This week (and weekend) has been a big attempt at getting a lot of little things out of the way. Actually, we were quite productive.
Saturday I was at a wedding all day and then came home to relax Saturday night. Sunday we took Lauren’s parents over to see the apartment and brought our first load of “move in” stuff. We also went down the street to Target to get some basics (TP, laundry detergents, spoons, etc). That set me back a cool $100 but most of that was because I picked up the super-elite-mega-special edition of Monty Python’s Holy Grail. I knew they would do that do me so I held off in buying simply the “special edition” and waited for this collectors set. It’s got everything from an actual film still to a copy of the screen play and more DVD extras than you can shake a stick at.
Monday was where we really go down to it. I called the public records office back home and asked what I needed to do to get a copy of my birth cirtificate. We went to the DMV (here in TX called the DPS) to get me a Texas drivers license. It should be mailed to me in a few weeks, hopefully in time for the trip. We also went to the county court house and got our marriage license.
We also went and I picked out my wedding band. Very cool. I got a titanium and gold band. The gold is a strip / band within (in the middle) of the ring and the part thats touching my finger is actually titanium. I think I’m mildly allergic to yellow gold (or more accurately the nickel in gold) and so this was a cool way of getting the traditional gold in there while having a hypoallergenic and nearly indestructible ring in the process.
My shipment has arrived from New Hampshire as well. It’s at the shipping / transfer station as I write. Paul has offered to go over there at lunch with me and get as much (read: all) as we can and bring it back to the studio. That way, if I have to make more than one or two trips I won’t have to go back to essentially “the docks” to get my stuff, I can take it home to the apartment little by little at my own convience. That was nice of him.
As for the rest of the world, so much has happened since I last wrote. Those Boston boys have made it to the 2nd round of the playoffs and will face off against those ass-hat Yankees tonight. I’ve either watched or listened to every single game of the series. I’m obsessed. I won’t be the A-typical Boston fan and declare this to be “the year” only to be shot down at the end of the week, but its very exciting to see them playing well and if they keep it up they have a real shot this year. I actually would like to see Boston and Chicago in the world series but something tells me that if that actually happens the earth would split open and hell would freeze over. But here’s to hoping.
Also, Half-Life 2 MIGHT (and probably will) be delayed until 2004. The early story out of France said it was definatly delayed, but theres still no official word from Valve. Since I don’t like the French because they smell funny, the only information I plan on taking to heart is that spoken directly from the mouth of Gabe Newell. We wait in anticipation.
There are so many other things I could go on and on about. The record companies reversing their price cuts, Capt. Moron becoming governor of California, Newt being addicted to pain killers. I could go on forever. That will, unfortunately, have to wait until I get my system up. The system should be “running” by tomorrow but a connection to the outside world will probably have to wait until next week. And then… let the blog flood begin.
Matt out.
Apparently the 2004 delay was quoted from a Vivendi representative, which I would take as being official. Since Vivendi is publishing the game, it’s their call on when it gets released. The only thing Valve has said was regarding the Sept 30th release date, that it had slipped to “unspecified holiday release”, I assume at the time they meant Christmas, but now it looks like it may slip to Easter. 🙂
It was probably silly of them to say Sept 30th in the first place. Ah well.
“A third of the source code was stolen,” VU Games president of international operations Christophe Ramboz told daily Les Echos in its Tuesday edition. “It’s serious because it forces us to delay the launch of the game by at least four months, that is to April 2004. Just the time to rewrite parts of the game.”
That was the “official” quote. That was made by someone who a) is not Valve and is not rewriting the code, b)has no input into the decision whether or not to rewrite code and c)is in France and is part of the international division. His opinions may solely express international release dates. If what’s been stolen doesn’t need much rewritting or if Valve desides not to do it, they don’t have to. VU may be publishing it but they still need the finished game to do so, and that rests squarely on Valve.
That’s merely what I see. My OPINION however is very much that we won’t see it this year. I think they will have to rewrite code if they want to avoid cheating problems like the HL/CS 1.0 era. They shouldn’t rush and put out something merely for blood-thirsty fans who demand something now. I’d much rather have a finished masterpiece than a paint-by-numbers patch job.
It is rather convenient that this whole mess happened just after the benchmarks with HL2 really sucking on nVidia hardware. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they’re just using the code leak as an excuse to take more time to make the game actually work properly on non-ATI hardware.
Wonder how this will affect the whole HL2/Doom3 thing, though it seems that Doom 3 has been getting very little press recently. This could just be a giant publicity boosting stunt by Valve/Vivendi.
From CNN:
“It’s the latest in a series of frustrations for Vivendi Universal Games (V: Research, Estimates) and developer Valve. Earlier today, Christophe Ramboz, VU Games president of international operations, told Reuters the source code theft would result in a four month delay, pushing Half-Life 2 back to April 2004.
Valve, though, has not confirmed that delay. (Calls to the developer were not returned.) That’s an important thing to note. Large independent game developers such as Valve and id Software typically decide when their games are released – not the publishers.”
http://money.cnn.com/2003/10/07/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm
I still agree with you though. It will be very very delayed. Unfortunate. And really sad that someone would steal it and ruin it for the rest of us.
Yeah, a publicity stunt wouldn’t be out of the question. Interesting, very interesting.
http://theinquirer.net/?article=11984
ooooohhh. updates and rumors 🙂