Bloodline Continued
Things start getting a bit livelier at Black Island Studios now that everybody is awake. LAN sessions get going and the CPL guys get warmed up.People start turning up at the HEXUS stand with looks of amazement. We had a host of fantastic rigs on display.
This beast is Scan's SLI Cobra - a dual Xeon system with a pair of 6800 Ultra's. For many people this was their first chance to see an SLI setup "in the flesh," myself included. The SLI Cobra alone sparked plenty of interest, but HEXUS had more to offer.
A LAN event of this scale needs the latest in gaming hardware, and HEXUS delivered this to Bloodline. We showcased, for the first time in public, ATi's X850XT PE graphics card in a HEXUS built machine. More details on this will appear soon!
HEXUS' Linux mastermind, Jo Shields (read his articles,) brought his own rig to the event, sporting Debian Linux. The F/OSS Operating System continues to improve, as Jo is eager to demonstrate. He flaunts the array of games he has on the machine, from Quake II to Doom III (both running native to Linux) and even Half-Life 2 thanks to a special preview of the latest version of Cedega, an application which allows win32 binaries to run under Linux. Lack of games on Linux is no excuse any more! I must give a special mention to Jo's new keyboard - a Linux keyboard. It sports a pengiun instead of a Windows key and extra unassigned keys for Linux users to assign to whatever they see fit.
Call of Duty, Counter Strike, Doom III, Dawn of War, a whole host of multiplayer games were running across the many computer screens in the studio. A LAN party on this scale is a great opportunity to play just about any multiplayer game you fancy.
Team-HEXUS likes games as much as the next group of computer enthusiasts, so we took time out to participate in a few LAN games. Classic Quake II and Unreal Tournament featured first, before we moved on to some more up to date games such as Far Cry and Dawn of War. Playing multiplayer games on the Internet is fun, but seeing the look on your opponent's face when you wipe the floor with them is far more rewarding.
Dell XPS systems powered the prefessional gaming competitions. The pro's even got their own section of the studio to keep them safe from us mortal n00bs. Team Sportscast Network broadcast gaming commentary on to the Internet for everybody to listen in on the action. The TSN guys sure get excited by gaming, kicking up a huge furor after each and every frag!
