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41

Other Discussion / Vista Ultimate: First impressions

« on: February 06, 2007, 10:49:17 pm »

Basically I installed vista a few days ago, a link to the article of how it went is here:

http://www.fendez.com/index.php?page=readarticle&id=4

For those who do not have a fendez account, here:
Well, I got myself a copy of Windows Vista just recently, and thought I would install it. My current setup included two operating systems, Windows XP Professional SP2 and Ubuntu.

Installation:
So, I put my Vista Ultimate DVD in, all seems to look nice, lovely graphical setup, pretty easy until I got to the partitioning part. I told it to delete (and only delete) my Ubuntu partition, nice of it not to ask before it deleted my Windows also, resulting in a strange loss of most of my files (which I was to later discover). The setup completed and I booted up Windows, but that wasn???t the end of the setup. For some reason the second I rebooted it could not find my operating system to boot into.... odd? I installed Vista Ultimate a further three times on my partition before I had to completely wipe all my partitions and install it on a fresh one (all NTFS previously). So slightly frustrated that I had now lost all my drivers, I carried on setting it up.

Inside Vista:
Well, I had just logged in to my first account, very nice, noticed its sleek look, very happy here, only one problem: it didn???t recognise (or even detect) my plug and play network card that worked on my XP machine fine... I played around with it, only to find that if I unplugged my WinTV card, my network card was instantly recognised, detected and functioning. As you can imagine, I was majorly annoyed, I wanted to play around with the Media Centre built in, no chance now. It turns out this would have been no use anyway; there were no Vista compatible drivers for it. I continued to look around, to notice the constant nags that really infuriated me, but I managed to turn them off using a simple registry edit, so I was more than happy.

I started looking at the network options, to find it was majorly difficult to do anything remotely advanced and it was built for dumbasses, just a slight inconvenience, nothing major.

I then proceeded to install my graphics drivers, FireFox, Ad-Aware, Spybot, Office 2007, Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, Skype, Google Talk and mIRC. I found no problems with most, except Live Messenger which had a few troubles retrieving my contact list; nothing a reinstall didn???t fix - not a Vista issue, I don???t think. I then decided to install some zBoard keyboard drivers, only to find they were incompatible, this could be a major issue to start with but I???m sure most companies will develop nice drivers soon, so I wasn???t majorly upset.

After that I noticed the very nice built in speech recognition, I played around with it and I have came to the conclusion that it is as good or almost as good as Dragon Naturally Speaking, so I was very impressed, however the setup was a bit lengthy. All in all, it was worth it though. The commands are easy, and the interface is just amazing.

I noticed the games section and enjoyed most of my favourite games with much better graphics, such as solitaire and chess. However, I was annoyed to see the lack of my favourite game - where???s my pinball?

After that I looked at my most commonly used programs, the Command Prompt was pretty much the same, Paint was similar with a nicer interface and one or two more options, and Notepad was pretty much the same, this made me very happy, however Paint???s colour toolbar was at the top instead of the bottom, if anyone could tell me how to change that I would be most grateful - it???s annoying. Windows Media Player is absolutely awesome, I couldn???t have asked for anything better, I???m very pleased with it, both graphically and functionally-speaking, enough said. Internet Explorer? Wouldn???t know, I don???t plan to use it; I???m a Firefox fan mostly. The Task Manager is nice, and it comes with what I???ve longed for in a Task Manager for a long time - a nice little service manager, it looks a bit nicer too.

Finally, gaming. Most people worried about this. I have 1GB RAM, and had no trouble playing Battlefield 2, so I don???t think it???s a major problem.

My overall view? Well, if you don???t count the incredibly rubbish installer and the few driver clashes, its just an enhanced XP, but the eye-candy is very appealing. If you have dumb parents and want to keep them from screwing up your PC, my advice is get Vista.

42

Other Discussion / I GOT DUAL MONITORS

« on: February 06, 2007, 08:31:55 pm »

Well my mums bf moved his pc in last week, and it had two very nice LCD monitors, as u can imagine i was quite jelous. So, this week i got a nice LG monitor. and I have a duel monitor setup Its amazing, i love being able to play games and program on one screen, or program and create images, . Im loving it .

43

Entertainment / PSP 3.03 AND BELOW ALL DOWNGRADABLE!!!

« on: January 29, 2007, 06:42:33 am »

Thats right, any version 3.0 and below can now be downgraded, why? Simple, upgrade to 3.03 and use the following downgrader:
http://noobz.eu/index.html

Enjoy your homebrew people

44

Other Discussion / .3ds conversion to .mesh???

« on: January 17, 2007, 04:53:29 pm »

Im looking for an application capable of converting .3ds files to a .mesh file, does anyone know where I can get hold of one?

For htose who dont know what .mesh is its an xml format made for the OGRE 3d engine.

45

Entertainment / Amazing, Zelda maps in RCT3

« on: January 15, 2007, 09:47:44 pm »

Well i dont know how to express how much work must have went into these, but look:
http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=492139

can anyone say, WOW?

46

Graphics / My old zelda TP HUD

« on: January 08, 2007, 11:03:22 pm »

Just thought i should repost this, since the games out etc, this was the HUD i made for tloz:tp when the first screens were shown:


and in use:

47

Other Discussion / uTorrent, stops above 95%????

« on: December 04, 2006, 09:16:21 pm »

I recently downloaded uTorrent, ive forwarded all necessary ports and got it running smoothly, etc. But i have this huge problem, the problem being that above 95% most downloads seem to freeze, i tried to get openoffice the other day through it, and it freezes and the download speeds go below 0.1kb/s... the 2% then takes a further 6-29 hours to download. Can anybody explain this to me, tell me how to fix it or give me another client i can import the downloads into so i dont loose them???

48

Entertainment / The BEST kid show ever!

« on: November 09, 2006, 06:35:39 am »

I was just looking around when i stumbled on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUzxdulMGN4

Anyone else find htis highly amusing???

49

Other Projects / [Completed] Kirbys Flight - by fendez.com

« on: October 15, 2006, 02:42:52 pm »

Kirbys Flight

   Genre: Arcade
   Release Date: 15/10/06
   Players: 1
   Size: 954kb

Oh no! The birds are migrating south again! Watch out Kirby, there sure is a lot of them up there. Don't let them hit you!

Tip: Pick up the stars to get even more points!

Screenshots

Download

Hightscore Page

credits go to Sheldon West (confused_gamer) and alspal
visit our homepage, Fendez

50

Discussion / Creating a good game, how to:

« on: October 15, 2006, 12:02:32 am »

Well another article brought to you by Fendez.com!

The link to the article is here:
http://fendez.com/index.php?page=readtut&id=6

But you can view it on good ol zfgc here:

Creating a good game:

Well I hear a lot of people say it when they see a good game. How do you make a game that is that good? I don't mean games with mean graphics, or amazing audio, im talking about gameplay here. What makes a game good there? So i started looking into the little habits i have developed over the year, im no expert, but I hope it will help some people.

The first good habit is to have a lot of experience in that area. I personally know you cannot make a good game if you have no idea how to code it most of the time. If you dont have the skills to program certain parts of the game, its best to learn to BEFORE you code the game, you could otherwise come to a dead end and not bother to code it. Its even worse if you dont know the theory, because then you have nothing to work with. This is a MUST. Type out theory for every part of the game. Know what your going to code off by heart before you do, i cant stress this enough.

The second good habit to have is to keep a log of your progress. It might sound silly but its a good way to notice your achievements. It shows you that YOU did that, and you did it in this time. It helps you complete projects faster and improve. You may also become more confident as a result because you see what you are actually capable of, right there in front of you.

The third habit which helps, is a combination of the first and second. Before you start, write off a tick list of what needs to be completed. That way as you progress you can see what needs doing, estimate times on it, which will help in giving a good estimation for release dates. It also means you can post logs of how far you are to any fans you may have, which will keep them interested, now this is very important, fans of a game are what keeps it alive most of the time, they boost your confidence, and its just fun to help people like that, whatever they need.

My fourth hint is not to plan bigger than you can do. This is important, if its too big you will simply get bored half way and quit. Its alright having this idea for an amazing game that you just know the world would love, but its no good if you cant finish it, you post a quick demo, get fans and false hope, then end it. This is not good for your publicity and when you finally can make an amazing game you may have no fan base around it.

Another important thing is to NEVER try and do it alone. Its impossible, you need a team, a spriter, another coder, a music man, anything you can get. But you cant just have any team you hardly know, you have to get on with them and trust them, this is a great ingredient for a good game, if you ever feel like giving up they will encourage you not too, lets face it, you dont make lots of graphics like that to be told your coders left you do you?

Listen to criticism and improve... I dont understand why people post their game on a forum, a couple of people reply and say something needs improving, and they go mad, its stupid. You post asking for criticism to improve it, that's the point. Nobody is perfect and nobody will get it right first time, stop thinking you will. Listen to your criticisms and learn from them, its the best way to become better, it can help not only in the game your developing but in future games.

Have fun whilst making the game, this is possibly the most important factor at al. I dont know if you noticed but if a developer doesn't care about the game, its usually boring and rubbish. There is just no fun in it, make the game with a passion, love your game and realise that YOU created it and realise your talents, if you dont do this you will find that no matter how great your games look, the game play will always suck.

There's not much more I can say, happy developing!

51

Other Discussion / BT Home HUB Help

« on: September 18, 2006, 06:17:07 am »

Since we swapped our router for the BT home HUB, we have been experiencing some issues. THe main one being that our 2.5 meg line, is now only 0.5 meg, any ideas? We have he issue that if any computer on the LAN boots up, or shuts down, the HUB disconnects everybody from the internet for about 5 seconds (and for onlnie gamers, its a huge issue). We no longer get the download speeds we used to, and have issues keeping a connection thats stable. Im pretty sure its the router causing all of this, but does anybody know WHY its happening?

52

Other Discussion / Google maps - As text!

« on: September 16, 2006, 02:21:00 pm »

Well i just noticed this incredibly cool site, http://www.asciimaps.com/, its google maps, but in text instead of images, highly cool.

53

Other Discussion / Web messenger clients

« on: September 14, 2006, 09:48:17 am »

I am looking for various web messenger clients (msn or yahoo) so that i can create a database of them, store them on my memory stick and use them whilst mobile. My issue is that I do not have many, and in a library for example, alot of them are blocked etc. So, which clients do you guys know of? All of them please, hehe.

Of course, i will share mine:
http://jabber.meta.net.nz/webmsg/index.php
http://www.e-messenger.net/
http://www.e-buddy.com/
http://www.meebo.us/
http://www.clientless.net/
http://www.iloveim.com/
http://www.imaginarlo.com/
http://193.238.160.77/servlet/login
http://mob.e-messenger.net/
http://www.smartdykes.com/modules.php?name=eMessenger
http://www.messengerfx.com/
http://www.goowy.com/
http://www.mabber.com/
http://www8.messengerfx.com/
https://www33.meebo.com/
http://www.myim.co.uk/
http://www.imhaha.net/
http://www.imunitive.com/

All of the above connect to some sort of web based messenger.  The issue is, from where i am trying to connect from, ALL of the above are blocked.

54

Other Discussion / LMFAO - WORLDS WORST HACKER!!

« on: September 13, 2006, 06:34:24 pm »

I just read this, and had to laugh, i mean seriously laugh... its so funny, read:

http://www.crisscross.com/jp/forum/Worlds_worst_hacker%25_IRC_t%20ranscript/m_422436/tm.htm

(im not sure if this belongs in tech talk or not, just move it if im wrong, but i see it as a joke, hehe)

55

Graphics / My first bit of Vector Art

« on: September 12, 2006, 06:36:10 am »

Well, im usually a spriter/coder, less so a spriter nowdays, I have to learn to use vector art as part of my ICT A2 course. So, my first bit of vector art, EVER, a wine glass:



c+c?

56

Other Discussion / Guess whos browsing on his 1.5 psp, without wipeout?

« on: September 10, 2006, 10:00:52 pm »

sing the links 2 homebrew browser, and i must say its better than the 2.0 browser by far. it has bookmarks, search, new windows, java support, save url, save image, file, html view, scrollbars, mouse, an easy keyboard, options, language and more, its fantastic! Anyone else use it?

57

Other Discussion / Issues with yahoo messenger

« on: September 07, 2006, 05:48:38 am »

I have been having issues with yahoo messenger since the last update, i know some of you already know this. If i right click on any part of the window (any window associated with yahoo), the system tray ican, or select any item in any toolbar, yahoo instantly closes, no error, nothing. I have asked around, nobody else seems to have this issue, nor knows how to resolve it. I have reverted back to an old version of yahoo, no difference, reinstalled the latest, no difference, but this only started when hte latest version updated, so, any ideas?

58

Entertainment / Just finished Quake 4

« on: September 03, 2006, 12:58:57 pm »

I just played quake 4 in singleplayer mode, its not usually my sort of game, but i just had to say, this game rocked! It had my heart racing almost all the way through it and i must say it was truely challenging.

59

Graphics / LTTP Style OOT Lake Hylia Update

« on: August 10, 2006, 04:56:07 pm »

Well as a lot of you know i hit a tiling spree the other day and I've been doing a few things for fun, one of which was to update my Lake Hylia with a few of the missing details. New features include the northern waterfall, a custom sprited tree and rock (where you shoot for the fire arrow), and the sign on the entrance to the fishing area. I have also changed the background tiles to match the ones on my Hyrule Field (as it seems logical to), so here you are, and enjoy:



The image above is resized, and used purely to demonstrate it, for the full image use the direct download below or the forum attachment.

Zip download:
http://www.speedsurf.to/zeldamo/LakeHyliaLTTP.zip


OLD POST:
Well personally ive been working my ass off on this for quite a while now, as a request from AleX_XelA on making Lake Hylia from ocarina of time, in 2d lttp style. The final result, soon to be on the fendez website, is here:




There are a few large difference due to the conversion from 3d to 2d, for example to entrance to the temple will now be on the south side, instead of the north so it is acessible, and the house with the scientist in now has a southern door, not western, as does the fishing area.

The link to the actual file is here as the forum resized it:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v173/Zeldamo/LakeHylia.png

Use if you wish, credit to me of course.

edit: Added the top part to the scientists home, and made the fire arrow stone larger, couldnt sprite the dead tree...

60

Other Discussion / Need help fast, service provider refuses to give mac address

« on: August 07, 2006, 01:39:52 pm »

Heres whats going on, we owe our broadband provider some money, they will cut off our internet as from tonight, so we are looknig for other providers, but the issue is, they all want out MAC address, i need this as soon as possible, or we will have trouble getting back online. So, my question is, if the account is closed, and they refuse to give us our mac address, how can we obtain it? A response ASAP (before tonight) would be fantastic.

(and i think this belongs here, as it is about my life after all)

If not, il see you sson zfgc.