At 2/5/14 02:21 PM, MSGhero wrote:

At 2/5/14 01:38 PM, swishcheese wrote: When he got the Pavilion back it was fixed, but he said for some reason they replaced the motherboard too. Idk, if they F'd up trying fix fan and had to replace motherboard because of it. Or it was just old and was not the best. But he still has all his files which was the important thing for him.

The fan is attached to the motherboard, so it's possible it got messed up when trying to fix/replace the fan.

Damn. yeah. Probably what happened. But yeahh, It worked. Just he couldn't play many games for too long or would over heat a little. He used a heat monitor thing to beware of the temp. And he said the it was slower.

At 2/5/14 02:56 PM, swishcheese wrote: Damn. yeah. Probably what happened. But yeahh, It worked. Just he couldn't play many games for too long or would over heat a little. He used a heat monitor thing to beware of the temp. And he said the it was slower.

Whoooooops I think I put it back together wrong. The touchpad and some of the keys don't work. I have an external keyboard and mouse, so I didn't notice until now. Luckily taking the keyboard out isn't a big deal unlike the fan. Anyway, I ordered a new fan and a well-rated place will replace it and hopefully fix everything else. Just waiting till then.

At 2/5/14 03:59 PM, MSGhero wrote: Whoooooops I think I put it back together wrong. The touchpad and some of the keys don't work. I have an external keyboard and mouse, so I didn't notice until now. Luckily taking the keyboard out isn't a big deal unlike the fan. Anyway, I ordered a new fan and a well-rated place will replace it and hopefully fix everything else. Just waiting till then.

Goodluck Sir. Yeahhh. These Keyboards are pretty flimsy and look delicate. I don't think i could put it back on without breaking it. I have a Hp Pavilion dv6. Fan is good for now. I hope I do not run into Greg again tho.

At 2/5/14 04:10 PM, swishcheese wrote: Goodluck Sir. Yeahhh. These Keyboards are pretty flimsy and look delicate. I don't think i could put it back on without breaking it. I have a Hp Pavilion dv6. Fan is good for now. I hope I do not run into Greg again tho.

As long as greg helps pay rent he's welcome here.

I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

You're missing a doctype and a charset declaration in your HTML.

The design isn't bad, though. Nice and simple, which is good. Personally I wouldn't use tables because of their verbosity, but the page is arguably tabular so it's a fine solution. I like that you used CSS and not JavaScript for your hover states, which I see sometimes.

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it.

You mean, you're actually hosting content on it?

At 2/5/14 06:06 PM, Diki wrote: You're missing a doctype and a charset declaration in your HTML.

The design isn't bad, though. Nice and simple, which is good. Personally I wouldn't use tables because of their verbosity, but the page is arguably tabular so it's a fine solution. I like that you used CSS and not JavaScript for your hover states, which I see sometimes.

I'm an olskool home-taught html-er, what good is doctype and charset declaration?

At 2/5/14 06:07 PM, kkots wrote:

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it.

You mean, you're actually hosting content on it?

Not really hosting much, but at least there are links to my games in there now instead of just a "coming soon" page :-P

At 2/5/14 06:13 PM, PestoForce wrote: I'm an olskool home-taught html-er, what good is doctype and charset declaration?

It ensures web browsers will display the page correctly.

At 2/5/14 06:19 PM, Diki wrote:

At 2/5/14 06:13 PM, PestoForce wrote: I'm an olskool home-taught html-er, what good is doctype and charset declaration?

It ensures web browsers will display the page correctly.

I just put in a meta tag, does it need more than that?

At 2/5/14 06:20 PM, PestoForce wrote: I just put in a meta tag, does it need more than that?

That's the correct, modern way to declare the charset. You just need to add the doctype, which just requires you to add this before your <html> element:

Then you'll be good to go.

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

I would say that rounded edges are more visually pleasing than sharp corners, but it looks good still.

Also PestoForce I noticed you updated your page to include a doctype, but you wrote it as this:

That isn't a valid doctype, and you're writing HTML not XHTML, so an XHTML doctype wouldn't make sense. Drop the "x" in that doctype and it will be correct.

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

Looks pretty good. I like the design so far. nice and simple. Good work.

Apart from PayPal granting Xelu access to the digital goods express checkout service, we're almost done. Just fixing some bugs here and there and polishing things.

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

Needs more pasta related content

At 2/6/14 05:35 PM, Rustygames wrote:

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

Needs more pasta related content

I made the list of pastas links to recipes recently :-)

For the xhtml doctype: I set it as html and some of my css stopped working correctly. I guess I'm using some unsupported features (like line-height and relative positioning???)? How can I fix?

At 2/6/14 08:03 PM, BoMToons wrote: For the xhtml doctype: I set it as html and some of my css stopped working correctly. I guess I'm using some unsupported features (like line-height and relative positioning???)? How can I fix?

Well that would be because that's how your website is supposed to look based on the HTML and CSS, not because you're using unsupported features (that wouldn't make sense). I took an attempt at trying to find the error in your HTML/CSS, but since you used tables for everything it was very overcomplicated, which made the error incredibly difficult to find.

Instead I decided, since I had nothing better to do, to just rewrite the HTML and CSS from scratch without any tables. It's much simpler and easier to make changes to as a result. I also made a slight tweak to how the links to games work: I changed it so the entire block of each item is click-able, and altered the colour of the description when in its hover state. I think it looks better, and it doesn't require having three anchor elements all linking to the same URL. I also made a version that functions the same as yours if you'd prefer to keep it that way.

You can view/download the sites here:
- Site with changed links.
- Download

- Site with original links.
- Download

Don't feel obligated to use this just because I wrote it, if you don't want to. I just rewrote it for the hell of it. If you would prefer to keep your site as it is then by all means do that, though if you want my opinion I don't think that you should. Even if you don't want to use it, it should give you an idea of how to write HTML without using tables for everything, which makes for messy and difficult-to-edit HTML.

At 2/7/14 12:05 AM, Diki wrote: You can view/download the sites here:
- Site with changed links.
- Download

Hey cool! Very helpful and educational. I appreciate the time you put into it. I'll need to do some retro-fitting though cuz I'm using php to build the site (header/footer functions + a content block function) but it shouldn't be too hard to integrate what you've done into that.

Thanks again!

Someone started a gamedev club here. Might be good until tom gives us a gamedev forum.

At 2/7/14 12:05 AM, Diki wrote:

Alright, I put in your css and layout updates, and also tweaked the pasta section at the bottom, and added a contact form. I think this is done for now!

Thanks again for the help!

http://www.pestoforce.com

No problem, buddy. Happy to help. Two things I noticed when you implemented it, though. First isn't really much of an issue, but right here:

That </section> underneath the image isn't doing anything; there's no opening <section> before it, so you can get rid of it. If you'd prefer just having the "contact me" there, rather than the list of pastas, you don't need that <header> element; you can just do this:

Though it would make more sense to rename the class to something other than "favoritePastas", which you would need to do in both the HTML and CSS.

The other thing I noticed is that you're missing the quotations in your anchor and image elements (i.e. around the href and src attributes), such as here:

While they aren't strictly required, it's best to include them, since if the URL were to ever contain a space it will only work with the quotations. Of course any space will need to be converted to %20 as per the HTTP specification, but any modern browser will allow you to use a space and convert it for you for the sake of convenience.

At 2/6/14 08:03 PM, BoMToons wrote:

At 2/6/14 05:35 PM, Rustygames wrote:

At 2/5/14 05:44 PM, PestoForce wrote: I updated my website and put actual stuff on it. Thoughts?

http://www.pestoforce.com

Needs more pasta related content

I made the list of pastas links to recipes recently :-)

Not even kidding, that's fucking epic!

At 2/7/14 12:56 PM, Rustygames wrote: Not even kidding, that's fucking epic!

Some of those pastas truly are epic... life-changing!

Uhm, I need to ask a question.
I have decided to write game dialogues (conversations, etc) in this nested object-array format.
Dialogue is broken into phrases (read, "messages"), all of which are objects with properties:
index - universal ID of the phrase, which can be used to refer to it from within constructors of other objects that are being created.
text - the text of the phrase.
lines - this is a bit silly, but this is the number of lines of text which the message occupies.
whoanswers - this is the ID of the character from which the message is coming.
face - this is the frame number of the facial expression that needs to be displayed with the phrase.
L - this is the array of all phrases that go after the given one, in linear order. It means there are no variations in the ongoing dialogue, it's linear. The phrases are listed one after another.
R - this is the array of possible replies to the given phrase, it lists all possible replies one after another. Those replies may either have linear continuations or have replies to them as well.
Note that a phrase may have only either R or L array, or none at all.
onShow - function ran when the phrase is displayed. If this refers to a function already declared somewhere in the code, then that function is referred to as {id of object which contains the function, name of the property under which the function is stored in the object}
onHide - function ran when the phrase is replaced by the next phrase or when the dialogue ends on it.

And also you can refer to objects by ids if they already exist, to create loops in the dialogue and to avoid repetition in declaration.

Example.

So I need to ask a few questions about this strategy:
1) Is it human-readable? How easy do you think is it to manually edit?
2) Is this good coding practice? Do I need to define a Phrase class and pass parameters to it in the constructor, instead of using typeless objects?
3) Is it OK to create anonymous functions like this? Do I need to define every single function elsewhere and refer to them by names instead of having to reuse them via onShow:{index:28,type:"onShow"}
4) How can this be improved to be more maintainable and more following good OOP standards?

I haven't tested this, I think it should work.

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: So I need to ask a few questions about this strategy:
1) Is it human-readable? How easy do you think is it to manually edit?

Yes, but if I format the code in FD with my code indent settings it'd be squashed into one line. Seems easy if you know how the entire thing works.

2) Is this good coding practice? Do I need to define a Phrase class and pass parameters to it in the constructor, instead of using typeless objects?

You seemed to have answered your own question there.

3) Is it OK to create anonymous functions like this? Do I need to define every single function elsewhere and refer to them by names instead of having to reuse them via onShow:{index:28,type:"onShow"}

No and no. Integrate what you'll be commonly using into the dialogue system. No need for callbacks when you set the boundaries yourself.

4) How can this be improved to be more maintainable and more following good OOP standards?

XML.
I don't know what you mean by OOP standards but learn by example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns#Patterns_by_Type
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_pattern#Classification_and_list

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: index - universal ID of the phrase, which can be used to refer to it from within constructors of other objects that are being created.

You should call that a GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) then, as the word "index" doesn't accurately convey what the value is representing. Unless I am misunderstanding you and the identifier used there is not unique, in which case GUID would not be a good choice.

If you were to instead store these blocks of data in an array you wouldn't need to manually write out those values since the index of the array would be there for you.

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: lines - this is a bit silly, but this is the number of lines of text which the message occupies.

It would make more sense, and be a lot easier and more extensible, to write a function that counts them for you. However, I don't know what you're doing with that value, so it's possible you don't actually need it.

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: 1) Is it human-readable? How easy do you think is it to manually edit?

If it were me I wouldn't worry about making it human-readable, and instead make an editor that simplifies changing the data. I would also be storing it as JSON in a separate file, and load it into the application at compile-time.

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: 2) Is this good coding practice?

To be blunt: no it's not. You should be making classes to store all of this information in, and just keep the most primitive data (e.g. the text) stored in a separate file. You want things to be easy to change (e.g. add new features, or add more information), and right now what you're doing is not easy to change.

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: 4) How can this be improved to be more maintainable and more following good OOP standards?

You could use XML like slugrail suggested, but I find it needlessly verbose and complicated, and would instead use JSON. Since ActionScript is just a dialect of ECMAScript you will immediately be comfortable with JSON's syntax.

Also there's no such thing as a standard way to do OOP. It's just a paradigm, other examples of paradigms being procedural or functional. However, there are good OOP practices, which will involve effective use of inheritance and polymorphism, among other things. A good start would be to use classes and proper functions for everything.

Official Trailer for Super Chibi Knight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQR2ZMkA_qE

Curious what you guys think...

At 2/7/14 10:03 PM, slugrail wrote: Yes, but if I format the code in FD with my code indent settings it'd be squashed into one line.

Not sure if I understand this. What do you want to say by that? It's my code's fault or your settings are bad?

2)

You seemed to have answered your own question there.

Yes yes. Yes.

3) Is it OK to create anonymous functions like this?

No and no. Integrate what you'll be commonly using into the dialogue system.
No need for callbacks when you set the boundaries yourself.

So you mean that I should instead write large chains of if/else, where I check what phrase is currently displaying and run code depending on what phrase that is?
For the most part, I didn't understand what you replied to point 3).

At 2/7/14 10:44 PM, Diki wrote:

At 2/7/14 09:35 PM, kkots wrote: index - universal ID

You should call that a GUID (Globally Unique Identifier) then, as the word "index" doesn't accurately convey what the value is representing.

It is supposed to be a unique (not universal, unique, sorry, my bad) value which can be used to refer to the object indirectly.
It does seem to be like GUID.

If you were to instead store these blocks of data in an array

I can't. I'm trying to write out non-linear dialogues with choices in human-readable format. It's not possible to use just one array for this. Besides, in an array, I would not be able to get a visual clue of what index every object has. I need that clue (the indexes) to refer to objects in the code.

lines

you don't actually need it.

That's painfully true. I must fix this.

1) Is it human-readable? How easy do you think is it to manually edit?

make an editor that simplifies changing the data

I tried to make an editor, but it's taking too much time to code the graphical interface for it, there are way too many buttons, the menus are way too complicated (and it does not look comprehensible, either). The fastest and easiest way to do it, and still acceptable, is to represent the dialogue database as ActionScript code and work with that.

2) Is this good coding practice?

You should be making classes to store all of this information in

I hope that you wanted to say that I should make a class and use its constructor to create objects, because otherwise I don't understand this, especially why would I need to separate text from the rest of the data? If I'm not going to write an editor?

4) How can this be improved to be more maintainable and more following good OOP standards?

use JSON.

If I use JSON, I will then be able to easily read the data using a program, and do operations with it, like overwriting the file with modified version of it? This is interesting, but it requires a dialogue editor, which I can't afford to produce.

A good start would be to use classes and proper functions for everything.

Thanks for the advice. I need to write down notes on what should be changed.