In early 2000, I cobbled together a gaming PC from used parts that I bought or traded for. It had a K6-2, a Voodoo 2, and 192 MB of RAM. It was amazing and such an upgrade over my family’s Celeron. The big games were TFC, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament, and StarCraft. We LAN’d every weekend. It was heaven.
I had no idea beavers were extinct in the UK. I hope they thrive.
We have a family of beavers on some property in the US. It is fascinating to watch their effect on the landscape over time. Ours cycle between an upstream and downstream habitat every few years. They allow one to regrow while they harvest the other. The area they manage is a favorite spot for many other animals including deer, various birds, coyotes, foxes, etc.
I was just reminiscing about this with a friend last night. We had tons of free time and games like Counter-Strike were the wild west of creativity. My fondest memory was a Spring afternoon in 2000 after school playing some janky fan made map whose name I don't remember and feeling so happy. Everyone was playing. We played every day. We went to a 300 person LAN party that summer. We formed a 5 man team and competed online.
It was so fun cobbling together a computer that could run it. Trying every trick to squeeze a few more FPS out of it. Trying to shave a few milliseconds off my dial up ping. Going to that one guy's house who had broadband internet.
It really felt like a golden age back then.
My friends and I planned our own mod and started working on it, but our ambition outstripped our ability. That's how we all got our start though. Now we all work as software engineers.
About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started looking into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still going and is popular, but seems very focused on competitive play. I wanted to experience that public lobby on a janky fan made map feel. I found a server running custom 'zombie' maps which scratched that itch for a few days. Then I got busy again and haven't touched it since.
CS2 community servers are nothing like the 1.6 or Source golden era. Those games are still going, but the playerbase has shrunk considerably.
I'm glad I got to experience it all (primarily in Source): gun game, deathmatch, RPG, surf, jailbreak, zombie mod and escape, iceskate, sliderace, hide'n'seek, trickz, xtreme climbing, multigames, deathrun, knifeball, HE wars, vehicle maps, bob, nipper maps, even hack vs hack, and the many many communities, each uniquely flavored and with their own story.
I totally feel that. The most fun I ever had gaming was back in my teens playing various different game modes in source. And yeah the communities really made it so special, to this day I'm good friends with some people that I initially met in CSS.
I can't help but feel Valve dropped the ball with cs:go and cs2. I mean, they did become incredibly popular but IMO there was potential for so much more if they would've supported custom game modes even just a little bit.
I think they may have been possible with Metamod: Source and SourceMod but now that it's on the Source 2 engine, server plugins are once again an unsupported hack.
> About six months ago, I felt nostalgic and started looking into what was up with CS. Amazingly, it is still going and is popular
I played the "original" CS (at least a version that looked like 1.6) around 3 years ago, and was surprised how painless it was to install it on Linux using Steam. I was also surprised that it was still no problem to find a de_dust server with > 20 players.
> That's how we all got our start though. Now we all work as software engineers.
Yes. It was so easy back then to play around with game development, web development, or desktop development. Around 2002, I hosted a web site for months on my local desktop server, reachable via a DynDNS solution.
Sorry for getting nostalgic, but it was even easier in the mid-90ies. As a 9 year old, I created a Dyna Blaster clone using a Demo-Version of "Klik&Play" on Windows 3.11 [0]. You could develop quite advanced games by just dragging around sprites, animating them, listening to mouse and keyboard events and object collisions. You could even "compile" the game into a single portable .exe! It was dead simple, but it introduced me to the basic concepts of programming and animation, and I didn't even realize it. A little later, I was able to teach myself BASIC by just reading the DOS man pages. We didn't even have internet back then. I very clearly remember realizing that "if ... then ... else" statements and variables were exactly what was missing in my "Klik&Play" demo-version. In the demo, you had to simulate these concepts by triggering the spawn of a hidden moving object and listening for the collision with another object. The hidden objects encoded the game state. Basically, the developers tried to remove Turing-completeness from the demo version, but failed and forced kids like myself to restore it via wild tricks (I remember feeling very clever when I had the idea for this trick). I only realized 2 decades later how useful these experiences were for a career in computer science.
The first web site I ever made was for my CS clan. I hosted it on the Linux server in my university dorm room that also hosted our CS server. I don't remember what I did for DNS back then. I learned so much that I still use to this day.
I also think its neat, guessing based on your ISP, that you had such similar experiences at the same time half a world away from me (in the US).
I ran a server that was primarily rat surf maps with a Warcraft/RPG server mod for years back then. It was super fun and something that modern games just can't touch in terms of that kind of niche.
It's still tons of fun but definitely different now, and since they came out with counter-strike 2 a while ago, it's me being specced out on my old gaming computer all over again - as with you I'm way too busy as a working adult to get too deep into it, was fun to play a lot during the pandemic though.
The craziest innovation I seen is counter strike 1.6 in the browser, fully playable multiplayer. Not sure how safe letting that much execution happen in wasm environment truly is but was still pretty funny to see how far the game has come in terms of graphics. Basically a bunch of the same maps still even though a couple have always been way skewed to one side or the other.
I am working on dealing with burnout for the first time. I’ve read about it here and thought I understood it, but experiencing it first hand has been difficult. It destroys everything good about life: relationships, hobbies, sleep, and health. I know I am not the only one here going through this and knowing that helps a little.
The impact of going from a non-X3D to X3D CPU is incredible in that game. I could be off on the details, but I recall benchmarks showing that just switching to an X3D has a much larger impact than jumping multiple generations of GPU. I get like 120 FPS with a 5600X and RTX 3080. I've been dreaming of a 9800X3D based build when it comes out, but realistically don't have the time to actually play.
I've always been fascinated by conspiracy theories. The weather weapon conspiracy isn't even new. I remember hearing "they" were controlling the weather to create storms using HAARP [0] like 20 years go.
Back then you had to seek this stuff out though. It was on obscure internet forums, fringe websites, and late night talk radio.
I am not sure what to make of the current situation. Its concerning. I think there are a lot of factors at play though with a big one being we gave everyone a megaphone and then monetized the result regardless of any negative consequences.
I've read this a few times over the years. Always amusing to experience the shift from totally believable to totally absurd as the second view is presented.
I don't have the discipline to stop working when I work from home. Being able to go into the office every day is a nice perk for me to help structure my day. If it was a longer drive, I'd probably feel differently.
I feel the exact opposite- I didn't have the discipline to keep working when I work from home- my productivity plummeted during COVID and skyrocketed when RTO was mandated again. At home I'm too easily distracted by errands, hobby projects in the garage, picking up a book to read "just a chapter" on a coffee break and realizing 2-3 hours have passed, and the like. In office I feel obligated to actually be productive from the combined shame of being seen as a slacker and less physical opportunities to goof off.
> In office I feel obligated to actually be productive from the combined shame of being seen as a slacker and less physical opportunities to goof off.
If anything, an office makes for more unproductivity than working remotely. No random people showing up at your desk with "can you help out real quick (LOL) here and there", no "hey we gotta wait for colleague XYZ before we head for lunch break", no coffee room talk...
That's true. I suppose if you are a person who has an iron will and good discipline the potential for productivity is much higher at home where you can lock in and just grind for a few hours with no interruptions. I am not that person and suspect many others aren't either, so there's that conflict between potential and real world outcomes where some people are just more productive in office even with all the distractions you mentioned than in an environment where you can actually focus in a flow state but have no surrounding social pressure to do so. I suspect management figures the same which is probably part of why RTO is being pushed so hard.
In my eyes the individual differences here could mean that it would be better to leave the decisions about WFH or office work to the teams. The team manager should know who can perform well from where and they can react if an arrangement does not work out as expected.
I personally resorted to logging time I spend working in a spreadsheet to keep weekly hours under control. Otherwise I often spend evenings reading work-related papers then the next day I feel guilty of taking a longer lunch. No more, the spreadsheet averages it all out.
Sadly, yes. I lose track of time and allow work to consume all my waking hours. Having to travel a little helps. I still fall into it if I need to work in the evening after I get home.
Separate your work location from the house life. Best thing i did was putting a desk in the guestroom and turn it into a home office. If im there im working, if im in any other part of the house im not
