Cg/HLSL Saturate
I've been converting my Cg shaders I wrote for my AGT work in university into GLSL, however I came by an annoying problem, Cg uses a function that doesn't exist in GLSL, but does exist in HLSL. I eventually found documentation on what it does and so looked up the GLSL equivilant. The Cg version shown below...
float3 outValue = saturate( inValue );Becomes the following when converted to GLSL...
vec3 outValue = clamp( inValue, 0.0, 1.0 );
Thought this might be useful for others who might be having the same problem.
Resident Evil 5
After completing Fallout 3, one of my friends at the office lent me their copy of Resident Evil 5 to play over the 4-day weekend. I started playing a little on Thursday, and watched Tales from the Crypt and caught up on House M.D. Friday I played through all day, apart from the time spent trying to get my iPhone working again, and then finally completed it this afternoon.
I have to say I really enjoyed it, I haven't played a Resident Evil all the way through since the second one, apart from a little time I spent on four. As usual with shooters on the XBox360, it took me a little while to get use to targetting with an analogue stick. One thing that did annoy me, was that I couldn't move and aim (my favourite thing to do since Dead Space made to fear going around a corner).
Some of the new bosses were really creative, ranging from giving you a flamethrower than you need refuel, to firing a missile at the boss only for them to catch it then you shoot it to make it explode in their face.
Some of the enemies are annoying to defeat, the chainsaw guy at first killed me many times before I figured a strategy to take him one. And later in the game, I found out I could shoot different objects such as transformers to electrocute enemies.
The only thing that does annoy me about this game, are people thinking it is racist, I was reading about it on another persons blog, who was arguing against another persons blog.
http://www.blacklooks.org/2007/07/resident_evil_5.html
To quote them incase they decide to retract their blog entry
The new Resident Evil video game depicts a white man in what appears to be Africa killing Black people. The Black people are supposed to be zombies and the white man’s job is to destroy them and save humanity. “I have a job to do and I’m gonna see it through.”
This is problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages, the killing of Black people by a white man in military clothing, and the fact that this video game is marketed to children and young adults. Start them young… fearing, hating, and destroying Black people.
First of all, they aren't suppose to be zombies, they are zombies, and the fact these zombies are trying to kill you doesn't make the people they were originally inhuman savages. The fact it is a white person doing this is because Chris Redfield is white in the previous games, changing his appearance breaks the game history. And to top it all off, it was made by Asian developers.
Apart from that annoyance, I really enjoyed the game, and I hope for more DLC. I might even buy my own copy so I can do the multiplayer thing, actually that is another thing I wouldn't mind when playing it, someone to Co-Op it with, I died a few times since Sheva was too busy waiting for me to do something (i.e. holding an enemy, waiting for me to shoot an enemy, etc).
Original blog I found this link from:
http://theblacksentinel.wordpress.com/2007/08/04/resident-evil-5-outbreaks-the-racism/
iPhone 3.0 Beta 2
With the release of iPhone 3.0 Beta 2, which automatically unlocks tethering as well as fixes a few other bugs with Beta 1 that were annoying me, I finally got around to upgrading.
However, during the process of the upgrade (I selected Update instead of Restore this may have been what caused it), an error occurred. Fearing I may have just bricked my iPhone with a firmware changed, I quickly ran Restore, only for it to fail with an Error 1611, or maybe it was 1602 or 1604.
Searching the interwebs, I found various people who had the same problem with earlier version of the iPhone firmware, and one recommended putting the iPhone into DFU mode... BIG MISTAKE! It turns out that MacOSX doesn't recognise an iPhone in DFU mode, treating it like an iPod and giving Error 2001 messages. But not only that, but I was stuck in DFU mode (which btw is a black screen with no way of knowing if it is turned on or not).
The only solution at the time I could find around this was a piece of 32bit Windows software, which wouldn't work with my 64bit OS. Luckily I came by some instructions the next day, which said to exit DFU mode, all you have to do is hold power and home for 10 seconds. I don't know if it was this however, since I think my iPhone had run out of power, I might have just been turning it back on.
To fix the original problem, all I did was delete the ipsw files in "/<user>/Library/iTunes/Device Support" directories. Restore didn't work until I manually Restore using Firmware 3.0 Beta 2 (probably something gets changes which is why you can't downgrade through normal means).
Fallout 3
For a while now I've been playing through Fallout 3, jumping between the main storyline and sidequests every so often. When I first started playing, I didn't enjoy it, the game was slow for progression, and not too well explained on how things work - one example of this is moving objects, I completely forgot that I could move objects with the right analogue stick.
But as the game progressed, things got interesting, missions started to be worth the effort put in, and money was no longer a problem, and once I finally reached Rivet City, neither was ammo. Combine that with Fort Independence for turning in Power Armor and Plasma/Laser rifles for 556mm ammo, and I was practically invincible.
This was all ruined when finally I reached the final mission, I had Liberty Prime on my side, and I was on my way to take back the Water Purifier, but Liberty Prime did all the work, and any mutants that were left over were killed by Fawkes and his Laser Gatling Gun. Not even one Super Mutant Behemoth.
I wish there was a way to change perks and stats again, later in the game after getting an understanding of how the system works, I realised a lot of the choices I made at the beginning were the wrong ones since they were badly explained what they do. I could play it through again and choose perks and skills more wisely, rather than waiting them on things that would be useless later on.
There is hope on the horizon though, apparently Broken Steel, the next DLC, will not only raise the level cap, but change the awful ending. I will probably just wait til then and continue, or maybe restart my character and make different choices.