Doug’s Blog

Proportionately long post title

...22 and a half foot poooooole!!!1

Lots of stuff has been going on lately. Really, lots–it’s crazy. I haven’t even had time to update my blog all this time, and I know I kept saying I’d update more frequently. I’ll keep saying it again! Ha! Anyway, I have a lot to cover in this post, so bear with me if this turns out to be really long. Even if it does, I assure you it’s well worth the read. Now then, hopefully I can try and tackle this in chronological order without completely screwing up…

First up we have EXGN. Basically, we used to be EXRP (a strictly GMod RP community and server), and now we’ve officially expanded to EXGN (a multi-game community and server network). We used to have a CSS and TF2 server before, but they were always kinda in the background and nobody really paid any attentionn to them. Now it’s official and we have everything flawlessly set up internally to run all the servers at once, so we’re good to go. Since my last post, I got a new server; completely dedicated this time–that server is all mine! Really good specs too, quad core, assload of ram, buncha space, connected to 3 backbones, etc… I’m set for quite some time with that server I think. Then I had to configure all of it, which took a while since the hosting company I’m with didn’t provision the IPs properly, after that I set up the sites again, set up the new EXGN site, and then all the games. Everything’s running suspiciously smoothly now, so I’d say I’m quite proud of myself.

Ubuntu is good for laptop

In order to set up the Garry’s Mod server without using a graphical X environment, using Xvfb, I had to use the -Y argument while connecting to SSH. It took me a while, but I finally figured out that this only worked when connecting to a Linux server from a Linux client. I had dualbooted Ubuntu before on my desktop, but I really have no use for it. However, I’ve gotten a laptop since then, and Vista really doesn’t run too well on it–bam, there’s a good reason to put Ubuntu on it; let’s do it! It took a while to get the partitions planned out so that I could have a primary NTFS partition for Vista, a primary FAT16 for it’s recovery and boot crap, a primary Ext3 for Ubuntu, a logical Ext3 swap, and a logical NTFS “data” partition to share between the two OS’s. Problem was for some reason Vista only wanted two primary partitions as Ubuntu would allow four, but then if I had four Vista wouldn’t allow me to have any logical partitions–it made no sense at all. After about an hour of deep thought and frustration, I finally got it figured out and installed Ubuntu with my carefully devised new partition table. Once Ubuntu was installed, however, the wireless card didn’t work–even after following all of the guides and forum posts online. After a couple days of trying to figure it out, I accidentally installed a module called linux-backports-modules-intrepid that automatically gets the wireless cards working. So, this is to any of you that have AR242x wireless cards out there: Just install that module, don’t do anything with modprobes or blacklists, and everything’ll work out just fine on your first try.

Next up: School. Ah, lovely, lovely school. I’ve been having some problems with my Algebra 2 teacher, such as when she gives us homework on stuff she hasn’t really explained, and that really set me behind–so much so that my final grade was failing and that I had to pull off an 88 on my semester exam toady. I really hope I did, I don’t know how I’d live with myself if I didn’t. The way it works here if you fail a class is you have to take it again the next semester. Then you take what would be the second semester not the first semester of the next year, but the second semester. Since I’m a junior right now, that means I would have only one chance to pass that second semester–if not, I wouldn’t be able to graduate. So yeah, this is really eating away at me and haunting me when I try to go to sleep at night, so I really hope the above situation doesn’t become a reality. I think I did well on the exam; at least an 88 I’m sure. I didn’t struggle with anything, everything seemed completely logical, and I’m positive I didn’t make any stupid mistakes like bubbling in the wrong answer or using the wrong method to answer a question. …Enough talk of this, I really want to get it out of my head so I can enjoy my Christmas and vacation.

FPS-town awaits me

Speaking of Christmas, my parents are surprising me with some new computer hardware I picked out and watched my dad order today. I’m really happy about that, as the hardware is really good. A general rundown: E8400 Core 2 Duo, 8800GT, 2GB DDR2 RAM (my old RAM was DDR, and wouldn’t be compatible with my new mobo), GIGABYTE UD3R motherboard, and an Antec 900 case. Nothing bleeding edge, but still really great and definitely a big upgrade from what I have now. I’m really excited for this, and can’t wait to play games on my new rig and see how amazing my FPS is. I’m taking stuff like the power supply and hard drives from my onw right now of course, and my old parts may go to my mum or dad. Depends if it’s better than my dad’s right now, which I think it is–he’s using a PCI 4x graphics card. Yeah, I didn’t even know they made those anymore either. Well, that settles it I guess.

I went to chop down my own tree last weekend (I think, my concept of time greater than two days is nil) and that was really fun. My parents and I drove up to the mountains of Cloudcroft, NM. There was about two feet of snow in some areas, so that made everything better. I brought my camera to do a kind of mockumentary (of Bear Grylls and Cloverfield if you’re interested), which is downloading right now and so far I think the footage is turning out quite nicely. The majority of it near the end is the epic struggle of dragging a tree up an 8-story hill. I’m glad there was snow, as it would’ve been impossible to drag the tree up to the top with dirt. Even with the snow, it was really tiring. There was really cold winds, and the temperature got somebit below freezing at one point, minus wind chill. As I said, it’s converting and stuff right now so I’ll have to edit it tomorrow. I’ll try to post it real soon, mmkay? It should be quite entertaining. I’ll try for tomorrow.

Last topic to cover, unless I think of something else, is the ol’ dreaded search for the perfect MMORPG. It keeps going. And going. And going… Ashen Empires released a massive update that fixes nearly every problem in the game, as well as adding and tweaking with a bunch of new things like nicer graphics, GUI redesigns, etc… They also released a new expansion pack titled Tides of Fate, which basically adds boats to the game. Pretty cool I think, as it opens up a whole new element to the game which is great, but the boats seem to be rediculously overpriced–the starter boat is around one million gold–I only have 1.5 million, and Son has around 4 or 5 I think, but he’s level 101 (I think) and I’m 34. People say the top-tier galleons cost around 15mil, which is ridiculous.

Above: Lucia Noxnoctis

I tried Guild Wars today from a trial code Lawrence got when he purchased the game. I set my expectations rather low; just expecting it to be another failed WoW clone. However, it’s actually really good. It’s themed just like your generic medieval crap, but it adds some nice quirks and twists that make it unique. Really, it seems like a blend of SRO, SWG, and WoW, which is really nice. One could say Ashen Empires in some cases, but that’s a whole different genre I think. Anyway, F2P is a definite pro, and the combat is quite nice. Questing is also good, as it isn’t just grinding like most RPGs are–like WoW. Yes, I’m aiming that at you, WoW fanboys. Go play a game that’s the least bit fun, mmkay? The biggest con I’ve found so far is that all the male characters are rediculously ripped to the point that they just look really, really unsightly. I’m going to be looking at my character for the whole time I’m playing this game, and more specifically: their ass. I really don’t want to be staring at a ripped guy’s ass all day, so I made a female character. Actually, that’s not much of a con at all. Hmm… Well, the FPS is good given the quality of the graphics, so surely something’s wrong there. Yeah, let’s go with that for cons.

Steam Mods

You may or may not know that Steam has released 5 SourceMods through their servers–Synergy, Insurgency, Age of Chivalry, DIPRIP, and Zombie Panic. I’ve tried the first few (I don’t think any zombie game can live up to L4D, so there’s no worth trying it) and they’re pretty good, at least as far as mods go. First, I think it’s an amazing thing to do; release mods for free on your otherwise commercial servers. Kudos to Valve for being such an awesome company. I can’t wait for L4D.

Anyway, first up: Synergy. Basically, it’s a HL2 co-op mod that works with HL2, EP1, EP2, Sin: Emergence, and some other game that I’ve never heard of. I’ve only been playing HL2 so far, as not everyone I was playing with had EP1 or EP2 installed, but I must say it’s pretty well done. It’s a lot more stable than other co-op mods that I’ve tried, and the simple game mechanics it uses to keep toe co-op in line are quite nicely done. For instance, when a player dies they spawn near the last player alive. Then when there are vehicles, there’s always a “ghost” of the vehicle where it spawns that anyone can press E on to make it into an actual vehicle to drive away. Overall, Synergy is quite good. There’s nothing too ‘fresh’ about it as it’s just HL2 maps, but it’s nice to play HL2 again with some friends. It does crash on certain maps for me, at least on a listen server.

Next up is Insurgency. I’ve played it before, I think when it first came out. It was nice, but was horribly unbalanced, laggy, and spawning was massively fucked. The spawn points had no shelter, and there were only two spawn entities so everyone got jammed inside each other. I’m happy to say that everything’s been fixed, and I can finally see how awesome a game it is. I guess you can call it a mix between BF2 and CoD4, but a lot more tactical. You can’t just run and gun, you have to do a lot of careful planning to get from point A to B and keep a constant watch on all your surroundings. It’s very realistic, so you have to keep an eye out for friendly fire, especially so since just a couple bullets will kill you. I really liked Insurgency, I’ll definitely be playing more of this. My only problem is how long the spawn time is, it’s amazing.

Age of Chivalry is decent, but gets old fast. The concept is great–somewhat similar to Dark Messiah in terms of game mechanics. It’s a medevail-based sword fighting and archery game. You can build objects and buildings, use catapaults, and combat of course. It’s fun, but the sword fighting is so incredibly slow paced that it gets really boring after a while; archery is a lot more fun, but that gets old too. Honestly though, you swing your sword so incredibly slowly that the animation doesn’t even look the least bit natural. Overall it’s quite decent but the gameplay is so slowly paced that you’ll be bored of it in just a couple plays. It’s pretty interesting, though.

DIPRIP [Warm Up] is… strange. It’s a total conversion mod to where everyone is in a bunch of tank-like vehicles driving around and shooting other players in tanks. It’s really strange though, you have these massive tanks rolling around and the guns are just these puny little pea shooters that sound like a cat meowing. Yeah, they really make you feel threatened when you’re up against them. The aiming for all but one of the weapons is god awful, so everyone’s just whoring the little pea shooters, making it take forever to kill just one guy. It sounds like a good concept, but I don’t really like how it’s executed. It’s impossible to tell where you’re supposed to go, so you’re just rolling around trying to find enemies to poke with your spit wads.

Anyway, that’s about it. I recommend you try all the SourceMods, and hell; I may even try Zombie Panic even though I know L4D will put it in between a rock and a very hard place–just like how TF2 pumbled that TFC SourceMod remake. See, I don’t even remember what it was called! In other news, LittleBigPlanet makes me want to buy a PS3. I wish I had the money to blow $600 to play just one game, I really do. Maybe if Sony had a better lineup with some original, fun-looking games that aren’t multiplatformed with the 360, that might help. As for the 360, I want TFU but I’m saving up for other things (namely, L4D). Nintendo’s been pissing me off with all it’s shovelware and pedometers. The Conduit looks good though, and apparently it makes use of Motion Plus–hopefully that little addon doohickey will save the Wii from the doomed fate of monthly My Little Pony episodic games. Oh wait, we already have that. That PS3 is looking very nice right now…

Aaaaaand for your blogly EXRP banter: I’m trying to fix displacements, I really am. I was told the problem was some missing files that define how friction on different surfaces work, but I’ve been unable to find them. I was told they were in the scripts folder of “some shared GCF for some game”, but after extracting every file from the scripts folders of every game, nothing works! I’m having an even bigger problem finding all the mattypes for all the broken surfaces so I can get my platform fix working on different maps, but then each map conflicts with eachother! I’m thinking of emulating Steam then logging into my account and running a listen server, as it seems this problem only occurs on dedicated servers. We’ll see, we’ll see…

Server switch

I can’t believe I haven’t made a blog post in so long, it amazes me. So much has been going on that would be blog worthy, yet I haven’t made a post–is it laziness or forgetfulness? In no particular order:

• Got Spore, played that for a long long long time and it pwns
• Tried the TFU demo, liked it but hated the targeting system
• Played GTA IV on XBL for a while with PP, XBL trial expired and I haven’t been arsed to renew it
• Got a new server, it’s amazingly fast, moved everything there
• Played the Battlefield: Heroes beta, enjoyed it
• Drooled over all the awesome new games coming out soon
• Finished EXRP Lite, put EXRP back up
• Redesigned sites (somewhat, still in progress)
• Couldn’t be arsed to reupload all my huge videos via FTP, rehosted them all on Vimeo
• Dropped the 18th century MMO idea for now, going with the sci-fi FPS
• Played a lot of games, enjoyed all of them except the crappy ones
• M3DS broke, using tape to fix it until I can get a new R4.

Changes and updates galore

I haven’t made a blog post in a while–I know! Stop bugging me about it, I know!! I should be like FPS_Doug: “YOU WANNA BLOG POST? YOU LIKE MY BLOG POST? YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH WWWWWWSSSSAAAAAADDDDDDDD”. Anyway, there’s a lot to cover, and I digress. First things first: School’s back. Huge bummer. Junior year seems a lot easier than Sophomore and Freshmen which is nice, but it’s still school so meh. Vacation was great though, but I’ll cover that later with pictures, videos, and other visual media to entice your puny insignificant brains. I kid.

I’m back on track with EXRP, although it’s on hold for about a week until I get a few last-minute things off my plate. I got that awesome quad core server that I wanted, except there are a few problems. I expected there to be a few problems when I first got it, but this is just rediculous. Apache, Dovecot, and PHP aren’t installed properly (probably because it’s 64bit), and the host insists that I can fix it from my control panel. Well, I probably can fix it from SSH, but that ain’t no control panel. I’m new to the whole dedicated server scene anyway, so it’s beyond my skill. They’re supposed to install it anyway, not me. I may just cancel my control panel subscription with them and get the actual control panel developers to install it for me–at least they’ll do it right without problem. As far as hosting games on it goes, I’ve figured out how to use WINE without a proper X11 server which is great, and CSS/TF2/L4D run natively on Linux so we’re fine with that.

I’ve been starting a couple projects recently, mainly an 18th century online RPG and a sci-fi FPS. I’ve had the latter in the back of my mind for a while, but I’ve finally got the right approach so it’s finally something really original. The 18th century ORPG does have pirates in it, but I’d like to refer to it as an 18th century game instead of pirates–that way people try out different things like merchant, navy, sailor, etc… Instead of just saying “OHMAHGOD PIRATES I WANNA BE ONE PLZPLZPLZ” and completely ignoring any other activities in the game. Yes PotBC, I’m referring to you. Anyway, these things will keep me busy for a while, as well as some friends who’re working on it with me. I’ll talk about this more later.

Last but not least (at least for this blog post… damnit, I said least when I said it wasn’t least) I’m changing around my sites a bit. First off, Dvondrake Studios will become a more company-oriented site as opposed to the personal “hay look at mah stuffz” it is today. I’ll move my blog onto another domain, I’m not sure what yet–probably a .ca, they’re hawt. Since I’ve got that new server, I’ll be creating a gaming network as opposed to one server under one name, one under another, etc… EXRP will be ‘merged’ with this network, so the forums will be moved there. I don’t know whether to keep SMF, go with something more main-stream like vBulletin (only if I can afford it), or make my own forum software. I’ve been meaning to for a while, but I feel like I’m just now ready. Before I wasn’t near experienced enough. So EXRP’s forums will be moving to a new domain, yeah. I have a lot of redesigning to do. New blog, new gaming network site/forums, new design for Dvondrake Studios–gah. I also have a site to do for my dad that helps you keep track of laptops if someone steals it. I’ll be busy for a while, but there will still be time for GTA and TF2–no doubt. I’ll talk about my vacation and Battlefield: Heroes in my next blog posts.

Ideas? Ideas.

I’m not quite sure what I’ve been up to lately. I would say nothing much, as I usually do, but that isn’t quite the case. That and I’ve used that as the beginning sentence to 9 out of 10 of my posts, so I think it’s about time to get creative and use something else. EXRP is going good, we’re getting a lot of new players recently. Still having a few server problems, but they aren’t as noticeable as before now. I haven’t really added anything new to the script, just a lot of bug fixes and minor tweaks. I’ve been meaning to set Ubuntu as my default in GRUB for a while now, but I’ve never gotten around to it. I even installed an IFS for Ext3 partitions in Windows so I can change my GRUB config without having to wait for my computer to shut down and boot to the GRUB screen again, but I never have. No idea why–I’m not doing anything really important now, so I don’t know what’s keeping me.

I’ve been exploring a lot of things, recently. My 6 months of coding have been a really eye-opening experience. Yes, that sounds really lame, cheesy, and unbelievable, but it’s true. It was the first time I’ve finally sat down and coded something from scratch. Sure, I do this quite often with my PHP work, but nothing on such a large scale as EXRP. It’s really opened my eyes to coding–allowed me to think about the future. And of course, that’s just what I’m doing now. Recently, I’ve been trying to think of ideas for games. To do so, I’ve been playing a lot of them. The past week, I’ve downloaded a lot of game demos and bought a lot of games. X3 Reunion was nice, but very complex and hard to get into without being a total geek about the game. Star Wars Republic Commando was an extremely good game, nice graphics, story, gameplay and all, but it was very neglected by the media in my opinion. My only problem is that it’s a bit repetitive, but I still think it’s a great game. In terms of FPS games, Republic Commando had the same thing going as CoD4 had with it’s campaign, with the whole team that you love that gets killed at the end. Good story, with that in mind. Of course I don’t know if they really do die, but whenever a writer gets you attached to a bunch of characters like that, especially ones you fight to your last breath with, you know they’re gunna die eventually. What I liked was that it was a lot darker than other Star Wars games I’ve played. It brought with it a whole new view of Star Wars games–it’s a shame LucasArts didn’t follow through and make more like this. Then again, The Force Unleashed may be darker as well, so you never know. Not until it releases, at least.

A couple other games I’ve tried are flight simulators. Flight Simulator X was nice, but the AA was quite awful–even at the highest setting. I don’t know, maybe it was just the demo. Hopefully, at least, because I liked that game. I built a jet fighter in EXRP a couple days ago that used the fin stool for wings, creating realistic lift. Thrusters were only used for acceleration and steering. I’ve always loved aviation and aircraft–even just the idea and thrill of flying–but to be honest, I’ve never really realized how much I have loved it until I made the RP character Thomas McCloud to make a caricature of aviation lovers. Midway through, I just stopped and thought to myself, “Hey… This is exactly like me!” Now I want to get some pilot training at my air port, get a license, and start flying. My dad was in the Canadian Air Force when he was young, and while I won’t join any military myself, I wouldn’t mind flying a jet fighter or two. However, that’s not the point. Throughout my whole life, I always remember my dad looking up at the sky and pointing out what model every plane he saw was. Watching programs on TV about planes, playing flight simulators, marveling over different planes at a museum. I guess that almost inspired me to have a certain love for aircraft as well. Then there was also Soarin’. It’s a ride at Disneyland/Disney World where you sit on a row of chairs that gets lifted into a big dome and moves around like a motion simulator, and on the dome is footage from a hang glider accompanied by some really relaxing, brilliantly made music. I really liked that ride, and it also had to do with aviation–this could’ve possible had an effect on me too. Also, the music is great.

As I said before, I really don’t know what I’ve been doing lately. In addition to the above, I’ve been trying out different 3d modeling programs (the contest is between Maya and Cinema 4D right now) to use for my games. I don’t know, I like having some help, but I find it easier just to do things myself sometimes. I would find someone to model stuff for my games for me, but it’s just so much easier to argue with yourself than with someone else. I got the Spore Creature Creator (who hasn’t?) and I really like the way that you “model” things in that; it reminds me a lot of ZBrush or Mudbox. ZBrush was alright, but it’s the type of thing you have to go through hours of training before you can do anything with it. I tried a demo for Mudbox, and it was a lot better, but unfortionately way too expensive for me. Plus I don’t know what the practicality of making a space ship in there would be.

I really like the look Will Wright is taking on gaming. I’ve really only noticed it now that Spore is the main talk–now that we know everything about Spore, and it really makes sense. At first I thought Will Wright’s games were simulators. Sim City simulated a society. Then The Sims simulated personality. Now Spore is simulating evolution. It just gets bigger and bigger each time around. Then I realized: These aren’t sim games, these are philosophy games. Evolution is still very much a theory (although I believe in it), so there’s still a lot of “what if” and “but then…” included whenever you think about it. Really, that’s philosophy. Sim City contained the philosophy of how a society grows. The Sims had the philosophy of of how peoples’ minds mature. Now Spore is about evolution? I applaud Will Wright in creating games that really make you think–regardless if they did when they were released, or now that Spore has surfaced to spark your memory. Really, Spore has gotten me thinking about a lot of things more philosophically now. Religion, emotion, psychology (partially), life in general, etc… It just has endless possibilities. Although it’s probably not something I should admit, it’s quite relaxing to take a crap at about 4PM in my house’s big bathroom. The way that the light reflects through the small window and how the birds in the trees directly outside it sing songs for me, it creates a very nice ambiance. Perfect for relaxing and thinking, really. And pooping. The mood is completely ruined once someone comes out with their weed whacker, however.

With that said, my post comes to an end. I haven’t posted in 10 days, and while I could definitely say I was busy enough to not have any time to make a blog, I wasn’t busy with anything really important. Later today I’ll be getting a summer haircut (read: summ’er better than others), and maybe I’ll watch Get Smart. Again, nothing important, but that’s what a vacation is all about; just relaxing and doing random, unimportant stuff you never had time to do before. Call me crazy, but I’m just enjoying my summer. Are we there yet?

ALSA salsa

I’m really liking Linux. Almost all of my Windows programs I can emulate with either Wine or Cedega–whichever works best; whatever Wine doesn’t emulate well, Cedega does, and vice versa. There’s only one problem: The Audigy SE’s mic input doesn’t seem to work with ALSA. Creative has been known for iffy non-Windows XP drivers (Whether it be Linux or Vista–we all know about the latter), and apparently the Audigy SE was an unlucky one. None of the X-Fi’s even function at all, so I’m glad mine even had sound at all. Either way, if I want to migrate to Linux, I’ll have to get my mic working–so I returned it. I got it at Circuit City, and their returns policy is that everything is returnable up to 30 days except cameras and PCs, which are 14 days. Apparently computer hardware is “covered by the 14 day policy”, even though it doesn’t say that even in the fine print. Whatever, at least they gave me store credit. Of course the problem now is what do I do? What sound card do I get now?

I was looking at M-AUDIO, which is apparently really good, but also really expensive–and therefor not an option for me. Turtle Beach seemed good as well, but the only models I could find didn’t have on-board processors, which kinda defeats the whole purpose of a sound card, don’t you think? After more digging, I found the Audigy 4–finally something affordable that works. It’s a step up from my SE also, which is good. I just finished ordering an Audigy 4 SE from Amazon for $35–the same price I paid for my original Audigy SE. The Audigy SE’s SNR is 100dB, and the Audigy 4’s is 106dB, which is not too big an improvement, but that’s fine. It has full EAX support and all that fancy unnecessary stuff too, so that’s got to count for something.

As for coding, the usual: not too much. Right now all that’s left is…

• Skillbooks (for kicking doors and unarmed combat)
• SENT to change clothes (kevlar, lab coat, fire suit, etc…)
• Newspaper SENT (grabs RSS from forums)
• Paper SENT (press E and a VGUI comes up to edit text, editable /write replacement)
• Fix Fire Axe and Unarmed Combat models
• Make sure Morphine isn’t as buggy as it was a couple days ago
• Bed SENT (press E and it makes a ragdoll of you positioned on the bed to sleep)

And if I have time…

• Metal detector (detects weapons on a person)
• Chairs and sofas (ones right now don’t animate properly, we use a custom animation system)
• Containers

I also have a lot of stuff planned for after the launch. I think I’ve mentioned a few things in some previous blog entries, namely SNPCs, WM2 weather, ‘temp internships’ to the cop/fireman/ems groups if nobody’s on, and a buncha other stuff. I don’t really remember–I just code whatever I feel like coding. I’m really spontaneous like that.

Anyway, that’s pretty much it. Lets hope my Audigy 4 SE works well. I’ll be doing some coding right now, but really, that’s about all to talk about for now. We’re getting really close to our launch date, and I’m getting really excited. As you’ve probably seen, I’ve been updating the site and forums a bit last weekend–and in doing so, I managed to break SMF’s package manager. I had to install all my mods manually, which was a pain, but really I get a lot more control over things which is nice. Less room for failure now.

GNOMEish paradise

I’ve been talking about it for a while, but I’ve finally gotten around to dual booting Linux again. I was using Fedora Core 7 back then, and quite honestly it was way inferior to Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8 today. It took a while to install since my internal CD drives are busted and I had to figure out how to get my BIOS to boot properly from my extermal drive, but after toying around with motherboard drivers and BIOS reinstalls, I finally got it to work. I tried the live CDs of both Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8 (hardy), and I liked Ubuntu 8 a bit more, so I went with that. I’m really surprised on how much Linux has advanced in these couple years–it’s amazing. I’d have no problem using Ubuntu as my default OS–I like it better than XP. No doubt. It’s taken me about a day total to get everything set up, but it finally is and now I get to enjoy it. I even figured out how to get Steam and GMod running through WINE, which is great. There’s a strange bug when you have your unarmed SWEP out that I can’t possibly understand, but who cares. It still functions and runs with decent FPS, and that’s all I care about. Only things I’d have to dualboot back to XP for are certain games that I can’t emulate (CoD4 and Continuum, namely), and the remote desktop client so I can connect to my server and update it’s SVN and stuff. Meh, I could probably emulate that too if I figured out where it is. Hopefully I can, then I won’t have to switch back and forth all the time.

Anyway, as for coding, not too much. There’s just SWEPs and SENTs now, and that’s not really too exciting to report on. I’ve finished all the class-specific things, though, although the fire axe’s FoV is really screwed. It’s just the TF2 model, I can’t figure out how to fix it up nicely. Also, punching is really messed up on dedicateds, but I think I fixed that. I tested it out last night (or was it the night before…) with PP and I think I fixed it then. Hopefully I did. I wanna do all my dedicated testing before launch day, that way we don’t end up two+ hours late like when we were beta testing.

Stuffs

Not too much coding recently, I’ve actually been doing my homework for once. But of what coding there was, it was EPICCCCCCC. I created an internet-based music system, which allows me to play music through a URL–you don’t have to download music. This allows me to simplify radio use (!radio works now), have some kickass background music for the newly skinned (and extremely awesome) character selection screen (which I’ve done), and have a contextual music system! I coded that too. Basically, whenever someone attacks someone, everyone within a certain radius of the attacker gets epic music played. It’s really awesome. I also finished coding all of the cop and fireman SWEPs, as well as a couple public ones.

As for other unrelated things, I’ve been looking into Linux again. It’s been a while, but as I’m getting more and more serious with my coding, it’s pretty obvious that I need it. I usually have around 20 big files open in Notepad++, and that really lags in Windows, not to mention that some are over 4000 lines long. I’ve narrowed the distro choice down to either Ubuntu or Fedora, but I’m not sure which yet. Fedora 9 came out today, so I figured I’d download the LiveCD for both Ubuntu 8 and Fedora 9, but I couldn’t download the Fedora one since it just came out and there were no torrent seeds. Guess I’ll have to try tomorrow.

Anyway, that’s it. I’m more pumped than ever because of my awesome music system and character selection screen, and I’m sure that will impress. Just a few more days, people; you can do it!