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You could just throw in a toy, a ball of paper, or just push a stick in from the other side and get hi to play with it.  He is just 1.5 years old and so is like a little kid.  For him the world is a fun and happy place full of wonderment and love ...     

I am serious so please no jokes or snarky remarks.   My cat, Tuqu (too-coo), who I dearly love is missing since last Saturday evening.

A year and a half ago I found a 3 week old kitten at my moms house.  He couldn't see because his eyes were full of crap and glued shut.  I think this was from fleas that were biting his face and the areas around his eyes.  I fed him milk from an eyedropper, traveled through airports with him, taught him to walk with a leash climb trees and chase birds (he picked up on the bird thing pretty quick).

I know that his not cowering under some bush and afraid to come home.  If he could come home he would.  He is a skilled climber and world class athlete.  He's smart enough to no get lost and brave enough not to have been frightened away.  One evening last summer while walking on a leash a neighbor's dog came to the other side of the fence and started barking.  I had expected that Tuqu would have frizzed out and run away pulling on and slipping out of the leash.   Instead he just sat down and started growling under his breath like he was really, really angry. 

The last time I saw him was 5:30 pm last Saturday when I let him go outside.   I took our other cat outside on a leash shortly after that for a short walk around the house.   I came back in the house and started working on the computer.   Around 7:30 I all of a sudden something inside told me to go look for Tuqu.  I asked my wife if he came back in yet and she ask me why I was asking (I'm usually the one who is absent minded about that).  We went out looking for him for the next three hours but hew was not to be found.   

Here are the possibilities I am fairly confident that can be eliminated:
=================================================
1. He was not hit by a car.  Check nearby streets and animal control about DOAs.

2. Has not killed by a dog.  There was no sign of blood, fur, or other indications of such a struggle.

3. He was not frightened away and too scared to come home.

4. He did not wander off and forget how to get back home.


Here are the possibilities that are still open:
=================================================
5. He got stuck in a garage or a shed.  We had a break in the weather and perhaps people took the opportunity to stow (or retrieve) stuff in a garage or shed.

6. Someone took him in as a stray.  His bones are almost full grown but he looks skinny and has always had a ravenous appetite.  So it wouldn't be that odd for someone to think he was a stray., in which case they would keep him in the house for awhile so they could  care for him and so that he wouldn't runaway and be "homeless" again.

7. He was killed by a gang for some kind of initiation ritual.  We have recently had gang graffiti appear in the neighborhood.   However, I am told that the gang it appears to be (Latino/Philipino) are sort of low key and that gangs don't typically hurt animals.  And if they did do something like that they wouldn't hide the remains but would want them to be found and to know who did it.

8.  He was killed an eaten. 

8a. A neighbor who lives about a block away who is from a country where cat eating is very prominent.   

8b. About 2 years ago there was an outbreak of rabbits (100+) on the same corner.  They were just running around in the street until  finally the city came and took them away.   Everyone thought they belonged to some old retired dude because they were always in his yard.  However, it turned out that they were not his at all and that the other neighbor had brought the original ones there and was eating them. 

8c. We lost another cat, Bandito, in similar circumstances around that time frame also.  A was a warm May morning and I saw our oldest cat Gordito, crossing the busy street he is not supposed to cross and going in the direction of the rabbits.   I left the house and went after him.  I was carrying him in my arms and was going to take him home.  We passed by Bandito who was playing in tall grass just across from our house.   I didn't want Gordito feel like he was being punished so I put him down next to Bandito so they could play together.   I did some yard work not more than 200 ft away.  I called them around lunch time but they never came back.   Yes, my cats are trained to come when I whistle and they always come (almost ).  Gordito finally got back at 5:30 but Bandito did not.

8d.  I was passing out "lost" poster the other night on the same block where this neighbor lives.  I was told that 4-5 cats have went missing on that one block since October.

8e.  I went to the copy shop to get more posters made yesterday.  The clerk told me that he lives in a nearby suburb and that a couple of years ago he had several cats go missing from his home and that other people nearby also had cats go missing.  When he went looking for the last cat he found his tale in a neighbor's back yard.   Apparently police came to ask questions etc and within a few days the neighbor moved away.  his neighbor came from the same country as my neighbor.

8f.  I asked him if they threw a sack or something over his cat and he said that his cat was friendly and probably just walked up to them to say high.  Both of my missing kitties would have done the same thing. 

8g.  I knocked on the neighbor's door last night, gave hime a "lost' poster and gave my little speech.  I swear I could see in his eyes that he was laughing at me inside, like I was an idiot for looking for a cat that was Sunday dinner the week before.

So now I am wondering if 2 years ago Bandito and Gordito when back across the street to check out the rabbits and wandered into this guy's yard where they caught Bandito and ate him.  Gordito got back 5 hours later than usual so maybe he was also trapped and managed to escape or he hung out hoping to bring Bandito back home and maybe left after he realized they killed him and he wouldn't be coming back?  Now two years later the same thing happens to my Tuqu and the other neighborhood cats.

I have to tell you that I am horrified at the thought and I don't want it to be true.  But as time passes the other possibilities become less and less likely.  I would like to figure out for certain if my dark suspicions are true or not and if they are I would like to send those SOBs to prison for a long time or as long as the law permits.

Next week I plan on canvasing the  neighborhood and documenting all the missing cats and the relevant details to see if there is a pattern.  I am also thinking about slipping the garbage men a 20 spot every week to check their garbage for cat remains over the next several months.   I am going to talk with the copy clerk today to get more details of his experience.  I think I can get adjacent neighbors to keep an eye out but I'm not sure that will be effective.

Do you know of any instances of people stealing and eating their neighbor's pets?   Do you have any other ideas of how I might catch these fiends?

I any of you are religious at all please say a little prayer for Tuqu.  Ask to keep him safe and from suffering and to help him find his way home if he is still alive.  And if not perhaps you could ask Tuqu to forgive me for not being smart enough to keep him safe.

Thanks for listening my friends.
Rick

As for windows cell phones .. you may want to see how they are not doing in the marketplace
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/02/07/google_android_widens_lead_on_apples_iphone_in_us_smartphone_market.html

Does anybody here have experience with MODBUS?  I need to interface a Click PLC to a Linux PC's serial port using the MODBUS RTU protocol.   

Any advice or knowledge you can provide will be greatly appreciated.   I would like to know what difficulties (or ease) you have experienced working with MODBUS. Thanks.

I think saving preferences in a file is a good idea.   

I have often wished that some preferences could be made on a per project basis.   Perhaps this could be implemented by first reading the xml preferences file in the appdata folder and then reading an xml preferences xml file in the game folder.   Entries in the game folder file would then overwrite/override entries in the appdata folder.

For example, it would be very nice if one could specify a path to a fonts folder/library for every AGS project and be able to specify a different sprite import path for each project.   

Now I've got that "Gates of Shambala" song playing in my head for some reason...

Funny thing you should mention that ... I started working on it again recently, or at least I was thinking about working on it.   

Holy shite! 

Who else would disappear for a decade and then on their return make it there first order of business to  ask if zombies need to carp!   

Now I know why for the past several years people have been asking why (or saying that) the forums ain't what they used to be.  Man I didn't think zombie crap could make me feel so nostalgic.  LoL 

Anyway glad to see you back Squinky.  I am sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for you next post or comment.  The suspense is killing me.   

While I am not much of a poster on these forums, I really do like the concept of having scenarios and having the more experienced people go through what they would do to get from point A to point B via AGS scripting.

This is a pretty good idea but many people who are knowledgeable enough to make a tutorial aren't rally in touch with beginner's difficulties.   I would perhaps be useful to have a list of what's needed.  It would kind of cool if people could make requests and other's could rate/vote for them.       

I make a testing platform so I could develop modules and other script code.  It would lend itself nicely to tutorial collections.  I can be downloaded from here:
http://demo.agspace.ws/project/archive/BluBox-T0100-B02.zip

1.  Resolution of 600x400 is quite common now days.   Players can adjust a game's default resolution using filters but there is a wide variety of opinions about the merits.  Resolution's limiting factor is performance and game size.  The higher the resolution the lower the performance and the larger the game's file size.

2.  I'm not an expert but it seems to vary from device to device.     

3.  The current AGS runtime runs primarily on a windows PC platform.  There are ports for linux and Mac that are a rev or two behind.   I has been recently decided to open source AGS editor and runtime so mobile ports are certainly future possibilities.    As Ben304 says there is currently XAGE, a Silverlight based runtime, currently under development and has been used to port several games.  There is also an HTML5 runtime under development in which you may be interested and is discussed in this thread.   

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=42594.0

============

I would also note that there are some very talented artists here that have experience with AGS and pixel artwork.   If your target is limited resolution mobile platforms (i.e. cell phones) then you will need artists that know how make impressive stuff from a handful of pixels and colors, not as easy as it sounds.   Anyway I'm not one of those people but there are many here that I am sure would be glad to help.

Happy AGSing     

Most programmers prefer to everything in the source files rater than in some squirrelly dialog box / unreadable binary file thingy.   Just saying...

Make a bool array having the same number of elements as the range of random numbers you desire.   Each element in the array indicates whether the corresponding number has been used or not.   This ought to work for a range of 50..100 as your example suggests.   Here is an untested example of how to code such a thing.

Code: ags

#define  RANDSIZ 50
bool RandUsed[RANDSIZ];

int GetRand(bool init) {
   int i, n,  not_found;

   // Start over again
   if (init) :
      i=0;
      while (i<RANDSIZ) {
         RandUsed = false;
      }
   }

   // Get random number only once
   while (n<RANDSIZ) {
       i = Random(RANDSIZ);
       if (RandUsed[i]) return i;
       n++;
   } 
   return -1;   // Return -1 if all numbers have been used
} 

The OP said that he wanted to know what terms such as void meant.  He also said he wasn't sure about functions and variables.   Since there seems to be a lack such AGS specific material,  beginner's C material is the next best thing, IMHO.    I'm not suggesting that it's necessary to master C before trying AGS scripting.  However C and AGS share a common syntax, operator set, data types, and many other characteristics.     

I think the OP knows more than he gives himself credit for.   I've been there, where I knew a lot of things but was missing just enough to cloud the higher level view of how everything fits together.   In fact I'm at that place now with Django and Pyjamas.

Here is an online book that may be of help.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/C_Programming/Compiling

You could actually do many of the demos in AGS.  Since the standard C library in not available in AGS functions such as printf() would need to be replaced with an AGS alternative such as Display().

You may want to take a look at the DemoQuest GiP thread here. 

http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/yabb/index.php?topic=34048.0

The source code hasn't been updated for a while but there are a number f documents that may be of interest to you.   You may find this one in particular helpful.

http://demo.agspace.ws/project/documents/ProgrammingConventions-V0101.txt

I would also recommend that you pick up a book on the C programming language which is what the AGS script language is patterned after.  A basic beginners book would do just fine.

http://treeline.bellz.org/scrnsht.html

I just installed it and played with it for a few minutes.  It's easy to use and exports to many formats including ODF and HTML which always seems what other similar "tree" editors lack.   It seems like it will be very useful and so I thought I share my find.   

Here are some of my current day favorites in no particular order

Burn Notice
Fringe
Doctor Who
Eureka
No Ordinary Family

... Some of my old time favorites
Hogan's Heroes
McHales Navy (btw there was a real life Quinton McHale who commanded a PT boat in WWII)
Bonanza
Barney Miller

... And this must see web series; short but very funny
Two Guys Drinking at a Bar - http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=ABCAAF06D204BDD1

Thanks Snarky for the kind remarks.

... since he had already been diagnosed with cancer at that time.

This is not entirely clear either because:

1) One of the doctors who gave diagnosis and prognosis received a 6 figure payment from the Libyan government.

2) A doctor who had a dissenting opinion was dismissed from the case

3) The medical records have not been released.   If they would exonerate the Scottish government and other people involved from nefarious dealings then this information would have been made available to the press one way or an other.   The fact that the information has not been released supports the notion  that the fix was in.

Typically a PSA (prostate-specific antigen) test is used to screen for prostrate cancer.  Values range  from 0-10.   Young healthy males have a PSA less than 2.   As men age their PSA number increases.   In addition to cancer an elevated PSA can be due to a number of causes including benign tumor, enlarge prostrate, and others.    My father's PSA, for example was 5-6 for many years.  It then jumped to 8 over a short period of time (6-12mo).   They took pictures, found a half dozen tiny tumors (pencil tip size), did a biopsy, diagnosed him with prostrate cancer, and successfully treated him.   

No what if a doctor was told that a patient had prostrate cancer, was shown test result PSA=6-7, x-ray showing an egg sized tumor, and asked how long the patient would live?   It may very well be reasonable, based on this information, to give a life expectancy with a few months on the low end even though the tumor was not cancerous.

The muth$%#@er is still not dead!  Man what a surprise .  Seems  that this was all about BP getting Libyan oil contracts after all.    

Wikileaks documents (diplomatic communications) reveal that government officials knew 10 months before hand that the fix was in to release the guy. 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20024926-503543.html

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/on-the-record/index.html#/v/4453114/lockerbie-justice-takes-backseat/?playlist_id=86925

I employed an infrequently used method of funding my education (Masters+) that was quite effective.   It's called "JOB".  The idea is that you do work that is of value for somebody.  In return they give you a quantity of money that bears some kind of proportional relationship to the value of the work and the amount of time required to complete it.

The downside is that it's necessary to, some extent, forgo the excesses of youth and save one's money.   That means not having the latest fashion, not having multiple girl friends or taking them to expensive restaurants, and no recreational drugs.

The upside is one is more committed to one's education.  In my case for example,  tuition for full time students carrying 12 or more credit hours per semester was the same amount regardless of how many credit hours.   Electrical Engineering students such as myself typically carried 15-18 credit hours per semester.   Since I was paying I wanted my money's worth so I always signed up for extra classes and usually carried 20-23 credit hours per semester.  If I wasn't paying I probably would have carried 15 hours and complained about how difficult it was.

I think the problem with the US and EU countries is that there are too many slackers who "... get money for noth'in and chicks for free...".  They don't need any more encouragement IMHO.      

I really like how Graphics Gale handles animation especially it's ability to name and export animations as individual frames.

http://www.humanbalance.net/gale/us/

You may also want to consider using QT as the basis of your project.  It is cross platform (the same source can be compiled for Win, Linux, Mac, and others), it has an extensive 2d and SVG drawing capabilities as well as web/network libraries.   

Of particular interest for animation it has built-in ability to group and attach graphic objects so that if an object is rotated or moved then any objects that are attached are automatically moved/rotated.  Consider a leg animation consisting of thigh, calf, and foot objects connected at the appropriate points.   If the calf object is rotated at the knee  the foot object moves along with the ankle end of the calf object and is moved and rotated so that it maintains it's orientation and position relative to the ankle connection point.  It seems to be all built into the  drawing libraries.   

Just some ideas to consider.

Cheers and good luck with your project