lost_soul

I wonder if the Doom 3 source code will be released at QuakeCon (starts in two days). The Wolfenstein sources were released at QC last year.

I have a Dell 20 inch monitor that does the following. When you turn it on, it works fine for about five minutes. Then it enters standby mode automatically, though the power LED stays on. You have to power it off or unplug the VGA cable to get it to come back on again, but it will then only stay lit for about three seconds. After that time, it goes back to standby and refuses to display anything. If you turn it on again, it will go to standby again in 3 seconds... and so on and so on If you come back in half an hour, it will work for another five minutes. Any ideas? Somebody on Youtube suggested bad capacitors. Apparently Dell was selling hardware with this problem.

This guy made a flashlight with . The thing is so big it has to be held like a grenade launcher. I particularly like the switch design on the back and the overall creativity! The thing draws 50 watts at full power and the battery only lasts 10 minutes on the highest setting. It uses a lead-acid battery. I wonder how he deals with the heat? Individual LEDs hardly generate any heat, but when we're talking 500 of them in a close proximity, I would imagine that would change things. Also, I'm guessing he wired the LEDs in series clusters of 4 to make them run off 12 volts because one LED usually uses 3 volts. 3+3+3+3=12 (cluster a) 3+3+3+3=12 (cluster B ) and so on ... and then just wire the clusters in parallel. It may not be that practical, but it looks cool. Maybe the TDM guards should be equipped with these!

I'm with the crowd that replays their favorite missions... but never immediately after completion. I will have fond memories of a certain area or sequence and that makes me want to play the FM again later. It is a bit like a book. If I read through it again, I'm sure to catch aspects I didn't catch the first time. These can be parts of the story, or finding secret areas I didn't see before in the FM.

What about decreasing RAM usage? Could that be done with the source code? I seem to recall someone saying that the current normal maps used in TDM are very memory hungry, so maybe someone could implement better normal compression. On my old machine with 1.5 GB of RAM, I re-encoded all of the vocals to 48 kbps/22 KHz to decrease RAM usage. This is how most games do it, because 44 KHz isn't much different than 22 when it comes to a human voice recording. If you look in the Doom 3 pack files, you see that their vocals are about 30 Kbps.

I like surprises so...

So I got Windows 7 and I'm using it now. I'm actually liking it a lot. Part of me wants to switch back to Windows as my day-to-day OS, keeping Linux for rare tasks. I especially like having a file manager that doesn't feel sluggish while opening folders with hundreds or thousands of compressed files in them. Nautilus in GNOME was always painfully slow.

I wonder if the open source version of the engine will have less performance in the renderer because of someone else's imaginary property. Also, I would like to see OpenAL support in the Linux version of Doom 3. It is currently unavailable.

I'm more of a Youtube guy myself. It is nice to have access to video reviews done by human beings, as opposed to companies who may or may not be on the payroll. I found review very informative and thorough. He gives examples of the linear level design and problems with the game without going on an angry rant. I'll never buy a game without at least trying a demo first.

I bought many games a decade ago, sold them and ended up rebuying them because I missed playing them. It would have been better if I had just kept them.

Many of us just try to get the most mileage out of things we buy. For example, going with an mp3 player that has expandable storage and fifty hours of battery life so we won't have to replace it in two years, even when the effects of aging start taking their toll on the battery. We do lots of research before we buy almost anything, which means we find fantastic performing products that sometimes cost a fraction of what "mainstream" things do. For another example, I showed a friend who makes several grand a month some headphones I got for $25, and he couldn't help but go order them immediately. For one more example, rather than spend crazy amounts on DVR systems, we just add a TV card to our computers for a fraction of the price and have a cheaper solution that is totally under our control. These are just some examples.

I got Three upgrades for about $110... If you've got some XP boxes around, this is the best deal. I can upgrade my primary machine, my extra one that I will soon upgrade the hardware in, and possibly my netbook as well. I will have to investigate how well W7 would run on the netbook first though because it has 1 GB of RAM.

They're quite good as well. I especially liked

Yep, that's the vocal set I was referring to. He is usually associated with the thug model, but occasionally with guards as well.

I seem to recall a few threads like this on TTLG regarding Thief, so I figured we could have one here. Mine is definitely the thug. I just like the way he talks and his attitude, especially his idle barks and the things he says when he attacks me! What is yours and why?

An NHAT play-through would be cool. Ever want to experience a part of a game but are too lazy to play through it again yourself? Lol I guess that's pretty darn sad... Seems like most of the play-throughs are for older missions.

Why the heck did I have to troll forums to find this? *orders upgrade pack for $105 used while he can)* http://social.techne...c6-c3fa74a547d5 "I would hope it wouldn't, since the "double install" is how Microsoft told me to handle a Win2k upgrade. If, at some point, the Win2k machine that I'm upgrading gets flagged as non-genuine, I would be highly irritated. I have gotten confirmation from two different contacts in MS - the store, and an escalation person. Both assured me that this would allow me to upgrade from Win2k. Now, the registry trick might result in a WGA flag down the road. I could see not recommending that technique - even if it is way more convenient than the double install."

@Baddcogg: I'm curious how you feel about a system like Windows XP. It requires the user to activate within thirty days of an install, or it locks them out, completely. XP is also being dropped in less than three years, so this will be an issue relatively soon for people. In your opinion, should MS be obligated to release an unlock patch at the end, or should they just tell people they must upgrade to keep using their netbooks or older PCs? This is like the Steam situation, but the XP will likely happen much sooner. You sir, obviously have no NVIDIA video cards. I tried Thief Gold on my modern system a wile ago under Windows with a GTX 460 and I got the dreaded black screen of doom on mission start. I know about DDFix, but that causes other trouble: specifically the game minimizes on video playback! I've begun running T1/2 in Wine now. The load times kind of suck, but the stability is great and it doesn't freak out if I upgrade my video drivers.

Nobody is saying they should have to support Win2k forever, but folks who paid for games that only required Win98 or Win2k should not be expected to upgrade just to keep playing the old games they bought.

The biggest issue is the first-run authentication. Even if you buy a game like Duke Forever right now from the local shop, you will have to go on Steam to activate it just to play it at all. So, what happens when Valve decide to close up shop or get bought out? Given the disgusting attitude from most game publishers towards their fans (leaving disk checks in decade old games that prevent us from using them on netbooks), we should at least be concerned about an online authentication required to even play in the first place. Steam can also raise its requirements in the future, and you're stuck. Either you have to upgrade your OS to keep enjoying your old games, or find a new hobby. The entertainment industry has repeatedly shown its lack of respect for the honest person as a whole with these online authentication schemes, sometimes selling you an "upgraded" version that stops the activation requirement (Itunes Plus). In other cases, they leave the honest user stranded with unusable files (in the case of the second link). Then we have the idea that a downloadable game on an outdated engine (like Duke Forever) that wasn't even fully designed for our target platform should cost $49.99, which is just greed. Now they don't even have to ship you a disk or a box and they try and charge the same amount.

I'll bet by the time they approve the source code release, we'll be able to play Thief 1/2 under ReactOS running on Dosbox. I already ran Windows 95 in Dosbox just because I was bored one day and wanted a bit of a challenge. Somebody is writing a 3DFX Voodoo emulator for Dosbox too, so this really could happen.

... or they could ignore the code. Don't touch it, don't work on it, etc. Spend the time improving TDM instead. And when Thief 4 roles around, ignore that too. How well would the game do if there were no fan missions made for it and the community ignored it as a whole?

Sure, just bind a range of keys to a few save file names like this. bind f6 savegame slotb bind f7 savegame slotc bind f8 savegame slotd and the next block of keys to load the respective saves... bind f10 loadgame slotb bind f11 loadgame slotc bind f12 loadgame slotd

Agreed. TDM is the reason my Doom 3 will never be re-sold.

Sounds great!