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• Best Frameworks/libraries/engines for 2D multiplayer C# Webbased RPG

  - by Thirlan

  Title is a mouthful but important because I'm looking to meet a specific criteria and it's complex enough that I need a lot of help in finding what I'm looking for. I really want people's suggestions because I trust it a lot more than anything else, so I just need to clearly define what it is I want heh : P Game is a 2D RPG. Think of Secret of Mana. Game is online multiplayer, but not MMO sized. Game must be webbased! I'm looking to the future and want to hit as many platforms as possible. I'm leaning to Webgl because of this, but still looking around. Since the users are seeing the game through the webbrowser the front-end should be mainly responsible for drawing, taking input and some basic checking such as preliminary collision detection. This is important because it means the game engine is NOT on the client's machine. The server should be responsible for the game engine and all the calculations. This means the server is doing all the work and the client is mostly a dumb terminal. Server language is c# I'm looking for fast project execution so I want to use as many pre-existing tools as possible. This would make sense because I'm making a game here, not an engine. I'm not creating some new revolutionary graphics or pushing the physics engines to the next level. Preference for commercially supported tools. For game mechanics reasons and for reasons 4 and 5, don't think I can use existing 2D rpg engines. I've seen them out there and I fear that if I try and use them they will have too many restrictions, but will be happy to hear out suggestions. So all this means I need a game engine on the server, or maybe just a physics engine, and then I need another engine/library to draw everything that the server is sending to the client on the webbrowser. Maybe this is how 50% of games work on the web and there are plenty of frameworks that support this! I wouldn't actually don't know : ( but my gut is telling me that most webgames are single player and 90% of the game is running on the client. So... any suggestions?

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• Software Tuned to Humanity

  - by Phil Factor

  I learned a great deal from a cynical old programmer who once told me that the ideal length of time for a compiler to do its work was the same time it took to roll a cigarette. For development work, this is oh so true. After intently looking at the editing window for an hour or so, it was a relief to look up, stretch, focus the eyes on something else, and roll the possibly-metaphorical cigarette. This was software tuned to humanity. Likewise, a user’s perception of the “ideal” time that an application will take to move from frame to frame, to retrieve information, or to process their input has remained remarkably static for about thirty years, at around 200 ms. Anything else appears, and always has, to be either fast or slow. This could explain why commercial applications, unlike games, simulations and communications, aren’t noticeably faster now than they were when I started programming in the Seventies. Sure, they do a great deal more, but the SLAs that I negotiated in the 1980s for application performance are very similar to what they are nowadays. To prove to myself that this wasn’t just some rose-tinted misperception on my part, I cranked up a Z80-based Jonos CP/M machine (1985) in the roof-space. Within 20 seconds from cold, it had loaded Wordstar and I was ready to write. OK, I got it wrong: some things were faster 30 years ago. Sure, I’d now have had all sorts of animations, wizzy graphics, and other comforting features, but it seems a pity that we have used all that extra CPU and memory to increase the scope of what we develop, and the graphical prettiness, but not to speed the processes needed to complete a business procedure. Never mind the weight, the response time’s great! To achieve 200 ms response times on a Z80, or similar, performance considerations influenced everything one did as a developer. If it meant writing an entire application in assembly code, applying every smart algorithm, and shortcut imaginable to get the application to perform to spec, then so be it. As a result, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool performance freak and find it difficult to change my habits. Conversely, many developers now seem to feel quite differently. While all will acknowledge that performance is important, it’s no longer the virtue is once was, and other factors such as user-experience now take precedence. Am I wrong? If not, then perhaps we need a new school of development technique to rival Agile, dedicated once again to producing applications that smoke the rear wheels rather than pootle elegantly to the shops; that forgo skeuomorphism, cute animation, or architectural elegance in favor of the smell of hot rubber. I struggle to name an application I use that is truly notable for its blistering performance, and would dearly love one to do my everyday work – just as long as it doesn’t go faster than my brain.

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• How can I achieve a 3D-like effect with spritebatch's rotation and scale parameters

  - by Alic44

  I'm working on a 2d game with a top-down perspective similar to Secret of Mana and the 2D Final Fantasy games, with one big difference being that it's an action rpg using a 3-dimensional physics engine. I'm trying to draw an aimer graphic (basically an arrow) at my characters' feet when they're aiming a ranged weapon. At first I just converted the character's aim vector to radians and passed that into spritebatch, but there was a problem. The position of every object in my world is scaled for perspective when it's drawn to the screen. So if the physics engine coordinates are (1, 0, 1), the screen coords are actually (1, .707) -- the Y and Z axis are scaled by a perspective factor of .707 and then added together to get the screen coordinates. This meant that the direction the aimer graphic pointed (thanks to its rotation value passed into spritebatch) didn't match up with the direction the projectile actually traveled over time. Things looked fine when the characters fired left, right, up, or down, but if you fired on a diagonal the perspective of the physics engine didn't match with the simplistic way I was converting the character's aim direction to a screen rotation. Ok, fast forward to now: I've got the aimer's rotation matched up with the path the projectile will actually take, which I'm doing by decomposing a transform matrix which I build from two rotation matrices (one to represent the aimer's rotation, and one to represent the camera's 45 degree rotation on the x axis). My question is, is there a way to get not just rotation from a series of matrix transformations, but to also get a Vector2 scale which would give the aimer the appearance of being a 3d object, being warped by perspective? Orthographic perspective is what I'm going for, I think. So, the aimer arrow would get longer when facing sideways, and shorter when facing north and south because of the perspective. At the same time, it would get wider when facing north and south, and less wide when facing right or left. I'd like to avoid actually drawing the aimer texture in 3d because I'm still using spritebatch's layerdepth parameter at this point in my project, and I don't want to have to figure out how to draw a 3d object within the depth sorting system I already have. I can provide code and more details if this is too vague as a question... This is my first post on stack exchange. Thanks a lot for reading! Note: (I think) I realize it can't be a technically correct 3D perspective, because the spritebatch's vector2 scaling argument doesn't allow for an object to be skewed the way it actually should be. What I'm really interested in is, is there a good way to fake the effect, or should I just drop it and not scale at all? Edit to clarify without the help of a picture (apparently I can't post them yet): I want the aimer arrow to look like it has been painted on the ground at the character's feet, so it should appear to be drawn on the ground plane (in my case the XZ plane) which should be tilted at a 45 degree angle (around the X axis) from the viewing perspective. Alex

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• How can I get my ATI / AMD drivers to work with any kernel above 3.2.0.x?

  - by TorakTu

  How can I get my ATI / AMD drivers to work with any kernel above 3.2.0.x ? WHAT DID WORK Installed original AMD64 version of Ubuntu 12.04 ISO image. Burned DVD and installed which shown kernel 3.2.0-23 to begin with. Got 5.1 surround sound working. Got ATI ( Now its AMD ) video drivers installed for my Radeon HD R6870 Video card from AMD's website. fglrxinfo came up and reported as normal. THE PROBLEM Kernel 3.2.0.x kept locking up so I tried higher kernel versions. But ATI / AMD Drivers do not install on any kernel Above 3.2.0.x WHAT I HAVE TRIED I have gone over this tutorial many times ( https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI ) and it doesn't work on ANY kernel except 3.2.0.x. The problems I am having here are that the ATI / AMD drivers working for the 12.04 Precise with kernel 3.2.0-23 and 24, But the computer kept locking up. Although all my games would work, the lock ups were random and were constant. So I looked all over the web for 3 days trying to find an answer and the lock up issue was said to just update the kernel. So I did. Have tried many kernels. All of them .. no lock ups. BUT the Restricted AMD drivers from the AMD website will not install. And none of the OpenSource AMD drivers have EVER installed no matter what Kernel or version I tried. EXAMPLE OUTPUT OF 3D TYPE OF ERRORS Javax.media.opengl.GLException: glXGetConfig failed: error code GLX_NO_EXTENSION at com.sun.opengl.impl.x11.X11GLDrawableFactory.glXGetConfig(X11GLDrawableFactory.java:651) at com.sun.opengl.impl.x11.X11GLDrawableFactory.xvi2GLCapabilities(X11GLDrawableFactory.java:350) at com.sun.opengl.impl.x11.X11GLDrawableFactory.chooseGraphicsConfiguration(X11GLDrawableFactory.java:174) at javax.media.opengl.GLCanvas.chooseGraphicsConfiguration(GLCanvas.java:520) at javax.media.opengl.GLCanvas.<init>(GLCanvas.java:131) at haven.HavenPanel.<init>(HavenPanel.java:68) at haven.HavenPanel.<init>(HavenPanel.java:78) at haven.MainFrame.<init>(MainFrame.java:182) at haven.MainFrame.main2(MainFrame.java:306) at haven.MainFrame.access$100(MainFrame.java:34) at haven.MainFrame$7.run(MainFrame.java:360) at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:722) And of course this is what fglrxinfo shows : X Error of failed request: BadRequest (invalid request code or no such operation) Major opcode of failed request: 139 (ATIFGLEXTENSION) Minor opcode of failed request: 66 () Serial number of failed request: 13 Current serial number in output stream: 13 EDIT : I forgot to mention that I DID look at this post over the last few days and it did not help.

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• How to run software, that is not offered though package managers, that requires ia32-libs

  - by Onno

  I'm trying to install the Arma 2 OA dedicated server on a Virtualbox VM so I can test my own missions in a sandbox environment in a way that lets me offload them to another computer in my network. (The other computer is running the VM, but it's a windows machine, and I didn't want to hassle with its installation) It needs at least 2, and preferably 4GB of ram, so I thought I would install the AMD64 version of ubuntu 13.10 to get this going. 'How do you run a 32-bit program on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu?' already explained how to install 32bit software though apt-get and/or dpkg, but that doesn't apply in this case. The server is offered as a compressed download on the site of BI Studio, the developer of the Arma games. Its installation instructions are obviously slightly out of date with the current state of the art. (probably because the state of the art has been updated quite recently :) ) It states that I have to install ia32-libs, which has now apparently been deprecated. Now I have to find out how to get the right packages installed to make sure that it will run. My experience level is like novice-intermediate when it comes to these issues. I've installed a lot of packages though apt-get; I've solved dependency issues in the past; I haven't installed much software without using package managers. I can handle myself with basic administrative work like editing conf files and such. I have just gone ahead and tried to install it without installing ia32-libs through apt-get but to install gcc to get the libs after all. My reasoning being that gcc will include the files for backward compatibility coding and on linux all libs are (as far as I can tell) installed at a system level in /libs . So far it seems to start up. (I can connect with the game server trough my in-game network browser, so it's communicating) I'm not sure if there's any dependency checking going on when running the game server program, so I'm left with a couple of questions: Does 13.10 catch any calls to ia32libs libraries and translate the calls to the right code on amd64? If it runs, does that mean that all required libraries have been loaded correctly, or is there a change of it crashing later on when a library that was needed is missing after all? Is it necessary to do a workaround such as installing gcc? How do I find out what libraries I might need to run this software? (or any other piece of 32-bit software that isn't offered through a package manager)

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• RTS Game Style Application [closed]

  - by Daniel Wynand van Wyk

  My question may seem somewhat odd, but I hope that my specifications will clarify EXACTLY what it is that I am after. I need some help choosing the right tooling for a particular endeavour. My background is in desktop application development and large back-end systems. I have worked primarily on the Microsoft stack using C# and the .Net framework. My goal is to develop a 2D, RTS style, interactive office simulation. The simulation will model various office spaces, office equipment, employees and their interactions with one another. The idea is to abstract the concept of an office completely. Under the hood the application will do many things that are nothing like a game. This includes P2P networking, VPN tunnelling, streaming video, instant messaging, document collaboration, remote screen sharing, file-sharing, virus scanning, VOIP, document scanning, faxing, emailing, distributed computing, content management and much more! A somewhat similar thing has been attempted by IBM, where they created a virtual office in second life. If their attempt was a game, the game-play would be notably horrible, to say the least! The users/players will drive and control my application through the various objects modelled in the simulation. A single application capable of performing all of these various tasks would be a nightmare to navigate for even the most expert user. Using the concept of a game, I can easily separate functionality by assigning them to objects that relate 1-1 with their real world counter-parts. This can greatly simplify computing for novice users, with many added benefits in terms of visibility, transparency of process and centralized configuration. My hope is to make complex computing tasks accessible to all kinds of users and to greatly reduce the cognitive load associated with using the many different utilities and applications inside office settings. The complexity is therefore limited to the complexity of the space in which you find yourself. I want the application to target as many platforms as possible and run on computers that have no accelerated graphics capabilities. The simulation won't contain any of the fancy eye-candy you find in modern games, to the contrary, my "game" will purposefully be clean and simple. The closest thing I could imagine would be an old game like "Theme Hospital" or the first instalment of "The Sims". All the content will be pre-created and not user-generated like Second Life. New functionality will be added via a plugin system. Given my background and nature of my "game", I would like to spend most of my time writing code that does not have to do with the simulated office, as the "game" is really just a glorified application menu. I have done much reading about existing engines, frameworks and tools. I need the help of an experienced game developer who has tried and tested various products over the years who can guide me in the right direction given my very particular needs. I would appreciate any help I can get!

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• Attaching new animations onto skeleton via props, a good idea?

  - by Cardin

  I'm thinking of coding a game with an idea of mine. I've coded 2D games before, but I'm new to 3D programming, so I'd like to ask if this idea of mine is feasible or out of my depth. I'm making a game where there are many different characters for the player to choose from (JRPG style). So to save time, I have an idea of creating many different varied characters using a completely naked body mesh and animation skeleton, standardised across all characters. For example, by placing different hair, boots, armor props on the character mesh, new characters can be formed. Kinda like playing dress-up with a barbie doll. I'm thinking this can be done by having a bone on the prop that I can programmically attach to the main mesh. Also, I plan to have some props add new animations to the base skeleton, so equipping some particular props would give it new attack, damage, idle animations. This is because I can't expect the character to have the same swinging animation if he had a big sword or an axe. I think this might be possible if the prop has its own instance of the animation skeleton with just only the new animations, and parenting the base body mesh to this new skeleton. So all the base body mesh has are just the basic animations, other animations come from the props. My concerns are, 1) the props might not attach to the mesh properly and jitter a lot, 2) since prop and body are animated differently, the props and base mesh will cause visual artefacts, like the naked thighs showing through the pants when the character walks, 3) a custom pipeline have to be developed to export skeletons without mesh, and also to attach the base body mesh to a new skeleton during runtime in the game. So my question: are these features considered 'easy' to code? Or am I trying to do something few have ever succeeded with on their own? It feels like all these can be done given enough time and I know I definitely have to do a bit of bone matrix calculations, but I really don't want to drag out the development timeline unnecessarily from coding mathematically intense things or analyzing how to parse 3D export formats. I'm currently only at the Game Design stage, so if these features aren't a good idea, I can simply change the design of the game. (Unrelated to question) I could always, as last resort, have the characters have predetermined outfit and weapon selections so as to animate everything manually.

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• HTML5 game programming style

  - by fnx

  I am currently trying learn javascript in form of HTML5 games. Stuff that I've done so far isn't too fancy since I'm still a beginner. My biggest concern so far has been that I don't really know what is the best way to code since I don't know the pros and cons of different methods, nor I've found any good explanations about them. So far I've been using the worst (and propably easiest) method of all (I think) since I'm just starting out, for example like this: var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); var ctx = canvas.getContext("2d"); var width = 640; var height = 480; var player = new Player("pic.png", 100, 100, ...); also some other global vars... function Player(imgSrc, x, y, ...) { this.sprite = new Image(); this.sprite.src = imgSrc; this.x = x; this.y = y; ... } Player.prototype.update = function() { // blah blah... } Player.prototype.draw = function() { // yada yada... } function GameLoop() { player.update(); player.draw(); setTimeout(GameLoop, 1000/60); } However, I've seen a few examples on the internet that look interesting, but I don't know how to properly code in these styles, nor do I know if there are names for them. These might not be the best examples but hopefully you'll get the point: 1: Game = { variables: { width: 640, height: 480, stuff: value }, init: function(args) { // some stuff here }, update: function(args) { // some stuff here }, draw: function(args) { // some stuff here }, }; // from http://codeincomplete.com/posts/2011/5/14/javascript_pong/ 2: function Game() { this.Initialize = function () { } this.LoadContent = function () { this.GameLoop = setInterval(this.RunGameLoop, this.DrawInterval); } this.RunGameLoop = function (game) { this.Update(); this.Draw(); } this.Update = function () { // update } this.Draw = function () { // draw game frame } } // from http://www.felinesoft.com/blog/index.php/2010/09/accelerated-game-programming-with-html5-and-canvas/ 3: var engine = {}; engine.canvas = document.getElementById('canvas'); engine.ctx = engine.canvas.getContext('2d'); engine.map = {}; engine.map.draw = function() { // draw map } engine.player = {}; engine.player.draw = function() { // draw player } // from http://that-guy.net/articles/ So I guess my questions are: Which is most CPU efficient, is there any difference between these styles at runtime? Which one allows for easy expandability? Which one is the most safe, or at least harder to hack? Are there any good websites where stuff like this is explained? or... Does it all come to just personal preferance? :)

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• Designing Snake AI

  - by Ronald

  I'm new to this gamedev stackechange but have used the math and cs sites before. So, I'm in a competition to create AI for a snake that will compete with 3 other snakes in 5 minute rounds where the rules are much like the traditional Nokia snake game except that there are 4 snakes, the board is 50x50 and there are a number of small obstacles on the field. Like the Nokia game, your snake grows when you get to the fruit and if you crash into yourself, another snake or the wall you die. The game runs with a 50ms delay between moves and the server sends the new game state every 50ms which the code must analyze and what not and output the next move. The winner is the snake who had the longest length at any point in the game. Tie breakers are decided by kills. So far what I have done is implemented an A* graph search from each snake to determine if my snake is the closest to the apple and if it is, it goes for the apple. Otherwise, I made a neat little algorithm to determine the emptiest area of the board, which my snake goes for, to anticipate the next apple. Other than this I have some small survivability checks to ensure my snake isn't walking into a trap that it can't get out and if it does get stuck, I have something to give it a better chance of getting out. ... Anyway, I've tested my snake on a test server and it does quite well. Generally, my strategy of only going for the apple when its a sure thing and finding space when its not makes it grow faster than any other snakes (some snakes do a similar thing but often just go to the middle or a corner) sometimes it wins these trial games but is more often than not beaten by the same snake who seems to have the edge on survivability(my snake grows quicker but then dies somehow and this other snake just plods slowly along and wins on consistency. So I was wondering about any ideas anyone has to try and improve my snake. Or maybe ideas at a new approach to take. My functions and classes are good so changes that might seem drastic shouldn't be too bad. I encourage all ideas. Any thoughts ??

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• Multiplayer tile based movement synchronization

  - by Mars

  I have to synchronize the movement of multiple players over the Internet, and I'm trying to figure out the safest way to do that. The game is tile based, you can only move in 4 directions, and every move moves the sprite 32px (over time of course). Now, if I would simply send this move action to the server, which would broadcast it to all players, while the walk key is kept being pressed down, to keep walking, I have to take this next command, send it to the server, and to all clients, in time, or the movement won't be smooth anymore. I saw this in other games, and it can get ugly pretty quick, even without lag. So I'm wondering if this is even a viable option. This seems like a very good method for single player though, since it's easy, straight forward (, just take the next movement action in time and add it to a list), and you can easily add mouse movement (clicking on some tile), to add a path to a queue, that's walked along. The other thing that came to my mind was sending the information that someone started moving in some direction, and again once he stopped or changed the direction, together with the position, so that the sprite will appear at the correct position, or rather so that the position can be fixed if it's wrong. This should (hopefully) only make problems if someone really is lagging, in which case it's to be expected. For this to work out I'd need some kind of queue though, where incoming direction changes and stuff are saved, so the sprite knows where to go, after the current movement to the next tile is finished. This could actually work, but kinda sounds overcomplicated. Although it might be the only way to do this, without risk of stuttering. If a stop or direction change is received on the client side it's saved in a queue and the char keeps moving to the specified coordinates, before stopping or changing direction. If the new command comes in too late there'll be stuttering as well of course... I'm having a hard time deciding for a method, and I couldn't really find any examples for this yet. My main problem is keeping the tile movement smooth, which is why other topics regarding synchronization of pixel based movement aren't helping too much. What is the "standard" way to do this?

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• PHP or C++? I just want to choose a language and focus on it!

  - by user19177

  I love C++, but I feel I don't know if I should focus on web, so PHP, or C++. It's just an hard choice because right now I want to focus on one language and don't want to switch it a few months later. With C++ I'd program in SDL, while with PHP I don't know yet. I am not a very advanced programmer but I know basics of programming and can get going very well if determined. The problem is I just don't know.. I'm like OK! I'll go for C++! Then a minute later, wait what if I went with C#? Why this that.. ! I've read milion threads about C vs VB C# Python Ruby etc, all of them which I could find! It got me nowhere. The problem is probably I need to know something from some experts I guess.. I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels/felt like I do right now yeah? Uhm... I guess I might help you with some details so your answer may be easier to write! ( And also, if you want to say something else which is not related to PHP or C++, you can do that, I've just got to the conclusion that C++ and PHP are the ones that are worth it but yeah. C# I've discarded due to some stuff I read which says in future the projects I'd start now could just be useless and stuff like that.. ) Ok well : I'm 18 years old, and I program as hobby right now, but I do hope to go to a programming college in future. ( That would be in 2 years ). Hmm, I like programming games, and I'm mostly bothered by the fact "this language could be useless to what I need to do" ( I don't know how to explain this feeling! ) I don't know which other details I could add... I hope you guys can help me choose my path, this is really stressing me I'm wasting my time not doing anything right now because I don't know which language to use..! Thanks!

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• Want to make RTS strategy game, good starting point...?

  - by NOLANDI

  everybody! I find this community because I did research about game developing topics. So I decide to register on this community and ask for your opinion. I am not begineer in computer stuffs, and I know logic of programming language. I have little knowlegde of C, C++, Started to learn C#...but I was always oriented about other areas of IT. Amateur for game making but not in IT general! I am interested to make RTS strategy video game, isometric camera view (like PC GAME COMMANDOS for example)...so I started to read many books about DirectX, XNA, OpenGL, C#, AI programming...so I want to know where is good starting point for making this game genre. I want to use C# for this project, not C++, since I always had trouble with it, because it is too complicated. I see good oportunity for learning C#, since it has more object-oriented concept, with much less code and easy readible code for writing. Beside of that I know that C++ is the more powerful language until today. So I want to use DirectX and C# for my project. But it will required more time for sure, to learn it. I have trouble with finding books for c# & DirectX (I found just one), but in every next book, it is programming in c++! I read many web sites and they mentioned Slim DX, and in generaly, other articles which I read tells that it is possible to make good game with combination c# and directX, but...I don't have enough information about all this stuffs, so I became confused! It is really hard to have wish to learn c++ from scratch, since I started c# and I like it really...I don't try OpenGL, but I am already familiar with DirectX (some beginning stuffs), and I think that it is good and interesting. So, I decide to choose between maybe Unity3d and XNA first. XNA...hm, it sound that it is not bad solution, but I heard that it is already overcome technology, and I think that it is better to wait with XNA, until I try to make something with DirectX and C#, at first. But I dont know it is possible to make strategy game in XNA?! Maybe I am wrong. I also, find Unity 3D game engine and I find that I could programming there in C#, but many all examples are written in Javascript (Digital tutors videos)...But I generaly have wish to learn it too, because it allows to export games to mobile phones, there a lot of documentations, it is free, etc... I want to find best way to learn C# and DirectX, and make this game, but I dont know if it's possible to combine?! But maybe is good to first try Unity and XNA, because I am beginner?! Thank you all! I am willing to hear your expirience.

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• Overheating computer

  - by Samurai Waffle

  My computer overheats somewhat frequently, usually during intense use. And by intense use I mean browsing the internet while downloading, or gaming. It even overheats on extremely old games though, Master of Orion 2, which was developed for Windows 95. My computer has a Pentium 4 Ghz processor, 2 GB of ram, and is running Windows XP. One of the symptoms it has after overheating, is that it'll turn on immediately afterwards, but won't show any video on my monitor. I usually have to wait at least 5 minutes (mostly at least 10) before I can get it to turn on and show video on my monitor. I also usually have to wiggle around the graphics card a little bit, which is the ASUS A9550 Series with 256 MB. I'm not sure exactly what is causing the computer to overheat. At first I thought it was the video card, but after I noticed it was doing it while playing Master of Orion 2, I'm not so sure, because that game can't be making the video card work all that hard. So how exactly can I pinpoint the problem? Thanks for any help provided. Edit: Okay I downloaded the programs that you specified, and will start benchmarking my system to try and pinpoint what's overheating. What is the temperature range for when it's getting to hot? Also I have an abundant amount of software experience with computers, but unfortunately not to much hardware experience.

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• Intel Core i7 QuadCore on HP Pavilion dv7 Overheating Issues

  - by kellax

  I bought a brand new HP notebook: HP Pavilion dv7-6b21em BeatsAudio edition. The notebook is about 2 months old and has pretty nasty overheating problem. I mainly use it for development however i do play some games. The disturbing thing is that the computer is loud on pretty simple tasks. Here are the specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-2670QM QuadCore ( 8 threads ) @ 2.20 GHz RAM: ( 8GB ) 2x 4GB @ 1066 HDD: 1TB 7200 GPU: ATI Radeon HD 6770M 1GB Dedicated DDR OS: Windows 7 64bit Enterprise I have an external monitor runing on VGA port an 22' Samsung SyncMaster S24B300 CPU Heat Statistics Platform: rPGA 988B (Socket G2) Frequency: cca. 3000 Mhz VID: 1.1809 - 1.2059 v Revision: D2 CPUID: 0x206A7 TDP: 45.0 Wats, Lithographu: 32 nm Heat: Tj. Max: 100*C, Power 4.5 - 5.9 Wats Core #0: 63*C Load on all is about 0 to 2% Core #1: 65*C Core #2: 66*C Core #3: 67*C I opened the notebook the fan is working fine there is no dust but still right now the fan is pretty loud even tho all i have open is FireFox. When i run a game the heat jumps to whopping 90-97*C. It has not shut down due to overheating yet but the loud fan is pretty annoying considering I'm not really doing anything stressfull. Is there anything i can do to fix this is it maybe a BIOS issue ? I have all drivers updated tho to the latest. I have very few background processes running consuming bare 2GB of RAM and about 2% of CPU. I had it serviced they said there is nothing wrong with it. But i feel that a Notebook that costs 1.2k Euros cant be like this.

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• Setting Ubuntu Global PATH for Ruby Enterprise Edition

  - by Wally Glutton

  Context: I recently installed Ruby Enterprise Edition (REE) on an Ubuntu 8.04 server. I would like for this new version of Ruby to globally supersede (for all users, crontabs, etc) the older version in /usr/local/bin. Attempted Solution #1: The REE documentation recommends placing the REE bin folder at the beginning of the global PATH in /etc/environment. I altered the PATH line in this file to read: PATH="/opt/ruby_ee/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games" This did affect my PATH at all. Attempted Solution #2: Next I followed these instructions and updated the PATH setting in the /etc/login.defs and /etc/crontab files. (I did not change /etc/sudoers.) This didn't affect my PATH either, even after logging out and rebooting the server. Other information: I seem to be having the same problem described here. I'm testing using the command: echo $PATH My shell is bash. My .bashrc doesn't not alter my PATH. I'm ssh'ed into the system for all testing. /opt/ruby_ee/ is a sym-link to /opt/ruby-enterprise-1.8.7-2011.03/

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• Port forwarding + shared connection with Ubuntu

  - by Joey Adams

  Because my wireless router's ethernet ports are defective, I set up a shared wireless connection from my laptop (which has wifi) to my eMac (which does not) via a crossover ethernet cable. The laptop is behind a router as 192.168.1.131, and the eMac is behind the laptop as 10.42.43.1 . The laptop is running Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic). I achieved the shared connection through NetworkManager Applet. I right-clicked on the network icon at the topright, went to Edit Connections, selected the Wired connection named "Auto eth0", clicked "Edit...", went to the "IPv4 Settings" tab, and selected the Method "Shared to other computers". The eMac can now access the Internet. Now I want to enable port forwarding. There's a game I want to play that needs port 6112 forwarded (both TCP and UDP) in order to host games. I set up the router to enable port forwarding for 192.168.1.131 (the laptop), but port forwarding still isn't available on the eMac. I suppose I need to pretend my laptop is a router and configure port forwarding on it, indicating that incoming connections to the laptop (192.168.1.131) should be forwarded to the eMac on the shared connection (10.42.43.1 ). Thus, packets coming into the router on port 6112 would be redirected to the laptop (by the router), then to the eMac (by the laptop). My question is, how would I do that on Ubuntu (in light of NetworkManager's presence)? Also, if I can't get this to work, does anyone mind hosting a comp stomp? :D

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• What is the best keyboard for typing speed (not layouts)

  - by Gapton

  So I am a programmer, and I like playing typing speed games. My typing speed is, for common English words, 85 to 90 wpm, max 95. I type on various devices, my laptop, desktop, office pc.... they all have slightly different keyboards. Being a curious programmer, I wonder what types of keyboard is used for the highest possible typing speed. Or let me phrase it in another way, what is the type of keyboards that people use in typing speed contest? Here is something I know that I feel like I can share: It must be a wired keyboard, I can feel the lag as I am typing this on my wireless keyboard, even if it is a slightly more expensive model which claims to have zero lag. I know people prefer a mechanical keyboard, for the hepatic feedback, however I have not tried one. It lasts longer and is noisy, it also does not have the problem of normal keyboards where you press many keys at a time the signals will get all jammed and the computer will only receive one or two keys. I personally prefer those "thin profile" keyboards. I type a lot, and 95 wpm put me in the top 5%, this is of course just on a gaming site. However when I type on the fat keyboards, my fingers have to travel a much longer distance before the keys actually click. This is where I find myself typing much faster with those thin profile keyboards found on my laptop. Because my fingers only hover on the keys and I only need to press a short distance, each stroke takes less force and light rapid strokes is what makes me type fast. When I type on a fat keyboard, I was forced to use heavy strokes, and this slows me down. There must be some people out there who are keyboard scientists, who actually do experiments and user tests with different setups. It would be interesting to understand more about the things we use everyday for not just work but a majority of our communications. P.S. this is about hardware and not about switching keyboard layouts to dvorak

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• Laptop choice for development: MacBook Pro 17 vs Dell Studio XPS 16 vs HP Envy 15

  - by Shalan

  Hey! First things first - let me state that I am not intending to play games on this - I have narrowed down to these 3 purely based on specs and its individual brand reliability in the market. I intend to primarily use: Visual Studio 2008 Pro a lot (develop and deploy on Windows platforms) SQL Server 2005 Oracle 10g Adobe Photoshop CS4 Microsoft Expression Studio Google Sketchup I currently use a desktop PC (Core2Duo 2.66Ghz with 3GB DDRII memory) running Vista Business 32-bit - and I have to admit that, especially for Visual Studio, its quite sluggish to a point where it affects productivity. Furthermore, I intend to only use the notebook on a table - with a cooled surface, like granite :) - so I would appreciate people's input with regard to heat issues. Im aware that the Dell's primary exhaust gets blocked by the lid when open, but some reviews don't seem to place extraordinary emphasis on heat issues resulting from this. My options for the Dell/Alienware: Core i7 720QM 4GB DDRIII memory ATI mobility 3670 (512) 128GB Solid State Drive 16-inch Full HD RGB-LED LCD display (1080p) 3-year next-business-day support My configuration for the Apple MBP: Core2Duo 2.8Ghz (Im assuming the T9600) 4GB DDRIII memory 128GB Solid State Drive standard 1 year support The one advantage I think of with the MBP is that I can have the addition of OSX (though Im unsure what I would use it for, but purely to play around with a much-boasted-about OS) What are your thoughts on this, especially regarding build-quality, heat, performance and battery-life? Much thanks! ~shalan

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• MacBook Pro screen flickers, and lines appears after using it a while

  - by Adam L. S.

  My aunt gave me her old MacBook Pro, but unfortunately it has a few issues. The main problem is that lines appears after I use it with applications that heavily depend on graphics, but they don't necessarily appear in that window. I also figured out that these lines appear with the windows, so the cursor goes over the lines, and menus and other windows also overlap them. If I take a screenshot of the window by itself, no lines appear. It seems obvious to me that this is a driver-related problem. Unfortunately, there are no updates or anything for the driver. At first I tried asking for a solution at Apple's forum, but they were only able to figure out that "something is wrong with the video card". I checked the MacBook with an Ubuntu disk, and the screen seemed OK. I've uploaded some photos to my Picasa account to show the symptoms. Recently, I've also noticed the screen flickering when using applications that need high performance graphics, like games. Also, the MacBook Pro came with Mac OS X Tiger, but she upgraded it to Leopard (she only brought the Tiger disk with her.) What can I do with this?

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• nginx does not use variables set in /etc/environment on system reboot, but does when restarted from shell

  - by Dave Nolan

  I have a Rails app running on nginx/passenger. It restarts happily in a shell using sudo /etc/init.d/nginx stop|start|restart. But Passenger throws an error when the system is rebooted: "Missing the Rails #{version} gem". But GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH are both set in /etc/environment so surely they would be available to all processes during reboot? /etc/environment PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games" GEM_HOME=/var/lib/gems/1.8 GEM_PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8 /etc/init.d/nginx #! /bin/sh ### BEGIN INIT INFO # Provides: nginx # Required-Start: $all # Required-Stop: $all # Default-Start: 2 3 4 5 # Default-Stop: 0 1 6 # Short-Description: starts the nginx web server # Description: starts nginx using start-stop-daemon ### END INIT INFO PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin DAEMON=/opt/nginx/sbin/nginx NAME=nginx DESC=nginx test -x $DAEMON || exit 0 # Include nginx defaults if available if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then . /etc/default/nginx fi set -e case "$1" in start) echo -n "Starting $DESC: " start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/log/nginx/$NAME.pid \ --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS echo "$NAME." ;; stop) echo -n "Stopping $DESC: " start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /var/log/nginx/$NAME.pid \ --exec $DAEMON echo "$NAME." ;; restart|force-reload) echo -n "Restarting $DESC: " start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \ /var/log/nginx/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON sleep 1 start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \ /var/log/nginx/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS echo "$NAME." ;; reload) echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: " start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile /var/log/nginx/$NAME.pid \ --exec $DAEMON echo "$NAME." ;; *) N=/etc/init.d/$NAME echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|force-reload}" >&2 exit 1 ;; esac exit 0 $ opt/nginx/sbin/nginx -v nginx version: nginx/0.7.67 Ubuntu lucid

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• Do I need liquid cooling?

  - by Mrrvomun

  I'm building a computer mainly for gaming and developing games. It's going to be a three screen system with two GeForce GTX 460's and a quad-core i7. The newegg wattage calculator says I need around 900W. The case I intend to get is this one. Full specs if you need 'em are at the end of this post. I have no intentions to overclock the system at the moment, but this may change in the future. I've done a lot of research on the subject, and the answers I've found indicate that it takes a heck of a lot of power to require liquid cooling, and most non-overclocked systems don't need it. But I haven't seen a question about a system with two GPU's, so I ask you the following two questions: Assuming that the system is used for gaming for very extended periods of time (say 4-6 hours at a time, nonstop) with all three screens running at full 1080p, would the fans installed in the system suffice? Or would I need more fans and/or liquid cooling? If the system is used under the same circumstances as above, and is overclocked to a reasonable level, would the fans installed in the system suffice? Or would I need more fans and/or liquid cooling? Specs: Intel Core i7 16GB DDR3 Two nVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 3TB HDD Two DVD-RW writers Thermaltake 1050W power supply Case is linked above

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• GTX 280 purple snow on bootup, card works without drivers

  - by Brokar

  i have owned a ASUS GTX280 for 3 years now. The card has been great all along but i started having problems 10 days ago. I was playing Diablo 3 for 1 week on max settings no problems, then suddenly my display kept getting some weird purple/colours as soon as i booted and logged into windows. Went into safe mode, updated drivers and it kept crashing. Formatted PC, fresh windows install with new WHQL drivers again same problem. Uninstalled nvidia drivers and pc has been running great for 4 days now, ofcourse i cannot run games but everything works on 1680x1050 resolution and i can browse internet,watch movies and use my PC for everything but gaming. As soon as i install nvidia drivers PC won't boot. I only wanna game a few hours a week (very busy program with school this month so it might be a blessing that i cannot game) and i would love it if i could keep the card. I am looking to upgrde later on when i will have time for gaming but i wonder if i could still use the card somehow with different/new drivers (tried older drivers that came with the card on a CD aswell) tldr: PC works fine with no nvidia drivers (apart from gaming ofc). Once i install WHQL drivers or older ones, cannot even log into windows. Fix?

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• How do I troubleshoot a slow hard drive?

  - by Bruce Connor

  My computer is suffering of slow-downs and I'm not surprised (it's around 6 years old). Here's what I've verified: They are not very frequent (only a couple of times a day). When they happen a single application will hang for 10-60 seconds, while the rest don't hang but also get slow. Even as it is happening, the CPU usage stays low. It happens to applications (such as text editor, firefox, skype). It never happens to some applications (such as games) which I use for hours under heavy CPU load. Also of note: The Graphics card and PSU are new (around a year). Though I have a decent amount of software installed right now, this was happening even right after I reinstalled Windows. This HDD has been through many partinioning schemes, and a few heavy operations (such as moving around 200GB of data). Because of the above, I am already 70% sure the problem is with the hard drive. Before I replace it, however, I want to rule out other less likely possibilities (such as RAM, software, or PSU). I don't have the money to replace the entire box right now, but I can easily replace one of the components. I've read several questions (such as this one) which give general guidance on troubleshooting an unknown issue, that is not what I'm looking for here. My main question is: What tests or benchmarks can I run to verify I have a problematic hard drive? I don't need to solve this problem, I am content with just making sure it's the hard drive. I could borrow a newer hard drive from a friend and see if it gets better. A positive result would rule out all other components, but it wouldn't rule out a software issue (since this new hard drive won't have any of the software I use daily). Running on Windows/Linux.

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• Pentium 4 Willamette vs. Faster Celeron Northwood [closed]

  - by Synetech inc.

  Which is the preferable of the following two processors? Intel® Pentium® 4 Processor 1.70 GHz, 256K Cache, 400 MHz FSB Willamette Intel® Celeron® Processor 2.40 GHz, 128K Cache, 400 MHz FSB Northwood Details: A few months ago my motherboard died, so I bought a used computer that had a 2.4GHz Celeron. My old system had a 1.7GHz Pentium 4, so now I’m trying to decide which CPU to use. Obviously a P4 is preferable over a Celeron, but the Celeron is (significantly?) faster than the P4. I’m wondering if the faster Celeron might be better for certain tasks (ie, stronger but dumber is better at some things than smarter but weaker). I tried Googling for some reviews and comparisons for graphs to get a clear depiction of which is better overall, but found nothing that helped. (I did manage to find one page that indicates (apparently by poll, not benchmark) that the Celeron is better.) So which CPU should I use? Does anyone know of some graphs that I can use to compare the two? The system is a general-purpose machine for word-processing, Internet, and casual games (not Crysis, but not Solitaire either). It will be running Windows XP. The board is a 478 with 400MHz FSB.

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• USB mouse disconnecting and reconnecting in windows and linux

  - by Kalak

  I have a problem similar to what is described at "Why is my USB mouse disconnecting and reconnecting randomly and often?" except is is happening in both Windows 7 and Linux (Ubuntu 12/04TLS, fully patched), multiple mice, multiple OSs. It stops responding to input for about 3-5 seconds, then starts responding again. It's more frequent and lasts longer when running games (TF2, L4D, Dishonored, Borderlands 2, and more), but happens when just running the OS as well. I was hoping it was the motherboard so I bought a USB 2.0 PCI card to try that, but it's still happening. I've stripped it down to just the keyboard and mouse (different keyboard too just in case the keyboard was the problem), but it's still happening. All the hardware (mice and keyboards) work fine on other computers. I have literally pulled the mouse and keyboard out and plugged them into another computer (laptop) and re-joined the online game and had no problem with the keyboard and mouse combo that just failed on my gaming rig. Please no driver / Windows or Linux only suggestions, as that wouldn't effect both OSs. edit: known good mice I've brought home are now going bad. I suspect the hardware is messed up (voltage?) and has been frying the mice.

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