Slashdot Mirror

Despite all the announcements for popular, big-budget game franchises at this year's E3, one of the most talked-about titles is a puzzle game for the Nintendo DS called Scribblenauts. In a hands-on preview, Joystiq described it thus: "The premise of the game is simple — you play as Maxwell, who must solve various puzzles to obtain Starites spread across 220 different levels. To execute the aforementioned solving, you write words to create objects in the world that your cartoonish hero can interact with. It's a simple concept that's bolstered by one astounding accomplishment from developer 5th Cell: Anything you can think of is in this game. (Yes, that. Yes, that too.)" They even presented it with a test of 10 words they wouldn't expect it to know or be able to represent, including lutefisk, stanchion, air, and internet, and the game passed with flying colors. The game will also allow players to edit and share levels. A trailer is available on the Scribblenauts website, and actual gameplay footage is posted at Nintendorks.

Guppy06 writes "Last week there was a posting about Nintendo's efforts to crack down on people selling counterfeit Nintendo hardware and software, and there was at least one reply from a guy who reported someone to Nintendo. It turns out he's not alone; according to a posting at Nintendorks, NOA's Jodi Daugherty, their director of anti-piracy efforts, says it was helped by over 400 people reporting such kiosks to them."

Guppy06 writes "Last week there was a posting about Nintendo's efforts to crack down on people selling counterfeit Nintendo hardware and software, and there was at least one reply from a guy who reported someone to Nintendo. It turns out he's not alone; according to a posting at Nintendorks, NOA's Jodi Daugherty, their director of anti-piracy efforts, says it was helped by over 400 people reporting such kiosks to them."

Thanks to NTSC-UK for its interview with scriptwriter Paul Rose regarding Zed Two's tactical RPG Future Tactics, as he discusses some of the issues with current game scriptwriting ("You may think there's nothing wrong with them, but to someone like myself who makes a living out of writing scripts and stories, they set my teeth on edge. Especially when you get developers, or publishers, going on about their Hollywood-style scripts"), as well as the sad demise of Zed Two (then a part of Warthog) just before the game's release ("A big, big shame, given that Zed Two's ethos was to produce genuinely innovative and interesting games.") Elsewhere, Gamecritics.com has a thoughtful review of the PS2/Xbox/GC game, "saddled with poor cover art and positioned as a budget release", but considered "a breath of fresh air" by the reviewer, though NTSC-UK's review is a little more ambivalent, arguing: "It can only be hoped that [the developers'] inventiveness is met with the time and budget to do their creativity justice [in the future]."

Nintendork asks: "I recently started a new job as a resident computer geek and am analyzing the performance of our SQL server. I did quite a bit of research and would like an opinion from the Slashdot community on my proposed solution for increasing the STR (Sustained Transfer Rate) from the server to the workstations. The server (Compaq ProLiant ML530) has 16 10,000 RPM drives with an average STR of ~43MB/sec. per drive. 14 are used for two RAID 5 logical drives (7 physical drives per logical). The remaining 2 drives are backup drives in case one fails. Currently, they're all connected to a Compaq fibre RA4000 adapter. It runs at 100MB/sec. from what I could find in a jungle of fibre information. Reasoning tells me I have a huge bottleneck at the fibre adapter and the 100baseT NIC. I should also mention that the server has 2 PCI buses. One runs at 64-bit and 66Mhz and has 2 PCI slots. My proposed setup would be to back up all the data and create a new array with a few hardware modifications. Take out the fibre adapter and use two, dual channel 64-bit 66Mhz ultra160 adapters on the two 64-bit 66Mhz PCI slots (4 drives per channel). Take out the 100baseT NIC and start a gigabit backbone." Would this significantly increase performance? Read on, if you to check out the numbers on the new setup.

"From what I've learned thus far, the proposed setup would be a blazingly fast file server approaching ludicrous speed. Let me break it down. Data can be read from the drives at a STR of ~602MB/sec. (~43MB/sec. * 14 drives). Each Ultra160 channel has a STR of 132MB/sec. This provides a bearable bottleneck that reduces the overall STR to ~528MB/sec. (132MB/sec. * 4 channels). The 64-bit 66Mhz PCI bus has a STR of 528MB/sec., which is an exact match for the 4 ultra160 channels! From there, I assume the data goes out the NIC, which is on a gigabit backbone. This would provide a STR of ~528MB/sec. to the workstations. Unless I'm missing something such as a possible bottleneck between the PCI bus and the NIC, my reasoning makes gosh darned perfect sense!

Thanks in advance for any insight you all can provide on this issue."

Jonathon Miller writes "Nintendorks has posted a huge special about Rare, the software company that brought us Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. The special outlines Rare's release list for '99, including their sequel to Goldeneye, the first person shooter Perfect Dark." For those of you who had an old 8-bitter (ZX Spectrum, BBC,etc) this is also a blast from the past: Rare used to be called Ultimate Play the Game, makers of Alien 8, Nightshade, etc... the only games I still play.

Jonathon Miller writes "Nintendorks has posted a huge special about Rare, the software company that brought us Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. The special outlines Rare's release list for '99, including their sequel to Goldeneye, the first person shooter Perfect Dark." For those of you who had an old 8-bitter (ZX Spectrum, BBC,etc) this is also a blast from the past: Rare used to be called Ultimate Play the Game, makers of Alien 8, Nightshade, etc... the only games I still play.