Topics

16

General Discussion / interesting new concepts for a video game media site?

« on: June 02, 2009, 02:24:54 am »

i've always wanted to maintain some type of video game media site. that goal was kind of what got me into programming in the first place.

with that in mind, what sucks about most of the current big video game media sites? what's good, or do you think is useful? does anyone frequently look for video games news, or anything, and find themselves saying "i wish i could just do this," or "i wish this site had that." it doesn't have to be anything new, or revolutionary - but maybe a compilation of all the good things of various sites into one site.

personally, i've always just wanted some very simple, easy to read and browse site that had general information about a video game but aggregated feed articles of the most recent news about those games. i think a site like this would come in handy during a time like right now with E3 going on.

any ideas?

17

New Project Announcements / XNA-based Level Editor

« on: May 26, 2009, 11:01:26 pm »

(update 1's shot)

I'm not quite announcing any finished products or anything, but this editor is going to be for a game I've been working on for the past several months. It's just a fairly simple 3D, isometric-style shooter, reminiscent of Sony's old "Infantry Online" game. What I've been needing to write, though, is an editor that'll just do some basic terrain creating. Initially I plan on being able to create and save heightmaps, or load existing heightmaps and render them to my viewport. I'll have this functionality implemented by the end of tomorrow, at least. I've already got code for this in my game, so that'll be relatively plug-n-go. After that, I'm not quite sure where the next logical step is but I think I'll add in some terrain picking, and work on manipulating the heightmap polygons on-screen - elevate, lower, smooth, whatever. If I get this far I'll add more goals, but I'm going to keep my sights relatively simple for now.

I'll keep updates coming as I work on this. Tomorrow should be a fun update.

Update 1: It took me a lot longer to get working how I wanted it, but I re-wrote the entire thing using a different method of getting XNA to work as a MDI child window. I'm using the Game class now which handles all the game looping, components and services for me. (I also get to use the content pipeline, now). I also threw in my free-moving camera, so now I can fully navigate around the 3D design space. The marker you see in the screenshot is just a simple origin marker placed at (0, 0, 0).

Update 2: http://forum.x86labs.org/index.php/topic,14336.msg177060.html#msg177060

18

General Discussion / gravy

« on: May 20, 2009, 05:06:28 am »

what does gravy go with... toast? ive got some toast andf some nutrigrain bars. and im going to make some gravy

19

General Programming / WPF

« on: May 19, 2009, 02:30:01 am »

I never really understood what WPF was, or what it did. I came across a program, though, that was written using the WPF and when I installed and ran it I was blown away. The program I downloaded was the Blu Twitter client, by Thirteen23 or something.

Seeing all the eye candy possibilities has me running through like 5 different programs, in my head, that I'd like to make. I may just have to put my XNA game development on hold for this.

Has anyone messed with WPF or written any neat looking apps?

20

General Discussion / Was anyone else here a rockstar in their past life?

« on: May 07, 2009, 03:21:20 am »

So, yea, I was just sitting down tonight listening to some songs when I realized how well I was actually able to critique them. I was like, I could have written this song. So then I was like, I wonder if I can actually play guitar... this was just a natural step I took from critiquing songs that I had never heard before. So, I very quietly snuck into the other room, grabbed my guitar, and took it into my room. Before playing the guitar, though, I had to figure out what tattoo I'd get if I ever really did become a rockstar. After some discussion with my peers I came to a conclusion. I'd be getting a tattoo on my forearm. It'll include a pheonix.. a phenoix blowing up a planet. The phenoix will be landing on bob dylans shoulder, or maybe ole willie nelson or mcjagger, i havent decided yet. Maybe I can do something like mount rushmore where the pheonix is landing on all three of their shoulders at once. Whichever one I choose, he'll be whailing a sweet guitar solo, while floating on a cloud. Behind him will be a choir of angels singing some awesome backup music, and maybe Jesus will be rockin lead vocals. This will all be on my forearm. So, I grabbed my guitar and realized I could actually play the damned thing. I'm thinking I may go into country music. Maybe I'll try to find a way to incorporate programming into my music.

Anyone else realize they were also rockstars in their past lives, too?

21

Trash Can / Re: Transparency? Nah.

« on: May 04, 2009, 10:24:52 am »

Girls. They're crazy.

22

Gaming / Battlefield Heroes Beta

« on: April 20, 2009, 02:44:23 pm »

http://www.battlefield-heroes.com/

This is just the newest Battlefield edition. Is anyone else in the beta? It's pretty damn fun. If you're looking for a quick beta key, keep your eyes on their forums - for some reason they let people post beta keys for others to use. It seems like somebody posts 5 available keys a few times a day.

23

General Discussion / Would an HTML rendering virtual machine be possible?

« on: April 18, 2009, 10:31:01 pm »

I'm not entirely sure how web browsers work. I haven't done any research into this idea, but from what I recall reading browsers use javascript to draw the HTML to screen.

So, I was just brainstorming about random programming ideas and kind of had a focus on web development and stuff. I was thinking about solutions to the problem of having to tailor my markup to the different browsers. This is a horrible thing to have to do and I wish I didn't have to do it. So, I was like well damn, I've got a cool idea but it's kind of similar to Flex. As I understand it, Flex uses the Flash Player to render layouts or something? You design your site with Flex, and it's rendered totally by the Flash Player? This is cool, because then it can be extended to your desktop using AIR, or however that beautiful mess of Adobe products works together.

Flex is great, it does what I think the only real solution to fixing this cross-browser, "tailor my markup" bullshit would have to do - get rid of HTML/CSS. This is a pretty scary task, though, that I probably think most of the world would be opposed to. HTML will remain what it is just for the simple fact that everyone uses it already. Who cares if it's good, bad, outdated, amazing, whatever you think it is - it's going to stick around. So, I kind of restated the 'solution' to myself.... get rid of HTML... orrrrr, relieve the browsers of this task. Which brings me to my idea...


Would it be possible to create a virtual machine that relieves browsers of the task of rendering the HTML? Could the virtual machine use some widely popular javascript engine and draw the HTML onto whatever browser the user made the request through? The browser could still handle the requests, and stuff, but the virtual machine could interject and take over the process of drawing the HTML. This would allow users to use their same favorite browser, it wouldn't shock the world by trying to kill off HTML, it wouldn't render old sites that aren't updated anymore obsolete... while adding the advantages of rendering pages the same on every browser.

Thoughts? Is this even possible?


Edit: I'm not even sure if there is a problem with this. I don't know if this is still a big issue these days. I don't typically have problems with my HTML/CSS. And, after thinking about this, the issue probably doesn't lie in the HTML. It's probably moreso the CSS. Now days most browsers seem to render things the same for the most part. I find myself following this work flow: 1) design markup 2) apply styles 3) fix any minor differences. So maybe it's not as big of an issue as I think it once may have been, though.

24

General Discussion / web-based markup debugger

« on: April 09, 2009, 11:03:28 pm »

well, i threw this together while bored today. it uses firebug lite. it's also just as easy to just set a bookmark to firebug lite's javascript file and drag that onto any other url you want to debug, i think. this works for me in IE, anyways. this seemed like a logical process to turn into a simple site, though.

i did this initially because i didn't have firefox with firebug at school, and they don't let you install anything on their computers. this supposedly works in most browsers.

let me know if you find it useful. i had some further ideas for it but won't bother if nobody other than me will be using it. hehe

http://chyea.org/

25

General Discussion / Anyone ever setup Postfix using authentication?

« on: March 23, 2009, 01:52:08 am »

I've got a Postfix (SMTP) installation running. It's setup right now to use SASL AUTH provided by Dovecot's SASL interface. Dovecot is an IMAP server that uses SASL Auth also and provides an easy method for allowing Postfix to Auth against the same database. That's what I'm using.

Anyways, the Postfix Auth is working... I'm able to pass authentication, and get rejected by it, etc. I can't, however, tell Postfix to only allow users that pass Authentication to be allowed to send mail. I just don't know how. I've been reading man pages, docs, forums posts, etc for the better part of the day. I've tried many different setting variations and what not. I'm not explicitly allowing my IP, or anything, either.

In short, users are able to use my postfix server without having to authenticate. Yet, authentication does work - it's just not required. I want it to be required.

Anyone have any experience with this?

26

Blizzard, WoW and Bots / I think Blizzard is in on the gold selling market...

« on: March 16, 2009, 06:43:58 pm »

Okay, I'm lazy and know of a site that sells wow gold extremely cheap. I've used them twice to buy like a quick 2000g for mats, and crap.

Every time I use this site, though, they're instant to respond and be online. I always do a face to face trade and they're always online it seems like. They chill in the SW bank - they're mostly level 1 chars with random lettered names, and they're all in the same guild which also consists of random letters. I've noticed they do this for the guild bank so they can store gold and easily xfer gold from farming chars to the level 1 chars that sell them in SW.

Now, I've always been weary because these characters are just so obvious. I see them every time in the bank and they're usually targeting somebody next to them, which I think is funny. It's funny to see them in the act of selling gold. Why doesn't Blizzard catch on to this? You'd think they'd be easily found and banned. The first time I bought gold was a long time ago, and they're still there. But, on a another note, they've got reps that'll call your cell phone when they're online to give you the gold and they have called me instantly both times, and both times were from a California-based phone number with an American sounding person of the phone - no accents from what I could tell.

So, just yesterday I logged on and was questing in Sholazar and I saw a level 80 mage farming herbs and mining nodes, and he was in the same random lettered guild. I had found one of their farmers! I did a who of their guild and sure enough 4 other level 1 chars were online from the same guild, as well as 2 other 80s... both on Sholazar (one of the better places for mining, from what i hear).

I went to Armory and tried looking up the 80s profile and he was unlisted... odd, I tried looking up the other 2 80s both of which are unlisted. Obviously the 1s wont show up. So I looked up the guild, which exists, but shows no members. Guild page here

Also, when I sold one of my accounts like a year ago, prior to the paid name change - only xfer existed, I had used my xfer like 3 days before selling the account. I xfer'd the char to a server that my other chars were on (but on a diff account), and added the char I was selling to my friends lists. The same day that I sold my account, the char was removed from my friends list and either had its name changed, xfer'd off or was banned. I know, also, that banned chars remain on the server so they wouldn't be removed from my friends list.

All of this leads me to believe that Blizzard is profiting off the gold selling market, too! dun dun dun

27

Blizzard, WoW and Bots / Death Knights getting the nerf =(

« on: March 07, 2009, 03:15:54 pm »

Yup, everyone saw it coming. The 3.1 patch is putting some hurt on the DKs. This is sad for me because mine is finally tanking Heroics and could easily tank a raid. Their increased time on Howling Blast cool down and removal of damage caused by Pestilence will hurt me a little. I don't recall much else, but I think they're reducing our avoidance, too. Oh, and our Icy Veins or whatever no longer does as much damage reduction. Booooo.

Guess I will focus on my Paladin, now.

28

Gaming / Halo Wars

« on: March 03, 2009, 02:15:39 pm »

Has anyone played this on xbox live, yet? I'm tempted to buy it but I'm not sold on the controls or fun-factor online. I played the demo and it definitely left me wondering how the real game works out online, but I wasn't too interested in much more. I hope it does better than I think it will.

29

General Discussion / I wonder how much it'd cost to start up a bar...

« on: February 25, 2009, 05:57:32 pm »

The town I live in has a very popular and busy "bar district." It's just a street where all the popular bars reside. They're all pretty popular and are packed every weekend and on certain weekday nights. The thing is, most of the bars are shitty. I transferred here from another university where the bars all had their own personal feel and atmosphere. At my other univ. people went to these different bars partially for the "place to be" aspect, and the other part to get shitfaced. None of the bars here really have that atmosphere that you are able to identify with and enjoy. It really sucks - I hate the bars here.

I've got a great idea for a bar concept (it has been done before. i've seen one in Austin, TX like it) where each table has its own tap on it and serves a certain kind of beer each day. People can either buy an 'all you can drink' type thing and fill up off the tap at their table or go to the actual bar and purchase shots, etc. As for the atmosphere of the bar, I don't really know yet. I think this tap concept though would be big enough to warrant the bar being cool, though. Throw in some TVs, maybe a spot for a live band, I don't know.

I wonder how much this would cost, though? I bet rent on a property down by the bars wouldn't be too bad compared to other "higher class" places around here. This town is a pretty big shit hole compared to all the surrounding areas like Dallas, Addison, Arlington, Ft. Worth, etc. Liquor licenses are probably a ton and there's probably something you'd have to do special to allow people to serve themselves. Anyways, I'm jacked up on red bull and bored waiting for my next class. These are my current thoughts.

30

General Discussion / TeamSpeak 2 server, MySQL and Linux question...

« on: February 21, 2009, 10:13:47 pm »

Well, Team Speak 2 is pretty damn old. Their server software sucks, their client software sucks. It's free, though.

I'm really just kind of messing around, but I'm trying to get a Linux Team Speak 2 server running using MySQL rather than the default SQLite. Their forum has several topics related to this but no great solutions.

I had run into an issue with the server not being able to load and use the newer mysql client library, so I reverted back to an older version. Now, I'm stuck with the Team Speak server not being able to properly log into the MySQL server.

Has anyone else got this to work, before?