The State Of bit-tech

Personally I prefer the reviews without the rants, it gives a better 'overall' feel for the game, definitely a step in the right direct for the Bit-Tech game reviews IMO.

 

I like the rants, but you're just fine without them. Sign of a good reviewer.

 

It's actually now been exactly a year since I joined bit tech. And I can hardly say things are good.
Ife get back to modding here, it's hard for me to say the budding projects are really getting recegnition. If I can be self absorbed enough to refer back to my own just finished project, a previous PM to Anthony about these projects (including my own) getting noticed resulted in me receiving a place in the August or September MOTM- August was most likely, around this time, all comments dried up on my project. As you can now see, voting has begun in the August MOTM- so I'll have to see what september brings. I've PM'd Anthony asking about this, but no reply. I've also PM'd Mankz about the forum update, and there was no reply either.
I'll now move on to the subject in the general section, about raping Krikkit's inbox. In no way is it right that 20 people need to report 1 thread, but what got to me was in SuicideNeil's post. No, someone who reports a post does not need to "grow up" last year when I joined, I thought it would have been the norm to report spam, but it seems not. Why? I don't know. Is what people have been saying about a lack of moderators correct? I'm likely going to be replied to as wrong, but ok. I've been listening to this thread for a while, so go ahead.

 

I'm bubbling with anger at TalkTalk. First dual post I've had.

 

He was just wrong, yes it is right for people to report spam, not sure where he is coming from. I think a sensible system whereby we can all tell that a post has been reported would help, not sure how easy that is to implement but it was certainly discussed in the thread.

I don't really get involved in the project log section, just have a look but never leave comments. What exactly is it that you are after from the modding sections? I am not sure what BT could do to make more people look and comment?

Why should projects get recognition? If the users aren't interested and commenting then I think that is a sign that maybe the community is changing?

I may have interpreted your comments incorrectly and if I have then please do correct me.

 

I'm not sure what you are trying to say. Please can you clarify a bit?

 

Well, mainly if people just bear with me at first and don't expect changes to happen over night. I don't want to be a whiny ass, but if we start doing articles like this again and the first twenty comments we get are "TLR" or something, then we're not going to keep it up for long.

 

I'd suggest emailing staff rather than PMing. Not all of us are constantly plugged into the forums, but most of us have our email open constantly.

Basically, it might not be Antony ignoring you, it might just be that he's not checked his PMs lately.

You can get all our email addresses from here: http://www.bit-tech.net/about/staff

 

Semicolon, Joe

 

Thanks Joe.

 

So what did you mean in your original post?

 

I really don't want to be a whiny little bitch about my project not getting in MOTM. Basically, I got quite miffed after Combatus allowed me a place in this month's, and as you can see, I'm not. Thereafter, I haven't had a reply to my PM. I'll try emailing him Joe, but I have checked the times he was online and he has been on after my PM was sent.
It may be me overreacting and I won't be surprised if some of you misinterpret my previous post due to the quick, angry construction but anyway, just my 2 cents.

 

Oh ok I understand, we all see red sometimes and it generally doesn't come across very well on the internet!

 

I'm still not clear how that relates to your general dissatisfaction with Bit-Tech forums. Sorry to be dim about this, but can you explain?

 

I'm just a bit miffed about being given a place in MOTM by one of the mods. As you can see that hasn't happened, and I have been given no reply as to why. I was a bit anooyed at the time so may have been quite nonsensical.

 

There are very good personal reasons why I haven't replied to PM's or been her for a good month or so.

I'll be back soon, just give me some time

 

Sorry mate, I didn't realise- apologies for any offence caused.

 

Phwew!!!

Looking forward to it, it probably makes sense just to do it for Games where you'd expect outstanding graphics and not all.

 

I noticed this thread a while ago, and have sort of been following it off & on...

When I first started coming here, the hardware world was completely different to the way it was now. I started reading the site a little before I signed up to the forums, but either way it's nearly 10 years ago. An awful lot has changed since then.

For starters, the cost of hardware versus the performance you'll get is vastly different. You could pick up a dual-core E5200 chip for peanuts these days and it'll easily crank out nearly 4GHz. I know because I have one of these chips, which was only around £40 two years ago, with a pretty average-priced motherboard and the cheapest RAM I could find; yet it runs stable at 3.75GHz (stock is 2.5GHz) with air cooling. It might not be the latest or greatest, but it suits me right now. If I wanted to, I could easily throw together a budget watercooling loop, get some better RAM and push that even further. To put that in context, here's a thread I started over 8 years ago discussing watercooling. The hardware in question was a dual-processor P3 board with processors running at 800MHz. The difference between then & now is vast; to gain even a few extra hundred MHz, I had to use some beefy heatsinks and extremely powerful fans (I still remember the noise that those two 80mm Deltas made). I only managed to get an extra 160MHz out of it, but overclocking gains of no more than 200-300MHz were pretty common. Back then, watercooling was considered "extreme"; now, it's pretty much par for the course for many people. Overclocking was a very big thing, and people would go to extreme lengths to get even an extra 100MHz. We didn't have GPUs with god knows how many cores back then, so getting everything you possibly could out of a processor became the all important factor. Hardware is so powerful these days that most people - even enthusiasts - don't really need the performance boosts. About the only time I notice my 1.25GHz overclock these days is when I'm rendering a scene in Blender. Everything else - games, photo work, watching HD movies, etc - is more dependant on how much RAM I have and how fast my GPU/hard drive is.

Modding has also changed vastly in the intervening years. Back then, it was rare to see things like machined aluminium or cases designed with optimal airflow in mind. About the only way to get a decent-looking computer back then was to dig out the dremel and do it yourself. Fan vents? You had one, or maybe two if you were lucky. You want fan vents that direct air over critical components? Get out your dremel/jigsaw and cut a blowhole yourself. If you walk into any high-street computer store these days, you will find plenty of cases that don't look half bad. You will also find cheap cases that are designed with watercooling or airflow in mind; 10 years ago, a case built for watercooling was unheard of. Even if you can't find them in bricks & mortar stores, the options available online are mind-boggling.

I think that what many are seeing as a "change" in bit-tech is a change in attitudes towards PCs/computing in general. Powerful hardware is so cheap these days that you don't need to invest so much in squeezing out all the performance you can. Many cases already look pretty good, so people have to up their game when it comes to making them even better. Of course there are still talented people that can make any £10 beige box look amazing for practically no cost, and savvy buyers who buy processors that are maybe 1 or 2 generations behind but still get massive performance out of them. My point is that these things seem to be in the minority these days. Why go to that effort when it's so cheap to pick up something that doesn't require you to tinker so much? (Of course that's half the fun, but try to see it from the other point of view).

Bit-tech has to cater to the widest possible audience if it wants to keep getting new readers. With or without Dennis, if the site has no readers then it's practically worthless - no matter how good the content is (one look at my site's traffic stats bear that out ). Old timers like me may bemoan the apparent change in attitude/direction, but how much of that is coloured by rose-tinted nostalgia for "the old days"?

As they always did, it's the forums that keep me here. The signal to noise ratio may have changed with so many more members, but there are still a lot of incredibly talented and knowledgable people here.