July 2001

Tuesday, July 10, 2001

(updated) AO - 2nd view

Click
to get the 2nd overview from TC`s in AO.

We look forward to creat Team Cow AO-clan :)

addon: One thing i missed in the 2nd overview is a very important little detail. as i also worked 2 years as programmer i told always how i cant really imagine how especially with a complex mmopg like uo they can make the hire and fire jokes.
You remember how often the Team was replaced, heck even producers came and left, lead programmers etc.
So here you can have a look at AO team and see if you notice the same interesting thing as i did.
I dont think the current way of dealing with programmers in the US market is the right thing. Not for lethal things like data input things on electricity networks, and not for mmopgs on the long run.
I hope they stay "independant" how they state in their corporate description and dont take the millions sooner or later from ms, ea, sony, bertelsmann or the save-the-duck party of nicaragua. ;P

one thing to the hardware:
I didnt done tests yet in deep but if you have to upgrade there are 2 main things:
- Graphic power and FSB/Memoryspeed.
The game itself uses atm huge amounths of memory and the data doesnt seems to get used in the best way. Also the Polygons of a scene seem to get rendered always not depending of what you actually see. Thats why you lag that muchin a City.
I didnt determined how much the Z Occlusion Culling feature of the Geforce3 helps atm (ATI has this technic too called Hierarchial-Z and Kyro names same thing with other name) but the technology behind this process is most likely a hiererchial Z-Cache that covers a certain part of the screen so you get only rendered what you actually see saving processing power and even more important memory bandwich on your graphic card.
Notice that modern graphic cards are far technically in lead today infront of cpu technics. A Geforce3 comes already in a 0.15u fabrication progress has 57M Transistors thats double that much than Geforce 2 had and 20% more than the Pentium 4 which comes actually in 0.18u fabrication copper progress.
While a modest cpu of about 750 mhz in athlon case or 2.9 Ghz in p4 ;) case may be appropriate the read mc coy comes to this game from your memory transfer rate, the fsb and the gpu-board.
Without forgetting who reads this i will shorten it down to:
If you are going to buy new hardware buy a DDR board. Dont expect muhc by taking a new CPU.Expect more by taking ddr cas2 memory (or cas 2.5 memory you can run as cas2 like crucial/micron) and play with the FSB. As more FSB (Front side bus) you can reach as better.
The FSB speed also relates in which way a processor can use the actual DDR memory bandwich. If you have a DDR ram board try upping the
FSB speed and see if your memory sticks work as CAS2 too. Even if labeled as Cas3 they may work without problem as CAS2.
If you need a new cpu, wait for the Palmino Thunderbird core as it will have SSE added to 3dnow as well as some technics to use the DDR bandwich better, but thats not that important.

As Graphic part if you go for the best deal for the bucks take a
Geforce2 Pro now, or if you get it cheap a Geforce2 and overclock the Memory of the card. For a decent amounth you can get now as Geforce3 was released already the geforce 2 ultra cards. I guess for around 250 $ or so you should find them. These cards have a gpu glock of 250 but more important use 3.8 ns EliteMT DDR chips that can reach while factory clocked to 460 mhz ddr (230) if you do the maths exactly 526 mhz ddr without that you overclock them.
Even with 512 mb ddr installed make sure you made enough virtual memory ready as the game leaks. If you crash often when zoning, you have surely not enough vitual memory. You reach it in
computer -> porprieties -> advanced -> performance options under win2k.

Woodstock

Monday, July 9, 2001

A time to live, and a time to die

No, I didn't hack this site, I just want to give some imput in :)

First of all, as all TC know, I have not been active since September. I would like to once again say sorry to all TCs for not being there on the battlefield with you like in old days.

After reading TC Chat and various ICQs, we have decided that TC will become more then just a Drachs guild, but rather a small online community. We have done everything we could on Drachs to prove that we can pvp ok, and we are not stating we are (or were) the best, but in our hearts we feel that we have succeeded.

As many of us have started making chars on other servers (for example Europa or Chessa) I believe it would be a nice idea to make a stone on each server, not to pvp, but just to represent us there.

So as you can see, TC is far from breaking up, we are just evolving forwards, but we will not be forgetting where we came from, aka UO RL meet in Sweden.

I am not sure how far Dorijans character pages are going, but imho it would be cool to make a subpage (depending on bandwidth) for each member, and if that is not possible, at least refresh the member section.

Ok, I have ranted enough, you know where you stand, go forward into the world and spread that cow feeling to all you meet!

BTW: If anyone is coming to Brighton this summer, for whatever reason, please contact me on board :)


Stody

Monday, July 9, 2001

about.. us ;)

If some ppl is completely UO oriented and/or rock-the-shard oriented please consider to leave the guild - now.
While we still play uo it will over the time get less and less importnace having us maybe moving to other games - together, making netmeets etc as community.

While doing this UO may, will, or already come(s) too short. If you are only for the UO aspect of TC here - consider leaving - now - if you think thats the only bounding to the rest.
We havent anything left to win or to prove in uo. Most of us reached individually and/or as guild anything they ever wanted.
If proving/buildin/reaching goals/names is what you want to do mainly in uo chose another guild - now please.

Woodstock

Sunday, July 8, 2001

AO - a first look

Check here
for a first impression through AO. In this part mostly begin/install based.

Woodstock

Friday, July 6, 2001

Testing AO today

Dont worry tho, if we change to another game we change mostly togehter. ;)

Woodstock

Thursday, July 5, 2001

some fights :)

today we had funny fights. starting at brit moongate where we
encountered a large group of oranges



a battle that lasted around 10 minutes and was very interesting,

to



multiple fights in magincia where com showed their new regained force.

all in all some very cool fights.

Woodstock

Thursday, July 5, 2001

Just a quick note

Hi there guys, I don’t often submit news due to time restrictions and uochat (now called mmog news) but today I thought I would do a small guest appearance and say hello to my guild.

I have noticed a few bickering internally the past days and people have expressed their concerns over the way the guilds is progressing, I will just quickly explain a few things to you that some may or may now know, I say this as a friend and a guild mate and as one of the oldest TCs currently in the guild, not as someone here patronising any one.

TC is about friendship and teamwork, one of the first rules in TC is “if one TC fight all TC fight” Wile that’s not always possible its still a good ground rule to base your choices around, if someone asks for help in chat and you don’t have a good reason not to help then you have let him and the guild down. Boosting a char or being on your thief is not a good reason, you need to take steps to ensure you can be ready, always have a full equipped out of loss char ready to log in at any moment.

Chat and uo auto map are a tool we use to aid us in combat, these are not tools to aid us in stealing or to aid us in gaining skills, if you are not ready to fight or fighting then please don’t use these tools. There are exceptions, TC who have current connection problems and so on are ok to sit in chat, we know it’s a social thing and all of this is just basic rules we should all know.

There is one more thing that we do take really seriously, teamwork, shit talking you guild mates is not on. I cant think of anything worse than being stabbed in the back by a friend, don’t do it, hold your tongue and wait until you are calm, then address you problems, but do it in private.

That aside the rate of enemy’s on the shard have increased to a level where a small TC team simply cant handle them, we try and we die, Woodstock is currently doing exams but the holiday period is upon us, we will soon be very active again. Take this chance to do what ever it is you want, but remember if someone calls for some help and you are in chat, you are expected to join in.

Sion

Tuesday, July 3, 2001

Heavy fights with SL and COM

which became very strong in the last time. COM cause it got 50% of SL again and SL doe to organisation. (imho) ;)

2 days before sl took already 2 or 3 towns and was holding the rest. happyly after we could organize all we managed to succeed after 2 trys



the luck wasnt for long as COM strenghten by the fresh forces decide to hold the sigils as well as introducing new defense tactics of com hq. We didnt managed yesterday to get around it.

Woodstock

Sunday, July 1, 2001

"im back in 1 hour"

were actually some of the last words towards orion.

Actually the whole story of my last 3 rl-nightmare days
i placed here

participants are 2 boards, 2 cpu`s, a lot ram, and even more
lost time. :)

Woodstock