FarT^ Blog

Once again I find myself thinking, and looking at my blog know its been way too long since I last updated it. I’ve been really busy since the last post in September, and a lot happened! I’m not entirely sure where to start – as usual.

First of all we’re working on getting the latest patch for Missing Information out which is really close to being done (there’s bound to be bugs in it, so there might be a 1.5.3 after all, who knows) September 20th the change log was like this

• Odell crash fixed on the Borealis
• Updated Rooftops map
• Updated animations on the Flaregun
• Updated Combine Soldier models
• Updated binocular skin
• Updated zombie model
• Tweaked the Stalker’s damage

January 17th, after a billion delays the change log was like this. Almost three times longer!

• Odell crash fixed on the Borealis
• Combine Elite will not attempt to use the Pulse Rifle’s secondary attack if not equipped
• Updated Rooftops map
• Updated the Borealis maps
• Updated animations on the Flaregun
• Updated zoom effects on the sniperrifle
• Updated AK47 model
• Updated OICW model
• Updated Physgun model
• Updated credits.txt to reflect current roster
• Added e3_under to the E3 presentation
• Added phong lighting to several models
• Added normal maps to several models
• New particle effects
• New Alyx model & skin
• New Stalker model & animations
• New Incendiary Rifle (I-Rifle) model & animations
• New Combine Soldier models
• New MP5K skin
• New MP5K sounds
• New binocular skin
• New Classic Zombie skin
• New HUD icons for several weapons
• Tweaked the SMG1 firing rate
• Tweaked the SMG2 firing rate
• Tweaked the Flare guns reload time
• Tweaked the Stalker damage

Of course there’s a couple of changes that aren’t included in the changelog, but they’re not worth mentioning.

There’s a couple of reasons for the delay of 1.5.2. First of all, around the release of 1.5.2 Skidz, Hyperjag3 and I did some intense work in our decompiler which we managed to complete the mesh, animations, facial animation (flexes), collision model, LODs and the entire QC output in about a week (so pretty much the entire decompiler is done). We did well, and it delayed 1.5.2.
Around October I was going to a fancy party wearing a suit and whatnot. I invited a random girl I met at a previous get-together. Long story short she’s now my girlfriend (we’ve been together for 6 months next month – 8th May specifically). She’s been taking alot of my time. Mugofdoom, Isotope and Red have been busy with school and other personal stuff.

The Missing Information team have had some changes too. We’ve said good bye to more or less all the old members (tundra_cool got hired by Gearbox). On the other hand Junk from Team GabeN is now part of our team. We have more or less merged with Team GabeN. Junk made some huge changes to the entire Borealis while we’re waiting for some of the last content for 1.5.2.

The Axel Project made their first release which is a set of updated binaries. I haven’t tried them myself (at least not enough to say anything about them), but I’m not impressed based on what I heard. While we’re talking The Axel Project and whatnot. ApertureGaming opened again, and shut down. Apparently the host let it run without any bills being paid, which is also the reason it isn’t running anymore.

On another Axel Project note they also had their first leak, which I guess was more critical than any we ever had in GabeN. Ben was kicked off the team and decided to leak the source code to several sites such as RIN. Ben is a former Team GabeN member, but was kicked because he didn’t really have any talents. Most of all The Axel Project seems dead. As far as I can tell from their site they’ve lost some of the data in their database (lastest blog post, loads of posts in their forums etc.). I haven’t talked to anybody on their team, so I wouldn’t know.

Regarding my blog itself, I’ve changed the comment system so its using DISQUS. Which means that you don’t have to register a user if you already have a Disqus user. This hopefully stops all those spambots from registering too!

Finally I bought myself a new monitor since I was getting tired of the amount of space my old Samsung SyncMaster 2032BW (20″) gave me. 1620×1050 just wasn’t enough for me. So I bought an Asus VW266H a nice 26″ monitor. All screens in my images directory will now be in the resolution 1920×1200 ! While I was at it I bought a HDMI cable, since the new monitor got DVI-D, VGA and HDMI inputs so its a monitor I’ll be able to enjoy for a long time. I got tired of my old Nokia 5310 XpressMusic too, so I’ve ordered a HTC Desire. More on this when I get it. I’ve thought about ordering a new GPU, but I don’t know. My Asus GTX260 is still able to play most games.

I do believe this is all that’s worth mentioning. I’ll update this either when I get my new phone, release 1.5.2 or some other interesting thing happens!

Might as well start this one with its been a long time since I wrote something here, and a lot happened since last time – that seems to getting a bit classic around here. Might as well make this clear. Missing Information is not dead and version 1.6 isn’t released (a few users and moderators at HLFallout thinks this is the case, for some reason).

There’s been much kiddy drama since last time, something I promised myself not to bother commenting on. Said kids wouldn’t listen anyway because… Well I guess because they ARE kids. It’s not my job to parent them so let them be.

We had some down time at Gabe’s Love Tub back in July because our old host Snakez (administrator of legendary HL2World & Flamehaus.com) couldn’t afford the hosting anymore. Long story short, Andy got a copy of the Tub including the database and domain for free which means he’s now hosting it for us. Shortly after this incident we had a team meeting where we agreed it was time for the Tub to grow up. So basically there’s a new friendly attitude in the Tub

Missing Information is progressing. I finally took the time to finish the pages on our main site (honestly this didn’t have that high priority). We’ll be doing a media release, and announcing some change in a, hopefully, not so distant future! Look forward to this!

While we’re at it. Some of you might have noticed we updated the GabeN Wiki with more information about the old story line, and somewhat the progress of our project.

And finally let me mention The Axel Project while I’m already talking about leak related projects. I got a rather rude message from one of their members calling himself Ben (he used to be on GabeN) about one month ago. See for yourself here. What I now find very – well not really sure whether this is hilarious or sad, but I’m quoting

we got v18-v20 bsp support
shared model support
full v37 model support
bloom
and a bunch of other shit
so fuck you and your gay gaben team
…
youll see in 2 or 3 weeks

Let me now, for hilarity refer to the latest post on their website/blog.

As you can see in this image there is no such thing as working bloom nor proper shader support on nVidia GPUs.

Not really sure why I’m bother pointing this out. Especially not when there’s other interesting news such as we’ve disabled hotlinking from our sites (includes the Tub) which have resulted in hilarities! This is all for now, I admit this isn’t the best post I’ve ever made but I wanted to test the script Andy <3 wrote for me

As all of you probably heard Michael Jackson died. Certainly not something I expected, but then again. Oh well. He was a great man, that’s for sure.

I kinda feel I’m repeating myself in every post I make here. So lets just get it over. Missing Information is not dead! And neither is GabeN (we got our forums back up recently, in case you’ve got any questions) and Andy is still working on GabeNet. It’s temporary shut down, which explains why you can’t connect.

I myself have been working on tracking down a lame ass bug, regarding the Citizen models in the leak, I most likely have introduced myself ages ago, and didn’t really investigate until now. The weird thing is it only happens when Citizens are spawned in a certain way. Something I haven’t done anything to.

I’m leaving for a while since I’m going somewhere. If you want to know, just take a look at my previous blog entries, one of them explains it. I’ll have turned 21 when I return. The girls I’m currently living with will have moved out (they graduated three days ago – so congratulations to them), and new ones might have moved in. How about that?

Not entirely sure I’ve said everything I said. Who knows, I might return in the middle of the week to say hello. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten something but I have to go.

Finally I’m just gonna leave this link here. Not really sure why seeing how it’s thing of the past.

Gabe’s Love Tub might be gone when I’m back, but who knows. I’d rather not talk about that before I’m certain. If it is gone though, doesn’t mean Missing Information is dead!

What’s up vanilla face? It’s been pretty gay around here lately. I’m going to make a blog post soon about what’s going on. In the meanwhile enjoy this shitty leaked version of “Lambda Core 21″‘s Air Exchange. It’s quite hideous.

I haven’t touched it myself, I’m only hosting this for shits and giggles. So I don’t have any screen shots for you.
I did take the liberty of decompiling the map for you, though

DOWNLOAD LINK LOL – VMF File

Check out his Steam Community Group, it’ll give you a cheap laugh for sure!

Anyway, Junk posted more images of what we’ve been doing lately. I can’t really think of anything interesting to say right now. Good bye!

Let me start with getting this out of the way. I’m guessing everybody that reads this blog knows it anyway. The Love Tub is back, along with Missing Information, so drop by if you haven’t already.

In my last real update I mentioned I was using an old Geforce 7900GT. Well that’s gone now, and have been replaced with an awesome Asus Geforce GTX260 that basically runs everything perfectly so far.

Since last time a lot have happened. I recently started over on my decompiler. The current QC output (comparing with Cannonfodders decompiler output) looks like this. I reimplemented the highlighting of vertices assigned to a specific bone (uncommented the code basically, it was THAT hard!) which is going to be quite helpful eventually when I need it.

Blake decided to update his blog with a somewhat interesting update, and changed his template. Junk posted a recent staff photo on his blog, worth a look.

It seems I once again have to make this clear. We (GabeN) aren’t doing what we do to satisfy anyone, we’re only doing it for our own sake and experience, so we really don’t care if you aren’t going to download our game when we release (we know you are going to do it anyway). Raynorpat and those guys decided to start their project called “The Axel Project“. Good luck to them.

If you haven’t heard this already, Microsoft released a public beta of Windows 7 (build 7000) in January, which I decided to check out. Let me just say I haven’t used Windows Vista once since I installed this back in January. I recently updated to build 7048 which is really awesome. Three screens from build 7000 here. Might upload more later.

I think that’s pretty much it, I don’t recall anything interesting happen besides what’s been said so far – well some shizzle in my personal life but I’m not going to mention it here. Maybe later for laughs.

Oh, I mentioned in my last blog post that Pawnstick didn’t hijack that YouTube account. Guess what. I didn’t do it either, the guy who did it just decided to share the account info with us.

So who did it ?

This is just something I’m posting to clarify a few things people got wrong.

First of all, Junk didn’t leave GabeN. It was a joke post we did for more lulz, and it worked quite nicely. Thanks for the team players from this Steam Group, you helped us with more laughs!

Secondly Pawnstick didn’t hijack any YouTube accounts, especially not this one. To prove it, check this out.
http://scart.slkandy.com/images/e-drama/poisonYouTube.png

Go figure who did, by looking at that image. And when you do please post it in the comments and you’ll get a spot on the GabeN beta, once that goes live.

Stuff not related to this dumb drama. I’ve been really busy lately, and I do plan on updating this blog soon. Expect a big update!

Alot have happened since last time I posted anything here, and at the same time nothing have really happened. I bought myself a new system. Specifications are

Monitor: Samsung SyncMaster 2032BW

CPU: Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz

Motherboard: ASUS P5K SE/EPU

Memory: OCZ Reaper HPC Edition Dual Channel – 4 GB (2×2 GB) – 1066 MHz / PC2-8500

GPU: MSI nVidia Geforce 7900GTO

OS: Microsoft® Windows Vista™ Ultimate (SP1) 64-Bit

The reason for using such an outdated GPU right now, is the lack of money. I’m planning on buying a nVidia Geforce 260GTX. The 7900 is an old one my dad used to have, but his powersupply crashed and damanged the GPU. Which gives me awesome glitches in games. Laugh out loud. Downclocking it a bit helps a little.

When I ordered parts of my system I ordered my memory from some Swedish online shop. Which turned out to be a big waste of time, and money apparently. I cancelled the order, but I just found out today they still withdrew the money. Fuckers. So now I have to deal with that retarded shit.

I decided to go with Windows Vista 64-bit. I heard a shitload of dumb stuff about 64-bit operating systems and Vista from a bunch of idiots that don’t know shit nor have tried it themselves. I wanted to experience it for myself, which I certainly don’t regret. Everything is just so much faster.

We’ve made some progress in Team GabeN last month. Nothing big and exciting but I guess it’s worth mentioning. Using 64-bit Vista broke the leak since it doesn’t support 64-bit, we fixed that (turned out to be alot simpler than first anticipated). A bunch of other, minor bugs, were fixed too. On the mapping part, Junk have posted some awesome stuff from our Terminal map.

I, of course, have to mention my decompiler as usual. I’ve done some work mostly with animations. Current output it gives (well June 16th) can be seen here. Unfortunately only a few modelling applications support these messed up animations (3ds max 7 will).

Other than that nothing’s really happening. Only alot of personal shit I don’t feel like blabbering about here, and some internal GabeN stuff we aren’t talking about (yet?). Last but not least I predict this week will be shitty. I actually were going to mention shit about the leaking of Half-Life 2 (as most people know GabeN have been in touch with Axel G., and therefor knows a bit more about all of it )

Let me just say these last words for now “September 30th. Worldwide”

This one goes out to my big sister! Peace nigger!

1st of July
I took off to Roskilde Festival, and what a fucking awesome experience! The trainride took about 5 hours and was boring as hell. I found myself standing alone at Roskilde Central Station having no idea where to go. Pretty quickly I found a girl in the exact same situation as me (it was her first time too). We decided that we might as well go together, and found our way pretty fast.
Met some other random girl that asked if I couldn’t pretend to be Swedish. Sure I could! Suddenly she was all over me, until one of my friends yelled shit about my cock, suddenly she was running away instead. Hilarious!
Only attended one concert that day – Casiokids (Danish), which was surprisingly good!

2nd of July
One concert again, another band I didn’t know – BETA Satan (again surprisingly good).

3rd of July
First big bands were going to give concert today. Artists such as Radiohead, Teitur, MGMT, Duffy & Bullet for My Valentine. (18 artists all in all that day – full schedule here).
I attented Radiohead, Teitur and The Dø (Finnish artist), and probably some I don’t remember.

4th of July
44 bands today (schedule)!
I didn’t really go to any of the big concerts, only passed by. A friend and I got lost from our group so we roamed around like idiots. Decided to hear Band of Horses, followed by random roaming around. We managed to hear Gnarls Barkley‘s biggest hits, hear most of VETO‘s concert, and finally decided to find a place to sit which just happened to be at Kings of Leon concert at the Orange Stage. I managed to got lost from the entire group so I decided to hangout with some girls which gave me free wine – laugh out loud. Roaming around with those bitches and hearing The Streets, Spleen United and finally Familjen was just awesome!

Especially The Streets was awesome, has to be the best concert of my life (so far?)! You just had to be there!

5th of July
47 artists (schedule)
My 20th birthday! And what a day! Must have been the best birthday ever! Free beer from random people, naked interview on Australian TV, and so many other great experiences! My big sister and I already started celebrating at the The Streets and Familjen concerts and some random dude gave me three beers – awesome!
I attended The Fashion, Neil Young and somewhat The Chemical Brothers.
Oh, and apparently you MUST have your goddamn phone on you all the time, even when it doesn’t have any power left, so you can reply to peoples text messages RIGHT AWAY! Not doing so will make them annoyed and angry. Whatever.

6th of July
(Schedule)
Going home, work tomorrow. Had to return some stuff I borrowed from random people so I started out going to my big sisters camp and give her the t-shirt I borrowed from her. Next up the girl that slept in my tent, she forgot her pants and shoes

Overall it was one of the best experiences of my life, for sure!

GabeN matters and things not related to Roskilde Festival now!

I’ve been working on some decompiler stuff lately. Posted a thread on HL2W and Skidz gave me some great ideas and made me look better at the SMD format, so I figured out why the mesh comes out wrong, but I haven’t delt with it yet – since it more or less require me to rewrite the entire thing

Oh and I managed to recover everything I needed from my dead old harddrive, so hurray for that.

Not sure all of this post makes sense, I wrote it over several days and couldn’t be bothered to read it through due to my hangover. Which reminds me. I’m so fucking awesome when I’m drunk!

Can’t be bothered to write more here, bet you haven’t read half of it anyway so whatever.

A lot of weird and random stuff happened since last time I wrote anything here, and I feel like summingit all up (before it’s too late, or whatever (I tend to forget stuff (parenthesis in parenthesis))).

First of all I got my black tie back, so hurray for that! Secondly I’m starting to feel old, guess it’s about time, I just realised there’s only five (5th of July) days till I’m turning 20 Also, did I fail? Reading my own post over again makes me laugh, and it hurts.

June 11th, 2008 (WORLDWIDE!) Team GabeN started accepting applications for our beta, if you feel you’ve got what it takes, and want to be a part of it, sign up! Make sure you read Junk’s post on it.

I “accidently” posted a link to my decompiler in IRC a few weeks ago (I think?) and Lamp got a hold of it, leaked it. Oh how we laughed at the idiots complaining it was broken! Other than that it’s going quite well with the decompiler (except for the fact I haven’t worked on it in a while). I ditched the mesh for a while, and I’m currently only focusing on animations and the QC script.

Viktor finally commited suicide, at least that’s what we’ve been told (I’m working on getting it confirmed). If I recall correctly he did it the 17th of June, 2008. As a tribute to Viktor, he’s going to be featured in our Half-Life 2 story line, and I set up this directory of images that’s been made over the years to make fun of him. Make sure you’ve got this song in the background while looking at those images! Honestly though, I always found Viktor awesome as hell for so many reasons (hence why I made this).

First a warning, parts of this paragraph will contain strong sarcasm!
Guess it’s time to confess. GabeN did it. We paid his parents to pick on their autistic son (yes Viktor suffered from autism) just like we paid Kevin Mitnick to deface shitty Internet forums. Last big confession. GabeN also paid Osama Bin Laden to arrange 9/11. That’s right. GabeN got access to an insane amount of money we spend on making other peoples life miserable.

Last thing. God I’m glad I finally listened to the advise my friends have been giving me for a LONG time!
I think that was about it, I probably forgot something, but I always do.

See you around guys!

(Also, what’s up with all the parenthesis in this post?)

Warning: Long post a head. Too long to read edition below!

Woah.! The previous weekend has got to be the most awesome in a long time! The party friday was just perfect. Probably because I was drunk more or less all day and night. There was this big party in the city I live in. We started out right when I got home from work, watching some people play sports etc. went home got ready. There was a couple of weird situations though, when I arrived at the party again, this girl came up to me.

Apparently she knew me, but I didn’t know too much about her, I’d only talked to her twice. Sadly she disappeared. So a mate and I went to another city. Met some friends which went home relatively fast, and my friend disappeared with some girl. To be honest I’m not sure how it happened but I found myself talking to some other girl, long story short I spend the rest of the night with her and lost my last tie (lost my red tie a few weeks ago to some other girls, those bitches!).

We planned going to McDonalds when we woke up, but we somehow ended up playing minigolf while getting drunk again, which I sucked at (minigolf that is).

Last personal thing. I had some trouble with my phone about two weeks ago, I couldn’t do shit. I didn’t feel like sending it to Nokia so they could take care of it, instead I spend saturday fixing it. Works perfect now, due to my awesome talents. Lost one number, but who cares?

Enough personal shit.
I just opened Visual Studio and I’m getting ready to work on LogThatShit, which is a note tool I’ve been needing for a while. Furthermore it’s my delving into C# and the .NET Framework. Originally LogThatShit was supposed to be a small tool GabeN could use for creating changelogs easily, but I’ve been coming up with a shit load of awesome ideas and things I want to try out. Turns out I forgot a shit load too. I used to write notes in Notepad, but I lost everything to a Blue Screen of Death (I didn’t save it ).

Things related to my work with the Source engine. I decided I wanted to update the VGUI panels, fixing a few memory leaks, and getting those smooth corners like retail have. Progress images can be found here. I’m looking into doing some alpha stuff like retail (too!) but I’m having trouble wrapping my head around that right now.

I mentioned my decompiler in the last post, but I forgot to mention what I had really done. Guess I was way too focussed on embedding that YouTube video!? Anyway. I’ve figured out why it looks like this. The decompiler doesn’t parent the vertices to the correct bone. I know what to do, I just need to write the code which I can’t wrap my head around either The mesh isn’t really that important, since Bob The Builder released his 3DS Max importer before he got a bunch of legal threats from Valve (I doubt you’re reading this Bob, but contact me if you are). What we really need is the animations and QC file. My decompiler already generates the QC file more or less perfectly (old QC examples can be found here).

Some of you might already know, but I still think it’s worth mentioning. Pawnstick and I opened our own forum, since we’re just awesome at everything we do. So why the hell not? Which brings me to this. This time it isn’t GabeN that’s getting blamed for shit, but actually Odessa’s Leaky World.
Of course we aren’t taking threats from a 15 year old kid who can’t manage his own shitty phpBB2 forum. It actually made me laugh so much my stomach hurt

I think that was all for now, I think this is the longest post so far, but I was waiting for the train at the time, so I didn’t really know what to do.

Nigger please! Too long to read!
Drunken stories in the first paragraphs, programming, GabeN, decompiler and Odessa’s Leaky World in the last paragraphs.