| --- Log opened Sun Nov 01 00:00:34 2009 |
| 00:33 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[T-2] |
| 00:37 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[zZzZ] |
| 01:04 | | Namegduf [namegduf@Nightstar-7ec84b32.bath.ac.uk] has quit [Ping timeout: 121 seconds] |
| 01:23 | < gnolam> | Take /that/, Herr von Gerstner! |
| 01:24 | < McMartin> | ? |
| 01:25 | < gnolam> | Finally got my Gerstner swell waves into a decent form for a vertex shader. |
| 01:26 | < gnolam> | It shouldn't have been that difficult, but my initial constants were... a bit off. |
| 01:36 | | AnnoDomini [farkoff@Nightstar-b1deb89f.adsl.tpnet.pl] has quit [[NS] Quit: beer_pump.c:335: robust error in 'traffic_cone()' - 'traffic_light' is not a budgerigar] |
| 01:54 | < dmlandrum> | This sucks. |
| 01:55 | < dmlandrum> | I'm motivated enough to want to play around with getting a pitch follower to drive the cutoff of a resonant filter, but I can't be arsed to sort out how to set up the build system. |
| 01:57 | < dmlandrum> | Screw it. Anyone want a Wave nomination? |
| 01:57 | < KazWork> | Maybe... but I don't have time to play with it yet.heh |
| 01:58 | < dmlandrum> | Well, a nomination just means they'll consider sending you an invite. Go Google! |
| 01:58 | < KazWork> | heh... |
| 01:58 | | Namegduf [namegduf@Nightstar-7ec84b32.bath.ac.uk] has joined #code |
| 01:59 | < KazWork> | I know at least one person on there. Runs MouseGuard rpg game. |
| 01:59 | < dmlandrum> | I just want to get more people on that I know so I can actually play around with the system. |
| 01:59 | < KazWork> | I've never meen into tabletop gaming though. |
| 01:59 | < KazWork> | s/meen/been |
| 02:00 | | * KazWork goes back to writing modbus driver code. :) |
| 02:01 | < KazWork> | Hanging out here it seems like I write the most boring code in the entire channel... all automation and plc stuff... |
| 02:02 | < dmlandrum> | Actually, I might be messing with PLCs in the near future. |
| 02:02 | < KazWork> | Fun... :) |
| 02:02 | < dmlandrum> | I want to modify a reel-to-reel tape deck to change speed dependent on MIDI information coming in. |
| 02:02 | | * KazWork is writing SBC code at the moment. |
| 02:03 | < dmlandrum> | And a PLC might be the solution depending on how the speed regulator of whatever R2R deck I get works. |
| 02:03 | < KazWork> | Hmmm. Interesting. That's more along the lines of rtu, sbc, and microcontroller stuff eh? |
| 02:03 | < KazWork> | PLC's probably overkill, they're rarely cheap. |
| 02:03 | < dmlandrum> | Well, the hope is I end up with a deck that uses a PLL regulator. |
| 02:04 | < dmlandrum> | That I can probably control directly with a PIC or something. |
| 02:04 | < KazWork> | programmable ladder logic? |
| 02:04 | < dmlandrum> | Phase-locked loop. |
| 02:04 | < KazWork> | Ahh. |
| 02:05 | < dmlandrum> | I'm not sure, but I think the PLL basically generates a PWM signal that can control the motor. Being digital, though, the PLL sends out a very accurate signal that has very little drift. |
| 02:06 | < dmlandrum> | I probably just made myself look a rank amateur, but hey, you only live once. |
| 02:06 | < KazWork> | right, so it generates a precise voltage? |
| 02:06 | | * KazWork hasn't worked at that low of level before. |
| 02:06 | < KazWork> | I've used my SBC PWM's before, but... |
| 02:07 | < dmlandrum> | Well, you can control the speed of a motor by changing the width of a pulse wave, I think. |
| 02:07 | < dmlandrum> | It's basically an analog method, because by an amazing coincidence, motors are analog devices. |
| 02:07 | | * Vornicus does battle with the B-tree. wheeee. |
| 02:08 | < KazWork> | Right, PWM. yep, the percentage gives you a specific voltage, etc. |
| 02:08 | < dmlandrum> | Ah, okay. |
| 02:08 | < dmlandrum> | Anyway, the alternative is analog PWM. |
| 02:08 | < KazWork> | SBC analog outputs use PWMs to generate their voltages. |
| 02:09 | < dmlandrum> | So, do you rectify the PWM signal and get a specific voltage out, then? Or is it integrated? |
| 02:09 | < dmlandrum> | I haven't read up this far yet. |
| 02:09 | < dmlandrum> | I figured I'd get my hands on the tape deck first, so I can find out what I need to do. |
| 02:09 | < KazWork> | I think they were using a capacitor to smooth the PWM output to a specific voltage on the sbc I used. |
| 02:10 | < dmlandrum> | Ie, which method of motor speed regulation it uses. |
| 02:10 | < KazWork> | they're particularly cheap models though. |
| 02:10 | < KazWork> | (around $160) |
| 02:10 | < dmlandrum> | I seriously doubt I'll get my hands on a PLL-controlled model for a few bucks on Craigslist. |
| 02:11 | < dmlandrum> | Eh, an SBC is way overkill for my purposes. |
| 02:11 | < dmlandrum> | SBC = single-board computer, right? |
| 02:11 | < KazWork> | Well, they call them SBC's, but they're computers in the same way that an old altair 8080 system is a computer. :) |
| 02:11 | < dmlandrum> | Right... |
| 02:12 | < KazWork> | They run a Z180 derived processor... |
| 02:12 | < KazWork> | most RTUs have even higher end chips, as do PLCs. |
| 02:12 | < dmlandrum> | Yes, WAY overkill for my purposes. An Arduino is probably way overkill for my purposes. |
| 02:15 | < dmlandrum> | A BASIC stamp might be about right. :-) |
| 02:20 | < dmlandrum> | Except Arduinos are cheaper. Damn. |
| 02:28 | < dmlandrum> | Wow, there are 32bit PICs now. |
| 02:31 | < KazWork> | http://www.rabbit.com/products/bl2000/ << 22mhz little thing, easy to debug. |
| 02:31 | < KazWork> | wierd compiler though. |
| 02:31 | < KazWork> | sorry I disappeared, wife wants me to work on a puzzle with her. |
| 02:32 | < dmlandrum> | What kind of prices? |
| 02:33 | < KazWork> | those things also have the ability to do built in web pages and cgi. |
| 02:33 | < KazWork> | they've gone up since I bought them last. without ethernet, $209. |
| 02:33 | < dmlandrum> | Umm, yeah. The Arduino is $40. |
| 02:34 | < dmlandrum> | PICs are about $5 apiece. |
| 02:34 | < KazWork> | I haven't used an arduino yet. |
| 02:34 | < dmlandrum> | I'm not designing anything for industry. |
| 02:34 | < KazWork> | I've used the pics, they're lacking a bit. heh |
| 02:34 | < KazWork> | though, I do have the Pic C18 compiler. |
| 02:34 | < dmlandrum> | I basically just want to hack a motor controller. |
| 02:34 | < KazWork> | the pic can probably do pwm well enough for that. |
| 02:35 | < dmlandrum> | Something PICs and Stamps and ATMegas are made for. |
| 02:35 | < dmlandrum> | Nothing I make will ever be configurable through a web interface. :-P |
| 02:37 | < dmlandrum> | Consider that the R2Rs I'm looking at on Craigslist go for $10 to $25. |
| 02:38 | < KazWork> | i've linked up rabbit and atmel chips before through serial. |
| 02:40 | < KazWork> | http://www.rabbit.com/products/bl4S100/ I've been using these recently.. |
| 02:44 | < dmlandrum> | They look like nice boards if you need that much power. |
| 02:46 | < KazWork> | I'm using them on something where they're underpowered now. heh |
| 02:46 | < dmlandrum> | Right tool for the job, and all that. |
| 02:47 | < KazWork> | though... the source of the application was also underpowered, but at least it had a malloc command. |
| 02:47 | < dmlandrum> | A digitally-controlled PWM chopper isn't rocket science, so something cheap and simple will be fine. |
| 02:48 | < KazWork> | Arduino seems useful. My main complaint about pic is that there's so much ground work to be done setting up the timing circuit, etc. |
| 02:48 | < KazWork> | before you can even do something useful with it. |
| 02:48 | < dmlandrum> | Well, I'm not building this for anyone but me, after all. |
| 02:48 | < KazWork> | yep. |
| 02:49 | < KazWork> | I have an electrical engineer at work to do the timing circuits and the like now, but it still costs more to do that than to just buy a canned solution like the arduino. heh |
| 02:50 | < dmlandrum> | So I take it you specialize in embedded systems programming |
| 02:50 | < dmlandrum> | ? |
| 02:50 | < KazWork> | yeah, I usually don't venture above the RTU level, mostly stick to the SBC's and RTU's, we have other programmers who focus on PLCs. |
| 02:51 | < KazWork> | I know enough plc programming to get by, since it's very close to RTU programming, but it takes a different mindset... |
| 02:51 | < dmlandrum> | I'm in college at the moment, theorerically I'm still majoring in physics, but I got pretty bloodied by the modern physics course (bacially, the quantum physics survey course) which I had to withdraw from/ |
| 02:52 | < dmlandrum> | So I'm thinking about EE instead. Engineering, the field built on the corpses of failed physicists. |
| 02:52 | < KazWork> | (PLC programming tends to be one-shot installations where every interaction has to be studied and verified on paper before you even start, and every interaction verified by the engineer of the project... oy.) |
| 02:52 | < KazWork> | Heh. |
| 02:53 | < KazWork> | I started in computer science, only got into embedded because my first job was that. |
| 02:53 | < dmlandrum> | Well, that's the perception among physicists anyway. As for me, I just don't know if I'm good enough. |
| 02:53 | | Porn_of_the_Dae [fff@Nightstar-e069452e.serverchoice.com] has quit [[NS] Quit: leaving] |
| 02:53 | < dmlandrum> | Or if I care enough. |
| 02:53 | < dmlandrum> | I just like building things, but engineering is the wrong field for that, too. |
| 02:53 | < KazWork> | I want to learn modern physics, just never have the time. |
| 02:54 | < KazWork> | Engineering would let you build your own things, but you wouldn't get to build them at work. |
| 02:54 | < dmlandrum> | Heh |
| 02:54 | < dmlandrum> | I just don't care about the fundamental laws of the universe beyond how they can help me build things. |
| 02:54 | < KazWork> | Right, physics probably isn't right for you then. :) |
| 02:55 | < KazWork> | I really want to build my own Reprap unit... |
| 02:55 | < dmlandrum> | Oh, I covet a Makerbot so much, myself. |
| 02:56 | < KazWork> | http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome << they uploaded a video of their second generation unit making a part. |
| 02:57 | < dmlandrum> | Yeah, Makerbot is basically the reprap commercialized. |
| 03:00 | < KazWork> | I'd love a chip fab added to this, that could make another copy of itself. :) |
| 03:00 | < dmlandrum> | Heh |
| 03:00 | < dmlandrum> | Well, Xerox is about to start selling their printable conductive ink. |
| 03:01 | < dmlandrum> | That will make home electronics fabbing a good bit easier. |
| 03:01 | < KazWork> | that'll at least get us to printable circuit boards, just add chips. |
| 03:03 | < dmlandrum> | I read somewhere about printable chip fabbing, but I think that's a ways off yet. I think that was Xerox, too. |
| 03:04 | < dmlandrum> | But it's not "make your own MPU" chip printing, more like "make a 555 timer." |
| 03:04 | < KazWork> | yeah... |
| 03:04 | < dmlandrum> | Still, I could see the advantages in making my own analog ICs. |
| 03:05 | < dmlandrum> | You know why I still want to stay in physics, even though I'm a better fit for engineering? |
| 03:05 | < dmlandrum> | It's a different type of problem-solving skill. |
| 03:06 | < KazWork> | Nod. |
| 03:06 | < dmlandrum> | One I think would be of great advantage to me, if I can slog through the rest of it. |
| 03:08 | < dmlandrum> | I just have no patience for solving already-solved problems. |
| 03:11 | < dmlandrum> | That, and I was disheartened by the thesis projects being displayed by the engineering students one year. |
| 03:12 | < dmlandrum> | Apparently, something I can throw together in a weekend counts as a thesis project these days. |
| 03:14 | < dmlandrum> | I exaggerate a little, but not that much. |
| 03:17 | | gnolam [lenin@Nightstar-38637aa0.priv.bahnhof.se] has quit [[NS] Quit: Z?] |
| 03:19 | | Attilla [The.Attilla@FBC920.398CA6.7725E7.C5C5C6] has quit [[NS] Quit: ] |
| 03:34 | < KazWork> | Reminds me of when I was trying to teach second year csci students how to use a for loop... |
| 03:35 | < KazWork> | They could barely grok the concept of a before the for loop, during the for loop, after the for loop. they kept doing things inside the loop that were for initializing it... |
| 03:36 | < KazWork> | It happened to me a few dozen times in the 5 years I worked at the college lab... |
| 03:37 | < KazWork> | Debugging code where the author just had no concept of how control structures worked. |
| 03:38 | | * Alek headdesks |
| 03:38 | < Alek> | ow. |
| 03:38 | < Alek> | I got those concepts back in BASIC. |
| 03:38 | < Alek> | self-taught at that. |
| 03:38 | < KazWork> | yeah. I learned them in 6th grade with Pascal. |
| 03:39 | < Alek> | I was self-taught in... middle and high school. |
| 03:39 | < Alek> | came late to computers. -_- |
| 03:39 | < KazWork> | I knew for loops before that, but I was using basic where the only real control structures were goto, gosub, and for with line numbers. |
| 03:39 | < Alek> | I had a 286 until 99. |
| 03:39 | < KazWork> | Ahh. |
| 03:39 | < KazWork> | I replaced my 286 sometime around 93. |
| 03:39 | < Alek> | :P |
| 03:39 | < Alek> | I GOT it in like... 95. |
| 03:40 | < KazWork> | I was using Atari's and other line-number basic things from 85 till about 91. |
| 03:40 | < McMartin> | Commodore BASIC was good practice for doing bare-metal assembler, but not much good for anything else. |
| 03:40 | < Alek> | learned on TRS Model III, 2 different flavors of BASIC, small stuff. |
| 03:40 | < Alek> | then a little on an Apple ][c |
| 03:41 | < Alek> | then finally got the 286. |
| 03:41 | < KazWork> | The first thing I did with Turbo Pascal 4 was unlearn the prior 6 years of basic. :) |
| 03:41 | < Alek> | and I started in 93 or so. >_> |
| 03:41 | < Alek> | when I was in middle school. |
| 03:41 | < Alek> | :P |
| 03:41 | < KazWork> | It took me about a year to stop using Goto in Pascal... |
| 03:41 | < Alek> | lol |
| 03:42 | < Alek> | goto, while not a good programming habit, was a good first step towards OO code. |
| 03:42 | < Alek> | towards modular code, even. |
| 03:42 | < McMartin> | goto is for exceptions! |
| 03:42 | < KazWork> | I didn't get into OO until about 93/94. When I picked up Turbo Pascal 6. |
| 03:42 | < McMartin> | At least until you get real exceptions. |
| 03:43 | < Alek> | :P |
| 03:43 | < KazWork> | "ON ERROR GOTO 50" |
| 03:43 | < McMartin> | Not that kind |
| 03:43 | < McMartin> | The kind where you're like six IF statements deep, there's more to come, and you just need to hit the end of the function now. |
| 03:44 | < McMartin> | (This would be for gotos in Pascal) |
| 03:44 | < KazWork> | nod. |
| 03:44 | < KazWork> | I think thats what I was using it for. I ultimately figured out ways of dropping out of them without gotos. |
| 03:44 | | * McMartin doesn't trust a coder until they've done something procedural, something object-oriented, and something lambda-based. |
| 03:45 | < KazWork> | Took me until my second year of college to get into lambda-based, then I didn't get too far into it. |
| 03:45 | < KazWork> | I need to play with common lisp more. |
| 03:45 | < McMartin> | You'll get more help from here with an ML dialect or with Haskell, tbh |
| 03:45 | < KazWork> | I was thinking of dabbling in Ocaml. |
| 03:46 | < KazWork> | or erlang. |
| 03:46 | < McMartin> | Ocaml is ugly from a code standpoint but produces insanely good code. |
| 03:46 | < McMartin> | Er, good binaries. |
| 03:46 | < KazWork> | yeah. |
| 03:46 | < McMartin> | source code is ugly; binary is a bit large but runs very very fast |
| 03:46 | < KazWork> | That's what i've heard. |
| 03:46 | < KazWork> | When it has to be efficient, use ocaml. heh |
| 03:47 | | * KazWork ponders Ocaml for SPE. |
| 03:47 | < McMartin> | (Really, when it has to be efficient, use C and know how to bring lambdas and/or objects down into it) |
| 03:47 | < KazWork> | code would probably be too big. |
| 03:48 | < Alek> | what's lambda-based? I haven't seen that mentioned before. |
| 03:48 | < KazWork> | SPEs... the data and code have to fit in 256k of ram. |
| 03:48 | < KazWork> | Alek: basically, lisp-like. |
| 03:48 | < McMartin> | Alek: the real word is "functional" |
| 03:48 | < Alek> | er. |
| 03:48 | < KazWork> | but a bit bigger category. |
| 03:48 | < Alek> | haven't done lisp yet. |
| 03:48 | < Alek> | either. |
| 03:48 | < KazWork> | It's fun to wrap your brain around. :) |
| 03:48 | < MyCatVerbs> | Alek: Have you heard of first-class functions? |
| 03:48 | < McMartin> | Languages in which functions and the context in which they are defined are a basic data type |
| 03:49 | < Alek> | just.... BASIC, COBOL, C(++), and starting on Java, Python, and Perl. |
| 03:49 | < Alek> | no, MCV. |
| 03:49 | < McMartin> | The latter is important to distinguish them from mere function pointers. |
| 03:49 | < McMartin> | OO and functional are in a vague sense "equivalent", in that you can use classes in a way to work like functional closures, and functional closures can be structured to behave like objects. |
| 03:50 | < McMartin> | But the mental processes for working with them are very different. |
| 03:50 | < Alek> | hm. |
| 03:50 | < McMartin> | A trivial example |
| 03:50 | < Alek> | I'm gonna need to see code samples to understand, I suspect. >_> |
| 03:51 | < McMartin> | Take a class whose constructor takes an integer argument, and which has a method that adds that constructed integer to its own argument: |
| 03:51 | < McMartin> | In shorthand Java: |
| 03:51 | < McMartin> | class Adder { public Adder(int i) {this.i = i;} private int i; public add(int x) { return i + x; } } |
| 03:52 | < McMartin> | Not a hugely exciting class, but it fits on a line of IRC. |
| 03:52 | < dmlandrum> | In other news, I'm meeting up with Dale Dougherty from Make Magazine about a project I've been working on. Not a physical project, but a... I guess you could say, a social one. |
| 03:52 | | * Alek hasn't gotten enough into Java to get it, yet. >_< |
| 03:52 | < Alek> | sorry. |
| 03:52 | < McMartin> | That should match C++ as well. |
| 03:52 | < McMartin> | Just that the "public" and "private" bits modify each thing on its own in Java. |
| 03:53 | < Alek> | hm. |
| 03:53 | < McMartin> | Oh, and this.i instead of this->i |
| 03:53 | < McMartin> | (and that should be public int add(int x) { return i + x; }) |
| 03:53 | < McMartin> | (that's a bug~) |
| 03:54 | < McMartin> | Anyway. Scheme you'd instead define something like this: (define (make-adder i) (lambda (x) (+ i x))) |
| 03:54 | < McMartin> | This is a function that, given some integer, returns a function that will add that integer to its argument. |
| 03:54 | < McMartin> | So you can go (define p (make-adder 3)) and (define q (make-adder 10))... |
| 03:55 | < McMartin> | And then (p 2) will yield 5 and (q 7) will yield 17. |
| 03:55 | < McMartin> | (For those of you following along who know Common LISP but not Scheme, Scheme collapses function and variable name spaces into one place, so there's no split between defun and define) |
| 03:56 | < Alek> | hmm. |
| 03:56 | < McMartin> | The thing that's interesting about this is that when p and q are called, they're referring to a variable that was bound previously in a call to make-adder, which was never actually given a specific location. |
| 03:57 | < McMartin> | That particular trick is why it's more powerful than C's function pointers; the operating environment at the time is part of the space. |
| 03:57 | < McMartin> | You can simulate that with an object. |
| 03:57 | < McMartin> | (the other direction is rather messier, and you shouldn't worry about it for now. But this goes both ways.) |
| 03:58 | < McMartin> | All that said, the best way to pick up Scheme and a lot of the ways to brainbend with it is to work through SICP, which is available in full online. |
| 03:59 | < McMartin> | http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html |
| 03:59 | < McMartin> | This was my first-semester CS textbook. |
| 03:59 | < Alek> | dude. |
| 04:00 | < Alek> | I really wish I hadn't decided to go to DeVry. |
| 04:00 | < Alek> | I should have waited a year and applied to a good college. |
| 04:00 | < Alek> | actually. I should have done my homework in HS, so I could have had that National Honors scholarship. and applied earlier, so I could have had a chance at a college right away. |
| 04:00 | < Alek> | bah. |
| 04:00 | < Alek> | regrets. |
| 04:01 | < KazWork> | heh. that's a better book than what we had to work with. |
| 04:02 | < KazWork> | Our final project the first year was a tic-tac-toe ai. That college was a little useless. |
| 04:02 | < Alek> | *shakesfist at DeVry* COBOL??? |
| 04:02 | < KazWork> | (State college.) |
| 04:02 | < KazWork> | Heh. I took cobol, just to see how antiquated it really was. |
| 04:02 | < McMartin> | I read an old manual for it once. |
| 04:02 | < McMartin> | I can easily see why it would have been necessary fifty years ago. |
| 04:02 | < Alek> | well, yeah. |
| 04:02 | < KazWork> | That was the only CIS-Business course I took. |
| 04:02 | < Alek> | sadly, it's STILL in use. |
| 04:03 | < McMartin> | Yeah |
| 04:03 | < dmlandrum> | Back when GOTOs rocked. |
| 04:03 | < McMartin> | Which means that it's still more practical than Scheme~ |
| 04:03 | < McMartin> | Scheme is AFAIK only used for instructional purposes, and is about as small as you can make a language while still letting you mess around with basically everything. |
| 04:03 | < KazWork> | as far as practical goes, Up until last year I didn't use a single programming language in real life and at college. |
| 04:03 | < McMartin> | It also has the control flow command "call with current continuation" which is straight from R'lyeh itself. |
| 04:04 | < McMartin> | I know how to use it to do a couple of things... |
| 04:04 | < McMartin> | ... or did, anyway... |
| 04:04 | < KazWork> | They taught us C++, Java, Delphi, Common Lisp, and Perl. I used Dynamic C, C#, Ladder logic, Function Block, and Python in my job. |
| 04:04 | < McMartin> | ... but at know point have I ever fully understood what it actually does, concisely, in a way that makes any sense at all |
| 04:04 | | Syloqs-AFH [Syloq@NetworkAdministrator.Nightstar.Net] has quit [Connection reset by peer] |
| 04:05 | < McMartin> | (It calls the function you give it, and that function then is given as its argument a "function" that represents "the rest of the program". You can do exceptions with it and God Knows What Else.) |
| 04:05 | < KazWork> | Only late last year I started a project in C++... |
| 04:06 | < KazWork> | That does seem like an function based way of doing exceptions. |
| 04:07 | < Alek> | I've also branched into XHTML and JS. |
| 04:07 | < Alek> | I aim high. |
| 04:07 | < Alek> | I hope to, eventually, be able to do every job in the CS field. |
| 04:08 | < Alek> | or at least most. |
| 04:08 | < KazWork> | http://store.makerbot.com/featured-products/sanguino-v1-0-kit.html << I should pick one up... |
| 04:08 | < Alek> | I'll probably eventually teach. over the internet. >_> |
| 04:10 | < Alek> | I want that... |
| 04:10 | < Alek> | I need to solder moar. |
| 04:10 | < Alek> | took Electronics too. XD |
| 04:12 | < KazWork> | http://store.makerbot.com/sanguino-breakout-shield-v1-0-kit.html << 6 pwm outputs when paired with a sanguino. That'd probably do what he wants. |
| 04:35 | < dmlandrum> | You mean me? |
| 05:09 | < KazWork> | maybe. |
| 05:09 | < KazWork> | that's just to make it easier to access though. I suppose wirewrap and other things would work instead of screw terminals. |
| 05:16 | < dmlandrum> | Well, first I need a reel-to-reel deck to modify. |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | rhamph@tetromino:~/src/openttd/cargodist$ git checkout origin/cargodist |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | warning: refname 'origin/cargodist' is ambiguous. |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | Switched to branch "origin/cargodist" |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | rhamph@tetromino:~/src/openttd/cargodist$ git branch -a |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | cargodist |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | * origin/cargodist |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | origin/HEAD |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | origin/capacities |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | origin/cargodist |
| 05:39 | < Rhamphoryncus> | git hates me |
| 06:36 | | Derakon is now known as Derakon[AFK] |
| 07:18 | < ToxicFrog> | \o/ openttd |
| 07:21 | | Kazriko [kaz@Nightstar-e09690fa.client.bresnan.net] has joined #code |
| 07:24 | | * Vornicus gets mad at openttd because he really, really doesn't like fucking with station designs. the rrt series all you do is say "there's a station here, and a station there, and some track between them" and you're set. Then he can concentrate on stuff like managing his economy. |
| 07:25 | < KazWork> | You must not care for ship designing in gc2 either... "Here's a ship. there's an enemy. Go blow it up." :) |
| 07:25 | | * Kazriko goes back on his desktop... |
| 07:25 | < Kazriko> | the redraw rate is dragging. wonder why. |
| 07:26 | < Vornicus> | Heh. Actually no, I don't do much of the gc2 ship designy stuff. "make for me... a ship that shoots missiles and has shields!" is about as far as I get. |
| 07:27 | < Kazriko> | nod. I like fine-tuning them a bit, Faster ship with fewer guns for some roles, slower ship with lots of defenses for some roles, etc. |
| 07:27 | < Vornicus> | I certainly don't load the damn thing down with gribblies. |
| 07:28 | < Kazriko> | nod. not much reason to usually. |
| 07:28 | < Vornicus> | THough I also get kind of mad at the gun screen. |
| 07:28 | < Kazriko> | (I found that against the dread lords in some chapters, it's essential to have a handful of reeeally fast ships to take out their colony ships whenever possible. |
| 07:29 | < Vornicus> | There's 20 or so types of mass driver, and finding the most recent one is either "remember what it's called" or "find the one that has the best numbers" instead of "it's at the top, of course" |
| 07:29 | < Kazriko> | Well, I think it sorts them by the amount of damage they do, even if it's not the optimal one... |
| 07:30 | < Kazriko> | i can't remember though. |
| 07:30 | < Kazriko> | man, what is up with the redraws on xchat... |
| 07:31 | < Kazriko> | *sigh* i really need to get Enneschat done... |
| 07:31 | < Kazriko> | bah. |
| 07:31 | < Kazriko> | mozilla redraws are equally horrendous. |
| 07:33 | < Vornicus> | Nope. at least in the unexpanded version, weapons and armor are sorted... alphabetically. |
| 07:34 | < Kazriko> | strange. I don't remember it like that at all... |
| 07:34 | | * Kazriko launches it... |
| 07:34 | < Vornicus> | Also the gribblies, if you really want them, are mostly unnamed and their pictures are not quite descriptive, and you can get gimbal lock when rotating them so certain orientations that should be possible are not. |
| 07:34 | < McMartin> | Rar, Mozilla =( |
| 07:35 | < Kazriko> | McMartin, I call firefox mozilla... heh |
| 07:35 | < McMartin> | FF too, tbh |
| 07:35 | < McMartin> | FF regularly brings my linux box to its knees |
| 07:35 | < Kazriko> | it can do that... |
| 07:35 | < Kazriko> | I'm not sure what good alternatives there are, opera? heh |
| 07:36 | < McMartin> | "Chrome on the XP machine, Safari on the Mac" |
| 07:36 | | * McMartin does the tri-platform-means-every-OS-always-handy dance. |
| 07:36 | | * Vornicus finds chrome to have /too much/ browser-window space. |
| 07:36 | < Kazriko> | i think the problem though is that ubuntu thinks fglrx is runnning when it isn't. |
| 07:36 | < Kazriko> | i use chrome, firefox, and opera alternately on windows... |
| 07:36 | < Kazriko> | and IE for netflix and mssql reports only... |
| 07:37 | < Kazriko> | i still use FF2.0 on linux... |
| 07:37 | < McMartin> | I had to use IE8 to get some legacy stuff working right on Win7, but once the plugins were installed, FF worked fine |
| 07:38 | < Kazriko> | I don't have a mac... |
| 07:38 | < Kazriko> | too expensive. :p |
| 07:38 | < Kazriko> | and I can't build my own with them. |
| 07:39 | < Kazriko> | hah. Ubuntu thinks i have an nvidia card... |
| 07:41 | < Kazriko> | Vornicus, I just started an accelerated start game in a non-expanded galciv2, and the weapons are sorted by how much damage they do first.. |
| 07:42 | < Kazriko> | stinger 3, stinger 2, stinger 1, then laser 5, laser 4, laser 3, railgun 4, laser 2, railgun 3... |
| 07:42 | < Kazriko> | first by damage, then by size it appears. |
| 07:42 | < Vornicus> | very strange. In mine it's always been by name or soemthing silly like that. |
| 07:43 | < Kazriko> | i have kept it updated though. |
| 07:43 | < Vornicus> | Indeed it was always laser 1 laser 2 laser 3 laser 4 laser 5. |
| 07:43 | < Vornicus> | Last time I plaed was a couple months ago? |
| 07:43 | < Kazriko> | latest version? wierd. |
| 07:43 | < Vornicus> | and freshly downloaded too. |
| 07:43 | < Kazriko> | i have the expansions, but when you start you select which one you use... |
| 07:43 | < Kazriko> | and the expansions don't modify the original code. |
| 07:44 | < Vornicus> | Meanwhile I never once managed to live long enough to build a force that could take out the dregnin homeworld in the first level with dread lords in it. |
| 07:46 | < Vornicus> | Every time the dread lords show up either before my fleet is launched, or after it's launched and step on /it/ instead of the ablative planets. |
| 07:46 | < Kazriko> | have you thought to report it as a bug? or maybe you hit some hotkey... |
| 07:46 | < Kazriko> | did you swing southward? |
| 07:47 | < Vornicus> | If I do that they kill me before they get there. |
| 07:47 | < Kazriko> | I don't recall what I did, but i remember barely getting there. |
| 07:48 | | * Kazriko removes and reinstalls fglrx= |
| 07:48 | < Vornicus> | THe problem is really any fleet powerful enough to take on the dregnin homeworld is too slow or too costly to get there in time. |
| 07:49 | < Kazriko> | What difficulty level did you put it on? you might try restarting the map at a lower difficulty level. |
| 07:49 | < Vornicus> | "beginner" |
| 07:49 | < Kazriko> | I think there's a level below that. :) |
| 07:49 | < Vornicus> | There are I think three, starting with "cakewalk" |
| 07:50 | < McMartin> | Strikers 1945's lowest difficulty level was "monkey" |
| 07:50 | < Kazriko> | I used it for the later level where you had to defeat 4 dread lord planets. |
| 07:51 | < Vornicus> | It doesn't much help, either, that I am traditionally a turtle in 4x games. |
| 07:51 | < McMartin> | We seriously need to get you SotS at some point. |
| 07:52 | < Vornicus> | TO the extent that 90% of my wins are tech wins. |
| 07:52 | < McMartin> | As the Hivers are the ultimate turtles and a continuous expansionary juggernaut at the same time |
| 07:52 | | ErikMesoy|sleep is now known as ErikMesoy[church] |
| 07:53 | | * Kazriko tends to turn off cultural victories, and intentionally tank his tech before he reaches a tech victory, so that he can get a conquest victory through cultural means. |
| 07:53 | | * Kazriko is really aggressive on expansion and technology, funds the former with selling the latter. :) |
| 07:54 | < Kazriko> | but once all the worlds are gobbled up, I play the moral highground and only do defensive wars. :) |
| 07:54 | < Vornicus> | (the other 10% are me turning off tech wins, and using my army of tanks to take on the enemy archers.) |
| 07:55 | | * Kazriko enjoys allying with minor races and then going to war defending them... |
| 07:56 | < Vornicus> | okay I need bed. |
| 07:56 | < Kazriko> | that strategy has been mostly crippled in GalCiv2, since the minor races are so darn buggy. |
| 07:56 | < Kazriko> | g'night. |
| 07:56 | < Vornicus> | nini |
| 07:56 | | * Kazriko reboots his linux box again. |
| 07:56 | | Kazriko [kaz@Nightstar-e09690fa.client.bresnan.net] has quit [Connection closed] |
| 08:00 | | Kazriko [kaz@Nightstar-e09690fa.client.bresnan.net] has joined #code |
| 08:01 | | Vornicus is now known as Vornicus-Latens |
| 08:41 | | AnnoDomini [farkoff@Nightstar-b1deb89f.adsl.tpnet.pl] has joined #code |
| 09:38 | | Rhamphoryncus [rhamph@Nightstar-a62bd960.abhsia.telus.net] has quit [Client exited] |
| 11:00 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 11:10 | | AnnoDomini [farkoff@Nightstar-b1deb89f.adsl.tpnet.pl] has quit [Ping timeout: 121 seconds] |
| 11:16 | | AnnoDomini [farkoff@Nightstar-f95bec25.adsl.tpnet.pl] has joined #code |
| 12:49 | | Attilla [The.Attilla@FBC920.398CA6.7725E7.C5C5C6] has joined #code |
| 13:05 | | ErikMesoy[church] is now known as ErikMesoy |
| 14:38 | | gnolam [lenin@Nightstar-38637aa0.priv.bahnhof.se] has joined #code |
| 15:06 | | Syloqs_AFH [Syloq@NetworkAdministrator.Nightstar.Net] has joined #code |
| 15:07 | | Syloqs_AFH is now known as Syloqs-AFH |
| 16:09 | | Rhamphoryncus [rhamph@Nightstar-a62bd960.abhsia.telus.net] has joined #code |
| 16:46 | | Derakon[AFK] is now known as Derakon |
| 17:21 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[afk] |
| 18:49 | | You're now known as TheWatcher |
| 18:53 | < gnolam> | There. The ocean is now infinite. |
| 18:54 | < gnolam> | Now, time to make the waveforms stop looking like crap. |
| 18:58 | < MyCatVerbs> | gnolam: So you're the bloke as stopped Thor from drinking the whole dman thing. |
| 18:58 | < MyCatVerbs> | s/dman/damn/ |
| 18:59 | < gnolam> | That wasn't me. He managed to drink enough to lower the water level. |
| 18:59 | < gnolam> | Inifinity minus x is still infinity. |
| 19:01 | < MyCatVerbs> | Substitute infinity for x and you get NaN instead, a much more interesting value. :) |
| 19:04 | | * gnolam slaps MyCatVerbs around a bit with a padded Aleph. |
| 19:15 | < McMartin> | FROG BLAST THE VENT CORE |
| 19:19 | < dmlandrum> | ... |
| 19:19 | < dmlandrum> | For great justice? |
| 19:20 | < McMartin> | This was actually more a reference to a certain series that used "Infinity" as one of its sequel numbers |
| 19:20 | < McMartin> | Thus forcing the next game made involving it to be called "Aleph One". |
| 19:26 | < dmlandrum> | Heh |
| 19:28 | < Vornicus-Latens> | (technically Aleph One is the open source version of the game engine.) |
| 20:06 | < MyCatVerbs> | Marathon? |
| 20:10 | < McMartin> | The same |
| 20:10 | < McMartin> | Which I still have to play. ;_; |
| 20:10 | < McMartin> | My game stack is way, way too tall. |
| 20:10 | < Namegduf> | The M2 theme music won't get out of my head now. |
| 20:11 | < SmithKurosaki> | (technically Aleph One is the open source version of the game engine.) - THis |
| 20:11 | < McMartin> | Fair enough |
| 20:11 | < SmithKurosaki> | And I think that they are releasing an upgraded engine sometme, ask TF |
| 20:12 | < McMartin> | Well, until I get Astatine up and running, I probably wouldn't be able to *run* an upgraded engine, so... |
| 20:12 | < SmithKurosaki> | (He knows a lot more about marathon than me |
| 20:17 | | SmithKurosaki [Smith@Nightstar-683a7925.dsl.teksavvy.com] has quit [Connection closed] |
| 20:17 | | SmithKurosaki [Smith@Nightstar-683a7925.dsl.teksavvy.com] has joined #code |
| 20:34 | < ToxicFrog> | I haven't heard anything about an overhaul to A1. |
| 20:35 | < ToxicFrog> | Although I would love to see a true-perspective render mode for it someday. |
| 20:35 | < SmithKurosaki> | Oh, sorry |
| 20:35 | < SmithKurosaki> | I though there was going to be an A2 or similar though |
| 20:35 | < SmithKurosaki> | o.0 |
| 20:36 | < SmithKurosaki> | (As in undistorted 2.5d type thing?) |
| 20:39 | < Vornicus-Latens> | Actually the shearing up-down look means that it actually looks like it makes sense when you look down at things. The true-3d with 2d-sprites in SS1 made for some damn strange things. |
| 20:39 | < SmithKurosaki> | I have seen very littlee footage from ss1 or 2 :(] |
| 20:45 | < Vornicus-Latens> | SS1 was, from my perspective, an amazing technical feat. And then they did amazing plotly stuff on top of it. |
| 20:47 | < SmithKurosaki> | Yea, there was something it had that no one else did for a years... |
| 20:48 | < ToxicFrog> | Vornicus-Latens: I disagree on the "makes sense" part; if you look up or down too far, the shear is really visually disturbing. |
| 20:48 | < ToxicFrog> | And you can't look up or down very far to begin with, either. |
| 20:48 | < ToxicFrog> | The SS1 approach results in odd-looking sprites at extreme angles, but at no point do you find yourself gazing at Lovecraftian geometries of madness. |
| 20:49 | < SmithKurosaki> | TF: Maybe they did that on purpose? |
| 20:50 | < ToxicFrog> | SmithKurosaki: which they and that? |
| 20:51 | < Vornicus-Latens> | The odd-looking sprites at extreme angles meant that some places you had to aim significantly far from the apparent center of mass. |
| 20:51 | < ToxicFrog> | Aah. Yes. |
| 20:51 | < Vornicus-Latens> | the shear in marathon means you don't have to. |
| 20:51 | < ToxicFrog> | Because the hitbox remained a 3d shape, and didn't rotate physically as the sprite rotated visually. |
| 20:51 | < ToxicFrog> | Yes, but the shear in Marathon is unpleasant |
| 20:52 | < SmithKurosaki> | Maybe the game devs made the graphics disturbing on purpose |
| 20:52 | < Vornicus-Latens> | I never found it so, but then Marathon was in fact my first FPS. |
| 20:52 | < ToxicFrog> | And also means it's impossible to engage or even see things in a, what, 60 degree cone above and below you? |
| 20:52 | < ToxicFrog> | SmithKurosaki: no,it's an inherent limitation of 2.5d rendering techniques |
| 20:52 | < SmithKurosaki> | Ahh |
| 20:52 | < ToxicFrog> | My first was...Descent? |
| 20:53 | < ToxicFrog> | Might have been Quake 2, but I think it was Descent: Destination Saturn, the OEM demo. |
| 20:53 | < Vornicus-Latens> | After Marathon I think my next one was Quake, and then Descent for PS1, and then Half-Life. |
| 20:55 | < ToxicFrog> | Anyways, my issue with 2.5d is that at significant vertical angles it becomes borderline nauseating, and without significant vertical angles you're crippled. |
| 20:55 | < Vornicus-Latens> | Somebody should remake the quake models so they have interpolations. |
| 20:56 | < ToxicFrog> | And A1 is still using it >.< |
| 20:56 | < Vornicus-Latens> | WEll. 'less you're playing Wolf3d. |
| 20:56 | < ToxicFrog> | (EDuke32 added a true-3d rendering mode a while ago, and fixed the sprite/hitbox issue at the same time by creating 3d model equivalents for all of the sprites) |
| 20:56 | < SmithKurosaki> | TF: What now? What does 2.5 have to have the vert angles? |
| 20:57 | < SmithKurosaki> | (I really suck at teeling between old 3d and 2.5d |
| 20:57 | < ToxicFrog> | SmithKurosaki: as you look up and down in a 2.5d engine, things get progressively more distorted. |
| 20:57 | < SmithKurosaki> | Hmm |
| 20:57 | < ToxicFrog> | Because it's not actually rotating your viewpoint so much as it is sliding the world up or down |
| 20:57 | < Vornicus-Latens> | SmithKurosaki: open a full3d game like Half-Life or something and look up, you'll see that vertical edges will no longer be straight vertical on the screen. |
| 20:58 | < Vornicus-Latens> | In a 2.5d game like Marathon, vertical edges will always be perfectly vertical. |
| 20:59 | < SmithKurosaki> | Oh |
| 20:59 | < Vornicus-Latens> | The simplest way to describe it is that in 2.5d, instead of looking up and down, what you're doing is standing behind a window and crouching to look up. |
| 20:59 | < SmithKurosaki> | Cool |
| 20:59 | < SmithKurosaki> | behind a window? |
| 21:00 | < Vornicus-Latens> | Yeah. The window is the screen; what it does is essentially make it so that to look up you have to crouch, and now you can see what's above the window instead of straight out of it. |
| 21:00 | < Vornicus-Latens> | If I had enough 3d chops I'd show you exactly, but it's tricky! |
| 21:01 | < SmithKurosaki> | Hmm |
| 21:01 | < McMartin> | There are tricks you can do with cameras to simulate it. |
| 21:02 | < ToxicFrog> | Which A1, regrettably, is not doing ;.; |
| 21:02 | < SmithKurosaki> | I am an obvious graphics whore, I love my pretty graphics, but when it comes to 2.5 and early 3d, I really can't tell the diff, I will have to see this for myself |
| 21:02 | < ToxicFrog> | (AFAICT they've implemented a trapezoid renderer on top of OGL primitives) |
| 21:03 | < Vornicus-Latens> | I'm seeing if I have a 3d nerd who can do this for demonstration purposes. |
| 21:04 | < SmithKurosaki> | Sweet :) |
| 21:06 | | Vornicus-Latens is now known as Finerty |
| 21:07 | < McMartin> | By "cameras", I meant "physical picture-taking aparatus", as it is often used to take pictures of buildings without higher floors being distorted. |
| 21:07 | < SmithKurosaki> | Heh |
| 21:08 | < Finerty> | THough it'd also help if I had a 3d level in a format I can easily render floating around. |
| 21:08 | < SmithKurosaki> | (Gaming Vorn?) |
| 21:08 | < Finerty> | (quite) |
| 21:08 | < SmithKurosaki> | (enjoy) |
| 21:08 | < Finerty> | (I shall) |
| 21:26 | < gnolam> | McMartin: Ah, tilt shift lenses (perspective control, in Nikon speak). |
| 21:26 | < gnolam> | I almost got me one of those last week, but someone overbid me. Rargh. |
| 21:31 | | * Finerty was trying to remember the name of the thing. |
| 21:32 | < Finerty> | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bashford-views.jpg <--- here we go. |
| 21:47 | < McMartin> | Yay, people who actually know things as opposed to having seen it in a magazine once~ |
| 21:47 | < Finerty> | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_control_lens <--- indeed this page even has a nice image of the "window" thing at the top. |
| 21:48 | < Finerty> | McM: whut? |
| 21:50 | < McMartin> | My knowledge of this comes from having seen some pictures like the page you just linked, in some magazine, once, a long time ago. |
| 21:50 | < SmithKurosaki> | Cool |
| 21:50 | | * McMartin has a vast, trivia-filled, but completely randomly-accessed memory. |
| 21:50 | < ErikMesoy> | I'm on my way to having one of those. Is it any good? |
| 21:51 | < SmithKurosaki> | Ehn, it would be nice if it wasn't so random, but as is, it is occasionally useful |
| 21:51 | < McMartin> | Great for parlor tricks, sometimes handy if you keep where the right real reference is swapped in |
| 21:51 | < McMartin> | Otherwise, it's kind of a wash |
| 21:52 | < SmithKurosaki> | YEA |
| 22:08 | <@TheWatcher> | Heheh |
| 22:35 | | * Finerty did not know that TFB did Archon... |
| 22:40 | < gnolam> | s/did/did a remake of |
| 22:41 | < McMartin> | "Starcon" is in fact a pun on "Archon". |
| 22:42 | < gnolam> | Huh. |
| 22:42 | | * gnolam realizes he hasn't played Archon since on the Vic-20. |
| 22:42 | < Finerty> | No, Reiche himself was involved. |
| 23:11 | | ErikMesoy is now known as ErikMesoy|sleep |
| 23:37 | | Rhamphoryncus [rhamph@Nightstar-a62bd960.abhsia.telus.net] has quit [Client exited] |
| 23:42 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[t-2] |
| 23:46 | | You're now known as TheWatcher[zZzZ] |
| --- Log closed Mon Nov 02 00:00:48 2009 |