LeighB_EU

See, I knew the big man would know the answer.

I didn't even know data to Opera Mini was handled that way. Thanks.

I’m running Opera Mini (rather than Opera Mobile) on a Nokia E71 purchased in the UK.

Phone operating system - Symbian S60v3
Opera Mini version – 4.2 (hifi ardentopium int v. 4.0.9751,20071107)

Just for clarity there is no problem with the built-in Nokia browser which I think (but haven’t checked yet) is a Mozilla build.

I noticed I’m still getting plenty of errors on Firefox while using both the EU and US forums – mainly page load errors and in the last few days blank forum topics.

I use Opera Mini and the Nokia browser on my phone (E71) and had never seen problems with either so had to check this out myself.

I apologise for not believing you straight off. Opera Mini just doesn't like the US hosted stuff anymore (I’m guessing the EU main site is EU hosted unlike the forums). I've only done a bit of testing while I was out but it does seem to be just Opera that has a problem.

It is interesting (maybe just for me) that I often run the EU and US forums on a five minute auto refresh in Firefox on the desktop and I am always getting crashed pages due to timeouts.

I have never thought to check the US main site as well, but this makes me wonder if it is all related and a short delay in packets gets Opera Mini confused causing it to time the site out. (Local chaching would mean there shouldn’t be a problem for the US main site, though, so it’s unlikely to be noticed.) I’ve also noticed further problems with the EU forums over the last few days such as various sections showing blank headers. Maybe things are just dying in anticipation of the new ones coming in. You know how sulky software can be.

FFM may be of some help, being the knowledgeable gent that he is, but I can only suggest using a different browser for a bit. A pain for just one site, but not a big one.

(I'll let you know if I uncover anything else or if I have gone off on the wrong line of thought. It's late now so this could well be the case. )

I wish I had a bigger screen.

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... screen resolution of 1280x1024 with a display DPI setting of 'Normal Size (96 DPI)'.


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Same for me.

Very nice and congratulations on the raid.

The Virtual Barbershop sound file I’ve had on various phones for a while. It never fails to bring a smile to a new listener’s face.

What I really want is this (or 5.1) type of sound effect with just two speakers as I don’t want a load of speakers dotted around the room just for the computer. One day they’ll get virtual sound fields working properly, but then I’ll be playing CoH on a holo-display so the visuals will be blowing me away.

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I notice they are migrating other fora, from smaller games first to test this. Is moving both TR posts sufficient?

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LOL

Nibiru:
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Mr Unpopular here has nothing to delete >_>


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We could all send you a single PM. Would that make you feel better?

I’m really looking forward to the shiny new forums.

Many thanks, as ever, for this wonderful program and the continuing updates.

I logged on last night and had exactly this problem. Having left the computer running all night it has now sorted itself out, but after a couple of hours it had done nothing so it isn’t very quick.

Also, closing the program and starting again seems to put you all the way back to the start, so I guess an interruption in your connection will do the same.

I use Firefox as my main browser and I have had this problem a couple of times (only recently). The work around is to use a different browser (not a different instance of Firefox) to access your forum account. Firefox will be fine after a few minutes.

I think it’s a problem with data getting stuck in Firefox’s cache, but as it’s easily solved and happens rarely I haven’t bothered to look into it.

If you don’t want to use IE as a substitute, install Opera or if you use iTunes Safari will probably have wormed its way onto your system anyway.

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The biggest change they could make, though, is in making the city come to life. We need more ambient "noise" as it were. Gridlocked traffic in some areas, lots of cabs, buses, patrolling police cars. Realistic response to threats such as fires, raves or monster attacks. Currently, the city just seems dead, and that doesn't help the immersion. We could also do with made of the things all cities have, but we're lacking. Fire stations, usable restaurants or bars, theaters, cinemas, sports arena's for your weekly football/baseball game! Schools, animals, WEATHER, and a more realistic day/night cycle.


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^ This.

I’ve said before that I don’t think it’s the graphics themselves (character models, buildings textures etc.) that make people think the game is bland, it’s the lifelessness of the city and the fact that cityscapes don’t have the wow factor (excuse the pun) that fantasy games do.

What the game needs is more things happening, more NPCs moving around, maybe weather as an option, people sitting on the grass in the parks having picnics, (non-interactive) busses with people getting on and off them, police cars driving around, nightclubs that look like nightclubs, supergroup bases that are alive rather than storage and transport areas.

It’s easy to play a fantasy game and gasp at the vista, but with a city most of us see one of them every day and the game has to live up to those expectations. Moving hair and cool looking characters will add to the look of the game but not in a massive way. Faultline and the night in that CoV zone with all the neon – those are the places people love. Fighting on oil rigs, getting the feeling that the game is responding to you in missions (armour that comes to life etc.), those are the things that will, in my opinion, get people excited.

We all know that graphics don’t make a game, they just add to it. Game play is king, and the game play isn’t far off. A few tweaks with the graphics that make people feel like they are in real city would be enough, nothing major. If you’re in the UK compare Birmingham to Milton Keynes. No offense to anyone, but the latter is like playing in Paragon (okay, it’s actually worse ) – there is no soul. Birmingham on the other hand lives, breathes and mugs you. Pizza compared to Florence is another example (or was a few years ago, I’m not sure if it’s changed now). Auckland to Christchurch. I’m trying to avoid capital cities, but hopefully you all get the idea.

For me little things such as Longbow patrols and police having shoot-outs with criminals were great additions. I’m not suggesting grid lock in Atlas, but where are the people on bikes, the skateboarders, the taxi ranks, the street vendors. It won’t make people catch their breath like a vast Dwarven mine does, but it will make people feel like they’re in a more real world, rather than taking part in 28 Day Later or Day of The Triffids.

(Sorry for going on. )

Chapter Eight is now available.

Individual chapters and the story so far can be found here: The Wandering Year

As ever, here are the combined opinions of a few casual players, who get online for three hours on a Thursday night and the same on a Sunday night, have all been playing for at least two years and (apart from me obviously) don’t read the forums:

Most common question asked: “What are these blue bits on my XP bar?”
Lots of love given to: Day Jobs, Shields, Level Pacts and new Cimerora missions
Feature most shrugged at: Changes to ‘Pv what’ and Pain Domination
Giggly excitement because of: The now massive base we can make
Interested in: Merits
Never even thought about: Dual Builds (there’s probably other stuff here, but we’ve not even thought about it )

This was from five of us discussing it on Skype while we played Villains on Thursday evening. There are obviously some differences in our opinions (one of the guys has been looking forward to shields since he started playing the game, whereas I have so little art ability that it’s just given me more ways of making a mess of my character, and only four out of eight of us have actually been to Cimerora) but this is a kind of aggregate.

Now, a Saturday night at home to do what I want with! I’m putting on a couple of DVDs and going off to show love to the stuff people have posted in the creative section. Oh, how I’ve missed that. Usual posting bomb will follow sometime soon.

Chapter Seven is now available.

Individual chapters and the story so far can be found here: The Wandering Year

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Ok... scuse a computer inept person... what is RSS feed?

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RSS feeds allow you to do lots of different things, but most people like them because you can use a RSS reader, a web page or get alerts via email when a web site is updated. You can, for example drop RSS feeds into an iGoogle or Yahoo! home page so you just have to give that page a quick skim to see if any of the sites you like have been updated, rather than visiting each site individually.

They are great for blogs as well, as again, who really wants to visit twenty blogs to see if anything new has been written when you can get an email through or just look in one place.

Hopefully that all makes sense, but here’s a more technical breakdown: linky

Good news on the RSS, and don’t bother anyone too much about mobile compatibility, I’d rather the code monkeys and test teams deal with more exciting stuff. I’m sure there aren’t many of us who go to the pub or the football and still manage to think about things they want to check on the site.

Another thing I did spot was that if a forum page times out on load (or there is any sort of general load error) the browser is bounced to the US error page rather than the EU one (i.e. you then click on the ‘community’ section and end up in the US forums). Again, not a big issue because it’s not like the forums timeout a lot ¬_¬ but might need a quick tweak when there’s a coder free.

Nice.

I could not find any RSS feeds for the news or GR’s Hideout. I know I can drop the pages into Yahoo! Alerts or Google, but RSS would be better.

Also browsing it from a mobile works okayish, but, for example, on the basic Nokia web browser the right-hand menus don’t work and in Opera mini they mix in together a bit. This is, obviously, a minor consideration, but it would be nice if the site degraded elegantly. (I will grumble a lot more if the new forums aren’t small browser friendly. )

I can’t remember where the debate (challenge) in the UK ended with regards to the ratings on games (should they be part of film regulation or stay self regulated), but I was certainly of the opinion that the ratings should be official as I don’t trust the game companies to fairly rate their products in all instances.

(Having said that the ratings on some films have obviously been changed for commercial reasons, so, as ever, the word independence is loosely applied.)

On the more specific subject of CoX I’ve not seen anywhere near half the content, but a rating of 16+ seems to make sense given some of the content.

This sounds like an excellent little program.

As I write every forum post in MS Word or similar (i.e. my phone), it would certainly help me. Send it over on an email (obtained from personal web site noted below) when it’s ready and I’ll have it locked and crashed in ten minutes.

I’m not sure how everyone did on but certainly grat’s to Morgana who hit the fifty thousand.

Also thanks to bluedarky for starting the post and therefore getting me interested. I’ve absolutely loved it.

The downside being I’ve now got loads of reading to catch up on.

Grat’s to all who took part. I might have been quiet for the last month due to doing that writing thingy I got started on but I’ve been looking at all the pictures on here or DA.

You guys are just great.

Good work and the first part was great. Not too clichéd at all.

Good skills as ever, but I think he needs to be slightly ‘robotic’ like to get across the tech’ you’re aiming for. At the moment he looks like a human who’s painted gold.

Also, I’m not sure if the elbow of the right arm is slightly too high. I could be wrong (and the friend who does archery isn’t answering his phone), but I thought it was ‘elbow level with shoulder’ giving a flat arm. (Sorry for being picky. )

(Well done to Cactus for bringing up Visionaries. I have all the videos and I wasn't even a child when the show first came out. I'm just a sad sad man. )

Oh, now that would look really good with some colour.