http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/525-Gears-of-War-2 

 

Megaman 

I have missed out on and some of peoples levels, and thinking of sifting though all of the ones I have missed could be a pain in the neck because of all of the filenames and stuff so:

Someone (not me because I suck) could make a tool which will sequence levels say in a mod/maps folder to run one after another by editing the entities lump to change the trigger_changelevels map key in each map so that they play through one after the other.....

OK, its maybe a silly idea for lazy people, but I'd use a tool like that. 

"triple cunted hooker" lol. 

*grabs megaman, removes from keyboard, takes outside and buries head-first in nearest snow-drift* 

P4 2gig, Asus MB, ATI 9700 Pro, wireless card, DVD x 2, HDD x 2, 350W PSU

Everything has been plodding along nicely. I am playing starkmon and just as I get into the first room the computer shuts down instantly (bad map, very naughty map. But no...)

Restart and the MB tells me it is "now booting from Operating System" in her MA accent and the system just hangs with the HDD light on.

Try again, same deal. Disconnect the power from DVD x 2 and HDD x 1 (obviously not the OS HDD) and it boots up OK. One by one I try all of the power supplly plugs and it is apparent that they all have power but as soon as I connect two or more drives it will not boot.

So, this suggests that the PSU is failing to supply enough power when trying to serve more than one device.

What tests can I do to prove/disprove a failing PSU? I don't have a multimeter so cannot actually test the output at each stage. Could one of the devices be drawing too much power for some reason that then affects the overall amount of power available to the HDDs?

I don't have a spare PSU so cannot check that way. I don't have spare cash just to buy another PSU just to check.

I have brown paper, string, paper-clips, bluetac etc.

Over to you guys.

(FMB-BDG, the probable ultimate ending of the possible final finale was vising in the background and was about 20 hours into a 200+ hours vis) 

my map blew Mikes computer :(

Asus mobo - my asus mobo switches off when the CPU overheats. could be that? Try CPUZ or whatever its called to see your processor temp when runing vis + Quake

Although that doesnt explain why it happens when you attatch all your drives....

hmmm.

Incidentally I was looking in the side of my computer the other day when I noticed that my PSU says "ATX 750" on the side. Which is weird cause I only paid for a 450w PSU (!) and they gave me an extra 300w without even telling me! Just a shame they fucked up the simple process of attatching the stock intel heat sink to the mobo. Then ran 3dmark06, gave the computer a really crappy score and shipped it anyway (what a bunch of weird computer builders they must be :)

Anyway sorry about that mike, im sure my stroy just adds insult to injury :( 

Drives do not eat that much power (~10 Watts each is normal as far as I know). Have you tried different cables/adapters?

As the PC boots "a bit" it does not sound like the PSU to me. 

Despite the incendary nature of snow (talk), it is fscking awesome, walking back from pub last night I had half an inch of snow on top of my hood by time I got back. Was epic snow. Tempted to go sledging in my kayak (planing hull ftw) 

RickyT: thanks for the moral support - a problem shared and all that...

Spirit: yes, I have tried changing the cables but nothing so far

Tried running power from another computer that is also running several drives(Heath Robinson eat your heart out) and can now eliminate the PSU as a source of the problem. This also allows me to narrow it down to the primary slave drive.

The BIOS sees the drive OK but this is probably reading data from the drive's electronics, not from the platter.

I need to think a bit more about why it should have crashed during a game of Quake: would the engine be accessing the HDD during play for any reason?

I know the drive is readable as I can see all my files via my Heath Robinson set up. So the drive has not failed.

Mmmmm. Curiouser and curiouser. 

I use Maxtor drives, always have and never had any problems 'till now.

So, I am looking at my spare Maxtors - a DiamondMax 16 and a DiamondMax Plus 9. Both are Primary Masters set up with 'clean' OSs, one is XP and one is Vista, you know, just in case.

I notice that each has jumper settings that are slightly different when setting them as primary slaves. And I think to myself (what a wonderful world), I know I set the jumper on this slave as a slave so perhaps the jumper has come loose(yeah, I know, fat chance).

But guess what - can ya guess what it is yet, can ya?

This DiamondMax Plus 9 that I use as a slave, the one that causes the computer not to boot, the one that has been in the computer for at least two years, has its jumper set just as I remember - top pins 2 & 3. Only trouble is, that this DiamondMax, different to all the other DiamondMax that I have, clearly shows the jumper settings as - you won't believe it - no jumper required when being used as a slave!!

So I remove the jumper, plug power back in and it boots perfectly.

Of course now I want to know why it worked like that for two years and only decided there was a problem when playing starkmon. Is starkmon a utility disc in disguise?

Who can tell me? 

I was wondering when someone would find that feature :)

Now go and make a nice demo! 

pretty fucked up. o.0

glad you got it fixed and all, but why the hell was it letting you boot up for all that time with incorrect jumper settings?? 

Just maybe, the crash in Quake didn't have anything to do with the hdd, but forced the BIOS to reinitialize something (like ASPI or whatever it is these days that controls hardware), and maybe that resulted in a different configuration than before, which produced the error. 

In anticipation of Willem's upcoming mdl editor, I give you a tool for generating the mdls to edit in it.

http://www.btinternet.com/~chapterhonour/md3tomdl.zip

It's a little command line job which takes a suitable md3 and outputs an mdl which closely approximates it. Hopefully helpful for people who would like to make things in maya/max, but can only export them to md3 from there. Just put this at the end of the pipeline, and your models can be used in Quake!

Source code, and an example ogre.md3 are included - screenshots of the latter were shown on here many moons ago, but it's a bit bloodier now... 

I cannot find the console command which toggles the overall screen flash (which is vaguely yellow) during weapon firing and instead has a "dynamic" muzzle flash, any clue? 

gl_flashblend (0, 1) 

is this trend just a cheap way to reduce the amount of stuff on screen at once and so artificially pump up framerate? or are there other reasons? 

Example? 

pretty much everything.

60 seems to be the new 90 but i recall seeing something that must have been like 45 or 50 (o.0) 

Isn't it something to do with widescreen support in games? I know of quite a few games that support widescreen resolutions but at an incorrect fov that gives a strange effect when your playing (hello Bioshock). 

I don't recall any game doing that. Seriously, do you have an example? That's sounds crazy. 

I read once that the fov in half-life 2 was reduced to 75 in order to make the characters' faces larger and easier to read. Which seems like an acceptable reason, if you want your game to be about the cutscenes : - p. 

lower FOV is probably better for more "realistic" games like half-life or medal of honor. (both use 75 i think.) It makes architecture look bigger (wide fovs artificially shrink the sense of scale) and makes it easier to see details (the tiny keycard on the desk that you're supposed to pick up), makes your motion feel slower, you can see distant stuff better (enemy snipers,) and it feels more cinematic (wide angle lens in movies = goofy, zoom lens = dramatic.)