Messages

1

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: May 05, 2021, 01:58 AM »

that video, is that made from your pc or other competitor?

-KodeZwerg (May 04, 2021, 08:18 PM)

Each video is of a different person working on the same game as a team. The one labeled "Deozaan's LD48 Timelapse" was made using screenshots of my PC while I worked on the game. The one labeled "Roidz's LD48 Timelapse" was made using screenshots of my teammate's PC while he worked on the game.

2

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: May 04, 2021, 04:29 PM »

Why does everyone seem to rip on WinRAR?!?

I've been using it for years, and never had a problem with it.

-Stoic Joker (May 04, 2021, 02:22 PM)

I don't think the joke is that WinRAR is bad software. I think the joke is that everybody uses (or has used) it, but nobody has purchased a license.

3

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: May 01, 2021, 12:06 PM »

Here are the timelapses of our work on the game.

Deozaan's LD48 Timelapse:

Roidz's LD48 Timelapse:

4

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: April 27, 2021, 05:38 PM »

We made a game called Let's Go Deeper.

I'll be working on creating "pretty" artwork and screenshots to make the game page(s) look nicer over the next few days. Right now it's fairly barebones looking. And I'll also be creating the usual timelapse videos and will post them here with more stats when they're ready.

5

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: April 24, 2021, 03:24 AM »

The theme is Deeper and Deeper.

I'm diving in! I'll come up for air in a few days.

6

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: April 21, 2021, 11:53 PM »

Less than 48 hours until LD48 begins. The final round of voting is open:

https://ldjam.com/ev.../ludum-dare/48/theme

The theme will be one of the following:

• Automation
• Containment
• Deeper and deeper
• Delivery
• Expansion
• Generations
• Hidden world
• Leave something behind
• Lost signal
• One time use
• One tool, many uses
• Parasite
• Shelter
• Split in two
• Summoning
• You are the power source

7

Post New Requests Here / Re: Show Center of monitor screen

« on: April 21, 2021, 02:06 AM »

But Deozaan made me realize that the taskbar can make a difference? However, I have never had the need for the precise vertical spot, merely the horizontal (width) one. So I am GUESSING that the taskbar that Deozaan is mentioning, not is the problem; I was only talking about the spot being too far to the right. I have not even checked if the displayed spot is too high up or what. Edited: I have Taskbar > AutoHide

-Curt (April 20, 2021, 06:09 PM)

I think you are correct that my guess was unrelated to your issue after all.

FYI the taskbar is not part of the desktop client area. Normal apps center on desktop, so their centering is correct.
You can write code to get around that issue for people who use a ruler to notice that at all 

-KodeZwerg (April 20, 2021, 08:04 PM)

My problem was that I was trying to use OBS to capture a 1920x1080 portion in the center of my 2560x1400 monitor. So I used DisplayFusion and set up a hotkey to resize the current window to 1920x1080 and place it in the center of the screen. Where the window ended up and where OBS recorded on my monitor were not aligned (vertically, as Curt correctly surmised). I found that by setting my taskbar to auto-hide, DisplayFusion began placing the window in the same location that OBS was recording.

8

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: April 20, 2021, 10:27 PM »

It begins in less than 72 hours, and currently all 3 rounds of theme voting are currently open. Though I imagine they'll end soon and it will be time for the final round of voting.

https://ldjam.com/ev...ludum-dare/48/theme/

9

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« on: April 20, 2021, 12:06 PM »

No wonder the hero is an assassin!  Having a single syllable for both first and last name must generate anger management issues. 

-MilesAhead (April 20, 2021, 11:41 AM)

I suspect that the only problem John Doe has with his name is that people often confuse him with someone else.

10

Post New Requests Here / Re: Show Center of monitor screen

« on: April 20, 2021, 11:16 AM »

The app is not doing its job properly on my 1920x1080: The cross comes up half a centimer off center! -even with no apps open.

-Curt (April 20, 2021, 10:00 AM)

Without knowing the full details, my guess is that it has to do with the taskbar always being displayed by default.

I recently encountered a similar issue where an app I use (DisplayFusion) wasn't properly centering windows on my monitor and I found that by setting my taskbar to hide then it would center them properly.

11

Finished Programs / Re: Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 15, 2021, 03:00 AM »

What I can not say is for example how my app react within the one hour thread.
Like, start app, put pc to sleep / disconnect Audio device, wake up Pc and attach Audio (all within one hour)
If it break the chain to the thread (and recheck after 30sec again and again) or if it will dumb do its one hour task to then recognize "hey, no more device, lets wait 30sec to retry"...

-KodeZwerg (April 13, 2021, 04:52 AM)

Just reporting that after having my PC sleep overnight it took approximately 1 hour before kzToneGen recovered and started playing sound again.

12

DC Gamer Club / Re: Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: April 14, 2021, 11:34 AM »

LD48 begins in just over a week (9 days). Currently the Theme Slaughter is happening.

If you want to have some say in the theme for this event, then go vote.

13

General Software Discussion / Re: Resolved(?): How to connect to GitLab using SourceTree?

« on: April 14, 2021, 02:15 AM »

I installed TortoiseGit. It appears to only be a shell extension which adds some context menus to Windows Explorer. I was expecting a GUI like TortoiseHg's Workbench.



After that I tried spending a bit more time with GitHub Desktop now that I realize it can work with GitLab. It seems pretty adequate for the job. Though it appears to be a very bare bones git client that is missing some features, such as the option to stash changes for later.

The Fork Git client is 49 USD if I remember correctly. My boss is the user who deals with both CVS (his favorite versioning system) and Git, the favorite of the main architect in the company receiving the code we produce. And he found this to be a very reasonable price for Fork. To date it is also a one-time fee. If this changes in the future? My crystal ball is too fogged up to see, I'm afraid.

-Shades (April 14, 2021, 01:45 AM)

Briefly checking out Fork's free evaluation and it actually looks pretty nice. It seems I had downloaded the installer last October in my search for GUI Git clients, but never installed it for some reason. Anyway, after playing around with it for about 10 minutes I'm really impressed by it. I'm still pretty new to Git, so I'm not aware of all the differences in features or workflow compared to Hg, but Fork appears to have all the features and support the workflows I'm familiar with.

I can't find any information on their website or within the program itself as to how long the free evaluation lasts or what limitations it has, other than "you can download and evaluate the Software for free, but need to purchase a license for long-term use." But I'm already thinking it may be worth the $50 asking price. It definitely feels a lot better than SourceTree, which is just getting more and more bloated and convoluted over the years.

It's a shame there's not a version for Linux, which I do occasionally (though very rarely) do some development on. Even so, I'm looking forward to working with it more and seeing if I remain impressed with it as time goes on. Thanks very much for the recommendation!

14

General Software Discussion / Re: How to connect to GitLab using SourceTree?

« on: April 13, 2021, 09:43 PM »

It seems that SourceTree was having a temporary brainfart. I realized I had the GitHub Desktop app installed, so I tried it and I was able to use the same PAT I'm using with SourceTree to communicate with my GitLab repositories. After I saw it was working in GitHub Desktop I tried it again in SourceTree and it still didn't work. That was yesterday, but today SourceTree is working for me again. Weird.

A bit of a rant about Atlassian:
Atlassian is a company with an attitude. We use their Jira product. For legal matters we can only use it as an on-premise product. While they first sent out a communication that the Jira on-premise product would still be supported in the future, their most recent communication now simply states that in 2024 all support drops and that there is only the cloud version of Jira available. Although Internet has improved a lot in Paraguay, it still isn't as stable as it should be. So, even if there were no legal bounds (with financial consequences) to consider, cloud solutions are not just as ideal as a solution as an on-premise server is to me.

-Shades (April 13, 2021, 08:18 AM)

That's why I didn't go back to BitBucket even after converting my repositories to Git. I'm ready to migrate away from Atlassian. I'm just using SourceTree for now because I need something now and that's what I know. But I'll be happy to learn/use a new tool.

Similarly with Trello. It just keeps getting worse and worse since Atlassian bought them out. Part of the reason why I made my own To-do List app recently was because I keep fantasizing about making my ideal Trello replacement. At that point I'll be completely rid of all Atlassian products.

Not sure what kind of tooling/IDE you use for development, but I've been very content using VSCode with the Gitlens plugin. Admittedly, I'm 'only' using it with Github (and TFS/AzureDevOps-Git at work), but Gitlab sounds no more than natural to also being supported.

When you're using the Visual Studio IDE, there is the official Gitlab extension available in the marketplace, adding full Gitlab support to VS20xx.

-Ath (April 13, 2021, 01:21 PM)

I used to be a big fan of Sublime Text several years ago, and I see VSCode as feeling pretty similar to it, but for some reason I haven't been able to "get into" using VSCode on anything.

As a direct alternative to SourceTree, Gitkraken is, AFAICS, free for open source Github and Gitlab repo's, so that could also be an option.

-Ath (April 13, 2021, 01:21 PM)

I've attempted to use Gitkraken in the past. It seems nice but I very rarely make my repositories open source or public, and I refuse to pay a subscription. If I could just pay $50-100 for it one time and then be able to use it forever, it might be worth it if it is good enough.

And then there's the 'Classic' TortoiseGIT extension for Windows Explorer, quite similar to TortoiseHg and TortoiseSVN.

-Ath (April 13, 2021, 01:21 PM)

Hmm... Yeah, I guess I'll have to give TortoiseGit a try, since I have years of experience with TortoiseHg.

I use sourcetree and Pageant so I know your pain about the format of the ppk. I'm not sure since you don't know your password, but you can try to regen with PuttyGen from your openssh key and put in the same password you think you used before to see if that helps you connect via SSH.

https://www.simplifi...nvert-ssh-key-to-ppk

-wraith808 (April 13, 2021, 02:42 PM)

Thanks for that! I've got the key converted to PPK format with PuTTYGen. The password worked.

15

General Software Discussion / Resolved(?): How to connect to GitLab using SourceTree?

« on: April 13, 2021, 01:16 AM »

This may be a little niche, or too specific to my situation, but I'm having some troubles and figured I'd ask if anyone here had experience or insight on how to resolve them. No worries if this is too specific. I don't expect anyone here to go through the trouble of setting up GitLab and SourceTree just to help me out, though I wouldn't put it past some of you people to be that awesomely helpful.

A Brief-ish History:
Ten years ago a thread started here on some relatively new distributed version control systems called Git and Mercurial (Hg). At the time when I researched them, I wanted to use Git but it wasn't easy to get working on Windows, so I ended up using Hg. So for about the past ten years I've become an old fart, set in my ways, thumbing my nose at Git while more or less happily using Hg with BitBucket and TortoiseHg. That is, until last year when BitBucket dropped support for Hg repositories.

For a little while I remained stubborn and hosted my own RhodeCode server but it wasn't ideal because I actually collaborate with at least one other person on a somewhat regular basis and my ISP's upload speed isn't that great and my internet connection kept dropping out frequently, so it wasn't very reliable for others to connect to and use.

As a result, this past December I decided to bite the bullet and convert all my repositories to Git and start using Git from then on. And after doing some research I decided I'd rather be using GitLab than GitHub. So I first used a feature of GitHub to import my Mercurial repositories from my personal RhodeCode server and convert them to Git automatically. Then I used a feature of GitLab to import my GitHub repositories to GitLab.

While I was still using Hg, I was alternating between using TortoiseHg and SourceTree to manage my repositories. That is, I primarily used TortoiseHg, but I felt SourceTree had better integrated using development branches more easily. When I made the move to Git, I obviously had to drop TortoiseHg, but I decided to just keep using SourceTree, which supports both Git and Hg (for now... Atlassian owns BitBucket and SourceTree).

I think I got it all configured and had it working in December so that I could connect with GitLab and push/pull to/from my repositories. But then this year I've kind of taken a break from my usual thing and have just been doing little experiments that I never felt were big or important enough for version control. But now I'm starting to get back into wanting version control and I've run into a problem where I can't seem to get SourceTree to work with GitLab anymore.

The Problem:
Somehow I was able to successfully create a new remote repository from SourceTree, but then I immediately got an error when it tried to push my local repo to it. The error looks something like this:

[Select]

remote: HTTP Basic: Access denied
remote: You must use a personal access token with 'read_repository' or 'write_repository' scope for Git over HTTP.
remote: You can generate one at https://gitlab.com/-/profile/personal_access_tokens
fatal: Authentication failed for 'https://gitlab.com/Deozaan/MyCoolRepository.git/'

GitLab has something called "personal access tokens" (PAT) which can be used in place of your password to authenticate third-party apps to work with your account. The UI doesn't make it very clear (IMO) which scopes are needed, and which scopes include the privileges of other scopes, etc. So, while the PAT I created from December had only the "api" scope, the error message says I need "read_repository" and/or "write_repository" so I created a new PAT with all the scopes.

It didn't help. I still get the same error.

I tried changing the URL to use SSH instead of HTTPS, but then it just asks me to load a ppk file which supposedly contains my SSH key. I don't have one of those. Or at least not the right one. I found one on my PC which I thought might be the right one, but when I load it, it just asks me for the SSH password over and over again. So it seems that the password I have stored in my password manager for GitLab SSH key does not match whatever SSH key is in that ppk file.

I do have my SSH private key stored in my password manager, but the putty agent (pageant) which SourceTree uses seems to require PPK format instead of... whatever format I have it stored as. It starts with "-----BEGIN OPENSSH PRIVATE KEY-----" whereas the random PPK file I found where I thought my GitLab SSH key would be starts with "PuTTY-User-Key-File-2: ssh-rsa"



So here I am with two PATs that don't seem to work anymore. Somehow I have saved an incompatible SSH key/password in my password manager. I swear I had this all working fine in December and I don't know what changed in the interim. And I don't know if it's a classic case of PEBCAK, or if GitLab's PATs aren't working right, or if SourceTree is not working properly. I just want to be able to push to and pull from my GitLab repos from SourceTree!

That said, I'm mostly just sticking with SourceTree because I'm already familiar with it and because it's free. If there's an alternative (and free) Git GUI client that works well with GitLab and runs on Windows which would solve my problem, I'd be happy to hear your recommendations on that front, as well.

16

Finished Programs / Re: Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 13, 2021, 12:48 AM »

I have added again a micro change.
Running with verbose switch = every minute it detect audio.  (for debug purposes to see whats happen)
Running without verbose switch = every hour it detect audio. (for normal usage)
(it will recover, might need one hour to do so in worst case)

-KodeZwerg (April 12, 2021, 01:15 PM)

So... here's an idea. Let me know if this will work or if there's a reason this can't be done (or if you just don't want to do it, that's fine, too):

Can you check the system datetime every minute, and only detect audio if the datetime is significantly different from the last time it was checked? My thinking is that if the app checks the time before I put my PC to sleep, then when I wake it up again the next time the app checks the time it will see that several hours have passed.

So, I think something as simple as only detect audio if the clock has changed by 5+ minutes should be sufficient.

17

Finished Programs / Re: Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 12, 2021, 10:58 AM »

@KodeZwerg: I have good news and bad news. v0.4 appears to successfully recover from sleep now! But it is a bit worse in terms of the moment-to-moment usage. If there's no other audio playing, v0.4 makes the speakers crackle every few minutes when it detects the audio device.

@app103: Thanks for that. The info you linked was a dead end for me, and my BT dongle is a cheap generic Chinese product from DealExtreme or AliExpress or similar. It didn't come with drivers or any indication of the manufacturer or chipset so I'm reliant on Windows to determine what drivers it needs and whether or not there are updates available, and it says there are no updates. But the Wave Generator seems to work well. 10 Hz isn't audible (to me) from this speaker, so I don't mind this as a solution until I decide to spend the few dollars on a USB->audio jack dongle. I haven't tested whether or not it survives/recovers from my PC entering sleep mode since I stopped it so I could test out KodeZwerg's app, but I suspect I'll find that out sometime in the coming days.

18

Finished Programs / Re: Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 11, 2021, 01:29 PM »

v0.3 doesn't seem to work for me. It says it's playing my favorite kind of music ( ) but the speaker never makes the initial crackle sound that would indicate audio is playing, and the volume mixer doesn't show any indication that any audio is being played. And when other audio does play, it begins with the crackling that this app is meant to help avoid.

v0.2 does work for me configured at 10 Hz at 0.1 volume, but has some issues which I'm not sure you can fix. When I put my computer to sleep and wake it up again in the morning, it doesn't seem to be playing audio anymore. I think this may have something to do with the fact that my PC has to reconnect to the BT speaker, which changes the output audio temporarily. My guess is that your app doesn't handle changes to the audio device and doesn't recover from that. But once I stop it and start it up again, it works like a charm until the next time I put my PC to sleep.

19

Finished Programs / Re: Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 10, 2021, 03:00 AM »

Me hopes to fulfilled your wish.

-KodeZwerg (April 10, 2021, 02:13 AM)

Thank you kindly. I'll start using it and give you more feedback if needed. If you don't hear back from me on this, then that means it's working well.

20

General Software Discussion / Re: Windows 10 Announced

« on: April 10, 2021, 02:57 AM »

I had an old Pentium I computer with a combo modem/soundcard that had issues staying connected to the internet when a system sound played (system would lock up just long enough to kick me offline), unless there was sound continuously flowing through the soundcard at all times. This meant playing music all the time, and usually keeping the speakers turned off if I didn't want to hear it, till I came across a small app capable of playing continuous low frequency tones that my cheap speakers were unable to produce. (25 Hz did the trick)

-app103 (December 18, 2020, 11:13 PM)

I originally made a reply here asking about this app, and got a few responses and a solution. But since it wasn't really related to Windows 10, those posts have been split off into a new thread here:

Program to play inaudible sound continuously

21

Finished Programs / Re: Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 10, 2021, 01:21 AM »

Thank you very much for your response, Shades. Your suggestions look like adequate workarounds for my issue.

Example: "kzToneGenerator.exe 100 1000 0.5"  <<- would play a 100Hz sound for 1000ms(1sec) at half possible volume output.

Like it, tell me?! Just a quicky made for you

-KodeZwerg (April 09, 2021, 10:53 PM)

It works wonderfully. May I request a change to pass in -1 duration for it to play forever? Or possibly have it play forever until I press some input (such as Q) to stop it? If you don't want to bother with adding input checking, then I'm fine with being able to have it play forever and I can press ctrl-c to interrupt it.

22

Finished Programs / Program to play inaudible sound continuously

« on: April 09, 2021, 06:39 PM »

Old solutions for new problems....

I had an old Pentium I computer with a combo modem/soundcard that had issues staying connected to the internet when a system sound played (system would lock up just long enough to kick me offline), unless there was sound continuously flowing through the soundcard at all times. This meant playing music all the time, and usually keeping the speakers turned off if I didn't want to hear it, till I came across a small app capable of playing continuous low frequency tones that my cheap speakers were unable to produce. (25 Hz did the trick)

Flash forward to a couple of days ago, when a screwy Windows feature update, which I am unable to uninstall, messed up my bluetooth, so that no matter how I have the hardware settings configured, it turns Bluetooth off (to save power) when it thinks it is not in use. This is very BAD for a bluetooth mouse. I reported here about this issue in this thread, and was avoiding reinstalling that update for as long as possible, but Microsoft managed to automatically cram it down my throat when I recently rebooted my machine, despite having updates paused till some time in January.

BUT I noticed it doesn't cut off my mouse if I have sound playing through my bluetooth headphones. So, I am back to using that very old app, to generate a continuous 10 Hz tone, just so I can use my mouse.

I had to use the system volume mixer to set the volume of this app at a very low level, since my bluetooth headphones are capable of producing audible sound generated from this app, at even the lowest (10 Hz) setting.

-app103 (December 18, 2020, 11:13 PM)

Do you have a link to that app, app?

About 6 months ago I moved my entire PC setup into another room, and when I plugged in my speakers to the power source (a surge protector), they made a very loud POP sound, and ever since then none of the audio jacks on my PC work. So now I've got a bluetooth speaker connected to my PC, but it has the unfortunate problem of taking half a second to "warm up" (or catch up?) whenever some audio is played for the first time after a few seconds of silence. And it's like it receives and plays that first half-second of audio all at once, making an unpleasant (and relatively loud) popping or crackling sound in the speaker as it begins to play audio.

I figure if I could trick it into thinking it is constantly playing audio, then it would stay "awake" and not have this issue. Then I remembered you mentioned playing an inaudible, low frequency sound to help with your BT issues and so here I am, asking about it.

23

PublicDomainVic / Re: Taskbar Gone - Hide the Windows Taskbar from login or via Hotkey (v0.1.0)

« on: April 06, 2021, 02:05 PM »

Nice work, as usual!

A little suggestion, if I may. It would be helpful if you included in your release threads (like this one) a little description about what your app is intended to be used for or why someone would want to use it. It doesn't need to be elaborate. Just a sentence or few. I know you include the link to the original thread that people can click through to read more details, but people prefer to be lazy and not have to click elsewhere to learn what the thing on this page does. And yes, even if the name of the app seems fairly self-explanatory, it would still be useful to have a short description, in my opinion.

Thanks for always being so helpful in taking up the coding snack requests!

24

DC Gamer Club / Ludum Dare 48: April 23rd-26th, 2021

« on: April 06, 2021, 12:49 AM »

Ludum Dare 48 is approaching fast! It begins three Fridays from now.

To be honest, I'm not especially motivated to participate this time, but it's kind of historic in that it's the 48th event of that which used to be called "LD48" due to its origin as a 48-hour game jam before being rebranded as "LDJam" a few years ago. So I feel I can't miss out on being a part of LD48. That said, I've never actually done the 48-hour "compo" and have always participated in the more laid-back 72-hour jam. Anyway, this time I'll be participating in the 72-hour jam as part of a team once again, so that should lighten the load.

Right now theme suggestions are open. Anyone can submit up to 3 themes, even if they're not participating. You just need to register a free account to be able to do so. If you'd like to suggest a theme, you may do so here: https://ldjam.com/ev.../ludum-dare/48/theme


EDIT: My team made Let's Go Deeper for LD48.



See previous posts on DonationCoder about Ludum Dare:

Ludum Dare 47 - (My team made Chrono Crash for LD47)
Ludum Dare 46 - (My team made Defendeer for LD46)
Ludum Dare 45 Reviews - A thread about LD45 games
Ludum Dare 41 - (My team made It's Not Lupus! for LD41)
Ludum Dare 2017 Thread - A thread about games from LD37 and LD38
Ludum Dare 33 - A thread about LD33 games
Ludum Dare 32 - (I made Time Bomb during LD32)
Ludum Dare 31 - (I made Worm Wars during LD31)
Ludum Dare 30 - (I made Planetary Devourers during LD30)
Ludum Dare 29 - (I made It Came From... Beneath!! during LD29)
Ludum Dare [29] topic for other games - A thread about LD29 games
Ludum Dare 23 - (I made Be Tiny, World! during LD23)
Ludum Dare - Game Programming Challenges

25

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: April 03, 2021, 12:09 AM »

He eventually uploaded the full course to Youtube, so the whole world is now able to enjoy it, for free.

-app103 (April 02, 2021, 12:22 PM)

Thanks for that. I just watched the whole thing. I learned something.