MyWiki:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2013 July 6

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July 6

Separate clients for singleplayer and multiplayer

I've noticed that several games have done this practice, most especially first-person shooters. They would market the title as a single game, but it has separate executables for the SP and MP portions of it, while others, such as Max Payne 3, would just incorporate both in a single .exe, or just separate portions of it in two dynamic-link library files. Are there any real benefits to this, besides development, as separate teams could just do both portions at the same time?

Having multiple teams wouldn't be a good reason to have multiple executables, as both modes share so much code. And even single player modes are often built in a client-server way; single player has a local server where the game logic, physics, AI, etc. work (this division is evident in games like Quake and Half Life 2, where messages about, and variables to configure, the server are evident throughout the single player console). Not having the game/server logic in the multi-player binary makes for a smaller binary, but a modern OS demand-pages binaries anyway, so really that shouldn't be an issue. Perhaps single player Max Payne /isn't/ coded with a clear client-server divide, meaning the multiplayer version would either have lots of "if multiplayer foo else bar" checks or compile those out (which would mean a distinct binary); I don't know why they'd do things that way (the local server for single player seems like a simple, clever architecture to me) but maybe they do. Or it may all be an artefact of whatever anti-cheating technology they're using (PunkBuster or whatever), as such things check in the client binary for illicit patches (Blizzard's Warden does that kind of thing), and giving it the smallest simplest binary to check, with simply no exploitable game logic present at all, might make that a more tractable process. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 11:25, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Permission to open Outlook file.

My computer recently broke so I bought a new one and downloaded the latest version of Outlook on it, and successfully added all my email accounts. So far so good.

But I have a copy of the .pst file from my old computer and for obvious reasons I want to be able to view it. But when I attempt to open it, it says "File access is denied. You do not have the permission required to open the file..." etc.

So can anyone tell me:

1. WTF? Who should need permission to access a file on their own computer?
2. More importantly, how to work around this?

Best, AndyJones (talk) 13:16, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

You may need to "take ownership" of the file in question. Instructions: XP, Win7. -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 13:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, that worked. Many thanks for your help. AndyJones (talk) 16:53, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia Dumps to import them to SQL

Dear Sir/ Madam

From website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_download, I have downloaded dumps from http://dumps.wikimedia.org/. How do I import these huge files to My SQL table format. I tried whats written in the website but it didn't work out.

Is there any easier and alternate solution. Its very urgent as I need to mine some data from the huge files for my journal paper.

Waiting for your reply.

Regards

Most of the dumps are XML, not MySQL-dump format, and need to be imported by a functional MediaWiki install, not MySQL's own tools. The process is described here -- Finlay McWalterჷTalk 20:05, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

USB 2 card (int. hub), power output

Useless w/o follow up. Board seems to be pro's for pro's only in my personal experience

If I replace a 2 slot USB 2 module with a 4 slot USB 2, do I get at least the same power on each slot like I had on my old card or will it be divided, like initial power divided by four? Was it divided by two with the 2 slot card? It actually comes down to the basic question on how much power I can get from a USB slot so I don't have to use something like a powered external USB multiple port devise? Think simple and you'll understand my question as I might not used the proper technical terms ;)
Thanks in advance for any help, TMCk (talk) 23:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

I assume you mean you're replacing a PCI usb card with a bigger one. Looking at Universal Serial Bus#Power, a USB2 device can draw 500mA from 5V, which is 2.5W. If we look at Conventional PCI, we see that a PCI card can pull 25W off the backplane. Obviously some of that is used to run the card itself (the UHCI/EHCI), but its unlikely that it's remotely close to using all of that 25W (only graphics adapters use serious amounts of power). So (as best as I can say without reading the datasheet for your proposed PCI adapter) it should have plenty of power to run all its ports (indeed, it would be defective if it had more ports than it could supply max power to). 87.112.233.132 (talk) 00:32, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. My old USB (PCI) card is about 10 years old (yes, 10 years) and working fine but the other day I connected my GPS for power only and although it worked, my system told me there is not enough power to run the devise. Maybe it meant the devise + other devises connected to it, like an ext. hard drive on one slot and an ext. USB hub (with external power unplugged) with a printer connected. The latter is where I connected my GPS. I would love to install the 4 slot internal (PCI?) USB hub, run the (new) external drive + an older one and a printer one 3 of them while having 1 slot left for other temporary devises. Maybe I should mention that I have a couple of USB 1 slots in use on my PC too. Don't know if they could cut down the amps available at other hubs but if so, I can retire those. Can they [cut down the amps available]? What solutions are there for my system and which one would most likely work the best? And of course, which one would work with what I have? Any idea or do I need to post more information? Please stay on it, thanks, TMCk (talk) 01:58, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

• Also, I have no datasheet for my new 4 slot USB(PCI) card as it came "plain". All I can say is that is has 4 slots externally and one internally. If there is some info printed on the circuit board that might be of help please let me know and I'll provide anything printed on it.TMCk (talk) 02:10, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Add on: And if I need more power, do I have another option besides an external hub? And if not, is there something I should look out for when buying a new ext. hub? The one I have is not recognized by my system unless I unplug the power cord while starting up my system or coming out of hibernation.TMCk (talk) 00:06, 7 July 2013 (UTC)