Mordent

Those thoughts pretty much sum up my own, wutske. The router isn't shutdown at regular intervals (we may do it once a month, or something silly like that), which does tend to make me think it's a problem nothing to do with anything at my end of the line. I like the idea of running a ping check in the background, and I'll make sure I do so next time I play the game. As for it happening "again", I can pretty much predict that it happens every evening, so I'll do so in a few hours when the problems really start to show.Cheers for the advice.

I'm not really sure why the packets are being dropped. I'm fairly sure it's not a problem at "my end", as during the morning my connection is perfect (0% loss), and it gradually gets worse throughout the day. Also: "CRC"? Anyway, I've got Wireshark and will spend a little while having great fun with the streams of data coming back from that. ;)Cheers.

Firstly, I'm not 100% certain that this is the correct place for this thread, so feel free to shift it elsewhere if you reckon it's needed...Anyway, my internet connection has been - and still is - almost notoriously dodgy. When web-browsing, or doing other general simple tasks (such as using Windows Live Messenger or TeamSpeak) I have little to no problem with it. Sure, the download speed's a little slow occasionally, but on the whole it seems fairly decent, and I never really bother downloading all that much anyway. The problem comes with how severely the connection is affected by the time of day.At around 7:00 AM local time, the connection is as happy as can be. Gaming-wise, we're talking <50 ms ping, and 0% packet loss. Come evening time - or even late afternoon - however, and the packet loss in my current favoured MMOFPS (PlanetSide, for all interested) shoots to ridiculous levels. 7% would be a "good" loss for me on a typical evening, with 8% or so being the most common. What gets me is that, despite losing 8% of the data, my ping rarely goes above 100 ms, and if it does then it returns to its sub-100 level within a second or so. Similar patterns occur with other online games, and the download speed noticeably drops as the area becomes more "busy" (from around 5,600 kbps (the maximum my line can handle, apparently) to below 400 kbps over the course of the day, according to speedtest.net).So, I'm curious as to the best way of giving this a tweak in the right direction. I know for a fact that my connection is capable of fantastic speed, latency and loss - albeit at 7:00 AM - so what would you say the problem is? So you know, my broadband connection is ADSL, connects directly (via ethernet cable) to a SpeedTouch router / modem combo that's sitting on my desk, which in turn goes outward to yonder world wide web. Occasionally, other people in my house (who connect wirelessly to the router) use the internet at the same time, but I get almost identical results even if their computers are off. I'll admit that I don't know all that much about what happens once the signal leaves the modem, so I'm curious as to whether it's a "fault" of the ISP (and I've heard "rumours" of problems occuring if the service in an area is oversubscribed - and I do live in a densely populated area), or if it's fairly common. Regardless, 8% loss is, in my opinion, ridiculous.Any comments / queries / pointers about this before I take it up with some call centre or live support with my ISP?Cheers in advance,Mordent

Just so you know, GameMaker's brilliant for a lot of games (and well worth the one-off registration cost, in my opinion), although getting multiplayer games to work over a network/the internet shouldn't be something you take lightly. While it's certainly possible, I would recommend trying to get a half-decent non-online game going first. Still, I know that some people have made some awesome online games using GameMaker, and there's a whole board full of programmers of different abilities to help you along the way. Just don't expect to come up with anything too revolutionary.

Personally, I reckon PHP is the way forwards for Mafia style games, mainly because a vast majority of them are currently made using PHP. The scripts that you can find laying around are probably not a bad place to start, although those which offer a decent amount of support tend to come with a pricetag (unsuprisingly). If you're looking to make your own there are often "limited" or "trial" versions of those scripts that let you see some of the techniques used, and while I by no means suggest you copy the code, having a glance at various ideas can really help you formulate your own. C++ is a totally different method of working on something like a Mafia-style game, so I'm not going to offer any advice on it due to my almost complete ignorance of the whole language. ;)Anyway, PHP/(X)HTML/CSS is a winning combination in my opinion. I don't know enough about Java to comment on how appropriate it is - and whether it would help at all - for what you're looking for, but either way a decent chunk of coding knowledge or just sheer persistence is needed to get yourself going. Heck, that applies to almost any projects that have just yourself working on them.

Show me someone who claims to have "real" magical powers, and I'll show you someone who won't stand up to and kind of test. Sure, I appreciate that "magicians" are very talented people, but that doesn't mean they have actual magical powers at their disposal. Illusions are great, and a combination of them added with the magician knowing a little about how the mind works, and they can work wonders at seeming real.

Well, the new PC's arrived! An early birthday present, admittedly, but it's not overly shabby. In effect, it's one of these, with a nice flatscreen monitor (1440x900) and decent speakers. All in all, it makes a nice change from my old laptop, although I do miss it's little quirky fan noise...

On a coincedental note, I'm just wondering when putting "/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi; in front of your domain name stopped working and when it got back to working again. Last night (GMT) I had trouble with one of my addon domains, with the version without the "/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi; not working at all, and with it working fine. Now, both work absolutely fine. Just a little curious, as the problems seem to be linked. *shrugs*

Fluent English through and through, with a smattering of French (although I'm very rusty ).

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my intention was to set the threshold number of credits below what you personally regularly fluctuate about. The warning email wouldn't be there as a reminder to post every day, just a little nudge if you've been letting it drop too far from what you normally do. In your case, setting the threshold at 10 would mean you've got a week's grace (or even more) with not posting - assuming you start at 20 credits - before the reminder email arrives, letting you know your credits have dropped below the threshold you set. Admiteddly, in the process of building your credits back up to above your threshold level and back to your normal level you might have a little problem with it dropping below the level again, but the whole point of the warning would be to make sure you boosted your credits back up. While having the second threshold level - like altimit suggested - wouldn't be a bad thing, it's an extra little bit of programming and a few more checks. If the extra little tweaks wouldn't affect the server that much, I'm all for it. Again, personal opinion and preference on that one.

Actually, I think that's it in a nutshell. The hard "ch" and soft "ar" as described above pretty much sum up how I reckon it should be said. As for the word "integer" mentionned earlier: "inter (as in "international") "jurr" (like "purr", or the "ger" in "germ"). If it's shortened to "int" though (for coding, for example), I say it how it's spelt ("splint" without the "spl"). Basically, I adopt the idea that if a word's shortened (both "char" and "int") then it's just easier to pronounce it how it's spelt rather than how the word it's based on is pronounced (although that means I pronounce the "int" the same in "integer"). Just a handful of random observations for you, there...

Just a few personal thoughts on this idea for you. I know I haven't exactly been on the forums for as long as some, but I figure my two pence is worth giving.Firstly, I'm all for the idea being generally implemented, as all too often I've glanced back at and realised I've suddenly got a matter of a handful of credits left, which gives me two (well, technically three) choices: work on writing a fairly decent, detailed and lengthy post, or a number of shorter but at least as well thought out ones. Choice three is, of course, buy some credits from people, but I just can't see that happening when earning them is so simple.So, building on the idea of an email when the credits drop below X credits as a friendly reminder to have a look back certainly wouldn't go amiss. However, I can happily understand OpaQue's post, as I for one often hover with my credits in single figures (or just in to double figures), and the resulting number of emails coming my way wouldn't be overly welcome, especially as I know my credits are reasonably low a fair amount of the time.My little suggestion would be making the emails optional. If people didn't want to be warned about their credits running low, more fool them. Secondly, the idea of having a threshold level that you can change (a drop-down box with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 etc. in it, or just a box where you can enter any integer) is the crux of my notion. Where these little options would be placed could either be in the forum control panel (although that would involve tweaking the forum software), or perhaps a little more likely, as part of the relatively new credit system panel (Credits -> Credit System v2.0 Login), as it relates to that nicely.In my case, I would happily sit the number at 5 credits, and turn the box on that enables the email notification (presumably to the same account I used to sign up with / have stored in my profile)The main problem I can see with that would possibly be the load on the server every time it decremented the number of credits in everyone's account. An additional check to see if the number of credits was an integer first, before looking to see if email notification was enabled and whether the credits had dropped below the threshold number would, to me, be a more efficient way of doing it, but clearly I'll leave the coding up to the creator. ;)Any thoughts/comments on this notion? It stops unwanted spam, and gives people a chance to decide when they want to be reminded to come post.

Out of idle curiousity, how much should the server load fluctuate over a short period of time? As I speak it's comfortably sitting between 0.10 and 0.20, but even a few minutes ago I saw 0.95 there. Sure, at the time it could have been doing so complicated little routine or running a nasty application, but going from almost ticking-over to nigh-on full blast just doesn't sit well with me, especially considering the time of day (1230-ish GMT), which isn't exactly "peak" time (in my experience, although I could be wrong).That said, I barely noticed anything wrong with the gamma server (other than being a little on the slow side) in recent days, but I'm not really using my hosting for anything major right now, nor overly public (so it's not receiving much traffic), for that matter.

Interestingly, I'd never actually heard of the Zune before reading this thread. Perhaps I'm a little out of touch with the whole market, but I figure I should have at least heard something about them. iPods, on the other hand (classic, nano, shuffle and touch alike), are seemingly more common than more generic mp3 players - like my poor Sony one, with its almost-cute 512MB capacity - which strikes me as being pretty decisive about which ones have dominated the market.

...Chinese chess? Have I missed some cultural reference - and it's just another name for some other game - or is it actually anything different? EDIT: Hmmm...a little bit of Googling makes it look a pretty interesting game, actually. Of the handful of links I looked at, I think the first result (link here) gave the best looking introduction. Definitely a game worth looking at, although personally I never got much beyond the level of regular checkers. Still, at least I know it's not the same game as Chinese checkers, now.

I used that for an absolute age, although the fact that it's literally years old now means that I'm at least a little skeptical of its ability to actualy work. Sure, no one is looking for ways to get past it any more, but that doesn't mean it's overly secure. That said, I did find that, during the time I used it, I was certainly happy with the way it worked. I still made the switch back to Zone Alarm though, if for no other reason that the fact that it just didn't feel right using a firewall that hadn't received anything that even looked like an update for so long. Still, I'm curious why you reckon Zone Alarm don't offer a free version any more. It's by no means their full internet security suite, but a quick google search shows that they still have the Zone Alarm Free Firewall available to download. Just make sure you click on the basic firewall download instead of the 15-day trial link after you follow the "download now" button on the right. I haven't had any prompts to pay for my copy, and as it's still there for download I'd imagine they're still running it. Hope this helps!

Well, my laptop's now officially "old". Despite being able to run a fair portion of "classic" games, Thief: Deadly Shadows proved too much for it. The video card was what let it down, which is hardly suprising. GeForce4 440 Go (64 MB) or somesuch, so it looks like it could be time for an upgrade. Now, my question for you all would be: if this old thing's lasted so long at a reasonable rate (nothing top end, and I always turn the graphics down to near minimum to keep the frame rate above 20) and is able to play a fair portion of newish games without too much complaint (namely tolerably, and without too much stutter), how long do you reckon it would be before I would need to upgrade significant portions of a desktop computer to keep things running? Basically, I'm definitely considering going for a laptop of some description for the portability, but I'd rather not have to buy another one next year just to keep in step. Sure, I realise that the computer industry's moving at a ridiculous rate, so within a year even a brand new desktop will probably be needing a few bits upgraded to keep with technology, but would laptops / desktops have any real differences in how quickly they need replacing? Laptops are notoriously difficult to upgrade, so if I buy a top end laptop now, thoughts on how well it would last me?

Agreed, but surely if the install script is coming up with 101 warnings then something's up? Is there a way of making the horrid errors go away, or is it more of a problem with the software/hosting we have available? Xisto definitely meets all of the minimum requirements that MediaWiki have got listed, but in which case how should I (if at all) get rid of the warnings before trying to install? Cheers in advance. Mordent

Well, it seems that I've lost my touch. After uninstalling the previous MediaWiki software an age ago, I've decided I'd like to re-install it. Since then, version 1.11.0 has come out, so as I was attempting a fresh install I saw no harm in trying that one. After uploading it to where I wanted it, I went to configure it and got this lovely stream of messages as it checked whether I could install MediaWiki or not: So it says I can install MediaWiki, despite having a whole stack of warning messages? Does that sound right to you? Personally I'm not a fan of installing software if it's said that it has problems...reckon I should try going ahead with the install?

Well, in response to that: A ) Agreed, which strikes me as being one of the main disadvantages. Likewise, if the energy is being sent around in waves, there's little that you can really do to control the power that reaches your wireless device. B ) Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the intention was for the wireless charger to be plugged in somewhere, which them "transmits energy" to the cellphone? C ) Agreed again, as the amounts of energy wasted would be more than enough to pretty much get the idea crushed by any kind of "green" energy proposals. As for the advantages: A ) True, but unless the coverage was pretty impressive then there would be little point. Imagine having to worry about both mobile phone signal as well as charger signal. B ) I'm at a slight loss here. I'm assuming you're talking about having your wireless device charged normally with a wire/transformer combination? If so, surely that comes right under the idea of free movement? Still, it's hardly as if you'd be able to use a phone all of the time, so I see no real problem with plugging it in, as per normal.

Hmmm, sounds pretty snazy, I'll admit. It strikes me a little like blogs, though, but more centralised and less personal. Still if and when it comes out I'd imagine that Knol will be a busy place indeed. B)The name's pretty damned catchy too, actually. Sure, Wikipedia has a lot of focus on facts rather than opinions, but Knol's a great little name that's already stuck in my head.

I almost forgot to mention, I've now managed to get Meteora, so I can now listen to Numb (amongst others) ad nauseum.

Agreed to some extent, although clearly the general portability of the wireless device is what's desired. It does get my point across that if you're within such a place that you could charge your device wirelessly, it's almost certainly just easier to plug the thing in.

PHP, XHTML (none of this HTML nonsense ) and CSS are allI ever really use. That might be because I've never even vaguely attempted to learn anything else, but so far I've found little need to go elsewhere to find the functionality that I require. PHP is, in my mind, sheer awesomeness. I find it a slight pain to try to make my .php files look tidy when having to <i>echo</i> chunks of XHTML code in them, and I'm always trying to find ways around that, but if you combine it with MySQL the sheer level of versatility can't be beaten.Still, I'm by no means an expert web developer. More of a tinkerer, with a love for clean code.

Generally pretty snazy, although clearly I'm missing a lot of the behind-the-scenes benefits of it. Still, it does save me having to keep my CPanel bookmark, and generally makes looking at the sorts of credits that tend to be floating around is a nice little perk, if nothing else.