Login with username and password (forgot your password?)

Yeah, that's what I was thinking

What improvements?
Also, I should probably ask about whether you decompiled my executable.

As a with a lot of things in the newer versions of windows (Looking at the controlless defrag in particular), They have a lot less power than they Windows 98 equivalents, to try to make things easier for normal users.  I'm looking for a program - Other than Regedit - Which will allow me to edit the individual actions in a File Extension.

Here's the Windows 98 dialogue, in case people need a refresher (It was over a decade ago)

You sent out an email with the august newsletter, rather than the september

There is one potential reason that some languages (C++ springs to mind) would have a difference between !(x==y) and x!=y

When making a class in c++ (And some derived languages), you may overload the == operator.  Doing so allows you to check if two instances are equal, even if they are not references to the same instance.  The thing you have to remember is that the C++ compiler will not automatically overload the != operator for you. As such, if the programmer of a class has forgotten to include something similar to the following,

[copy or print]
bool MyClass::operator!=(const MyClass &other) const {
    return !(*this == other);
  }

then !(x==y) will use your equality operator, while x!=y will simply check if they are the same instance.

So yes, when dealing with poorly written code, there is a difference between the two, but only in some languages, and only if the class in question wasn't implemented properly. 

Recently I have been wanting to play more D&D rather than just DMing all the time. Unfortunately nobody I know is willing to step up as a DM at the moment.   As such, I've decided to make my computer do so for me

Basically, DungeonAI is an application that can act as a GameMaster for D&D4E, complete with battlemap and condition/HP tracking.  

I'll probably code it in Java.  More details to come soon.

PS:  I don't actually have an internet connection right now, so I won't respond to this post for a couple days.

Any documentatiuon on how to expose the changelog?

I could make this relatively easily. I have two options:

• Have a client-only program that uses PSExec to launch your mail app
• Make both client and serverside applications.

Having a serverside application means several things:

• You don't need to give the software the password for your other computer.
• It knows whether it was successful
• It requires the server app to be running.
• It will be more reliable than PSExec

(I assume that somebody is still interested in this app?)

TabRocket is a must for anyone who uses more than one computer.  It basically allows you to push a tab from one computer to another.  (Requires that you use chrome's Bookmark Sync)

I know it's a take it or leave it type of thing, but there will be other tabs on it later.

And that's all I wanted to hear

As far as the external runtimes bit- what do you refer to?  .NET?  That's what my major focus is in for work- and when I do these side projects it's because I'm trying to advance those skills, so that's not going away.  Or were you referring to something else?

One other issue with using a ribbon (Assuming you're using one of the Microsoft-Provided implementations): It puts your minimum requirements at Vista SP2+. (This does vary between implementations, but is there in the Windows Ribbon Framework, which I assume is your ribbon of choice.)

And I guess, to a large extent, I was asking about the available fields- was there anything I missed in terms of important information to be available?

As I mentioned on the other launcher, the ability for a group of extra executables (Level Editor, Mod Manager, Configuration Tool, Safe Mode, Save Game Editor, etc) would be nice. (And I'm talking a List<>, not just one)

I agree, a ribbon feels like overkill in this application (At least the way it is now)
I'd recommend reading through this MSDN page and re-evaluating the choice and/or implementation of the ribbon.

Other than that, I assume that it automatically updates the PlayCount field?
Can it automatically grab the cover art, or do we need to do that manually?
What about the Publisher Details and Release Date?

What is the Digital checkbox supposed to represent?

Could you change the format for the Release Date to show Date, rather than DateTime?

Overall it looks promising. 

Make the "Other Executables" tab more expansive. (Five or six executables, and let us change the labels).
For example, one game could have:

• Map Editor
• DX9 version
• Safe Mode
• Save Game Editor
• Config

And you should probably add an option to Close/Kill programs before you launch the game.

also, pics of the details view?

Games explorer notices eight of them

Problem here is that games have to register with Games Explorer, during install usually, to be noticed by GE, so it's not directly GE's 'fault', IMHO

Exactly.  And there are ways around that.

Yes, and I have used that to input an additional 5 games - It's just too slow and ugly to use, when doing in a large scale.

Well, I just use Steam as my game launcher. Even for non-Steam games. But that probably won't be useful for games that require DOSBox.

I use XFire for my game launcher, although I'm currently also playing the Raptr, which is quite similar.

I didn't suggest that either b/c if he wasn't satisfied with the game explorer, he definitely wouldn't be satisfied with steam or xfire or raptr.  They have even *less* customization options.

I agree, but thought I'd weigh in my opinion regardless - My personal complaint with Games Explorer is that of the 200 games on my computer, Games explorer notices eight of them.

(Also, Both Steam and XFire allow you to put in Command Line Arguments, which was one of the requests above, and also have a per-game screenshot manager)

I take the same approach as app103. Sometimes I install but disable extensions for later use.

I just wish that FF approached extensions in the same way as chrome in regards to restarting the browser.  I would use disable more for extensions that I don't use that much, but I hate restarting the browser to do so.

A shiny new feature in Firefox 4 offers exactly that.  It's just very few developers are yet to convert their addons to use it. Here's a few that do.

A feature request for you:  Would it be possible to have it convert shortcuts to symlinks?

I use XFire for my game launcher, although I'm currently also playing the Raptr, which is quite similar.

Assuming Mouser doesn't post anything for those 2.5 years?

Ack, came back to see if you posted a comment about my issues and I missed it.  Found that my post with the full error report never posted! 

So anyway, I will post now with my appologies that I didn't verify I posted them sooner.

Everything else was in one of those reports for Microsoft, but I was unable to copy any of them out of the "view report" except by taking a great many screenshots.  I believe, though, that they really won't help you anyway.  They looked like OS related errors rather than application errors, though they may be related....

uhh...  Congratulations? You've got an error I didn't know was possible, let along existent in my code..
Can you upload the Settings.xml located in

• %userprofile%\Appdata\Local\Kamahl (Vista/7)
• %userprofile%\Local Settings\Application Data\Kamahl (XP)

And you can fix the bug by renaming the file. (I still want to see it though)

Also sim games, where you can build a world or city or house or country or whatever. What kind of games allow you to create things that you enjoy showing off? What kind of games have things in them that interest you enough to want to see someone else's creations?

And lets not forget puzzle games. The Incredible Machine, Chu Chu Rocket, Lemmings, ... Uh... and others. Those are pretty easy to add content (levels) that could help create a community.

A sim game would be easy to extend, but hideous to get started.

A puzzle game on the other hand would be nice, but they generally exhaust their level ideas fairly quickly.

Oh, and please don't double-post.

Sure, it's probably fairly trivial to add a new kind of tower or enemy type in a TD game, but the hard part is in the balance. Some problems that plague TD games are that (1) you could beat them using just one or two kinds of towers. (2) One strategy worked on every level. (3) Or another problem I've seen a lot is with the difficulty (which also has to do with balance, IMO). You'd be doing great for 86 waves and then suddenly it became impossible.

Why not have the game choose a random subsection of the total number of towers at the start of the level?  If you don't have the Flamethrower tower all the time, you can't possibly use the strategy based around it.

And if it does get impossible, why not simply design a few waves in the middle, or make a tower that might be useful in that situation.  Of course, balance is always going to be an issue, and creating an overpowered tower would definitely be an issue.  
I do have a solution around here somewhere though.  

A while back, I started work on a procedurally generated TD game.  The computer would score the power of your setup, based on a combination of dps and how well the last wave fared. It would then generate a wave which is slightly stronger than it thinks you can handle.  I designed it based on the L4D2 Director - It targets weak points, and subtly throws wave after wave against them (I had a game where it threw five or so flying waves in a row,and then a fast ground wave when it realized I was onto it)

Well, I may be misinterpreting what mouser means, but it is my impression that he is talking about a game with a community. I don't mean to sound negative, but documentation, help, tutorials (which are pretty much the same thing), as well as level/tower/enemy design don't make much of a community. An editor of some kind would probably be good, but I think a TD game would have to have some great elements and strategy to it to make a lot of different levels worthwhile.

I guess what I'm saying is, even though I really like TD games I don't see the genre as necessarily fostering a big community where everyone can play and contribute and enjoy. Does anyone have any other suggestions for what type (genre) of game to make?

Actually, before we all rush in and clamor for a TD game (or a game of any genre) maybe we should have a bit of a discussion first to better define the goals for the project so we can choose a genre that will best suit those goals.

The thing I like about TD games, is that they're relatively easy to extend.  Creating an RPG or RTS will involve a lot more effort for someone wanting to casually contribute a small chunk of the game, and therefore discourage people from contributing.   I'm going to throw together a simple base Tower class, and a Slow Tower, which should demonstrate the ease of extensibility for a TD.

But yes, we need to define clear goals before we jump in with the coding.  Otherwise we'll end up needing to reshuffle the code to get plugins to work properly (Or break any plugins people have already made, by changing an Interface, or shuffling methods around).

Oh, and we'll want at least some of the content to be parsed from XML, so that non-programmers can contribute - We'll probably want to make a GUI editor to generate said XML as well.

In what way(s) could people contribute to a tower defense game? Obviously coders could help program, artists could make graphics, and musicians could help with music or maybe sound effects, but in what other ways would someone be able to contribute to a TD game?

I think level design is often underrated. Also, the tedious things that those high-falutin' coders overlook, like documentation, help, tutorials. Ooh, and my favourite: play testing!

A lot of design/concepting stuff can be done by just about anyone.  This includes:

• Level Design
• Tower Design
• Enemy design
• The name

On the coding side, there are a lot of different skill sets here at DC. How would/could/should things be setup to let the maximum number of people participate?

I am a bit bias, but .NET would let anyone write in any language and the core game could then consume libraries (DLLs). It would also allow for specialized things like DSP or math-heavy stuff to be done in a functional language like F#, while other things were done in C++ or whatever.

My personal preference would be to build the base in XNA (.NET), and load plugins for the content.  The way I envision it, the base game has very little in it, and uses the plugins to make a completely modular game.  (And we might even be able to do some funky stuff like reusing the monsters directly into an RPG game, if we design it right )

I'd love to help build a Tower Defense game

The link appears to be dead.

and after testing all, how do you conclude if network is up or not? is it that if ANY adapter is up, the network is considered up?

Yes.

this would be the main thing that could prevent the program from actually being usable for real world scenarios, since it could be pretty common that some network adapters will show as up when the user considers their network (internet?) down.. maybe the solution is being able to specify what network adapter to test, or whether the test should be done simply by pinging a web page, etc.

I do have framework for using pinging for the test, I just never implemented any way of turning it on.
I shall do so now.

All of a sudden it keeps crashing with a system.invalidoperationexception.  

Unfortunately that's not very helpful on it's own.  I have had this error before (Due to a race condition when updating an app *during* the launching phase), but that has been fixed.

It is primarily in 1.0, but I tried 1.0.1 and it is having the same issue.

1.0.1 was purely cosmetic changes, so I'm not particularly surprised

I can recreate it and get the system dump information if that will help any.

That would be wonderful.

P.S.  Man, no matter how much I try to plan how long a screencast takes, it is 2 to 3 times longer to actually accomplish.  This is harder than I thought it would be.  Good to learn though.

Feel free to take your time.