Blog posts

One of the things I love most about the WSGF is our community (i.e., our members). People are welcoming, helpful and friendly, and we are known as an inviting community. Behind the scenes there is a core group of people (our Insiders and Editors) that stay in contact and game together from time-to-time. However, one of the things I would like to see more of is a more active gaming community within our membership at large. To that end, we're launching a number of activities to help bring WSGF members together.

I would like to thank everyone from WSGF who very kindly donated towards the site upgrade and managed to raise over a staggering $1400!

The upgrades unsurprisingly took a bit longer than was originally expected, with myself working long hours over many months to achieve the setup and design that we now see today.

This however could not have been done in the timely manner that it took without the assistance from a committed group of core members who aided in the data migration and bug finding.

It did not take long for the community break open Dead Island and see what makes it tick.

Inside that clockwork of files are several ways to enhance your game graphics and well as how to increase the in-game FOV.

Here is a step by step video tutorial to show you how to make these edits to your game and give you the knowledge needed to complete other tweaks not covered in the guide

In my last blog post, I talked about how the WSGF got started. In those early days we often found that games had zero support for widescreen. We weren't debating issues of "good" or "bad", or "Hor+" vs. "Vert-". We were trying to get widescreen resolutions to just show up in the game options. Fast forward a few years, and as widescreen displays became more prevalent, the issues became fewer. We still fought the good fight regarding increasing the horizontal FOV, and ensuring that the HUD remained unstretched.

Have a sit, and I'll tell you the tale of how the WSGF came to be...

Back in September 2003 I was looking to buy a new laptop. I wanted to do some gaming, and knew that I wanted to go widescreen. I was torn between the 15.4" Presario x1000 and the 17" Pavilion zd7000, both from the newly merged Compaq/HP. In my research I found two forums (both now defunct), x1000forums.com and zd7000forums.com. I ended up buying the x1000, but then returned in and exchanged it for the zd7000. Ah, the early days of a 9+ pound 1440x900 17" notebook with a full keypad....

Believe it or not, many games at the time didn't support widescreen. It was common for widescreen resolutions (listed in your desktop properties) to be completely missing from game options. And, even when you could get the game to load, there were often issues. In scouring the x1000 and zd7000 forums, I saw that members were working diligently to find solutions to the popular games of the day - but those two groups weren't talking together. If two communities that were closely aligned (many members were users on both forums) weren't sharing information, what about all the people with Dell, Sony and Toshiba laptops? Or, people who owned or built desktops.

Two recent high-profile game releases have generated a bit of buzz within the multi-monitor community.

First was the release of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. This title was "sponsored" by NVIDIA with their "The Way It's Meant To Be Played" (TWIMTBP) initiative. By all accounts the game is a great title, and offered superb "Surround" support. However, it doesn't support TripleHead via the Matrox TripleHead2Go or AMD's Eyefinity.

There is absolutely no reason any developer to lock out features based on which video card you purchased. This type of behavior segments and already small market and will slow the adoption of multi-monitor among users. Why would a user invest in any multi-monitor technology, if they have to worry about developers not only supporting multi-monitor, but their choice of multi-monitor technology.

Sony exec Tim Schaaff proves once again that big corporations live in some bizarre otherworld where reality intrudes but rarely. GamesBeat reports that he said it was a "Great experience, really good time. Though I wouldn't like to do it again."

Was he joking? Or could he actually be serious? The hacking of PSN was probably the worst and most public intrusion of a major developer or publisher in recent history, although it was quickly followed by the hacking of Codemasters, Sega, Nintendo and SquareEnix, among others.

Disclaimer

"Ramblings of a Moron" is a review series done by WSGF member Cynagen. While reviews from other sites focus on extensive play and detailed postmortem analysis, "Ramblings of a Moron" is a first impression "stream of consciousness" review. The grammar isn't perfect, and the prose can sometimes be disjointed, but these are the first impressions of a seasoned WSGF Insider. For more information, and for more Ramblings, see the complete list of Cynagen's offerings.

The Rambling

Disclaimer

"Ramblings of a Moron" is a review series done by WSGF member Cynagen. While reviews from other sites focus on extensive play and detailed postmortem analysis, "Ramblings of a Moron" is a first impression "stream of consciousness" review. The grammar isn't perfect, and the prose can sometimes be disjointed, but these are the first impressions of a seasoned WSGF Insider. For more information, and for more Ramblings, see the complete list of Cynagen's offerings.

The Rambling

Disclaimer

"Ramblings of a Moron" is a review series done by WSGF member Cynagen. While reviews from other sites focus on extensive play and detailed postmortem analysis, "Ramblings of a Moron" is a first impression "stream of consciousness" review. The grammar isn't perfect, and the prose can sometimes be disjointed, but these are the first impressions of a seasoned WSGF Insider. For more information, and for more Ramblings, see the complete list of Cynagen's offerings.

The Rambling