Fantastic Contraption is a great little game where you build a machine to transport (or throw) an object from your “workshop” to the goal area.
The best thing is you can share you solutions with other people; check out the forum for different solutions.
Someone even made Godzilla.
- Fixed several security issues.
- Fixed several stability issues.
Hopefully Firefox will now play nicer with Kaspersky, but the virtual keyboard still crashes it, so i’m guessing Kaspersky is still going to keep causing crashes untill the patch is released (some time this week according to the Kaspersky forums)
This is a handy little Addon, one thing that annoys me is having to navigate folder download locations when I want to save a file, e.g. i want to save some things in a c:\download folder, some in c:\images, some on desktop, some in deep directory trees.
Save Link In Folder allows you to create menu shortcuts, so you can just select (for example) images from your download dialog, and the file will automatically be saved in C:\Documents and Settings\yourname\location\of\your\images\folder or whatever you specify.
A Quake style game that features some different modes of play and instagib, cel shaded graphics and basic deathmatch style maps. Very fast paced, but a bit of a dated game style in my opinion.
A First-person shooter with great graphics and a handful of different game modes. It does require lots of resources to run well, but you can tone it down slightly to improve performance but this game is all about the graphics.
Savage: the battle for newerth is a free full game, it used to be sold but was then given away for free! The game involves 2 (or 3) teams, each having 1 “commander” which can use team resources to build structures and research upgrades for the players. Everyone else plays the game in first or third person.
Gameplay
The game is fairly easy to pick up, and your character will gain experience (exp) that provides certain upgrades like added HP or stamina, but XP is reset at the end of each game and xp does not have much of an influence on game balance. Much of the game is dictated by the decisions your commander makes, which technology tree is taken, where to expand etc. but games can suddenly swing if someone pulls a crafty move!
Graphics & performance
The game is fairly old, but is still fairly pleasing to the eye and runs surprisingly well on older hardware, turning off grass can really improve performance!
Spring is an open source RTS game engine, on which people build different mods and maps. The units looks fairly basic, compared to games like Red Alert but it is truly three dimensional; you can rotate and angle the camera pretty much however you want and can even go first-person and manually control a unit. You can play against the AI opponents or you can play online via the Spring lobby.
The catch is that the most popular mod (Balanced Annihilation) requires some content from the original TotalAnnihilation, so you should own the original game if you use this content. (more info @ the FAQ).
Gameplay
The game has many tactics and counter tactics, a good amount of advanced controls; e.g. you can tell an air transport to pick up all units within one area and shuttle run them to another area, but this depth also means it’s not easy to pick up quickly. It’s even possible to draw on the ground to provide directions for your team mates, genius! There are regularly 10-12 player games, with a few 16 player games.
Graphics & Performance
The units/vehicles are quite square-looking, but recognisable. The landscapes are also quite basic, but are deformable. Most of the time the game runs fairly well, however in larger games it can really slow down and the pace of the game will be determined by the slowest person.
This is one of those games that really flys under the radar and I don’t really know why it never gets any publicity, maybe because of it’s legal reliance on the original game? Saying that, there is a regular following of players.
Quite an addictive racing game (not a simulator), a Cut-down version of Trackmania United Forever, with only 1 car but almost an unlimited number of tracks and plenty of players online.
Trackmania United Forever (TMUF) is the full-game that includes all previous Trackmania games rolled into one.
Trackmania Nations Forever (TMNF), which is free, only has the Stadium cars and tracks, however this is by far the most popular game type.
Everybody drives the same car so you don’t need to spend ages playing it to unlock better cars, the only thing you can change about you car is the appearance (TrackMania Carpark) and the sound of the horn. You can play offline in time-attack mode and attempt to beat the computer to unlock more tracks, or you can play online against others.
Gameplay
The most popular mode of play is a time-trial, the track plays for usually around 5 minutes and you must get the fastest time you can, you can restart at any time. Most tracks involve jumps, loops, and plenty of speed. There are a few servers playing race mode, where you race in real-time against others and must be the fastest to complete around 4 laps, a few of these servers run mock Formula 1 circuits. Cars are able to pass through each other so there’s no need to worry about crashing into someone else (some servers have over 100 players) but this means there’s no real over-taking as such, just passing through!
Graphics & performance
The graphics are very clean and vibrant, there are 4 different lighting conditions, and two different track surfaces (tarmac and dust). The default cars come with different decals, for each country and are fairly detailed. The game performs very well on my modest system (e6420, x1950xt, 2gb) If you do experience any slow-down you can always choose to not draw any other cars, or turn off some of the fancy graphic features.
Overall this is a great game to just pick up and instantly play, there’s plenty of people playing it and plenty of servers running different tracks.
It doesn’t use sticky pads, claws or magic but a technique called Electroadhesion (It’s basically a static charge, like you get from rubbing a balloon on your head) which allows it to climb pretty much any flat surface.
It looks quite cool and it would be awesome if it could suspend itself from a ceiling, but I doubt it could support much weight.
There’s a video over at bbc.co.uk and more information at SRI international
How to: Hauppauge HVR 1300 on Linux.
If you want to view TV under Linux (DVB or analog), I can verify that the Hapuuauge HVR 1300 is compatible! (digital works fine, however I do not have analog sound working yet)
I bought the card because i don’t get very good reception on digital mux 68 (E4, ITV, channel 4) so also need analog.
My first attempt was to follow this guide and use the latest V4L modules, however I had problems with the V4L sources and the vanilla Mandriva 2008.0 kernel (2.6.22). So I decided to use a later kernel and compiled 2.6.24.4 from source, making sure the Video 4 linux and DVB modules were included when compiling.
Another valuable resource was Bernard GODARD’s blog, he listed the modules that you need to load in order to get the card operating.
I hardly ever use the menubar in Firefox since it’s possible to bookmark from the URL bar, so why do I need the menubar wasting 21 pixels?
Hide Menubar can save those precious pixels!
Before
After
The best bit is, If you ever need the menubar, just hit the ALT key and it will reveal it.