Recent Posts

6801

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

« Last post by Deozaan on February 02, 2010, 03:14 AM »

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not, but one time I managed to clear away all the pegs from a level upon completing it. I was disappointed that there was no super mega bonus for this amazing (and lucky) accomplishment.

6802

Living Room / Re: Simon Tatham's Portable Puzzle Collection

« Last post by Deozaan on January 30, 2010, 08:10 PM »

NECROPOST WARNING: My brother recently pointed out this site to me, so I figured it might be a good idea to resurrect this thread from the dead.

6803

Living Room / Re: External harddisk broken?

« Last post by Deozaan on January 28, 2010, 01:17 AM »

The drive does power up and spins without making any aweful noises, but when the OS tries to access it, merely cycles endlessly through a 4 or 5 second loop of whirs and clicks.

-Ampa (January 26, 2010, 10:46 AM)

This probably isn't useful, but I had a similar problem with a new SATA 2 HDD I bought. I plugged it in and it would just whir and click. It turns out I had to put the jumper on a specific setting for my non-SATA2 motherboard to recognize it.

6804

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 28, 2010, 01:14 AM »

Twigatelle 0.5 is out:

1. Deozaan's bouncy bumper bug fixed
2. Deozaan's Improved Aiming Request Implemented with Alacrity (I always work faster with DIARIA  )
3. Blue rectangles are now very, very blue.

-timns (January 27, 2010, 09:53 PM)

1. Nice! Though that one is a bit hard for me to try to get again to test.

2. Hmm... Now it seems to kind of undershoot where I'm aiming for. What I'm doing is aiming it off near one of the top corners (but still low enough that the cannon still tracks the mouse movement) and then seeing if the center of the ball goes through where the mouse pointer is located. At the worst, the ball completely misses where the pointer (I'm talking pixel precision--the tip of the pointer) is pointing.

I even tried aiming just high enough that the ball should have gone completely over the top right peg and it hit it.

EDIT: I just noticed that it seems to be more accurate than I first perceived. It does still seem a little underpowered, but probably not as bad as I first let on.

3. Awesome! Thanks. Now if you could do the same thing to the curved "pipes" or semicircle thingies.

4. New bug(?): I got a ball frenzy and one of the balls later hit a Nega-Gavity powerup, but only one ball was affected by the nega-gravity. Is that a bug or a feature?

6805

Living Room / Re: Best trackball?

« Last post by Deozaan on January 28, 2010, 12:55 AM »

I'm with Ehtyar. I love the Logitech Trackman Wheel. Unfortunately it doesn't appear to come in Left-Handed versions.

My 5 minutes of research leads me to the conclusion that people seem to love the Logitech Trackman Marble. But you say you have one already and need something better. So I'm afraid I'm of no help to this particular line of inquiry.

6806

DC Gamer Club / Re: Gog.com countdown (7 hours left)

« Last post by Deozaan on January 28, 2010, 12:34 AM »

It's been announced in a CNet exclusive. Some people are throwing a fit about CNet announcing it early, so click the spoiler to see:

Spoiler

Classic Activision games:

http://news.cnet.com...275-1.html?tag=mncol

6807

DC Gamer Club / Re: Gog.com countdown (7 hours left)

« Last post by Deozaan on January 27, 2010, 10:18 PM »

I'd say it's OpenOffice.

6808

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 27, 2010, 06:06 PM »

Can you try again please Deozaan? You should see a "0.4" version number on the main screen. If you don't, then for some annoying reason the latest version is not downloading automatically.

-timns (January 26, 2010, 05:21 PM)

I just tried it again, and it did indeed show 0.4 on the main menu. It still overshoots the pegs that are far away.

And I found a bug: I got Power Bumpers just before my last ball fell into the pit, and when I clicked Retry, I started the round over with the remaining time left on my Power Bumpers.

6809

General Software Discussion / Re: Generic Card/Board Game Prototyping and Playtesting Tools

« Last post by Deozaan on January 26, 2010, 05:19 PM »

I think you are right about the future of table-top gaming with regards to the surface-like touch screen tables, and also the coming 3d/holographic projection tables.

-mouser (January 26, 2010, 12:25 PM)

Well, then take a look at this. 

-tinjaw (January 26, 2010, 02:15 PM)

Wow that's cool! I've embedded the video below.

6810

General Software Discussion / Re: Scumbags Hall of Shame

« Last post by Deozaan on January 26, 2010, 05:06 PM »

Why not link to them?

-Bamse (January 26, 2010, 12:51 PM)

I think mainly because if you link to them, there are websites like McAfee's Site Advisor that will give DonationCoder an "unsafe" or "untrusted" rating because it links to other known "unsafe/untrusted" websites.

6811

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 26, 2010, 05:00 PM »

Ironically some of the real things were IMO the weakest parts of the film (photographer just too arty & cliched, pigeon & flowers a bit kitchy).

-tomos (January 25, 2010, 06:09 AM)

That's interesting. I was thinking along the same lines. Especially with regard to the photographer. I was sure the photographer was CG because it was one of the worst looking parts of the whole thing.

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 26, 2010, 04:56 PM »

The game seems to run much faster now, though the framerate is a near constant 46 FPS.

1. The ball now hits the point where your mouse pointer is aiming it!

-timns (January 26, 2010, 04:32 PM)

It is still overshooting when I aim way off to the side. Try it on level 1. Shoot for the top-left and top-right pegs. If I aim for the top center of these two pegs, the ball usually goes completely over the peg.

4. Bumpers fly in from off the screen instead of the top corners!

-timns (January 26, 2010, 04:32 PM)

Awesome! Don't forget about the magic trail/explosion particle effect. There's a white pixel that shows on top (towards the left) of the screen the entire time when there is no magic trail following the ball and no pegs are exploding.

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 25, 2010, 12:40 AM »

I'm still having a really hard time finding the purple "bonus" bars and semi-circles. They look too much like the blue ones.

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 25, 2010, 12:34 AM »

At first I was sitting there thinking criticizing thoughts along the lines of "Yeah well, it's not hard to make CGI look photorealistic when everything is blurry!" but by the end of the film I was smiling and delighted.

A great piece of art indeed!

6815

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 23, 2010, 01:38 AM »

Is it just me or does disabling the background music not actually do anything?

EDIT: It turned off after finishing the first level (I lost).

6816

Post New Requests Here / IDEA: Continuous/Repeating Goal/Task Tracker Website with API

« Last post by Deozaan on January 21, 2010, 03:17 AM »

Hello,

This idea may not qualify for a coding snack because it actually comes in a few parts, some of which might be simple enough to be a coding snack, but others I'm sure would likely require a much more involved process.

Part 1: What I'm looking for is a website that would allow a person to create an account under which the user could then set recurring tasks that can be checked off or tracked.

Ideally it would have an API so that a mobile app can be made for cell phones (I currently have an Android phone, so that would be my request).

So for example, I might have a goal of reading a book for 30 minutes each day. At the end of the day I could bring up my tracker and check off that I fulfilled the daily task.

But say I wanted to expand my social horizons and make new friends, so I might have a goal of talking to three new people a week. At the end of the week I could either have a boolean result (goal met or not) or a fraction (2 out of 3 talked to).

The idea is to make it very simple with only a few options for simplicity's sake. But to have a few options such as daily, weekly, and monthly tasks with boolean (check box) tracking or tally (2 out of 3) tracking.

Then the true beauty of the whole thing is that from the database kept, you could gather all sorts of statistical information, so you can track your progress and improvements over long periods of time.

I'm typing this all up from my cell phone at 2 AM (which I'm sure you can imagine takes quite a while) because I thought it was a great idea and didn't want to forget about it. I'll flesh out this post a bit more when I am at a PC with internet in the next day or two.

If you have any comments or questions, go ahead and post them, but please understand I know I didn't explain very well because that would take way too long on my mobile and I need to sleep, so as I said, this post will be fleshed out more in a day or two.

6817

Living Room / Re: I can haz LOLMouser plz?

« Last post by Deozaan on January 21, 2010, 12:01 AM »

A continuation of this one.

6818

DcUpdater / Re: Dcuppdater.exe crashes multiple times daily in W7...

« Last post by Deozaan on January 11, 2010, 12:41 AM »

I tried the new version and it did not crash in Windows 7 (64-bit). So it looks good to me.

6819

DC Gamer Club / Re: Torchlight - Short Rant

« Last post by Deozaan on January 10, 2010, 12:31 AM »

So I've given Torchlight a try on a PC that can handle it. A few thoughts:

Loading times take forever! Probably 20-30 seconds any time I go from town to the dungeon. Also, why the long load time just to show the menu, which upon clicking Continue makes it load all over again before letting me play? Ugh!

Being able to send your pet to town to sell your stuff is a great idea! Too bad they totally ruined it by completely interrupting the game whenever your pet returns. Is there any way to disable the "Your pet has returned!" notification that breaks the flow of gameplay? They have a voice announce the return of my pet anyway. So why couldn't the pet just come to you and drop the money at your feet, which would make you automatically pick it up and then you'd know how much he earned selling your crap without interrupting the game?

What's with the vague/interchangeable classes? I thought I picked the magic class, so why am I able to spend skillpoints on improving armor or melee or ranged weapons? Where are all my cool spells?

I'm not finding that the game flows very well. I find myself constantly stopping to sort the loot and send my pet to town to sell, which then stops the game again in a minute or so when he returns.

I'm practically falling asleep playing the game.

The music sounds very similar to Diablo music. Yeah, I know, the same guy did the music for Torchlight, but it just reminds me of Diablo and makes me wish I was playing it with some buddies instead of Torchlight alone.

I'd say it's a mediocre hack'n'slash with some (one?) really good--though poorly implemented--new idea(s). All in all I'm very glad I waited until it was $5 before I bought it. I would feel extremely disappointed had I spent more on it. I don't understand why everyone else seems to have nothing but high praise for it.

6820

Living Room / Re: Great Britain is frozen!

« Last post by Deozaan on January 08, 2010, 06:24 PM »

Curse you, Global Warming!

6821

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Final Release: Leap of Faith

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2010, 06:48 PM »

...the blocks all disappeared, and I fell to the ground. Is that a win, a lose, or a tie?

-Stoic Joker (January 07, 2010, 06:43 PM)

That's how the "next level" starts when you reach the goal.

It should be noted that the goal is not a block you can stand on. You're supposed to be able to go through it, but it should trigger the "new" level. I may need to improve the methods used to detect "collision" with the goal. I've also noticed problems when trying to enter the goal from above.

6822

N.A.N.Y. 2010 / Re: NANY 2010 Final Release: Leap of Faith

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2010, 06:21 PM »

Well, something happens when you reach the end, but it wasn't quite what I expected... kinda fit well with the game, though

-f0dder (January 07, 2010, 06:00 PM)

I found the ending rather confusing myself ... I wasn't really sure if I'd won, lost, or broke something.

-Stoic Joker (January 07, 2010, 06:17 PM)

I figured there was no point in making a "level 2" since it's all randomized anyway. If you want to keep playing you just need to get back to the bottom and have the goal in a different spot. So that's what happens.

6823

Living Room / Re: When you make your 100'th Post

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2010, 05:42 PM »

I triple dog dare you to do the same trick next year!

-Deozaan (January 05, 2010, 08:39 PM)

Hmm... isn't there a thread around here somewhere about returning to the past?

-cranioscopical (January 06, 2010, 09:23 AM)

Well it would certainly save you from getting any more rotten turkey sandwich badges.

6824

Living Room / Re: To wide-screen or not to wide-screen

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2010, 05:29 PM »

I still don't really get widescreen. After all, 4:3 is still widescreen. It's just not as wide as widescreen. But most of the time I need more vertical space so I don't have to scroll up and down so much. But having dual monitors sure is great, so I suppose a big widescreen monitor with a large resolution and Windows 7's feature that makes apps fill half the screen (or jgpaiva's GridMove) would be essentially the same thing.

6825

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

« Last post by Deozaan on January 07, 2010, 05:21 PM »

I'm not sure if this will resolve your problem, but you can adjust your Flash storage settings on a global level from Adobe's website.