PC Gaming. Does anybody here play?

I played around making Doom maps when that game first came out. They were called WADS which as a kid always made me think of a snot ball. My maps were never very interesting, usually just long hallways with random textures, and usually a doorway and a elevator(because I was figuring out how to get those to work). One time I just made a map filled with imps and a ledge where I stood with the gattling gun and mowed them all down.

I played Wow off and on for close to 8 years. I finally think I may be done with the game though. I saw them strip away just about everything that ever gave the game depth in the interest of appealing to the "casual" player. I was not hardcore by any means, I was never in a raiding guild or anything like that, but I also wasn't so dumb that a talent tree that let me design my own character was vexxing. That game is basically a vending machine now. Log on, put in your quarter, get your old sandwich, rinse and repeat. I wish they'd stop designing those games for the lowest common denominator.

I can see your point there. I probably never would have picked this game up if it hadn't gone free to play. As it stands, I do have to say that I've enjoyed playing it so far(Been about two months). The storyline and zone quests alone are enough to keep it interesting even if it were a single player game. I think they expanded and evolved a lot of systems from Wow as well, though the "Wow in space" analogy is certainly accurate. I sincerely doubt I'll play this game even a fraction as long as I did Wow but for now I am enjoying it. Have a level 50 Jedi Knight and am working on a Trooper now.

My wife and I watch The Big Bang Theory and one of the episodes featured this game. Sitting on the couch, when they showed 10 seconds of them playing the actual game I got excited and turned to my wife and said "That's the game I play. Look darling, that's the game I play!"

I used to play Wing Commander(the original), F117 Stealth Fighter, F-15 Strike Eagle III, and Ace of(over?) the Pacific. I haven't really read anything about good flight sims over the last decade though. Are there any, other than the Microsoft one?

 

I just finished up Hitman: Absolution, fun game with a decent story, and it looked sweet on my gaming rig. Right now I fired up Dawn of War: Soulstorm, lots of fun and gets pretty hectic. I was very disappointed with Dawn of War II though. If anyone has steam add me: Guncrazy56.

 

That describes ElderScrolls Skyrim..............pay once and play through cloud. Either alone or as a multi-player platform on-line

 

I just got "Wings Over Flanders Fields"...an air combat game set in WWI. It's a Combat Flight Sim 3 addon...
highly immersive. Fly too low, the infantry on the ground will shoot at you...it's not just a vacant battlefield below, the AI is pretty good.

Depending on settings, you can play as a true flight sim with accurate physics..or more arcadey by switching off all the various bells and whistles.

Multi-player is also fun to play, individual dogfighting, or as part of a team simulating actual air battles which took place.

I rank it as the best WWI era sim I've played, better than Rise of Flight, which although a technically purer game in terms of simulation, is not nearly
as immersive.

They've done their homework with this game right down to what squadron used what planes and planes used in specific missions.
Whether you've got a simple mission like shooting down observation balloons, strafing ground emplacements, or a sky full of aircraft in a giant furball....it's addictively fun.

A war often neglected in console and PC games, "The Great War"...WW1..is the perfect setting for gamers to learn a history lesson...or two.

Recommended.

 

I may do some flight simming or dirt from time to time but RTS is my thing.

 

For turn-based WW-2?...."Making History-II: The War of the World".

Not as easy as "Axis and Allies"...not as number-crunching and spread sheet as "Hearts of Iron".

 

TBH I prefer the old Avalon Hill board games. But I have been know to play ruse from time to tim just for a little time killing. I will check out Making History-II: The War of the World though.

 

I have a copy of the rare "Conquest of the Empire" (Same series as "Axis & Allies"). Figure my kid can go to college on a re-sale on Ebay some day.

 

I am waiting for my kids to get interested. I am an old style gamer.

 

Has anyone played Planetside 2?

Just started playing this game earlier in the week. It's a free-to-play FPS, not unlike Battlefield 2142, but on a much larger scale. There are three continents, dozens upon dozens of control points, and the battles all rage simultaneously. There are no "maps", though the three continents do seem to have different geography. One is winter, one seems to be desert/tropical, and I haven't seen the third yet.

 

My daughter has not tried that yet! Free steam game?

 

Mine does computer games....but still likes "Sorry" and "Game of Life" and playing chess....thank goodness.

 

I am not sure if it's on Steam or not. I know that I went to the website and downloaded the installer and was able to install and play the game without launching Steam at any time.

 

Well the work I do in my spare time gives me more scrap crap than I can sell off at times (memory, video cards, motherboards, drives and accessories as well as some external accessories and computer systems) so I just let her have the video card testbed.

My daughter does Axis and Allies, she was in the chess club when she went to public schools, monopoly... Wanting to get her into the D&D and Avalon Hill games.

She does not FB (or any social network as I will not allow it), text (she has a smart phone but for my connivence not hers) that is more of a PDA than a communications device.

I would love for her to communicate with more people but the fact is while her brain is evolving many other children her age (teen) are dumbing down. I really don't think she is all that bright at times but then I see other kids and realize she really is because she can have a real conversation with me.

She does brake jobs, she can rebuild the front end of a car (RWD I only all RWD or 4WD vehicles in my family), change oil...



She actually built her gaming current PC:



I force her to do instead of depending on others.

 

That's awesome! Building your own system has got to be a lot like building and maintaining your own car(on a smaller scale anyway). I get so much satisfaction out of being completely in charge of every piece of equipment in my case(and the case itself haha).

When I graduated from high school(2000), my father bought me all the components for my own desktop system(new case as well). They all arrived together in a box and he put the box in front of me and told me to build it. I haven't looked back since. Newegg.com has gotten tens of thousands of dollars of business because of me, either buying for myself, buying for others, or directing others to buy for themselves from there. When it comes to video gaming, I am PC all the way, and always have been. Consoles just don't cut it.

 

Building your own rig is reward in itself! I built mine a few months ago.

Intel core i7 3930k 6 core CPU
16gb 2133mhz G.Skill ram
1tb Velociaraptor hard drive 10k rpm with my old 1tb 7200rpm drive as secondary storage
Nvidia GTX 470 (eventually upgrading to th GTX 680)
Gigabyte G1 Assassin 2 motherboard with intergrated creative soundblaster X-fi
plus watercooling on both CPU and GPU

It took many months to save up the cash for it all but its still cheaper that way than buying a system premade. Also took many hours to put it all together since this was my first time water cooling. Everything runs great and the system is a beast!

 

That's a nice system. I'm actually running a gtx 470 in mine. Also have an i7-870 OC'd to 4ghz, 8gb ram, a 90gbm SSD, and three velociraptors. I bought the equipment to water cool my CPU but it's been sitting in a box for a year because I just can't bring myself to introduce a conductive liquid to the inside of my computer. I keep telling myself if my Zalman air cooler doesn't cut it, I'll put it on, but I haven't had the immediate need to yet.

 

Both of you have some decent systems. The OC I do like to see!

You can get non conductive coolant for that: http://www.xoxide.com/primoice-nonconductive-fluid-clear.html

I don't know how well it works but you can check it out.

 

Thanks for the link!

I had tried looking for this stuff on Newegg a while ago and couldn't find any. Unfortunately, the system I bought is a closed one so I can't replace the liquid in it. Perhaps I'll sell it on Ebay and take a go at building a custom setup. I didn't want to do that because I didn't trust myself to get it sealed confidently enough that I wasn't biting my nails for the rest of the life of my computer. Using that non-conductive liquid would really put me at ease. I've worked with plumbing hydraulics into CNC machine fixtures at my job, so I've got a little experience with sealing, but the biggest risk I've dealt with there is having to wipe up a little oil if it leaks.

 

Yep. I saw a Russian video by a dude calling himself "Orc Podcaster," where he calls Mists of Pandaria "World of Casualcraft." I've been playing the EU version of the game again lately. Why? Because it's a good way for me to immerse myself in another language and interact with people who also happen to speak it. Hence I've got characters on German and Russian realms. Even ended up with a Real ID friend from Germany! So, at least it's that good. Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 are also very well translated, so I play a wee bit of those in Russian as well.

No, I don't know of anything very good. I found an A-10 game at a store and picked it up, but the stupid thing doesn't even want to launch.. Not under Wine, and it wouldn't even do so in Windows 7!! I hope it gets fixed eventually (in Wine). So, no, no good flight sims to talk about, except maybe X-Plane and Flight Gear. X-Plane is a detailed commercial program that lets you add downloaded and home brew vehicles of all sorts. Flight Gear is a similar program, but open source. Both are complicated, though, and not really games so much as hardcore simulators, I suppose like MS Flight Simulator. I don't think I've ever tried that one.

At least I could fire up Basilisk II and run my old Mac flight sim games if I wanted to, though I never do bother with that.

 

Ah, so this thread has gotten around to the inevitable PC size comparison

I have an AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Black Edition and a Geforce GTX 560 Ti. I was going for low-cost power, and I think I did well in achieving it. Certainly handles things I throw at it well enough!

 

In games the X6 is about as good as anything on the market. Your build is GPU bound which means before upgrading your entire system get a faster video card!

To qualify myself in this I had the 27th ranked quad core system (first place i5 3570) @ HW Bot (still hold the ranking but broke the build down) and some hardware awards as well.

At the moment my daily driver is an i7 870 @ 3,6ish with a 6770, SSD cacheing, 16 GB of 1600 memory.

And the fast memory? Not worth the money on modern Intel systems and on AMD systems low and tight memory timings are generally more important than speed.

The only time you really need faster memory is when you benckmark for a living.

 

Always. You know what they say about a man with a small processor....

I used to use AMD, and still do for other applications, but finally relented and went with Intel for my home gaming rig. Also put an Intel 3ghz quad-core in the the CAD workstation I built at work. This was probably 4 years or so ago, so the newer AMD offerings may be closer to Intel's.

Unrelated but funny story about you. I was playing Star Wars: The Old Republic about a week ago and ran into another player named Durandal. You are the first person I'd ever see use the name(asked the player and he said it's from Xenosaga) so I was thinking "what are the odds" it's the same person from here. Obviously it wasn't but that would have been funny.

 

Glad mine is biggest round these parts

 

My processor is faster than your "daily driver" processor!