Gaming miscellany

Second Life, ATI, and Vista: fix coming

I’ve posted before before about the fact that I can’t play Second Life since I upgraded to Vista. I was pretty certain that the problem related to the ATI video drivers. ATI added OpenGL support in the 7.1 release of the drivers and updated that support in the 7.2 release, but Second Life still doesn’t work.  I haven’t been logging into SL recently: I decided to cut back and focus more on other things, but I would like to be able to log in once in a while…and the lack of support for Vista and ATI has been a major inhibitor.

Gaming miscellany

Building a console station…

I have a somewhat mixed history with regards to console games.  Looking back in history, I believe the first console I had was some kind of pong-type thing…back in the days before console games had cartridges, so about 1977…30 years ago.  Yowsa, I’m old!  The first console I had that I have a clear memory of was a Colecovision: I had Donkey Kong, plus some kind of adventure game where your “character” was a little ball with a bow going through a 2D maze.  After that I went through a succession of Sega systems, culminating in a Sega Genesis “portable”.  That was about when online PC games started showing up (1996), which somewhat coincidentally was the last time I played a console game for about a decade.

Games

My Second Life house…

Okay, so I’ve had a few too many “Second Life” posts lately. I’ll do my best to make this the last one for at least a few days.

The other day I bought my land- yesterday I put the finishing touches on my house.

I like the “rustic” look as opposed to the modern appearance many favour. The house itself is something I purchased at a shop.

I’ve also been working on the interior…

Games

Oblivion: still fun after several weeks…and the death of a demi-god

Oblivion has been and continues to be a fascinating game for me.  I know full well that some people claim to have completed the main quest in as little as a couple of days, but I’m now up to over 70 hours of play time…and I’m still not finished. 

The main quest isn’t hard and, in fact, it’s arguable that its easier to complete if you do it quickly.  Oblivion “scales” your foes as your character goes up in level- so if you work on a quest when you are level 5 your opponents will all be around the same level as you.  If you wait until you are 20th level, your opponents will have “kept up”…and although this may sound like the challenge is the same, the powers (spells, items, and so forth) at higher levels are (in my opinion) more challenging
to deal with. 

So how is the game keeping me busy?  Well, I’ll give a few examples, including my most significant accomplishment to date…

***** WARNING *** SOME SPOILERS FOLLOW *** WARNING *****

Gaming miscellany

Irene wants to play EverQuest….

I’ve been playing computer games for…<shudder> decades. The first computer game I played was probably a text adventure game I hand-typed into my Apple II from a magazine. I saved it to cassette tape…I think the game had something to do with exploring an abandoned mine, but I’m not sure. That would have been about 1979/1980 or thereabouts: my memory is a bit hazy.

Scroll to Top