We keep the server going all day basically ramfisher, so it gives everyone a fair chance to participate. However, we don't have many active members right now so it's kind of hit and miss for when we all get together. However, you can usually find rabbit, g@rgoyle and myself playing around 2 or 3 in the afternoon your time. I try to start my server about 1 your time so I'm there for a good portion of the beginning. I've been having difficulty with my end of the server, but rabbit has fixed his problem. If I'm hosting the server, you may be able to join the game by clicking on join game with one of the other members. That being said though, we did have some difficulty with the last game on rabbit's server, but I'm not sure if that got fixed later on in the server's life. I had to go rather early. Did you fix the freezing and jumping screens rabbit?

Hey Rabbit, greetings from USA, . I was happy I decided to check the forms because I would have never known about aa3. I already had a steam account,and recieved HL2,Portal,HL,HL2 Deathmatch,Lost Coast, bundle for Valenties Day and have been having a ball ever since. If you guys and gals in the UK play online, will it still be available during Eastern Standard Time? Please let me know, so I can arrange time to play online with my fellow GAOTD members. Thanks again for the heads up to us all.

Hmmm rabbit, sounds like it may be more of a hardware issue than the dual core because I have several of those games and haven't had a single problem. I'm running Vista as well and it's not hindered the game one bit. In fact, however, I think I had more problems with the XP and my games than I have with Vista. I've only come across maybe 2 games that won't run on my computer. Perhaps it is the XP that is hindering the games?

I am impressed you made sense of what I wrote. You know, when you are typing out a thought it seems to make much more sense than what is actually being typed out.

I know I don't want to retype it and I am pretty sure you don't want me type it all back out, just to explain what I meant by most of it. So I will get to gist of it. The court cases will probably take 6 months or so, but I will probably end up upgraded the the 8800 to a 9800 in 3 or 4 months. For what ever reason, nvidia claims that the 9800 works better for physx. Since they are only about 120 us dollars now, I will go ahead get one.
I have quite a few video cards around here being used in computers, but none can handle the power demand for it, so it will pretty much be useless to me. I thought about sitting on it (hard times and all), but seeing your in the same boat as me. I know sending it to you would give it a good home that appreciate + utilize its full potential.

My only draw back,which would not affect you, would be getting a stronger card for physx, but the only prob is if went with like a 260. My motherboard's PCIE slots would drop to x8.

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The one thing I can't understand disability is that they said from 2004 to 2007 I was disabled,but now I am ok. Weird logic, I have miraculously healed and am ready to join society again. I guess I shouldn't have gone to the faith healer in tent revival, just joking.

I wasnt through talking, but I gota run to town.

Nice one Txnnok, if you do decide to give it away I'll happily pay postage and packaging. I could set it up in SLI mode with the one I have to improve frame rates on some of my games.

I do hope your battle is successful. Mine is soon to start also. Thefirst court date has been set for mid July. It was delayed due to the defendants wanting more time to prepare their case. It will probably drag on for quite some time though becasue there are two defendants, one of which is a hospital, they will no doubt bring in the big guns to trey and reduce the damage it's going to cost them. I'm hoping it will be resolved before the end of next year though as I'm sick of the whole process already.

Regards

Whiterabbit

Hey Wizard, Befoere I startin on the quad core I was running the amd 5000 at dual 2.6 and then I got the amd quad 2.3, both Black editions. When running tests I found the dual core almost always did better than quad core, Which was so annoying. I also am not a super pusher on the them, cause I can't afford something going wrong. But really it looked like the dual core was a much better card to me, but for what I was using it for could make a huge difference.

As for intel, from I understand. It utilizes the core in a completely different way. Kind of like one core will deal with just the web and another core will deal with just the browser game going on , the next core will function on some program you have open, and the last core will either stand by in limbo incase the other 3 need extra or some other calculation I cant remember. Intel Has designated it to be more efficient.
From my own use I have to to suffer any lag and I am using the the middle end of the core quad. I was never an intel fan myself, just price wise, but from all reading about each intel or amd. The nehalem is suppose to run circles around amd.

As for the 3d aspects of playing games. Quite a few games that I have tried really didn't impress, like Cryostasis, which was designed by them. But from the ok ok ok games to ones that. World at War is just the shiznit for this 3d world. I can't even become to describe it, but wow it is awesome. I haven't tried world of warcraft yet, but it is suppose to have an excellent rating to. They haven't got it perfect yet, but man if you got a bit of money to invest, give it try. Not to mention, 120 lvd or plazma tv can be hooked up to your computer to give it the effect.

I didn't win enough money yet to buy me, but when I win the final battle. I am going to take a couple of thousand and buy me a 120hz tv and watch all my movie in 3d. They don't even have to made for 3d. I can see it being the way of the future.

Hey rabbit, It will take me a while longer another sixth months or to win this finally round with the goverment, but I'll keep my 8800 in mind for you. Prob just send it to you for the cost of the shipping charges. It seems like much, but nvidia is trying to phase them out. They want everyone to use the 9800,which is strange cause its pretty much the same card.

Thats kind of why I wanted the x58 motherboard. I can with ati if I want.

Operation Flashpoint, American Conquest and American Conquest Fight Back, Big Mutha Truckers I (the second one works), Secret Weapons over Normandy, Crimson Skies, Hidden & Dangerous 2, my Hard copy of Farcry, (though the copy I purchased from Steam does work), Shellshock Nam 67 (the latest Shellshock 2 works fine), Wizardry 8, and Beowulf. there are others, but can't remember exactly. Most are quite old now, but I don't want to part with them yet becasue I never completed any of the games, and despite some of them having graphics that look old, they are still excellent games. The only recently released game I've had problems with is Beowulf which is 2 years old. If it was only one computer i'd just assume there was a problem with the computer, but they won't play on all three computers that have dual core cpu's. All the DVD reader/writers are different, the MoBo's are different and even the Hard Drives are from different manufacturers.

I installed a couple of the above games on my recently purchased laptop, which only has a single core and they worked (Big Mutha Truckers I and Shellshock 'Nam 67) with Vista installed.

That's odd rabbit, I've not had any problems with my dual core. What games are giving you headache? Perhaps I'll know to stay away from those in the future.

Brilliant Deserthead, good to have you on board. Let me assure you that most of us are also quite new to online games (though I have played America's Army and a few others previously, but only with a small group of friends). If you do keep getting wasted, don't worry, most of us also get wasted all the time. A little practice and some tips such as don't stand still and shoot for the head will help keep you alive longer and give you more deaths. ;)

Txnnok,

I'm saving up for a i7 920 at the moment. I've got money for the MoBo, fans and psu so far, and have my eyes on a decent graphics card as well. I've got an NVidia 8800 GTX with 640Mb in my top computer at the moment, but the 8800 is getting old now so want something more up to date. Your new rig should keep you going for a few years before you need to upgrade.

Let me know if you have any issues running any of your games on a quad core. I've been a little reticent buying one after finding several of my games wouldn't play on a dual core computer (they play okay on single core, but not on my dual core machines.

good to have you deserthead, welcome to the group! We look forward to seeing the haggis on the field of duty.

Have finally decided to signup for a Steam account,never been one for gaming online as I don't normally last too long in a game before getting wiped out or falling asleep due to my medication(I'm also one of the old codgers,but never really admitted it 'till now).
Thanks to the info from The Wiz. and W.Rabbit,I'm now downloading HL2 Deathmatch,Lost Coast and Portal.It will take me a few days to get organized and suss a few things out,but hope to get involved on a regular basis.Will be joining the GOTD group under the name TheBlackHaggis.
Will meet you all on the battlefield/racetrack or wherever sometime soon.

Bob.

I had a big long post wrote out and accidentally deleted it, I was gonna say I was about to post the release of this when I saw you beat me to it, WhiteR.
Oh well, From what I see so far, it looks like a pretty sweet upgrade. I still waiting for emails for codes to be sent to me.

I've looked into the older ones, but never got a chance to try them. I won't miss this chance, although I've been been downloading steam games, like they are going out of style. They offer some great deals. I have at least 6 games I haven't tried yet.
I've been to busy been building my new computer and learning the O'clocking functions on it to get around to playing games. In case ya'll are wondering and bit to brag.

I went with an evga classified x58 motherboard, I7 920 Nehalem processor,windows 7 64bit, 6 gigs of ddr3 1600 corsair dominator, corsair 1000hx power supply, 2/260's gtx with and and 8800gtx for physx and a nvida 3d with samsung 120htz monitor,

I know its all overkill, but since I got a partial settlement from the gov for Disability. I thought why not splurge a bit and get top of the line stuff. I won;t have to but any new stuff for 8 years or more and then I can prob. still sell this stuff for 20% or more of its current value.

Hi thenameIpicked. Sorry if I wasn't as clear as I should have been. To be honest, I'd forgotten about the need for either an ATI or an NVidia card before you can install both these games for free.

If you're not sure what graphics card/chip you have, go to the start menu (in XP) and select the run command. Type in dxdiag and click on okay. The DirectX diagnostics window should pop up. Click on the display tab to find out what your graphics card is. If you're running Vista just type in dxdiag in the search box to the bottom left via the start menu, it'll bring up the same window. If it's an ATI use the link I provided above, if it's an NVidia use the link that wizzard provided. It's unlikely that you won't have one or the other, though there are a small percentage of computers using other graphics chip technologies. If you find the card isn't a NVidia or ATI card, that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't have an ATI or NVidia chip because Gainward, Asus Abit and Maxtor use NVidia chips as well., so these cards may be valid. Off the top of my head the only non ATI/NVidia card I can think of is the Hercules, though it's unlikely you'll have one of those.

Keep posting till we resolve this as we want you on the team. :) The more players we have, the better chance of a Team Deathmatch game, which in my opinion is much better than straight deathmatch.

btw, I've just started pre loading Americas Army 3 onto one of my computers and was surprised to read that they only have 15 maps now. that's not to be sniffed at , but it seems that the maps that I was familiar with have been retired. (though I hope not as I though most of them were brilliant). I'm wondering whether the 15 I read about are just the cooperative maps. (I hope so)

There's also a dedicated server that can be downloaded, which is great because, as I mention above, you used to have to pay to be able to run your own server. So it looks certain that we will be able to arrange some private games; (jumps up and down with joy). I do think that a minimum of around 8 players would be needed to have a good team deathmatch game though.

regards

Whiterabbit

They are hardware components tnip, for rabbit's link...you need to have an ATI video card installed. For mine, you have to have an NVIDIA card installed.

Hmmm....neither of the links work, when I say that I have Steam installed, and it checks, it says that my system requirements do match for the giveaway. I'm not sure exactly what those requirements, but I looked into it, and it mention DirectX...so I'm downloading that now, and then checking later. If that isn't the requirements I need, what are they, and are they software or hardware requirements! Thanks!

True. Thankfully most community members have one or the other.

or you can download Deathmatch and Lost Coast here if you have Nvidia:

http://www.steampowered.com/nvidia/

These games are not free on the steam client you have to take advantage of these two offers to get the games for free. Rabbit's is if you have an ATI video card and this one is for Nvidia.

Hi thenameipicked.

You can download Steam via the following link. Once you've installed it and created an account (which is free) do a search with the Steam search engine for Half Life 2 Deathmatch and Half Life 2 Lost Coast. They are free. America's Army is also ready for pre loading, but you can't play it till next week.

Download the Steam Client here:

http://store.steampowered.com/about/

You can download both the free Half Life 2 (HL2) games here (Half Life 2 is not required to get HL2: Lost Coast and the HL2: Deathmatch games) :

http://www.steampowered.com/ati_offer1a/

I hope this solves your problem. :)

Regards

Whiterabbit

p.s.

I just realized that you may already have Steam installed. To join the Giveaway group just clicks on the community tab at the top of the Steam window and type Giveawayoftheday in the search engine field to the top right then press return.

Only a few groups should be found. Click on the one that says Giveawayoftheday (GOTD) Click on the icon.

When the next page appears you should see an orange bordered button with the word join (also orange in color). Click on that and follow whatever instructions come up.

To make friends, (which makes it easier to communicate via messenger and also helps you to join games easier), click on the icons near the bottom of the page.

Each icon represents a member of the Giveawayoftheday group. When you click on any one of these you'll see an option to the right that says something like invite this person to be your friend (or I think add to your friends list.)

I hope this helps. Any more problems please do ask.

Thanks

Regards

WR

p.p.s.

Having the Steam client gives you access to some amazing bargains; especially at weekends when you can sometimes get as much as 75% off recently released games. I've bought over 50 games since I installed Steam in January 09, most of which have been bought via the weekend deals or pre-ordered with offers on; for example, a couple of weeks before I went on vacation Steam were offering a free copy of Second Sight, an action shooter game from 2005 if you pre-ordered Damnation.(Second Sight is actually quite a good game and was considered very innovative at the time of release) - I didn't bother buying Second Sight then because I was more into traditional army based FPS games such as Americas Army and Battlefield 2. Damnation really appealed to me when I saw the pre-release trailers which showed amazing scenery that you would be playing through as well as some actual game play footage, that looked better than anything I've come across in game yet. (Unfortunately I've found the game very prescriptive and it didn't lived up to the pre-launch hype); nevertheless, the two games were a bargain. I got 40% off Left for Dead, and loads of others at half price. My first steam purchase was actually a five game package that included Multiwinia, Trials 2: Second Edition, IFluid, Gravitron 2 and Eets for only $10 (actually 6.99 pounds).... brilliant bargains.

Rabbit :)

Ok, how do I join you group? Secondly, I cannot get any of the Half-Lifes for free...how do i do this?

I used to play America's Army religiously {until I got into Battlefield 2 when it was released in June 2005}. It's a totally free online shooter developed by the American Armed Forces with the help of a software developer. (There's a Naval version that I used to play as well). The download is a couple of Gigabytes in size, but I highly recommend those that have steam installed to install this game. It's ready for pre -load now and will be playable from the 17th or 18th June onwards.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/13140/

It's come a long way since I last played it with cooperative play added nearly 2 years ago plus custom made maps by the community. I don't actually know how many maps there are to play now, but when I last played it in 2006 there were about 20 brilliant maps. The graphics then were superb, and they have had several updates since.

I'm hoping that we will be able to set up private servers via steam, though doing so will probably preclude us from adding stats points and levelling up. Though in a closed circle of friends that's not absolutely necessary becasue levelling up really only gives you preferential access to the different classes you can choose from (for example, id a level 20 and 30 were playing, if the level 20 chose to be commander, and the level 30 then chose to be commander, the level 20 player would be bumped down to a lover class, however if the level 30 decided to choose a lower class the level 20 player would remain the commander. (I have a suspicion though that you can't play commander until you've attained at least level 15) You progress in America's Army by earning point via kills and accomplishing missions, plus winning matches. Matches last until a mission has been accomplished, or you are the last man standing and I think there's also a time limit, but not 100% certain on that one. In the event that the time runs out, the winning team will be those that have scored the most when taking into account the number of kills, secondary missions accomplished and the number of soldiers that have been healed. During a match when you are killed you have to wait until the match has ended to re enter (which is a good incentive not to die and tends to stop run and gun methods; making it a much more enjoyable experience. Once killed you can follow the progress of the match by following any player around from a third person viewpoint, though you can't interact. I think there's a facility to send messages to others that have also been killed, but you can't communicate to those in game (unless you have a teamspeak server, though it's frowned upon to pass on information to your team members).

Earning points enables you to level up every so often, (see below for more details of this which in turn gives you privileges in game; the higher the level you are, the better positions you can select during the start of a new match, for example sniper, sergeant in charge of a squad or the commander. If you win a match, the commander gets a larger slice of the points , the squad sergeants next, then the rest get the rest of the points, though you can also earn individual points for other attainments in game (such as healing a wounded soldier or killing one). To move up a level you have to earn a specific number of points. The higher you are in level the harder it is to get to the next level.

When you first start the game you actually play single player, and have to do your basic training which starts with movement then firing ranges. There are several stages to this before you qualify to actually play online. I found this stage a lot of fun because I am basically a single player fan, but online play can be better if you find a good group to play with. Some of the servers I've playe don in the past had clans that were deadly serious about their gameplay and for me that just wasn't fun. I was actually kicked from one server, not becasue I did something stupid or illegal, but becasue I wasn't following the orders of my squad seargent to the letter. There are also a couple of optional stages which can be done once you’ve started playing online. They are Special Forces training, Medic training, and Airborne training (there's possibly been others added since I played, but I haven't researched the subject yet). To be able to use certain weapons (the best ones basically), and to play some of the maps as well as be able to progress beyond a specific level {level 15}, you have to have completed the Special Forces training which involve aircraft and tank recognition tests as well as a stealth exercise where you have to get from point A to point B without being seen by the enemy, and special weapons training using weapons such as the Barrett Rifle and rocket launcher. Airborne training opens up certain maps that you can’t play until you’ve learned to control a parachute. This just involves jumping out of a plane and being able to land within a specific zone. Though it’s not as easy as it seems. Whereas the medic course enables you to heal team members which also gives you extra points towards attaining your level ups; {I think you get 2 points for every soldier you heal} and involves a basic first aid test and some practical work (in game of course). All of it is fun and gives an extra edge to this brilliant online action first person shooter. Don’t let the above put you off; it seems quite a lot to do to be able to actually play the game fully, but as already indicated, you don’t have to do it all at once, though if you don’t do the Special Forces before you attain level 15 you’ll be stuck on level 15, and will not be able to select any position at the start of each game that uses Special Forces weapons, though you can still use them if you pick them off dead comrades or enemy.

One thing you have to be careful of in this game is killing your own team members. If you kill more than a few in any one map you will be sent to Fort Leavenworth and are basically locked from the game for a short period; also when this happens you lose some of your earned points, in fact any team kill reduces your points and can even cause you to drop a level if you’re points take you below the threshold for each level rise.

On average you can earn upwards of a couple of hundred points to around 500 points for each game if you are the commander and get lots of kills, though on average 50 to a 100 points is more realistic if you're playing any other rank. Level ups start from level 10, which is what you are awarded for completing basic training. I think the first five levels cost 2500 points each, then the next 5 are 3000 then the next 4500 …... etc. So you can see the higher you go the harder it becomes to level up. Each game can take anywhere from 20 minutes to around 40 minutes depending upon the number of players and the mission involved.

I highly recommend all of you who have Steam, to try it, and to those who don’t have Steam, get it now, it’s ALL totally free and you’ll then be able to download Half Life 2’s deathmath and Lost Coast for free as well, plus you’ll be able to join us in our monthly online game, which by the way is only for fun and not competitive.

I’ve probably forgotten some details about the game, because it’s been almost four years since I last played it. We had a private clan called ‘The Pointmen’ and used to run it on a private server, with around 14 of us shooting it out every week, three or four times a week (all of us had full time jobs as well). Sometimes only four or five played, sometimes the whole clan, but I can honestly say we all had the time of our lives and created some friendships that are still going strong. We stopped playing it for two reasons; only myself and one of my online friends paid for the server and it had become a little too expensive especially as I’d just lost my job due to the accident that I've mentioned elsewhere in these forums - (Old codgers thread, lol); we didn’t like asking the others in the clan for money so had to shut down the server, (though we did announce a month before we shut it down that we would be; but no one offered to help keep it open, despite the fun factor and camaraderie it created); the other reason it was shut down was because Battlefield 2 was becoming more of an option for all of us to play (We also played Battlefield Vietnam , Men of Valor and later Men of Honor: Pacific Assault, plus a few other games, (none of which required a paid for server if you weanted a private game).

With respect to America’s Army, it’s a great team based game and the game can be enhanced a lot by using Teamspeak. You can set Teamspeak up so that each team member can speak to each other but the opposing team can’t hear you. Ideal for a team based game play. It’s a similar principle to 'voip' which some games support; but it's not quite the same because you don't have as many options to configure who you can speak to. The great thing with a Teamspeak account is that you can set it up to use with multiplke games as you get quite a few channels to play with in a basic subscription. There’s also a lobby for general chit chat.

If there are enough community members interested in joining the giveaway Steam group (we have around 18 members, but most haven’t been active yet) and in particular in playing America’s Army and Half Life 2 deathmatch I will personally hire a team speak channel to dedicate to the games we play together.

Regards

Whiterabbit