I'm currently working on a Windows Azure project. A collegue of mine who is oOur Technical Lead on the project (Peter Jones is currently up at PDC showing some of the stuff we've been working on.

He got the chance to see some of the Azure Server containers running. These things are basically like a shipping container racked out with hundreds of servers. Apparently they can get one of these racks up in running in 4 hours of it arriving at it's deployment location!

Pete got a short video clip of what the server looks and sounds like. That is some heavy hardware.

Mark Russinovich (one of the old SysInternals team, now part of Microsoft) has posted an extremely interesting article about memory usage on windows systems.  It goes very deep into the details of how Windows allocates and accesses memory, and explains more about how the 4GB limit works on 32 bit systems.

Go and check it out here.

I currently use 32 bit (x86) Windows Vista for my home machine, and I've been wary of using a 64 bit OS for a while because of driver issues, and software incompatibility problems.  However I've been using 64 bit (x64) Windows Vista for my work machine since I started at Straylight Studios (which I must blog about soon), and I believe that it is coming time for me to make the jump at home, certainly for my next computer which I'm saving up for.

The main issue with a 64 bit version of windows is driver compatibility.  Older hardware may not have 64 bit drivers which makes them unusable, however pretty much any new hardware which is built in the Vista era should have 64 bit drivers.

Internet Explorer Issues

Also, in the past I've had the perception that there is problems with 32 bit software compatibility on 64 bit Windows.  I say perception because I'm slowly learning that there are not that many problems.  I'm quite fond of the IE7Pro plugin for Internet Explorer and for quite a while I had real issues installing it.  I kept installing it but the icon didn't appear in the bottom right corner of the browser window and none of the functionality worked.  It took me quite some time to figure out that it had actually installed okay, but I didn't realise that Vista x64 has two separate copies of the Program Files folder; one for 32 bit apps, and one for 64 bit apps.  It also has two copies of Internet Explorer; one 32 bit version and one 64 bit version.  I had installed the 64 bit version of IE7Pro, and was defaulted to running the 32 bit version of Internet Explorer.

So the solution was to either default to the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer, or to install the 32 bit version of IE7Pro.  I tried running the 64 bit version of Internet Explorer but I soon gave that up because a lot of the IE plugins such as Shockwave Flash (which is required for a large percentage of video sites on the internet) don't like running on that version.  I then installed the 32 bit version of IE7Pro (you can install both versions side by side, so long as you use a different install folder for each) and now I have it working perfectly well.  There is a minor issue with the crash recovery functionality of IE7Pro on this configuration, but the development team are aware of it and are currently working on a fix.

Windows Explorer Issues

The only other outstanding problem that I've been having with Vista x64 is with Windows Explorer plugins.  More to the point, the plugins and programs work just fine, but some installers don't seem to be able to set up the context menu items for files and folders.  I believe (although I may be wrong) that this is purely an installer issue.

For instance the Agent Ransack file search program that I use does not correctly set up a right click context menu, however the application works perfectly fine.  If it becomes a major annoyance for me then I'll just set up a context menu by hand in the registry editor, but for now I'm happy with it.

On the other hand the TreeSize application (for showing you how big each folder is hierarchically) installs a right click context menu just fine, as does the Bulk Rename Utility (BRU) (an application for bulk renaming large amounts of files in a folder).

Critical mass

I believe that there is also a certain amount of critical mass required for 64 bit.  Once more and more people start using it, more and more developers will start developing for it.  So lets start using it everyone.

 

I'd love to hear your comments on your experiences with 64 bit Windows, both good and bad.

My wife must love me.

I was checking out trademe the other day and happened across a very cheap factory recertified MSI Nvidia GeForce 7800GTX video card, pretty much identical to the Gigabyte one that I currently already use, for only $200NZD.  The normal retail for this is over $500NZD.  I thought to myself that it would be bloody nice to set up as SLI in my system, but I didn't have the pocket money, and we are going into a financially tight time coming up to christmas with the kids so I just thought that was the end of it.

My wonderful wife disappeared and came back half an hour later and said that I could buy it; she had shuffled some money around so that we could buy it out of the family account.

So now I have a great twin 7800GTX SLI rig.  It's awesome.  My 3DMark scores have almost doubled, and I can bump up to almost maximum video quality settings in most games. 

I'm just loving playing Half-Life 2 Episode 2 with full shadows and no noticeable slowdowns.  Half Life creeps the sh!t out of me at the best of times but now it's even better especially when you see the shadow of a Headcrab Zombie coming around the corner.  I also like when you're holding something up with the gravity gun (like a circular saw blade with a Zombie's name on it) and the flashlight on, and getting accurate shadows on the walls.

I initially had some a problem with the computer shutting down when an intensive graphics application started, but I juggled my power connections around so that the two video cards get enough power.  I definitely recommend a good quality power supply if you are setting up an SLI rig.

The only issue that I have now is that with some games (well, only one in particular) when you exit the normal Windows Vista screen doesn't reappear.  It just remains black.  I can blindly run a reboot command, and as soon as the reboot starts the screen will reappear before windows shuts down, but it's still a pain in the arse.

Anyway, I know that my wife doesn't read my blog, but thanks sweetheart!  She definitely must love me if she's helping me buy something which can only make me want to spend MORE time on my computer.

 

I finally got my motherboard back from being sent away for warranty repair (see here) and i'm not at all suprised to see that even though the board was marked as "repaired", it is just the same as before.  In fact now i'm having some weird issues where Vista gets into a state where the UI seems to be responsive but no applications actually seem to get their messages about mouseclicks or anything.  It's annoying as hell.  I have to physically reboot the machine to recover.

It's been a while since I've posted so I figure I should keep everyone in the loop.

I was planning to get a whole lot of work done over the christmas break, but ended up spending heaps of time with my wife and kids, which was probably more fun anyway.

Getting back to work was hectic because we are in new offices so I've been rebuilding the network and trying to keep up with coding jobs as well.

Last week I installed Vista on my home machine which runs great, short of the lack of drivers for either of the available ADSL modems that I have.  I ended up having to revert to building an old computer and running it without a monitor as a gateway machine.  It is appropriately named R2D2 on my home network.

During the period of installing Vista and trying to get the ADSL modems working on it I had to reboot lots of times.  Unfortunately I'm having further issues with my Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Pro motherboard (see here and here). 

The problem that I am having is that when I turn the computer on it will power up for a couple of seconds and then reboot (you can hear the drives recycling and the fans resetting), then powers for a couple of seconds, then reboots, etc.

This will happen anywhere from 4 times or more. I've seen it cycle more than a dozen times before, but I usually turn it off again before it does it too many times for fear of causing permanent damage to the computer. If the rebooting does stop then it won't load up the video card (a Gigabyte 7800GTX card) and the computer will continue to load into windows but without the video card working. At this point I have to turn it off again to try again.

This happens at least 19 out of 20 times that I turn it on. Getting the machine to boot up is a labourious task because of this; it can take over 30 minutes or more to get it to turn on successfully.  This definately made installing Vista a problem, especially due to the fact that I needed to open the box a bunch of times and twiddle with the internal PCI ADSL modem.

Usually I avoid the problem by not turning off my computer, but after last week I decided to get something sorted out about it.

I think it must be an incompatibility with the motherboard and my Pentium D 830 CPU, which is supposed to be supported but I'm not entirely sure.

Unfortunately the only option to get it sorted was to send it back to the supplier in australia, and it could take a couple of weeks to sort out, so once again I am without a decent computer to code on.  On top of that my source code repository (running on SourceGear Vault) is on that computer so I can't even code on my laptop.

I have been doing a bit of work creating tilesets however, so during this downtime I might attempt to get a better set of graphics for my TileEngine prototypes.  I've been working on some cave wall tilesets, plus some better brick walls, and also some road floor tiles and roadsigns etc.

I was just thinking about the new domain (http://buzzrick.true.geek.nz).  If I change my blog to this URL what will this do for my google ranking (which I am quite happy with at the moment)?  Will my rank dissappear?  or will google be smart enough to figure out that it's actually the same site?

If anyone has any knowledge about how this works then I'd be dead keen to hear.  Just post a comment below.

Just a note to say that I've just set up a new domain for this blog, and I will slowly migrate my links over to it. 

you can now get to the site via http://buzzrick.true.geek.nz

Aside from that, I am still making progress with my TileEngine game platform, however I've been too busy with work and life and house renovations and car accidents and stuff to keep this updated.

I've been very keen to do more work in Jason's SpriteMaker, but I haven't been able to spend much time on that yet either, but hopefully I'll get some time in the next week and post an update.

I have been continuing with my data serialization, which is going very well.  I can now load different levels and all of the actors in it.

Anyway, back to the real world.  I'll be off to Microsoft TechEd in Auckland the week after next, but I hope to post more info soon.

At the start of December I sent my replacement motherboard (a Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI royal) away because the chipset fan was grinding.  It was really loud, and I was hoping to use the machine for the Visual Studio launch and it would have been distracting. 

The suppliers said that in order to get a replacement fan I would need to send away the whole motherboard. 

I thought okay, I've waited this long.  I can wait another weekend without the computer.  That was back at the start of December.  My supplier sent the motherboard back to their supplier at which point they couldn't get me a replacement, so I went on the backorder list. 

Time dragged on, and I kept contacting the supplier to see the status, and the ETA kept being pushed back.  My computer has been sitting in my office at home gathering dust and getting obsolete.  I asked for my old motherboard back, and I would buy a replacement fan myself, however they couldn't find the old motherboard (which AFAIK is still in perfect working condition).

After 3 months I'd had enough and I agreed to take a Gigabyte GA-8N-SLI Pro motherboard as a replacement.  It is basically exactly the same motherboard as the GA-8N-SLI Royal but with a few less components soldered on.  In fact it even has the SAME CHIPSET FAN that I needed to have replaced on my original board.

Well, at this point I didn't care;  I just wanted a working computer so that I could get back into modelling and programming, and playing some games of course.

So I get the motherboard installed and I get all excited and fire up a game.  After an hour or so the computer completely locks up.  The image on the screen doesn't move.  The keyboard doesn't respond.  Even the power button doesn't work.  The only thing that I can do is turn it off at the switch at the back.   And it was quite duplicatable too.  I couldn't run anything that exercised the computer for more than an hour.

This is right back to square one.  I had this problem right back when I first bought the computer.  I assumed that it was a power supply problem, or perhaps it was related to the motherboard not correctly supporting the Pentium D CPU (hence the first issue with the BIOS update I talked about back here).

So after talking to the tech guys they suggest that it is a RAM problem.  I'm running Corsair Value Select DDR2 667 Dual Channel memory (VS1GBKIT667D2), which I thought and have heard is great quality RAM.  I downloaded and ran MemTest86, and I got multiple errors. 

I talked to the guys that I bought the RAM from (not the same suppliers as the motherboard) and they suggested that it could be incompatible with the gigabyte motherboard.  That sounds a fairly shady description to me, I mean after all, it is Corsair memory.

Anyway I have sent the memory back to the suppliers and they will test it.  If it turns out that it is faulty then they will replace it, otherwise they'll help me find a replacement.

*sigh*

So it's been nearly 8 months since I bought this leading edge computer.  The fastest video card.  A great motherboard (and even though I've had so many problems with it, I still believe it's a great motherboard).  An excellent dual core CPU.  Lots of RAM.

However, if I spent the same amount of money today that I spent back at the start of August last year, then I would have an even more powerful machine.  Component prices have dropped over that period, and newer, better components have arrived on the market.

In fact when I saw that nVidia had released their new GeForce 7900 GTX video card I almost cried.  This card appears to be approx 1 1/2 times the speed of my GeForce 7800 GTX with twice the memory, and uses less power.  And it probably costs the same as I paid for the 7800.

At the rate that things are going I wont have a working computer until a full Moores Law cycle.  I feel like I have wasted so much money.

A friend said that I should have just bought an off the shelf computer, but I still disagree.  If I bought something off the shelf I would have paid probably one and a half, to two times the price, plus I wouldn't have been able to get some of the components and features that I wanted.

He is half right though.  I have no one to blame for this.  There is no way that I can get the wasted time and dollars back.

Urgh!  I have to apologise for the lack of updates.  I haven't written a line of code for over a month.  My laptop has been rendered unusable since I installed the latest Visual Studio release client (I can type standard characters, but my arrow keys, shift keys, enter keys, etc don't work in VS) and my new desktop machine at home is still having crashing problems (it locks up when running high CPU applications)

I think i'm nearing a breakthrough on my desktop, but I should get off my butt and re-install visual studio on the laptop.

 

On a side note, I was contacted by a guy asking if I had any tutorials.  Well, I don't yet, but I think it would be a great idea for me to do some in the future.  I was thinking of perhaps posting some Lua tutorials and maybe some AI stuff, but we'll see how I go. 

In the mean time, I thought I'd post a link to Amit's Game Programming Information site.  He has some great tutorials which I've used in the past, including tile based graphics and scripting tutorials, and some I plan to use in the future, including A* path finding and artificial intelligence.  Thanks Amit!

Now that I have my new motherboard replacement I'm looking at the following two focuses for the game platform.

• Firstly, I want to get actors up and running.  This is all of the NPCs and monsters etc.
• Secondly I want to get the platform into shape so that I can release a version with the map editor working more seamlessly, so that all of you out there can download it and start making your own maps and setting up game scripts.

Sound fun?  Is there anyone out there that would be keen to have a shot at map making and possibly even scripting?

Yay!!!!

My motherboard has arrived back.  I haven't had a chance to install it yet and see if it has the new BIOS version, but at least I'll have a working machine.

So at this point development has been halted for now until I get my motherboard back.