Slashdot Mirror

next time make it a link you lazy cumguzzler.

Hundred "lol msnbc rotfl lol" one liners already?

Bashing articles like this takes patience, and (lucky for me) always starts with a little character assasination:

A quick google on Jown w. schoen shows us john (whose lastname translates to "shoe" in dutch btw, for those who where wondering) likes to write stories. None of these apear to be hosted at nasa.gov , so we just assume he is no rocket scientist. Most of his stories come from msnbc And they tell us about how "local busineses go for the gold at the olympics and the Insurance industry thriving post-9/11 . Now, in his favour, google turns up some searches indicating he (or someone with his name) wants to preserve wildlife(bears and birds ), I may be ruthless with other peoples character, but on these issues I agree and think he should perhaps consider a full time career couse he does a way better job at writing about birds then he does on "hightech-biz-hype" issues where he just does the pressrelease/minute counting game to find out whats "hot" (hype)

Righ now is the time to note his stories are not hosted at ADTI, either. Nice for him you might think, couse documents once posted there, tend to change over time, but there is another reason. It seems john has found a platform for his text in wich there is little bother about their contents as long as they match the general small to thinking-they-are-big busineses line of interests. No critical journalism, and no conclusion of any sort in this article whatsoever, by no means a targeted fud compaign.

So what remains of this particular story: "At tech expo, open source software is hard to find" is the sub-headline for those of us who (like me) didn`t bother to read the article completely, thats all what this story is about and it just heapons to be a quote from someone who is in those silent spots at "tech expo". Wich expo is he talking about anyway, ah there is the link in the article, you know a good journalist has done his/her job when you see one link in the article, it tells you that he has listened to every side on the matter on which he (or she) is reporting. Tech expo must be a fun place to be, especially for serious programmer will feel right at home at the informationweek sponsored (another reputable magazine with such high ranking "news sources" as the bsa!) where the most sophistacated topic seams to "securing wireless networks using nice shiny gui software", one has to wonder in what cave those who hear of wireless insecurity for the first time have been living, but it aint the one with our friendly OOG

And now I might have lost the readers looking for a nice conspiracy theory about well targeted fud already, dont throw away those tinfoil hats yet couse msnbc actually reports the scary story that there is an FBI booth at pc expo where real fbi officers (no "I could have sworn it was a booth babe when I asked about getting a picture of her kissing me" stories this time)hand out application forms becouse, acording to msnbc "where better to find certified computer experts" Now that is scary becouse from what I read in the rest of the story, this expo doesn`t really match computex, hacking at large or e3 for that matter, so I think the FBI should have a chat with Cia recruting or perhaps see if the nsa has some cryptographers left couse I have the feeling they wont find any real technical help at this expo (other then those who put ten years of wireless mcse window 2000 experience with webservices .net and iis on their cv).

OK, here is my humble opinion on this whole mess. Firstly, from what the Id guys said, The E3 Doom III footage was a demonstration of actual gameplay, YES you heard correctly. If you don't believe me, here is the proof. (This is assuming that you consider Gamespy a believable news source, If not, that's cool and I have no other real proof, but I am sidetracking...) Secondly the Doom III Legacy video is NOT what was shown inside the booth. Most of you already know this, but just in case... I and some of my friends asked if we could get video of the closed demo but they were not allowing it, (hence the whole wait in line for 3 trillion hours. It looks like they wanted control of the viewers and what intellectual property they captured on film.) Yes, as far as I can tell it is nowhere near done, (the console said version 0.01) yes, the engine technology is amazing, yes, the gameplay seems to be much more focused on surviving and making slow, calculated, fear driven moves. I would liken the gameplay I saw more to a combination FPS/Silent Hill style game than the old school "shoot the 10,000 creatures and flip a switch" system of Doom II and Doom. It looks like you as the player will have to occasionally hide and run from the enemy rather than haul out the BFG and let all die. I saw demons break out of walls behind you and from pipes in front of you. The player seemed more able to interact with his/her environment in a realistic way. This does A LOT for improving suspension of disbelief within the game. The rules you have come to expect to hold true from all FPS games, (hiding in corners where nobody will attack you from behind, inanimate objects always face one direction and can NEVER tip over) may not always apply anymore. Simply put, hiding in a corner is not going to save your sorry a-- now marine! The lighting engine goes a LONG way to enhance your perspective of where everything is. If you see a large daemon shaped shadow on the ground, it is probably a good idea to hide at this point, especially if the demon has not seen you yet. (As evidenced by it eating your head. :)

My concern is simply this, I have seen A LOT of Id bashing these past few weeks since E3. Frankly, the PA guys aren't helping much with the whole "I wish they would make a game out of the engine sometime" attitude. They have that opinion, and although I tend to disagree with it, they are entitled to it. I am more concerned with the HORDES of end users who take this idea and treat it as biblical law rather than thinking on their own. I agree Id does not have a truly working full game out yet. H-ll, I am sure they are nowhere near done, but just because the graphics are amazing and it is an Id release, does not necessarily mean that this game will be plotless. Doom III is the first Id game I can think of where a WRITER (from 7th Guest and 11th Hour) was hired for the team.

I have a theory regarding successful companies and end users opinions regarding them. It seems fashionable to hold successful, established companies in low regard. While us readers of Slashdot bash Micro$oft, we at least have A LOT of material to work with. (I think of the hundreds of security loopholes, system crashes, and restarts over the past few years I had to deal with. :) Id, however, has consistently released stable, fun, modable, and groundbreaking CROSS PLATFORM products that I and several thousand people have consistently enjoyed. So why does everybody want a groundbreaking, reliable, fun, and modable cross platform game RIGHT NOW?! Please, give the Id people some time to breathe. Note, I did not say praise Id for they are infallible, just don't bash them with less than all the facts.

In closing, I would say that this demo deserved the award it got, does this mean the game will rule all when it is released? Not necessarily, I only saw less than 7 minutes of gameplay. When comparing this to the 29 hours I spent on RTCW, this seems trite indeed. However, this demo did give me a glimpse into the future of gaming technologies, something I hold dear to my heart. I want to know that through this recession, through this war on terrorism, through the Colombine tragedy, and in this post dot com world, that somebody has the ability to be creative, talented, and gutsy enough to push the envelope and change the industry for the better. Did Id give me a great game? We will find out when it is released. Did Id give me hope for a bright future for games? I would say a resounding yes.

The games are downloadable to the GBA, yes. But that's only after you unlock them playing another game, Animal Crossing (known as Animal Forest + in Japan) for the Gamecube. Now, there's something you have to understand about Animal Crossing: 95% of people will not like this game. Imagine The Sims crossing with the talking animals found in Disney movies. That's a hint of what Animal Crossing is all about. You play the game for literally months before you can save up enough money to buy yourself a decent house, and winning NES games is purely luck-of-the-draw.

I've talked to people in Japan who have been playing the game literally for months, and they just won their first Famicom (Japan's version of the NES) game. And it's not like they play it for a day, then pick it up next week. No, no, the game continues even when you're not playing it, using the Gamecube's internal clock. The game knows when certain things happen (raffles, sales, etc) and will not let you jump in to play them later.

Also, the NES games are stored in local RAM on the GBA. Once you power it down, you're done. You gotta reload the game from your Gamecube.

They have taken a hint straight from HERE

Hell, same thing for just about any skilled work that combines technical expertise with creativity EXCEPT FOR PROGRAMMING.You never even tried to look around for musicians, mappers, texture painters, modelers and animators that put their work on the net for free did you?

If you look at the work that went into some of the commercial quakeIII engine games (sof-ii,jediknight-ii,startrek something) then you will know that there are people out there who can do more and better in a three to ten people teams in their spare time!
The process of going to good gpl games will be in two steps:
- getting (gamecontent commercial like quake 1/2?) games with sufficient gameplay to iron out the bugs in the engine, get the physics for gameplay that feels good and get the and tools to build for it

- getting the current hl/ut/q3a modders to come to the new engine and build good games from scratch, they have what it takes (just play some of the free single player half-life maps and look at the models build for half-life multiplayer mods)

No "financial incentive"? Well some people think there is not reason to write gpl code for free and therefore there will never be any good gpl code, I dont think this is the case and looking at the mappers and animators working on all of the populair mods out there who work mostly becouse they know their work will get spotted and get them a job I have high hopes of games equivalent in size to the current mods getting made available for free as in beer.

btw: When you go looking for programmers you can find them on every street corner (although not linus level ofcourse) but when you want people who know how to make games where do you look? The best of the modding community has proven to be a great place to start your search, moddelers and mappers know that!

I don't know about you guys, but I can see what this article's talking about. There are sectors where the audience is not so full of fellow hobbyist programmers, but with users - including the rude, clueless, computer-illiterate users with no reading comprehension skills who will bombard you with email requesting you to restate what you've already taken your time to put in a readme or who blame you for your stuff not working when they overwrite your files with someone else's, ad nauseum. I myself have gotten much grief over releasing code to gaming audiences the way us OS geeks would think of releasing things in the Linux world.

Previously when I'd written engines and snippets for MUD codebases, my cohorts and I very quickly wearied of the bleating of people who thought that, although we'd gotten our own start by making an effort, buying books, and experimenting with code, we were duty bound to tie their shoes and clean up their mess and exempt them from learning about what they were trying to do. We wound up releasing without documentation to discourage folks who couldn't figure out the very cleanly written and yes, commented code for the file formats and do a simple "./configure; make", just to keep some spare time open for coding and real life instead of answering griping emails from people to squeamish to touch a little C++ or install a Linux or BSD partition like we had.

Nobody has any business trying to turn your hobby into unpaid labor, but boy do some people try. The value of the ethics of the open source world varies with the audience. "Release early, release often" can make all kinds of problems when there's more review from users early on than peers.

Doom took a year? If I remember correctly, Doom was about a year late when it came out...am I wrong?

I believe so. The original design document (pdf) for Doom is dated 11/28/92. The release date was 12/10/93.

Obviously work was started before the design document was finished, but as you can tell by perusing it, the game was still being sketched out at the end of November, 1992. Several reports say that iD began Doom only after the Wolf 3D expansion Spear of Destiny was released, which was September, 1992. So, if we take that as the start date, it looks like about 15 months.

As for an iD game being a year late, I'm not sure, but you may be thinking of Quake 1?

That would be Matt Costello.

From the id Software E3 interview at GameSpy:

GameSpy: [7th Guest and now DOOM III writer] Matt Costello ... somehow I suspect you were involved with getting him involved in the project.

Graeme Devine: [laughs] Oh yeah! I remember we were looking for a writer ... we'd talked to a bunch of writers, Tim and John were reading books and stuff, and I said "Well, I know a guy. I've worked with him before, he's really good: Matt Costello."

So, we got some of his books and John read them and loved them, and it's just really weird, bringing him onto the project ... an old friend, bringing part the old team back. It's been really fun.

Well, while Doom III certainly looks good, I don't think the whole "medium quality" issue is so big a deal. If it was, they'd have taken more of an effort and shown it at high quality, or at least they'd have told just about everyone that it'd look better at high quality.
In the "interview" with Shacknews (actually it's just one email), Carmack says that high quality settings opposed to medium ones would mean "uncompressed textures" and "anisotropic filtering". While especially anisotropic filtering is nice, it's not that big of a deal. The game would look better, but not stunningly so, and I'm not actually sure if you'd notice the higher quality in the low res movies that are available on the net.

The interview is quite interesting, though, even though it doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know (Nvidia faster than Ati, Ati's drivers suck, GF4 Ti best buy). Please note that the story (for some reason) links to page two of the review, page one is available, too. :P

Since everybody wants to see the pretty pictures.
the real thing
in-game shot

Since everybody wants to see the pretty pictures.
the real thing
in-game shot

pretty: http://www.gamespy.com/e32002/image.asp?/e32002/xb ox/sb/7.jpg

non-pretty: http://mediaviewer.ign.com/ignMediaPage.jsp?media_ id=1513230&object_id=481366&channel_id=73&page_tit le=E3+2002%3A+Steel+Battalion&adtag=network%3Dign% 26pagetype%3Darticle%26site%3Dxboxviewer&return_ur l=http%3A%2F%2Fxbox.ign.com%2Fobjects%2F481%2F4813 66.html


I love the self destruct button, encased in a little clear plastic box, Spaceballs style.

ALternative INFO b/c it's /.:
Here, I read about Steel Batallion (the mech game for XBox) a few days ago at gamespy.com. I can't find the article now but here are some screen shots: Screen Shots

From what I can remember, the game has "graphics so good you won't find them amazing because the game looks so real." (or something.)

OKAY HERE I FOUND IT: The article is here: ARTIVIEW ARTICLE!! The actual comment was ""the graphics really don't seem that impressive, because they look so real."

"Steel Battalion will ship with 20 missions on 12 different levels, and although the final price has yet to be determined, you can probably expect to pay about $150 to $300 for this awesome-looking game/controller combo.

Oh, and it WON'T be playable online using XBox-Live :/

ALternative INFO b/c it's /.:
Here, I read about Steel Batallion (the mech game for XBox) a few days ago at gamespy.com. I can't find the article now but here are some screen shots: Screen Shots

From what I can remember, the game has "graphics so good you won't find them amazing because the game looks so real." (or something.)

OKAY HERE I FOUND IT: The article is here: ARTIVIEW ARTICLE!! The actual comment was ""the graphics really don't seem that impressive, because they look so real."

"Steel Battalion will ship with 20 missions on 12 different levels, and although the final price has yet to be determined, you can probably expect to pay about $150 to $300 for this awesome-looking game/controller combo.

Oh, and it WON'T be playable online using XBox-Live :/

Try Gamespy.com's E3 Coverage, it's been going since Day Zero of E3.

It's not your grandfather's Myst anymore; they're going with the times and have added a little gore and fragging to the game. Heres a screenshot.

:P

I'm not sure that Cool toilets would look good on the Sharp Zaurus =]

By the time this comes out (they say 2004, more like 2005)

Nope, it's due out next year. id Software are generally pretty good at predicting the year of release, unlike some companies.

Dude, I think you need to look a little closer. Those facial features aren't textures, they are polygons. Note the shadows from the facial features on the face itself. Look at the detail of the hands. In the words of Carmack at his Japan presentation, "in previous engines, we were lucky to have 3 polygons for a nose". :)

Sheesh, Carmack sure is slipping. Things are looking a little foggy here. And these monsters aren't looking very frightening. Okay, well, maybe if I was a girl...

Sheesh, Carmack sure is slipping. Things are looking a little foggy here. And these monsters aren't looking very frightening. Okay, well, maybe if I was a girl...

Wow and Cool toilets

Now, this is why I always wipe the seat before sitting down.

River Raid RULES! Hall of Fame

Thanks for posting that, Cliff.

I would like to thank those who have shown an interest so far in this process.

So far I have prepared a site to notify students of their marks, hand out assignments and post notes and news. This entire course is expected to be online via IRC. During the whole time, I expect to be accessible to the students on a one on one level as much as possible. My goal is to keep the price down and class size down (per section). 20 students per section is a goal that sounds effective.

Course content will focus on the archetypes intrinsic to all games and zoom in on the games that are successful (board and you control a paddle that whacks a ball back and forth because everybody loves tennis and ping pong, right?" See the agreement? Every game there is comes down to this principle and I am going to develop these ideas for the course in such a way as to get the students thinking. One assignment involves creating necessary elements for a new game, never before created. If I can find the game a student hands in, they get zero! (within reason)

Why level design? If there is any form of design in game design, it starts with the levels and entities that occupy them. The rules and other such things all come secondary to the form and function of the environment. Instead of level design, if I chose game programming as a medium for a game design course, I could propound things like the necessity of using Pointers until I'm blue in the face, while next year someone could optimize a third party driver, that actually rewires the way data is handled on the heap so all that work we did was for nothing, or worse off - has to be reworked entirely. In reality, the engines are always changing, and the companies making games are adapting short lifespan techniques to obtain the desired look and feel they want. I understand we might be all using database driven operating systems soon, so that has to impact game design in a good way. What we do today we won't do tomorrow - except for that common denominator called level design. Until someone figures out how to come up with algorithm based games that write their own levels (in a true sense, not abstractly), you can expect to find level design as the front runner to any form of game development - even though the programmers might claim that their entity work is more important. It's really the same thing, now isn't it?

Even now, the industry is leaning toward how a game looks often more than how it plays. Only a handful of games are balanced enough to look good and play good.

What this means to our course, is that it's best to understand game design from a level designer's perspective before getting bogged down in the rapidly changing elements in game programming, models, art or sound.

Level design transfers between all games without much of a difference. 3d or 2d, there are principles delivered in level design that are not so fundamental in other arts.

Students of the course, in all likelihood, could focus on any game, and are all expected to bring discussion to the table as a portion of their grade.

Assignments and tests can come from the perspective of any number of games, provided the points are proven by the student.

Three major assignments and two online tests are also anticipated. The tests can be written in such a manner to prevent cheating, too.

I expect this to be a fun course with lots to offer anyone who wants to get into the industry and stay.

Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~dteam/

Thanks for posting that, Cliff.

I would like to thank those who have shown an interest so far in this process.

So far I have prepared a site to notify students of their marks, hand out assignments and post notes and news. This entire course is expected to be online via IRC. During the whole time, I expect to be accessible to the students on a one on one level as much as possible. My goal is to keep the price down and class size down (per section). 20 students per section is a goal that sounds effective.

Course content will focus on the archetypes intrinsic to all games and zoom in on the games that are successful (board and you control a paddle that whacks a ball back and forth because everybody loves tennis and ping pong, right?" See the agreement? Every game there is comes down to this principle and I am going to develop these ideas for the course in such a way as to get the students thinking. One assignment involves creating necessary elements for a new game, never before created. If I can find the game a student hands in, they get zero! (within reason)

Why level design? If there is any form of design in game design, it starts with the levels and entities that occupy them. The rules and other such things all come secondary to the form and function of the environment. Instead of level design, if I chose game programming as a medium for a game design course, I could propound things like the necessity of using Pointers until I'm blue in the face, while next year someone could optimize a third party driver, that actually rewires the way data is handled on the heap so all that work we did was for nothing, or worse off - has to be reworked entirely. In reality, the engines are always changing, and the companies making games are adapting short lifespan techniques to obtain the desired look and feel they want. I understand we might be all using database driven operating systems soon, so that has to impact game design in a good way. What we do today we won't do tomorrow - except for that common denominator called level design. Until someone figures out how to come up with algorithm based games that write their own levels (in a true sense, not abstractly), you can expect to find level design as the front runner to any form of game development - even though the programmers might claim that their entity work is more important. It's really the same thing, now isn't it?

Even now, the industry is leaning toward how a game looks often more than how it plays. Only a handful of games are balanced enough to look good and play good.

What this means to our course, is that it's best to understand game design from a level designer's perspective before getting bogged down in the rapidly changing elements in game programming, models, art or sound.

Level design transfers between all games without much of a difference. 3d or 2d, there are principles delivered in level design that are not so fundamental in other arts.

Students of the course, in all likelihood, could focus on any game, and are all expected to bring discussion to the table as a portion of their grade.

Assignments and tests can come from the perspective of any number of games, provided the points are proven by the student.

Three major assignments and two online tests are also anticipated. The tests can be written in such a manner to prevent cheating, too.

I expect this to be a fun course with lots to offer anyone who wants to get into the industry and stay.

Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~dteam/

Thanks for posting that, Cliff.

I would like to thank those who have shown an interest so far in this process.

So far I have prepared a site to notify students of their marks, hand out assignments and post notes and news. This entire course is expected to be online via IRC. During the whole time, I expect to be accessible to the students on a one on one level as much as possible. My goal is to keep the price down and class size down (per section). 20 students per section is a goal that sounds effective.

Course content will focus on the archetypes intrinsic to all games and zoom in on the games that are successful (board and you control a paddle that whacks a ball back and forth because everybody loves tennis and ping pong, right?" See the agreement? Every game there is comes down to this principle and I am going to develop these ideas for the course in such a way as to get the students thinking. One assignment involves creating necessary elements for a new game, never before created. If I can find the game a student hands in, they get zero! (within reason)

Why level design? If there is any form of design in game design, it starts with the levels and entities that occupy them. The rules and other such things all come secondary to the form and function of the environment. Instead of level design, if I chose game programming as a medium for a game design course, I could propound things like the necessity of using Pointers until I'm blue in the face, while next year someone could optimize a third party driver, that actually rewires the way data is handled on the heap so all that work we did was for nothing, or worse off - has to be reworked entirely. In reality, the engines are always changing, and the companies making games are adapting short lifespan techniques to obtain the desired look and feel they want. I understand we might be all using database driven operating systems soon, so that has to impact game design in a good way. What we do today we won't do tomorrow - except for that common denominator called level design. Until someone figures out how to come up with algorithm based games that write their own levels (in a true sense, not abstractly), you can expect to find level design as the front runner to any form of game development - even though the programmers might claim that their entity work is more important. It's really the same thing, now isn't it?

Even now, the industry is leaning toward how a game looks often more than how it plays. Only a handful of games are balanced enough to look good and play good.

What this means to our course, is that it's best to understand game design from a level designer's perspective before getting bogged down in the rapidly changing elements in game programming, models, art or sound.

Level design transfers between all games without much of a difference. 3d or 2d, there are principles delivered in level design that are not so fundamental in other arts.

Students of the course, in all likelihood, could focus on any game, and are all expected to bring discussion to the table as a portion of their grade.

Assignments and tests can come from the perspective of any number of games, provided the points are proven by the student.

Three major assignments and two online tests are also anticipated. The tests can be written in such a manner to prevent cheating, too.

I expect this to be a fun course with lots to offer anyone who wants to get into the industry and stay.

Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~dteam/

Kevin Cloud interview is HERE.

screw the mideval crap.

I want to fly around in my own ship and blast at bad guys with the latest tech.

Eve-online here I come baby.

They expect to go closed beta this month too!!

There is also an article over at Game Spy.

I think the next year is shaping up to turn out some great new MMORPG games.

The thing is, Java's strength is it's very weakness. Java is a platform neutral by design, so it's rather clunky when compared to a platform specific language. You won't ever see a game written in Java, not because Java is slow, but because you can't use Direct X with it(or whatever platform specific lib you want).

I beg to differ

http://www.gamespy.com/games/971.shtml

Forget Black and White. Get yourself Populous I !!

Might as well mention Morrowind, which went gold last week and is expected in stores late next week. According to the many previews out there, Morrowind looks to be more open-ended and immersive than any other RPG to date. It's only single player, but given the joys of many multiplayer RPGs, that's probably a good thing. In addition to the official site and forums, there's a good RPGPlanet site that collects most relevant information. Look for the water screenshots; they use pixel shading to get some truly impressive effects.

it would seem that we would already be getting some idea as to the basic premise of the plot from the producers

Not only does it seem that way, but it really is that way. Hint: RTFA!

don't look all that great from the screen shots.

http://www.gamespy.com/previews/april02/nwn/screen shots.shtm


http://www.b.150m.com/

What a fun neologism. I looked up Nerfed on E2, but no luck. For those who don't play EverQuest (or similar games), Nerfed seems to mean that some skill associated with your character class has been rebalanced by the game designers to keep the game fair. I would guess that its etymology lies in Nerf toys; swords, guns and other weapons among them, that are made of foam rubber so that kids can play with them without getting hurt.

The source I found was on Gamespy which includes this delightful description:

• The definition of balance tweaking is when the developer adjusts another player's class and makes it a bit less powerful. The definition of a nerf is when it's your class that is tweaked and made less powerful. To give you an example, non-archers in Dark Age shrug and say things like, "Archery was insanely overpowered anyway. It's about time Mythic did something." Archers say, "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS! NOW WE ARE USELESS AS A CLASS. YOU SUCK, MYTHIC!!!!!

GameSpy.com:
What's This World Coming To? The Future of Massively Multiplayer Games

Slashdot.org:
The Future of MMORPG's

FARK.com:
Multiplayer game developers declare the future of online gaming to be something like a "Fascist Disneyland."

If you look at the picture of all those guys lined up beside eachother you could swear it was taken in the 1970's.

You forgot one link:
The adventures of Spyke Johnson-- Ascii Archaeologist
This is an ...interesting intro to nethack :)

I'm surprised to read quite a few posts from people saying "What's Nethack?" ... well, here's some information to get you started on an answer:

Unsung Heros: NetHack : "NetHack is a spectacular dungeon crawl that has been in development for more than 15 years. It's the only game in this feature that we can refer to in the present tense, because it is the only game still being actively worked on. It features random dungeons, enough monsters to fill an AD&D menagerie, and enough commands to create a programming language."

The Gamespy Hall of Fame : "Here's a game that's been under continuous development for over 15 years. It has no graphics, unless you count the primitive patterns made of ascii characters. And yet is has a huge following -- a very active newsgroup, fans all over the globe, and many instances of major media coverage. There's some kind of magic in NetHack, a world so huge and complex that every game is completely different, where each new item can twist the gameplay in new directions. Mostly we love it for the surprises -- the number of times you try some amazingly obscure action and find out that it works, leaving slump back in your chair and exclaim, 'They thought of everything!'"

Salon: The Best Game Ever : "But as any hacker worth the title will tell you, Nethack is still one of the best games ever made. What's more, it's one of the best open-source games ever made -- meaning anyone who cares can grab ahold of the game's source code and make changes and improvements. The player's guide is even authored by none other than open-source ontologist Eric S. Raymond..."

The Nethack Homepage : "Nethack is a single player, ASCII graphics-based adventure game, similar to the lines of Dungeons & Dragons and similar fantasy games. It is commonly classified in the larger group of Rogue-like Games, which generally are all text-based, solo adventures. Within the game, your character is after the infamous Wizard of Yendor, who has stolen the Amulet of Yendor and plans to use it for his evil purposes. You, a young member of your chosen class, have been blessed by your people and your god to retrieve the Amulet, and to save the world from the Wizard's evil plans."

Variants and Utilities : "One of the most impressive features of Nethack is the amount of 3rd party developed material that either is a varient of the Nethack game, or can be used to enhance your Nethack gaming experience. You'll find both variants and utilites for Nethack listed on this page."

But this one may be (in my biased opinion) the coolest project of all...

Nethack-Palm Porting Project : "The Nethack-Palm porting project is a loosely-knit group of Nethack and Palm enthusiasts who are working to port the classic game Nethack to the Palm platform. The project is well underway, but still far from complete so we welcome any new contributors." (See also Roguelikes for PalmOS)

• His recent interview with RPG.net
• An insightful writeup at GameSpy
• A fairly thorough biography of the man
• And, of course, Gary's homepage

At least they're not peddling their readership to businesses by offering poorly-animated, humor-lacking Flash animations. Gabe has always done art for things other than Penny Arcade. His art is a regular staple over on the Gamespy Network. At the very least, Gabe's art is good enough that he doesn't have to whore himself out to get work.

Google is your friend!

This guy seems to be of the same mind as you. Take a look here

This is also a good laugh.

You are completely wrong. Quake could - and in almost every level had, overlapping passages. I can assure you, it was as fully 3D as any game to come after it. To quote Gamespy: "The most amazing quality of Quake was the first completely three-dimensional environment, with the most advanced physics system of its time."

Disclaimer: I work for GameSpy

I've found that, for reviews, the best place to go is http://www.gamespy.com/reviews, and here's why: 95% of our reviews are outsourced just to prevent biasedness.

Yes, MS does have a competitor in this field, and that competitor is wiping the floor with them (on non-subscription services).

You might have heard of them... GameSpy?

A second game for the teenage age that I would certainly recommend is Halflife. Yes, it's been out forever. But, for people who dont have brand new 2.0 ghz p4's or 1900+ Athlon XP's, Halflife offers a game that is easy on older hardware, has an active online multiplayer community, and is really fun to play.

I second that. Also, as far as community goes, it's not just active, it's HUGE. According to the GameSpy stats page, it's seriously kicking everything else's butt in terms of players. (Think like 10 times more people play it than play Quake III Arena.)

Personally, I'm not too fond of consoles, but I've heard good things about GTA3. On the PC, the most obvious thing to mention would be Castle Wolfenstein, which I spotted in the stores the other day. Judging from the popularity of the multiplayer test, it's going to be ripped off the shelves. I've heard some people complain about the AI, but personally, I'd much rather play multiplayer anyway.

For strategy-lovers, there's always Stronghold.A realtively new game from firefly studios, stronghold mixes bits of the fighting from age of Empire with the resource management from the settlers and adds some spicy caste-building extras on top. It may not be everyones cup of tea, but I find it very enjoyable.

I'm not implying that ATI did it in a selfless manner; enlightened self interest is a good thing. ATI does well in reviews and Quake III players that buy ATI cards get faster operation. Other than the competition, who loses here?

If they were optimizing for Quake 3 because that is where their largest audience was, and therefore they could satisfy the greatest number of their customers in that way, then yes, I would have a hard time faulting their actions from the standpoint of the free market(although I still wouldn't buy an ATI card, because that is a stupid engineering decision). However, this is not why they optimized for Quake 3.

Confining the dicussion solely to first-person shooters, it should be pointed out that Quake 3 is *not* the most popular game in this genre. Gamespy.com tracks playing statistics -- the numbers they display for today have been consistent for some months(excepting the addition of RtCW). I presume Carmack didn't want to dwell on this at great length in his .plan, and who can blame him? Quake 3's failures are not failures of technology(for which he is responsible) but of gameplay(for which he is not). The reason that ATI optimized for Quake 3 is that it is used as a benchmarking tool. Their expectation, probably, is that gamers will see relatively high benchmarks for Quake 3 in reviews of ATI cards, and generalize from that to assume that all OpenGL games will enjoy excellent performance on ATI's card. This is likely a false assumption for anything other than Quake 3 or a Quake 3 mod. (Even games based on the Quake 3 engine will not share the performance benefits, unless you rename their executable -- and possibly not even then, depending on how modified the engine is.)

So in other words, the problem is not that ATI has cheated on their drivers to please the massive Quake 3 community. The problem is that they have cheated on their drivers to deceive reviewers, and(they hope) customers who read reviews. This is "self-interest," to be sure, but I do not find it to be "enlightened."