The program may fold due to budget costs ($500 a month), but it may come out somewhere in June 2002.

THIS DOES NOT VIOLATE ANY OF THE COPYRIGHT LAWS!!!

frapguy
OH Hanni?

::smirks::

TC_Legolas
Umm, you CAN play TA on Windows NT. I have...really ticked of my uncle too. ;P
But good look that sounds good!

compunut
The thing is, TA being played on NT now is that it will crash often. My new TA will have a special anti-crash program built in. Some of the partial betas that I have played with, they will only crash 1 in every 70,000 games.

ID_Triceraton
Hmm, how did you find out that ratio compnut, because I doubt that you really play that many games of TA.

compunut
I used a program called QuickBASIC to make a loop program. Then I waited for my quad-CPU (2 Ghz X 4) to run TA that many times. Things go a lot faster under Unix and Linix because they aren't as big as Windows. The exact ratio came out to be:
2 Crashes in 140,891 Games

Drinken
"Then I waited for my quad-CPU (2 Ghz X 4) to run TA that many times"
I smell a fish...

compunut
i got a network of 4 comps that have 2 1Ghz processors. and i just ran the main files, not ta itself. that is a thing with my beta.

NJ_THUG
Pull the other one, it jingles..

Aslan
That's cool ,but if you wrote a program in Qbasic, it wouldn't matter if you had 500 processors, it wouldn't run any faster than if you had one...
Qbasic is not, was not, and will never be multi-processor aware or capable...
Nice try, compnut.

Screamer
ROFLMAO THUG, nice job.. smirk..

compunut
No, I wrote the program in QBASIC, set it so that you could compress the file in to level 1 casche, and compilied the program using a utility called FirstBASIC©. If you want proof, I'll post the code here into the UBB.

Believe me, I know how to program. I have been programming since the Comodore Pet. I still program on my Comodore Vic 20, which I might say, is in good condition for being 20 years old.

Aslan
Your programming ability is not in question.
Your ability to make up wildly extravagent tales, however, does need some polishing.

compunut
Here is the code for all you losers that doubted me:

'L1 Cache Array
dim rtndll(8, 16000)
poke 1723(19299)
poke 17(0)
'Testing Begins...
while prob <2
cnt = cnt + 1
fileopen 1,2,1 G:\TACONV~1.dll
fileread read$
if read$ = Char$(73) then
UCase$(Char$)
prob = prob + 1
poke 17(1)
endif
fileclose (G:\TACONV~1.dll)
wend

'Results Printed
print "There were ", prob, " out of ", cnt, "simulations"
end

Note: All code has been edited to fit FirstBASIC. All poking has made to work for a DUAL-1GHz AHTALON-THUNDERBIRD motherboard. It will not work on any computers without these specs.

Note2: I ran these on all four computers and averaged out the totals.

There, my proof has been shown to the public.

Dark Rain
I'm no expert in qbasic, but the way it look to me is that you open a file, read it, then close it after checking for the ascii char 73. How does that help O_o.
On another note, just closing and opening TA without playing a game doesnt prove a thing, just that the program open and close... I dont remember my TA ever crashing when I opened or closed it for that matter. Maybe you're trying to tell me that this programs will Open Ta, play a small game then close it. If you do, then you'll excuse me if I have some ****ing big doubts.

*puff puff puff*

Screamer
Not to mention QBASIC programs are necessarily DOS progs which can't really communicate with Windows programs like TA at all, that poking to adresses (which I doubt even works in QBASIC) will 99% likely cause your program to crash with an access violation error and if it doesn't then it still is restricted to the address space of that program and cannot reach another's (not easily at least), your UCASE$(Char$) is a syntax error that even if it worked would have no effect and my post is verifiable by anyone with knowledge in the field as opposed to yours.

Do you happen to have any relation to TyrranzX?

Ry Safley
I was starting to wonder myself, and just how in the hell can you afford that kind of computer, let alone 4??! That's at least $10,000 worth of computing power, probably more. Most people don't just have 10 grand lying around to blow on 4 computers, 3 of which probably aren't necessary.

Flying Rhino
LOL, can't be any relation to Ty, he hasn't used the word 'HEX' yet
edit: Also could you explain who is going to do this new TA, what the plan of development is for it to be release in summer 2002 and why the budget is $500 a month??

Also why did you write the test program in QBasic and how the feck did you work out that crash probability using that program, it's bollocks. A majority of TA crashes are probably windows fault anyway.

Also how are u planning on doing this conversion?? Language? u using the TA .HPI files as that'll be breaching copyright?

Just a few things for you to consider, I though u might need some help.

Also, one more thing, stop talking sh*t.

LaserBeams
HAHAHA my sides hurt...
"What I have been able to do is de-compile Total Annihilation's interface file. Then, I wrote the whole program over again."

You mean... you disassembled the TotalA.exe with C++, read the assembly code, then reimplemented it (all in assembly, I might add) without any references whatsoever to Windows/DirectX DLLs/functions? First of all, decompiling (disassembling) TotalA.exe is illegal, and taking portions of their code is also illegal (copyright violation - they own every last byte in that executable). Also, what do you mean by "interface file"?

"I converted it to a MultiSystem interface."

So, you made it portable? Without DirectX? I find the use of the term "MultiSystem" fuzzy, at best.

"The program may fold due to budget costs ($500 a month)..."

$500 a month, for 12 months... that's $6000. Nothing wrong with that, other than you'd have to have an awful lot of money, and an awful lot of things to spend it on. AFAIK, writing and compiling C++ code is free...

"...but it may come out somewhere in June 2002."

Keyword: "may". That's a 50% chance. Not very good odds, if you ask me. Did you ever wonder why news of TA being released did not come until soon before it was done? Because they weren't sure if it would fly. Be more professional next time.

"THIS DOES NOT VIOLATE ANY OF THE COPYRIGHT LAWS!!!"

HAHA HAH AHA HAHAH AHA HAHAHA HAHAHA HAHA *snort*

"The thing is, TA being played on NT now is that it will crash often."

Windows NT4 runs fine with DirectX 5 and the latest service pack. It should rarely crash anyway. I have not tried it, but I do know that anything that is made to be compatible with NT4 and Win95/98 runs much better on an NT machine. If you are still running NT, though, why are you playing games? If you want games on an NT machine, make it dual boot. Same goes for Linux/Unix boxes.

"My new TA will have a special anti-crash program built in."

So, you either have the intelligence of the Norton CrashGuard team, you figured out how to make PC processors fault-tolerant (via software, I might add...), or you somehow figured out how to keep Windows from crashing?

"I used a program called QuickBASIC to make a loop program. Then I waited for my quad-CPU (2 Ghz X 4) to run TA that many times."

First of all, QuickBASIC is a MSDOS program, last updated sometime in 1992, I believe. It does not run on Linux/Unix, and does not support multiple processors or networking.

"Things go a lot faster under Unix and Linix because they aren't as big as Windows."

No, they are just more efficient at managing their tasks. A Linux/Unix install with the same capabilites of a Windows install will have about the same footprint.

"I got a network of 4 comps that have 2 1Ghz processors. and i just ran the main files, not TA itself. That is a thing with my beta."

As stated before, QuickBASIC does not support distributed processing. Especially with that teeny little bit of code you've got up there someplace... Also, in your code, you didn't run anything. You loaded the DLL lots of times, and checked for the number of times it did not load successfully. QuickBASIC cannot read DLL files. If your program was beta, then that would mean there is a working version. What you have now is called a pre-alpha. If it really is in beta now, though, and if you copied the "interface" exactly, then the screenshot utility works. Well...?

"Believe me, I know how to program. I have been programming since the Comodore Pet. I still program on my Comodore Vic 20, which I might say, is in good condition for being 20 years old."

Is that what you are programming this on? But seriously, if you want to show programming skill, don't brag about longevity or programming on a Commodore. I have 2 C64s, and I know how to use them. Big-freaking-whoop-dee-doo. If you want to brag, talk about how you made your own wrapper functions for DirectX so that you can use the Microsoft files on a Unix machine running with an Alpha processor.

As for that code-chunk, I'm not even going to try to run it (because it would probably not work), but from what I can see, all it does is load and unload a DLL to/from memory. So? It doesn't run anything. Plus, poking two variables into memory (which are not changed or viewed again, I might add - and one of which is in the low memory area and would probably cause a crash - and most OSes use dynamic memory allocation now and poking to a specific memory location is NOT recommended) doesn't really help. And I don't think poking works in QuickBASIC. Poking is a Commodore thing.

poke compnut(0)
poke LaserBeams(1)

(disclaimer: I know compnut and LaserBeams are not hexadecimal memory locations. So sue me.)