turbopowerdmaxsteel

Just use the .value property. It will work on all browsers.

No its not a mistake. The getAttribute() method is required when dealing with XML data. But, when you retrieve an element using getElementById (or getElementsByTagName or through any of the other DOM functions), the returned value is an object. That is why, you can access the properties of the object just by their name.

I don't think you need to use the getAttribute() method. The problem must be something else. I believe you have wrongly typed the ID of one of the Input boxes. That would return a null value and when the parser tries to look for its value attribute, an error occurs.

New Release v 1.4.0.0

 

This is the final release and it contains new features such as different tiles for the concrete and empty blocks, support for saving/viewing online scores, a game summary after Game Over which shows the number of enemies you have killed, bricks you have blown up and their combo bonuses. This version also offers three difficulty modes - Easy, Normal & Hard. A starfield background can be seen throughout the menus.

 

http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

The information bar is kinda annoying. I don't like it when the bar is shown when a JavaScript redirect starts a file download - the system that is used by many websites with messages like "Click here if your download doesn't automatically start". The entire page has to be refreshed before IE initiates the download.Thanks for sharing that info.

The game's performance has significantly increased following the complete recoding from the scratch.

 

Here goes the link: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

Requirements: Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or higher

 

Summary of New Features

 

> Game Controls can now be configured

> High scores are saved

> 50 predefined stages

> Add/Customize the stages

> Adjust volume levels

> Adjust screen resolution & other video settings

That's cool, might be useful for me as well in the future. Thanks for sharing

No problem, thats what we are here for!

I would appreciate it if anybody would review my game in progress. It can be downloaded from http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ under The Bomber Man directory.

I am building the game for a contest. More info. Initially, I was going through a tutorial of Managed DirectX at Coding4Fun. In my opinion, using DirectX would be unfair against the likes of the other languages in the contest (J2ME & Flash).

I did think about using an external program. The game being entirely rendered in GDI+, executing such processes would further deteriorate the performance. Although, I haven't given it a try.

Thankfully though, I came across an excellent library named irrKlang for playing 2D/3D sounds. It also supports MP3 which is a major plus point because the final project must be zipped within 2 MBs.

I have reached a dead-end, in trying to code the Audio Engine for the game - Bomber Man. The current engine uses the native functions(waveOutOpen, waveOutWrite, etc) declared in Winmm.dll file. While this allows me to play two sounds together (the Background music and the sound effects), it causes frequent memory corruptions. For instance, it changes the value of an integer variable located in a different and unrelated class. I spent hours trying to find out why the value was constantly changing. When I disabled all the sounds, the problem didn't occur. I used a modifed version of the code given in this example. The problem is not due to these modifications because it does not occur in a Console Application.

Is there a library for .NET that I can use for playing two or more sounds simultaneously? Also, the above example does a lot of low level handling, which I do not require. All I need is the ability to play WAV files.

EDIT: Screenshots of the new Release

 

 

 

 

Here goes the link: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

 

A game development contest named, Game'istaan started on the 5th of this month at NIIT, India. Each of the teams (max 3 students per team) need to submit their entries by the 4th of september. The coding can be done in C++, J2ME, FLASH or C#. I went for C# which was not among the list, initially. It was introduced because very few (just us in our zone) opted for C++. The game I am developing is 'Bomber Man'. Currently, the game resembles the classic NES game.

 

I haven't used DirectX because I wasn't sure if it would be fair to use it against the other languages. So, the whole game is rendered by GDI+. Also, the .NET framework doesn't have a class that would allow two or more sounds to be played simultaneously. The sound engine being used is a toned down version of an example at CodeProject.

 

The current version can be downloaded from http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/. The game is in The Bomber Man directory.

 

Controls cannot be configured yet and only 1 stage is playable. The default controls are given below:-

 

Movement: Up, Down, Left, Right

Place Bomb: D

Detonate Bomb: A

Start/Pause: Enter

 

I would like to know your opinion on the current version. Also, if anybody knows of any library that will allow simultaneous execution of two or more sounds. For example, when a chain of bombs go off, multiple sounds should be played. The current version will only play 1 sound. The example provided at codeproject works fine if you play multiple sounds in a Console Application, but it shows various unmanaged code exceptions when doing so in a Windows Forms Application.

 

Requirements

 

- Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 or Higher

 

Differences from the final release

 

The flame length (length of the explosion) in the current stage is a powered up version. In the final release, the users will have to begin with one that can only span one block. A detonator will be available in 3rd or 4th stage. Before that, the bombs will go off in 2 seconds. Only 1 Bomb will be plantable by default. Bombpass will be obtainable from a powerup.

I think the <BR><BR/> pair of tags is not even valid for an XHTML document, as empty tags must be of the form <BR/> (according to the XML standards). Sure, browsers will render it in the same way, but I think a document with <BR><BR/> will fail to validate against the XHTML specification.

I agree with wutske on that one. Always use https, is a must for people who access the Internet from Cyber cafes. While, those that have a connection at home, can use the non secure protocol to speed things up. I rarely use https because my 128 Kbps connection is quite slow.

They seem to have hacked a number of site. Try doing a search on "Hacked By Dumansal" or their slogan "We're not First but We're the Best". This must be a recent development because Google's cache of http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ dated August 1, 2008, contains the data from the original site.

It works on my end. Check out  YCC Bot Maker 1.2.rar. The .htaccess file is contained within the Files directory. You might have some other rewrite rules in your .htaccess file that is causing the 500 Internal error to be shown. Try using a .htaccess file with just the following code:-

RewriteEngine OnRewriteRule YCC(.*)Bot(.*)Maker(.*)1\.2\.rar$ /Files/YCC$1Yahoo$1Bot$1Maker$12.0.zip  [R]

I have also faced this problem of users having to try one of the outdated version of my softwares. My solution to this is to have an auto updater bundled along with all my applications. You could use one of the third party update managers or build one yourself.Did you try the last code I posted? It should work. Also, if I may suggest, you could use a simple technique of not including the version number in the filenames. A user can easily check out the version stored in the file's metadata. That way, you wouldn't have to rely on redirects.

I don't feel that Windows is that bad in terms of stability. Windows Vista is much more stable than XP, just as XP was compared to Windows 98. After a few months, my Internet connection used to get slow (not just browsing pages through IE). Connections used to take longer to be established. Resetting the sockets through netsh winsock reset did help, but eventually, even that became useless. I don't face this problem on Vista. I have been using Vista for 8 months or so, but I have not seen the dreaded Blue Scree of Death (BSOD).

 

And as xboxrulz said, it is highly improbable that an Operating System without bugs will ever exist. Developers are human after all. Besides, sometimes such bugs are there because of a situation that the dev team didn't anticipate and not due to a mistake on their part. With increasing size & complexity, such bugs are bound to exist. But, the good thing is that they fix the bugs and release updates quite often.

I guess every programmer dreams of creating an Operating System! The worst thing about it is the complexity involved and the time & effort requirement. But, that is what would make the end result so satisfying. Technically speaking, one must have extreme knowledge about Operating Systems & their working. The basic operations such as CPU scheduling, I/O management, Paging, Memory handling, etc, must be implemented. Adding a GUI would further complicate matters. The OS also needs to be able to handle various file systems. Also, the OS would have to be coded in a lower level language such as C or assembly, which makes the task even more daunting. It is extremely difficult (if not impossible) for one man to develop such a thing.

I have been using phpMailer for quite sometime. However, for some reason, it is unable to send mail anymore. I don't recall changing any of the configurations either. I was using gmail as the SMTP server. But now, I have switched back to the mail function, which always works.

The 8600 GT drains a lot of power as well. The UPS is unable to provide more than a minute's backup. I had to remove the 17 inch monitor from the UPS and put it on direct AC. Now, whenever there is a power cut, the monitor gets turned off and I have to blindly hibernate the PC. I use hibernate because its much faster and has the added benefit of saving my workspace. The power and sleep switches have been configured to do a hibernate. Sometimes, though, especially when I have been gaming, the PC just refuses to Shut Down or go into hibernation.I am really surprised to know that the companies would cheat us by reporting the power to be higher than what it actually is. Its kind of like the misreporting of disk space that the manufacturers do. (1 GB = 1000 MB and not 1024 MB)

Thank You everybody for your advice. After reading faulty.lee's reply and the article regarding the over heating problems in the low to mid range chips of 8 and 9 series, I decided to go for 8800 GT. I wouldn't have chosen an ATI model because it is said to be less compatible than nVidia's cards. The salesman at the store made some calls to make sure that the 8800 GT would run with my PC. He recommended against buying 8800 GT priced at 10,000 INR because that would require an additioanl overhead of 2,000 INR for an "SLI SMPS". I don't think there is anything like an "SLI SMPS", considering the fact that its a technology to enable two cards to work together. Perhaps they refer to high wattage SMPSs with this name. I had read in a review of 8800 GT that it required only a 400 W SMPS, mine being 450 W. But, the salesman was pretty sure that it would require atleast a 600 W one. This power issue and the worry about compatibility led me to 8600 GT, which was also, the highest model in the shop.I am not sure if his recommendations were so because they only had 8500 GT and 8600 GT models at that time. Apparently, the store is one of the biggest seller of Computer peripherals in Kolkata. But, it did appear that he could have got me a 9600 GT or a 8800 GT by calling the local nVidia store. Anyways, I bought 8600 GT for 4,000 INR. At first I was unhappy of being tricked into buying whatever was available. But, it all seems for the best now. The 8600 GT lags behind the 8800 GT only in the performance department. As I mentioned before, compatibility with latest games is what I prefer, even with a bit of lower performance. The 8800 GTX has been tested to be 5-10% faster than 8800 GT and it costs more than its double (23,000 INR). How better could the 8800 GT would be (over 8600 GT), anyways?I played the demo for the PC version of Direct X (which I previously could not). The game ran extremely smooth at 1024 x 768. Vista's performance index increased to 4.2 from 1.0 and I was able to experience Vista's Aero look. The translucent title bar and Windows Flip 3D looks really awesome.All in all, I am pretty happy with what I got.

I tried vista for 30 days and was quite satisfied with it. All the applications Internet Explorer, Firefox, XAMPP, Dreamweaver, Filezilla, etc, worked fine on my system. I did have a problem with a couple of applications. Cyberoam 24Online client's setup rendered the OS un-bootable after the mandatory re-boot. Somehow, the setup managed to delete/replace critical boot files. This application allows me to connect to the Internet through the LAN. I re-installed Vista and managed to workaround the problem by using a copy-paste version of the Application's Programs folder in XP.The absence of the Up button or more importantly, the assignment of the Backspace shortcut to Back command in Windows Explorer, did annoy me. But, the new Alt + Up shortcut seems workable. Besides, the highly interactive address bar also allows to quickly move to the ancestor directories.The bootup time of Vista is much less compared to that of XP. XP's bootup time increases quite a bit after installation of softwares which rely on services and various drivers (MS SQL server, etc). However, the effect of these softwares on Vista is minimal.The Shutdown glitch is a cause of concern, though. If I don't manually close uTorrent prior to shuting down Vista, the process gets killed. The torrents have to be re-checked before being resumed, and this takes quite a lot of time.I am not sure as to why you are having problems with Internet Explorer (Maybe some network problem?). Process killing through the Task Manager works fine too. You will see two firefox.exe processes in the list, if you run two instances of the browser.

I have finally decided to get a dedicated Graphics card for my PC. My budget is around 300 USD. I have been going through the models at nVidia's website and found the models (8600 GT & 9600 GT) to my liking. My friend suggests that I should go for 8800 because it provides greater performance than 9600 GT. To me, perfomance is not as big a factor as compatibility, in terms of being able to play the latest games, is. In that respect is it better to go for the chip which offers higher memory? My motherboard is Intel 915GAG which supports PCI Express. Will a model stated as being PCI Express 2.0 compatible, work on the same?

Its not just a PHPMyAdmin problem. The error seems to be related to session data which has to be saved somewhere in the /tmp directory. My statistics page which is based on Tracewatch is showing errors as well.

Well, It might be an indication that your hard drive is degrading. Check the SMART parameters as well. Try monitor the temperature too. I had a friend who killed his hard drive after operating above 50C for a prolonged period.
I never liked to hibernate anyway. Only used in on my notebook. Never even border to enable it on my desktop. I run my desktop 24/7 too, but I let it download and share files on p2p when I'm not using it.

I used Seagate tools and did the SMART and some basic tests, none of which reported any anomaly. Temperature is not an issue because I keep the sides of the cabinet open.

The only time my system needs to be turned off is when a power cut occurs. Hibernate is the fastest way to turn it off and the fact that all my work can be resumed from the previous point is a plus. I could easily go on with a Windows with only Restart & Hibernate option .

o, this is a UATA hard drive? That could explain the reason why it's slower on Windows XP. If you have a SATA drive that shouldn't happen. By default Windows XP for some reason disables UATA and pops the drive to ATA.
xboxrulz

No, its a standard SATA HDD. I don't think my Intel 915GAG board supports UATA either.

Is your system low in ram? If so, having a near full hard drive could cause some issues of that nature. It's odd the benchmarks would show numbers like that but if you have little ram and low free HD the lack of swap space for moving files could heavily impede transfers and the like.

 

That seems really odd though, if the numbers are accurate I have a hard time picturing a scenario that could cause that. Seems almost like the cache or cables are bottlenecking one transfer direction to max out the other or something. Maybe others have better ideas :|

The RAM utilization is pretty mediocre. Also the drive being new is relatively empty.

 

Could this be the problem?

 

In the old days, manufactures used to brag about CD writing speed. I think Pioneer once promoted that their CD writer can write up to 72X. But someone took that lie and found that only data written closer to center were writing in 72X but as it went closer to the edge the writing speed slowed down extremely. The average writing for a single CD broke down to a mere 12X.

 

I wonder if a similar phenomenon is happening here. When you initially install a fresh OS with minimum programs are installed I'm sure seeking and testing times were quite fast. But as you accumulate files and programs the actuator of a hard drive is now traveling the "longer" diameter. Therefore, causing slower seeking and transferring time...? I once saw the best explanation for this physics problem in Calvin and Hobbs. It had to do with a needle of a record player traveling shorter distance closer to the center ring and the outer ring must travel faster and longer distance to keep-up with the same speed.

I don't think that would be a problem because the 80 GB disk from the same manufacturer (Seagate) performed just fine even when it was brim full. Also, the drives have very low fragmentation and are quite low in terms of disk space usage.

 

Buffalo, I'm sure that could play into it somewhat but you need to note the great disparity between read/write speeds. 3mbs write is ridiculously slow but 125mbs read is insanely fast.

 

Another issue that slows drives is simply that they wear out over time, making a slower read/write speed as the actual platters spin slower. This normally is something I'd have suggested but the time between the first and second benchmark dates is way too small for that to play a factor.

A Hardware issue can be ruled out because the drive is performing quite well on the other OS - Vista.

 

turbopowerdmaxsteel, there 2 possibility of your problem. I'm assuming you're at least running WinXP or Win2k.

 

1. DMA/PIO mode related. Windows will downgrade your device DMA mode when CRC error occur along the interface. After UDMA-1, it will downgrade to PIO mode. This might be why your transfer speed is slow. PIO mode is VERY slow. You can check at the Device Manager, under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Depending on which channel your harddisk is plugged into. Say "Primary IDE Channel". When you open up the property window, look under Advanced Settings. The "Current Transfer Mode" should be "Ultra DMA". If it's PIO Mode, then you might be having this problem. There's a few way to go around this. You can set the Transfer Mode to PIO, restart, the set back to DMA. Or you can refer to these 2 articles for more solutions.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/817472/

http://winhlp.com/node/10

 

2. Your hard disk had a bad sector in the critical section like the file record or MFT (Master File Table). Thus it takes longer to read or write to your disk. Try do a bad sector scan on your hard disk by running checkdisk, make sure you tick "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors"

 

Good Luck

You've hit the bullzeye, faulty.lee. XP disabled the UDMA mode for that drive. My PC remains on for 22 - 24 hours a day and during the non-running phase it is mostly hibernating. Perhaps the constant hibernate and resume operations are causing this. But, then again, I have been continuously doing this for the last two years and my old drive didn't have this problem. XP reported one of the drives as using UDMA Mode 5 while the other one was using PIO. Chaging it back to 'UDMA if available' didn't work so I followed the instructions and uninstalled the IDE Channel. After rebooting, I ran the benchmark again and FreshDiagnose now reports the write speed at 30 MB/s. The read speed, however, is being reported at a whooping ~1500 MB/s. Perhaps some of the test data is being cached. But, anyways, everything is back to normal.

 

Thank You everybody for your help.