Reality Factory

Well, the other day i got a new laptop.
AST Maxima (i think its a maxima.)
Leather Bag,
Charger, CD-Rom Drive, Internet Card, Windows 98.
No 3D Card Unfortunatly.
It cost me,
£5.
:p
I'm thinking of upgrading it to XP, More RAM, Graphics Card and a 80 GB Hard Drive.
I might then whack RF on it and go sit in a quiet field and make a game.
i think that would rule.
anyways,
does anyone have any suggestions for cheap laptop parts?

First the hard drive
http://www.laptops4me.com/product_info. ... ts_id/2896
be sure to check for the right type ie ata and what not

The ram is slightly harder
what kind does it have-doubt it but is it ddr or more likely sdram?
depends on motherboard but try and find the same amount ie two 256mb or you might be able to mix it up one 256 and one 512 or something?
http://www.laptops4me.com/index.php/c/memory/cPath/407

A video card
i have no idea about these for laptops as my laptop was free and has a 486 processor waits for them to stop laughing and i only play old games like commander keen, bio menace, and missile command on it. Did i mention it was free.

for the xp upgrade
just use a pc restore disk if one came with your desktop.

also
might want to look into a wireless adaptor and a ethernet card so you can transfer files easily and can use high speed internet at hotspots if there any near your residency
and the cd drive may need to be replaced depending on the speed as some games require 4x or whatever

good luck with your endeavor.

cheers,
commander keen rules!
i bought every single episode!
there all in sealed bags for safe keeping

to the best of my knowledge, except in special cases such as alienware laptops, video is controlled by the motherboard, so to upgrade the video you need a new motherboard... i believe...

i use a laptop as my primary machine, and it really is so awesome to be able to just unplug at any moment and go play/make a game or watch a movie or surf the web anywhere you want... touchpad gets aggervating after awhile though, and places like a couch are hard to use a mouse on...

if it's an old laptop, its likely the battery is going to fail or has failed very soon if it's lithium ion, since they become severely damaged if not used for 6 months or more... if so, try charging/using down to 0 about 5 times, if it dosent revive, you can see if you can find a new battery on the net... if not, normally laptop batteries are pretty standard cells, you can buy them from a place like onlybatteries.com or send them to a service that rebuilds them for you... if the battery is nickel metal hydride or nickel cadmium there shouldnt be a problem... (symbols that would tell you: li-ion = lithium ion, nimh or ni-mh = nickel metal hydride, nicd, ni-cd, or nicad = nickel cadmium)

sounds good just wach for your processor speed, it shouldnt be much of a problem win XP needs MINIMUM 233Mhz (i think) and that is slow and old but i had a computer with 233Mhz with win 98 and a CD-rom almost the same as your laptop, and i think but not sure, the faster ram chips will need a minimum cpu power, and if your cpu power is low then paying alot for some ram might not be worth it as the processor might not be able to keep up with all the ram, i had 128 MB in my old computer and it would be pointless upgrading it because the processor was at a 110% as it was and wouldnt make it any faster.

oh, and let me make one note: rf's hraphics depend almost solely on cpu speed and not gpu speed at the moment.

You are quite wrong about laptops having on-board graphics cards - these days many types of laptops have dedicated graphics hardware - we bought a dell recently that had the option of a dedicated 256 meg nvidia graphics card included with it (we got the 64 meg dedicated nvidia card option because it was more for business / accounting stuff than graphics or programming)...

In fact, My new toy has a 128 meg ATI x700 video card in it capable of shader model 3.0 graphics:

http://global.acer.com/products/notebook/fr4000.htm

It also has a 64 bit AMD processor running at 3Ghz, 1 Gig of Ram, a 100 Gig harddrive and is fast like i've never seen, laptop or desktop.

The BV project we're working on at the moment has about 250,000 poly's in the world, and this machine runs it at like 500 fps...it's insane how fast it is.

Quite frankly, if you are looking for laptops I can't recommend this series of laptops enough. It's even reasonably priced - goes for about $2500 new

Oh, and you can tell your friends that you have a Ferrari too ;P

It even goes 'vrrrm, vrrrm' when you boot it up - lol

BTW, the F4000 is the laptop that is included as a part of the tuition for Pacific Game Design - learn Reality Factory, Beyond Virtual, etc from myself and our technical director - AND get a kick ass laptop as well...

Can hardly go wrong...

http://www.pacificgamedesign.com/

Does anyone here go to a game design college? Dont know much about them but i think that spending thousands to learn what is free on the internet namely the rf community is a waste. I could be wrong though.

Its odd how now the pentium 4 laptops are being phased out for centrios.

Also what type of card slots does the laptop have? For a good 3d card you'll need an agp slot (colored brown). They are cheaper and faster then pci equivilants. If you need more sites for parts just ask as i have plenty of time to look stuff up.

It all depends on what kind of person you are and how you learn i guess.

The main advantage to going to a school like PGD is that not only are you learning how to use game engines like RF, as well as programs like 3ds Max & so on but you are learning these skills from people that have used them for years and can get you alot farther along than you could ever learn by just reading tutorials and experimenting.

This is the big thing - sure you can learn RF just through experimentation, sure you can learn 3ds Max from tutorials online, but there is nothing like having someone that can answer the questions that you have - as you have them - instead of posting a question on a forum online and waiting for an answer, if you get one.

The first semester of PGD for example, the students are learning Level Design and Machinima - by the time the students finish in September, they will have not only a very good knowledge of RF but they will also have enough experience using the tools that they can easily create their own games &/or Machinima movies (ala red vs blue) once they are finished.

In addition, we are bringing in a number of guest lecturers on an ongoing basis so not only do you get to learn the programs & tools, but you will get exposure to serious professionals that have been making games for years...this kind of thing you can't get online, not in an up-close fashion like you will get in the classroom.

Considering that we had 12-13 year old kids making complete RF games that are fairly advanced - in a 10 day summer camp - I am looking forward to seeing what the college-level students can come up with after 3 months.

To top it off, we are working with discreet to ensure that the students are learning the specific skills that companies are asking discreet for - so when they leave the school they have the skills, the technology (game engines / programs etc) and a kick-ass laptop to continue learning after they finish.

Wondering how the laptop is coming along? If you need free parts google search freecycle. Its a group of sites that let people post stuff they no longer need for free. Just dont be lookin for great stuff like a 7800 gt card but you may find something you can use.

my roomate bought his from a company that sells 'whitebox' solutions for laptops - basically it was a case & display and he got to custom pick the parts for it.

if you are looking for the lowest cost option, this might be something to look into - might be harder to find a company that does this kind of thing, but it's worth looking into at least.

Wish i could go to pgd and get one of their laptops. that would be great but i guess for now i will just have to learn as i go.

finally got my friend to help make games and he enlisted others so we have 6 people total. we plan on using his garage so i would like a laptop to make games with rf. otherwise i would have to bring my tower which im not going to do. funny story today i went to a bunch of garage sales cause it was a city wide thing and one house had ms pac man and taito machines. but they were 200 and 450 dollars respectively.

anyway are the specs for rf for a laptop different than for a pc? only ask cause now centrino processors are everywhere and want to know what there speed really is.

not really any different, though you should be aware that pentium m processors are about twice as fast as thier equivalent pentium 4 counterpart, and put out less heat and use less energy (ie. a 1.6ghz pentium m ~= a 3.2ghz pentium 4)

im using a budget 1.3ghz celeron/intel extreme graphics 2 laptop as my main development machine, and rf runs without much real trouble on it.

the actual megahertz ratio on processors matters less and less with machines, but you can't say that a Pentium M processor has the same power as a comparable Pentium 4 processor.

the Pentium M & Celeron processors (in particular) have a number of serious limiting factors in their performance - i don't know 100% of the details off the top of my head (i'll ask our sysadmin - he's the hardware guy) but for gaming machines I would highly suggest staying far away from celeron processors in particular and the centrino's are in the same category.

These processors are basically the 'cheap' version of the full Pentium processor - it's similar to the Geforce 4 and the Geforce 4 MX lines - the MX versions are the 'cheap' versions of the full line.

There's a reason these 'lower end' processors are alot cheaper than their respective 'full line' processors - companies like intel don't just make stuff cheaper for no reason ;}

It's also harder to judge AMD processors against Intel these days - the Mhz (Ghz) ratings are very different due to internal processor designs.

In general AMD processors tend to be lower Mhz, but actually faster in processing instructions for a comparable intel.

This is why AMD has their specs labeled as an 'AMD 3000' for example when the processor is 'only' 2000 Mhz - the same processor performs the same as an Intel 3.0 Ghz machine is basically what AMD is saying with that.

Throw in the AMD 64 line and you have an incredible performance gain (even for standard 32 bit apps like RF) over their respective 32 bit processors.

The Ferrari's that we are using for PGD are the AMD 64 3000 chip - and are as fast as i've ever seen a machine - even for being 'only 2Ghz' in speed.