Burn your Sound Blaster 16! Take To The Streets!

Me? Doing a spot of internet bandwagon-jumping? Surely not…

However, in this case, as is often true with internet nerds, this one’s hard to ignore. I’m sure pretty much everyone has heard about the whole CREATIVE Labs thing by now, but if not, here’s a little explanation. You see, the well-known manufacturers are one of, if not the biggest when it comes to sales of PC sound cards.

Trouble is, Vista was released, Microsoft changed the sound architecture of the Windows operating system, and as a result CREATIVE released some really crappy drivers for their cards, missing important features like Dolby Digital support, and generally being unstable and rubbish. Pretty much everyone accepted the fact that this was the march of progress, and resigned themselves to buying new sound cards.

Trouble is, a member of CREATIVE’s forums, known as Daniel_K, decided to take matter into his own hands and prove them wrong. He released some excellent drivers for Vista which he’d written by reverse engineering CREATIVE’s own efforts, and they left him to it, that is, until he started accepting donations for his time. That’s when the legal heavies got involved.

Here’s the infamous forum post where it all kicked off.

Fast forward to today, and the internet at large is now calling for a boycott of all things CREATIVE. I have to agree with the cause too – this guy’s using his own skills and valuable time to write drivers that they refuse to, and then sharing the fruits of his work with others in the same shitty situation. Obviously his work also proves that CREATIVE are lying about Vista’s driver model being the cause of the problems – the issue here is that they want people to go out and buy new sound cards, and they’re doing it by deceiving people.

There’s a massive internet storm brewing, and it’s heading in their direction.

So, are you going to boycott CREATIVE, or do you think it’s all a bit silly? I wasn’t thinking of buying any new hardware in a long time anyway, so I’d be lying if I said I was deliberately boycotting them, but I can’t help but agree with this cause.

Any comments?

As regulars to TTB will have gathered, me and Mr Geekboy had the pleasure of going to the Call of Duty 4 Boot Camp event in London on Friday afternoon to play the new maps that will be released on April 4th. So I thought to round off our coverage of the event I would give you a walkthrough of what to expect when the maps hit the wild.

Killhouse

Loosely based on the training mission at the start of the single player mode, Killhouse is quite a small map based in a decrepit warehouse with large chunks of it’s roof missing. All of the structures on this map are made of plywood, so they offer no protection from your enemy if they know you are there, making games on this map quite frenzied and fast paced. The roof offers some shelter from helicopters and air strikes, but not much, making it very messy when somebody gets one. My only real gripe with this map was that as it is so small it makes ‘grenade spamming‘ (the art of randomly throwing a stun grenade followed by a frag grenade and hoping you get a kill) quite a successful tactic. I only got to pay this map on free-for-all, but I think it could be really good for domination, as there is no real hiding places, and very few sniper spots!

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Check out these pictures of a hacked version of Valhalla, the popular multiplayer map from Halo 3. Plucky NeoGAF member Ajemsuhgao managed to get a hold of these pictures of a Snowbound / Avalanche inspired mod, supposedly done on a dev console, which I think looks really, really well done.

Looks a lot like the Assault On The Control Room mission from the Halo:CE single player campaign, actually. It kinda makes me wonder how cool it would be if Bungie had gone with realistic weather effects, much in the same vein as PGR4… Maybe for Halo 4, eh?

My God. This, this is possibly the most incredible thing I have ever seen. The team behind the unofficial Black Mesa mod are aiming to recreate the whole of the original Half-Life game, only using the incredibly sexy Source engine from HL2. And unlike Valve’s own effort, Half-Life: Source, this one is completely rebuilt from the ground up, with new sounds, new sprites, new everything based on those from the original Half-Life.

Please Valve, if you know what’s good for you, give these guys a job and release this as part of whatever box HL2:Ep3 is going to be part of, along with the sequel to Portal. If you can crack it out this year that’ll be two years in a row when you’ve really made my life complete.

Did I mention how much I love everything Half-Life?

Also, their web site is totally sweet. Check out this image browser! Plus, you really, really, really need to watch this video to understand what I’m talking about.

So, I pick up my fellow teabagger OwningXylophone from his house on Tuesday night for some hardcore gaming, as I often do, and he’s all excited about something. He says he can win some VIP tickets to a Call of Duty promotional thing in London through Aceybongos, but that he’d need me to be able to get Friday afternoon off.

Thankfully, I have an understanding boss who is also a massive CoD fan, so he let me go. And so it was that, on an otherwise relatively normal Friday afternoon, I find myself on a train down to London. Half an hour or so of standing around outside a gay cinema in Soho, and we’re lured in to what looks like an NCP car park with promises of gaming.

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Unfortunately this has nothing to do with our very own Evoroth (as you’d expect from the title), but it is incredibly funny.

Hold out for the big LOLs @ 0:45.

Here are some of the pictures I took at today’s CoD4 Boot Camp event, where we got to play with the upcoming variety map pack and also take part in a bit of a tournament with some hardcore CoD fanboys. We’re not CoD fanboys (although we agree that it is a most excellent game), so we didn’t do too well.

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The Boot Camp event took place in a car park. That’s right, an actual, true-to-life NCP car park. It’s all good though, because it was all made up to look like the new Call of Duty map Killhouse, with plywood walls and burnt out cars…

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It seems OwningXylophone has gone and won us a rather awesome competition (I use the term “won” loosely, he basically used his supreme nerdiness to muscle his way in). We’re going down to London this afternoon to take part in the Call of Duty 4 Boot Camp event, which is basically a preview of the new map pack (out in April) with some hardcore tournament competition thrown in.

After getting lots of practice in last night on a game I’d never even played before (*ahem*), I’m fairly confident that our vast shooter experience and innate TTB mad skillz will help us to not get completely pwned, but it’s still going to be tough going. Also, we’ll be VIP guests of OX’s personal hero, Aceybongos, who happens to be the Xbox Community Manager for Europe, so I’m a bit nervous too.

So, wish us well, and rest assured that there will be pictures (and maybe even video) posted upon these hallowed pages some point shortly after our triumphant return. We could also get our ugly mugs onto Inside Xbox, which is a pretty scary thought.

Not for us, for you.

This week’s theme on TTB surely has to be blagging skills – OwningXylophone’s managed to blag us into something spectacular (which I’m sure he’ll tell everyone all about later), and me… Well, I’ve used my industry position and Linux experience to blag my way onto the Elonex ONE beta testing programme.

The ONE, for those who don’t remember, is a sub-£100 ultraportable computer made by UK company Elonex. The specs aren’t all that great (300MHz custom-made processor, 128MB RAM, 1GB SSD HDD in the basic model) but due to its price point this thing’s set to take the world by storm.

It’s available on general release (for those who have preordered, anyway) in June but as a beta tester I will be playing with mine a bit earlier than that. So hopefully I’ll be setting up a new blog soon to tell the world about my experiences with the ONE, and of course covering it all right here on TTB too. And hey, if it sucks, I could always just sell it on ebay.

Without warning, Microsoft have stripped about 15 Xbox Live accounts of all their gamerscore… The reason behind this? They are all gamerscore cheats! About time I say! MS released this statement on the matter:-

Gamerscore Corrections

About Gamerscore corrections

A gamerscore correction occurs on a player’s LIVE account when they gain achievements through avoiding game play and the use of external tools. LIVE is committed to keeping the service free of this type of behavior as it violates the LIVE Terms of Use. When abnormal achievement or gamerscore activity is found, LIVE modifies the gamerscore of players who meet specific and automated criteria.

A LIVE player who obtained their gamerscore in this abnormal way will

• Find their gamerscore reset to zero, and
• Be unable to regain all previously earned achievements, and
• Be labeled as a “cheater” for the community to view.

While players who have been identified by these criteria will start from a zero gamerscore, they will still be able to gain achievements for future games. In other words, we give them another chance to earn future achievements by earning them as other “fair” players do. The original gamerscore correction will remain permanent without any way to appeal.

Questions and answers

Under what circumstances does LIVE correct a specific gamerscore?

Specific and automated criteria are used to determine if a player has earned achievements by using tools that circumvent the game or avoid game play entirely. A player who meets these criteria has their gamerscore corrected.

How does LIVE know a player has been cheating on their gamerscore versus another player?

We look for abnormal achievement and gamerscore activity using criteria that identifies users who have used external means to earn achievements without really playing the game. Users who play games legitimately to earn an achievements are unaffected by this.

Does being a “cheater” change a player’s experience on LIVE?

We only correct the player’s current gamerscore and label them as a “cheater.” This label can be observed on Xbox.com, and through the player’s view of their gamercard on a console or PC connected to LIVE. They are still allowed to legitimately gain future achievements and the player’s experience doesn’t change in any other way.

I think I know someone who has been “cheating” – why haven’t you corrected their gamerscore?

For gamerscore corrections, cheating is when you gain achievements through avoiding game play and the use of external tools. If a player hasn’t met specific criteria then we don’t correct their gamerscore. If your definition of cheating is different, then gamerscore correction isn’t the answer – you should consider reporting the user through the feedback reporting system. It is also possible that the player is not cheating at all.

I’ve had my gamerscore corrected, is there any way to appeal the decision?

There is no way to appeal a gamerscore correction. We only correct gamerscores for players who meet the criteria 100%. Your best choice is to show the community you won’t do it again.

But it was my little brother/roommate/guest that did this using my gamertag. Can I appeal?

No. As is outlined in the Terms of Use you are responsible for all activity on your account.

I’m worried I might get my gamerscore corrected. What should I do?

Like the vast majority of Xbox LIVE members, if you earn achievements by playing through games like any other player, then you have nothing to worry about. Gamerscore correction only applies to players who use external means or avoid game play to earn achievements.

I’ve heard of other players getting banned. Why don’t you just ban these gamertags?

We believe in players reforming themselves, which is why gamerscore correction only applies to previously earned achievements. This allows these players to earn achievements like other “fair” players without having to get banned from LIVE. However, any user who violates the LIVE Terms of Use is subject to having their gamertag banned.

It’s probably worth noting that MS are being pretty tight lipped on what the ‘criteria’ for cheating is, so I wonder how difficult it will be to convince them Mr Evoroth is a cheat?