Recently, I was playing around with some ideas and cooked up this nifty official Podtacular Xbox 360 theme background for the whole community to use. It’s designed for widescreen displays at full 1080p resolution, so download and display it proudly in your Dashboard!

UPDATE: I’ve now included a version for older televisions at 480p fullscreen resolution.

To download the image, just right-click on the attached files below and save the file to your computer. There are several ways to get it to your 360, including copying the file to a USB hard drive or iPod/MP3 player, burning it to a CD or even streaming it across your network via Media Center/Connect 360. Once you see it in the Photos section of your 360 Dashboard (in the Media blade), find the image and press X to “Apply as Background” and you’re all set!

Oh, and since I know we have some really good and enthusiastic artists in the Podtacular community, I’d like to see if anyone else has some awesome ideas for 360 themes. We recently had a desktop wallpaper contest, and if there’s enough interest, maybe we could have one for 360 themes! Whaddya say?

Recently, I was playing around with some ideas and cooked up this nifty official Podtacular Xbox 360 theme background for the whole community to use. It’s designed for widescreen displays at full 1080p resolution, so download and display it proudly in your Dashboard!

Oh, and since I know we have some really good and enthusiastic artists in the Podtacular community, I’d like to see if anyone else has some awesome ideas for 360 themes. We recently had a desktop wallpaper contest, and if there’s enough interest, maybe we could have one for 360 themes! Whaddya say?

Recently the Seventh Column came back online. You recall that Bungie.net got a makeover. The old THX group is still on there.

A lot of information has been lost over the years. It looks like a lot of accounts have been deleted and that most all of the members didn’t port over. I think some information was lost in the port.

Oh well. That’s why we run our own stuff.

If thx.com ever goes down, we can always go to the THX site on the Seventh Column if we need to make announcements.

You can view the chapter at http://www.bungie.net/fanclub/thx/Group/GroupHome.aspx
__________________________
rapzilla blog | Shadowrun | HALO 2 Vista | cooked Gamers

I received this email from Brick’s brother this morning:

Congratulations Brick.
__________________________

Pretty cool. FASA has released a ton of stats they collected during the beta. (They actually collected from pretty complex stats like “distance bullets traveled” and other complex stats).

Kill to Death ratio stats

		Gamer Tag 	Kills 	    Deaths 	    K:D
1 	         	EnragedGnome 	4871 	1257 	3.88
2 	         	Crymson Omega 	2176 	575 	3.78
3 	         	DarckDrizzt 	618 	216 	2.86
4 	         	EA 	        2980 	1098 	2.71
5 	         	Fall360 	195 	72 	2.71
6 	         	KarmicMonk 	8099 	3038 	2.67
7 	         	tsfreaks 	2675 	1050 	2.55
8 	         	xUnknown Datax 	1901 	768 	2.48
9 	         	Xion89 	3509 	1420 	2.47
10 	         	goku2057 	3942 	1688 	2.34
60 	         	synide 	        1070 	628 	1.70
98 	         	THX Oculus 	718 	482 	1.49

You’ll notice that Gnome and I are at the top of the Top 100 Kill/Death ratio stat. I think it’s neat to know that Gnome, Xion, and Goku all live about 3 hours from Huntsville. I don’t know about the rest of the guys in the top 10. Oculus also made the Top 100 K/D ratio list with a respectable 1.49:1 K/D ratio. jayWHY?

Time spent playing Shadowrun

		        Gamer Tag 	Days 	   Hours 	   Minutes 	   Seconds
1 	         	Are U Dead Yet 	8 	4 	31 	20
24 	         	goku2057 	3 	5 	5 	17
25 	         	EnragedGnome 	3 	4 	6 	20
47 	         	EA 	        2 	6 	44 	34

I actually thought I would have played more than that. 50-something hours isn’t THAT much Shadowrun for a 3 to 4 month beta.

Longest rang kill

	                Gamer Tag 	Weapon 	    Distance (Meters)
1 	         	Dragondemi 	Pistol 	146.52
2 	         	Ollie Cromwell 	SMG 	139.42
3 	         	B4M Bloody Life Sniper 	123.77
4 	         	Quidam18 	Sniper 	115.25
5 	         	xBETA 420x 	Sniper 	110.42
6 	         	PowerRory 	Sniper 	108.80
7 	         	Xx d04 xX 	Sniper 	108.45
8 	         	THE MLG PUCKETT Sniper 	105.43
9 	         	EA 	        Sniper 	104.84
10 	         	mfed3 	        Rifle 	102.43

So, I had a long Sniper shot. No big deal. But look at the longest range kill in the game. It was done with a Pistol. Nice D.

Note that this is probably the last of the stats reporting. FASA has decided that reporting stats encourages cheating. You’ll never know your TrueSkill ranking. They won’t be publishing leaderboards.

I think that’s a great decision. A game shouldn’t be about leaderboards. It caused a lot of cheating in HALO 2. Being a 40 or 50 in HALO 2 didn’t mean anything because so many people cheated to get there.
__________________________

rapzilla blog | Shadowrun | HALO 2 Vista | cooked Gamers

Should make for some interesting physics experiments.

How do you think they will impact gameplay though?

via x360fb.
__________________________

rapzilla blog | Shadowrun | HALO 2 Vista | cooked Gamers