Author Archives: Snake

Dungeon Crawler II and other cool shit.

Posted on January 17, 2007 by Snake

I’ve finally gotten my TI-8x calculator RPG into a playable beta state! There’s still plenty left to do on it yet, but one may try out the new map, key, and xp systems if they like. More information and the download can be found here. Here’s a few screenshots of screens I changed:

I cleaned up the About page some yesterday–updating hardware and site descriptions. I also got my much needed uninterruptible power supply (UPS) on Monday. It has a slight hum and is heavy as fuck, but these don’t matter so much now that it’s tucked behind my loud PC. I actually had it cut on briefly for the first time a couple hours ago. The power flickered but the computer was unaffected. There’s a picture of the UPS and power cord goodness below.

I also came into the company of a new cat recently–a male tabby which I think we’re calling Gordon and you can see why.

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Thoughts on my new X-Fi

Posted on December 28, 2006 by Snake

I asked for two things for Christmas: a Creative X-Fi (Extreme Music) sound card and a UPS. I got the sound card, but I kinda wish I’d gotten the other now. Let’s run through a list of expectation I had and whether or not it fulfilled them.

Fixed Half-Life 2 sound stuttering? Yes.
Fixed sound in ATI MMC TV v8.8 ? Sorta. The echoes are gone, but there are still…issues.
Increased performance in games? Maybe. If so, it’s too insignificant to tell, but I’ve only tried HL2, Red Orchestra, and Doom 3 (1.3 patch with EAX 4).
CMSS would make stereo music sound better in surround? Not any better than the SBLive already did automatically.
Music would sound better overall? Not much. You can hear strings coming though more brilliantly. I probably just need new speakers to get anything better sounding.
The 24-bit 96khz output and 109db SNR will make a difference to sound? Can’t really tell, but then I haven’t really had anything that supports outputting this.
EAX 3, 4, and 5 will sound awesome in games? I can’t tell for this either. I tried Doom 3 with EAX 4, but it didn’t seem any different, albeit it was extremely creepy. I’ll have to try some more games.

I had a lot of expectations and most of them go unfulfilled. Even worse, it adds problems that the SBLive didn’t have. One good annoyance is the lack of inputs and outputs. Three functions are shared with in one jack (Line-In, Mic, and Digital Out)–this is unacceptable. I feel like there should definitely be an included breakout box or card. But they want to push the need for their expensive IO Drive and Console, neither of which have the necessary jacks for standard PC Mic and Line-in plugs.

Also, some features are of dubious value. The Crystalizer is just a glorified hardware EQ/Dynamics filter. The CMSS-3D Xpand Upmix adds too little to the surround, and the Surround Upmix is the same as how my SBLive always worked (non-surround output is just mapped to surround). Surprisingly, the X-Fi installation CD has even more crap on it than my SBLive one did. A lot of it is stuff that you can change in the Audio Console (about the only thing you need) and the rest of it is demo/gimmicky type stuff, like the 3DMidi player.

I’m just generally disappointed in this thing. It was all a lot of marketing hype and everyone, even the reviewers, bought into it. I’m thinking now that there’s nowhere else for audio technology to go. I think we’ve mastered reproducing sound–any further “fidelity” will go unheard. I think the future is more in trying to consolidate the workload and get all sound processing into hardware no matter what and off of the CPU.

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Holiday Formatting Fun

Posted on December 25, 2006 by Snake

Turns out I wasn’t in the clear when I posted last on Wednesday. When I next restarted, it went right back to doing its boot BSOD thing. But it was weird, because it didn’t happen until after I was in Windows and startup programs were already loading. Once I removed the Catalyst Control Center, it started BSODing right after the Welcome screen. I hate Catalyst Control Center–what a bloated piece of shit excuse for a device config panel. You don’t need skinned interfaces and demo levels to set up your hardware.

So, I ended up reinstalling Windows anyways. As I was going about the process, I started making a list of things I’d need to do; and, that turned into a general checklist which I published as a short column found here. It details in a roughly chronological order the steps to take during reinstalling WinXP. So, hopefully, you and I won’t miss something important the next time we need to do it. I also list some more 1337 tips for optimizing your system for inevitable reinstallation.

One thing that all this Windows installation shit has brought to mind is the necessity of the registry. Now, I won’t claim to know everything behind the registry and what it was created for, but from my observations, the use of it by most applications impedes the speed at which you can get Windows set back up. I feel like any application specific settings should be stored right there in the same directory as the program itself. Too often, programs are storing everything in the registry and it’s a mother fucking pain to back this data up and restore it afterwards. The registry has some uses, though, that I won’t deny. Anything that multiple independent programs may need, should be stored in the registry (codecs, file handlers, drivers, other system stuff). Also, the installation path of most programs should be put into the registry (so any program can find another program). Finally, anything that could fuck up Windows should be put into the registry (so that a reinstall does fix it). Really, developers, just stop storing user settings in the registry; let’s go back to the days of ini files. Many awesome programs follow these rules and I’d like to commend them for making my life easier the last few days. They are: Trillian, Emule, Firefox, Media Player Classic, and all the programs I’ve made.

End Rant. And Merry Christmas.

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What’s been going on

Posted on December 20, 2006 by Snake

So the fall semester of school is finally over with–oh, when will it end. I managed to pass all of my classes, albeit busting my ass to do so. Next semester, I’m trying for a lighter after-school (homework) workload, so I can finally get to all these projects I’ve been meaning to do. Or at least the ones I don’t get started over break. Those include my alarm program (still some bugs to work out and polishing); calculator RPG (working on the combat system); a program to convert Trillian logs to HTML (just an idea right now, but something I’ve been meaning to do); the links, photo album, and feature archive sections of this site (probably more coding from scratch in PHP), and fixing up dad’s old computer for a local server.

I’d really like to use Linux for the server, but I’m unsure of what distro, filesystem, and other settings to use to give it the best interoperability with the Windows machines. There’s also concerns about what upgrades I can manage to spend on it. It’s a five year old Pentium 3-based machine, desperately needing an upgrade from a 10GB hard drive if it’s to be a media server. I’m also thinking about using it as a testbed, especially for this site. As I said, it’s a project on its own.

Kaylen has been staying with me for the last week. It’s been a good time for the most part. We’ve been trying for 100% completion on Lego Star Wars II (currently at about 85%). That game is surprisingly fun for how simple it is. I’ve also been back at Red Orchestra since the last free weekend. I’ve been playing offline with a cracked steam dll since then, but I really wanna buy it and make Kaylen drive tanks while I man the gun. 😉

I’ve been trying to play NWN2, but that’s been an ordeal. I was getting locks in the game with the Catalyst 4.12 drivers that I’ve been so adamant about for two years. So I tried just upgrading to the newest version of Catalyst (6.12). That did better with the locking, but then I would get some BSODs on Windows startup. After much fuss with safe-mode and restore points, I finally got the old 4.12 drivers installed back. I hear people saying all the time that the WinXP system restore feature is crap and a waste of drive space, but that shit is really useful. But, I digress. No NWN2 for me, I suppose. I really need a new system.

Kaylen and I were cleaning out my room yesterday, and I had decided to finally get rid of a majority of my box collection. But before I threw out the hardware boxes, I snapped a pic for memorabilia’s sake. The pictured Diamond Viper II and SBLive! were the first video and sound cards I bought. I still have the SBLive in my rig, but it’s soon to be replaced by an X-Fi, courtesy of Santa.

Boxes from my first Sound, Video, and TV cards.

Boxes from my first Sound, Video, and TV cards.

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New Domain

Posted on November 10, 2006 by Snake

As you may have already noticed, I have purchased the new domain of snakebytestudios.com. I was simply tired of how unprofessional s–l.com was. And I was tired of having to explain what it meant. And I was tired of having anything to do with that worthless fuck, Loogie. But, I really like the new name–most people get the pun easily.

The old domain will continue to exist until it expires (in about a year, I believe), but all URLs will immediately redirect to the new domain. This keeps links and bookmarks working and gives people a chance to update at their leisure.

I also updated the about page slightly. More changes will be on the way soon. Ah, and it’s beginning to feel a little like Christmas, which means CHRISTMAS BACKGROUNDS!!! And speaking of images, here’s a couple that I did last night; it’s my girlfriend, Kaylen’s, face.

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Alarm Status and Ti83plus Game

Posted on October 31, 2006 by Snake

Nothing really to report on any previously mentioned projects. I haven’t really had time to delve into my alarm too much since I got it running stably several weeks ago. It hasn’t failed any in the last month, not even from human error (which I tried to minimize the possibility of). Still, it needs a few more features, options, and documentation-type stuff before I feel like it can be released for a public beta. (If you beta test it and give useful feedback, I will put you in the program credits; so there’s all the incentive I can give.)

Also of interest is a game for the TI-83 plus line of calculators that I’ve been programming between classes. I’m actually making it based on code for another game, found here. It’s an RPG with 10 areas (or floors, albeit they all look the same), randomized loot, XP and character development, spells (sorta), and a combat system.

I’m redoing practically everything (or planning on it). The maps are no longer static: every map is loaded from a simplified storage program into a matrix for easy X,Y coordinate access through a grid subroutine which can turn any coord into a graphic block. There will be a new enemy type which uses spells. And spells will be totally revamped. In the original game, you could only get spells by having them as enchantments on items. In my remake, you’ll get to upgrade your spells when you level (the mage class gets more points to distribute) and choose from a larger selection like curses, healing, lightning damage, fire damage, damage reflection, etc. There will also be skills like knockdown, disarm, leech mana, steal life (vampire), and more. Obviously, to permit all these new combat features, the fight system will have to be augmented and enemies given very basic AI.

There’s tons of other features that I’m conceptualizing as well, but the only part well underway is the new map system. Programming on the calculator is difficult, though. For one thing, all variables and data structures are global. 😕 The editor has only 7 lines and no indenting. And debugging consists of programmer breaks and printing out variable values. It’s an interesting break from the norm, though. Here’s a screenshot from the new map system. You can compare it to one from the aforementioned link.

news202

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