Slashdot Mirror

> isnt the Emotion Engine (PS2) an 128bit processor?

Yeah, the EE has 128-bit registers for when the CPU is dealing with 4x Floats at a time, (Vectors via the VU0 & VU1), otherwise it is a normal 64-bit cpu.

--
Original, Fun Palm & Web games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> Anyone know of a nice long RPG in the works? I remember playing Wizardry 7 for months before I was able to get all the way through it.

You completed Morrowind and the 2 expansion packs?

It's no Ultima 7, but it's pretty good.

Peace

--
Original, Fun Palm & Web games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

I remember finding hidden messages in the Apple ][ games I played. It was relatively easy todo, because you could memory scan for $C000 or $C010 (IO address for the keyboard strobe) (i.e. Trivial to stash a memory scanner program at $0300 the memory area before the text page, because most cases would load their code at $0800.

Another cool thing was finding hidden messages using a sector editor. It was quite feasable to scan 40 tracks * 16 sectors.

Some of the hidden codes/messages I remember..

Mario Bros
- Instead of running the game, if you loaded it and took a look at the entry point, you saw a jump. If you "started" the game, 3 bytes later, you would get a text pages of message from The Fly about cracking it.
i.e.
BLOAD MARIOS BROS
CALL -151
803G

- Gumball
Press Ctrl-Z during the intermission to get hints about another Br0derbund game.

- Spare Change
Ctrl-z would bring up a secret control panel.

more can be found here Apple Game Secrets

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> Most cameras that offer RAW mode have 12 bit sensors so you get 4096

I couldn't remember if it was 10-bit or 12-bit. Thx for the correction.

> The problem with JPG is that those 12 bits of information are squeezed into 256 levels of an 8 bit image.

Yeah, quantization sucks.

> Why is it that CinePaint doesn't get more publicity?

Never heard of CinePaint until today. I imagine Photoshop publicity is spread via a word-of-mouth type advertising. It is what everyone-else-you-know uses, either at home or at work, so it gets plugged. Why look for alternatives, when it does what you need?

Wow, CinePaint was used in "2 Fast 2 Furious, Scooby-Doo, Harry Potter, Stuart Little and other feature films." Pretty cool. Thx for the link.

Peace

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> Who writes games in C anymore?

Console programmers with a legacy codebase.

We don't have a choice for bindings to the thin-vineer of an OS, so it's either C or C++. Most C programmers switch over to C++ because of the new paradigms the language lets you express natively, and fortunately the language is backwards compatible. (Its strength is also its weakness.)

I'm not sure why you got modded down as flamebait. Any language is unsafe. Some just make it easier to use & abuse then others :) Calling C safe shows that the mod doesn't understand (or have a clue) exactly what dangerious low level programming C allows, and obsviously they never had to spend any time tracing through (malloc) memory leaks. Blah.

Oh well...

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> Myst... and all it ever got were bashings in the (gamers') press by the critics.

That's because

a) Most (hard-core) gamers didn't want a "slide-show" type of game. They wanted an interactive world - one that "felt" 3D. The whole time while playing, I missed mouselook. It was a beautiful world, and I wanted to explore it, dam'it!

b) It was too easy. The "puzzles" were a joke. At least 7th Guest, and the 11th hour kept the brain entertained.

Hmm, the former (Myst) had a better story at the expense of puzzles, while the latter (7th Guest) was the reverse. Never noticed that before.

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> The reason why people give up is quite simple.. it's fairly easy to get a 80% complete game, and see what it's like. The last 20% however takes 50x longer to do

Yeap, the standard joke in the industury is that the first 80% takes a linear 80% of your times, and the last 20% takes an exponential 80% of your time. i.e. ~160% total time.

Why do you think id, Blizzard, etc. keeps polishing their games before they declare them good enough to ship?

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

Hmm, only took Microsoft 9 years to figure out that cap bits cause more problems then they solve.

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> Illegal does not mean "wrong" (some things that are wrong are not illegal, some things that are illegal are not wrong).

Exactly, and things can go from being legal to illegal and back again, so is it wrong when it is legal or illegal?!

A is legal.
A becomes illegal.
A is then legal again.

i.e. Prohibition

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

Why isn't there a wiki for the man pages?

The biggest problem I have with the man pages, is lack of examples!

--
Original, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

> I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD.

You raise a couple of very good points. Let me elaborate:

Let's look at entertainment, specifically in this order:

Music/Boardgames
Movies
Games

Music is the most accessable, with games being the least accessable. By accessable I mean by how much attention you need to give it, in order to enjoy it. And also how many times you tend to repeat the experience.

Music: You can listen to it anywhere, and you tend to listen to time and time again with your favorite bands.

Games: Requires your direct attention, and usually tend to become outdated with technology. How often do you play the same game? MMORPGs are an exception, usually more in line with card games or board games. You keep playing them because of the social setting.

> Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture (even allowing for a smaller audience).

You're not a nut. Let's look at the production costs!
Games cost $2 to $10 million, compared to Movies at $10 to $200 million
That's different by at LEAST a factor of 10. ($5 million, AAA to $50 million, blockbuster.)

Why can movies be sold for $10 (Ticket) / $20 (DVD), when games have always cost $50 - $60. When you have a smaller market, you need to raise the cost, to make the same profit.

The 2-fold problem with games becoming more and more niche market is:

1. The problem is (computer) games become out-dated. The changing technology in movies, doesn't make movies outdated. (They usually just retold, and modernized to better relate to today's culture)

(Point 2 is below.)

What I'm trying to say, is how you summarized your post.

> I used to buy almost every new game I could get my hands on. Anymore, though, I see a game price on a store shelf and I spend a lot more time thinking over whether I really want it or not--the pricing has driven the product out of the impulse-buying range.

Yeap, as someone who has been a gamer for 25+ years, I have to agree with you. Most "new" games, are not new, they are more evolutionary, then revolutionary. Admist the sea of sequel-itis, it's becoming harder and harder to find Orginal & Good games.

2. I agree with you're conclusion: Music and DVDs represent a better "value" for me.

What's going to be real interesting is when the computer games industry has finally matured, in 50 to 100 years. Its similiar to the movie industry when it first started. We are still in the B & W stage.

Cheers

--
Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!

... is OVER rated.

Of all the thousands of posts on avsforum.com, I think I've seen a grand total of 1 or 2 posts about it. I've never experienced it on my own plasma either, and I've put a lot of long continious hours on it.

--
Orignal, Fun Palm games by the Lead Designer of Majesty!
http://www.arcanejourneys.com/

Check out Adventure Solitaire for the Palm OS, from Jim Dubois, the designer of Majesty.