Ancharon

Sweet! Nice job, Nova; I wish I could send you some money or somet'n. Well, that rebate brings the grand total cost to me for BCM to...$30 plus tax! That $10 EB cash'll help defray the cost of all the higher-end games I'm gonna be buying once I get my new comp. But, I dunno...I might be too wrapped up in BCM to care. Now I just gotta wait 'til my dad gets home so I can get a ride to EB... (Yar! Not having a car sucks! )

My dad pre-ordered it per my request some time in June... So you're only a month ahead of me! Oh, well. And I did register, just gotta set up my e-mail account now.

Just called EB a few minutes ago, the guy said BCM'd be there at 4 PM (it's 2:50 PM now). Woohoo! I may not have gotten it as quickly as you guys who ordered it online did, but at least I don't have to pay shipping and my dad already paid $10 for the deposit, so I've only gotta pay $40 plus tax.

I've had that same problem, especially in Mechwarrior 4... My mech's torso would always be twisted a little to the left and would slowly continue to twist that way. I finally figured out that the point where the joystick is fully centered is a little more to the right, and it would fall to the left just a little if you let go of it (from heavy use or just a faulty stick, I dunno, but that's the case). I just recently saw the same thing happen in the E2 demo the other day, but it's easy enough to correct...

Argh! The EB near me said it'd be in on Tuesday, too, but...I recently ordered a GeForce 2 Pro 64 MB and it's not gonna be here 'til Thursday at the earliest (which isn't gonna happen, since it's Thanksgiving). The graphics in the demo are as screwed up as the SC warned they would be with a Voodoo card, and I wanted to play The Game with some decent graphics. Oh, well, I can wait a few extra days...maybe.

Ooooh, no wonder! I was scouring the keyboard commands doc to try and find a way to change it, but I've been looking at the E1 doc the whole time! Wow. Don't I feel stupid. Thanks for your help, it was much appreciated.

I'm having a bit of a problem with my joystick controls... In E2, when I move the joystick left to right, it rolls the ship instead of turning it, and it only turns if I twist the joystick, which is a pain to remember. I've tried most everything in the config menu to get it to the way I'm used to, but so far it doesn't seem to have worked. Is this the way the joystick is supposed to work? It didn't do this for me in the E1 demo... Or is there a really easy way to change this I'm just missing? Any help would be...well, helpful for this [mostly clueless] newbie. Oh, and if it's just some simple thing I'm missing, feel free to bash me for being stupid.

I wish I had ordered it online... I've already got a $10 deposit on it at the EB near me, though, not that that does any good. The EB near me is worthless when it comes to pre-orders... They never call (except several days after it actually comes out and they're all sold out) and they always misplace pre-orders somehow. For me, at least. Maybe they call other people when the stuff they pre-order comes out, but I've never gotten a call from them.

Ah, see, that's not at all what I do. I only upgrade the motherboard if I'm getting a whole new computer (usually). I'm doing it this time (getting everything at once) because everything in my current computer is basically worthless and not worth upgrading much more. Also, another problem integrated graphics tend to have is that they share system memory. The nForce might not, so don't come and assassinate me in the night if it doesn't, but many integrated graphics set ups do this, thereby slowing down the entire system. Anyway, all I'm trying to say is that I'm sticking to buying separate video cards and motherboards. [ 11-11-2001: Message edited by: Ancharon ]

I like that nForce motherboard, but it only holds up to 1.5 GB of DDR RAM, and the one I was looking at (the Pro2) holds up to 3 GB. Also, more than one video card eats away at the system resources and makes 'em both slower, as was proved true on my system just a few minutes ago. I had an old old AGP card in there and my Voodoo 3 PCI card that I use, and I finally took out the old AGP one when I was trying to replace my motherboard (doesn't work; need a new case ). I went into the setup menu for Earth 2150, where you can set the resolution and bit depth and it tells you the FPS... Well, with the old card out I now get 130+ FPS on 800X600x16 and over 100 for 1024x768x16. That's a 40 FPS gain from what it was before. So, getting back on track, my problem with the nForce motherboard is that if I ever wanted to upgrade the graphics for my comp without buying a whole new board the integrated one'd suck away at its resources. Other than that, those cards look nice, really nice, but I'm strapped for cash already and I need to buy a whole new comp (it's already about $700 now with all the stuff I want for it...no need to add even more...yet ). [ 11-11-2001: Message edited by: Ancharon ]

quote:Originally posted by Game_Ender: Some Geforce 3s are going for very cheap: You can get a Geforce 3 Ti500 for about $145 US. You can get a Geforce 3 Ti200 for about $165 US. Where?? Made by who?? I want one!! quote:Originally posted by Game_Ender: As for a motherboard, the Nvidia Nforce chipset looks like a good choice. Not only does it support all the latest tech, its integrated grahics preform like a Geforce 2 and it has decent on board sound. For $185 US(motherboard form MSI) you get a motherboard, video card, and sound card that will run all current games. I'm leaning more toward the MSI K7T266 Pro2 motherboard, myself ($115-$140, depending where you go). No integrated graphics, but I'm not really a big fan of them, anyway. That combination does sound interesting, though... Where'd you find it? I wanna take a look at it.

If you get a new Athlon system, be sure to get a motherboard that supports 200/266 mHz FSB, as that seems to be the way things are headed. I wish I had the cash to get (and the system to run) a GF3 'Til I get both of those, I'm stuck with my Voodoo 3...*shudders* You can get a pretty decent GF2 card for $90-120 or so, depending on where you go. If money is a problem, that'd be a decent option (at least until the prices drop on the GF3s ) That's what I'm going with when I get my new comp in December.

TCWO.com, which seems to be pretty good price-wise. Don't expect free stuff like that, though (beyond the Lifesavers ) 'cause it was probably just some stupid computer error or some bleary-eyed box packer. Oh, well, I'm not complaining.

Last week I ordered 256 MB of SDRAM from an online store so I could beef up my comp a bit. It came yesterday, and in the box with it was an AMD Athlon processor, which, as far as I can tell from reading the tiny little lettering on the thing, runs at 1.2 gHz. It's not on the invoice that was also sent, it was just...there. I paid $35 for the RAM (shipping included) and got a 1.2 gHz processor for free. Now that's a sweet deal. All I have to do now is get a motherboard that'll support the thing... *Kicks his stupid Pentium II* Oh, and they threw in a free roll of Lifesavers, too, just 'cause, I suppose.

Schoolwork keeps me busy a lot... Heh. Other than that, I've been looking around on the 'net for parts for my new comp (although my dad says he probably won't let me get it 'til December ) and playing games on the comp like Mechwarrior 4, Shogun: Total War, Earth 2150, and a bunch of demos on a CD I found somewhere. Don't have the bandwidth to get the BCM demo in less than a day (literally! ) or I'd be playing that, too. A lot of the time I just surf around and look for stuff about THE game, though. Oh, and the occasional game of Perfect Dark on N64.

I just ordered 256 megs of RAM for my comp for about $35, with s&h. Unfortunately, my comp's a piece of crap (PII 350, 128 MB RAM right now, Voodoo 3 3000 16 MB)... But I should be getting a nice new comp if my grades are good in school, which they are, so now it's just a matter of time. Specs for my new comp: 1.33 gHz Athlon 256 MB DDR (probably...) RAM (I'm gonna up that to at least 512 later on, though. 256 is just to get it started) 40 GB harddrive Either a GeForce 2 or a GeForce 3 card (haven't decided which I want, or, rather, want to spend the money on) 52X CD-ROM 17" monitor (nothing bigger fits at my computer desk ) All for a little over $700, if I get the GF2