Well one thing led to the next and I found out that there is headsets that have mics on them (The apple store sells them for around $30). The cool thing here is that you can go to the App Store on your iPod and download skype!

With both the microphone headset and skype on your phone, you can make full calls, CRYSTAL CLEAR I MIGHT ADD, as long as you have a wifi connection (Which most users do).

The neat thing is that I pay around $70 per year to skype and 90% of the time i’m either at home (With Wireless) or in the office, which also has wireless. This means I can save myself a lot of money for phone calls by using skype, getting the benefit of North American calling as well (Full long distance!!).

So if you dont have the cash to shell out for an iPhone or just done want to sign up to the bloody contract (Like Me) and be sucked into all the hype, then GET YOURSELF AN iPod Touch for like $200 and install skype to make phone calls from your iPod Touch!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!

And best part, there is only one fee you pay to skype every year, not a monthly fee like the other big guys!

Anyways hope that helps some of you out. BTW: My iPod touch is the latest 3rd Gen iPod.

Nav

The reason why this has happened in many cases is due to a new software program or several software programs recently installed all conflicting. You must un-install these softwares, however in most cases you really dont know what software did it, especially if you installed several programs.

The fix? SYSTEM RESTORE!

If you’ve ever had this glitch, here are steps to solve it:

1. Firstly, log into safe mode by restarting your system and before entering windows, hit the F8 key
2. Select safe mode and log in as Administrator
3. Once into windows, go to Start->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore
4. Restore your system to a date when you guaranteed did not have the problem
5. Once restored, test your system, you should not have any issues.

If this did not help you out, then you could try restoring to an even earlier date. If that still doesn’t work, go into safe mode and scan for viruses or spyware. If still no solution, your best bet is to reformat and re-install windows, but thats a route that is the very last resort. If by some crazy chance it is still happening after a fresh copy of windows is installed, you could be looking at a physical hard drive problem.

Good luck and I hope this helps some of you out there

Nav

I thought it rather unfair that I had to put my credit card in for free stuff, until I realized that there is a workaround to this!

Note: I’m assuming you have not been successful in creating an iTunes store account so if you have one, this article wont matter for you. It is a article for the newbs or the security conscious who do not want to enter their credit card info and just downloading the free apps.

SETTING UP AN ITUNES STORE ACCOUNT FOR FREE (WITHOUT HAVING TO PUT IN YOUR CREDIT CARD):

1. Open iTunes on your computer
2. Go to Store
3. FIRST Find a FREE APP
4. Select the app to download/purchase
5. When it asks to create an account, create a new account
6. When the option comes to enter credit card information, you will notice that this time it actually has the option called “NONE”. Select this option and finish filling in all your details.
7. Once done, check your email and complete the registration
8. Now you will have your new iTunes Store account. Go to your iPhone/iPod Touch App Store icon and select any free app you want.
9. Enter in your username and password which you made for the iTunes Store
10. VOILA!!!!! YOU NOW CAN DOWNLOAD ALL THE FREE APPS YOU WANT!!!

Congratulations, you just saved yourself from entering your credit card info and now you can get all the free apps you want from the app store on your iPhone/iPod Touch!

Enjoy!

Nav
Abhiware.com
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Anyways, lets get on with it:

TO SETUP YOUR iPod/iPhone you will need:
A. An Internet Connection
B. The iPod/iPhone
C. The USB Cable for the iPod/iPhone

All the above items except for the Internet Connection come with the iPod/iPhone.

1. When you first get your iPod Touch/iPhone you will realize that the BLOODY THING DOESN’T GO RIGHT TO THE FAMOUS SCREEN WITH ALL THE ICONS!!! Don’t panic, the people at apple have forced you to download the iTunes software before you can use your iPod. (iTunes is pretty good okay okay I’ll admit it is much sexier than Windows Media Player)

GO TO THE ITUNES WEBSITE (http://www.itunes.com) AND DOWNLOAD THE LATEST ITUNES (Make sure you download the one for your system or else it will ask you to re-download and install!!! If you have a 64 bit system, download the 64 bit version, if you have a 32 bit system, then download the 32 bit version…Dont worry there are only 2 versions so if one doesn’t work, just download the other one)

NOTE: DO NOT PLUG IN YOUR iPod YET!!!!

2. After you install iTunes, PLUG IN YOUR iPod/iPhone
3. Follow the onscreen registration instructions
4. Let the software do what its got to do

And now if you’ve done everything correctly, the iPod/iPhone will be ready to use.

To confirm this, press the on button (top left of the iPod/iPhone) and then slide the slider with your finger and you should be right into the iPod/iPhone!

CONGRATULATIONS, Your iPod/iPhone is now working and can be used on your computer as well and you can start downloading everything you need.

HOPE THIS SAVES YOU PEOPLE TIME AND MONEY AS IT TOOK ME ALMOST 2 DAYS TO FIGURE IT OUT WHEN I GOT MY iPhone LAST YEAR! LOL!!!

Enjoy,

Nav

HOPE THIS LIST HELPS SOME OF YOU OUT THERE!

<a href = “www.site.com”>…</a> – Anchor Tag: Used to put a website link or an email on your site.
<b>…</b> – Bold Tag: Any text between this tag will become bold
<i>…</i> – Italics Tag: Any text between this tag will become italic
<p></p> – Used to start a new paragraph
<table></table> – Used to create a table
<tr></tr> – Used to create rows inside a table usually within a table tag
<td></td> – Used to create columns inside a table, usually within a row tag
<pre></pre> – Used to create pre-formatted text
<br> – Used as a new line or break
<center>…</center> – Used to center items
<font>…</font> – Used to define a new font or font details and attributes
<form>…</form> – Used when grabbing user input to be transmitted over to another page
<h1> to <h6> – Used for creating various headers
<hr> – Horizontal Rule (Creates a line across the page)
<img> – Used to place an image into the page
<li>…</li> – Used to create a list item, usually inside of an ol or ul tag
<ol>…</ol> -  Creates an ordered list
<select>…</select> – Creates a combo box
<option>…</option> – Creats an item in a combo box, usually inside of a select tag
<u>…</u> – Underline Tag: Any text between this tag will become underlined

Nav
Abhiware.com
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How do you fix this?

Well firstly, you need to log into your router!

Let us begin now with logging into a router. Firstly, most routers will work using the following IP addresses:
192.168.0.1
192.168.1.1
192.168.2.1

If your router does not list the actual ip address on the bottom of it (Where all the info about the router is) try typing in the above ip’s in your browser address bar, and one of them should lead you to your router.

Next, most routers have the following user names and passwords if they are directly out of the box or from the factory:

COMMON USERNAMES AND PASSWORDS FOR MOST ROUTERS
Username: admin
Password: admin

Username: administrator
Password: password

Username: administrator
Password: admin

Username: administrator
Password: (LEAVE THIS FIELD BLANK!)

So that’s logging into your router. Usually all linksys and d-link routers feature the above. Should you have another router (for example, a motorola we have used had the ip 192.168.10.1) then check the bottom of it and it should lead you to what your routers basic factory ip is.

Once in your routers administration page, you can access all the functions you need from updating a wireless WEP security key to even setting the DHCP range!

BTW if you have setup a printer on a static IP and it no longer works, check to see that the DHCP range set in your router does not include the IP of the printer or else the printer will have the issue where some days it works and some days it doesn’t! THIS IS A VERY COMMON PROBLEM! Simply make sure the DHCP range on your router is outside of the printers, so for example if your printer is set to like 192.168.1.101, set your DHCP range to be between 192.168.1.102 to 192.168.1.152 rather than from 192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.150.

Hope this info helps some of you get into and setup your routers.

Abhiware
Need a website? Give us a call! 416-912-8289
OR Email: sales@abhiware.com

WINDOWS KEY + D = Minimize all Windows and go straight to desktop (No more minimizing one window at a time!)

WINDOWS KEY + E = File Explorer

WINDOWS KEY + U = Accessibility Programs like Microsoft Narrator, Magnifyer and more!

WINDOWS KEY + R = Run Command

WINDOWS KEY + F = Find

WINDOWS KEY + L = Lock Computer

WINDOWS KEY + M = Minimize windows

WINDOWS KEY + SHIFT + M = Maximize windows

WINDOWS KEY + PAUSE/BREAK = Control Panel

ALT + TAB = Switch between windows

ALT + CTRL + DEL = Task Manager (Or locking computer in a windows server environment)

CTRL + C = Copy Selected Items

CTRL + V = Paste Selected Items

CTRL + Z = Undo Previous Action

CTRL + Y = Redo Previous Action

CTRL + S = Save

CTRL + P = Print

Hope these keyboard shortcuts help some of you save time and money (COPY AND PASTE ARE HUGE TIME SAVERS!)
Nav

So lets start off by first a little bit of theory. Firstly there are 2 areas of modeling. One is modeling for RENDERING, and one is modeling for GAMES. When we model for Rendering, we are modeling at the highest quality possible because our end product will be used for a movie or television show or other graphical application OTHER than a video game, OR for CINEMATICS in a video game. Modeling for rendering takes up A LOT of memory, space, time, etc. To give you an idea, a single frame can take as much as an HOUR to render to DAYS depending on what is being rendered! In these cases, many frames are done simultaneously by many systems so that the rendering can be done fast.

Modeling for video games is VERY different as we are concerned about REAL TIME RENDERING! The amount of triangles your model has can greatly effect a games performance! This being said, it will take a lot of tweaking to get the right balance between game speed and graphic quality (number of polygons) equal so that you get the maximum speed and the maximum graphic quality (number of polygons) possible.

Below is a technical chart showing the balance between these two areas:

As you can see, depending on what kind of game you’re creating, you’ll want to model a certain way.

Now remember, as game creators we need to decide what platform we are programming for and from a business perspective, that will determine where on the chart we want to model for. For example if we are creating PC games, it would be great to program in the blue area at the top level graphic level (And by graphics I mean polygon count, that doesn’t mean you can’t get the best looking models in lower polygons because you can and there are tools to help you do this) but as a business decision this would not be good as the majority of users and households have a mid range system with an on board graphics card. You’d only be marketing to those who have a graphics card, however most end users have on-board or basic graphics processors. This means that the only people to buy your game would be game enthusiasts or graphics artists, which is not a large market vs the mass public who have mid range computer systems with an on-board graphics card.

Thats the PC market and you want to make MORE sales so you can fund your future game projects! If however you are coding for CONSOLES like Playstation or XBOX then higher graphics will be fine as your market is now on XBOX or Playstation users who will all have the same hardware.

Most Indies have their first games on computer as thus this is the area that most indies start creating games for. Hence why the RED area is the best for this which will hit most systems AND get great gameplay and quality at the same time.

If you’re making a 2D game, then you can choose the lower systems as well.

Okay so now that you’ve decided on an area to model for, (In Macrion: The Beginning, we are focusing on the Red area as our first launch will be for PC only) we will now want to decide on model level counts.

In game theory the idea is that the further we move from an object, the smaller it gets, so there is no point in rendering 10,000 triangles when the object is occupying only a few pixels on the physical screen! You might as well just have those 5 pixels lit up with the colors of the object which would save your processing speed which would mean a MUCH faster game!

That being said, in the game modeling world we have a term called LOD or Levels Of Detail! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Without having various levels of detail, a game can slow to a crawl and become unplayable, even if it has the best graphics. Game play is important and without it, a game is not a game!

So now in Macrion we have model polygon (Triangle) targets:

5-10k max polygons: Main game character
1-2k max polygons: NPC (Non-Player Characters)
1k max polygons: Level 1 detail (highest detail for game)
750 polygons: Level 2 detail (mid-high detail for game)
500 polygons: Level 3 detail (mid level detail for game)
250 polygons: Level 4 detail (low-mid level for game)
100 polygons or less: Level 5 (low level for game)

So what this means is that as the object moves away from the camera, we want to display the lower polygon version of the object and as the object comes closer to the camera, we display the higher version. This will help us in making the game move faster than if we were rendering all polygons at the same time.

Here is a flower that will be in Macrion: The Beginning with all 5 levels of detail (As well as the first image as the original model with 6000 polygons approximately) close up (We will also display other models from the game as we make them in future posts so users can see our progress):

As you can see above, the same flower is shown with the various levels there. We use Milkshape 3D to create all our models and animations and in a future post I will go over how to actually create this flower from scratch using reference images.

To give you an idea, the reference images we used to create the flower are below:

Okay so that in a nutshell is modeling for game programming. Modeling for rendering is a different thing all together and this is where 3d artists will differ. The tools used to create models are different based on what you are doing and the model quality will differ greatly based on that.

Hope that helps give you an idea of modeling for game creation.

Until next post!

Nav