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Messages - Gilbert

#441
Quote from: Ben304 on Wed 07/07/2010 10:24:26
enormous beard
As he is holding a number plate you'll expect that he HAS to give up the beard unwillingly anyway.

He probably photoshopped it to remove the beard for job-seeking and the like. This is the unaltered, original version of the photo:
#442
Actually I just find a good actor to play Bernard in a MM play. :=
#443
It could also relate to what kind of materials that were used to make the cubicle divisions and how they're mounted.

For example in this old style office I'm working at this particular second, we have old cupboards and wooden boards made to divide our working space, so there's either a board or a cupboard between each two adjacent seats. Some of these boards are actually hanging loose mounted just by a few screws on the tables or cupboards.

We had a co-worker here who actually broke two boards by leaning on them (in each case, one screw which held one side of the board on the table was broken, making the board hanging loosely at that end). These damages are never fixed and we just use some useless scotch tapes to stick the boards back on the table and have since been careful not to touch them again.

But I'll expect modern implementations with better materials and mounting could be more sturdy.

In other words, there is no definitive answer.
#444
It's because we're used to count in group in 10 when we're small (and our commonly used symbols). If we were born in a place that counting is done in another base it wouldn't be uncomfortable at all.
#445
I've never looked up for details, so the following are just what I understand from my experience:

I think the adoption of hexadecimal is just natural (obviously much more natural and mathematical than the denary system humans use most of the time, which is familiar to us mainly only because we were born with 10 fingers).

The smallest integral base for displaying numbers is 2 obviously, so binary representation of numbers is the basis of all basis, and since digital circuitries are just collections of on/off(logic) "switches" this is of high importance.

Of course, numbers displayed in binary are clumsy and inconvenient most of the time (except some cases like displaying flags), so we usually show numbers in certain bases that are easily converted to and from binary. In general, if the base is of the form 2^n the conversions are super easy, so leaving us with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, ... as possible bases.

Bases of 2 and 4 are obviously too clumsy for everyday use, and numbers displayed in base 32 and onward would require a large set of numerals (e.g. under base 32 you need 32 distinct symbols to represent a digit) and are inconvenient, so octal and hexadecimal representations of numbers are optimal.

Both octal numbers and hexadecimal numbers are widely used, but in many cases hexadecimal is preferred, because:
1. It takes 4 bits to represent a hexadecimal digit (16 = 2^4). In general it's more organised if the number of bits in a group is also an even power of 2 (4 = 2^2), compared to octal numbers where each digit composes of the odd 3 bits.
2. While for octal numbers you only need 8 distinct symbols in the set of numerals to display any number (i.e. we can just directly use 0-7 from the denary digits), you need 16 symbols in hexadecimal (most of the time we use the 0-9 denary digits together with the six Roman letters A-F). However, hexadecimal numbers are more compact that we never need to use more places to represent a number compared to it represented with our everyday denary system.
3. This is an extension of 2, as humans use denary numbers in their everyday life, it may be sometimes convenient (for our eyes) to just use a hexadecimal digit to display a denary digit, e.g. we use the hexadecimal number $99 to represent the denary 99. In fact, the 6502 family of CPUs had a BCD mode that, when set, would treat each byte as a denary 2-digit number and could do (only limited) decimal arithmetic directly. Few people really used this mode though (and when Nintendo and Ricoh cloned the 6502 core for their Famicom they even removed this ability, though from what I've heard this was mainly due to patents). This is not possible with octal numbers, as each digit can only be 0-7, which is not enough to represent a denary number directly.
#446
I agree with this to some extend. It is important to keep sleeping activities active again but if people can start the new round once they post something it may lead to abuse, in case the "entries" actually aren't created with any effort and may not even follow the rule of the competition. So, we need at least some people to recognise it as an accepted entry first (not necessarily the original host, I guess a few people are enough, and of course, a single moderator can approve it also), then if all goes well he of course will win by default and can host the next round.
#447
Actually I have mentioned in that other thread already, if you're certain that it could attract enough activity to make it regular, just start it here.
#448
I don't see that much in my everyday life. :P
#449
Really?
#450
I don't know, but if it's always to be conformed to some specific world settings it would be best to have it stay away from this section, like for example MMM are conducted elsewhere (I think it's mostly because of the German background though, and ironically most AGSers (including me) couldn't name most of the MMM games because of this).

Unless we have a section specific for a certain setting (like how the RON boards contribute to a section here now) I don't think it's a good idea to have this in teh activity forum.
#451
The Rumpus Room / Re: Happy Birthday Thread!
Fri 04/09/2009 10:18:57
Hehe Thank you all.
#452
Hmmm. Are the rooms scrolling ones? If the room is very large you may experience some problems.

#453
I have no objection against this, and I think it's worth a try.

So, it's okay for you to start a new one if you want.

(I think maybe it's also a good idea if a sprite IS also provided as some people may not want to create everything from scratch, so entries created by animating the sprite or original ones are both welcome, as long as they fit the theme.)
#454
Did you even read this? :P
#455
My point is, I disagree the suggestion to make another extra competition, unless it can be proven to be vastly popular.

For Sprite Jams, the host can set the rules to whatever he wants, so I don't think it is necessary to have a pixel art competition and another "not necessarily pixel" art competition. If you have an idea for a certain Sprite Jam challenge, just manage to win a round and you can be the host for the next round.
#456
No, there is no official change, whether a sprite follows the restrictions is decided by the rules set by the host of the certain round. The bottom line is, whether an entry qualifies as a sprite for the expected purpose of the round, so it doesn't rule out any possibilities of character art.
#457
Use DosBox, or ScummVM?
#458
In fact, as lots of hardware behaviour can now be controlled with software configurations, so sometimes graphics driver can affect the card and even the monitor.

For monitors blacking out it's possible that the driver set to a mode that the monitor cannot handle (invalid resolutions or refresh rates) for some split seconds.

I remembered someone discussing one previous Nvidia official driver version can in fact cause permanent damage to the graphic card (as you can control overclocking, etc. hardware features with software) due to overheating of the chip. It's also not surprising that faulty drivers may damage a monitor (especially analog CRTs) by outputting "bad" signals.

I agree that for safety you may try testing with another display first. If the problem persists try upgrading (or downgrading) the drivers and see if it makes a difference.
#459
Well, in that case it does not fit in the "AGS Tips" category, it's actually more like the cheesy subtitles, which are implemented already.
#460
Don't have much in my mind ATM, I think something like:

"Object index starts from 0"
"xx index starts from 0"

May get to this later.
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