blah , pico has a limit of 72 chars per line, and we all like it.
And the good old file_id.diz standard defines for the file to be no larger than 40characters wide and no more than 10 lines long (some older ones forced 5 lines long), with the first line being the MOST descriptive.
Not to mention that assembly programmers can do it under 40 chars per line.
you people with 80 chars per line are WAY too spoiled.
-- /apz, why does BBS novadays means webforum? I want telnet BBS
IIRC Van Burmen project was the Fallout 3, not BG3 as you seem to elude to.
Another nitpick, or to be overly pedantic Planescape Torment was also released in the last 5 years.
I have not played Icewind Dale 2 to comment on it, first one I disliked for same reason I disliked Diablos (1 and 2), both were click fests and not imaginative, not giving ability to try to pass the game by just talking out of a problem.
-- /apz, Power corrupts... Atomic power corrupts atomically!!!
TOEE engine? hah, graphically decent, TOEE engine is AD&D based, and AD&D for cRPG just sucks ass. AD&D has tons of rules that are originally left for the dungen master to enforce or not. Further more, AD&D rules are quite limited, especially since they are for pen & paper, minimizing calculations.
For example, in AD&D you have charisma/likability. If you play as an ogre you get a penalty hit for charisma, I understand, ogre deals with humans, charisma is shot to hell, but same ogre character deals with ogre? Shouldn't the reciprocal be true to? And then another scenario, you play human, go to a bartender that is an ogre, should not your human character now get same charisma penalty as a ogre player going to human bartender? BLAH
Another problem with AD&D is classes. Classes of characters are MOST stupid and braindead idea ever. If I play as a clerick or druid or whatever then I cannot wear armour. Its against my alignment/beliefs, even if I play as chaotic evil. Instead of giving me a penalty of -4 for wearing armour against my class I cant even try to put the armour on.
Now, take original fallouts:
1. there is no concept of classes , you build character how you
want. Do you prefer a thief? Choose lockpick/stealth/steal
skills. Do you prefer a brain guy? choose intelligence/repair
Speech skills. Do you prefer fighter? Go with power/agility
and weapon skills.
You are not locked into classes, start with one set of skills
but in middle of the game start upgrading other skills. Maybe
you will notice that what you wanted (thief) needs to change
to another (sniper).
2. npcs npcs npcs... fallout is famous for having npcs written
well with wide variaty of things that change talk options.
Depending on all your actions, karma, perks, skills the whole
game changes.
I Love my Ipaq, but I don't understand why I'd want a way bigger, way clunkier version with a desktop OS not intended for its purpose.
wrong,
1. its a laptop, you dont want a laptop? 2. you can close it with screen on the outside , now you
can pretend its a nice ebook, or scetchpad 3. you have more detail now your cad drawings actually make
sence!
so the question is, why dont you want a laptop with
extra features?
you look at it the wrong way, its a laptop that can double as a tablet pc.
Reasons why its good:
1. as a tablet pc you can turn it to make the screen be more
like page of paper (automatic ebook), but unlike handheld
it will have a good resolutions
2. as a tablet pc with touch sensitivity you can now paint
and see results on same 'canvas'. Handhelds are too
small, usb tablets are cumbersome
3. and then, this is a laptop.
why are people thinking: great, someone made a hand held that is no longer a hand held. instead of thinking: great, someone made a laptop that doubles as a tablet.
-- /apz, I want my c64 with the joystick based tablet
CBC2 is the only station in my town that bothers with Jazz / Classical / Electronica. Every other station does the easy 70s, 60s, or 80s, 90s, or top40. Ugh
Fallout 3 was 90% complete as developers claimed, even if they overshot, it would be much less time to finish fallout 3 than to do mmog, not to mention that they would regain trust of the fans.
as per developers:
The first batch of developers, the ones responsible for original fallouts did go to Troika
Others that stayed developed Icewind dale, a squad game that stayed on heels of Buldurs Gate, and later LionHeart, a game that was fantasy much like Icewind Dale, but did use Fallout like Special system as opposed to the very limiting and constraining AD&D system. They were working later on Fallout 3 (the Armen Burmin project), but as project was canned they created own studio, Obsidian.
Funny, both Obsidian and Troika specialize in RPG making and their releases are quite well recieved. To recap:
Troika -> Arcanum
a big game that industrilizes fantasy.
you got magicians traveling in trains.
amazing marriage of sci-fi and fantasy worlds
Troika -> Temple of Elemental Evil
one of the most highly detailed games
that is based on AD&D system
Obsidian -> Star Wars - Knights Of THe Old Republic
need I say more?
As per Fallouts, there were so far 4 games released:
Fallout 1
for pc and mac
original dev team
quest : find waterchip Fallout 2
for pc and mac
original dev team
quest : find GECK Fallout BOS Tactics
for pc ?mac?
contracted outside of interplay
commonly referred to as Fallout Tactics
not an rpg, but more of a squad game
quest : start new BOS outpost Fallout BOS
for xbox
new dev team, new art, new game rules
inconsistant with Fallout1/2/tactics
quest : join BOS
When Interplay announced a new fallout, Fallout BOS, people were surprised and quite taken aback as to why xbox only? Afterall the game was originally PC based and would not translate properly to console style gaming. And yet interplay pushed, changed ideas, logos, story lines, the special system, dumbed down everything. (yes, I played them all).
Not only that, but before finishing xbox Fallout BOS, Interplay had the audicity and the nerve to annouce a sequel, the one they never did start!
Then Interplay decided to get back on track and to finally make Fallout 3, but that was cut, as some developers claim, at being 90% done.
Dear sir, I strongly advise, urge, you run to nearest store and rummage through the bargain bin. You should find a dual-cd jewel case with both Fallouts for 5$.
If you are lucky, it might also contain Fallout:BOS Tactics.
There is no reason anymore for you, nor anyone, to still have had not played the game
and yes, the game plays like a charm under Wine too !
The 3d they have done, atleast from screenshots of Fallout 3 and from the xbox Fallout:BOS.
I dont have anything against the game being non turn based, but give me the ability to play turn based.
I loved the idea that the game never really was a clone of diablo where finger twiches are actually an advantage.
ofcourse this causes problems for the game to be MMO, but then Civilisation / HOMM3 play online quite well, and Fallout:BOS Tactics also did have a fake real time mode.
-- /apz, Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
At 1600, scalable sites seem to wither... may technically scale, aestetically it won't
aesthetics... HA!!!
More important in html is to be able to be technically usable under all conditions:
- scallable down to text mode browsers (like lynx that dont render tables)
- scallable between beta release of mosaic and newest fireFox
- scallable between 120px (pda) and 1600px
- be able to print to any printer (including dot matrix)
then you have used html properly, aesthetics were never part of the html.. Its the MAC crowd that decided that html should replace PDF that we started to have problems.
-- /apz, the guy who preaches, but does not follow own advices
Once you've established that your site has to be cleanly and professionally designed, accessible and usable, you now have to make sure none of these elements breaks as you move from machine to machine, browser to browser, and platform to platform. You'll quickly notice that suddenly, you can't make your site scale as much as you want. You see that smoothly-flowing text on a 800x600 screen looks hopelessly cluttered on a 640x480 screen and ridiculously wide, yet short on a 1024x768 screen.
But that was the design of html, that is free flowing and uses your resolution as best as it can. I browse w3 site and its text becomes ridiculously wide on my 1600x1200, and how wrong is that? Because text properly flows and adjust size I dont have problem changing font sizes.
Take any of the sites adjusted for a specific resolution and try to enlarge fonts. If you used CSS then IE users cannot change font sizes easily. If you use mozilla, it will change font size, but retain width limit, so you end up with ridiculous one word per line articles.
Not to mention that if you want WAI support you should not develop for specific resolution, considering that your site should be accesible from webTV, through links lynx or the w3 browsers, etc..
You begin to develop visual guides that will work with lower monitor resolutions, yet still look professional on the larger screens. Your designers produce a style guide that begins to define specific column widths and template sizes. And you notice... that the web really isn't as scalable as you thought it was.
The web is VERY scalable. I develop websites that work from all the various text mode browsers like lynx, links and the w3 (can you tell the difference between them) and also making them still be good on the holy 4 browsers (ns4, moz, IE, opera).
Number of rules that I adhere 1) page has to be usable in lynx 2) page has to look decently in links/w3 3) javascript is nice, but should not be required 4) use flash for useless trivial things (logo) 5) everything in percentages 6) no nested percentages (yes, browsers mean different
things when you say 40% width inside a 60% layer,
some think you meant 40% of the 60% screen width,
others assume that 40% of the 100% of screen width). 7) images are nice, as long as they have text beside
them, and alt and title tags... Why do so many site
makers skip on the alt/title/label tags? 8) avoid visual enforcing of display, rely on meta
guides. Dont use italics tag, use the emphasis tag.
Dont use bold tag, use strong.
Dont use font tag, use the heading tags.
Dont use a layer with a different margin, use blockquote
Dont use multiple line breaks, use the paragraph tag
-- /apz, Art is anything you can get away with. -- Marshall McLuhan.
the biggest problem with web is that you have to code for:
1) lowest common denominator
and forget things like javascript/flash, or
use them only as a bonus addon, not a requirement
(ie: flash for a logo, not a menu)
(ie: javascript to verify a form before submission
( but still duplicate code on the server side to
( repeat the form verification
2) have tons of work arounds for different implementations
Every browsers has own quirks. So you try to find
ways to fix problems. NS4.x is the worst of them all,
does not handle nested DIVs, has a limit on the javascript
source code it can process, crashes, forgets to render
elements, its a mess. Now NS4 is a recent browser, dont
forget to also try to support the lynx/links/w3 browsers.
3) alienate users
the webservers I am handling for now have 98% IE users,
its reasonable to deny access for people who use
alternatives.
as per your ideas as a sollution:
1) flash is a JOKE, dont touch it ever!!
2) python? how? on the server side? and how would it differ
from perl/php/asp/jsp ?
3) JavaScript with Extensions, beautifull, NS4 has different
layering system than IE/Mozilla. Not to mention that IE
has its own. And then there is the 'standard' DOM, that
every browser supports partially...
I fear of the extensions you propose? and how do you hope
to make browser makers support them.
I mean, in IE you can use vbscript instead of jscript,
and with 98% market saturation no-one sane is doing that!
4) XUL, I have though about XUL and XAML,... Gnome/mono/Mozilla
people think this will be great. but then, please
review the point above!! its an extension that only one
browser supports, and its unlikely all browsers ever will
(or I await the links/w3 support for XUL)
5) compile C on the fly... How big is C compiler?? What
libraries are for C to be used?? Do we allow inline
assembly?? What about pointers? security? this is tryly
insane idea!!
So why has no one tried?
1. http was not designed for this
http is just a transfer protocol, we could as well keep
hosting webpages over gopher or ftp for all that is
necessary.. 2. html was not designed for this
M stands for MARKUP, providing hints how to display Text
(guess what does T stand for in html). This is an
extension to ascii files. We define what part of the
ascii file is a quote (with QUOTE tag) or what is
a paragraph (p) or what needs to have emphasis (with EM)
The addition of such tags as bold (B) or italics (I)
already bastardized HTML !!! 3. javascript / css / dom / dhtml / cookies / https
these are all kludges and hacks on top of hacks to get
html do something that it was not designed. Not to
mention that HTML itself in the middle of its life
changed its purpose from being an open ps/pdf replacement
that makes sence to an idea of full fledged application
system... UGH!!!
to answer: many tried, many failed, and we keep adding hack on top of hacks.. small hacks, i hopes that one by one they will get somehow supported and popular around the web.
enjoy
-- /apz, Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
1) you have to register 2) scrolling an article with mouse reduces resolution
scrolling an article with keyboard causes choppiness 3) magazine is reproduced with advertisements, if you
are saving the printing costs, and delivery costs
why not save some more on the bandwidth/scanning
of the advertisements.. Most funny is the time spent
on making sure that all the postcard based inserts
also are flipping on the pages 4) no way of reformatting pages (why oh why do I get three
columns of text and have to keep scrolling up and
down on the page when reading each column) 5) no way of cut/copy/paste to send an interesting quote
price, tidbit, or, in case of such mags like the MS SQL
magazine, the source code... 6) the page scrollbar is always same size, 100pixels or so
this means that even when opening zinio at 1600x1200
you cannot easily scroll between pages as you need to
be pixels accurate.. And no, its not like the space
not used for the scroller has another purpose, its
just blank 7) no way to disable images 8) no way of forcing own fonts 9) no way of forcing own colors a) lack of sub pixel antialising for laptops/lcds
and in future also means lack of support for plasma/oled b) does not allow for text to be formatted left and right
such as the nice "The Boustrophedon Text Reader" found
at traevoli.com/boust/
overall zinio is trying to be pdf, but fails even at that, but atleast enjoy the nice animation of that postcard insert as you flip it between the pages you are trying to read!!!
-- /apz, If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
1. you dont need wireless, ever, just a 50m of nice blue cat5 2. you dont need laptop, pdas are in game as well (all hail pdb/rb/prc) 3. why is washroom a bad place for a pda? get one that is water resistant
although I do agree, a site that requires for you to be online to read the material is bad.
-- /apz, There's a lot to be said for not saying a lot.
if you need a drive that is more reliable get one like that.
Everyone out here complains about reliability of hard drives. I had only:
One drive fail on me due to age (clicks and then death) One drive died due to power fluctuations One drive circuit board burnt out due to overheating the case
( thats what you get for stacking 4 drives on each other,
( and anyways, fixing only required getting a replacement
( circuit board, not a biggie
This is from the average of 40 drives that I have bought over last 10 years. And no, all these drives were cheapest and bottom of the barrell. I bought them randomly depending on which machine/server at work needed upgrade (was an admin) and from random shops, from mom and pop and from big flea market sales (www.comfest.com)
Now, when buying the drive remember that the moving parts are generally the things that die. A disk rotating at 5400 is more reliable than one at 10,000 if both are built the same way (generally 10,000rpm should have better material for the extra strain, but not always).
Also, a 10,000 rpm at 20gb will have similiar bandwidth as 5400rpm at 40gb (assuming saem amount of platters/heads). The difference is latency (possibly twice longer wait for the stream to start, but not necesarilly, its also important to note the head spead, not just the platter speed).
I do miss the 5400rpm drives, they were most reliable I had from anyone, and they easily saturate my 100mbit network.
people who had drives fail are to blame themselves (unless the drive was from a company known to produce faulty drives, can you say 'deathstar'?). Did you really need that 40gb at 10000rpm? or 7200rpm? if you still can buy, use the 5400 rpm, they never wear out.
-- /apz, Never insult an alligator until you've crossed the river.
In fallout, anything that is a drug or similiar to a drug can cause an addiction.
So besides obvious: Beer / Booze / Jet (form of speed) / Mentats
we also could get addicted to just Coca Cola, Nuke Cola.
Out of more wierd addictions are ones related to healing. In Fallout you can become radiated by walking around nuclear silos, nuclear blast sites, nuclear waste or nuclear reactors. The game however provides you a variaty of anti-rad pills and potions. A heavy use of such pills can leave you addicted to them.
Further more, in fallout one generally heals by sleeping off damage, but during a fight you cannot take a nap, so there is this product called 'stimpak' that fixes you. You can get addicted to it.
There are also super stimpaks that you get more easily addicted to (but provide more healing power).
And once you get addicted you have to sustain your addicted state or go through withdrawal.
Some of the characters that join your party (cassidy) also have medical conditions, meaing they can die of heart attack due to abuse of drugs.
As another poster mentioned there are also addiction related perks/skills.
If you are 'Chem Resistant' it means you dont get addicted as easily, but this also means that the drugs effects get diminished.
Conversly if you are 'Chem Reliant', it means that you get addicted easily, but also it means you go through withdrawal much faster.
so many choices, so many poisions, so many addictions.
Fallout,.. the best ever RPG...
/apz, If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter. -- Freeman Dyson
so you are one of the losers who keeps changing the id3 tags..;D
but seriously, its not like its magic to create a checksum of only music frames of mp3s. This has been done few times ago, for example checkout crc authentication built to mp3, or better yet, use a ready tool such as
linux -> mp3bookhelper
windows -> mp3-vaccinator
Another way is to compare tree hashes of files. A tree hash is where you break a file into a binary tree, where each leaf is a hash of a segment of a file. You combine the hashes of each leaf to get a node hash. All the way until you get the root node hash. With a tree hash its quite efficient to figure out what part of file is different and needs a redownload. That is assuming you are using id3v1 which does not change file size. This is yet another reason to avoid id3v2/Ape systems.
-- /apz, "Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead." -- Euripides
I dont see what you are trying to say. Compare winzip to winrar: - same price - winrar comes with full command line, and gui interface - both support variaty of decompression schemes - zip provides worse compression ratios than rar - zip has virtually no recovery methods - zip has no multi archive support (unless you
consider the current hack as a valid system) - zip uses pathetic encryption (password breakers
exist for over a decade, rar still has not a
single password breaker)
So crappy Zip has same asking price as amazing Rar. I fail to follow your logic.
originally designed to let you fit large files onto floppies, but can be used for everything, splitting dvds onto cds, etc. from the manual:
-v[k|b|f|m|M]
Create volumes with size=*1000 [*1024 | *1].
By default this switch uses as thousands (1000) of bytes
(not 1024 x bytes). You may also enter the size in kilobytes
using the symbol 'k', in bytes using the symbol 'b',
in megabytes - 'm', in millions of bytes - 'M' or select
one of several predefined values using the symbol 'f'
following the numerical value. Predefined values can be
360, 720, 1200, 1440 or 2880 and replaced with corresponding
floppy disk size.
If the size is omitted, autodetection will be used.
If volumes are created on removable media, then after
the first volume has been created, user will be prompted
with:
Create next volume: Yes/No/All
At this moment in time, you should change the disks. Answering
'A' will cause all volumes to be created without a pause.
By default RAR volumes have names like 'volname.partNNN.rar',
where NNN is the volume number. Using -vn switch it is
possible to switch to another, extension based naming scheme,
where the first volume file in a multi-volume set has
the extension.rar, following volumes are numbered from.r00
to.r99.
When extracting or testing a multi-volume archive you must use
only the first volume name. If there is no next volume
on the drive and the disk is removable, the user will be
prompted with:
Insert disk with
Insert the disk with the correct volume and press any key.
If while extracting, the next volume is not found and volumes
are placed on the non-removable disk, RAR will abort with
the error message:
Cannot find
Archive volumes may not be modified. The commands 'd', 'f', 'u',
's' cannot be used with Multi-volume sets. The command 'a' may
be used only for the creation of a new multi-volume sequence.
It is possible, although unlikely, that the file size, of a file
in a multi-volume set, could be greater than it's uncompressed
size. This is due to the fact that 'storing' (no compression if
size increases) cannot be enabled for multi-volume sets.
Archive volumes may be Self-Extracting (SFX). Such an archive
should be created using both the '-v' and '-sfx' switches.
rar has one of the best recovery methods, as it has mutliple of them.
during compression: Recovery Record (-rr option)
it has Recovery Record, this is data appended to the actual
rar file that lets you recover from errors within a file. The
default RR takes 1% of the archive and lets you recover 0.6%. You
can change this behaviour to going more recoverability by
specifying -rr[N]p and telling it larger percantage for recoverability.
Recovery Volume (-rv option)
further more, rar supports PAR like volumes called REV
That can recover full missing files. For all you are concerned REV is
PAR, except its integrated to RAR utility. all you type is unrar *.rar
and rar will recover files for you, either through RR or REV. No need
to muck around twenty different utilities just to ensure proper file.
Non Solid Archiving (-s- option)
Further more, rar support non solid archiving, meaning each file is
saved using new compression statistics. You will lose some space due
to this method, however you will gain speed (you dont need to decompress
first 20 files to gain access to 21st file), as well as you will gain
partial recoverability (if file 20 is corrupt, you can still decompress
file 21)
during decompression: Keep Broken Files (-kb option)
By default, like most archiving software, rar will not save a file
that is known that is corrupt, unless you explicitly force it to do
so.
I highly recommend checking out the command line manual to RAR,
Slashdot Mirror
blah , pico has a limit of 72 chars per line, and we all
like it.
And the good old file_id.diz standard defines for the file to be
no larger than 40characters wide and no more than 10 lines long
(some older ones forced 5 lines long), with the first line
being the MOST descriptive.
Not to mention that assembly programmers can do it under 40 chars
per line.
you people with 80 chars per line are WAY too spoiled.
--
/apz, why does BBS novadays means webforum? I want telnet BBS
IIRC Van Burmen project was the Fallout 3, not BG3 as you seem
to elude to.
Another nitpick, or to be overly pedantic Planescape Torment was
also released in the last 5 years.
I have not played Icewind Dale 2 to comment on it, first one I
disliked for same reason I disliked Diablos (1 and 2), both
were click fests and not imaginative, not giving ability to try
to pass the game by just talking out of a problem.
--
/apz, Power corrupts... Atomic power corrupts atomically!!!
TOEE engine? hah, graphically decent, TOEE engine is AD&D
based, and AD&D for cRPG just sucks ass. AD&D has tons of rules
that are originally left for the dungen master to enforce or not.
Further more, AD&D rules are quite limited, especially since they
are for pen & paper, minimizing calculations.
For example, in AD&D you have charisma/likability. If you play
as an ogre you get a penalty hit for charisma, I understand,
ogre deals with humans, charisma is shot to hell, but same ogre
character deals with ogre? Shouldn't the reciprocal be true to?
And then another scenario, you play human, go to a bartender that
is an ogre, should not your human character now get same charisma
penalty as a ogre player going to human bartender? BLAH
Another problem with AD&D is classes. Classes of characters are
MOST stupid and braindead idea ever. If I play as a clerick or
druid or whatever then I cannot wear armour. Its against my
alignment/beliefs, even if I play as chaotic evil. Instead of
giving me a penalty of -4 for wearing armour against my class
I cant even try to put the armour on.
Now, take original fallouts:
1. there is no concept of classes , you build character how you
want. Do you prefer a thief? Choose lockpick/stealth/steal
skills. Do you prefer a brain guy? choose intelligence/repair
Speech skills. Do you prefer fighter? Go with power/agility
and weapon skills.
You are not locked into classes, start with one set of skills
but in middle of the game start upgrading other skills. Maybe
you will notice that what you wanted (thief) needs to change
to another (sniper).
2. npcs npcs npcs... fallout is famous for having npcs written
well with wide variaty of things that change talk options.
Depending on all your actions, karma, perks, skills the whole
game changes.
I just dont see Fallout in AD&D.
--
/apz, Of all my friends, you are the first.
wrong,
1. its a laptop, you dont want a laptop?
2. you can close it with screen on the outside , now you
can pretend its a nice ebook, or scetchpad
3. you have more detail now your cad drawings actually make
sence!
so the question is, why dont you want a laptop with
extra features?
--
/apz, tablet is not just an overgrown gameboy
you look at it the wrong way, its a laptop that can double as a
tablet pc.
Reasons why its good:
1. as a tablet pc you can turn it to make the screen be more
like page of paper (automatic ebook), but unlike handheld
it will have a good resolutions
2. as a tablet pc with touch sensitivity you can now paint
and see results on same 'canvas'. Handhelds are too
small, usb tablets are cumbersome
3. and then, this is a laptop.
why are people thinking: great, someone made a hand held that
is no longer a hand held. instead of thinking: great,
someone made a laptop that doubles as a tablet
--
/apz, I want my c64 with the joystick based tablet
Whats wrong with CBC?
CBC2 is the only station in my town that
bothers with Jazz / Classical / Electronica.
Every other station does the easy 70s, 60s,
or 80s, 90s, or top40. Ugh
--
/apz, Canada is FUN FUN FUN
Fallout 3 was 90% complete as developers claimed,
,
even if they overshot, it would be much less time to
finish fallout 3 than to do mmog, not to mention that
they would regain trust of the fans.
as per developers:
The first batch of developers, the ones responsible
for original fallouts did go to Troika
Others that stayed developed Icewind dale, a squad game
that stayed on heels of Buldurs Gate, and later LionHeart,
a game that was fantasy much like Icewind Dale, but did
use Fallout like Special system as opposed to the very
limiting and constraining AD&D system. They were working
later on Fallout 3 (the Armen Burmin project), but as
project was canned they created own studio, Obsidian.
Funny, both Obsidian and Troika specialize in RPG making
and their releases are quite well recieved. To recap:
Troika -> Arcanum
a big game that industrilizes fantasy.
you got magicians traveling in trains.
amazing marriage of sci-fi and fantasy worlds
Troika -> Temple of Elemental Evil
one of the most highly detailed games
that is based on AD&D system
Obsidian -> Star Wars - Knights Of THe Old Republic
need I say more?
As per Fallouts, there were so far 4 games released:
Fallout 1
for pc and mac
original dev team
quest : find waterchip
Fallout 2
for pc and mac
original dev team
quest : find GECK
Fallout BOS Tactics
for pc ?mac?
contracted outside of interplay
commonly referred to as Fallout Tactics
not an rpg, but more of a squad game
quest : start new BOS outpost
Fallout BOS
for xbox
new dev team, new art, new game rules
inconsistant with Fallout1/2/tactics
quest : join BOS
When Interplay announced a new fallout, Fallout BOS,
people were surprised and quite taken aback as to why
xbox only? Afterall the game was originally PC based
and would not translate properly to console style
gaming. And yet interplay pushed, changed ideas, logos,
story lines, the special system, dumbed down everything.
(yes, I played them all).
Not only that, but before finishing xbox Fallout BOS
Interplay had the audicity and the nerve to annouce a
sequel, the one they never did start!
Then Interplay decided to get back on track and to finally
make Fallout 3, but that was cut, as some developers
claim, at being 90% done.
Yay for interplay....
--
/apz, Interplay dug their own grave
Dear sir, I strongly advise, urge, you run to nearest
store and rummage through the bargain bin. You should
find a dual-cd jewel case with both Fallouts for 5$.
If you are lucky, it might also contain Fallout:BOS Tactics.
There is no reason anymore for you, nor anyone, to
still have had not played the game
and yes, the game plays like a charm under Wine too !
--
/apz, If it's too loud, you're too old.
The 3d they have done, atleast from screenshots of Fallout 3
and from the xbox Fallout:BOS.
I dont have anything against the game being non turn based,
but give me the ability to play turn based.
I loved the idea that the game never really was a clone
of diablo where finger twiches are actually an advantage.
ofcourse this causes problems for the game to be MMO, but
then Civilisation / HOMM3 play online quite well, and
Fallout:BOS Tactics also did have a fake real time mode.
--
/apz, Far duller than a serpent's tooth it is to spend a quiet youth.
aesthetics... HA!!!
More important in html is to be able to be technically usable
under all conditions:
- scallable down to text mode browsers (like lynx that dont render tables)
- scallable between beta release of mosaic and newest fireFox
- scallable between 120px (pda) and 1600px
- be able to print to any printer (including dot matrix)
then you have used html properly, aesthetics were never part
of the html.. Its the MAC crowd that decided that html should
replace PDF that we started to have problems.
--
/apz, the guy who preaches, but does not follow own advices
But that was the design of html, that is free flowing and
uses your resolution as best as it can. I browse w3 site
and its text becomes ridiculously wide on my 1600x1200,
and how wrong is that? Because text properly flows and
adjust size I dont have problem changing font sizes.
Take any of the sites adjusted for a specific resolution
and try to enlarge fonts. If you used CSS then IE users
cannot change font sizes easily. If you use mozilla, it
will change font size, but retain width limit, so you end
up with ridiculous one word per line articles.
Not to mention that if you want WAI support you should
not develop for specific resolution, considering that
your site should be accesible from webTV, through links
lynx or the w3 browsers, etc..
The web is VERY scalable. I develop websites that work
from all the various text mode browsers like lynx, links
and the w3 (can you tell the difference between them)
and also making them still be good on the holy 4 browsers
(ns4, moz, IE, opera).
Number of rules that I adhere
1) page has to be usable in lynx
2) page has to look decently in links/w3
3) javascript is nice, but should not be required
4) use flash for useless trivial things (logo)
5) everything in percentages
6) no nested percentages (yes, browsers mean different
things when you say 40% width inside a 60% layer,
some think you meant 40% of the 60% screen width,
others assume that 40% of the 100% of screen width).
7) images are nice, as long as they have text beside
them, and alt and title tags... Why do so many site
makers skip on the alt/title/label tags?
8) avoid visual enforcing of display, rely on meta
guides. Dont use italics tag, use the emphasis tag.
Dont use bold tag, use strong.
Dont use font tag, use the heading tags.
Dont use a layer with a different margin, use blockquote
Dont use multiple line breaks, use the paragraph tag
--
/apz, Art is anything you can get away with. -- Marshall McLuhan.
the biggest problem with web is that you have to code for:
1) lowest common denominator
and forget things like javascript/flash, or
use them only as a bonus addon, not a requirement
(ie: flash for a logo, not a menu)
(ie: javascript to verify a form before submission
( but still duplicate code on the server side to
( repeat the form verification
2) have tons of work arounds for different implementations
Every browsers has own quirks. So you try to find
ways to fix problems. NS4.x is the worst of them all,
does not handle nested DIVs, has a limit on the javascript
source code it can process, crashes, forgets to render
elements, its a mess. Now NS4 is a recent browser, dont
forget to also try to support the lynx/links/w3 browsers.
3) alienate users
the webservers I am handling for now have 98% IE users,
its reasonable to deny access for people who use
alternatives.
as per your ideas as a sollution:
1) flash is a JOKE, dont touch it ever!!
2) python? how? on the server side? and how would it differ
from perl/php/asp/jsp ?
3) JavaScript with Extensions, beautifull, NS4 has different
layering system than IE/Mozilla. Not to mention that IE
has its own. And then there is the 'standard' DOM, that
every browser supports partially...
I fear of the extensions you propose? and how do you hope
to make browser makers support them.
I mean, in IE you can use vbscript instead of jscript,
and with 98% market saturation no-one sane is doing that!
4) XUL, I have though about XUL and XAML,... Gnome/mono/Mozilla
people think this will be great. but then, please
review the point above!! its an extension that only one
browser supports, and its unlikely all browsers ever will
(or I await the links/w3 support for XUL)
5) compile C on the fly... How big is C compiler?? What
libraries are for C to be used?? Do we allow inline
assembly?? What about pointers? security? this is tryly
insane idea!!
So why has no one tried?
1. http was not designed for this
http is just a transfer protocol, we could as well keep
hosting webpages over gopher or ftp for all that is
necessary..
2. html was not designed for this
M stands for MARKUP, providing hints how to display Text
(guess what does T stand for in html). This is an
extension to ascii files. We define what part of the
ascii file is a quote (with QUOTE tag) or what is
a paragraph (p) or what needs to have emphasis (with EM)
The addition of such tags as bold (B) or italics (I)
already bastardized HTML !!!
3. javascript / css / dom / dhtml / cookies / https
these are all kludges and hacks on top of hacks to get
html do something that it was not designed. Not to
mention that HTML itself in the middle of its life
changed its purpose from being an open ps/pdf replacement
that makes sence to an idea of full fledged application
system... UGH!!!
to answer: many tried, many failed, and we keep adding hack
on top of hacks.. small hacks, i hopes that one by one they
will get somehow supported and popular around the web.
enjoy
--
/apz, Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!
Zinio reader is crap
1) you have to register
2) scrolling an article with mouse reduces resolution
scrolling an article with keyboard causes choppiness
3) magazine is reproduced with advertisements, if you
are saving the printing costs, and delivery costs
why not save some more on the bandwidth/scanning
of the advertisements.. Most funny is the time spent
on making sure that all the postcard based inserts
also are flipping on the pages
4) no way of reformatting pages (why oh why do I get three
columns of text and have to keep scrolling up and
down on the page when reading each column)
5) no way of cut/copy/paste to send an interesting quote
price, tidbit, or, in case of such mags like the MS SQL
magazine, the source code...
6) the page scrollbar is always same size, 100pixels or so
this means that even when opening zinio at 1600x1200
you cannot easily scroll between pages as you need to
be pixels accurate.. And no, its not like the space
not used for the scroller has another purpose, its
just blank
7) no way to disable images
8) no way of forcing own fonts
9) no way of forcing own colors
a) lack of sub pixel antialising for laptops/lcds
and in future also means lack of support for plasma/oled
b) does not allow for text to be formatted left and right
such as the nice "The Boustrophedon Text Reader" found
at traevoli.com/boust/
overall zinio is trying to be pdf, but fails even at that,
but atleast enjoy the nice animation of that postcard insert
as you flip it between the pages you are trying to read!!!
--
/apz, If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly.
1. you dont need wireless, ever, just a 50m of nice blue cat5
2. you dont need laptop, pdas are in game as well (all hail pdb/rb/prc)
3. why is washroom a bad place for a pda? get one that is water resistant
although I do agree, a site that requires for you to be online to read
the material is bad.
--
/apz, There's a lot to be said for not saying a lot.
ebooks are easier to search
ebooks are easier to cut / copy / paste
ebooks are easier to give to friends
score one for ebooks
ofcourse, by ebook I mean something friendly, like ascii, not the ugly and
bad pdf/rtf/doc/lit or the horrendously bad zno
--
/apz, "She liked him; he was a man of many qualities, even if most of them were bad."
if you need a drive that is more reliable get one like that.
Everyone out here complains about reliability of hard drives.
I had only:
One drive fail on me due to age (clicks and then death)
One drive died due to power fluctuations
One drive circuit board burnt out due to overheating the case
( thats what you get for stacking 4 drives on each other,
( and anyways, fixing only required getting a replacement
( circuit board, not a biggie
This is from the average of 40 drives that I have bought over
last 10 years. And no, all these drives were cheapest and
bottom of the barrell. I bought them randomly depending on
which machine/server at work needed upgrade (was an admin)
and from random shops, from mom and pop and from big flea
market sales (www.comfest.com)
Now, when buying the drive remember that the moving parts
are generally the things that die. A disk rotating at 5400
is more reliable than one at 10,000 if both are built the
same way (generally 10,000rpm should have better material
for the extra strain, but not always).
Also, a 10,000 rpm at 20gb will have similiar bandwidth
as 5400rpm at 40gb (assuming saem amount of platters/heads).
The difference is latency (possibly twice longer wait for
the stream to start, but not necesarilly, its also important
to note the head spead, not just the platter speed).
I do miss the 5400rpm drives, they were most reliable I had
from anyone, and they easily saturate my 100mbit network.
people who had drives fail are to blame themselves (unless
the drive was from a company known to produce faulty drives,
can you say 'deathstar'?). Did you really need that 40gb
at 10000rpm? or 7200rpm? if you still can buy, use the 5400
rpm, they never wear out.
--
/apz, Never insult an alligator until you've crossed the river.
In fallout, anything that is a drug or similiar to a drug can cause
/apz, If you don't have a nasty obituary you probably didn't matter. -- Freeman Dyson
an addiction.
So besides obvious:
Beer / Booze / Jet (form of speed) / Mentats
we also could get addicted to just Coca Cola, Nuke Cola.
Out of more wierd addictions are ones related to healing.
In Fallout you can become radiated by walking around nuclear
silos, nuclear blast sites, nuclear waste or nuclear reactors.
The game however provides you a variaty of anti-rad pills and
potions. A heavy use of such pills can leave you addicted
to them.
Further more, in fallout one generally heals by sleeping
off damage, but during a fight you cannot take a nap, so
there is this product called 'stimpak' that fixes you.
You can get addicted to it.
There are also super stimpaks that you get more easily
addicted to (but provide more healing power).
And once you get addicted you have to sustain your
addicted state or go through withdrawal.
Some of the characters that join your party (cassidy)
also have medical conditions, meaing they can die of
heart attack due to abuse of drugs.
As another poster mentioned there are also addiction
related perks/skills.
If you are 'Chem Resistant' it means you dont get
addicted as easily, but this also means that the drugs
effects get diminished.
Conversly if you are 'Chem Reliant', it means that you
get addicted easily, but also it means you go through
withdrawal much faster.
so many choices, so many poisions, so many addictions.
Fallout,.. the best ever RPG...
so you are one of the losers who keeps changing the id3 tags..
but seriously, its not like its magic to create a checksum of only
music frames of mp3s. This has been done few times ago, for example
checkout crc authentication built to mp3, or better yet, use a ready
tool such as
linux -> mp3bookhelper
windows -> mp3-vaccinator
Another way is to compare tree hashes of files. A tree hash is where
you break a file into a binary tree, where each leaf is a hash of a
segment of a file. You combine the hashes of each leaf to get a node
hash. All the way until you get the root node hash. With a tree hash
its quite efficient to figure out what part of file is different and
needs a redownload. That is assuming you are using id3v1 which does
not change file size. This is yet another reason to avoid
id3v2/Ape systems.
--
/apz, "Dishonor will not trouble me, once I am dead." -- Euripides
I dont see what you are trying to say. Compare
winzip to winrar:
- same price
- winrar comes with full command line, and gui interface
- both support variaty of decompression schemes
- zip provides worse compression ratios than rar
- zip has virtually no recovery methods
- zip has no multi archive support (unless you
consider the current hack as a valid system)
- zip uses pathetic encryption (password breakers
exist for over a decade, rar still has not a
single password breaker)
So crappy Zip has same asking price as amazing
Rar. I fail to follow your logic.
just use RAR volume (split file) capabilities
.rar, following volumes are numbered from .r00 .r99.
originally designed to let you fit large files
onto floppies, but can be used for everything,
splitting dvds onto cds, etc. from the manual:
-v[k|b|f|m|M]
Create volumes with size=*1000 [*1024 | *1].
By default this switch uses as thousands (1000) of bytes
(not 1024 x bytes). You may also enter the size in kilobytes
using the symbol 'k', in bytes using the symbol 'b',
in megabytes - 'm', in millions of bytes - 'M' or select
one of several predefined values using the symbol 'f'
following the numerical value. Predefined values can be
360, 720, 1200, 1440 or 2880 and replaced with corresponding
floppy disk size.
If the size is omitted, autodetection will be used.
If volumes are created on removable media, then after
the first volume has been created, user will be prompted
with:
Create next volume: Yes/No/All
At this moment in time, you should change the disks. Answering
'A' will cause all volumes to be created without a pause.
By default RAR volumes have names like 'volname.partNNN.rar',
where NNN is the volume number. Using -vn switch it is
possible to switch to another, extension based naming scheme,
where the first volume file in a multi-volume set has
the extension
to
When extracting or testing a multi-volume archive you must use
only the first volume name. If there is no next volume
on the drive and the disk is removable, the user will be
prompted with:
Insert disk with
Insert the disk with the correct volume and press any key.
If while extracting, the next volume is not found and volumes
are placed on the non-removable disk, RAR will abort with
the error message:
Cannot find
Archive volumes may not be modified. The commands 'd', 'f', 'u',
's' cannot be used with Multi-volume sets. The command 'a' may
be used only for the creation of a new multi-volume sequence.
It is possible, although unlikely, that the file size, of a file
in a multi-volume set, could be greater than it's uncompressed
size. This is due to the fact that 'storing' (no compression if
size increases) cannot be enabled for multi-volume sets.
Archive volumes may be Self-Extracting (SFX). Such an archive
should be created using both the '-v' and '-sfx' switches.
Example:
create archive in volumes of fixed size:
rar a -s -v1440 floparch.rar *.*
will create solid volumes of size 1440000 bytes.
rar has one of the best recovery methods, as it has mutliple of them.
during compression:
Recovery Record (-rr option)
it has Recovery Record, this is data appended to the actual
rar file that lets you recover from errors within a file. The
default RR takes 1% of the archive and lets you recover 0.6%. You
can change this behaviour to going more recoverability by
specifying -rr[N]p and telling it larger percantage for recoverability.
Recovery Volume (-rv option)
further more, rar supports PAR like volumes called REV
That can recover full missing files. For all you are concerned REV is
PAR, except its integrated to RAR utility. all you type is unrar *.rar
and rar will recover files for you, either through RR or REV. No need
to muck around twenty different utilities just to ensure proper file.
Non Solid Archiving (-s- option)
Further more, rar support non solid archiving, meaning each file is
saved using new compression statistics. You will lose some space due
to this method, however you will gain speed (you dont need to decompress
first 20 files to gain access to 21st file), as well as you will gain
partial recoverability (if file 20 is corrupt, you can still decompress
file 21)
during decompression:
Keep Broken Files (-kb option)
By default, like most archiving software, rar will not save a file
that is known that is corrupt, unless you explicitly force it to do
so.
I highly recommend checking out the command line manual to RAR,
Eugene Roshal is GOD