Oh Really?

Haven't posted in at least a billion years. My exploitation of webs.com as a depository for my website images has apparantly come to an end. My beautiful blog has been littered with placeholder images because they decided to stop hosting my content. Dammit webs.com, I hope you go out of business. Probably already have, lol. Gone is the awesome exocet font. Gone is the wonderful picture that I was using as a background. Gone is the only true coolness to this blog. But because blogger is free, and because I may still post things from time to time, I have decided to forge on ahead. But because of so many other things I don't have time to redo my images so I just pulled up the templates and chose the first one I saw. Lame? I know, right?

Are You Not Entertained?

I just realized something today. Maddeningly so. I blog about Planescape Torment because I am legitimately hindered from writing about it. And it's not the same thing. Not to me. Otherwise why would I have made the statement? You see you have to know what's going on to get it. And if you don't, you miss the boat. Hell, you don't even see the boat. You don't even know that there is a boat.

Should I wrap it up in gold paper or coat it in chocolate? Should I apply a liberal dosage of cute pop culture? Or saturate it in clever idiomatic expressions... Or leave it as it is, flopping around gasping for AIR that it wants to breath but which it can't? Or can it be force-fed to the masses, jammed right down their throats in an AVATAR-esque fashion? No, because for that to happen it would naturally have to, in fact, suck. A matter of opinion? Isn't it always? But some things, when they have had time to burn down to their core -- after sifting through ash and smoke painted in bright pretty colors -- just suck. And some things don't. For example, Shawshank Redemption doesn't suck. I don't care how much you flowed with the crowd and slandered it upon release. You know it's a good film.

I have now crossed over into that zone where the blogger is killed. Not crucified in public, just cut down and taken out to trash as an afterthought. I entered that zone when I started this blog because at the end of the day, you can't really convincingly play the charade. This is who you are. The classically pure form of an amateur but really only for one reason: public perception based on the notion that people like to be entertained if not more importantly be accepted by being "in the know." Notice how I said "perception". Often times it is just that. And public perceptions these days are increasingly founded upon falsehood. Don't believe me? If James Cameron, and you know who he is, said tomorrow that Planescape Torment was the greatest story ever conceived you would believe him. Maybe it would take millions of dollars in marketing and advertising and press conferences and rhetoric, but you'd believe him. Or at least most people would because not everyone will, I give you that. I might not believe him. But chances are, you would. Even if the millions weren't spent... except they already have been. He could say it tomorrow in an off the cuff comment to an ET anchor, and it has already been funded.

Call me a nut but if I had to stand before God and make an accounting for energy expended on entertainment purposes I will be relieved to admit that I've spent some time in Sigil, the city of doors -- a lame fictional world of no import and wild eyed dreams while the big line of folks behind me are smug with confidence at presenting to their maker Pandora, the Kingdom of Heaven itself.

And now many would argue that it's time for me to step off my crumbling pedestal, back down from my pulpit and walk out of the burning church. Get the hell out of dodge before random blog commentator sheriff comes to town. But I'm not on one. I'm not in dodge or on a pedestal. This isn't about James Cameron or Avatar. If you were thinking I was you have fallen to the whims of what I like to call "angry blogger syndrome". Most do it because they can't do anything else. I may be in that boat, sure, but I am aware of the boat in any case.

The pure truth here -- call the above a test, point, or my personal opinion -- is that you should be able to decide something for yourself regardless of what is said or not. If you have decided on whatever, and it's you, and that's the truth, then I admire that; even if it is Avatar. Because the most eternally consequential aspects of your existence have been in the past, and will continue to be forever, choices that YOU make.

And now for what some would perceive as a confession, but which to me is just the truth that hasn't been accepted like so many truths, sadly enough... if you are in fact asking the question... I don't fancy myself a blogger. Never have, never will. I promise you that. Blogging is a specific part of a larger form of art. And I don't have a good grip on it. It's like, in the sports realm, say, soccer: there's a few damn good players, a lot of okay players and even more who just plain suck. But keep in mind that there is also baseball, football, volleyball -- whatever. I'm not a big fan of soccer and I lived in Brazil for 2 years. I prefer basketball any day of the week. So in this sense, do I fancy myself a basketball player? Quem sabe... But I'll NEVER play soccer well.

And for the sake of this blog, It was always ever about Planescape Torment...

As a great fictional film character once said -- and in light of the aforementioned PST and maybe a great game of basketball, not a blog or soccer -- are you not entertained?

PST on Vista 64 bit & a 1440x900 Native Res LCD Monitor

The other day Chezdon asked about setting up PST on a 64 bit version of Vista on Game Banshee's PST forum... I have never actually done this and while others may have, I can't remember having come across such information. (Although it should theoretically work out just fine) I also became intrigued at the notion of moddifying the game to run on different widescreen monitors. Folks have put up guides to such incorporating existing mods but, at least the ones I've read through, take you through it step-by-step on a theoretical basis, not actually by going through it themselves. This is important because many of today's widescreen monitors have different aspect ratios and resolution dimensions than what was out at the time that the above mentioned mods were developed.

I have two main goals: 1) Make sure it runs on 64 bit Vista and 2) See how The Bigg's widescreen mod and the Ghostdog UI mod work on my 1440x900 native resolution lcd monitor.

I am more or less following the "Fully Modded" guide by Johnny Walker found here:

http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2009/01/planescape-torment-fully-modded.html

My point isn't to just copy his guide (why else would I have put it up) but to go more in depth into the aspect of modding the game for current generation widescreen monitors. It is an experiment in testing it out on my specific monitor size and to see how well it performs on 64-bit vista. I do however touch on the topic of a full install which many folks have already gone through in other places. This is so that one could potentially set up the game without having to link out of here.

The computer I'm testing this out on runs on an AMD Phenom x4 9759 Quad Core processor and an ATI Radeon HD 3650 video card.
I am running a 64-bit version of windows vista. (home-premium)
My monitor is an LG 19" widescreen that runs at a native resolution of 1440x900.

I am using the 4 disc original version of the game.

I installed the game... my chosen installation path looks like this: C:\Games\Black Isle\Torment

I then installed the V1.1 Patch because I have the 4 disc version.

Since the installation basically just installs the core components off of the first disc you will be doing a lot of disc swapping so I will now do the "full install".

So I copied the contents of each disc to inside of my Main "Torment" game folder... remember that each disc contains one actual folder and inside of the folder are a bunch of .bif "files".(they are actually archives) DON'T put the .bif files, by themselves, into your Torment folder, rather just copy the folder -- which contains the bifs -- into the Torment folder.
So for example, on the second game disc there is the "cd2" folder and inside that folder there are maybe a 100 .bif files, well just copy the "cd2" folder to your main Torment folder.

Repeat for discs 3 and 4.

Okay, finished that up. Now I need to make it so that the game knows where these folders are when it needs to load from them. To do this I opened up the Torment.ini file which resides in the main Torment folder. In Vista, if the "show file extensions" is off, which it is by default, you won't actually see the .ini part but it is easy to find because on the "file type" column it is listed as "configuration settings". Now just change the file paths for each cd to where it was you put the cd.(this is the very first part of the .ini file) For example, with cd 2, it looked like this CD2:=E:\CD2\ but after changing it, it looks like this CD2:=C:\Games\Black Isle\Torment\CD2\

Also, as per the "Fully Modded" guide, I changed the "cache size" to =1, the path search nodes to =32000 and the "maximum framerate" to =40

I tested the game up to this point to make sure everything is working so far. It does. Also, before getting into the widescreen mod, I took a screenshot of how the game looks played at its native 640x480 resolution when scaled up to my monitor's native resolution. (the link is towards the bottom of this post) Note: The screen capture tool I used actually captures it at its true 640x480 resolution without taking into account the scaling that the graphics card performs. This means that I had to scale the image up manually in my image editing program to 1440x900 but by experimenting with different resampling algorithms, I was able to get it to look nearly identical. All in all, the picture is almost exactly how the it looks while playing the game without any mods. IMO, it's not acceptable.

I installed The Bigg's mod using the following specifications (as per the "Fully Modded" guide): 1280x720. Note: I tried using my native res of 1440x900 even though it is unsupported by ghostdogs mod, and the graphics were very messed up...

I need to make note of the fact that not all "widescreen" monitors have the same aspect ratio which can be problamatic. You see my widescreen doesn't proportionatly scale down to any of the Ghostdog supported resolutions: 1280x800, 1280x720, 1280x768, and 1280x1024... so in a way I'm screwed. I'm not a resolution expert and don't know exactly how The Bigg's mod works so I just tried different ones until I found one that kept everything on the screen. (note, the menus will be top left justified regardless... you actually have to start a game to see) So experimenting around is really the only thing I can recommend... Ideally, my resolution would be set at 1280x740 but The Bigg's widescreen mod doesn't support this, neither does Ghostdog's mod.
The best I could do, ultimately, while still staying "supported" by both The Bigg's and Ghostdog's mods, was 1280x720. This still is unacceptable, however, because it clips off a portion of the screen on the right...

Here's a before pic:

And the after: (Note that you can not see the cut-off on the right side of the screen because my screen capture software captured the full image without taking into consideration the scaling, and subsequent cut-off, that my video card produced.. but trust me, it cuts off about 20 pixels or so)


So there you have it... it works great, but only on SOME widescreen monitors. If your widescreen monitor can scale 1280x800, 1280x720, or 1280x768 properly, i.e. no clipping, then you should be good to go. If not, I'm not sure if there is a solution. If anyone out there knows of a solution PLEASE share. What happened, I think, is that The Bigg's mod was created "back in the day" when there wasn't as much diversity in types of widescreen monitors... but times have changed.

Links and Credits: I didn't create any of the tools I used for my install test and am not implying I did. The download links for the mods (along with credentials) are listed below:

The Bigg's Widescreen mod: http://www.gibberlings3.net/widescreen/

Ghostdog's UI mod: http://www.spellholdstudios.net/ie/ghostdogs-pst-ui

Where Have all the Manuals Gone To?

I was going through some old game stuff of mine and came across the original manual for Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn. It sits in front of me as I type. It’s a frickin' monster! Like a book.

Back then, games were more than just an interface thrown together over the latest Unreal engine in a half assed manner. Granted, that’s not entirely fair to say, and BGII did re-use the infinity engine… but still, games were legends out of the box. It wasn’t a sales thing as much as it was a gamer thing because gamers weren’t casual about their sport. It wasn’t a Friday night two hour flick at the closest. But I’m not just talking about a time investment. I’m talking about energy and passion. Back then kids didn't get bored of a game in a month only to then lose it a month after that; or trade it in for a few bucks and Gamestop because the quality of the content really is that mediocre. Back in the day, people, at least that I knew of, didn’t trade/sell games. Why? Because I still play many of them to this day. I wouldn’t give up my copies (I have several…) of BGII for anything… Games had a lot of heart, a lot of background, a lot of meaning and connection to the gamers, high replay value, and, of course, big ass manuals that explained everything, from how to play the game, to a brief history of the making of the game, to the background story for the game.

I must admit I never read the “how to” parts of the manual but I absolutely loved reading about background story elements for the diegesis’. The character bios in the BGII manual, yeah, I would read all of those. I read all of Volo’s little random notes about whatever. I would read about Amn… I loved that stuff. (PS:T was sorely lacking in the manual department. Maybe that is part of why it failed commercially.. back then if there was ever a genre in which a big manual was required that genre was the role-playing one. RPG’s needed to have big manuals)

So here we are now. The prices of games have crept up from the previous and long standing high of 50 bucks a pop for newly released goods to 60, and yet we fail. I haven’t played Dragon Age yet… but I will. How’s the manual…

Expansion

I've decided to diversify. Expand beyond PS:T. Why? Because PS:T is effectively dead to the world at large. In fact, it never really lived except within the hearts of a select few. But at the end of the day I don't think anybody reads this blog and I used to falsely maintain that such didn't really matter ... I lied. It does. If it didn't I would write off-line. But for some reason, it matters. Maybe my writing isn't up to par with the bloggers who have readers, but I know that my topic of choice, PS:T, isn't really helping either and while I can't wake up tomorrow suddenly as a blogger extraordinaire, I can maybe write for a larger audience. I'm not "selling out" however. PS:T always is and always will be the best game ever and I will write about it often but I will also write beyond PS:T. I am determined however to stay within the realm of video games. So I may blog about Modern Warfare 2. Or Bioshock. Or Unreal Tournament... whatever. But I will maintain focus on video games. So if you happen to "like" video games you might find something of interest on Prime Material. (the name stays, for now) You don't even have to like PS:T... you should; but you don't have to.

Right Up There with the Lady of Pain?

I ran into the Sword Emperor himself tonight as I was navigating through the cyber-planes and took a plunge through an iffy portal behind a brothel (got to stop doing that, just where in the hell do I keep thinking those ones are going to lead to?)... It wasn't as bad as meeting the Lady of Pain though. (shivers) In fact, it was really quite pleasant because at the end of the day he runs a very pleasant blog. But not any old blog for there are a hundred billion of those out there. No no, *this* blog had Planescape: Torment stuff on it and that my friends is always a good thing. Truly warms my heart. It was cool because the Sword Emperor played through, chronicling his experiences along the way, PS:T and gave a great review at the end. I thought I would put up a link to his review for all to check out:

http://theswordemperor.wordpress.com/2009/10/14/end-of-torment-the-planescape-torment-review/

As an aside, the other day I put up a topic on a Diablo II forum and someone responded to the post by starting off with an "it's great to see another Planescape:Torment fan!"... You see my profile name on the forum is Vhailor and well, a connection was made. It kind of hit me when I saw this, another fan's recognition of the game: People at large who have played Planescape: Torment treat it with deep respect...

Justice Is Not Blind, I Am Her Eyes

*SPOILERS*

Torment is full of "wow" moments. Moments that make you stop and think. Moments that make you want to reload a saved game file or play the entire game again. In fact, the game is like one big long epic moment. Sure it has up and down slopes but the overall curve it is truly stunning.

I was thinking of my "favorite" moment and while it would be wrong to say I truly have one there is a moment that I have recently been thinking about a lot and that is when The Nameless One meets Vhailor. You see Vhailor is perhaps more akin to The Nameless One than any other NPC or character in the game. (excepting TTO who is a part of TNO) The difference is that it wasn't some misguided ritual performed by a night hag that gave him his immortality (okay so maybe he isn't truly immortal like TNO but you get the idea) rather it was through sheer force of will and dedication to an ideal that literally kept him from dying until his work was through... I dig that... a lot?

Talk about undying loyalty to a cause... such a phrase has always been used metaphorically until Vhailor's character was created. One more reason to love Planescape: Torment. (actually, as an aside, I am reminded of the Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marines from the table top minatures game Warhammer 40k. Their armour was sealed shut by a curse so that their spirits continued to live in their armor long after their physical bodies had turned to dust. Vhailor, however, continues living long past his mortal expiration date to fight for justice through sheer force of will)