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what OS? you could run the DX diagnostic tool ta see what it tells, which may or may not be totally useless. find...DXDIAG.EXE. or you could just try ---reinstalling the game. see if that does anything. reinstalling directx. in that order. personaly tho, i would have to say, screwing with the directX drivers is the last thing i would attempt. do other games work? which ones in particular that you know? my 3 cents

my dad always told me that all your brains was in yer big toe. and all this "its in your skull" stuff was just a big fairytale.

sounds like a good place to go spam. no wonder you got removed. i think a pre-req for owning a zone should be that you have some hair on your balls.

missed this one... i think the program exe itself will end up being around 300-400k its 250 as of last screen, but alot still missing. but...since this is VB here ill most likely have to include some control files, and a resource file, and a small sample lvz setup. i like the sound fo an updater, but i dont think ill get to that, at least not any time soon. the zip itself should not exceed 200-300k(controls ususally compress really well) and thats managable for even a really crappy connection.

still plugging along, doing mostly boring user control, and error checking now. just in case anyones wondering. not sure how itll be for beta, but i want the editor to handle even corrupted/bad files and try to make some sense out of them. notify you apon loading of any numbers out of range, any LVZ attribute thats not valid...but still try to load. so basically you could open a large text do-*BAD WORD*-ent, plug some lvz lines here and there, and as long as its a valid map postion, and a valid image, it would show it. hehe i suppose i could just say, any existing ini's must be totaly valid...meaning buildlevel must be able to compile them without any errors. before you would even attempt to laod it in the editor, and just have it spit out one generic error and cancel the open...... much easier for me. not quite as nice of a program. as far as stability goes, from all i can tell its rock solid. i had the whole program written and pretty much working like have seen. without a single onerror statement, or any error getting raised, except for in the file loads and writes. which means the program does not hop all around, most things will just drop through instead of failing or generating an error. and this is good sign. time will tell i suppose.

ahem, correct me if im wrong....but deep star 6 is about a a great big killer dinosaur fish...right? a truly great underwater movie.? right there alongside leviathan? eerm... ya just checking the wavelenghts here.

deep star 6, a true classic.

ya, its ignoring the screen objects for now.

working on user control and error handling. gotta handle skipped image numbers, missing files, bad ini lines, selecting wrong files....etc etc. anything that could make it crash. lots and lots to do really, once ya step back and look. it would be mildy ready to go, as it is opening ,adding, removing, saving lines, but ya know what they say, The biggest bug in the program is the user. gotta get the help file started, and make the userpref.ini that i tend to use over messing with the registry to track your prgram options. at this point, i just like to make 100% clean install/un-install. (delete the folder and its all gone)

games that take up th screen also tend to be the main producers of heat...since they are basically constantly looping once running. i personly cant see ss overheating a cpu, a pos video card might get hot, in a zone with lots or lvz going on. maybe your video card has a fan? and your card is overheating. so its fan is like going up to 10,000 rpm and shaking your whole MB, and your nic card is loose so when it vibrates your cards connection is getting weak signals. hehehe...lol open up the case, and look. make sure all cards are pressed in firmly...etc etc... look for huge mounds of dust by the cpu. a vibrating pc that lags you out......sweet $

vibrating? must be a fan. a) a sensor is screwed up. b)your cpu heatsink is clogged with dust. and your cpu is overheating.

shut off... any fancy screen savers. any stupid file indexing windows might be doing. any program that might automatically do something while your playing. excluding virus scanners and soft-firewalls. progrmas like messangers or p2p things. try and determine if this happens at certain times, or within a certain amount of time from the moment you enter the zone. my 3 cents.

i dont really care how big it gets. im going to keep adding to it like a painting ive got a whole set of back ground images that really mkae things have a 3d look, its trippy. but i was tired of adding lvz's

make a controler def, and save it with a name like joystick, set it all up and make sure use joystick is checked. then choose the profile you want to use and set its keydefs, to that keydef you created called joystick.

charge...pfffffft. now if i was certain it was going to be the most excellent editor ever. i might breifly consider it, before remebering this is a mostly free game. and like most eveything else around here, it will be in some kind of a "in development" stasis for all eternity. not to mention how cool it will be if lots more ppl start using it for things. so i can check out lotsa kewl zones with animations and larger more detailed graphics. that are not just a center safe zone, or really limited to just one or two items like a scoreboard. the real trick is knowing when to say when, and getting the most out of as little as possible....sorta. this editor makes it real eazy to add "too much" , smart design will play a real big factor. for example. you want a forest. making one large image with like 3 trees on it, is better than drawing 3 individual trees..... to a point. there is a point where 2 small draws, will take more(or less) time to draw then 1 draw of an image of a large size. one 32X32 image will draw faster than 2 16x16 that might not be true at that size, but there is a point where that becomes a factor, i think that alot of ppl play ss at 1600x1200, and an optimal size for images at that resolution is 32x32(if the tiles was all you had, here you have a choice), subspaces 16x16 tiles are, in theory, making the number of draws outwiegh the small draw size. my evo zone(latest screen) is mostly the way NOT to do things. eheh it uses specific images for almost eveything. and it looks kewl, and performes fine on even a voodoo3. but its close to 7 meg dl. the other lvz zone thresh...is alot closer to the right way. performace wise. using mostly smaller images to do things like 32x32 or 64x32, or such a size as that. and making lots of those things reusable lets you keep size down, and sort of fake that you have alot going on, when in fact you are just wisely re-using the same image for multiple tasks. maybe one or two large images for this or that. thresh was like a bit over a meg, and had double the amount of lvz objects placed on the map. ..........ya got all that?

i dun like to put deadlines on leasure activities, cuss then they have a potential to become a bit more like work, and a bit less like leasure. but i wouldnt be experting anything for at the very least, 3 weeks. and then i might have to get a few other ppl that have actually done some deep work manually with lvz, and let them use it for a week or so, and make changes / fixes after that. then open beta. i need to find someone who has done alot of screen objects stuff, and servercontroled objects.

thanks yall that stuff is actualy pretty old, a year maybe? hehe. its a lvz zone, as one can see, and was very ambitious in thought. turned out to be such a complicated mess i gave it up. but now...hmmmm i actually do have a few tanks made as well. forgot all about them. hehe. thatll have to wait. ive semi-neglected a previous engagement with MG ctf. but, ooo hooo lookie what i got now ill be writing the save routine next, and then doing all the user control(enabling/disabling....showing/hiding..validation. error trapping ect. those are the things that need to happen before a beta. then the program will be able to show/add/remove and save lvz ini's. the basics... i know. but monumental leaps as far as im concerned. F#$k Windows Calculator. The Number "16" can suffer in everlasting torment, cast deep into the scorching fires of -*BAD WORD*-.

Layering pretty much 100%. sublayer order determined by layer/orderadded. A sample of a background type zone. All layers and display modes can be toggled on and off. clicking on lvz's on screen will cause them to become selected.

every step forward usually ends up involving a couple steps back.

http://www.sscentral.com/zignotzag/conted5.jpg the last major thing needed appears. the manager form. it can show all the images on screen, originating from a certain tile, and all the current objects selected. clicking a entry here causes the offending object to be highlighted with an orange border. most likely include image actual name here instead of just id

ya, snapping is just an option. i would recommend to keep in mind for further ventures. you dont have to snap to anything with the lvz. but it could make your job easier if you design future lvz's accordingly

does anyone know which zones actually use a 16 bit or higher tileset?

i know!! forget all about starcraft. control your desires to rip all your graphics from other places. and make something original. just a thought.

hmmm, check the AGP settings in the BIOS?...? hehe doesnt sound promising to me, but...if you havent looked....