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"Torching cars and stealing TVs is not the solution. The shooting is just being used as an excuse by the rioters and the unhelpful people encouraging them."

Much the same is said here:
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/change/science_nonviolence.html

But, the more a society is stretched to the breaking point by bad social policy, the more likely it will break into violence. Most humans can be civilized, but only while things are going at least not too terribly badly socially. The 9/11 attacks were also the product of social problems, although in that case, by frustrated young men from Saudi Arabia who blamed the USA for supporting who they saw as their local oppressors (ironically spun as "they hate us because we are free").

But, as far as the UK, from 2007, and I doubt it has gotten better with the global recession, consider this article (sadly, no longer directly at Adbusters):
http://apolyton.net/showthread.php/167082-How-Britain-is-Eating-Its-Young
http://web.archive.org/web/20071019031111/http://adbusters.org/the_magazine/71/Generation_Fcked_How_Britain_is_Eating_Its_Young.html
"Around the nation, airtime was cleared for cathartic phone-ins, heated discussions, and a torrent of contributors that simply would not stop. As if sensing that many of the problems might in part stem from the government's unparalleled obsession with monitoring, measuring and homogenising the very children it once sought to cherish, many former Labour advisors suddenly sought to introduce daylight between their ideas and those of the heavily surveilled nanny state. Neil Lawson of the Labour think-tank Compass bleakly admitted: "Society is hollowing out, but not just in the rotting boroughs of south London. The middle classes are anxious too. Many are richer but few seem happier. Mental illness abounds. White-collar jobs are outsourced to India. Everyone looks for meaning in their lives -- but all they find is shopping."
"The reason our children's lives are the worst among economically advanced countries is because we are a poor version of the USA," he said. "So the USA comes second from bottom and we follow behind. The age of neo-liberalism, even with the human face that New Labour has given it, cannot stem the tide of the social recession capitalism creates.""

Does not bode well for either the UK or the USA. And when the violence starts, things tend to just get worse for everyone, with more police, more fear, less comunity, and a downward spiral that is really expensive to recover from (like in Iraq after the civil war there that started after the US invasion).

I tried really hard to find other ways forward, and I found the conceptually, but implementing them against entrenched dogma is another thing.
"Five Interwoven Economies: Subsistence, Gift, Exchange, Planned, and Theft"
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems."

The use of the word "Theft" in the title there is not intended as advocacy -- it is more to point it out as what happens w

While you can find that in modern warfare (Amazon Indians would be helpless against an Aircraft carrier), it doesn't hold up in infantry battles (which is what pretty much all RPGs simulate). Doesn't matter how well you equip your infantry (apart from armoured vehicles), if you make them do nothing for an hour against an enemy that massively outnumber them, they'll take massive losses.

Clearly, you've never played Civilization. ;)

Oh, God, we have yet another "Artists are perfectly willing to work for fun and for free" thread on Slashdot.

Bottom line: The majority of artists, programmers, etc. out there won't make something for fun and for free. Of, if they do, they will create it to a much lesser degree than they would if they were getting paid for it.

"Having a day job" and "Willing to work for fun and for free" are two very different things. I am sure a lot of your artists friends would find something else to do in their free time if they were told that they would never earn a dime making their art.

Why is it that the majority of video games out there are games people legally need to pay for to buy? With a very few rare exceptions, commercial games blow open-source games out of the water in terms of quality.

For example, let's look at Civilization-type games. If you go to civfanatics.com, you can see large communities playing Civilization II, Civilization III, and Civilization IV. These games are incredibly popular. The graphics are compelling, the games includes movies, and Civilization IV even has 3D graphics.

Lets compare this to the free Civilization clones out there: Freeciv, C-evo, and the abandoned Clash of Civilizations project. Freeciv doesn't have the compelling graphics the professional Civ games have, and its gameplay is as compelling as writing a spreadsheet. While there is a full-screen SDL port, it is incomplete and unstable.

C-evo is essentially Civilization I with Civilization II isometric graphics. It has a nice full-screen interface, but its documentation is sketchy and it has issues with being too difficult for a rank beginner to start playing and enjoying. There are no voice actors, no movies when you build a wonder, no engaging diplomacy, and the game for all intents and purposes can not be modded. Did I mention it's not truly open-source, since you need the proprietary Delphi programming environment to build it?

Clash of Civilizations died a few years ago. Its developers, quite frankly, did not have enough motivation to make a full game. "For fun and for free", the delusion Slashdot keeps bringing up over and over, did not work.

When people are being paid for their work, the result is a game with far more compelling graphics and gameplay. People, plain and simple, will not make the type of compelling music, games, and movies people have come to expect if there is no way people can be compensated for their hard work.

With Blake's http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threa did=159157A Better AI which Firaxis actually included in the latest patch, it's gotten pretty impressive.

Unfortunately, Brian Reynolds (primary designer of Civ 2, Colonization, and Alpha Centauri) is no longer working with Firaxis. I suspect that an Alpha Centauri 2 made by others would be too much "Civ in Space".

Check out the interview about Civ2

Quoting this is seems very possible that stuff like that could have been passed unnoticed:


Instead of dealing with its chief constitutional duty -- approving all government spending -- Congress devotes its time to dumb bullshit. "This Congress spent a week and a half debating Terri Schiavo -- it never made appropriations a priority," says Hughes. In fact, Congress leaves itself so little time to pass the real appropriations bills that it winds up rolling them all into one giant monstrosity known as an Omnibus bill and passing it with little or no debate. Rolling eight-elevenths of all federal spending into a single bill that hits the floor a day or two before the fiscal year ends does not leave much room to check the fine print. "It allows a lot more leeway for fiscal irresponsibility," says Hughes.

A few years ago, when Democratic staffers in the Senate were frantically poring over a massive Omnibus bill they had been handed the night before the scheduled vote, they discovered a tiny provision that had not been in any of the previous versions. The item would have given senators on the Appropriations Committee access to the private records of any taxpayer -- essentially endowing a few selected hacks in the Senate with the license to snoop into the private financial information of all Americans.

"We were like, 'What the hell is this?' ?says one Democratic aide familiar with the incident. "It was the most egregious thing imaginable. It was just lucky we caught them."

I haven't read many strategy guides lately, maybe 10 or so in total, and I definitely haven't read any in the last couple years in either a seperate book version or print Computer Game magazine feature.

I've been disillusioned to them since I read the Diablo II strategy guide and like many I had read before it seemed to be a series of common sense suggestions, and a rehashing of in-game help & manual information. More importantly, it often suggested strategies, character builds, and skill combinations that were bad. The most annoying is information which is out of date or incorrect!

At least now I can go to gamefaqs or gaming websites if I want mediocre strategies and single-player walkthroughs (I generally don't).

I find a lot more useful information and effective strategies reading the most popular fan forums for the game in question. Yes, there is bullshit in the forums and information which is wrong, but the absolutely vital thing is that people usually get called out if the provide bad information, strategies that only work on 'easy', or are easily countered. People will sometimes (best cases) give hard evidence/examples/replays/game data to back up their claims, and will comment on whether patches have changed the effectiveness of any plan.

• Detailed information or strategy discussion -> Forums
• Walkthrough for an unenjoyable/unsolvable puzzle -> Gamefaqs
• Otherwise -> Enjoy the game unassisted

It's very possible I'm out of touch with most others and get more 'into' any game I play

Games I've played recently & best website I could find discussing them:
Civ 4 at Apolyton and Fanatics
Rise of Legends also Game Replays is a pretty popular site for Rise of Legends and other popular RTSes I don't play (C&C, AoE III, Act of War, Battle for Middle Earth).
Rise of Nations
Guild Wars
NWN Official Forums and NWVault
Ground Control II Official Forums
Age of Mythology
Diablo II

I've tried looking for a good place to find out about Star Wars: Battlefront II and Homeworld 2 but I haven't really found out what the most useful site for these games is.

Wasn't Quantum Psychology one of the technologies you could develop in SMAC-X?

Oh, and since the plug got pulled on that dinosaur game, how about open sourcing the code?

Firaxis has posted a fix over at Apolyton.

I admire many of the great game designers who have pushed the boundaries in gaming (yourself, Will Wright and Peter Molyneux to name a few). However, I can't help but feel that many of today's genres are stale and a lot of new games are mostly repeating past formulas as we see many sequels or derivatives of previous games being released. This appears to be a trend that will continue.

Where do you think the future of gaming is headed and how hard is it to introduce radical new ideas into the industry (for example, Firaxis shelving Dinosaurs or Will Wright's bold idea in Spore)?

Also note that the source for call to power 2 was released just over a year ago, and now runs on linux.

Adam is right in assuming that on a per-game basis there are difficulties, but he makes several mistakes thinking they impede a future for OSGames. The Open Source model has advantaged many game development teams on the level that they aren't forced to reinvent the brick, they can use code written by someone else under a flexible license. Examples of this are really boring things like a sound manager, communications layer or texture processing tools. Tons of open libraries are used already in commercial projects for this reason: OpenGL, Python, Ruby, SDL, DevIL, OpenAL, Java to name a few. To what level of open source development is he talking about here? Secondly, whether or not they release the code for open development during the development cycle is their business, and in many cases is unwise given the possible loss of focus on s specific development project. Why would you want 500 people working on extending an engine while you were trying to make a Second Person Fish Throwing Game? You wouldn't. Instead Adam assumes that opensouce development always implies community development during the game production cycle:

"Doom 3 was quite playable half way through its development cycle. That means with two years of full-time development left, in an open source world, players would already be playing it. Two years is a long time in the gaming world. It would be very hard to keep any sort of public interest alive with weekly test releases where the only change might be that a weapon was tweaked, a room was added halfway through the game, the lighting was adjusted, or load time was slightly reduced.

I don't know why he doesn't see the alternative option of releasing the source after the game has been released, to be further developed later. This is a way of retaining control of the project, it's obligations to the inaugural release date and to the publishers. On a commercial level, what is the engine really worth? How much money can a game developer make on licensing out an engine they have made? ID software and Epic Games might be licensing their source out to developers with some success, but really no one else is (though many are trying). Looking at the list of takers for ID's Quake3 engine, few can afford, or justify, a $US450,000 ticket on the code. It is simply out of the reach for almost everyone, and those that can afford it would often rather bring their pie to the table. For this reason, Open Source game development is integral to the future of independent gaming, small teams with innovative ideas can actually afford to make a game without having to work with expensive proprietary code already rigged up for making a certain kind of game. However even large companies like Activision are recognising real advantages in releasing the source of their engine *after* the development cycle, in the interest of a community of developers freely extending the development of the engine after the market life of the project for use by the originators, or anyone else later.

"On 28 October 2003, Activision released the source code for Call to Power II. This part of our CtP2 section is dedicated to the CtP2 Source Code Project: the collective effort by the Apolyton CtP2 community to document and improve the source code of the game."

Anyway, it is really a question of critical mass in the source pool. With enough free source available (including libraries, API's and whole engine projects) to make nearly any kind of game, as is happening right now, small to medium teams can quickly develop a specific project with the primary budget being dedicated to human labour, not licenses and legatilities.

Companies like Radon Labs have really cottoned onto ths, and looking at the commercial games derived from their own Nebula Open Source game development is really working, and working commercially for the developers. Aside from the to

Maybe you should participate in the development of the free CTP II to get the better AI. And I think they even have a working Linux version. I use only the Windows version so I'm not sure how playable the Linux version is. http://apolyton.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?forumi d=213

whoops... that link was supposed to be this

here you can see the fun spelling and the laying out of plans for developing the code base further. towards the top you can see that there is a call to arms for C++ programmers.

sunncomm says it won't sue. guess they finally saw reason.

try out this or this... of course old fashioned but funny... and free as long as you have Civilization II...

just 'till the king returns : )

try out this or this... of course old fashioned but funny... and free as long as you have Civilization II...

just 'till the king returns : )

To illustrate the customizable interface, check out this pic of my personalized Opera.

Better watch out for the RIAA and DMCA freaks clicking on that link and seeing Kazaa running. . .

http://www.opera.com/windows/changelogs/710/ http://www.opera.com/download/

I am really impressed with this release.

0. Mouse gestures (you know, the things that Mozilla and Phoenix ripped off from Opera) are now customizable. In other words, there will be no more accidental window closures.

1. There is now a good interface for saving toolbar layouts so that you will not have to recustomize after every upgrade.

2. The Notes feature is a multiple item clipboard (independent of the usual thing) done right. The storage is permanent, it doesn't throw itself at you, and you can misuse it for something goofy like a personal quotation database.

3. The nature of 7.0 MDI/SDI is even more obvious now. Context menus allow you to open links in the current child window, in a new child window, in a background child window, in a new parent window, and in a new background parent window.

4. Fast Forward has become even better. To quote the changelog, "FastForward can now be used as a "slide show" on galleries, like http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asi a/".

5. All dialogue boxes are now skinned. You won't believe how much skinned javascript prompts imrove the user experience.

6. All the great features from 7.0x are back. I can go through those if anyone wants. The include universal interface dragndrop, Links sidebar/CTRL+ALT+J, pervasiveness of text files, etc.


Unfortunately, the Active Bookmark Folder concept from 5.x/6.x is still not back, but I am managing without it. It's likely to reappear in 7.20, no one in the Mozilla/Phoenix crowd has used Opera enough to learn the full splendour Insane Greatness, and Microsoft has stopped shovelling features into MSIE after it killed off Netscape 4.x.

P.S. Do remember to set Opera to Always Check Documents in the History and Cache preferences panel.

P.P.S. I've just discovered skin scaling. Wow. Not quite as cool as skin colour schemes, but still very wow.

I'll spare you my take on the game, since it has been echoed by many people on MOO3 discussion boards. Try the boards at Apolyton and The Orion Sector. You'll get more opinions about the game than you ever wanted.

I will advise you to stay away from the official Infogrames boards, however. Most of the trolls and flamers seem to reside there, so signal to noise ratio is much lower.

Favoured Flight (Interview) has recently made some really good LotR scenarios for Civ2.

Despite the release of the craptastic Civ3, the Civ2 scenario-making community is still going strong. Spanish Civ2 Site has an excellent scenario collection; many of the more recent scenario can be found at Civilization Fanatics Centre; myself, I run the Scenario League resource for designers and can be often spotted in the Apolyton Forums.

Just FYI, of course.:)

Favoured Flight (Interview) has recently made some really good LotR scenarios for Civ2.

Despite the release of the craptastic Civ3, the Civ2 scenario-making community is still going strong. Spanish Civ2 Site has an excellent scenario collection; many of the more recent scenario can be found at Civilization Fanatics Centre; myself, I run the Scenario League resource for designers and can be often spotted in the Apolyton Forums.

Just FYI, of course.:)

Favoured Flight (Interview) has recently made some really good LotR scenarios for Civ2.

Despite the release of the craptastic Civ3, the Civ2 scenario-making community is still going strong. Spanish Civ2 Site has an excellent scenario collection; many of the more recent scenario can be found at Civilization Fanatics Centre; myself, I run the Scenario League resource for designers and can be often spotted in the Apolyton Forums.

Just FYI, of course.:)

Favoured Flight (Interview) has recently made some really good LotR scenarios for Civ2.

Despite the release of the craptastic Civ3, the Civ2 scenario-making community is still going strong. Spanish Civ2 Site has an excellent scenario collection; many of the more recent scenario can be found at Civilization Fanatics Centre; myself, I run the Scenario League resource for designers and can be often spotted in the Apolyton Forums.

Just FYI, of course.:)

• IRC logs from the developers
• Apolyton
• OrionSector
• Infogrames MOO3 forums

... but we're already planning to fight back! :P

After reading the gobblygook article and looking at the race types, I went in search of something that would tell me what the game play is like.
After seeing this screenshot , I decided I just didn't care.

The article and the screenshot together just make the game look mush-brained.

It's interesting that Infogrames is going after this mod when there are already several mods that use the original files as building blocks.

Here are a few examples:

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread full of modifications to the original resource tile graphics to make them more easily identifiable.

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread discussing a mod that adds some information to the production queue that makes it easier to understand the implications of your production choices.

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread discussing a modification to the original wonder graphics that gives some useful information about what the wonders do for you.

I Could cite some more examples, but this gives an good picture of the selective enforcement of this part of the EULA.

It's interesting that Infogrames is going after this mod when there are already several mods that use the original files as building blocks.

Here are a few examples:

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread full of modifications to the original resource tile graphics to make them more easily identifiable.

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread discussing a mod that adds some information to the production queue that makes it easier to understand the implications of your production choices.

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread discussing a modification to the original wonder graphics that gives some useful information about what the wonders do for you.

I Could cite some more examples, but this gives an good picture of the selective enforcement of this part of the EULA.

It's interesting that Infogrames is going after this mod when there are already several mods that use the original files as building blocks.

Here are a few examples:

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread full of modifications to the original resource tile graphics to make them more easily identifiable.

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread discussing a mod that adds some information to the production queue that makes it easier to understand the implications of your production choices.

Here (Apolyton's Civ III forums) is a thread discussing a modification to the original wonder graphics that gives some useful information about what the wonders do for you.

I Could cite some more examples, but this gives an good picture of the selective enforcement of this part of the EULA.

Regarding Civ III and Infogrames, I've got a gripe with them Stateside.

They marketed a "Limited Editon" which promised designer notes(which were pretty much the only worthwhile goodie added). They shipped the Limited Edition, which said it contained the designer notes, and they never included them. Just plain forgot to include them in all 75,000 of the "limited" Limited Edition.

People have squawked about it, but Infogrames and Firaxis (Sid Meier's company) have been silent on this rip-off. This is particularly galling as Firaxis used to be a real standout in terms of standing behind their products with patch support and decent documentation.

Sometimes you wonder how the bean counters really can manage to screw up a thing of beauty.

check out apolyton.net.

No one has yet pointed out that turn-based games work really well in multiplayer if the players are't all free at the same time. The PBEM (Play By EMail) mode of games like Alpha Centauri lets you carry on a game even when all of the players are on completely different schedules.

I have a good friend who's as into turn-based strategy games as I am. In the past, we've gotten together for a full day playing Master of Orion II, FreeCiv, or Alpha Centauri on a LAN, but that takes a lot of time and requires us to both be free at the same time. He and I now live in different cities in different time zones with different schedules, so it'd be very difficult to set up a simultaneous game over the Internet.

Instead, since August, we've been playing near continuous games of Alpha Centauri via email. When I finish a turn, I send it to him in email and vice versa. This lets the game go whenever we have time in our respective schedules, and gives time to think about strategy and tactics between turns without holding up the other players.

This is easily extensible up to the maximum of seven players allowed in Alpha Centauri. The Apolyton Alpha Centauri Multiplayer forum regularly has games going with players from all over the world, playing their turns whenever is convenient for them in their own timezone.

Alpha Centauri is a long game and takes a lot of time, so you can't complete a full game in a single sitting as with RTS games. Coming from a long line of turn-based games it works very well in that mode, and turn-based gaming is very compatible with PBEM. I'm also aware of other games like VGA Planets which also are turn-based with PBEM modes, so the idea that turn-based games aren't multiplayer is a myth.

Turn-based games aren't as popular as RTS games, but there's a sizable contingent of people who prefer them, and will continue to buy them as long as there are companies that produce good ones. The next year looks very promising with Civilization III and Master of Orion III coming out, and I hope they both have PBEM capability.