Jump to content
xisto Community

darasen

Members
  • Content Count

    246
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by darasen

  1. Yes, C++ programs in general run faster than Java applications. Remember all Java applications are running through the interpreter. There are advantages and dis-advantages to both programming languages as with anything. I would never suggest trying to build something as complex as 3D studio max in Java but some the like Google's Sketch up should be doable. Of course Java is platform independent but the performance difference in C++ is certainly noticeable. there are 3D libraries available for both Java and C++ as well as 3D engines you may be able to put to use for either language. Sourceforge.net is great place to look for that sort of thing.Almost forgot to add be sure that you do not use anything requiring direct X technology if you want to maintain the ability to compile your application for anything other than Windows.
  2. If the dog is young perhaps you could look into crate training it.
  3. Since my Fisrt post when so long I decided to put my actual review of City of heroes in a separate post. If brevity really is the soul of wit I must be an absolute dullard. Thus onto my opinion of City of Heroes. Firstly City of Heores is a Super Hero MMO. That makes it a great game to me right there because even in my late thirties I still like super heroes. To me there is no cooler fictional character than Superman. So my opinion of the genre itself may cause a bit of bias. I accept that anyway. Really is Conan, Legolas, or Drizzt really anything less than a low powered superhero? The Arch Types in City of Heroes seem very restricting when first starting the game but they are only slightly restricting. So you can make your Tank more of a scrapper or do a lot of blasting with your defender or even set up a controller to do more damage than crowd control. What is also nice is that there are differences between how the power sets in each iof the ATs play. I have one character who is a spines scrapper. His body is covered in toxic spines and he can hit bad guys at a distance with them and even shoot tham all around him at once. He is able to deal damage to multiple targets at once. Where as my Broad Sword scrapper mostly hits one person at a time. But he hits for LOTS of damage per whack. For controllers, as another example, I really do not think any of the two power sets play the same. They are rather different. Defenders being the closest thing to a cleric in a fantasy MMO are not that. One defender power set focuses on healing while others may not have a heal power in them at all. So while two characters powers may or may not be close to the same you can count on being able to tell them apart. the CoH costume creator is legendary for being the best of any MMO to date. if you find two characters that look alike it is most likely intentional. Another great thing in CoH is that though there are these ATs like many fantasy MMO's there is never an AT that is a must to have in the group. Any group that plays with a small bit of smarts can play with out a tank or a "healer" or any other AT. This avoids the common occurance from the Everquest days if sitting doing nothing while looking for a cleric. There will be some people that insist that you need a healer or controller or what ever. Ignore them they are wrong. Combat in CoH differs from other MMO's greatly as well. In WoW as example if you happen to be in a group doing an dungeon you avoid fighting multiple monsters when ever possible. You may fight three at a time but usually try to avoid so many at once. This was especially true in Everquest where often you fought one mob at a time. This is vastly different in City of Heroes where you fight multiple bad guys all the time. WoW Conversation: " hey wait for that patrol to go by we don't want to have to fight four guys at once" "I can use my freeze trap on one so maybe we can get the caster before the other guy unfreezes" CoH conversation: "Theres only four bad guys?" "Really, where are all the henchmen?" "I know I will go attack that group of ten and bring them over here as well" "Sounds good!" The pace is far more frantic and fun in CoH than other MMO's and that, to me, makes it much more fun. One of the biggest thing that makes CoH a better game than most has little to do with the game itself per se. The community makes CoH great. I can honestly say with out reservation that ratio of jerk to non jerks is expremely low. I think in may have found 10 in several years of playing. In WoW I can count on about 10 an hour. I think it is the lack of "Uber loot", lack of PVP focus and the fact that there 50 levels in the game with the developers having no intention of raising the level cap that dis-interests certain types of gamers. The game appeals to a different gamer than the "I'm the uber-est" crowd. I think that game being a super hero game with a flavor for more of the silver age attracts a slightly older audience as well. This player base works well for the game. Pick up groups (or PUGS) in many games can be an absolute nightmare. In City of Heroes I have had very few groups that just did not work. Putting together a group or being invited into a group of people you have never played with is actually fun. This is especially true of the sever I play on, Virtue, the official un-official RP server. The community also frequently does fun things like costume contest where a bunch of heroes line up to see who the judge thinks has the best costume and gives rewards. An odd but great thing about the the general population and game set up is that I find the game to be more kid friendly. you are never out to kill the bad guys they are "arrested" they fall over and disappear with no blood shed. Even when using a katana oddly enough. The populace being generally friendly helps as well. I ahve less to worry about when my 10 year old niece plays CoH than I do WoW. there so many things in CoH that are jst plain cool to me. Costume contests I mentioned. Saving burning buildings, fighting off hordes of alien invaders when they pop up in normally peaceful zones. there is nothing quite as cool as seeing a hundred on hundred battle in a "newbie" zone. Side kicks so your level 4 hero can play with your friends level 46 with no problem. Super group bases. Flying. Diving into a group of 20 machine gun wielding robots. So many other things I am going to stop typing to go play. All these things add up to make City of Heroes my MMO of choice. You can try it for free at the official web site.
  4. After being away from the game for while I returned to my favourite MMO, City of Heroes (AKA CoH). CoH is not my forst MMO after having played Everquest well past the point that it was actually fun, I have also played Dungeons and Dragons Online, World of Warcraft, and tried or Beta tested many others. Every time I come back to CoH though. I thought I would answer why this is. Tehn I realized I had a really long post on some of the mechanics in CoH just to explain why it is great. So I decided to split the post into two. one for the basic game mechanics nad one for the actual review. (hope that is ok mods). City of Heroes, for those unaware, is as of this writing the only MMO based on super heroes. So if you have a preference for yet another game of elves and orcs then CoH may not be your cup of tea. If, however. you are interested in something different then read on. Given that it is not fantasy based and it came out before WoW Coh has the distinction of not trying to be WoW. I would be more accurate to say that it tries hard not to be Everquest, the most popular North American MMO when CoH released, though it does retain some of the standard MMO trappings. One of the most obvious carry overs from a fantasy MMO in City of Heroes is the arch types or as they would be called in any other game the classes. You can fit or shoe horn most these AT's into a more standard MMO. Tanks represent the big, strong, tough type of superheroes such as the Thing or Colossus. In the game they could be considered the warrior or meat shield. (they do not have to be though, see below) Also there are blasters (like Cyclops) for wizards (kind of) Scrappers for melee DPS, defenders for clerics or shamans or other support, and controllers for enchanters crowd control types or pet classes. Like any MMO there are missions to accomplish and experience to gain to get more powerful. The comparisons pretty much end there. The trick is that the Arch Type (AT) you play does not have to be shoe horned in to a particular role. Your character has a selection of power sets based on his AT. For example, controller may chose to control fire or earth or gravity or a few other options. You will also have a secondary power set with powers that augment or fill in tha gaps from your primary power set. On a Tank his Primary powers are defensive and his secondary set has his attacks. With a scrapper it is the other way around. What is fun is that you will never be able to take all the powers in both sets. One reason is that you also get to choose powers from multiple tertiary power (power pools) sets and when you get to level 40 you get to chose yet another power set with power types you have never been able to get before. So on my Tank, named Odhinn, he is has invincibility and super strength plus the pool powers of flight, speed, and extra fitness, then he added the ability to shoot lasers from his eyes. To improve powers you add enhancements to them. When you level up you either get a new power or the enhancements slots to add to your powers. So you can control how many enhancements you want to add to a certain power up to six. Every power comes with one. You will never have enough enhancement slots to to put six in every (or even close) power. Then is it up to the player to decide how he wants to enhance any given power. The effect of this is that you can, to a point, how you want to play your character. As an example I will go back to my Tank Odhinn. He is by no means the toughest tank in the game because i do not have him set up that way. He is more of a melee damage guy that can take one hell of a beating. I have him set up to do lots of damage and fast by enhancing his attacks with more damage and recharge to make them available more frequently. That is the very basic of the game mechanics. My next post will have my actual review of the game itself.
  5. This looks rather interesting I will be interested in the full implementation.
  6. As an FYI in case you missed reading the board rules you need to put quoted text in quote tags. As this is lifted verbatim from Adobe's site you may want to edit the post. Anyway CS4 does seem like to have some good features added to it. One of the most exciting for many of us who produce art in Photoshop have wanted the ability to freely rotate the canvas. Hopefully the tool on PS will be as quick and easy as the one in Painter. When I get my Beta copy I will probably post some thoughts on it.
  7. That looks interesting. Particularly the "Tower of Terror" as I actually had a chance to go over the code for this ride when I worked for Disney.
  8. That is a good resource xboxrulz, thanks for sharing it with us.To the OP, perhaps if you let us know where it is that you are losing comprehension we can assist you better.
  9. It seems that first issue you shall need to address is that of the unknown sound from your case. Leaving the case open when you start one of the problematic applications should you to easily ascertain the culprit. Bear in mind the only hardware with moving parts are fans, hard drives, and any Cd/DVD drives installed. Thus the sound has to be from of these components. You listed two games whose launch seem to be precursor to your system failure. Thus, the obvious question is if you experience similar issues when starting any other applications particularly any that would put more of a strain on the system such as 3D games or applications. You have stated that the PC "shuts down immediately" while this is not a particularly helpful description it leads me to believe that the PC has powered off entirely. For the moment I shall assume that is the case. There are only two reasons that any piece of equipment would lose power; one being it is designed to under certain circumstances the other that there is something wrong with the power delivery. If the CPU is running too hot many systems are designed to shut down before any permanent harm is done to the electronics. Thus if you have the ability to check your CPU temperature during operation do so. You may find that your hand thermometer is a bit less accurate than thought. Another consideration is that the power supply has developed a fault. If this is the case it very plausible that once the video card draws more power (It looks like yours may be overclocked judging from a quick look on the Galaxy web site) and the hard drive does the same that the supply is simply failing at that point. I would do a web search for power supply testing methodologies. There could also be an issue with the mother board where a circuit is overloading or a capacitor not doing it's job resulting in the power off. In my experience typically if the Motherboard is faulty it is more likely not to run at all or reboot itself not power down completely. Of course any of this could be wrong as I am guessing from a rather sketchy problem description. You, of course, should do some basic trouble shooting such as checking event logs as well. I hope that some of this is helpful or at the least informational. Side Note: Please remember that an attempt at proper grammar is a rule on the board. You is not that many more letters.
  10. Firstly I am going to guess that the data you are trying to retrieve was in the Documents and Settings folder. This is where My Documents resides for each user. As a small aside I always advise people not to use My Documents given it is a system folder and can become corrupted when the system does. (My wife lost many of our son's baby pictures this way, I had the back ups though.) You are going to need to take ownership of the folder and files you do not currently have access to. Given you are running XP Home you will be required to boot into safe mode accomplish the task. The step by step direction are here from Microsoft's support site. Another option would be to use a Linux live CD like Knoppix that supports NTFS volumes. Though I do not know off hand if the security from the file system is retained when so doing. Hope this helps and let us know if we can help further.
  11. Action Script is the Scripting language used in Adobe Flash.
  12. Thank goodness some domain extensions are more resistant to useless crap. Really does the internet need a few hundred thousands porn sites posing as educational in a respectable way?
  13. If you want a Linux that you can just install and not really worry about or learn anything then something like Ubuntu would be likely to fit your needs. If you really want to learn Linux and how it works then I can not over suggest Slackware. Sure its about as user friendly as a barbed wire g-string but once you get into it you will know how any Linux distribution is put together and can be modified. Of course there is the most extreme option of compiling your own kernel and going from there.
  14. If there is an option between CS2 and CS3 I would go for CS3. The biggest CS# advantages for me have been the cleaner interface and that ir runs smoother taking less memory than CS2. But, if you are not doing professional work you really do not Need Photoshop CS3. Photoshop elements or one of Corel's image suites may accomplish what you need.
  15. Simply put there is no way in hades you are going to be a Cisco "Guru" in anything less than several years. I have three CCNA books from Cisco that weigh in at a thousand plus pages each (Glad a job paid for them) they are to study for the CCNA. Understand that the CCNA holder is by no means a "guru". The CCNA is "Associate" level (the lowest) of training per Cisco themselves. There are followed by professional and expert levels as well as specialist training. The absolute lowest certification offered by Cisco is the CCENT. Most likely any good book (such as this from Cisco) on that exam or "Interconnecting Cisco Networking Devices Part 1 " will give you more information then you are likely to ever need or use concerning networking unless you are working as an admin/tech in a large corporate environment. (Obviously you are not based on the question) Just so you know this lowest level class from Cisco's own web page is described as follows. I had never heard of CWNA until your post. I looked it up and it seems completely pointless, particularly given the the Cisco training covers wired and non wired.
  16. That would certainly be a significant amount of work to manually close older threads. It would seem, however, than an admin could do it fairly easily either through whatever tool the BB program uses to manage itself or by executing a fairly basic SQL statement on the database.
  17. I "mis-spoke" a tad. By purge I meant close not remove them altogether. Nearly every other board I know of has some sort of rule concerning the resurrection of old posts.
  18. Looking over the board rules I have noticed that there is no rule explicitly against resurrecting long dead posts, as evidenced by the resurrection of yet another Gimp vs Photoshop thread. This one just happens to be four years old. Frequently I have noticed these topics being resurrected by "iGuest"; I am unsure what exactly that means. Oft times threads get resurrected by new members coming in trying to earn early points fast. I will admit this is very much a personal opinion but I think the practice is overall bad for the boards. Adding a comment to a dead topic may sometime illicit an additional comment or two but most often the thread simply dies once more. This is especially true if a member has already responded to the same post a year before. It seems that in most cases starting a new thread (even it is a re-hash) would be more likely to generate more conversation. In the instance of answering request for help about a technical issue chances are that if a question was asked six months prior to your response the original poster has either found a resolution, found a workaround, has stopped caring or, is now a skeleton slumped against the keyboard. This is especially true if a competent answer has already been given to the issue at hand. (In full disclosure I have answered an older question like this. In my defense it was in the database section and full resolution had not been given. Thus I made the disclaimer that the post was for the sake of reference) I also think that new post to really out dated questions just seems sloppy. To my suggestion. Perhaps a new rule identifying a time at which a topic is dead and therefore need not be responded to further. orDo a one time purge and close any thread older than a certain age. orDescribe a rule that a new post made where the post previous to it is of a certain age the new post is of less value point wise. Just a thought on my part to help keep Xisto a good forum and a great free web host. </buttkiss>
  19. Ghost Recon is very mod-able and has a decent modding community though the game is a bit old. Despite it's age the game is still rather fun to play and the vast majority of the mods I have seen for it focus on single player missions or campaigns. Ghost recon also includes tools for modifying and creating missions as well as plugins for 3d Studio Max and Photoshop to save files as types used by the games engine. The game being older does actually have some advantages as well: It is cheap, you can get the original game on both of it's expansions for less than twenty dollars U.S. From a modding stand point if you desire tore skin any of the models or create your own models they could be far less complex (lower polygon count) then higher end graphics require.
  20. Making an undo function in VBA is certainly do-able. For starters in you OP you state VB I am assuming that you actually intended to say VBA. A quick search for "VBA Undo" gave me several results. A quick look at the code here seemed to fit the bill. Microsoft's website has some information as well though it seems to be geared to the latest version of Office. The specific example is in Project though I do believe the code would be interchangeable to Excel. The MSDN website often has very helpful information for VBA programming. Best of luck.
  21. Largely due to a general lack of basic scientific knowledge. Then there are others that prey on this lack of knowledge and sensationalism always makes good headlines.
  22. Allow me to clarify the last line of my post as it does read a bit unclear. should read more like: When two sub atomic particles interact (An Interaction that may never take place) for 1 / 1000000000000000000000000th of a second that interaction is of zero concern. Thus I was not talking about the probability of any event rather than noting how fast any "miniature black hole" would last in the collider. Yes that is about the length of time any "black hole" would exist before it decayed. Granted saying the interaction may never take place might sound like a reference to probability. But, the statement is a reference to the fact that the scientist involved do not actually know if they will create a mini black hole given that the scientific models that allow for the creation of such an event are very much theoretical. Certainly they are grounded in good science and mathematically they make sense. However the lack of directly observable evidence means that they remain theories. All that to say that if certain theories are not quite right then there remains an absolutely firm zero % chance of a mini black hole ever being created, regardless of how many times an experiment is ran. Conversely if they are correct there is a 100% chance one would be created. Allow me to add some more information to the discussion. So if everything does indeed lend itself to the creation of a mini black hole inside the collider then what? Consider that the mini black hole is only gong to last "a few billion billion billionths of a second" after that time the mini black hole evaporates into other elementary particles. This is called Hawking Radiation. Even if Hawking is wrong (doubtful at best) and the mini black hole does not evaporate it would still be so incredibly small (having no more mass than a pair of subatomic particles) that it would never be able to gain enough mass to ever be a threat to the planet. This statement is confirmed by the the presence of celestial objects like white dwarfs. Lastly, there is in science, even Quantum Mechanics, a point of probability that is considered impossible.
  23. *Sigh* Once more everyone check your facts. The Large Hadron Collider has yet to collide anything. Photon were injected and passed in only one direction thus there has been no collision. Two sub atomic particles that may not evn exist for 1 / 1000000000000000000000000th of a second is of zero concern.
  24. I am rather certain there is going to be no "Black Hole" forming and sucking the planet into it. From Science Daily: Furthermore for whatever reason the terms black hole and singularity seem to be confused in some of the material I have read. A black hole is typically a term used to identify an astronomical object such as the super massive black hole at the center of out own galaxy. Where as a singularity describes a single sub-atomic particle. In the case of the collider they are referencing a singularity that manages to attaract some mass to it before it stops existing and releases it's energy. But this would all take place in 10-17 th of a second. Also note that this will only occur if certain theories are correct. While I am in science pendant mode allow me to correct another small misconception. The Big Bang Theory is about the expansion of the universe not particularly the creation of the universe. Certain amounts of matter have to exist for there to be any bang in the first place. The theory is generally accepted as fact as it is given the evidence we have of red shifted light and the universal background radiation. This is a misconception that the theory aims to provide for an explanation for all the matter in the universe is simply ill informed. This misconception of the Big Bang Theory is one I have seen, however, in several places leading to uninformed statements like those in the OP about disproving a creator, (No offense intended). Biblically the creation events of the first chapter of Genesis exist not to be a descriptor of the scientific laws and principles used (put into place by God) but establish His authority over all creation. To say that the Big Bang Theory Proves or Disproves the existence of God Is like saying His existence is disproved by discovering the Earth is round or that it circles the Sun. Certainly there were those that thought these concepts were heretical but this was based not on His scripture but because of their own limited understanding. This lack of understanding makes people want to put their limitations on God. Back to the science at hand. The Collider may provide the scientific communities with some outstanding data to further our understanding of the universe. If we could verify the existance of a fourth dimension (5th actually) and come that much closer to figuring out gravity, and why it is far weaker than it should be, we could be that much closer to controlling it someday. Artificial gravity anyone? Every bit of practical science starts off as abstract and less practical. When we learn the science necessary to make these things every day is when we move forward technologically. consider the fact that as science stands we will never be able to visit extra-solar planets, relativistic physics simply precludes being able to travel fast enough and avoid time dilation. But, if we can verify things like string theory or discover newer even more bizarre theories perhaps these limitations can be circumvented. More immediately it is not beyond reason to suppose a greater understanding of quantum mechanics overall could lead to us abandoning the microchip for quantum computers instead. Realistically this is some thing we could see in the next 20 years with the procurement of new knowledge. The possibilities are amazing and I certainly wish all the scientist on this project the best. I can;t wait to see some of the reports on the data as they come out.
  25. darasen

    Database

    Using local host is assuming that the database is stored on the same physical server that is serving the PHP pages. This is not always the case.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.