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http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysintern...essmonitor.mspx This is bloody useful, if for nothing more than to see where your all your computer resources are being spent. But you can use it to monitor registry and file activity of any running processes, it's great. So you could hunt down spyware apps that way, or you could work out what's wrong with a program that's not behaving the way it should. For example - Doom 3 "exportModels" command has been halting with NO error messages, but in Process Monitor, after several file accesses, I can see it tried to access a Maya registry entry and was disallowed - reason "Max Allowed" whatever that means. But at least it's somewhere to start. Also if a program looks like it's locked up, you can run Process Monitor and see if it's actually doing anything behind the scenes, so you know wether to hang around or just terminate it

MA stands for Masters of Arts, as opposed to a Masters of Science. My program offers an MLA, a Masters of Liberal Arts, or as I have named it a Masters, Light in the Ass. Its a masters degree, but I cannot teach with it. The US higher ed system is something like this, and its helpful to bear in mind that US schools are deeply segregated from one another in terms of resources and the will to network with one another. There are Tier 1 schools, supposedly the best but thats highly debatable, Tier 2 schools which are good schools but not prestigious or wealthy enough to control the best employees and resources, and Tier 3, the standard state university or smaller poorer schools. These are not official designations AFAIK, its just how people describe them here. Another way to divide the schools, one that cuts across the Tier structure more so, is into research institutions and teaching institutions. Research institutions still teach and vice versa, but its a matter of degree. Generally, the research institutions are the far more elite and privileged. These divisions are taken pretty seriously, although there is not a lot of reality to back up the appearance of differences. For example, here in Philly UPenn has strong relationships with Drexel, so thats a Tier 1 school that has strong ties with a Tier 2 school with a Tier 1 engineering/technical sciences reputation. Different Tiers but both are research institutions. But UPenn does not share nearly as many of its resources with Temple University, although Temple is huge and influential in the state, its only a Tier 2 and its primarily a teaching insitution. I remember being amazed at Penns library when I found I could access the databases of Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Tufts, Cambridge, Drexel a few blocks away, but not Temple two miles away or any of the state schools either. Typical elitist horseshit, what school would not benefit from such a network of scholars and resources? But thats the way it works here. AA or AS associates of arts/science, 2 year degree, usually community colleges. Arts include the arts/humanitites, sciences are the hard and soft sciences, although in the soft sciences I think you can sometimes end up with an science degree with more labs or an arts degree with less labs and other courses. BA or BS bachelors of arts/sciences, 4 year degree, sometimes building on an AA/AS sometimes straight through MLA masters of liberal arts, 2 years, sometimes called an "advanced" degree, a non-teaching masters, there are many variations, Penn has for example a Masters of Urban Spatial Studies and a Masters of Applied Positive Psychology, you could get an MLA in a language as well, the main point is you cannot teach with it. THese are far less commonly sought degrees than full MA/MSs, the reason being is that if you don't get one from a reputable school, its nearly worthless beyond personal enjoyment of learning. MA or MS masters of arts/sciences, 2 years of graduate work, then you can actually teach college courses with this degree, this includes degrees like MBAs, masters of business admin, or as I like to say Mostly Bullshit Anyway, Masters of Fine Arts, masters degrees are probably the most sought after graduate degree, actually more useful in many instances than a PhD. PhD Doctorate of Philosophy in Whatever, biology, medieval poetry, ballet, cuisine, there are also many variations, including what some are calling PhD lite, which is a kind of doctorate but not as extensively researched, titled for example "Doctorate of Engineering or ED", but notice without the Philosophy part, which others dismiss as fake PhDs. This is probably not 100% correct but its basically so I think. Dennet was conceptually important to my work as well, Elbow Room provided great models for consciousness that has you noted are deterministic and with a basis in evolutionary science/biology. My paper is not that difficult to understand, well it is right now but Ive been told to pare it down and streamline my discussion so that should make it more approachable. I've never messed with Penrose, most of the other free will discussions I've read are those who attack Frankfurt, such as Ekstrom, Kane, Van Inwagen, and a few others who escape me.

This is sometimes usefull if you want to document the closeness to some object, or sometimes it's needed for technical reasons. For example, you could write a calendar class. In this class you have several methods, that deal with all kind of things that are needed for a calendar class. Of course usually you will want to access the current data to process some function. For example, you write a function that determines the differences between two dates and return the number of days or number of seconds between them. Whatever. class calendar { public long Diff(calendar); } So this function returns the number X between the current date of the calss itself and the one passed in. however, you might provide an additional function that also returns the difference, but between two arbitrary dates without an object. Since you already have the above function, such an additional function would come almost for free, as it is basically the same algorithm. public long Diff(calendar, calendar); In this case, the function doesn't really need the object because it already got both dates passed in. In this case you can write it as a firend function or a static function. The reason is, that it doesn't need an object and therefore the user shouldn't be needed to create an object just for the purpose of the calculation. Maybe that's not a good example, but one where I would use static. Another example could be a singleton. Hery ou create the object only once, when it is created. So you can construct it somewhere unrelated, and provide a static function that returns the single object. This is a rather typical usage IMO. In C++ this is just another name for function.

Under NO circumstances should you start out programming in C if you haven't programmed before, that is like learning to drive by studying welding. Give C# a miss as well, I know nothing about it as a language but I haven't heard particular good things about it and you don't want to get sucked into Microsoft's proprietary crap at such an early stage. For a new starter with no programming experience, I recommend Python -- it's a great language, very well documented and beginner-friendly but also extremely powerful and flexible. Once you've learnt the basics you might want to try Java, which is a pure-OO language widely used in the enterprise and commercial sectors. At that point, you could look at C++ but only if you think you will need (or want) to actually use it; it is a very large and complex language and is best studied after you have considerable programming experience. The only reason to learn C is if you want to do low-level driver programming or development for embedded systems (mobile phones etc).

TDM provides medieval, steampunk assets for building missions. Stylistically, our characters look a bit different...but we also tried to make it obvious who they were meant to represent. The Builders are our representation of The Hammerites. It would be unwise to call them Hammerites in a fan mission, as that would be against Eidos copyright for those characters. That being said however...what's in a name? Just pretend TDM is an alternate universe..which essentially, it is. Thief was about the gameplay...our characters are similar enough to the originals that the can still be used for the same purpose without having to call them Hammerites. If they look close enough to a Hammerite, without actually being one...they will serve the same purpose. We aren't planning to do any of the translating ourselves, that can be handled by the community. Getting all the english speaking characters ingame is more than enough work. I would suggest that the community provide separate language packs, to keep the downloads smaller. Dark Radiant is simply the User Interface for editing, it isn't the game engine...the game engine is still Doom 3. That being said, yes...but within reason. Like any modern engine..you'll have to build your maps carefully...but the D3 engine is much better for that sort of thing than T3 was. You're welcome.

The Dark Mod universe is also a medieval(ish) steampunk world. While the 'official' setting has limited use of electricity, it does exist, and there's no reason mappers can't make maps full of electrical devices and machinery. As for using the tools to create maps that use Garrett or other Eidos IP, that does infringe copyright, so obviously we don't recommend it.

@Crispy: When PepsiCo sponsored the Woodstock 2or3 a few years back, the ads running here showed crowds of people jamming to the music with "With Love, from Pepsi" signed across the bottom. Ads here trumpet your ability to choose a new "lifestyle" via their selection of wooden floors, sports cars, hair colorings, or cheese puffs. @Springheel/Orbweaver: Its endemic here. The "land of the free" is filled with people who assume that anyone wealthier or more influential than they are is inherently better. I've seen it in cities and small towns, all over the place. In our business programs, especially our elite ones, they explicitly tell these idiots that they are going to be the captains of industry, the leaders of society. I mean it, thats what they tell them, in those words. So they believe it. And then the masses are constantly bombarded with the myths of a society of total freedom of movement and the notion that you are utterly and totally responsible for your fate, so they think "Hey, if I really wanted to I would do it, I haven't, therefore its my fault I'm not a CEO or a university president." @Orbweaver: hes trying to protect his illusions about the country, Im assuming hes a USer although I've talked to non USers who defend the US rabidly, he sees a patent, self admitted imbecile tottering about drunkenly on his TV and rather than decrying the insanity of a world that promotes such wasteful and empty lives and the millions of dollars they consume needlessly, he assumes that since this is the land where the best run the show, Paris >must< be from the best. People literally worship wealth here, they fawn over the wealthy like royalty, when instead they should shoot them in the face. They are devout believers in the Church of the Land of Opportunity, even if they are not among the Elect who will be taken up into heaven they still have to gibber and dance at the alter of Mammon. Its a sticky, gobby mix of faith, patriotism, superstition, militarism, consumerism, and dealing with it is enough to drive one insane. When I get into a discussion here, unless its with an educated or at least informed crowd (and education is certainly no guarantee of clear thinking, I should add!) , its not uncommon to have to deal with the silliest beliefs, things you and I have dismissed decades ago from our lives, as viable information because the well meaning schmuck you are talking to really believes that shit. Its kind of like having to start every conversation over, time and time again, moving back up the chain of reasoning until you get to the simpler stuff, then work your way back up to your original point. This is one reason why I believe this country will take a sharp rightward turn towards fascism when the next economic downturn hits hard. Many of the symptoms are already in place.

Don't get sucked into the loudness wars please http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://www.barrydiamentaudio.com/loudness.htm http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archi...out_a_viny.html http://www.mindspring.com/~mrichter/dynamics/dynamics.htm Also a few questions: How's your listening environment? Is your mixing/mastering room acoustically treated? What reference monitors (speakers) do you use? Do you use subwoofers or headphones to mix/master? An acoustically treated room is probably the most important thing when you're an audio engineer. You have to watch out for standing waves & reflections that can cause frequency cancellations. Room EQ Wizard is a free utility that tests room acoustics. Good reference monitors mean your mixes translate better to different listening environments like your home stereo, car stereo, ipods, etc. One possible reason your mixes may lack a low end is you're using subwoofers or headphones to mix. If you're using subs then they need to match seamlessly with the rest of your system. I used RoomEQ with my surround sound receiver & found that some frequencies canceled each other out around the 90-100 Hz area. I flipped the phase on the subs & that solved the problem. http://www.hometheatershack.com/roomeq/ If you use headphones to mix, often check those mixes on decent monitors. Only using headphones is a big no-no. It's hard to judge the stereo image, it's too "personal" and "in your face", and mixes I heard on headphones have too much bass because people often compensate too much. Here's some other links to check out: http://www.soundonsound.com/forum http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/May03/arti...udioinstal4.asp http://www.ethanwiner.com/acoustics.html http://emusician.com/tutorials/emusic_doit...ring/index.html http://www.tweakheadz.com/mastering_your_audio.htm Honestly I think the mixing needs a lot more work.

Hey Fingernail! I don't keep up with this style so I don't know how to categorize it The closest I get get is progressive (Green Day? I don't listen to those guys so I don't know). Anyway I like the music but not too keen on the vocals. Also I've been working on my mastering skills: http://home.comcast.net/~alter-id/audio/mp3player.html & check out my SoundClick page on my sig. If you'd like me to take a stab at mastering your stuff, PM me & we could work something out. As for the mixes: - The bass drifts in & out (the lower notes stick out too much & disappears in the mix every now & then) - The drums are too subdued on some tracks (& I like the drums on these tracks). Could use more kick &snare. - The drums on some tracks are also too right channel centric. They should be more centered. - the voice is too upfront - sonically they vary a lot from track to track (one reason for mastering) Ouch, I just loaded these into Audition. "Call it Off" through the rest of the album are severely clipped. The only ones not clipping are #1 "Youth", #2"Days", & #8 "Jason". If you did get these mastered & if you paid money for it, ask for your money back I didn't catch this since I didn't listen all the way through (and I listened to it on my mac which doesn't have the greatest sound). You lose a lot of the definition, and a lot of distortion (and I can hear the distortion in the bass which is pretty bad), with severely clipped digital audio. The vocals suffer as well. Also the low end (below 100 Hz or so) needs to be mono. That's one of the reasons why the bass is so weak. If the low end isn't in mono, then there's a strong chance of the bass being out of phase with the rest of the music (which happens around 3:05 in "Tomorrow"). I realize these are mp3s encoded at 128 Kbps. A better option for mp3 would be 192. EDIT: I've been playing around with "Rick's House" (catchy tune, BTW) and due to the severe compression/clipping & low bitrate mp3 artifacts, this could've been engineered a lot better. The vocals totally drown out the rest of the band with the exception of the guitar. Also work on vocal recording techniques. Often the singers hit the "h" on house & that produces low frequency stuff that really belongs with the bass & kick. Position the mic better so the singers don't sing into the diaphragm straight on. Maybe aim it at an angle. De-essers might help the vocals and apply a nice low frequency roll-off to get rid of those hard "h"s and "p"s. EDIT2: I just read the MySpace blog & you're using SM58s on the vocals . . . tape a pencil on the head to lessen percussives on the vocals . . .

I posted last night, IE lockedup when I was almost done, arghh... let's see if I can remember what I posted: I'll let you guys worry about pathfinding, ect... -------------------------------------------------- Rat Mouth - Attacking rats I think an opening mouth would look best. But you are right, player might barely see it, unless maybe a rat was attacking a guard. I still think 2-3 small attacker would be cool, but do realize the prob is not polys (maybe 600 each) but the AI computations. The reason I'd like to do a mouth for them all (IF we want a mouth on large rat) is that it'll only increase polys by 30-50. Reasonable since it's only at -500 polys now. If I gav all rats a mouth I wouldn't have to re-rig for a lartger version, which would also mean reanimate. Adding verts and polys messes up the order and count and bone attachments. But if you guys are fine with NO mouths on any of them that's perfectly fine by me. I still have some touch ups to do so there's time to decide. I might like to start rigging by next weekend. ------------------------------------ I will put the rats into ambient_animals But I think if we do a large attacking rat it should probably be in monsters (help the author defferentiate between a standard rat and a monster rat) ------------------------------------- As far as AI scripting goes this is what I think we should do: Very Ambient Creature: base creautre scripts. these are ravens, butterflies, dragonflies, snails. Animated but don't attack, not even aware of player. All they do is patrol, whether on ground or air (I'm not sure how flying creatures play into simplicity) Ambient Creatures: rats, same as above BUT they are aware of player and will flee. possibly frogs. I'd like to do a bullfrog at some point. Big fat slimy bullfrog, not T2 chicken leg frogs. (This might be an after release thing, but would be cool to have some kindof base scripting to use) Not so Ambient creatures: Attacking rats, possibly exploding frogs. Can patrol, CAN detect player. Can attack. But very basic, they see polayer they charge, that's it. No figuring out what they should say/whatever. Just patrol/attack. --------------------- probably all creatures should die. with instecs death very low priority. If a snail is hit with sword and doesn't die no biggie. But if a racne is shot with arrow it should die, same with all rats. They will have AF's anyway, and a death anim is quick and easy. It would suck if a rat got shot and just kept trolling.

Ah, I thought that was familiar, and that you'd be the guy to remember the reason behind it. Well that's cool if something can be done about it. I assume the reference would just be copied in a different way or whatever.

I'm sure people will want to fire their bow while on a rope as well...that's not a compelling reason to allow it IMO. I don't have any strong arguments for NOT allowing it, however. Only that it's more work and inconsistent with other animated activities.

I agree it's mostly eye candy and shouldn't be a high priority, but it can't hurt to have more interaction possibilities. Now that we have the procedure down, it should literally take 10 minutes to do an AF with a single simple constraint. If we have a sign model already, there's really no reason not to make an AF version as well. It takes far longer to model and texture stuff than it does to set up a simple AF for it.

they are virtually the same object. one is fixed that's all. But I can only export as .ase. I don't see a reason not to get rid of the bad one. Even ifwe converted it to lwo we'd still have the same prob if we deleted the ase. We just need to get rid of one before the issues grow further, since the lwo is currently the messed up one it would make sense just to delete it. I'm not sure what the mappers have been using. But this was done and I did request someone delete the original long before any of these screens with signs in em. Either way, shouldn't be hard for mappers just to replace the few sign mounts they are using if they are the wrong ones. Not like they have to rebuild anything. Just a quick drop n swap.

It's been in game for some time, though it doesn't spin. Frankly, I think having it spin is virtually pointless, and possible even a bad idea. It would be like bookshelves where every book is frobbable--it doesn't add anything to gameplay and can actually make the player aware of other limits to their ability to interact with the world that they wouldn't otherwise notice--it's like the "ugly friend" syndrom in reverse. I'd like to make sure we don't get too carried away with animated objects. Neither a spinning globe nor a sign that reacts to arrows add anything to gameplay--it's just eye candy. And unlike other types of pure eye-candy (like light-beams or nice textures) they're going to have no impact at all if the player doesn't actively use them. Players aren't going to spin a globe or shoot a sign with an arrow for any reason other than "to see what happens". After the initial, "neat, it moves" that'll be it. I'm not saying we shouldn't make any AF objects--I think a swinging bucket might be useful for some kind of mousetrap-style contraption. But if we're still seriously looking at a beta-release at the end of 2008 (less than a year and a half away), then we shouldn't get too carried away when there are lots of regular models that need to be done.

For some reason throwing only works when you're holding the handle, not sure why. It also throws WAY too far, because our throwing force was calibrated for throwing around 200 kg crates. We'll have to update those forces as we update the masses. Rotating shouldn't be that hard to code, I just have to decide which body to rotate about for small AFs like this (maybe the most massive one?), and make sure the constraints don't fight the rotation in a bad way. Dragging the bucket around is lagging behind more than it should be. When the only AFs were bodies, I had put in a general AF damping number for extra damping, but this should really be a per-entity spawnarg, not an overall variable. In terms of tweaking the AF, what I've been doing is starting with a sensible mass for the whole thing using the TotalMass variable. Then I set all the densities to 1 as a first guess, and use af_showmass cvar to check it out ingame, make sure no body part is too light (significantly under 1.0). Then I adjust the constraint frictions, setting them fairly low until it starts moving like you'd expect, but not so low that it's unstable. After that first guess, I go thru and tweak the densities and frictions as needed to make it stable. The contact friction of the body itself is also critical, if those are too high, the bodies will get stuck when they're trying to slide against the floor, and it will come to rest too early. Too low and the whole thing will slide across the floor too easily.

There's no reason it has to be linear though. Just the simple act of putting in somewhat realistic architecture, like a mansion with 5 different entrances, makes it a lot less linear. One of my gripes with TDS was they never had a well-developed perimeter area, where you could scope out several possible entrances an pick one you thought was best (like First City Bank & Trust). The only TDS mission that came close to that sort of freedom was Overlook Mansion. The rest were all pretty much a closed in court yard and maybe two doors going inside at most.

Okay, I tweaked it up. There was an extra constraint you didn't need in there binding it to the world, which is why you couldn't drag it anywhere. Set the mass to a semi-realistic 10 kg, and tweaked the friction. Also, I renamed atdm:phys_bucket to atdm:env_bucket to be consistent with the rest of the ragdolls, rather than start a new group with just the bucket in it. It's pretty cool, you can choose between holding it by the handle or by the bucket based on which your view-center is closer to when you frob (maybe at some point we should make a system for showing you which AF body you're frobbing before you frob it, if that's even possible. Something like a subtle secondary hilight around the particular body). The grabber currently won't let you rotate this, and it's also applying the dead body drag force to all AF's, meaning the drag is artificially high on this bucket. Also, for some reason when you are grabbing on to part of an AF, you seem to be able to exert less force on the entire AF the lower the mass of the thing you're grabbing is. Not sure why. Could be that the grabber is only calculating the desired acceleration based on that particular body, neglecting that the rest of the AF is connected to it. I had to scale up the mass of the handle a bit artificially to make this work. Anyway, that's why we're doing this test, to iron out these issues.

I did try an alphaTest 0.5, but it didn't have any effect I could see. Adding "translucent" didn't seem to effect anything either. I'm not sure what you mean by this. I tried a few different images, and the black boxes seem to follow the shape of the object in the image for some reason.

IMO evidence points more into the direction that free will is just an illusion IMO. After all, we are made of physical stuff. Physcial stuff is goverened by physical laws, which are not free at all. There is no reason why we should assume something like a soul, so free will would also be just an emergent behaviour of complex information processing and interaction. I don't see how free will would be working because of the many constraints anybody constantly has to live with. Even though some decisions, may seem quite arbitrary and free (like deciding to make suicide) I still believe that such a decision is not completely free, because it stems from the complex analysis thats going on before the actual decision. Nobody denies that decisions doesn't have to be rational from any point of view, only from the persons own perpspective. Nobody gets up in the morning and decides to make suicide (I'm just using this as an example, because suicide may look as a perfect example of free will). The decision is based on the previous experience, and the persons assesment what the best course of action would be to resolve the problems. As a matter of fact, suicide can even happen on the cell level, so we can also see there, that such a "decision" is not a real example for free will at all, even though it may seem so.

I'm not ignoring the facts of the situation - I'm looking straight at them. Snape had a tough childhood with strict parents. I don't see how that can be accepted as a reason for siding with a mass murderer. The central premise of this argument is that Snape showed 'considerable strength of character not to become completely evil' - I'm just arguing that this isn't true. He showed considerable weakness of character in siding with Voldemort in the first place, even more in sticking with him when he showed his hand as a mass murderer. The Germans were completely vilified by British propaganda during both world wars. Your argument does not stand up, because every one in Germany was subject to the same propaganda but responded in different ways. Some chose to become Nazi guards, others didn't, some fled, some stayed to fight the Nazis from within. These different choices show that different people of different character can respond differently whatever their background. The 'hypodermic needle model' for propaganda is much too simplistic. People do have a choice in the way they act and to blame it on propaganda or their past for their choices is just an abdication of responsibility on their part.

Hey guys, I've been wondering if anyone is going to model the city where Garrett lives in TDM. I mean take the various drawn maps of the city from Thief I and II and the playable levels that show parts of it, plus the maps and levels from Thief III and recreate the entire city in TDM. This would include the Hammerite cathedrals, various inn's, the docks, the Keeper compound, locations of alleys, shops, local fences, Garrett's apartment, the Thieves' Highway, etc., the whole thing as one continuous level. If one is careful about the layout of the streets and such, so as to keep how much you could see of the city at any one time to a manageable amount, this would keep the polygon count of what is visible within reason. Would it be possible to do this in the DOOM III engine without the need for portals like they used in Thief III? Instead of FM authors having to reinvent the wheel every time they want to have a Thief mission take place either in part or in whole in the city and massively duplicate each others efforts endlessly, there would be a master reference level of the city modeled with a high degree of accuracy that could be used in any TDM Thief fan mission. Either as a base of operations for parts of the mission or campaign to which they could add in a portal which takes the player to some location on the outskirts of the town, or as the location of a main mission or campaign which takes place entirely in the city itself. The city would have convenient dead-end alleys and such where any FM author could easily add in portals if they want to that could serve to simulate roads which take the players out of the city to other nearby locales for part of their adventures before they return. This would greatly simplify the creation of FM's, as there would an excellent foundation which any FM could build on or use as is. After all, the city is large and there are many adventures that await within it's sizable confines.

You're right; any new purchasable entity would need an inventory icon as well. In a pinch, the mapper could use the same image for both. Well, that settles it then. I think I'll go ahead with 2d images for the purchase menu unless anyone can think of a compelling reason not to.

Me too, I'm not trying to put down the Gimp. The main reason I tried Gimp was for Texturizer, but it couldn't do anything larger than a postage stamp without crashing, so I gave up on it. (a way around MDI mode sure would be nice... I'm sure that must exist??)

Aww, but I loved the time travel sequence in book 3. I think the reason (or excuse, if you like) JKR can get away with time travel is that changing the past is so dangerous that nobody dares to attempt it. That, and the entire stock of Time Turners was smashed (though admittedly this is a weak argument since they could presumably just build more, assuming they know how). That's an easy one. It's because there are souls in the HP universe, and these souls are not made from the same fundamental stuff as matter. You can turn an apple into an orange, but you can't give it life. (Inferi don't count since they're not actually alive; they're just magically animated corpses.) I'm sure one can sit back and poke holes in the fabric of the HP universe all day long if one chooses, but ultimately I don't see the point except to demonstrate how smarter-than-thou one is. It's a work of fiction set in a world containing magic, and as such some suspension of disbelief is required. For the most part I think JKR manages to dodge around the plot holes at least as well as most authors do. If you don't like 'em, don't read 'em; meanwhile I'll be enjoying myself despite any apparent logical contradictions.