Profile for Theodis
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Theodis |
| Member number | 3418 |
| Title | Apprentice |
| Postcount | 16 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
Recent posts
| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| Assembling code in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Thursday, June 16 2005 14:36
Profile
Well as far as terminology goes it is assembly you are writing and you use an assembler to generate executable code not a compiler. As people have already noted you are more likely to slow things down by writing things in assembly as most modern compilers are very good at doing general case optimization tricks. The only time you will get any speed benefit is if you really know how the chip you are programming for works and you know your compiler well enough to no it won't optimize properly. Also another problem with writing assembly is that it isn't portable. Every chip has its own set of commands and registers and while they may be similiar assembly for one chip won't work on another. Which means you kill much hope of having a cross platform app unless you write a variation of the assembly for each chip you want your program to run on. However as far as it not being useful this is very untrue. Most handheld console systems still use it extensivly as space and cpu cycle usage are at a premium(compilers tend to be good at optimizing for speed but are lousy when it comes to doing it in a small amount of space). If you plan on building your own computer peripherials you need to know ASM to either write the drivers for it or interact with it directly. The cases in which you need to use assembly are few and it is an awful awful language to work with so unless you need to know it for a job you can probably safely stay away from it and save your sanity. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Politics in Exile? in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Thursday, October 7 2004 22:57
Profile
quote:Socialism is a bad idea unless everyone within your government likes the idea of working for the interest of the whole rather than the individual. The great part of capitalism is people have the choice since you can work for the sake of your own gain or you can take all your gain and distribute it all to those who you think deserve it or any range inbetween the invidual and the whole. There's also the fact that by forcing people to help others you take away the good feeling that it gives because now you're not helping people from your own good will but because you're required to which alleviates most if not all the good feel from helping people. And even if you had the perfect civilization in which socialism would work capitalism would work just the same since the individuals would use their money to further the collective rather than themselves. Socialism isn't evil it's just plain stupid. [Edit] Of course an unrestricted capitalism that generates a few large monopolies isn't much better. [ Thursday, October 07, 2004 23:02: Message edited by: Theodis ] Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Politics in Exile? in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Wednesday, October 6 2004 23:47
Profile
quote:Heh well under the ideal communism there is no government and everyone works not for the good of themselves but the good of the community that they are part of. So communism is like wishful thinking that anarchy would not only work but that people would selflessly devote themsleves to their community. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Wednesday, September 29 2004 07:25
Profile
quote:Really? I don't see why you think it's so bad seemed like a solid scenario to me. Like the others I've went through it 3 or 4 times. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 22:23
Profile
quote:No problem. As of yet I haven't made any commercial games since Nintendo owns all the rights to anything I make at Digipen :P . Anyway here's a link my last game project http://s92177798.onlinehome.us/thelema/ThelemaSetup.exe . There are also builds for Mac and Linux I could dig up if you want. Of course that $0 price tag might be a bit hefty for you if you can't handle the loss of $30 on a lousy game. quote:It's easier to empathize when you have a better understanding of the development process. quote:Of course here's where our views largely differ. I find his games to be excellent and much more entertaining than games I've spent $60 on! So the fact that he charges $30 for games that are so great is just an outstanding deal to me :) . So you may have recieved an awful deal but mine was awsome even if we paid the same amount since the actual value of an object differs largely from person to person. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 22:07
Profile
quote:In buisiness ethics are generally thrown out the window. I'm quite sure all those products in late night infomercials are down right crappy and won't completely change my life like they make them out to. What I'm saying is for $30 the product was well worth it in the state I bought it. If you don't think it was then stop buying stuff from Jeff since you have different expectations. quote:See that's the thing. Even though the products aren't perfect and Jeff makes statements you find assinine you still think it's worth your money otherwise there would be no hesitation in just leaving. If you're still unsure just don't buy the product right away and see what people have to say. Games rarely get too much support after its initial release since it's generally not very profitable and even if a game isn't perfect if its fun people will continue to buy products from you. So if after a few months the game/editor still isn't at the state you want then don't buy it. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 21:58
Profile
quote:Yep money is a powerful persuasive force. Though I'm quite sure a good majority of Jeffs buying customers aren't forum goers. I've been playing Exile games since back in '96 when I got the internet yet until recently I never even checked the forums. And if you don't like a companies policy on support you certainly shouldn't support them by buying their products. quote:Yep and its a shame that even commercial companies do it. Just look at Temple of Elemental Evil it was released ina barely playable state with many features missing and game killing bugs. Atari provided no support for the product. If it weren't for the fact that one of the programmers had pride in his work there would have been no patches since he single handidly on his own time with no pay from Atari. quote:Heh well you have the right to complain but certainly aren't responsible. If I get a crappy game I just move on and am more weary about buying from the same publisher/company in the future :) . quote:Yep applications certainly aren't interchangable but if you require the unique aspect of one product you'll just have to live with its short commings if the author doesn't get around to patching them. You certainly have your right to voice an opinion but its still up to the author to anything about it. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 21:29
Profile
quote:Ahh brings back memories of a thread on the Temple of Elemental Evil board where someone was making a big fuss about all the bugs and poor quality of its release. He made a big deal claiming he was going to take it to court. Guess what nothing happened. Look at the forums for just about any game and you'll find people whining that they were ripped off by the company since they didn't meet their initial expectations or certain things never got fixed. And despite people sue over the most trivial and ridiculus things I've never heard of a game company getting sued because of lack of support or meeting there expectations. Take this to a lawyer and I'm sure he'll laugh his rear off. The bottom line is that Blades of Avernum was only $30. If it were some larger sum of money I could see it being worth fighting for it and not being a joke in court. I've spent more on commerical games only to have them run poorly or worse on a machine that met and exceeded the recommended specs. If you feel you've been ripped off then don't make the same mistake twice and find some other toolset to use that meets your budget and expectations. But whining about it on a forum and being disgruntled won't do much. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 21:01
Profile
quote:Well once you spend the money there isn't much you can do if Jeff doesn't offer any refunds. If you don't think his products are worth that or will reach what he says his expectations are then don't buy future products from him. Slinging insults at him is a much less effective way to get him to change as compared to not funding him. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 20:50
Profile
quote:Well the thing is Jeff needs to make money. Not only does he need to support himself but a family which is quite expensive. As Jeff has stated in an interview(http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=11) he'd like to claim that he's doing this for the love of writing games but he needs money to survive especially with a family. When you do independant development you don't directly get a salary or an hourly wage and are dependant on releasing titles since I'm quite sure sales taper down quite a bit after a certain time past the initial release regardless of how much time you put in supporting it. There's also the fact that it's much easier to say you're going to fix something than it is to actually do it and its very easy to underestimate how much effort is required to stomp a seemingly simple bug. Though it's certainly bad to make a lot of empty promises I can see where he's comming from. quote:Well I went through most of it and my opinion is still unchanged for this simple reason. I have got more than what I consider my money's worth on each and every game I've purchased from Jeff. Even in the case of Blades of Avernum I feel I have gotten my money's worth on the scenarios that it came with alone much less all the other user made scenarios that will come. So any other patches and updates Jeff makes is just icing on the cake. There have been so many commercial products I have purchased in bargain bins that weren't worth the 10$ I spent on them(which is why I generally do all my impulse buying in the bargain bins). If you feel that Jeff's products aren't worth the money you spent on them there is a very simple solution to this problem! Just don't buy future products from him if you feel they aren't up to your expectations for what you are paying for. If enough people feel that way then Jeff will be forced to raise the bar or in the awful case find another way to make money. As I've already noted several times I really like his games and they are certainly at the top of my list of games I enjoy to play which is why I support him by continueing to purchase his excellent games. And if people don't like his games or don't think they are worth their money I have to wonder why on earth they hang around as there are many other alternates. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Tuesday, September 28 2004 19:30
Profile
After reading a some of this recent hate stuff towards Jeff I'm starting to get the impression that people seem to think building a game and providing continous support requires next to no time or effort. It's giving me a great laugh since game development is the field I'm getting into and it isn't simple. For everyone that thinks it is why on earth are you wasting time with Jeff's editor? You could obviously do better yourself if game development is a piece of cake for you. On another note I did buy Blades of Avernum mainly for Jeff's scenarios since I think he does an excellent job with his scenario design. Most work done by other people I can't stand since they generally seem to have the misconception that plot should be constantly badgering the player. Either that or they have no sense in clever dungeon design. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| A Perfect Forest on Spiderweb in Blades of Avernum | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Saturday, September 18 2004 00:06
Profile
quote:Well even if it's the fault of the scenario data Jeff should have the program bail out a bit cleaner with an error message that provides the right details about the problem :P . Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| A Perfect Forest on Spiderweb in Blades of Avernum | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Saturday, September 11 2004 10:56
Profile
Well I finished off the perfect spirit and right after I select 1 - Return to the Lost City when trying to leave the place I get the following error Unhandled Exception: c0000005 At address: 004492a8 Though I'm guessing this is more of a bug with Blades of Avernum itself maybe the scenario tries to do something that freaks it out :P . Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |
| avernum trouble in Tech Support | |
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Apprentice
Member # 3418
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written Wednesday, May 19 2004 10:34
Profile
Yeah I have the same problem. My solution is to just use my old laptop that has Win98 installed rather than my WinXP desktop :P . I was just comming to this board to post this exact problem when I noticed someone else already beat me to the punch. Posts: 16 | Registered: Tuesday, September 2 2003 07:00 |