Games often have bugs in them, usually in the form of not being able to complete a mission or quest, or in-balances like a knife being able to sniper.
While we’re probably seeing more buggy games due to how quickly games tend to be pumped out these days, more often than not, these issues get addressed during the support lifespan of the game (at least in the PC arena).
Today I encountered what I must admit is the best bug I’ve ever seen in a game.
While trying to frag Ryan in FEAR (he had FEAR, I had FEAR Combat – the free multiplayer version), I discovered after about five minutes into the game, that my frame rate dropped from (what I perceived to be) 60 frames a second down to under 20 frames a second.
Given FEAR is a shooter, frame rates as well as low ping can make all the difference.
A restart of the game, fixed, at least for another five minutes. Fine, I rebooted my system, seeing that Visual Studio Orcas had half crashed. Again, once I reached that magical mark of 300 seconds, the frame rates plummeted like Lemmings.
As it did, Ryan managed to sneak a few bullets into me and shoved me into spectator mode, waiting for me to click to respawn. I decided a quick search on Google would be in order to see if I was the only one (search term was “fear slowdown”). The eight result yeilded something I initially dismissed as so rediculous it could never possibly be, that USB mice and keyboards were dropping my framerate.
Given I was on my laptop however, I decided that I’d give this preposterous idea a go, unplugging my Logitech G5 2007 and G15 (I’m a Logitech fanboy, I also run their Z-5400 speakers), and restarted the game.
Two hours later, my framerates continued to be far beyond that which was achivable with a mouse. It’s a pity I can’t say the same for my score.
Google’s unofficial motto was ‘Don’t be evil‘, a good motto most people would admit. That is, of course, until they contradict such a motto, and start being evil.
First it was censorship, then it was the stuff about scanning books, Google Earth’s photos being security risk, inability to counter click-fraud on Adwords, the list goes on with the ‘troubles‘ they’ve caused. Google Watch has more on this if you’re interested.
Then you’ve got the whole ‘we buy out everything‘ approach.
Recently Google bought FeedBurner. There was a bit of an uproar (sorry, didn’t save the links) from a few bloggers who used Feedburner, they didn’t want Google having that sort of power. Google would then be able to track content makers and through Google reader, the content readers. Thats some nasty privacy issues if you think about it.
The ironic thing is, I know of another company who has bought out a lot of other companies (and continues to do so), who is considered evil by millions of people – including the majority of its user base. They’ve been sued to hell over their lifespan, but are slowly changing their image to a ‘friendly/decent’ company. Microsoft.
Speaking of Microsoft, they’ve got this new product out, you may have heard of it. Vista.
One of Vista’s best features was its fantastic search. Apple’s OS X has the same sort of thing, dubbed Spotlight.
Apparently Google wasn’t too happy with Vista’s search, it was far too built into the OS, far too good, and was stopping them from implementing their own Google Desktop Search. So they bitched about it. Loudly. And its been brought to the Department of Justice, and Microsoft is being forced to change the way Vista handles its search.
Winxperts reports on it.
Okay, sure, Microsoft is apparently abusing its power to release features in its own products now. They’ve agreed to three things, the the one that stands out the most is point two. (emphasis is mine)
(2) The default desktop search program will be launched whenever Windows launches a new top-level window to provide search results. This will include an existing location on the Start menu that a user can select to display additional search results in a new window. Windows Vista also includes search boxes located in the upper-right hand corner of various windows in the operating system, such as Windows Explorer and the Control Panel. In these windows, when the user enters a query Windows Vista will continue to display the search results using the integrated desktop search functionality. Microsoft has agreed, however, to add a link that, if clicked, will launch the default desktop search program and display search results from that program.
What does that mean exactly? I’m not to sure, but it sounds like the search facilities in the Start Menu will have to pop out into another window. That defeats the point of having the search there at all!
Look, even if I’m wrong (please, please somebody prove me wrong on this one), Google has still over stepped their boundaries, and are moving into asshole territory.
Where is the complaints about Spotlight, doesn’t it have the same level of integration?
The problem with all of this is how ‘reliant’ on Google’s services/products I am.
- My homepage is set to iGoogle
- I use Google Reader several times a day to manage my RSS feeds
- I use GMail, both the G-Chat and mail features
- Picasa2 is fantastic for managing my photos
- Google Adwords lets me run my websites a bit easier.
- Google’s Calendar is a wonderful organisation service…if only I could edit it with Windows Calendar
So whats the solution? Go to another ‘services’ provider? What happens when they start ‘getting evil’, or worse….Google buys them out?
Realistically, I’m now looking at having to port as many ‘services’ over to open source (or writing it myself – any such products I’d release under CC licensing) and running on my own servers as possible.
This blog is already running on such software, rather than using Blogger.
This gets rid of the ‘privacy’ issues that plague Google (and for good reasons!), but then has the pitfalls of I have to maintain it, patch security holes, etc.
I was already looking at writing a webmail app (did you know GMail doesn’t allow attachments with exe’s in it? Even if they are Zipped, TARed, RARed, etc), I’d toyed with the idea of adding Calendar integration. Now I just need to write/find a decent RSS Reader, photo manager (I’d be willing to pay for one if it was good enough…), and ‘web portal’.
Sigh. You know the worst thing? All my research for this post was done through Google.
Update: Turns out some of the later ones, apparently, cover material we didn’t, so they won’t be on the exam. Exams tomorrow. Good time for people to find that out Ray
One of my fellow students had queries about the “Some Typical Exam Questions” document posted by our lecturer, namely, the answers seemed to be wrong.
This was the response
Yes some of those earlier sample solutions were done incorrectly. Hopefully the later ones are correctly done.
Ray
…what? So, the sample solutions with you provide sample answers for isn’t right? And you can only hope that the later ones are correct?
I think its about time I say “KTHXBAI” to Monash, as this certainly isn’t the first thing on the list of complaints…
I’ll post the letter I’ll send to the head of school (started writing it a few days ago) once it’s finished.
“Sample Solution for assignment 1. Note I have put this together very quickly and it doesn’t have a lot of comments. It also doesn’t adhere completely to the specification, I’ve just done the major parts. There also appears to be a separate floor plan down below the building, this is in fact a representation of the array I have used to check for limitations on movement, I drew it to check it was right and then didn’t remove it.”
That’s the note attached to the sample solution for Assignment 1 in my OpenGL unit.
It wouldn’t be so bad if assignment 2 wasn’t based on assignment 1. And it probably wouldn’t be so bad if the note was vaguely true.
- Instead of ‘it doesn’t have a lot of comments’, it should read as ‘it has comments, most of which are useless due to their scarcity’ (we’re talking one comment per function, if we’re lucky)
- ‘It also doesn’t adhere completely to the specification’, should read ‘I made it roughly like what you had to do, but if you submitted anything like this, you’d get no more than 50/100′. The task involves generating two rooms. The example incorrectly generates the second room (in several ways)
In any other unit, an example like this would receive zero marks for code layout (lack of comments, although, this is the first example he’s given with consistent indentation), understandability (variable names? ugh), etc.
I have other problems with this unit, specifically, the language of choice. I don’t have any real objections to C++/OpenGL, but I have objections to the way its taught.
If you visited the unit description, you’ll see a good knowledge of Java OR C/C++, as well as two prerequisite units that are taught using Java.
At Monash, the languages in this course have been: Java, VB.NET, PHP/Perl. Two out of three (the two you actually ‘compile’) are heavily Object Orientated. In this subject, we’re discouraged from using OO. That’s right, discouraged.
To make matters worse, no C++ is taught, just the GLUT commands. While the syntax is similar, there are some things that are very different from Java (pointers, not being able to return arrays, etc etc)
To make matters worse, this is the best taught subject I’m doing this semester.
When chickz0r’s mother had a heart attack, obviously my studies were effected, so I applied for an extension. Gour Karmakar, my lecturer for Enterprise Programming did not respond. In-fact, he hasn’t even acknowledged I sent it, despite how many messages I’ve left in the discussion boards (being off-campus, I don’t have any other access to staff).
For this subject, I’m yet to receive my unit book. We’re in week 11 or 12 of the semester, and I’m yet to receive the unit book or DVD containing the virtual image we’re supposed to be working off.
But when I complain, oh, how quickly did he jump to email somebody else to look after it. Note, that was a week ago, still no further contact, and no materials.
Although, I dont’ know if I’d like the materials anyway, all of its from Douglas Thomson (not saying Doug is bad, from memory, he was one of the few who could actually teach! I mean it more in a ‘I wish Gour would make/understand/read his own materials’ sort of thing), who was fired by the Uni (I believe). Its rediculous that everything has his name written on it, lecture slides, assignments, etc, its as if Gour just doesnt’ care!
And with my final subject, Operating Systems, the lecturer seems pretty lazy. I don’t know if this is the case, but all the lecture slides/example materials come from the text book. I don’t mean rewording or derivation from the text book, I mean, word-for-word copying of Tenembaum‘s Modern Operating Systems. The most hilarious thing is we’re forced to do a Plagiarism Declaration before we can access the assignments.
Graphics cards, nVidia in particular, have a sucky model numbering system.
On the desktop, you have (current 8xxx series) 8800 which comes in Ultra, GTX, and GTS. The 8600′s (and I think the 8500′s too) get GTS and GT.
And in the laptop arena, you have GT and GS for the cards.
Thats five different suffixes for your graphics card to supposively tell you what is the best performance.
Its too bad the 7xxx series had GTX, GT, GS (oh, and I suppose GX2), so throwing in those two extra suffixes certainly helps confuse customers.
It also doesn’t help that usually the difference in a series (ie, 8800) is based on ram amounts and core clock speeds. You overclock the lower rated model, and you effectivly have the higher rated model. Except when you get to the 8600GT and GS. The GS has half the amount of Stream Processors (or the same amount as the 8400 series) as the GT, as well as different clock rates – hardly seems like it fits into the 8600 category at all!
My Proposal: “xyzz”
- x = generation
This is already in place, and although this does lead to confusion, there isn’t much you can do about it. Each generation needs to be clearly defined.
ie, 8yzz is the Geforce 8 series
- y = series
Again, this is already in place, but is nessicary. There should, however, been some tougher rules regarding where the realistic performance is.
For example, ATI/AMD’s x1600 got a revision, the x1700. Was it worthy of the generation gap? Hardly, the performance was increased, but the main difference was that it was produced using strained silicon. Each series should be defined by being at least 20% greater performance.
- zz = performance within series
Get rid of this Ultra, GTX, GTS, GT, GS crap.
Usually sometime after each series is launched, revisions come along which offer minor performance increases. To cope with that, cap zz at 50 for the first generation. So your 8800GTX (Not Ultra, as it was released afterwards) would become the 8850, GTS would be 8830, GT would be 8820, GS would be 8810, and the Ultra would be the 8860 or 8870 – or something along those lines.
Much easier to follow.
Cloth is a very versatile substance.
You can use it in your printer, to write letters to people, heck, most people buy “the cloth” from The Herald Sun or The Age (in Melbourne) every day.
You can make cloth aeroplanes, oragami is made out of cloth.
I bet you are sitting back, looking at your monitor thinking “this guy is an idiot”.
Well, I might be that, but in this case, I’m right. At least in the universe according to Midway.
When I preorder Lord of the Rings Online Special Edition, I was excited. The list of included goodies was pretty awesome
- Cloth map
- Figurine
- Soundtrack
I picked up my copy from EBGames today, only to find that there was no figurine. Sure, there was a soundtrack, and even a map. Silly me, however. I mistook the map as being made out of paper, not cloth, as Midway would never false advertise now would they?
It’d be just like if they advertised if you entered your preorder key, then your retail key, you could get special pricing offers (USD$199 lifetime, or USD$9.99/month) and couldn’t. You know, sort of like what happened to me a few days ago with chickz0rs retail key.
Their first response to my (very polite, I swear!) email was:
Thank you for your inquiry. We have reviewed your account, and it is upgraded properly. We are
aware there were some issues with a small number of Founder’s keys not properly providing access to
the Lifetime subscription option, however our system has been updated and you should now be able to
select that option by logging into your account at https://myaccount.turbine.com and changing your
subscription plan. If you continue to have issues with this billing option, please respond via the
link below and we will be happy to assist you.
Fantastic, we jump onto the account page, and…nothing. Awesome.
They responded today, and actually fixed it, this time requiring us to enter in another preorder key (which they provided).
Good start Turbine/Midway, you’re going to go well in this “small” gaming market thing.
First you won’t take my money, then you won’t give me what I paid you for.
Needless to say, I’ll be calling up Midway on Monday to abuse them.
WordPress users out there, try this.
Create a nice floating div (for say, an image float like in my previous post) in the Code view, then save it.
When you’re redirected, it automagically goes to the ‘Visual’ tab. Now click Code view again, and watch it transform your lovely DIV into a non-terminating P tag.
Oh, and any line breaks you had? (BR) Gone.
I’ll have to disable the ‘Visual’ editor, which is annoying, since at times its rather handy, just complete bastardisation of my code isn’t so handy.
So I bought a Zalman VF-900 CU to cool my 7900GT, although quieter than the stock cooler.
It arrived in the mail while I was out, so I get home today to check it out, and yay, its damaged.
Its not a little bit of superficial damage that I can just ‘get over’, fins are bent in so that the fan can’t spin at all.
CentreCom called me today, instead of shipping off my laptop, they’re trying to “solve my problem“.
What they offered to do was:
- Call ASUS higher up and try and get a response from them
- Offer to give me an A8JP for $2099 while refunding my F3JP for what I paid minus a ‘restocking’ fee of 10%
Well. I told mum. She uh, started getting rather angry at me, until I told her to channel her energy into bugging them
At the end of the last chapter, our hero Paul was faced with playing the waiting game with Centrecom, as the refund proceedings begun.
On the 19th, I got a phone call from Centrecom, where I spoke to a rather helpful guy (Ivan?) who was about to call Asus to sort things out, but was getting the story from me first.
It was an interesting conversation. After explaining what the problem was, as well as what had happened with the laptop, he claimed the most likely case would be a ‘exchange‘ of laptops – that is, I’d get a different model (Yeah, I’m sure that falls under the Consumer Trading Act…).
Great, I thought, A8JP here we come. Ivan was curious as to what I was after, I told him about the A8JP as well as Centrecom’s horrible pricing compared to say…Myer ($2800 vs $2100. Yes, Myer is winning here).
He got the story he needed, then called Asus to try and initiate the refund, and Myer to make sure it was the ‘same A8JP’.
Half an hour later, he calls back.
- Centrecom will happily match that price…nice way to drop $700, and thats not the best price I can get either (haggling will get less, but JB HiFi has it for $1997)
- Asus have a ‘special cases manager’, who was ‘offline’ so I needed to send him an email.
Nearly two weeks later, no response from him.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know whose fault that is – Centrecom’s or Asus’. Personally, I’m leaning towards Centrecom, because the ‘contract’ of warrenty is between Centrecom and me, not Asus and me. I didn’t buy this from Asus, I bought it from the retailer, Centrecom.
Fast forward a few days (25th to be exact), and an Asus tech from Silverwater calls me up to notify me that they’ve just released a BIOS that solves all the grainy screen issues.
Freaky timing, I thought. The BIOS isn’t available on their website, so it was sent to my email. Because I haven’t been online much lately, I haven’t had a chance to check out the BIOS (not that it overly matters, Centrecom have my laptop), however today I did.
Comparing files F3JP203.ROM and F3JP203.T00
FC: no differences encountered
Gah. Asus have sent me that beta bios that causes BSOD’s.
I give up. Honestly, this just isn’t fair.
