DBR_ONIX

I got an iPod aggeeesss ago (Must be around 3 years ago now), and it was working fine up till a few months ago.. T'was a 40GB one, which was verging on being full (around 6000 songs, at varying bitrates).. After going back to my old 128mb MPIO FL100 player that I had before, I realise how much I miss having all the music with me, and how much I hate having to recode selected songs so I can fit more than 5 or 10 on (can fit around 20 songs if I recode them at 96kb, would be more but around half the songs are over 6-8 minutes) I was considering getting an iPod video, but alll (over 400gb ) my videos are incompatible format, and I don't think I'd want to transcode and store the stuff to put on it, and not fit that much on it. And with that proper video iPod possibly comming out soon, it'll drive the price of the iPod with Video down.. But, the only place I'd really use it is in a car, where I could just use my laptop.. *Shrugs* - Ben

I really don't think Jungles work in OFP Forests in OFP are fecking dangerous, the AI are lethal in/though them, and the player is nearly blind. The city based thing would be fun, but the size of Ocean Island is verying on the max size for such a map, still, that island is fun, and OFP needs more city stuff Recon-y stuff is another thing OFP needs more off, with a little bit of scripting to stop the AI seeing units sneaking around behind them, it could work (One of the thing that made Hawk In Nets very annoying was the AI, which had far too good vision at night) The WW2'y stuff has been kind of over-done - Theres a lot of addons out that fell kind of incomplete, or are buggy etc, and it's a fairly huge project, so I'd say it's not the best idea The Assault On Terror, not really sure what your planning for that, stoping bombers and the likes could be interesting, if a slightly touchy topic just now.. Overall I'd say the recon ops or the city thing, buut thats just me - Ben

If you think it's your router, is there any way you could borrow a router, or directly connect the server to the internet temporarily? (For example, I still have my old USB ADSL modem lying around I'd use if my modem or wifi card screwed up on my main PC) It'd help narrow it down, if it is your router thats screwing up, they're cheap enough to replace now, but theres no point doing that if it's just Windows setup wrong Another possible way to narrow things down is to use a linux live-CD, and install the OFP dedicated server on that, and see if you get the same problems Only other (fairly obvious) thing I can think of is the cabling to the server, but if the LAN client is staying it can't be that.. Other than that, I've no idea {Edit} The router you have, it has SNMP support, which allows the Multi-router traffic grapher (MRTG) thing to work, if you can be bothered setting it up, it'd show how much data is going though the router at the time, if it suddenly dips (with no LAN client) it might be your internet connection screwing up and causing the clients to lose connections.. Though it's kind of unlikely, as it's only with OFP (which could mean it's more likely a game/server problem) {Edit2} Kind of obvious, but the router has been rebooted recently? They screw up sometimes, but I seriously doubt it would be that regular.. - Ben

Odd.. One thing to narrow it down could be to download a file, limit the download speed to, say, 10 kbs, and use some form of monitoring program.. When the clients get disconnected, see if the download dies or not (Some kind of bandwidth monitoring thing like DUMeter or Down2Home might be usefull, as they have shiney little internet-speed graphs). If all bar the LAN client keep working, chances are it's your internet, if not, it's the game screwing up That other thread with a similar problem seemed to be about problems in v1.93, kinda obvious, but you have the latest server version? Another unlikely problem (it doesn't seem like it should be as regular as it is) is the server is using too much upstream, and is choking your upstream, and causing the clients to lose the connection (explaining why the LAN client is fine) Final thing I can think of, if it's worked on WinXP, it could be an idea to go back to that Doh, Just remebered about the teamspeak thing, so it's probably not a game-realted problem.. Although teamspeak can use a lot of bandwidth, have you tried without it..? You say it happens more when more people are playing, which makes it more likely it's something to do with your connections upload-speed - Ben

Tada http://www.dbrweb.co.uk/ofp-rts/OFP-RTS_v0-1_PreAlpha.rar Read the !readme_documentation file, this is NOT the final version Any questions and the likes, ask here - Ben {Edit : snuffles : It's possible to be ingame as the units are moving about, the test mission puts the player as a commander in one of the tanks. It would also be possible to incorporate my OFP Camera program to put live-screenshots of the mission on the web-server }

{Note : itallic bits aren't too important, bold bits are the ones most people should pay attention to } While replying to a post in the FWATCH thread I started a few days ago, I came up with an idea.. A web interface, with the locations of your soldiers, and the enemies, denoted by small dots. When you click on the map, the coordinates get passed into OFP, and the group starts heading there.. One player controls one side (So up to 3 players) The group will act like normal OFP AI, and will shoot the other team.. Think of this like an online RTS game, but with OFP's AI.. A few ideas to extend this : Obvious adding vehicles, controlling more units (right now it's designed for 8 units per side, just for ease of coding), creating bases etc.. Web-based CTI? "Get Intel" button, which would make a spy-drone fly over a specific location, and take a "photo" (screenshot), and is made visible to the player - Problem with this is I'd like to keep it as compatible with dedicated servers, on both windows and linux.. This'd require two programs to take the screenshots, and either the server to be running in serve-and-play mode, or to have a client to take screenshots, which starts getting hard to program.. Problems : Since players are controling semi-phsyical units (i.e tying up a server), it's not hugely very scalable, not helped by the ammount of data that would need to be passed into/out of OFP via FWATCH.. So, what would people think of such a thing? For now it'd more be a proof-of-concept thing.. The first version would basicly let you move around units, who would then attack the enemy if they could, and keep some form of score [wandering of topic here, but oh well],But with Armed Assault's JiP feature, and hopefully MP-saving/loading (or atleast better file reading/writing), it could be extremely usefull.. Log in and manage your RPG character, get them to move around etc.. the server could keep a database (mysql, say) of player names, a password, inventory etc. When you join the game, your password (read from a file, or messaged somehow) is checked, if it's right it loads your stats, and you contiue playing.. You could move around and control your player from the web interface etc.. Or, being able to drop in the game at any time, while your at work/school, you could keep an eye on your squad, order them to move/hide/attack, then when you get back, you can join the server and take control of the leader.. For presistant-world type games (Capture the Island), or RPG's, a web control panel could be usefull..[End wandering] - Ben PS, so far the requirements would be to have OFP running with FWATCH (Can't remeber if the dedicated servers works with it, but I think it should..), and to be running a webserver with PHP (Apache/PHP, for eaxmple).. In the future it should be possible to run the scripts on a seperate server, and have the server get the data either via a small script, or FTP

I reaaally suggest you get atleast a 512mb card, I got mine over a year ago for < Å40ish, now you can get 1GB cards for very little.. One thing I discovered, some cards don't like certain cameras (One of my cards sometimes curroupts images, which is very annoying, so I tend to use it only if I have to) I need to get another card or two at some point, but for now, two 512MB cards work (Or if I'm going to be taking a lot, I'll try and have my laptop, card reader and Microsoft's SyncToy setup, then clear the cards when they're full) - Ben

It's very nearly done, fixed that stupid error that was stopping the markers getting refreshed, going to eat, then sort the image-to-OFP-grid conversions, test, should ready for release by 8PM GMT - Ben

The controls will be (for now) extremely simple, just click to move the soldiers.. Originally there was going to be a (javascript) popup when you clicked, that you selected different move types, formations, guard, watch direction etc.. But thanks to browser-compatabilities it was dropped (It's still there, it's just hidden, and the PHP scripts doesn't have it implimented) It's totally possible to add though.. For now, this is just to prove the idea works The external AI management is possible, but it would put a lot of train on the system reading data in/out of OFP fast enough to be of use I think (Depending on how specific you want to control the units.. To move them to specific points, say, it's quite possible, but then you get problems like accidently moving them over water, which is hard to detect out-of-game etc etc..) It shoould be done in 2 days time, having a slight problem with the javascript to update the soldiers markers, and the fact Cherry's busy just now.. So, when either a good javascript-y person PM's me, or Cherry gets round to it, it'll be done - Ben

Depends how much money you want to spend, not too sure about the mid-range-ish cameras (I'd just avoid the cheap cameras all together, they're pretty much terrible for all but really basic snapshots), but if you don't mind spending around Å500, get an SLR, like the Canon 350D (what I use, I'd recommend it), or the Nikon 50s (Same price, very similar features, the canon is 8MPixels, the Nikon is 6, but no huge difference, I largely went with the Canon because I had a few Compact Flash cards that only worked in the Canon camera) It might seem a lot, but if you look in the long term, several mid-priced cameras, then an SLR is a lot more than straight to the SLR Kind of a big jump though.. As for mid-range cameras, there's bound to be better ones, but the only one I can recommend (since it's the only one I've used) is the Fuji S7000, which I used a lot before the 350D, it was a pretty good camera, only problem I can remeber is the lens took a while to go in/out when powering on/off - Ben

Corduroy, Light Years and Immortality are great songs too - Ben

There is Photoshop, for example, has invisible watermarks under Filters > Digimark How reliable it is I'm not sure (If it stays after cropping, or a small blur, say), but such things exist If your extremely patient, you could use a steganography type thing to hide an other image with your copyright image Photoshop Actions! Or, I've used FastStone Photo Resizer (FSResizer), and it's normally on my USB-drive (It doesn't need to be installed to run), it's good for basic resizing/adding simple watermarks, theres also a few other batch thingys it does, but resizing/watermarking are the most usefull http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm Free too - Ben

Could be either fun, or extremely annoying, with people getting disconnected and complaining to get the mission restarted (Missions with more than 5ish people tend to end up like that, espically in this sort of mission, with random people showing up from different timezones etc ) Interesting idea, aslong as you can force everyone to get in the mission at a specific time, and don't restart for one or two people who accidently quit {Edit} Oh, other possible problems, the ammount of addons.. Try and not require everyone to download 300 different planes, and make sure their from reliable mirrors (OFP.info, for example), and if there are a lot, direct-ish links to them would help, don't use unnessariry addons etc - Ben

I agree with the 100kb picture thing.. It's extremely unlikely that anyone is able to do anything with a <700x700px picture.. To prove you took the picture I think the full-res image would go quite a way, but honestly I doubt posting pictures here (particularly at such small resoulutions) would ever cause any problems (by which I mean people selling it) - Ben

Isn't this kind of.. random? Anyway, personally, I dislike (among other things) how ridiciously unoriginal Dragan Force and other power-metally bands are (Well, same applies to a bunch of other genres), but that's just my opinion - Ben

It's totally possible to make children in OFP. The ones that have been made were very-half-done feeling, the only animations that were done are the running/walking forwards ones, I don't think they could hold weapons, or crouch etc, which is somewhat understandable, it'd take a lot of patience to convert all the animations, for something realtivly useless in most missions (They might be usefull for cutscenes, and certain missions, but for the most parts simply As for the moral issues (Yes yes, sorry etc) : There has been far too much arguments over "Games caused my child to [shoot/steal] [someone/something]", and in all honesty, it's crap, the only children who would have negative effects from it are ones who have previous problems.. If you look at any of the people who've shot people which was blamed on games, you'll see they were hardly normal cheerey little angels before.. OFP has men, woman, even various animals, I've played OFP, erm, shall we say "quite a bit", along with maany other games (Some far more violent than OFP), and I've never killed/ran-over/strangled/etc anyone/thing.. - Ben

Update : Front end is half done.. Gone are the evil browser compatability problems.. We're working on the image coordinates to OFP coordinates conversions now (Well, Cherry and DaveP are, I'm writing this just now ) After it's done, we'll display the units on the map, test, then release Update 2 (didn't want 3 posts in a row ) : We have pretty much all the javascript in place, just a few problems left to sort out, and it's done.. Assuming theres no huge problems, a beta version will be released tomorrow evening - Ben

Strange, it's worked for others, oh well Still looking for people good with Javascript or Flash *hint hint* - Ben

http://www.dbrweb.co.uk/ofp-rts/OFP-RTS_Demo1.mov is the HTTP mirror, ideally use the torrent though - Ben

Pre-Alpha Test video! http://thepiratebay.org/details.php?id=3501771 or http://www.dbrweb.co.uk/ofp-rts/OFP-RTS_Demo1.mov.torrent It's using tanks for this example, but the final version will probably use soldiers.. Although with tanks could work (It's very easy to change them anyway) Very tired today, so won't get much done.. Fixed a lot of script-errors, getStatus isn't behaving right, so I'll fix that Small update : Sorted that fecking script somewhat (it not works, but I've no idea why it didn't work). I've also got a few people to test it, without an interface, by running OFP on the laptop, along with Apache, and getting them to put in coordinates "That is so bloody cool", "thats sweet" etc - Ben

Done : PHP script to take data from map-click to an FWATCH file (need to work out coordinate conversions, but shouldn't be too hard) Flashpoint script to take coordinates made by PHP scripts, and move soldiers move to the right coordinates Flashpoint script that sends all units coordinates to an fwatch file PHP script that takes this fwatch file, and outputs it ready for displaying on the map Buuut, due to fun things like cross-browser compatability, the front end is taking a bit longer than expected.. Basicly the pop-up you get when you click only works in IE.. Wouldn't be too bad but the system we were going to use for positioning the dots for soldiers uses the same thing.. So, we have two options.. Don't live update the icon markers, and just reload the entire page, while it'll work, I don't think it'll look nearly as shiney, and might be slightly annoying to use Or, work out a method of dynamicly positioning div tags using Javascript, that will work in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera (Starting from highest priority, to lowest).. I'm almost 100% sure it's possible (as I've seen it done).. Cherry might manage something, but is there anyone good with Javascript who knows how to do this? If so, could you PM me If I get this damned javascript working, the only thing left is to convert the javascript (the image-map) coordinates to ingame coordinates and it's ready for testing So, javascripty people, heelp - Ben

I think the reason it's good for buildings is : To make a wall, you simply draw the outlines for it on the floor, click the box-with-an-arrow tool, and click/drag the wall.. No need to copy the polys, move them up, and manually make polys like in O2 Download Google SketchUp and go though the guided-tutorial thing, it takes 10-20 minutes, and shows of the basics of the program I think for some things you'd be far better of using O2, but particularly with buildings, I think SketchUp is the right thing to use for them.. I had a horrrriible time trying to make buildings in O2, if I knew about SketchUp back then I might have not wanted to print and eat O2 - Ben

*Cough* Back on topic *Cough* Has anyone built anything using this yet? I'd like to see screenies - Ben

Small progress report : It's easier than I thought it would be.. I've got the script (PHP) to send positions to FWATCH, and the OFP script to read the positions.. The way it ended up being coded is more scalable than I first thought, particularly using dynamic varible names in the OFP script.. Basicly the script is run on each group leader as [this,group1] exec "script.sqs" Then it works out the filename like _file=FORMAT["%1_in.rts",group_name]; So, in the squad-select bit, you define how many squads are setup (or it could be worked by writing group1=true in an fwatch file, for each group.. Hmm) Cherry has the hardest job I think, maping the map-interface accurate to in-game coordinates.. But assuming no huge problem in that, I expect an alpha version to be ready if not tonight, by tomorrow One thing I've not worked out, when a soldier dies, what happens? Do they respawn? Do they wait till all soldiers (or 90% anyway) are dead, then group-respawn? Not sure.. - Ben

Played Ep1, it was okay, the lenght doesn't seem bad.. I'm slowly going though it, playing for 40-60 minutes at a time.. I could probably finish it in a day if I tried, but I don't want to.. The level design is amazing, theres a few stupid things, like the short battery life (Though when Alyx says something along the lines of "We'll need to get Klyner(?) to take a look at that battery, wont we..", it's obviously more to stop the player running around with the torch on all the time, t'is still annoying at times though ) I'm not sure if I like the idea of Episodic content, hopefully only certain games will use it.. If every game suddenly uses it just because it's what's cool now, a lot of games will suffer (imagine Oblivion, you can only wander around the sewars untill a few months later they release the first little bit of ground etc..), but for HL2, I think it works.. Not that I wouldn't have prefered an entire game in a nice shiney box, like HL2, but I'd prefer "episodes" rather than waiting 2 more years to play it - Ben