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Ex professional game developer here. (I've shipped games on PS1, PS2, PC, Wii, DS, and helped numerous companies with their PS3 engines and toolchain. Left the professional industry in 2011 for a stable paycheck but I do my own (indie) game programming and design now, am a hardcore gamer, and help fellow game developers with advice.)

Sorry for the LONG read, but think I can lend some information that will be insightful and not inciteful. =P

> why we still haven't seen modders, foss developers and artists get together to build their own games.

We have, but on a limited scale.

TL:DR;

* Tech Hurdle
* Too many cooks in the kitchen
* Co-dependency upon the Game Engine and everything else
* Theory vs Implementation
* The "good" modders get "poached"

The LONG answer:

There are numerous reasons for this:

* Tech Hurdle

The first hurdle was the tech hurdle. Up until recently writing a "general purpose engine" was folly. Was the game 2D or 3D? If 3D, you HAD to optimize for indoor or outdoor environments for the most part with various kludges to support the other. If you notice both Unity and Unreal now offer a "2D" mode -- Unity with 2D Game Kit and Unreal with Paper2D

Examples where tech matters:

Trying to do "dense jungle environments" in a 3D shooter was basically a recipe of framerate FAIL until Crysis came along:

Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Don't do that!!

We "solved" this problem by basically throwing more money at hardware (GPU / CPUs)

How does the engine handle the "contradictory" nature of transparency?

* Opaque objects can be rendered front-to-back using the hardware's "Early Z Test".
* Transparent objects need to be rendered back-to-front so you get the correct colors.

How does an engine handle thousands of lights?

* Deferred rending "solves" this problem but doesn't work for transparency. DOH!

People are using hybrid approaches of Forward Render vs Deferred Render. If the "big boys" are STILL figuring this out, Unity 2018.1 with their High Definition Render Pipeline (HD RP) (Preview) -- what chance does amateurs have? Yes, we see engines like Irrlicht but that is a steep learning curve for non-technical people.

We've seen SOME limited success. Back when Quake 2 was popular we Cube 2: Sauerbraten as a good example of the community coming together to produce something "good."

Open Source engines have typically performed like crap. I've posted in the past

how Mike Acton reviewed Ogre 1.9's OrgreNode.cpp pointing out its horrible design and performance.

As a result Orge 2.x game up with a gameplan -- they put together a PDF of how OOP screwed their performance over.

Turns out, Mike Acton was right. They ended up with a 5x performance increase by ditching OOP and using DOD.

How many people own Jason's quintessential engine development book Game Engine Architecture? How many understand it?

* Too many cooks in the kitchen.

C++ is "good" example of "Design by committee." Everybody has their favorite pet peeve bloating the core user experience until it is an over-engineered clusterfuck.

You'll notice that almost all of the

If you "Ignore the messenger because you don't like the message" you'll miss out on a lot of great wisdom. You'll find the following links to be a lot more palatable.

Mike Acton reviewed Ogre 1.9's OrgreNode.cpp pointing out its horrible design and performance.

As a result Orge 2.x game up with a gameplan -- they put together a PDF of how OOP screwed their performance over.

Turns out, Mike Acton was right. They ended up with a 5x performance increase by ditching OOP and using DOD.

Where is he, by the way? Haven't seen his rants in a while. It's as if MOO (sexconker, IIRC) and APK hosts file guy have taken his spot.

Hey, MOO guy, I just want to know if you're the same sexconker as 00:45-00:55 in http://www.mediafire.com/?9ncnq0c4o3f8ciz (MP3, no copyright infringement, probably NSFW and funny as fuck) because if you are, it is one fucking small world.

While there is some truth to that, you haven't been keeping up to date with Orgre's design and architecture changes:

Orgre 2.0 Pitfalls and Design Proposal
* http://www.mediafire.com/downl...

They ditched OOP and incorporated DOD (Data-Orientated-Design) for a 5x performance increase!
* http://www.yosoygames.com.ar/w...

Mike Acton is a respected programmer in the video game industry, and he's right. In fact, if you were paying attention I listed his famous Typicall C++ Bullshit as reference in my Ogre 2.0 proposal.

OgreNode.cpp was written 13 years ago when OO programming was all the rave (still is?) everyone had a single core, caches didn't matter and most efficient way to cull the world was to use an Octree or a BSP. The world believed that "if( dirty )" was a magical, no-cost expression that is immediately a performance improvement wherever used to avoid the execution of more than 3 instructions.

13 years later, Moore's law kicked us in the butt and everyone is multicore. You probably know that story already.

Mike Acton reviewed the 1.9 version. Perhaps it would've been more interesting to see a review of the 2.0 file which has been refactored to better fit Data Oriented Design principles (and I'm sure there are things I wrote to criticize). Many of the things he criticizes of 1.9 have been fixed. Nevertheless there are things we can learn. Note that if he weren't right, then it would be hard to explain why there was a 5x performance increase between 1.9 and 2.0.

Mike Acton's DOD comments
* http://bounceapp.com/116414

It's not directly linked anywhere, so here his is wordpress blog page about it, including source (Unity3D project). There's native clients at his link also, or you can download the /Web.html page and /Web.unity3d file from the webplayer version then edit the html to make the screen size larger (I altered it to 2500x1400, looks cooler larger).

It's hitting the nostalgia pretty well for me, having not played any 3D mario games since 64. The little bombs look awesome. The whole thing makes me want to make a small game in Unity, which is pretty cool.

I found a copy of the Palm 5r3 SDK here:

http://www.mediafire.com/downl...

Didn't download this myself, so I don't know if the docs are in there too.

A couple of Tu-95 Bears flew down towards the north of Scotland a few weeks back, the RAF went up to welcome them outside the national limit and got some nice pictures. I grabbed them off the MoD website and bundled them up since most of my friends are Apple fans and don't do Flash.

https://www.mediafire.com/?fs5...

Runs to about 12MB or so as a zip download.

try this instead...

http://www.mediafire.com/?jwzmmuhmyku

i hear it scales quite well

I can't stand her either, been calling her Shitney since 1999.
However:
There's a Youtube user named Bliix who makes very good rock/metal remixes of pop songs. Here are his Britney Spears remixes:
http://www.youtube.com/user/bliix/videos?query=britney+spears (the videos on his channel)
http://www.mediafire.com/?awwphlehwm7phq3 (.ZIP of the .MP3's)

Also, many pop songs benefit from acoustic and/or cover versions.

PS
Some pop is much better than Britney. I listen to plenty of other stuff. I don't slam all of pop because some of it sucks. I know that's a bit of a tangent, but I wanted to make sure I said it.

They could use the books already on Wikibooks ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page ) as a starting point.

I wonder if the open-source books they will produce will break away from the paper textbook paradigm (linear text+static images)? The one I am writing ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Transport_and_Engineering_Methods ) is heavily hyperlinked, I've included a spreadsheet and expect to include other media, am working on a resource library ( http://www.mediafire.com/?y1ko8gj5rouob ), and the concept of "class projects" (design studies) which become part of the book.

There's a torrent link on the official Black Mesa site, it points to:

http://www.mediafire.com/?khmzyygg4vetko0

I'm downloading it now, Black Mesa team says "Please seed!"

Those who want to read it need not settle for a wikipedia editor's summary.

The story was originally printed in the March 1962 issue of Amazing Stories. Scan available here.

Also, Asimov's original title for the story, "What Is This Thing Called Love?" is restored in his short story collection, "Nightfall and Other Stories".

So the damage is done to file hosting industry.

Tell that to mediafire, which is where all illegal download links started sending me about a week after megaupload went down.

I found a link for those interested: http://www.mediafire.com/?fd9zx2ckd1xfals

The forum text before it was blown away

From reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/unt92/russian_hackers_claim_to_have_65m_linkedin/

"dwdm"

Guys need you help again.

[2] link to hash

it's about 118Mb.

"M@LIK"

Alright, looks like no one wants to help here...

100 449 found

6 358 928 left

Can't upload left due to poor internet connection, use my founds as a dict instead.

More will be here soon! Already hit 15k more.

"charlie"

30077 new

"M@LIK"

+163 267 found : [3] http://www.mediafire.com/?bq8bd5iojp50zci

6 165 604 left (After importing all charlies' founds)

"CyberLord"

Hi guys

Where is last left list ? Anybody,Would you mind adding the left list please

POLIMO

Ok here my stuff !

236 578 Cracked one ( propably more to come if i have time...)

cracked pass come from the start post, cause no left....

The join file is on pass format ( no hashe:pass cause i use JTR & on heavy file is taking to much time to past, so feel free to load my pass & past them)

Here the patern i find :

*linkedin *

*link *

"alotdv"

55120 found after all

left : [4] http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n307hutksjstow3

The forum text before it was blown away

From reddit:

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/unt92/russian_hackers_claim_to_have_65m_linkedin/

"dwdm"

Guys need you help again.

[2] link to hash

it's about 118Mb.

"M@LIK"

Alright, looks like no one wants to help here...

100 449 found

6 358 928 left

Can't upload left due to poor internet connection, use my founds as a dict instead.

More will be here soon! Already hit 15k more.

"charlie"

30077 new

"M@LIK"

+163 267 found : [3] http://www.mediafire.com/?bq8bd5iojp50zci

6 165 604 left (After importing all charlies' founds)

"CyberLord"

Hi guys

Where is last left list ? Anybody,Would you mind adding the left list please

POLIMO

Ok here my stuff !

236 578 Cracked one ( propably more to come if i have time...)

cracked pass come from the start post, cause no left....

The join file is on pass format ( no hashe:pass cause i use JTR & on heavy file is taking to much time to past, so feel free to load my pass & past them)

Here the patern i find :

*linkedin *

*link *

"alotdv"

55120 found after all

left : [4] http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?n307hutksjstow3

In general, random maps are great for a game's replayability, whether or not one can modify settings.

II was a marked improvement over the already-great 1st game, but game series sometimes seem to level off after that, so I asked.

I've had a lot of fun customizing Civ II. Does Civ IV maintain that, or take it farther?

My modified text files can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ef5y9gql83g8lws and http://www.mediafire.com/?u5hzc09j3c3uqc2
I like my renaming scheme, I made a few minor tweaks, and some of my settings changes seem to have led to a more challenging AI.

In general, random maps are great for a game's replayability, whether or not one can modify settings.

II was a marked improvement over the already-great 1st game, but game series sometimes seem to level off after that, so I asked.

I've had a lot of fun customizing Civ II. Does Civ IV maintain that, or take it farther?

My modified text files can be found here: http://www.mediafire.com/?ef5y9gql83g8lws and http://www.mediafire.com/?u5hzc09j3c3uqc2
I like my renaming scheme, I made a few minor tweaks, and some of my settings changes seem to have led to a more challenging AI.

Mediafire surely doesn't host any pirated software, movies, or music.

Oh, and these were just the first ones I came across, by googling terms like "MS Office site:mediafire.com"

Mediafire surely doesn't host any pirated software, movies, or music.

Oh, and these were just the first ones I came across, by googling terms like "MS Office site:mediafire.com"

Mediafire surely doesn't host any pirated software, movies, or music.

Oh, and these were just the first ones I came across, by googling terms like "MS Office site:mediafire.com"

I know of no filesharing site that does this automatically, but some users themselves give cryptic names to their files for this reason.
yeah, generally a cryptically named archive with clearly named files inside it. (so people aren't confused by what they have once they download it.)

then again, maybe some uploaders are too lazy to organize their stuff. tempted to do it for them...

http://support.mediafire.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/15/1/can-i-search-files-from-other-mediafire-users
MediaFire doesn't allow searching, but Google often seems to have results for filenames of something on MediaFire.

http://www.mediafire.com/?3u7istowiddu9g8

This isn't the first time I've done a MediaFire upload version of something from a torrent. :)
(Incidentally, I also sometimes upload torrent versions of stuff from non-torrent sources.)

It is still available for download at CNet. http://download.cnet.com/Tricorder-for-Android/3000-20432_4-75025147.html

Thanks. Just downloaded and installed from that link.

OK, that is version 5.11 and at least on my phone, it has a fairly nasty force close bug.

The latest version is 5.12 and it is available here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?nex1dcidhb8t886

The original filename appears to be Tricorder_5.12.apk, so searching on that or similar brings up some more potential download locations.

http://www.mediafire.com/?nex1dcidhb8t886

I don't have an android yet - and I certainly do not support CBS.

Its in several places:

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/5727745/DEFCON.15_T203_-_The_Zfone_Project_(Cryptophone)

http://www.mediafire.com/?l3d4nn62nez22lc

http://www.kat.ph/search/zfone/

http://www.mediafire.com/?9gig97gio0g3b7b

Sorry to reply off-topic, but I want to post this as high up as possible:

http://www.mediafire.com/?9gig97gio0g3b7b

Here is the torrent file. BoA seems to be sockpuppet-rushing TPB to mark the torrents as fake.

http://www.mediafire.com/?9gig97gio0g3b7b

For some reason the torrent on TPB was marked as fake and taken down. Get it here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?9gig97gio0g3b7b

Download and seed!

http://www.mediafire.com/?5sl3uu7lu5hn7a7

This was working at the time of posting the comment (TFA isn't).

http://www.mediafire.com/file/dhm7thh2whg3hwd/Chapter80's%20Lotto%20Numbercruncher.py

Here's your script, with the comments I've added based on our discussion

A linux build is available here. It's an firefox addon file (xpi). I have it up and running on Ubuntu fine. You'll need libpcap installed obviously.

You need to make sure you run firesheep-backend --fix-permissions as root manually before it'll work. You'll find this in Firefox's plugins directory.

All info taken from here.

Would greatly appreciate if someone could please add this information onto the USB dead drops in my absense (after all the dead drops need some juicy content with government secrets):
http://www.mediafire.com/?09tf66ybzurpr0s
http://cid-3bfa0ee4c6f361ff.office.live.com/browse.aspx/Public
https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0B9K1bpZ8L19dNTk1YmE1NTctYTYwZC00ZjdjLWEzZGUtNDY1MzQ5ODVmNTQ0
http://cid-3bfa0ee4c6f361ff.photos.live.com/
http://evidenceagainstusgovernment.blogspot.com/
http://newworldordersatanicslavery.blogspot.com/

If you are worried, here are the IP addresses: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ks31ib61whkbacw/harddrive_ips.pdf http://www.mediafire.com/file/45brgysw5scc55h/lightspeed_ips.pdf http://www.mediafire.com/file/0hy9eh8z2loue5x/Millenium_ips.pdf

If you are worried, here are the IP addresses: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ks31ib61whkbacw/harddrive_ips.pdf http://www.mediafire.com/file/45brgysw5scc55h/lightspeed_ips.pdf http://www.mediafire.com/file/0hy9eh8z2loue5x/Millenium_ips.pdf

If you are worried, here are the IP addresses: http://www.mediafire.com/file/ks31ib61whkbacw/harddrive_ips.pdf http://www.mediafire.com/file/45brgysw5scc55h/lightspeed_ips.pdf http://www.mediafire.com/file/0hy9eh8z2loue5x/Millenium_ips.pdf

Just in case you can't find it: http://www.mediafire.com/?rc31cdpif96qz

Ever heard of Youtube?

For starters

Ever RTFA?

4. Infringing webpage(s):

http://hotfile.com/
http://usershare.net/
http://2shared.com/
http://4shared.com/
http://mediafire.com/
http://megaupload.com/
http://sendspace.com/
http://teradepot.com/
http://zippyshare.com/

None of these are Google-owned sites. Doesn't hurt to try throwing the DMCA at Google though.

You're welcome http://www.mediafire.com/?kml3oz0mwyy

H.264 decodes fine at low bitrates. 128-256kbit should decode fine on most cellphones - software permitting. That's a high enough bitrate to look decent at cellphone resolutions.

Here - if you want to test it, I'll hand you a bunch 128-256kbit videos:
http://www.mediafire.com/?iyohljiy3gy

75 seconds long, FRAPS footage of a game intro. It happens to compress quite well, so for actual video footage, 256kbit and up would be best.

That's with all settings tweaked to the max. If your cellphone or media player can play that, then hardware support probably isn't required - it's just handy to avoid having to transcode to lower bitrates.

A few things:

1) Please stop citing that. It's not fair to compare highly tweaked Theora encodes to untweaked H.264. Put them on level ground at least.
2) That quote is clearly hyperbole.
3) For Theora to maintain equal video quality in the sub-1mbit range, it would take at least 30% higher bitrates on most videos. For some videos that H.264 compresses well, it could be 80% higher bitrates. H.264 does extremely well with fading, single-colour areas that aren't updated often (slides, captions), and preserving shapes. It's particularly noticeable with small 2D sprites. In short, H.264 is good for lectures and game speed-runs. Theora would spend a huge amount of bits and lose quality for those types of vids, but does okay on actual video footage.

For an example of what H.264 can do for speed-runs, check out this 75 second 256kbit example:

http://www.mediafire.com/?zb5wzm1mdyy

There's lots of fading in it, a few graphical effects, lots of sprites, and lots of bland terrain. Pay attention to the quality of the terrain, sprites, etc.; there's no shimmering, and only slight artifacts after fading. The perceived quality is quite good. Youtube is a poor measure of what H.264 (the spec) and x264 (the encoder) are capable of.

If someone wants to do an objective test, I'd be happy to upload the 1024kbit source. Or if anyone could point me towards the best version of the Theora encoder (thusnelda), and send some tweaked settings my way, I'll eventually get around to it myself. Experimenting with different encoders on different vids is a bit of a hobby for me. I even have an Ubuntu VM set up in case a good version of the encoder is linux-only. :P

The data in the actual paper doesn't support the conclusion in the title of the Slashdot story.

sorry about being sidetracked

yeah in all that i never needed to use gconftool. yeah ive run it, but for 2 secs. i dont think ive run it for years.

these days i do maths and classical em (multiscattering and optical force) with the intel compiler suite which is really sweet, has a gui debugger, profiler, etc, mulithreaded lapack, solvers (paradiseo etc), and the rest of the mkl. as well as matlab and mathematical which have first class support and performance under linux and are less painful in manyways than windows.

2nd year of a phd in maths of optical forces, and binding. looking for new complex optically bound structures, using various classical domain models, mie, cde...

basically maxwells eqns are linear so perhaps we can make mutually bound structures like molecules but made from neutrally charged matter and at least 1000's of times bigger. already found some prettyinteresting data so i'll just through out this bistable looking, which is the time evolution of two opticall bound spheres that oscillate and then chage sides, the time evolution is in the z-direction (well it can be interpreted as that. its just an x,y,z plot but because of radiation pressure they move in the z direction)

http://www.mediafire.com/?dtkrzdznhjy

cheers.

Here's some mirrors of the original document, in case the original site is slashdotted:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28853862/201001-acta

http://www.mediafire.com/?wdnjg2nrmne

http://rapidshare.com/files/367572656/201001_acta.pdf
http://hotfile.com/dl/34373604/038b957/201001_acta.pdf.html

Mirror available at http://www.mediafire.com/?j21t2ynnnzn

And please stop hitting the server liked in GP's post. The poor server hardly sustains 30 KB/s.

I see your SkyDrive and raise you a Mediafire 200mb... so I did overstate in calling 250mb paltry, but it's in no way revolutionary.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ymiunmtqmyz/Non-Ionizing%20Radiation.ppt Please view that PowerPoint presentation. I have done much research into this specific topic and came to realize that much of the research that has actually been PUBLISHED on the subject finding little to no ill health effects have been funded mainly by companies holding a stake in wireless technologies.

I upgraded my Fallout 3 installation yesterday. After patching, the game wouldn't run, returning some fairly obtuse message about import ordinals. So I googled the message, and found out it's because the game now links against a newer version of "Microsoft(R) Games for Windows(TM) Live(TM)" whatever. Note that this wasn't some new patch, it's months old and yet this problem, which must realistically be hitting quite a few users, persists. This isn't something you get via Windows Update either, this is just some obscure 'distributable runtime' crap you should know you need?

So let me repeat that: Super mainstream game on a super mainstream platform (Vista x64), no add-ons, I patch to the latest version and it won't start, nothing is mentioned at the developer's site.

Now I recognize good old Bethesda again. Here's how they'd be able to repro: Fully updated Vista machine, install game from DVD, apply patch, notice it won't fucking run.

I don't normally give much for the 'PC-gaming sucks' choir, but c'mon..

I had the same problem. Only, I run Fallout3 in Linux via WINE and there is apparently no way whatsoever to get xlive.dll to work in WINE. In addition, you do need the latest Fallout3 patches in order to install the expansions. Personally, I found it unacceptable that I would not be able to use any of the expansions merely because someone decided to add functionality that I never asked for, do not need, and will never use.

I found a solution. There is a patch for Fallout3 that removes all Live functionality, and was sufficient to get the game working for me in WINE because it removes the dependency on xlive.dll. I can now use the game with all five expansions (Mothership Zeta was particularly fun). A page describing it can be found here while a direct link to the download is here.

32 bit Linux

http://willhostforfood.com/users/C/cymon/asciiportal-linux32.tar.gz
http://solidfiles.com/d/YlA4
http://www.mediafire.com/?zj0ywjmgylm