March 14 2012 - I Hate Myself

Mycal

Mycal

Staff member
Personal Stuff..I just felt like typing. Real news below..
So I started playing SWTOR recently, after swearing off WoW cause of boredom, I decided I wouldn't play any more pay to play MMOs. However, the star wars universe has always been intriguing to me and I couldn't resist when I saw the $29.99 price on an Amazon daily deal. I hit level 32 the other day on my first character after 1 solid week of playing. I usually put in a few hours a day just to gain at least one level, but man, this week it's been rough.

My car broke down yesterday and its going to cost a little to repair. I waited 2 hours for a tow truck that was promised to only take 50 minutes. So, that killed my day yesterday. Today, just didn't feel in the mood to play after getting home. Ended up just sitting and watched videos on youtube for awhile. After that stared at visual studio for a good 20 minutes before realizing how much time had passed...sigh, I'm so tired and ready for the weekend.

OK, in less tiring/depressing news. I've barely touched the database/script conversion stuff since last week. Good news is, it's all seems super easy to convert over. And by that, I mean all native .NET code, no external libraries (besides SQLite for the new DB) necessary to convert it over. I have yet to try porting over scripts since that will require a little bit more work. I'll basically have to create my own code parsing tool, but that's the beauty of code. It's structured so it shouldn't be too bad.

I've also been looking into ways to fix the front page of this site and permissions in general. I've been experimenting with XenForo and I really like the software. It's expensive, but seems more worth it compared to other paid forum software (eg. IPB, VBulletin). You can check out my test site I set up with it here. No need for you to register or post anything there. It won't transfer over if we do move to it. I'm just going to convert this forum's database over again. Though, you can see all posts before this one over there right now to show there is no problem converting everything over. But I really like it.

I'm not going to purchase it just yet though. I'll hold off until Odyssey is released since until we actually have something to give out, our website is extremely low priority.

Let's see, anything else I should mention...No? OK then!
 
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steven

Administrator
So xenforo is more of a portal than a forum right? Can you create static pages to have a better navigation? First thought I like it, I didn't even notice this post but was already planning on making this website a lot more polished. I was considering moving from wp to Drupal because I have been messing with it a lot and it simply offers a lot more for website customization compared to hacking up a wordpress installation. This xenforo stuff seems interesting though, let me know if you make the call to use it and I will look into the software.
 
Mycal

Mycal

Staff member
Yea, haven't decided yet, but I like it's look and functionality. I added a plugin which gave the portal, but I believe you can also have static pages, though I haven't looked into it too much.

I've actually not looked into drupal much, mainly cause I don't like the forum software. All I know is, I want to get something that is easy to hook into. I would like to able to link into the site's accounts so that they are also game accounts.
 
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steven

Administrator
Unless you shell out for vbulliten I don't think and forum solution will have a super integrated cms with it...the only reason vbulliten does is because it's expensive...but anyways I've learned so much more about oop, syntax, and just controlling what I'm doing. It's all in java though, do you think I should jump to another language before I try and create something real? From what I read Java really made a comeback power wise but I just don't know what I should be using really. I want to do a port of that Akarra game to java but I don't know if it would be a better idea to do it in another language. I just think rebuilding it would teach me so much and all I would be doing is taking already coded things and recoding them in another language. Any input? Also still 'about' to build a pc any build recommendations? Don't wanna end up with a card or something that simply isn't compatible with the motherboard ect..

I also am trying to find the best way to create a map editor which I'm learning is exceedingly more difficult than the engine for the game itself....

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bsT6otdcTv0

I like this editors flexibility but I just don't know where to start if you can shed some light on it all...like how do most write and read this data? I want to rewrite akarras editors as well as create an editor for the sidescroller I'm making to eventually have a cell phone app.
 
Mycal

Mycal

Staff member
Just wanting to say, I have seen this post and will respond to you, I started a draft that I never finished, hopefully I can remember to do so when I get home, but I will respond. Have faith!
 
Mycal

Mycal

Staff member
OK, I finally put most of my thoughts on Java in words here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=596&p=3091#p3091 If you like Java, I say stick with it. The only reason I would say to switch is to become a more rounded programmer.

Build-A-PC text. I copied and pasted this from a draft:
As for building a new computer. Ah, my favorite activity for the past year. I worked retail helping people pick parts every day and I have a fairly strong knowledge of what's good, what to avoid, and OH GOD IT'S A PLAUGE. Though I no longer am in the job since graduating and moving into the real world, so I may be a little rusty with some components. I'll start with a few things though.

Intel beats AMD. No matter how you look at it, this has and will continue to be true for at least the next year. That said, Intel is a little bit more expensive and for most things, AMD is generally fine. I still recommend Intel for anything more than light-gaming. Read benchmarks at tomshardware.com, they will be your best friend when choosing components. As for motherboards, I would need more detail to be able to tell you which boards to look at, but Intel boards to avoid are: ASUS (way too many failures in the SATA controllers), Biostar (talk about cheap boards, these are just crap), ECS (a step up from Biostar, but still just bad), and ASRock (same reason as ASUS, which makes sense since they are owned by ASUS). I truly don't understand how all the other manufacturer's recovered from the Sandy Bridge recall but ASUS still has the same problem.. For AMD boards: Biostar and ECS again. ASUS is perfectly fine for AMD boards, they don't suffer the same problems on the SATA controllers that Intel boards did for some reason. Gigabyte is still my top choice for boards though. Consistently reliable and very few returns when compared to other brands. Not to mention they have some truly powerhouse boards out there.

Video cards are a tough topic. I'm going to tell you an honest opinion I told to everyone of my customers. A very high percentage of games are developed with nVidia cards in mind. In today's game development cycles, it is released with full support for nVidia and then patched for specific issues related AMD cards. It has happened several times over the past year and will likely continue to happen due to the high percentage of players on nVidia cards. If you are not an early adopter of PC games, you typically don't have to worry as much, but I can tell you, many benchmarks of comparable cards point to nVidia cards running statistically cooler and faster than AMD cards. As for actual cards, I've not kept up with cards over the last 5+ months, but my favorite was the MSI 560 GTX Twin Frozr II (which I own). Fast and very cool card. Lower temperature's than all other 560 GTX cards as well as any comparable AMD card. 580 GTX I think has dropped in price a lot and is even better and has a similar card by MSI that would be worth it. For AMD, refer to tomshardware for a comparable card to either one and you will probably be fine. I'm sure there are newer cards that I'm not aware of, so, tomshardware :).

As for other components, corsair is generally the top rated for just about everything else. They have some extremely high quality/reliable products and I used them pretty much everywhere I could in my own build for this reason. Memory, 8GB should be enough for just about anyone. I've not met anyone that wasn't running virtual machines or server farms that needed more. That said, prices are so low right now, that it truly doesn't matter. If you can get a good deal on 16GB go for it and you'll be set for the forseeable future. I only have 8GB in my personal PC and 16GB in my work PC. Though, my home PC is faster, I don't have to close a single thing down at work (I have so many programs and windows open daily and restart maybe monthly if that).

For a case, please just go with your personal preference. So many people will try to recommend a case, but you will be the one looking at it for as long as you have it. Look at cases that are rated really high in airflow and use your own tastes to decide which one to get. Again, Corsair is really good for this, as is Cooler Master, Antec, and Thermaltake cases.

I can give better tips if I get some information on what you want. Here are the questions I asked my customers:
* Who is primarily going to be using this computer and what will it be used for (primarily and ocassionally)?
* What is your budget? (Though I typically had to build with the best money could buy and work down, it is easier if I get a price range to work with)
* Any interest in overclocking or water cooling? (Purely for recreational reasons, not needed for absolutely anything).

Other places that are an enormous help in building a PC:
reddit.com/r/buildapc, pcpartpicker.com, tomshardware.com

Map editors suck. I hate them so much. They constantly fall behind in my development and they are in general hard to design without being a clone of the game client. For single player games, they are fairly simple, especially sidescrollers. Many people like to do the use paint or some similar program to design their levels. In these cases, each pixel is a block and the color decides what block it is. Saving is as simple as save the level as an image, or if you want to get complex, turn it into a multi-dimensional array and save the color as index to which block it is. Then it's as simple as loop through each coordinate on the level saving each one. Loading is just looping back through reading the size of whatever it is you saved. tile[x,y] = load(sizeof(int)). There's some pseudocode. You can start off looking at BSGame's world editor, though it does not at all match what is currently in BSGameLib so it may error..just load the head revision and you should be fine (does not remember if you have access to the repository. <_<)
 
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steven

Administrator
I've settled into the average joe 11 hour work day life so I barely have time to do anything, let alone feel like it when I have time. I bought a msi gt60 and I want to start dedicating some time to helping with projects. I really just need some direction like for instance you to just say go learn this and write this...so if you have anything for me to do let me know.
 
Mycal

Mycal

Staff member
Average Joe 11 hour work day!? Holy crap. I only work 8 hours not counting my lunch. Last time I worked more than that was Black Friday when I worked retail. But, now you know how I feel most of the time, I just want to get home and relax after a long day. I live my life in a debugger at work, its not something I typically like to go home and do as well. Though that's very different lately since I'm trying to learn ASPX with little success.

Since you have learned a lot, next I would say, go learn about databases. Particularly SQL. For Odyssey, it will be using SQLite on the server side and SQLServer 2008 on the web-side. BSGameLib started to use SQLite. It will probably stay this since it's not going to use a server registry or be totally open a-la odyssey. This is assuming you don't have any database knowledge yet. If you do, then, I need to figure out what you've learned so far so I can get an idea where to lead you next..Perhaps DirectX/OpenGL?
 
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steven

Administrator
Well I have got into databases a little, I learned about connecting to java through jdbc or whatever it is, and learned a lot about looping through SQL commands to edit a database from a program. Thats about it though..
 
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