Friday, October 28, 2005

F.E.A.R... no time to be scared

I bought F.E.A.R the day it was released but because of other commitments I haven't found the time to play it through yet. Although from what I've seen and played so far it looks like it will be one of the great all time games and it's well worth the money (DVD edition). Also being true to it's name you will crap you pants at times ;-)

Wednesday, October 26, 2005

AAL FOX Series: Round 2

My race was a bit up and down, but other than that I had a lot of fun thanks to some close racing.

Close Racing

In qualifying I was very lucky to get 10th with a time that was almost a second faster than my hot lap. This was odd because I hadn't raced in over a week but somehow I was now faster? I guess this got my hopes up that I might have a good race even though I would be racing on a different setup and one which I hadn't used before.

Once we were racing I made it up to 6th by the end of the first lap but I knew right away I didn't have a good race pace. In the practise before the race I received a copy of sambo's setup from Threeps because I only had a qualifying setup at the time. The new setup was easy to drive and seemed to look after the tyres very well. But once I had completed a few laps of the race I realised I was going much slower than I had expected. I was hoping that my times would improve from 2:29s-2:30s once I burnt some fuel, but to my surprise they didn't. I then tried to push the car a bit harder which only caused me to spin out and overheat my tyres.

Is this the right way?

Once they were at a good temperature again I started to push, only to spun off at almost the same place but this time I hit the wall. I thought the car was ok at first so I didn't pull into the pits at the end of that lap. If I was going to complete the race with only 2 stops I knew I needed to complete at least one more lap. This however was a mistake because by the time I made it to the first split on the next lap I found that the car was uncontrollable. I almost took a few people out as I was sliding around trying to control it.

Maybe staying out was a bad idea...

After my pit stop to fix the damage I had lost all confidence in the car and Threeps was on my tail. I didn't want to push to hard because of the threat of a spin. This meant that Threeps was easily faster than me and after a long battle he found a way past. He then started to pull away and I thought I'd never see him again.

Coming into the pits for the second time I wasn't to sure where I should be braking on the entry. The only time I had actually entered the pits was on my first stop when I was damaged and going slow. Maybe next time I'll remember to try a pit entry before the race starts. Anyway I managed to brake as late as I think was possible for me which was a good sign and I had a clean stop. As I was driving past Threeps in pit lane he finished his stop and pulled out next to me which meant we were side by side. When we reached the exit I had my nose just in front and Threeps backed off to pull in behind me. I knew that he was faster than me before so the only thing I could do is start pushing hard and hope I don't spin. Otherwise he would just pass me again and that would be then end of it.

Threeps down the inside

After the pit stop I pulled away from Threeps mostly because he was caught in a battle with PS13t. I was also starting to catch StanDaam and by the time I was on his tail he had caught Doso. This turned into a three way battle which gave me an opportunity to get past StanDaam. Now I was behind Doso and on the up hill left hander Doso and I were side by side. This caused us to be slower on the straight where StanDaam was catching us quickly. I had Doso to my left and StanDaam coming past on the right when he had a moment and slid across the track in front of us. This left Doso and I side by side going into the first chicane where I managed to just get in front.

StanDaam stunt driving

From then on I didn't see anyone else and managed to pull away from StanDaam who had also gotten past Doso. I did start to catch kwijibo at the end of the race making up 10 seconds to finish 2 seconds behind him. But catching someone is one thing getting past is another so in the end I was more than happy with 7th.

Monday, October 24, 2005

Haiku's First Employee

Development on Haiku has stepped up a notch in the last few weeks with Haiku Inc. taking on it's first full time employee Axel Dörfler. This should be a great boost to the project and I can't wait to get my hands on a build. So if you want to keep up to date with the development visit Axel Dörfler's blog.

Friday, October 21, 2005

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released

Yes that's correct, OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been release and is ready to be downloaded. I've just installed it and from what I have seen it's a massive improvement over 1.1 which was already a great product. So if you haven't tried OpenOffice now is a good time.