Steve Betts: Games

Quake 3 Rocket Jumping

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 00:48:21 GMT

OMG. If I could ever be this good. Makes everyone I've ever seen look bad.

Too much noise in a room? Fix it!

Wed, 05 Apr 2006 18:21:08 GMT

I certainly need to keep my late night gaming sessions quiet. Maybe this will help.

How-To: Theater or studio acoustic treatments.

Filed under: Features, Home Entertainment

Have you been yelled at for watching your latest Superbit DVD "too loud" by your mom / dad / child / spouse / neighbor? Tired of having the Tiki-bar TV guys next door in the background of your podcast recording session? In today's how-to we cover tricks to improve your room acoustics for better listening or recording pleasure. Yeah, we know it may seem a little esoteric -- and our own Engadget Podcast could probably take a hint here -- but you'd be surprised at how nice some peace n' quiet actually is.

Treating a room to improve its acoustic properties is a combination of art and science, especially for the home acoustic engineer on a budget. With an unlimited budget, a room can be double walled and covered in commercial acoustic paneling. When trying to improve the acoustics of an existing room, whether for listening pleasure or anger prevention, a smaller budget is more of a challenge.

Every room has different challenges, but if you're building your podcasting studio or improving your home theater the same problems need to be solved. Sound transmission into and from the room needs to be reduced and the room's acoustics are probably less than ideal.

'Acoustic isolation' is trying to reduce sound transmission out of the room. Improving internal acoustics is a matter of reducing sound reverberation. Completely eliminating reverb is not always desired. Even with today's sound processing technology, concert halls are still designed to use natural reverberation to improve sound for live performances.

For today's how-to we're making treatments for an unfinished basement. Finishing out the basement isn't an option at this house, so everything we do needs to be removable when we move out. Our home theater area has a concrete floor, two concrete walls, and two 'walls' that are open. Every surface needs some sort of acoustic treatment.

Often the simplest solution is one of the best. To keep excessive sound from going upstairs, we hung acoustic ceiling tile on the floor studs. Ceiling tile is easy to get and has acoustic ratings. Basic ceiling tile is pretty inexpensive. For about $60 in ceiling tile, we covered the entire ceiling of our home theater area. Rather than hang the tile with a drop frame, we screwed it directly to the floor joists. When we move out, a quick session with the cordless drill will take these down. The tile is pretty fragile, so using washers on the screw heads is advised. For the floor, a thick wool rug makes a great sound damper.

There are plenty of commercial products for sound treatment. Our temporary install is on a budget, so we built some simple portable acoustic panels to help reduce sound transmission and reverb.

To make your own, you'll need the following:

3-1/2 inch thick 15 inch wide rolled fiberglass insulation
Polyester batting
Lightweight fabric
1-inch by 3-inch pine boards
4-foot by 8-foot 3/16-inch lauan or plywood board
Liquid nails adhesive
Tools: saw, hammer, sharp scissors, staple gun.

Dow Corning R-13 insulation runs about $10 a roll. It's made to go between wall studs, so it's 15 inches wide. One roll should be enough to make eight to ten panels.

To make five panels, we need ten 48-inch 1x3s, and ten 15-inch 1x3 pieces for a total of seven 8-foot 1x3-inch boards. It's important to get boards that aren't warped. These boards are pretty thin, so it will be fairly annoying but worth the effort. Look down each board from the end to see how warped the board is.

To keep it light and inexpensive, we used lauan plywood made for floor backing. These panels have a smooth finish and are cheap. A four foot by eight foot panel runs about $10.

Just about every hardware store that sells lumber has a panel saw. Save yourself some pain and have them slice the four by eight lauan into 48 inch by 16.5-inch pieces. Most stores don't guarantee their measurements, so keep an eye on them to make sure they get them close enough. Luckily, the cuts don't have to be perfect.

We picked up this not so stylish green fabric off the wally world clearance shelf for $1 a yard.

We cut our 1x3s down using our handy miter saw. Ten 15 inch cuts for then ends and ten 48 inch cuts for the sides.

Nailing the frames together goes quickly. Start with one side, then locate the other side using the 15-inch end pieces to get the spacing correct. Then add the ends last. Finally a couple nails at each corner help connect it all. Wood glue is optional.

Lay the fiberglass out over the frame and cut it to fit. We tried a utility knife first, but scissors worked best. A bit of liquid nails adhesive under each end will keep the fiberglass in position.

We laid out polyester batting over the frame, and cut it with excess to cover the edges of the panels.

We wrapped the whole thing in fabric and stapled the edges. A quick trim and the panel is completed.

To hang our panels, we used some cheap brass hooks at the topmost corners of the panel. These won't take much abuse, but they'll do the job.

Our row of sound panels hung up in the basement. We're still playing around with the spacing, but they definitely improved the acoustics in the room. If you're not into hanging them, add some hinges and you can make a nifty sound barrier disguised as a changing screen.

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[Engadget]

What D&D character are you?

Mon, 06 Feb 2006 19:03:17 GMT

I Am A: Neutral Good Half-OrcFighter Ranger

Alignment:
Neutral Good characters believe in the power of good above all else. They will work to make the world a better place, and will do whatever is necessary to bring that about, whether it goes for or against whatever is considered 'normal'.

Race:
Half-Orcs are a cross between a human and an orc. Generally, this kind of mating does not occur willingly, so half-orcs are almost never raised by a full set of parents. They tend to be less intelligent and attractive than humans, but are generally stronger and hardier. Violence is a part of their nature, and few half-orcs manage to overcome this to follow other professions. They are generally treated with disdain by other races, if not outright hostility.

Primary Class:
Fighters are the warriors. They use weapons to accomplish their goals. This isn't to say that they aren't intelligent, but that they do, in fact, believe that violence is frequently the answer.

Secondary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.

Deity:
Lathander is the Neutral Good god of spring, dawn, birth, and renewal. His followers believe in new beginnings, and work for the betterment of all. They have no preferred weapon, but they typically wear plate mail and a shield, with red and yellow tinting. Lathander's symbol is rosy pink disk, typically cut from rose quartz.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy ofNeppyMan (e-mail)

New UT tools

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 20:07:17 GMT

Just wanted to post a note saying I've release my UTUtils program under the Creative Commons license. This is a Java application, so it requires a JRE to run.

This tool allows you to keep the maps that you've downloaded into the cache during online play.

It also allows you to install maps that you download via MapRaider or FilePlanet. It will automatically unzip and install the maps, textures, music, etc. in the file packs.

You can download the tool at Minethurn.

Really cool Xbox

Thu, 11 Nov 2004 23:20:13 GMT

Go ahead and string your eight Xbox consoles together.

Anandtech is out to do two things with this article:

1) Prove the versatility of the Xbox console
2) Prove game geeks are mentally dubious, on a good day

I’ll let them explain themselves:

“The goal today is to see if we can modify an XBOX successfully to do something useful that we can’t do for the cost of the modification (aside from play XBOX). We will look at a media center, a basic PC and finally, a lot at the possibility of setting our XBOXes up in some sort of cluster, with detailed steps all along the way.”

Lordy, that’s a tall order. And they deliver. The article is worth checking out just to see the pile of black boxes stacked atop each other, as if partaking in some plastic orgy. If you don’t enjoy this read, you’re dead.

[Joystiq]

Wed, 14 Apr 2004 23:45:55 GMT

Ooooh. Nvidia announced its new video card, the GeForce 6800. Check out its performance review. Here's the best quote:

"Compared to the GeForce 6800 Ultra, the former high-end models Radeon 9800XT and FX 5950 Ultra often seem like nothing more than cheap mainstream cards... "