I know, I know, I shouldn't disappear for... weeks, but I was too busy getting raped by exams. I'm afraid that this situation will take one week more. God, do I love end-of-semester exams!

And I have good and bad news for you guys: the goods are that I'm releasing the first beta Destructoid Screensaver. The bad news are that it's not what I promised but, honestly, I had a rough time trying to make the 3d model look... you know, at least decent. Fear not, sooner or later I'll stop behaving like a crybaby and finish the freaking model and screensaver.

The one I'm releasing right now is a simple 2d screensaver, hacked together in a few hours. Why beta? Simply put, I'm not really used to Windows programming, so I'm missing a few details of Windows screensavers (configuration and that crap). I really hope you like it guys, and sorry for the delay, life and 3d can be bitches sometimes.

Now, the details:

You can donwload the screensaver from here.

Installation instructions:

Just decompress the ZIP file, right click dtoidss.scr and click "Install" (or something like that, my XP box is in spanish)

How to uninstall:

Just delete the screen saver folder and you're done. No registry keys, no installers, no spyware, no crapware, no shit.

One more thing, it's marked as beta just because when you enter the Screen Preferences panel the screensaver behaves... hmm... funny, but believe me, it can't do any damage to your system.

If you have ideas, graphics or whatever (if you bring me a 3d dtoid I'll let you rape my sister) just drop me a comment or PM.

Enjoy!

Also, cocks. Of course :D

*Sigh* I'm gonna regret this. I'm about to destroy any kind of gamer reputation I might have.

...

I'm really enjoying Albatross18. Yeah, forgive me fellow dtoididers, for I have sinned, I'm playing a golf game!

For those who don't know it, Albatross18 is a golf MMOG, with some RPG elements (your character progresses both in skills and equipment). You can practice alone, or go straight to challenge some other players around there. It's just like any other matchmaker game: you create/join a room, press ready and there you go.

I don't know, it's a pretty easy to play golf game, with the usual crazy asian stuff like super shots, magic items and bouncing boobs. Maybe it's not all that hardcore, but it was cool to be able to play a game being a n00b without all those "ur so gai!!1" "lulz n00bz l0olz" and all that crap. I wasn't expecting anything from the game, but it slowly grew on me, giving me a few hours of relaxed entertainment.

In other news, I'm up to the balls with the amount of exams right now, so don't expect any news about my little project for a few days, I'm sorry :(

Yesterday I mentioned that I was working in a fancy Dtoid screensaver. I also mentioned that I was having a hard time making the stupid model. Today I really didn't have much to do at work, so I fired up Wings3D and tried again, from scratch. This time I spent some time reading a few tutorials, and the WIP result is much better. I might look the same as before, but this one is made of a single mesh, and its way better suited to use in a real time renderer. Once I get the model finished, it's easy to add the rest :)

By the way, kudos to Nex for the cool idea.

Attached, the full size screenshot.

Some really bored people at Engadget think that Sony's new 80Gb PSTriple model might include a rumble-enabled version of the SIXASIS controller. Where does this info come from? Oh, they say that the SIXASIS info in the package is longer than before, and they also think that the glowing PS logo might be some sort of rumble indicator. No, I'm not kidding.

While this is good news indeed for Sony, I have yet to see more than ten games that use the rumble function as it really deserves to be used. And, seeing how good is Sony doing lately, I'm sure the glowing logo mentioned in the article is just there so you can notice that your PS3 is gloing to blow up. Red rings? Ha! Next-gen failures start when we say so.

The other day I was toying around with a little 3D engine but, even though I'm a programmer, I got really bored in no time. The bundled demos were like... boring: BSP levels, shaders, animations and, you know, all that crap. So I decided to give my test some Dtoid punch, and since I wasn't bored enough to try to make a full blown game, I decided to code a simple screensaver.

So, I fired up Wings3D (don't look at me like that, that's the only 3d tool I can... kind of use), absolutely sure of being able to make a nice Destructoid head. And then I realized why I'm a coder: I suck big time at any art-related task. The code is pretty much ready, but my model simply sucks, I won't release anything that looks like that.

But, sooner or later, I should release something. And don't mind the GNOME screenshot, it will run on Windows, XP for sure, no way I'm installing Vista.

Edit: I know, I know, the model is unfinished, I'm not going to leave it like that. It's just that I feel stupid when I try to use a 3D modelling app.

Ok, this is weird. I was smoking one of my ganesh-powered cigarettes when I looked through the window and discovered that it is snowing. Being in Buenos Aires, Argentina, this is a really rare event, the last time it snowed here was in 1918 n_n

Simply beautiful. And cold, damnit!