turned on my pc this morning and it didn't work, despite working perfectly for the past two years.

Hard drive had bricked itself due to a firmware bug (thanks, Seagate!) so I had to go buy a new one. I bought a copy of Windows 7 whilst I was at it, so I am finally on a modern OS. Unfortunately, all my data is locked away on the bricked drive, so I can't install Quake or any of my other non-Steam games. I also lost access to several map sources and programming projects I was working on, which is all rather annoying. Not sure if Seagate will recover the data for me, but they had better, since it's under warranty and the problem is caused by their defective firmware (those of you with Seagate Barracuda drives, UPDATE YOUR FIRMWARE).

At least I am back up and running again, but I've lost a ton of stuff and Windows 7 is now stuck in Japanese mode, which means that I take about twice as long to find anything, coupled with the unfamiliarity of the OS is a nightmare.

Hopefully I can get all my mapping tools and relatively recent versions of my projects up soon. 

Saved me a lot of heartache about a year ago. Hopefully it will work for you too, Than.

I'll keep my fingers crossed! 

Hard drive had bricked itself due to a firmware bug

yeah, i had that. it was a problem where the drive, when powering on, immediately went into 'busy' state and couldn't be used.
if it's the same thing i had, you can't fix it with any normal tools.
i found a detailed way of doing it, which involved shorting out bits of the pcb while it was running and using some kind of command line tool to manually unlock the drive.
i never got around to trying it as it seemed insanely hard and i have zero experience with that kind of thing.

i got two 1.5 tb WD drives after that fiasco and now keep almost OCD level backups. -_- 

I had a problem some years ago also, and lost some stuff! after that... all I have that means something to me is backuped 

Hope you get it fix0red soon.

Note to self: buy external HDD as intended. 

Would be a shame if all the map/coding sources were lost.
I don't buy Seagate drives anymore - they are cheap but not very reliable. At least that's my impression after having two drives die on me just like that. It also taught me to backup all important files (e.g. WIP maps) online, as everything can be replaced, except for weeks and months of mapping work. 

Shambler - I bought an external HDD, I think it was a buffalo, 500Gb. Got sick of the damn thing vibrating, and the fact that it required it's own AC adapter, so I broke into the chassis and removed the drive and put it in my PC. Turns out that it was a Samsung !!!

Moral of the story - just buy a damn drive and put it in your PC! :) 

external drive cases. i got a 20$ vantec case. the only thing is that it's on ALL the time unless you hit the power button. even if you set your drives to never spin down in your pc, it can be annoying because as it's external, the drive noise is much louder.
for me, it's a non-issue because the external hdd is purely for backup so it's only on for as long as files are being copied, then it gets turned off manually.

more expensive cases probably come with a built in timer, but i don't think you can change the settings on them. 

http://www.evga.com/community/modsrigs/uploadImages/294190_14432_04.jpg

Just stuff a bloody HDD into your computer. so you have to buy a sata cable. So what?!! They cost fuck all. I think all desktop PC's have the capability to house and power 2 or more drives. 

sometimes you have to activate a new drive through the "manage" window, you get the option of accessing this if you right-click on "my computer" or just "computer". 

It's cheaper than buying additional hardware, let's you work on multiple machines and also protects against meteor strikes and house fires - unless they happen to you and not your machine. 

Read your Doom vs Quake thing recently, and while Terra was indeed fun, I wonder if the issue isn't what seems _impressive_ in a given game. It was very easy to seem impressive in Doom; maybe I haven't played enough (or new enough) custom Doom maps, but it seems like in the context of Doom (which, by the way, will always equal OR exceed Quake in my heart) you can only be so impressive. In Quake, you can make a guy look up to a distant tower, or down over a cliff; this makes the compilation time waaaaaay longer but it achieves a cinematic effect I think Doom could never do. It all goes back to what Romero said with the original Quake levels; that it simply takes 5-6 times to do something which seems equally impressive. My 0.02. 

from the few months i spent working with doom, doing the really impressive stuff takes about 5x the amount of work it would take to do it in quake. a simple thing like adding more than 1 texture per wall is fairly roundabout whereas in quake, you'd just bust out the 3 point clipper and slice the brush in half.

working on the doom map, i found there were many times where i wished i could do some fancy stuff like trisoup terrain/caverns and overhanging areas. but i just couldn't, either because it was impossible or i just wasn't willing to commit the effort into using the fiddly new engine port features. in the end, that kind of limitation made me more productive in that i had to accept the limitation and move on.
there are plenty of areas i feel would look more than 2 times as cool if they were in quake.

it's the way the limitations are enforced in the two engines.
doom's limitations are rules that cannot be broken.
"you cannot place one sector over another. ever."
"if too many sectors are visible at a time, the engine will crash."
quake's limitations are a lot more vague.

In Quake, you can make a guy look up to a distant tower, or down over a cliff; this makes the compilation time waaaaaay longer but it achieves a cinematic effect I think Doom could never do.

you can have some pretty huge areas in doom. i think even larger than quake because i didn't seem to notice any kind of maximum extents. currently, my doom map goes from -13k to 9k. mind you, this is in zdoom. it's possible stock doom would explode, but i can't even run it to see. :P

that said, i never finished the doom map because i lost interest in doom. sooo not much of a win for doom overall. :P 

I'm disappointed in you. The map was so close to being finished... 

I guess the Home Premium edition is actually the "I'm a fucking retard edition" after all :(

I looked at the comparison list when deciding which windows version to buy and professional seemed to have a couple of things I didn't need for accessing the desktop from another machine and ultimate had bit locker, which I also didn't need, so I thought I would pay way less money and get Home Premium.

Big mistake. I am already going crazy trying to change options not even available to me because there is so much stupid annoying shit built into the OS I want to disable. Every time I try and change something, I find via some helpful internet forum that I need enterprise (wasn't available to me), professional or ultimate. Applocker whitelisting, group policy editor... FUCK YOU MICROSOFT.

Release one god damned version of your fucking OS, not Starter, Home Basic, Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, Ultimate. Why the world needs six versions, I don't know. So now I have to upgrade via anytime upgrade, which costs more money and last time I checked, the functionality to pay was disabled, completely preventing me from upgrading. FUCK YOU!

I want to just install the warez version of ultimate I have, but I know it will just lead to more hassle :(

p.s. if anyone else uses a Wacom tablet as their primary input device and has figured out a way to disable the annoying animated ring when left clicking, please let me know how. 

i know. i am a piece of shit. :(
for some reason, i just have a really hard time staying interested in any one thing. 

looks like someone forgot to pay the bills over at inside3d... 

Thanks for your email! Just got it now because I don't use that email address anymore. It's really nice to know that you don't like my work, I hope it will crash and burn your computer!

Best regards
STUPID FUCKING ASSHOLE 

When I was coming back to mapping wanting to do something single player I considered Doom 2. I had some Half-Life 2 stuff going but despite it's power I found the lack of varied default graphics and the smaller amount of monster types kind of frustrating. I do intend to go back though because it's scripting is amazing.

Wads like Plutonia 2 and Scythe 2 do an insane amount with the Doom engine I think, but both fall into the same trap. You can do huge levels in Doom and they run fine, but (imo!) playing through both wads gets so boring after a while, when every level is a 400+ monsters slog :(

Scythe 1 (and so far Scythe X) is one of the best Doom wads imo because all the maps are compact and interesting, and its got some great variety as you go through. It too has a couple of insane monster count levels but not that many... 

Can you just get a room?

Like on a email address you only use to insult each other?

Really, you're always going to talk to someone, sooner or later, who pisses you off. No need for the rest of us to read the crap as well.

I like my fence - I had a cushion installed. 

I'll shut up. 

Please, post the email. 

http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=16069&start=98 

2nd'd the posting of the email btw. Not necessarily in here, but I think further examples of what a distasteful person Trinca is would be educational. 

did I?

...