Remember my recent mention of Speedball 2, when I posted the teaser video? Well today the Web site for the game was updated with more information and a load of new images…
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I have also uploaded to YouTube the development video from the site and you can see that below: The video shows a lot of the images seen above being turned into ingame models, but that’s it really…
Here’s what I believe are in-game screenshots:
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Why isn’t there a law against certain types of people wearing certain clothes? You know what I mean because, we’ve all seen them…
The very young girls in revealing clothing covering less skin than a Playboy Bunny… The guys who wear shorts so tiny that you fear if they lift a leg you’ll see something that’ll terrorise you the rest of your life… The women who, well, read on to see what they do!
Last night I had to walk behind a girl in skin-tight Spandex bottoms for two city blocks on my way to collect Sheila from work - it was horrible. You know how when you pass a car crash, however horrible it might look, you can’t not take a glance? Well yes, that’s right - I am comparing her rear-end to a car crash.
Spandex must do something to people, perfectly ordinary people, because not only did it look like her buttcheeks were waging war against each other like Sumo Wrestlers, it also seemed like she thought they looked good like that…
Women: Just say no to Spandex. The women it looks good on would never wear it and those of you who do wear it, usually look awful.
Thirty-one degrees, thirty-one bloody degrees. It’s not even the height of Summer!
I’m sweating like a Sumo Wrestler who’s been smeared with Butter and placed in an oven…
ps: 31°c = 87°f
I was on the Red Line Subway in Chicago this morning, on my way to collect my wallet.
I was stood near the doors as most of the seating was full, but I noticed a Mexican looking man sleeping in a nearby seat with his head swaying around. Suddenly as we approached a station he started screaming in his sleep - a real high-pitched wail too! The doors opened in the station and everyone who was sat nearby bolted for the doors, leaving the man sat all alone with me stood closest.
At the next station the man seemed to have settled back into his sleep, a guy got on the train and sat behind the sleeping Mexican. As the doors began to close and the automated voice said “Next stop: Lake Street” the Mexican jumped to his feet with his eyes shut and with no chance of making it before the doors closed, walked straight into a metal pole. The young guy who’d just got on the train burst out laughing as I took in a lung full of air through my teeth and whispered “Ouch…”
The Mexican simply slumped back to sleep in the seat beside the pole… I got off at the next station, who knows what wonders happened on the rest of that magical ride!? I will never know…
On Saturday Sheila and I left my wallet in the LaSalle Street train station. This morning I went back there and someone had handed it into lost property.
They took the $20 that was in it, but left both the credit card and cash card. If they’d have taken my cash card, that would have been real bad… They couldn’t have used it (it’s for withdrawl of cash with the PIN only), but I’d have had to of gotten another one sent to me via my parents back in the UK. The $20, as far as I’m concerned, is their “payment” for doing the right thing, even though the maximum they could have gotten was $4 (from the credit card), they didn’t know that.
That’s pretty cool, huh?
Don’t you just love those ‘have a go, heroes’?
Last night Sheila and I were walking down Michigan avenue and we hear a man at a crosswalk refusing to move from infront of someone’s car until they ended their cellphone conversation.
It is illegal to use a mobile phone while driving within Chicago’s city limits, and this man, who I believe was an off-duty Police Officer anyway judging by his verbal threats of “a ticket”, wasn’t going to let this one person slip by.
It’s possible that before we got there this car almost ran the man over, the car was way past the line they’re meant to be at when the light turns red - and that’s why he had the issue with this driver, but, in any case - what a hero. 
Of course in the UK it’s illegal to use a mobile phone while driving - at all.
Colin McRae’s “DIRT” had a PC demo version released on Thursday and I thought I’d write a quick post featuring my thoughts…
I am able to run it on my laptop as long as I use the “front bumper” camera or the “chase” camera. When I use the cockpit view my framerate drops low enough to make it undriveable. One thing I did notice with a low framerate is that like Geoff Crammond’s GP3 and 4, when the framerate lowers, so does the “playing speed” of the game itself.
Anyone who doesn’t have the game zipping along is actually losing out, the cars move slower but the clock moves in real-time. The recommended system specifications, or even the minimum specifications that this game requires are way, way too high. Flatout 2 (another racing game available on the PC) manages to create something almost as beautiful with much, much lower system specs.
The graphics are stunning though and that’s even more impressive when I consider that I have most of them turned off… The car bodies are nice looking and the visual damage appears to be both beautiful and functional - at last an arcade game that punishes the “wall rider”.
The physics are where I start to lose my smile on this one… DIRT is a lot of fun but it does have a few strange things that I noticed within minutes…
Drifting the cars (essential in rallying and dirt racing) is very difficult to do because the cars appear to have far too much grip. You also seem to be able to turn the car in mid-air and if you land with a car you’ve turned while jumping and wind up facing at a 90 degree angle to where you’re moving at, your wheels don’t snap off under lateral load. With such a “realistic” damage engine that I’d praise in many areas I have to say it seems the damage is “canned”. If you hit a tyre, you get tyre damage… It doesn’t matter how you hit the tyre.
The demo tracks are also quite strange because you have barriers and objects of the same sort reacting in different ways: One tyre barrier might bounce your car, another might have no effect (you can drive through it). Hopefully this is just something you can see with the demo track versions?
Like most racing games, “DIRT” will be a lot of fun and will in some areas add new features to the genre, but with that said, it isn’t going to give anyone a true to life simulation of rallying. You can download the demo from here. You can buy Flatout 2 from here
Here’s a selection of videos I took yesterday while at Lincoln Park Zoo. Photographs from the day will be added sometime this evening.
Male Lion rolling over:
Female Lion Roaring:
Two Otters Playing/Fighting:
A Rabbit, very close to a Black Bear:
I got a little nature show (you know the ones I mean… the ones where you see a cute Seal being eaten by a Killer Whale) while walking through Lincoln Park yesterday. A little baby Rabbit was being chased around by two crows and for the most part he seemed to be out-smarting them. I wasn’t there to see how things ended, but I guess whichever one got tired first was the loser.