Virtual Russian Roulette

If you want to play Russian Roulete, but cannot find anyone to play it with, not authorized to buy a gun, or simply too scared to play it, then you can try this excellent online version (you’ll need your browser to support Flash). The pace seems a bit slow, but I guess you are not in a hurry when playing death games.

WineX 3.3 on Fedora Linux Core 2

Being uterly bored today, I decided to try WineX to run a few games on my home Fedora Linux Core 2 workstation. WineX is a commercial version ($5 USD) of Wine project produced by Transgaming Technologies. WineX is mostly Wine, plus a few goodies, like better support for DirectX.

It seems that Transgaming Technologies website is partially closed for renovation. Including the part of the store where you can buy WineX. So, I searched the web and found a stripped down version of WineX which works on Fedora Linux and a couple of other distributions. It comes in RPM format, so all the installation and configuration thingy is pretty much minimized.

When I tried to run this and that executable I started to get all sorts of debug and error messages. Brief search on Google also provided me with an answer, which, pretty often, was to go to DLL-Files.com website and download this or that file.

Most of the games I tried ran the installation just fine. Everything was installing pretty nice, but I didn’t succeed in actually playing any game except for Sierra’s Half Life. It was getting stuck every other time after accessing main menu, but when it was working – it was perfect. Age of Empires II, Sims, Singles, Colin McRae, Midtown Madness, and a couple of others – all refused to work, reporting problems about unhandled exceptions.

It seems that some people do succeed in playing some of the games I failed, but I am certainly not alone. Overall, I think that the progress is very noticable. Last time I tried Wine/WineX I could only install Counter Strike at best. I have no idea if the commercial versino of WineX is any better, but judging from the impressive list of supported games it must be.

I will try it again later and probably will pay my $5 USD. These guys are doing a great job and they need all the support they can get. Meanwhile, I am back to Quake III Arena and a whole bunch of Linux games.

Do computer games provoke violance in kids?

Do computer games provoke violance in kids? Of course. Messed up kids can use any cause for violance. Computer games, sports, card games, whatever. But everyone, of course, knows that already.

Here is an excellent flash cartoon that illustrates the issue (found by means of the revolver.ru).

Doom 3

Slashdot has some more Doom 3 coverage. It links to few reviews, blogs, and collections of screenshots (more than a 100 so far). As far as it looks, the game rocks and all those upgrades were purchased for a good cause. Reviews say that graphics are excellent, game play is cool, and adrenaline levels are way up.

Here is a quote from one of the reviews:

Is it as good as all the hype would have you believe?
Hell, yes!

Happy fragging!