| Wednesday,
April 28, 1999 I thought I was past the illegal operations problems with
Max2, but I'm not. Although I got past this point before, there's one place in one
scenario where the system reliably crashes. I suppose what I have to do is not stack too
many operations at once; but you would think that a game wouldn't run out of resources on
a Pentium II with 256 megs main memory and many gigabytes of virtual. Interplay needs to
get their act together. This is silly. I used to have that problem with This Means War --
in fact that game was a good test of system integrity -- but larger and faster machines
with more memory cured that problem. This time, though, we seem to be locked into a crash
mode. I'll have to throw away that saved game. But I do wish Interplay would clean this
mess up. I've already downloaded a patch. They need another.
Interplay's Max2: That is one BADLY misbehaving game. Why do companies DO this? It's
not as if they haven't had time to play test it or fix it. I suppose they no longer care.
It didn't make best seller status, so they feel no obligation to make it work properly. Is
that the new game philsophy? Release it with bugs and fix only the most popular? That I
would think has some built in risks, no? This Means War, for example, was really a neat
game, but it never caught on in large part because of all the bugs...
Maybe I should start a new award: wannabe but too buggy program of the month...
I managed to write an Intellectual Capital, pay
the bills, and get through the night. This morning I am precisely where I was Monday
morning: sore throat, stuffy head, but not so miserable I can't work. Let's hope the
Cephalexin does the job, because if that doesn't work I am I fear back to the drip. Maybe
snake oil will work. I've had lots of advice on home remedies, from gallons of water to
literal snake oil. A story goes with each one...
Fry's this morning has Pentium III 450 chip and mother board for about $550, and
Pentium II chip, motherboard, and case for half that. Staples the other day had a 13
gigabyte Western Digital PLUS an internal IDE Zip drive for $200 (after rebates of about
$150). Video cards that used to be top of the line are well under $100 now. Ensonic sound
cards are about $20 as are Bay Networks 100 base-T Ethernet cards. A floppy dirve is about
$20. CDROM drives range between $25 to maybe $60 for the fastest, and DVD is coming down
rapidly. All told you can build a fabulous machine for well under $1000 and Fry's this
morning has a 17" ViewSonic monitor for under $300. If you like small computers this
is a great time...
Mr. Rice tells me
Jerry,
Anyone who is ‘seriously’ interested in understanding why
‘Littleton’ happened should read the articles and followups at Slashdot.com .
These are the saddest commentary I’ve ever seen on the state of our school system.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/25/1438249&;mode=thread&;threshold=1
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/27/0310247&;mode=thread&;threshold=1
John
But all my attempts have been met with the message that slashdot.org is not responding.
I don't think it's my system. Pinging -- (ping slashdot.org) shows that it's functional
now, and -- yes, I can reach it now. Must have been doing some uploading. These are as I
suspected the JonKatz article and comments, and well worth your attention.
I am getting SERIOUSLY annoyed at Interplay. They don't return messages other than
automated "o, we care, we really care, we'll get to you just as soon as we can, we
wish you well with a vengeance we do" which come in an endless stream, while Max 2
continues to crash.
I suppose what I can do is simplify: destroy all surplus units so there are fewer
objects for the brain dead program to keep track of. What did they develop this on? If a P
II with 256 megs won't run it what will??
TOP
|
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
