www.digitalmars.com         C & C++   DMDScript  

digitalmars.D.announce - UFCS for D

reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/

Andrei
Mar 28 2012
next sibling parent "F i L" <witte2008 gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 00:21:38 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/

 Andrei


Awesome! Been wanting this ever since I bought TDPL! :D

One question though, what takes priority, UFCS or opDispatch?
Mar 28 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Jesse Phillips" <jessekphillips+D gmail.com> writes:
On Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 00:21:38 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/

 Andrei


I won't be going out of my way to check this, but there is a 
mention of adding the range primatives. This works, but it 
doesn't make the class a range for any other module, so 
std.algorithms won't recogonise it as a range.
Mar 28 2012
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:53:57 -0400, Jesse Phillips  
<jessekphillips+D gmail.com> wrote:


 I won't be going out of my way to check this, but there is a mention of  
 adding the range primatives. This works, but it doesn't make the class a  
 range for any other module, so std.algorithms won't recogonise it as a  
 range.


At first thought, I believed this should be fixable -- if not working  
already.  Consider that std.algorithm doesn't include *your* module, yet  
you can pass types defined in your module into std.algorithm and it works  
just fine.

But I realized after typing about 2 messages in response to this (and  
deleting them), you are right, there is a fundamental problem here.   
Because the template instantiation is based solely on the type.  It does  
*not* include the type and whatever other modules you may have included  
that could define extension methods.  I don't think it's an implementation  
issue, I think it's a design issue -- there simply is no way to do this.

A counter case:

module1.d:

int foo(T)(T t)
{
    return t.bar();
}

module2.d:

struct S { int x;}

module3.d:

import module1, module2;

int bar(S s) { return s.x * 2;}

void baz1()
{
    S s(2);
    assert(foo(s) == 4);
}

module4.d:

import module1, module 2;

int bar(S s) { return s.x * 3;}

void baz2()
{
    S s(2);
    assert(foo(s) == 6);
}

// and to drive the point further:
module5.d:
import module3, module4;

void main()
{
    baz1();
    baz2();
}

In order for the asserts to *both* pass, there has to be two different  
instantiations of foo!S, one for module3, and one for module4.

So two possible sane rules:
1. A template instantiation can *only* use UFCS from functions defined in  
or imported from the module in which the template is defined. (i.e. the  
way it works now I think)
or
2. A template instantiation can *only* use UFCS from functions defined in  
or imported from the module in which the template is defined, *and* from  
functions as defined or imported by the module that defines the type on  
which UFCS is being used.  In other words, from my example above, only  
functions defined in or imported from module1.d and module2.d.  Therefore,  
the bar extension defined in module3 and module4 cannot be called from  
module1.

For builtin types (such as arrays or numbers), there wouldn't be a module  
that the type was defined.  However, object.di is imported by everything,  
so extensions could be put in there.

This kind of puts a damper on certain expectations for how UFCS could be  
used.  But I don't see any other way (other than adding the current module  
into the instantiation somehow -- imagine the template bloat...).

Even with this limitation, UFCS still allows a lot of cool things.  One  
misleading suggestion from the article however, it's not very easy to  
create non-friend non-member functions using UFCS, considering that every  
function in a given module is a friend.  In order to do this, you would  
need a helper module for each module that wants to define such non-friend  
functions.  Given the above proof, the helper module would also have to be  
imported by the main module.

-Steve
Mar 29 2012
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/29/2012 4:34 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 One
 misleading suggestion from the article however, it's not very easy to create
 non-friend non-member functions using UFCS, considering that every function in
a
 given module is a friend. In order to do this, you would need a helper module
 for each module that wants to define such non-friend functions. Given the above
 proof, the helper module would also have to be imported by the main module.


I think there's a misunderstanding. The class should contain, as member 
functions, anything that needs to access private state. UFCS functions declared 
in other modules should not need access to private state (if they do, it's an 
error in the design of the class) and so should have no problem being
non-friends.
Mar 29 2012
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 19:46:24 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 3/29/2012 4:34 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 One
 misleading suggestion from the article however, it's not very easy to  
 create
 non-friend non-member functions using UFCS, considering that every  
 function in a
 given module is a friend. In order to do this, you would need a helper  
 module
 for each module that wants to define such non-friend functions. Given  
 the above
 proof, the helper module would also have to be imported by the main  
 module.


 I think there's a misunderstanding. The class should contain, as member  
 functions, anything that needs to access private state. UFCS functions  
 declared in other modules should not need access to private state (if  
 they do, it's an error in the design of the class) and so should have no  
 problem being non-friends.


I don't think it's a misunderstanding on my part.  If you read Scott's  
article (as I did a week or so ago when I realized this limitation), he  
makes this point:

class A
{
    private:
      int x;
    public:
      int getX() { return x; }
      int getXSquared() { return getX() * getX(); }
}

Is more encapsulated with getXSquared moved *outside* the class like this:

int getXSquared(A &a) { return a.getX() * a.getX(); }

and use namespaces to make sure there is no symbol conflict.

The reason being, if you change anything in class A, you do not have to  
worry about the implementation of getXSquared, because it simply has no  
access to the private implementation.  You only have to worry about  
internal methods, and friend functions.

The intention is, getXSquared is a fundamental part of A's interface, so  
it actually is defined in the same location as A.  That is, it's not an  
afterthought defined elsewhere, it's part of A's API that should always be  
with A.

In order to accomplish this in D, getXSquared must go into another  
module.  There is no mechanism to say "don't give this function access to  
A's private data".  While I think Scott's arguments are a little strict in  
light of how D doesn't define explicit friendship, he has a good point.   
The D compiler doesn't help you achieve this goal *at all*.

In fact, in order to achieve UFCS with this, you'd have to define the  
getXSquared method in a helper module, and the module defining A must  
include the helper, which must include the original module.  This creates  
a module cycle, so that means you can only have static ctor/dtors in one  
or the other.  This makes things even more awkward.

-Steve
Mar 29 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/29/2012 5:09 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 The reason being, if you change anything in class A, you do not have to worry
 about the implementation of getXSquared, because it simply has no access to the
 private implementation. You only have to worry about internal methods, and
 friend functions.


Ok, I see what you're talking about. It has nothing to do with UFCS, it is D's 
design decision to not have explicit friends, but to make everything in a
module 
implicitly a friend.

I think it's far superior to the explicit friend thing in C++.

I've never seen much cause for hiding things within the same module. It's not 
like you're allowed to edit one part of the file and not touch another part.
Mar 29 2012
next sibling parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:27:46 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 3/29/2012 5:09 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 The reason being, if you change anything in class A, you do not have to  
 worry
 about the implementation of getXSquared, because it simply has no  
 access to the
 private implementation. You only have to worry about internal methods,  
 and
 friend functions.


 Ok, I see what you're talking about. It has nothing to do with UFCS, it  
 is D's design decision to not have explicit friends, but to make  
 everything in a module implicitly a friend.

 I think it's far superior to the explicit friend thing in C++.

 I've never seen much cause for hiding things within the same module.  
 It's not like you're allowed to edit one part of the file and not touch  
 another part.


That is precisely what Scott Meyers recommends in the article you  
referenced :)  He *relies* on the fact that you can edit one part and not  
worry about examining other parts (using his philosophy, it reduces the  
amount of code you have to look at when changing private implementation).

FWIW, I agree with you, I think the C++ friend mechanism is awkward for  
what it does, and I also don't take such hard-line views for code I write  
(i.e. I don't mind putting code that doesn't access private members as a  
member function).

-Steve
Mar 29 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:jl2um7$2eq5$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/29/2012 5:09 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 The reason being, if you change anything in class A, you do not have to 
 worry
 about the implementation of getXSquared, because it simply has no access 
 to the
 private implementation. You only have to worry about internal methods, 
 and
 friend functions.


 Ok, I see what you're talking about. It has nothing to do with UFCS, it is 
 D's design decision to not have explicit friends, but to make everything 
 in a module implicitly a friend.

 I think it's far superior to the explicit friend thing in C++.

 I've never seen much cause for hiding things within the same module. It's 
 not like you're allowed to edit one part of the file and not touch another 
 part.


That's the *whole point* of moving it outside the class. (Well, that and a 
smaller vtable.)

In D, if you change this:

-----------------
// foo.d
class Foo
{
    [...core stuff...]
    void extraFunctionality() {...}
}
-----------------

To this:

-----------------
// foo.d
class Foo
{
    [...core stuff...]
}
void extraFunctionality(Foo f) {...}
-----------------

How the heck does that improve encapsualtion? With D's implicit friends, it 
*doesn't*, it's just shifting things around. There is NO encapsualtion 
benefit there. Like Steven said, to *get* the encapsualtion, you have to 
create a whole new module to stick "extraFunctionality" into.
Mar 29 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/29/2012 6:57 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 How the heck does that improve encapsualtion? With D's implicit friends, it
 *doesn't*, it's just shifting things around. There is NO encapsualtion
 benefit there. Like Steven said, to *get* the encapsualtion, you have to
 create a whole new module to stick "extraFunctionality" into.


It doesn't improve intra-module encapsulation, you're right. The point of UFCS, 
however, is so that *other* modules can extend a class's methods without 
breaking encapsulation.

In D, the module is the fundamental unit of encapsulation, not the class. The 
reason is the whole reason that friends exist - sometimes, more than one 
component (i.e. class) is needed to manipulate private state.
Mar 29 2012
next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:jl3kkf$j4b$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/29/2012 6:57 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 How the heck does that improve encapsualtion? With D's implicit friends, 
 it
 *doesn't*, it's just shifting things around. There is NO encapsualtion
 benefit there. Like Steven said, to *get* the encapsualtion, you have to
 create a whole new module to stick "extraFunctionality" into.


 It doesn't improve intra-module encapsulation, you're right. The point of 
 UFCS, however, is so that *other* modules can extend a class's methods 
 without breaking encapsulation.

 In D, the module is the fundamental unit of encapsulation, not the class. 
 The reason is the whole reason that friends exist - sometimes, more than 
 one component (i.e. class) is needed to manipulate private state.


(Disclaimer: I don't really excpect this to actually get changed at this 
point, just discussing.)

I definitely agree with this:

"sometimes, more than one component (i.e. class) is needed to manipulate 
private state"

However, that need could also be served by a "module" access specifier 
(similar to "package"). Personally, I think that would have been a better 
approach. (And it would still be much, much better than "friend".)

While there are definitely times I need to access private state across 
separate components within a module, I find such cases are fairly uncommon, 
so I question the wisdom of making it the default behavior.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 12:18 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 While there are definitely times I need to access private state across
 separate components within a module, I find such cases are fairly uncommon,
 so I question the wisdom of making it the default behavior.


If your module has grown so large that you need such encapsulation, meaning
that 
the "cognitive load" of understanding the module has exceeded one's grasp, then 
I submit that the module needs to be broken up into multiple modules.

There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules. I 
believe this is indicative of a problem in the language. Andrei and I have 
talked about it, and we think it is because of difficulties in breaking a
module 
up into submodules of a package.

We think it's something we need to address.
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com> writes:
On 3/30/12, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:

 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules. I
 believe this is indicative of a problem in the language.


Ignoring that there are still a few import bugs, you can split
functionality into multiple modules and use one module per package
that publicly imports all modules in that package:

module std.datetime;
public import std.date.time, std.date.clock, std.date.watch;

That's what people are already doing with various D libraries.
Then, unittests could be moved into a central place. I think that
could cut down the linecount quite a bit. If linecount is still a
problem after that, then either the modules have to be further split
or it might be an indication that Phobos is getting too large.

Why would the language be at fault here?
Mar 30 2012
parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 10:36, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:

 On 3/30/12, Walter Bright<newshound2 digitalmars.com>  wrote:

 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules. I
 believe this is indicative of a problem in the language.


 Ignoring that there are still a few import bugs, you can split
 functionality into multiple modules and use one module per package
 that publicly imports all modules in that package:

 module std.datetime;
 public import std.date.time, std.date.clock, std.date.watch;


I agree.


 That's what people are already doing with various D libraries.
 Then, unittests could be moved into a central place.


Yeah, that's working just fine.


 I think that
 could cut down the linecount quite a bit. If linecount is still a
 problem after that, then either the modules have to be further split
 or it might be an indication that Phobos is getting too large.


If any abstraction (or what to call it) becomes too large then you just 
create another one.

If method becomes too large - split it up in several methods
If a class gets too many methods - split the class in several classes
If a module gets too many classes - split the module in several modules
If package gets too many modules - split it up in in several (sub) packages
If a library gets too many packages - split it up in several libraries

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:jl3qds$10ga$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/30/2012 12:18 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 While there are definitely times I need to access private state across
 separate components within a module, I find such cases are fairly 
 uncommon,
 so I question the wisdom of making it the default behavior.


 If your module has grown so large that you need such encapsulation, 
 meaning that the "cognitive load" of understanding the module has exceeded 
 one's grasp, then I submit that the module needs to be broken up into 
 multiple modules.


It's not about cognitive load exceeding the brain's capacity (well, I'm sure 
it can be in some cases), it's about just simply keeping separate things 
separate without ending up in Java's world of "millions of tiny files for 
each trivial thing".

You should be able to look at a couple unrelated chunks of code in a module 
(ie they handle completely separate details of the implementation of the 
module's single conceptual task) and *know* there's no interplay going on 
simply by virtue of the code not specifically suggesting otherwise via 
permissive access specifiers. And if those "separate sub-tasks" are small, 
stucking them each in separate files is a Java-like burden. So if you don't 
want to go that route, then when you look at them as things are now, well, 
there might be interplay and there might not be.


 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules. I 
 believe this is indicative of a problem in the language.


I thought that was a deliberate Phobos style convention. I'm certain I 
remember you and/or Andrei talking here about a year or two ago about how 
you didn't want Phobos modules broken up into separate implemetation 
modules.

In fact, I definitely remember now, back early last year when Andrei first 
brought up the idea of having  generalized parser in Phobos, I mentioned my 
Goldie project and there was a small discussion about the possibility of 
using that as the "std.parser" or whatever. I specifically remember you 
saying that, were Goldie to go into Phobos, you'd want it all merged into 
one module. Ultimately, I backed off on the whole idea as I felt Goldie 
likely wouldn't be an appropriate fit for Phobos, and that was one of the 
reasons.


 Andrei and I have  talked about it, and we think it is because of 
 difficulties in breaking a module up into submodules of a package.
 We think it's something we need to address.


Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even 
pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing modules 
with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo" and 
module "foo.bar". The reasons they gave for wanting this are right along the 
lines of what you're talking about here. Eventually they got the message 
that it wasn't gonna happen and they gave up asking for it.

Or is there a separate problem you're refering to?
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply bls <bizprac orange.fr> writes:
On 03/30/2012 02:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo" and
 module "foo.bar".


This is afaik similar to ADA child packages.
Quote :
Ada allows one to extend the functionality of a unit (package) with 
so-called children (child packages). With certain exceptions, all the 
functionality of the parent is available to a child. This means that all 
public and private declarations of the parent package are visible to all 
child packages.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 11:40, bls a écrit :

 On 03/30/2012 02:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo" and
 module "foo.bar".


 This is afaik similar to ADA child packages.
 Quote :
 Ada allows one to extend the functionality of a unit (package) with
 so-called children (child packages). With certain exceptions, all the
 functionality of the parent is available to a child. This means that all
 public and private declarations of the parent package are visible to all
 child packages.


This sound interesting. And why not use public import for that ? It 
wouldn't break any existing code, because it enlarge the field of possibles.
Mar 30 2012
parent bls <bizprac orange.fr> writes:
On 03/30/2012 05:06 AM, deadalnix wrote:

 Le 30/03/2012 11:40, bls a écrit :

 On 03/30/2012 02:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing
 modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo"
 and
 module "foo.bar".


 This is afaik similar to ADA child packages.
 Quote :
 Ada allows one to extend the functionality of a unit (package) with
 so-called children (child packages). With certain exceptions, all the
 functionality of the parent is available to a child. This means that all
 public and private declarations of the parent package are visible to all
 child packages.


 This sound interesting. And why not use public import for that ? It
 wouldn't break any existing code, because it enlarge the field of
 possibles.


Asking Nick or me ?

Anyway, you can't really compare the D module- and ADA package concept.
A D-ified ADA package could like like :

module Shelf {

	module Disks {

	}
	module Books {

	}
}

I am not an active ADA user but instead of having a single file you 
could use the D-ified Ada way...
module Shelf;
module Shelf.Disks;
module Shelf.Books;
instead. And I think this what Nick is talking about.

Having the same scoping rules.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ada_Programming/Packages
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 2:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Andrei and I have  talked about it, and we think it is because of
 difficulties in breaking a module up into submodules of a package.
 We think it's something we need to address.


 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo" and
 module "foo.bar". The reasons they gave for wanting this are right along the
 lines of what you're talking about here. Eventually they got the message
 that it wasn't gonna happen and they gave up asking for it.

 Or is there a separate problem you're refering to?


No, that's it. What brings it to the fore is, as I said, the kitchen-sink
module 
that is becoming prevalent.
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply "foobar" <foo bar.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 10:22:18 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 2:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Andrei and I have  talked about it, and we think it is 
 because of
 difficulties in breaking a module up into submodules of a 
 package.
 We think it's something we need to address.


 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay 
 back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for 
 allowing modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both 
 module "foo" and
 module "foo.bar". The reasons they gave for wanting this are 
 right along the
 lines of what you're talking about here. Eventually they got 
 the message
 that it wasn't gonna happen and they gave up asking for it.

 Or is there a separate problem you're refering to?


 No, that's it. What brings it to the fore is, as I said, the 
 kitchen-sink module that is becoming prevalent.


I'm confused. I thought that The kitchen-sink approach was a 
deliberate design decision. I also don't see how the language is 
at fault here - some libraries opted for a all.d module that 
public imports the other modules which cleanly solves the problem.

This can be trivially solved by a convention of adding a _.d or 
all.d or whatever agreed upon module at the package level. Sure, 
the above mentioned enhancement will remove the need for this 
extra tiny step. But this is merely eliminating a minor 
inconvenience, not some huge flaw of the language that prevents 
good design and proper organization.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 12:57, foobar a écrit :

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 10:22:18 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 2:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Andrei and I have talked about it, and we think it is because of
 difficulties in breaking a module up into submodules of a package.
 We think it's something we need to address.


 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing
 modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo"
 and
 module "foo.bar". The reasons they gave for wanting this are right
 along the
 lines of what you're talking about here. Eventually they got the message
 that it wasn't gonna happen and they gave up asking for it.

 Or is there a separate problem you're refering to?


 No, that's it. What brings it to the fore is, as I said, the
 kitchen-sink module that is becoming prevalent.


 I'm confused. I thought that The kitchen-sink approach was a deliberate
 design decision. I also don't see how the language is at fault here -
 some libraries opted for a all.d module that public imports the other
 modules which cleanly solves the problem.

 This can be trivially solved by a convention of adding a _.d or all.d or
 whatever agreed upon module at the package level. Sure, the above
 mentioned enhancement will remove the need for this extra tiny step. But
 this is merely eliminating a minor inconvenience, not some huge flaw of
 the language that prevents good design and proper organization.


all.d this the de facto standard here. I think it should become an 
official guideline.
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 14:07, deadalnix wrote:

 all.d this the de facto standard here. I think it should become an
 official guideline.


Why can't we get "import foo.*;", then we don't have to relay on guidelines.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 30 2012
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Jacob Carlborg" <doob me.com> wrote in message 
news:jl4d2e$24i1$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 2012-03-30 14:07, deadalnix wrote:

 all.d this the de facto standard here. I think it should become an
 official guideline.


 Why can't we get "import foo.*;", then we don't have to relay on 
 guidelines.


The problem with that is it indescriminately imports modules that are either 
just helper modules or just intended to *occasionally* be imported instead 
of always imported. I like the D way of requiring the lib author to use 
deliberate and explicit public imports for this sort of thing. That way the 
lib author is deciding what gets imported, not the ignorant compiler.
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"deadalnix" <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:jl47k0$1old$2 digitalmars.com...

 Le 30/03/2012 12:57, foobar a écrit :

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 10:22:18 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 2:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Andrei and I have talked about it, and we think it is because of
 difficulties in breaking a module up into submodules of a package.
 We think it's something we need to address.


 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in 
 even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing
 modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo"
 and
 module "foo.bar". The reasons they gave for wanting this are right
 along the
 lines of what you're talking about here. Eventually they got the 
 message
 that it wasn't gonna happen and they gave up asking for it.

 Or is there a separate problem you're refering to?


 No, that's it. What brings it to the fore is, as I said, the
 kitchen-sink module that is becoming prevalent.


 I'm confused. I thought that The kitchen-sink approach was a deliberate
 design decision. I also don't see how the language is at fault here -
 some libraries opted for a all.d module that public imports the other
 modules which cleanly solves the problem.

 This can be trivially solved by a convention of adding a _.d or all.d or
 whatever agreed upon module at the package level. Sure, the above
 mentioned enhancement will remove the need for this extra tiny step. But
 this is merely eliminating a minor inconvenience, not some huge flaw of
 the language that prevents good design and proper organization.


 all.d this the de facto standard here. I think it should become an 
 official guideline.


Another option is to do this:

    module foo;
    public import  foo_.bar;
    public import  foo_.baz;

    module foo_.bar;
    [...]
    module foo_.baz;
    [...]

The benefit of that is that the user doesn't even have to know or case about 
any such conventions (actually I might do that with my libs intead of the 
all.d I've been using). The (somewhat small) downside though, is that 
anything in "foo.d" is not in the same package as "foo_/*.d", which could 
matter on things with the "package" access specifier. But that's easily 
solved by keeping "foo.d" limited to imports only.

Of course, *all* this stuff goes away if we could just simply do:

    module foo;
    public import  foo.bar;
    public import  foo.baz;

    module foo.bar;
    [...]
    module foo.baz;
    [...]

Which IMHO seems like a simple "removing undue limitations". But maybe 
there's technical problems with that I haven't thought of?
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent reply Don Clugston <dac nospam.com> writes:
On 30/03/12 12:22, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 2:15 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Andrei and I have talked about it, and we think it is because of
 difficulties in breaking a module up into submodules of a package.
 We think it's something we need to address.


 Eh? Other people have voiced concerns over that since waaay back in even
 pre-D1 times. In particular, many people have argued for allowing modules
 with the same name as a package. Ie: you could have both module "foo" and
 module "foo.bar". The reasons they gave for wanting this are right
 along the
 lines of what you're talking about here. Eventually they got the message
 that it wasn't gonna happen and they gave up asking for it.

 Or is there a separate problem you're refering to?


 No, that's it. What brings it to the fore is, as I said, the
 kitchen-sink module that is becoming prevalent.


To be brutally honest, I don't think that's got much to do with the 
language. It's got to do with Phobos adopting the Big Ball Of Mud design 
pattern. There's no reason for the existing modules to be so huge. Eg, I 
created std.internal.math so that the math modules would stay small.
Not only are the modules huge, they import everything.

I'd like to see some attempt to fix the problem within the language 
right now, before jumping straight into language changes.
Apr 02 2012
parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-04-02 16:31, Don Clugston wrote:


 To be brutally honest, I don't think that's got much to do with the
 language. It's got to do with Phobos adopting the Big Ball Of Mud design
 pattern. There's no reason for the existing modules to be so huge. Eg, I
 created std.internal.math so that the math modules would stay small.
 Not only are the modules huge, they import everything.


I couldn't agree more.


 I'd like to see some attempt to fix the problem within the language
 right now, before jumping straight into language changes.


That's not very hard. It will just break existing code.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Apr 02 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 02/04/2012 18:00, Jacob Carlborg a écrit :

 On 2012-04-02 16:31, Don Clugston wrote:


 To be brutally honest, I don't think that's got much to do with the
 language. It's got to do with Phobos adopting the Big Ball Of Mud design
 pattern. There's no reason for the existing modules to be so huge. Eg, I
 created std.internal.math so that the math modules would stay small.
 Not only are the modules huge, they import everything.


 I couldn't agree more.


I did noticed that, but this isn't the only problem.


 I'd like to see some attempt to fix the problem within the language
 right now, before jumping straight into language changes.


 That's not very hard. It will just break existing code.


Yes, this is the point : refactoring a big module into submodules is 
hard because it break a lot of code, which is something we don't want 
ina standard lib for instance.

Not because it isn't possible, but because almost all D code repose on 
phobos, so refactoring it into submodules is likely to massively break 
existing code.
Apr 02 2012
next sibling parent reply Rory McGuire <rjmcguire gmail.com> writes:
Andrei and Walter's proposal does not break existing code because it
makes folders into modules.



On Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 8:43 AM, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote:

 Le 02/04/2012 18:00, Jacob Carlborg a =C3=A9crit :


 On 2012-04-02 16:31, Don Clugston wrote:


 To be brutally honest, I don't think that's got much to do with the
 language. It's got to do with Phobos adopting the Big Ball Of Mud desig=






n

 pattern. There's no reason for the existing modules to be so huge. Eg, =






I

 created std.internal.math so that the math modules would stay small.
 Not only are the modules huge, they import everything.



 I couldn't agree more.


 I did noticed that, but this isn't the only problem.



 I'd like to see some attempt to fix the problem within the language
 right now, before jumping straight into language changes.



 That's not very hard. It will just break existing code.


 Yes, this is the point : refactoring a big module into submodules is hard
 because it break a lot of code, which is something we don't want ina
 standard lib for instance.

 Not because it isn't possible, but because almost all D code repose on
 phobos, so refactoring it into submodules is likely to massively break
 existing code.
Apr 03 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 03/04/2012 09:58, Rory McGuire a écrit :

 Andrei and Walter's proposal does not break existing code because it
 makes folders into modules.


Yes, I was explaining why a solution is needed here.

I think the public import method is better than the one from Walter and 
Andrei, which is lacking in some aspects.
Apr 03 2012
parent Rory McGuire <rjmcguire gmail.com> writes:
On Apr 3, 2012 10:19 AM, "deadalnix" <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote:

 Le 03/04/2012 09:58, Rory McGuire a =C3=A9crit :


 Andrei and Walter's proposal does not break existing code because it
 makes folders into modules.


 Yes, I was explaining why a solution is needed here.

 I think the public import method is better than the one from Walter and


Andrei, which is lacking in some aspects.

To me that proposal is public importing. Just without breaking code. I also
like it because it reminds me of __init__.py
Apr 03 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent James Miller <james aatch.net> writes:
On 3 April 2012 19:58, Rory McGuire <rjmcguire gmail.com> wrote:

 Andrei and Walter's proposal does not break existing code because it
 makes folders into modules.


Completely off topic, but can you please refrain from top-posting? Its
not a big deal, just generally quoting above you is preferred.

Because it breaks the natural flow of conversation
Why shouldn't you top-post?

--
James Miller
Apr 03 2012
prev sibling parent Rory McGuire <rjmcguire gmail.com> writes:
On Apr 3, 2012 10:44 AM, "James Miller" <james aatch.net> wrote:

 On 3 April 2012 19:58, Rory McGuire <rjmcguire gmail.com> wrote:

 Andrei and Walter's proposal does not break existing code because it
 makes folders into modules.


 Completely off topic, but can you please refrain from top-posting? Its
 not a big deal, just generally quoting above you is preferred.

 Because it breaks the natural flow of conversation
 Why shouldn't you top-post?

 --
 James Miller


Sure
Apr 03 2012
prev sibling parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 11:15, Nick Sabalausky wrote:


 I thought that was a deliberate Phobos style convention. I'm certain I
 remember you and/or Andrei talking here about a year or two ago about how
 you didn't want Phobos modules broken up into separate implemetation
 modules.


I recognize that as well.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 10:20, Walter Bright wrote:


 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules.
 I believe this is indicative of a problem in the language. Andrei and I
 have talked about it, and we think it is because of difficulties in
 breaking a module up into submodules of a package.

 We think it's something we need to address.


I don't know for HOW LONG I've been saying this. The modules in Phobos 
are way too large. I always thought this was a design decision, that you 
wanted a flat hierarchy of modules in Phobos.

But I don't think it's a problem with the language. I've been splitting 
up my code in several sub packages and modules for as long as I've been 
using D. Just move the code to new modules. It can take some time to 
figure out how to best organize the modules but when that's finished 
there should be any problems.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent reply Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 3/30/12 3:20 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules.
 I believe this is indicative of a problem in the language. Andrei and I
 have talked about it, and we think it is because of difficulties in
 breaking a module up into submodules of a package.

 We think it's something we need to address.


Walter and I agreed on a design and I got tasked with writing a DIP. I 
don't have any time for it, but I had to do it so here it is:

http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?LanguageDevel/DIPs/DIP16

Please comment, after which Walter will approve. Walter's approval means 
that he would approve a pull request implementing DIP16 (subject to 
regular correctness checks).


Thanks,

Andrei
Mar 30 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 16:24, Andrei Alexandrescu a écrit :

 On 3/30/12 3:20 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules.
 I believe this is indicative of a problem in the language. Andrei and I
 have talked about it, and we think it is because of difficulties in
 breaking a module up into submodules of a package.

 We think it's something we need to address.


 Walter and I agreed on a design and I got tasked with writing a DIP. I
 don't have any time for it, but I had to do it so here it is:

 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?LanguageDevel/DIPs/DIP16

 Please comment, after which Walter will approve. Walter's approval means
 that he would approve a pull request implementing DIP16 (subject to
 regular correctness checks).


 Thanks,

 Andrei


Hi, It is an interesting proposal. You should start a thread about that 
so comment will not get lost in this one.
Mar 30 2012
parent Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> writes:
On 3/30/12 9:32 AM, deadalnix wrote:

 Le 30/03/2012 16:24, Andrei Alexandrescu a écrit :

 On 3/30/12 3:20 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

 There has been a trend in Phobos of having some truly gigantic modules.
 I believe this is indicative of a problem in the language. Andrei and I
 have talked about it, and we think it is because of difficulties in
 breaking a module up into submodules of a package.

 We think it's something we need to address.


 Walter and I agreed on a design and I got tasked with writing a DIP. I
 don't have any time for it, but I had to do it so here it is:

 http://prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?LanguageDevel/DIPs/DIP16

 Please comment, after which Walter will approve. Walter's approval means
 that he would approve a pull request implementing DIP16 (subject to
 regular correctness checks).


 Thanks,

 Andrei


 Hi, It is an interesting proposal. You should start a thread about that
 so comment will not get lost in this one.


Started a thread in the main forum.

Andrei
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 02:42:03 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 3/29/2012 6:57 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 How the heck does that improve encapsualtion? With D's implicit  
 friends, it
 *doesn't*, it's just shifting things around. There is NO encapsualtion
 benefit there. Like Steven said, to *get* the encapsualtion, you have to
 create a whole new module to stick "extraFunctionality" into.


 It doesn't improve intra-module encapsulation, you're right. The point  
 of UFCS, however, is so that *other* modules can extend a class's  
 methods without breaking encapsulation.


This is misleading, the class being extended or the code that uses the  
extensions must import the extension methods or it doesn't work.

The OP to this sub-thread brought up your example in the article -- adding  
range functions to a class.  Yes, you can do it, but it won't work with  
std.algorithm.  There's no need to test this, because it fundamentally  
cannot work that way (see my counter-case).

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent reply Piotr Szturmaj <bncrbme jadamspam.pl> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/29/2012 5:09 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 The reason being, if you change anything in class A, you do not have
 to worry
 about the implementation of getXSquared, because it simply has no
 access to the
 private implementation. You only have to worry about internal methods,
 and
 friend functions.


 Ok, I see what you're talking about. It has nothing to do with UFCS, it
 is D's design decision to not have explicit friends, but to make
 everything in a module implicitly a friend.

 I think it's far superior to the explicit friend thing in C++.


Just curious. Did you take it from Delphi? :-)
Mar 30 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 4:24 AM, Piotr Szturmaj wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 I think it's far superior to the explicit friend thing in C++.


 Just curious. Did you take it from Delphi? :-)


No. I've never looked at Delphi in detail.

But in any case, for any language feature, there's always another language that 
had done it before, or something like it, or something that if you stand on one 
leg and touch your nose it resembles it, or whatever.

It's also true that good ideas tend to be reinvented over and over.

There have been many module systems before Delphi, too. I even have dim
memories 
of reading about modules in the 1980 Ada spec :-)
Mar 30 2012
parent reply Piotr Szturmaj <bncrbme jadamspam.pl> writes:
Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 4:24 AM, Piotr Szturmaj wrote:

 Walter Bright wrote:

 I think it's far superior to the explicit friend thing in C++.


 Just curious. Did you take it from Delphi? :-)


 No. I've never looked at Delphi in detail.

 But in any case, for any language feature, there's always another
 language that had done it before, or something like it, or something
 that if you stand on one leg and touch your nose it resembles it, or
 whatever.

 It's also true that good ideas tend to be reinvented over and over.


Yes, I agree.


 There have been many module systems before Delphi, too. I even have dim
 memories of reading about modules in the 1980 Ada spec :-)


Actually, I meant allowing access to private fields within the same 
module. It really helped me to avoid writing boilerplate code for these 
fields. And I'm thinking about lots of correlated classes.

I asked because Delphi and D are the only ones I know that make friend 
classes implicit :-)
Mar 30 2012
parent Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 3:27 PM, Piotr Szturmaj wrote:

 I asked because Delphi and D are the only ones I know that make friend classes
 implicit :-)


I didn't know that about Delphi.
Mar 31 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.wbyg2ywyeav7ka localhost.localdomain...

 For builtin types (such as arrays or numbers), there wouldn't be a module 
 that the type was defined.  However, object.di is imported by everything, 
 so extensions could be put in there.


Wait, What? Weren't you strongly *opposed* to this last week when I 
suggested it for empty()?

I'm not trying to be an ass about it. Just not sure if you changed your 
mind, or I'm missing something, or what.


 One  misleading suggestion from the article however, it's not very easy to 
 create non-friend non-member functions using UFCS, considering that every 
 function in a given module is a friend.  In order to do this, you would 
 need a helper module for each module that wants to define such non-friend 
 functions.  Given the above proof, the helper module would also have to be 
 imported by the main module.


Yea, that occurred to me, too. <wishful musing>I've been starting to think 
more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was a mistake, 
and that we should have instead just had a "module" access specifier like we 
have "package".</wishful musing>
Mar 29 2012
next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 <wishful musing>I've been starting to think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was 
 a mistake,and that we should have instead just had a "module"
 access specifier like we have "package".</wishful musing>


Or, for moar compatibility, have enemy functions.

class Klingon { private Starship commanding; }
void nonFriend(enemy Klingon kor) {
     kor.commanding = lol; // error, commanding is private and kor 
is an enemy
}


Or, to avoid having a new keyword, call it interface
instead of enemy.

Though, then you could just pass an interface instead of
a class too. Take most general possible type.



But, separate modules are kinda cool anyway. I often put
stuff together in one module just for ease of distribution,
but eh modules are cool.
Mar 29 2012
next sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:nidsvjszuhicjthlpaxm forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 <wishful musing>I've been starting to think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was a 
 mistake,and that we should have instead just had a "module"
 access specifier like we have "package".</wishful musing>


 Or, for moar compatibility, have enemy functions.

 class Klingon { private Starship commanding; }
 void nonFriend(enemy Klingon kor) {
     kor.commanding = lol; // error, commanding is private and kor is an 
 enemy
 }


You forgot:

version(KhitomerAccords) {} else {
    [...]
}

'Course that still doesn't take into account that short period in the middle 
of DS9, but meh, good enough.

And then there's this line, which I'd consider mandatory for any 
Trek-related code:

version(JJAbrams)
    static assert(false, "Fuck this shit, this ain't even Star Trek 
anyway");


 Or, to avoid having a new keyword, call it interface
 instead of enemy.


Don't you mean "static"? ;)
Mar 29 2012
prev sibling parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 04:13, Adam D. Ruppe a écrit :

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 <wishful musing>I've been starting to think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was a
 mistake,and that we should have instead just had a "module"
 access specifier like we have "package".</wishful musing>


 Or, for moar compatibility, have enemy functions.

 class Klingon { private Starship commanding; }
 void nonFriend(enemy Klingon kor) {
 kor.commanding = lol; // error, commanding is private and kor is an enemy
 }


 Or, to avoid having a new keyword, call it interface
 instead of enemy.

 Though, then you could just pass an interface instead of
 a class too. Take most general possible type.



 But, separate modules are kinda cool anyway. I often put
 stuff together in one module just for ease of distribution,
 but eh modules are cool.


For the ease of distribution, you can use a module with public import in it.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 12:10:32 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 For the ease of distribution, you can use a module with public 
 import in it.


There's still a few things I don't like though, about
downloading and compiling several modules.

When it is just one, you can download the single
file and add it to your dmd command line.

With several modules, that's more effort, either
in downloading many things or in maintaining
a zip+lib of them too.

A lot different than my preference of "grab my cgi.d
and play"!
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 16:17, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 12:10:32 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 For the ease of distribution, you can use a module with public import
 in it.


 There's still a few things I don't like though, about
 downloading and compiling several modules.

 When it is just one, you can download the single
 file and add it to your dmd command line.

 With several modules, that's more effort, either
 in downloading many things or in maintaining
 a zip+lib of them too.

 A lot different than my preference of "grab my cgi.d
 and play"!


That's way I'm working on a package manager.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:idxacwhjfymfbmezlmks forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 12:10:32 UTC, deadalnix wrote:

 For the ease of distribution, you can use a module with public import in 
 it.


 There's still a few things I don't like though, about
 downloading and compiling several modules.

 When it is just one, you can download the single
 file and add it to your dmd command line.

 With several modules, that's more effort, either
 in downloading many things or in maintaining
 a zip+lib of them too.

 A lot different than my preference of "grab my cgi.d
 and play"!


I always use rdmd to compile anything with >1 file, so tossing in more files 
makes absolutely zero difference to me.
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message
 news:op.wbyg2ywyeav7ka localhost.localdomain...

 For builtin types (such as arrays or numbers), there wouldn't 
 be a module that the type was defined.  However, object.di is 
 imported by everything, so extensions could be put in there.


 Wait, What? Weren't you strongly *opposed* to this last week 
 when I
 suggested it for empty()?


Yes.  My assertion is that you have either the module defining 
the template import the module that defines the UFCS function 
(which in this case, std.range imports std.array), or have the 
module that defines the type import it.  Since range operations 
are not intrinsic to slices, and are a phobos-defined thing, 
including them in object.di I don't think is appropriate.  You 
may think differently.

In the case of .empty, I still contend that as long as we don't 
have a general definition of .empty being "the true way to check 
for zero length/elements/whatever," it doesn't belong as an 
intrinsic for arrays.  std.array defines empty so slices can be 
used in range functions, which would inevitably import 
std.range/std.array.  I think you are using .empty() in a 
generalized non-range fashion, and that is fine.  But we haven't 
defined .empty in that way, only in terms of ranges.  I know this 
may seem nit-picky to you, but I think it is important that we 
*don't* put arbitrary pieces of phobos into druntime because it 
seems convenient.  There should be a good compelling reason.


 I'm not trying to be an ass about it. Just not sure if you 
 changed your
 mind, or I'm missing something, or what.


I understand.  I'm trying to play the role of advocating for 
existing code.  Not because I think it's better, but because I 
think we should have a high bar to cross in order to make deep 
changes like this.  Adding things to object.di should not be a 
trivial matter.

I also happen to think if(array) and if(!array) should be 
directly tied to length instead of pointer (this was a big design 
mistake IMHO).  This would put us in the awkward situation of 
aliasing a very builtin feature of arrays as a property, 
seemingly for no reason in hindsight.


 One  misleading suggestion from the article however, it's not 
 very easy to create non-friend non-member functions using 
 UFCS, considering that every function in a given module is a 
 friend.  In order to do this, you would need a helper module 
 for each module that wants to define such non-friend 
 functions.  Given the above proof, the helper module would 
 also have to be imported by the main module.


 Yea, that occurred to me, too. <wishful musing>I've been 
 starting to think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was 
 a mistake,
 and that we should have instead just had a "module" access 
 specifier like we
 have "package".</wishful musing>


I don't think it was a mistake, it makes perfect sense to me.  On 
the other hand, I fully understand why Meyers' prescription is 
useful for humongous code bases.  However, I don't see this 
causing much trouble for code I write.

For instance, you have two classes you may have put into the same 
module because they are categorically related (not necessarily 
friends in C++ terms).  It's highly unlikely that you 
"accidentally" access private information across the classes.  So 
how much time is "wasted" checking the other class for external 
references?  Probably none.

-Steve
Mar 29 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:kgwyziwlndczqtafbvrf forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Yea, that occurred to me, too. <wishful musing>I've been starting to 
 think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was a 
 mistake,
 and that we should have instead just had a "module" access specifier like 
 we
 have "package".</wishful musing>


 I don't think it was a mistake, it makes perfect sense to me.  On the 
 other hand, I fully understand why Meyers' prescription is useful for 
 humongous code bases.  However, I don't see this causing much trouble for 
 code I write.

 For instance, you have two classes you may have put into the same module 
 because they are categorically related (not necessarily friends in C++ 
 terms).  It's highly unlikely that you "accidentally" access private 
 information across the classes.  So how much time is "wasted" checking the 
 other class for external references?  Probably none.


Large portions of D's access specifiers were completely unenforced for a 
long time and it never caused me much trouble. Doesn't mean they didn't 
still need to enforced.
Mar 29 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 07:29, Nick Sabalausky a écrit :

 "Steven Schveighoffer"<schveiguy yahoo.com>  wrote in message
 news:kgwyziwlndczqtafbvrf forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Yea, that occurred to me, too.<wishful musing>I've been starting to
 think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was a
 mistake,
 and that we should have instead just had a "module" access specifier like
 we
 have "package".</wishful musing>


 I don't think it was a mistake, it makes perfect sense to me.  On the
 other hand, I fully understand why Meyers' prescription is useful for
 humongous code bases.  However, I don't see this causing much trouble for
 code I write.

 For instance, you have two classes you may have put into the same module
 because they are categorically related (not necessarily friends in C++
 terms).  It's highly unlikely that you "accidentally" access private
 information across the classes.  So how much time is "wasted" checking the
 other class for external references?  Probably none.


 Large portions of D's access specifiers were completely unenforced for a
 long time and it never caused me much trouble. Doesn't mean they didn't
 still need to enforced.


Because projects were small.
Mar 30 2012
parent "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"deadalnix" <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:jl47vt$1old$5 digitalmars.com...

 Le 30/03/2012 07:29, Nick Sabalausky a écrit :

 "Steven Schveighoffer"<schveiguy yahoo.com>  wrote in message
 news:kgwyziwlndczqtafbvrf forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Yea, that occurred to me, too.<wishful musing>I've been starting to
 think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was a
 mistake,
 and that we should have instead just had a "module" access specifier 
 like
 we
 have "package".</wishful musing>


 I don't think it was a mistake, it makes perfect sense to me.  On the
 other hand, I fully understand why Meyers' prescription is useful for
 humongous code bases.  However, I don't see this causing much trouble 
 for
 code I write.

 For instance, you have two classes you may have put into the same module
 because they are categorically related (not necessarily friends in C++
 terms).  It's highly unlikely that you "accidentally" access private
 information across the classes.  So how much time is "wasted" checking 
 the
 other class for external references?  Probably none.


 Large portions of D's access specifiers were completely unenforced for a
 long time and it never caused me much trouble. Doesn't mean they didn't
 still need to enforced.


 Because projects were small.


Right, my point is, just because you're not accidentally accessing things 
you shouldn't, doesn't mean those safeguards shouldn't still be in place. At 
the very least it makes it easier to reason about the code: You can just 
look at it and *know* there's no improper access going on. No need to tiptoe 
around keepng an eye out for it on the off chance that you or someone else 
did manage to slip something in there accidentally *or* deliberately.
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent "foobar" <foo bar.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 01:55:23 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Yea, that occurred to me, too. <wishful musing>I've been 
 starting to think
 more and more that the "everything in a module is a friend" was 
 a mistake,
 and that we should have instead just had a "module" access 
 specifier like we
 have "package".</wishful musing>


Given Phobos' organization (or lack thereof) where files are at 
the order of 10k lines or more this should raise concern.
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 01:34, Steven Schveighoffer a écrit :

 On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:53:57 -0400, Jesse Phillips
 <jessekphillips+D gmail.com> wrote:


 I won't be going out of my way to check this, but there is a mention
 of adding the range primatives. This works, but it doesn't make the
 class a range for any other module, so std.algorithms won't recogonise
 it as a range.


 At first thought, I believed this should be fixable -- if not working
 already. Consider that std.algorithm doesn't include *your* module, yet
 you can pass types defined in your module into std.algorithm and it
 works just fine.

 But I realized after typing about 2 messages in response to this (and
 deleting them), you are right, there is a fundamental problem here.
 Because the template instantiation is based solely on the type. It does
 *not* include the type and whatever other modules you may have included
 that could define extension methods. I don't think it's an
 implementation issue, I think it's a design issue -- there simply is no
 way to do this.

 A counter case:

 module1.d:

 int foo(T)(T t)
 {
 return t.bar();
 }

 module2.d:

 struct S { int x;}

 module3.d:

 import module1, module2;

 int bar(S s) { return s.x * 2;}

 void baz1()
 {
 S s(2);
 assert(foo(s) == 4);
 }

 module4.d:

 import module1, module 2;

 int bar(S s) { return s.x * 3;}

 void baz2()
 {
 S s(2);
 assert(foo(s) == 6);
 }

 // and to drive the point further:
 module5.d:
 import module3, module4;

 void main()
 {
 baz1();
 baz2();
 }

 In order for the asserts to *both* pass, there has to be two different
 instantiations of foo!S, one for module3, and one for module4.

 So two possible sane rules:
 1. A template instantiation can *only* use UFCS from functions defined
 in or imported from the module in which the template is defined. (i.e.
 the way it works now I think)
 or
 2. A template instantiation can *only* use UFCS from functions defined
 in or imported from the module in which the template is defined, *and*
 from functions as defined or imported by the module that defines the
 type on which UFCS is being used. In other words, from my example above,
 only functions defined in or imported from module1.d and module2.d.
 Therefore, the bar extension defined in module3 and module4 cannot be
 called from module1.

 For builtin types (such as arrays or numbers), there wouldn't be a
 module that the type was defined. However, object.di is imported by
 everything, so extensions could be put in there.

 This kind of puts a damper on certain expectations for how UFCS could be
 used. But I don't see any other way (other than adding the current
 module into the instantiation somehow -- imagine the template bloat...).

 Even with this limitation, UFCS still allows a lot of cool things. One
 misleading suggestion from the article however, it's not very easy to
 create non-friend non-member functions using UFCS, considering that
 every function in a given module is a friend. In order to do this, you
 would need a helper module for each module that wants to define such
 non-friend functions. Given the above proof, the helper module would
 also have to be imported by the main module.

 -Steve


I would expect this not to work, because bar isn't defined in module1 
and template are supposed to use declaration scope, not instantiation 
scope (unless it is mixin template).
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:10:14 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote:


 I would expect this not to work, because bar isn't defined in module1  
 and template are supposed to use declaration scope, not instantiation  
 scope (unless it is mixin template).


Right, I think it's the way it works now.  But consider that the template  
instantiation *does* pull in some stuff from the instantiation scope (i.e.  
the template's module may not import the type being used to instantiate).   
I think it would be OK for the compiler to consider UFCS functions from  
the type's defining module as well, since you cannot instantiate the  
template for that particular type without having imported that module  
(i.e. it's guaranteed to instantiate the same no matter what module does  
it first).

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 14:13, Steven Schveighoffer a écrit :

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:10:14 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote:


 I would expect this not to work, because bar isn't defined in module1
 and template are supposed to use declaration scope, not instantiation
 scope (unless it is mixin template).


 Right, I think it's the way it works now. But consider that the template
 instantiation *does* pull in some stuff from the instantiation scope
 (i.e. the template's module may not import the type being used to
 instantiate). I think it would be OK for the compiler to consider UFCS
 functions from the type's defining module as well, since you cannot
 instantiate the template for that particular type without having
 imported that module (i.e. it's guaranteed to instantiate the same no
 matter what module does it first).

 -Steve


It does pull information from it's own scope and what is passed as 
parameter. So it would still fail for the UFCS case.

I don't see a clean solution for that, because of ambiguities. That 
something that is not new and not specific to UFCS.

Immagine you want to define your own to!xxx() for your type xxx. (It is 
dumb case because you have toString, but an interesting exercise because 
for your own stuff, not something that is specified in the language - 
like toString - the same could happen with no easy solution.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:22:12 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> wrot=
e:


 Le 30/03/2012 14:13, Steven Schveighoffer a =C3=A9crit :

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:10:14 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com>  =





 wrote:


 I would expect this not to work, because bar isn't defined in module=






1

 and template are supposed to use declaration scope, not instantiatio=






n

 scope (unless it is mixin template).


 Right, I think it's the way it works now. But consider that the templ=




ate

 instantiation *does* pull in some stuff from the instantiation scope
 (i.e. the template's module may not import the type being used to
 instantiate). I think it would be OK for the compiler to consider UFC=




S

 functions from the type's defining module as well, since you cannot
 instantiate the template for that particular type without having
 imported that module (i.e. it's guaranteed to instantiate the same no=





 matter what module does it first).

 -Steve


 It does pull information from it's own scope and what is passed as  =



 parameter. So it would still fail for the UFCS case.

 I don't see a clean solution for that, because of ambiguities. That  =



 something that is not new and not specific to UFCS.


Why would there be ambiguities?  Unlike C include files, D modules are  =

consistently compiled, unaffected by importing other modules.  In order =
to  =

instantiate a template templ!Foo, either the module that defines templ, =
or  =

the module who is instantiating *must* import the module that defines  =

Foo.  Knowing this, the compiler should be able to deduce that it can  =

consistently compile tmpl!Foo even if it pulls in UFCS functions from  =

Foo's module or modules that Foo's module imports.


 Immagine you want to define your own to!xxx() for your type xxx. (It i=


s  =


 dumb case because you have toString, but an interesting exercise becau=


se  =


 for your own stuff, not something that is specified in the language - =


 =


 like toString - the same could happen with no easy solution.


I don't think this disproves anything.  It should be possible without  =

ambiguity given the rules I stated.

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 14:52, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


 Why would there be ambiguities? Unlike C include files, D modules are
 consistently compiled, unaffected by importing other modules.


What about static-if and string mixins?

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 30 2012
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:39:09 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> wrote:


 On 2012-03-30 14:52, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:


 Why would there be ambiguities? Unlike C include files, D modules are
 consistently compiled, unaffected by importing other modules.


 What about static-if and string mixins?


This C code is what I'm talking about:

file1.h:

#define BLAH

file2.h:

#ifdef BLAH
int foo();
#else
char * foo();
#endif


main.c:

#include "file1.h"
#include "file2.h"

Note how including file1.h affects how file2.h is processed, with no  
control given to file2.h.  But in D this cannot happen, a module is  
consistently processed, no matter how it's imported or in what order.   
Therefore you can be confident that no matter how it was imported, it has  
access to the same exact compiled code.

Neither static-if or string mixins cannot affect a file that does not  
import them (directly or indirectly).

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent reply deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 30/03/2012 14:52, Steven Schveighoffer a écrit :

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:22:12 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> wrote:


 Le 30/03/2012 14:13, Steven Schveighoffer a écrit :

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:10:14 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com>
 wrote:


 I would expect this not to work, because bar isn't defined in module1
 and template are supposed to use declaration scope, not instantiation
 scope (unless it is mixin template).


 Right, I think it's the way it works now. But consider that the template
 instantiation *does* pull in some stuff from the instantiation scope
 (i.e. the template's module may not import the type being used to
 instantiate). I think it would be OK for the compiler to consider UFCS
 functions from the type's defining module as well, since you cannot
 instantiate the template for that particular type without having
 imported that module (i.e. it's guaranteed to instantiate the same no
 matter what module does it first).

 -Steve


 It does pull information from it's own scope and what is passed as
 parameter. So it would still fail for the UFCS case.

 I don't see a clean solution for that, because of ambiguities. That
 something that is not new and not specific to UFCS.


 Why would there be ambiguities? Unlike C include files, D modules are
 consistently compiled, unaffected by importing other modules. In order
 to instantiate a template templ!Foo, either the module that defines
 templ, or the module who is instantiating *must* import the module that
 defines Foo. Knowing this, the compiler should be able to deduce that it
 can consistently compile tmpl!Foo even if it pulls in UFCS functions
 from Foo's module or modules that Foo's module imports.


 Immagine you want to define your own to!xxx() for your type xxx. (It
 is dumb case because you have toString, but an interesting exercise
 because for your own stuff, not something that is specified in the
 language - like toString - the same could happen with no easy solution.


 I don't think this disproves anything. It should be possible without
 ambiguity given the rules I stated.

 -Steve


You are messing up everything.

First, this have NOTHING to do with UFCS. Second, current D import 
system have no ambiguity. But you propose to change that system. That 
would introduce ambiguity.

Even if you don't believe me, which is fine, it is safe to assume so 
unless you can prove otherwise.
Mar 30 2012
parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:48:04 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> wrot=
e:


 Le 30/03/2012 14:52, Steven Schveighoffer a =C3=A9crit :

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 08:22:12 -0400, deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com>  =





 wrote:

 Immagine you want to define your own to!xxx() for your type xxx. (It=







 is dumb case because you have toString, but an interesting exercise
 because for your own stuff, not something that is specified in the
 language - like toString - the same could happen with no easy soluti=






on.

 I don't think this disproves anything. It should be possible without
 ambiguity given the rules I stated.

 -Steve


 You are messing up everything.

 First, this have NOTHING to do with UFCS.


Yes it does.  The special rule only applies when using UFCS functions.


 Second, current D import system have no ambiguity. But you propose to =


 =


 change that system. That would introduce ambiguity.


Stating it doesn't prove it.  I claim no ambiguity, simply because I  =

cannot see what the ambiguous case would be.  It's very easy to disprove=
  =

me, show one example.


 Even if you don't believe me, which is fine, it is safe to assume so  =



 unless you can prove otherwise.


I'm not disputing the current module system is unambiguous.  I assert th=
at  =

my additions do not make it unambiguous.  Trying to prove that it's  =

unambiguous would be really really hard, and require probably years of  =

research.  I don't really want to prove it.

But disproving it can be done with one case.  If you believe it's  =

ambiguous, you must have a case in mind, no?

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/29/2012 4:34 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 But I realized after typing about 2 messages in response to this (and deleting
 them), you are right, there is a fundamental problem here. Because the template
 instantiation is based solely on the type. It does *not* include the type and
 whatever other modules you may have included that could define extension
 methods. I don't think it's an implementation issue, I think it's a design
issue
 -- there simply is no way to do this.


Yes, you're right. The template is instantiated in the context of the template 
definition, not the template instantiation. Hence, unless the extension methods 
are in scope of the template definition, they will not be found.

I hadn't thought of this issue.



 So two possible sane rules:
 1. A template instantiation can *only* use UFCS from functions defined in or
 imported from the module in which the template is defined. (i.e. the way it
 works now I think)


Yes, that is the way it works now.



 or
 2. A template instantiation can *only* use UFCS from functions defined in or
 imported from the module in which the template is defined, *and* from functions
 as defined or imported by the module that defines the type on which UFCS is
 being used.


I would argue that:

3. An extension method for an argument of type template parameter T will be 
looked up only in the instantiation scope.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:27:43 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 I would argue that:

 3. An extension method for an argument of type template parameter T will  
 be looked up only in the instantiation scope.


I don't think you looked at my counter case in detail.  Your idea leads to  
two different instantiations of tmpl!Foo having two different  
implementations, depending on which extension methods you include.  In  
fact, in one place, the instantiation might succeed, but in another, the  
instantiation might fail.

Given that the compiler simply trims out identically defined symbols,  
assuming they are the same, this could have disastrous consequences.  You  
could end up with code being different based on the link order, or  
possibly arbitrary decisions made by the linker!

My argument is that the one thing in common is that the module that  
defines the type has to have been included.  I think you would agree that  
the one truth we must maintain is that X!Y must be implemented exactly the  
same no matter what module instantiates it.

I realize that the compiler likely doesn't keep enough information to know  
what functions would fall under the rules I specified, so this is probably  
a difficult change to effect.  But it could be an incremental change later.

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 12:11 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:27:43 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com>
 wrote:


 I would argue that:

 3. An extension method for an argument of type template parameter T will be
 looked up only in the instantiation scope.


 I don't think you looked at my counter case in detail. Your idea leads to two
 different instantiations of tmpl!Foo having two different implementations,
 depending on which extension methods you include. In fact, in one place, the
 instantiation might succeed, but in another, the instantiation might fail.


Yes, you're right. I missed that nuance. I don't really know how to fix it.



 Given that the compiler simply trims out identically defined symbols, assuming
 they are the same, this could have disastrous consequences. You could end up
 with code being different based on the link order, or possibly arbitrary
 decisions made by the linker!

 My argument is that the one thing in common is that the module that defines the
 type has to have been included. I think you would agree that the one truth we
 must maintain is that X!Y must be implemented exactly the same no matter what
 module instantiates it.

 I realize that the compiler likely doesn't keep enough information to know what
 functions would fall under the rules I specified, so this is probably a
 difficult change to effect. But it could be an incremental change later.

 -Steve
Mar 30 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 12:36 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 12:11 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:27:43 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com>
 wrote:


 I would argue that:

 3. An extension method for an argument of type template parameter T will be
 looked up only in the instantiation scope.


 I don't think you looked at my counter case in detail. Your idea leads to two
 different instantiations of tmpl!Foo having two different implementations,
 depending on which extension methods you include. In fact, in one place, the
 instantiation might succeed, but in another, the instantiation might fail.


 Yes, you're right. I missed that nuance. I don't really know how to fix it.


Ah, I know how to fix it. Mark such instantiations as "local" ones, so they are 
mangled with the module name of where they were instantiated from.
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/30/2012 5:25 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 Ah, I know how to fix it. Mark such instantiations as "local" ones, so they are
 mangled with the module name of where they were instantiated from.


http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7802
Mar 30 2012
parent =?utf-8?Q?Simen_Kj=C3=A6r=C3=A5s?= <simen.kjaras gmail.com> writes:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 08:10:56 +0200, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 3/30/2012 5:25 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 Ah, I know how to fix it. Mark such instantiations as "local" ones, so  
 they are
 mangled with the module name of where they were instantiated from.


 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7802


http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2131 might be a related  
problem.
Apr 01 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 31/03/2012 02:25, Walter Bright a écrit :

 On 3/30/2012 12:36 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 12:11 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:27:43 -0400, Walter Bright
 <newshound2 digitalmars.com>
 wrote:


 I would argue that:

 3. An extension method for an argument of type template parameter T
 will be
 looked up only in the instantiation scope.


 I don't think you looked at my counter case in detail. Your idea
 leads to two
 different instantiations of tmpl!Foo having two different
 implementations,
 depending on which extension methods you include. In fact, in one
 place, the
 instantiation might succeed, but in another, the instantiation might
 fail.


 Yes, you're right. I missed that nuance. I don't really know how to
 fix it.


 Ah, I know how to fix it. Mark such instantiations as "local" ones, so
 they are mangled with the module name of where they were instantiated from.


I think this is a terrible idea. Additionally, such a function can be 
passed as template parameter using an alias parameter, or the module to 
import can be passed.

This is a non issue. I don't see why UFCS would be treated as special in 
regard to template instantiation. Template and UFCS are orthogonal concepts.
Apr 01 2012
prev sibling parent "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:25:10 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 3/30/2012 12:36 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

 On 3/30/2012 12:11 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:27:43 -0400, Walter Bright  
 <newshound2 digitalmars.com>
 wrote:


 I would argue that:

 3. An extension method for an argument of type template parameter T  
 will be
 looked up only in the instantiation scope.


 I don't think you looked at my counter case in detail. Your idea leads  
 to two
 different instantiations of tmpl!Foo having two different  
 implementations,
 depending on which extension methods you include. In fact, in one  
 place, the
 instantiation might succeed, but in another, the instantiation might  
 fail.


 Yes, you're right. I missed that nuance. I don't really know how to fix  
 it.


 Ah, I know how to fix it. Mark such instantiations as "local" ones, so  
 they are mangled with the module name of where they were instantiated  
 from.


As I mentioned, this is the horrible solution I did not wish to have :(

What is wrong with my proposal (item 2 from my original post)?  It seems  
like it would be as easy to implement as your proposal, and does not  
create "local" instantiations.

-Steve
Apr 02 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com> writes:
Le 29/03/2012 02:21, Andrei Alexandrescu a écrit :

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/


 Andrei


The example of std.algorithm should have been used. The importance of 
such a syntax become obvious when using it.
Mar 29 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:
On 03/29/2012 02:21 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/


 Andrei


I think the article does not mention that it also works for primitive types.
Mar 29 2012
parent reply bearophile <bearophileHUGS lycos.com> writes:
Timon Gehr:


 I think the article does not mention that it also works for primitive types.


But there is a small problem with primitive properties:
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7773

Bye,
bearophile
Mar 29 2012
parent Timon Gehr <timon.gehr gmx.ch> writes:
On 03/30/2012 01:45 AM, bearophile wrote:

 Timon Gehr:


 I think the article does not mention that it also works for primitive types.


 But there is a small problem with primitive properties:
 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=7773

 Bye,
 bearophile


Yes, I have never understood why built-in types are excluded from 
expressions other than '.' expressions during parsing. After all, 
semantic analysis must deal with them because they can occur through 
aliases. It seems inconsistent and causes strange behaviour that is hard 
to remember. (The fact that primitive types cannot be passed as alias 
parameters smells in a similar way.)
Mar 30 2012
prev sibling next sibling parent reply Simon <s.d.hammett gmail.com> writes:
On 29/03/2012 01:21, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/


 Andrei


I do wish you guys would just post the direct link as well.

I hate reddit, I've zero interest in the comments on there and jumping 
through that hoop just slows down my browsing.

-- 
My enormous talent is exceeded only by my outrageous laziness.
http://www.ssTk.co.uk
Mar 29 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Simon" <s.d.hammett gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:jl2j1u$1p3p$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 29/03/2012 01:21, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/


 Andrei


 I do wish you guys would just post the direct link as well.

 I hate reddit, I've zero interest in the comments on there and jumping 
 through that hoop just slows down my browsing.


Yea, reddit *is* extremely slow whenever there's a reasonable number of 
comments. And *that's* with JS *off* (and using it that way prevents you 
from doing *anything* there other than read existing comments, which of 
course is retarded). And then with JS on, reddit is *insanely* slow. 
Seriously takes fucking forever. Easily one of the slowest sites I've ever 
come across. Total piece of shit implementation they have there (and a 
perfect example of what's wrong with "cloud" and "web 2.0"). It's almost as 
if the GitHub guys wrote it.
Mar 29 2012
parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com> writes:
On 3/29/2012 3:00 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Yea, reddit *is* extremely slow whenever there's a reasonable number of
 comments. And *that's* with JS *off* (and using it that way prevents you
 from doing *anything* there other than read existing comments, which of
 course is retarded). And then with JS on, reddit is *insanely* slow.
 Seriously takes fucking forever. Easily one of the slowest sites I've ever
 come across. Total piece of shit implementation they have there (and a
 perfect example of what's wrong with "cloud" and "web 2.0"). It's almost as
 if the GitHub guys wrote it.



True, but I upgraded recently to 64 bit Win 7, with a 6 core processor and SSD 
drive. Reddit seems a lot zippier :-)
Mar 29 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:jl2p1f$252f$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/29/2012 3:00 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Yea, reddit *is* extremely slow whenever there's a reasonable number of
 comments. And *that's* with JS *off* (and using it that way prevents you
 from doing *anything* there other than read existing comments, which of
 course is retarded). And then with JS on, reddit is *insanely* slow.
 Seriously takes fucking forever. Easily one of the slowest sites I've 
 ever
 come across. Total piece of shit implementation they have there (and a
 perfect example of what's wrong with "cloud" and "web 2.0"). It's almost 
 as
 if the GitHub guys wrote it.



 True, but I upgraded recently to 64 bit Win 7, with a 6 core processor and 
 SSD drive. Reddit seems a lot zippier :-)


I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that would 
have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite literally 
is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely powerful 
hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking 
single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking bat-shit 
crazy.
Mar 29 2012
next sibling parent reply Jacob Carlborg <doob me.com> writes:
On 2012-03-30 04:05, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright"<newshound2 digitalmars.com>  wrote in message

 True, but I upgraded recently to 64 bit Win 7, with a 6 core processor and
 SSD drive. Reddit seems a lot zippier :-)


 I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that would
 have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite literally
 is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

 Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely powerful
 hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking
 single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking bat-shit
 crazy.


Have you seen this:

http://hallicino.hubpages.com/hub/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualCore_You_Wont_Believe_Who_Wins

They compare and old Macintosh from the 80's against a fairly new PC.

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg
Mar 29 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Jacob Carlborg" <doob me.com> wrote in message 
news:jl3kar$ie4$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 2012-03-30 04:05, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright"<newshound2 digitalmars.com>  wrote in message

 True, but I upgraded recently to 64 bit Win 7, with a 6 core processor 
 and
 SSD drive. Reddit seems a lot zippier :-)


 I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that 
 would
 have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite 
 literally
 is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

 Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely powerful
 hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking
 single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking bat-shit
 crazy.


 Have you seen this:

 http://hallicino.hubpages.com/hub/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualCore_You_Wont_Believe_Who_Wins

 They compare and old Macintosh from the 80's against a fairly new PC.


Yea, I've seen that. It's a very good article, though. Although I've been 
saying this since before that article, and even before multi-cores. Contrary 
to the title, I wasn't at all surprised which won ;)

Of course, I don't expect software to be as super-fine-tuned as it was on, 
say, the Apple 2 or Atari 2600. There *is* definitely some value in loosing 
a certain amount of performance to abstractions, up to a point. But we've 
blown way, way, WAAAY beyond that point.

It's sickening how much gratuitous waste there is in a lot of "modern" 
software, and really for not much benefit, as D proves.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in message 
news:jl3n59$qf7$1 digitalmars.com...

 "Jacob Carlborg" <doob me.com> wrote in message 
 news:jl3kar$ie4$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 2012-03-30 04:05, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright"<newshound2 digitalmars.com>  wrote in message

 True, but I upgraded recently to 64 bit Win 7, with a 6 core processor 
 and
 SSD drive. Reddit seems a lot zippier :-)


 I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that 
 would
 have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite 
 literally
 is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

 Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely 
 powerful
 hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking
 single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking 
 bat-shit
 crazy.


 Have you seen this:

 http://hallicino.hubpages.com/hub/_86_Mac_Plus_Vs_07_AMD_DualCore_You_Wont_Believe_Who_Wins

 They compare and old Macintosh from the 80's against a fairly new PC.


 Yea, I've seen that. It's a very good article, though. Although I've been 
 saying this since before that article, and even before multi-cores. 
 Contrary to the title, I wasn't at all surprised which won ;)

 Of course, I don't expect software to be as super-fine-tuned as it was on, 
 say, the Apple 2 or Atari 2600. There *is* definitely some value in 
 loosing a certain amount of performance to abstractions, up to a point. 
 But we've blown way, way, WAAAY beyond that point.

 It's sickening how much gratuitous waste there is in a lot of "modern" 
 software, and really for not much benefit, as D proves.


Actually, one thing that really gets me is shutdown times: RAM is 
*volitile*. How much processing can really be needed when the RAM's just 
gonna get wiped anyway? You ask the user if they want to save, you flush the 
output queues for anything non-volitile, and you cut the power. Sheesh!

Desktops are the worst offenders, and paricularly WinXP. But then even on my 
brother's PS3, you can literally count the seconds before it actually turns 
off. It's just a set-top gaming console, is that really necessary? (They can 
spare me their "It does everything!" - like I give a crap about any of those 
gimmicks.) On my old (super-low-power) NES, you could hit the power button, 
and within one second you were at the title screen. Hit one button and 
you're immediately playing (and I mean *playing*, not "watching exposition" 
or "learning how to turn left"). And then power button again, and the 
system's off. Try doing any of that on a PS3. It's amazing that the faster 
and more powerful the systems become, the longer and longer it takes them to 
start/stop tasks. ('Course, the Apple 2 is a notable exception: that thing 
seemed to take forever to boot. It did shut down pretty damn quick though.)

Some of that stuff isn't even a technical matter at all, but deliberate 
design: Who the hell decided we need twenty company logos (fully animated, 
one at a time), then 10+ minutes of exposition and building "atmosphere", 
followed by half an hour of (typically patronizing) tutorials before 
actually getting to the real gameplay? Zelda Skyward Sword is the worst 
offender, it literally takes *hours* to get past all the initial exposition, 
tutorials and shit into the real core of the game (I honestly started 
wondering if there even *was* a game - "Did I pick up a Harry Potter movie 
by mistake?"). The original Zelda, you could get from power off to the meat 
of the gameplay in literally seconds. Game devs won't let you do that now: 
They've gotta show off their cinematography so they can get hired by Pixar, 
where they *really* wanted to be all along. (Meh, Dreamworks was always 
better anyway ;) )

Sheesh, (and now I'm *really* getting sidetracked here ;) ), even 
*Hollywood* hates exposition (you can tell by how the actors/directors 
always rush through those lines as fast as they can). But go figure: with 
all the Hollywood brown-nosing the game devs do, and imitating them even in 
ways that make no sense for an interactive medium, that hatred for 
exposition and rambling on, and on, and on, is the *one* thing in Hollywood 
that game devs aren't tripping over themselves trying to ape.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:
On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:21:12 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in message
 news:jl3n59$qf7$1 digitalmars.com...



 Yea, I've seen that. It's a very good article, though. Although I've  
 been
 saying this since before that article, and even before multi-cores.
 Contrary to the title, I wasn't at all surprised which won ;)

 Of course, I don't expect software to be as super-fine-tuned as it was  
 on,
 say, the Apple 2 or Atari 2600. There *is* definitely some value in
 loosing a certain amount of performance to abstractions, up to a point.
 But we've blown way, way, WAAAY beyond that point.

 It's sickening how much gratuitous waste there is in a lot of "modern"
 software, and really for not much benefit, as D proves.




100% agree.  There has been a huge trend in software to disregard  
performance because "the hardware will take care of it."  Interestingly  
enough though, performance still turns heads :)  That is, when faced with  
two applications that do the same thing, but one is twice as fast, most  
people will choose (and probably pay more for) the faster one.


 Actually, one thing that really gets me is shutdown times: RAM is
 *volitile*. How much processing can really be needed when the RAM's just
 gonna get wiped anyway? You ask the user if they want to save, you flush  
 the
 output queues for anything non-volitile, and you cut the power. Sheesh!


One of the things I was extremely impressed with on my new macbook is that  
it usually shuts down in under 2 seconds.


 Desktops are the worst offenders, and paricularly WinXP.


Windows 7 is vastly better at both startup and shutdown than WinXP.  I  
think part of the problem is that shutdown on these systems defers to the  
user applications.  Sometimes I shutdown, and come back the next day to  
find it was still asking me some questions.  Grrrr.  Now I have to answer  
the questions, let it power off, then power back on again.  The apps  
should save enough state so they can resume the next day without issue  
(this is how the mac seems to work, and I love it).


 But then even on my
 brother's PS3, you can literally count the seconds before it actually  
 turns
 off. It's just a set-top gaming console, is that really necessary? (They  
 can
 spare me their "It does everything!" - like I give a crap about any of  
 those
 gimmicks.) On my old (super-low-power) NES, you could hit the power  
 button,
 and within one second you were at the title screen.


You must have had a different version of NES.  The process to start mine  
up was not nearly as fast.  It went something like this:

1. Insert cartridge, push down cartridge, power on.  (I cite this as one  
step because it became automatic to do this in 2 seconds)
2. Screen with horribly large pixellated game appears.
3. Power off, pull out cartridge.
4. Blow in bottom of cartridge, even though the pins are clean and free of  
dust (did this actually ever do anything?)
5. Re-insert cartridge, this time more firmly, push down deliberately to  
make sure game locks into place
6. Power on, normal screen comes up, push start button.
7. Play for about 2 minutes, game hangs with single audio tone.
8. Bang hand on top of NES to show it you mean business.  Sometimes it  
will whimper back to playing mode.
9. After second hang, attempt to press reset button about 15 times.   
Peanut-sized pixels return.
10. Power off, remove catridge, repeat blowing procedure from step 4, but  
with slower more deliberate breath.  Try a blowing pattern, like quick  
bursty blows in various locations.  Insert cartidge even MORE firmly.   
Jiggle cartridge a bit to make sure the NES is aware there is a valid game  
for it to consume.
11. Lower cartridge, power on.  Play game for another 5 minutes.
12. After next hang, turn power off, and watch cartoons.

I exaggerate a bit :)  But sometimes I swear it was like this.  I don't  
miss those days, though I don't get to play many video games these days.   
I'm waiting for my kids to get old enough to play them so I can mooch off  
of their video game time :)


 Some of that stuff isn't even a technical matter at all, but deliberate
 design: Who the hell decided we need twenty company logos (fully  
 animated,
 one at a time), then 10+ minutes of exposition and building "atmosphere",
 followed by half an hour of (typically patronizing) tutorials before
 actually getting to the real gameplay? Zelda Skyward Sword is the worst
 offender, it literally takes *hours* to get past all the initial  
 exposition,
 tutorials and shit into the real core of the game (I honestly started
 wondering if there even *was* a game - "Did I pick up a Harry Potter  
 movie
 by mistake?"). The original Zelda, you could get from power off to the  
 meat
 of the gameplay in literally seconds. Game devs won't let you do that  
 now:
 They've gotta show off their cinematography so they can get hired by  
 Pixar,
 where they *really* wanted to be all along. (Meh, Dreamworks was always
 better anyway ;) )


When I bought the new Wii motion plus (that gives better sensitivity) with  
Wii Sports Resort, the first time you play, it makes you watch 8 minutes  
of instructional video on how to use your Wii motion plus.  I thought at  
the time "Wow, that was a bit long, but I guess I only have to do it  
once."  Then I went to my sister-in-law's house, and wanted to show her  
the game.  This was *her* Wii's first time playing the game, so again, I  
had to watch the damn video (no way to skip).  It happened a third time on  
my parents' Wii, and I was thinking "Man, this was a *bad* design  
decision".

-Steve
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 11:21:02 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:

 4. Blow in bottom of cartridge, even though the pins are clean 
 and free of dust (did this actually ever do anything?)


My hypothesis is it was actually the moisture that
made a better connection.

I'd like to test this now... I should break out the old
nes and some canned air and distilled water.


But, back in the day, I used to find great success by
actually running the game under a small stream of
tap water. It'd almost always work right after that.


I prefer the cartridges, flaws and all, to CDs. They
are so easy to dirty up, scracth, or get outright broken
(my brother was an angry gamer!)

And they load sooooo slowly, especially the newer games.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:udpabjwyzxlollbizxzz forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 11:21:02 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 4. Blow in bottom of cartridge, even though the pins are clean and free 
 of dust (did this actually ever do anything?)


 My hypothesis is it was actually the moisture that
 made a better connection.


Probably. Problem is, it also corrodes the connectors. So the more you do 
it, the worse it gets. Best thing to do is rubbing alcohol on a q-tip. Or 
rubbing alcohol on a soft cloth wrapped around a few old credit cards or a 
thin piece of wood.



 I prefer the cartridges, flaws and all, to CDs. They
 are so easy to dirty up, scracth, or get outright broken
 (my brother was an angry gamer!)

 And they load sooooo slowly, especially the newer games.


Totally agree on all counts. I *liked* that the N64 used carts (although 
some were ridiculously pricey). And right from day one, you knew that the 
PSP's use of discs was a colossally stupid thing to do on a *portable*.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> writes:
On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 21:03:21 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Problem is, it also corrodes the connectors.


Yea. But oh well, it can't be too bad... my old games
all still work!

Though, nowadays I tend to prefer the emulators. I have
a playstation controller on usb, which works for all
the old games naturally (there's a clear progression
from nes -> super nintendo -> playstation, each is a
superset of the next. It works well for Sega too.)

No hardware hassles, doesn't take space under the tv.
I used to have a real mess of crap in my bedroom, the
cords were hideous. Now most of that is on the computer.

The computer can also crank up the speed, which makes
some of those old games so much more playable! I can't
believe I used to sit there 10 hours a day and just
grind or use the slow moving characters.

(though now I can't do a video game for more than one
hour a week, between work, etc., and my eyes just get
horribly tired with the motion. But with emulator's
speed acceleration, that one hour can go a pretty long way!)


 I *liked* that the N64 used carts


I have only one game for the N64: Perfect Dark. Bought
the game when I saw it at one of the stores and picked
up the system like a month later.

Great game, still my favorite of the FPS genre.
Mar 30 2012
parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> writes:
"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ftnddrqdfbrtxiiwehaa forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 21:03:21 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Problem is, it also corrodes the connectors.


 Yea. But oh well, it can't be too bad... my old games
 all still work!

 Though, nowadays I tend to prefer the emulators.


Oh *definitely*. BTW, Wii homebrew is *fantastic* for that. It literally 
turns the Wii into a (very good) set-top multi-emulator device. And many of 
the Wii-hosted homebrew emulators are *very* good now. *FAR* better than the 
half-assed Virtual Console stuff.


 I have
 a playstation controller on usb, which works for all
 the old games naturally (there's a clear progression
 from nes -> super nintendo -> playstation, each is a
 superset of the next. It works well for Sega too.)


Yea. This gets into one thing I *love* about China's unwillingless to play 
by the US rules: Thanks to Hong Kong, I have an inexpensive device that lets 
me use a PS2 controller on PC *AND* GameCube *AND* XBox1 (And on Wii, for 
the few games that are actually intelligent nough to allow GC controllers as 
an alternative to the piece of crap "Classic Controller"). I love this 
thing. But that would *never* happen under US-style IP law. Playing by US 
rules, you're not allowed to have the *basic consumer choice* of using 
whatever the fuck controller you want with whatever the fuck system you 
want. China *allows* such consumer choice. Yup: China being *more* free than 
the corporate-owned US. Go figure.



 No hardware hassles, doesn't take space under the tv.
 I used to have a real mess of crap in my bedroom, the
 cords were hideous. Now most of that is on the computer.


Eeewww, I hate playing games on a PC:

- Too many other processes to screw up the experience.

- I spent sooo many hours every day *working* at the computer desk, I 
*don't* want to be be glued to it for my entertainment, too.

- Even if I didn't use a PC for work, for my entertainment, I'd still much 
rather use a nice comfortable living room couch/TV/environment than a 
computer desk anyway.

- Plus the non-indie commercial games come with rootkits and the requirement 
of buying new hardware twice a year. No thanks.



 The computer can also crank up the speed, which makes
 some of those old games so much more playable! I can't
 believe I used to sit there 10 hours a day and just
 grind or use the slow moving characters.


Some of the Wii-hosted homebrew emulators will do that too :)  I doubt I 
would have ever gotten all the way through Chrono Trigger if it weren't for 
that feature.


 I *liked* that the N64 used carts


 I have only one game for the N64: Perfect Dark. Bought
 the game when I saw it at one of the stores and picked
 up the system like a month later.

 Great game, still my favorite of the FPS genre.


Yea, this is a pretty good one. Another one of my favs in Conker's Bad Fur 
Day. You play a cute little furry squirrel, and then you do things like get 
drunk so you can kill flame-based enemies by staggering around and pissing 
on them :) Fantastically "wrong" and great gameplay. It's a Rare game from 
back when Rare was actually still good. Actually paid $80 for that fucking 
game, but never regretted it.
Mar 30 2012
next sibling parent reply "Bernard Helyer" <b.helyer gmail.com> writes:
 Eeewww, I hate playing games on a PC:

 - Too many other processes to screw up the experience.


Maybe if you were basing your experiences off of Windows 95.


 - I spent sooo many hours every day *working* at the computer 
 desk, I
 *don't* want to be be glued to it for my entertainment, too.

 - Even if I didn't use a PC for work, for my entertainment, I'd 
 still much
 rather use a nice comfortable living room couch/TV/environment 
 than a
 computer desk anyway


Fair enough. You can hook PCs up to a TV though, of course.

.

 - Plus the non-indie commercial games come with rootkits and 
 the requirement


Lose the hyperbole. :P


 of buying new hardware twice a year. No thanks.


Oh please. The hardware requirements have basically been static 
because of the age of the current consoles.






 Mar 30 2012



  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Bernard Helyer" <b.helyer gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:jiioyfihtaqhpjafgmxr forum.dlang.org...

 Eeewww, I hate playing games on a PC:

 - Too many other processes to screw up the experience.


 Maybe if you were basing your experiences off of Windows 95.


Actually, it was pretty good back then, I'm thinking more the past 10 years. 
There's too much background crap that's always running now, not to mention 
programs completely hoarding as many resoruces and CPU power as the possibly 
can. Back with 95/98, there were what, three basic processes that were 
always running? I used to even have them memorized. Now it's probably around 
10x times that, plus god-knows how many services, and half of it's all 
written in a "the hell with efficiency" style.


 - I spent sooo many hours every day *working* at the computer desk, I
 *don't* want to be be glued to it for my entertainment, too.

 - Even if I didn't use a PC for work, for my entertainment, I'd still 
 much
 rather use a nice comfortable living room couch/TV/environment than a
 computer desk anyway


 Fair enough. You can hook PCs up to a TV though, of course.


Yea, and I can replace my car's steering wheel with a one of those big 
wooden things things they used to use on boats ;)

My point being, yes, it's technically doable, but to make it work *well* is 
too much of a DIY project. (Plus it's not really doable for me since the 
shithole I've got here has knob-and-tube wiring pretty much everywhere but 
my computer desk, so nothing three-prong will work in the living room, so 
it'd have to be a laptop).

Something like a softmodded Wii, OTOH, is cheap, quick, easy, and has great 
results. (*Really* looking forward to the Raspberry Pi, though.)


 .

 - Plus the non-indie commercial games come with rootkits and the 
 requirement


 Lose the hyperbole. :P


There's no hyperbole there. PC gaming DRMs have been *known* to be 
implemented as rootkits. That's plain fact. That's one of the reasons people 
pirate PC games they've already legitimately bought - because it doesn't 
have DRM, and therefore doesn't go screwing around with their kernel.


 of buying new hardware twice a year. No thanks.


 Oh please. The hardware requirements have basically been static because of 
 the age of the current consoles.


Even if that's true, it's too little, too late. Once bitten, twice shy.



 Mar 30 2012



prev sibling  parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 22:43:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Oh *definitely*. BTW, Wii homebrew is *fantastic* for that.


I don't have one of those thingys though.


 But that would *never* happen under US-style IP law.


You know what's funny: I used to use an Atari ac adapter
for my Sega. (still do, when I actually use the thing)

The Internet tells me that Sega controllers work in
Ataris too!

Accidental compatibility there!


 - I spent sooo many hours every day *working* at the computer 
 desk


This is one reason why I actually like staying at the
computer: I can keep an eye on my email in the corner.

I often tell people I have to get back to the computer
so I can pretend to work for a while.

They laugh - I work via the internet, so I don't
have to *pretend*, since there's no one there to
see it.

Of course, often I actually do work and just don't
want to admit it. But, sometimes I actually do pretend.


The way I do that is by keeping the email window open
and answering requests, bugs, etc. as a kind of low
priority process. When they interrupt me, I'll handle
it, then get back to what I was otherwise doing.


Thus, pretending to work. It looks like I'm on top of
things, in reality, I'm goofing off on the video game,
a side project, the television, or the newsgroup or whatever.


Parking my butt in the computer chair means I can do
all that, and I keep the game in a corner window on the
screen, so I can see everything else going on too.


 - Even if I didn't use a PC for work, for my entertainment, I'd 
 still much rather use a nice comfortable living room 
 couch/TV/environment


My computer chair is probably the nicest furniture I own...
In my house's big room, I have a floor bed: a couple
blankets and pillows on the floor, next to my big tv.
(my "big tv" being a 20 year old 19" set! I'll use it till
it dies. Then duct tape it back together and get a few more
years out of it.)

Anyway, the floor bed is brilliant, but I like my chair too.

Besides it's just that I always feel like I *should* be working,
or at least available in case something comes up,
and if I'm sitting at the computer, at least I can pretend
to be...


 - Plus the non-indie commercial games come with rootkits and 
 the requirement
 of buying new hardware twice a year. No thanks.


Eh, I just stick to the old stuff. The newest computer
game I've played is either Starcraft or Worms.

BTW, Worms 2, now there's a great game. I hear they are
doing a new 2d Worms game, written in D. I look forward
to it. (totally on topic now :P)


 I doubt I
 would have ever gotten all the way through Chrono Trigger if it 
 weren't for that feature.


huh, Chrono Trigger moves pretty quickly. I don't mind it
at regular speed at all.

Unless you were playing the AWFUL playstation version. The
super nintendo one was pretty well paced. The events moved
along quickly, the characters moved at a good speed,
and most importantly, NO LOAD TIME.


A friend of mine years ago liked my super nintendo
version and saw a playstation port come out. He
bought it.

And I couldn't even look at it. It took literally
*minutes* to load the initial game, and several
full seconds to do stuff in the game!

In the original one, you bump into a monster, and instantly,
swords come out, the music changes, and you can hold in the
button to get it over with.

In the playstation one, you move... it pauses to load.
You finally bump into the monster.

It STOPS THE WORLD, seeks the disc, finally the music
changes, wait a bit longer, and FINALLY the swords come
out. Don't use the magic though, it will have to load some
more.

Fucking unbearable.


You'd think they would cache this or something. Nope. Go
to the next screen, bump a monster... and WAIT AGAIN.



What the /hell/. I know the playstation wasn't exactly
the beefiest hardware ever made, but come on.




Ironically, they also bundled final fantasy 4 in that same
sale, and this one was bearable. (I actually bought this disc
from him.) It took great aeons to initially load, but once
you got started, it played normally. You could even take
the CD out for the most part and still play it, proving
they loaded the whole game into memory up front.

Actually, it was pretty good. How could they do a good
job on one game, but so horribly drop the ball on a similar
game that came in the /same box/?

Ridiculous.


Since I'm talking about final fantasy, I played their playstation

haven't gotten myself to try 9 again (despite it sitting next
to me for years now. Seriously, I can reach it right now!)

I didn't love 9 the first time I played it, but I went into
it with a bad attitude too - my dad paid the full $40 for it
instead of waiting a year for it to drop to $20. That annoyed
the crap out of me. Now I'm more angry that I was so rude
about it than anything else; he tried to get a fancy expensive
christmas present, and my response was not nice at all.


Aaaanyway, two objective complaints I have about it are
a) load times and b) cutscenes. 7 and 8 had these problems
too, but it was different...

FF7 fight time from start of graphic to menu input: 7 seconds.
FF8, same thing: about 7 seconds too, but you could turn them 
off, omg.
FF9.... 15 seconds.

(btw, FF1, same measure: < 2 seconds.)


That's right, the load time just about doubled between 8 and 9!
How ANNOYING.

And cutscenes: 7 had a few. 8 had a few more. 9 piled it right
up.

Gah!



But the worst when it comes to exposition is Metal Gear Solid.

and 3.

MGS1 had a lot of exposition, no doubt about it.

But MGS2 was just non fucking stop. Round a corner, mandatory
call. Listen to them blabber on meaninglessly for like 45 minutes.
Seriously, some of the exposition scenes were that long, just
dribbling dialog.

My god.



Anyway I'm really rambling. Preaching to the choir I'm sure.



 It's a Rare game from back when Rare was actually still good.


heh, they also did Perfect Dark and the great Battletoads
on the nintendo. I never did finish that battletoads, but
I beat the living crap out of my brother over and over again!



 Mar 30 2012



  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:vcadggwxsbxhdkjhrqfl forum.dlang.org...

 On Friday, 30 March 2012 at 22:43:00 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 But that would *never* happen under US-style IP law.


 You know what's funny: I used to use an Atari ac adapter
 for my Sega. (still do, when I actually use the thing)

 The Internet tells me that Sega controllers work in
 Ataris too!

 Accidental compatibility there!


Yea, that was before the suits smelled money in the games direction, 
invaded, and decided "What's with all this oppenness bullcrap? LOCK THAT 
SHIT DOWN! Rope 'em in and lock 'em in!"

Like the AV cords: For fuck's sake, what's with the proprietary AV 
connectors? DVD players (even small ones) get by fine without that bullshit: 
They could easily have gone with proprietary conectors on the device end 
like the game companies do. But they're not actually asinine enough to do 
it.


 My computer chair is probably the nicest furniture I own...
 In my house's big room, I have a floor bed: a couple
 blankets and pillows on the floor, next to my big tv.
 (my "big tv" being a 20 year old 19" set! I'll use it till
 it dies. Then duct tape it back together and get a few more
 years out of it.)


Finally! Another person that's not jumping on board the "If flatpanel HD 
sets are so popular then I guess I have to go spring for one, too" 
bandwagon!


 Besides it's just that I always feel like I *should* be working,
 or at least available in case something comes up,
 and if I'm sitting at the computer, at least I can pretend
 to be...


That's kind of another thing: If I need to be doing work, it's going to be 
damn hard if I have a bunch of games two clicks away.

I'm both tongue-in-cheek and totally serious on that :)


 BTW, Worms 2, now there's a great game.


Yea, I've always like Worms. That's a good one. I grew up with the original 
Worms though, so the changes in Worms 2 took some getting used to: The 
cartoon worms, the new voices, the lack of scaling (the kids call it 
"zooming" these days ;) ). Got used to it though, and it's very good.

Another fantastic turn-based strategy is Moonbase Commander. Super 
under-appreciated.


 I hear they are
 doing a new 2d Worms game, written in D. I look forward
 to it. (totally on topic now :P)


Really? Cool!


 I doubt I
 would have ever gotten all the way through Chrono Trigger if it weren't 
 for that feature.


 huh, Chrono Trigger moves pretty quickly. I don't mind it
 at regular speed at all.


I'm trying to remember what it was that felt really slow to me...It's been 
awhile since I played it, but I think it *might* have been fanfare at the 
end of each battle...? Something like that anyway. It was a short, minor 
thing like that, but it was frequent enough that it just felt like I was 
being really slowed down.


 Unless you were playing the AWFUL playstation version. The
 super nintendo one was pretty well paced. The events moved
 along quickly, the characters moved at a good speed,
 and most importantly, NO LOAD TIME.


No, it was definitely the SNES one.

Aside from active time battle (which I've never liked in any of Square's 
games that used it), it's certainly not a bad game overall. Quite good, 
really. Although, I was always more of a Lunar fan, even if the battle 
system wasn't quite as polished as Chrono Trigger's.


 What the /hell/. I know the playstation wasn't exactly
 the beefiest hardware ever made, but come on.


Yea, constant loading sucks. Actually, that reminds me, have you seen that 
YouTube video of Sonic 2006's hub-world "gameplay"? Pretty much exactly like 
you describe: contant (slow) re-loading for at every trivial step...Except 
it's on the 360/PS3. No doubt that must have been a real rush-job.


 Since I'm talking about final fantasy, I played their playstation

 haven't gotten myself to try 9 again (despite it sitting next
 to me for years now. Seriously, I can reach it right now!)


You know, I've always had mixed feelings about square. I've always liked 
JRPGs, especially 16-bit ones, and square's have always had top-notch 
storytelling and presentation, but there's always been one reason or another 
that I never got far with any of them, despite beating other JRPGs like 
Lunar (multiple times, on both SegaCD and PSX).

The SNES Final Fantasy's seem right up my alley, being 16-bit JRPG and all 
(and I have a couple of them on PSX), but the active time battle just makes 
it really difficult for me to want to stick with it enough to get anywhere. 
So I don't think I've ever managed to get more than a couple hours into 
those.

In the PSX era, I was more into PC gaming and didn't have a PSX, so I got 
the PC FF7. Not long after I got to the overworld map (roughly disc 2? After 
Aeris is kidnapped, but before...uhh...you discover her ultimate fate - does 
that even *count* as a spoiler anymore? *Did* it ever? ;) ), I ended up 
getting bored with it and never got any further.

Later on, I got FF8 (for PSX), and even though I didn't mind the draw 
system, early on in disc 2 I realized I was only playing it to see what 
happens and was genuinely dreading/rushing-through the battles (which just 
seemed boring), so I gave up on that too. Didn't like how it was so ultra 
stat-heavy, either. I can enjoy stat-fiddling up to a point (such as in 

seemed excessive.

Never tried 9. Played a demo or two of FF10, and thought "meh", and I guess 
I've kinda given up on FF since. I spent years trying to like the series and 
just couldn't :/ Ironically though, I think I'm the only person in the world 
who actually *likes* "FF: The Spirits Within". (I think part of what I liked 
was that it was a CG movie that *wasn't* a cartoon.)


 Aaaanyway, two objective complaints I have about it are
 a) load times and b) cutscenes. 7 and 8 had these problems
 too, but it was different...


Heh, on games like that, I feel a little bit differently about cutscenes. 
While my hatred for cutscenes and story-driven games has been growing for 
over a decade, storytelling has always been one of the core points of JRPGs.



 FF7 fight time from start of graphic to menu input: 7 seconds.
 FF8, same thing: about 7 seconds too, but you could turn them off, omg.
 FF9.... 15 seconds.

 (btw, FF1, same measure: < 2 seconds.)


Heh. Yea. Faster the hardware, the more waiting. Go figure.


 That's right, the load time just about doubled between 8 and 9!
 How ANNOYING.

 And cutscenes: 7 had a few. 8 had a few more. 9 piled it right
 up.

 Gah!


Hmm, I'll be sure not to try 9 ;) I guess even in JRPGs, story and cutscenes 
can be overdone.


 But the worst when it comes to exposition is Metal Gear Solid.


Oh my GOD yes, you're right. I was even going to mention that in reply to 
the FF stuff.

MSG1 was a great game at the time, despite the constant chatter. In fact, it 
was one of the main reasons I got a PSX (the other reasons being Castlevania 
Chronicles and SOTN). I don't think MGS1's gameplay holds up very well now, 
though.

MGS2 was CRAP. I couldn't understand how so many people actually liked that 
so-called "game". World's worst offender in terms of pointless incessant 
yammering with no gameplay (at least until Zelda Skyward Sword came out, 
which seems roughly even with MGS2 - but at least most of MGS2's cutscenes 
could be skipped - although there were so many that even *skipping* them 
still took forever).

I do have to admit though, the gameplay in MGS2, what incredibly little 
there actually was, was actually pretty good. But I've been spoiled by the 
Splinter Cell series which is stealth gameplay that even puts MGS2's 
gameplay completely to shame. Plus, the first three Splinter Cell games 
actually have very *good* (ie, not moronic) storylines that...here's the 
best part...are *seamlessly* integated with the gameplay and *don't* 
interfere with it (Splinter Cell 4's storyline is properly integrated, too, 
but it's a really f*ing stupid "THIS time, it's PERSONAL!" travesty). 
Seriously one of the best game series of all time (aside from the story in 


I played a demo of MGS3 and...never even finished the demo. The chatter was 
just as bad as in MGS2, plus loading times were worse, plus the gameplay 
itself was boring: It seemed to involve too much "Go into the menu to change 
clothes". What is this, Metal Gear, or Barbie's Dress-Up Menus?

I've never touched MGS4 and I never will. No matter what the gameplay is 
like.

Then the same guy behind MGS *cough*reinvented*cough* Castevania to 
predictably horrid results. And yet somehow it was well-received. After 
playing the demo, I cannot understand why: *everything* looks like 
plastic-toys-wrapped-in-cellophane, and the gameplay is a pure God of War 
clone (which itself was just mediocre: As my brother astutely pointed out, 
God of War is just the nighttime levels of Sonic Unleased with an Ancient 
Greek theme). Man, what I wouldn't give for a *second* Metroidvania game 
that *doesn't* require being played on a tiny little handheld 
screen...Preferably with the badass Alucard (and not that pussy Soma).



 But MGS2 was just non fucking stop. Round a corner, mandatory
 call. Listen to them blabber on meaninglessly for like 45 minutes.
 Seriously, some of the exposition scenes were that long, just
 dribbling dialog.

 My god.


Yes, and if you were massochistic enough to actually listen, the *content* 
of the conversations was maddeningly inane (that's "inane", not "insane". 
Although "insane" works, too.) It's like listening to a detailed analysis of 
Sex and the City plotlines: Who the fuck cares?!?!


 Anyway I'm really rambling.


Oh, like I'm not? ;)


Preaching to the choir I'm sure.


Yea, but it's fun to actually *agree* with someone on gaming (or anything) 
for a change.


 It's a Rare game from back when Rare was actually still good.


 heh, they also did Perfect Dark and the great Battletoads
 on the nintendo. I never did finish that battletoads, but
 I beat the living crap out of my brother over and over again!


Heh, yea, Battletoads was fantastic. I never beat it either, at least not 
without Game Genie. Insanely hard. A real "gamer's" game. That hoverbike 
section was just EVIL!

Rare used to be truly fantastic, right up there with Treasure. But when Free 
Radical split off, it killed both companies: Rare lost the ability to 
understand the art of gameplay, and Free Radical just re-released Goldeneye 
over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and called it "TimeSplitters".



 Mar 30 2012



 next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com>  writes:


On 3/30/2012 11:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Adam D. Ruppe"<destructionator gmail.com>  wrote in message

 In my house's big room, I have a floor bed: a couple
 blankets and pillows on the floor, next to my big tv.
 (my "big tv" being a 20 year old 19" set! I'll use it till
 it dies. Then duct tape it back together and get a few more
 years out of it.)


 Finally! Another person that's not jumping on board the "If flatpanel HD
 sets are so popular then I guess I have to go spring for one, too"
 bandwagon!


Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me that my 
expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in comparison, even 
though it is in perfect working order.

I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.



 Mar 31 2012



 next sibling parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:jl6a6a$1gh$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/30/2012 11:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Adam D. Ruppe"<destructionator gmail.com>  wrote in message

 In my house's big room, I have a floor bed: a couple
 blankets and pillows on the floor, next to my big tv.
 (my "big tv" being a 20 year old 19" set! I'll use it till
 it dies. Then duct tape it back together and get a few more
 years out of it.)


 Finally! Another person that's not jumping on board the "If flatpanel HD
 sets are so popular then I guess I have to go spring for one, too"
 bandwagon!


 Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me 
 that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in 
 comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.

 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


I've seen and used HD sets. Heck, my sister has one (a fancy new one - 1080p 
of course) and I've watched stuff on it with her. BluRay, HDMI, all the 
bells & whitles, etc. Yea, the HD looks nice, but ultimately I've never 
gotten past the overall feeling of "Meh". YMMV, but it *honestly* just 
doesn't do much for me. Certainly not enough to blow hundreds of dollars on 
it.

And that's with HD content. A lot of my stuff is SD (and will never change 
to HD - it's not as if my Wii or XBox1 games/hardware are suddenly going to 
start outputting HD), and I've always found that SD content looks noticably 
*worse* on an HD set than an SD set, no matter how fancy the upscale 
filtering is. The upscaling/filtering artifacts are always painfully 
noticable and it just looks like shit. But it looks perfectly fine on an SD 
set. 'Course, the old HD CRTs would have been able to handle SD content 
perfectly fine, but you can't get those anymore.

So blowing hundreds of dollars just so half my stuff looks *worse* and other 
stuff looks (to me) only marginally better? Pass.

It's not like B&W -> Color. Just a higher rez. Meh, big deal. When it's 
commonplace to have inexpensive HD *with* extended gamut (sp?) and quality 
no-glasses/no-headaches 3D, and content to take advantage of all that (and 
without getting dizzy from all the shaky-cam bullshit), then it'll probably 
be enough for me to care. At one point I went from a 160x160 greyscale 
Handspring Vizor (PalmOS) to a 320x320 full-color Palm Zire 71. *That* was a 
significant difference. SDTV -> HDTV? Small potatoes, I just can't care.



 Mar 31 2012



 next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 09:35:25 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 So blowing hundreds of dollars just so half my stuff looks 
 *worse* and other stuff looks (to me) only marginally better? 
 Pass.


I've seen a few high def tvs. I like half of them, though
not enough to displace my old set.

The ones I didn't like though are apparently the more
expensive ones. What happens is motion looks really
bizarre on these. I don't know how to describe it, but
watching a show on it just feels... weird as the camera
moves.

At first, I thought it was because these things are so
big that it was messing with my brain.

But, I brought this up on another forum and I was told
that's a feature in the hardware: apparently the expensive
sets interpolate frames into regular shows and display
more movement. So, instead of 23 fps, we get, I think,
30 fps, though I'm not sure, out of the same original material.

Anyway, everyone insists this is "better" and I think
it is weird just because I'm "so used to seeing shit".



But blargh, I still don't like it.



 Mar 31 2012



  parent  Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org>  writes:


Some of the fancier TVs operate at 120Hz and generate interpolated frames to=
 fill the gaps. It tends to cause all sorts of problems and look terrible. G=
enerally renders console games unplayable too, as it creates all sorts of in=
put lag.=20

On Mar 31, 2012, at 6:40 AM, "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wro=
te:


 On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 09:35:25 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 So blowing hundreds of dollars just so half my stuff looks *worse* and ot=




her stuff looks (to me) only marginally better? Pass.

=20
 I've seen a few high def tvs. I like half of them, though
 not enough to displace my old set.
=20
 The ones I didn't like though are apparently the more
 expensive ones. What happens is motion looks really
 bizarre on these. I don't know how to describe it, but
 watching a show on it just feels... weird as the camera
 moves.
=20
 At first, I thought it was because these things are so
 big that it was messing with my brain.
=20
 But, I brought this up on another forum and I was told
 that's a feature in the hardware: apparently the expensive
 sets interpolate frames into regular shows and display
 more movement. So, instead of 23 fps, we get, I think,
 30 fps, though I'm not sure, out of the same original material.
=20
 Anyway, everyone insists this is "better" and I think
 it is weird just because I'm "so used to seeing shit".
=20
=20
=20
 But blargh, I still don't like it.





 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling next sibling parent reply Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org>  writes:


Don't have the HD set stretch the image. Just watch it in the original forma=
t. Personally, I just find that looking at an LCD display is easier on the e=
yes than a CRT. Being able to mount it on the wall to get it away from the k=
ids is nice too.=20

On Mar 31, 2012, at 2:37 AM, "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote:


 "Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message=20
 news:jl6a6a$1gh$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/30/2012 11:16 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Adam D. Ruppe"<destructionator gmail.com>  wrote in message

 In my house's big room, I have a floor bed: a couple
 blankets and pillows on the floor, next to my big tv.
 (my "big tv" being a 20 year old 19" set! I'll use it till
 it dies. Then duct tape it back together and get a few more
 years out of it.)
=20


=20
 Finally! Another person that's not jumping on board the "If flatpanel HD=







 sets are so popular then I guess I have to go spring for one, too"
 bandwagon!


=20
 Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me=20=





 that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in=20
 comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.
=20
 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


=20
 I've seen and used HD sets. Heck, my sister has one (a fancy new one - 108=


0p=20

 of course) and I've watched stuff on it with her. BluRay, HDMI, all the=20=



 bells & whitles, etc. Yea, the HD looks nice, but ultimately I've never=20=



 gotten past the overall feeling of "Meh". YMMV, but it *honestly* just=20
 doesn't do much for me. Certainly not enough to blow hundreds of dollars o=


n=20

 it.
=20
 And that's with HD content. A lot of my stuff is SD (and will never change=


=20

 to HD - it's not as if my Wii or XBox1 games/hardware are suddenly going t=


o=20

 start outputting HD), and I've always found that SD content looks noticabl=


y=20

 *worse* on an HD set than an SD set, no matter how fancy the upscale=20
 filtering is. The upscaling/filtering artifacts are always painfully=20
 noticable and it just looks like shit. But it looks perfectly fine on an S=


D=20

 set. 'Course, the old HD CRTs would have been able to handle SD content=20=



 perfectly fine, but you can't get those anymore.
=20
 So blowing hundreds of dollars just so half my stuff looks *worse* and oth=


er=20

 stuff looks (to me) only marginally better? Pass.
=20
 It's not like B&W -> Color. Just a higher rez. Meh, big deal. When it's=20=



 commonplace to have inexpensive HD *with* extended gamut (sp?) and quality=


=20

 no-glasses/no-headaches 3D, and content to take advantage of all that (and=


=20

 without getting dizzy from all the shaky-cam bullshit), then it'll probabl=


y=20

 be enough for me to care. At one point I went from a 160x160 greyscale=20
 Handspring Vizor (PalmOS) to a 320x320 full-color Palm Zire 71. *That* was=


 a=20

 significant difference. SDTV -> HDTV? Small potatoes, I just can't care.
=20
=20





 Mar 31 2012



  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Sean Kelly" <sean invisibleduck.org> wrote in message 
news:mailman.1259.1333217864.4860.digitalmars-d-announce puremagic.com...

Don't have the HD set stretch the image. Just watch it in the original 
format.


Ew, then it'll be **tiny**. Esp if it's one of those 1080p sets (which I 
think they all are now, right?) It'd be a tiny little postage stamp in the 
middle of the screen.


Personally, I just find that looking at an LCD display is easier on the 
eyes
than a CRT.


I'm somewhat afraid of triggering another LCD vs CRT debate, but for me 
personally, the only time my eyes ever seem to have a problem with CRT is if 
it's a computer monitor that's set to 60Hz (and seriously, who ever does 
that?) or i the brightness is cranked up way too high, or if I use that 
eye-searing black-on-white color scheme that's default on every OS (I 
personaly think white-on-black is much nicer looking anyway, esp. when 
paired with blue/purple/pink elements, so that's not really an issue for me 
anyway - except when using a Mac which, last I checked, didn't let you 
change anything about the color scheme besides highlight color and 
wallpaper. But I don't like Apple products anyway, so whatever ;) )



 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling next sibling parent  Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com>  writes:


On Saturday, March 31, 2012 09:30:19 Sean Kelly wrote:

 Don't have the HD set stretch the image. Just watch it in the original
 format. Personally, I just find that looking at an LCD display is easier on
 the eyes than a CRT. Being able to mount it on the wall to get it away from
 the kids is nice too.


Changing the aspect ratio of an image is downright evil. It distorts the image 
and looks horrible. I was shocked and horrified to learn that any TVs did this 
at all, let alone by default, and I have no idea how anyone can put up with 
it.

- Jonathan M Davis



 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling next sibling parent reply Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg gmx.com>  writes:


On Saturday, March 31, 2012 05:37:49 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message

 Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me
 that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in
 comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.
 
 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


 
 YMMV, but it *honestly* just
 doesn't do much for me. Certainly not enough to blow hundreds of dollars on
 it.


[snip]

Personally, I can stand SD less and less, and poorer video quality annoys me 
more and more. But I deal with video-related software for a living, and I've 
transcoded enough video (especially HD video) in my free time that I _really_ 
notice the flaws. There are DVDs that I watched 5 years ago and thought were 
fine that I see now and have a very hard time standing them, because they look 
so bad. There are even encoding issues that I see in blu-rays quite often that 
drive me nuts (especially banding), but that's the best that you can get at 
this point.

My parents, on the other hand, don't have any HD anything, don't see the 
point, and don't seem to care much about video quality at all. So, it really 
depends on what you're used to and what you expect. I've just dealt with video 
encoding and the like in enough detail long enough to get really picky about 
it (my Mother thinks that I'm a snob about video and audio quality). I don't 
have a TV right now (I just watch everything on my computer - 24" 1920 x 1200 
display), but if I did, I sure wouldn't put up with an SD TV. I'd be looking 
to get a high quality, HD TV.

But there's no question that YMMV.

- Jonathan M Davis



 Mar 31 2012



  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisProg gmx.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.1266.1333244549.4860.digitalmars-d-announce puremagic.com...

 On Saturday, March 31, 2012 05:37:49 Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 "Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message

 Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me
 that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in
 comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.

 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


 YMMV, but it *honestly* just
 doesn't do much for me. Certainly not enough to blow hundreds of dollars 
 on
 it.


 [snip]

 Personally, I can stand SD less and less, and poorer video quality annoys 
 me
 more and more. But I deal with video-related software for a living, and 
 I've
 transcoded enough video (especially HD video) in my free time that I 
 _really_
 notice the flaws. There are DVDs that I watched 5 years ago and thought 
 were
 fine that I see now and have a very hard time standing them, because they 
 look
 so bad. There are even encoding issues that I see in blu-rays quite often 
 that
 drive me nuts (especially banding), but that's the best that you can get 
 at
 this point.

 My parents, on the other hand, don't have any HD anything, don't see the
 point, and don't seem to care much about video quality at all. So, it 
 really
 depends on what you're used to and what you expect. I've just dealt with 
 video
 encoding and the like in enough detail long enough to get really picky 
 about
 it (my Mother thinks that I'm a snob about video and audio quality). I 
 don't
 have a TV right now (I just watch everything on my computer - 24" 1920 x 
 1200
 display), but if I did, I sure wouldn't put up with an SD TV. I'd be 
 looking
 to get a high quality, HD TV.

 But there's no question that YMMV.


I can actually relate somewhat: Compression artifacts, messed up aspect 
ratios and double-letterboxing (ie, on both top/bottom *and* sides) all 
drive me absolutely nuts. And it bugs me even more that most people don't 
even seem to notice.

Seriously, how f*ing hard is it to get aspect ratios right? You flag the 
damn video with its aspect ratio[1], pass it through *everything*, and if 
the *display device* is physically different, it letterboxes as 
appropriate[2], and *optionally* crops instead if you really want it to. For 
non-digital TVs, you tell the 
tuner-box/cable-box/DVD-player/Game-console/etc., what aspect ratio the TV 
is and it does the scaling/letterboxing instead. Done! Follow that and 
*nothing* should ever be stretched, squished or double-letterboxed for 
*anyone*. But no, everything's gotta be done as ad-hoc, 
fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants bullshit. It's HTML4 all over again.

Pulldown/interlacing artifacts and lack-of-vsync tearing annoy me too.

Light text on a light background (esp. when it's really tiny text, as they 
like to do now for some reason - do filmmakers and gamedevs somehow think 
high resolution automagically makes the screen's physical size larger? 
Because it doesn't.)

Pan & scan conversions of 16:9 -> 4:3. (Not that anyobne does that 
anymore...do they?)

Shaky-cam and rapid-fire edits irritate the *hell* out of me too, but I 
guess those aren't so much technical issues as production ones.

And then there's watching shows on my grandma's ~17", ~30-year-old 
twin-lead-input TV. Not *that's* a bad picture!

[1] And when the content changes ratio, change the damn flag, don't bake in 
the letterboxing.

[2] "Letterbox": Ie, *uniformly* scale the video so that one dimention is an 
exact match and the other dimention is smaller than the screen and centered. 
Cropping is the same, just choose the other dimension as the exact match.



 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling  parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com>  writes:


On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 05:37:49 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message
 news:jl6a6a$1gh$1 digitalmars.com...

 Dudes, get an HD TV. It really is transformative. And yes, it kills me
 that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is just a POS in
 comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.

 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


 I've seen and used HD sets. Heck, my sister has one (a fancy new one -  
 1080p
 of course) and I've watched stuff on it with her. BluRay, HDMI, all the
 bells & whitles, etc. Yea, the HD looks nice, but ultimately I've never
 gotten past the overall feeling of "Meh". YMMV, but it *honestly* just
 doesn't do much for me. Certainly not enough to blow hundreds of dollars  
 on
 it.


3d.  It's worth the upgrade.  My brother has a PS3 and just got a 47" HD  
3D set for about $1000.  Modern warfare in 3d is freaking amazing.

I'm waiting for the price to come down so I can get one :)

I currently have an HD tube tv which runs at 1080i.  The nice thing about  
tubes is that standard definition *does* look more normal in it.  But the  
bad part is that most HD signals are *expecting* you to have a flat  
panel.  Whenever I watch a sports game, I get pissed that the score is cut  
off by my TV because they put it on the exact edge of the picture.

-Steve



 Apr 02 2012



  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.wb47llmueav7ka localhost.localdomain...

 I currently have an HD tube tv which runs at 1080i.  The nice thing about 
 tubes is that standard definition *does* look more normal in it.


Yea. They don't make them anymore though :(


 But the  bad part is that most HD signals are *expecting* you to have a 
 flat  panel.  Whenever I watch a sports game, I get pissed that the score 
 is cut  off by my TV because they put it on the exact edge of the picture.


A lot of Wii homebrew actually does that too. Annoying as hell. It's like 
people forgot what used to be common-knowledge design principles.



 Apr 02 2012



prev sibling  parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen 
 standard def TV is just a POS in comparison, even though it is 
 in perfect working order.


It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and
a 13", and they have beautiful pictures.

I don't want to go any bigger than this. I sit right next
to my 13" (I can reach out and touch it right now), so
anything bigger would just be overwhelming.

I guess I physically could go bigger than the 19 inch,
since there's plenty of room where that one is, but
meh.


 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


Something that I found really interesting is even
on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually
do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite.

I decided to turn off my cable last December (paying
$55 / month to watch CBS, PBS and USA just isn't remotely
worth it, and they wanted to raise prices again.
I can get CBS+PBS off the air, and for the money I was
throwing at the cable company, I could buy every
dvd the usa network puts out and still come out ahead!).

Anyway, after turning it off, I got one of those
digital tv converter boxes and hooked up my old
antenna to it.



And the picture was actually really good. PBS on
cable, including the HD channel, was a little
fuzzy in comparison. I never noticed it before,
but for the brief time that I had both, I could
switch between cable and antenna and see a clear
difference.

The air version was a lot better.

Tried CBS... same deal. Better picture on
broadcast, even through my old tvs.


I tried it at a friend's house too, on
their hdtv with satellite. The satellite
picture for PBS looked outright *bad*
on their big television.

But the broadcast one was beautiful.
Big difference on the computer generated
shows (Dinosaur Train especially).




While I miss the USA network, I don't miss
cable. I have a better picture and a much
smaller bill over the air.

And best of all, not having USA to fall back
to, I got a new appreciation for some old
shows on channels I wouldn't have watched before...

I now watch "Seinfeld", and I love it!



 Mar 31 2012



 next sibling parent  Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com>  writes:


On 3/31/2012 6:53 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

 On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV is
 just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.


 It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and
 a 13", and they have beautiful pictures.


Not really. I have an ipod with the retina display, and the older one with the 
low res display. It's a tiny screen. Casually, they look the same.

But the retina display really does make a big difference! It's just a lot less 
eyestrain to read text on it, for one thing. And it just looks crisper.

I hope Amazon's next Kindle Fire will have a high res display, if it does I'll 
upgrade just for that. I'm glad Apple has raised the bar on this.



 Something that I found really interesting is even
 on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually
 do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite.


That's because your cable provider is compressing the image, and the 
over-the-air broadcasts do not.



 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:fheaogseyibtulrhfsmg forum.dlang.org...

 On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 07:02:35 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

 And yes, it kills me that my expensive old large screen standard def TV 
 is just a POS in comparison, even though it is in perfect working order.


 It might help that I have smaller tv sets. I have a 19" and
 a 13", and they have beautiful pictures.

 I don't want to go any bigger than this. I sit right next
 to my 13" (I can reach out and touch it right now), so
 anything bigger would just be overwhelming.

 I guess I physically could go bigger than the 19 inch,
 since there's plenty of room where that one is, but
 meh.


My bigger one is something like 27"-31" (ballpark, I don't remember the 
exact number), and it still looks great to me.


 I can't even stand to watch standard def anymore.


 Something that I found really interesting is even
 on my old tvs, the new digital broadcasts actually
 do look pretty good - better than cable and satellite.


Don't know about satellite, but Cable turned to crap about a couple years 
ago. It used to be very good, but then they started compressing the fuck out 
of everything, and honest to god, half the time it looks like a fucking 
MPEG**1**. "Digital quality" my fucking ass. (And and there were even A/V 
sync issues!)

Over-the-air broadcast literally looked *better* than that *before* the 
digital switch! I'm not exagerating. And I'm *just* talking SD here!

And with what Time Warner charged for that shit quality? And they still 
expect *more* money on top of that for good^H^H^H^Hawesome stations like 
NHK. And they don't even show the new local subchannels like Antenna TV or 
PBS's Create. And then all the shows you're paying ungodly amounts of money 
for have *overlayed* ads? Oh yea, and the set-top boxes themselves don't 
even work right anymore! You push a button and they'll literally just sit 
unresponsive for about 10-30 seconds. Fuck that shit. I've mostly just been 
watching library DVDs for the last few years, and we even got rid of cable 
entirely a couple months ago. We don't regret it at all.

I actually watch *more* broadcast TV now. The "old show" stations and PBS 
have such incredibly *better* directing and editing it's rediculous. And 
none of that drama-queeen bullshit the other networks insist in cramming 
into *everything*. *Food Network* shows are all drama-queen bullshit and 
shaky-cam/rapid-fire-editing now! It's crazy, it's like they're *trying* be 
as shitty as possible! But PBS is mature enough not to pull any of that 
crap.


 I decided to turn off my cable last December (paying
 $55 / month to watch CBS, PBS and USA just isn't remotely
 worth it,


!!!

That's *cheap* for cable. (Still not worth it though, I agree.)



 Mar 31 2012



 next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 20:54:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Over-the-air broadcast literally looked *better* than that 
 *before* the digital switch! I'm not exagerating.


I don't doubt it, though I was on cable for a long
time.


 Oh yea, and the set-top boxes themselves don't
 even work right anymore!


That was *terrible* when digital was new, but wasn't
bad at all when I left (in December). The cable
was pretty good... just /ridiculously/ overpriced.


 But PBS is mature enough not to pull any of that crap.


yes, pbs is a fine station.


 That's *cheap* for cable. (Still not worth it though, I agree.)


Actually, I think I flipped that... I'm paying $55 now
for the internet. (that reminds me, it is time to pay that
again)

At first, the cable+internet was $90 / month. But, after
the first year, they jacked it up to $120.

And then, the next year, they jacked it up to $130. So
I was probably paying $75 for the cable. Even worse.
Totally not worth it.

I'm not terribly happy with that internet price either,
but I use the crap out of it and my job relies on it,
so meh.



But, speaking of raising prices, this reminds me of a
convo I had with my landlady a couple weeks ago.

She noted that I've been here for two and a half years
and only jacked the rent once.

"I've been getting behind on that... I have to raise it
at least 3% a year. The cost of living is going up..."


Yes, the cost of living is going up because YOU are
insisting on raising the rent on some fixed schedule!

And then I asked for all this in writing, and I get a
letter in the mail. She changed her mind: 5% increase,
effective immediately and going up each year automatically.

Hell no, I'm not going to sign that. I find it a little
ridiculous that she thinks I would - that's higher than
the going mortgage rate! And, unlike this lease, a
mortgage can eventually be paid off.

But, ugh. I hate moving and I hate being in debt, but
she made the decision for me - I'm just going to buy
a house and be done with it. I hate annual price hikes,
no matter who's doing it.



 Mar 31 2012



  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:ywifkafuypvfduunmatf forum.dlang.org...

 On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 20:54:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Oh yea, and the set-top boxes themselves don't
 even work right anymore!


 That was *terrible* when digital was new, but wasn't
 bad at all when I left (in December). The cable
 was pretty good... just /ridiculously/ overpriced.


That would make more sense, but for some reason it was backwards for us. Our 
area was initially Adelphia, and everything actually worked 100% fine for a 
long time. Then their CEO, or some other board member or whatever went to 
jail apperently, and Time Warner scooped us up, and everything just went 
straight downhill from there.

I still find it wonderfully amusing that the known-corrupt Adelphia actually 
gave us better service than Time Warner.


 That's *cheap* for cable. (Still not worth it though, I agree.)


 Actually, I think I flipped that... I'm paying $55 now
 for the internet. (that reminds me, it is time to pay that
 again)

 At first, the cable+internet was $90 / month. But, after
 the first year, they jacked it up to $120.

 And then, the next year, they jacked it up to $130. So
 I was probably paying $75 for the cable. Even worse.
 Totally not worth it.


I don't remember our exact numbers, but that sound right about on par with 
us.

Interstingly though, Time Warner was always more expensive than Adelphia. We 
first got cable w/ digital w/ internet through Adelphia when I was in 12th 
grade IIRC (Cleveland area - Northeast Ohio). Then two or three years later, 
when I got out of the college dorms and into a college apartment (Toledo 
area - Northwest Ohio), *that* area was served by Time Warner and IIRC they 
were charging something like $20-$40 more than the folks were paying back 
home in Cleveland for the same service.

Then later on when Adelphia collapsed and Time Warner took over, the prices 
back here in Cleveland started getting jacked up more and more each year 
(and like I said, the service got worse and worse).


 I'm not terribly happy with that internet price either,
 but I use the crap out of it and my job relies on it,
 so meh.


That does seem about $15 higher than it should be. I'd have to check what 
we're paying though, might actually be the same these days. I could never go 
back to dial-up though. Seriously. Like you, I just wouldn't be able to do 
my work.


 But, speaking of raising prices, this reminds me of a
 convo I had with my landlady a couple weeks ago.

 She noted that I've been here for two and a half years
 and only jacked the rent once.

 "I've been getting behind on that... I have to raise it
 at least 3% a year. The cost of living is going up..."


Wow, what a moronic load of crap! That's why I think people with a < 100 IQ 
should be institutionalized or at least kept from making decisions that 
affect other people.


 Yes, the cost of living is going up because YOU are
 insisting on raising the rent on some fixed schedule!


Exactly!

It pisses me off when people blame things on "inflation". Yes, there *is* 
certainly inflation involved, but inflation means the money *itself* has 
reduced worth: Ie, more $ going out *and* more $ coming in.

See, going from earning $100 and then paying $0.10 for product X, to earning 
$1,000 and paying $1 for product X - *THAT'S* inflation. You know, "$100 / 
$0.10" with 10x inflation == "$1,000 / $1".  But that's NOT what we have: 
What we have is more like "$100 / $0.10 -> $115 / $1". That's not inflation, 
that's just corporate greed and bullshit excuses.



 But, ugh. I hate moving and I hate being in debt, but


Yea, same here.


 she made the decision for me - I'm just going to buy
 a house and be done with it. I hate annual price hikes,
 no matter who's doing it.


Good for you! (Stick it to the...*ahem*..."man" ;) ). The one thing to be 
careful with though is maintenance. If it's an older house, sometimes the 
upkeep can end up costing more than what you'd expect to save (My mom ran 
into that once).

Finances are a pain the the ass, eh?



 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling  parent  Sean Kelly <sean invisibleduck.org>  writes:


On Mar 31, 2012, at 1:57 PM, "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote:

=20
 Don't know about satellite, but Cable turned to crap about a couple years=20=



 ago. It used to be very good, but then they started compressing the fuck o=


ut=20

 of everything, and honest to god, half the time it looks like a fucking=20=



 MPEG**1**. "Digital quality" my fucking ass. (And and there were even A/V=20=



 sync issues!)


I have U-Verse now and it's the same way. HD stations are compressed so much=
 that i occasionally even see artifacts. In fact, I often get a higher quali=
ty picture streaming from Netflix over the same pipe. Comcast is just as bad=
 though.=20=



 Apr 01 2012



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 06:14:03 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Like the AV cords: For fuck's sake, what's with the proprietary 
 AV connectors?


What really gets me there is the old playstation used
to have regular rca jacks. They removed it from the
design about the same time they brought out the dual shock.

Similarly, the model 1 Genesis used the same rf adapter
as the NES and SNES... but they changed it for the model 2.

Annoying!


 That's kind of another thing: If I need to be doing work, it's 
 going to be
 damn hard if I have a bunch of games two clicks away.


This is why Windows can kill me... I get addicted to
those stupid built in games.

And Windows Vista threw a Chess game on top of it. Gah!
(nice game though, it has a good sliding difficulty
setup to keep it going.)



 Really? Cool!


http://worms2d.info/Worms_Armageddon

There's a familiar name in there :)



 It was a short, minor  thing like that, but it
 was frequent enough that it just felt like I was
 being really slowed down.


heh, that's the way I feel about most animations, in
games or not. "get on with it" is what I say.

But, in many of these games, I really like the
background music, which makes it more awesomer.

In a game with bad music, everything gets more annoying.
With good bgm, it can take its time, to an extent.


 Although, I was always more of a Lunar fan


omg, not every day I see a Lunar fan! Silver
Star Story: Complete is the reason I wanted
a playstation.

That's a beautiful game.

I don't think Working Designs has ever published
anything less than great too. My first game
of theirs was Popful Mail on the sega cd, and
that was awesome back in the day too.


It made me sad when they went out of business, but
it was probably inevitable. A company that insists
on going above and beyond on every release will just
get swamped in the game environment today.


Something awesome though: my brother emailed them
to send his condolences when they went out of business,
and actually got a personal reply from Victor Ireland,
the president. I doubt any other game company out there
has such a connection with their fans.

I love them <3


But, what sucks: one of my Lunar SSSC discs is broken!
My sister stole it one day and was playing it instead
of doing her chores.

So my mother took the game away and threw it out. I
retrieved it, but the disc had chipped.

That was the *hardest* game for me to acquire. I'll
probably never replace the physical disc now, and
am stuck on the emulator.

Gah.


But, great game. Those are cutscenes I couldn't get
enough of.



While I'm talking about great games, another good
one is Phantasy Star IV on the Genesis. II and III
were ok too, but they moved too slowly. Literally,
the character walking speed was abysmal. But, IV
bumped up the speed big time, and it was amazing.

I hate the way "phantasy star" now refers to some
shitty MMORPG though. Fuck that noise, the Genesis
is where it's at.


 Actually, that reminds me, have you seen that
 YouTube video of Sonic 2006's hub-world "gameplay"?


Nay, but a friend bought some sonic game for the PS3
recently. I played it Wednesday, actually.

The loading was annoying, but only at the start of
a stage, so not disruptive to most the play.

What got me though was the bizarre 3d stuff and
seemingly sluggish controls. It was the same levels
from Sonic 2, but it felt slow and unresponsive in
comparison to the original.

idk though, I haven't played the original for a long,
long time.


 So I don't think I've ever managed to get more than a couple 
 hours into those.


People call me a heretic for this, but I say FFs 1, 7, and 8
are the best of that bunch (and FF Tactics on the Playstation
mixed in there too).

The SNES ones were ok, but I didn't love them. Yes, FF6
has the opera scene. Yes, it is amazing.

But the rest of it? eh, certainly not bad, but not all
that great either.


 In the PSX era, I was more into PC gaming and didn't have a 
 PSX, so I got the PC FF7.


I've heard nothing but bad things about the PC versions.
Never played it myself, but I'm told it was slow, buggy,
and annoying...



 I realized I was only playing it to see what happens
 and was genuinely dreading/rushing-through the battles


I put 8 among the top for a few reasons: 1) I liked
the story and the main character. People call me a heretic
for this too, but "then go talk to a wall", I cheered
that line! That was sexual harassment, and Squall didn't
have to take it.

Just generally though, 8 has a fine story.

2) Enc-None. You can turn off most the fights and just
fly through the game if you want too.

3) I liked the stat twiddling too. Spend a few minutes
in preparation on the junction screen and you turn your
characters into gods. That's part of the reason I play
those games... to play god. So win.

4) I liked the card minigame too.



It isn't perfect, but it checks the big boxes in jrpg
for me.



 Never tried 9. Played a demo or two of FF10, and thought "meh", 
 and I guess I've kinda given up on FF since.


I watched my brother play some of 10. Gah, I couldn't
really get into that one.

I barely played the PS2 at all; almost everything I've
seen of it was my brother playing it. It was just
after my time.


 storytelling has always been one of the core points of JRPGs.


eh, in Lunar they are brilliant, but in FF, they
are just accent pieces; the real story is in the
gameplay and, especially, the dialog boxes.

The best FF cutscenes are the relatively brief ones
that introduce something or finish off a sequence.
They are short and relatively infrequent - do their
job and get back to the meat.


I think the problem was as the tech advanced, they
were no longer limited in their use. The designers
before used them sparingly because that was the
most they could.

Later on, they could use it more... did use it more,
and then it just got overused.

I'm told FF9 actually has a good story though. I'll
have to play it again to tell for sure, but I betcha
it will be despite overused cutscenes, not thanks to them.



 Then the same guy behind MGS *cough*reinvented*cough* 
 Castevania to predictably horrid results.


Blah. I'm not a big castlevania fan (I watched my brother
play a lot of SOTN - yea, I watched my brother play a lot
of stuff, happens when you share rooms for 16 years! and
it was ok but seemed to drag on and on for me. Changing
cape colors only goes so far in making up for repetition.)


 And yet somehow it was well-received.


omg it is hideo must be awesome

(ps thanks for the check, konami)

Game critics are bought and paid for by the publishers,
all of them, and the sheeple buy their crap hook, line,
and sinker.


 Yea, but it's fun to actually *agree* with someone on gaming 
 (or anything) for a change.


aye



 That hoverbike section was just EVIL!


Yes! And worse yet with two players, you both
have to do it right together. Impossible!



 Mar 31 2012



  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:evxliildxhaodnbmqkjw forum.dlang.org...

 On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 06:14:03 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 That's kind of another thing: If I need to be doing work, it's going to 
 be
 damn hard if I have a bunch of games two clicks away.


 This is why Windows can kill me... I get addicted to
 those stupid built in games.


Heh :)

They need to bring back Hover and update it (to be more than, what was it, 
like 32x32 resolution? ;) )



 Really? Cool!


 http://worms2d.info/Worms_Armageddon

 There's a familiar name in there :)


Heh, I'll be damnned :) Our Vladimir's been doing a lot of really good 
stuff, hasn't he? Between that, and DustMite, and some D pull requests. 
Kudos!


 It was a short, minor  thing like that, but it
 was frequent enough that it just felt like I was
 being really slowed down.


 heh, that's the way I feel about most animations, in
 games or not. "get on with it" is what I say.


Same here, word for word. It annoyed me in the Metroid Prime series, too. 
Every time you get one of the many, many, many missle upgrades and other 
such upgrades, it *has* to give you a little fanfare and fade in a message 
box during which time you can't do anything but wait. Every...single...time.

Maybe we're just impatient gamers ;)


 But, in many of these games, I really like the
 background music, which makes it more awesomer.


The phrase "more awesomer" itself is inherently more awesomer than anything. 
:)


 In a game with bad music, everything gets more annoying.
 With good bgm, it can take its time, to an extent.


That's why I always hated stuff like EA Trax. "Let's cram our games full of 
whatever crap the RIAA is currently trying to shovel out. Great idea!"


 Although, I was always more of a Lunar fan


 omg, not every day I see a Lunar fan! Silver
 Star Story: Complete is the reason I wanted
 a playstation.

 That's a beautiful game.


Certainly is. But *I* grew up on the original SegaCD version :)

Both versions are great though. And it is worth playing both, because they 
are different enough.

I can't believe I've still never gotten around to finishing either version 
of Lunar 2: Eternal Blue. I need to do that sometime. (All the Lunars after 
that sucked though, which is very unfortunate. Every play "Lunar: Dragon 
Song"? Trust me: Don't.)


 I don't think Working Designs has ever published
 anything less than great too.


Yup. Working Designs was great. And if you like them, Atlus seems to be the 
modern equivalent. Actually, that's exactly show I'd decribe Atlus: "The 
modern Working Designs, but with more games being released."


 My first game
 of theirs was Popful Mail on the sega cd, and
 that was awesome back in the day too.


I never actually played that until a couple years ago. *Definitely* a very 
good game. I keep meaning to go back and actually finish it.

It's kind of sad, there was a lot of *really* good stuff on the SegaCD, but 
nobody ever knew because they kept pushing the "games" from Digital Pictures 
too hard, so that's all anyone ever knew existed. (Although I'll admit, I 
did enjoy Sewer Shark, especially it's over-the-top B-movie cheesiness. And 
Night Trap is actually kinda clever.)

Some of the real standouts on SegaCD off the top of my head:

- Sonic CD (One of the two best Sonic games ever made, the other being Sonic 
2)
- Final Fight CD (The best version of Final Fight)
- Lunar 1 & 2
- Popful Mail
- Willy Beamish
- Silpheed (Very different from the PS2 version, but both are fantastic)
- D (Heh, that's right. If the name is "D" it has to be good :) )
- Wolfchild
- Puggsy (although this was on Genesis, too)

The funny thing about D in particular (the game) is that it breaks 
practically every rule of good game design, and yet, that's exactly what 
makes it so fantastic. And not even in a "so bad it's good" sort of way, 
just genuinely good.

(Ermm...wait no...D was on Saturn not SegaCD. Nevermind ;) )


 Something awesome though: my brother emailed them
 to send his condolences when they went out of business,
 and actually got a personal reply from Victor Ireland,
 the president. I doubt any other game company out there
 has such a connection with their fans.


Heh, cool :)


 But, what sucks: one of my Lunar SSSC discs is broken!


Ouch!  One of my Driver 2 discs got broken in college, but I'm somewhat less 
bothered by that.


 But, great game. Those are cutscenes I couldn't get
 enough of.


Same here. I had a ritual (and still do to this day whenever I play it) of 
watching the entire intro song before every play session (Actually, I'm 
talking the SegaCD version here). I used to love that song, even 
had...no...*have*...it memorized:

---------------------------
When all the land is peaceful,
And there is no real threat to us at last,
Then comes the time for love,
Two hearts colliding into one great hymn.

But there are winds forboding,
And there is a dark storm that soon will pass.
Kiss me my love and go,
The time for valor has returned again.

All through the night...
Keep marching on...

Fighting...Through the darkness...
All is evil...Still we must press on...
Fighting...Toward the the power...
That enslaves us...Yet we are not done...
Racing...To the climax...
Of the battle...To return to love...
Valiant...
[Uhh, ok I forgot what goes here,
and I think I may have screwed up
this section anyway]
Evil forces...Take heed
---------------------------

Yea, it's pretty cheesy, but I was probably only about 12 at the time ;)


 While I'm talking about great games, another good
 one is Phantasy Star IV on the Genesis. II and III
 were ok too, but they moved too slowly. Literally,
 the character walking speed was abysmal. But, IV
 bumped up the speed big time, and it was amazing.


Yea. While I never really played Phantasy Star at the time, I did play 
through at least half of...one of them...about a couple years ago. 
Definitely a good game. It might have been the first...Regardless it wasn't 
Genesis, it was Master System, so whatever that could have been. I remember 
shuttling between three different planets, if that narrows it down.

I think that may have been another game where the "increase speed" button 
helped ;)


 I hate the way "phantasy star" now refers to some
 shitty MMORPG though. Fuck that noise, the Genesis
 is where it's at.


Yea. I always liked the Dreamcast, but I never really got into Phantasy Star 
Online. Or any MMO for that matter (Unless you count Sierra's "The INN" - 
way back before online gaming meant the internet!)


 Actually, that reminds me, have you seen that
 YouTube video of Sonic 2006's hub-world "gameplay"?


 Nay, but a friend bought some sonic game for the PS3
 recently. I played it Wednesday, actually.

 The loading was annoying, but only at the start of
 a stage, so not disruptive to most the play.

 What got me though was the bizarre 3d stuff and
 seemingly sluggish controls. It was the same levels
 from Sonic 2, but it felt slow and unresponsive in
 comparison to the original.

 idk though, I haven't played the original for a long,
 long time.


I wonder which one that was. Maybe Sonic Generations? My brother and I have 
always been big Sonic fans even through the long period of admittedly crappy 
Sonic games. Sonic 2006 is the only one we haven't really played much of, 
and don't really plan to. But the PS3 ones he does have are:

- Sonic Unleashed: Daytime leves are fantastic, the puzzle sections on the 
Wii/PS2 version are great, but everything else is crap - and the PS3 version 
has framerate issues that are completely unforgivble considering the PS3 is 
*more* powerful than the Wii or PS2 hardware.

- Sonic Colors (Actually, this one's Wii). He likes this one, I hate 
everything about it. It pretends to be "Sonic Unleashed Daytime" gameplay, 
but everything about it's botched, IMO. And the music is "Mario 
Galaxy"-style orchestrated crap.

- Sonic 4: I love this one, despite how short it is. The physics are a 
little different from the Genesis games, and most people hate that, but I 
actually like it. It's a totally 2D game. Only the "sprites" are 3D. The 
upcoming second episode is looking fantastic. But I'm pissed that episode 2 
won't come to Wii like episode 1 did.

- Sonic CD: Same game as the SegaCD one, but you can switch between the 
Japanese and US soundtracks, and play as Tails.

- Sonic Generations: The *allegedly* "Classic Sonic" levels are OK: not bad, 
but not fantastic. The "New Sonic" levels are fantastic though: They're 
"Sonic Unleased Daytime" gameplay, and some of them are 3D versions of 
classic older levels, like Chemical Plant from second level of Sonic 2.


 So I don't think I've ever managed to get more than a couple hours into 
 those.


 People call me a heretic for this, but I say FFs 1, 7, and 8
 are the best of that bunch (and FF Tactics on the Playstation
 mixed in there too).


Really? I thought 7 was universally considered the best one. Although 8, and 
the NES ones, are fairly unpopular.


 The SNES ones were ok, but I didn't love them. Yes, FF6
 has the opera scene. Yes, it is amazing.


I'm not sure I've even heard of that scene. Maybe I'll have to give it 
another chance and try to get to that.


 In the PSX era, I was more into PC gaming and didn't have a PSX, so I got 
 the PC FF7.


 I've heard nothing but bad things about the PC versions.
 Never played it myself, but I'm told it was slow, buggy,
 and annoying...


Back then, any time you had a PC port of a console game, you *knew* it would 
be a bit rough around the edges. So it was just kinda expected. And it *was* 
a little rough around the edges, but I didn't have any major problems trying 
to play it. Seemed to work fine, though I don't doubt other people had 
problems.

Thanks to my 3DFX Voodoo card, It *was* definitely better-looking than the 
PSX version: 640x480 instead of what I'm pretty sure must have been roughly 
comprable to 320x240. And of course, you have to keep in mind that was 
loooong before anyone had even heard of "HDTV". (Probably part of why I'm so 
unimpressd with HDTV now - I've already been using HD resolutions on my PC 
for ages and already got used to switching back to SD whenever I'd use a 
TV.)


 I realized I was only playing it to see what happens
 and was genuinely dreading/rushing-through the battles


 I put 8 among the top for a few reasons: 1) I liked
 the story and the main character. People call me a heretic
 for this too, but "then go talk to a wall", I cheered
 that line! That was sexual harassment, and Squall didn't
 have to take it.

 Just generally though, 8 has a fine story.


Yea, I did kinda like that about it.


 2) Enc-None. You can turn off most the fights and just
 fly through the game if you want too.


Huh, really? I never new that. If I had, I probably would have finished it. 
How do you do that?


 I barely played the PS2 at all; almost everything I've
 seen of it was my brother playing it. It was just
 after my time.


I was always more a GameCube/XBox1 guy, but there's some good stuff on PS2:

- Contra: Shattered Soldier and Neo Contra (The main reasons I got a PS2 in 
the first place, and still two of my all-time favorite games.)

- Silpheed (totally different from SegaCD version, but still great)

- MegaMan Collection / MegaMan X Collection / MegaMan X8 (Best on PS2 b/c 
it's the only system with a non-crap DPad and, the GC version has those 
stupidly-reversed shoot/jump controls)

- God Hand (f*ing CRAZY)

- Stretch Panic (Also f*ing CRAZY, kinda unfinished though)

- Some others: Rez, Devil May Cry 1, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus (crap 
framerate though), Katamari Damacy



 I think the problem was as the tech advanced, they
 were no longer limited in their use. The designers
 before used them sparingly because that was the
 most they could.


That's how I feel about *many* things in modern games. Or even modern 
software or devices. Just because the "can" they think that they should.


 Blah. I'm not a big castlevania fan (I watched my brother
 play a lot of SOTN - yea, I watched my brother play a lot
 of stuff, happens when you share rooms for 16 years! and
 it was ok but seemed to drag on and on for me.


Oh, man, I'm a total Castlevania fanatic, especially the "Metroidvania" 
ones. But those ones (SOTN being the first - and the only non-portable one 
unfortunately) *would* probably be boring to just watch. Open-world games 
are great, but they don't always make for great spectator games.


 Changing
 cape colors only goes so far in making up for repetition.)


Heh, well, that's more of an "extra little touch" easter egg kinda thing 
anyway.


 Game critics are bought and paid for by the publishers,
 all of them, and the sheeple buy their crap hook, line,
 and sinker.


Yea. That's actually become publically-known now, even though a lot of 
people will still never beleive it.



 Mar 31 2012



  parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 23:01:32 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 Certainly is. But *I* grew up on the original SegaCD version :)


I never got to play that version... but the song you mention
below, oh I know it. Track 9 on the playstation version
soundtrack cd.


 I can't believe I've still never gotten around to finishing 
 either version of Lunar 2: Eternal Blue. I need to do that 
 sometime.


That's actually on my list too... my brother finished lunar 2,
but I never did. But again though, sharing the room means
I know it all.



 (Although I'll admit, I did enjoy Sewer Shark


hahhahaha "relax, pretend it's a game... maybe it'll
even be fun. SHOOT THE TUBES, DOGMEAT!"


It's kinda funny when you think about all the craziness
that shapes quirks. At least in me. Every so often,
I think of one of these stupid games and I laugh
to myself, or slip it in to a conversation at random.

But, it is just a random collection of, often, really
bad things from fifteen years ago.


 - Sonic CD (One of the two best Sonic games ever made, the 
 other being Sonic


Have this one. That was a fine game; the good SCD
games are the ones where they actually made a *game*
that happened to use the sega cd, not a Sega CD thing
that needs to pass for a game.

Another good one btw is Sol Feace - a pretty simple
sidescrolling space shooter, but just again, a
game that happened to be on the system.

Oh, Mortal Kombat was scd too, and it had full blood
and everything. My copy of this disappeared sometime
in the 90's though, and we never did find it.


 I used to love that song, even
 had...no...*have*...it memorized:


I think I have the words to... 9 video game songs
memorized.

I actually listen to vg music more often than anything
else.


 Definitely a good game. It might have been the first...


Yes, indeed, the first was on the sega master system.
It was a little slow moving... lots of level grinding
needed. It did that weird faux 3d dungeon thing
that was popular for a bit in the 8 bit era!

They set a nice foundation for the story there.
Uniquely, in my experience, they actually have an
ongoing story in those four games.


 I wonder which one that was. Maybe Sonic Generations?


Maybe... I was just helping his daughter through a
couple levels. She's kinda terrible at games!

But I think that does fit, since it had a time travel
plot going with younger copies of sonic and tails and
I did the chemical plant level for her.



 - Sonic 4: I love this one, despite how short it is.


Huh, I didn't even know there was a sonic 4. On the
genesis, I had 1, 2, 3, sonic+knuckles, sonic cd,
and one called sonic 3d.

Oh and sonic spinball, a pinballish game.

I guess I had a lot of them! Sonic 3 & Knuckles
was one monster of a game. Huge.


 Really? I thought 7 was universally considered the best one.


The internet nerds seem to be of two groups: the ones who
say 7 is the greatest game ever made, and the ones who
say 7 is an overrated piece of trash that has nothing
on 6.


Those are fine games.


 I'm not sure I've even heard of that scene. Maybe I'll have to 
 give it another chance and try to get to that.


omg just youtube it too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgZXiHfNt0M

there's more to it than that, but that's the main piece.

I guess that's arguably a SNES cutscene... but this one rocks.
They also did live versions of the song! Totally amazing.


 Huh, really? I never new that. If I had, I probably would have 
 finished it.
 How do you do that?


After the training thingy, the headmaster gives you
a lamp. Use it as an item, and a demon pops out.

If you beat him, you can use it as a GF and learn
an ability Enc-Half. After that comes Enc-None.

Equip the skill and boom, no random fights.


Since you can do this fairly early in the game, you
can go through 80% of it with no random fights at all!

And since the stats mostly come from junctions, you
can get away with near zero experience too - so
missing the fights+experience isn't a dealbreaker.



 I was always more a GameCube/XBox1 guy, but there's some good 
 stuff on PS2:


I haven't played any of those... I did somewhat recently
finally buy a used PS2 for myself, but barely played
it so far. Got Gran Turismo 3 and Madden 2008 for it
(for a dollar a piece, not bad!)

I played Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 too, and that was
a fine game. A solid series they have there.


 Open-world games
 are great, but they don't always make for great spectator games.


aye.


 Heh, well, that's more of an "extra little touch" easter egg 
 kinda thing anyway.


It looked really good though. My definition of
"good graphics" is often "bright, lively colors".

That's one reason I like FF1 - you have a good amount
of bright green and blue. It makes me happy. FF Tactics
too had a lot of cool bright thingies.

Too many new things are going with dull, boring colors.
Gah. Newsflash people, the real world is pretty bright!
You can be realistic and colorful, though the old
drawn animation style looks nice for itself.



 Mar 31 2012



  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:vxrvmmiapcbsemheabee forum.dlang.org...

 On Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 23:01:32 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 (Although I'll admit, I did enjoy Sewer Shark


 hahhahaha "relax, pretend it's a game... maybe it'll
 even be fun. SHOOT THE TUBES, DOGMEAT!"


Games don't have fantastic lines like that anymore ;(

Heh, and even the delivery of it is just priceless.


 It's kinda funny when you think about all the craziness
 that shapes quirks. At least in me. Every so often,
 I think of one of these stupid games and I laugh
 to myself, or slip it in to a conversation at random.

 But, it is just a random collection of, often, really
 bad things from fifteen years ago.


Heh, yea. I don't care if the whole Inter^H^H^H^H^Hcybertubes are tired of 
it: I *still* find "All your base"/"Set us up the bomb" to be hilarious.


 - Sonic CD (One of the two best Sonic games ever made, the other being 
 Sonic


 Have this one. That was a fine game; the good SCD
 games are the ones where they actually made a *game*
 that happened to use the sega cd, not a Sega CD thing
 that needs to pass for a game.


Exactly. Always felt that way.


 Another good one btw is Sol Feace - a pretty simple
 sidescrolling space shooter, but just again, a
 game that happened to be on the system.


Yea! I have that one too :)


 Oh, Mortal Kombat was scd too, and it had full blood
 and everything. My copy of this disappeared sometime
 in the 90's though, and we never did find it.


Oh, you were one of *those* people... ;) I was always more in the SF2 camp. 
MK's ultra-violence was great, and I liked "toasty!" and such, but I never 
much liked the controls.

But I'm absolutely rubbish at *all* 1-on-1 fighting games, though. Anybody 
has *always* been able to kick my ass unless I did cheap shit like choose 
Chun Li when my friend uses Ken, and constantly shout things like "You were 
out with that slut Barbie again, weren't you, Ken!!" Only way I could ever 
win :) Never worked against the CPU though...


 I used to love that song, even
 had...no...*have*...it memorized:


 I think I have the words to... 9 video game songs
 memorized.


That's actually a lot as most don't have lyrics ;)


 I actually listen to vg music more often than anything
 else.


There's definitely some good stuff. The 8/16-bit era capcom is ledgendary 
for great music. Like MegaMan 2/3, and Street Fighter 2. Guile's theme has 
always been is one of my all-time favorite songs. And probably the original 
reason I got into smooth jazz (although I guess it's not exactly smooth 
jazz, per se, but some sort of jazzy).

Actually, there's some really good stuff on OCRemix (a lot of crap, too, 
though). Some of the stuff by DJ Pretzel is absolutely fantastic.

And of course (here I am back with Castlevania again), Symphony of the Night 
has just the absolute most legendary soundtrack ever. Even the 
totally-different-style end theme works surpisingly well.

Doom 1+2's music, of course, is classic too. And a little-known EGA PC 
platformer called Space Chase (great game too BTW).

And Sonic CD (unlike many people, I actually like the US soundtrack better). 
I used to sit in study hall memorizing and reciting in my head "Sonic Boom".

I could probably go on and on.

But I tend to listen to non-game stuff more: I'm a total whore for Anime 
opening/closing themes. So Yoko Ishida is great. And then there's normal 
Industrial/Metal etc like TKK/KMFDM/Iron Maiden/Manson (esp. the stuff with 
Tim Skold - a fantastic musician). And Paul Hardcastle (ie smooth jazz), 
partly 'cause some of his stuff reminds me of Streets of Rage.

I've got strange music tastes ;)


 Definitely a good game. It might have been the first...


 Yes, indeed, the first was on the sega master system.
 It was a little slow moving... lots of level grinding
 needed. It did that weird faux 3d dungeon thing
 that was popular for a bit in the 8 bit era!


Yea. But the whole thing is incredibly impressive for an SMS game.


 They set a nice foundation for the story there.
 Uniquely, in my experience, they actually have an
 ongoing story in those four games.


Really? I've played only the first few minutes of all of them and they all 
seemed very different from each other. But obviously a few minutes doesn't 
even scratch the surface.


 I wonder which one that was. Maybe Sonic Generations?


 Maybe... I was just helping his daughter through a
 couple levels. She's kinda terrible at games!


Like my sister. She likes Sonic and 2D Mario, but still tends to need help 
from her two brothers who have spent their lives playing the crap out of 
such games ;)


 But I think that does fit, since it had a time travel
 plot going with younger copies of sonic and tails and
 I did the chemical plant level for her.


Yea, that would definitely be it. The only other Sonic with time travel 
(AFAIK) is Sonic CD.

Actualy, IIRC, my brother told me that Silver from Sonic 2006 is from the 
future, but what you described does sound like Sonic Generations. I actually 
like Generations quite a bit, definitely one of the better 3D sonics, even 
if imperfect. And the cutscenes are skippable, so I've never had to watch 
them :P


 - Sonic 4: I love this one, despite how short it is.


 Huh, I didn't even know there was a sonic 4. On the
 genesis, I had 1, 2, 3, sonic+knuckles, sonic cd,
 and one called sonic 3d.


It's a brand-new one. Just came out about a couple years ago, a downloadable 
title for Wii/PS3/360/iOS. "Sonic 4: Episode 1". Episode 2 should be out 
this year, but they're dropping Wii support (Dammit! It looks fantastic!)


 Oh and sonic spinball, a pinballish game.


Yea, that was surprisingly good. And really kinda clever.


 I guess I had a lot of them! Sonic 3 & Knuckles
 was one monster of a game. Huge.


Oh yea. It certainly was.


 Really? I thought 7 was universally considered the best one.


 The internet nerds seem to be of two groups: the ones who
 say 7 is the greatest game ever made, and the ones who
 say 7 is an overrated piece of trash that has nothing
 on 6.


 Those are fine games.


Most people seem to hate the draw system in FF8. I can definitely see why, 
but for some reason it didn't bother me as much (don't know why).


 I'm not sure I've even heard of that scene. Maybe I'll have to give it 
 another chance and try to get to that.


 omg just youtube it too

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgZXiHfNt0M

 there's more to it than that, but that's the main piece.


Thanks.

Yea, 8/16-bit cutscenes were so much more artistic. The ones now are, at 
best, nothing more than normal, ordinary cinematography. And "impressive" 
ones just mean "flashy ways to move the camera around". *Yawn*


 I guess that's arguably a SNES cutscene... but this one rocks.
 They also did live versions of the song! Totally amazing.


8/16-bit cutscenes weren't bad. Actually I never minded them back then. It 
wasn't until much later that I got fed up with cutscenes.  Even as late as 
Quake 2 - I *loved* the Quake 2 opening cutscene. 'Course it *was* 
skippable, which helped to not piss me off.


 Huh, really? I never new that. If I had, I probably would have finished 
 it.
 How do you do that?


 After the training thingy, the headmaster gives you
 a lamp. Use it as an item, and a demon pops out.

 If you beat him, you can use it as a GF and learn
 an ability Enc-Half. After that comes Enc-None.

 Equip the skill and boom, no random fights.


Neat, maybe I'll dig it out again sometime just to give that a try. (If I 
still have it...I might have sold it.)


 Since you can do this fairly early in the game, you
 can go through 80% of it with no random fights at all!


Smart move on Square's part.


 And since the stats mostly come from junctions, you
 can get away with near zero experience too - so
 missing the fights+experience isn't a dealbreaker.


Ahh, I was wondering about that.


 I was always more a GameCube/XBox1 guy, but there's some good stuff on 
 PS2:


 I haven't played any of those...


Really? Oh my god, you're really missing out. Let's see:

GameCube:

- Luigi's Mansion: Most people hated it just because it wasn't "Mario 64 2", 
but it's one of my all time favorite games.

- Pikmin 1+2: The only RTS I actually like, and I love it. Although the Wii 
versions are better.

- Resident Evil 4: Actually, this is another fantastic one where the Wii 
version was even better. *Very* different from all the earlier Resident 
Evil's though.

- Killer 7: Crazy awesomeness. Awesome craziness.

- Metroid Prime 1: Two was also pretty good, but three sucked (and so did 
"hunters"). This one I honestly like the GC version better. Normally I like 
IR pointing for FPSes, but I think they really botched it up for the Metroid 
Prime Games.

- Wind Waker: Best of the 3D Zeldas.

- Donkey Kong Jungle Beat: Briliant twist on platformers, provided that you 
use the bongo controllers, not the GC controller and not the horrid gesture 
controls from the Wii version. (I *hate* gesture recognition. Never 
responsive, never even works reliably.)

- Eternal Darkness: Who the hell says Nintendo systems are for kid's games? 
Kinda like Resident Evil meets H.P. Lovecraft.

- More: Alian Hominid, Ikaruga, MegaMan: Network Transmission.

XBox1:

- Tony Hawk 2X: By far the best in the series. Note: "2X" not "2". It has 
all the THPS1+2 levels, plus extra levels, plus the best graphics of any 
THPS2, plus a menu system that isn't ugly like the regular THPS2.

- Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay: Yea, a movie tie-in that 
actually doesn't suck, and is actually incredibly good. There's an annoying 
cutscene sequence early on, but it's worth putting up with to get to the 
rest of the game.

- Splinter Cell 1-4: Like I said before, one of my all-time favorite game 
series. Stealth gaming that puts MGS absolutely to shame. The best one is 3 
("Chaos Theory"), and then the first one. I've actually just been replaying 
the first and third lately (for probably the tenth time), and I'm *still* 
getting better at it and finding things I missed. The XBox1 versions of 
these are by far the best. GC/PS2 versions aren't quite as good looking, and 
the GC doesn't have enough buttons to really make it work. And the Wii one 
was just totally botched up in every way. I think they've ported them to PS3 
though, those versions might be good.

- Dead or Alive 3 and Ultimate, if you're into fighting games. I'm not as 
much as I used to be. But these are good ones.

- Beyond Good & Evil - Too much story and cutscenes, and too short, but 
still surprisingly good.

- Blowout: It's like an updated Abuse. Underrated, IMO.

- Battle Engine Aquila, Oddworld: Munch's Odysee, Prince of Persia: Sands of 
Time, Outrun 2, Forza Motorsport, SegaGT Online, Rallisport Challenge.

- Pretty much any cross platform game was always best on XBox1. Only 
exception is MegaMan b/c MS DPads are always shit.

Meh, and yea, I guess there's something-or-other called "Halo" or some such 
name which apperently was all the rage... ;)



 I did somewhat recently
 finally buy a used PS2 for myself, but barely played
 it so far. Got Gran Turismo 3 and Madden 2008 for it
 (for a dollar a piece, not bad!)


Good deal! I actually returned GT3 when I got it though because playing 
racing games without proper sholder triggers (for gas/break) sucks.


 I played Gran Turismo 5 on the PS3 too, and that was
 a fine game. A solid series they have there.


Haven't played that one, but I like PS3's "Split Second" quite a lot. 
Although I could do without the pretend-it's-an-extreeeeme-TV-show announcer 
and the over-designed menus.


 Heh, well, that's more of an "extra little touch" easter egg kinda thing 
 anyway.


 It looked really good though. My definition of
 "good graphics" is often "bright, lively colors".


Yea, Castlevania: SOTN is a brilliant game visualy. First of all, it played 
to the PS1's strengths by making it good-looking *2D* instead of 
shitty-looking 3D like all the other games of the era. And then they added 
just extra little 3D "touches" without overdoing it. And just the whole 
visual direction overall was very well done. Even the later Metroidvanias 
didn't pull it off quite as well as SOTN did.


 That's one reason I like FF1 - you have a good amount
 of bright green and blue. It makes me happy. FF Tactics
 too had a lot of cool bright thingies.


Heh, yea. That's probably part of why I have such a soft spot for EGA 
graphics and, yes, that exact "bright color tiles" aethetic used in NES FF's 
overworld.


 Too many new things are going with dull, boring colors.
 Gah. Newsflash people, the real world is pretty bright!
 You can be realistic and colorful, though the old
 drawn animation style looks nice for itself.


Dark is "hip and edgy".

But haven't you heard? Real is brown: 
http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222



 Mar 31 2012



  parent reply "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>  writes:


On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 03:10:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 But I tend to listen to non-game stuff more: I'm a total whore 
 for Anime opening/closing themes.


Oh yes. Coincidentally, as I read this, I was playing
the opening from Zeta Gundam!

Another one I find incredibly addictive is one of
the openings from Tenchi Muyo - "Pioneer" I think
is the title.

This is one reason I like living alone though: I can
use the speakers for this stuff without embarrassment.

"are you listening to some weird Japanese song???
At 1.3x speed???"

/deal with it/



 Really? I've played only the first few minutes of all of them 
 and they all seemed very different from each other.


Oh yes. They are all different, but take place in the same
setting and the events of one contribute to the next.

You get a nice sense of continuity, especially in PS4
looking back.


 Really? Oh my god, you're really missing out. Let's see:


Well, I was imprecise - I had played the XBox, but not
the specific games you listed.

I actually won an xbox in... 2003 or 2004 in a school
event contest. I think it was actually rigged, but
that's another story.

I barely played it though; by then, my gaming days
were pretty much already over.

My father and brother both got into it though, and
bought a number of games that I played a little bit
with them.

This included some baseball game (baseball btw is a
weird thing. I can't stand watching it. Baseball
on the tv is one of the most boring things I have
ever seen. But, I enjoy playing it, both in the
video game world and in the real world.), a
fighting game, Dead or Alive (2 and 3 I think),
some kind of Tony Hawk, and Halo. And Halo 2,
but that was godawful.

My brother also played a single player Star Wars
RPG on it.


Baseball is baseball, not much to say there. A pretty
solid game.

The Dead or Alive games are ridiculous though. One
word: BOOBS. But, they were pretty good for fighting
games anyway.

Tony Hawk is a nice game. I played Tony Hawk 2 on the
playstation (something I'd like to find. I think I
still have it, but idk) and I liked that one. The
xbox wasn't the same though - I could never get used
to the new controller.

And then, Halo. The single player is PURE ASS. It
just goes on forever and is horribly repetitive. I
can't play that.

Perfect Dark's single player is awesome. The levels
are varied, you have things to do, the story is
good enough, and most importantly, it moves quickly
enough that it isn't a bother.

The typical PD level can be beaten in three minutes.

Halo just went on and on.

But, multiplayer wasn't bad. It wasn't really *great*
either, but plenty playable. I like it.

My favorite part of that game though was the title
screen. That was just a cool picture and that halo
theme song rocked.


Now, Halo 2, ugh. So, the single player still
sucks... and they proceeded to break the multiplayer too.

Take a poor weapon selection from halo 1. Make it worse.

Take a mediocre level selection. Make it worse.

Take a workable life and powerup system. Ditch it.


Gah! Thankfully, my brother agreed, so we always
put in halo 1. I don't think I've ever seen halo 3,
and I don't care to.



 Good deal! I actually returned GT3 when I got it though because 
 playing racing games without proper sholder triggers (for 
 gas/break) sucks.


I've never even tried a game like that! Holding a button
with a thumb is the way it has always been. And the
way it always shall be.


 Although I could do without the 
 pretend-it's-an-extreeeeme-TV-show announcer
 and the over-designed menus.


haha that sounds awesome. I'm reminded of one game
my brother had in... oh god, the old house, 1998 or
something.

It was a wrestling game for the playstation with
announcers.

Me, being a button masher, had little to no style,
and this game actually called me out!

"This guy is an idiot! He keeps doing the same move
over and over!"

that was great. Until they started repeating the
same commentary over and over.


 But haven't you heard? Real is brown:
 http://www.vgcats.com/comics/?strip_id=222


yup.



 Mar 31 2012



  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


From: "Adam D. Ruppe" <destructionator gmail.com>

 On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 03:10:49 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 But I tend to listen to non-game stuff more: I'm a total whore for Anime 
 opening/closing themes.


 Oh yes. Coincidentally, as I read this, I was playing
 the opening from Zeta Gundam!

 Another one I find incredibly addictive is one of
 the openings from Tenchi Muyo - "Pioneer" I think
 is the title.


Haven't heard that Gundam one (I'm not usually real big on mech animes. I 
have no idea why.) I have a couple Tenchi ones, but the metadata labels on 
them aren't very helpful, so I don't know if I have that particular one. One 
of them's an instrumental.

These are my favorites so far (and keep in mind, too, that one of the things 
that often makes me love an opening/closing song is when a great animation 
goes with it - Just one of those weird psychological "association" things.) 
And yea, this *is* a long list. I have a lot of favorites :)

[artist] title (show)

[Anzen Chitai] Suki Sa (One of the Maison Ikkoku openings)
[The Indigo] I Do! (ED1: Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi)
[Yoko Ishida] At Your Own Speed (I don't actually know what it's from)
[Oranges & Lemons] Raspberry Heaven (ED1: Azumanga Daioh)
[Oranges & Lemons / Kuricorder Pops Orchestra] Soramimi Cake (OP1: Azumanga 
Daioh)
[Hitomi Takahashi] Aozora no Namida (OP1: Blood+)
[Chitose Hajime] Kataritsugu Koto (ED1: Blood+)
[???] Let Me Be With You (OP: Chobits)
[Yoko Kanno] Tank! (OP: Cowboy Bebop)
[???] Real Folk Blues (ED: Cowboy Bebop)
[Excel Girls] Ai (Chuuseishin) (OP: Excel Saga)
[Origa & Yoko Kanno] Inner Universe (OP: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone 
Complex)
[Kaoru Wada] Kagome's Theme (Background Music: Inuyasha)
[Ayumi Hamasaki] Dearest (ED3: Inuyasha)
[Dream] My Will (ED1: Inuyasha)
[Every Little Thing] Yura Yura (Movie 2: Inuyasha)
[Hitomi Shimatani] Angelus (OP6: Inuyasha)
[Namie Amuro] Come (ED7: Inuyasha)
[Nanase Aikawa] Owarinai Yume (OP3: Inuyasha)
[Eufonius] Koi Suru Kokoro (OP: Kashimashi)
[Yuumao] Michishirube (ED: Kashimashi)
[Isoe Toshimichi & Hosoi Soushi & Fujima Hitoshi] Hiai mo Otome ni wa 
(Background Song: Kashimashi - I've actually been trying to learn this one 
on the piano)
[???] Panic (ED1: Kodocha)
[???] Ultra Relax (OP2: Kodocha)
[the show's cast] Cherry Blossoms Blooming (OP: Love Hina)
[Shiro Sagisu /Miho Morikawa] Blue Water (OP: Nadia: The Secret of Blue 
Water)
[Shiro Sagisu / Miho Morikawa] Yes! I Will... (ED: Nadia: The Secret of Blue 
Water)
[Rythem] Harmonia (ED2?: Naruto)
[Eufonius] Idea (OP: Noein)
[Solua] Yoake no Ashioto (ED: Noein)
[the show's cast] Shojo Q (OP3: Pani Poni Dash)
[the show's cast] Roulette * Roulette (OP2: Pani Poni Dash)
[Suga Shikao] 19sai (OP: xxxHolic)
[Minmi] Shiki no Uta (ED1: Samurai Champloo)
[Nujabes] Battlecry (OP: Samurai Champloo)
[Yui Horie & Unscandal] Scramble (OP1: School Rumble)
[Yuko Ogura] Onnanoko Otokonoko (ED1: School Rumble)
[the show's cast] Ichigo Complete (OP: Strawberry Marshmallow)

Some of those artists have some other really good stuff, too. Like Anzen
Chitai's "Jirettai". Namie Amuro's "Style" and "As Good As". Or the 
"Abingdon Road" album from Abingdon Boys School (along with much of T.M. 
Revolution's stuff - one of the members of Abingdon Boys School). Or almost 
anything from The Indigo (NOT to be confused with Indigo Girls).

Actually, that is insanely long, these would be the tops of the tops:

[Anzen Chitai] Suki Sa (One of the Maison Ikkoku openings)
[The Indigo] I Do! (ED1: Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi)
[Hitomi Takahashi] Aozora no Namida (OP1: Blood+)
[Yoko Kanno] Tank! (OP: Cowboy Bebop)
[Origa & Yoko Kanno] Inner Universe (OP: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone 
Complex)
[Kaoru Wada] Kagome's Theme (Background Music: Inuyasha)
[Dream] My Will (ED1: Inuyasha)
[Namie Amuro] Come (ED7: Inuyasha)
[Nanase Aikawa] Owarinai Yume (OP3: Inuyasha)
[Eufonius] Koi Suru Kokoro (OP: Kashimashi)
[Yuumao] Michishirube (ED: Kashimashi)
[Isoe Toshimichi & Hosoi Soushi & Fujima Hitoshi] Hiai mo Otome ni wa 
(Background Song: Kashimashi - I've actually been trying to learn this one 
on the piano)
[???] Panic (ED1: Kodocha)
[???] Ultra Relax (OP2: Kodocha)
[Rythem] Harmonia (ED2?: Naruto)
[Eufonius] Idea (OP: Noein)
[the show's cast] Shojo Q (OP3: Pani Poni Dash)
[the show's cast] Roulette * Roulette (OP2: Pani Poni Dash)
[Suga Shikao] 19sai (OP: xxxHolic)
[Minmi] Shiki no Uta (ED1: Samurai Champloo)
[the show's cast] Ichigo Complete (OP: Strawberry Marshmallow)

Shit. Still long. Oh well :)


 This is one reason I like living alone though: I can
 use the speakers for this stuff without embarrassment.

 "are you listening to some weird Japanese song???
 At 1.3x speed???"

 /deal with it/


LOL :)


 This included some baseball game (baseball btw is a
 weird thing. I can't stand watching it. Baseball
 on the tv is one of the most boring things I have
 ever seen. But, I enjoy playing it, both in the
 video game world and in the real world.),


That's how I feel about Golf, Bowling and Volleyball (although TV Golf's not 
bad for background atmosphere and scenery). Then skateboarding's good to 
both do *and* watch (though I'm awful - I never even learned to ollie). 
Skiing/Snowboarding are good to watch, but torture to do. Everything else is 
just boring period. Except NBA Jam. That's awesome :) "BOOM-shaka-laka"! Hee 
hee hee.


 a fighting game, Dead or Alive (2 and 3 I think),


Those are the best ones. I had 2 on Dreamcast and on XBox (ie "DOA: 
Ultimate").


 some kind of Tony Hawk,


Those very wildly. Some are fantastic, some are crap, some are in the 
middle. 2X and American Wasteland are my favs, then the original. Project 8 
and everything after were crap. Everything else was ok-to-mediocre.


 and Halo. And Halo 2, but that was godawful.


Really? I never actually played 2 (or 3). I definitely enjoyed the first 
(except for how some levels contained the *same* fucking sections 
copy-pasted over and over and over). But I didn't like it enough to care 
about the sequels. I never would have guessed 2 would have actually been 
worse.


 The Dead or Alive games are ridiculous though. One
 word: BOOBS. But, they were pretty good for fighting
 games anyway.


lol, yea. One of them was *really* ridiculous for that though: I don't 
remember which one (I think 4 - they made a 4, right?), but at one point 
they made *separate* physics for the left and right ones and they were just 
bizarrely flopping all over the place. It was kinda freakish. That can't 
even *happen* when they're wearing shirts.


 Tony Hawk is a nice game. I played Tony Hawk 2 on the
 playstation (something I'd like to find. I think I
 still have it, but idk) and I liked that one. The
 xbox wasn't the same though - I could never get used
 to the new controller.


I love my Chinese PS2 -> XBox/GC/USB controller converter :)

But yea, MS dpads have always been garbage.

I always liked the size of the original XBox1 controller though. The S 
controller, and every other MS or non-MS first party controller in existence 
is too small for my hands. The 360's is waaay to small - that's actually one 
of the reasons I'm more interested in PS3 than 360. The PS3's is too small, 
but not *that* insanely small.


 And then, Halo. The single player is PURE ASS. It
 just goes on forever and is horribly repetitive. I
 can't play that.


Heh, I was never a fan of the multiplayer. Actually, I got tried of 
multiplayer FPSes way back with the original UT and Q3A. It's all the same 
game and...well...personally I find it 10x as repetitive as even Halo 1's 
single-player. :/

I *did* however enjoy the 16-player Halo & pizza LAN party we did at college 
once :). I still found the gameplay to get too repetitive too quick (and I'm 
honestly *terrible* at multiplayer FPS), but the whole thing was fun 
overall, and connecting together four XBoxes, with four TVs, four players on 
each (right in the middle of the CS department, too), was a bit of a 
geek-out high ;)


 My favorite part of that game though was the title
 screen.


Heh, that sounds like an insult. :)

It *was* good though. Metroid Prime 3 tried to ape it, but it just ended up 
sounding like a cat being run over by a half-broken motorcycle.



 Although I could do without the pretend-it's-an-extreeeeme-TV-show 
 announcer
 and the over-designed menus.


 haha that sounds awesome. I'm reminded of one game
 my brother had in... oh god, the old house, 1998 or
 something.


It gets better though: You can blow up the buildings near the track in order 
for them to fall on and wreck the other player's cars :)



 It was a wrestling game for the playstation with
 announcers.

 Me, being a button masher, had little to no style,
 and this game actually called me out!

 "This guy is an idiot! He keeps doing the same move
 over and over!"

 that was great. Until they started repeating the
 same commentary over and over.


lol. Gotta love irony.



 Mar 31 2012



  parent reply "so" <so so.so>  writes:


On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 06:41:16 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:


 [Anzen Chitai] Suki Sa (One of the Maison Ikkoku openings)
 [The Indigo] I Do! (ED1: Ai Yori Aoshi Enishi)
 [Hitomi Takahashi] Aozora no Namida (OP1: Blood+)
 [Yoko Kanno] Tank! (OP: Cowboy Bebop)
 [Origa & Yoko Kanno] Inner Universe (OP: Ghost in the Shell: 
 Stand Alone
 Complex)
 [Kaoru Wada] Kagome's Theme (Background Music: Inuyasha)
 [Dream] My Will (ED1: Inuyasha)
 [Namie Amuro] Come (ED7: Inuyasha)
 [Nanase Aikawa] Owarinai Yume (OP3: Inuyasha)
 [Eufonius] Koi Suru Kokoro (OP: Kashimashi)
 [Yuumao] Michishirube (ED: Kashimashi)
 [Isoe Toshimichi & Hosoi Soushi & Fujima Hitoshi] Hiai mo Otome 
 ni wa
 (Background Song: Kashimashi - I've actually been trying to 
 learn this one
 on the piano)
 [???] Panic (ED1: Kodocha)
 [???] Ultra Relax (OP2: Kodocha)
 [Rythem] Harmonia (ED2?: Naruto)
 [Eufonius] Idea (OP: Noein)
 [the show's cast] Shojo Q (OP3: Pani Poni Dash)
 [the show's cast] Roulette * Roulette (OP2: Pani Poni Dash)
 [Suga Shikao] 19sai (OP: xxxHolic)
 [Minmi] Shiki no Uta (ED1: Samurai Champloo)
 [the show's cast] Ichigo Complete (OP: Strawberry Marshmallow)


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPnIDiLJuuY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RazOfS6mjfw
... and many more.


 Actually, that is insanely long, these would be the tops of the 
 tops:


Indeed there are tons! Too bad my first anime was "Samurai 
Champloo". It is like starting movies with Bladerunner and then 
have to endure soup operas like Star Wars mostly because of 
addiction (Probably i offended most of the interwebs now but that 
is what i do!).



 Apr 01 2012



  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"so" <so so.so> wrote in message 
news:vckzoemajryxvrwzciby forum.dlang.org...

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


I've never even heard of that show before. Definitely a very good opening.

Looks like a good show, too. While I agree with "Can't judge a book by it's 
cover", anime openings seem to strangely be an exception: Nine times out of 
ten (yes, I pulled those numbers out of my ass ;) ), my impression of an 
opening sequence is spot-on with how I end up feeling about the show. Ghost 
in the Shell SAC, Death Note, Strawberry Marshmallow, Azumanga Daioh, 
Blood+, Pani Poni Dash and various others are all shows I fell in love with 
right from the opening sequence, and the shows themselves lived up to their 
openings. And then there were cases where the openings and actual show were 
both "just ok", etc.

What's really impressive about anime openings/closings though, is that they 
really are a whole separate art form in and of themselves. For example, 
Naruto's second (Japanese) closing ("Harmonia"), and Inuyasha's 7th closing 
("Come"), are just pure artistic beauty. I was completely blown away by 
them. Same goes for the openings (and closings) of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai 
Champloo. Music videos have *nothing* on those (although I am a fan of Spike 
Jones's work).


 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RazOfS6mjfw
 ... and many more.


How could I possibly forget that one?!?

Yes, Light's Theme from Death Note is indeed one of the best anime songs 
/ever/. Come to think of it, it would fit in very well on Marilyn Manson's 
Holywood album - *and* be one of the real standout songs.

I actually have the Death Note soundtrack. Other equally-stand-out songs on 
it are "L's Theme" (L was a fantastic character period), the title tracks 
"Death Note" and "Death Note Theme", "Jiken", "Kinchou", "Senritsu", 
"Kodoku", "Tokusou Kira han", "L's Theme B", "L no Nakama", "Tokusou", 
"Taikutsu", "Teloelogy of Death" and "Law of Solipsism". That sounds like a 
lot, but there's actually a *lot* of songs on the album.

The opening/closing songs are pretty good too. Gotta love that "Maximum the 
Hormone" group: Japanese Death-Metal-slash-Ska/Punk. Crazy shit :)


 Actually, that is insanely long, these would be the tops of the tops:


 Indeed there are tons! Too bad my first anime was "Samurai Champloo". It 
 is like starting movies with Bladerunner and then have to endure soup 
 operas like Star Wars mostly because of addiction (Probably i offended 
 most of the interwebs now but that is what i do!).


Heh. :) I see Star Wars as more of an action movie than science fiction 
though. And it's pretty damn good as an action movie (though I've always 
been more in the Trek camp, myself :P )

Funny thing about Bladerunner though, for some reason I just couldn't get 
into it when I tried to watch it. It just seemed really slow moving and it 
kinda (dare I say it?) bored me. Maybe it's cause it was the director's cut? 
I dunno. I've been meaning to give it another try though. Maybe the "Final 
Cut".

There's a fairly recent movie though that's apperently based on another 
story by the same author of Bladerunner: The Adjustment Bureau. *That* one I 
was pretty impressed with. Sort of a "Michael" meets "Matrix" (And Total 
Recall, also apperently one of his, is of course one of the best movies ever 
:) )



 Apr 01 2012



  parent reply "so" <so so.so>  writes:


On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 21:06:09 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:


 How could I possibly forget that one?!?

 Yes, Light's Theme from Death Note is indeed one of the best 
 anime songs
 /ever/. Come to think of it, it would fit in very well on 
 Marilyn Manson's
 Holywood album - *and* be one of the real standout songs.

 I actually have the Death Note soundtrack. Other 
 equally-stand-out songs on
 it are "L's Theme" (L was a fantastic character period),


L is awesome.
Don't start with characters! Every character in SC and CB is just 
crazy for starters. I mean everyone. Did you watch C-Bebop in 
English or Japanese? I tend to watch them in original sounds, 
this one was an exception. Edward with "Melissa Fahn", priceless!


 Funny thing about Bladerunner though, for some reason I just 
 couldn't get
 into it when I tried to watch it. It just seemed really slow 
 moving and it
 kinda (dare I say it?) bored me. Maybe it's cause it was the 
 director's cut?
 I dunno. I've been meaning to give it another try though. Maybe 
 the "Final
 Cut".


Every picture in BR is pure art to me, Rachael, Zhora and most 
importantly every appearance of Roy. You could just "listen" it 
for Vangelis (he is the best of best!). Sometimes i think 
everything comes out of a single idea, everything in a cinema or 
a book prepares you for that moment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VupxqjTGAyk&feature=fvwrel



 Apr 01 2012



  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"so" <so so.so> wrote in message 
news:tnlksyhbnypfjbybmeju forum.dlang.org...

 On Sunday, 1 April 2012 at 21:06:09 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:


 (L was a fantastic character period),


 L is awesome.
 Don't start with characters! Every character in SC and CB is just crazy 
 for starters. I mean everyone.


Yea, they are great. Shinichirou Watanabe is nothing short of a genius. Pure 
perfection in his work. It kills me that he doesn't have another new series 
on the horizon (at least to public knowledge, anyway).



 Did you watch C-Bebop in English or Japanese? I tend to watch them in 
 original sounds, this one was an exception.


English. For me, "English vs Japanese" varies from show to show (And in 
*rare* cases I'll actually watch both - namely Kodocha). Generally, I'll 
start with the English (if there is any), and if it turns out to be 
bad/annoying, then I'll switch to Japanese.

Once in a while a show will come along where I'm genuinely blown away by how 
incredibly good the English version is: In particular, Death Note and 
Fullmetal Alchemist (And naturally Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo). The 
*entire* English casts on all those shows did unbelievably fantastic jobs. 
Even to the point where it's actually worth watching those shows even just 
for the English voice acting (Which is a wonderful far cry from the days 
when English dubs had a reputation for being bad.)


 Edward with "Melissa Fahn", priceless!


Oh, yea. She did a brilliant job. That's definitely one of the absolute top 
3 on my list of "Best-Dubbed Characters". The other 2 would be Laura 
Bailey's "Sana Kurata" from Kodocha, and Caitlin Glass's "Winry Rockbell" 
from Fullmetal Alchemist. Particularly Caitlin's/Winry's famous squeal which 
wasn't even in the original Japanese version.

I only wish I could do voice acting as well as they do it and work together 
on a project. It would certainly beat mucking with HTML!



 Apr 01 2012



prev sibling  parent reply Robert Clipsham <robert octarineparrot.com>  writes:


On 31/03/2012 07:16, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 I hear they are doing a new 2d Worms game, written in D. I look
 forward to it. (totally on topic now :P)


 Really? Cool!


See also:
* http://wormsng.com/
* http://worms2d.info/4
* https://github.com/CyberShadow/ae

See anyone you recognize there? ;)

-- 
Robert
http://octarineparrot.com/



 Mar 31 2012



  parent  Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich gmail.com>  writes:


On 3/31/12, Robert Clipsham <robert octarineparrot.com> wrote:

 See also:
 * http://wormsng.com/
 * http://worms2d.info/4
 * https://github.com/CyberShadow/ae

 See anyone you recognize there? ;)


Aye, CS has been great to the WA community. :)
I wonder if Deadcode (another bWA contributor) uses D now too.



 Mar 31 2012



prev sibling  parent  "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.wbzdtbo0eav7ka localhost.localdomain...

 On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:21:12 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a a.a> wrote:


 "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a> wrote in message
 news:jl3n59$qf7$1 digitalmars.com...

 Of course, I don't expect software to be as super-fine-tuned as it was 
 on,
 say, the Apple 2 or Atari 2600. There *is* definitely some value in
 loosing a certain amount of performance to abstractions, up to a point.
 But we've blown way, way, WAAAY beyond that point.

 It's sickening how much gratuitous waste there is in a lot of "modern"
 software, and really for not much benefit, as D proves.




 100% agree.  There has been a huge trend in software to disregard 
 performance because "the hardware will take care of it."  Interestingly 
 enough though, performance still turns heads :)  That is, when faced with 
 two applications that do the same thing, but one is twice as fast, most 
 people will choose (and probably pay more for) the faster one.


Yup. And there's *also* still the issues of:

- Saving your user money on hardware.

- **Battery-Fucking-Life**

- Noise. All that extra processing produces more heat, thus requiring more 
cooling and, often times, more fan noise.

- Environmentalism. All that useless processing causes the hardware to suck 
up more electricity, and that means power plants burning more dino-fuel and 
producing more nuclear waste.

- Environmentalism again: Less need for hardware upgrades means less 
hardware in landfills.



 Desktops are the worst offenders, and paricularly WinXP.


 Windows 7 is vastly better at both startup and shutdown than WinXP.


Yea, like I said, "particularly WinXP" ;)



 On my old (super-low-power) NES, you could hit the power  button,
 and within one second you were at the title screen.


 You must have had a different version of NES.  The process to start mine 
 up was not nearly as fast.  It went something like this:

 1. Insert cartridge, push down cartridge, power on.  (I cite this as one 
 step because it became automatic to do this in 2 seconds)
 2. Screen with horribly large pixellated game appears.
 3. Power off, pull out cartridge.
 4. Blow in bottom of cartridge, even though the pins are clean and free of 
 dust (did this actually ever do anything?)
 5. Re-insert cartridge, this time more firmly, push down deliberately to 
 make sure game locks into place
 6. Power on, normal screen comes up, push start button.
 7. Play for about 2 minutes, game hangs with single audio tone.
 8. Bang hand on top of NES to show it you mean business.  Sometimes it 
 will whimper back to playing mode.
 9. After second hang, attempt to press reset button about 15 times. 
 Peanut-sized pixels return.
 10. Power off, remove catridge, repeat blowing procedure from step 4, but 
 with slower more deliberate breath.  Try a blowing pattern, like quick 
 bursty blows in various locations.  Insert cartidge even MORE firmly. 
 Jiggle cartridge a bit to make sure the NES is aware there is a valid game 
 for it to consume.
 11. Lower cartridge, power on.  Play game for another 5 minutes.
 12. After next hang, turn power off, and watch cartoons.


Heh, good point :)

It didn't happen with brand new systems/carts though, it took awhile for 
them to corrode and for the pins to warp. But yea, I'd actually forgotten 
about that.



 Some of that stuff isn't even a technical matter at all, but deliberate
 design: Who the hell decided we need twenty company logos (fully 
 animated,
 one at a time), then 10+ minutes of exposition and building "atmosphere",
 followed by half an hour of (typically patronizing) tutorials before
 actually getting to the real gameplay? Zelda Skyward Sword is the worst
 offender, it literally takes *hours* to get past all the initial 
 exposition,
 tutorials and shit into the real core of the game (I honestly started
 wondering if there even *was* a game - "Did I pick up a Harry Potter 
 movie
 by mistake?"). The original Zelda, you could get from power off to the 
 meat
 of the gameplay in literally seconds. Game devs won't let you do that 
 now:
 They've gotta show off their cinematography so they can get hired by 
 Pixar,
 where they *really* wanted to be all along. (Meh, Dreamworks was always
 better anyway ;) )


 When I bought the new Wii motion plus (that gives better sensitivity) with 
 Wii Sports Resort, the first time you play, it makes you watch 8 minutes 
 of instructional video on how to use your Wii motion plus.  I thought at 
 the time "Wow, that was a bit long, but I guess I only have to do it 
 once."  Then I went to my sister-in-law's house, and wanted to show her 
 the game.  This was *her* Wii's first time playing the game, so again, I 
 had to watch the damn video (no way to skip).  It happened a third time on 
 my parents' Wii, and I was thinking "Man, this was a *bad* design 
 decision".


Uh-huh. I've actually played a lot of Wii Sports Resort. I honestly can't 
believe how much I ended up liking parts of it. I normally can't stand 
"casual" games. I can't stand Miis (got sick of them within a year of the 
Wii first coming out) I can't stand the non-disableable elevator music in 
that game. And there are a lot of stinker games in Sports Resort (Cycling 
anyone? Didn't think so) But I've played so much of the Bowling and Frisbee 
Golf it's ridiculous. The Archery, Golf, Swordfighting, and Island Flyby are 
surprisingly good, too. (The rest is largely forgettable, though.)

But yea, I really have gotten sick of Nintendo's bullshit:

- All their core IPs are getting systematically dumbed down.

- They never let you skip cutscenes, unless the game save says it's already 
shown you it...which proves they're pulling that unskippable shit 
*deliberately*. Truly moronic design. I don't even watch them, I just switch 
to a TV channel, or turn the TV off and then come back later.

- The system menu "music" that never ends.

- The endless stream of nanny health screens. There's literally *two or 
three* of them *every* time you turn on the system to play.

- Many game saves are *blocked* from being backed up to SD or even taken to 
a friend's system.

- And oh yea, you're not allow to play imports, or write software or run 
non-official code on a device you *legitimately own*.

Shit, they're actually *worse* than *Apple*, for fuck's sake! How the hell 
is that even possible?

All that crap is why I decided "Fuck you, Nintendo" and softmodded the 
goddamn thing. Thanks to things like Priiloader, a couple USB loader apps, 
Homebrew Channel and Homebrew Browser:

- I no longer have the initial startup health screen.

- I no longer have to listen to that "music" in the system menu which got 
painfully irritating after the first *year* of listening to it.

- I can do WTF I want with game saves.

- I can play imports. Fuck region coding.

- I can keep all my games on a USB HDD, so I:

    * Don't have to worry about the discs getting damaged.

    * OR the laser burning out (already became a problem on my XBox1, but 
almost irrelevant now thanks to XBMC).

    * OR swapping discs just to play something different (seriously, WTF is 
this, 1995?).

    * AND as a bonus, load times are now *much* faster.

- I can write software for it (Meh, if I ever had the time)

- I can play some very clever homebrew games like Sand Traps ( 
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Sand_Traps )

Hail hackers, Fuck Nintendo's suits.

And fuck the DMCA - a completely illegitimate law and the *only* thing 
making *any* of this illegal.

(Plus I can discover that a game is total crap *before* blowing fifty bucks 
on it, instead of *after*...Not that I would do that...)



 Mar 30 2012



prev sibling  parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com>  writes:


On 3/29/2012 7:05 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that would
 have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite literally
 is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

 Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely powerful
 hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking
 single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking bat-shit
 crazy.


I'm in complete agreement with you.

It's like when I bought a new dvd burner, and had to upgrade Nero Burning to 
deal with it. The old Nero was 6Mb, the new one was 90Mb (!)



 Mar 29 2012



  parent reply "Nick Sabalausky" <a a.a>  writes:


"Walter Bright" <newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote in message 
news:jl3l0c$jn2$1 digitalmars.com...

 On 3/29/2012 7:05 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

 I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that 
 would
 have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite 
 literally
 is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

 Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely powerful
 hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking
 single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking bat-shit
 crazy.


 I'm in complete agreement with you.

 It's like when I bought a new dvd burner, and had to upgrade Nero Burning 
 to deal with it. The old Nero was 6Mb, the new one was 90Mb (!)


Yea, needing to upgrade Nero bugged me too. And even ignoring filesize, each 
new version of Nero kept getting worse anyway (the original was actually 
pretty good, but they quickly put a stop to that).

I just use ImgBurn/DVD Decryptor/DVD Shrink for ripping/burning ISOs and 
InfraRecorder for everything else. They're soooo much better than *any* 
commercial package I've seen in at least ten years. They do the job, do it 
well, and all with *no* bullshit/bloat/skins or any other such crap.



 Mar 30 2012



  parent  dennis luehring <dl.soluz gmx.net>  writes:


or just use http://cdburnerxp.se/

Am 30.03.2012 10:30, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:

 "Walter Bright"<newshound2 digitalmars.com>  wrote in message
 news:jl3l0c$jn2$1 digitalmars.com...

  On 3/29/2012 7:05 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

  I don't understand why people think it's ok for basic, basic shit that
  would
  have ran fine on a Pentium 1 (and less) to now require what quite
  literally
  is a super-fucking-computer-on-the-desktop just to run acceptably.

  Seriously, what the fuck's the point of buying all this insanely powerful
  hardware if software just turns the damn thing right back into a fucking
  single-core P1? That's just insane. People are seriously fucking bat-shit
  crazy.


  I'm in complete agreement with you.

  It's like when I bought a new dvd burner, and had to upgrade Nero Burning
  to deal with it. The old Nero was 6Mb, the new one was 90Mb (!)


 Yea, needing to upgrade Nero bugged me too. And even ignoring filesize, each
 new version of Nero kept getting worse anyway (the original was actually
 pretty good, but they quickly put a stop to that).

 I just use ImgBurn/DVD Decryptor/DVD Shrink for ripping/burning ISOs and
 InfraRecorder for everything else. They're soooo much better than *any*
 commercial package I've seen in at least ten years. They do the job, do it
 well, and all with *no* bullshit/bloat/skins or any other such crap.





 Mar 30 2012



prev sibling next sibling parent reply "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com>  writes:


On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:21:41 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/

 Andrei


Is anyone else's computer complaining about drdobbs having an invalid  
certificate?  I read the article, and then I wanted to reference it again,  
and I got the error.  Now I'm hesitant to accept the certificate because  
it seems to come from a completely different site...

-Steve



 Mar 29 2012



 next sibling parent reply Walter Bright <newshound2 digitalmars.com>  writes:


On 3/29/2012 5:10 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 Is anyone else's computer complaining about drdobbs having an invalid
 certificate? I read the article, and then I wanted to reference it again, and I
 got the error. Now I'm hesitant to accept the certificate because it seems to
 come from a completely different site...



I've never seen anything like that from drdobb's site.



 Mar 29 2012



  parent  "Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com>  writes:


On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 20:28:31 -0400, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 digitalmars.com> wrote:


 On 3/29/2012 5:10 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

 Is anyone else's computer complaining about drdobbs having an invalid
 certificate? I read the article, and then I wanted to reference it  
 again, and I
 got the error. Now I'm hesitant to accept the certificate because it  
 seems to
 come from a completely different site...



 I've never seen anything like that from drdobb's site.


Seems to be working again.   huh...

-Steve



 Mar 29 2012



prev sibling  parent  deadalnix <deadalnix gmail.com>  writes:


Le 30/03/2012 02:10, Steven Schveighoffer a écrit :

 On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 20:21:41 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
 <SeeWebsiteForEmail erdani.org> wrote:


 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/


 Andrei


 Is anyone else's computer complaining about drdobbs having an invalid
 certificate? I read the article, and then I wanted to reference it
 again, and I got the error. Now I'm hesitant to accept the certificate
 because it seems to come from a completely different site...

 -Steve


I have a lot of problems with drdoob, but not that one. Still, I don't 
what this website is made of, but it seems dangerous material. Hopefully 
the content is good.



 Mar 30 2012



prev sibling  parent  "Nathan M. Swan" <nathanmswan gmail.com>  writes:


On Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 00:21:38 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:

 http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/rif9x/uniform_function_call_syntax_for_the_d/

 Andrei


The primitives/utility distinction is an idea I've thought about 
a lot. UFCS is justifiable not only as a syntactic convenience 
but as a solution to an important design principle.

Great work guys!

NMS



 Mar 29 2012