USN: SOCOM clan

Saturday, March 20, 2004


I saw you disappear from AIM about 10 mins ago and you didn't come back, so I assumed you had to go do something else. I'm gonna play some game but I'll stay logged on if you do come back.


I kinda got the hang of AH. The B17s are awesome. So is the C47. But I dont get what the paratroopers do once they get to the ground. Anyways ill be on aim now.


Oh yeah, Ill be on AIM


I'm downloading Aces High right now. I thought about installing CFS2 instead but I wanna give AH a shot. Can you still play online with ppl? or have you had if for 2 weeks, if you can still maybe we could get together tonight


I am still really split between the 128mb video cards and the 256mb cards. Looking at JO it looks like the engine is pretty much the same as DFBHD and BHD needed a 32mb card, so a Nvidia 128MB would be fine for JO. It's good for pretty much everything too, I guess a 128mb card is ok, cause graphics really can't get that much better. The only thing is map sizes can get lots bigger, but that would go to RAM not the video card, unless they completely took away fog on the maps.

Then there is 2 128mb cards. The Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 and the ATI 9800 Pro. The GeForce is the base system's card and the 9800 pro is another 140 dollars. I'm not really sure what the difference is. Do you know?

Right now you can get a dell 8300 with 1gb ram, 3ghz P4, 120GB HD, 19 inch CRT, Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 for 1408 dollars, and free S&H thats pretty good. Maybe Ill talk to my dad.


Aces High looks awesome. How much is the subscription fee after the 2 week trial? And can you just re download the trial over and over? that what I do with WinRAR, just keep downloading the trials.

Don't worry about last night. I was playing Socom II with some guy who flew C130s. He was pretty cool and were messing around with people. We would find the stupidest person on the team and tell them that they were are new squad leader and they would be held accountable for everything. They if they screwed up we shot them, it was pretty funny.




Hmm, you can have another gunner onboard your bombers in Aces High. Awesome. I just read that in the help files. I don't know how yet, but you can, hehe.


Sorry I forgot about tonight - I was listening to Mark W doing the DJing for the jazz and big band radio show on KUWS tonight, and then David and I played Aces High for a while, and by that time, I had fogotten completely. Aces High is an awesome game on a network. That's the one I was telling you about that we play at school; it's actually a massively multiplayer online combat flight sim and you can download it and try it out for like a month or whatever free, but it also has a 8 player LAN mode that you can always play. So when we come down, you should install it on your networked computers and maybe we can bring my mom's laptop so Dave and you and I can all play multiplayer on that game. It's so cool. You can take all sorts of different planes, fighters, bombers, and tanks and jeeps and PT boats and the rockets and artillery on all the battleships and destroyers and cruisers and you can man each gunner station and bombing station in the planes. I don't think you can team up with other people in one plane, but still, it's great. Oh yeah, here's the link:
www.hitechcreations.com

And my FM transmitter is in Hodgkins, IL last time I checked.


Friday, March 19, 2004


Woah, I just read that the Ghost Recon:Jungle Storm has a really bad online glitch involving the voice chat. Apparently the PAL and NTSC versions are pretty much glitched in the fact that if the host of a game is using a US copy (NTSC I think) that the game will have no headsets working. If the host is Austrialian or European (PAL) the headsets work fine. That a pretty bad glitch. One guy mentioned that it's not fair that even when Europeans pay less for the game, they get alot better copy than the US players do. The GR Tournament starts April 3 I think. If they don't get something fixed by then they are gonna have some pissed off people. It just seems like Ubisoft hasn't been trying hard enought lately. I'm considering not buying this now, buy maybe the single player will be cool. If that glitch is true I'll have to get better at my german :D

Ughhh, IGN gave JS 6.5 overall. Not very impressive.

I was bored so I went out and rented SWON just to give it another shot, and now I can kinda see how once you get the controls and all down its a cool game. Maybe I'll buy that instead of GRJS. I bet SWON is cheaper now and the music in SWON is awesome. Right now I'm on the battle of Midway. It's really hard because you have to escort the torpedo bombers and the dive bombers to the carrier group and they get killed really easy, plus all the zeros just get behind them and take down like 5 at a time with their guns.

lol, Tripod now has adds at our site for video cards, after talking about computers.

Just read on IGN that the HDD will be packaged with FFXI and they won't make another package with just the HDD. I personally think that kinda sucks because
1.) I don't really enjoy FF
2.)I don't want to pay for FF when I will never play it
3.) I don't want it taking space on my HDD.
Maybe you can delete it but I doubt it. I probably would give FF a try if I didn't have to pay a fee (what is it 12.99 a month). I wanna see what the Socom II Pt.2 upgrade adds, then I might get a HD. Looks like the HDD comes out on the 23rd.

Check out all the new game screenshots on www.johq.com for Joint Operations. They have some trailers too, but I haven't seen many of them yet. I really like the M4 model and the MH6s look sweet too. The blackhawk model looks worse than the one in DF BHD, but is probably a beta model and the CH-47 model and textures could use some work. I also wish the M249 and M240 had bipods, but I can't be too picky.

That game is looking pretty cool. It would be sweet if we both got it, and Dan probably would buy it too.

http://www.johq.com/ss/428.jpg Check out those Ghillie suits, nice...
http://www.johq.com/ss/466.jpg I like those dudes, I think they are GSG-9 cause hes got a german armpatch. The MP5s they have are sweet. I hope they have some maps where it is like US vs Indonesia. And then some maps where it is like Germany vs Indonesia. That would be cool to have the choices between countrys
http://www.johq.com/ss/352.jpg nice I think that dude is SAS or just normal british dude.
http://www.johq.com/ss/470.jpg that screen makes it look like all the countrys can fight together. well I guess that why its called joint operations
http://www.johq.com/ss/430.jpg this dude kinda looks like a SEAL.

So anyways, if I do get a new computer I would play as SEAL, Ranger or GSG-9.


http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

I've never been able to figure out what dBpowerAMP is supposed to mean - decibels, power, and amplifer? - but anyway, they make a bunch of free programs for music. I love dBpowerAMP Music Coverter - it will do what you want, convert mp3s to ogg. Also, it adds a function to windows where you can hover your mouse over an audio file and a window will pop up showing you all of its details and file information from its tag. It's really cool. I've never tried their Audio Player, but it looks cool. I'll probably check it out sometime.

Well, my FM transmitter is en route from Oakland to somewhere, according to UPS tracking. Apparently, the scheduled arrival is March 23rd... Oh, and I'm free tonight, Friday night. Or, at least, I should be. If ya want to play...


Thursday, March 18, 2004


Do you know any programs that can convert MP3s to .ogg files? I was just wondering cause OFP uses .ogg as its sounds and music and if I could get a program to convert it I could put my Band of Brothers soundtrack in the game and some other CDs it would be pretty cool.

When SC beats MGS at stealth, MGS beats SC by far in its storyline. The only cutscenes in SC and mission intros and outros and most suck. I think MGS has a cooler weapons system too. It sucks in SC because for actual guns you only get the Five-Seven and the FN F2000. But some where I heard ubisoft wanted it that way so you had to actually use alot more stealth than just shoot your way through the level, so I see what they were doing.

That is a good point the MGS won't be the same outside with all the camo types and all. Some guy pointed out in that camo list that MARPAT camo is a varition of the canadian camo CANPAT or something like that. But anyways MARPAT was introduced in like 2001. So maybe all that stuff with it being in the cold war is wrong? I doubt it though.

The coolest thing I think will be that stamina stuff. That would be sweet having to eat food, and not just rations to have to kill animals and eat them.

I think it would be pretty cool if MGS was trying to mostly not get killed by the enviroment and that there would be enemy patrols but it wouldn't be like enemies everywhere.

Looked like yesterday SOCOM II downloaded a patch onto my memory card. No gameplay changed, but glitches and a few ways to cheat were taken out. It would suck so bad to have to play games to find glitches before they came out and get every single glitch. Like in S2 there used to be a glitch where if when the hostages were just starting to attack and you started to shoot in the air, or at anything your points would go crazy and up to about 100. I can't see how a beta tester could ever catch that one before it was released, after S2 got released people noticed it so I guess it works if they keep the patches coming. I can't wait for PS2 HDD to come out. I haven't seen it not bundled without FF though. I don't want FF I just want the hard drive.



Wednesday, March 17, 2004


Wow, that grass looks awesome. And all the emphasis on camo sounds cool. The camo index sounds kinda odd, though. I hope MGS's stealth doesn't get too canned and predictable. Like with MGS2, you always knew that if you walked just outside of the blue cone, you'd never be seen. Things were really black and white, you know? Like, the game was programmed so that if you did one thing, then you'd be seen and the enemy would walk a certain route to perform specific actions, blah blah blah, and if you did another thing you wouldn't be seen. There are all sorts of moves added on, but it was just basically hide and seek. Which is fine in an indoor setting, but with MGS moving outdoors now, I hope they can add a sort of organic, living element to the stealth. I mean, I haven't played Splinter Cell but it seems like it has MGS beat in terms of stealth gameplay, hands down. I hope the camo index isn't like some thing where the game is programmed to go, "if you are lying down in this type of grass wearing this outfit, your stealth index will be exactly this much percent and if you go over xx% then you will be spotted." I wonder how hard it would be to program a game so that it thinks for every enemy - like say, for each enemy it runs a process where it constantly monitors the enemy's view and compares you to your surroundings using an algorithm that would compare the image of yourself in the game with your surroundings from the enemy's viewpoint too see how close it is. Or maybe that's what MGS3 will do. I'm not really expressing myself too well, but hopefully you get what I'm saying.

So anyway, I ended up not being free tonight either. Originally, I was going to the Kitchee Gammi club to play violin duets with another kid from school as background music for a dinner party. The head of the school was going to it and offered to "provide" kids from her school to play for it. I thought I was just going to be there to play half an hour of music and then they said that they'd feed us too. Well, it turned out it was a party being thrown by this guy as a Master and Commander theme. And originally, they wanted a violin and a cello since that's what the commander and the doctor of the ship play duets on in the books and the movie. So anyway, we ended up staying for the whole party to eat. All the food was from the official Master and Commander cookbook or whatever, like lobster soup, and Peas Mashed to a Paste with a White Sauce (that was the actual name of one of the dishes). It was ok, I guess. I don't like seafood usually, but this stuff was ok. I don't like formal dinners either, but I survived. Actually, one of the guys at my table was a pilot who flew in the Korean War and another guy's son was going to the University of North Dakota in their aviation program, which is what I want to do, and another guy across the room was there with his son, who has been accepted to North Dakota's aviation program for next year and went last year to the same UND aviation summer camp that I'm going to this year. It's like a weeklong camp in late June for kids interested in aviation and going to UND. So anyway, it was interesting talking to the guys at our table. So the whole thing wasn't that bad.

So, the FM transmitter. It plugs into a normal 1/8" headphone jack, so we can run cd players, my md player, anything with a headphone jack. That'd be kinda cool to run it through your TV so that we could send the TV station's audio down to the dock if we ever wanted to. Although I'm thinking of buying a portable shortwave radio anyway, which would also pick up TV stations. Or, I might buy these:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?id=1055388013871&skuId=5608522&type=product
They're the Creative Travelsound speakers. They're really small, not much bigger than your hand, but they have great sound. A kid I know at school has them and they sound awesome for their size. So here's something we could do: I'm in the process of ripping all of my cds to my hard drive in high quality MP3s, using Exact Audio Copy's secure mode and the -alt standard LAME preset. I could burn them to a cd or dvd, then copy them to my mom's laptop, or just run them from the disc, and I could rip mp3s of all your cds too, and then have them all play on my mom's laptop - it'd probably be like 30 or 40 hours of music with all the stuff I have - and then we can run the laptop through the FM tx, I'll either buy a shortwave radio or a normal portable one with your Target gift card, hehe, and then we can use that to pick up the FM signal and run that to the Travelsound speakers. Lol. It'd be cool. And of course, I like the idea of sending the FM signal to both of our cars, hehe. We could also use the Travelsounds for our GBAs, lol. There's a ton of things we can do, it'll be fun. And especially if we get those ZZs to play with while we listen to the music - it'd be fun. Maybe we'd even skip our annual GB game, lol.


sorry I can't tonight. I got church until from 6:30-8 and then I gotta do my english and math stuff.


Hey Eric - I have to leave for an hour or two like right now, so this is quick, but I have the rest of the week off - do you want to play RoN or FS9 tonight? Post if ya do.


Tuesday, March 16, 2004


What does that FM Transmitter hook up to? Like headphone jacks? or those Red and white cables? If it takes the red and white ones we could set one of our PS2s to play CDs, and then my CD player picks up the radio, and you have a headphone splitter, we could bring it down to the dock. I think you said you could hook up CD players so if it takes the same things that comes out of headphone jacks then we could run it through the little TV that we have with the VCR.


IGN has a nice little article about Hideo Kojima discussing how stealth, stamina, and temperature. It's pretty cool, but I know you were trying to stay away from spoiling the game by reading alot of stuff. I don't think its got that much stuff that spoils it, just how he's gonna utilize stealth mostly. It also said that this summer they are gonna make a contest that will let people send in some creative textures for a couple of bonus camo suits. We should try to come up with one.
http://ps2.ign.com/articles/499/499241p1.html

I read the hands on reviews for both JS and RS3 at IGN too. They make RS3 sound like a sucky version of the Xbox one, and thats what I think it is. They said things like they made levels smaller, took away doors, took down textures, and brought down the mulitplayer limit from 8v8 to 3v3. So I probably just rent it.

JS on the other hand they said was pretty cool. They did say the GR has never been great graphics, but that JS for graphics is the best console version. They said too that it uses Dolby Prologic II so its got really nice sound. I've played a demo of JS so maybe I'll buy that one, I do like the GR series, always been nice games.


Yeah, we could play RoN sometime. I know it wouldn't work out this weekend for Dan. But I could probably play RoN if we wanna see the player has dropped screens a few more times :D Maybe FS2004 works, better but Im not sure. Maybe we could install CFS2 on our computers I can play it on my old computer and I know this one works. I can run CFS2 on high on this computer, but I think you said something about when you and Mark W tried it, I forgot if it was bad lag, but I'm not completely sure. I just checked WhatismyIP and it gave me one I actually think is real.

Check out this map for JO, reminds me a little of Wake Island, but not much. That would be the first game I would buy when I would get a new computer. The glare is cool too http://www.johq.com/ss/306.jpg

Yeah, I heard some stuff about Monet here. I saw something on the news about them going bankrupt.

CS is actually really far from a realistic game... Maybe the weapon system is kinda real though, and maybe some aspects. But using a health system where you start at 100 health and go down from there so you can take about 6-7 hits. I just rush people with my UMP .45. I think CoD would be more realistic than CS, but I think Operation Flashpoint tops most games in realism, at least in the infantry aspect of things. Helos and planes aren't completely realistic. But darn close. It's also pretty cool how OFP has it so there is no way of telling how bad you are wounded. If you take a shot in the hands, your aim is less accurate. If you take like 2 shots in a leg you can only crawl, things like that make the game cool.

I think GR:JS came out yesterday and RS3 on PS2 came out today. They probably aren't in stores yet, but I might think about getting at least 1 of them.

So anyways maybe we could play CFS2 this weekend, I'm pretty sure you said something about it though once online, I can't recall it though...







Yeah, the CoD squad missions are sweet. You'll actually get real commands from your COs and use real strategy. Nothing, huge, but it's cool when you have a Bren and your CO tells you to find a spot to provide covering fire, or when he spiits the company into two flanks and tells you which one to join and where to go, and then to wait for the covering fire before your two groups move in to outflank the German MG42s. Just little touches like that, it's awesome. And when you point your crosshair at one of your own guys, it tells you whether he's a rifleman or a support gunner or a scout or a sniper, and they all actually play out their roles in the game like a real squad. It's cool. I imagine it must be pretty neat in team multiplayer, there would be at least some sort of squad strategy like CS. Obviously not as realistic as CS, but still, I think it'd be cool. But I just do deathmatches for now. I figure I'll wait until I get ok at those before I try team matches, lol. And I totally suck at deathmatch anyway. When I played MOHAA deathmatch online on our old computer, I used to think the reason I sucked was because the computer was so slow, but now I realize I just suck in general, lol.

The CoD weapons system is cool. It's kinda clumsy, but you get used to it. You have a total of four slots, instead of like the crazy seven slots in MOHAA or whatever. Two of them are always reserved for grenades and your handgun. With the other two slots you can carry any weapons you want. You hit 1 or 2 to select them, or use the mouse scroller, but I never use that because I can never remember which way to scroll it to go the one I want, lol. So if you want to switch weapons, or like pick up the weapon of a dead enemy, you select slot 1 or 2 and press F to pick up the other weapon. The weapon you had then lies on the ground so you can pick it back up later. It's cool though, to run through all the clips on your Allied gun and then just drop it and pick up a German gun and then you can use all the dead Germans' ammo too.
I know that was a long description, but I haven't played OFP or DF BHD, so I don't know what to compare CoD's weapons system too...

I dunno about joining an RoN clan yet. I haven't played it much, just the times we've tried to play together. You me and Dan should try playing one of these days. Mark W doesn't have internet access right now because his ISP went bankrupt and is closing down, so he has to sign up again with Charter. He should be back online in a few days, though. Actually, it was Monet Broadband that he was using and that went bankrupt - did you hear anything about that in Eau Claire? Cause I thought I remembered reading that Monet also had coverage in Eau Claire. Well, anyway, we should play RoN, yeah.


Monday, March 15, 2004


Yeah, CoD looks awesome. Dan doesn't have it but he told me he'd probably buy it pretty soon. I like how CoD focuses on an entire group of men, instead of just a one man killing machine. I also like how CoD has more than one country you play as. He he, and I also like the M1 Carbine in that game, its a nice model and the iron sights on it are sweet. I'm thinking MOH better pull something big off soon, or they are gonna be in trouble...

Does CoD have a weapons system more like MOH where you carry about 6 guns, or does it do a weapons system kinda like OFP or DF BHD where you have 1 rifle and maybe a sidearm. Also I forgot how American campaign starts, does it have to do with taking out AA as a paratrooper at Normandy? I think that's what it was, but I might be wrong. Have you seen any of the Band of Brothers videos? I have the DVDs and we can watch a couple if you want when you come down here. There is like 10 hours of it though so we would probably have to continue it at Plum Lake.

Oh yeah Dan is trying to see if Icoliseum has a RoN clan. If you wanna be in it I can talk to Dan. It's not gonna be real competitive I don't think and mainly just a group of people who get together to play the game. Though until I get a new computer I'll have to sit out games.

I can't wait until Joint Operations comes out, that game looks really cool. IGN has said alot of things about glare from the sun being really realistic and dust clouds from the choppers looking really nice. I heard that the choppers will blow all the grass and stuff around when they hover near the ground. I dunno if you have played DF BHD but they have a nice way they set up helicopters so that if its flying you can either be in one of the 2 miniguns or you can be sitting in the back shooting out of the side doors of the blackhawk. The only thing is in BHD you couldn't fly or drive, only ride along. I think it would be awesome to have 32v32 players and to fly around littlebirds. I saw that the Mh-6s have a little icon in the corner that tells you if people are sitting on the side benches of your helo. I just hope not everybody will want to fly. It sucks in Flashpoint where the noobs beat everybody to the helos and you regret it the whole game. Because they get lost on the big islands, not good. If everybody flys around in the game I'll be a ground soldier and just ride on the sides of helos.


Hehe, yeah, MGS blew my mind at the end. Now if you play through MGS2 again you'll appreciate how incredibly ambitious that game was.

Well, I beat Call of Duty today. Wow, what an incredible game. Beats the crap out of MOHAA; seriously, it's that good. The Stalingrad assault mission that was straight out of Enemy at the Gates literally had me sweating from the intensity of the gameplay and the sheer impact of what I was seeing on my screen. I got goosebumps at the end too when I ran up the steps of the bombed-out Reichstag. Wow, what an experience. Oh, and 5.1 sound is awesome with it, lol.

Well, I ordered that C.Crane FM transmitter. I'll put it next to the computer and hopefully it'll reach my room. I never got to Target this weekend, but I think I'm going to use your giftcard that your family gave me to buy like a digital radio that I can plug the computer speakers that I have in my room into to pick up the FM transmitter. I could just put our old computer in my room, but that's not as fun as using an FM transmitter, plus my parents say I'd have to clean out my room before they'd let me put it in there and I don't feel like doing it. And we could use the FM tx at Plum Lake - that'd be fun. We could hook up a cd player or whatever to it and put it in one of our windowsills and leave it playing at night so we could both tune in. And we could set our alarm clocks to it and stuff - it'd be fun, hehe. Or put it on while we're driving with both cars and then both of our cars could tune into it, lol. There's all sorts of fun stuff we could do with it, hehe. If you brought your Bose radio, we could get good sound from it.


Sunday, March 14, 2004


I just beat TTS here at dan's. It's awesome. Now I can't wait for MGS:SE.


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