Wrestling the Beast

No updates in the last week, courtesy of Windows Vista Home Premium edition. A friend asked me to install some stuff and hook up some printers, soundcards that kind of thing to his new HP unit which came with Vista installed. I was excited, I admit, but soon after the loading was done, the feeling of joy left quicker than a shithouse rat down a drain.

So this friend is an architect, artist, lecturer, bohemian type fellow and is more about getting the work done, and not worrying about how to install this, where are the drivers for that, and so on. So we grab his Photoshop and AutoCAD to install, only to be told to that AutoCAD 2008 at a mere 5000 earth monies, and Adobe CS2 at 1000 more, will be all you need to get you on your merry way. So if you happen to run a firm of 40 architects or engineers you will need to spend a quarter of a million upgrading to Vista. Wheres me old BitTorrent client I wondered……
Oh and that gets me onto another thing. Piracy. Since so many pieces of software have to be updated to run on vista, I’ll bet you a pint that this will be the year of the most downloads for pirates since Henry Morgan and his swashbuckling kin ruled the waves.

Currently I run a 3.65 Ghz Prescott Chip with 3Gigs of ram and a very trimmed startup list on XP. When she’s on, she idles at 340 odd megs of system ram occupied. My friends system, with the E6300 chip and 2 gigs of ram on vista runs at about 730 megs of system ram occupied whilst idling. That alone is friggin scarier than waking up with Osama in the bed beside you.

Now imagine having to reinstall all the maps for the mod and theres quite a few. Each time a new installation window that requires you to hit the “next” button pops up, it does it in the most pointless graphical gymnastics ever seen – by fading in and out while zooming at the same time, an effect that last looked funky in the Streets of San Francisco starring Michael Douglas and Knobbeldy Nose all those years ago. This gets extremely annoying after a while yet not as pointless as all those “Can your computer have permission to open this unknown piece of software called Microsoft Update?” And does this stupid interface remember your choice should you try to run it again? Not on your nelly. Mercifully you can knock this stuff off, but its not immediately clear, as the control panel has about forty odd icons, that now split every simple function into painful cheery sugar coated gaudy icons.

However, this is a benchmark in some ways similar to Windows 95, only that was software driven, and this is hardware driven. DX10 graphics cards etc. will only run on Vista. Drivers for this new hardware are so dodgy they make greasy haired second hand car dealers look like choirboys. Games, Test Drive Unlimited for instance, is so unsure of what DirectX platform it should honour, gets around this by being laggy and stuttery on nearly all platforms, even with high end systems. HP and Creative, two major companies who have a software autoupdate system, have some charming ways of telling you that your hard paid for hardware will not have a dedicated driver until Q3 this year. What a sloppy operation. So by years end the benchmark in the upgrade stakes will be the have-nots and the wish-they-hadn’t. Get saving now.

Administrator: The person with the rights to access all the files on the machine and funny enough, also the person that paid for the machine and Operation System? Not on Vista. Even if it reassures you that you are the Admin, its in name only. Changing the rights to allow yourself complete control over files in hidden directories is only available by going into the registry and bashing a few keys and dwords. Oh, and this isn’t possible on Home Premium, unless I upgrade as was suggested by the frustrating pop-up mother.

I get the feeling that there must be no power users working in R&D in Microsoft, no people with multiple screens, old printers or deadlines to hit. If there were, they would suddenly realise that patronising their customers with this “recipe collecting” approach to computing and organising their data is painful in the extreme. We don’t get into work and fool with email for an hour and play with the internet and go home. We are the people that treat regedit as a challenging playground, the internet as a means to an end, getting file formats to open in multiple apps backwards is an ease, and generally being very efficient in what we want to get done, done. Vista is a step backward, but if you wrestle with it enough, turn off the graphic nonsense and big brother/nervous mom popups, you’ll find you’re running a very compliant version of XP with DirectX 10 installed.

Rolf Harris never did this stuff....

Meant to post these a few days ago. Been too busy. I'm exhausted!

Bo

Research II

Just a quick note to let you know that I bought a 12 month subscription to armyrecognition.com, and though it isn't the most comprehensive coverage of world weapons and vehicles, the photos it does have are the excellent, with loads of up close and personal detail. So, with supplemental help from the BOM researchers, theres little to prevent the inclusion of the vehicle and weapon list I drew up a few weeks ago. Yeehaw! All I need now is 2 more modellers and a skinner and we'll get it all done in double quick time!

Bo

I suppose you're looking for news then....

Well I've been thinking about trying to update the page, but after careful review of my complete lack of knowledge of html etc., I decided to give it a miss, except for a few minor things.

Many of you guessed the not so subtle reference in yesterdays post to the 'rushian shubmarine commansher' - Sean Connery in Hunt for Red October, ...oh I wasn't going to bother but....

"The Soviet Typhoon-class submarine, on which the Red October is based, contains three pressure hulls, carries 20 ballistic missiles, and is 175 meters (574.1 feet) in length. This is a mere 5 meters (16.4 feet) longer than the American Ohio-class submarine, but has twice the amount of displacement." ....stickypedia

So with grateful thanks to the many researchers who assisted in finding good info for her, GiJackal in particular, I tried my hand at the Typhoon 941 class. She's nearly skinned, and you're probably wondering '..why go to the bother of building it 'cos battlefield 2 can't do submarines....blah blah blah'. Well, we've tested it using our own brand of genius and lunacy and it does work. Bigdog even modified the F35 to fly and shoot underwater and I have the video to prove it. [/evil laugh] Whats it gonna shoot at? Well, you'll just have to come back to find out when 'censored' finished.

Bo

Do you think they will let me live in Montana?

Bo :)

No Name

The weapon model is from EA/Dice, the stand is mine. There is also a shot of the mayhem on a night time map. Gotta go to work now. More later.

Bo

Chaho Underway

Just a quick post to let y'all know whats going on. The boats are in Drydock and the AI has been tweaked, the textures, the weapons, the whole shootin' gallery. Had a blast in some custom naval maps with BigDog and Cobra. In a bit of a rush here, will post more info tomorrow. Note new AA mount on the rear of the 'boat'. Just made up, thanks to the research provided by jackal, eagle, mscd and a few others.

Bo

EC 135

No news, 'cept that BigDog is making some progress on the mortar from yesterday. Thought I'd show ya the [near] final new chopper before she goes to the paintshop. The stub wings at the back are the only "invented" item, and might be removed for the game. After that, the boats go to drydock.....

I would still like to have a crack at building a UH-1D, mount a couple of them M60's on the side.........

Bo

*EDIT* The blackhawk shown in wednesdays post is NOT mine. It is the stock BF2/Dice model. The wings with the Hydras and Hellfires etc. etc. will be the only thing added to the existing model. I don't have the energy to build a competely new version!

Incoming!!!

So I skinned this little harmless M120mm Mortar for the craic, then set up a botched hierarchy, got it into the Editor, and managed to get it to do some wonderful things, none of which help it to behave in a manner similar to that of its real world cousin. Stick to what you know applies here.....So I'll leave it to one of our illustrious coders to make it do its thing. This is one of those "on-the-bench" projects that I meant to finish some time ago.

In other news, the two boats are going into dry dock to be completely overhauled, especially to get the bots using them. It's something that bugs the snot out me, so I'll be focusing on that for the next day or two. We hope to throw a bit of a naval twist on things if it works out.

More screenies in the coming week.

Bo