Darth Maul, a brilliant answer to replacing Vader as the main baddy. And so evil and menacing he could have been the main enemy of all the triology. BUT WAIT A MINUTE LETS HAVE HIM KILLED TO RUIN THE HYPE AND IN A STUPID AND RETARDED WAY! WE NEED MORE JAR JAR!.
Ive owned a crap load of Amstrad CPC, SNES, and PS1 games but 99% of them were broke/dumped/lost. DO I have the right to get the ROM? I did own the games afterall.
I guess that must be using maximum compression settings. Using average settings my prog does the same greyscale in about 2 seconds on my 2GHZ machine. Havent really tested it out recently though. I must try to hoke out the disk from the attic and test it again:)
The settings are the first thing stored. Without them the decompressor wouldnt know what to do with it. And as Ive said above somewhere there are about 20 variables on the basic algorithm. Trying to find the ultimate compression setting is doable, but vastly time consuming.
Another part of my project was to see if theres a magic set of pixel blocks that could be stored to save on some of the compression calculations. Turned out to be hit and miss. It didnt matter that much.
Well the fractal decompression I was using was mere seconds. I think all forms of it are, seeing that the compressed file is just a list of transformations of whatever groups of pixels that were stored with it. Its the deciding on what groups of pixels to store thats the problem, and that took an hour per machine on a 300MHz pentium 2.
A rough fractal compression algorithm is this:
1. Divide the pic up into subsets of itself, or pixel blocks. Simply Half it, quarter it, eighth it etc, down to 2x2 pixels. This can be varied depending on how quick you want it against loss of potential compression, for instance you can stop at 'eighths' and do the rest of the algorithm on just these. It would be very fast but the compression wont be that great.
2. Now for each pixel block, compare it with every other one to see if they roughly match given a set lossy tolerence (another variable you decide in advance).
3. If blocks match, store the smaller block if one, and the directions on how to produce the other blocks.
4. If blocks dont match store the pixels.
Now this is a simplified algor, but you can see in 2 that theres a shitload of block comparisons needed for the best compression of an image. Even more for better search parameters, like rotating each block by 90/180/270 degrees to better pattern match or trying the inverse of blocks which again doubles the comparisons! My 256x256 greyscale test images took an hour, triple that for a RGB image!
Sorry, not online anywhere. I did it in a uni that doesnt normally allow access to projects. They wouldnt even allow me to see prior years work into fractal compression!
http://links.uwaterloo.ca/fractals.home.html Try this, its a repository of fractal compression papers.
so am probably one of the few to be lucky to delve into the mind warping subject.
I wont bother going into the details of how it works (go read 'Fractal Image Compression' by Yuval Fisher*) but I concluded that fractal compression wasnt viable as there wasnt a general solution to suit all images. There are about 20 variables that you can decide, which give variable results to the final compressed image. And one set of variables would be excellent to compressing pics of trees down 80%, another set of variables would be excellent compressing pics of animals down 80%, but using each others set would only give results equal or worse than normal compression algorithms. Another factor at the time, five years ago, was that it took an hour to compress a 256x256 greyscale image on a 300MHz machine. Nowadays that isnt a factor.
* If anyone has this on ebook please post a link here, Im dying to read this again.
I did my final year project in Fractal Image Compression about 5 years ago.
I concluded that it isnt practical for general use, it took too much time to compress an image (alright it was five years ago and so today it probably wouldnt matter), but most importantly there is no easy general compression solution for all images (for instance one that compresses tree pics well wont do faces well and vice versa).
For a general dip into fractal image compression try to get and read 'Fractal Image Compression By Yuval Fisher'. Damn good read.
Its all recent 'popular' stuff now on offer, and less and less old rare or cult items. For instance a year or two ago they had a good selection of chinese and japanese action films. Hell, from every country. Now its just a couple of 'popular' ones that made it so US cinemas alredy.
And where the hell is Von Triers The Kingdom series 2 Amazon? You have the woefully bad Stephen Kings abortion, yet dont have the second part of the original.
UK resident here.
I think its about who'll run them, not of the consequences. The Las Vegas casinos were the ones who started this bill in the UK, and so itll be them who'll get the money.
Most people are seeing that the money will flow out of the UK areas and leaving behind increased crime, poverty and more gambling addicts.
They are planning to allow the opening of several Las Vegas style super casinos around the UK which dont exist here. Currently casinos are limited to small rooms and crowds and are overly regulated. Funnily enough its the Las Vegas casinos who lobbied the idea in the first place.
Though recently they backed off from the idea by reducing the number of initial casinos to about six (I cant remember the original number) as there are fears here that they'd cause more crime and more poverty in the surrounding area due to the envitable rise in gambling addiction.
I loved his shows. Please let him be on this one. It aint a GTA game unless you are running away from the cops while hearing how he got kicked off the rock station.
Slashdot Mirror
Radio 1 on the BBC channels (who own the station). Most people would have heard it from the ad and not the terrible station.
the guy is still a virgin.
What else could account for his major asshole-ry.
Fuck you Lucass you shill hack.
Darth Maul, a brilliant answer to replacing Vader as the main baddy. And so evil and menacing he could have been the main enemy of all the triology.
BUT WAIT A MINUTE LETS HAVE HIM KILLED TO RUIN THE HYPE AND IN A STUPID AND RETARDED WAY! WE NEED MORE JAR JAR!.
Ive owned a crap load of Amstrad CPC, SNES, and PS1 games but 99% of them were broke/dumped/lost.
DO I have the right to get the ROM? I did own the games afterall.
HP reports record losses! Dump those shares now everyone.
I would love to incorporate some basic physics in my small non-commercial demos. For example just basic gravity and limited objection interaction.
Couldnt tell you. Havent used the program I made in ages.
I guess that must be using maximum compression settings. Using average settings my prog does the same greyscale in about 2 seconds on my 2GHZ machine. Havent really tested it out recently though. I must try to hoke out the disk from the attic and test it again :)
Another part of my project was to see if theres a magic set of pixel blocks that could be stored to save on some of the compression calculations. Turned out to be hit and miss. It didnt matter that much.
Its the deciding on what groups of pixels to store thats the problem, and that took an hour per machine on a 300MHz pentium 2.
A rough fractal compression algorithm is this:
1. Divide the pic up into subsets of itself, or pixel blocks. Simply Half it, quarter it, eighth it etc, down to 2x2 pixels. This can be varied depending on how quick you want it against loss of potential compression, for instance you can stop at 'eighths' and do the rest of the algorithm on just these. It would be very fast but the compression wont be that great.
2. Now for each pixel block, compare it with every other one to see if they roughly match given a set lossy tolerence (another variable you decide in advance).
3. If blocks match, store the smaller block if one, and the directions on how to produce the other blocks.
4. If blocks dont match store the pixels.
Now this is a simplified algor, but you can see in 2 that theres a shitload of block comparisons needed for the best compression of an image. Even more for better search parameters, like rotating each block by 90/180/270 degrees to better pattern match or trying the inverse of blocks which again doubles the comparisons! My 256x256 greyscale test images took an hour, triple that for a RGB image!
http://links.uwaterloo.ca/fractals.home.html
Try this, its a repository of fractal compression papers.
Damn, this was meant to be a reply to the first post. Thought my last post didnt get through. DOH!
I wont bother going into the details of how it works (go read 'Fractal Image Compression' by Yuval Fisher*) but I concluded that fractal compression wasnt viable as there wasnt a general solution to suit all images. There are about 20 variables that you can decide, which give variable results to the final compressed image.
And one set of variables would be excellent to compressing pics of trees down 80%, another set of variables would be excellent compressing pics of animals down 80%, but using each others set would only give results equal or worse than normal compression algorithms.
Another factor at the time, five years ago, was that it took an hour to compress a 256x256 greyscale image on a 300MHz machine. Nowadays that isnt a factor.
* If anyone has this on ebook please post a link here, Im dying to read this again.
I concluded that it isnt practical for general use, it took too much time to compress an image (alright it was five years ago and so today it probably wouldnt matter), but most importantly there is no easy general compression solution for all images (for instance one that compresses tree pics well wont do faces well and vice versa).
For a general dip into fractal image compression try to get and read 'Fractal Image Compression By Yuval Fisher'. Damn good read.
For instance a year or two ago they had a good selection of chinese and japanese action films. Hell, from every country. Now its just a couple of 'popular' ones that made it so US cinemas alredy.
And where the hell is Von Triers The Kingdom series 2 Amazon? You have the woefully bad Stephen Kings abortion, yet dont have the second part of the original.
Im not technically knowledable but is it possible to strip the plastic casing top and examine the microchip under a microscope?
There is only ONE Matrix movie. Got it?
Its one thing making software that you think will benefit people, its another making a generic shitty brand game that'll benefit no one.
UK resident here.
I think its about who'll run them, not of the consequences. The Las Vegas casinos were the ones who started this bill in the UK, and so itll be them who'll get the money.
Most people are seeing that the money will flow out of the UK areas and leaving behind increased crime, poverty and more gambling addicts.
Though recently they backed off from the idea by reducing the number of initial casinos to about six (I cant remember the original number) as there are fears here that they'd cause more crime and more poverty in the surrounding area due to the envitable rise in gambling addiction.
...would the speed hack give an unfair advantage in combat or any other part in the game?
Article doesnt say.
and which would fuck the others mother first.
from the average public joe.
"Hey mister, this game wont work. Can I exchange it?"
I loved his shows. Please let him be on this one. It aint a GTA game unless you are running away from the cops while hearing how he got kicked off the rock station.