Back on the horse

[cmdr_zoom]

Getting things done.

Haircut tomorrow, 1:00.

Interview on Thursday with Facilities Services (across from campus) for yet another Office Specialist position, 1:15.

Poking at other apps right now and thinking that I should probably eat something today. I'm in the mood for a burrito, so I guess I'll go out and get one.

Not so good: I tried the BioShock demo, and my video card (ATI X850 XT) isn't Cool enough. Oh well.

EDIT: After the discussion in comments, went back and added some appropriate music for this post. Going back to where it all began...

Comments

[mechaman.livejournal.com]

Ugh. Though wierd. That's an equivalent to a *600 Nvidia, isn't it?

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I think it's an issue of shader support. I couldn't see anything except the menu screens and subtitles. No cursor in the menus (that was fun) and no "scene." Maybe I need to upgrade my drivers, but they aren't that old...

[caluche.livejournal.com]

ATI and nvidia released drivers on the day of the bioshock release (IIRC) to fix performance and other bugs in bioshock with their respective cards. It might well be old drivers.

Though looking at the requrements, SM 3.0 is required. It is the shaders.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

Yup. I have a card that's too fancy to run ol' Halo and not fancy enough to run the newest games. (It works just grand for City of Heroes, though.)

Ah well. It's always something.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I bought the game off steam thinking X800 > current gen low end. They could have labeled the SM3.0 requirement a little better.

Anyways, there's a mod (http://bioshocksm2.blogspot.com/) out there now that gets it to a playable state. Graphics still aren't 100% though.

I've played the first bit (I've got the fire plasmid) with the mod, but I'm going to leave it for now. I was planning to upgrade my computer in the next few months anyways, and I have other games pulling my attention as well. I'm currently working my way through the latest (and quite fun) Metroid game on the Wii.

[cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com]

I'll check it out. Thanks!

Yeah, pretty much a stopgap for me too. I don't have the money to be buying new games, let alone a video card to play 'em.

[kowh.livejournal.com]

Of course, after I posted, I found a better mod (http://www.paolofranchini.com/shshock/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5). Graphics are much better in this one. I wouldn't know if they're as good as SM3.0 though, as I have to turn the settings down to get it playable.

Still has the large drawback of causing 10 minute load times, as it has to recompile the shaders every time. So I'm still going to mostly hold off playing.

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

I've made this comment elsewhere recently (in regard to HL2Ep2). You can get a nVidia 8600 GT (PCI-E 16x) for about $100 these days. No AGP DX10 cards from nVidia yet.

And FWIW, the 8600 GT rocks CoH. :)