Back to work on it soon, really! (January 1st, 2010)

[Cless]

It's been another unproductive month for me since posting the last update here. I was working on a personal project for most of the last month anyway, and most of the hard work for that is done, and I've got more time.

Incidentally, I'm beginning to feel motivated again. Give me about a week to get over this cold I currently have and I should be good to go again for a while.

I really don't think there are too many good excuses remaining as to why this has not been completed and released yet. I'm not going to make anymore excuses for myself, unless something really serious happens.

[DeadlyAnGeL91792]

YESSS!!!!! lol im truly still waiting for your patch before i play through ToP.

p.s HAPPY NEW YEAR CLESS!!!!!

[Penance]

Yaaaay!!
Glad to see you're almost ready to progress.

btw, any chance of a PM reply in the next few weeks?

[DuskShark]

That's great to hear.

...I need to finish ToP.

[Cless]

Cless sighs

This is going to sound really bloody lame, but I'm going to have to keep my computer usage to a minimum over the next several days. Why? Because my main hard disk has decided that now is the time to start acting up. (don't worry--even if this drive goes kaput, the projects are SAFE)

I just dropped $350 I don't have to replace it with a SOLID STATE drive, an extra normal hard disk to make up the lack of space on the SSD, and the full version of Windows 7.

A healthy hard drive does not perform like this, and I do not trust it enough to last long with regular usage:



Not to mention, the slowdowns that occur during regular usage are infuriating.


At the very least, I do have some good news of this temporary mess: As of a few days ago, Habilain informed me that he resumed hacking in earnest and will be able to work on it for the forseeable future.

[Penance]

...
I thought the hacking was finished?

[Cless]

He's working on non-essential extra stuff, but stuff that is nice to have anyways.

[Penance]

Oooo, sounds interesting ^^.

[bajol]

what does that mean?
you can´t work on the project the next few days?
now that I thought it was going to be released soon.
well, I hope that wont, at least, harm your personal affairs,
and good luck with the project, dont ever give up on what you believe!

[Cless]

I was concerned that heavy computer work would cause the drive to die faster as I wait for my new drives and Windows 7 disc to arrive (ordered from Newegg and they won't be delivered until Thursday).

But I have to admit that, oddly, the "dying" drive seems to have kicked itself back into gear again. I still have my doubts as to whether or not I can completely trust it, so I have set my backup program to do an incremental backup to a known healthy drive every hour for critical files.

I'm still keeping my usage to a minimum, however--The personal project mentioned in the opening post of this thread is still going on; it's very, very important, and I absolutely need my computer to be up and alive for it. I really want to work on ToP right now, but I just can't risk this. If I had another PC available, I'd definitely use that, but all I have is this one desktop.

[Cless]

Time to get this stuff installed, get my programs reinstalled, and get back to work.

[Heimdallr]

Good luck with the upgrade.  I built a new computer with Windows 7 x64 recently and I had quite a few bluescreens before it started to stabilize. x_x

[Cless]

I'm still getting settled in, but I haven't had any serious trouble with 7 x64 Pro (used the RC of Ultimate from its release up until today as primary OS).

On a side note, even though my SSD is Intel's "low-end" solution, it absolutely kicks ass. The speed of disk-intensive operations for project work has increased five fold. Repacking a 2GB packfile takes over five minutes on a conventional, modern spindle hard disk...and 65-70 seconds on this thing! Before hooking the thing up, I did some math based on the advertised specs of the thing and figured 70 seconds would be like a best-case-scenario-type of thing and probably wouldn't actually happen in real-world usage. I set my expectations at 120 seconds to do the job. I was amazed that the performance was actually up there in the "best case scenario"!

The drive is small, but you can bet I'll be temporarily copying over PS2 projects to this thing whenever I work on them. The time it takes to create a test build for those things was always irritating, and this'll help a ton.

[ClesStahn]

I really want to work on ToP right now, but I just can't risk this.

Absolutely. Do what you need to do, man.

Glad to hear that all of the new upgrades and such are going well--it is always nice when that happens, heh.

[Cless]

Okay, I think I've installed just about everything that matters. Productivity on my end begins tomorrow and not a day later (it's nearly bed time).

[Heimdallr]

Glad to hear it's going well for you so far.

On a side note, even though my SSD is Intel's "low-end" solution, it absolutely kicks ass. The speed of disk-intensive operations for project work has increased five fold. Repacking a 2GB packfile takes over five minutes on a conventional, modern spindle hard disk...and 65-70 seconds on this thing! Before hooking the thing up, I did some math based on the advertised specs of the thing and figured 70 seconds would be like a best-case-scenario-type of thing and probably wouldn't actually happen in real-world usage. I set my expectations at 120 seconds to do the job. I was amazed that the performance was actually up there in the "best case scenario"!

That sounds pretty sweet.  I'd get a SSD if the ones with a lot of space weren't so expensive (I tend to use a lot of drive space so a small one is out of the question). =(