Not like they need my money.

So doom 2 comes out to xbox live recently, and I'm super stoked. I go to buy that shit the moment I find out, and since I've done this a thousand times before I figure it'll be super easy and I can get right to downloading right? WRONG.

THE CREDIT CARD YOU ARE TRYING TO USE COULD NOT BE AUTHORIZED, PLEASE TRY ANOTHER CARD.

Yes, the very same card that I have not only used multiple other places on the internet within the week, but across town within the day, Microsoft has some sort of problem taking. Never mind the fact that I've been a gold subscriber for over a year and purchased god knows how much shit from them.

So I call my bank, hoping they could sort it out, so I don't have to deal with Microsoft's worthless customer support, "Nope, problem is on their end, charges are coming through fine, they're just not coming through for any amount."

So I call the BARELY English speaking customer support and what answer do I get after a 20 minute run around and hold? USE ANOTHER CARD OR BUY A PREPAID POINTS CARD.

NO! FUCK YOU! IF I WANTED TO DO THAT SHIT I WOULD HAVE ALREADY GODDAMNIT.

I guess if you dipshits have some sort of problem taking my money I can just fucking give it to someone else!

Hal

Got a starcraft 2 beta invite in the mail today.

Just thought I would share :)

So close to perfection....don't burn your wings on the sun.

So I'm playing a mod for Unreal Tournament 2004 named "Out of Hell." Fantastic free mod, absolutely brick shitting.

I'm positively blown away by how much detail can be stuffed into a six year old engine, of course running such loving detail in such a dated engine causes performance to suffer exponentially, but I thought it was a pretty good trade off for slightly slower framerate.

Keyword being thought.

I was thoroughly enjoying myself, scared out of my mind, reading up on some of the most fascinating zombie mythos I've ever read within anything, let alone a game, when I come to the end of the third level exit and BAM

GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT: CRASH TO DESKTOP

Normally I wouldn't have minded the jarring removal of my immersion, but when I loaded back up I found that the game hadn't saved prior to crash, as the author opted to remove mid level saves and checkpoints in favor of a between level save system.

Which while creating a much better atmosphere, if your game crashes between levels, that creates a pretty big fucking flaw.

I realize it was the work of just one guy, and amazingly well done at that, but that's still a pretty big fucking flaw. Sure these things take forever to make, but take a little longer and get it done right. If you're going to make an admittedly awesome atmosphere enhancing save restriction like this, it's best to have it save from within the game before any loading occurs, rather than in the middle of two states. Then just have the save file automatically skip to the next level when loading.

I loved what I played, but I wont be slogging through the 15 minute long level again anytime soon just to roll the dice and see whether the program will CTD instead of save. The CTD I can deal with, redoing the level from scratch? Not so much.

Hal

Edit: possibly a problem with multi-core support....did they have multicores in 2004? I doubt it....I'll try it out tomorrow night maybe.