Yesterday i got oblivion and well.. it's just great! I am not really able to tell much more, but in time i may write some impressions.
Until now i just played the tutorial and my first dungeon.. and the only thing that stopped me was my wife towing me into bed so i am able to work the next day ;-)
The only thing i want is a safe deposit ingame so i can keep their my precious stones and other things.
Now another adware: if you like some information about alcemy go to Darliandor's Alchemy Lab.
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Don Quijote's way of life
Working in a webdeisgn firm i always thought there is a place for design and programming standards. When i started there was just design and some barbarous programming. I was not very happy about it but i adapted.
A couple of years ago we had a high peak for programming standards due to a new programmer in the team that changed our complete behavior. Standards were right and fundamental and the firm tried to have both, high design standards and high programming standards. I always thought that would be a good thing and i always thought that both can live together.
But since then some things have changed. Our lead programmer left the firm and i was the one in charge about programming standards. I always tried to be like a rock and getting at least the standards of capital importance in every project.
But it seems i was more like don quijote fighting with windmills. At least from my part of view the firms path is just design, and if comfortable we also like some standards, but that's not important.
My problem is: I like to work and i want to make projects which i am proud of. Unfortunately that means i also want to use standards whenever possible and try to even more enhance our goal to maintaine maximum accessibility.
But to what end? I am tired of telling why we should also program a textonly version, or why we should let people increase their font size, as they wish.
For the first time I found myself thinking if i should leave the company or just stop using standards, and just doing my job without pride, without fun. Using them only in private little projects and do whatever they want.
I found myself asking if i lost something or just found something i don't want to loose anymore..
I found myself asking why do we work all day triing to use standards, doing things "right".. when there is no recommendation, no one that we see it was the right thing to do.
I may sound depressive.. well i am, but where should we go from here... Triing to better our techiques to build more websites which use all standards and have maximum accessability or not..
Is the war worth fighting for?
A couple of years ago we had a high peak for programming standards due to a new programmer in the team that changed our complete behavior. Standards were right and fundamental and the firm tried to have both, high design standards and high programming standards. I always thought that would be a good thing and i always thought that both can live together.
But since then some things have changed. Our lead programmer left the firm and i was the one in charge about programming standards. I always tried to be like a rock and getting at least the standards of capital importance in every project.
But it seems i was more like don quijote fighting with windmills. At least from my part of view the firms path is just design, and if comfortable we also like some standards, but that's not important.
My problem is: I like to work and i want to make projects which i am proud of. Unfortunately that means i also want to use standards whenever possible and try to even more enhance our goal to maintaine maximum accessibility.
But to what end? I am tired of telling why we should also program a textonly version, or why we should let people increase their font size, as they wish.
For the first time I found myself thinking if i should leave the company or just stop using standards, and just doing my job without pride, without fun. Using them only in private little projects and do whatever they want.
I found myself asking if i lost something or just found something i don't want to loose anymore..
I found myself asking why do we work all day triing to use standards, doing things "right".. when there is no recommendation, no one that we see it was the right thing to do.
I may sound depressive.. well i am, but where should we go from here... Triing to better our techiques to build more websites which use all standards and have maximum accessability or not..
Is the war worth fighting for?
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
A Tribute to Raid
Since i was having some difficulties while changing my motherboard with onboard Raid and maybe someone has the same problems i wanted to post this little story.
I had an Asus A8V board with Promise Raid onboard and used it with two SATA 160GB Harddisks in a Raid 1 (mirror) Array. It was working fine and i was getting used to how the Promise Bios works.
Unfortunately the Mainboard was AGP and i needed an upgrade to PCIe.. so i bought the Asus A8N-E with onboard Raid from VIA.
The first impression was good. I activated the Raid controller, set the two SATA ports to Raid and looked into the Raid Bios. Raid was found and worked "Healthy"... Very good, i thought and started up, since Windows was already on the harddisks....
But Windows is not as easy as i hoped for which the bluescreen told me even in Safe Mode. Now i had two options.. try to boot somehow and backup all data (160GB is a little too much) or just disconnect one drive from the array and boot up with one harddisk. Install everything on that and then copy everything i need (like profile) from the disconnected drive.
At this moment i loved Raid 1, since i did not have to backup everything.. i had a backup. To make the story short: i disabled the Raid, installed everything on one disk, connected the second drive and copied everything from one disk to another.
Then things got wired. I reactivated Raid and the Bios told me the Array was healthy.. that could not be since the data on both disks differ... I tried to boot, but it did not (which i later discovered was my fault since Windows never installed a raid driver, becouse it was disabled)..
The Bios was also very wired since there is an option for rebuild an Array, but when you press R for rebuild you can choose a disk from the Array.. but no info what will happen. Am i choosing the master disk or the disk which is going to be rebuild? The documentation on this part is .. well there is no documentation.. All it says is: then press enter and the rebuild process will start...
Very good.. really... Who wrotes crap like that? Did people actually get paid for manuals which don't help?
The best part, after you choose a disk nothing happen...absolutely nothing.. With the Promise Bios you see a progress Bar and everything.. but here.. nothing..
After i realized that windows could not even start without the raid driver i was finally able to boot and then something happend i did not think of.. automatically in windows a info tray window appeard telling me the reconstruction of the array is in progress...
Ahhhh... now it's rebuilding the array... in windows.
So at the end i have to say i made some mistakes and should just have installed the Raid Driver in Windows to make everything work.
But i also have to say that VIA should rebuild their Bios so people are able to make this things in the Bios.. doing that kind of things in Windows is.. well it's not only bad.. it's ..unthinkable....
I had an Asus A8V board with Promise Raid onboard and used it with two SATA 160GB Harddisks in a Raid 1 (mirror) Array. It was working fine and i was getting used to how the Promise Bios works.
Unfortunately the Mainboard was AGP and i needed an upgrade to PCIe.. so i bought the Asus A8N-E with onboard Raid from VIA.
The first impression was good. I activated the Raid controller, set the two SATA ports to Raid and looked into the Raid Bios. Raid was found and worked "Healthy"... Very good, i thought and started up, since Windows was already on the harddisks....
But Windows is not as easy as i hoped for which the bluescreen told me even in Safe Mode. Now i had two options.. try to boot somehow and backup all data (160GB is a little too much) or just disconnect one drive from the array and boot up with one harddisk. Install everything on that and then copy everything i need (like profile) from the disconnected drive.
At this moment i loved Raid 1, since i did not have to backup everything.. i had a backup. To make the story short: i disabled the Raid, installed everything on one disk, connected the second drive and copied everything from one disk to another.
Then things got wired. I reactivated Raid and the Bios told me the Array was healthy.. that could not be since the data on both disks differ... I tried to boot, but it did not (which i later discovered was my fault since Windows never installed a raid driver, becouse it was disabled)..
The Bios was also very wired since there is an option for rebuild an Array, but when you press R for rebuild you can choose a disk from the Array.. but no info what will happen. Am i choosing the master disk or the disk which is going to be rebuild? The documentation on this part is .. well there is no documentation.. All it says is: then press enter and the rebuild process will start...
Very good.. really... Who wrotes crap like that? Did people actually get paid for manuals which don't help?
The best part, after you choose a disk nothing happen...absolutely nothing.. With the Promise Bios you see a progress Bar and everything.. but here.. nothing..
After i realized that windows could not even start without the raid driver i was finally able to boot and then something happend i did not think of.. automatically in windows a info tray window appeard telling me the reconstruction of the array is in progress...
Ahhhh... now it's rebuilding the array... in windows.
So at the end i have to say i made some mistakes and should just have installed the Raid Driver in Windows to make everything work.
But i also have to say that VIA should rebuild their Bios so people are able to make this things in the Bios.. doing that kind of things in Windows is.. well it's not only bad.. it's ..unthinkable....
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Battle for Middle Earth 2 Review
I happen to get a look at the game through a friend of mine and was like in the demo impressed by the stability of the game.
When playing BTFM 1 the game was a little laggy, meaning you had problems navigating through the menu since the animation of the "eye" made everything uneasy. But they improved everything and also the game itself runs good. And that on the same machine where i had problems with the first game.
Another goodie are the new Races, Goblins and Elves. Two Races, Rohan and Gondor, has been put together and are just called Men. And they added more Weight on Heroes by allowing the User to create their own Heroe. This is really nice, becouse you can adjust a little the look of the Heroe and some stats. But it is also limited, since a friend of mine created a Harradrim which was able to disguise and kill a Person in an instance, but was also very slow. There was no indication how quick he will be and there is no way of changing the speed.
As a rpg playing gamer i would expect another advanced button to change more stats, but that's just a love to have, not a need to have.
What's really bothering me is that when you capture a building you use the Flag of the building. That Idea is great, but what i don't like is that when you move the cursor over the Flag you see the same cursor which was used in C&C Generals... hello? That should not have been necessary.
As in BTFM1 the Maps have not very improved. There is only on Map for 8 Players and most of the Maps have moved from BTFM1 to 2. What's good is they added a nice Minas Tirith, Helms Deep Map and some other cool locations. We already started searching for new maps, especially which needed a little more water.. I would like an Osgiliath Map for 8 Players with a huge Water Part in it.
Another good invention is that you can build your own Walls, which means you can make your own minas tirith if you'd like (i usually do) ...
But speaking of Walls, there is one catch i definetly don't like. Every good race is able to build a Wall, every single one. On the bad side there is only Isengard... hello? Did they hear about the lack gate? You know the one from Moria...
It's really anoying since you can't stop a group of Horseriders with some Archtowers. But with a wall they would have some problems. Looking at the Races in General it's like in BTFME 1, the good have a greater advantage like healing, they can build fountain, walls, legolas...
My conclusion is: if you had liked BTFME1 it is not bad to buy BTFME2. They have improved much, but i don't know if BTFME2 would kept me from playing C&C Generals Zero Hour in the Future..
When playing BTFM 1 the game was a little laggy, meaning you had problems navigating through the menu since the animation of the "eye" made everything uneasy. But they improved everything and also the game itself runs good. And that on the same machine where i had problems with the first game.
Another goodie are the new Races, Goblins and Elves. Two Races, Rohan and Gondor, has been put together and are just called Men. And they added more Weight on Heroes by allowing the User to create their own Heroe. This is really nice, becouse you can adjust a little the look of the Heroe and some stats. But it is also limited, since a friend of mine created a Harradrim which was able to disguise and kill a Person in an instance, but was also very slow. There was no indication how quick he will be and there is no way of changing the speed.
As a rpg playing gamer i would expect another advanced button to change more stats, but that's just a love to have, not a need to have.
What's really bothering me is that when you capture a building you use the Flag of the building. That Idea is great, but what i don't like is that when you move the cursor over the Flag you see the same cursor which was used in C&C Generals... hello? That should not have been necessary.
As in BTFM1 the Maps have not very improved. There is only on Map for 8 Players and most of the Maps have moved from BTFM1 to 2. What's good is they added a nice Minas Tirith, Helms Deep Map and some other cool locations. We already started searching for new maps, especially which needed a little more water.. I would like an Osgiliath Map for 8 Players with a huge Water Part in it.
Another good invention is that you can build your own Walls, which means you can make your own minas tirith if you'd like (i usually do) ...
But speaking of Walls, there is one catch i definetly don't like. Every good race is able to build a Wall, every single one. On the bad side there is only Isengard... hello? Did they hear about the lack gate? You know the one from Moria...
It's really anoying since you can't stop a group of Horseriders with some Archtowers. But with a wall they would have some problems. Looking at the Races in General it's like in BTFME 1, the good have a greater advantage like healing, they can build fountain, walls, legolas...
My conclusion is: if you had liked BTFME1 it is not bad to buy BTFME2. They have improved much, but i don't know if BTFME2 would kept me from playing C&C Generals Zero Hour in the Future..
Thursday, March 09, 2006
oblivion - will there be a generate button?
Hi!
As many others i am already waiting for the release. A friend of mine made a site for it: http://oblivion.melian.cc
But that's not why i started the post. I was thinking while looking at the screenshots, that the trees and nature are completely generated by the computer. So when i start the game it will generate my version of oblivion. But will it remember it or will it generate it new every time i enter the game or dungeon or.. i don't know, like diablo 2 the map.
I thought of running through the forest in circles becouse everything is generated over and over again and you have no point of reference (except of a map) where you have to go..
Playing Gothic 2 we started to memorize which plants we find on which sites.. like a specific tree... now what? The tree is there but the plant not... the tree and the plant are moved 50 meters to the west.. the plant is there but the tree not..
That's a new way of playing scottland yard.
The other way would be that the forest is generated only one time after creating a new character, specific to the hardware you have installed. But then, what if you change it to a better one, will you still see the old version. Will there be a generate button to recreate the forest?
Let the question enter yourself and think of it as activity for the break until the game is in your hands.
As many others i am already waiting for the release. A friend of mine made a site for it: http://oblivion.melian.cc
But that's not why i started the post. I was thinking while looking at the screenshots, that the trees and nature are completely generated by the computer. So when i start the game it will generate my version of oblivion. But will it remember it or will it generate it new every time i enter the game or dungeon or.. i don't know, like diablo 2 the map.
I thought of running through the forest in circles becouse everything is generated over and over again and you have no point of reference (except of a map) where you have to go..
Playing Gothic 2 we started to memorize which plants we find on which sites.. like a specific tree... now what? The tree is there but the plant not... the tree and the plant are moved 50 meters to the west.. the plant is there but the tree not..
That's a new way of playing scottland yard.
The other way would be that the forest is generated only one time after creating a new character, specific to the hardware you have installed. But then, what if you change it to a better one, will you still see the old version. Will there be a generate button to recreate the forest?
Let the question enter yourself and think of it as activity for the break until the game is in your hands.
googlemaps api
As i was thinking the other day why shouldn't somebody try to use the googlemaps engine, or sort of it for fantasy worlds, it just happen to be me one week later ;-)
My first approach was to try to understand the engine just by examing their code and the dominspector... but after a while of searching i found something great. You can use the googlemaps api from google themselves. Just create your onw code and voila everything is working..
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/
Also there are a mass of tutorials and helps how to work with the api and how to add custom maps, although they only think of adding just parts of the map and not a completely new map.
http://www.mapki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/googlemaps/index.htm
I would also recommend looking into the Google Group for the Api for help. There is always something you can work with.
Happy mapping!
My first approach was to try to understand the engine just by examing their code and the dominspector... but after a while of searching i found something great. You can use the googlemaps api from google themselves. Just create your onw code and voila everything is working..
http://www.google.com/apis/maps/
Also there are a mass of tutorials and helps how to work with the api and how to add custom maps, although they only think of adding just parts of the map and not a completely new map.
http://www.mapki.com/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://www.econym.demon.co.uk/googlemaps/index.htm
I would also recommend looking into the Google Group for the Api for help. There is always something you can work with.
Happy mapping!
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