Posts by Section_Ei8ht

  • 2K on Bioshock: "Why should your brother play for free?

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    Remember Ubisoft placed Securom in SCCT. Are you still holding a grudge against them for this? If you look at the big picture, no one gives a damn, or remembers any of that.

    Actually, it wasnt Securom, it was StarForce3, which is worse. And Ubisoft got off my shit list because after all the complaints, they voided their contract with StarForce and stopped using it (ironically, switching to Securom, but that was before the version of Securom that Bioshock uses, which is shit. Securom was a great DRM scheme until version 7).

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    Also I'm not talking about myself, I bought Bioshock on Steam Ah Yeah

    Steam version still comes with Securom (which is also pointless, because Steam IS a DRM scheme).

  • How are you doing?

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    good post section_8! UML was kind of boring at uni for me, but maybe you get more into it because you work on a project while we only had a single semester with small exercises. operating systems is a cool course! i had it last semester and it was really interesting to get the basics of a modern operating system (no i am of course not talking of windows based systems!). learned a lot about process synchronization and file management. i once worked on a flash based application in the old fashion way. highly procedural fucked up code. though AS seems to be a bit shitty for debugging, but it is a powerful tool once you got into it. this semester i have to work out an application of my choice and maybe i will make a small kids game. technologies are yet to be decided, but flash would be in consideration (besides Ogre which is maybe too complex, but we will see )

    The great thing about AS3.0 is that it's incredibly Object-Oriented and Event-Driven. It was just weird for me having used AS2 for around four years, then giving AS3 a go and and wondering why the old hacks no longer worked.

    The Pong game I wrote is very procedural and not very OO, but thats the great thing about flash and AS3. You can hack together some quick code to get the job done or you can make it OO and very efficient. Small kids games are great to do in flash if they're not graphically intensive. Heck, it's why I used flash for my Pong clone. I figured I could do it quick in flash to help myself understand the functionality of the game and how the game logic and everything works without having to focus on specific implementations of API's or memory management. Now that I have an understanding of the game logic, I can port it to C++ and OpenGL or something to take that next step.

    BTW, this thread is awesome. It's great to attach a greater sense of personality to all this text. I love reading everyone's stories. Really reinforces the feeling that I'm not alone anymore

  • How are you doing?

    My fourth year of college is starting up this Wednesday. I'd like to say its my last, but I'm on the five year program (might even stay a bit longer to get a second major). I'll be glad to be back in school because I'll actually get stuff done. Most of the classes are programming related and I'm really looking forward to the operating systems and software engineering classes (get to learn about multi-threaded programming, UML, and spend the semester converting a board game into a software product. I'll probably work on the GUI and throw some 3d in there.)

    I'm really glad that this last summer is finally over. It was pretty rough, mostly because all my good friends graduated college and are off in some other place in the world working, making a family, making a life, and here I sit in a closed off room never feeling more alone. That and it's been about two years since my last relationship, and every decent girl around this dank little shit town is already taken. After about a month of a lonely and boring summer, I really started questioning my faith and my life, and I started drinking heavily. I'll admit, I went a bit emo on the inside (not outside, though).

    In the last week though, things have really started to turn up. I've stopped drinking (when I'm alone, at least ) and I've actually been able to do a few things that are productive. Over labor day weekend I decided to learn ActionScript 3.0 (Flash CS3), so to help myself make the jump from AS2 to AS3, I made Pong in flash (it's funny. I'm trying to become a game programmer, yet I've never made Pong). I had a programming binge that went for about 7-8 hours and man, did I ever feel alive. I guess it's kind of nerdy to admit that one of the only times I truly feel alive is when I'm programming, but it's the truth. I actually was able to take a lot from making a complete game from start to finish, regardless of how small it is. I've never done that before, and now I want to keep going. It's a beautiful feeling; going from feeling like you're in the gutter to feeling like you're on top of the world.

    I guess the biggest part of my problem over the summer was the fact that I just didn't want to grow up. I didn't want anything to change. I wanted to stay in college with the same group of friends forever because hanging out in the computer lab with people I could relate to was one of the greatest highs a guy like me could ever have, and when they all left to go their separate ways and live their own lives, I went into withdrawals. But over the past few weeks I've been able to get over that fact and realize that this is my life, things change, things will change, and there is nothing I can do to stop it. And the change can either be for the better, or for the worse, but no matter which it is, things always come around one way or another.

    So here I am, back in a good position (even though I wasted most-of-if-not-all my summer being a drunken depressed emo [i'll admit it]). College starts up tomorrow, I'm back on my feet, and my faith is restored. Enough of me being emo. Never again! There is work to be done, a life to be lived, and games to make!

    Edit [to comment on Grin's post that was posted while I was writing my post]: Grin, sounds like you have a pain I know all too well. My last relationship ended with her leaving me for some guy I never met, and her becoming a stripper and a crack whore. Got me drinking, too. Don't worry man. Things will shape up for you.

  • BioShock demo up on XBL!

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    These people who say they're only pirating to make a stand against the copyright stuff? Absolute bollocks. They pirate anyway, and have done for years. The only reason the companies are taking more drastic measures is because their software is getting thrown all over BitTorrent hours after release.

    And even with these drastic measures, the games still get thrown all over BitTorrent hours after a release. So far the record for longest time between retail release and scene release is Splinter Cell Chaos Theory with 422 days using StarForce 3. On that 422nd day, the release came with reverse engineering instructions for the entire StarForce 3 framework, rendering it useless.

    The only thing the protection does is prevent legitimate users from enjoying the product that they paid for. Rather than get a product that installs out of the box and they can play in a matter of minutes, they get something that is crippled with DRM (in the case of this version of securom, something that irreversibly modifies the system registry without telling you). The choice is between paying for something that fucks with your computer and probably wont work, or getting something that doesn't and is free.

    I buy my games because the dev's need (and in most cases, deserve) the money, but I usually don't buy it until there has been a crackfix that removes the DRM from the game because I don't want that shit on my PC. Of course, there are unobtrusive forms of DRM, like Steam or earlier versions of Securom that didn't do anything like what it's doing now.

    I bought the game on Steam. The reason I bought it on steam was beause I thought Securom would be removed since Steam uses it's own DRM scheme. I'm not going to play the steam version, but I'm going to play the pirated version because it doesn't fuck with my registry without telling me.

    I paid for the game, it should play where I want when I want. The retail version doesn't do that, but the pirated version does.

    Now I just have to ask: Does pirating a game I already bought make me a bad person?

  • BioShock demo up on XBL!

    Installed the latest drivers for everything and updated my windows, and the damn thing still crashes. I can't even load a level now, and I've tried tweaking my settings to damn near every possible permutation. I am quite pissed. I would get a refund, but I bought it through steam and steam = no refunds (although I don't blame steam for that, I understand why they don't). Hopefully a patch will fix all these problems.

    Securom and 2K Games just made my shit list.

  • BioShock demo up on XBL!

    I bought my copy off steam. Got home today and played it for a bit and from what I played, it was fantastic. Only problem is that I can't really play the game because it keeps crashing. The longest I've been able to play without it crashing is about 15 minutes. So far I've had one bluescreen, two bioshock.exe crashes, one steam.exe crash, and one hey-lets-make-both-your-monitors-stop-responding-resulting-in-a-manual-cold-restart.

    I have a 7800GTX and the latest drivers. I must say that I'm quite disappointed. Makes me wish steam had a refund policy.

    Hopefully this gets sorted out with a patch.

    [edit]Oh yeah, and I'm not using Vista.