[Kathy]

Don't birds throw little ones on the earth so they could learn to fly? At least crows are doing this. Although, they're constantly flying around and try to keep everyone off their fledgings.

[Mikko]

 Rory, on 11 May 2012 - 01:04 AM, said:

Anyway, guys if you could make any game, what would that be?

I've always dreamed of an online shooter like Battlefield but with much bigger maps based on actual cities that have been designed to resemble their real life counterparts to an astonishing degree. Every building would be accessible and there would be slots for thousands of players. It'd still be an arcade shooter with regenerating health (perfect for competitive squad-based online shooters) and respawns (with, say, 10-15-second delays) but with vehicles, squads, classes etc. The environment would be destructible like in BFBC2 or BF3 (Frostbite engines 1.5 & 2 are fucking amazing).

[Fox]

[Jeff]

So I was thinking about moving to a new place. However, since I'm renting from my dad, he thinks where I'm living is a good neighborhood. I was going to show him this:

Calgary police crime map

Where he lives, I think there's only one colored pin on the map.

[Jeff]

I don't know if I have the money to. That's the other issue. Pretty expensive to rent in Calgary. One of the most expensive cities to live in Canada.

I don't live in his house. This is a condo that he bought for me, so it's my place. I make the rules. I just pay the condo fees in the form of rent. I don't understand how he thinks it's perfectly fine to live here when there's drug dealers and homeless people just next door. Downtown is one of the highest crime areas in the city as per that map I showed you. We're not New York or anything, but you kind of have to be careful when walking around downtown at night. East side has a bunch of hookers and drug/gang activity. West side where I live is a bit safer, but it's growing to be less safe.

[Jeff]

 Rory, on 12 May 2012 - 04:24 PM, said:

Dude you live in a condo? Why didn't you say that before? LOL!

It's more of a 600 square foot apartment, nothing big. One bedroom, kitchen, and a small living room. Plenty big enough for me and the cat.

[Jimmy]

Just buy a gun and start doing barbecues with your neighbors.

[Master Fibbles]

What does a gun have to do with barbecues with neighbors?

[Jimmy]

You have to kill your neighbors before you can barbecue them.

[TerminX]

Not necessarily.

[Inspector Lagomorf]

Sure, you can barbecue with your neighbors after killing them. Maybe you're the type that entertains the dead.

[Master Fibbles]

I've been working on my own version of Duck Hunt (<-linky) for flash.
I haven't added sound but I have rudimentary animations for both the ducks and the dog (whom you can also shoot, if you are into that sort of thing...or you are still angry that you couldn't shoot him 20 years ago when he was laughing at you).

Actionscript 3 is fun but a lot of work. There isn't a "pause" function so I had to make a class for game tools and use a pause function someone posted online (very interesting, if i hadn't found it, I was going to try to figure out how to make one myself). I am finding AS 3 to be flexible if not cumbersome at times. This all just gives me something to pass the time with (and buff up my resume for jobs until I graduate...or as a back up plan).

Duck Hunt (<-linky, again)

[Hank]

 Mr.Flibble, on 14 May 2012 - 01:16 PM, said:

I've been working on my own version of Duck Hunt (<-linky) for flash.
I haven't added sound but I have rudimentary animations for both the ducks and the dog (whom you can also shoot, if you are into that sort of thing...or you are still angry that you couldn't shoot him 20 years ago when he was laughing at you).

Actionscript 3 is fun but a lot of work. There isn't a "pause" function so I had to make a class for game tools and use a pause function someone posted online (very interesting, if i hadn't found it, I was going to try to figure out how to make one myself). I am finding AS 3 to be flexible if not cumbersome at times. This all just gives me something to pass the time with (and buff up my resume for jobs until I graduate...or as a back up plan).

Duck Hunt (<-linky, again)

You did this? wooooow !

[Jeff]

Finally got around to remastering that Mass Effect 3 movie I made. Original movie had a bitrate of around 14 Mbps, which is kind of low for HD. The new one has a bitrate of about 140 Mbps, although, I don't think I'll be able to stream that, so I'll probably cut it down to 50 Mbps or so.

[Sangman]

 Mr.Flibble, on 14 May 2012 - 01:16 PM, said:

Actionscript 3 is fun

You need to be slapped hard! AS is a piece of shit.

Quote

You did this? wooooow !

My fucking second year Flash project which was a dumb Mario clone was more impressive than that dumb shit

[Master Fibbles]

Hey, I don't program very often. I also did this without a class or a book. Just me and the Internet and my spare time (which isn't much) over the last few weeks.

I find AS to be, yes, convoluted (I'm not sure if that is the right word), because you have to make everything a function and you can't pause or any number of other things, but it is relatively easy to use for something as simple as Duck Hunt. It is simple and using it has been instructive in object oriented programming in general. If I ever feel like getting into something else, I will be able to do more than just count and output text.
Just because I ENJOY challenges, doesn't mean you got to be a dick about it.

If I wanted to make a side-scroller, sure, I could, but I wanted to make Duck Hunt because it is more gratifying (and to shoot the dog). Side-scrollers would require me to draw far more than I care to. I wasn't even going to add the dog, but I did it because I was asked to (and to make the dog killable). Through this process and other experiments with Flash, I have figured out why so many Flash games/movies are stick figures: the is so much easier to animate them.

You're just being a dick, Sang.

[Kathy]

 Mr.Flibble, on 14 May 2012 - 06:22 PM, said:

Hey, I don't program very often. I also did this without a class or a book. Just me and the Internet and my spare time (which isn't much) over the last few weeks.

You can't say you did something "just" by using internet. Nowadays using internet is pretty much enough, especially in IT-related questions.

[Jeff]

Cool app you've got there man.

In the meantime, I really need to get Diablo 3. Been putting off the purchase, but I just remembered it comes out tomorrow.

[Hendricks266]

 Burnett, on 14 May 2012 - 07:27 PM, said:

You can't say you did something "just" by using internet.

INTERNET!

[Master Fibbles]

 Burnett, on 14 May 2012 - 07:27 PM, said:

You can't say you did something "just" by using internet. Nowadays using internet is pretty much enough, especially in IT-related questions.

Yes and no. Sure, I could just copy/paste whole code snippets from the Internet and pass them off as my own...but I didn't do that. I did search through Adobe's reference pages to figure out more of the vocabulary/syntax of AS3 as I needed to learn it. So, yes, in that respect, it wasn't "just" the Internet (in the diminutive sense of the word. However, I was saying that I only used the Internet which didn't have great results for some of my inquiries and I had to figure it out on my own. I wasn't following a script written by someone on how to make a game, I was learning the language.

[Sangman]

You're misunderstanding me Mr. Flibble, all I said is that AS is a piece of shit and that it's weird that somebody goes "wooooooooow" over that Flash app even though it's nothing impressive. Of course it's your choice if you want to take that personal.

[Kathy]

It seems he also misunderstood me. I never meant copying someone else's code. I was talking about lots of information on Internet to learn from without going to some courses and still being good at it. Although, since I'm usually working with Microsoft products which have a shitload of information on TechNet, that may not be true about other products.

[Master Fibbles]

 Sangman, on 15 May 2012 - 06:22 AM, said:

You're misunderstanding me Mr. Flibble, all I said is that AS is a piece of shit and that it's weird that somebody goes "wooooooooow" over that Flash app even though it's nothing impressive. Of course it's your choice if you want to take that personal.

Commenting on someone's work is often understood as personal. This is literally the first "game" and almost the first real thing I've made with Flash and AS3. No tutorials; just looking up vocabulary for AS3 as I needed to figure out how to accomplish something. Learning on your own is a lot harder for some people than others.

Burnett, Sang mentioned a class he took where he had to make a Mario clone. A classroom setting forces things to be done and within a classroom setting (or through a manual [of style]) a person is told how to do things by a "best method." Using a text book to learn German, for example, or taking a class in it is different than learning German by looking at the Wikipedia page for the German language and then learning vocabulary as you go (using Google to translate German words or phrases/idioms into English). The former is structured and gives feedback that is human and individual while the latter just is and in order to learn beyond what is in one place, you either have to go to another page or induce it on your own.

Yes, the Internet has a wealth of information in it, but it isn't always as useful as a textbook or classroom setting. One could just follow a tutorial on the Internet and copy/paste code snippets but never be able to do anything more than just what is on the tutorial.

[Sangman]

 Mr.Flibble, on 15 May 2012 - 07:20 AM, said:

Burnett, Sang mentioned a class he took where he had to make a Mario clone. A classroom setting forces things to be done and within a classroom setting (or through a manual [of style]) a person is told how to do things by a "best method."

This is wrong. Please don't pretend to know how my classes are organized.

For our Flash class it was basically - "here's your assignment. Look it up.". Kindof like you, except I guess it was more forced and with more pressure.

[Sangman]

That does not sound like the same thing at all.

When we had to do our assignment we only had a very, VERY basic knowledge of the Adobe Flash GUI... and no familiarity at all with ActionScript. We literally got no information at all to base anything off of.

[Hank]

 Sangman, on 14 May 2012 - 04:57 PM, said:

My fucking second year Flash project which was a dumb Mario clone was more impressive than that dumb shit

Who cares how good you are.

My complement to Mr. Flibble stands!

[High Treason]

I got a new toy today, say hello to Mr. Boom!¹
< Same as that one...²

Bought as broken, opened it up, seems it's been dropped and the trace that takes input power to the transformer was broken, 30 seconds after getting my iron out, the boombox is fully functional, until I did something silly and blew the amp - but it's a HA1392, an off-the-shelf part worth about £10 from Hitachi, everything else is still 100% operational within the unit.

But there's a problem, anyone that follows what I do will know I dislike my country's stance on electronics - for example, only one place in the country supplies Intel Xeon Processors for eight times what it costs to import them from the US, but it's redundant as you can not buy the motherboard from any company in the UK as far as I know, unless you want to pay over the odds whilst ordering 100 of them - anyway, I used to work with chips a hell of a lot, nothing special, just PICs mostly, though I've built DACs and Rom Copiers before now, unfortunately the tools I used to do this; Programmers, Decent Soldering Irons/Guns, Deck and most importantly de-soldering iron are long since dead and gone. Now I can not find one anywhere, all I can find are "desoldering stations" which are damn near useless, more annoyingly, they seem to be available in other countries.

Looks like I'll have a long tedious job to do with my brass brush doesn't it...

Edit:
¹ First one to get the reference, I will +1 your post...
² I just realised, that guy who took the pic (not me, my cam isn't capable of taking photos now) has the same shoes as I do too.

[Hank]

Boom Box > portable cassette player, so I am guessing Mr. Boom refers to the multiple cassette players???

[Sangman]

 Rory, on 15 May 2012 - 02:13 PM, said:

No consider yourself lucky, as ActionScript can be very troublesome

Yeah, if only there was a better IDE for it as well... Maybe VS can support ActionScript with some plugins, I dunno. Adobe Flash itself is shit though.

[The Commander]

So Facebook is trying to make more money out of users... with an option to "highlight" posts.

http://www.bbc.com/n...nology-18033259

Quote

By paying a small fee users can ensure that information they post on the social network is more visible to friends, family and colleagues.

The tests are being carried out among the social network's users in New Zealand.

Facebook said the goal was to see if users were interested in paying to flag up their information.

I tried it out before and spent 0.80 USD to highlight my post and I see no visible difference in the post.