Be Excellent To Each Other

http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/10/ ... ogram.aspx

Major Nelson is asking for people across the globe to sign up to a beta test of the new Dash. The site's getting hammered but I'll be signing up for a chance to have a look at this. We'll all be running it next month so I'm VERY curious to see how it works. I'm betting quite a few of you are too...

Regged ta

Mummy, what's an XBox?

Same here. wtf, etc?

Excellent. More chance for me!

Oooh, shiney!!

You GamerScoreWhores will be pleased to know there's a button to delete all your Ghost games (anything with nil points) in one easy click.

I got an email this morning saying I've been accepted into the programme after I applied weeks ago. I though they'd already sent them? Any way, it's available to me from 10pm tonight apparently.

Why didn't you tell us weeks ago? Eh? Eh?

but there's only 5 days till we all get it. What's the point?

I was going to say exactly that, but have been labeled a curmudgeon enough times recently. It's not like it's an exciting new game or something, who cares?

but, but, but.... AVATARS! I, for one am looking forward to a free major update, mainly to put GH:WT, Burny Pee and GTA:4 (the 3 games I'm playing currently) on the HDD and stop the damn noise. But I can wait. Oh and AVATARS!

I want to install Fallout to my hard disk so I can give the DVD drive a break and turn the speakers down a bit. Also, the party support will be aces for bezzing it up.

There are reasons to be (mildly) excited.

I will only concede that point IF!... your DVD drive breaks in the next five days as a result of not getting the NXE early.

What is included in the party mode? is it like a lobby system of halo 3 orso?

Yeah... so you can move more easily between games and take all your buddies with you as opposed to reinviting them all again.

The 360 is in the back bedroom at the moment, so after people go to bed I'd appreciate the ability to turn the speakers down. Last time I did, the DVD drive started drowning out the game. It doesn't help that Fallout 3 seems to have massive dynamic range, the gunshots really are loud.

I'll go dig my spare amp out and some headphones I think.

This is true, you need to have it fairly loud to hear the dialogue.

Half Life 2 was bad for that also. Amp up to drown out the drive, then get to a shooty bit DAKA! DAKA! DAKA! DAKA! DAKA! DAKA!

Are you going to use it's magical powers to catch up on the Street Fighter II Pinball FX table? AHAHAHAHA.

A lot of Xbox games seem to do this. I really hoped there'd be some kind of compressor/limiter in the big shiny update. There apparently isn't.

They'd still hear you bellowing though

My grown up 5.1 amp downstairs has a night mode, of course, but in the bedroom I use a little Creative Labs 2.1 system that doesn't.

Hence no late-night bezzieness

What's annoying is when the radio decides randomly not to mute during cutscenes.

You could whisper. Like a little Welsh mouse. Neep neep neep.

Is that a proper limiter, or does it just tame the low-end a bit? Every amp I've ever owned has just done the latter, and I'm a propa mashup rungleclotted bass junkie, blud. Innit.

GLYNDWR DOES NOT WHISPER. The forumites that have seen me drunk can confirm this. I start loud and get louder.

Hmmm. I wonder if I could use my old amp + 360 pad + Rock Band headset adaptor + random PC headset (with 3.5mm mic jack) to both play the game and voice chat at once.

Excellent question. I thought they were always compressors? Certainly the one on my (Yamaha) amp seems to be. I'll give it a closer listen one day.

you forgot this

Yep, oddly enough I got one late last night telling me I'd been accepted as well. Should be available within the next hour or so.

I'm guessing it's the "sympathy allocation" to all the people who bothered to register and never got in at the beginning.

As a side effect, I guess of this, Sheepeh no longer has a gamerpic on my xbox.com friend's list. DUR DUR DURRRRRR!

It's the third wave of invites. This is the final one before next week.

My Gamerpic is actually my Avatar, but non NXE boxes don't have the avatar software so you can't see it yet.

http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/sheep ... r-body.png

That was my first go at a normal avatar. It might end up gradually more and more silly as I get bored.

Can you still set it so your avatar is a (gasp!) old fashioned gamerpic? No doubt the publishers are up in arms that they can't flog us some tiny jpegs for £1 a throw any more.

"Last Playing XBox.com Error"


Is it any good?

Live was wonky poo last night. Me and Dave had reet troubles trying to insane it through gears of WAH 2.

http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/jonar ... r-body.png

No bullshit, that is exactly what I look like. This is great!

Yes!

Yup, all the old options are still there. Except now it'll be £1 a throw for a jpg, or £2 for a tshirt.

Well, I'm not terribly impressed with the avatar creation thingy (but then I'm about as artistic as a sponge), but the new interface is very, very nice indeed.

So, a reasonably hearty "Hurrah!" at the moment.

Oh, and for delectation and amusement, here I am in my avatar-like glory...

http://avatar.xboxlive.com/avatar/MalcS ... r-body.png

I hate to ask, but why do all the avatars seemingly stand in an effeminate way? I'm sure I don't balance on one hip when I stand up.

Yeah, they're incredibly effeminate. My avatar looks like a pointy-nosed lesbian.

I assure you, I'm not a pointy-nosed lesbian. Honest.

Hard drive install test! Since Overlord was already in the disk tray I tried that. Once you select "Install to Hard Drive" it just does it. I'm presuming it actually checks how much space you've got free and compares it to the size of the install before it starts doing anything, but it doesn't actually say anything like "This will take up 3.5 gigs of your 8.4 available, are you sure?"
Anyway, it took about 7 minutes to install the 3.5 gigs. It's a nice novelty to start a game and not have the sound of a helicopter taking off in my living room. I'd estimate that the loading times were approximately halved, but Overlord isn't really a loading-intensive game anyway.
I'd say it's worth it for the noise reduction alone, but obviously if you want to install a lot of games to HD you're going to need a 60 gig drive at the very least.

I'm assuming that when they say the 19th, I'll not be able to get this at midnight, as one might expect, rather due to England being subordinate to the colonies where the servers are...?

Late morning tomorrow then is it, so's everyone can crash the thing when they get home from work tomorrow evening?

10am, last I heard.

Fuckcheese, I'll have been in work half an hour. Shitbags

They launch XBLA games and everything else they've announced I remember at 2PST / 10GMT.

I imagine it'll come in dribs and drabs, they won't want everyone updating all at once. The preview testers got theirs "By 10PM GMT" and I signed in and got it at 7:15PM. Assuming you can sign in at all, I'll be suprised if Live holds out this week.

Yeah it's going to die on its arse.

they do seem to have been doing a fair bit of work at xbox.com the last few days