shinRaiden

There really ain't a thread for this... Basicly, this is the critical core code for exporting graphics into OFP PAA/PAC format. If you want to make a converter like texview, or create a viewer application, or a wrp editor, this is the key to WRITING textures. Essentially, this is just the skeleton _defs and code to structure your data arrays of pixels, and properly process them through the pal2pac.dll included with Oxygen. The biggest need that can now be filled is to make a transition masher, where you could load in some base textures, a list of desired transitions, and punch out textures. Or you could make a converter for other raw formats.

Additionally, as I routinely BS to the survey takers when they call here to deliberately muck with the system, and also I tend to withhold a lot of the actual hows and why's for the same survey's, and I know many friends who do likewise, I to would like to see how these reports are created and presumed to be accurate. It's real easy to do, just engage the worker in friendly conversation, let them do the talking, take what ever they say, and spin it back to them. If they think they see through it, use the Inshallah method and spin it a little better. If you can't bluff them, just keep running around in circles until they give up. If you've ever tried to nail down an appointment time with a palestinian or any arab in general, you'll understand exactly what I'm saying.

Actually, I was agreeing with Miles, and not the other way around as he's got the references more readily availiable. The best political source I've found is "From Beirut to Jerusalem" by Thomas Friedman of the NY Times. A lebanese co-worker had also read it and generally agreed with with the beirut half of the story, although he had his opinions about the israeli half. I personally have seen confirmation of all the numbers Miles has posted, I just don't have the references handy. The low relative birth rate problem is not unique to Israel, as Europe and Asia are looking at catastrophe ~20-50 years out, but the problem is more immediate in the ME given the instability of the region. For what it's worth though, I did talk with Ehud Olmert in a student forum while I was over there in 2000 before things blew up - while he was still mayor of jerusalem - and he stuck me as a severe personality type, a cut-no-crap-this-is-the-way-its-going-to-be or its-my-way-or-the-hiway type. Contrast that with every arab I've ever worked with, they tend to be as easy to nail down as mud. Just something cultural. Okay, here's a process that would be idealistic - the Jews would have to stop dragging out Yad Vashem and calling each Sbarros' pizza shop bombing "Warsaw in our time", and the Palestinians would have to buckle down and collectively negotiate individual liberty, and quit the nonsense of pretending that a terrorist gang of thugs can be a respectable government. The police can not be running the mob by night and still have law and order prevail. That 'solution' however, is diametrically opposed to the Israeli stress factor and the palestinian waffliness. But so long as ANY shots are fired, and threatenings mumbled on either side, panic and stonewalling goes into overdrive on both sides and nothing productive happens. I will say though that all the chrisitian palestinians I spoke with tended to be a bit more relaxed and open to western style negotiations than their muslim counterparts.

Now we've got to the crux of the issue. The game Saddam has been playing and quite well is the fact that he can afford to lose far more than we can afford to kill. Just like chess, you could capture every piece without one loss, but untill the king is checkmated, you have not won and are liable to lose. Furthermore, a draw is non-applicable, as it is only a mutual understanding of the non-progressability of the situation. Finally, there is no mutual-win option. Agreed, his (military?) was joke. For all his threats of neo-stalingrad, the talking-heads worrys about the alleged numerical superiority of his forces, c'mon, it's T-55's vs Paladins, A-10's, AH-64D's, M1A3's, and the Marines. Anybody not stoned should have seen it was going to be a turkey shoot. Therefore, he appears to have been bluffing. And for what reason? Possiblities: 1) He really had WMD's, and skilled operators and equipment. 2) He was trying to stare down GW 3) He was trying to keep all hell from breaking lose at home and avoid a coup. 4) He's a grumpy old krumedgeon. I would tend to go with 2,3,4. The fact that everything else was crap tends to PRECLUDE the actual capability and possesion of (1). ------------------------------------------------------------ Would those who disagree with our election methods care to offer some viable solutions readily acceptable by heavily armed hermits and drunken poker players? We just had an election here in an affluent liberal-inclined community of about ~3000 people where they had several recounts and just barely settled in the state supreme court one seat for a city council. Are there issues with the administration of the system - since the methods and operations vary from state to state? Yes, and the whole purpose of the electoral college is to even out those ambiguities. Problem number one is some states split votes, others lump them in a jackpot. Problem two is it is handled by human delegates who are legally able to vote however they choose, on the 2nd or later ballots. For one, we'd need a constitutional amendment to legaly implement a change to uniformity because the right to chose the method of elections is expressed delegated to the states, and 2, it should be automaticly calculated based off of the official accounting method. The primary problem with a direct election is the ambiguity of tabulating ~200million votes in various formats, locales, and languages, as well as ballot list variants from state to state. This is why the elctoral college system works, it covers for 50 dead people in this county, 20 illegal aliens over there, 75 transients bused from county to county, etc. ------------------------------------------------------------ Osama Bin Laden has declared war on America and all persons supporting America. He has declared that this is the will of God, and all like believers are obligated to join in the fight. He operated from a country that openly avowed support for him and his operations, and defied the US to do anything about it. We asked for Bin Laden to be extradited to face an indictment standing from the Clinton Administration for the first Trade center attack, and the two african embassy bombings, and added to that the USS Cole and the 2nd Trade Center attack. We asked for Bin Laden alone, the Taliban responded by destroying Buddhist antiquities, and by declaring official war on the US. We gave Saddam, Uday, and Qusay 48 hours to go whereever they felt like out of the country to any number of countries that had officially or unoffically offered asylum. Saddam declared he would rather die a martyr and would unleash the fires of hell on the allied forces. While Saddam might have never fired a weapon at a citizen of the US or personally spat on US soil, he harbored Abu Nidal knowing that there was a US warrant out for him, launched tactial missles capable of WMD attacks at an non-participatory ally of the US, ordered an assasination attempt on a sitting US president and all other US personal neccessary to complete the mission, and his sons were found in possesion of photoshop'd porn of Bush's daughters. ------------------------------------------------------------ I admire your consistency in your logic Denoir. You are honest about your opinions, and you make them track all the way through. However, your reasonable European inhibition against capital punishment should also apply to any and all acts of war, correct? After all, the purpose of war is either armed robbery or restoration of aggrieved rights, depending on who you talk to. Ultimately, it is to insure the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of at least one party to the conflict, who holds that those values have been inhibited to an extent worth the loss of some life. One never goes to war without expecting to lose some casualties. That is the fate of war. But to resolve this issue, you have to determine the value of life and the objectives of the conflict. Furthermore, if you are indeed clearly the non-agressor (not that I'm saying that this scenario of discussion is that case) is there a point where you have the justification or even obligation to take defensive measures, that could result in the life of an enemy aggressor? How would this fit with a unilateral no-killing belief? I'm not attacking here, I'd actually like to hear your response on this, as it is a topic of particular interest. ------------------------------------------------------------ Another excellent reminder about how folks don't see things the same way. But, how do we determine what is the most moral or honorable platform? Is it the American doctrine of pre-emption and Texan management, is it thie nihlistic collectivism of east asian thought, a mix in between, or what? What if I choose to not see things the way you do? I could say the sun don't shine and call you a liar because it's night time here and daytime there, and you could say I'm a liar because the sun is always shining, but the two things we are agreed on is that the other party is a liar and that we're using completely unrelated benchmarks. Now how do we reconcile them? After all, by bringing religion or philosophy into the fray we've added a measure of non-negotionability to our individual positions.

In futher support of Miles 1st treatise on pg. 83, Yitzahk Shamir, when asked what would happen if the Palestinians decided to switch to heavy military attacks directly on military and military installations, as opposed to terror bombings and snipings of women and children, is reported to have said "there wouldn't be even a memory left of them." A justification often cited for attacking non-uniformed israelis is that with a very small exception, all Israelis have to serve in compulsary active duty, followed by reserve duty until retirement age if I'm not mistaken. Countering this though, is the terrorist's imams calling for all muslims to wage jihad as muhajadeen, and the repeated usage of women as bombers, and incited child mobs as cover for snipers. At least Israel has the benefit of precision weapons to minimize collareral damage. Incidentally, anyone notice that this thread is titled "The Middle East" thread, and not "Israel vs. the world"? Now that Iraq is effectively offline for several years, and SaudiA is running scared between being stuck with Al'Qaeda, Iraqi Oil, cell phones and internet cafes, and Bush slipping in his speech by saying "friend in the ME" instead of "friends in the ME", who do you think will be next to stump for neo-caliph? My vote is for King Abdullah, the Jordanians have the best camels of course.

What about the Druze? How many occupy what senior positions in the israeli army? Aren't they also tasked with internal security as well? Why is that? (rhetorical) What about the naturalized arab israeli's in the knesst, and those who can drive cars with yellow plates than green ones?Why would the israeli's be 'crazy' enough to let them into their own house? What about the roman themed restaurant on the cardo in the old city and it's owners - jewish israeli and a muslim palestinian? What about the similar arrangement at the restauant in Haifa that got cratered a month or two ago? How about the sherut taxi buses that are cheaper and way faster and more fun than any old egged bus? Whats the status report on Arafat's casino on the north sore of the dead sea avon, and who's paying for it, and who gets paid out of it?

My understanding was that the '48 partition was supposed to create a israeli and a palestinian states, but Jordan hijacked that. Furthermore Jordan got caught up in politiking with Syria and Egypt, and got stuck with all the east bank refugees. Then when Israel threatened to flatten Amman for harboring the PLO, King Hussein told them to leave. Arafat responding by calling for his head. The native Jordanians were indignant and ran him out of town. Allegedly Arafat had to sneak out dressed like an old widow.

Has anyone come up with a reason as to why putting Al'Fatah in uniforms and calling them police makes them any more respectable? The DC area got their break when the DC sniper got nabbed. When does Gilo get a break? Should Gilo get a break? If they 'deserve' to be sniped to 'even the score' for hits in Gaza, would you care to explain that? Further more, how about reports that Ms. Bomber was banging a Hamas bomb-builder, and when her family found out, her only means of 'restoring their honor' was 'martyrdom'. Allegedly her boyfriend rigged her up with a bomb, and her husband drove her to the border. The family denies all this, but admits that she and her husband were having hard times and contemplating divorce. And what about the guys who hid out in the church of the nativity after firing on uniformed military? Who paid the bills to clean up the place? Not the guys who made the mess... an idea

Again, the primary issue with conservatives is that they tend to keep their mouth shut and feel all alone, because they only hear themselves by not talking with others. Look at the Bush campaign versus the Dean campaign. Bush supporters say "I'm voting for Bush". Deaniacs say "We're voting for Dean". That is a critical blindspot among conservatives. Liberals have always been far more diligent and talented in motivation and organization. (I have my opinions why, but I'll keep them private.) What happens is conservatives look at the TV and feel depressed by what they see, get some ideas, but clam up thinking "who am to impose my ideas on others? I'm a nobody anyways", never realizing that their neighbors are thinking likewise. Meanwhile the liberal-inclined people pull out their soap boxes, start cranking out fliers, pass out buttons, and hit the streets organized. I personally think Bush is far too much of a pansy and has played way too much suckup to those who are not interested in negotiations anyway. I do like the fact that he plays huge Texas-style poker foreign policy. Things have been getting boring for far too long. Now this leads into another self-diatribe on self-diatribe. Another critical mistake on the conservative side is two-fold: a) demanding perfection, while ignoring their christian belief in the inherent fraility of mankind, b) destructive infighting and refusal to build alternatives when perfection (a) fails. You hear about conservative infighting, but what about brotherly reconciliation? So now we've got a pile of people who are hacked at Bush for selling out on stuff they believe in, but rather than uniting as Democrats do well, they'll stay home, or vote for the "lesser of two evils" as opposed to the "better of two solutions". And their intransience only further fractures conservatism, and allows organized conservatism to rot and turn in on itself, resulting in just as much corruption as if the democrats were elected outright.

The only thing for sure about lines in the sand is that the wind blows them around. Look at the lapel pin Arafat wears, and match up that line. Now where does Israel fit in? I would presume that flashpoint players would understand the strategic advantage of terrain and how political maps don't neccessarily relate to reality in shape, form, or fashion. I live out in the sticks and we've been embroiled in a fence dispute between two cantankerous krumedgeonly old horse ranchers. The deeds and county records say that the property line goes right down the middle of our private road, which is an deeded easement from neighbor A. But hes says since the gravel was 'historically' on B's side, the 'defacto' border drifted 2m east. So B sez "to heck with you" and plants a railroad tie in the middle of the road. Now the rural fire trucks can't make the bend and you have 90-year-old B cursing A's ancestory back to Father Adam in court, while A's lawyer is chronically late by covering a crazed psychic's divorce. This has been ongoing for 15 years now. B has signs around his property that say "Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be violated". Now you've got Arik and Arafat going at it like Lewis and Tyson, or Akebono and Musashimaru. As long as folks keep running business as usual, the hills will continue to be... how do you say... 'well fertilized'? It's actually gorgeous in the spring when the mountains are all green and the flowers are in bloom. In stead of squabbling over meters E or W, chain-link vs. concrete, how about some ideas agreeable to the general populace (not the fringes on both sides) that do not involve the unilateral liquidation of undesirable liabilities?

IceFire: Statements like this need to have actual documented facts behind them. When you say he is honest, you need to prove how he is, and clarify where he has made corrections in harmony with that honesty. If you say "I like Bush and Dean is bad" and leave it at that, you are no different than those who say "Bush goose-stepped from texas to DC" and fail to explain how and why. My comment about all the other catasrophes is two-fold: 1) Where do you draw the line with conspiricy theories and culpability, and more importantly, 2) Now that we are in this mess, what are we going to do about it? As for Bush complicity in 9/11, can anyone DOCUMENT anything where Bush was told that Al'Qaeda "Will hit such-and-such", and responded with a deliberate informed decision to fiddle while Rome burns ala Nero? I've only heard Dean say "Well, an interesting theory I once heard..." and that doesn't cut it for me. Now to twist the knife in the back of the US. All the same arguements against GW2 orginated many years ago. If you read back in history, you'll see that the US had a strong (and much more credible and effective) peace movement in the early 1900's and '30's. We were PROUD of the fact that we were sitting on our butts watching Europe slaughter each other in the two World Wars. Sure there were a few annoying buzzards that kept yapping nonsense about trains to Treblinka, but thats not OUR problem... was/is it? Now again, a common attitude is that the whole ME and Afganistan and anywhere else can go to hell, just as long as it don't interrupt my Super Bowl 38 (Patriots by 7 IMHO). For people who are on any side politically, why shouldn't Iraq or Tibet be liberated? Furthermore, what's the difference anyway? I may not agree with pretty much everything Toadeater sez, HOWEVER, he does make the effort to research and organize a consistent arguement - in the debate sense.

THIS is what we really need... editorial from www.jpost.com

In follow to my earlier post sticking the economic burden on mismanagement, and not directly on Clinton or Bush, all I can say is go troll the list of 'former' Arthur Anderson clients. But it's not our problem only. Will Italians have milk to drink? Welcome to the club. Why did the US pick up mad cow (BSE)? Same mind set - to heck with the comapny and the stockholders, gimme (the CEO & board) a 'good' (ie cooked-book) quarter or two, and bail. Supplement that with expense account padding as well. So CEO screws staff and kicksback to CFO who covers both guys and a cut for himself. This guts budgets, and besides projections are cooked as well - leading to wildly missed expectations, or safer 'adjustments'. Line departments lose all work motivation, and seek to entrench themselves by multiplying paperwork and management. Floor grunts now can't achieve basic business functions, leading to further lost productivity so non-technical marketing accounts can advertise non-performing ISO 9000 services. Of course, having mugged the goose that laid the golden egg for its feathers, the division is liquidated, folks fired for non-performance, and accounts outsourced to where folks are grateful for beans and rice. Boeing, Enron, Tyco, --(current employer)--, Citigroup, First Boston, Parmalait, Arthur Anderson, Qwest and other Baby Bells, Lucent, SCO, it goes on down the list. NOW, what do you propose the President, (whoever he be) do about this?

Add to that the USS Cole, the embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, the USMC barracks in Beiruit, the Iran hostage debacle, the cold war, WW1 & 2, (his [great?]-grandfather was in the civil war - so investigate the family for that too), also his brother is govenor of Florida - so investigate Dubya for all the cuban catastrophes, and since he's a white guy he's inherently ... (nm), and since he claims to be christian also investigate him for ancestrial culpability in the English medival era, lets see... partial liability for all pogroms and anti-islamic crusades, barbarian invasions, heck lets add the great flood and original sin for good measure. Kruschev[?] said Stalin was a bad man, who went to Budapest? Now seriously... For those of you who will be legally voting in the US elections, make a speadsheet of EVERY canidate as your row leads, and the issues across the top as column headings. Make a check in each box where a canidate has a PROVEN history on an issue that you agree to, or are willing to accept. He (or she) who has the most check boxes and is on your ballot (see state rules) deserves your vote. But that's not all. Now that you are making informed decisions, do all you can to help others do likewise, rather than running around yelling "The sky is falling". My response is "That's nice, what are YOU going to do about it?" If you choose to turn politics into jihad, it makes no difference whether you vote for Dean or Bush or Sharpton.

Having just seen my coworker get double-screwed in firing (job position requiried certain certification, assignments from manager who fired him precluded obtaining certification), as well as a lot of other nonsense including the CEO of Boeing (not my employer) banging every secretary within arms length, and wiping his rear end with the company, I would tend to attribute the economic troubles more to barbarian bosses who'd rather bleed a company for personal pocket padding than corporate advancement, over schemeing politicians. A previous post mentioned that Dean grew a successful investment over 20+ years, rather than putting a economic stick of dynamite in the stock market and watching money rain like the tech boom farce. While the democrats have been arguing over how bad things are and what is going wrong, with little attention relatively to what they're going to do about it, the republicans are looking at a situation where to avoid a democratic president they'd have to elect Bush, and then fight had to stack the congress to block his numskull ideas like inviting illegal (Hello, can I be illegal?) aliens in country. Tom Clancy writes: "Power corrupts, but absolute power is actually kinda neat." Now I got to go to work. Maybe I'll blow a whistle, get fired, and start a class-action lawsuit. Problem is all the 'good' lawyers are democrats.

This is the officially hosted forums, hence the need to stick to the rules. There is an authorized channel for discussing media issues, and it has been repeatedly stated that you do this through [email protected] or codemasters directly. Nobody here can do anything about it any way, and those that can, have asked that you use the production channels. Check your manual for warranty contact information. Thanks.

Great job on the island, this has some real potential for all sorts of surprises. On the river, you may want to try the blur tool in wrptool to blend out the chop in the river banks. I paniced when I saw the high berms around the paddies (tambo's?), but fortunately the geo.lods are lower than they appear. Thanks much.

Hmm... I put a BAS UH-60 into the mission editor just to hitch a ride around a modd'd island I was working on, under the @ECP pack. Unfortunately, I don't quite remember how I managed to do it, but in third view I 'broke' it so all the posts around the cockpit lost their textures. They came back, but only after I restarted the mission. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

Nvidia reference only. Allways higher spec than the versions rolled by the manufacturer. Iirc, there were some rumors that the new 5x.xx series has some tunings for HL2/D3, that adversely (but not majorly) impacts performance. You're more than welcome to try it though. I use it on one machine, and the other is still using a 45.xx detonator just fine. Your real problem is going to be Win98 and its woeful memory handling.

Hmm. I'm more partial to the sony re-chargeables, bright orange for NiCad, and lime green for LiOn. Idea for a mission: Get the santa model, have hime trying to stuff batteries into the radio, the radio blows up and somebody hears the RF crackle and St. Nick cursing it's ancestry, and mistakes it for a code to attack Morton, and everyone runs off in the middle of the night, but since their batteries are dead, so no NV, so they have to stumble around half the island blindly until they find the hidden battery dump, after which they can go save morton...

The comment I made regarding the workaround for 256mb cards without auxilary power-in may be applicable for all graphics cards, Nvidia, Radeon, etc. BTW, does anyone have a spare Matrox Parhelia PH-A256 laying around that I can test? I've heard that there is a limit of 256 viewable objects, and I think that elevated viewdistances degrade OFP's ability to cull objects to view dramaticly, sometimes resulting in CTD's. Other issues I've seen sound similar to what you've described, Komuna. Mainly seem to be variations though of the known 3rd-person view CTD's. I am often inclined to think that there might be a subtle memory leak in a sub-buffer for rendering, but that would be difficult to track and prove. What I do believe is that in general, OFP's buffer overrun code is generally set to trigger a CTD, rather than recover. This could be either a lack of an appropriate handler, a broken handler, or just a minimal response. Seriously though, to echo what Deadmeat stated, I don't think that BIS likely imagined the incredible work that has done by the mod community when they designed the game. Further more, this engine has been in development since (97?), and that was before Quake3 and everything else had come out. The fact that Posiden has somehow managed to put up with the immense terrains and rounds of ammo is a testament to its capability.

In the link I posted above, there are some notes elsewhere in the thread detailing a possible workaround. It appears to work so far, but I have not had a chance to really peg it yet. Basiclly, I have to drop the FSB from 200 to 166mhz to stabilize it, and depending on the load, possibly as low as 133mhz. And, since I am now the dubiously proud owner of a uber-locked Barton 2500, it's stuck at 11x. So my Flashpoints mark is down to 5000 (166mhz) from 6000 (200mhz), but that's still better than 4000 (133mhz). The main test I've been using is flashpointbeta.exe -nosplash -nomap -mod=RHS, which includes only the crew and t55 pbo's, and loading the intro mission. 200mhz crashes in the first cam shot, 166mhz goes all the way through. I need to load it up further to confirm the workaround. @Konuma - what's your viewdistance and terraingrid settings? @BIS - The preferences app allows you to adjust memory available to OFP all over the board. How/does this relate? Is it just the limiting mechanism? Also, I set that limit to 864mb, but things freak out long before I get anywhere close to it. Thanks all.

Just picked up the new PSU, no change. Found this link from nForcersHQ.com, may be applicable to other boards as well. Outstanding A7N8X bugs Basicly, the motherboard does not supply sufficient power to the AGP slot. Asus has confirmed that this is an issue, and has corrected it in the A3 and A1/C1 north bridges, according to that FAQ. So, I need to confirm that I have this chipset revision, but I highly suspect I do. This means new Mobo time, as it is not a software/bios issue, rather a VRU issue. But, I needed that PSU anyway. Thanks. ---edit--- Also noting that P4 boards are more common to have the 4-pin extra CPU power capacity, the CPU and AGP don't have to contend for power as much as AMD boards, which 'normally' do not utilize that plug.

Is it just me, or does it look like that Mother Russia copied the clamshell design style of the turret front from the Merkava 4?

I too am having random CTD/CTR issues, and most pronounced with OFP. However, I do not have any video issues associated with it or any other program. What I have had is that I had to run my CPU up to 1.8v from 1.65 to get XP to come up, and I've had Winamp and Galactic Battlegrounds CTD/CTR as well. CPU burnin test ran happy for an hour, and no complaints from it. The CPUv, 12v, and 5v lines were all suspicious though in Asus probe. Since I have only a 300w (replacement) PSU, I think thats where my issue is. I'll replace that and report back. ---------------------------------------------------- Specs: Asus A7N8X DLX 2.0 (1007 bios) Athlon Barton 2500 (11x200, yes I was too late.) 2x 512mb DDR400 MSI GFX 5600 VTD 256mb 2x CTL 910tf 19" @ 1280h x1024v x32b x75hz each SB Audigy 2 Platinum 20GB Maxtor IDE 120GB WDC IDE 16x Samsung DVD And a lowly 300mhz Fortran PSU.