Krofinzki’s World

My favorite media player is the absolutely awesome Media Player Classic by Gabest. Sadly Gabest isn’t developing it anymore (but some other cool dudes on doom9.org are making some new versions of it using the latest source), but it’s still very usable today.

Sometimes when I watch videos with MPC I find that I want to add some more videos to the playlist so that’ll they run after the video I’m watching. This can be done from the program, but you’ll have to muck about with opening the playlist and browsing through the programs little “Browse…” feature. It’d be very convenient to be able to add videos, songs, etc, to the playlist by just right clicking on them in Explorer (Like you’re able to with Winamp).
Well, this is possible thanks to the command line switches MPC has.

In Explorer goto Tools -> Folder Options and select the File Types tab. Select the file type you want to enable this for (for example .avi) and press Advanced. Press New. As Action type in:

Enqueue in MPC

and as Application type in:

"C:\WINDOWS\mplayerc.exe" /play /add "%1"

That is, if that’s where your Media Player Classic installation is located. If you installed to another directory, you need to adjust the above line to fit your installation. When done editing, press OK three times to get out of the menus.

That’s it! Now you should be able to right-click on any .avi file and select “Enqueue in MPC” and the video should be added to MPC’s playlist. I suggest you also add this Action to the following file types: .avi .mp4 .mpg .m2v, since those are all fairly common for video files.

I propose a new weekday naming-system:

• monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday
• catday, catsday, catnesday, catrsday, catday, caturday, catday

Why? Because days are named after gods we have worshipped in the past and I think it’s time to update the weekdays to gods we worship of today. No I don’t mean Jesus, Allah or any of that horseshit, anyone can see that stuff is bogus. I mean come on, the earth was made in 7 days, 6000 years ago? You people make me sick.

No, we need to set our worship-drives to maximum while changing to cat-gear. I mean, who doesn’t like hilarious cute cats with bad grammar? That’s right, no one. And if you happen to be that no one, then you are a dark soul my friend and you should seek professional help. Like, right now… seriously, go away.
Anyway, back to what I was talking about. What was I talking about? Oh yes, lolcats are awesome and need to be worshipped. We should make enermous statues with pointy ears, build churches with lots of sand in them, etc.

But we should begin with changing the weekdays to their cat-counterpart. We already changed saturday to caturday, what’s wrong with changing the rest? Ok, it could potentially be a bit annoying to have three days named “catday”, but let’s just change the week structure aswell to get around that:

• monday, tuesday, wednesday, thursday, friday, saturday, sunday
• catday, catsday, catnesday, catrsday, caturday, catsomeday

I removed one of the workdays, for convenience, so now we’ll work less and as a result be happier.
All of this might have been a little bit complicated, so here’s a nice little summation of the awesomeness this proposal will bring,

End result:

• No more focus on ancient gods
• Less workdays
• More lolcat pictures will be posted online
• People will be happier
• The financial crisis will be over

So there it is folks, it’s time for change and the world has recently been open to change, so I think this will work out just fine.

The website Good Old Games™ launched earlier this week as a public beta. It’s been around for a few months but it’s first now that it’s starting to get some actual Good old Games™ in their store.

The idea is to sell Good old Games™ that are 100% compatible with Windows XP/Vista, that contains NO DRM, at a low price.

It seems like a really good idea and all, but, they really do need some more games on there. So far, it’s full of games were the “goodness” is kinda debatable… Such as:

• “Battle Chess: Special Edition” - A chess game? Yay…
• “Evolva” - I got this game for free with a PCGamer magazine, I don’t have it anymore though since I threw it away. It had a bit of a MDK-feel to it, but the concept was too done and boring already.
• “F/A-18E Super Hornet” - Some random flight-sim. Never heard of it before.
• “I.G.I. 2: Covert Strike” - Another game I acquired for free. I played it a few times… I remember not being able to finish the 4-5th level (something like that) because of a bug that kept comming back regardless of if I reinstalled it/patched it/whatever.
  It’s kind of like a bad ripoff off “007 GoldenEye” for N64. I managed to sell it for $3 though.
  The only user comment (as of now) on gog.com about this game reads:

  “Not good. I don’t like this game [...].” -Pajk

• “Kingdom: The Far Reaches” - Wtf? is that santa-claus?

  

• “Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader” - A quote from the user comments sums up the lack of excitement you should be feeling for this game:
  

  “[..] Lionheart failed to deliver.” -jopo

• “Shattered Steel” - Some old mechadroid-shooter. Lame.

But don’t worry, the store has a few gems and hopefully in the future it’ll be full of them. The gems include such wonders as “Operation Flashpoint” for $10, “Freespace 2” for $6 and “Fallout” for $6.

Anyway, the real story here is that there is an actual webstore out there, selling games, without forcing DRM on your ass. And that, is most definitely : cool.

Do you ever wish that the golden days of LucasArts adventure games could return? Well, they won’t. But fans of the genre keep getting better at making their very own adventure games - much due to the fact that there’s a wide array of tools out there to make adventure games, such as the popular Adventure Game Studio.

Ben There, Dan That! by Zombie Cow Studios is one of those games. It has everything a fan of adventure games could ever want, and it’s FREE (donations are welcome though).
The game begins with a simple puzzle and a hilarious plot that just reeks of reference-humor. I can’t help but to fall in love instantly and declare that this game is absolutely awesome! After sorting out how to bring a zombie back to life, you’ll be introduced to the main plot of the game which is to get the TV-signal back up so the guys can watch Magnum P.I. How can you go wrong with such a plot? Do you really need to read anymore? Just go ahead and download it right NOW.

You look a bit tied up there, Zombie-Dan.

The puzzles involve roaming about randomly to try to grab as many things to put in your inventory as possible. Then you combine these things in some elaborate way to make your way to the next place where you’ll be roaming around randomly. All in good adventure gaming tradition of course. The difficulty level isn’t that high, so you shouldn’t be too frustrated with this game even if you’re a complete newbie with adventure games. And even if it’s somehow too much you can enjoy the game by going through the walkthrough with clues on Zombie Cow Studios website.

The visuals are very reminiscent of the good ol’ adventure games such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle or Sam & Max. Although not as detailed, but very much in the same spirit and style, which makes you feel right at home walking through the different rooms. The animations are far and few between, but once you get to one, it’s always a pay-off.
There are plenty of sound effects and some of them are really right on. Such as the “yoink!” sound when Ben picks up something. There’s background ambience sound in almost every room which is a really nice touch. There are no speaking voices, but that really isn’t necessary.

There are lots of jokes that references old adventure games and promptly make fun of them, and for someone like me who loves those good ol’ games: hilarity ensued. The writing is very much in the same style as fan would be used to, but there’s even jokes here that people who haven’t played any adventure game will enjoy.

There are a few bugs, but nothing major. And sometimes it gets a little annoying having to wait for Ben and Dan to walk all the way to the exit your clicking at. If one could double-click his way out of a room, that’d be swell! (hint).

Ben and Dan hanging around some Zombies.

Pros/Cons

+ Great graphics and sound effects that will bring you back to “the good ol’ days”.
+ Lots of fun
- A bit short.

Conclusion

All in all, this is a wonderful humourus adventure game that will appeal to all the fans of the classics and newbies to adventure gaming alike. The graphics, sound effects and story-line is everything you could hope for. This game DELIVERS. Go get it NOW. And, consider donating, so that the developers can be inspired to create an even better sequel!

So, Metallica put out a new album. And this time they weren’t gonna do a complete sellout. They were gonna go back to the sound of “…And justice for All” and the with that: the sounds of the good ol’ days. Happiness was supposed to ensue, but of course, something went wrong. No, they didn’t put out another Load/Reload, the songs are all great and I’m sure the songs will sound awesome on tour. No, they didn’t use a shit producer this time around, they used the legendary Rick Rubin.
The problem this time, is that the audio on the CD is so LOUD that the audio keeps clipping and thus makes the songs completly unlistenable in some areas. Here’s an example (from the retail cd): Click to listen. If you think that compression might have caused these distortions and you wish you could hear an uncompressed sample, then click here.

If you can’t hear it.. then you might wanna go check your hearing. There’s an obvious buzzing noise when there’s supposed to be a slight increase in volume. This is what they in the industry call “clipping”

Clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is overdriven, which happens through attempts to increase the voltage or current beyond its maximum power capability.

This is the waveform for the 'The Day That Never Comes' sample that you just listened to.

So, five years after the complete letdown that St. Anger was (to most of the fans anyway) due to the horrible production and lack of awesome Kirk-solos. Metallicas attempts to put out an awesome album was yet again foiled due to shoddy sound engineering. How could this have happened?

Didn’t they listen to the tracks before putting them on the cd? Or were there just too many steps of production, mastering, remastering, etc, with this problem showing up too late in the process for anyone to notice it before printing? Don’t worry, we’ll find out in due time. But in the meantime you can check out lots of other morons discussing it here.

But wait, there’s more (and this is the best part). The album recently became available for Guitar Hero 3 on Xbox360/PS3 and that version does NOT have any of these clipping problems. Don’t believe me? Listen to this.
Shocking isn’t it? One wonders how they managed to send a proper version to Neversoft but couldn’t manage to print a good sounding version on CD! I guess you got to buy your albums for video games nowadays if you don’t want them ridden with sound distortion problems!

The waveform for the Guitar Hero 3 version of the sample.

If you don’t have an Xbox360 or a PS3, you might just find the Guitar Hero 3 version on the internet somewhere…

Some further reading on this topic:

• Metallica “Death Magnetic” sounds better in Guitar Hero by Ian Shepherd
• Low Volume in GH3? Read this! by Hancoque
• YouTube: Metallica Death Magnetic - CD vs. Guitar Hero comparison by florixg