Recent Posts

1651

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 22, 2010, 02:13 AM »

I can't wait! I'm going through withdrawls tonight not having any new Twigatelle bits to play with.

- Oshyan

1652

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 21, 2010, 07:09 PM »

You're not going anywhere near my balls!

Honestly it was really just several strokes of luck, getting some ball frenzies and other powerups at the same time. Sometimes it just happens. But I think in general the difficulty level is still pretty good, and being only at level 6 there is plenty of room to ramp it up some more I reckon.

- Oshyan

1653

Living Room / Re: The Third & The Seventh - Beautiful CG short film

« Last post by JavaJones on January 21, 2010, 03:53 PM »

Yeah, this guy is brilliant. It's really his skill with lighting, color, and texture that make the thing. He also uses Vray, a rendering engine which IMHO is pretty tops in the industry. Allows for some very nice indirect lighting effects.

The compositing breakdown is also well worth watching to see how he builds up the scene. Notice how a lot of the realism and impact comes from color correction and post effects:
http://www.vimeo.com/8200251

- Oshyan

1654

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 21, 2010, 03:40 PM »

I reached level 6 and broke the 2 million barrier last night. Good stuff.

- Oshyan

1655

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies for using user-data folders in Windows 7?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 20, 2010, 02:37 PM »

Fair point, maybe an option on install wouldn't be great... then again I doubt 99% of users knew what to do with the networking prompts or perhaps some other ones on install of XP anyway, so perhaps installing the OS is, I dunno, an expert's thing to do in the first place? After all 90% (yet another made up statistic, woo!) of end users (or more?) get their OS shipped pre-installed with their system.

Anyway I'll grant it's not an ideal solution. A better one would be an overhaul that eliminated the need for 2 partitions *on the same drive* just to separate data and applications. Partitions are not necessarily the best logical separation for these things, at least not as they're presently treated in Windows, e.g. showing as different drive letters. What about having a logical data "partition" accessible through drive manager and admin interfaces/tools, thus solving the data corruption and portability issue in the same way as current partitioning schemes, but still showing them as one drive for the lowest common denominator masses who, as Stoic Joker put it above, "...tend to panic if they are faced with more than one of something"

- Oshyan

1656

Living Room / Re: Birth of an Avatar

« Last post by JavaJones on January 20, 2010, 01:34 PM »

Am I the only person who didn't like Avatar (besides my girlfriend)?

- Oshyan

-JavaJones (January 08, 2010, 01:07 AM)

Then you might like this snarky metacontextual version 

-JennyB (January 20, 2010, 05:47 AM)

Hit. Nail. On. Head.

- Oshyan

1657

General Software Discussion / Re: Strategies for using user-data folders in Windows 7?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 19, 2010, 06:25 PM »

It's interesting you bring this up because I've found this to be a real mess, and getting messier despite apparent efforts to the contrary, with each new Windows version (as you also said). Quite honestly I'm sad to say my current approach is neither very clear nor very safe for my data. On my XP machines I did use the My Documents folder extensively, and never remapped it in any of my systems. I know I should have, especially now, but I never really wanted to deal with the pain of it, and preferred just to keep regular full backups (which I must honestly say I don't do properly and regularly enough anyway!).

Now with Win7 I have tried to get a bit more deliberate, I do have a lot of stuff stored in a completely separate external RAID array, which is good, but there are still a good amount of documents, videos, etc. in the default folders. I like the Libraries concept and basic functionality, but hate the remaining legacy of the "My Stuff" folders that are still pointed to by default.

In my opinion this is one of those things the Windows setup should ask you, along with time zone, keyboard layout, etc. e.g. "What is your preferred location for documents and other important user information?" Now granted that is going to be an added complexity for many, but they can always provide a good, easy default for most people, even if it is just the current behavior. As long as there is an option for others to *easily* do this *and* it is setup such that it automatically remaps other apps, old and new, that would want to use that folder. Sadly I doubt we'll see this any time soon.

Anyway I'm afraid I don't have some great strategy to share with you. But I can say that my goal at this point is to move as much as possible away from using those folders and toward my own organizational scheme on my external RAID (which I intend to then backup to another external RAID eventually as full insurance - unfortunately off-site backup is not an option for me due to 1+TB of data). I don't however intend to try moving my User folders or anything. I'll back them up in full though, and leave it at that. It's a compromise unfortunately, and I wish it weren't necessary. Surely there's a better way...

- Oshyan

1658

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 19, 2010, 04:26 PM »

Hah, yeah, I totally thought it was way too luck-oriented at first as well, especially since you can't control the paddle at bottom. Now I get it, and I can advance through it reasonably well.

- Oshyan

1659

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 19, 2010, 04:02 PM »

Yeah, it took me a while to figure out certain bumpers are what gets you past the level. Duh me!

- Oshyan

1660

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 19, 2010, 03:16 PM »

I dug the new level 4 as well. The "wheel" bumpers are fun since you get more ball interaction with them, and there's less room for the ball to fall between at first.

I think once you reach level 5 it just keeps repeating that level, no?

Can't wait for more levels, effects, modes, etc. I have lots of ideas for this, but don't know if you have time/interest to implement. For example a powerup that actually bumps/moves the bumpers when the ball hits it (they would just move once, not become additional balls and bounce around), or a powerup like Peggle has where it shows you the projected n bounces from your current firing direction (really helps in tricky shots).

Also it would be nice to have more options to customize the game experience. I don't know if the position of bumpers is fixed and has to be created in a level editor, but I'd love to be able to just turn up a dial and get more green, more red, more blue, etc. bumpers to customize game difficulty, or at least have a difficulty slider that adjusted these ratios for you (e.g. turning difficulty down would give you less red, more green, and maybe more balls).

I can also imagine a fun game mode with harder difficulties where you could store up powerups and choose to activate them at a particular time using hotkeys. Maybe this is overkill or going beyond the scope of the game. But I really think this is a great opportunity to take the Peggle-like gameplay and extend it to some innovative concepts.

Thanks again for all the hard work on this one. It's addictive and fun.

- Oshyan

1661

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 16, 2010, 09:04 PM »

Cool, it's great to be able to have input on a game one enjoys. Off to try to get to level 5...

- Oshyan

1662

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 15, 2010, 10:28 PM »

So I finally made it to level 3 and a respectable score of 889,000, and I feel better about myself. But having got this far, I really feel like the game could be made easier, or at least have options to be so, as I was missing out on a good portion of the interest and fun for lack of ability to advance. Adding things like control of the paddle at bottom and additional peg hit effects/modes would also extend enjoyment a lot.

Anyway, I hope this is encouraging and doesn't seem like bellyaching. I really like this type of game and hope this continues to develop.

- Oshyan

1663

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Pre-Release: Twigatelle

« Last post by JavaJones on January 15, 2010, 08:09 PM »

I can't even get past the first level yet. I don't get what I'm doing wrong. Frankly it's kind of frustrating I can't control the paddle at the bottom. Or... maybe I can and that's my problem, I don't know all the controls? Is there a control reference? I feel like I must be missing something.

- Oshyan

1664

DC Website Help and Extras / Re: is the chatroom borked?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 15, 2010, 07:27 PM »

Or the web chat room could be, you know, fixed...

I use HydraIRC when I can't use the web client, but it has an awkward preferences dialog and I don't think it has proxy support. Still it's entirely free, unlike nagware mIRC...

- Oshyan

1665

Screenshot Captor / Re: Is it possible to capture a RDP (remote desktop) session?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 13, 2010, 05:42 PM »

I think the ability to capture depends more on the RDP software than the capturing app, at least partly speaking. For example I can easily capture a session of UltraVNC using XnView with default settings. Windows RDP may be different.

- Oshyan

1666

Living Room / Re: Birth of an Avatar

« Last post by JavaJones on January 10, 2010, 01:37 AM »

I thought the actual usage, as directed (or whatever), for the 3D was nice, more subtle in most cases than the usual "spear in your eye" gimmicky 3D use. It was just the quality of it wasn't that great. Might have been the older IMAX theater though?

- Oshyan

1667

Find And Run Robot / Re: How to configure FARR for finding the right exe shortcuts?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 10, 2010, 12:49 AM »

If FARR doesn't already have a way to filter search results by file type/extension, then it totally should...
Ok so I just went and looked at preferences, and I suspect there may be an existing setting to do what you want. Go to Preferences->Lists->Pattern Scoring. Check out the *.exe entry and consider its score...

- Oshyan

1668

General Software Discussion / Re: How to disable Flash from caching to disk?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 10, 2010, 12:33 AM »

Do you have compelling evidence that suggests it's the disk caching that's responsible?

- Oshyan

1669

Living Room / Re: Birth of an Avatar

« Last post by JavaJones on January 08, 2010, 01:07 AM »

Am I the only person who didn't like Avatar (besides my girlfriend)? I agree about one thing though, the 3D lowered visual quality, and I really don't get the hype about it. Everything looked slightly miniature as well. Not impressed.

- Oshyan

1670

Mini-Reviews by Members / Re: Mini-Review: Breeze Cat Litter System

« Last post by JavaJones on January 06, 2010, 02:51 PM »

Great story mateek! Priceless.

Man, I miss having a cat... and you know that's true when talk of litter boxes is getting me all nostalgic.

- Oshyan

1671

Living Room / Re: How can we *share* Donationcoder.com better in 2010?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 06, 2010, 12:50 PM »

I like the idea of soliciting visitor feedback as often and as easily as possible (without being obtrusive).

I also think, as far as "conversion" and the new user experience, a forum is not necessarily the most intuitive and accesible thing for the uninitiated, and with so much of DC coming from the forums, that may present a problem. I'd be very interested in results of the log analysis Perry suggested.

- Oshyan

1672

General Software Discussion / Re: Audio moderator required ...

« Last post by JavaJones on January 05, 2010, 01:19 PM »

Sounds like what you need is a system-wide "normalizer" and/or "compressor" (I always forget the difference). Unfortunately I'm not aware of one specifically, but two thoughts come to mind. First, you might look for a general system-wide equalizer with plugin capability, which might allow for those kinds of effects. Second, if you already have a semi-sophisticated sound card with more advanced capabilities like one of the Sound Blaster Live, Audigy, etc. models, some of their software might have this capability somewhere in the many realtime effects and whatnot...

- Oshyan

1673

General Software Discussion / Re: What is the Best Movie Collection Organizer Program

« Last post by JavaJones on January 04, 2010, 05:35 PM »

I'm still researching this particular topic, and finding that nothing seems to quite meet my needs. But the other thread on this has a lot of useful info, particularly about the media PC people having some good ideas and software...
https://www.donation...x.php?topic=10370.25

- Oshyan

1674

General Software Discussion / Re: Creating "Navigation Points" in Video Files / Annotation?

« Last post by JavaJones on January 04, 2010, 05:06 PM »

I'm not aware of any particularly good solutions for this, particularly any that could create data viewable in multiple players and not just the source app. So I too am very interested in any more informative responses. I do believe this sort of thing was going to be a part of the MPEG4 spec at one point, or perhaps the upcoming MPEG5. Hopefully that comes to pass for MPEG5 at least because then it would be a standard and many players would have support for it.

- Oshyan

1675

General Software Discussion / Re: SUPER © updated, download from Major Geeks

« Last post by JavaJones on January 04, 2010, 04:17 PM »

Looks like a nice update with FLAC, TS and M2TS (common DVR and/or HD disc format), and improved multithreading. Woo! And thanks for the easier download link. Believe it or not I've been using this app for several years now and never bothered to find an easier DL link, even though I too am of course annoyed no end by their crappy website...

- Oshyan