duber's blog

Ok, it wouldn’t be the TD inside of me if I didn’t customize the game at least a tiny little bit before even starting to play.

So the absolutely first thing I did was to change the game’s language. I can’t stand Czech localization (though, admittedly, it was done very well in this particular example, to be perfectly honest). Unfortunately, there isn’t a super simple way for an average player to do this. You have to modify a config file called system.cfg, found in the root of the Crysis 2 installation (i.e. C:\Program Files\Crysis2).
In there, there’s a line that says g_language = Czech (in my case, obviously), simply rewrite the locale name to your pereference (mostly, probably, English).

After that was done, I started playing. Now, I have a 24″ widescreen monitor (as probably most of the people on the planet), which makes it even more baffling why the devs kept the default FOV option at 50 degrees?! I changed that to something more pleasant and “natural”, 70°. To do that, simply open up the game’s console by hitting the ~ key (delete the semicolon!) and type:

cl_fov = 70

or whatever value you like. Try several options which one will suite you best.

After this, you should also consider tweaking the near FOV (for drawing the weapons you hold etc…) and the sprint FOV (when you’re running). These are the commands (with my settings):

r_DrawNearFoV = 60
pl_movement.power_sprint_targetFov = 70

If you need to change anything else, try searching the web for the right command. Unfortunately, I don’t know if there is any particular command for listing all the available commands, so, this was just that.

I don’t feel the need to modify anything else anymore. Enjoy the awesome game!

I don’t play many games often, but when I do I tend to be very picky and I stick to the genre that I usually enjoy, like FPS or RTS. Now, as for Crysis 2, that’s actually my “first” Crysis game I’ve played and I have to say one thing: this game fucking rocks!

It’s the best FPS since Half-Life 2 (that I absolutely love)! If you haven’t played it yet or considering buying it, just don’t think, buy! If you pirated this game, fucking rot in hell, because the dev team, Crytek, put so much effort into this beauty that it’s a sin not paying the few bucks for such a wonderful gaming experience!

Kudos to all that worked on this masterpiece, it’s awesome!

An overview of the setup at the duber studio that I use for synchronizing and distributing plugins, scripts etc… on all my machines at the studio using Deadline and Dropbox.

Once again, after the promising IronPython Tools for Visual Studio 2010 were included in the installation of IronPython 2.7, I decided to give Visual Studio Express another shot. Well, VisualStudio Integrated Shell, to be exact, as Express doesn’t specifically support IronPython.

I’m fairly inexperienced with Visual Studio and also I don’t code very large script/programming projects, thus a full Visual Studio suite is a complete overkill for my needs, however, I really like Instellisense and Autocomplete features it offers, but mainly I really dig the Forms or XAML designers.

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I’m amazed how long I’d been avoiding Dropbox. I knew about the service for ages and a few friends of mine and collegues had kept on suggesting me starting using the service. But I’ve always preferred FTPs and other methods of distributing and sharing data.

The thing is, for my clients, FTP will always be the best way to share data with them, but for my collegues and partners, Dropbox just beats everything else! Hell, I even considered writing tools that’d automatically synchronize my dirs at work and at home over the VPN etc… but then I recently “discovered” Dropbox and I felt ashamed I hadn’t started using this awesome service before!

What I use Dropbox for right now is rather simple. I setup two accounts, one for me personally and one for my company’s file server. I linked the two together using simple folder sharing Dropbox offers and I use that folder to synch all my plugins, scripts, settings etc… between my workstation and my file server. This “centralized repository” is then being synced individually among all my render nodes and workstations at the studio using another brilliant piece of software, Deadline, so that everything is up to date and all the machines are using the current tools.

I’m planning on installing a company Dropbox account on all my workstations so that all the workstations are up to date immediately and only the render nodes get the full synch using Deadline. Or, perhaps, I’ll finally finish writing the Deadline plugins that allow for running Python scripts as jobs on all the nodes, so I can perform maintenance and synch operations without actually having to execute any of the rendering apps. We’ll see about that.

However, another thing I’m going to definitely do is sharing my public Dropbox folder with my collegues so we can easily skip the upload – download hassle, especially when there is no FTP access (yes, some companies have weird security policies).

Anyways, Dropbox is an easy to use, very flexible, genius service that everyone needing to transfer files or carry files on them should definitely check out. Did I mention it’s also free?

So, I can finally publicly say that I’ve been a part of the 3ds Max 2012 beta testing team.

Now that 3ds Max 2012 has been announced, I’d like to comment on the matter.

First off, there aren’t many new features in 2012, however, the ones that got there, namely Nitrous, are great and show where is Max headed in the future. Unfortunately, due to the very short development cycles, the new features aren’t as polished or finalized as they could be, but, that’s something we have to deal with. Another thing is, 3ds Max 2012 addresses a lot of the performance and stability issues. Mainly performance, which is always great. Though, there is always room for improvement.

Overall, I think 3ds Max 2012 is a great release and with the biggest obstacle out of the way (the old Viewport system), the future development of Max seems pretty good.

One feature I do miss a lot is, of course, Python. But even at this front Autodesk finally seems taking some action. You’ll see in the near future.

In the mean time, also check out the new Maya and Softimage 2012 releases! Some very, very nice features in both that I’d love to see in Max as always…

I must say, I am very pleased with the new Sandybridge i7-2600 in my render farm. It’s super powerful, it consumes less power and is a lot cooler in the tiny 1U rack configuration!

It’s been under a 100% load (3ds Max rendering) for over two hours and the CPU temperature hasn’t even reached 70°C! Now that is impressive, considering the i7-860s I have in the rack are a bit slower, consume more power, but mainly, in their tiny 1U configs, easily reach 90°C-95°C under full load after a few minutes.

This has been a huge improvement and I can confirm all the rumors and speculations on the forums that Sandybridge really is a great CPU for your general processing tasks. As if it was specifically designed for low-cost render farms.

When I read the news about the new generation of CPUs from Intel, Sandybridge, I was trhilled! And when these bad boys were finally available at the local hardware stores, I immediately bought one.

I gave my new Core i7 2600 a quick spin and after initial OS install immediately tested its performance using Frybench.

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If you’ve read my last post about my first ever AMD machine I bought just to test out the fantastic power consumption and mainly heat dissipation attributes, I burnt myself, almost litterarly, with it.

I might have had just a bad luck, but the cpu, AMD Phenom II X6 1055T, is a fucking fusion reactor! Man, I was planning on putting that thing in a 1U rack case config with a special 1U Dynatron cooler, but as it turned out, it’s impossible! The CUP’s TJ Max is about 70°C, yet under no load, in BIOS, the temperature climbed to 45°C with the standard, included, cooler. As soon as I mounted the 1U Dynatron cooler on that thing and checked the BIOS readings, the CPU slowly climbed to about 65°C and kept on rising! That’s when I turned the machine of, just to not catch fire, or whatever!

I am so dissappointed in this CPU and AMD in general that I will never, ever, buy another AMD CPU in my life. You can call it irrational or spontaneous, but believe me, I’ve been building my computers since I was 13 or 12 and I’ve always stuck with Intels (even at their worse times), yet I’ve never been so dissappointed by their CPUs.

I’ll reclaim the CPU and see if it was just a bad unit. If not, I’ll sell the stove to someone with a huge-ass cooler for a few bucks and be done with it.

I just upgraded my Repository server as well as all the Render Slave machines to the latest Deadline 4.1 build and I must say, the performance seems better (over a WAN VPN) and some tiny bugs presented in the older version seem to be ironed out.

The installation couldn’t have been easier. Since it was a point update, I just installed over the Repository and the Clients, all seems to be working perfectly.

Great job, Prime Focus Deadline team!