Seems windows doesn't want the judging to happen (look at the end if you don't want to see the issue/rant). I booted up windows this morning to do some testing for the people that requested it and it was slower than usual then eventually it just hung. I tried to restart explorer from the ctrl-alt-delete task but it never started back up but ctrl-alt-delete still worked. Then I goto reboot and windows displays the loading screen with the scroll bar forever (waited 15 minutes). I decided to start in safe-mode and it hung on chkdsk.sys the first time and disk.sys the second time. I figure my ntfs partition is corrupt so I boot up my vista cd and it bluescreens, boot up my xp cd and it bluescreens then I boot up my friends custom vista dvd with sp1 and I finally get to run check disk, it fixes up a few errors. I reboot and it bluescreens complaining about the registry.

So anyways I looked at the SMART status in my bios and it reports all is ok. Not trusting it I run my seagate cd that checks the integrity of the disk (bad blocks etc) and it finds nothing. I ran memtest a few times and not a single failure. Linux of course works just fine so I'm now backing up all my files from my windows partition and going to reinstall.

Those that say vista is more stable are full of BS, I've had less issues with xp over 5 years then I have with less than one of vista. I've had less issues with linux over the last 8 year than either version of windows, go figure.



Anyways, for those who sent me PM's about testing your game I'm not ignoring you, I just can't at the moment.

My sympathies go to you through this difficult times.


The most stable windows PC I've used is the one I use at the moment. Win2k based, it crashes very rarely. I had a bsod last week which was honestly the first in over a year of a few hours of use each day.

I think there must be some gremlins going around - the other day my router crashed, then my x server crashed, then my internet tablet crashed twice in a row, and my phone stopped working.

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Trying is the first step towards failure
b

Stability is a personal thing. I've had no problems with Vista and had plenty with XP.

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Bored? Head on over to my blog and see what I'm up to.

Microsoft XNA MVP

I'm sorry to hear about your troubles, Seoushi. Take your time and fix it to what you need.

I really appreciate that you're administering and judging the challenge this time around. So, no pressure from me on testing out that small sample I sent you or for trying to hold to the judging/reporting timeframes that you were originally expecting to do.

As for troubles ... I must really not use my machines in the extreme manner that most of you do ... I rarely have ever had any problems on my desktop or my laptop -- both Dell, one Win2K, one XP Pro.

My wife's laptop has had some ups-and-downs, but then again she beats the heck out of it with every Adobe app known to mankind.

-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

Oh ... I suppose a progress update might be good here.

It *was* a late night last night, followed by a few hours of fitfull sleep as my mind worked through the last few issues I'll need to tackle today.

The main gameplay code is there now. Now I need to do all of the "tween" stuff -- ending a level, ending the game, pausing between levels, ending the game, allowing "play again", etc.

And I still need to pick out and implement SFX. And then there will be the "readme" write-up and probably an external help file that will pull together all of the in-game tutorial screens into a PDF.

Back at it ...

-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

In the back of my mind, I kind of know from experience how unpredictable multitasking often is. So I tend to use my computer with some acknowledgment of what it is doing at any one time. If I think it's got one critical cpu intensive process, I won't start another. So with dvd writing, I won't touch the keyboard till it's done. real time video compression is ok, but I'll only start things like notepad or file system operations. Winamp is usually ok running in the background alongside any other application. VB6 strangely feels like it makes other apps more unpredictable in stability.

So I know my computer. It rarely crashes now I am familiar with all of its nuances.

Hmmm....I usually prefer pushing my computer to its limits (I dunno why, it just feels....proper, somehow): I'll often have 100+ tabs open in firefox, music playing, g++ compiling, and svn running at the same time.

Of course, my computer is pretty much gone as it is; my little sister accidentally spilled a pretty sizeable amount of rootbeer directly on the keyboard, and it fried half my USB ports, my cd-drive, and my internal wireless card....it also damaged my CPU so I have to always run in power-saver mode, and my ethernet port got ripped apart when a friend tripped over the cable plugged into it.

Currently I'm using a USB wireless card and/or an ethernet-to-USB device to get my connections, and when I want to watch a DVD I have to rip it on my brother's computer and then stream it wirelessly to mine XD

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Worlds at War (Current Project) - http://www.awkward-games.com
Ganadu'r, The Eternal Sage (Other Current Project) - http://rpg.naget.com
Programming tutorials and web-design services: http://www.wyrmmage.com

Are you making a competition entry this time wyrmmage?

(23.50 GMT) well it doesn't look like anybody is posting their games up yet, and it's gone my bedtime.

So I suppose I'd better get this party started.

Jasmine Games
--- proudly presents ---
ISIS

Download from 2shared (6.5MB)

unfortunately, no All my spare time right now is devoted to Worlds at War. Sometime in the future, though

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Worlds at War (Current Project) - http://www.awkward-games.com
Ganadu'r, The Eternal Sage (Other Current Project) - http://rpg.naget.com
Programming tutorials and web-design services: http://www.wyrmmage.com

Here's mine ...

ELEMENTAL REDUCTION
http://www.wordenapps.com/files/ElementalReduction.zip
~9.5MB

(Had some problems getting it uploaded somewhere ... hope this works now.)

Now, I'm off to play Jas' work.

-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

No submission, I became occupied with a game project that's actually going to be released someday.

Oh, and I uninstalled .net last week having so rarely used it. I'll have to load it back on again now so I can try your game.

btw, the download works for me Bryk, in case you wanted confirmation on that.

Great job with your game Jasmine! Very impressive.

Fully agree ... very nice job, Jas.

How'd you do the rolly-ball? That would be nice little tech tutorial/demo in itself!



-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

well, i originally sent mine off to seoushi so that he could test and submit it for me over the weekend, but since he's having computer problems, i'll just post it now.

sorry for not using 2shared, i couldnt get it to upload for me.

http://www.datafilehost.com/download-1a9d2d32.html
~ 3.04 MB

you need .net, but this time i stayed away from xna so that more people could play it.

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The path to hell is paved with clever code.

Cool Moglor ...

You game ran just fine on my setup (XP Pro).

What you did for your sound class was how I was originally going to do it, but I got scared off by the Loader-Lock issue and dropped back to irrKlang.

But, since then I've read how to turn off that exception from being thrown ... so, I think I'll use that MDX Sound/Music approach in the future.

As for the game ... it falls into that intense-to-frustration category for me as I blow through pipes trying to find ones that fit nicely into my planned path.

Nicely implemented.

-Bryk

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www.mwgames.com ... Dicey Curves, Space Mission, Jump Gate, Gem Raider, DareBase, Castle Danger, Keeps & Moats Chess

wow, that was a quite amazing game, jasmine....some very tough levels in there!

Two suggestions:
A key for giving your ball short boosts of speed would have cut down on the tedium of running down rather long passageways
Make the blocks move a bit more quickly

Other than that, I really liked it

_________________
Worlds at War (Current Project) - http://www.awkward-games.com
Ganadu'r, The Eternal Sage (Other Current Project) - http://rpg.naget.com
Programming tutorials and web-design services: http://www.wyrmmage.com

It's done in several stages.

1. attach axes to the ball.
2. calculate a rotational velocity from the linear velocity (depends on the circumference of ball, and whether or not we're sliding).
3. Apply this rotational velocity to the frame. As codehead suggested in another thread, you can use quaternions to do this.
4. set up a double-loop to process every pixel in the sprite as a mini ray-tracer.
5. determine which pixels are part of the ball and which are background.
6. for those pixels which are part of the ball, calculate the ball centered coordinates for the point where the traced ray intersects the spherical surface.
7. change coordinate frame of this point to the attached axes.
8. these coordinates now relate to a point in a fixed volumetric graphic.
9. For the Orb, I used a logic based volumetric banding of blue/gold layers, and simply sampled a pixel from either a blue or gold graphic for this step.