The new facebook design

by owen

Burns my soul. There tends to be too much stuff on the left and nothing on the right. Lots of clutter on the news feed.

Weird Lines around everything.

Link Item 1118, posted: 23 days ago,  comment ⁶

Things That Annoy me about Video Games

by owen

- I hate being funneled down a path. I get a clusterphobic feeling far too early. Especially when it obvious that I need to go into the cave. I don't want to have to stop and talk to mother, get some back story, and take a nap before I go into the dam tunnel. Maybe I've played one too many console fps games but why is this invisible wall blocking me? the cave IS RIGHT THERE! branch me a path or story line or something. So I missed a few cut scences - it couldn't be all that important because I still saved the princess.

- I hate being asked for which damned memory card I want to use/overwrite EVERY SINGLE TIME I SAVE. Just use the last one or make so that I can press through it. gamecude is very prone to this and the some xbox games.

- Unreal engine or anything that makes games easier to make. hate hate hate. unreal engine is akin to when everyone thought visual basic was cool and every app started to look like a calculator. Everybody just kept making calculators.

- Graphics for graphics sake. So you have fire and pretty water effects but I can't break the toilet and drink the water? come on man! You are in this bueatiful environment for hours upon hours but its always the same, no weather change, no night/day, - nothing. its like looking a static picture. No sense of time. You guys have to sleep sometime and THEN I'll GET YOU!

- modern games which equate to a 21-century pac-man. Go to A then B, get special, avoid enemy, repeat until desired thickness.

- Stupid unrealistic building structures. like that first stage of condemned where you are in a building and you have to keep going up stairs, which are at alternate ends of a hall. WHERE ARE THE DOWNSTAIRS? WHO BUILDS A BUILDING LIKE THAT? WHY CAN"T I JUST SKIP THE CRACKHOUSE BUILT BY FRANKENSTIEN?

- forcing a player to play a certain way. I know game devs are trying to sell you an "expirence" but there is no reason I should leave base camp with a pistol EVERY SINGLE MISSION.

- Car games where I can't make a sharp turn at high speed so that the car flips and going in to a roll. Pit manuver anybody? All this focus on realism and I still have to wear my seat belt.

- Car games with perfect roads and no sidewalks. Rumble, rumble, rumble.

- Purposely weak characters, silly equipment or instant death scenarios. Of course sometimes you have to have limits but there is no reason why I can't shoot down that helicopter with a rocket that I've saved just for that purpose from the 1st stage.

- Stupid restrictive controls that you can't custimize. So you can't jump or open a door or throw a brick.

- Silly built in restrictions for the sake of "balancing" characters. I don't remember where I read a interview that a developer said that the couldn't make the inventry "TURN FASTER" because it would through off the balance of the game. GRAVITY?

Link Item 1090, posted: Tue, 24th Jun,  comment ⁵

Old School: Turbo Pascal 7 GUI

by owen

(old geeky stuff. ignore. I'm fixing up my projects page)

Here are the links to my latest version of my GUI (GRAPHICAL USER INTERFACE). It includes some old and new versions, just to display where the program is coming from - how the program has evolved and mostly because I change so much of the good stuff, in my program, each time I update it:

Exes and the sample code used to create (315 kb .zip)

Make sure you post a comment below before you leave. The definitions of the objects and the tpu files are available if you'd like to take a look at then, I don't really develope for the GUI alot currently but I do take some time and keep it uptodate every now and then by fixing bugs and adding new controls.

I have provided my minesweeper game object which you can try to inplement into your own programs(incomplete). If you have a object/control which I can incorporate in to my interface (such as a textbox control), I will gladly take a look at it because the GUI is build with programers in mind. The only external object added so far is the scrollbar object which was ported from a totally different GUI by Lennoi Anderson(who all so provided the mouse and screen units).

It was written this way to solve one problem that I have noticed whenever writing various types of programs. I won't tell ou what that is right now but it results in many changes at the low level of the program.

written in Tp7, provided by owen, although no problems should occur I must insist - use/download software at your own risk.

If you require addition info feel free to post a comment or email me at owensoft at gmail. but most of all post a comment!

current features

-you can tab/shift throught most of the objects.

-full keyboard support on menu and other objects (I started building it in MSDOS and I didn't have access to a mouse most of the time so I had to build in very good keyboard support).

-objects currently include: dynamic menus (generated from a string variable), normal and adv buttons, frames (which you can tab through), collection object, linklist object, object-binder object, timer object, titlebar, clock, minesweeper app, scrollbar.

-all objects can be dragged, mouseover, mousedown, mouseup, mouseout and gotfocus/lost focus, and added to collections (menus, frames, lists, etc).

-all objects have two draw plains (which is how I can draw the menus without having them over written).

current bugs

-you can't add a frame to a frame (will you can if you want to) this will result in the tab marker being trapped in the deepest frame (collection). Yeap you can tab down to it but you won't be able to leave unless you use the mouse. this bug is my main priority.

how can you help

-if you have any "windows like" controls or would like to write a program using the GUI email me!

- I also need a textbox control - like the one in windows

last updated friday, Jan 10 2003

terms of use

Copyright (C) 2002 owen. All rights reserved. THIS CODE AND INFORMATION IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY AND/OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Link Item 1075, posted: Sat, 07th Jun,  comment

My Vista Rant

by owen

How can you be building something for 5 years, have all the money in the whole-wide-world and mess it up? I told them to re-write everything from scratch, now that I look back, that was not such a good idea THEN!! But now - I don't know.

I (on the other hand) am still rocking MY LEGAL COPY OF WINDOWS 2000 and I'll like to tell Microsoft to stop trying to kill a perfectly good operating system - I'm watching you. I am not buying another operating system unless its at least GOOD or better than MacOSX. It runs fine on my 1.6 ghz Dell machine that I bought 4 years ago for 1300USD. I'm not going to buy a new machine just to surf the net. I have a wii, a dreamcast, a playstation, my neighbour has a PS3, and another neighbour has a 360 - PC GAMING IS DEAD - except for GTA 4 and FPSs. My pc wieghs like 20 pounds but I like it, its black and runs quite fine on 256 mb of ram - I bought a 19" flat panel for it just the other day - pimp my pc.

Whats wrong with software nowadays? Why you gotta be all up in my RAM? I remember the days when a user interface was simply colored characters on the screen - now - I think everything is running the UNREAL ENGINE 3. It hurts my heart to realise that no matter how much RAM or how fast the processor you put into windows you still have to wait on stuff to happen. The new moto should be "its thinking".

I have this HD version of the Matix 2 trailer on my machine from just before the movie came out, which is basically 1000-something by 700-something. I remember specifically the point where Trinity would jump through the window into a free fall and my quicktime player would drop frames like a mother. Fast forward 2 years later I installed the new version of the Quicktime player - same machine - same ram - same everything - plays SMOOTH AS BUTTER. See? An improvement not just in features but "efficiency".

Link Item 1070, posted: Mon, 02nd Jun,  comment ⁷

So I got a xbox360 to borrow

by owen

So I got a xbox360 to borrow in exchange for my Wii. Apparently Carnarge is a first-person shooter nut. I am going to now review all the games I got my paws onto. I should note though that I am from the PC-FPS crowd so I hate the aiming with the right analog stick. So it may affect my liking of certain games. Note also that I've played alot of games and have never seen a xbox360 upclose. What I notice about the xbox 360 games is that often times it like I'm watching a movie instead of playing a game. Or I'm playing the game so that I can get to watch the next movie. I like playing music in the background while I'm playing games (sometimes). The user profile and achievement system is good and nicely implemented. So without here goes;

The xbox360

I ripped Eminems: The Curtain and The best of Sade to the harddrive. Its kinda nice, but the brick makes alot of noise and fear it may red ring if I play it for more that 3 hours.

Turok

Lots of green and the knife kills everything. I like the knife. Nothing more to say right now.

Call of Duty 3

More WWII, I may play this later if I get drunk enough.

Just Cause

250,000 Acres of bush but it has beautiful water. I kinda ran around in this game for a bit and might decide to eventually finish it. The vehicles are kinda meh but the overall game is like GTA on a Caribbean island. The AI is flaky at most some points and the music is mental but the freedom and the diversity of the island makes it a interesting adventure shooter game. Except maybe when you have to travel 2500 kilometers to your next mission ON FOOT! For a sandbox that big the main story is incredibly short, it ended before I realised that I reached the 25th mission. Its still fun though, at least I can tackle the side missions.

The game engine is superb;

youtube.com/watch?v=PD1sXFbMM7w

Can't wait for part 2.

Prey

So the game started out in bar and I'm like "cool, I can turn off the lights just like in Dukenukem". Then 10 minutes later I got abducted by aliens - I meant really? Why do you have to set you game in a dam alien space ship? Everything is dark and shiny in the Doom3 engine and I'm like why am I here? Rooms, rooms everywhere! sometimes I wondered why aliens had so many unecessary rooms with one entry point and one exit. I mean if a fire should break out on that spaceship those aliens are fucked.

The Darkness

I watched a guy play this game and I think he was skipping the cut scenes because the story lost me at some point while he was going through the subways. Why does the dude like to talk to himself so much? Was he born yesterday? zero back story. I didn't play this one at all - couldn't bother.

Condemned

Dark and moody. From what I heard about the game I kept my gun close to me until the first mission when a CRACKHEAD KNOCKS ME OUT AND TAKES IT AWAY :(. I end up chasing the guy through a unfinished crack house. The main character of this game must live in the worst part of the nieghbourhood because the whole game looks like a big UNFINISHED CRACKHOUSE. Not saying that the game looks bad, but can the environment be any less depressing? I forgot to go back to this one.

Full Auto

Two words: Sucks Ass. I have to admit it gets kinda better if you play the career mode - single player. Though on the canyon track the cars tend to launch into the air if you touch certain parts of the wall.

Kane and Lynch: Dead Men

The aiming in this game is baaad - I think the pointer moves too fast or too slow or something. High production values but the game itself I think is just too cluster-phobic. Point black shots will often miss, cops/enemies rain down on you, bullets everywhere and most likely you WILL ALWAYS GET SHOT FIRST.

Quake 4

I like it, simple stages that actually make sense. Some slow down and stupid A to B story telling. I am this point where I come out into the open and I see this tunnel across the way, so I make a B line for the tunnel only to have the mothership land infront of me. So I say to my self I hope I don;t have to go into that stupid ship just some EXTRA WASTE OF TIME STORY CRAP. So said, so done, I get forced into the stupid ship for a half and hour of talking only to get sent out INTO THE SAME DAM TUNNEL.

Blacksite Area 51

So far it seems like another generic army shooter. Starts in Iraq, then in mission 2 goes to the Nevada desert which looks EXACTLY like IRAQ. I have seen enough sand for one game. Simple run and gun game, I might attempt to finish it. After playing it abit more its just too "A to B". The AI is silly, the level design is linear and has nothing new to offer to the player. The audio is good though, it would have been a better movie, I would sit and watch it. Finished it, waste of time, totally forgettable. I'm beginning to hate UnReal Engine, it seems like just an excuse to make stupid pretty games with no substance.

Topspin 2

Tennis. It doesn't seem to be better than Virtual Tennis on the Dreamcast. Its ok.

John Woo Presents Stranglehold

Its good. Its like Max Payne on steriods. Nice voice acting, gameplay, cut scenes. I will definately try to finish this one just to see who else gets killed IN STYLE!! After a while so many enemies came into the stage that I just stopped playing. Its ridiculous, my hands got tired.

Link Item 1065, posted: Tue, 20th May,  comment