TheTerminator2004

It depends on the modem. My advice is just to use it like that for a while, and feel how hot it is every now and then. If after 4-5 hours of use it doesn't feel too hot, it should be fine. Otherwise, if it does feel too hot, you should probably try and put it somewhere else. How hot too hot is probably also varies between modems, so you'll have to make an educated guess as to how hot is acceptable.

The arm of an average recliner is sufficient surface for a wireless mouse, as well. You'd actually be able to change games without getting up, unlike a console where you have to get up to go swap discs. Everything needed already exists. Granted a PC doesn't come out of the box with a wireless keyboard. But then, neither does an XBox. So again, nothing need be specially designed, but also again, the whole "PC as Console" concept is kinda stupid anyway. True, but contrast this to a console where you take it out of the box, turn it on, and play, without having to search for the right drivers and peripherals to make it actually work. Thats the big draw of the consoles: they're easy, and they're simple. Sure the PC can do everything they can, often better, but it doesn't do that out of the box. Which is why I think there'd be a good market for a consolised PC, as it were - with standardised hardware, designed from the beginning to be plugged into a TV and controlled with a gamepad, with updates etc handled automatically. Combining the ease and simplicity of the consoles, with the power and versatility of the PC. I personally wouldn't want one, but it could likely be popular - and depending on how much it stuck to the principles of the PC (free and open, as opposed to rigidly controlled, and closed), it could well be beneficial to the PC games market as a whole.

The new version, 0.31.10 looks pretty good. No more unkillable megabeasts, no more infinite bleeding, maces and other blunt weapons are now more viable in combat, marksdwarves work properly, as do hunters, no more Arsenal Dwarf, and you can now do various things such as butchery and stone working in adventure mode too. It's looking like pretty much all the major problems are sorted, at last - though I haven't had time to give it a go yet, and I'm not sure whether military is properly fixed yet or not - or dwarves working themselves to death. EDIT: Marksdorfs still wont train properly. But they do shoot at enemies now, instead of trying to whack them over the head with their crossbows!

How would you go about navigating the desktop/start menu/etc with a gamepad? You can't. So you'd still have to get up and walk over to the keyboard/mouse everytime you wanted to play a different game, or whatever. And if you wanted to do something other than game, you'd be screwed. So some kind of PC especially designed for this situation, and either with software or hardware to get around the problems, could prove pretty popular.

LotR: Battle for middle earth. (That ring is too recognisable :P) Another one: http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm181/The_Terminator2004/Untitled-3.png

Yep!

Nobody's managed to guess yet? :D I'll give you a clue: The developers have often been described as "the last of the bedroom coders". You will without a doubt have heard of them.

I heard somewhere that TES V was expected late 2011 or so, but I don't remember where I heard that. I've also heard several people claiming the TES MMO Bethesda are working on will be out before TES V - but as I don't remember seeing any announcements about an MMO, I think that's just rumours and speculation.

But that's the thing, PCs aren't standard. Some have nVidia GPUs, some have ATi, some have Intel. Some have Intel CPUs, some have AMD. Some are hyperthreaded, some arent. Some are single core, some 2, 3, 4 or even 6 cores. Some have 1gb memory, some 2, 3, 4, or even more. All of these make a massive difference, because different pieves of hardware work in different ways - coding a game to work the same on nVidia and ATI graphics cards is much harder than just programming for one or the other, for example. And while PCs can connect to a TV, they aren't designed to, at least not in the same way as consoles. How many people do you know who have their PC in the living room by the TV, and play it sat on the sofa? Not many, because you need a desk for a keyboard and mouse. And trying to read the writing on the screen from a distance at high resolutions could pose problems. Finally, from a developer's perspective, consoles and PC are even more different - consoles have licensing fees, restricted online access (such as MS charging for each patch or update a developer releases, or their restrictions on releasing free content - which is why people who own TF2 on 360 have to pay for all the updates), assessment procedures that have to be gone through, etc. Whereas on PC, developers can do whatever they want, as can users - it's all completely open.

You don't need any new drivers, and you most definitely do not need to ghost it or reformat or anything like that. Simply slide your new drive into the slot, screw it in, connect the PSU and SATA cables, and you're done. Next time you turn on Windows, your new drive will show up in My Computer automatically. You may need to format it (right click -> format), but once that's done you can use it however you want - install programs etc. Dead simple - much simpler than installing a new video card, for sure. Once you're done, my advice would be to try and keep 10-20gb free on your old drive at all times (since it's the system drive - and Windows generally needs some free space for the swap file, and sundry other temp stuff), which basically means installing any new programs on your new drive, and maybe moving things like your music library etc over to it as well.

Halo. Now, how about this one: http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm181/The_Terminator2004/Untitled-2.png

A PC that is explicitly designed to plug into a TV and play games like a console could be quite good. With standardised hardware, it could have many of the benefits of a PC, and many benefits of a console - hopefully making it the best of both worlds. Of course, thats assuming it would still be a normal PC, where you can do whatever you want with it, and which runs Windows or Linux, not some proprietary OS which is incompatible with everything else. And how they'd get that to work with a gamepad instead of a mouse and keyboard, I don't know. But, if marketed right, it could certainly break the dominance of the consoles, as well as net Activision a lot of cash. So it makes sense. Whether it actually will turn out like that, and not end up being just another console, is another question altogether.

When you got those 'Access is denied' errors, where were you trying to extract the files to? Normally it should request elevated priveledges automatically if needed, but sometimes it might not. So if you're trying to extract to Program Files or somewhere which needs administrator permission, try running it as an administrator (right click -> run as administrator. You can also go to properties, and under compatibility check "run this program as an administrator" to save having to right click every time).

I recognise that! Isn't it breath of fire? I'm not sure which one though... possibly IV? Anyway, my next one: http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm181/The_Terminator2004/Untitled-1.jpg

If only the exe file is fragmented, you won't see much difference, if any, seeing as the exe is very small, and therefore won't be very fragmented. Similarly, you have no way to time how long it takes to load, seeing as 95% of the game's load time will be from initialising, and loading resources. For a proper test, you'd want to uninstall it, then install a couple of small programs (to go in the space FO3 used to be in), then reinstall FO3. But that doesn't seem worth the effort - better to wait until you next buy a new game.

Kotick is the guy in charge of Activision-Blizzard, for those who are wondering. And it makes sense he wants to weaken Sony, MS, and Nintendo. After all, anyone who releases a game on their consoles has to pay them a massive licensing fee for each copy sold, which eats into profits. Whereas PC is an open platform - no licensing fees, anyone can release whatever they want, etc. Of course, no doubt what he'd really like, is for everyone to pay him licensing fees instead, but I doubt that'll happen (though no doubt he'll try).

Fixed it! Finally! :D Spent ages trying to figure it out, and (as always) it turned out to be something incredibly simple. But, it's actually working now, so I can finally go back to developing the actual game. Well, at least, I can once I can get the gui library to work properly... oh, the joys of programming.

Other. I don't mind how long or relevant a post is so long as it has decent spelling/grammar*, and isn't completely stupid. Excessive rambling does begin to get on my nerves after a while though. *If English isn't someone's native language, that's fair enough. But people who can speak perfectly good English, who insist on writing lik dis rlly suxorz lol u no wat i meen?????

Google? It would have been much easier to just use a reverse image search. :tongue: (which annoyingly doesn't work for your image) Anyway, SC2 is one of the greatest classics in gaming history, so I heartily recommend you all play the remake, the Ur Quan Masters, if you get the opportunity. It is pretty hard without an FAQ, but so are all games more than a few years old.

You'll probably have to use Hamachi. I never managed to get it working, but in theory, if you all join a hamachi network, and try to connect to the host's Hamachi IP address, you should be able to play. You might need to choose LAN in the game, instead of connect by IP.

It is well known! There've been several remakes of it over the years too, including one very popular freeware one (which is also the best). But I guess a lot of members here might be a bit young to remember it - it was released in 1992. Any self-respecting PC gamer over the age of 16 should have played it to death though. I'm in a generous mood, so I'll give you a clue:

Defragging is less useful in Windows Vista than Windows XP, and massively less so in Windows 7 (to the point where it's almost completely pointless). So if you have one of those operating systems (or Linux, which is efficient to the point where it IS completely pointless), you won't notice nearly as much benefit. This is partly because Windows 7 is much more efficient when it comes to handling the filesystem, and partly because it does a very good job of defragging while your PC is idle. So defragging won't take very long at all, and you won't notice much of a difference (though it is still good to do it occasionally, because unlike Linux, Windows 7 still isn't perfect in this regard). For Windows XP or older, however, regular defragging is essential. Ideally, every time you install a big program, such as a game, you should defrag afterwards.

Yeah, I installed it outside program files, and it ran fine without even needing to be in compatibility/administrator mode. I had some problems getting MGE working, but other than that, it was fine. And yeah, as a rule of thumb, VMs are not good for gaming, full stop. Since they basically have to create an entire virtual graphics card to map all the functions of the real one to the VM, the developers don't normally bother with much more than is necessary to run the majority of programs. Sadly games aren't normally a priority. Saying that, Microsoft Virtual Machine is one of the worst. I'd recommend VMWare instead.

@Pov: That is Penumbra, is it not? Now, how about this one: http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm181/The_Terminator2004/Untitled.jpg

No offense, but I think a lot of your design would be pretty unworkable, mostly because it seems to be far too complex to easily be made into a game. It would take a long, long time to make all that, and even if you could, computers just aren't powerful enough to run it all (though, it may well end up being possible sometime in the future, when PCs have improved enough). Right now, Eve Online is the most technically demanding MMO (and I'm talking about serverside here - running the client for your game wouldn't be so hard) - and that's nowhere near as complicated as this. CCP have done various presentations etc on their server infrastructure, so if you want more info on the maximum amount of power you could reasonably expect to have available for an MMO, I'm sure I can find you a few links. You might want to check out Wurm Online though, as the most similar existing MMO to your design - it's basically a game about living life in the wilderness, where you can build yourself a house, make tools/pottery/carts/boats/etc - combat plays a much smaller role, though it is there. There's a free server available to try the game out on, but it is limited quite a lot. On the paid servers, you get entire cities of players, all living in houses, running shops etc, and on the servers where combat is allowed, there's often all out war between them. Well worth checking out. In other news, I've finally managed to (somehow) fix the library problem I was having with my game! So finally, it's back to actual development again. :D EDIT: Seems I spoke too soon. The bloody things still broken.