http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/ Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:54:43 -0500 MyBB http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=85 Thu, 17 Jan 2008 12:10:35 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=85
I want some action.]]>
I want some action.]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=82 Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:53:24 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=82

Cgi_Vamp Wrote:I had an idea of making a Isometric Pixel Art city with buildings made by members here in Bme Studioz.
I drew an empty city with just one Building.

The red squares are where your buildings are going to be put in.
You building must be in this proportion:

Or This:
[url="http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/107/4spaces33lw2od.gif"]http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/107/4spaces33lw2od.gif[/url]
space now available(thx to spaceyoshix :P )
[url="http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/9107/bigtall6rj.png"]http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/9107/bigtall6rj.png[/url]
3x3 space now available (flat land only)!

space now available

Save the image and simply add things to it.

Examples:


You can put whatever you like within your space, it can be a flat surface like a grass field or Park.

Rules:

1. Save the image as either gif or png.
2. The image must be no bigger than the above images.

Just post and I'll be putting your building somewhere (randomly) in the city.

Tutrial on Isometric Pixel Art
[url="http://rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial/"]http://rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial/[/url]


Favorites:


Buildings in queue:





Rejected buildings:


Well, I don't have anyone to do the flash for this anymore, but I thought I might as well remake the topic as I have a link to it on the site and it'd be still nice to see what buildings people can make for it. Perhaps someone can rebuild it for me, or I could learn enough flash to do it myself.]]>

Cgi_Vamp Wrote:I had an idea of making a Isometric Pixel Art city with buildings made by members here in Bme Studioz.
I drew an empty city with just one Building.

The red squares are where your buildings are going to be put in.
You building must be in this proportion:

Or This:
[url="http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/107/4spaces33lw2od.gif"]http://img311.imageshack.us/img311/107/4spaces33lw2od.gif[/url]
space now available(thx to spaceyoshix :P )
[url="http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/9107/bigtall6rj.png"]http://img373.imageshack.us/img373/9107/bigtall6rj.png[/url]
3x3 space now available (flat land only)!

space now available

Save the image and simply add things to it.

Examples:


You can put whatever you like within your space, it can be a flat surface like a grass field or Park.

Rules:

1. Save the image as either gif or png.
2. The image must be no bigger than the above images.

Just post and I'll be putting your building somewhere (randomly) in the city.

Tutrial on Isometric Pixel Art
[url="http://rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial/"]http://rhysd.syntesis.org/tutorial/[/url]


Favorites:


Buildings in queue:





Rejected buildings:


Well, I don't have anyone to do the flash for this anymore, but I thought I might as well remake the topic as I have a link to it on the site and it'd be still nice to see what buildings people can make for it. Perhaps someone can rebuild it for me, or I could learn enough flash to do it myself.]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=81 Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:00:18 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=81 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=80 Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:49:09 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=80
R U E]]>
R U E]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=79 Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:43:22 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=79
Post 1: Pumping Iron.

Post 2: Iron Man.

Post 3: Man Power.

Continue it. ;)]]>
Post 1: Pumping Iron.

Post 2: Iron Man.

Post 3: Man Power.

Continue it. ;)]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=78 Tue, 18 Dec 2007 18:59:14 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=78
Example:

Poster 1: Once there was
Poster 2: a person who
Poster 3: enjoyed eating pie.

The story will certainly get crazier as more people put their input in. I'll start with what I used for an example:

Once there was...]]>
Example:

Poster 1: Once there was
Poster 2: a person who
Poster 3: enjoyed eating pie.

The story will certainly get crazier as more people put their input in. I'll start with what I used for an example:

Once there was...]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=77 Sat, 15 Dec 2007 09:25:50 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=77
Umihara Kawase (J) (SNES/SFC)



I've actually played this game on and off for about 4 years roughly now, it's always had a special place in my heart. It's bizarre, funky and pretty fun, kind of unfortunate that we never saw it here in the US (at least as far as I know)..



You play as a young girl (AFAIK, I'm pretty sure most male characters in games back then wouldn't be wearing so much pink attire.. But then again, this isnt a US game :T) who I'm guessing has some sort of affinity for fishing and aquatic life? Don't know. Her only friend in this bizarre world appears to be a fishing line/hook which she uses to grapple walls, ceilings, floors, enemies, items, tractor beams, etc. to traverse various obstacles. The stages/levels are rather short, but treacherous, at the end of each one there's a door that'll take you to another, and so on and so forth. Each stage has a bottomless pit (water) at the bottom, which kills you instantly.



Enemies are a one hit kill, as with everything.. To avoid being a victim, you either grapple them and reel them into your backpack, or just dodge them, but it can get crowded pretty fast.. Speaking of enemies/monsters, most of them are fish/eels with legs. Kind of disturbing.

I was only ever able to encounter one boss, which was a gigantic tadpole who would lay eggs and have its FROG offspring (backwards, I know) chase you off the edge of the platform, where you'd hang for safety until it committed suicide for no reason, then proceed. Cant always find it again either, there's a few different routes to be taken here and there..

One of the things I like about this game is that there's always more than one way to complete a level/traverse obstacles. Lets you get really creative with the grappling aspect, which is really fluid and not clunky unlike most grappling mechanics in SNES games..

Thought you'd guys like to hear/see about it, maybe something new to discuss here too.. Look it up somewhere if ya want :>.]]>
Umihara Kawase (J) (SNES/SFC)



I've actually played this game on and off for about 4 years roughly now, it's always had a special place in my heart. It's bizarre, funky and pretty fun, kind of unfortunate that we never saw it here in the US (at least as far as I know)..



You play as a young girl (AFAIK, I'm pretty sure most male characters in games back then wouldn't be wearing so much pink attire.. But then again, this isnt a US game :T) who I'm guessing has some sort of affinity for fishing and aquatic life? Don't know. Her only friend in this bizarre world appears to be a fishing line/hook which she uses to grapple walls, ceilings, floors, enemies, items, tractor beams, etc. to traverse various obstacles. The stages/levels are rather short, but treacherous, at the end of each one there's a door that'll take you to another, and so on and so forth. Each stage has a bottomless pit (water) at the bottom, which kills you instantly.



Enemies are a one hit kill, as with everything.. To avoid being a victim, you either grapple them and reel them into your backpack, or just dodge them, but it can get crowded pretty fast.. Speaking of enemies/monsters, most of them are fish/eels with legs. Kind of disturbing.

I was only ever able to encounter one boss, which was a gigantic tadpole who would lay eggs and have its FROG offspring (backwards, I know) chase you off the edge of the platform, where you'd hang for safety until it committed suicide for no reason, then proceed. Cant always find it again either, there's a few different routes to be taken here and there..

One of the things I like about this game is that there's always more than one way to complete a level/traverse obstacles. Lets you get really creative with the grappling aspect, which is really fluid and not clunky unlike most grappling mechanics in SNES games..

Thought you'd guys like to hear/see about it, maybe something new to discuss here too.. Look it up somewhere if ya want :>.]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=76 Tue, 11 Dec 2007 14:07:37 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=76

but anyway pong rocks, id say that even with all our modern day games pong is still fun. Great multiplayer to :P]]>

but anyway pong rocks, id say that even with all our modern day games pong is still fun. Great multiplayer to :P]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=75 Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:57:32 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=75 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=73 Sat, 01 Dec 2007 09:47:36 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=73
Two games we forgot to mention when we added are Biohazard, a fun FPS, and Dungeon Slash, a third person game with swords as the main weapons.

Biohazard
Dungeon Slash
Magneball
Zombie Simulator

Enjoy, and know that we are going to get some amazing games next month! Stay tuned!]]>
Two games we forgot to mention when we added are Biohazard, a fun FPS, and Dungeon Slash, a third person game with swords as the main weapons.

Biohazard
Dungeon Slash
Magneball
Zombie Simulator

Enjoy, and know that we are going to get some amazing games next month! Stay tuned!]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=70 Wed, 21 Nov 2007 22:35:49 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=70
http://gamesforfree.net/rotatorz.php]]>
http://gamesforfree.net/rotatorz.php]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=68 Sat, 10 Nov 2007 08:31:52 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=68


Functions

First, let me just start off with a quote that comes directly from a PHP user.


Quote:PHP takes a bit of patience to get the hang of, just like every other language. It's actually very straightforward, no excessive complicating.

There are so many built-in functions that the reference has been changed from a flat list to one-hundred eighty categories of functions.

There are at least 22 functions alone for finding something in a string, depending on if you want to be case insensitive, if you want to replace that something, if you want to search from the end first, etc etc... some of those functions also have flags, which is a bit self-defeating.

To the best of my knowledge, the built-in database access functions don't use or even allow the use of variable binding, which is possibly why I hear about so many common PHP applications with SQL injection exploits. There are, of course, several different ways to get around this, including a flag in a config file that affects every script on the whole server and a function named mysql_real_escape_string. (I eagerly await the announcement of mysql_fake_escape_string.) There are also dbx_escape_string, escapeshellarg, escapeshellcmd, pg_escape_bytea, pg_escape_string, pg_unescape_bytea, addslashes, addcslashes, preg_quote, quotemeta, mysql_escape_string, mysqli_real_escape_string, and sqlite_escape_string. Why? Who knows?

The reflectiveness API looks absolutely nothing like the rest of the language and actually more closely resembles a failed attempt at wedging Java into C.

The developers can't even decide whether or not they want underscores in function names or not. is_object vs isset? base64_encode vs urlencode? str_rot13 vs strpos? Straightforward indeed.

Arrays and hashes, despite being completely different, are merged into the same data structure because I guess it would just be hard to expect new programmers to tell the difference. Teaching by removing difficult details; what a concept.

Does PHP even have references or namespaces or closures yet? I don't think so, really.

I'm not a fan of having the same operators for numeric and string operations either, but almost everyone does that

Bad programs do not a bad language make, but there have to be some criteria for a bad language, and I'm pretty sure these should all be on the list. PHP started out as a quick templating language for non-programmers, and it's still not very good for anything better than that. I could write a symbolic algebra package in Malbolge, but that doesn't make it a good idea.


PHP is a horrible language for a new programmer and a pathetic language for a seasoned programmer. If you want a decent language also aimed for beginners, use Python. If you want a powerful language with vaguely-consistent syntax and lots of easy-to-use libraries, use Perl or Python or Ruby. If you want to put a cute little counter in otherwise-static HTML, use PHP.

Design
What about these and these and these and these and these? What do they have to do with Web development? Oh but right, you can choose to just not compile them in, if you happen to be the administrator of the machine you're on and want to remove them from everyone else who may dream up a reason to use them. Modularity and dynamic loading is for nerds!

I'm talking about the design of the language. We could all write our Web applications in C or even assembler, but for some strange reason we don't. PHP has inconsistent syntax, far too many functions that do almost the same thing, weird scoping rules, and far too much old junk lurking around. It almost seems deliberately designed to encourage obfuscation and require having a manual open at all times.


Libraries
Python, Perl, and Ruby all have ridiculously huge libraries available and it is trivial to connect to a database with any of them. I believe Python's is built in, and Perl/Ruby both have DBI modules which are easy to get and install.

Preference & Overall
Yes, it's a matter of preference of what to use, but it's a preference that leads to ugly code all over the place and a lot of "programmers" raised on PHP who think they rock for being able to make counters but can't really do anything else. As a dev, I do happen to care about what goes on under the hood; I care about code reuse and modularity and clean code and such, because it makes the world a better place~~

Any of the more commonly-used features in one of the four P's can be duplicated in C with some library or other. Granted, something like Catalyst or RoR would be a wee bit more difficult to do, but I don't think we're really talking on that level. (Does PHP have a framework like RoR?) *examines*

Ick, except horrendously ugly and without actual templates.

Python blocks take LESS time and space by definition, since you don't need a line with a lone brace on it at the end of a block. Ruby just uses a keyword to end a block that otherwise looks the same as it would in Python, and uses braces for closures. I'm not used to either and my initial problem with Python was the extreme emphasis on whitespace, but that hardly breaks the language and has been called a mistake anyway.

PHP's map() doesn't even allow for inlining afaik (anonymous functions are just too complicated?), and I'm not sure it has a grep() at all. Sorting is ridiculous; I count twelve different sort functions, several of which exist only to work around the array/hash hack (and none of which, of course, have the array_ prefix that the most common array functions have). Searching a string is still thoroughly ridiculous. Database access... who even knows, it's different for every database.

It's almost as if nobody except Zend knows how to write PHP modules, and since all this stuff is built in everyone else is rather discouraged from trying to write anything better.

As a developer I do occasionally have to poke around this code other people have created and am treated to messy code written in a messy language by people who think this is normal. It also leads to a lot of jobs I might otherwise want to take revolving around the language.

Plus the language seriously seems to either train or attract the bottom of the barrel and thus coats the Internet with lots of scripts that can only be described as analogous to . At least the other languages have communities and documentation that tries to teach people how to code.

And I have this thing about people using crappy tools, as you may have noticed :|


It takes less lines to write up a simple form script in Python, as with PHP, it can take up a few. You could do it manually in any of the languages, if you really wanted to. Still one line, though, at least if you are some sort of Perl masochist:


Code:
my %params = map { local $_ = $_; s/\+/ /g; s/%([0-9a-z]{2})/ord hex $1/ieg; split /=/, $_, 2 } split /[&;]/, $ENV{QUERY_STRING};




PHP is a bad practice to learn as a first language, and overall, a bad language to use if you're a serious developer. If you're really looking to do serious programming, then Perl, Ruby or even Python can do the job for you the same way PHP can do it, and in a more elegant way.]]>


Functions

First, let me just start off with a quote that comes directly from a PHP user.


Quote:PHP takes a bit of patience to get the hang of, just like every other language. It's actually very straightforward, no excessive complicating.

There are so many built-in functions that the reference has been changed from a flat list to one-hundred eighty categories of functions.

There are at least 22 functions alone for finding something in a string, depending on if you want to be case insensitive, if you want to replace that something, if you want to search from the end first, etc etc... some of those functions also have flags, which is a bit self-defeating.

To the best of my knowledge, the built-in database access functions don't use or even allow the use of variable binding, which is possibly why I hear about so many common PHP applications with SQL injection exploits. There are, of course, several different ways to get around this, including a flag in a config file that affects every script on the whole server and a function named mysql_real_escape_string. (I eagerly await the announcement of mysql_fake_escape_string.) There are also dbx_escape_string, escapeshellarg, escapeshellcmd, pg_escape_bytea, pg_escape_string, pg_unescape_bytea, addslashes, addcslashes, preg_quote, quotemeta, mysql_escape_string, mysqli_real_escape_string, and sqlite_escape_string. Why? Who knows?

The reflectiveness API looks absolutely nothing like the rest of the language and actually more closely resembles a failed attempt at wedging Java into C.

The developers can't even decide whether or not they want underscores in function names or not. is_object vs isset? base64_encode vs urlencode? str_rot13 vs strpos? Straightforward indeed.

Arrays and hashes, despite being completely different, are merged into the same data structure because I guess it would just be hard to expect new programmers to tell the difference. Teaching by removing difficult details; what a concept.

Does PHP even have references or namespaces or closures yet? I don't think so, really.

I'm not a fan of having the same operators for numeric and string operations either, but almost everyone does that

Bad programs do not a bad language make, but there have to be some criteria for a bad language, and I'm pretty sure these should all be on the list. PHP started out as a quick templating language for non-programmers, and it's still not very good for anything better than that. I could write a symbolic algebra package in Malbolge, but that doesn't make it a good idea.


PHP is a horrible language for a new programmer and a pathetic language for a seasoned programmer. If you want a decent language also aimed for beginners, use Python. If you want a powerful language with vaguely-consistent syntax and lots of easy-to-use libraries, use Perl or Python or Ruby. If you want to put a cute little counter in otherwise-static HTML, use PHP.

Design
What about these and these and these and these and these? What do they have to do with Web development? Oh but right, you can choose to just not compile them in, if you happen to be the administrator of the machine you're on and want to remove them from everyone else who may dream up a reason to use them. Modularity and dynamic loading is for nerds!

I'm talking about the design of the language. We could all write our Web applications in C or even assembler, but for some strange reason we don't. PHP has inconsistent syntax, far too many functions that do almost the same thing, weird scoping rules, and far too much old junk lurking around. It almost seems deliberately designed to encourage obfuscation and require having a manual open at all times.


Libraries
Python, Perl, and Ruby all have ridiculously huge libraries available and it is trivial to connect to a database with any of them. I believe Python's is built in, and Perl/Ruby both have DBI modules which are easy to get and install.

Preference & Overall
Yes, it's a matter of preference of what to use, but it's a preference that leads to ugly code all over the place and a lot of "programmers" raised on PHP who think they rock for being able to make counters but can't really do anything else. As a dev, I do happen to care about what goes on under the hood; I care about code reuse and modularity and clean code and such, because it makes the world a better place~~

Any of the more commonly-used features in one of the four P's can be duplicated in C with some library or other. Granted, something like Catalyst or RoR would be a wee bit more difficult to do, but I don't think we're really talking on that level. (Does PHP have a framework like RoR?) *examines*

Ick, except horrendously ugly and without actual templates.

Python blocks take LESS time and space by definition, since you don't need a line with a lone brace on it at the end of a block. Ruby just uses a keyword to end a block that otherwise looks the same as it would in Python, and uses braces for closures. I'm not used to either and my initial problem with Python was the extreme emphasis on whitespace, but that hardly breaks the language and has been called a mistake anyway.

PHP's map() doesn't even allow for inlining afaik (anonymous functions are just too complicated?), and I'm not sure it has a grep() at all. Sorting is ridiculous; I count twelve different sort functions, several of which exist only to work around the array/hash hack (and none of which, of course, have the array_ prefix that the most common array functions have). Searching a string is still thoroughly ridiculous. Database access... who even knows, it's different for every database.

It's almost as if nobody except Zend knows how to write PHP modules, and since all this stuff is built in everyone else is rather discouraged from trying to write anything better.

As a developer I do occasionally have to poke around this code other people have created and am treated to messy code written in a messy language by people who think this is normal. It also leads to a lot of jobs I might otherwise want to take revolving around the language.

Plus the language seriously seems to either train or attract the bottom of the barrel and thus coats the Internet with lots of scripts that can only be described as analogous to . At least the other languages have communities and documentation that tries to teach people how to code.

And I have this thing about people using crappy tools, as you may have noticed :|


It takes less lines to write up a simple form script in Python, as with PHP, it can take up a few. You could do it manually in any of the languages, if you really wanted to. Still one line, though, at least if you are some sort of Perl masochist:


Code:
my %params = map { local $_ = $_; s/\+/ /g; s/%([0-9a-z]{2})/ord hex $1/ieg; split /=/, $_, 2 } split /[&;]/, $ENV{QUERY_STRING};




PHP is a bad practice to learn as a first language, and overall, a bad language to use if you're a serious developer. If you're really looking to do serious programming, then Perl, Ruby or even Python can do the job for you the same way PHP can do it, and in a more elegant way.]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=67 Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:44:34 -0600 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=67
Apparently people think that I want everyone to use the same software I do. This could not be further from the truth. As an official Open Source Hippie, I care about choices, not making everyone use the same thing as long as it's free. I point out alternatives because I know a lot of people don't bother looking for them. I say they are better because I have used several of many types of applications and have gotten a feel for what makes good software. I know that is partly opinion, but part of it is also good design and feature sets, which are partially based in human nature and so forth. I don't even expect everyone to try every single option, but at the very least the most popular apps deserve a quick Wikipedia lookup. Yes, it is easier to use what you have always used for now, but if you find something that works with you rather than forcing you to work around its pitfalls, the gain in efficiency will rapidly make up for the time you take reading a quick tutorial.

Why yes, I am going somewhere with this.

I do support choices, and I'm not going to force anyone into anything, but some choices of programs actually affect people beyond the users. Browser use is such a choice.

I'm sure you expect me to launch into a list of reasons Firefox is totally tubular, but to be honest I don't care too much if you use Firefox or not. If you are annoyed by Firefox fanboys, well, I'm sorry that you judge a product by a small part of its userbase, but that's fine. I know I flinch when someone mentions e uses Opera, simply because I'm so used to Opera users launching into tirades about how Opera will fix the ozone layer. Not that it makes me think Opera is a bad browser.

For those of you going "tl;dr", here is the list of reasons nobody should be using IE:

Security
Frankly, I don't care about security. I don't click "yes" on every dialog I see, I sit behind a router, I don't visit leetcrackwarez.sk very often, and I don't fall for domain squatters. I'm sure there are people for whom this doesn't apply, but I have my doubts that a different browser would prevent them from finding ways to screw their computers up.

Still, given how much press spyware is getting, it deserves a mention first so I can get it out of the way. IE has a pretty terrible history with giving the Internet all sorts of interesting ways to run stuff on your computer without asking. Everything has bugs, but IE is shoddy decade-old code that is only updated when another hole is found -- and those holes often go unfixed for a while. IE is on the bottom of the list here.

How does this affect me? If your computer is compromised it could be used for all sorts of unsavory things: open proxies, spamming sites until they run out of bandwidth, and generally slowing the Internet down.

I'm sure you have never gotten a virus from IE and have the best virus scanner ever; that's great. Just keep in mind that virus scanners are gradually becoming less useful and IE has a track record that nobody else does.

User interface
A lot of these are nitpicks, but they are nitpicks that I have grown to rely on. Maybe you would use them, maybe you wouldn't, but with IE you don't even have a choice.

There are no tabs. You really can't imagine how nice it is to browse Wikipedia or forums or Slashdot or just a site with a lot of links using tabs until you've tried it. Open everything of interest in a new tab, and when you're done with the page you're reading you already have new pages loading and waiting. It's easy to close a lot of tabs at once, you can save entire groups of tabs (for example if you have a lot of webcomics you like to read), you don't have lots of the same window filling up your taskbar, you can rearrange them, you can switch back and forth between two pages quickly without messing up when you look at another window, you can see at a glance what you have open and close them all with single clicks, etc etc.

There is no quick find. Finding requires leaving a window sitting open on your screen, taking up rather a lot of space if you have a small screen.

No search bar, no bookmark keywords. I use dictionary.com and Wikipedia and other such reference sites a lot, and all I have to do is type 'wiki some article name' in the address bar and hit Enter. In IE you would have to go to the main Wikipedia page and search every time. Once or twice this is hardly an inconvenience, but if you do it very often it takes up a lot of time.

Less stuff in the right-click menu. In particular, there is no 'view image', no 'copy image location', and the Properties dialogs are a bit cryptic and unhelpful.

Not very transparent. IE doesn't tell you anything about how it communicated with the server or what other files it downloaded; all you get is the source, and you can figure the rest out yourself.

Changing the text size does nothing if the page's CSS specifies exact font sizes, which most people do. (They really shouldn't, but the "correct" way doesn't really work in IE either.) If someone uses 8px text for some sadistic reason, you're on your own. And, yes, a lot of blog authors and such do that.

IE is harder to write plugins for and harder to find plugins for. Open-source projects tend to be overflowing with plugins and extensions and modifications created by bored hacker users.

Not many options for how the browser actually functions. Most of the Options dialog is options for how to connect to servers.

Etc, etc...

Rendering
Ah, the fun one, the one that's really bad. HTML, CSS, and other such formats have rules for how they work, called standards because they are.. well, standard. They are, by definition, how HTML and CSS are supposed to look on the screen (as in this is not just my opinion and indeed I disagree with them sometimes). IE, which has not been significantly updated in a number of years, dates back to the days when the standards were still a bit hazy. Microsoft added their own features (some of which, granted, were nice -- but then there's ), left some out for various reasons, and outright changed others if they thought their way was better. Since IE has barely been updated, any new additions to CSS -- such as all of CSS 2 -- have gone largely unused because IE can't support them and the majority of Web users have IE. Not only that, but anything that is drastically different between IE and everyone-else becomes rather difficult to make work everywhere. The whole idea of HTML was that it would work the same anywhere. I know that nobody is going to get it perfectly right, but the strange bugs should be cropping up when people do really weird things to the system, not just from using italics.

This presents a very big problem. Web developers have a few choices.
1. Have separate CSS for IE and everyone else. This defeats the purpose of using CSS in the first place, and is only a fix for things IE does differently, not things IE doesn't do at all.
2. Use javascript to fake it. javascript is, of course, also fairly different in IE, so this only works for CSS. There is a library for making IE6 parse CSS 2 correctly, but of course that can start to suck up a lot of bandwidth and slows pages down a lot.
3. Ignore one side or the other. Given that IE is 85% and everyone-else is 15%, this is excluding a large chunk of the Internet either way. Plus, if you only support IE, you are encouraging IE to stay how it is: broken.

I know people will always tell me "well everything looks fine in IE", but that's exactly because everyone is having to work around it. This is extra work for everyone, and it's often quite frustrating too.

This also leads into bullet four:

Nothing new
IE7 is marginally improved. It has tabs, it does RSS, it has a search bar. However, the CSS support is only marginally improved and there is really nothing else new except one or two security features so they can go "Look, we're secure!" This doesn't at all help the underlying problem that IE just doesn't do a lot of things correctly.

For a demonstration, I refer you to the Acid2 test. It's a picky test that covers a lot of areas of CSS, from normal boring things to correct error handling to complex stuff nobody would ever really do. Not all the non-IE browsers have it perfect, and that's okay; some of them have a few really obscure bugs.

This is what it's supposed to look like.
This is what it looks like in IE6 and IE7. 6 is on the right, 7 is on the left. I'm not really sure which to call worse. (Credit to Veekun.com for this)

You may also be interested in this [url="http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html"]list of IE bugs[/url]. Some have been fixed, some have not, and the PIE guy is lazy and hasn't marked which are which, but regardless, keep in mind how long it took for these things to be fixed. CSS 2 has been around since 1998.

Please, use something else. Make another dent in the IE market share and help release me and others from having to hack around strange bugs that sometimes haven't even been explained yet. Browse the Internets with newfound vigor. Prove that you don't hate freedom :'(

Have a look at Firefox or Opera or K-Meleon or SeaMonkey. At the very least, glance over their Wikipedia pages and look at screenshots. If you try out Firefox, I can help with any questions or problems; if you try the others, uh, I can google for documentation.]]>
Apparently people think that I want everyone to use the same software I do. This could not be further from the truth. As an official Open Source Hippie, I care about choices, not making everyone use the same thing as long as it's free. I point out alternatives because I know a lot of people don't bother looking for them. I say they are better because I have used several of many types of applications and have gotten a feel for what makes good software. I know that is partly opinion, but part of it is also good design and feature sets, which are partially based in human nature and so forth. I don't even expect everyone to try every single option, but at the very least the most popular apps deserve a quick Wikipedia lookup. Yes, it is easier to use what you have always used for now, but if you find something that works with you rather than forcing you to work around its pitfalls, the gain in efficiency will rapidly make up for the time you take reading a quick tutorial.

Why yes, I am going somewhere with this.

I do support choices, and I'm not going to force anyone into anything, but some choices of programs actually affect people beyond the users. Browser use is such a choice.

I'm sure you expect me to launch into a list of reasons Firefox is totally tubular, but to be honest I don't care too much if you use Firefox or not. If you are annoyed by Firefox fanboys, well, I'm sorry that you judge a product by a small part of its userbase, but that's fine. I know I flinch when someone mentions e uses Opera, simply because I'm so used to Opera users launching into tirades about how Opera will fix the ozone layer. Not that it makes me think Opera is a bad browser.

For those of you going "tl;dr", here is the list of reasons nobody should be using IE:

Security
Frankly, I don't care about security. I don't click "yes" on every dialog I see, I sit behind a router, I don't visit leetcrackwarez.sk very often, and I don't fall for domain squatters. I'm sure there are people for whom this doesn't apply, but I have my doubts that a different browser would prevent them from finding ways to screw their computers up.

Still, given how much press spyware is getting, it deserves a mention first so I can get it out of the way. IE has a pretty terrible history with giving the Internet all sorts of interesting ways to run stuff on your computer without asking. Everything has bugs, but IE is shoddy decade-old code that is only updated when another hole is found -- and those holes often go unfixed for a while. IE is on the bottom of the list here.

How does this affect me? If your computer is compromised it could be used for all sorts of unsavory things: open proxies, spamming sites until they run out of bandwidth, and generally slowing the Internet down.

I'm sure you have never gotten a virus from IE and have the best virus scanner ever; that's great. Just keep in mind that virus scanners are gradually becoming less useful and IE has a track record that nobody else does.

User interface
A lot of these are nitpicks, but they are nitpicks that I have grown to rely on. Maybe you would use them, maybe you wouldn't, but with IE you don't even have a choice.

There are no tabs. You really can't imagine how nice it is to browse Wikipedia or forums or Slashdot or just a site with a lot of links using tabs until you've tried it. Open everything of interest in a new tab, and when you're done with the page you're reading you already have new pages loading and waiting. It's easy to close a lot of tabs at once, you can save entire groups of tabs (for example if you have a lot of webcomics you like to read), you don't have lots of the same window filling up your taskbar, you can rearrange them, you can switch back and forth between two pages quickly without messing up when you look at another window, you can see at a glance what you have open and close them all with single clicks, etc etc.

There is no quick find. Finding requires leaving a window sitting open on your screen, taking up rather a lot of space if you have a small screen.

No search bar, no bookmark keywords. I use dictionary.com and Wikipedia and other such reference sites a lot, and all I have to do is type 'wiki some article name' in the address bar and hit Enter. In IE you would have to go to the main Wikipedia page and search every time. Once or twice this is hardly an inconvenience, but if you do it very often it takes up a lot of time.

Less stuff in the right-click menu. In particular, there is no 'view image', no 'copy image location', and the Properties dialogs are a bit cryptic and unhelpful.

Not very transparent. IE doesn't tell you anything about how it communicated with the server or what other files it downloaded; all you get is the source, and you can figure the rest out yourself.

Changing the text size does nothing if the page's CSS specifies exact font sizes, which most people do. (They really shouldn't, but the "correct" way doesn't really work in IE either.) If someone uses 8px text for some sadistic reason, you're on your own. And, yes, a lot of blog authors and such do that.

IE is harder to write plugins for and harder to find plugins for. Open-source projects tend to be overflowing with plugins and extensions and modifications created by bored hacker users.

Not many options for how the browser actually functions. Most of the Options dialog is options for how to connect to servers.

Etc, etc...

Rendering
Ah, the fun one, the one that's really bad. HTML, CSS, and other such formats have rules for how they work, called standards because they are.. well, standard. They are, by definition, how HTML and CSS are supposed to look on the screen (as in this is not just my opinion and indeed I disagree with them sometimes). IE, which has not been significantly updated in a number of years, dates back to the days when the standards were still a bit hazy. Microsoft added their own features (some of which, granted, were nice -- but then there's ), left some out for various reasons, and outright changed others if they thought their way was better. Since IE has barely been updated, any new additions to CSS -- such as all of CSS 2 -- have gone largely unused because IE can't support them and the majority of Web users have IE. Not only that, but anything that is drastically different between IE and everyone-else becomes rather difficult to make work everywhere. The whole idea of HTML was that it would work the same anywhere. I know that nobody is going to get it perfectly right, but the strange bugs should be cropping up when people do really weird things to the system, not just from using italics.

This presents a very big problem. Web developers have a few choices.
1. Have separate CSS for IE and everyone else. This defeats the purpose of using CSS in the first place, and is only a fix for things IE does differently, not things IE doesn't do at all.
2. Use javascript to fake it. javascript is, of course, also fairly different in IE, so this only works for CSS. There is a library for making IE6 parse CSS 2 correctly, but of course that can start to suck up a lot of bandwidth and slows pages down a lot.
3. Ignore one side or the other. Given that IE is 85% and everyone-else is 15%, this is excluding a large chunk of the Internet either way. Plus, if you only support IE, you are encouraging IE to stay how it is: broken.

I know people will always tell me "well everything looks fine in IE", but that's exactly because everyone is having to work around it. This is extra work for everyone, and it's often quite frustrating too.

This also leads into bullet four:

Nothing new
IE7 is marginally improved. It has tabs, it does RSS, it has a search bar. However, the CSS support is only marginally improved and there is really nothing else new except one or two security features so they can go "Look, we're secure!" This doesn't at all help the underlying problem that IE just doesn't do a lot of things correctly.

For a demonstration, I refer you to the Acid2 test. It's a picky test that covers a lot of areas of CSS, from normal boring things to correct error handling to complex stuff nobody would ever really do. Not all the non-IE browsers have it perfect, and that's okay; some of them have a few really obscure bugs.

This is what it's supposed to look like.
This is what it looks like in IE6 and IE7. 6 is on the right, 7 is on the left. I'm not really sure which to call worse. (Credit to Veekun.com for this)

You may also be interested in this [url="http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer.html"]list of IE bugs[/url]. Some have been fixed, some have not, and the PIE guy is lazy and hasn't marked which are which, but regardless, keep in mind how long it took for these things to be fixed. CSS 2 has been around since 1998.

Please, use something else. Make another dent in the IE market share and help release me and others from having to hack around strange bugs that sometimes haven't even been explained yet. Browse the Internets with newfound vigor. Prove that you don't hate freedom :'(

Have a look at Firefox or Opera or K-Meleon or SeaMonkey. At the very least, glance over their Wikipedia pages and look at screenshots. If you try out Firefox, I can help with any questions or problems; if you try the others, uh, I can google for documentation.]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=65 Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:57:40 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=65 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=64 Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:32:14 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=64
Grimmy attack of the rune lord will be a platformer as most know but on top of that it will have a huge amount of character development!!!! That is right, a leveling system!!!! This system will feature the following.

-More health per level
-1 Skill Point per level
-max of level 30!!!!

and now what good is leveling without skills!!!! so here I bring you the list of learn able skills!!!

-Sharpen Scythe (5 ranks)
+1/2/3/4/5 damage

-Throwing Arm (3 ranks)
+2/4/6 feet to throwing range

-Critical Strikes (5 Ranks)
+2/4/6/8/10% chance to do 25% more damage
-Improved Critical Strikes (1 rank)
+50% more damage from crits

-Enchant Weapon Fire (1 rank)
adds 2 fire damage in an explosion on impact

-Enchant Weapon Ice (1 rank)
adds 3 frost damage and slowing effect

-Enchant Weapon Death (1 rank)
adds 6 damage

-Fortitude (5 Ranks)
adds 1/2/3/4/5 armor(damage reduction)

-Soul Reaping (5 ranks)
adds 10/20/30/40/50% faster soul power generation

-Soul Caller (3 ranks)
adds 2/4/6 soul levels


Some of those ability's don't make much sense so ill explain.

Soul power- Soul power is basically the mana of the game, and is required for super moves which will be added later on!

Soul Levels- Basically when you get 100 soul power it gets stored as a soul level!!!! you start out with 4 max levels!



I will update this as time goes on.

Also it is currently undecided if I will give games for free a demo at this time, but if I do I will let you know!

and finally I will edit this post to have a new date on the title when i post an update and will post the date next to any updated items!!!]]>
Grimmy attack of the rune lord will be a platformer as most know but on top of that it will have a huge amount of character development!!!! That is right, a leveling system!!!! This system will feature the following.

-More health per level
-1 Skill Point per level
-max of level 30!!!!

and now what good is leveling without skills!!!! so here I bring you the list of learn able skills!!!

-Sharpen Scythe (5 ranks)
+1/2/3/4/5 damage

-Throwing Arm (3 ranks)
+2/4/6 feet to throwing range

-Critical Strikes (5 Ranks)
+2/4/6/8/10% chance to do 25% more damage
-Improved Critical Strikes (1 rank)
+50% more damage from crits

-Enchant Weapon Fire (1 rank)
adds 2 fire damage in an explosion on impact

-Enchant Weapon Ice (1 rank)
adds 3 frost damage and slowing effect

-Enchant Weapon Death (1 rank)
adds 6 damage

-Fortitude (5 Ranks)
adds 1/2/3/4/5 armor(damage reduction)

-Soul Reaping (5 ranks)
adds 10/20/30/40/50% faster soul power generation

-Soul Caller (3 ranks)
adds 2/4/6 soul levels


Some of those ability's don't make much sense so ill explain.

Soul power- Soul power is basically the mana of the game, and is required for super moves which will be added later on!

Soul Levels- Basically when you get 100 soul power it gets stored as a soul level!!!! you start out with 4 max levels!



I will update this as time goes on.

Also it is currently undecided if I will give games for free a demo at this time, but if I do I will let you know!

and finally I will edit this post to have a new date on the title when i post an update and will post the date next to any updated items!!!]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=62 Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:24:34 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=62 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=61 Tue, 16 Oct 2007 14:46:18 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=61
Misc Stuff:
Hardhat
Mario
Mario 3
Koopa Troopa
Hammer Bro
Arrowmen
Hydrodude - Sprite by Icicle
Firedude - Sprite by Icicle
Dread
check out my self portrait - Sprite by Icicle

Robot Masters:
Megaman
Megaman X
Zero - Sprite by Icicle
Cutman
Iceman
Fireman
Metalman
Bubbleman
Heatman
Crashman
Magnetman
Shadowman
Pharoahman
Plantman
Flameman[/i][/color]]]>
Misc Stuff:
Hardhat
Mario
Mario 3
Koopa Troopa
Hammer Bro
Arrowmen
Hydrodude - Sprite by Icicle
Firedude - Sprite by Icicle
Dread
check out my self portrait - Sprite by Icicle

Robot Masters:
Megaman
Megaman X
Zero - Sprite by Icicle
Cutman
Iceman
Fireman
Metalman
Bubbleman
Heatman
Crashman
Magnetman
Shadowman
Pharoahman
Plantman
Flameman[/i][/color]]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=59 Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:46:47 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=59
I am rather surprised to see no Pokémon topics here, so I made one.

What's everyone's favorite Pokémon?

cheers]]>
I am rather surprised to see no Pokémon topics here, so I made one.

What's everyone's favorite Pokémon?

cheers]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=57 Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:55:10 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=57


:D 5,000 hours in mspaint]]>


:D 5,000 hours in mspaint]]> http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=66 Mon, 29 Oct 2007 15:59:51 -0500 http://www.gamesforfree.net/board/showthread.php?tid=66
Sakurai spoiled us SO BAD with that codec conversation update. I love how serious Otakon's description of Yoshi is.

Anyway, bets on any characters being in/wishes for ones that probably won't be? I would kill to see Dungeon Man (from Earthbound). Would be a really cool heavyweight character, one that I'd actually play.

I'm guessing Tom Nook's going to be in as Animal Crossing's representative.]]>
Sakurai spoiled us SO BAD with that codec conversation update. I love how serious Otakon's description of Yoshi is.

Anyway, bets on any characters being in/wishes for ones that probably won't be? I would kill to see Dungeon Man (from Earthbound). Would be a really cool heavyweight character, one that I'd actually play.

I'm guessing Tom Nook's going to be in as Animal Crossing's representative.]]>