Welcome to ZDF!

Sticky wrote:Enjay getting broadband is the best thing to happen to this forum in a long time.

Enjay's no longer on the crappy dial-up he was perpetually whinging about? Hooray!

To Enjay:

Yes, please, I'd like to see this Christmas mod you put together. Could you send me a download address, pretty please?

Yes, I can finally ditch my crappy old dial up for most things - still need to hang on to it for a couple of things ATM. My broadband may not be quite as good as some peoples. Being at the end of an 11km line means occasional drop outs and slow connections but most of the time it's great.

As for the Christmas compilation - I tried to upload it to my lycos examples site, but I think the file size is too big. It got rejected once the upload had completed. I don't think it likes files much over 1mb and this mod is just over 3.

If anyone want's to host the file, I'll happily send it to them. Maybe I could use the ftp service provided by Krillancello from the other thread?

Enjay wrote: Being at the end of an 11km line

Ouch, that's long. Is it just for you?

No, our entire village. For some reason we are connected to an exchange "nearby" in a place called Kinellar. However, we are not really sure why. Kinellar is part of the 'phone system for the nearby city of Aberdeen, but our postal region is Inverurie. The town of Inverurie is much closer and Inverurie has had broadband enabled exchanges for some time now. Our village is the last on the Kinellar line. So we are probably the furthest village out of Aberdeen to still have an Aberdeen 'phone number. People less than 1/4 of a mile nearer Inverurie are on the Inverurie exchange and get much clearer phone lines, much less in the way of problems and have had broadband (without all the hassle I had to get it) for some time now. We have asked to be transferred to the Inverurie exchange, but it's not going to happen.

As the telephone engineer who came out explained to me, being on the end of such a long line has a number of disadvantages. There is general deterioration of signal due to the length of the cable. There is an increased chance of the cable failing at some point. There is an increased chance of interference (everyone in the village can hear a quiet tick, tick, tick on their phone line which apparently is due to a perfectly legal electric cattle fence about 3 miles away). Also, the history of the line is a contributory factor. It is a single cable that was originally intended to serve far less houses than are now in the village. (Witness the number of wires attached to the telephone pole that, ironically, is in my garden.) If you want a second 'phone line in your house now, they have to split your existing line. There is no spare capacity on the cable. (A split line is no use for broadband - at this distance at least - as one of the villagers found out to his cost.) Everyone on the line shares the same cable until a few hundred yards just out of the village where the line splits to go off to the different houses. And there's more. A nearby village (about 3 miles closer to the exchange) used to use the same cable. However, quite a few new houses were built in that village so a second cable was put in to service them. This second cable was drawn through the same conduit as the original cable. As it was pulled through, it grazed the existing cable in a number of places. This wasn't enough to make the cable fail straight away. However, it has meant that every now and again, over the 6 years or so since the new cable was laid, the original cable simply fails.

And we still pay the same price for our service as someone who lives right next to the exchange because we get at least the minimum standard of acceptable service as laid down in the guidelines.

Bah!

Ugh... and I thought the German Telekom is bad...

So how about sabotaging the cable so that they have to replace it completely?

Graf Zahl wrote:So how about sabotaging the cable so that they have to replace it completely?

Heh, we have considered quite a few paths of extreme action - including (in the wee small hours, once the alcohol has removed any chance of sensible proposals) blunt objects blunt, large objects inserted into telecom area manager's orifices.

However, our last best hope is that there are plans for quite a few more houses in the village. Whilst the thought of the village being expanded, and thereby changed, does not really appeal to most residents, there may be spin off advantages - like having to put a new 'phone cable in to service the new houses.

Well, I am very happy that you discuss that much, but could you be so kind and get back to topic?!

thinking about it, this wouldn't be a bad idea. You could make weird looking flamerthrowers if you had access over particles

Finally ;(

One word: fireworks.

Some sort of particle description system akin to jDooms would be very nice... sort of in the same vein as decaldef.

Also, textured particles.

Enjay wrote:

Graf Zahl wrote:So how about sabotaging the cable so that they have to replace it completely?

Heh, we have considered quite a few paths of extreme action - including (in the wee small hours, once the alcohol has removed any chance of sensible proposals) blunt objects blunt, large objects inserted into telecom area manager's orifices.

However, our last best hope is that there are plans for quite a few more houses in the village. Whilst the thought of the village being expanded, and thereby changed, does not really appeal to most residents, there may be spin off advantages - like having to put a new 'phone cable in to service the new houses.

I'll tell you what, Enjay... You know where Mintlaw is? From what I understand, you can just walk in to the "shed" that holds most of the equipment for broadband in that village. BT doesn't lock the thing up, for some odd reason, and it's near Mintlaw's old train station (that is obviously out of use for some years now.) That means it's very close to where vandals are doing most of their mischief (SP) in the train station...

One could have a little fun with it in there... and I've heard of someone thinking about it, just to prove his point with BT... But then that would mean that he would be out of broadband until they replace the equipment...

-M.

Risking Tormentors wrath about off topicness...

I don't know if Mintlaw has its own exchange or not. The telephone engineer who told me all the other stuff said that BT has basically done away with most, if not all, of their little sheds and sub-exchanges in favour of long lines from the main exchanges. Many of the sheds and grey boxes still exist, but are no longer functional and BT simply plan to sell them, and the land they stand on, to anyone with reason and cash enough to buy one.

Anyway, back on topic, kind of, I've uploaded the extended compilation mod using the exe that has particle snow to my web space. Seeing as how it is a compilation of quite a few other mods, I'll not put in on "general release" but if anyone really wants to know where it is, let me know and I'll give you the link. Remeber, it uses a mod of Zdoom.exe version 1.17c so an install into its own directory is highly recomended.

The mod itself is 10 levels (many quite small), nearly all from existing Christmas mods culled from the idgames archive with only the most minor of tweaks from me to make the whole thing tie in. Nearly all (maybe all) monsters have been replaced but only with minimal dehacked work, like changing a monsters radius to tie in with the sprites etc. Again, most of the sprites were obtained from the idgames archive, but I did a few myself. Other TC type stuff is also present - music, sounds, textures but weapons are basically untouched.

Like I said, let me know.

@Enjay - Feel my vengeance!!!! Damnit, you know, that offtopicness enlarges the fact, that this thread won't ever be a new feature in the next ZDoom, if there is just stuff which has nothing to do about particles!