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Games in the Workplace?
Anonymous Coward asks: "Back in the day it was not uncommon for games to contain 'Escape Buttons' and other commands to quickly exit a game. These games appealed to the Geek at Work as he could fill in his Friday afternoon and as soon as he heard his boss' shoes approaching, he could escape from the third dungeon and return to his spreadsheet. Yet games today are not allowing such activities to occur. Most games are requiring so much dedicated action that it is impossible to play a game and still switch back and forth without long delays. Where are the games for the worker?"
As much as I like playing games at work when there is nothing to do, I would be just happy having a job at this point. 4 months of unemployment are enough for me!
Why was it I went to college again?
Who the hell has time to play games at work? There aren't even enough hours to keep up with the work loads.
Its a call center.
They allow the night crew to occupy themselves with games. Often they go a hour or so without any calls so it gets dull.
We have 15 people employed to work from 10pm to 6am and they take maybe 8 calls that last for 10 minutes each at most.
What do they do??
Well they each have several high level characters in diablo II. The work place took the stance that if it doesn't interfer and you can quickly jump back to your desktop to actually work they don't mind. Many games they have tried to see which ones work and some simply wont let you alt-tab out of it. Those games are not played and others are. Also the option to use the computer besides you is used if that computer is empty.
I wish more work places would take this example.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
have a Windows key on your keyboard - then you can just Windows+D to get back to the desktop quickly.
Video Game cheats, hints a
Holy shit. What is this? Wow! Why is it that Google is always coming out with cool new things, and I never hear about them from.. google? How many other cool Google things are there that I'm misssing out on?
Wow.
Emulators!!!
Many of the NES and SNES emulators will run in windowed mode or will let you freeze the game and alt tab out of it.
Also there are a few emulators with network enabled so you can play multiplayer with other people.
Also Diablo II works good.
Destruction Zone a old tank combat game from the old days of 94(still quite fun to play)
feel free to add to the list.
Also I imagine many people at work wont be useding win98. they are forced to use something along the lines of Windows NT or 2K based upon thier job.
-THIS SPACE FOR RENT!
Doesn't sound like a very good management system which hires 15 people to do the work of 3.
creation science book
I play most of my games on my PDA. When the boss is coming, it goes in my pocket.
Right is wrong when left is right.
Suggestion to all game writers. Allow your game to have a customizable title bar name. That way, when someone glances at your computer, they don't see "Minesweeper" in the task bar. Instead, they see "Q3 Earnings Report.xls".
"People that quote themselves in their signatures bother me" - athakur999
minesweeper.
(ah, another serious isue solved)
I wonder why so many IT-startups have gone bankrupt!
What's wrong with Alt-f2 ?
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
This is what I do at work, tape a report or some other piece of paper at the top of your monitor. Flip it back when your playing that game of Quake during when your supposed to be working on tps reports. When your boss is about to pass by flip the paper so that the monitor is now covered. Oh, and always keep an open notebook with some papers scattered on the desk. He won't even notice. :)
thi
what on earth is a kike anyway? (sorry, no knowledge of this word until someone would care to enlighten me?)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If you're trying to put off finishing the boring project that you've been staring at until your eyes glaze over, don't fire up a game. Do something intellectually stimulating.
Like reading slashdot. :-)
"Anything is better than IE, and you can quote me on that." -- Wil Wheaton.
When I was working a Unix Tech support job a couple months back, I was running Debian on my desktop at work. I ran two X servers:
:0 on VT7 for games
:1 on VT8 for work
When I had to hide my game and get back to work, I just hit Ctrl+Alt+F8.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
If I recall correctly, the games that come with Windows 2000, when minimized, appear to be open Excel documents. =)
slashdot!=valid HTML
kike Pronunciation Key (kk)
n. Offensive Slang
Used as a disparaging term for a Jew.
does the trick
The other cool part is if I forget to switch back to the game, my character just keeps pluggin' away, on some sort of strange magickal "autopilot", which liberates me from having to pay attention that often.
Also, it's all online, and you can compete against up to 65,536 other players simultaneously. Can't beat that! Can you? Can you?!?
Free music from Jack Merlot.
Oh please.
There is a reason it is called "work." If you are so bored with your job that you need to play games all the time, you are in the wrong line of work. If your boss is too uptight to realize that sometimes the brain needs to leave a problem lie for a while, and that there is nothing wrong with playing a game or surfing the web when you are just spinning your wheels, you are working for the wrong people.
Thomas Galvin
Okay, I'm not the most productive person at all times. I've been known to play a game or two of bedazzled at work, but come on, you are at work. You really want to play CivIII or TheSims? If you do, you aren't just stealing a little bit of time and performance from your company, you are guilty of severe underperformance. I don't care if you get all your work done and have 3 hours to kill. At my job, if a person has free time, then they have time to help someone else do menial tasks. There is always filing that needs to be done.
Steal some time to play Solitaire or Tetris, some other simple game that can be played will checking voicemail or sitting in on a conference call.
This is not the way to build a lasting empire.
One screen running the game, the other one runs your work... Switching is instant. (If i'm not wrong) Also there are always online webbased games like runescape, www.runescape.com which is a MMORPG running in your browser's window...
^_^
Gaming at work isnt much fun anyway since most work computers have crapy video cards. There is allways solitare though.
Hacker Media
Wah bout useing the Alt-ctrl-delete command and
end task on your game...works quick enough for me
AIM: EdCross447 MSN: quigebow@hotmail.com (Ed_Cross)
Hell, I usually have to tell my boss that I'm too busy to play Quake3. Its all about the relaxed workplace.
Oh yeah, just play a little Q-Bert, a little Pac-Man, a little Donkey-Kong. And the arcade games were all designed to get rid of the players after a few minutes, so it's perfect for those unscheduled boss-breaks.
Dope Wars is as addicting as dope and is easy to minimize...
Bejeweled is played during practically ALL of my classes with labs. Funny thing, the professors play it while we're taking tests.
I'm pretty hyped about matchmaking.google.com, myself. If they can solve that problem, they've got it made. The sooner they open the beta to the general public, the better, as far as I'm concerned.
(posting AC for obvious reasons)
If your employer is not enlightened enough that you have to hide your gaming from them, the you probably should not be doing it in the first place.
I personally never game at work, but I do pursue other extra ciricular activities, like playing with the latest mozilla or kde builds, resurrecting old hardware (currently an 8mm tape library) and learning new programming languages.
Besides, the machines at my work don't have good enough graphics cards to play anything interesting anyway.
Xpilot is a nice space war game (u can even play it on the net w/ other people). You get out of it fast. And it's fun and adictive
At my school there is an absolute no-games-on-computers, ever policy in force; at the end of term though we all felt desperately in need of some BZFlag action. Being the Computer Society, we decided the way ahead was to set up a USB QuickCam connected to a Linux machine with motion detecting software (apt-get install...) aiming right at the bottom of the door; we then wrote a quick app to be executed when motion was detected which would send a specific broadcast packet on the network and a daemon to run on the client (also Linux) workstations which, on receiving the packet, would execute 'chvt 1' immediately. Having set all of this up (in about half an hour - frenzied coding!) and opened emacs/top/something-important-looking on virtual console 1, we all got down to playing BZFlag - and lo and behold, as soon as anybody walked in the door every single screen simultaneously switched to the text console and we all looked deeply studious... Worked like a charm :-)
...is a brand new turn-based strategy game. It definitely allows for a quick alt-tab back to something that appears to be work. Unforutunately, you are sort of locked into turn-based strategy games when you are looking for something that allows a quick escape. For just about everything else, quick escapes put you at a serious disadvantage because losing track of where you are could spell death (or the equivalent in the game).
Bugger off early on that Friday Afternoon? If your company has dial-in access, just claim you're going off to work from home. Or as we like to call it, "Work from Home." You have to say it with the quotes. What you neglect to mention is that you plan to stop at the pub on your way home and might dial in to check your E-Mail if there's anything particularly important that might be going on. The video cards they install on work machines tend to not be able to push the pixels fast enough for the really good games anyway.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Go with games that play in a window, like some of the games from www.shockwave.com
If life's a beach, wheres my tan?
Well, first of all we had (have) quite a lax policy on games. Do your job and do whatever you like. However, most of the time games we're allowed after hours only.
:). But the boss had an ace up the sleeve. He used to scan the network for Q3 servers with that tool from GameSpy that is otherwise used to "lawfully" find servers :). He said nothing, but at the end of that month penalties poured in :))
:)
Here are three funny stories about getting caught playing.
At this company I used to work for, the boss had a harsh policy on games and it started by refusing to buy accelerated cards. So much for Q3A... Well, however, we eventually elude him and tricked him into buying some. Six hours a day games were then not so uncommon, especially since we had a multiple floor building, the management on the last floor
Another funny story. We we're CTF-ing, all in the same room, a 4-4 game. I don't think a normal person could have resisted the shouts and yells that we're going on. On that particular day we thought our boss was out for the day, so we had an early start at around 4 pm. The truth was that he was out, but only to get out CEO from the airport. And most of us quickly exited the game when they entered our office when returning, except for this guy who keps on shouting : "Get the flag, get the f*ckin' flag!" with our boss and our CEO in the room. And when finally he saw we exited, he shouted, still not noticing the new commers, with his headphones still on his head: "Hey, whadda f*ck you exited now that I finally got the flag"... He turned blue two seconds later when he saw why we had exited.
At my latest company UT was the game of the day. And since our CTO played with us most of the time, we quite often broke the "games after hours" rule and played even in the middle of the day. On one of this occasions, out CTO joined the game with the nick of another casual player (thus we didn't noticed him), took the Sniper rifle and shot of on the guys in the head. Then the message flashed on the screen : "You're busted!"...
Well, however, I loved Q3 because you could do "bind ENTER quit" and it exited the game sooooo quickly. It saved me on more that a couple of boss-raides
__________
Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace!
From the number of nasty replies, I have to wonder how many ppl are at work as they reply to this, while I sit home on my PC with the NHL playoffs on the TV in the background. Simple fact is, everyone needs a little break now and then. Look how many people spend hours a day here on slashdot. Gaming or looking at slashdot- either way you're still not doing "work", so get off of your high horses already.
You're looking for Pocket Tanks.
http://www.blitwise.com/
Remember Scorched Earth? It just got better baby.
I play Hegemony ( hegemony.skotos.net ) -- it is a web based strategic and diplomacy space game that just uses your browser. It works with both my Mozilla at home and with IE at work.
The free games are 2 weeks long, pay game are more often quite a bit more complex and are 3 weeks long, but I've found the free games quite fun. Each game is you vs. 11 other players. It takes about half-hour to an hour or so to play each day, however, typically not all at one time. In fact, you'll find yourself checking in quite often to see how your fleets are doing. It can be quite addictive.
ADOM is one of my favorites, it fits on a floppy disk and is free, takes a long time to beat, and is avalible on Linux/Windows and other OSs
Hmmm, I have 5 mod pts, its time to metamod, and on top of that I have to meta-metamod? When do I get to read slashdot?
Get a dsl line and play at home, you are paid to work, but if you really feel a need to play games at work, work for a video game company. Atari had 3 arcades as well as numerous works in progress that you were encoraged to play. Perhaps with your skills you could get a job as a game tester.
For *n?x people, text mode MUDs are great games to play. They don't affect any security issues (they run on an external host), and if you really hear your boss coming in too late, it's just one out of a dozen xterms on your desktop, so switching to a different one won't be suspicious at all. ;-)
My favorite game to play at work is always PS-Xdoom. If my boss happens to walk around the corner, all I need to do it shoot a RPG into the group of process monsters, and wh00p, my X session gets killed, and I'm at a terminal looking like I was actually doing something
The Sims is a perfect game for the workplace. Why? Because you can enable your Sims to have some intelligence for themselves and the game proceeds while you answer that phone call or speak with the boss. Granted, this intelligence isn't very high, but you don't need to babysit them and the game doesn't require total concentration. Just queue up some actions for your Sims every 20 minutes or so, and you are good to go.
A friend of mine at my former workplace was very good at this. He had a laptop running the Sims all day while he sat in his cubicle pretending to work. The laptop was hidden by a stack of engineering equipment. It was funny watching the boss stop at his cubicle to discuss things. He had no clue what was going on!
caught, damnit
Quick look back:
Job #1: Satellite Communications Controller for the US Army Space Command. Lots of night shifts with nothing to do. Certain shift supervisors tolerated games as a way to keep people awake as long as the mission was not affected.
Job #2: Civilian Satellite Communications Controller (the former American Mobile Satellite, now bankrupt as Motient).
Again lots of shift work and hours upon hours of nothing to do. Lots of 3D shooters and Diablo. IT folks tolerated us as long as we did not screw up the PCs. Boss played stupid, he was only interested in people not getting in trouble.
Job #3: Web Applications Developer, the employer shall remain nameless. Boss-approved 3D-shooter games at lunch almost every day as long as it did not impact a project deliverable. Full cooperation from the IT folks. We would rotate between Quake III, Half-Life and Kingpin. Some high execs were popular for their Age of Empires games at lunch. The day the Sega Dreamcast was released we had ours FEDEXed to the office and paid for by the company (only console, controllers and memory cards, they told us we could buy our own $#^& games).
Workplace started eroding and then one day some guys got yelled at for playing Dreamcast at lunch. Eventually everybody left the company.
Current job: Another web shop that shall remain nameless. No gaming whatsoever, the corporate mentality is BILL BILL BILL (if you have read Grisham's The Firm you know what I am talking about). People prefer to bail out of the office for Starbucks or good food instead of eating in front of the PC just to play Quake III or whatever.
I personally tolerate one of my employees. He is a total slacker but he is a total genius on what he does, so if he wants to play a bit of Shockwave Pool at lunch then I could care less as long as he delivers on time.
There is a project manager that likes to play Shockwave games whenever a customer puts her on hold, which is fine since the clock is ticking and the customer is paying to keep her on hold.
I personally believe that with such high stress levels in my workplace an everywhere else, it is necessary to give employees some breathing room. Let them play a little bit. Let them take a walk around town and maybe grab a cappuccino on the way back upstairs. And don't count their lunch minutes. If the guys want to hit a restaurant once a week and spend over an hour there instead of the institutional 30 minutes (which is a retarded concept) then by God let them relax and eat something a bit tasty than a freaking burger.
Also, if the employees are done working and they want to stay after hours for a Quake III shootout across the network, then I am not only going to look the other way but I am going to make sure the IT folks leave them alone too.
Of course, notice that I keep saying it is OK as long as the deadlines are met. If we don't meet the deadlines we lose business and we all lose our jobs. Also, if you know a certain Project Manager is a total asshole, don't let him catch you!
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
I am constantly finding that i'm being moderated as 'troll'! Most of my comments are NOT INTENDED TO BE TROLL! But moderators have seem to of forgotten what a 'troll post' is!
A 'troll' usually tries to get the first post in a article
Trolls talk about discusting topics such as gay nerds and sex with animals such as goats!
Trolls posts links to vile websites, the most well known one is http://www.goatse.cx. Sometimes they try and discuise it through another website such as AOL.com.
Trolls post anti linux material, trying to prove how windows is superior. which often is moderated as 'flamebait'
Trolls post useless information known as 'crapfloods'.
I AM NOT A TROLL, STOP MODERATING ME AS A TROLL!
If it happens again, you will be SORRY!
Is this a troll? No I don't think so!
Aiiirrgghhh!!! I've gone BLIND!!!!! My eye muscles didn't evolve to handle Space Invaders at 30x30 resolution!
...come to think of it, they didn't evolve to handle Space Invaders at ANY resolution.
Either way, I'M STILL BLIND!!!
Phone call from Boss: "How's things going ? What is your team working on now ?"
Me: "I'm giving them some resource management training using the Warcraft 2 tool"
Boss: "Ah, ok then"
What would Lemmy do?
Uplink is a great workplace game. Its fun, adds stress to a stressless job, and is rewarding at the same time. Hell, even bosses would like that game.
Job? I don't have time to get a job! Who will sit around and bitch about being broke and unemployed then?
As games are starting to require more memory all the time, you can't simply save & exit or minimize one without a significant amount of waiting and/or rattling from your hard disk. By the time the game has disappeared from view, your boss may already be onto you. And then there's the Windows taskbar, prominently displaying the game's minimized icon.
Back in the days of DOS, most Sierra adventure games came equipped with a solution in the form of a 'boss key' - F5, if I remember correctly. Quickly pressing the key when you heard your boss approaching wouldn't exit or minimize the game - this is 640k DOS, after all - but it would bring up a mockup screenshot of a spreadsheet.
Something similar could be used in modern games. It wouldn't actually exit the game, but it would very quickly display a fake workscreen without the telltale taskbar icon. It could even have a limited amount of interactivity or animation. If your boss asked you to punch up a different document, for instance, it could display a fake BSOD the moment you touched the Start button.
Then, you could make a big scene out of it, claiming that this always happens because your computer has far too little memory and the video card has no 3D capabilities...
Hee-hee. Dying tickles!
Nethack is the best.
No one at my call center knows what it is.Also if you stop playing, you don't get killed.
--- Evil robots don't kill people, Mad scientists kill people.
Remeber the game with the anti "boss-key" that instead of the boss key, came up with a message saying something like "we think your boss should know you are playing games" and then played a very annoying sound on you speaker.
I can't remeber which game it was(King's quest?) but I think it was sierra online. hmm
my sig
Don't play, even if your employer says that you can do so after your work-time. Employers always change their mind after seeing an employee playing computer games inside the company dependencies.
I saw this happen with me, and with other friends of mine, so don't ever plan to play games inside the company dependencies. If possible avoid to tell anyone that you don't really trust that you like games, officially you hate computer games, and only your closest friends knows what you really like to do after leaving the company.
Too drastic? After passing through the acusations I have passed, and after two of my supervisors blame me and lie about what they allowed and didn't allowed me to do during work all I can say is, don't trust your boss.
-=-=-=-=
I know life isn't fair, but why can't it ever be un-fair in MY favor!?
First, it's called Solitaire.
Second, don't you have a fucking job to do, you dirty hippy? I ain't paying you to frag the doofus in the next cubicle over.
First it was checking mail at work. Then getting around the proxy server. Now it's this bullshit. Christ, grow up. You wonder why you get downsized? You wonder why your company's stock is in the toilet? It's because you are doing everything at work EXCEPT work.
If the lazy SOB's who post around here spent half as much time working as they do bitching, complaining, playing games, posting here, etc. there never would have been a recession, pets.com might have survived, and Gnome and KDE would be fully compatible with packages completed for everything from Debian to Red Hat to *BSD.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
by your programming skils i doubt youre at an elementary school. is this a university? just curious what university has such an oppressive doctrine. a military academy?
It seems the masses have flocked to Yahoo Games for worktime leisure. I've played many games of spades (at work or at home on my off days) with people who keep insisting that the play get a little quicker because they're at work and need to get back to productivity. I just laugh and tell them to get a job like mine where they pay me to do nothing (:
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
There is a new version of xquake that allows you to set a variable fastquit. a simple config like:
:)
fastquit 1
bind F12 "quit"
and you're golden. the screen goes back into windows very quick, and no trace of the game is left. It works, trust me
"i can never say no to anyone but you"
I just run multiple X sessions on my computers. First first four are text, the second four run gdm(kdm ruins fullscreen in mandrake) and the last 2 get status reports streamed to them by my server software. Now if only I had a true supercomputer. Maybe I could pretent to and get my site /.ed!!!
p.s. My supercomputer, flame.dnsart.com, is offering free vnc and shell accounts to any |my website for more information.
https://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=thread view&id=2232
I am a firm believer in playing games in the workplace. As a manager of software engineers, I want people working for me to really be into computers, to be the type that notice every little thing. I want them to be people who know how to have fun. I want them to be creative people.
I also want them to be productive, and certainly would not let game playing get out of control. But I would much rather my reports not wince and hit the Boss key when I 'catch' them goofing off [heh, do you think you actually fool us with that quick alt-tab?]. As long as they are getting work done, why not let them blow off some steam? Maybe even have team building exercises where teams compete against each other.
sounds interesting, but I can't see any of the screenshots. When I click, nothing happens. Stupid Javascript, when will people learn?
One of the newest games out is an RPG called dugeon siege. It is a cross between Bolders Gate and Diablo 2. The plus side is you can alt-tab out in about 3 seconds even on a mediocre processor (think 500 mhz Laptop. It has worked for me many times as i go to a prep school where we to "work" during study and this has saved my ass many times. Thought you would like to know.
NetHack. The levels are randomly generated, there are surprises at every corner, and most importantly of all, you can minimize it. Also, if your boss has poor eyesight, he may just see that it's a text console and actually say, "Keep up the good work." Don't try to play Q3 or UT at work, as they are impossible to keep hidden on the computer since they're 600+ megabytes each. Hovever, NetHack fits on very small media, including a floppy.
For the non-worker you mean...
There is a thin line between laid back and laid off
With profound apologies to whomsoever this sig originally belonged.
I can't remeber the exact game now.. perhaps it was F-15 Flight Simulator for MS-DOS.. used to have a boss key - when you pressed it, the game was paused and fake spreadsheet was fired up.
Great idea I guess.. unless you work for a graphics design company or somthing.
"We dont pay you to do maths.. now go and draw somthing."
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Why hide? If you do your work, complete tasks/projects on time, and you aren't a freakin' parasite your boss will know it and not care if you kick-back every now and then. If he doesn't then he's out of touch with his people, and situations like that tend to correct themselves. (Unless the corruption goes straight to the top, then it's time to look for a new professional home). What do you have to hide? If, on the other hand, you are a worthless waste of company resources then just stay home and play games. Problem solved. I have no sympathy who people who spend most of their effort trying to beat the system.
I always have at least half a dozen terminal windows scattered across my desktop, and so far, nobody noticed that one of them regularly contains a nethack session...plus, nethack is perfect for the office because you can always let the game sit in the background for a while, then switch back to ten minutes of dungeon exploring once your boss is gone :)
frotz grue
If you work in an IT departmetn aquire yourself another computer (now referred to as the drone) install all your needed apps on that. Take another machine (not on the network) and install whatever games you want on that. Most of the new KVMs (LInksys for sure) allow you to switch from one computer to another by pressing ctrl twice quickly. Instantly you are back on your drone, no minimized windows, etc.. This way you can even play MOH or Quake... in a real pinch you can reset the game computer and have a safe login ID with the games hidden.
Come on, your company is wasting money? Then what about the fortune 500 companies with paid vacation? wasting money. Any kind of perk translates to wasting money, so your response is invalid, you invalid.
Bye... see you in one week. The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout begins now (in this this timezone, that is).
if you use a good enough junk-filter, slashdot.org will display a single, *blank*, page
Are you new to computers?
Back in the day, we used to rename our binaries so that when we ran 'tf' (TinyFugue, a MUD client) or 'nethack' or 'slirp' (a user-mode PPP tunnel for dialup users), the sysadmin running 'top' would see 'emacs', 'gcc', and 'spice', etc.
I fully understand overstaffing call centers, so that peak time is handled well. This is good customer service, and on the surface it's not a bad idea, especially when the customer is paying for it anyway.
...
Letting your staff waste their free time 7 hours (or whatever) a night of vid game playing is a corporate strategy that will eventually land your company out of business, and all of your happy nightshift guys out of jobs.
One of four things will happen to you.
1) your client will tighten their belt, and go with a strategy that only has the 3 people working, and deal with the reduced customer service level.
2) your client will hire a smaller group of people to handle the business themselves, and bring it inhouse
3) another company who staffs 15 people will make a bid to only charge your customer for 4 or 5 people, and your customer will leave.
4) your customer that is stupid enough to pay you for bloat staff will go out of business
How does #3 work ? By making your call center staff DO SOME WORK while not taking calls. If there literally isn't anything for them to do but sit around and wait, then you have bloat in other areas.
Who is your customer ? The firm I work for is large and has our fingers into all sorts of stuff, I am sure we could service them better than you are
`let him who hath understanding reckon the number of the smurf`
, even using that method
Yes, I'm at work right now, at 3:45 pm on a Saturday, and it's sunny and 75 degrees outside. No, I haven't gotten a hell of a lot done. :-P
Great Free Strategy Formula One Game. One race takes a whole week!
http://games.f1-live.com
I used to be an "alt-tab" slave myself, but its WAY to obvious... the boss materializes in your doorway and you fumble for the right keys, that's rookie ball... the pros know that mapping the depression of your mouse wheel to "alt-tab" is far more efficient and less conspicuous. Works great for the occasional pr0n fix as well :)
First, Baldur's Gate has a great option... in the Options tab you can set BG to run in a window instead of full-screen. This can kill the playability on older PCs but BG isn't an action game so it's still a viable option.
Also many games support the (on windows) ALT+ENTER hotkey to switch between normal and full screen mode (like if you're watching a DVD or MPEG you can switch this way).
But whatever your game of choice, if, unlike at Kasmiur's, your workplace does not allow games, you might want to look into an insanely useful program called "Watchcat." First of all, it's FREEWARE. The program, either by clicks or hotkeys, will hide any or all applications currently running... so if you're a Solitaire freak and you hear someone coming up, smack that hotkey and not only is the game off the desktop, it's off of the taskbar too. This program ROCKS.
Here's a small article about the program on Tech TV
...But here at BioWare, we're always playing games. I don't just mean the games that we're working on, I mean that we're allowed to play games. We have a foosball league, and several of us are currently involved in an NHL '96 (yes, for the Genesis) tournament. Of course, when we're in crunch, we're discouraged from playing games too much, but even then it's generally accepted that the less stressed out we are, the better we work.
:D) at your desk, you should be questioning what value you're bringing to your job, or what satisfaction you could possibly derive from a job that leaves you so bored.
If you're playing a couple games of solitaire at your desk, or maybe something from Popcap games (http://www.popcap.com), nobody should care. If you're trying to make it through Baldur's Gate II (or, coming soon, Neverwinter Nights!
Heres a trick i used back in my windows days at school.
/. readers =)
open a dos prompt
c:
cd \recycled
md games
now install your games to c:\recycled\games\blah, you cant browse to it you have to type the path into the install program. and thats the point their is no way windows is going to let you see any thing in the recycle bin thats not registered as deleted. Dont worry u can click empty recycle bin quite happily.
to run your game open a dos prompt
c:
cd \recycled\games\blah
start game.exe
now no one will ever find it! erm well... bar
KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 CTRL CTRL CTRL KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_PLUS KP_9 CTRL KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 ENTERYeah!!!EAT MY ROCKET LAUNCHER!!!ENTER KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_8 KP_8
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
I could be wrong, but I've heard you can play a lot of games (even FPS ones) in the dock in OS X.
c-hack.com |
There are loadsa little browser games, if you just look hard enough. I recently found a little gem, it's a JavaScript version of the old Atari Kaboom
http://www.neilpearce.com/kaboom
this is why I keep my games on my iPaq. Most of the time when I don't have anything to do, I'll be playing solitare on my iPaq in the cradle next to my computer
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Don't play, even if your employer says that you can do so after your work-time. Employers always change their mind after seeing an employee playing computer games inside the company dependencies... If possible avoid to tell anyone that you don't really trust that you like games.
:)
I think that depends on the employer. Well, I've been a game developer so a general interest in games was expected
We often had after-hours networking game sessions ("evaluating competitor's products") which were obviously endorsed by the brass.
I guess the more you get away from this business, the more truth lies in your posting (so if you're in some accounting company, you might want to stick to your suggestion). But if it's somewhere inbetween (application developers? Web designers?), it really depends.
and that's on fridays, after work, and against most people you work with, including your boss.
sic transit gloria mundi
my favorite is carnage blender but there's a lot more worth trying. topwebgames.com is one list; there's others.
At a job I had a while back I would spend tons of time playing znibbles with cowowrkers. On the day before everyone got off for 4th of july, a bunch of people played half life on the 5th and 6th floors. Great please to have fun, but unfortunately the site was closed down at the onset of the dot-com bubble burst. Guess it made since, not only were people playing way too many games, but we would buy a couple of 60,000 dollar tape jukeboxes so we could be lazier, and sun enterprise servers to do work that coul dbe done much cheaply on other systems.
I then killed a few months as a network admin for a industrail magnet research company. They primarily used office and autocad on their windows boxes, a cake walk of a job but they needed a relatively cheap administrator in case their server went down, so I killed quite a bit of time there with games. Of course, bein a cheap windows admin was only a holdover, so I quite and now work for a company where I don't ever play games. Get a lot more money, but still it is sad I don't get to cut back as much. of course the fun still comes in when servers go down. I think in the right context games can be very important in the geek work environment. Boost morale, build teams. It's worth sacrificing a little bit of productive time in order to reduce turnover and make people much more cooperative.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Just tell them that it's some sort of graphical network admin tool.
"Now there's Sharon, she's going to open a Word file..."
...you used to be able to get games on EPROM. To execure the game you just did a SYS ???? where ???? was the address of the code in the ROM. No need to boot a program off disk (which took an eternity those days). Nobody had any clue it was there as it was tucked away in an unobtrusive part of the memory. Nobody could accidentally stumble on it. I think it even returned your screen to its previous state as soon as it quit.
-- SIGFPE
[Menlo Park, CA] Today, Epic Games, makers of the popular Unreal(tm) series of games, announced that its latest version, Unreal Tournament 2003, would include, in addition to open-source audio format Ogg Vorbis, the entire open-source office package, OpenOffice, build 632a. Lead developer Thomas Hunterson was quoted as saying "We decided to expand into the corporate market, where games are furtively played. We're hoping to open it up to a greater level of acceptance by introducing game modes like 'Capture the Profits' and 'Team Presentationwatch'. This is truly a new day for gaming"
No kidding. A lot of that site is designed under the assumption that everyone has Javascript enabled.
<noscript> motherfucker, do you speak it?
this is a sig.
I would take anything right now -- literally, i.e., even less than minimum wage. It's better than making $0.
nethack!
Oh, but working where I work is more fun than any computer game could ever be! I get my entertainment from my positive work environment, grey Lexus, and cult-figure nerd/Chairman!
My is Redmond beautiful today, too!
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Always keep your taskbar hidden and always Window + M when you hear a suspicious noise. It has never failed me.
My favorite was the game 'Overkill' by Epic Megagames (back in the day). F10 or 11 or something would bring up a fake spreadsheet in the game. Halarious! Ah the days of the 'boss' key.
Flight Sim in Excel 97 and probably later
1. On a blank worksheet press F5.
2. In the "Go To" windows enter "r97c12:r97c24"
3. Press enter.
4. Press the TAB key.
5. Hold down Control + Shift.
6. Click the chart wizard tool-bar icon.
7. Have fun and enjoy.
slashdot needs an escape button.
That man tried to kill mah Daddy
In the isp where I work, it is a lifesaver. They just got a bubble bobble derivative. Also, for late at night when the boss isn't around, multiplayer literati with everyone in the office involved. (Basically scrabble.) And you can just minimize when the boss comes by.
Plus it runs on a variety of platforms. Can't wait to make it run on OQO's ultra-PC (www.oqo.com).
Progress Quest (www.progressquest.com) is the perfect game for the workplace. It's online, can appear as if it is work-oriented and important (when not in 3d mode), massively multiplayer, and, best of all, a free download!
I've managed to spend time with my wife and 3 kids, work 8 hour days (plus 1 hour commute each way), work a part-time job, and still have enough time to play and maintain a level 50 character.
Personally, I'm with Bill Mahr (sp?) of Politicaly Incorrect...people waste so much time at work, be it to gab with someone, play a game, check personal email, etc., a shorter work-week makes sense...
I've seen others spout off about downsizing and productivity, blah blah blah and, "yeah right". If you can get up to piss, have some coffee, or chat with the secretary about the latest office gosip, you can play a game...they already tried the "using every second to do work" bit at the end of the last century/beginning of this one - know what they found? Instead of accounting for every second of everyone's day to increase productivity, just allow a coffee break or two - works wonders!
Look it up - I thought this was common knowledge, but who knows...
this is solved with zsnes, the ALT-TAB shortcut, and any number of high quality 16 bit RPGs. Of course you should have the cartridge sitting in your desk if you get caught.
Download Boss! from Rohitab Software at Nonags. It runs in the background; specify your Boss! key and reveal key, be sure to turn off Window minimization animations, and set up as many Windows to hide in its INI file as you want (with only partial titlebar text necessary). When you hit the Boss! key, everything disappears instantly, gone from the taskbar, ready to resume.
The best game? Click-O-Mania (a Samegame clone) is great; so is Kyodai Mah Jongg Solitaire. It's a complete block-puzzle game suite, including Mah Jongg solitaire, Samegame, Columns, among others. If you're not worried about elapsed time, you can play most of these games at your own leisure without needing to pause. Kyodai is the only shareware I've ever registered...
<read slashdot>
<read slashdot>
<quickly switch to code editor with complicated source file loaded>
<read slashdot>
<read slashdot>
<read slashdot>
<quickly switch to terminal and enter a frenzy of mundane 'ls', 'grep' and 'vi' and 'find' commands.>
<read slashdot>
<read slashdot>
<read slashdot>
...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
/quit 'enter' enough fast to keep me out of trouble!!!
... all the .COMs who could afford to hire programmers who sat around playing games all day at work have passed on. And you wonder why they don't make games like this anymore?
If you are always ssh'd into a server somewhere, then one of your consoles can be connected to your MUD and nobody would even know. Well, unless they hear you cursing cause you just got blinded ;-)
Good MUD -> isengard.nazgul.com 4040
Live web cams
The bosses of game companies must have noticed that their own employers (game developers) were playing other games instead of coding one.
That's why they made it become more difficult to switch to the desktop.
It's Ctrl+Tab on MS Windows, I think, and probably on x86 Linux as well. On a Mac, you can also go Command+H to instantly hide an application.
..do your job you lazy piece of shit..your the reason communism dosn't work.
The Truth: There is no string:)
Get a rear-view mirror for your monitor :-)
In the last six years I've had a more senior role including being the CTO of an organization. This has involved having many concurrent tasks, some coding related, administative work, documenting on the intranet, interviewing, etc. The advantage of this kind of work is that I can switch tasks when I get disinterested in the task de l'heure. My brain is occupied and the urge to play games disappears.
Bottom line: if you want smart people to stop playing games; promote them, give them more responsibilities and more varied tasks. If they are not ready to for the promotion, put a "acceptable use" policy in place and live with the games and be happy that you have real people rather than robots.
consider coffee a lubricant that helps one penetrate the coding zone
They should make a boss key that runs Windows RG
It's called "Ctrl-Alt-F7".
"Every man is a mob, a chain gang of idiots." - Jonathan Nolan, Memento Mori
I don't think there are too many game dev companies still producing software for the SNES... :)
Several game dev companies are producing software for a handheld system that is a Super NES yet isn't a Super NES. The Game Boy Advance is twice as powerful as the Super NES in almost every aspect of 2D graphics, and about as powerful as a Super NES plus Super FX or an Atari Jaguar for 3D. And it doesn't have that annoying SPC700 coprocessor.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Where are the games for the worker?
Don't you mean games for lazy bastards:)
I had my computer at work rigged up pretty well at my last job. Counterstrike, combined with the crashing power of Windows NT, had a uniqe incompatibility with the Matrox video card drivers I was using, so that whenever I hit the escape key, I'd get the blue screen of death. So, i'd play, and when the PHB would come around, my computer would crash. I had him convinced he was bad luck. :)
today is spelling optional day.
Nethack of course, and GALTRADER! I have killed many an hour here, and it's great! This is the only Galtrader I know of on the net. It is constantly updated with new features, runs in terminal, and is multiplayer. I used to play this all the time back in VAX days, and was overjoyed to find this one! (So don't /. it ;)
Alt-tabbing and jumping to the desktop can take a few precious seconds... :)
Switch a KVM (keyboard/video/mouse switchbox) - if you're in the IT dept you'll have no problem acquiring a second computer and the KVM - and you can then use the KVM's hotkeys to instantly switch back to the other machine - no directx glitches etc. Heck, if you get the Belkin SOHO model you can have your audio switch off with it too
At my work you will be fired for playing games.
They fired a very hard working IT operations director who I don't think ever got a straight four hours of sleep due to escalation pages.
They also "walked out"a call center rep for playing games.
Some companies value their ancient culture and have a zero tolerance policy. We were told to limit web surfing at work to 15 minutes a day.
I'll play the games at home.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Me and my old boss used to have lunch all of the time and brainstorm cool useless ideas. One wasn't that bad.
:)
We had this idea for a footpedal that would fit between the monitor and the PC. When depressed, it would display a preset screencap. Everything would be built in, with some type of a button to set take a cap for use. Perfect for PC's that are locked down from installing software, drivers, etc.
The downside is that the cap would be obviously non-interactive. If the boss actually comes into your cube and asks to take a peek at your project, you're pretty screwed. Maybe you could "Oh shit, I accidentally bumped the power button. Lemme reboot real quick!"
Thought it would be a cool ThinkGeek product. Interested guys?
That's when you go on welfare!
Hip Hip Socialism! (and strip joints).
I was an operator of a Cyber mainframes and at the console we had some really cool games. My favorate was the baseball game. The game had a "boss key", but on third shift, it wasn't needed. Ahhh.. those were the days.
---- perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5,(41*2),sqrt(7056),(unpack(c,H)-2),oct(
Civilization 2 is a fine game for those who want to play a real game during work, but don't want to get caught. It minimizes and maximizes quickly, sound isn't a necessary component, it's turn based, it runs on old and new windows machines with few issues, and most releases of it run without the CD (not sure about Civ2 GOLD multiplayer). I generally enjoy leaving it in the taskbar while I'm doing work, so I can periodically reposition my tanks and cruise missiles as I guide the Sioux towards world domination. Only problem is that my "just one more turn" mentality leads me to spend 3 hours engaged in important government activities for every 5 minutes of actual work!
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
What's wrong with javascript? If you're worried about all of the malicious javascript code, I recommend Proximitron
After trying 5 different pop-up killers, this one was definitely the best for me. It handles tons of other annoying web-based shenanigans too.
The Red Pill
bind \ quit
....to keep the it kids happy, the CIO let's us play quake over our lunch break, also when we work overtime on the weekend to cover production
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Your company sounds miserable -- do you like it? I'd never _ever_ tolerate working at or running an organization that has such a draconian attitude towards its workers. Firing people for playing games (unless they didn't do their jobs ever) is wrong.
Likewise, web surfing is a tool -- not just a waste of time (though there are plenty of ways to waste time). If the company _really_ wants to prevent time wasting, they can install censorware that blocks the commonly-used time-wasters (match.com, lotsoftimewastinggames.com, etc.).
Anyway, sorry...I just hate reading about companies that still think that the stick is a more valuable tool than positive motivation.
--noah
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
www.lasersquadnemesis.com
Email Turn based Stratagy game.
Constantly putting something in your pocket can also draw unwanted attention at the office
Q2 isn't the latest and greatest but it runs well on our standard hardware and it's a lot of fun. It can be ALT-TABbed if necessary. The server even has an entry in our corporate DNS, an on-line stats page, map rotations and 3 game variants (deathmatch, rocket arena and capture the flag).
We even had a one-year anniversary match where players who had left the company came back as special guest targets. We had about 30 players that day (with a peak of 24 concurrent).
The server is tolerated by management because:
- It's scheduled to start only after business hours
- It has bandwidth caps so players can't flood the network.
- Some of them have been known to play occasionally
:-)
Unfortunately, the server is mostly idle now. It was fun while it lasted (and it lasted much longer than I thought it would). People are now playing other things served of their local systems again.I interned at a very good company last summer. They were very relaxed about hours, games, lunch times and everything. There was a strong drive from everyone around to put in a large number of hours and projects were assigned such that you needed to work 9-10 hours a day to stay on top of things.
I started playing CS and Yahoo! Chess in the middle of the internship, and my productivity sort of tanked. I'd just play 'one more game', or stay at work after business hours playing games. After a while I was sick of all things computer and really didn't devote myself much to my project.
Fortunately, this enlightened company also had a Foosball table. I started playing Foos during lunch or when I needed some downtime after concentrating for long periods of time. Strangely, the wrist-flicking motions of foosball helped me to type faster, while the quick actions allowed me more focus when I returned to work.
IMHO, separate work and play as much as possible, because you'll start to associate play with work (bad) and work with play (could get you fired).
No way.
1) Video cards today on work oriented PC's don't really make the grade for 3D games.
2) People should not be racing to get work done just to play games... a good employee never has any 'free time', but that doesn't mean they have too much to do either. A good employee manages their time to look and keep busy while producing the work required. I have found that, at places that let me game when my work was done or during those slow times that my work suffered because I was eager to game and rushed to finish my work load. As a boss, I have seen it alot.
3) IT folks are the worst!!! Watch your IT people the most as they are the ones that know how to hide it.
4) Networkable games... I have worked places where if they found a networkable game, you were canned. I have worked places where any form of game (even web ones) were banned and a firing offense (and funnily enough, they left the base windows games like solitaire installed!). Network games induce additional network load and tempt people to do things to their network settings or the servers that they wouldn't do without out it.
5) I LOVE to game... but you won't catch me doing anything other than web based games during lunch... it's not appropriate or a legitimate use of computers, IT resources, even power. Hell, I would rather send staff home early than let them slack off an hour or two with nothing to do...
The company here doesn't discourage game playing. We have a company NHL league for XBox and Wolfenstien 3D as well. Pretty much whatever cool game comes along that the booss and everyone likes. I figured it was kind of an obscure practice, but geez - it seems no on else posting has anything like that.
figure, employees are going to goof off and such anyway, everyone has to in order to prevent insanity from boring tasks. So if you give them an outlet for it, not only will they probalby take it, thye may even enjoy their job more and respect you [the boss] a bit more for respecting their mental well-being.
imagine that
-shpoffo
...if you'll run Notepad or something in the background you can always Alt+TAB and put the game in the background. But Jeez, who has time to play games? I put in 9-10 hours days and still have to spend an hour ever night just catching up on freakin email.
Ruger
If you have time to play a game, go home and play. If you have time to play games a lot, lay-offs can't be too far around the corner...
And watch any game that has network capabilities. Any good security admin is going to see the traffic and have a fit, probably running TCP dumps to see how badly you're playing...
I just don't trust the software enough to think that Q3 might not be "Gatorized" before long. Anything written for work, is written as such for a reason.
---Trust No One---
Play Chess or Go online.
Or MUD. No one thinks these days that scrolling text could have anything to do with a game.
Similar situation is at school, in any of my programming classes. When we have a substitute, we'll load up Unreal Tournament, in a window of course, and game the period away. As soon as the sub comes to check what we're doing, we open up Word, or what ever. The computer-ignorant subs normally don't have the eye power nor computer intelligence to take a look/unhide the task bar.
Good fun.
... I stop playing games at work because I am so damn busy. Nice that I got laid off and haven't found shit since.
The next job I get I will work my ass off. Playing games at work is cool when I was younger but if you are that bored, you are going to be canned sooner or later.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
Your tax dollars (if you live in Missouri) hard at work.
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
Magic the Gathering is always a fun one. You can download a free graphical tabletop based freeware program that allows one to play with anyone over the Internet.
The program contains a working database of every Magic card ever created as well as a means to keep track of all the information required to conduct a full game, so you don't have to spend money on tons of cards in order to create an asesome deck.
Apprentice requires Windows 95, 98, NT, or 2000. Development for Macintosh, Linux, and BeOS will begin after Apprentice 2.0 is completed.
How did this even come up, the post had nothing to do with jews or even black people. How did this come up?
"Alle reden vom wetter. Wir nicht." - SDS Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund.
j00 4r3 3n73r1ng l337 w0r1d.
(match.com, lotsoftimewastinggames.com, etc.)
You forgot slashdot.org..
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
My previous company went on a CS high. When I first joined last Feb, the guys there got me hooked on after working hours CS within days after I started. Well, that's how it first started - after working hours. Eventually, as the dotcom boom started going downhill, so did everyone's motivation. Soon we had lunchtime CS and eventually, towards the end of the company's inevitable demise, it was CS slightly before lunch, and then again at 4pm. The graphics guys were playing soccer and strategy games in between and a few of us on Yahoo! Games. Got to the extend when people were also watching movies at work. Oh well, helps if the bosses are never around and our team leader was crazy over CS as well.
It was fun while it lasted...
Ie, it never rains but it pours.
You have no idea what the back shifts are about do you?
they are only there for when something fuckups.
90% of 90% of nights they only need 1 person, nut when things fuck up they'll all of a sudden get 50 cals a minute, that's why they have 15 people on.
Check out Multris.com. It is absolutely perfect if you need a 10 minute break from work. For the panic-boss-is-coming feature, just close the window and pretend you were reading Slashdot...
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
...have a new feature --- it's called the "Keep Your Job Feature". Since you can't get away with playing them when you're not supposed to, you actually get your work done and keep your job so you can afford the computer to play them on at home.
Shhhh! slash-whatca ?? Nothing to see here, just move along now.
What company was that?
can you please give me the name of that company and I'll make sure I never come to work for it!
This is simply lame.
At the company I'm working for, we don't have strict rules.. it's almost a given that you won't play games/surf the web endlessly if it hurts ongoing projects etc. Frankly, I'm loaded with so much work that I can hardly find enough time to finish my lunch off! The good thing, however, is that I don't hear my boss or someone else at the company say "You'll be fired if we find you surfing the web for at least 15 minutes" OR "You are strictly prohibited to surf for more than 15 minuts, play _any_ kind of games, etc.. " you know what I'd do then? I'd simply walk away. I'm absolutely positive in my skills and am confident that I wouldn't waste much time finding another job.
If you want your employees treat the company with respect, treat your employees like you'd treat any other responsible adult. *period*
It's a geek thing.
And for us *nix users there are always the dockapps. Having a window manager that supports dockapps is not a requirement. The dockapps just won't dock, that's all.
C'mon, the very name implies "These aren't the games you're looking for, you can move along".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Subject says it all.
Windows and Unix clients available. Bit of a learning curve, but very rewarding.
Try Xpilot today!
Command attempted to use minibuffer while in minibuffer
It's actually more restrictive if you work for the government--playing computer games on government property, even "after hours," falls under the rubric "Waste, Fraud, and Abuse," and could potentially (though it seldom does) lead to criminal penalties as well as administrative punishment. On the bright side, there are rewards for turning in those who defraud the government. You have a coworker who likes to play solitaire during his lunch break? Kaching!
Why no one mentioned nethack. It's a great game and it doesn't look much like a game. Netris is a good one too. But it looks more like a game.
I work in a Help Desk department with over a dozen other men and women. We support a rough total of around 700 other folks.
It is against company policy to install and play games. Shockwave is technically not OK because of 'security issues'. The Solitaire, Minesweeper, Freecell, and Pinball executables were removed from our PC's HDD image prior to their rollout. If they're replaced, SMS automatically pulls them off twice a day (sometimes more.)
Some days, it gets really really slow, and we either have to amuse our selves with raunchy jokes, bad stories, wav files of corny movie lines, movie trailers off the web, reading books, or just tossing a small ball around.
Meanwhile, the boss is over in his segregated cubicle, playing Minesweeper. Mgrs are exempt from SMS scanning.
what about http://www.orisinal.com?
Incredible games that are really addictive and are quick playing. Besides, they all work great under linux (moz 0.9.8).
Here's a novel idea, and one I try to follow.
Rather than playing games at work, teach yourself
some now technology. Then, when it comes time
for bonuses or raises you'll have a leg to stand
on. Also, maybe it could get you into a more
exciting and better paying job.
That is all.
Hunt the Wumpus... :-)
Is working from home. The hardest thing to do is remember to shut the sound off whatever game you're playing when somebody calls.
The Internet is generally stupid
Wait a minute, I'm not sure if I understand... You won't get cought, because these are really small games? Are they so tiny that nobody will see them? Is it safe for the eyes?
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
A lot of that site is also designed under the assumption that everyone can see fonts smaller than pixels (which is actually quite a sane assumption, considering the fact that they provide games 4x4 pixels large). That said, as I am unable to read their website without getting my lazy ass off the chair and staring from the distance of 2mm from the screen using a magnifying glass, so my question is: are they available only for Windows? As for the Javascript, I enabled the damn thing, but I still can't see their screenshots. But then again I probably wouldn't be able to see them even if I could display them, if they are as small as fonts... Oh, well, it's only my own fault that I bought a 15" monitor having problems with sight. I should've bought 50" projector instead, then I wouldn't complain about incompetent web designers, like I always do...
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Here's a thought. Do you job.
http://www.digger.org
Yeah!
Voodoo Football My best score is 78. Whats yours?
Canadian Cynic, canadian politics is less boring than you
I have a theory about this one. Once a game reaches a a sort-of playable stage, all the developers will do from then on is play it, and the game will never get finished as it should be. Management force them to make games this way, so developers can't play the game themselves without being caught, and they will have to work on the finishing touches instead.
http://www.subspace.net/
Had an ALT-H command and you could choose the icon it minimized as. ALT-H minimized my game and made it look like a Lotus 123 spreadsheet icon. I wish they had this for everquest :(
'nuff said.
May we live long and die out
One is dialed out of the company onto Diablo II Battle Net, the other is logged into my email and stuff.
Just switch the screen and be prepared to have your character get fried or hacked while you are not paying attention.
The division I'm in has no work, but won't let us transfer out either. So what else is there to do? I've already finished one C# book. Don't flame me for being a slacker. If there is work to do I'd do it right away.
If I was an employee of a company I wouldn't play games, even if it was sanctioned in the company handbook. Two reasons:
1. First time your project slips, guess what (or rather who) is to blame?
Me: "I haven't completed the importing of the blah, blah data into the new system. It will be done by Friday."
Boss: "Well you seemed to have enough time to play Quake III all last week"
2. I could never look my boss in the face at a review and say "I deserve to make this much or this position", if he know I was playing games. (Even during lunch.)
Bottom line is I never give them anything to hang over my head. Even if they want me to go to a conference in Florida during the middle of winter I act like I am getting screwed. Work should be as painful as possible (or look that way at least if you want to get an edge over your boss.)
Of course I like that employees typical burn company time and equipment. It makes selling myself that much easier. I am successful as an independent contractor because I try my hardest not to waste time. I have been well trained by the Army to avoid distractions.
I am not going to say grow up and all that. But I do think if you have time to waste like that, you're not balancing your time correctly. And as for talking to co-workers and snack runs as being just as time wasting. Rubbish! Talking to co-workers builds relationships which helps at the workplace (as long as it's not hours at a time.) Casual conversion while working can be mentally stimulating. And who can work without sugar and caffeine? If I feel I can't concetrate, I grab another Mt. Dew.
Not preaching, just my thought on the subject.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Lois, this isn't my Batman glass. - Peter
I thought it had a lovely instruction set compared to most 8 bit machines.
The DSP registers are OK too - the real pain was the tiny and seemingly unpredictable ports between the 658C16 and the SPC700 - four ports (one byte each way) but when you poked bytes in one end you didn't know what order they were going to come out the other end in :-(
But I let the sound guys write the GBA driver instead of doing it myself - which makes me wonder - is it so hard for them to give me envelope controls on indivual samples? Pretty please! I had it on the SNES, so why not on the GBA? (I think they are mixing them in software so they claim it would cost too much processor power) :-(
it's called Larn, NetHack, and all those other fun, free roguelike games... sometimes simpler is better!
What a joke!!! The bosses aren't stupid low tech idiots anymore. They probably can't code, but they're willing to pay for it, if they're stingy on game playing at work. Want to know what the boss does nowadays to catch people goofing off? Search for this in Google:
desktop spy software
Better hack those trojans to fool those spyware because you sure can't remove it.
These spywares have been available for years now. The question is balance, whether it is better to overwork workers, or to reduce workers' stress and make the work-place a fun place to be. One would think to support the latter over the turnover and the sick-leave.
Why don't you do what I did, and take your life's savings to start a company. Pay people out of your own money while you don't make a salary for a year while you build your company up.
Then, let your employees spend 90% of their time playing games and screwing around. When you consciously realize where employment comes from and how it affects you personally, I think you'd change your shallow attitude.
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
didn't you see the law and order where the kids wrote "KILL ALL KIKES" in their yearbook? Whats wrong with you?
Well, I got about half way through these cooments before running out of time, but I'll throw another couple of things out there. I haven't seen Alt - F4 mentioned. On almost any windows based program, it quickly closes just about any program. As for Games, I really like nethack. It's small, fun, and really, really hard to beat. Civilization 1 is one of the best old games. It fits on two meg, and can take up to 6 hours to play. Calmiche,
Not exactly a game, but headhunter has one!.
http://www.Headhunter.net/JobSeeker/PanicPage.htm
In-browser games are easy to hide and are good for short-term distractions that won't totally kill your "productivity".
...at least they're better than solitaire.
Multiplayer Mini-Golf
NetbabyWorld (not Mozilla-friendly)
Orisinal (little Flash games)
Spaced Penguin! (fun with gravity)
Just wish there was more out there.
\bind * quit
thats what i use.
works great.
THERE IS NO DATA. THERE IS O
Gaming at work?
Sounds very foreign to me. In today's competitive business culture, you need to stay on the front line. Having some spare time? Fine, read Sun's latest Java specs, or W3C's XML specification.
There are always stuff to learn and the more you know, the better you will perform.
Playing games will hardly lead to any promotions nor more interesting job assignments.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Just install SoftIce, and when the boss comes buy, hit Ctrl-D and pretend you are deep in debugging. sky
http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava. html
Requires java. Minimize window if the boss comes.
The site is just a fun site. It's depressing that in a year of running tinywindowsgames.com, this is the first negative comment. I have always found it strange that people in the computer industry tend to be some of the most backwards when it comes to exploiting technology. Most people have JavaScript enabled and that helps us to create sites in a quick and useful way.
Incidentally, you can zoom in to view the text better using menu options, or in IE you can hold down the control key and use the mouse wheel.
A great game to play while you are at work is baseball mogul 200x. The latest one is 2003. It is a text-based baseball management game in which you have full control over a team.
This
is not new technology. It's actually very outdated way to control text appearance. If you want to exploit technology, use XHTML Strict and Cascading Style Sheets.
But I wasn't talking about the way how the fonts are made smaller than the default size (size="+1" is the font larger than the user default and size="-2" is font smaller than the user default font, i.e. this size which I find the most readable - see my web design rules if you're not sure what I mean). I was only commenting the idea of using fonts smaller than the size which I have chosen as the best size for me.
Of course I can set my default font so large that when the size is decreased twice the result will be my favorite size. But this way the correctly designed websites would have fonts too large and it's completely backwards and doesn't make much sense.
I'm sorry if you found my comment offensive. I was mostly joking because I visited a website with tiny games and I found the fonts so tiny that I couldn't read anything, which kind of made sense, because people who play so tiny games obviously has to have great sight, unlike myself. The first thing I thought was that you may have set the fonts so small, so the people with poor sight (those who wouldn't be able to play those games anyway), won't waste your bandwidth downloading games to small for them to play, because they won't find the download links. I found that kind of funny.
As for the Javascript, as I said (please read my comment), I couldn't see the screenshots even after I enabled Javascript, so something is just broken. (JavaScript Error: http://www.tinywindowsgames.com/tiny/: document.all has no properties.)
Yes, most of people, but not everyone. Unless you use the <noscript> tag, you have to understand that those who don't have Javascript enabled, or those who don't use Javascript browsers at all, will complain that your website simply don't work, which is true however great working with Javascript it may be.
Just use <noscript> tag and your website will work great for everyone. People with working Javascript interpreters won't see <noscript>this code</noscript> at all, so your site will be exactly the same for those who can use it today. The only difference will be to those people who can't use it today. Please read my web design rules, I believe you'll find quite a few good points there.
I'm glad that you answered and I'm honored that you probably made your account just to answer my comment. The main reason I posted my comment (other than a joke about tiny games and tiny fonts correlation) was to ask if these games are available only for Windows, because I don't have Windows (I use Debian) but I'd like to check them out. So please tell me: what platforms do you support? Are those games released as free software (in the FSF sense)?
If your games work under GNU/Linux systems, then I'll be glad to check them out. If they are written only for Windows but they are released as free software, then I'll maybe try to port some of them when I find any time for that. Please tell me where I can find the working screenshots, I'd like to see how do these games look like in the first place.
Thanks and, once again, I'm sorry if you misunderstood my intentions, I really didn't want to offend you. Please don't confuse my post with the somehow more offensive parent post by limbostar.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
We're currently working on a complete site re-design (re-coding actually) to get round the ridiculous number of font tags and there is a nice cascading stylesheet helping us to do that. The tiny fonts were meant to be a laugh (The site started out with no illusions about ever getting hits and it's kinda stuck that way for a joke). Sorry if I took offense rather too quickly. It was more the thread I was replying to, not your post in particular. The games are Windows only for the moment (Hence the domain name), but a tinyworkbenchgames site is in the works for Amiga fans. There are currently no plans to develop on Linux, although if anyone wants to give it a shot, be my guest ;)
I thought [Super NES's sound CPU] had a lovely instruction set compared to most 8 bit machines.
IIRC, it was in essence an extended 6502 with the instruction bits permuted.
the real pain was the tiny and seemingly unpredictable ports between the 658C16 and the SPC700 - four ports (one byte each way) but when you poked bytes in one end you didn't know what order they were going to come out the other end in :-(
By "SPC700 processor", I meant "entire SPC700 side of the system". Without any method of debugging the sound loader, there is no way to know why a program isn't working. I gauge difficulty of programming an audio system by how much effort it takes to say "Hello World".
is it so hard for them to give me envelope controls on indivual samples? Pretty please! I had it on the SNES, so why not on the GBA?
GBA music formats are typically MOD-like.
I had it on the SNES, so why not on the GBA? (I think they are mixing them in software so they claim it would cost too much processor power)
Super NES had hardware mixing. GBA audio is essentially the same as a Sound Blaster Pro: two 8-bit sample channels with DMA playback, and some legacy (Ad Lib for SB; DMG audio for GBA) tone generators. Mixing is at least a multiply (volume) and two adds (playback frequency and mixing sum) per voice per channel.
There are several GBA MOD players available for licensing, and one to be released soon is Lesser GPL'd.
Will I retire or break 10K?
People who are just screwing off and not getting their job done should get axed. But over-focusing on where each minute of an employee's day goes and trying to account for every single penny of productivity is counter-productive as well. There are intangibles involved here; loyalty, effort, enthusiasm. And I've found, time and again, that companies that have happy employees who feel that they are trusted and valued get better results than companies that try to squeeze every last ounce of non-work related activity out of their zombies.
I'm at a place like that now (obviously there not very good at it, or I'd not be posting here right now). They do everything in their power to ensure that everyone knows they are here to 'work, not have fun' so they can get every possible ounce of useful work out of each of us. But if backfires, badly. I hate being here, I spend my time not being productive, but counting the minutes till I go home. I'm out the door right on time, every day. I never skip lunch. I never go that extra mile--it's been made clear that work is work, and so I make sure it doesn't impinge in the least on the rest of my life. Got a major systems problem at 4:58PM? Too bad, it'll have to wait till tomorrow.
Contrast this with the last place I was at. Man, I loved that job. We played Half-Life half the time, spent hours talking about trivia and tech, wandered in and out at random hours, and generally did a lot of things that would give more traditional business owners a heart-attack. But if there was a problem, we were all over it. I've never worked harder on anything in my life; I've never put in more hours anywhere. And I did it for a fraction of what I make where I'm at now. I would have done anything to keep that place afloat, and so would most of the rest of the staff, and consequently, we were extremely profitable. We got rid of dead wood, but having fun on the job did not necessarily equal a bad investment in someone. What it taught me is that you should be measured by what you accomplish, not how much time you spend doing it.
I left there for other reasons and I've regretted it ever since. But I see this phenomena with all sorts of different companies. The ones with happy, dedicated employees do better than the ones with mindless drones. You may be able to justify drones more easily to the accountants, but if you're really concerned about doing well, take the chance and try building a workforce that enjoys what it is doing enough to do it well and cheaply.
No relation to Happy Monkey
Sorry -- I'm a bit ahead of where you think I am. I did start a company, with my own money. I did pay my employees with my own money, and I did work for no salary for the first year. I grew the company to 31 people and sold it in February for a lot of money.
And you know what? I never ONCE considered implementing draconian policies like this. My employees played games (after hours, when they knew it was OK), used IM, surfed the web, and got all of their work done. The ones that didn't got canned (usually for more complex, but similar issues), and you know what else? My former employees constantly tell me that they'd work for me and my partners again in a SECOND and that they wish all jobs were as great as the ones they had.
I think my attitude is not shallow in the slightest.
--noah
Ferrari and other exotic car rentals in New York
U238, huh? Cute.
rocks! (it's also in Debian, of course :)
--
Free Software enthusiast; Debian GNU/Linux (powerpc) developer
Try sim city classic - www.maxis.com, playable in a browser! Very easy to hide!
OK. No problem.
I don't have much of free time right now, but I could take a look at the source of a simple game and see if I could port it. I don't know how your games are written but if it's standard C or C++ and if you have some internal frame buffer, than it shouldn't be hard to output that buffer to SDL window. Even if it had to be converted to different format with every frame, the overhead shouln't be high with small screen.
Actually, you may want to take a look at the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library. Using SDL, you could write portable games working under Windows, Linux, MacOS, MacOS X, Solaris, IRIX, FreeBSD, QNX, OSF/True64. Here's a short summary from SDL website:
I really recomend SDL. It's developed mostly by Sam Lantinga, who worked in Loki porting Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns, Tribes 2, Heavy Gear II, Heretic II, Heroes of Might and Magic III, Railroad Tycoon II, Civilization: Call To Power and few other titles, and is now working in Blizzard on the World of Warcraft - in other words, he knows how to code games, and it shows with the SDL. Check out the games, demos and other applications which use SDL.
For the portable sound code you can use SDL_mixer and for more advanced effects I recommend the OpenAL which takes care for you about the 3-D sound effects in a similar fashion as OpenGL with graphics.
What language and libraries do you use anyway?
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$