Messages

It's OK Monkey, what I worte may be of use to someone else, besides what else couold I do at 1:30 in the morning?   

[Fire FTP]

Here are a few more that I now use and thought I would share them with all.

Fire FTP
Handy FTP client in a browser tab. 

Disable Target for Download
Prevents the browser from opening a blank window when downloading a file

Down Them All
Allows easy downloading all links, images, or oher file types form a given page.

Dictionary Search
Select a word on a web page, right click, and lookup in online dictionary in new tab.

Launchy
Open links with external applications.  My browser opens with a number of tabs containing my favorite sites.  One of the tabs displays a local text file containing configuration information for my network.  With launchy I can edit this file with a right click.

AddBlock Filter set Update
Updates AddBlocks filters.

Editus Externus
Allows yu to use a text editor of your own choosing to edit text boxes.  Perfevt for making long forum posts.

Hehe, Monkey you have me wondering if this is a joke or if I am just getting old..   Ok assuming your question is on the level I'll give you my definition of "Memory Space".

Technically speaking, from my point of view, "memory space" is more or less synomous with  "address space".   If you were designing a mother board or embedded computer board then at some point you would need to allocate ranges of memory addresses to different functions or categories.  You would need to allocate some space for the ERPOM or FLASH memory from which the computer initially boots and which contains the BIOS, perhaps you would allocate some memory to CMOS memory.   Also some hardware devices, not as common as it once was, may be mapped to a portion of memory.  And of course the RAM memory needs to allocated to a range of addresses also. 

Each of these categories could be referred to as a memory spaceor address space.  The memory addresses and control signals would be decoded acording to the kind of memory or devices allocated to the particular space.   In a sense it's something like creating partitions on a harddisk and assigning each to a different type of file system.  I think you get the idea here but clearly this is not what your parents were talking about.  It seems to me they meant to say "RAM" or "Memory".   

I suppose you know this next part but in case you or some else doesn't here goes.   When you start an application the program is copied from the hard drive to RAM memory where the CPU can execute it.  Modern day computers are able to load different portions of a program as they are needed so that is is not necessary to load the entire program every time it is activated.  This makes programs start faster and use less memory. 

In a PC you can reduce your memory usage by eliminating all those programs that are started when you bootup windows.   On my machine for example, the only programs that are automatically started at boot time are SYSTRAY and EXPLORER.   Ther are any number of freeware p[rograms out there that will allow you to keep unwanted and unnecessary programs froom starting at boot time.   I use something called STARTCOP but ther are many others.

"The reason that computer runs so slow is because it doesn't have enough memory space..."

Current PC operating systems alow you to run multiple programs simultaneously.  This accomplished by time sharing the computer between all the programs.  The more programs you the run the more memory is used.  If the amount of memory required to run the desire programs exceeds the amount of physical memory available then some memory is freed by temporarily coping it's contents to the hard disk (i.e. swap file).    Disk access is much slower than RAM access.   Also if you have a lot of programs runnig then they are also consuming CPU time as well.   

"Michael, if I buy an external hard drive, would that fix the problem of her memory space being almost full?...Well...she probably doesn't have enough memory space to plug it in."

This seems to be an inaccurate statement.  Installing an additional hard drive shouldn't consume any additional memory.

"You need to quit installing all those games or you're going to run out of memory space..."

Only if those pesky things are started up automatically  at  boot time.

Hoipe this helps...

Gord10, 
I was glad to see your post last night but was too sleepy to reply then.  Again, as long as you don't take any of this personally, I'd like to share more of my thoughts with you and listen to anything you may have to add or disagree with.   I guess the easiest way is to just go point by point.

@RickJ: To be honest; I think you're right with most of the things you said.

I am glad that you and I seem to have a meeting of minds and that we are able to talk about our differences in a calm manner in spite of my inflamatory remarks.   You seem to have a cooler head than I and you have my respect and envy in this regard.   

But the ratio %99,9 is too much. Yes, it was a very crowded riot which burnt the embassy buildind etc., but it doesn't mean %99,9 of Muslims are xenophobic.

I'll have to concede that my assertion that 99.9% of all Muslims as evil doers is an exaggeration.  On the other hand one could argue that my assertion is just as valid as the previous assertion that only 0.1% of Muslims have extreme beliefs.  It's interesting that this assertion went unchallenged and mine did not. 

Anyway I did lump an awful lot of adjectives together to make my point but doing so kind of complicates the math.  The main point of my statement is that Muslim intolerance of other religions and points of view is underlyoing this whole mess.  Here is my reasoning:

• It is widely published by news media, books, religious decree, and statments by Muslim leaders, etc)  that Isalm should be the only religion in the entire world and that it is God's will that all be converted to Islam by any means, even by force. 
  
  
• Conversion by force is discussed in the Quran and the practice is  given the blessings of the prophet and indeed were employed by him to spread Islam in the first place.   Indeed if not for Muhamad invading and conquering his neighbors it is likely very few, if any of us would have every heard of Islam.  This has been a continous conversion process and practice of Islam since it's inception.  I have read translations of the Quran and some of the the history of Islam myself and have aslo been told the same by numerous people who read/write Arabic and have first knowledge of these practices.
  
  
• Intolerance of other religions and beliefs by Muslims is on display world wide every minute of every day.   Just look at what's going on in Sudan for example.  In nearly all so called Muslim countries this intolerance carries the force of law to one degree or another.  Try taking a Bible into Saudai Arabia or Google for news stories about the recent sunami relief efforts that were hindered because Mulims didn't want to have Christians come and help the people.
  
  Intolerance and conversion by force are tenets of Islam prescribed in the Quran and practiced by Mohamad himself and others continously ever since.   It seems to me that devout followers are necessarily obligated to, or by definition must, adopt and practice these views/values.    That's what all these protests are about anyway aren't they.  If tolerance and acceptance of others people's beliefs were an Islamic virtue then there wouldn't be anyone to protest or riot would there, at least not devout Muslims as these rioter claim to be and that no one has denounced as unfaithful.   Though I conceed that 99.9% was too large, by the same token 0.1% is far too small, IMHO.
  
  

  
  I believe your only information source about Muslims is the media; you could just learn the way we are shown.
  

  In fact Gord10 this is far from the truth.  Though I am not an expert I have traveled far and wide and have lived, worked, and played with people from all the world.   Here is a short list just to give you and idea.
  
  
• The professor who mentored me through garduate school (masters Degree in Electical Engineering) is from Egypt.  We spent much time together over a 2 year period.    On numerous occasions we took a break from work to muse about life, etc.  He told me his family was Christian because Christ had supposedly visited his ancestor's home  and/or village way back when.   He told me how poorly Christians are treated in Egypt and other middle eastern countries. 
  
  
• When I was employed at GE I workd on a project in the south of France for about a year.  In that time I met a lot of people from Algeria and a few from Turkey.  There was one guy from Turkey about my age that used to talk to me about politics.  I don't speak very much French and understand even less so we got some high school kid to translate for us.  He told me that since he was in France his eyes had been opened to the reality of the world situation.  We also managed to share a few jokes.  The funny thing was that the kid who was translating for us didn't get any of the jokes and did not have much undcerstanding of the other things we were talking about.
  
  
• My wife's gradfather is from Bethlem, making him a Palestinian.  We have arabic style cusine at our house on a regular basis.  I also have three nephews named Hassan, Husein, and Ahmed.   I get from her and her family their perspectives on world events and media coverage, whether I like it or not.
  
  
• One of my wife's close friends is from Jordan.  Her grandfather moved his family here to the US,  because in Jordan they were being persecuted doley for being Christians.  Her mother and uncles were kids when they moved and have many stories about how badly they were treated by Muslims just because they were Christians.
  
  
• My niece on my wife's side married a Saudi who turned out to be a piece of shit.  That whole episode made it necessary for me to interact with officials from the local Mosque.   I can tell you from my own direct personal experience these people are the most evil mother fuckers I ever met or can even imagine existing.   
  
  
• I do ocassional investigative work for a local anti-discrimination orgainization.  I get paid a little gas and burger money but it's pretty much a voluntary gig.   The who coordinates my assignments is from Iran and a Muslim.  We have a cordial, friendly relationship professionally and socially.  We have ocassion to have dicussions about many things, including world events.  I didn't know it but he tells me that, up until the last few decades, Iran had a human rights tradition going back several thousand years, that was tolerant of many different religions and cultures.
  
  
• I do watch the news but regardless what the comentary says, facts are facts.  There isn't much a news reporter could say about a bunch of Arabs chanting Ala Akbar whilst cutting someone's head off is there.  I mean there's the video and audio, there's the guy's headless body found and there's video again.   Do you really think it matters to anyone what the reporter has to say about it?  These sorts of thing have been happening on for a long time and have been on a regular basis for at least 35 years that I am aware of.   
  
  

  
  Me, my friends, my family and all my environment are Muslims; but we are not assholes who wants to destroy the civilization of Christanity.
  ...
  I want to note that the Westerners who visit Turkey usually changes their mind of prejudices. They see Islam is only a religion, not a thought of evilness or barbarianism. Also I believe I'm a good example of this, too. I had tried to be a part of a universal community, and guess I'm successful.
  

  You seem like a decent fellow and as I have said before my comments aren't directed at you personally but rather at the culture and religious beliefs common in your part of the world.  I am sure that you have a fine and honorable family and I will take your word that your friends are decent people also.  I would enjoy meeting you someday and having a few laughs about all this.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could put all the assholes in the world (yours and mine) on a giant spaceship and send them on their way to another planet ala HGTTG. 
  
  Well my friend I think the only thing we can do is make peace among ourselves pray that the rest of the world does the same they blow the whole damm thing up.   Tell your family I said hello and that I wish them well.   
  
  Best Regards
  Rick
  =============
  
  I have one more observation I'd like to share and ask everyone to think about.   
  
  If Islam is a religion of peace where beheadings, bombings, kidnapings, etc are truly against the tenets of the faith, and if these protestors are protesting because they are devout followers and defenders of their faith then where is their outrage against Al Queada and other terrorist groups who blaspheme the faith by carring out such evil atrocities in the name of Islam?  Hmmm, perhaps this cartoon atrocity has more to do with intolerance than with offence?   
  

Wouldn't there need to be oxygen inside the tank for the flame to burn and ignite the gas?

Well when the gasoline is pumped out of the tank what do you suppose is left?

Has anyone else seen this sort of behaviour? I'm wondering if it might be a problem specific to RunAGSGame.

Which version of Windows are you running?

I am running WinME (arghhh!). 

Ssssh Helm, it's 69 man ...

Sorry Gord, but I believe that 99.9% of the people who practice your religion are ignorant, intolerant, xenophobic, assholes who are full of themselves.  The last I heard Europe was a free democracy where freedom of speech is considered a fundamental right of the people.   I think the publication of the cartoon was a good thing because it was an exercise of this right and it served to demonstrate to the whole world what the practicioners of Islam are truly like.  Yes, I can make a statement like that because the protests spread world wide so it was not just a few holigans getting out of hand.  If Muslims can't handle living in a free country then they should get the fuck out!

I think this incident is a good thing.  The problem with dealing with muslim  terrorists (or is it freedom fighters, or jihadists or ...) is that they are cowardly cunts who are affraid to show their faces and hide amongst the innocent population.  They know they can do this because they know the US and Europe are reluctant to put innocent people (yes even Muslims) in harms way.  I think we need to have more of these kinds of incidents so that we csan identify the enemy and eliminate them.

I just can't respect a religion whose practioners don't respect mine and who wish to force me to take up their religion under threat of violence.   

This verse orders Muslims to fight in order to establish Allah's kingdom
on earth (world domination) by any means:

From Quuran:
"But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war): but if they repent, and establish regular Prayers and practise regular Charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful". 9:5

In other words, the only way for the pagans (or infidels) to be spared from being slain is to become Muslims.

From Focusing On Islam, authored by a Palestianian Christian ...

Is Islam a peaceful religion?

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on our country, we have heard from our Government Leaders,
The Media, and Islamic Clergy/Scholars that Islam is a peaceful religion. They further state that terrorists
are made up of only a small group of extremists. Lately, questions are starting to arise as to the validity
of those claims. The Quran has many, verses that call for violence towards anyone that does not believe
and follow the ways of Islam. But don't take our word for it, Click HERE to read them for yourself.

And here is an article from an another author (arab/American) LINK

And here is an article from the that may be of interest to all you folks from across the pond.

Gord10, I'm sorry if my post makes you feel bad.  I have always known you to be considerate and someone who I enjoy colaborating with on these forums.   I know that nobody called and asked your opinion or permission to riot or blow up the twin towers.  So I hope you realize my remarks are not directed at you personally.   It seems world events are larger than either of US and that we don't have much choice about how we feel about them or what opinions we may have.  The only thing we can do is be honest  about it.

Cheers
Rick

Yeah, I suspected something like that but there must be a practical way of accomplishing this.  I guess in my way of thinking the eBlock option would terminate the current script or thread when the Save or Restore instruction is encountered.  When the operation is complete you could just restart the thread at the place just after the Save or Restore operation was initiated. 

I suppose there could ne some promblems with losing context in "if" or "while" code blocks.  If so why couldn't we just use a keyword to associate a code block with the Save/Restore operation something like the following.

QueueAfterScript {

    // Do something before Save/Restore operation

    // Do Save/Restore operation
    SaveGameSlot(....)

    // Do something after Save/Restore operation
}

The engine and the user would know that the instructions within the braces are to executed after the current script is complete.  The current script would complete as normally, pointers and such would get cleaned up etc.  before the Save/Restore operation was initiated.  The "QueueAfterScript" instructions could be handled so that pointer problems do not arise and the compiler could enforce any necessary restrictions on what could be included in the delayed code block.

The problem I and other people have is that it's nearly impossible to add any kind of logic around these operations.  In some cases it can be done with guile, trickery, and cleverness which are not usually considered to be good programming practices.    

I suppose I'm an optimist for believing there is a simple and practical solution out there. 

Is it due to the restartgame(); problem, mentioned by largopredator elsewhere in this forum?

Martijn, I wasn't sure what you are referring to but I checked it out and found that it was related to my suggestions.  Thanks.

Monkey, thanks for the correction.

monkey,

After having taking some time to think about it,  I really like your idea.   I think the options would be more appropriately named eBlock/eNoBlock as this is consisten with many other built-in functions.  So we would have something like the following.

SaveGameSlot(MiniGame_SAVESLOT, MiniName, eBlock);

There is a similar discussion regarding the Restart function in the thread below.

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=24818.0

[this thread]

I have the same issues with the Save/RestoreGameSlot functions.   I describe the problem and then make some suggestions in this thread.

My suggestion was essentially to create a way of synchronizing the Save/Restore/Restart operation with subsequent instructions.   This would work similar to the "blocking" option available in other built-in functions (idea courtrsey monkey_05_06).   Alternatively an anothe rversion of Wait() could be created, via either a seperate wait command or an optional parameter, or add some type of  "Queue" or "Spawn" keyword that would allow a collection of instructions, containing Save, Restore, Restart, etc to be executed sequentially.

I'll publish a new version of the module this weekend, probably Sunday.  It don't think it uses any of 2.72 features and so should be compatible with 2.71. 

Edit:
Thanks  monkey for the correction.

[Apparent Memory or Resource Leak]

Apparent Memory or Resource Leak
After doing a number test games I get the following runtime error when trying to run a "Game Test".  Quitting and restarting the editor does no good.  I have to reboot my machine to correct the problem.


Unable to execute the game engine.  Make sure ACWIN.EXE is in the game folder and that you have write access to the compiled folder.

CreateProcess returned error 8


Note:  In the test game I am calling and returning from a minigame and exiting from the first game using crtl+alt+end.

P.S. I know I double posted but since the previous post is totally unreleated it seemed like the best way to document this behavior.

Yeah, that would work just fine but I think there were reasons why the delay was originally required.  I don't know if those reasons are still valid but presumably they are.    I'm open to any implementation that cleanly provides the desired functionality though.   

[Queue After Script]

I am in the process of updating the MiniGame module and hope to make an official release soon.   There are a couple of quirks in the script language that require a bit of a  convoluted work around that I would like to eliminate.

Queue After Script
Some script commands don't execute until after the curent script is finished.   SaveGameSlot() is the one I am particularly interested in.   In the Example below the SaveGameSlot() function is never executed because the  RunAGSGame() function immediately after closes the current game and starts the new one before the SaveGameSlot ever has a chance to execute.   I am not certain if there are other built-in functions that have the same or similar behavior. 

Code: ags

	MiniName = String.Format("%s Return",mininame);
	SaveGameSlot(MiniGame_SAVSLOT,MiniName);
	Wait(1);
	RunAGSGame(mininame,0,game.previous_game_data+1); 

I was thinking it would be handy if there were a way of synchronizing these type of functions with other code.    I suppose there are any number of implementations that would be acceptable.  One possibility is  the introduction of a new keyword as shown in this example:

Code: ags

	// Script code executes normally
	MiniName = String.Format("%s Return",mininame);

	// The new keyword quesup instructions to be executed 			// after script completes.
	QueueAfterScript {   
		SaveGameSlot(MiniGame_SAVSLOT,MiniName);
		RunAGSGame(mininame,0,game.previous_game_data+1); 
	}

The other idea that comes to mind is to have another version of Wait() that would accomplish the dsame thing.  Perhaps the latter (i.e. Wait()) would be more intuitive for most people.

RestoreGameSlot()
When returning from a minigame it is desireable to seamlessly return to the previous game in it's previous state.   Currently this isn't possible because RestoreGameSlot() can't be executed until aafter the first room is displayed.  The workaround is to have the game's first room be a dummy black room with a some code to determine if returning from a minigame or starting from the OS.   

Since it's now possible to do a NewRoom command in game_start() I was wondering it could also be made possible to allow RestoreGameSlot() to be run from within game start?   

Alternative Suggestion
If the above two items are deemed to be relevant only to RunAGSGame() the perhaps a better solution would be to integrate the save/restore functionality within RunAGSGame() itself as follows:

Code: ags

RunAGSGame (string filename, int mode, int data, optional int saveslot, optional int restoreslot)

saveslot - if this parameter is specified and greater than -1 then the current game is saved to this saveslot before starting the new game.

restoreslot - if this parameter is specified and greater than -1 then the new game is restored from restoreslot before displaying the first room.

Summary
The above two requests would allow the removal of convoluted logic and awakward requirments from the module before release. 

1.  Ability to execute commands after builti-ins such as SaveGameSlot() complete.

2.  Ability to execute RestoreGameSlot() from within game_start().

3. Alternatively integrate save and restore functionality into RunAGSGame() itself.

I believe these changes, if possible and practical, would be of benefit to all.  Thanks for your consideration.

What vesion of AGS are you using?  The links I gave you only work with AGS 2.70.  I will have a new version of everything in a couple of days that works with V2.72.

I hold the power to fondle you all. Maybe I already have, you would never know!

Yeah, you bastard, you made Squinky vomit... ;}

Links to the latest version of Demo Quest are maintained in the "Games in Produiction" forum in this thread:

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=23083.0

Let me know if you have any trouble with them.  Also keep in mind there will soon be another update for V2.72 compatibility.

Hi Martijn,

Hehe, it's funny you ask about this as I am currently working on this.  If you can wait a few days I should have the entire demo up to AGS V2.72 compatibility.   

Also for general info the main game and all mini games must re-import the updated minigame module. 

CJ, to update a module it's currently necessary to remove the module and then import it again.  Would it be possible to just display a warning dialog and give the user the choice of ovewrwriting or aborting?