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Post by Mereel Ma'viin on Nov 1, 2011 3:20:13 GMT 1
Last week, after waiting for the better part of a year, I finally got hooked up to high-speed Internet! ;D
Unfortunately, this was preceded by the discovery that the computer that I got last year finds RAM sticks to be delicious. Apparently, for reasons unknown, it will randomly ruin one of the sticks, and the only way to find out which one is to take both out and manually test them. Even worse, the only way to fix the problem is to replace the bad RAM stick, with no guarantee that it won't happen again.
However, fear not! This interesting and unexpected turn of events has inspired my brother and I to pool our resources and build our own gaming computer. With both of us working together, we were able to go all out on the system specs. As I type this, the pieces are all waiting to be assembled, but when we're done, we should have a computer that will suit our needs for quite a while to come. ;D
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 9, 2011 16:50:29 GMT 1
Woohoo! FINALLY! I'm so glad for you guys. ;D
Hey, maybe we can finally play some games together online!
I'm also thinking about playing SW:TOR, because I've got a PC that can run it now, but not in the near future, because I can't afford to invest my time in an MMO at the moment. I will at some point jump in though.
Sorry for the late reply, by the way.
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 9, 2011 16:50:31 GMT 1
EDIT: Double post. For some unknown reason, it won't let me delete it.
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Post by Mereel Ma'viin on Nov 10, 2011 3:47:08 GMT 1
I would love to play some Battlefront II! I'll have to sort through my games and see what still works.
The new computer is up and running (I'm posting from it now, in fact), although it's going to be awhile before I get used to it. Because it was built from the ground up, I have to reinstall all of the programs and tweak all of the settings in order to get it to run just the way I want it. On top of that, I have to get used to Windows 7, which is just enough different from Vista to make life interesting =/
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 10, 2011 20:59:51 GMT 1
Windows 7 is better and lighter than Vista in my experience. Remember when installing software that is better to install 64 bit applications, as I'm sure you're aware, just saying it to make sure.  I'd love to play some SWBFII! Go get the Total Conversion Pack 2.0! It's well worth the download and will enhance and enrich the game in so many ways! It adds the KotOR era, new types of games, and even the SWBF1 levels. ;D I haven't tried to install it on Win7 yet (because I've only recently gotten a new PC), but I'm sure we'll get it to work in some way or another. I did get EAW to work, Forces of Corruption too, but the only way to get FoC to work with Win7 is using an illegal patch (which does some minor tweaks on the game as well). I have played SWBF2 online... but not a lot. We could go on the same team and go against the computer maybe... should be possible I think. In any case we could go on the same team vs. other players. Last time I checked, people were still playing it. I haven't tried getting JK to work, but there's a topic on massassi for help with that. In any case I'll still be able to run it fine on my old XP computer. |
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Post by Mereel Ma'viin on Nov 12, 2011 2:42:00 GMT 1
I agree, Windows 7 is an improvement. It's just different, which is difficult to get used to.
I don't even remember for certain where my JK disc is, it's been so long since I last used it. The disk drive on my old XP computer died several years ago, and I never tried to play JK on the Vista computer.
As for other games, I have the Best of Star Wars pack (KotOR, Battlefront, Republic Commando, Empire at War and Jedi Outcast), Jedi Academy, Battlefront II and probably one or two others that I can't recall off the top of my head. I would be very pleased to set up a game sometime once I've got this computer fully set up. I'll probably also try to get back into IMing at some point, so I'll send you my contact info when that happens.
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 12, 2011 3:25:22 GMT 1
All right, sounds great!
I have the best of PC too. And then there's the old games like XWA, XvT... I haven't tried those yet. Will probably be a pain to get to work on Win7.
Googling SWBF2 on Win7, I learned there are sound-related problems with SWBF2... but shouldn't be too difficult to fix. I'll think I'll just install it and see what happens.
My Star Wars Multiplayer games:
JK
JO
JA
SWBF
SWBF2
XvT
XWA
RC (Tried the multiplayer mode once, it's not very special - but we could give it a go.)
EaW / FoC
The rest of my SW games are all SP as far as I know.
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Post by Mereel Ma'viin on Nov 13, 2011 3:17:32 GMT 1
Yeah, my brother told me that he had to do something to SWBF2 to get it to work correctly on the old Vista computer, but he wasn't very clear on exactly what it was. I'll have to see if I can get him to explain it to me.
I wish that Lucasarts would do a space combat simulator like XWA, but with upgraded graphics and gameplay. SWBF2's space maps are fun, but I'd really like to see something a bit more detailed and complex in a new-ish game.
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 13, 2011 5:25:15 GMT 1
I remember hearing a rumour about a game like that being developed. Forgot where I heard it though. TFN, maybe. I got SWBF2 to work on Win7. There seems to be a sound issue that can be resolved by enabling stereo mix in the volume control options for recording devices. (It -may- crash if you don't) I turned it on beforehand, because it seems to be turned off by default. So I wouldn't know if this fixed anything, but in any case it's running like a dream. ;D I'm rusty though.... ooooh! Terrible!  Also need a better keyboard because these keys are way too bouncy for my tastes. They're not sensitive enough, I need to press them way too hard for response. Not good. |
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Hyde
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Post by Hyde on Nov 15, 2011 3:16:44 GMT 1
Hey, that's great news! I'm glad to hear that  I'd love to play something with you guys. It's hard to find each other, but hopefully we'll get lucky eventually. I've been waiting for something like XWA for years... actually I kinda gave up at some point... IMO they just don't make games like they used to, the gameplay of our good and old JK is one example and space combat sims like XW/TF/XvT/XWA just don't exist anymore, it's all arcade for my taste. It's either that or maybe I'm getting old and grumpy I'd like to give TOR a shot though, but I'm not sure if I'll meet the system requirements to run it smoothly... |
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 16, 2011 1:16:14 GMT 1
Last night I lay awake in bed, thinking of all my unfinished JK projects...
I've made so many awesome things ... but I never got around to completing and polishing everything. I'm itching to finish a couple of those projects. One of these days I'm going to make a topic and list all the secret projects I've cooked up over the years, maybe let you guys vote on which one I should complete first. ;D
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 20, 2011 1:25:17 GMT 1
K, so I did it!
I got JK to run on Win 7, it's running smooth as shit from a duck's behind on an amazing widescreen resolution of 1900x1200 or something close to that. ;D
One minor, but really annoying problem though... I imported the 'player' folder from my old PC, so I didn't have to set my keys and settings (this always used to work on older systems), but for some reason it does 'import' my character, but not my keys. Thing is, I've tried setting the keys manually, but it won't let me bind the right shift key.
This is a huge problem because I've literally been using the same key config for all my games in my entire life, and every other key in the 'neighbourhood' is already taken. So I would have to change my entire key layout, which is something I've attempted before, and it just didn't work for me at all.
I'm asking around on JKhub and massassi... I guess we'll see if anyone has an answer.
Bottom line: JK runs on Win7! You'll need to follow some procedures though.
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Post by Mereel Ma'viin on Nov 20, 2011 2:09:23 GMT 1
Sorry for up and disappearing in the middle of the conversation like that. I just spent the whole week treating yet another ulcer attack, and I'm just now getting somewhat back to normal.  Almost immediately before that, I ran into a tiny little problem. After just over full operational week, my new hard drive abruptly gave up the ghost. I have no idea what caused it, and without knowing that, I'm a little reluctant to replace it with the same model. Worse still, I'd just gotten through transferring all of my files over, and I forgot to back it up, so all of my writing and everything was on the new drive. Good news is, I'm pretty sure that the HDD failure is not mechanical. I hooked it up to another computer, and while it doesn't work every time, it will, about once out of every five tries, attempt to boot up. What that means is that once I replace the drive, I should be able to recover at least part of my data, although I can't be certain of that until I can actually try. For now, I'm back to using the old XP computer, but I'm going to try and get this whole thing straightened out ASAP. I'll let you know when the new computer is up and running again. |
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Post by Jos Nelsh on Nov 20, 2011 2:20:33 GMT 1
Aw, d**n. No worries, your health is more important than us dudes on a Star Wars forum. Wow, that stinks about the HD. This goes to prove that for digital data, you don't have it unless you have it twice. I know it's no help, but I always need to remind myself of that. I'm not all too knowledgeable about building modern PCs, but here's a few random ideas. Are you sure your power supply is powerful enough to run all your devices? As far as I know it's not like some types of HDs are incompatible with certain Mobos. (As long as it's the correct connection type, that is). I understand your concerns about going for the same model. My advice would be to always go for a premium brand as far as HDs go. If unsure, check which ones are supposed to be trustworthy. In any case, if you manage to boot the thing up on another PC, backup as much as you can as soon as you can, starting with the most important stuff in case it decides to break down in the middle of things. Yeah, I'm probably playing captain obvious here, just my two cents, for what it's worth. |
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Post by Mereel Ma'viin on Nov 20, 2011 20:59:39 GMT 1
Thanks for the thoughts. Not backing up my data was a serious rookie mistake, but between having a brand-new drive, and never having gone through a hard drive crash before, the thought never even crossed my mind.
The drive itself is a Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB, which I understood to be a semi-reliable drive. Having it die after only a week does tend to change a person's opinion about things like that, though.
As far as power consumption goes, I put an 850-watt power supply in the computer, which should be plenty to power the entire rig without causing a problem.
Hooking the drive up to the Vista computer gave me some minor problems that I'd like to try to work out. After hooking up the drive, I double-checked to make sure that the computer would boot from the existing drive, rather than the bad one, but when I rebooted, it kept trying to boot from the crashed disk. If I can figure out what I was doing wrong, I'll use the Vista computer to try and recover the data from the crashed drive.
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