But the comparison goes deeper than just against issues. It’s wacky. The way it’s stylised is really crazy. If you ever wanted to study colour grading, puppeteering, CGI, prosthetics or a range of film techniques you wouldn’t need to go any further. Bright, bold colours and entertaining ways of showing fruit (in individual ice-cubes, anyone?) are actually more interesting than it seems. If you can get past the long monologues of Robbie Rotten (or the original Icelandic name Glanni Glæpur), his character is insane – is he puppet? Is he human? Where does the prosthetic stop and the man begin? Why doesn’t he change clothes normally, rather than use a contraption? Why don’t they ever know it was him?

And if I ever create a hero that flips everywhere possible, is named Sporticus, and is indeed the creator and writer of the show (he was a famous gymnast in Iceland) then I’ll consider this life a life well lived. As a deus ex machina of a hero, Sporticus is just as good as Captain Planet. Maybe even better. He has a moustache and his own blimp. And doesn’t need to be summoned, his crystal on his shirt will do it for him.

So it’s wacky, it has a message. How many people my age remembers the Captain Planet theme song, I wonder? Perhaps this time in 10 years or so there’ll be a ‘retro’ nostalgia to Lazy Town, people singing the theme song and laughing (or many of the other Eurovision-sounding songs). I know I’ve got the theme song stuck in my head already. Lovely.

Hmmm perhaps I should think of some content next time.

For those who haven’t seen the original page you can check it out here.

Now it’s time for the follow up as I finally got around to buying and playing Valve’s new release The Orange Box, which features Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2 Episode One, Half-Life 2 Episode 2, Team Fortress Two and Portal.

I’d firstly like to echo most sentiments that the pack represents amazing value. But one can’t shake the annoyance at making loyal games fork out for games they’ve already bought by not selling a hard copy version of Half-Life 2 Episode 2 in a stand alone pack. I probably would have bought The Orange Box anyway because I wanted to play Portal, but the lack of choice gets to me. (I know I’m being pedantic, I could have bought it off Steam, but I don’t entirely trust the whole Steam process and I prefer to buy the physical DVD)

After the troubles I had with Episode One I’d like to say that everything to do with The Orange Box went smoothly without any crashes or errors but alas that wasn’t the case. Fortunately my problems weren’t as bad as with Episode One.

The two problems I suffered when playing Episode Two were a graphical issue and a stuttering issue. But it should be pointed out that the stuttering problem I suffered isn’t the one that most people have had with Source games.

The graphical problem came up from time to time. Basically every now and then, after a loading screen, some of the textures would become all hyper coloured, instead of their normal colour. Re-starting the game or changing the resolution usually got rid of the problem. I never actually fixed this issue. I figured it was probably something that could be fixed with a video card driver update but I never did anything about it. I’ve noticed on other forums similar complaints but I haven’t seen a solution posted yet.

The other problem I had was much more serious. It came at a key point in the game in the chapter called “The Vortigaunt Coil”. Now for those that haven’t played the game I won’t describe what happens but suffice to say that during this episode a significant event occurs which is key to the entire Half-Life story. Unfortunately for me when this event occurred the entire game froze up and began moving at something like one frame a second with sever stuttering and sound issues.

At first I thought this issue was a re-occurance of the looping sound problem that was common in Episode One. So I followed some of the fixes posted in the Episode One thread but nothing seemed to work. I also tried a solution posted by Valve which suggested that AVG anti-virus which I was running at the time uses a lot of memory and interferes with Steam Games. So I completely un-installed it and still no fix.

Finally I came across a different solution posted on a forum. Turns out the problem comes from having too little ram. I only have 512mb of ram. Adding more RAM would have fixed the problem.

Luckily that wasn’t necessary. Turns out you can fix the problem by changing the “heapsize” which allocates memory to the game.

By adding the following line to the launch options: “-heapsize 256000″ (With out the “”) where 256000 is half your RAM, measured in bytes I was able to overcome the problem and play the game through as normal.

Once I’d overcome that problem the game ran fine the rest of the way through and it was an awesome experience. The final battle is one of the most intense gaming battles I’ve ever experienced.

I still get annoyed sometimes by the inability to shake the notion that your playing the game on rails with all your moves laid out for you. I understand that Valve’s intention is to guide you through the story, but my favourite game ever, Deus Ex presented the gamer with genuine choices at various points in the game. It’ll be a mighty game that eventually finds the balance between these two styles.

Of the other games in the pack I haven’t had much of a chance to play Team Fortress 2 and multi-player games aren’t really my thing. But Portal was great and it was fun to play something different and genuinely innovative.

So all in all that was my experience. Like the other post if you have any feedback, problems, advice or solutions please post them in the comments so that others can use this page as a resource.

Colonel

They’re generally of a terrible quality and not funny at all.

Enjoy!

Note: This post is for anyone who has attempted to play Half-Life 2 Episode One and run into various crashes or problems. In my struggles to get the game working on my computer I’ve noticed many forums with threads started by users who are having problems with the game but answers to these problems seem spread out across various forums. I’ll try to be as logical as possible when explaining the various ways to solve these problems.

Update 20th, June 2007: I’ve added some additional information at the bottom of this post for people who reported a problem with pink and black boxes appearing where walls and doors should be. Scroll to the bottom to read.

Update 20th November 2007: I’ve posted a new thread for Valve’s new release, The Orange Box. It includes my comments on the game and some solutions to problems I had with crashes during Half-Life 2 Episode Two. If you have any issues with The Orange Box or Half-Life 2 Episode 2 then post them there. The post can be found here

A few days ago I finally got around to purchasing Half-Life 2 Episode One. I’m a huge fan of the ground-breaking Half-Life franchise and was really looking forward to playing the game, especially as I had purchased a laptop between now and when I’d played Half-Life 2 and was eager to see the game on a Direct X 9 video card.

However, much to my dismay I found the game to suffer from numerous crashes and it has taken me quite some time to get the game running stably. What I’ll do first is run through the crashes I experienced and the solutions I came up with before giving my opinion and comments.

The first thing I should note, my computer is a Toshiba Satellite M50/L00. It is a Centrino notebook and has a Pentium M 1.7GHz, 512mb of RAM and an ATI Radeon x600 SE which is a PCI Express, Direct X 9 video card.

So onto the problems. I think I can now split my crashes into two problems:

The first problem I encountered almost immediately. After playing the game with out trouble for the first few minutes I exited to change some preferences and found that I could not return to my saved game or start a new game because the game would freeze when during the loading sequence. It didn’t matter if I changed the settings back to how they had been before I had exited, or whether I changed the resolution it always froze with the loading bar on about 75%.

From reading a variety of forums I’ve found this to be a common problem for people with ATI video cards. (I can’t deny or confirm that the problem occurs with NVIDIA or any other video cards) The loading bar will get to about 75% and the game will freeze.

I found that I could sometimes exit the game by pressing ctrl + alt + delete. Other times I had to shut the computer down by turning it off using the physical switch.

Some times I would find that the game would crash and the following error message would be displayed:

Internal driver error in IDirect3DDevice9::Present()

Some people may have had the game crash during actual play and this error displayed. (Again I can’t confirm or deny this)

As far as I can tell the best way to solve this problem is to update to the latest drivers for your video card. You can download these from the ATI website or from your computer manufacturer’s website. This should solve the problem for you. When I installed the new drivers I was able to successfully load the game.

However, because I have a laptop the standard ATI drivers are not compatible with my laptop getting the latest drivers was a little tricky. For those of you with laptops you should visit your manufacturer’s website and download the latest ATI drivers from there. However, as is often the case you may find there are no up to date drivers available from your manufacturer. This was the case for my so I had to use a program called DHmodtool. What this program does is convert standard ATI catalyst drivers for use on a laptop computer.

The program is available here: http://www.driverheaven.net/modtool/ The website has detailed instructions on its use. (Please note that is using this program you will be using drivers that were not provided by your manufacturer and I accept no responsibility for any damage caused by the use of this program and recommend it only so far as it worked on my computer. Your experience may be different.)

Once you have installed the latest drivers Half-Life 2 Episode One should load. However, if you still cannot progress beyond the loading stage there is another method for playing the game. Open Steam and right-click on Half-Life 2 Episode One. Go to Properties > Set Launch Options and enter -dxlevel 81 and click ok. This will force the game to run in Direct X 8 mode. Once you have done this the game should load, however you will not be able to view the Direct X 9 features such as HDR. However, this option will let you play the game if all else fails.

The second common problem that people experience is the game freezing during the action. I played the game two thirds of the way through when it began to freeze with the sound stuck in a continuous loop. Many people have experienced this problem and from what I have read, many have experienced it at the same point I did. You can read about the technical details of the problem here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source_engine#Looping_audio

There are a number of solutions to this problem floating around but before I list them I will guide you through how I solved it.

Click on the start menu and select Run. Type in DXDIAG > ok. This will open the DirectX Diagnostic Tool. Click on the tab labelled Sound. Under the heading Direct X Features is a slider labelled Hardware Sound Acceleration Level. On my computer this was set to Full Acceleration. Reducing this slider to Standard Acceleration appears to have eliminated the looping sound freezing problem.

If this doesn’t work try some of the solutions listed at the Steam forums

Those were the fixes that worked for me. A few other things to try, ensure you’ve updated to the latest version of Direct X which can be downloaded from the Microsoft website. Also I’ve come across a few mentions of people having trouble with older versions of Windows so it’s probably safe to recommend that you have at least Windows XP when playing Episode One. I’ve also read people recommending that users with 64bit CPUs ensure that they use a 64bit operating system.

As this is a relatively recent game, having a decent amount of RAM will probably help avoid any issues although I have noticed people with 1gb and more of RAM reporting these same problems.

So to quickly summarise before I add my comments:

If you’re having trouble starting the game and it keeps crashing when it’s 75% loaded make sure you update to the latest drivers for your video card.

This should also help if you receive the following error message:

Internal driver error in IDirect3DDevice9::Present()

If you’ve updated your drivers and still the game freezes when loading then change the launch properties so that the game loads in Direct X 8. You won’t get all the features but at least you’ll be able to play the game.

If you’re experiencing crashing during the game where the screen freezes and the sound become stuck in a loop then try reducing your level of sound hardware acceleration.

Ok so now my comments.

I must say I was so disappointed to find the game so riddled with crashes, 6 months after its release. Granted it appears I’ve been able to find solutions to the problems after purchasing a game I shouldn’t have to go to so much trouble just to play it.

As I searched for the solution to my problems I read many similar stories on forums and also many comments by users insisting it was a problem with the users hardware not the game itself. However these problems appear far too wide spread to simply be confined to individual hardware issues.

Now granted I should have ensured I had the latest display drivers (something notebook users will understand is often very difficult to do) but prior to purchasing Episode One I had played F.E.A.R, a notoriously taxing game with out any trouble or any need to update my drivers.

What made my experience far more distressing was that initially I had to wait two and a half days for STEAM to automatically download updates and patches for the game. Where I live I don’t have access to the fastest internet technologies I was thus disappointed at being forced to download 100mb plus updates. There was no option to play the game with out updates. In contrast when I installed F.E.A.R it asked me if I wanted to update, but when I saw the size of the download I declined and was able to play the retail version with out any trouble. Granted this stance would prevent me from playing multi-player but I don’t really have that option any way because I only have a 256kb connection.

Unfortunately this experience has tarnished my feelings towards the Half-Life franchise. Which is sad because the game itself is terrific and a worthy successor to Half-Life 2. I will buy the next episode as I love the games. But it won’t be with out apprehension after my latest experience.

For anyone else experiencing these same problems please leave a comment if the solutions I have posted worked or didn’t work so as to help anyone else with similar problems.

If anyone knows of any other problems or solutions I haven’t covered please post them here.

Colonel

*Additional Info*

A couple of people have left comments stating that they had problems with visual artefacts when running Half-Life 2 Episode One with the walls appearing as black and pink check boxes. I’ve searched the Steam Support pages and it would appear that they have a solution to this problem.

To see their solution go to:

The solution involves verifying GCF cache files. I hope this helps anyone experiencing this problem. Since I didn’t actually experience this particular issue when running the game I can’t verify how well it works so anyone who’s had the problem if they could comment on whether the above solution works that would be great.

Being a Middle of Nowhere Production, it is severly bizzare and is no-doubt going to induce fear and nausea in its readers.

So without further ado we proudly present Part One of The Adventures of P.K. Shaw!

The Fantastic Adventures of P.K. Shaw – Part 1: The Beginning

Another Radio Serial: In Infinite Parts

Prologue

Narrator: One fine day, birds were singing and there were no clouds in the perfectly blue sky. But, something was missing. And although some of the finest minds in the world had pondered this issue for years they were no closer to discovering what it was.

FX: Thunder and wind

Narrator: Suddenly and unexpectedly a large storm formed from nowhere. Fearsome and ominous it loomed large over the peaceful land.

FX: More thunder and wind, louder and with rain.

Narrator: During the midst of this storm, the local townsfolk cowered in their houses. Except for one couple who were driving frantically towards the local hospital. The story was the same. A baby chose to be born at the worst possible time.

FX: Crying then thunder and silence.

Woman: No!!! My baby!

Man: Noooo!

Narrator: A seemingly tragic event had taken place. A huge bolt of lightning had descended from the heavens, through the open car window and struck the new-born baby. Who proceeded to utter the timeless words:

Baby: Being your age is hard enough without having to act it.

Narrator: This bolt of lightning had been thrown from the heavens by the gods, transforming this baby into the previously fictional P.K. Shaw, the invention of every good calendar editor in history. And from this moment forth, young P.K. would provide a quote for every occasion.

Title song or three.

P.K. Shaw! It’s P.K Shaw! He’s our favourite fictional know-it-all. He writes all day and quotes all night! He’s the omnipresent, fictional know-it-all!!!

P.K: Wait! I exist now!

He’s the omnipresent, non-fictional know-it-all!!!

P.K: That’s better.

Chapter I: The Young PK Years

Narrator: Of course, being a baby with the ability to speak world changing quotes, he quickly became a novelty at circus side-shows.

Country American lady: Oh! Look at that baby! Isn’t he adorable!

PK: When you stir up the water you can see the mud.

Yokel soundin’ guy: Hyuck! Dadgum! The lil’ fellas’ right. That’s why my turnips won’t grow!

Narrator: Over time, young P.K. Shaw became discontented with his role within the circus side-show. He wanted to move on to bigger and better things.

PK: When you stay in a job too long, you find faults which weren’t there before.

Woman: What does that mean?

PK: It means you are a stupid fat idiot who has been working at the post office since you were 12 and you have never done anything but lick stamps!

Woman: Wow! You’re right. Tomorrow I’m going to mop the floor I think!

PK: That’s right… Go mop your floors. Before you know it I’ll take over the wor…

FX: Dummy plonk sound. E.g. Simpsons style with Maggie.

Mother: Now PK, suck on your dummy for a while and stop insulting those poor people.

Narrator: It was exactly this type of treatment that young PK came to resent and it would affect him for the rest of his life.

Narrator: Despite the fact that he was but 1 year old, young P.K. Shaw had already contributed to several day-to-a-page calendars. But this was not enough for him, but due to the limited mobility and strength which his young body afforded him he decided to wait and bide his time…

Narrator: One of his quotes…

PK: To hate your parents is to hate yourself…

Narrator: Would give an insight to his suffering as an infant. Later in his life, revised that quote:

PK (old man): To hate your parents is to hate yourself. This is why I despised them! And thus didn’t hate myself!

But with films, these are products that are trying to cater to peoples’ particular tastes, and so there is a certain amount of risk involved. So what’s the main thing Hollywood in particular does? A number of things:

1) Make it to the tune of a formula that has been proven to work (i.e. the Bond movies formula, which I’m thinking of writing about later)

2) Test screenings!

Test screenings are critical, and if the movie doesn’t rate well with the select preview audience then BY JOVE it’s going to be changed.

The question is: does this ruin the integrity of the movie? Was it going to be a much better movie critically if the changes weren’t made, rather than appealing to the mass economic reason or social/political landscape of the time (to illustrate the latter, movies such as Spiderman and Lilo and Stitch had to have their endings changed because they corresponded too much with the September 11 attacks. And now an entire movie has been made about it. Logical, no; cash-in, oh yes). Besides, it’s not like the whole world is seated at these test screenings, so the future of this movie is resting on the decision of these highly-prized individuals who scored tickets to a free movie.

I also saw on the news a while ago this program that let people edit movies so to make them more suitable for their kids or whatever. But that’s someone butchering a movie. Why not wait until they’re older – that’s what ratings are therefore. Or, gosh, let them watch the whole thing. For some movies they might end up being 15 mins long and quite boring without some of the more involving scenes. Can you imagine watching the new Star Wars without the action? The dialogue is painful enough as it is.

OK, that’s that finished, but I just wanted to point out a little formula here that I’m sure people already know.

A main idea for something is to be unpredictable (or, if you read above, seem unpredictable but reliant very much on the opposite). So in the case of a ‘plan’, if it is described early on in the plot, it will ALWAYS fail to execute properly. However, if you see them discuss the plan but it’s more like whispers, then there will be this awesome plan that’s crazy-as-cool and it will execute flawlessly.

I just wanted to add that thing in anyway.

Anyway, that is all, for now…

ODE TO A CARROT

O carrot of gold,
Not three months old,
I eat you up.

I didn’t like this poem. So I decided on another:

CARROT MAN

Yummy, yummy, yummy,
I’ve got ‘rot in my tummy
And I feel like throwing up.

This one wasn’t that good either, and it was slightly taken off a bad song.

So I couldn’t describe this carrot. So I decided to take a picture of it in all its glory:

Actually, I couldn’t take a picture because after eating the carrot it was in my belly (Unless you count an unpicturable and obscure X-Ray). So I painted a Carrot in Paint. Subsequently, here is a picture of a three-legged man eating a carrot.

I believe that is all.

–Ate-a-carrot-last-night.

p.s. it was raw.

No live coverage at all! In this day of mass electronic media it’s impossible not to know the results before they’re aired 12 hours later in the evening on Channel 7 taking away all the excitement and anticipation of the event.

And on top of that cheesy, uninteresting commentary certainly hasn’t helped liven up the action.

And finally, not enough snow boarding, skiing, ice hockey or curling… far too much figure skating!

I’ve been a fan of W&G since I first saw “The Wrong Trousers” on TV – and it remains my favourite W&G film.

When I left the cinema I had a feeling of emptyness. The first coherent thought to go across my mind was “What has Nick Park done? That was not a Wallace and Gromit film. Somehow it managed to be stupid.”

A week on, after reflecting on the film and reading comments other people have on the film I’m starting to accept that it wasn’t that bad.

Perhaps, as other Australian viewers might appreciate, it was the inclusion of the Madagascar Penguin short and the Shmackos movie (a 10 minute non-sensical advertisment) that starting things on the wrong foot. All up, 35 minutes was spent staring at inane garbage. The Penguin short was funny but I’ve seen that on DVD – I paid to see Wallace and Gromit!!

Sigh…

When the films titles started and the familiar W&G theme began I had high hopes. Immediately the visual gags started coming – I especially liked the photo of Gromit’s graduation from ‘Dogwarts’ – very cute.

The animation was stop-motion claymation at its finest. I especially liked the fact that it wasn’t perfect. I thought Chicken Run was too highly polished – it had lost that Aardman charm. There is nothing like a shot of Gromit with a big fingerprint on his nose! That is the W&G I love.

Gromit was certainly the star of the show. Silent yet expressive, as always – Gromit is unarguably one of the best silent actors of all time.

It will find its way into my DVD collection…

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Update:
Aardman Animations archive destroyed in fire