Messages

1

Competitions / Re: FBGD Rescue The Colors Competition (Nov 2011 - end of Jan 2012), 250 $ 1st prize

« on: November 10, 2011, 10:15:08 PM »

This actually sounds like a really fun idea.  I'm very busy for the next couple months, but I'll see about creating something for this competition.  (I may have to relearn freebasic to do so though. )

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General Discussion / Re: What the hell happened to freebasic.net ?

« on: January 28, 2009, 10:43:26 AM »

Dammit Dr_D, just because your on the bigfoot diet doesn't mean you can eat freebasic.net!

3

Game Dev / Re: "Feed me" FBGD package idea

« on: January 18, 2009, 01:32:36 AM »

I'm annoyed by the growing popularity of .7zip... wtf?  Nothing needs 7 zippers!  Unless it includes alot of leather and black latex...

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General Discussion / Re: I'm going on a diet.

« on: December 18, 2008, 11:04:01 PM »

Wait, your just going on that diet now?  We canadians don't think of it as a diet at all.  It's a part of our heritage right up there with toques, aboots and igloos!

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General Discussion / Re: There should be a fair reduction in spam messages.

« on: November 21, 2008, 10:21:13 PM »

I

I didn't put these here:

And I am getting more spam in my inbox than ever!

I don't know why your getting more spam than ever.  Why don't you tell me, spammer? 

Seriously though, even though those ads promise you free viagra, they lie.  So stop clicking on those ads!

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General Discussion / Re: There should be a fair reduction in spam messages.

« on: November 21, 2008, 10:20:19 AM »

It's not helping me a bit.

Of course it doesn't.  Not when your providing the spam kristopher... or should I say SPAMMER!!!   

DUN DUN DUUUUN!

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General Discussion / There should be a fair reduction in spam messages.

« on: November 20, 2008, 11:16:39 PM »

Mccolo, a web hosting company, was taken down about 8-9 days ago.  They're quite well known for hosting alot of spammers and the like.  As a result Spam has dropped by about %75.  Enjoy it while it lasts, because the people spamming will find new places to set up shop.

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General Discussion / Re: Konichiwa, puzzle very hard yes

« on: November 18, 2008, 12:25:47 PM »

heh i'm not spamming

That is a matter of opinion.  One mans delight is another man's spam.

9

Work In Progress / Re: Conquest MapEd Beta

« on: October 27, 2008, 10:07:33 AM »

Sure. 

Laptop: 3.5 years old Acer Aspire

1.7 GHZ Turion processor (an Athlon 64 that uses less power)
768 MB Ram
SIS M760GX Integrated graphics (slow, yet fast enough to play older games like NWN, B&W and other 3d games)
It's not great, but should be easily powerful enough to play your game.  I've had no problems with other OpenGL apps.

redoing the gui handler can make things run better if you add some optimizations. 

Later on I can test on OMalley.

OMalley:

3.0 GHZ Core 2 Duo
4 GB Ram
Radeon 4850

10

Work In Progress / Re: Conquest MapEd Beta

« on: October 26, 2008, 12:54:04 PM »

Here's a log of how my testing went:
5 seconds in: Noticed the mouse pointer is very laggy
10 seconds in: The computer heats up to the point where the fan kicks in to keep it cool enough to use.
15 seconds in: Tested the menus.  They were non responsive and required several clicks to open.
20 seconds in: noticed the zoom slider.  Cool stuff.
25 seconds in: Tried drawing tiles.  Noticed gaps in the tiles, due to a laggy mouse.
30 seconds in: shut down the program to let my laptop cool down.

Tested on XP on my laptop.  All I gotta say is, what the hell?  What do you do, resize all the tiles every frame?  Nothing short of a 3d game makes this computer lag like that, and a 2d map editor SHOULD NOT be doing this.  If it's doing this, AND has severe issues with vista... well, i'd stop working on it and fix these issues first.  You've got a nice thing going, but it's buggy as hell and gobbles cpu power like nothing else.  If you provided the source I'd go in and look to see what's causing these issues, but since you didn't and I can't, all I can do is let you know how my test went. 

11

General Discussion / Re: Ideas Fair at my University

« on: October 26, 2008, 12:45:37 PM »

Perpetual light bulb wouldn't work. Remember conservation of energy: what you take out can't be more than what has been put in. So the energy (power [watts] * time) output must be less than what you put in (whatever is powering it). So if you have 100 joules of potential energy, and you have a 99% efficient lightbulb (highly unlikely AFAIK), you get 99 watt-seconds of light. The brighter it is, the shorter it lasts.

So a 100 watt bulb requires 100 joules per second of energy at 100% efficiency. You can't get a 100 watt bulb to use only 50 joules per second at full brightness. If you do, the universe will shatter.

SSC's not talking about a lightbulb that burns forever, he's talking about a light bulb with a mirrored interior surface that traps light in the bulb, i'm assuming forever.  Don't worry, I already destroyed him and all his hopes and dreams.  

Plan Phi-Phi-Tango-Foxtrot: Kill all humans with blue screens of death.

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General Discussion / Re: Ideas Fair at my University

« on: October 26, 2008, 12:32:29 PM »

Plan Omega-Phi:Throw all humans into grand canyon, build bridge.

Well I have been holding this one in for a long time, but why not. I don't know if it would be possible to make, but who knows (btw if you use it and win money I want some of it ^^). Ok so basically is it a perpetual light bulb, a 2way mirror with the mirror part on the inside, from what I know about 2way mirrors is that when there is bright light on the mirror side you can not see through it, thus making it solid (but you can see through from the other side). The bulb would need to be perfectly spherical and of high quality, you would flash the light in, in a dark room so that the light travels through and gets trapped. If it can be made in a way that light can not escape you should be able to see the glow of the light from the outside, not sure how bright it would be though.

Just so we're on the same page here, from what I can tell you have a perfectly round light bulb with a 2 way mirror coating on the inside.  You flash the lightbulb on and turn it off, and get light forever in the bulb.  Due to the 2 way mirror you can see the bulb glowing.

Kristopher: I think he's expecting it to be infinityx more efficient than a typical light bulb since in theory once it's flashed, it would burn "perpetually."

Just a couple things why this would not work:

1. You forget about the filament.  The filament would absorb light itself.  It cannot be mirror coated because if it did, no light would escape it.
2. Ever look out of a window at night time?  Did you see anything?  Probably nothing but your own reflection.  Glass is used because it allows most light to pass through, but not all does:  a bit does get reflected back.  On the outside there is no or little light, therefore none or little coming in. Light reflects off of the glass working a bit like a mirror and no light comes in from outside.  If you were standing outside you could see anyone in that room, but no one in that room could see you.  2 way mirrors work on the same principle.  So if you were to turn off the lights in the room, lighting levels between the room and outside would be similar and you could see the person standing outside.  So basically, 2 way mirrors  work by reflecting most of the light back and allowing the rest to pass through.  That light passing through would be the glowing you would see... for about the split second after you turn it on anyways.
3. I don't think we've invented a perfect mirror yet: that is, a mirror that can reflect ALL light.  Just so you know, lasers are used to cut mirrors, and mirrors are made up of light.  You may say that a laser is different, but a laser is just concentrated light.  We do have mirrors that can reflect those kind of lasers, but nothing perfect yet.

I'm not saying the idea is without merit and impossible, but to make it work would take someone with a far greater understanding of physics than any of us here.

::EDIT::

Just some quick math here to show you it won't work at all:

Assumptions:
- Light travels the maximum distance between two reflective points in the sphere
- Every bounce we lose 0.1% of the light in the sphere
- light travels at, well, speed of light (299 792 458 m / s)
- we have a sphere 20 meters in diameter

Light can travel the width of the sphere in:

20/299792458 = 0.000000066712 Seconds
so every 0.000000066712 Seconds we lose 0.1% of light
So we'd lose all the light in:

0.000066712 Seconds

Which means you'd lose all your light in less than 1 ms.

0000.066712 milliseconds to lose all light

Foiled again by the laws of physics!   

Even if you could improve efficiency of the mirrored glass to only allow 0.0001% of light to go through every bounce, you'd still lose all your light in 66.7 milliseconds, or 0.00667 seconds.  And don't forget that the less light you allow through, the dimmer your sphere will be, therefore reducing it's usefulness.

13

General Discussion / Re: Ideas Fair at my University

« on: October 25, 2008, 09:45:02 AM »

Here's a neat idea: Give me the prize when you win it.   (well, I think it's neat.)

Anyways I'm quite annoyed right now about some people, but here's my list:
--------------------
a. kill all humans.
b. kill all humans painfully.
c. kill all humans on alternate fridays.
d. Kill all humans with giant death ray.
...
...

Anyways the list goes on and on.  This one though is actually productive:
double theta: compress all humans into giant bricks and build a wall.  (It's good for the economy!) 

14

Game Dev / Re: A game dev pot

« on: October 20, 2008, 12:54:42 PM »

Personally, I don't like this sort of resource databases. I want original work for my projects.

Who said the stuff on such a resource couldn't be original?  I never said that it would be filled with final fantasy sprites and Dragon warrior music.  Such a resource would be a place for new fledgling artists and musicians to put up their works in hopes that other people would use it and boost their repitoire.  With getting artists and musicians for your games it's partially who you know.  If your new to the scene and don't know any artists or musicians, it's gonna be tough getting someone.  It could also be a place of contact: musicians and artists post up their works.  A programmer likes what he sees, and emails the musician, who conveniently put up his email address in his profile.

Anyways, you may want original work, but not everyone has access to it.  Their either crappy artists, even crappier musicians or both combined, and their only saving grace is their programming skills.  Ever seen a beginner go to a game development forums and ask people to create music or art for their game?  I used to see it all the time on rpg-dev.net and on gamedev, and let me tell you almost no one helped them.  At least with a resource reservoir they'd have an alternative to go to.  It allows programmers to work on games without having to worry about where they're gonna get their music or art, without having to rely on other people and at their own pace.  (How many codevelopers did you go through with Barren?)  Of course you'd want original work.  You're at least skilled enough to create your own art and music when need be.  And you have such a repitoire that most people have no problems at all with helping you out.  But not everyone has that luxury, you know?

Problem with music is that it requires huge amounts of memory. I agree with Lachie though, I personally like to do everything myself. But somebody else could make a junkyard game, using a conglomerate of resources. Have enough contributions, and you could have a competition. Junk Source Wars 

Ten years ago, yes.  Now, not so.  Nowadays with such a resource, bandwidth is the biggest issue.  On my home server, I have over 500 GB of space available to use, all for about $120, including the Server itself.  That much space can hold enough music to play nonstop for days if not weeks on end.  No, definately the biggest issue for servers is paying for the bandwidth usage.  Besides, not all music is 6 MB mp3 files.  Tracked music can sound great (XM format) and stay small for a whole song. (under 1MB)

I'm not saying a resource reservoir would be better than original work.  If I had my way during my development, i'd always have a dedicated artist and musician pumping out original music all the time.  It's not always that easy though, and sometimes to get by you need to head to the soup kitchen.  And you never know, you may find a goodie or two!   Remember to think of more than what you need with this stuff.  While you'd see no value in such a resource, to someone who's trying to get into game development it could be invaluable.

15

General Discussion / Re: Hi there!

« on: October 20, 2008, 12:28:22 PM »

Well, look what the cat dragged in!  Welcome back na_th_an.