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Well tax season is done and my work is down to a nice easy flow. My business laptop is five years old and ailing (big old 20" HP HDX with a dedicated Nvidia 8800M GTS card, a 2.1ghz intel core2 duo cpu, and 4gb of memory). I think it's about to die, lots of frozen screens, seems to be quite hot, and I'm just grateful to have the tax stuff backed up elsewhere. My laptop is also my game computer. Anyway, I am far from being a computer guru, but like probably everyone else on these boards, there is a bit more interest than the norm. So I've decided to build a new system to replace my laptop. I've decided that, for once in my life at least, I want to build something that will let me enjoy the games I enjoy at full settings. The games I do aren't typically all that demanding, but with my laptop, even with most graphics options way down, I enjoy them with stuttersteps (Dark Mod, Rift, Second Life, and GW2 when it finally comes out). I'm going to build my own case. From wood. With a handle on the top so I can still transport it easily from home to my office and back every day for tax season. It's small-form factor, but I'm using a mATX board. My plan is to mount the board such that the back panel comes out the top of the case. I want to do this for several reasons: (1) Easier connection every day, as the case sits on the floor next to my desk, (2) allows direct mount of a water cpu cooler to the right side of the case, (3) allows the case to be wider than it is deep...and I plan to go steampunk on this project, with a keyed-clock and analog temperature gauges built into the front face of the case. I tried to get the most bang for the buck but retain as much future-proofing as possible. Here are the things already ordered and on the way: Video card: Gigabyte GeForce GTX 560 Ti Fermi 900MHZ 1GB 4.0GHZ GDDR5 2xDVI Mini HDMI DirectX11 PCI-E Video Card Motherboard: MSI Z77MA-G45 LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard with UEFI BIOS Memory: (32gb, 4X8gb) Patriot G2 Series Division 2 Edition 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model PGD316G1600ELK CPU: Intel Core i5 2500K Quad Core Unlocked Processor LGA1155 3.3GHZ Sandy Bridge 6MB Hard Drive: OCZ Vertex 3 120GB 2.5IN SATA3 6Gbps SandForce SF-2281 Solid State Disk Flash Drive SSD (for OS and games...I'll probably mount an older sata drive I have as storage) OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional Edition 64BIT DVD SP1 OEM (supports as much system memory as I can afford...was only $20 more than home edition) Optical drive: ASUS DRW-24B1ST 24X SATA DVD Writer OEM Black PSU: Rosewill Green Series RG630-S12 630W Continuous @40°C,80 PLUS Certified, Single 12V Rail, Active PFC "Compatible with Core i7,i5" Power Supply Wireless: Rosewill RNX-N180UBE Wireless Adapter IEEE 802.11b/g/n USB 2.0 1T2R / 5 dBi External Antenna / Up to 300Mbp I still have to get the cpu cooler and a large, quiet fan to mount in the floor of the case, pulling air in from beneath. The case floor will be about 2" off the surface on which it rests. The PSU will be mounted in the roof of the case and exhaust the case air. It's probably difficult to envision, and honestly I am just as likely to put the PSU on the floor as the intake and the 200mm fan as the ceiling exhaust fan. Much will depend on the dimensions of the pieces, once I get to see them up close. If the finished project doesn't look cheesy, I'll post pictures for you. I should have all the parts in the next couple days. I'm not the world's most adept woodworker, but I enjoy a challenge. And there is a bit of urgency, as this laptop is performing worse every day. I can no longer play the Dark Mod on it. I'll have to see what I can do to make it safe to use after I finish the new computer, as my daughter is hoping to inherit the laptop.

Yes, you are still viewing The Dark Mod Forums I've just finished the upgrade of our IPB Board Forums to the latest release. Packed with new features, rewritten code and all that. Have a look around. The skin is currently the default one, but will sooner or later be converted to a darker skin, to fit the Dark Mod universe. Also note that the forums have been moved from http://modetwo.net/darkmod to it's own sub-domain: http://forums.thedarkmod.com - all forum links will still work tho, thanks to Apache's rewrite-plugin. Please report any bugs, requests and comments in this thread. PS: The forums will run a bit slow the first hours as the cache is being rebuilt.

So... What was up with the forums all day yesterday..?

when i do a search, it give me some results, I click on a result and exspect to get taken to the post it specifies - but no..... I get taken to the first post of the bloody thread it is in..ggrrr

I just picked up on what nbohr1more posted here about building from prefabs. I was just wondering how easy could we make it for novices to plug together modules to make new simple FMs. OK, likely they would lack originality and have lots of weaknesses but they might draw in more mappers who would not normally map and not all maps need to be highly advanced 'super maps.' I can't work on this currently but we could spend a few months kicking ideas around so maybe one day... Many of my first thoughts likely won't work. Let's see what if any will. Performance: Keep it simple so performance is less of an issue. Do not optimise. You only normally gain tiny fractions anyway except in complex situations and the prefabs rooms can be kept small and simple anyway. Just cover up ragged edges and junk waste. Keep focus entirely on speed building. Start Map: Needs a new simple one just for this probably just extended objectives, tools, ammo etc. Needs some thought. Prefabs: So I'm thinking first of customisable 'rooms'. A 'room' is defined as one closed volume with 'doorways' whether it be an alley, a mineshaft, whatever. Each room built to a standard wall thickness and grid. Each prefab labelled, eg, 'plug in compatible'. Standard texture types of same scale and alignment so can easily change. Each prefab has distinctily named layers for ease of re-selection and re-texturing. Each room has doorways at set points, eg, always say at positions 0.25, 0.5 075 along any wall. So to connect any two rooms you can align them easily. Doorways designed so they can be blocked off easily. For instance, if all doorways have a frame that protrudes 0.5 units then a 'blocker' prefab can be dropped over it.. This might for instance just be a a big vertical brush. Possibly leave the doorway inside for quickness but disable any working door. Stair room connectors and stair units. AI and pathing: A set of prefabs each with one AI type and say 8 paths + waits linked in a loop. Waits set at say min 10, max 30. Easy to change. Mapper changes AI skin & head for variety. Paths dragged to where needed. You can't really have too many; a one corridor guard can have 4 at each end. Paths are just discarded if not wanted by removing the AI's first target. Don't waste time deleting - you might change your mind later. Sitter prefabs with seat Sleeper prefabs with bed Problems: Dark Radiant's multiple item rotation bug is a big problem. Rotating a complete room prefab is hopeless. 4 sets of every prefab is not practical. So anyway, the mapper just Starts with the start map Inserts prefab rooms so each connects with another at doorways. Forms a basic structure of rooms. Retextures if needed. Adds or moves or changes any furniture or other models (or maybe does this later Inserts AI and adjusts Inserts loot Inserts custom objects Inserts and modifies just a few ultra simple pre-made generic readables. Modifies simple objectives.

[update] Spoke to Marcus @AMD UK on the phone and as it turns out a number of complaints have been made against "Spyre". My AMD forum account has been unbarred and my Ip address unblocked!!! Bought a new gfx card for xmas, been having issues with mainly the driver So I though a good place to look for support and polity vent etc - or so I thought My second post got flamed by some smart arse fanboy and then promptly locked, to which I reported the posted asking why it had been locked.. and then my account on there got deleted and my Ip blocked (untill the isp dhcp refreshed etc) so I cant login even with a different account name. I have emailed AMD directly about this as I did nothing wrong according the t&c's and I got no warning Pm or email from the forum mods. Now I've been over at the nVidia forums a long while back when I had the 8800GTX when I was equally frustrated when posting about the driver issue with thief etc, but at no point did a thread get locked or worse my account deleted. I don't have loyalty to AMD or nVidia but depending on the answer I get from AMD next week this card maybe going back and AMD will be added to the list of manufactures I will never buy anything from again. So whats the moral of this story, well take your pick.. [update] found cached copies of 1 of my posts Cached AMD frum link Cached AMD forum link2

why are they so slow this evening..??

I'm trying to build a custom skybox for my mission that takes place near the edge of a large dropoff, and I'm having a little trouble figuring out the best way to do it. So far I've taken one of the prefab skyboxes and enlarged it, which lets me get something approaching the scale that I want, but it's still a bit awkward to resize and I'm not sure that I did it right. I'm also not sure how to line up the skybox camera with the geometry at the edge of my map. Right now I'm planning on fudging it and making sure the player can't see the gap at the edge, but it'd be nice if I could use the skybox to do a really long street or something. Anybodv have any advice or experience working with the 3d skyboxes?

Just returned from a 7 day holiday, opened up this forum, had at least 4 pages of "new content". Made it past page 2 (to about June 03), and then had to take care of a few things here. When I came back, the forum had logged me out (timeout?), and when you log out, it forgets all "new content". So you log in, and it says "there is nothing new for you". Great, now I never know what I missed between May 30th and June 03.... grrrrrrrrr With email, you would still have all unread messages *sigh* Is there a way to change this behaviour? It has annoyed me in the past, but not as much as this time.. Edit: It's even worse, there is "no new content", but when I go f.i. into the "off topic" sub-forum, it still shows me threads as unread that I definitely already did read an hour ago. So I can't even just look at all the "unread" threads. Oh boy...

I'm just starting this topic because I'm building a section of city streets, and they've taken on a curved, organic direction, so I wanted to know if there's a good approach to building like this, and what all the pitfalls are before I get too far into mapping something unworkable. I was having a think about how to make houses - complete with interior - that would be at an angle to the grid. Would it be best to make it to the grid first, save the whole thing separately in case of needed revisions, and then place it all at an angle? If there was a way to snap vertices to the vertices of other brushes/patches editing might become quite a bit faster. So far, for small changes I've been using ctrl-G to snap a vertex to the grid, and then select vertices from another object, snap them, and line them up. Is there a better workflow for this? Slightly unrelated but, is there an easy way to get neighbouring patches to line up properly with each other? I'm trying to use a few for streets, but getting them connected at a T-junction without a small gap seems very tricky. Is there anything that I should be aware of?

Hey all. After upgrading my brother's computer in the other thread I had a lot of extra pieces left over, and enough to build a new computer Here's what I'm hoping for: Acer Mobo 1 gb DDR 2 ram 9600 GT Nvidia 512 150Gb HD Registered version of windows XP 1.87ghz core 2 duo 1 dvd reader/writer 1 projector Daytek 17" monitor 1 wireless mouse 1 keyboard 8usb ports Hopefully I will be able to sell it for around $500.00 CDN (which will all go towards school ) I've got everything in place to the best of my knowledge, I can't get the power button to work, it has green and white chords and the mobo doesn't have any green and white plugs anywhere where these things usually plug in. But reset works and turns it on. So it has Power and the HD has power as well as the mobo and GPU. When I was at the computer store the other day getting my brother's computer put together with a new Mobo the guy said he tested the old CPU and it worked and he tested the old MOBO and it worked. Their both in this computer, but when I turn it on and all the lights and such go on there's nothing on the screen. It's like no information at all is being passed to the monitor. I've tried plugging the monitor into the mobo as well as the GPU with no luck. Here's some pictures I've taken of it. Hopefully it helps: http://img696.imageshack.us/gal.php?g=comphelp003.jpg I'm using a Sata to IDE adaptor for the harddrive which is an old one with windows XP installed on it. But even if the computer had no harddrive it should boot to the boot screen of ACER's mobo and you should be able to go into BIOS right? If anyone needs any pictures specifically I can take them no problem. Update 1: Okay I just got the power chord to work. I'm in the midst of figuring out the pins that go in where with a friend. I took a picture that is much clearer for reference. It only has the power button plugged in atm: http://img251.imageshack.us/i/comphelp011.jpg/ Also the Mobo is an AprireE700 (special thanks to Bikerdude for finding that out) http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/desktop/0000/Acer/AspireE700/AspireE700sp2.shtml I'll keep messing around and let you guys know if I make any progress. I have no booklet and have been unable to find schematics.

Is it currently possible to build traps like the classic arrows-from-the-wall, hidden spike pits, walls that crush you etc.? I couldn't find the relevant info on the wiki.

The forums have been upgraded, please see this thread: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/9845-forums-upgraded-to-ipb-3-0-3