Recent Posts

29526

Announce Your Software/Service/Product / Re: Free RSA crypto component for C++ Builder 2006

« Last post by mouser on September 27, 2006, 05:18 AM »

tchikien is that yours? nice!

why not put it up on a webpage somewhere?

29527

Official Announcements / Re: --> SEPTEMBER SOFTWARE DRAWING RESULTS - POSTED!

« Last post by mouser on September 27, 2006, 05:05 AM »

Embarrassingly, I thought I had to draw a picture or something to enter the 'Drawing' contest.

 
hahahahaah - i wonder if others have made the same confusion.. perhaps we need to stop calling it a "drawing"

29528

Skrommel's Software / Re: LabelControl

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 07:06 PM »

skrommel seems to be on a little vacation recently, but i suspect he'll be back soon so just give him a little time.

29529

Developer's Corner / Nice blog on rapid game prototyping

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 07:03 PM »

Interested in creating a game in a week? I mean who wouldn’t be. Everybody’s got great ideas for a game. Unfortunately you can’t design fun on paper. So the best way to see if a game is fun to play, is to create the damn game (or at least a playable prototype).
..
I thought I would gather here a little list of articles about rapid game prototyping. These are from very different contexts and there might be some segments in these articles not directly related to rapid development.

http://www.kloonigames.com/blog/

from http://www.raphkoster.com/

29530

Found Deals and Discounts / Re: McAfee for free

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 05:33 PM »

i would - i like mcaffee; not currently what im using, but it's a nice find i think.
thank you for the post!

29531

Living Room / Re: Flash Game: Artificial Lifeform Intended for Assassination and Sabotage

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 03:16 PM »

really beautifully animated - very professional.

29532

Developer's Corner / Re: Game Engines and Apps

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 03:12 PM »

let me start with a 2d engine that i really kind of like, the only problem is that it's windows-only, which could be a real drawback for someone looking to make a popular game.  It's also not very actively developed and doesn't have a giant community, more drawbacks.

HAAF'S GAME ENGINE

http://hge.relishgames.com/

HGE is an easy to use yet powerful hardware accelerated 2D game engine. It is a full featured middleware for all who want to develop commercial quality 2D games rapidly and easily. It covers all imaginable 2D game genres: you could create everything from a simple puzzle to advanced multilayered platformer or strategy without even thinking of any non game logic code! And you don't have to know anything about "window messages", DirectX programming and all that stuff. Instead you can start developing your own game within 15 minutes!

HGE runs on Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP and requires DirectX 8.0. It will run even on low-end video cards, including built in video cards such as Intel Solano (i815 chipset). HGE can be used with virtually any C++ compiler including Visual C++, Borland C++, MinGW and Metrowerks Codewarrior.

 Strict concentration on subject "2D games"
Task oriented design. Nothing redundant and lots of higher level features.
 
 Simple interface and extreme easiness
You don't have to know anything about system programming and don't need any additional libraries. Classes and headers that make sense. Very easy to set up and use.
 
 Technical advanceness
HGE is built upon modern Direct3D API what allows lots of special effects and great performance. Alpha blending, color tinting, geometry transformations etc. without performance hit at all!
 
 Complete and clear documentation
All the features thoroughly grouped and described, lots of general game development hints provided.
 
 HGE just feels right!
HGE is highly consistent. Every minor feature is carefully planned and interconnected with others.
 
 Free
HGE is distributed under The zlib/libpng license, i.e. it is completely free for any uses including commercial ones.

29533

Developer's Corner / Re: Game Engines and Apps

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 02:58 PM »

a comprehensive list of engines could be asking for too much maybe, especially given that their are entire large sites devoted to listing engines, but maybe a comprehensive list of the very TOP engines, or engine REVIEW SITES ?

I really do hope we see more game development by dc members!

29534

Living Room / Re: Play: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 02:55 PM »

it's quite well done, even down to the phone call stuff.

29535

Official Announcements / SEPTEMBER SOFTWARE DRAWING RESULTS - POSTED!

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 12:02 PM »

WINNERS OF THE SEPTEMBER 2006 FREE SOFTWARE DRAWING

Once a year we devote a month here at DonationCoder.com to having a fundraising celebration, where we ask both new and old members alike to consider making a donation to support our site.

As you know we have a software giveaway every month, but we always try to make the fundraising month a little special, and this month we are giving away an unprecedented number of top-quality programs, including:

• WebSite Watcher, Genie-Soft Backup Manager Pro, Surfulater, TechSmith Camtasia, TheBat! Pro, FontCreator Pro, XYplorer, UltraEdit, Help & Manual, Zoom Player Pro, EssentialPIM Pro, CD Bank Cataloguer, TextPipe Pro, Font Expert 2006, Power Archiver, DHTMLMenu, SlySoft AnyDVD, Guitar and Drum Trainer, Collectorz Triple Bundle With BarCode Scanner

A huge thanks to all of the companies who donated software for us to give away, and made very generous discounts available for our members.

If you haven't won anything, please remember you still have until September 30th to take advantage of use the discounts for these and the other programs offered in August.  The discounts are listed here (on the specials page) and supporting members can access them directly here (in the members only discount code section).

And now the results:


Winners of 'WebSite Watcher' (5):

• alexey_r
• cjseymour
• Nelson Carvalho
• doublebogey
• superticker

Winners of 'Genie-Soft Backup Manager Pro' (5):

• rokarge
• katydragon
• jparks
• DVB
• daddyman

Winners of 'Surfulater' (5):

• brotman
• Nomadin
• smarcin
• twinkler
• shinger

Winners of 'TechSmith Camtasia' (3):

• bratliff
• bobdec
• vallipow

Winners of 'TheBat! Pro' (5):

• zj
• hamradio
• Nodrog
• cemole
• AdIyhc

Winners of 'FontCreator Pro' (5):

• KenR
• thunder7
• allen
• Carol Haynes
• wraith808

Winners of 'XYplorer' (5):

• Notts
• Canacoder
• godsgeek
• jgpaiva
• JavaJones

Winners of 'UltraEdit' (5):

• Poolee
• gwynevans
• mukestar
• Rohit
• eFotografo

Winners of 'Help & Manual' (1):

• tinjaw

Winners of 'Zoom Player Pro' (2):

• superboyac
• OldElmerFudd

Winners of 'EssentialPIM Pro' (5):

• NigelH
• pfflyer
• Redhat
• thomthowolf
• donzonion

Winners of 'CD Bank Cataloguer' (5):

• heavy
• stoobee
• lanux128
• Josh
• Cavalcader

Winners of 'Font Expert 2006' (5):

• Don 1
• tseaman
• kab122
• rssapphire
• app103

Winners of 'Power Archiver' (5):

• A64
• Loonier
• psaving
• Yukon
• LokiLoki

Winners of 'DHTMLMenu' (5):

• insert_nick
• genezip
• Parchuvegal
• mikebd
• fredchoum

Winners of 'SlySoft AnyDVD' (5):

• Leander
• tehmul
• jdakpiglet
• Defenestration
• tinyvillager

Winners of 'Guitar and Drum Trainer' (5):

• sahara
• Terry
• Jerrod777
• Perry Mowbray
• rotassator

Winners of 'Collectorz Triple Bundle With BarCode Scanner' (1):

• Cloq

Winners of 'DonationCoder.com Collector's Mug' (2):

• Who?
• JEdwardP

Winners of 'Rare Handmade Cody Mascot Figurine' (1):

• f0dder

Winners of 'DonationCoder CafePress Item of Choice' (1):

• mteal

All winners are now being notified by email to their forum email address.  If you haven't received an email but your name is listed above, check spam filters and forum email address, and then mail [email protected] and let us know you never got any mail.  It can take a few days for companies to send you your serial number; if a few days pass and you haven't received it - send a reminder to the company email as noted in your winning notification email, or to us by replying to the email you received or to [email protected]


An extra special thanks is due to Ampa who handled virtually everything related to the discounts and donated software and drawing this month.  It's a hell of a lot more work than you might think.

Curious about how we award prizes?  See https://www.donation...dex.php?topic=1684.0 for a discussion about our custom prize optimizer utility. Winning something one month reduces your chances of winning the next month, and being helpful on the forum slightly increases your chances.

29536

Mobysaurus / Re: Mobysaurus Thesaurus v1.0.27 receives Editor's Review 5/5 Rating from Softpedia!

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 11:22 AM »

i have to say, i've never seen softpedia give such a big review - it's obvious they really like the program.. Congratulations Anderson!

29537

Post New Requests Here / Re: IDEA: Command Line Renamer

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 10:27 AM »

such a program should exist im quite sure.. hopefully someone will be able to point us to one.
definitely a useful idea.

29538

Find And Run Robot / Re: search for all matches shorcut / button

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 10:26 AM »

it's not a bad idea to use a special hotkey for this - i'll add it to todo list.

29539

Find And Run Robot / Re: comment on new version 1.10.02 beta

« Last post by mouser on September 26, 2006, 07:37 AM »

All the new trick does is briefly access the the cache items and the directories in the search list (not recursively), every 10 minutes, in an attempt to convince the system  to keep these directories in the operating systems own cache.  It's very primitive and just an experiment.  in my heart i've always felt the operating system should be smart enough to cache this stuff, so this is my attempt to see if i can "covince it" to do so.

I get ~1351 I/O operations on first trigger without entering any text, of which the majority are accesses to desktop.ini - this seems to be FARR getting information on each item in the history list.

this is strange - i am going to studd io operations when testing farr in the future and see if i can't see what causes what.  it really shouldn't be going through the entire history list unless something regressed in the last version (which is possible), since it not supposed to even look behind the top items on a blank search.

29540

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature limits for clipboard extenders

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 07:02 PM »

firefox really does open your eyes to the possibility of plugins.

29541

Living Room / Re: Hungy Space: today's flash game

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 05:59 PM »

please someone tell me they got big enough to eat those giant blue bastards..
where's a flash addict like Rover when you need him?

29542

Living Room / Re: Hungy Space: today's flash game

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 05:51 PM »

addictive..

29543

Clipboard Help+Spell / Re: Feature limits for clipboard extenders

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 05:16 PM »

very nice write up Mark, as are most of your writeups - i hope you'll keep us informed whenever you add something.. it's daunting to see how much overlap there is between all of these programs, and the note taking programs, don't you think?

29544

Official Announcements / Re: Upgrading forum software on server to rc1.3 today.. be prepared for issues

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 11:47 AM »

ok found a couple of gremlines but mostly things look good.

29545

Official Announcements / Re: Upgrading forum software on server to rc1.3 today.. be prepared for issues

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 10:42 AM »

upgrade has completed, now i suspect there may be some lingering bugs i need to fix.. if you find an error please post it here or email me ([email protected]).

29546

Living Room / Re: Amazing VR setup for R/C airplane

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 10:06 AM »

Beautiful. 

29547

General Software Discussion / Re: foobar...honestly...WTF?! WTF?!

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 07:15 AM »

someone showed me a column-ui addon for foobar - without that i found the program unusable, but with that it's not bad.

 http://music.morbo.org/columns.php

29548

The Getting Organized Experiment of 2006 / Re: GETTING ORGANIZED EXPERIMENT - WEEK FOUR ASSIGNMENT

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 07:13 AM »

well, let me suggest that i had almost the opposite insight about the "little and often" and 5 minutes per day thing.

i found that i put it off until the evening, and then ended up doing about 15-20 minutes.

but here is what i realized - yes i put it off to the last minute, as usual.  BUT the key was that the "last minute" now became the difference between doing it in the morning and doing it in the evening (ie 12 hours difference).

in the scope of a larger project that difference is meaningless.

my point is this: if i'm always ending up putting things off to the "last minute", then the beauty of actually SCHEDULING some work time on a project every day, is that even if you put it off to the last minute, your really only putting it off 12 hours.  wheras if your todo list says "write article by Dec 25th", then the "last minute" is 3 months away and leaves you with only a day to do it all.

so i'm going to embrace this idea of scheduling some work time each day, and not worry about doing it "first thing"; i'll let myself put it off till the last minute of the day for now.

by the way forsters trick worked for me, at least for my first try at faking myself out by saying "i'll only work on this for 5 minutes" - once i got started it was trivial to work for 15-20 minutes.  it's that first minute that's the hardest.

29549

Official Announcements / Upgrading forum software on server to rc1.3 today.. be prepared for issues

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 04:18 AM »

i'm planning on upgrading the smf forum software to rc1.3 today so please be prepared for forum strangeness while i do..

29550

Developer's Corner / Re: Are you satisfied with BDS 2006 (Turbo C++) IDE ??

« Last post by mouser on September 25, 2006, 03:59 AM »

How to make Delphi 2005 look like Delphi 7

http://blogs.borland...005/07/06/20152.aspx