Bay 12 Games Forum

Just came across a weird bug in my direct input code. In both my book and a sample tutorial from the documentation in VC++ '08 it says to use the following when checking for a keypress.
bool DirectInput::keyDown(char key)
{
    return (mKeyboardState[key] & 0x80) !=0;
}This then gives me a compiler warning (c4309, variable truncation) for large DIK values (for example, DIK_LEFT = 0xCD = 205), and for said values it will not give correct readings on whether the key is pressed. Reading the book a bit more about it said the 'key' variable is basicly just an index, so I used an unsigned int key rather than the char key, and it worked just fine.
So my questions are thus:
1. Why use char rather than an unsigned int for this?
2. What would cause this error?
3. And most importantly, will anything explode at a later date for using an unsigned int rather than char?

So if I had a Danger! High Voltage! sign on the stairs leading up to my house and then pumped near lethal voltage through the metal safety rail.....

That would be a mess any time a bird or squirrel landed...

In other news, since we had Viking metal and Pirate metal posted already, I went looking for Ninja metal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5-bmJDlIsg&feature=related

I couldn't get past the second line of that without cringing and turning it off at the horrible, horrible voice. It didn't sound ninja-y at all... You would need some strange oriental version of an electric guitar to pull off ninja metal.

There was a map I found way back where one side had OMGWTFBBQ defenses built into the map, with the other side playing as the offensive team. It also came with a game mode which IIRC made the player the defender and the attackers constantly got stronger, to the point where even said uber defenses would not save you. I remember a match of that going for several hours as the german tanks drove in, were destroyed by my full supply worth of artillery, and more just kept coming. There was probably no more than a 2 second gap between various types of artillery barrages. Now that was pretty. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3WF-5-o2KA The cake recipe.

What if some dick in good old America decided to go "DERP LETS SET IT ON FIRE" And threw a match out into the oil thingy, thus igniting the entire thing. Because of him alone.

Heh, makes you think how much pow-ar we hold. Then again the smoke from the oil burning would be fuckhuge. No, not fuckhuge, fuckfuckfuckshitcockhhuge.

Meh, been done. http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=a-vortex-of-fire-erupts-at-the-oil-2010-06-16

5 weeks out here.