Format a drive larger than 32Gb into FAT32 on modern Windows OS

IIRC Windows was restricting usage of FAT32 since Windows 2000, in favor of NTFS. And it is actually a good thing. NTFS is far superior than FAT32 in almost any aspect.

However, this activity come beyond reasonable amounts in my opinion. Simply put, you just can't format a drive larger than 32Gb into FAT32 using any modern Windows OS (Windows Vista/7/8, maybe even Windows XP). This is very, very annoying. I'm fine then you can't do something using standard approach, but I want be able to do that I want somehow, even if this is sounds unreasonable.

Now, users must fix that Microsoft must do itself. This utility (click on image to download) by fine fellas from Ridgecrop Consultants Ltd. do the thing. Since it's very valuable tool and "teh internets" fail us sometimes, here's a copy in the SkyDrive cloud.

Running Apache on Windows 8: port 80 occupied by System

If you are using Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012, and Apache service won't run (you have something like make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80 immediately after installation) what means that something occupies port 80, which is Apache is trying to use. You can use Tcpview tool to see what occupies port 80. Then I did that I saw that is was a process called "System". While "System" can actually refer to many system services, it seems that there are two common cases present:

1) Web Development Agent Service (MsDepSvc);
2) World Wide Web Publishing Service (W3SVC).

If disabling any of these servies does not help you can use some other tools to dig deeper in your quest of finding service responsible for port 80.

P.S. There is of course other solutions to that, most simple of which is changing port to which Apache will be listening.

XNA the end

This entry at Promit Roy's blog finally confirmes that any last hope of XNA should be left. This is, probably, better than nothing, however it was almost obvious with release of Windows 8 SDK with DirectX merged into it. Yet they gained some little respect at least from that point. This is, probably, the only point from which respect can be given.

First they they should say that earlier. Second, they should not drop XNA at all. Despite some negative aspects XNA was extremly intuitive and easy to work with. It was a huge success, enormous attention from developers of wide range of expecience, from novice to professionals. Terraria was written in XNA, a 1.5+ million sells title. They don't need even to add support for WinRT. Just a mere bugfixing, support and Visual Studio 2012 integration.

Enough rant. The question is, should you continue to use XNA? It, of course, depends. If you amateur or just started to learn game programming, it doesn't really matter, you can safely continue to write your first games. However, you can try to port your game to MonoGame to be ready for Windows 8. Last option is also to consider for writing your first more or less serious game, which, most probably you want it to evolve and live in future. Professionals can decide for thenselves I guess, but I guess XNA is no longer a valid option for pro game development.

jQuery "No Transport" error solution

If you get a "No Transport" error then making AJAX request using jQuery in Internet Explorer, then solution is as simple as adding:

$.support.cors = true;

before making your calls to

$.ajax(...)

For some other possible options take a look here.

Console isn't a box that run games

An interesting article called Why Xbox failed in Japan is worth reading despite it's pretty long.

Not only it describes Japan game market specifics, it's also pretty much shows that console market is very different from a PC, and a console is not just a computer which can run only games. Also it reveals much of "behind the scene" activity in console game development, some info on popular studios which are dedicated themselves to console game market - just as I said, it's worth reading for anyone interested in games and games market.

P.S. BTW, I think this article pretty much fails in answering it's main question, a lot of 'in American/Japanese way' references doesn't always mean a lot, really. But, still it's an excellent overview article.

Remaking Karateka

This is so awesome!

Why OUYA can be a failure

I was actually pretty excited then I first saw and read the concept of an OUYA. An open game console, isn't that great? But recently I've discovered some thing that missed somehow from me, but I think it's rather important:



This is a serious statement. All OUYA games will be a free-to-play. And most of free-to-play games are simple money-making machines, the legitimate rest are basically using "try before you buy" (shareware) or subscription model.

Serious gamers don't like free-to-play model at all. While it's still possible sell a game in more or less "standard" model in OUYA (as I guess), I think it's rather confusing that free-to-play model is enforced by a console which considered to be a most open game console ever? Absolute nonsense!

As a side effect this type of restriction is actually encourages and attract game developers who are specialized in free-to-play games, thus making a OUYA game marked flooded with "bad" games, which will prevent some "real" games in gaining popularity.

I think OUYA should remove this absurd limitation, if they want to name their console a truly open system. Not only this will attract more developers to console, it's also good for a future reputation of OUYA. I personally will not buy OUYA until this limitation is removed from a system.