I've not posted here in a while. Glad to see this place is still going.

I'd just like to say, I dreamed of knave textures the other night. 

It seems that gtkr 1.5 development has slowed to a halt. Meanwhile, a branch of 1.4 has started development for the Quake Zero project.

http://zerowing.idsoftware.com/pipermail/gtkradiant/2007-September/010747.html

More on Quake Zero:

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48290

This is maybe good, maybe bad news depending on your attitude. There was actually a fair amount of work on 1.5 to add things like native quake support, and support for many other games. Some cool features are in there.

On the other hand, 1.4 is generally the preferred version for people who feel that 1.5 totally fubared the interface. 

I really hope they try to make Quake Zero custom map (and other content) friendly, would probably get me to make another Q3 map.

I have no real prob with 1.5 other than it seems to crash all the friggin time. 

yep, will upload soonish after I get things sorted. 

id co-founder and programming lead [Carmack] noted his preference for "straightforward and elegant" games such as Quake 3 Arena

Hmm... does he mean, a bare skeleton of content and watered down gameplay wrapped around a pretty engine? I guess that is "straightforward," but q3 was pretty bad until mod makers (esp (cpm) got to it.

Concerning radiant things - Does radiant 1.4 or 1.5 load wad2 texture files? where am I supposed to put these? 

i can't rememeber for sure, but I think you put them in the root mod directory. For example, id1. Or, quoth. Or, rubicon2. 

I've noticed that more and more people are doing that Steam community. Is this in preparation for TF2 or just a general thing? 

we're playing tf2 already ;)
and steamcommunity is the tool for us to keep an eye for each other 

TF2 is awesome!!! And its easy to play with other TF'ers as steam lets you join the server they are playing on with a single click :)

Did I mention tf2 rocks???! :D 

I noticed a bug I'd never seen in photoshop before recently. I'd go to file>open, the open dialog would appear for a billionth of a second, and photoshop would disappear. Bip. Deft and timely application of PRNTSCRN allowed me to see what folder the open dialog was open to in that split second - some temporary folder full of garbage hash filenames. VYG7NTC9\, specifically.

Starting photoshop with ctrl-alt-shift held down to reset all settings fixed it (of course I had to rebuild my workspace and preferences, but whatever, I can open stuff again.)

It began happening a second time, and I correlated it to using the import drivers for my canon powershot s50. Same folder name, too.

This time I searched the registry for it, and found the full file path: C:\Documents and Settings\Lunaran\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\Content.IE5\VYG7NTC9\. I open it up in explorer ... and explorer mysteriously disappears.

In fact, nearly any application I use to try to look in that folder is immediately killed by Windows XP. WS_FTP can browse to it, and I can look in it with Word, and nothing else survives the exposure to whatever awesome temporary bullshit contents that folder has which XP deems so important.

Anyone have any idea why? 

malware? 

Try if you can start the IE, then use "delete temporary files" or something in the options.
And use a proper browser in the future. 

Do I need any additional software to get the dual monitor setup to work? For example laptop and CRT monitor configuration. 

If you are using Windows, then the basic graphics drivers (where you can set desktop resolution and bit depth) take care of multi-monitor setups. Same with OSX. Other OSes have such and such method for doing it that you will have to search to discover.

Make sure you also have an unused port to connect the monitor to :D 

Rocks for steam, you can play whatever game on the main monitor and have all your steam chat and community windows on the other, its great :) 

Fuck you, I don't use explorer. Windows uses it for other things anyway - like the import driver for my digital camera. 

ok? 

It began happening a second time, and I correlated it to using the import drivers for my canon powershot s50.

Don't use japanese imports. It's a rootkit! Honest american drivers only.

It seems it tries to protect some files.

I remember having an experience trying to find drivers for my OEM SB Live soundcard. The installer from creative.com wouldn't install since the detection routine found that the card was an OEM product. (I lost the CD.) So I stalled the installer and found the temporary files and copied them over to another place to do the install. :)

Some companies seem so touchy about their drivers. 

Patronizing condescension doesn't get as warm a response. This seems like a perfectly fair policy. 

http://www.farrarfocus.com/atom/

Looks interesting. 

That looks truly awesome. I want to fly a spaceship through there.


Lun: Sorry, no offense meant. :(
Did the deleting help? 

Hmm. That atom sent me on a weird surfing spree.
The tech it uses has been used in old videogames when the hardware was too slow for real 3d polygons.

I remember being in Italy as a kid and there was this arcade hall that had this space shooter game where you sat inside, and I was too young to really play. Might have been 1984 or 1985... I remember the big death animation explosion and how the sounds made the seats rumble. I wish I could find out the name by then. My parents later told me that we had to take another route to the beach so I wouldn't see the arcade hall and want to play the games.

Oh how has everything changed since then.

I remember my friend had a C64 and a small black and white TV connected to it. We went downstairs to borrow Turbo Tape from an older boy to get some game to load.

There should be a post icon with a big teardrop from one eye.

It's not the games per se but the sense of wonder of something new. Perhaps all this technology we are using now will look ancient in 23 years as well... so it's not worth too much hassle in comparing the minute details of this or that clockspeed and pipeline width.

Experiences are things that leave memories. And it's important to get out and do various things and get those experiences. I so remember the beaches and ruins and catacombs and the tap that poured water to a pool when it was not attached to anything and a million other things too - but these things haven't really outdated. They're still there and if I have kids, I could go and visit them and say "your daddy was here 35 years ago". It's perplexing in a way, how things age at different rates. 

reminds me of electric sheep ( http://www.electricsheep.org ), another fractal-ey thing. 

fuck 

There's a lot I could write about games with discrete countable states, games with uncountable states, and in-between games where the uncountable states are really clustered onto a simpler graph of meta-states. But it's late and I wouldn't be coherent, but here's a cool video project that implies some of those ideas.

http://www.thenewgamer.com/content/archives/averaging_gradius

It also makes me think of that Trackmania video where they have thousands of cars playing out all possible routes through the course simultaneously.

http://www.gamevideos.com/video/id/5930