As a poster below said, this is a fan site and our first attempt at using PHP/MySQL. The site has never been stressed like this until now. Probably a bad way of learning that your site will break horribly when too many visitors hit it at once. If it was a commercial site, we'd probably be fired by now.
Yes, we are using "pconnect". And yes, we were using the default MySQL configuration of 100 connections. This has certainly been a great learning experience and is the first PHP/MySQL driven site I've ever written. It's also not a commercial site (we lose money hosting it!), just something we put up because we're big fans of classic gaming systems. Not that we should be excused for the errors, mind you, but until now the site has never been stressed. I've already suppressed the PHP errors (learn something new every day!), but will have to investigate the proper way to handle MySQL/Apache getting swamped. Thanks for your suggestions.:)
Okay, lesson learned. Stay as far away from Slashdot as possible if you want your poor server to live longer than 30 seconds once an article has been posted to the front page.:) Here are some links to the images on the server that will bypass MySQL, so you can at least see them:
Okay, what actually happened is back in spring of 1997 Looking Glass wasn't doing too hot financially. In May of 1997 I moved from Cambridge, MA (where Looking Glass was located) to Austin to work on a game called Junction Point. Well, imagine my surprise when Looking Glass shut our office down on July 1st. Okay, it wasn't really too surprising.:) They didn't want to do it, but it was either shut down our office and continue to make payroll up in Cambridge, or shut the whole thing down.
A core group of six people stayed together, receiving no salary, and worked on various project ideas and shopped them around (well, Warren shopped them around.) Eventually a deal was struck with Ion Storm to create an Ion Storm Austin office, as none of us wanted to move to Dallas (can you blame us?) We became Ion Storm Austin on September 1, 1997.
The six people who started the office were Albert Yarusso (myself - programmer), Chris Norden (programmer), Steve Powers (designer), Dave Beyer (designer), Kraig Count (artist), and of course Warren Spector. Of those, Steve and Warren are the only full-time employees still with ISA. Chris and I are working as contractors on Deus Ex for the Playstation 2.
I talked to the Bleem! guys at E3 last week and each Bleem! disc will allow you to play 100 PSX games on the Dreamcast. Each disc will cost $20.
They were showing several games running on the Dreamcast vs. PSX, including Gran Turismo 2. The improved visual quality is pretty impressive.
Re:Things are looking up!!
on
Free Be
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· Score: 1
I picked up 4.5 with the BeOS Bible for only $45 at Best Buy about a month ago. I was quite surprised to see it sitting on a shelf and decided to give it a whirl. Runs *LIGHTNING* fast on a dual-533Mhz Celeron setup (Abit PB6 MB). I can only dream about getting performance like this from Windows 98 or even Windows 2000 with SMP.
However, I can't run it full time as there are too many Windoze apps I need. Not to mention games.:) Hopefully this situation will change in the future as I really like what I've seen thus far.
Yes, I do. But at least OLM (supposedly) owns their own equipment and seems to respond to customer service queries in a more timely manner than CI Host (especially now!!!) I never had a problem with the speed of my website until CI Host decided to move. And I'm paying less through OLM than I was through CI Host. I really haven't seen any people complain about OLM.
My site isn't live yet, so I wasn't greatly affected, mostly just a hassle because I couldn't send/receive email through my domain.
Pretty damn interesting how their accounts database is down but they sure as hell managed to prematurely bill me for another three months of service today!! And I faxed in my account cancellation YESTERDAY. Also nice how the cancel.cihost.com site is not accessible (which is how they claim you _must_ cancel your account on their website).
After experiencing many of the same problems with CI Host that others have been having (check out alt.www.webmaster), I decided to move to a new hosting company, OLM.Net. Yesterday I faxed in my cancellation request to CI Host (1-888-242-7554), and I also emailed them with the same information (my name, domain to be cancelled as well as reason for cancellation). This morning I received an email from the billing department saying I would have to fax in my request, which fortunately I had already done.
However, this morning I checked my credit card balance only to discover that CI Host today charged me for another 3 months ofservice, even though I was paid through (around) January 15th. I would know the exact date if I could actually view my invoice online, but as with cisupport.com, this part of CI Host is still not operational. However, I signed up on October 15th and paid for three months in advance.
Needless to say, I was pissed and immediately called my credit card company to dispute the charge. I am also attempting to call CI Host, but I'm only getting busy signals when I dial their 1-888-868-9931 number. I highly suggest that anyone who cancelled accounts with CI Host to make sure they didn't charge you for another billing period.
I can confirm this as well. It's been fun just walking around with the camera watching the jaws hit the floor (I work at a game company, so most people here are familiar with MAME). It just so happened that I had my camera with me at work today--as soon as I saw this news I grabbed the binaries, dug out my USB cable and started downloading! Now all this puppy needs is sound!!
Although this was some time ago, the Atari 7800 was backwards compatible with the Atari 2600. Which is interesting, considering the Atari 7800 came out *after* the Atari 5200, which *wasn't* backwards compatible. There were a few Atari 2600 games that weren't compatible with the 7800. You could also use 2600 controllers on the 7800, which was nice considering the 7800 controllers were terrible. Several other systems also had modules that allowed you to play 2600 games. The Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and Intellivision come to mind. Obviously building backwards compatibility for consoles as complex as the Playstation is a bit more involved than for the 2600.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Done. Learn something new every day. :)
As a poster below said, this is a fan site and our first attempt at using PHP/MySQL. The site has never been stressed like this until now. Probably a bad way of learning that your site will break horribly when too many visitors hit it at once. If it was a commercial site, we'd probably be fired by now.
Yes, we are using "pconnect". And yes, we were using the default MySQL configuration of 100 connections. This has certainly been a great learning experience and is the first PHP/MySQL driven site I've ever written. It's also not a commercial site (we lose money hosting it!), just something we put up because we're big fans of classic gaming systems. Not that we should be excused for the errors, mind you, but until now the site has never been stressed. I've already suppressed the PHP errors (learn something new every day!), but will have to investigate the proper way to handle MySQL/Apache getting swamped. Thanks for your suggestions. :)
Thank you, this is the proper link. And I even looked at the image before posting it, but everything's a blur at the moment. :)
Woops, missed one. Here's the link to the page in the Parker Brothers catalog with the blurb about the Lord of the Rings game:
Parker Brothers Catalog
Okay, lesson learned. Stay as far away from Slashdot as possible if you want your poor server to live longer than 30 seconds once an article has been posted to the front page. :) Here are some links to the images on the server that will bypass MySQL, so you can at least see them:
:)
Screenshot #1
Screenshot #2
Screenshot #3
Screenshot #4
Screenshot #5
Screenshot #6
Screenshot #7
Prototype Cartridge
Prototype Box
Binary Image
Here's a MySLQ-free writeup we did, although many of the lnks internal to AtariAge won't work right now.
Information about 2600 Lord of the Rings
Enjoy!
Actually, it was Imagic who produced Atlantis and Subterranea for the Atari 2600. :)
..Al
Okay, what actually happened is back in spring of 1997 Looking Glass wasn't doing too hot financially. In May of 1997 I moved from Cambridge, MA (where Looking Glass was located) to Austin to work on a game called Junction Point. Well, imagine my surprise when Looking Glass shut our office down on July 1st. Okay, it wasn't really too surprising. :) They didn't want to do it, but it was either shut down our office and continue to make payroll up in Cambridge, or shut the whole thing down.
A core group of six people stayed together, receiving no salary, and worked on various project ideas and shopped them around (well, Warren shopped them around.) Eventually a deal was struck with Ion Storm to create an Ion Storm Austin office, as none of us wanted to move to Dallas (can you blame us?) We became Ion Storm Austin on September 1, 1997.
The six people who started the office were Albert Yarusso (myself - programmer), Chris Norden (programmer), Steve Powers (designer), Dave Beyer (designer), Kraig Count (artist), and of course Warren Spector. Of those, Steve and Warren are the only full-time employees still with ISA. Chris and I are working as contractors on Deus Ex for the Playstation 2.
They were showing several games running on the Dreamcast vs. PSX, including Gran Turismo 2. The improved visual quality is pretty impressive.
However, I can't run it full time as there are too many Windoze apps I need. Not to mention games. :) Hopefully this situation will change in the future as I really like what I've seen thus far.
My site isn't live yet, so I wasn't greatly affected, mostly just a hassle because I couldn't send/receive email through my domain.
Pretty damn interesting how their accounts database is down but they sure as hell managed to prematurely bill me for another three months of service today!! And I faxed in my account cancellation YESTERDAY. Also nice how the cancel.cihost.com site is not accessible (which is how they claim you _must_ cancel your account on their website).
However, this morning I checked my credit card balance only to discover that CI Host today charged me for another 3 months ofservice, even though I was paid through (around) January 15th. I would know the exact date if I could actually view my invoice online, but as with cisupport.com, this part of CI Host is still not operational. However, I signed up on October 15th and paid for three months in advance.
Needless to say, I was pissed and immediately called my credit card company to dispute the charge. I am also attempting to call CI Host, but I'm only getting busy signals when I dial their 1-888-868-9931 number. I highly suggest that anyone who cancelled accounts with CI Host to make sure they didn't charge you for another billing period.
I can confirm this as well. It's been fun just walking around with the camera watching the jaws hit the floor (I work at a game company, so most people here are familiar with MAME). It just so happened that I had my camera with me at work today--as soon as I saw this news I grabbed the binaries, dug out my USB cable and started downloading! Now all this puppy needs is sound!!
Although this was some time ago, the Atari 7800 was backwards compatible with the Atari 2600. Which is interesting, considering the Atari 7800 came out *after* the Atari 5200, which *wasn't* backwards compatible. There were a few Atari 2600 games that weren't compatible with the 7800. You could also use 2600 controllers on the 7800, which was nice considering the 7800 controllers were terrible. Several other systems also had modules that allowed you to play 2600 games. The Atari 5200, ColecoVision, and Intellivision come to mind. Obviously building backwards compatibility for consoles as complex as the Playstation is a bit more involved than for the 2600. :)