Search the Community

Evening Thought I would share this recommend build spec I did for Grayman - Bikerdude recommends: Gfx $179.00 Gigabyte GTX465 "352core" 607/1215/3200 1GB 256bit 3yr warranty NewEgg Link Cpu $140.00 Amd Phenom II X4 955 Black edition NewEgg Link Mobo $140.00 Gigabyte GA-890GPA, 6xSata 6, 2xUSB 3.0 NewEgg Link Ram $99.00 Kingston HyperX DDR3-1333 8Gb kit, 4GBx2, Cas7, KHX1333C7D3K4/8GX (v.low timings w/stock voltage) NewEgg Link HDD $86.00 Samsung F4 HD322GJ 320GB, put the these in raid-0 and get over 300MB/s read and write NewEgg Link DVD $18.99 ASUS Black 24X DVD+R ... SATA 24X DVD Burner - Bulk - OEM NewEgg Link Snd $99.00 Soundvlaster X-fi Titainium PCI_E NewEgg Link OS $99.00 Windows 7 X64 Home premium OEM NewEgg Link PSU $85.00 Silverstone 700W, single 12v rail. (single big 12V rail is the way for good stability) NewEgg Link Case $89.00 Cooler master Storm Scout Black (better than the Antec 900 in every way, $10 cheaper) NewEgg Link $1043.99inc tax. (I haven't calculated the shipping, as you should get combined shipping etc from NewEgg). So I have improved his overall system: performance, reliability, desirability and saved him around $200! Ok reason for my choices - The Galaxy is almost as fast as the evga card he specced just cheaper and has the neat feature that allows the use to clean the dust bunnies out of the fins on the gpu cooler. The Phenom II X4 955 is just as fast in most situation to the i5-750 that GM originally speced, but the AMD chip is much cheaper. Also this chip is unlocked and good for over-clocking. The motherboard was a simple and basic choice, it has the latest AMD mobo chipset (890) it has big number of SATA6 and USB3, and is cheaper than the Asus. The ram choice was educated, most situation and game WILL NOT benefit from insanely fast ram, so why waste money?! So the best bang for buck is to get mainstream speed in this case DDR3133 with really low timings, in this case "Cas 7". And its $60 cheaper than the shit arse ocz ram. I actually use 4x of these Samsung F4 320 drives in Raid-0 and get 640/600MB read/write speeds. But more importantly these drives are better than any other mechanical drive on the market on small file(4k etc) read and writes - its 4x faster than the nearest competitor (the WD black drives) The Silverstone PSU was another easy choice, good reliable make of PSU, Single 12v rail provides seriously stable voltages, and the 700W should be fairly future proof. And lastly there is ABSOLUTELY no point buying retail versions of windows for ANY reason, when the only thing you need is the CD and the key!

I can get on the main forum now but still get an error when trying to load posts. Anyone else?

I have decided to chronicle my foolish attempts to get a P4 3.4Ghz (Northwood) CPU without my wife closing in on my activities. In my previous caper, I wanted the ability to play the Ghostbusters game and was below specification in several key areas: RAM: 512MB (needed to be 2GB) Video Card: Radeon 9500 Pro (Needed SM 3.0 capability) Hard Drive 120GB (needed more space or there would be conflicts about Photos verses Games... ) So I first tried to lobby for the additional RAM as it would improve Photo editing performance. But this was always delayed. Then I was struck with the "luck" of hardware problems in the Hard Drive. I was able to convince my wife that the RAM upgrade would go great with the new Hard Drive. (Phase 1, complete) So then I begged for the Video Card as a combined Birthday/X-mas/Fathers Day gift. I was given a paltry $65 limit. I found an HD3850 AGP at Mwave for just above my allowance and ordered it. When the card arrived, I found that is was wrongly labeled and was in-fact a PCI-E card. This setback was after all kinds of harrowing arguments about how I waste too much time and money on video games (my dusty ole Gamecube begs to differ). A co-worker got wind of my predicament and offered his 7300GT for $45. After looking at reviews I found that the card was just shy of a 6600GT performance-wise and decided to jump. The new card allowed me to crank-up the IQ in HL2 and Doom 3 (and thus TDM Saint Lucia) and I was even able to play the Batman AA demo (at very low resolution). (Phase 2, complete) Now I needed the Ghostbusters game! I had to wait 'till the year rolled around again and traded my Best Buy gift cards for permission to buy the game on Steam. It ran like a dog. After tweaking and fussing for over 2 months, I found some nVidia beta drivers on nvnews that pepped it up to playable at 800x600. But I was bothered that the Stay Puft level was still so slow. (Phase 3, complete) Now I had my sights on a better video card and decided I would have to take more drastic measures. I told my wife's friend's husband about my need to complete this objective and all my secret plans. He must've relayed this to his wife because she informed me that her co-worker needed PC repair! I arranged meetings before and after work to collect and return the infected laptop. After two secret trips to the bank to convert the personal check, I had accumulated $65. . So back to square 1 sorta. (Another set-back) My wife found the money and discovered the scheme. (she took all the money). (Back to work) My father-in-law secretly gave me a gift of $100 (he must've intuited my tortured life). I took this as Karma and secretly transferred the cash to a cash-card. I ordered the HD4650 online and had it shipped to my Grandma's house. When it arrived I was able to justify my late visit to Grandma and sneak the card into the house, AND... install the card, all in the same evening. I even had enough money left on the card to order HL2 EP1 and EP2! My wife had no idea that a new video-card was screaming away in that old case! Ghostbusters was still sluggish but seemed more playable at higher resolutions. But there were unbearable intermittent lockups!!! I was afraid that I had wasted all that effort. I was using the latest Catalyst AGP Hotfix so I decided to try older drivers. I found that 9.10 was the last version with SmartGart (so I could do stuff like disabling Fast-Writes if necessary...). This driver smoothed out all the lockups and left me with only slowdowns (which was acceptable). I was able to tour the Ghostbusters' HQ at 1280x1024 very smoothly. The Stay Puft level is still slow and now I pine (a little) for a faster CPU as some forum posters claim that 3.4Ghz is enough to get over the hump on that level. (Mission Complete?) So, somehow my wife became suspicious a couple of months later. She wouldn't stop badgering me about some secret she claimed I was hiding. I finally relented (needed sleep) and revealed my caper. So I am in the dog house. (Mission Fail? ...or setup for a Sequel!) So I got back around to putting The Dark Mod back into Doom 3. This time it was MUCH slicker and there a bunch of Fan Missions to complete. I was happy again! But then the NHAT campaign arrived. I was looking forward to wandering that Forest level in the screenshots!!! After much acrimony, I found that my poor old CPU was (yet again) defeated by a modern game. So now I have decided! I must find a way to get enough dough for a Northwood 3.4ghz CPU!!!!! I hope you will laugh along as I fumble my way to better computer hardware. (or pity my worthless soul).

IPB (Invision Power Board) 2.1 Final was released 15 minutes ago. I'm going to upgrade this 2.0.4 forum to version 2.1, as this will get us loads of new cool and reworked features. However, we will have to re-do the skin as there are so many template changes. Just keep that in mind, the forums might look a bit odd the first couple of days. I'm not sure when I will have time to perform the upgrade, might happen tonight or tomorrow. You can discuss this here.

I've just completed the upgrade from IPB 2.2.x to 2.3.6, the newest official release of IPB. This was done to stay ahead on the IPB version 3 that is currently in the beta stages. Please post any comments, bug notices, etc in this thread. PS: If you have any issues with the new forums, please try to refresh/remove your Internet browser cache. Thanks, ~m2

Just a heads up that the header images are now missing from the top of the forum. I suspect due to domain forwarding or something like that?

Have I been hacked or is the site being rebuilt or hacked?

Just wanted to say, Hello! From reading through various posts in the forums it seems like a great community and I hope to become a part of it. So I got the hankering for some Thief as of late and stumbled on TDM through some googling. After purchasing Doom 3 through Steam and instaling TDM, I have been nostalgiacly playing through many of the FMs and have also decided to d/l the Radiant editor and start making a mission, maybe many, we'll see. As it turns out also, I just started (today!) my 1 week vacation from work and intend to dive in to the Radiant editor and am currently going through the A-Z wiki on it. A bit of background on me, I 'used' to work in application support till the economic crash a couple years ago and was laid off and am now running a machining center at a local machine shop, using Mastercam daily, 2D/3D stuff and have always wanted to make a mission/game, and decided since I've always enjoyed the Thief series and stealth gameplay so much, this is where I would start. After getting to my third year in Mechanical Technology I changed my major to Information Technology (should have went with straight Computer Science but ahhh hindsight). I've always loved building things and designing things and also really enjoy computers, art, audio, and the entire visual experience as presented to a user. I have created a couple playable maps before using the older source engine editor so I'm vaguely familiar with 3D modeling, skyboxes, lighting, AI pathing, etc. That's been over 10 years ago though. I got familiar with 3dsmax, ProE, Autocad, and Mastercam in my first major during school so that helps a bit when familiarizing with a new editor and as previously mentioned I've dabbled around in the Valve Source editor. I'm also very much looking forward to the Crucible of Omens campaign created by the marvelous talent at TDM and would like to help in any way I can once I'm familiar with the Radiant engine. I can also do many many voices, I've often thought about moving out to Cali from Indiana and finding work in voice-overs, voice acting, etc. All this started as a youngster with little friends, time on my hands, and imaginary friends. Wow that's hard to admit. So anyway, I've been working on a shadowy Garrett voice, and can do guards and some women characters with old, old english, gruff, slippery, sneaky, terrifying, voices and personalities. Just thought I'd mention that as it may be a way that I could contribute early on and would also enjoy. So anyway, too much about me and not enough A-Z wiki, back to the tutorial! Glad to be here and hope for good things to come.

First my config. intel 6600 2,4 dual core quad nvidia 8600 gts 512 mb 4 gigs ddr dual channel (ddr2 or 3, I'd have to look) (3 gigs useable) (8 possible) xtreme gamer audio (onboard is realtek) Vista home 32 bit (supposedly I could request a 64 bit disc by mail) --------------- The issue. Had this machine for almost 2 years now, wouldn't mind upgrading a little bit. I have a 24" monitor and I think it taxes my gpu a bit. Most TDM missions I sit at 20 fps with vsynch on. Not bad as it's a steady 20 unless in a big unoptimized space where it'll drop below (vsynch off its 18-25 kindof jumpy/laggy so locked at 20 is best (or 30 if really optimized spots). Still, most games at fairly high detail I'm kindof locked at the lower end of performance, I'd love to see a steady 30 fps all the time. --------------- What I use it for: Gaming, TF2 online, The Dark Mod, 3dsMax (want to keep, under wine maybe), Photoshop (could live with gimp), Dark Radiant and Steam, Internet, internet radio. ------------- My choices. Looking at around $150. So I could get a newer better 1 gig gpu. Never had an ATI, always Nvidia. OK with switching if an ATI would be better. But I'm already limited to 3 gigs because of 32 bit OS, - 512 for the card. a 1 gig card would drop my ram useage by another 512 mb. So I could get a W7 upgrade for $120. But I'm kindof pissed at MS for the whole vista crap anyway. But would get better performance and ram usage with W7 64 bit. Kbuntu is another OS choice, I tried it a bit and it seemed fairly cool. Could run most of my stuff under it I think and would have the 64 bit option. Free so that's good. However I tried before and it renders my sound card useless, which basically costs me $100 as that card is no longer used. Onboard sound is probably fine. I just came to the realization that getting the drivers to work is above my ability and never could find the answers I needed. So if I go this route I'd probably just pull the card. Also, internet on Kbuntu was VERY slow, on my cable it was like being at 56k. Never looked into improving that much. ----------------- So I think I'd get performance either way, by using an OS that isn't a hog like Vista is (kbunutu might be better than W7?) and with 64 I get all my ram (probably wont help with monitor) I'd probably get better fps with new card. W7 and a card would be easy, no uninstal reinstal of OS. But can only afford 1. Kbunutu would require a full back up, instal, driver search but would also allow me to purchase a card and get all my ram useage. I do dig the open source thing, just not really much of a comp. whiz so having to run command lines to egt stuff to work is usually an exercise in frustration. I don't know anyone personally anywhere close that can help. ------------ So what do you think I should do?

For the last 1-2 weeks the forums have been really slow and unresponsive for me, when I type a post half the time it just sits there etc.. is anyone else having the same issues..?

Does anybody else have this problem? In the (European) evenings the forum is unbearable slow. The server is delivering about 8Kbyte/s, sometimes less and usually stops midwhere during loading the page. Sometimes you can't even get the index page, sometimes you can log in, but then only get half of the overview etc. In the mornings everything is snappy.

I uploaded GoldChocobo's stone footsteps to the sound_src repository. The WAVs are still uncut, as I couldn't get around to do it yet. It contains all possible variations (walk, run, walk+creep, crouch+run, crouch+creep). The question is: do we want to include them in the next release? So far we only have the stone ones, and GoldChocobo needs to tell whether the other materials would be ready in time.