April 2004 Archives

Coincidences are really odd sometimes....

After months of silence, I received within a couple of days, news from three different people going back to the time I was in college in Nimes.

That was a good reminder that my plans to revive some of my past websites have not gone very far. So here it is, after a week-end and a couple of evenings of work, the website of the alumni of the EERIE school is about to open.

This site provides a forum to alumni to reconnect and share experiences, a directory of graduates and some old pages about Nimes and the school itself. It was a shock to find out that since the school has been transformed by a take-over from a nearby institution, there is nothing left on the web, of what used to be our school.

Hopefully, we will change that in time...

Quelques mots en francais pour les visiteurs francophones eventuels : le site des anciens de l'EERIE, Nimes, est enfin disponible. Vous y trouverez un forum de discussion pour reprendre contact avec d'anciennes connaissances, un annuaire electronique que vous pourrez mettre a jour, et quelques pages nostalgiques sur ce que fut l'Ecole pour les Etudes et la Recherche en Informatique et Electronique de Nimes.

Si vous etes un ancien... rendez nous visite !

We just came back from our Easter getaway  in the Florida Keys.

The weather was not that great, but it was nice enough to appreciate lazy afternoons by the pool, sunset cruises, dolphins playing here and there, parasailing and sailing lesson for the first time. Overall, it was a fun time. It was also the occasion to discover Key West (interesting enough to go back someday) and Key Largo (not much to see there).

We both needed that break from the crazyness of work, although something tells me that this restful feeling will not last very long once we are back at work.

Although I purchased Far Cry about a week ago, I haven't played more than an hour of it, and it was not for lack of trying.

So far, this game has been a lesson in patience and frustration.

First mistake was to install the newly release patch. The game was out for less than a week when the patch was made available. I should have taken that as an hint. The patch was supposed to improve performance and get rid of some visual glitches. It turned out that it did not really like to coexist with an Nvidia GeForce FX 5900. Performance was so slow it reminded me of software rendering back in the days of Unreal wthout hardware acceleration. Some textures of trees or entire portions of sky turned into blinking noise reminiscent of glitches in the Matrix or on a bad Holodeck exercise. And at the first sign of gunshots, large polygons just came blazing through the screen and brought the whole game to a crawl. Not a good thing for an action title.

I had to reinstall the game and not apply the patch to find satisfying performances. Now the game runs as expected, with only minor visual defects (mostly bright blue shadows in some areas... not too appealing but harmless for the rest of the game).

That's too bad because both demos of the game turned out great and I could not wait to sink my teeth into that title. So, after much frustration, what does the game have to offer ?

• The most beautifully rendered outdoor scenes I have ever seen. The water is gorgous. The jungle is most credible. The special effects add a glow to the scenes that only increase the contrast between sunlight and shadows. Bugs buzz around you. Birds fly up in the sky. Fishs swarm in the water. Just walking through the game makes me wish I was there on vacation.
• Great story telling. Although the introduction could use some explanations, I liked how every element of gameplay (namely, the usual tutorial and explanations about HUD elements) were weaved into the story. I haven't got very far, but what I saw was promising.
• Cunning ennemies. The mercenaries that swarm the islands call for reinforcements, turn around you and run for cover. This game is difficult at times, even in 'Easy' mode.
• Credible vehicles. I was pleased to see that driving heads on into a truck will cause your own vehicle to explode and kill you in the process. Likewise, you have to push a beached boat into the water before using it. These are nice touches that make the game a lot more fun.

The game is well worth trying to get it to run. It is just unfortunate that technical glitches come and spoil what would have been (and could be still)  a great gaming experience.

Bottom line. If you own a GeForce FX 5900, DO NOT install patch v1.1 and the latest NVIDIA drivers (v56.72 dated April 1st). Just run the game out of the box and ignore those light blue shadows that pop up from time to time. Hopefully, future patches will take care of these issues.

I liked watching "hellboy" . I liked it a lot.

Maybe it is because of the incredible creative freedom provided by computer graphics special effects, or maybe it is because like Peter Jackson or Brian Singer, Gillermino DelToro cares about his subject - "hellboy" shows there is a hope for movie adaptations of comics or novels.

Like with "X-Men" or "The Lord of the Rings", "Hellboy" is a joy to watch for a fan of Mignola�s creature.

Everything is there : crazy nazis, the absolute evil of Rasputin, the torments of Liz Sherman, the oddity of Abe Sapiens, and of course, Hellboy�s low key humor. There was a sense of jubilation watching Hellboy as a baby, and even better, witnessing him as a demon king contemplating the destruction of mankind.

The movie was a little slow at times, and probably difficult to follow without knowing the comics, but the mix of plot lines from several stories turned out to be a faithful adaptation of Hellboy�s universe. It doesn�t really matter that the story was not religiously identical to the comics, changes are easily forgiven when thedirector respects the original material.

Maybe now someone can take care of adaptations of H.P.Lovecraft�s stories that would be worth seeing. After "hellboy", Cthulhu on screen feels just around the corner...