by Matt | Jul 19, 2007 | Games
I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask one of you to do something for me. You might not like it, but it has to be done. Sure it will be painful, but with time the pain will lessen and you’ll get used to your new condition. I’m going to need one of you to buy a Xbox 360. I know, I know, I’m asking a lot. But remember, you’d not doing this for yourselves, but for the good of us all.
Ahem.
Seriously though, I’m getting rather lonely out here in gaming land. Am I the only one that still plays games? My team has all but gone into hiding until “the next big thing” comes out. Only 3 of them have 360’s and their all Madden freaks anyway. My college and highschool friends used to game but most everyone is busy lately. Doesn’t anyone want to play some Rainbow 6, Halo or Ghost Recon? If I don’t get a “team game” fix soon, I’m going to go ape shit.
It’s not as though it’s a bad time to own a 360. The release schedule for the fall/winter season is ridiculously jam packed with AAA titles. There’s a little of everything in there. Everything from Assassins Creed, Frontlines, Mass Effect and Call of Duty strait on up to the grand-daddy Halo 3 is coming out sometime between now and X-mas. And those are just the ones I thought of off the top of my head. The list I have running on what I’m going to be buying this season is already 30+ titles deep.
With all of the great news from E3, all of the new trailers and all the confirmed release dates, this winter is going to validate my ownership of that system.
So… I’m going to go fire up the 360 for a little Xbox Live ass kicking… anyone want to join me?
Disclaimer: I wasn’t actually serious in my demand for someone to purchase a 360 solely to game with me… but it would be kinda nice. 😛
by Matt | Feb 13, 2007 | Culture, Games, Tech, Web
No sooner had I posted that last long winded post did I read, deep in the forums I found it on, that the development had forked, gotten a GUI and a new website. You can check out the new versions here. Pretty slick. This will certain ease the pain of having to encode everything by hand. Ah, the wonderous power of the internet, lol.
by Matt | Feb 13, 2007 | Culture, Games, Tech
Ever since I heard of the existance of the Xbox 360, I was intregued by it’s alleged “streaming media” capabilities. When I got one, I knew it was a feature that I simply needed to try. That was December. I had been running Windows Media Player 11 long before that, and downloading and setting the connectivity part was simple. I had my mp3s streaming in about 10 minutes. Since then I’ve become quite the “library whore”, having a constant need to manage my own content, fix ID3 tags, get album art, etc. For the most part, WMP11 has stood up to my abuse, and I applaud it for that. I still think there are better players out there, but for library and organization sake, I find WMP superior to iTunes. That’s just one man’s opinion. I don’t have an iPod, so I can’t attest to iTunes “awesome trendyness”. But this article isn’t about iTunes vs WMP, actually, it isn’t even about music. It’s about TV.
While WMP11 streams music and photos to the 360 with ease, video is a whole other ballgame. At first I just put various TV shows into a folder, added the folder to my library and hoped for the best. No dice. Although WMP can play all sorts of media files, the 360 won’t see them. So I start digging. Apparently the original 360 dashboard and the original versions of WMP11 forbid streaming video. This was a pretty blatent attempt to sell more copies of XP Media Center Ed., which worked right out of the box with the 360 and could stream pretty much everything with little or no effort. The other option for streaming content was to wait for Vista, since Home Premium, Premium and Ultra all had the media center components build in. All this was going on in the latter parts of last year, before I even got my 360. When I was Google’ing the problem, I kept on finding “it simply won’t work without Media Center” as the answer, but all the articles and forum posts were early or middle 2006. Surely there had to be some sort of update since then, especially now that Vista is here. Sure enough, there was a WMP update, a Media Connector component update and a few dashboard updates. All this combines to let the people with the bleeding edge, newest updated copies of WMP stream a VERY specific type of WMV file to the Xbox.
Fantastic, awesome, now I can stream video to my Xbox right? Kinda. Like I said, it needs to be a specifically encoded WMV video file, with a certain type of audio encoding as well. Specifially, you need the Windows Media Encoder Series 9 codecs. You also need to have the video compressed with MPEG4 and MP3 192kbps audio. This is the only combination I could find that would work.
So, I have the right format. What about my content. Well, my main motivation in doing this is to watch TV. You see, I don’t have a DVR. I can’t watch TV when I want to. I’m at the mercy of the networks. I know, shame on me for not being with it and having a DVR (trust me, I want one). Thankfully, the internet comes to my rescue. TV torrents are among the most popular things on the planet at the moment. Not to mention that these torrents are almost always of the HD version of the show. The main problem is, all these bountiful, HD quality shows are all Xvid encoded AVI files. What’s a boy to do? Convert them of course!
Converting video these days is easier said than done, at least for the average home user, and especially when speciality formats are involved. I already mentioned that for the WMVs I needed the WME9 codec, MPEG4 and MP3 audio right. Well, to use the AVI files, I also need the Xvid codec, the DivX codec (for some), and AC3 audio filters. Of course, you need a program to actually do all this conversion. Well, most, if not all the popular conversion software can’t convert into that funky WMV format that the Xbox needs. WMEncoder can, but it can’t DECODE the AVI files. This is where it gets complicated. After searching for days, I finally determined that with the help of a VB script and a lot of command line decoding/encoding, it’s possible to do it fairly painlessly… but one video at a time. Of course, you need MORE crap to do that too. FFMpeg, FFDShow, and the front end to the AC3 filters do most of the work, and the VB script I found was called Encode360.
Basically, once you get all the pieces in the right place (which took the better part of a day), all you need to do is drag and drop a file onto the VB script and a couple minutes later, you have a fantastic looking, still fairly HD quality, properly formatted WMV file, that WMP11 recognizes, shares, and that your 360 finds and players perfectly.
Now, the only thing left to do is to re-encode my entire library of stuff. While it’s always beneficial to keep the AVI files, I usually just burn them to disk and get them off my system. There’s no sense in keeping the AVI files on my system when I would have to be in front of my computer to enjoy them. I’ll just keep the WMV files handy so that I can watch TV more or less on demand. Seeing as there’s only one evening’s worth of TV that I watch in the first place, that shouldn’t really be that daunting of a task. How I Met Your Mother, Two and a Half Men and CSI:Miami. I’ve got the occasional episodes of Family Guy and The Office, but that’s pretty much it. I would like to get the entire collection of Red vs Blue on there, but I think I’d be looking into getting a new (giant) hard drive before that happens.
So, my question to you guys is this… do any of you have any experience transcoding stuff like this? Is there an easier way to do it? Any suggestions on programs or processes to speed this along? I’ve already tried TMPG-encoder, VLC player, and MediaMonkey. They either didn’t work, didn’t work properly, or produced poor and unwatchable results. I had videos without color, without audio, with audio but without video, all sorts of crap. I’d really like an all in one package that I just give it a file, tell it to make it a WMV with X, Y, Z parameters, and let it go to town. Any thoughts?
by Matt | Oct 16, 2006 | Games, Personal, Work
It’s been a long two months. Here in Texas its gone from unbearably hot to mildly aggravating. Now we’re getting into the rainy season and, since everything is bigger in Texas, the storms are frequent and violent. This afternoon we’ve lost power twice already. I worry about making this post so I’m typing as quickly as I can.
Recently I had the opportunity to watch The Departed. I’m not quite sure I can give the movie a high enough mark to properly describe it’s brilliance. There’s no question that Scorsese is at the top of his game. That was the best ending I’ve seen to a movie since The Usual Suspects.
On the job front, although I can’t go into specifics, I’m currently checking out alternatives to my current employment. Not by shear choice of my own, but at my employer’s suggestion. Apparently the books look a little lean.
I have hope for a few possibilities I’ve found. One actually involves working for the Army Intelligence branch in a quasi-secretive fashion. That’s definitely something I can’t give you details on.
We’ve also found a new church home that, for the first time, I actually enjoy going to. The people are extremely friendly, the sermon isn’t heavy handed, everyone is laid back and really upbeat. It’s quite a nice change of pace. We’ve made quite a few friends and actually enjoy spending time with them outside of church. Most “church friends” aren’t the kind of folks I’d invite over for a BBQ, but these people seem to be an exception to the rule.
So, it’s mostly a job hunt around here lately. There’s also a small photo project I’ve taken on, just for myself, to chronicle life here in Texas. I’m hoping I can make it into a book and bring copies up north for the holidays.
Actually, that brings up a good point. I’m coming home for X-mas. I’ll be back in New England the day before my birthday until a day or two before New Years. A nice long break.
I tried to clear that trip with work, only to get a tentative “we’ll see, I guess it’s ok” answer, but, in all honesty, I’m hoping to no longer be there by the time this trip rolls around. Even if I’m not, it’s not something I going to fight my boss about. I’m going, they can just deal with it. I’ve worked too long and too hard to even be questioned about time off. After three years, if they don’t see the value in me as an employee and can’t seem to find it acceptable that I take one week off a year, then that’s not some place I want to work at any more.
Other projects I’m thinking about are an audio podcast for SavvyNation and trying a review/web tidbit site with Chris. I’d really like to get others involved the audio production, mostly because I doubt I have a great “radio voice” and it’s always nice to have some color commentary to back you up.
We’ll see how that goes. I wouldn’t be holding your breath or anything.
Ok, gotta run, the house is shacking with thunder, probably a good time to shut down the PC.
Matt out.
by Matt | Aug 17, 2006 | Games
Every Wednesday the guys from the Texas Combat Crew get together and drink. Heavily. Then, we play Battlefield 2, because that’s just what we do. Our “Drunken Wednesday Game Night” as it’s been cristend has attracted an attendence of histroic perportion. When you do a search on All-Seeing-Eye or Game-Monitor, not only does out BF2 CTF server come up, it comes up often as the highest ranked. The developers of the mod have taken such a fondness to our schenanegans that they reoutinly stop by, enjoy a view drinks vicariouly via TeamSpeak, and get their game on. You can see a few of them in that screen shot. Anyone with a “Dcon” tag is actually developing the game we’re all playing.
It feels really good to be a part of something this much fun. It’s a real great group of guys, who I enjoy playing with every time I do. Having a crew like ours is what video game clans should be about. Non of this competition pressure, no one getting angry over someone elses “skill”, no one having an attitude problem. Just a fun, friendly gaming experience. It could be that way since all but 2 of our members are over 25, most of us are married, have kids, steady jobs, and generally aren’t 14 year old smacktards just there to “pwn noobs”. We’re there to have fun.
We run a smacktard free server and I think that’s what everyone enjoys. So, cheers to the CTF mod, cheers to good gaming, and cheers to the guys of the Texas Combat Crew. See you Wednesdays.
-=TCC=-Doc – proud member of the TCC and profession spokes person for drunken gaming
PS: If you’d like to learn more about the TCC and our Wednesday night fun, please visit is at our website. Also, please know that you’ll need the game “Battlefield 2” by EA and the DCon CTF mod, available here.
by Matt | Dec 31, 2005 | Games
In case anyone has stumbled across this page in Google, I’m writing this in hopes of sparing you from some of the fustration I felt when I learned that my brand new Logitech G5 laser mouse’s extra buttons weren’t natively supported in Battlefield 2. As an avid computer gamer, I frequently bind my wheel mouse button to “zoom” or “alternate fire” as games sometimes call it. I also bind my thumb button to something handy. I do this because usually I use the right mouse button as “jump”. I’ve never been a big spacebar fan for jumping.
Regardless of my personal preferences, the point here is that those two buttons on the G5 are considered “buttons 4 and 5” to a game. BF2 isn’t known for supporting many mice buttons beyond the standard 3. After some digging and a little coaxing, I figured out a work around to get those buttons to work until such time as EA includes updated mouse support in one of their patches.
What we’re going to do is configure the mouse buttons to be something else, keyboard keys to be exact.
Here’s how. Oh, and click the thumbnails for a larger view.
1. Get the latest SetPoint drivers from Logitech. As of Jan 1, 2006, this should be current: Setpoint 2.47 (English)
2. After installing SetPoint, open the settings dialog. (Mine was: Start -> Logitech -> Mouse and Keyboard – >Settings)
3. On the very first screen (top tab if you’re looking at the tabs on the left), towards the bottom, select “Manage Programs”. We’re doing this so that your normal day-to-day desktop settings won’t get messed up and our changes will apply only to BF2 (or any other game that has this problem, I hear CS:S has the same issue).
4. Select “Add” and browse to your BF2 game folder. Select BF2.exe. Click “Open”, then “Ok” on the list screen.
5. Select the newly added “BF2.exe” from the dropdown box.
Now it’s time to change some button behavior. Keep in mind that you can do this for any of the mouse buttons (though it’s probably wise to leave “left click” and “right click” alone), even the tilt wheel. In this example, I’ve chosen to only modify the thumb button and the wheel button since thats all I’ll be using.
6. Select the button you want to change. In my case, this is button 3 (the wheel). Next, check “Keystroke Assignment” from the options. Next, pick a key that you know you DON’T USE IN GAME. This is important. I chose the “right bracket”.
7. Repeat step 6 with any addition buttons you want to change. This time I selected the thumb button and changed it to “apostrophe”.
8. Click “Apply” and “Ok”
9. Next, fire up BF2, or whatever game you’re trying to get these to work in. Find the appropriate options menu. I’m changing my Alt-Fire button, so that’s what I have highlighted in the example.
10. Rebind the action to the KEYBOARD KEY (not mouse button) you just used in the mouse config. In my case, ” ‘ ” and ” ] “. Notice in the screenshot I’ve bound them both to the same action. This is not nessisary, it was only for illustration purposes. (I later rebound apostrophe to “parachute” in case you’re wondering).
11. Click “apply” and you’re ready to play.
What you’re just done is made BF2 THINK you’re using ” ‘ ” and ” ] ” to do those actions, when infact, with the mouse software, you’ve set up your mouse to emulate those keys. You press your wheel button and the game thinks you’re hitting ” ] ” , which you’ve just bound to the game action.
Easy huh?
I hope this prevents people from throwing your mice against the wall like I almost did. Happy gaming. 🙂
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