Battlefield
I started playing Battlefield 2 again not long ago. It's a great game, but, because of all the n00bs playing it, it's not the best game I know.
I started out trying to find a server with less than 16 people. I prefer this to overcrowded 64-man servers, which reminds me too much of Counter-Strike. After several minutes of searching, I had discovered another challenge: Finding a server not being infantry only on Karkand.
This was a hard job too, as almost 50% of the servers are exactly that; Karkand infantry only. I succeeded a ffew times though, but had a few difficulties with the admins.
The first server I joined, I got kicked from after killing an enemy with the message:
"This is a farming server."
I LMAO.
Yeah, I know point farming is abundant in BF2, but, seriously. Kicking a guy for not wanting to farm points. Anyway, I continued. Got kicked a few times because I was commander and the server admins didn't want commanders, so I tried finding a server that didn't have that rule. I did, and played on it for 20 minutes.
After I killed an enemy admin, though, I was kicked with the message: "No fighting commander". Even though I wasn't fighting, I almost got killed while spawning.
He didn't seem to care if I killed non-admins though. Anyway, I don't know if I'm gonna play that game again. It's a great game, with poor players.
New computer!
I finally got my new computer! Hooray!
I have now, for the first time, tried the (in)famous Vista, and I actually find it pretty good! I can't understand why people are so negative about it. Sure, the UAC is a real bugger, but the OS does have better features. It also has (pretty good, unlike XP) x64 support.
A lot of people have complained about x64 being slower than x86. This is indeed true, if you benchmark using 32-bit apps. If you run 32-bit apps on a 64-bit OS, they have to be emulated. If you do the same test with 64-bit-optimised programs, you'll find it's actually faster.
I've had some trouble with my GFX card, a pretty nice HD4870 from Sapphire. According to Sapphire I was the only one having the issue, but I don't believe them. I guess it's got to do with the firmware/ATI drivers.
Computer broken still…
It's been a while since I posted. My computer is still partly broken, which means I almost can't play any games at all. I do play a little RTSes, though.
I almost have finished the Command&Conquer campaigns. I did the NOD one a few weeks ago, and I'm on the last GDI mission. The campaigns are actually pretty good, a game you should consider buying! I haven't tried Kane's Wrath yet, gonna wait until I get myself a new, shiny computer so I can play on max graphics (instead of minimum).
On a side note, I've almost gotten a programming job. It's a one time php coding job, but should do a nice job injecting some money into my scraped account.
Shiny as Chrome
Alright, yesterday I downloaded Google's new browser, Chrome. It's kinda nice, Google being such a large company, doing everything, and now even making a browser.
At first glance, the browser looked kinda weird. Very slick, custom themed, e.g. no default windoze layout. This is positive. The fact that it doesn't have a lot of bullshit is very appealing to me, at least.
The real cool thing about it is that it's multi-processed. This means every tab runs in a separate process, which both makes it multi-threaded in a nice way, as well as making sure that if a tab should crash (whcih is very unlikely, but can happen), the whole browser doesn't crash.
The download functions are also pretty slick, as well as being efficient. And the browser looks good!
The main reason that made me stay with it (Yes! I actually thrashed Opera and made Chrome my default browser!), was that it uses VERY little memory. In fact less than Opera. It's also extremely fast.
Even though it is still beta, I recommend everyone to go and get it! As a little side note, after one day, the browser already has 3% of browser usage in the world. BEAT THAT!
Graphics…
Allright, it looks like my PC is breaking down step by step. A year or so ago, one of my hard drives smoked, same goes for my mouse, then my keyboard, and now it appears my graphics card is saying goodbye too.
Well, it still works, but it looks like the memory is being fucked. I noticed this while playing a HL2 mod called Age of Chivalry, pretty cool idea, actually. Well, suddenly my FPS dropped from about 25 to 10, I had no idea what the cause was. A quick investigation using the +showbudget command revealed the "Swap Buffers" field going through the sky. At first I thought this was because of my RAM or hard drive, and notcied my hard drive was excessively fragmented. I tested several mroe games, including a couple mroe mods, Garry's Mod, and even HL2. They had the exact same problem. So I reinstalled everything and reformatted...
And guess what? It's the same problem still. After some more investigation I found it to have something to do with fillrate.
It's not a surpirse my GFX card is having issues. It's pretty old, a GeForce 6800. But it hasn't had the problem before!
I'm getting kinda pissed. Just... Pissed. I guess I'll have to test some more apps before drawing a conclusion, but it looks as if I need a new rig...
Computer reformat
Allright... Not only has my keyboard stopped working, but also my PC has become so full of crap that I'm going to reformat it. Right now I'm backing up whatever crap I've got on it, double checking I actually got it backed up.
I'll probly be back with a "new* computer in a couple hours.
AngelScript
Allright, I've been fiddling around a little with scripting languages for my soon-to-come game engine, and I probably settled on Squirrel. Squirrel is a scripting language largely influenced by LUA, but has a more C++-like syntax, and takes away a lot of the bad stuff with LUA. It also adds classes and whatnot.
Some time ago, though, I discovered something called AngelScript. What's kinda unorthodox with it, though, is that it's statically typed, unlike most scripting languages, who are dynamically typed. This simply means that every object in the script has a type, and the type cannot change implicitly. At first I thought this makes it a little harder for the scripters, as they have to worry about types, but after reconsidering, it actually doesn't. Sometimes it makes it a lot easier!
One of the reasons for this is that the functions no longer have to do type-checking to see if the argument is a number or string or blah blah. It's all done automatically!
The real reason I'm starting to like this, though, is it's API. It's all OO, and a lot easier to integrate, IMO.
So check out AngelScript!
Gamemode progress!
Ok, today I got bored, so I don't care about my fingers.
I've made some progress witht he gamemode, regarding the SQL storage system. No more text files for storage, which (hopefully) means less bugs. And easier management.
I've sorta completed the table layout, and even implemented a little system that will keep track of how long you've been here, and even how long you've been on the server. So be wary, big brother sees you!
Anyway, I've not only been doing bullshit. I said the storage is sorta completed, which means I've also done progress on the character system. Yes, that's right. The door ownership system is also getting together!
Next I'll be doing will probably have something to do with the combine.
Keyboard broken
Allright, now I got kinda pissed. A couple years ago, I got myself a shiny new MX5000 desktop from Logitech, to replace my old rusty Dell PS/2 keyboard. It included a nice MX1000 laser mouse, and a MX5000 cordless desktop. Pretty neat, ehh?
About a year ago, my kissed goodbye, which I didn't care that much about, because it had a very slow response time, which made me miss a lot of stuff. Anyway, I got a G5, a very nice mouse that I like a lot.
A few days ago, my keyboard kissed goodbye too. It still works, it's just the software that doesn't wanna connect. It just wants to reconnect and reconnect forever. Damn Logitech. So here I sit with my rusty PS/2 keyboard again... Guess I'll have to get a G15 some day.
Blog relaunch!
I decided to bring down and delete my old blog due to various reasons. Among them spam and the fact that I hadn't posted there for a year.
Anyway, here's the new blog! Hope it'll be better!