2016-02-01 14:32:14

Welcome to another monthly chat topic. This is where everyone gets the chance to talk about anything and everything in their lives that might happen to be important, work/school/university, games and what your playing, films, books, random annoyences or triumphs all that sort of thing.

Of course, only a privilidged few get to start one of these balls rolling on the first day of each month, and by few I mean one, and by one I mean me, and by privilidged I also mean me!

It's a dirty job, well actually it isn't it's lots of fun, and that's why I don't let anyone else do it big_smile.

Seriously, as people will gather I've been off the forum recently  due to the continuingly wonderful circumstance of living with the future mrs. dark. In case anyone else ran into her, her name is Leslie, she was at one point Bell-song on the Zone, and Talia on Klango, though hasn't been on either place for a while. We'll hopefully be fixing her e-mail address this week, so she might well end up with a forum account although we've had lots of stuff to sort.

The immigration system still prooves fun. We plan to have two weddings, one hear in Britain, one in the states, but at which the actual formal signing of the mariage license happense we don't know yet sinse it depends upon lots of annoying bills and other stuff. Mostly we've been doing lots of things connected with living together, most of which are nice but some of which are rather hard work, eg, getting all Leslie's possessions room in my flat etc. We've also been doing lots of things together. Sinse Leslie needed a new phone I've fixed her an Iphone 6 with a new contract, and we've been going through the looktell vo tutorial to get the basics, actually there's more of that than I thought there was. We'll also probably be playing some games at some point, (she rather enjoyed the adventure game part of the tutorial), although games are just one advantage of an Iphone.

Another fun thing we've been doing is listening to the bbc version of lotr together and comparing differences. My lady mostly knows the American one so it's an interesting experience for her, and for me. it was a toss up which one we heard first, but the bbc  won the toss so we'll probably be doing the American minds eye one in the future. I've also introduced Leslie to the awesomeness of blackadder.

So, lots of good stuff going on over hear at the moment, if on occasions quite some work, I'm just amazed to have found this. I do however hope I'll be around the forum at least some of the time, both to help and because there are definitely some games I fancy trying (griff looks good, and I want to continue with six dragons, not to mention try out the life line games).

I hope everyone else is having a good time, and that  disasters are at a minimum, (I was extremely sorry to hear about Nocturnus nastiness in the other thread).

I heard Aprone is okay, albeit rather snowed under himself, likewise on the audeasy list we've had a couple of messages from Tom Ward who's apparently out of surgery but feeling distinctly ill. Hopefully he'll make a recovery to health soon.

So, what's everyone else up to?

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-02-04 05:28:27

Well Dark? Good question.
  Me, I'm pretty much wading through an endless sea of dreadfully boring school days which I begrudgingly face with an eye of rebellious contempt. Which is to say, I wish they'd end.
  Still, there are things to look forward to. Danny from this forum and I are in contact every single day, so usually after school I spend my evenings relaxing, talking with him, though admittedly him and I Skype chat back and forth during my school days. smile
On another note, work with S Quad Racing and the Matt the Terrorist engine are going quite well. As for the former I feel a bit bad since I haven't released a patch for it to my testing team in 16 days, though I'm striving to add some features before I do so and expect to by the end of the week.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2016-02-04 11:42:14

Yeah steve, school is fun. Best days of your life? piffle! university  however is much more fun in a totally unsarcastic sense if you want to go that way, sinse being with people who are actually interested! in what they're doing makes a major difference.

Glad development continues, the terrorist thing sounded interesting and we definitely need more racing games albeit racing is less my thing personally.

Well things are continuing over here in a wonderful state, albeit one which probably wouldn't mean much to most other people. My lady's Iphone is now fixed and running which is good and we're investigating the aspects of how it works, sinse there are a number of useful aps, indeed if anyone wants to suggest some favourites for general life that might help (the money recognizer advertised on the looktell vo tutorial sounded interesting).

I did however get some good news yesterday. First, where it would cost stupid amounts of money for us to get married in britain and then further stupid amounts of money for the spouse visa in order that my fiance stay here, for me to go and get married in the states wouldn't cost more than 80 dollars for the license, though admitedly there is still the stupid amounts of money for the spousal visa ontop of that, still if you have to pay stupid amounts of money, one stupid amount of money is much better to pay than two stupid amounts of money big_smile.

So wedding plans are definitely likely which is awesome. Really this is something I never expected but it's something we both definitely want and it's amazing that it's actually happening.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-02-04 13:35:03 (edited by CAE_Jones 2016-02-04 13:36:23)

I'm starting to wonder if the Buddhists aren't on to something with the whole karma-absorbtion thing, though really I have to wonder how Dark and I could have built up so much negative karma as to require 5 celebrity deaths, at least 5 cases of health crises, a dead horse, and the destruction of Nocturnus's apartment just to get to this point. And all I seem to be getting out of it is copious amounts of coding[1], one conversation that was actually pleasant (I forgot they made those), and one song I was beginning to think was born out of the ether showing up on iTunes Radio.
May the Force be with us?

[1] No promises. Never promises. No info. Info kills.
[2] I notice my posts are becoming less coherent lately. I wonder if that's part of the deal, too. *Grumbles about the universe being made of spaghetti code*.
[3] EEEEK WHY AM I ON THE FORUM MUST KEEP CODING FOREVER CREATING THE PIT WILL NOT HAVE ME AGAIN NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

看過來!
"If you want utopia but reality gives you Lovecraft, you don't give up, you carve your utopia out of the corpses of dead gods."
MaxAngor wrote:
    George... Don't do that.

2016-02-04 16:45:14

Well yes Dark, regarding Matt the Terrorist I actually read a book recently that added more touch to its developing story, and I think that in time it could grow into a pretty long and extensive game, oh how I wish there was a way to bold the words, in time, in a way that screen readers would recognise because it will take a while. However I do so far have an engine with material and environmental effects, not a lot, but I'd say that's good for it being a side project. Also, I think college will be better for me than high school, because as you said people will be interested in the same things as me. All I can say, though, is that those who claim that high school is the best time of their lives either A, have a bad life or, B, somehow had a great high school experience.

If you have issues with Scramble, please contact support at the link below. I check here at least once a day, so this is the best avenue for submitting your issues and bug reports.
https://stevend.net/scramble/support

2016-02-04 17:53:23

Congratulations on the upcoming marriage!  I'm happy for you man!  big_smile

Severestormsteve, I'm glad to hear your game projects are coming along.  CAE Jones that goes for you as well, though you make it sound like "the pit" has a stronger hold on you at the moment, hehe.  As long as you can keep yourself coding you'll be finished before you know it.  Each time you come up for air (facebook, forum, email), you're playing programmer's russian roulette!  big_smile

I'm slowly trying to get myself back into the community.  I still don't even run Skype, and only barely glance at my email to see if anything non swamp related needs my attention.  It's just so hard to get back in once you've been away, I'm not sure how so many others manage to pull it off.  Plenty of times I've seen people surface after essentially vanishing for weeks/months and they seem to pop right back into the swing of things.

I think it was back in early November that enough "life" had piled up that I reached a state of being overwhelmed.  I stopped even looking at Skype, email, and the forum, and that was clearly the tipping point.  It's the whole "out of sight, out of mind"... hmm, it strikes me as odd to use that saying here... and once I wasn't constantly seeing stuff about the community it was 10 times easier not to think about it.

By the time the dust started to settle and life was a little more manageable, I was shocked by how much time had passed.  I remember thinking, Holy crap, literally 3 months has just flashed by of me being away from the audiogames community!  It's hard to explain, but it was actually frightening to see just how easy it was to be gone since for years I've found it hard to imagine not being a part of this place.  I guess anything and everything can change quickly, if you slip up and let it.

The bright side is that from the moment I had that startling realization, I actively started programming again and I made some difficult changes to one of my long running projects.  I have talked about my Castaways 2 project with several people in the past.  It was a large project with grand goals, and as a result I've never been able to get very far before Swamp regularly pulls me away.  Each time I'd get back to C2 (Castaways 2), I'd have lost all momentum and would usually tear out and redo whole sections of code.  I'm guessing my fellow developers understand why it works like that.  While doing complicated code, being pulled away before you're ready usually means you'll come back to something that's more work to re-understand than it is to just tear down and start fresh on.

So I looked at my beloved Castaways 2 project and made the tough decision to change its direction into something much smaller.  When us developers have built up a grand game idea, we can get stuck and never be willing to change it or scale ourselves back.  We sort of fall in love with the project and get all stubborn about it.  In a situation where you can't complete such a grand project, for whatever reason, those stubborn love-projects will never be finished.

To get myself out of that trap, I tell myself that what I originally planned for Castaways 2 can just come into existence later down the road, perhaps as a Castaways 3.  big_smile  I'm also happy to report that several testers have been playing Castaways 2 since Friday night, and it has continued to come together at a pretty good pace.  I had already had a ton of code written for the "grand" Castaways 2 idea, so when I decided to change I sat down and asked myself what type of game I could easily create with the stuff I'd already written.  Thanks to all of that code I started with, it only took a few days of programming before I had it far enough along to bring the testers in.  If all goes well, we should have a new game soon.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-02-05 12:58:55

@Aprone, thanks. I much sympathize with the absense, sinse i've been pretty absent myself from audiogames for quite some time, either because I've been physically absent or just because I have had trouble keeping my mind on literally anything besides my lady.
I have at least tried to stick my head around the door occasionally, but with lots of things that needed to happen from the immotive to the mundane, it's been quite a ride, heck I've not even played! youmart yet and several of your other games need pages on the db.

Still, now at least the problematic stuff is done and we're on the nice, if occasionally mundane bits of being together, this morning we've been discussing everything from joint accounts to wedding preparations. Hopefully things will slow down enough to play some games, indeed my fiance is interested to try stuff both on her Iphone and on her pc (which should be up and running today), although I will say I'm realizing what a welcome change being together with someone and yes, being married will be, and that I probably won't have as much time for gaming and writing about games as I used to, albeit much as I love games it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make, albeit a very partial sacrifice.

Still, I do hope to have some time for castaways ii, actually given how compelling the first game was with the disasters etc that might be a fun one for my fiance when it's ready.

@Cae, what are you smoking, I want some! i really don't know about the hole karma thing (this site not withstanding), to me this is a miracle pure and simple.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-02-05 17:56:40

Dark, is your fiance sighted?  I'm sure this probably was answered somewhere while I was away, but I'm curious.

- Aprone
Please try out my games and programs:
Aprone's software

2016-02-05 22:47:34

@Aprone, as it happens she isn't, indeed she has no sight at all, though that's pretty low down in terms of list of mutual interests.
Actually at the moment we've just setup her computer, first learnt it doesn't have a wireless networking capability (so need some more cables), and right now are running into problems sinse unfortunate shely she has windows 7, and for some reason can't access several of her own folders and is being given messages such as "access is denied run through security tab" which I don't really know about, and can't read fully sinse she uses window eyes but isn't sure where the Window eyes screen review curser is to read windows.

Btw, if anyone knows how to get the security crap off windows 7 and access folders just to copy onto external devices (and one folder which her sister seems to have right protected), I'd very much appreciate knowing.

moral of the story xp is best, but it's a shame that my fiance can't access her stuff.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-02-05 23:24:40

@dark: that's a bit weird, I'm using win7 here and don't have any problems. Are you sure her computer didn't come with any adware or stuff like that? Some companies are really sneaky.

2016-02-06 01:33:04

@Aaron, not that I know of, however I believe I've worked out what the problem is at least with that specific folder (though some help with window eyes might be useful), her sister tried to import it into itunes with her windows 10 machine,and didn't really know what she was doing, so I believe either the process was not complete, or itunes grabbed the folder and now made it so that itunes alone can access it.
Luckily the stuff is still on her desktop so she can copy it off onto another folder, though as I said some assistance with window eyes would be good if you know (see the other folder).

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2016-02-06 03:03:41

Yeah, unfortunately NTFS permissions are a really murky subject. This document gives a pretty nice overview of how they work, and even though it was from a windos 10 manual, it applies equally well to any NTFS file system which includes windows xp, vista and 7.
http://examples.oreilly.com/06369200327 … ssions.pdf

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2016-02-06 14:21:25

I've never heard of iTunes snapping a folder up for it's own use, so I'm not sure what's going on there.
Well, as for me though, life's good. I got to stay at my Aunt's last week which was really fun because I got to watch some films with a sound system that had lots of bass.
As some of you know, I'm also working on an independence plan of sorts, which might take a while to properly get going but I'd definitely like to do some stuff this year even if it's small steps.
On the gaming front I've been playing a lot of Killer Instinct and ROck Band 4 on the xbox, and for the pc I'm waiting for the new street fighter.
I've also recently discovered that the android verson of Kindle is accessible, so there's a way I can read some books as well, most of them for less than £10.

2016-02-08 21:33:27

I've not yet found a synth which is good enough for me to want to read books on, but hope the kindle thing works.
The bfolder is weerd and we're not sure exactly what happened as far as the machine went, but my lady's sister did try to import it and it is the only thing I know about thus far.
I admit not a lot has been happening hear, ---- well actually quite a lot, but probably not much of it anything that would be significant to anyone accept us.
We do now have an internet cable so hopefully my lady should be online soon and we should fix her an e-mail address which will be good.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)