• Darien H (unregistered)

    Fractional math? I like. (First post?)

  • PAG (unregistered)

    I hope it's not the only finalist with asm code embeded, I find it sooooo relaxing :-)

  • (cs)

    Assembler code AND XML in the same application????... you are the incarnation of Lucifer.

  • Comment lover (unregistered)

    Love the comment

  • Wyatt (unregistered)

    Not only that, it's SSE2 assembler code!!!

  • ParkinT (unregistered) in reply to rilarios
    rilarios:
    Assembler code AND XML in the same application????... you are the incarnation of Lucifer.
    Was it done on a WOODEN TABLE?
  • (cs)

    Hacking a railroad tycoon file for positive income? I found an easier way, make too much money and the game will do it for you, I couldn't spend money fast enough. Here's how, you want single point runs between cities, separate trains for each run, small number of cars to keep speed up and only passenger and mail cars. As the trains improve you can up the number of cars. Also you can add multi city freight trains to pick up that extra cash once the trains improve enough. I took over most of Europe this way but hit every limit in the game, no more trains, train stations, or track; and the money would overflow so every other yearly report would show me bankrupt only to have a killer year soon after.

  • (cs)

    erm, the Ti-85 already had a decimal to fraction converter built in... I guess his programmer friend would have done well in our contest.

  • Adam (unregistered)

    erm, the Ti-85 already had a decimal to fraction converter built in... I guess his programmer friend would have done well in our contest.

    I was thinking that too, but then I remembered that it doesn't work for really ugly decimals. Maybe his friend wanted to convert the really ugly ones, too?

    (Oooh, captcha: kungfu)

  • Rudolf (unregistered)

    This monster does, however, tick all the boxes for enterprisey software... [x] Optimized code, you don't want to waste cycles (aka money) on small equations like these [x] XML (You do need droolproof paper to present the specs tho) [x] Solution for problems that can arise are bound to be worth gold when you actually need them

    Nice entry

  • dkf (unregistered)

    Unlike finalists #5 and #6, this is an excellent entry. It sticks far more properly to the rules and has a really interesting mix of demented optimization (SSE2 assembly!) and absurd over-complication.

    But you can tell the author isn't a true XML wizzard. There are depths that can be plunged there that are truly not funny...

  • (cs) in reply to retnuh
    retnuh:
    Hacking a railroad tycoon file for positive income? I found an easier way, make too much money and the game will do it for you, I couldn't spend money fast enough. Here's how, you want single point runs between cities, separate trains for each run, small number of cars to keep speed up and only passenger and mail cars. As the trains improve you can up the number of cars. Also you can add multi city freight trains to pick up that extra cash once the trains improve enough. I took over most of Europe this way but hit every limit in the game, no more trains, train stations, or track; and the money would overflow so every other yearly report would show me bankrupt only to have a killer year soon after.

    My strategy was similar to that one. It was all a question of what you were allowed to do when you were in the red. First I'd sell off a bunch of bonds, so that I would have more than enough money to lay track everywhere on the map. Once all the track I could lay was done (hit zero dollars), I'd repay all the bonds. To drive myself even futher into debt, I would finally buy all my stations and trains. Then I would pretty much follow the same strategy you had :) Also, for some reason I never overflowed from positive back into negative, only negative into positive... maybe that was a result of the save game hack?

    PS: to those curious about the horrendous QBasic text game I made, I'll post it when I get home. I wasn't able to respond to Alex's email in time.

  • (cs)

    Oh, and just so you guys know how much of a WTF SSE2 is, here is a little clue: PMULUDQ is short for PackedMultiplyUnsignedDoubleWordToQuadWord. So I had to make sure that everything was unsigned first. That single SSE2 instruction changed the architecture of the whole program!

  • ja (unregistered) in reply to Charles Nadolski

    I guess I'm not the only one who calls his computer HAL9000... I thought that was so original...

  • Pasotaman (unregistered)

    I think it is WTFey only because of the implementation. Fractions are IMHO a valid way of dealing with numbers and, for instance, calc uses them for arbitrary precission:

    http://www.isthe.com/chongo/tech/comp/calc/calc-whatis.html

  • mos (unregistered)

    This is the first one I've seen that I'd vote for.

    Well done.

  • (cs) in reply to Darien H
    Darien H:
    Fractional math? I like. (First post?)

    If you are going to make an idiotic post, just so you can say "first" at least say it correctly

    1513 / 89 post

  • Tom Morris (unregistered)

    If you are going to do XML for these things, you should really use IDREFs! I mean, the values and operators can all be referred using IDREFs for added insanity.

  • (cs)

    Here are the old QBASIC programs referred to in the article: http://freedombeer.servehttp.com/downloads.php Some of this code I wrote is shockingly bad. This was before I ever heard the phrase "GOTO considered harmful" ;)

  • wow (unregistered) in reply to Charles Nadolski

    hahahah the good old days of programming

    PLAY "l12cp30ccl5a+l12cp30ccl5gl12gfefefgagaa+agfl5g"

  • Leif Arne Storset (unregistered) in reply to Pasotaman

    Pasotaman's comment left me with a few minutes of newfound wonder and respect for Windows Calculator until I realized he was talking about the Linux calculator.

  • (cs)
    Alex Papadimoulis:
    ...ranging from Roman Numerals in strings to...
    I choose to take that as a dishonorable mention :D
  • (cs)

    I had no idea that C++ allowed inline assembly like that. I've never seen it mentioned in any book, nor was it ever mentioned by any of my professors. Of course, I believe there is a very good reason for that.

  • (cs) in reply to Pap
    Pap:
    erm, the Ti-85 already had a decimal to fraction converter built in... I guess his programmer friend would have done well in our contest.

    As does Common Lisp, for some reason. It's highly inconvenient; certain calculations may result in a float or a fraction depending on the phase of the moon, and this may not be constant across implementations, and so on. Easily fixed, but a bit jarring when you first see it.

    kipthegreat:
    I had no idea that C++ allowed inline assembly like that. I've never seen it mentioned in any book, nor was it ever mentioned by any of my professors. Of course, I believe there is a very good reason for that.

    Indeed there is. As you can see above. :)

    I'm pretty certain it's possible to have inline Pascal with GCC, as well, but it's probably not advisable.

  • TwelveBaud (unregistered)

    I'm not totally sure if this is a bug or not, but reading through the assembly and noticing the JMP instructions...

    What if both fractions are negative?

  • (cs) in reply to TwelveBaud
    TwelveBaud:
    I'm not totally sure if this is a bug or not, but reading through the assembly and noticing the JMP instructions...

    What if both fractions are negative?

    Not a problem since you can't make a number negative through the GUI ;)

  • AdT (unregistered)

    And I thought there was a cheat code to give you millions of dollars in Railroad Tycoon.

    In Railroad Tycoon 2, I found a - non-cheating - way to utterly ruin some of the other Tycoons. This works only with those opponents that buy stock on margin, and you must already have shitloads of money yourself. But if this is the case, you can make them lose all their money and stocks, until his stocks are 0 (from forced sales, think of the dreaded broker's call) and his cash negative, and he has no salary. By the rules of RT2 this means he's completely out of the game and probably would become a beggar in real life.

    It's funny because it's cruel.

  • (cs) in reply to AdT
    AdT:
    And I thought there was a cheat code to give you millions of dollars in Railroad Tycoon.

    In Railroad Tycoon 2, I found a - non-cheating - way to utterly ruin some of the other Tycoons. This works only with those opponents that buy stock on margin, and you must already have shitloads of money yourself. But if this is the case, you can make them lose all their money and stocks, until his stocks are 0 (from forced sales, think of the dreaded broker's call) and his cash negative, and he has no salary. By the rules of RT2 this means he's completely out of the game and probably would become a beggar in real life.

    It's funny because it's cruel.

    :D Oh man I gotta see if that works in RT3. I also remember in RT2 to generate a lot of personal wealth you could do a pump-and-dump Enron style. (For those not familiar with evil corporate schemes, a company borrows money to buy back shares, and when the stock hits its peak (runs out of debt or can't hide it anymore), the insiders sell the stock and the company declares bankruptcy). You can then use the personal wealth to start a new company with a larger number of starting funds. They stopped that in RT3 by preventing bankruptcy before you have 2 years of no profits.

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