Announcing Games.slashdot.org

For years Slashdot has had an abundance of game related content. Unfortunately, we've also had limited space to post those stories. We strive to cover a wide range of tech news, and this often means passing on a good game story because something else is more important. But today I get to announce the creation of games.slashdot.org, where we'll finally have a home for all the gaming related content that might otherwise have been rejected. Keep reading to learn more.

The Slashdot Game Section will function similiarly to the other major sections on Slashdot, like apple.slashdot.org and Ask Slashdot. Visitors to the direct URL will be presented with additional, more focused, topical content. The best stories in the section will be posted to the main page and shared with a more general audience as they always have been. Logged in users can choose to consolidate Games content to the main page.

You'll notice a few things in the game section that are new. Most important is the addition of our newest editor, Simon "Simoniker" Carless. Simon is a sharp guy who has written for a variety of publications, but also is uniquely qualified since he has a history as a game designer for Eidos & Atari. Backing up Simon is the man of many polls himself, Jon "CowboyNeal" Pater. CowboyNeal is an obsessive gamer, having sacrificed his body for years to become a better gamer. We'll all benefit from his efforts in the field of sitting, pressing buttons and eating snacks.

The Slashdot Game Section will cover a variety of game related material. We will not be limited by platform- we intend to cover the major consoles, new and old releases, as well as computing games. We want to cover classic gaming as well as emulation. We intend to provide occasional original coverage, but mostly, we want to provide more exposure to the existing gaming sites, while providing our users with a place to discuss the major gaming news of the day.

Initially content will be found in the overflow from the Slashdot submissions bin. But as the section grows, we expect that readers will use the Games Submissions Bin to submit stories directly to Simoniker and CowboyNeal. You can also contact them directly by emailing games at slashdot dot org.

We've been looking forward to creating this section for a long time, and I hope you will all enjoy reading it as much as we'll enjoy researching stories for it ;)

Comments

And that clears that up

[Loosewire]

Ive been following this for the last couple of days, first i was looking through the Icons list and notice lots of ones with the (games) tag but nothing in - thats odd??.
Then i notice some things being posted under a games.slashdot.org. Odd never seen that before, and its not in the sections, must have missed it...
Now it all makes sense :-)
Anything that means you can waste more time on slashdot when you need to do work cant be bad.
What prompted the move to ads in a slashbox at the side then??

Re:And that clears that up

[Breakfast Pants]

I wonder, when they typed "games at slashdot dot org" were they trying to prevent spam? If someone were to say type games@slashdot.org in a comment would that override all their efforts as it would be picked up by any spiders on this story?

What's next?

[stiv]

Perhaps dupes.slashdot.org? For all those other dupes there hasn't been room for on the home page!

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

If they keep them all together, they'll compress quite well. Very good for storage.

You just saved /. a shotload of disks!

Re:What's next?

[jkrise]

Okay.. here's a list:

1. sane.slashdot.org (Linux, GNU etc..)
2. inane.slashdot.org (NASA, Service Packs :-)
3. insane.slashdot.org (Throwing pies, personal submarines)
4. microsoft.slashdot.org (isn't it already?)
5. slashdot.slashdot.org (figure this one out!)
6. music.slashdot.org (should've been up before games, methinks)
7. troll.slashdot.org (let's give them a separate space)
8. moderators.slashdot.org (we'd like to see the faces of our faceless foes!)
9. joke.slashdot.org (LOL!)
10. follow-up.slashdot.org (actually this is the one serious suggestion I'm making. Often, we read several articles that need review and follw-up. Slashback is inadequate since many un-related reviews get bunched. The recent Lance vs Sasha reg MS VS.Net Student edition comes to mind. The review was drowned amongst other junk).

Cheers.

Re:What's next?

[Obiwan Kenobi]

I wait patiently for natalieportman.slashdot.org

You know they say the waiting is the hardest part...er...

That come out wrong. Ish.

Re:What's next?

[HaloZero]

slooflirpa.slashdot.org

Security through obscurity, but still a place for all that crap.

Re:What's next?

[worf_mo]

You forgot

11. dupes.slashdot.org

unless it is supposed to be covered by 5.

Re:What's next?

[secolactico]

[...]

11. boobies.slashdot.org (so we can finally finish sinking to Fark level).

Re:What's next?

[WhiteBandit]

Apparently they are one step ahead of that game! Although the content is rather lacking... ;)

http://natalieportman.slashdot.org/

Re:What's next?

[Silent1]

i'd be happy with porn.slashdot.org

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

11. dupes.slashdot.org (when you just want to hear the same news twice).

Re:What's next?

[Hard_Code]

"5. slashdot.slashdot.org (figure this one out!)"

This is where sites referenced on slashdot can redirect users, correct?

Re:What's next?

[Markus Landgren]

Perhaps dupes.slashdot.org? For all those other dupes there hasn't been room for on the home page!

Yes, dupes.slashdot.org, duplicates.slashdot.org and repeats.slashdot.org are set to roll out within four hours from eachother.

Re:What's next?

[wario78]

You forgot

11. dupes.slashdot.org

You forgot

12. dupes.slashdot.org

Re:What's next?

[NanoGator]

1. sane.slashdot.org (Linux, GNU etc..)
2. inane.slashdot.org (NASA, Service Packs :-)
3. insane.slashdot.org (Throwing pies, personal submarines) ...

11. mozillagetsaminorversionnumberupdate.slashdot.org

Re:What's next?

[phlack]

How about:

soviet-russia.slashdot.org

Oh wait, that could be an alias to:

yro.slashdot.org

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would hot grits be included?

Re:What's next?

[BigBir3d]

register.slashdot.org (the one true source)
mirror.slashdot.org (for the little guys with wimpy servers)

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

kittens.slashdot.org

Re:What's next?

[The-P]

How about

porn.slashdot.org

Can't forget that!!

Hmm Kinda makes me wonder if they'll license there software.

P

Re:What's next?

[jcast]

You do know you can type anything.slashdot.org and it'll resolve, right? Just try tacofuckinghemos.slashdot.org if you don't believe me.

Re:What's next?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd hit it!!

Re:What's next?

[WhiteBandit]

Yup, as denoted by the smilie, I was joking around.

Re:What's next?

[zerocool^]

Heh.

ssh ns
cd /var/named
echo "* IN A 66.35.250.150" > ./hosts.slashdot.org
killall named
/usr/sbin/named -c /etc/named.conf

Or somethign like that. Need to update the serial, too.

~Will

Re:What's next?

[bcemoli]

Shouldnt there be the obligatory Beowolf cluster reference:

11-20. beowulf.slashdot.org

Or the other fan favorite:

21. goatse.slashdot.org

Argh... Purple?

[CoolVibe]

This color scheme for the games section is hurting my eyes and is causing my brain to cringe...

Please change it? Ouch.....

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Loosewire]

hurting my eyes and is causing my brain to cringe...

Please change it? Ouch.....
Shouldnt that be its hurting my eyes and causing my brain to cringe, please crank up the brightness and BRING IT ON!!

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Joe the Lesser]

Try loading the page while sufficiently baked, and you'll change your tune...

It's like, I am the purple man.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Matrix272]

I don't think there's too much purple. For every good webpage, there should be a color scheme or at least 3 colors, but no more than 6 (6 is just too many, IMO). The wonderful, intelligent people at Slashdot decided on black, white, and purple for the Games section. The Apple section is teal, Apache is purple (an uglier purple), Ask Slashdot is gray, etc. Given that there are only 8 primary colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet / purple, brown, and black), eventually they have to duplicate one somewhere. FWIW, I like it.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Clover_Kicker]

I've been using the "light" HTML version of /. for years.

Looks like I haven't been missing anything :)

Re:Argh... Purple?

[trezor]

Well. For all those tech-savy who don't like the colors... Ever heard about user-css? It can be made domain-specific and all, you know :)

Re:Argh... Purple?

[mmol_6453]

It looks like most of the theme consists of images. CSS doesn't handle those.

Of course, there're probably ways around that limitation, like letting the user provide his own image links in his preferences.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I just did and I am and it still hurts my eyes...

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Matrix272]

I have seen some sites with a color scheme consisting of 6 colors that look good, but most look bad. Also, given that there are only 8 primary colors, having any more than 6 would constitute staring at a rainbow. Obviously, a webpage may have 6 colors, but each color doesn't necessarily have to be in the color scheme.

I also might suggest a week or so at Tolerance Camp, and probably about 5-10 years at Anger Management.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I tried loading it while sufficiently NAKED, and wow! it's romantic. Thanks for the hint.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

Um, no. There are only 3 primary colors. Red, Blue and Yellow. In any case, I wholeheartedly agree....the PURPLE SUCKS! If it were perhaps a shade darker, it would be acceptable.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Isldeur]

Good God! this color scheme is worse than the YRO site!

What kind of disposessed weirdo did this one? You may as well put the whole thing in blink tags.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[eclectro]

Soon Thinkgeek will start selling radiation badges to make sure we are not overexposed to radiation by reading the games section on slashdot.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[strider44]

I think that blue is better - a light one, not as harsh on our already depleted eyes

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I seriously think I'll be seeing big neon streaks all day. Please don't make me go blind.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[rppp01]

So, I've been out of rehab for a week, right? And, I have been, like, gaming and such, right? And so, this morning, I am at the magical number 7, right? I get online, check a few sites, and get to /., right? And I see this games./..org, right? And, I'm like, cool, and so, like, I click on it, right? And, woaaaah. Oh man, relapse!

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

as soon as i clicked the link i felt i was taken to some cheap gay strip club...
ouch my eyes...

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot's been hacked!

By Elvis!

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Randolpho]

No, I like it! More purple!

Change the header highlight to a really fine, light purple. Say... #EACBEF That'd be cool. :D

Re:Argh... Purple?

[thatguywhoiam]

Um, no. There are only 3 primary colors. Red, Blue and Yellow. In any case, I wholeheartedly agree....the PURPLE SUCKS! If it were perhaps a shade darker, it would be acceptable.

Pendant alert!

Red, Green, and Blue are the primary Additive colours that your monitor (and most video gear) uses.

In grade-school art class they teach you Red, Blue and Yellow, but that is actually a simple version of the typical Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black process that is used for printed or painted material (reflective light).

What you consider 'primary' colours largely depends on the medium you're using.

The moral of the story? The purple sucks. :)

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Matrix272]

Often, I hear women say that something isn't blue, it's "navy blue" or "sky blue" or some other metaphor-laden color. My personal definition of a primary color (in this case, anyway) is one of the main 8 different colors. I probably wouldn't know the difference between "navy blue" and "dark navy blue", but I know the difference between purple and orange, and neither of those are "primary" colors.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[trezor]

I'm sure following O'Reilly's CSS-Anarchists guide, you'll find a fluid way of providing new iamges in the CSS as well. Or just removing them :)

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for the sake of science, red/green/blue or red/yellow/blue are primaries, with orange/yellow/purple or orange/green/purple being the secondary colors. Black and white are a full addition or subtraction of all of the primaries (technically this is a bit off). And brown is just thrown in for good measure... it's kind of the odd one out. All other colors are different combinations, shades, and highlights of the above.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[dood]

I don't know if it's possible for the /. guys to make an *uglier* site. I mean seriously - I think they had to try to make this site this bad looking.

Will /. ever get a facelift? I'm not sure if this has been brought up before so maybe some of the /. vets can comment.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[GigsVT]

For the sake of science, you aren't very scientific. Red is not both and additive and subtractive primary, that wouldn't make much sense.

The subtractive primaries are Cyan Magenta and Yellow. Red is 100% Yellow with 100% Magenta.

Microsoft has a page about this. Don't ask me why.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[thatguywhoiam]

Often, I hear women say that something isn't blue, it's "navy blue" or "sky blue" or some other metaphor-laden color. My personal definition of a primary color (in this case, anyway) is one of the main 8 different colors. I probably wouldn't know the difference between "navy blue" and "dark navy blue", but I know the difference between purple and orange, and neither of those are "primary" colors.

Well now you're talking about the visible light spectrum, and orange + purple are indeed in there.

Red - Orage - Yellow - Green - Blue - Violet (purple), etc.

It's a bit silly to distunguish 'primary' colours out of this as its all just frequency range anyways.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[redtail1]

The green and white color scheme is the only one I've seen so far that doesn't suck. Why does the site need alternate color schemes at all? The icons and subdomains are enough.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Carbonite]

Try loading the page while sufficiently baked, and you'll change your tune...

I just said "No!" you insensitive clod!

Re:Argh... Purple?

[CoolVibe]

Well, how many amounts of psychotropic drugs do I have to take to be able to dig this? I mean, reading the slashdot games section could become an expensive habit that way...

An anonymous coward was worried about having neon streaks branded in his retinae. I have the same worry. Looking directly into the sun is less painful.

I guess I have to start visiting the slashdot site in light-mode to escape this insanity. I thank whoever said that for the advice...

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Lord Dimwit Flathead]

Pendant alert!

I believe you mean pedant alert.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[metlin]

Actually not.

Having been a Graphics programmer, I associate graphics programming with bright, jazzy and glitterati layouts.

And I think this color-scheme pretty much portrays it, and does a good job of looking radically different within the constraints, from the rest of the site.

I really think it kinda looks different, and cool too!

But oh well, thats my 0.02.

Re:Argh... Purple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. I'm using mozilla 1.0.1 on rh8. I know how to edit my user.css, but I'm not familiar with css and user.css to know how to make changes specific to only slashdot. The closest idea I can come up with is to create a whole profile dedicated to slashdot.

What method are you thinking of/using to change the colors?

Edumacate me, please.

:)

Re:Argh... Purple?

[trezor]

Google for CSS2. In CSS2 you are allowed not only to alter specific tags, but alter specific tags, given specific conditions, like the IMG-SRC=tag.

Colors?

[bananaape]

The blue on black theme is messing with my head.

Otherwise, good idea.

Re:Colors?

[Anonymous Coward]

"The blue on black theme is messing with my head"

• Blue on black? Am I color-blind, or isn't this purple on black?

Re:Colors?

[bananaape]

Maybe its my really old monitor at work. Its not so vibrant anymore.

Re:Colors?

[iabervon]

Ah, you fools who don't use "lite" mode...

Section bar

[42forty-two42]

Will this be added to the Section bar on the right-hand side?

Re:Section bar

[jamie]

In about 45 more seconds, yes. :)

Re:Section bar

[NickFitz]

Will this be added to the Section bar on the right-hand side?

No, they're trying to cut down on the dupes.

Re:Section bar

[cperciva]

Speaking of the section bar, is anyone else seeing really out of date data there? Just now it updated (with the addition of the games category) but until a minute ago it was still reflecting April 20th data.

Re:Section bar

[Zathrus]

Logged in users can choose to consolidate Games content to the main page

Ok, I'm apparantly dense since I see no way under Preferences to do this... unless it's through the User Code bit in Preferences.

There's an easy way to exclude moderators/sections/topics, an easy way to setup slashboxes, but no easy way (as best I can see) to integrate sections into the main page. What am I missing (and yes, I did check the FAQ).

Re:Section bar

[afidel]

What about a slashbox for it?

Re:Section bar

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, please, change the color scheme. It hurts :(

Re:Section bar

[Tomun]

Preferences, Home Page, Collapse Sections (show stories from all sections, unless specifically excluded)

Re:Section bar

[Refried Beans]

I'd like to see a slashbox for this too.

Re:Section bar

[jwilloug]

There are no finer controls than that? I don't normally read Apple or BSD stories, but I'm not sure I want to turn them completely off either.

Re:Section bar

[Anonymous Coward]

bump n stuff.

slashboxes are good.

Games.slashdot.org?

[Matrix272]

Why not make a Microsoft.slashdot.org for all the M$ bashing? Or a Linux.slashdot.org for all the linux lovers (or is that www.slashdot.org)? What about freaking-stupid-legal-system.slashdot.org for all the people that get arrested and/or fined for doing things that shouldn't be illegal in the first place?

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[ergo98]

Tis rather odd that bsd.slashdot.org brings you to BSD-centric content, but linux.slashdot.org just brings you to the standard front page.

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[Faust7]

Why not make a Microsoft.slashdot.org for all the M$ bashing?

Because it spills over into all other sections anyway.

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[ramzak2k]

no all of that cant be done, we wont have stories to post on the main page then. Oh well, I guess we can always dupe em.

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[shish]

ANY not registered subdomain gets the front page - foobar.slashdot.org fearthecow.slashdot.org etc

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[antiMStroll]

What, and leave regular Slashdot the domain of Linux bashers and MS apologists? Oh, wait...

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about fuck.slashdot.org for trolls?

Re:Games.slashdot.org?

[phorm]

I think we need a microsoft.slashdot.org and a microshaft.slashdot.org

That way, we can filter out all those random pro-MS articles (MS+AOL against spam, etc), and continue our bashing unabated.

Truly though, with MS actually doing some beneficitial things online currently, perhaps we need two icons, Bilgatous & the evil empire doesn't seem right on the "MS against spam" articles.

Dupes.slashdot.org?

[Penguuu]

What next? Dupes.slashdot.org? :)

Great Idea!! Now how about....

[Chilliwilli]

...every posts there best links to any information about Half Life 2.. that's the big story at the moment right?

I'll start with http://www.hl2hc.tk/

Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, whoever this new guy is, he certainly isn't a graphic designer.

Re:Hrmm

[jamie]

"Well, whoever this new guy is, he certainly isn't a graphic designer."

Wow, you managed to be wrong about two things in that statement :)

Re:Hrmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, a good graphics designer. I folded a paper airplane once, that does not make me an areonautical engineer.

Welcome to /.

Re:Hrmm

[jkrise]

OMG! Good ol' Jamie, the culprit?? No wonder 'tis said "The female of the species is more deadlier than the male". This color scheme looks so very evil...or should I say bewitching?

The color reminded me about "Robin Ultramarine Blue". I suppose you look like Cruella DeVil of 101 Dalmatians fame :-)? Your website doesn't carry your pic :-(

Re:Hrmm

[shdragon]

Jamie, please consider changing the color scheme. It really is kinda.....bright? I'd be happy with just less color saturation.

p.s., what language is your site in?

*clicks on link*

[nherc]

Oww! My retinas! I'll never play Conterstrike again!!! You bastards!

Re:*clicks on link*

[Angry White Guy]

Less competition == good for me. I suck at counterstrike. I'm one of the elite few that can take down an entire clan just by playing on their side.

Re:*clicks on link*

[Fesh]

Heh. Wanna scrim? Sounds like you're at my skill level...

Great... my proxy at work will probally block this

[Brian_rts]

Great... my proxy at work will probally block this

MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!

[Winged Youth]

JESUS...the purple is sensory OVERLOAD. I'm not so sure that the first thing you want to see when you put down your sniper rifle, take off your night-vision goggles and exit the game is a bright white and purple webpage...

I mean...don't get me wrong, the slashdot logo looks cool like that...but so much purple detail all over the place? it's just too much

In other news: DUDE! Games.slashdot.org! COOL!

Re:MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!

[JoeCotellese]

Well I'm glad I was the first one to say this. My first impression of the site was what a god-awful color scheme. The logo is hard to make out and there seems to be too much contrast between then white text over purple background.

Re:MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, toooooooo much white.

Re:MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, the proper expression ends with "The goggles, they do nothing!" Get it straight.

Re:MY EYES!!! THE GOGGLES DO NOTHING!!!

[Rainier Wolfecastle]

Hey, that's my line! I put my high-priced german lawyers on you, nurd!

Cool. Now a Star Wars one?

[Anonymous Coward]

The films f*cking suck HARD, but seem to get posted here on an almost weekly basis. Come on, guys - its embarrassing. Pulp sci-fi doesn't belong on a site which also covers heavy maths/coding/encryption etc issues.

Limited space eaten up by Limited space eaten up b

[kzinti]

For years Slashdot has had an abundance of game related content. Unfortunately, we've also had limited space to post those stories

You'd have more room if you'd read your own web site and stop posting so many duplicate stories.

Colors

[SushiFugu]

Ok, I love slashdot and all, but seriously...

worst. colors. ever.

What about goatse.slashdot.org?

[AnswerIs42]

At least what.. 10 references to that site per day? Better to keep them all in one location to save our sanity ;)

Re:What about goatse.slashdot.org?

[Flarg!]

Nah... Because then people would be trying to disguise links to legitimate sites as a goatse link

1 out of 6 aint bad

[BlueTooth]

Toons
Games!
Characters
DOWNLOOOOOOODS
Store!
Da Email

Re:1 out of 6 aint bad

[viking099]

Somebody get this freakin' duck away from me!

That's it, I'm going to go play Trogdor!

Poll

[Psychor]

The gaming section colour scheme: 1) Hurts my eyes 2) Gives me a nice tan when I view it on my CRT 3) Features a new colour, infra-purple 4) Is even more garish than Barney the dinosaur 5) Clashes with CowboyNeal's underpants

Re:Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

tooo much fucking white, now a nice pink/brown or whatever background would be nice, but more fucking whoite.

Re:Poll

[afidel]

Thanks, I haven't belly laughed like that since I was downsized months ago. Being newly employed combined with that great post just made my week =)

Re:Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

" Clashes with CowboyNeal's underpants"

Does he wear the same color always? Have you checked personally??

Re:Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

well since he doesnt change them; his underpants are probably dark purple/green/brown....

Re:Poll

[larry bagina]

what do you think was the inspiration for the piss-yellow/shit-brown apache section?

Re:Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

Does he wear the same color always?

Not just the same colour, the same pair!

Re:Poll

[KikassAssassin]

3) Features a new colour, infra-purple

So, if what Good Omens says is true, we now have two scientifically documented ways of viewing this newly discovered color. Bashing your head into a brick wall so hard that you die, and viewing the Slashdot games section.

Now the real question is, which technique is more pleasant? :)

Re:Poll

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't he remove them atleast twice a day :-)...maybe more often?

Re:Poll

[sootman]

I'm colorblind, you insensetive clod!

Re:Poll

[Guppy06]

6) Matches the color of my GameCube.

The site layout Rocks

[bsy-1]

I love the colors! And its great to see that much info on games posted in one spot. Great work!

ahhh bgcolor = white

[oliverthered]

If you think that's bad, try reading the 99% of the web which has bgcolor=white (fuck knows why) when you've got a migraine, or dyslexia.

The purples cool, the white's ANOYING AS HELL. time to write my own CSS.

Re:ahhh bgcolor = white

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that's bad, try reading the pages that force background colour to white, but forget to force the text colour, when you're using a light system font colour and certain browser combinations. (Konqueror springs to mind)

Hollywood / Axis

[CausticWindow]

Yo Hollywood (Simon Carless)

Amiga still rules, or what? At least demoscene wise :)

blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Excellent. Now my workplace can filter the news I read more effectively by blocking games.slashdot.org! And they will . . . websense is merciless :(

Re:blocking

[jamie]

"Excellent. Now my workplace can filter the news I read more effectively by blocking games.slashdot.org! And they will ... websense is merciless :("

http://slashdot.org/games/ also works, as does http://slashdot.org/index.pl?section=games ...

Re:blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

thanks for the URLs... now I can add them to my corp. block lists....

{evil laugh}muuahhhhhahahahahahahahahahahha{/evil laugh}

Re:blocking

[viking099]

That will get us to the section, but what about seeing the details of the stories themselves? They are still referenced on those pages by the foo.slashdot.org, not www.slashdot.org/foo.
Please help if you can, as for some reason my firewall blocks developers.slashdot.org and books.slashdot.org. Both are sections I sorely miss...:-)

Re:blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the reply! But the first one's no good, websense does directories too. No big deal though, the last one should be pretty unstoppable. Websense isn't that thorough (like when they block anything ending in mp3, but a mere ? for a query on the end of a url gets by that :). You guys shouldn't be worried about helping people get by coporate blocking software anyways; there are always a few proxies around.

Thanks again Jamie, you're the best!

Re:blocking

[Anonymous Coward]

Read them from home and stop goofing off at work.

Re:blocking

[jamie]

The section machine name is not necessary. Go to http://slashdot.org/index.pl?section=games. You'll find that the Read More links go to e.g. http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/28/ 161209&etc. Copy and paste the link and take out the machine name -- edit it by hand to http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/04/28/161209 &etc which will work just as well.

Of course now they'll just block all of Slashdot.org, sigh...

large advert on right hakd side

[tplayford]

Dear me...

That huge advert on the right hand side of games.slashdot.org is really irritating!

Any change of reducing the size, changing the position or stopping the animation?

I realise Slashdot needs to make money... but there must be better ways than this.

Re:large advert on right hakd side

[muzthe42nd]

subscribe?

Original content?

[shivianzealot]

"We intend to provide occasional original coverage, but mostly, we want to provide more exposure to the existing gaming sites [...]"

Could this be a hint to a slashdot game reviews feature similiar to the current book reviews?

...I hope so

Re:Original content?

[CmdrTaco]

I didn't think it was really a hint as much as me saying that we would provide occasional original coverage- which I assume would include game reviews ;)

CowboyNeal wants to write a review of Pokemon Saphire so badly, he might rupture something if we don't let him.

Re:Original content?

[jherekc]

CmdrTaco actually *reads* Slashdot?

I'm obviously losing my Mod points by posting logged in, but fuck it, it had to be said.

Re:Original content?

[GnomeSkull]

Hey, look at your sig:
"It IS easier to mod you down than to post an inteligent reply."

you spelled "inteligent" wrong. it's spelled "intellagent". Duh.

Re:Original content?

[shivianzealot]

"CowboyNeal wants to write a review of Pokemon Saphire so badly, he might rupture something if we don't let him."

Actually, that might be pretty cool... er... not the review; the rupturing.

Re:Original content?

[Anonymous Coward]

Feeling the way you do, and I am not trying to change your mind only inform, you wouldn't. You would push for a ban. I understand that.

Feeling the way I do, you wouldn't ban all sites. Because there are some class sites, with class individuals running them, where teens are taught photography as well as practice modeling, there are no webcam chats, no auctions, and no interactive email. It has been a wonderdul experiance for some teens. And if you want to model and learn photography it is OJT and wonderful working discipline. So even if you don't "make it" you have acheived discipline in life. Kind of like training for swimming five hours a day or dancing until your toes bleed. You don't get that in acting classes, theater or dance it is not job specific to modeling and photography.

My age limit would probaly be 16 and up with some exceptions made for emotionally mature 15 year olds.

Lastly - you were/are a dancer. How cool! I had love for museums/theater/dance instilled in me at a very young age. When working in NYC, San Fran, and chicago I was only person I knew who would go to the ballet or modern dance recitals. I always found it so graceful and knew the hard work involved. Three months a year my older swimmers would take two hours of dance instead of a.m. practice. Good changeup and very beneficial for swimming.

I am always using this id. It actually is a makeup of my name. I hope we cross paths in a different forum under better circumstances. You made my visit here much more pleasant than my original welcome.

Woo

[rf0]

A section which I can waste more time on and go blind. No wait should this be pr0n.slashdot.org then :P

Rus

Great news!

[LeoDV]

I've had /. as my home page for some time now, but have constantly needed to resort to other game sites for my gaming information. This is great news, I was hoping for it.

Though, if it's videogames that make you guys believe purple on white is a good colour scheme, then maybe videogames truly *are* bad.

Re:Great news!

[liposuction]

If only the color hadn't burned out my cones, I'd be happy about it too.

games.slashdot.org running Linux

[NewbieSpaz]

OK, Netcraft shows:
The site games.slashdot.org is running Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a mod_perl/1.27 mod_ssl/2.8.10 OpenSSL/0.9.6g on Linux

Linux on an Xbox? Dreamcast? What? GBA maybe? Nah, it'd get /.'ed too quickly.

Re:Argh... Purple? stop playing with my eyes..

[jkrise]

As a compulsive gamer, my eyes are already in a pretty bad shape. Please, please change the color. Dark green perhaps?

Of course...

[Faust7]

I expect the Xbox category to be especially fair and objective.

Re:Of course...

[jcast]

Of course. We're always objective about the relative merits of different Linux platforms.

Ouch

[Forager]

Great news about the new section, but what good is it if we can't read it? The colours are blinding and SUPER saturated -- you guys should know that one of the first rules of good layout is to AVOID using garish, high-intensity, saturated colours on the periphery that might distract readers. Come on, guys! Your developers section has great colours -- medium intensity, not too saturated. You really kind of dropped the ball on this one ...

-A.

Re:Ouch

[beebware]

Nah, it's all part of a master plan. You see - there's a common misconception that geeks like games. If slashdot has a garish games section that hardly gets any visits (because people can't stand the colour scheme) and slashdot is one of the leading geek sites: it'll prove that geeks really don't like games (or else they'll visit the game section).
Totally logical you see! :)

other hopes

[gumbi west]

Slashdot looks forward to a new area in which posts can be made again and again and again.

And how is this cool?

[Da Fokka]

I really don't see why this hasn't been done earlier and why it's considered such an event. I guess the theme took about 3 minutes to complete, and then I assume - given the color scheme - a blind guy was doing the work.

Wow. After reading the first dozen comments...

[jeaster]

I have a suggestion for a new URL: How about whineybutt.slashdot.org ? 80% of the posts(Please, don't check the exact percentage and post it...I know you people) are complaints about how the color sucks (hard to defend) or how half the other stories should have thier own pages, as they should *never* have been posted on /. Congrats /.! Best of luck with your expansion.

Re:Argh... Purple? stop playing with my eyes..

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope thats white->dark green. It ain't the purple that's causing you problems.

Ground Rules

[matp]

OK, we need to establish some ground rules early on. We bash XBox, PS2, Gamecube in that order. And I think we all agree the SNES was the best console ever :)

Re:Ground Rules

[Hellkitty]

I think you are forgetting Dreamcast. Now and forever, the best console ever.

Re:Ground Rules

[Rudy Rodarte]

AMEN!
And, we'll trade Roms while we're at it!

Re:Ground Rules

[TopShelf]

What??? Gotta go with Intellivision!

Re:Ground Rules

[Kashif Shaikh]

The first flame war:

Nope. NES was much better.

Wooohoooo! =)

[geirlk]

This is the section that I didn't know I wanted, but now that it's here I know I wouldn't want to live without it. Much like heroin in other words..

pr0n acutaly works!

[Adler]

Try it! Go to http://pr0n.slashdot.org/ its a good URL. I knew it! That's why they haven't been recording any more "geeks in space" they're too busy with their own little porn empire!

Re:pr0n acutaly works!

[njvic]

I think you will find that [anything].slashdot.org works.

Re:pr0n acutaly works!

[makapuf]

Eh .. I find some hilary rosen article when I try this ... slashdot pr0n is so weird !
[/funny]

Re:pr0n acutaly works!

[CoolVibe]

You just made me lose my appetite....

Thanks, man...

Re:pr0n acutaly works!

[jcast]

I think you will find that [anything].slashdot.org works.

No it doesn't. Maybe you meant to leave off the brackets?

Please! Change the color scheme!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no way on earth I'll be back to this games site until the color scheme is less painful. It physically hurts to read this page.

I didn't want to post 'yet another color complaint' message, but since there's no poll on it (yet), I see no alternative.

Re:Please! Change the color scheme!

[javajeff]

I agree with this user. The colors are horrible.

Re:Please! Change the color scheme!

[wheany]

Tho color is a lot more tolerable if the saturation is reduced. Here is a comparsion The original color is the 100% saturated one.

Gaahhh, a new server!

[Quarters]

Now I gotta start a new character, run him up to level 60, find a new group of people to guild with.... So much to do...

Re:Gaahhh, a new server!

[Shadestalker]

Puh-lease, level 60 is so last week. It's 65 or nothin'.

Re:Gaahhh, a new server!

[FlynnMP3]

Expect level 70 in the next consumer rapi^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hexpansion.

Re:Gaahhh, a new server!

[Anonymous Coward]

Level cap was raised to 65 with PoP, didn't you get the memo?!

Two things?

[Compact Dick]

Lemme guess: a trannie CEO?

Woohoo!

[nahdude812]

Looks like my game made it on Slashdot. Not exactly front page, but I'm not gonna complain :-)

I strongly urge everyone to head on over to http://lotgd.sourceforge.net and play on your lunch break, this is a well done game even if I do say so myself ;-)

Re:Woohoo!

[Reptile]

Woo, my game--or at least its name--made it on games.slashdot.org's front page! Guess which one of pudge's listed games I was a programmer on! ;)

Re:Woohoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

u r ancient!

Games Slashbox

[bildstorm]

Ok, so when do I get my handy-dandy game slashbox for the main page of slashdot?

Also, are we only covering electronica as far as games are concerned?

Slacker seeks slashdot configuration advice

[truffle]

With my busy life I'm not sure if I have time to click on yet another URL in my day. Is there some way I can get all of the games.slashdot.org content squooshed into www.slashdot.org? I have an account here, is there some configbulatory method?????

Re:Slacker seeks slashdot configuration advice

[ceejayoz]

Yep, you can.

Go to your "Homepage" section of the preference page and check the box for "Collapse Sections (show stories from all sections, unless specifically excluded)". Then, in the table below marked "Exclude Stories from the Homepage", check all the boxes in the "Sections" column EXCEPT for Games (and any other section you want to see on the home page).

The Colours...

[dbglt]

Are Killing me...

Please do something about them, it does not look nice at all. On another note, it is great to see slashdot take up something like gaming.

I mean, we all play games, but now we can READ about them and things related to gaming to waste more of our precious time. Slashdot... Wherever would we be without you? :P

I'm excited!

Microsoft & games

[Trurl's Machine]

This section will make M$-bashing extremely difficult! At long last, slashdot will cover an aspect of computer use where M$-solutions are so obviously better than the competition...

Re:Microsoft & games

[dbglt]

This section will make M$-bashing extremely difficult! At long last, slashdot will cover an aspect of computer use where M$-solutions are so obviously better than the competition...

Hardly... *nix support for commercial games is increasing as we speak. Orginizations like Icculus and LGP (and its sub-branch angry pixels) become more popular day after day.

While mac and other *nix support is not near the level of Microsoft gaming, it is increasing with every breath we take. Microsoft is an O/S made for gaming - it is short and sharp. Other unix's are made for stability and long term performance over short term gains.

Comparing Halflife on my dual booted win2k and Slackware box shows almost no difference in fps - just that windows leaves a lot of leaked memory behind when I am done...

Anyway, I should stop ranting as I am tired and probably only half coherent. In conclusion, Microsoft is not 'obviously better' than any other O/S - it just has more support for the sheep that use it :)

Re:Microsoft & games

[Anonymous Coward]

damn troll!

Re:Microsoft & games

[Anonymous Coward]

While mac and other *nix support is not near the level of Microsoft gaming, it is increasing with every breath we take. Microsoft is an O/S made for gaming - it is short and sharp. Other unix's are made for stability and long term performance over short term gains.

HAHAHA! You're joking right? Linux is a toy OS and not suitable for any sort of mission-critical application. We fired our open-sores advocates months ago. Last I heard, the job market was flooded with loser Linux zealots like yourself.

Re:Microsoft & games

[dbglt]

HAHAHA! You're joking right? Linux is a toy OS and not suitable for any sort of mission-critical application. We fired our open-sores advocates months ago. Last I heard, the job market was flooded with loser Linux zealots like yourself.

Get it right before you go off flaming others. *nix does not refer only to Linux. It refers to BSD, commercial unixes and anything based on UNIX. Get your facts straight...

Linux a toy OS? Hardly. In your experiences (if any), what do you find that Linux lacks in? It rivals/betters most of the commercial unix's out there, so if you don't have anything constructive to say, please don't waste mine - or others - time.

I am also an open-source (not open-sores) advocate, yet this post had NOTHING to do with open source. I was simply stating what is true and proven fact.

Enough Said.

Re:Microsoft & games

[Mage Powers]

hah you told an AC troll to check his facts, welcome to slashdot ;)

According to the submitted stories...

[spacefight]

...Simoniker must be this guy..

Re:Please don't !!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why's everybody complaining about the color scheme? Purple is a beautiful color that is seen all too rarely these days!!! I love purple!!!

What are all you guys whinging about...

[Anonymous Coward]

...it looks fine to me.

Re:What are all you guys whinging about...

[Anonymous Coward]

...although I wrote that at lunchtime (in the U.K.) Now I'm reading it again at 7.35pm, it's suddenly quite a lot harder for my work-tired eyes to take in, at least the main page is.

Re:What are all you guys whinging about...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and every time I come back, it hurts worse. Really. It's weird. Yes, I am serious.

how about another version of slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

okay okay, there's alot of comments about purple already, but what about...

1. Human interactive design.slashdot.org?
2. Usability.slashdot.org?
3. Ultraviolent is cancerous.slashdot.org?

Seriously, I think I have CRT burn in after having been to this site only once...

Why not a contest ?

[ramzak2k]

a cheap giveaway like a subscription for slashdot for someone to design a cool logo and come up with a color scheme ? Am sure there are many talented ones out there who would like to get their work displayed !

Re:Argh... Purple? stop playing with my eyes..

[Yorrike]

Purple happens to be the colour of the best current generation console.

Dark green? What are you? Some kind of XBox Fanboy?
</sarcasm>

. . . . In all seriousness though, this section is going to be to gaming what the slash front page is to operating systems, the home of flamewars.

Should be fun : )

Hah

[michaeltoe]

And thus Slashdot keeps it's tradition of horribly bastardizing a default layout beyond all rational ends.

to blog, or not to blog ...

[matp]

Hey Simon, what happened to the blog?

The color is cool

[tankdilla]

I like this color. KEEP IT!!!

Oh yeah the caps are response to all the whiney "I don't like purple" posts. Sound like cranky old farts wanting things to stay the way they were.

Also this was totally unexpected. A whole new slashdot page devoted to games, and for a gaming freak like me, it's another place to kill time and talk about games. Nice job.

Re:The color is cool

[btlzu2]

Dude! Me too. The colors are fine. I really think that a lot of folks around here are worse than a bunch of old ladies in a sewing circle. Whine whine whine!

Re:The color is cool

[maxpublic]

Like duuuuuuuuuudddee! Purple, like, rocks dude! If the old guys don't like it it *must* be cool, dude! Rock on! I'm sooooo cool and, like, even groundbreaking 'cuz I said I like the purple - dude!

I'm, like, sooooo cool, even if I am still a virgin, and like, the only girl who'll look at me is the one on my new XBox game....

Re:The color is cool

[btlzu2]

Dude! Excellent. You're very funny!

I'm not so sure

[Mattygfunk1]

Anything that means you can waste more time on slashdot when you need to do work cant be bad.

Nope, I wont be. The purple-white gradient with white text is rather painful on the eyes. After all the flak this site cops for the fugly, motherboard green layout of the main page this is not an improvement.

Nice concept, but badly executed in my opinion. Let's hope it gets touched up a fraction.

__
cheap web site hosting

Re:I'm not so sure

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this. I'm happy for the games section, and I like the colors but it really does slightly hurt my eyes and I think I may get a headache from extended reading. What about same concept using main pages color. I dunno, just an fyi

Re:I'm not so sure

[GunFodder]

I agree completely. I am willing to tolerate questionable style but the purple on white makes my eyes hurt.

wtf?

[AssFace]

The purple is heinous.

If I go into my settings and try to add the Games slashbox to my homepage - there is no "Games" there... does that mean that list is manually updated and not keyed off some database table?

The icons never show up on stories for me anymore (as of the past few days) - they show up at the top bar, but not in the story at all.
For awhile multiple icons at the same time were showing up... stacked - I thought at first they were some way of showing that it was a little bit of a few topics.
But now I think it was just bugs.

That and I haven't had moderator status in pretty much a year now.

This Slashdot is a well oiled machine.

Re:wtf?

[AssFace]

and also the Sections box on the left (which does have a Games section, so that is nice), rarely updates properly. It will work for a bit, and then not work...

And I have checked my icons settings in the preferences - and they are all set to display... but I regardless I get none.

Like clockwork I tell ya.

That being said....

[Jaysyn]

... GalCiv is pretty damn awesome.

Jaysyn

Who says...

[archetypeone]

I don't need to wear my sunglasses inside!

I troll it up - you mod me down

Moral dillema

[lowlands]

What an excellent timing guys! This morning I got my free xbox. The fine people over at globalknowledge.com had cooked up the concept of "take 10 days of training, get an xbox for free" and I guess my timing was ok as at the time I had planned 2 Cisco trainings. Now the question is, if you guys are really going to cover xbox games (what does "the majority of consoles" mean?), do I go out and buy those 5-star rated xbox games or do I wait for the Linux version to come out, immediately install Linux and MythTV on my xbox and enjoy the multimedia experience with an evil grin on my face?

Cheers,
Lowlands

I guess this is the end for me...

[Bohnanza]

The "no gaming sites" internet filters at work will catch up with this in a couple of days...

Suggested new colours: #330066, #330099

[Compact Dick]

The current colour, Electric Blue aka #3300CC, is very harsh on the eyes, as many have already made clear.

I recommend using #330066 or #330099 instead. These browser-safe colours are easier on the eyes and more aesthetically pleasing.

Cheers,
CD

Re:Suggested new colours: #330066, #330099

[dentar]

Really? I think the new color scheme is excellent! I was thinking of ripping it off myself!

Re:Suggested new colours: #330066, #330099

[Quarters]

I remember when colors were refered to as "Red", "Blue", "Purple", etc... You make colors sound like they are prison inmates.

Re:Suggested new colours: #330066, #330099

[neo]

Browser Safe? What rock have you been hiding under?

No one cares about browser safe colours anymore. We have higher colour depth now. Honest.

On the other hand, I agree that the Electric blue is too vivid. Why not a nice raster green?

First game is "Stop the Dupes"

[Anonymous Coward]

The less dupes you post, the higher your score! And if you get a 100% success-rate, you get to see Samus in a bikini.
Hop to it gang!

eeexcellent

[Shadestalker]

Maybe with this as a viable public forum, John Romero will finally make good on his promise to make us his bitch. Come on, John-boy, ante up.

Re:eeexcellent

[Anonymous Coward]

A few years back, I hunted that bastard down at E3, got right in his face, and told him he sucked. It was great. He said "Whatever", and walked off.

Great comeback, Bitch.

New Slashdot slogan

[borgdows]

News for Blinds. Stuff that dazzle.

RSS Feed?

[don_carnage]

Will there be a http://slashdot.org/slashdotgames.rdf feed?

Re:RSS Feed?

[Saint Nobody]

it looks like http://games.slashdot.org/games.rss works.

Re:RSS Feed?

[don_carnage]

Thanks!

Wholly puke batman

[Anonymous Coward]

looks like some one with no taste has taken /. hostage.

Still waiting on..

[Anonymous Coward]

pRon.slashdot.org ;)

seriously though.. let's hear it for the gamers!

Damn, that's ugly

[YrWrstNtmr]

Not merely purple, but the exact shade of purple (mixed with black) which burns the retinas, causes blindness in lab rats, epileptic fits in otherwise normal /.ers (is there such a thing?), and provokes the general fight or flight response.

A little color research next time? Or did you mean to cause this?

Re:Damn, that's ugly

[Ambient Sheep]

and provokes the general fight or flight response

Isn't that a good thing? Gets you in the mood for a good fragging... ;-)

yro

[donscarletti]

All those needs are filled by our beloved rights online page: yro.slashdot.org. Personally I love yro, I have spent many fun hours whining about the world and blowing off steam in there. This is proven by the fact that I have had more of my posts modded flamebait there than anywhere else. Personally I LOOOVE to bitch and moan, and I love yro.slashdot.org for providing a forum for me to do that.

Dear CowboyNeal,

[miTTio]

I too would like to become a better gamer. To whom must I sacrifice my body to?

Any additional details would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
miTTio

My thoughts on Linux games

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been a certification analyst (tester) for Loki Games for a couple of years now.

In my experience, gaming on Linux lags behind and probably always will. The reason? OpenGL v. DirectX.

Unfortunately (I LOVE Linux), OpenGL implementations are very much inferior to DirectX. I have to give the guys at MS credit where credit is due - DirectX is the superior technology.

Until Linux and the OSS community comes up with something as good as DirectX, Linux games are going to be inferior to their Windows counterparts.

Just out of curiosity

[CausticWindow]

What are browser-safe colours?

Re:Just out of curiosity

[fgb]

In ancient times many systems were limited to displaying 256 colors so a standard palette was created so that web designers knew that if they stuck to that palette then the colors would appear just as they specified and not the nearest approximation.
I don't believe this is an issue anymore.

Is there a lameness filter for run-on sentences?

News flash!

[borgdows]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Tuesday the U.S Army has conducted a test of a revolutionary new weapon of mass destruction (WMD) on the famous website slashdot.org ! The results are above what was expected with a estimation of about 30.000 deads and more than 100.000 blind-injured people. Most victims were called 'nerds'. Detailled results will follow later.

Re:News flash!

[Kredal]

Wow, 3 sig figs when talking about 30 dead people and 100 injured people. Impressive precision!

Tee hee.

AAARGH!!!1

[Anonymous Coward]

MY EYES! IT BURNS! IT BURNS! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

How to fold it in

[ArmorFiend]

Dumbe Qwestion: how do I get this stuff "folded in" to my main page?

Re:How to fold it in

[jamie]

"Dumbe Qwestion: how do I get this stuff "folded in" to my main page?"

Go to users.pl?op=edithome, check Collapse Sections, click Save.

Re:How to fold it in

[ArmorFiend]

Ok, once I do this I get all the articles in "Games". Unfortunately I also get all the articles in "BSD". I want to get the big, important BSD headlines, but not the minor ones. There's no way to do this and still get all the games headlines, right?

agreed re:interface

[thatguywhoiam]

Nope, I wont be. The purple-white gradient with white text is rather painful on the eyes. After all the flak this site cops for the fugly, motherboard green layout of the main page this is not an improvement

That is correct, grasshopper. You must embrace the Light Mode. Only then can you withstand Slashdot's punishing interface without succumbing to madness.

Enough already

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody is going to die in the few seconds it takes to scroll the top of the page off the screen. I've been looking at it for a minute or so now, I haven't died yet, haven't gone blind, no harm at all. Try wandering around the web for a while, there is some really ugly shit out there.

Tacohell!

[MacJedi]

You may as well put the whole thing in blink tags.

I wonder what happened to tacohell?

/joeyo

Browser-safe colours

[Compact Dick]

...are those colours guaranteed to render identically on Windows and Mac machines with 256 colour displays. This means that dithering [combining two colours to create a third, with grainy results] is avoided.

There are 216 such colours, and a very easy way exists to work them out. Each colour channel [red, blue and green] should be any of the hexadecimal values 00, 33, 66, 99, CC and FF. For instance, 66CC99 means 66 red, CC green and 99 blue.

In decimal notation, this translates to multiples of 51. So 00 == 00, 33 == 51, 66 == 102, 99 == 153, CC == 204, FF == 255.

Most displays can now display well over 256 colours, but it is considered good website design practice to stick to them.

Re:Browser-safe colours

[chaidawg]

Actually, there was some research done a year or two ago, and I think it was posted on /. (I'm too lazy to look for it) The researchers tested out on a bunch of different browsers, on different OS's and different displays. Turns out there were only about 15 colors that were uniform throughout, and most of them were green.

Re:Browser-safe colours

[sheldon]

"Most displays can now display well over 256 colours, but it is considered good website design practice to stick to them."

You sound like the sysadmin at work who grew up on Netware and thinks we still shouldn't have directory names more than 8 characters long.

Re:Browser-safe colours

[radish]

Not quite. The browser safe colours are those which are guaranteed to be rendered without dithering on a browser running on a 256 colour desktop, regardless of platform. There is no requirement that they are rendered the same, as mac and windows boxes have different gammas and even different monitors can change the displayed colour. The only guarantee is that they will never be dithered.

The reason it is less than 256 colours is to allow space for the underlying desktop's system palette.

As for it's relevance, the person credited with figuring out the palette (as for some reason the technical people who defined it didn't release it) has since said there's no point using it any more. Particularly since (from a design point of view) it's such a horrible set of colours to use. She wrote an excellent article describing why it was useful, why it's not any more, and what it should have been in the first place.

Re:Browser-safe colours

[etcpasswd]

Parent has a point. Websites can be viewed from handhelds too.

Re:Browser-safe colours

[Anonymous Coward]

Handhelds are either B&W or have more than 256 colors.

Time to move out of the 1980's guys!

Topic Icons

[roc_machine]

Ok, I know this is off-topic and will probably be modded down, but has anyone else had their topic icon beside each story on the frontpage disappear? I check my frontpage prefs and they are fine. It started on Saturday. It's been this way on 3 different machines, all running IE (yet another reason to mod me down I guess). I haven't seen anyone else comment on it, nor could I find anything when I did a search... which makes me think this could be an isolated issue.

Thanks in advance.

pr0n.slashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'll ask him, but I don't think he'll be very keen! We've already got one, you see?

(I told him we've already got one. >snicker<)

Pick a better HTML title please!

[InodoroPereyra]

Hey, what about a more representative title for the index page ?. Something like "Games.slashdot.org" or "Games @ Slashdot", etc.

Good luck folks!

Well, *I* like it.

[Randolpho]

I like the colors. I say keep 'em.

One thing I note, however, is that the games section is not in the slashboxes yet. Hopefully this will be remedied soon.

Also, why is it that the Collapse Stories preference works exactly the opposite of the way it is indicated? Collapse Stories implies that I only get main stories. Unchecking that should get me all stories from all sections.

I had to check it to get all stories from all sections. That's kida opposite, isn't it? All stories from all sections should be the *default* preference, too.

Re:Well, *I* like it.

[tfreport]

About the colors, have you gone to games.slashdot.org or have you just read this article? If you haven't done the first, try it and see if you like all the bars with the bluish purple metallic look. It is not something I am personally fond of. And then trying to read through all these messages with the links in that color is not appealing. It would be really nice if the shade was either lighter or darker.

Re:Well, *I* like it.

[Qzukk]

My guess is that whoever called it "collapse stories" was thinking "Lets call this operation 'collapsing' all of the various sites stories into one list."

Re:Well, *I* like it.

[hawkstone]

Praise (insert deity here)! Someone else likes it!

At least games./..org is a pretty color. Bright yes, but it's a nice, happy cobalt blue.

For comparison, if you want to talk about ugly colors, has anyone looked at YRO??? Red on yellow? Hard on the eyes AND ugly! I hate even going to that section -- it makes me nauseous.

Damn Slashdot...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's frustrating, and somewhat humbling, to be confronted with the fact that any point you may think of has probably already been posted repeatedly by other people.

But I'm gonna go ahead anyway.

First, along with everyone else who has been asking "why not fill-in-the-blank.slashdot.org," I have to ask if a new games section is really the most important direction for /. to be expanding into right now. Why not, say, activism.slashdot.org or something like that. There's a lot of potential on /. to improve things, but so far it remains mostly unrealized.

Second, wow that color for the hyperlinks on games.slashdot.org is painful.

Ironical

[Yoda2]

Just last week, NerdTreeHouse, a popular gaming site, started posting tech news.

Story repost in.....

[Tingler]

5......

4......

3.......

RPG's, Clix games, CCG's included?

[RolandGunslinger]

I hope to see other than comp-based games on this page. I've discovered the fun with MechWarrior and am a long-standing Magic player. I'd love to see these kinds of games covered in this forum.

the color selection

[XO]

The color selection here seriously hurts my eyes so badly that I want to vomit.

Please do something else???

Something more important?

[stepson]

Tell me, what was more important, that dupe story that you always post, CmdrTaco, or some story about how some Free Software package is at its 0.3.4 release. Maybe the story that was posted 2 days ago on LinuxToday.

Please, you can come up with whatever reason you want for things, its your site, but don't be so blatant about it. You never passed on a story because something else was too important, unless it was 9/11 and someone submitted a review of what they'll think the next Duke Nukem will be about. You spell words wrong, you never check your sources, you never even check your own site (sometimes on the same goddamn page) to see if a story has already been posted. You're a goddamn idiot, and you should stop trying to act smart.

70's Bachman Turner Overdrive

[Anonymous Coward]

I can feel this shit, man. This righteous purple is totally Doobie!

Slashdot Magic Carpet Ride, baby!

What we're playing....scary?

[MeanE]

Pokémon Sapphire?
Ok that is a little wierd...but...
Mary-Kate and Ashley Girls Night Out?
That is just pure scary ;)

I wouldn't be surprised

[Compact Dick]

There are many other variables in this equation such as monitor brightness, contrast, gamma calibration, incidental lighting... the only "guarantee" would be the aforementioned dither's absence.

Please Change Color

[diagnosis]

This color will keep me and probably others from the page. Could it be changed?

I don't like games

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to post this anonymously cause its a shocking admission. I am a life-long nerd but I don't care
for computer games. After 12 hours debugging a program I don't want to stare at a screen any more.
And I definitely don't want to play an adventure-type game where you have to guess what's
happening and peer into rooms, etc. That's too much like real debugging. For me its beer in my spare time. Cheers.

Slashboxes are great....

[geddes]

and I assume that a games slashbox will be an option shortly, but what I would _love_ is to have the ability to force all news items in a particular section to be on my front page.

It would be the opposite of the current "exclude" feature. Right now, if I wanted to, I could exclude all games content from the front page, but what I want to do is pull _all_ games content on the front page, even if the editors didn't determine it to be front page worthy. I would do the same for the apple section. Currently I am limited to slashboxes, which I guess are good, but often they are wasted space since, for example, the apple section might go a day without news. If I could just integrate it all into the front page, I could then use more usefull slashboxes like poll, eff alerts, etc. Stuff that really looks like they belong in the boxes.

Re:Slashboxes are great....

[thelenm]

I agree, when Taco said "Logged in users can choose to consolidate Games content to the main page", I thought he meant we could do something like what you suggest and I was trying to figure out how. Dang...

ColoUr Scheme

[Stoptional]

I LIKE it!

But then - I'm a 47 year-old buttonhead who gave up on computer games when Pac-man was a pup so I'd bet that this is my one and only appearance here.

Ahhhh . . . I'd say you have some more focus grouping to do :-)

Next ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool! Now all I need is a musicpirates.slashdot.org for all the tedious crap about peer-to-peer file sharing.

Wh don't you hire a *real* web designer?

[autopr0n]

Slashdot has about the ugliest layout of any major site out there. And this hideous 'games' theme is the worst. Why don't you guys hire a real graphics designer? Other OSDN sites aren't even as bad.

Totally friggn' lame, IMO.

Re:Wh don't you hire a *real* web designer?

[TheSync]

Real Slashdot users browse in Lynx...so why bother for all the "posers"?

Actually, the site looks great, but you can only see the cool Web design if you are using Opera... ;)

Re:Wh don't you hire a *real* web designer?

[Anonymous Coward]

I sees it, my precioussss. It hurts our eyesess!

Re:Wh don't you hire a *real* web designer?

[Guppy06]

"Slashdot has about the ugliest layout of any major site out there."

Which explains why this is your 2556th post here.

Re:Wh don't you hire a *real* web designer?

[telstar]

"Why don't you guys hire a real graphics designer?"

• I'll do it for free ... get in touch with me if you want to talk it over.

Re:Wh don't you hire a *real* web designer?

[RestiffBard]

and yet its one of the most popular sites on the net. Maybe we don't read /. for the colors. Maybe just maybe we read it for the content. I'm not talking dupes and misrepresentative articles. I'm talking about the comments that /. readers leave. I learn more daily from /. than I ever did in school.

by the way autopr0n, love your site. :)

wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

HULK GO BLIND!
HULK SMASH!

"I am not a number...

[Compact Dick]

...I am Goldenrod!" - said #DAA520 in a thunderous voice.

There's be more room if Taco didn't dupe posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on... It's becoming more and more of a problem.

Perhaps if the Tacomeister bothered to check his site out on occassion and didn't duplicate and "triplicate" postings, there'd be more room for such things as Games on the main board.

Dumb idea... maybe...

[pr0ntab]

Allow users to choose color scheme in preferences? You can enforce a default, and all the whiners can tweak it to their hearts' content.

Hasn't anyone added a patch to slashcode that actually uses CSS? Jeez.

But I do like the idea. games.slashdot.org and science.slashdot.org... and I wonder where does the time go? ^_^

How do you pronounce Simoniker?

[rigmort]

Seriously, what part of the name is the accent on?

Re:How do you pronounce Simoniker?

[simoniker]

You could pronounce it like the word 'moniker' with the syllable 'si' (pronounced like the first half of Simon) in front of it. :)

Re:How do you pronounce Simoniker?

[rigmort]

Thanks. Ever read an 800-page book where you're not sure how to pronounce the main character's name? Just wanted to avoid that feeling here...

Re:Argh... Purple? stop playing with my eyes..

[goreking]

I agree whole-heartedly...the color is definitely seizure-worthy!

"... consolidate Games content to the main page"?

[Enfors]

Logged in users can choose to consolidate Games content to the main page.

How does one do that?

oh wow

[hswerdfe]

how did I miss that check box?

this is much better now.....

Thanks.

Atari!

[notque]

I think that as a group we will agree that the Dreamcast was the best console, but whenever put to the question, or defense we will cite the Atari, or a collection of door games as being the true backbone of our civilization.

We will also praise the game civilization.

That is all.

Re:"... consolidate Games content to the main page

[NullProg]

Under your "userid", select homepage.

Enjoy,

CowboyNeal

[BigJimSlade]

I assume CowboyNeal was brought on board to meet the daily dupe quota?

Will there be a XML file for games.slashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

If so what will the URL be?

Long overdue!

[TerryAtWork]

Now, where's Pr0n.slashdot.org ?

my eyes are burning

[Anonymous Coward]

damn, this is the worst color combination of colors, it's the worst, it's ugly... i dont have more to say,

Purple is nice

[Azahar]

I'm an old fart and I like it.

All of those people complaining will become acclimatised soon enough.

I say keep the purple at least in the short term.

What we're playing

[Compact Dick]

pudge: Mary-Kate and Ashley Girls Night Out

Nice to see pudge indulging his adolescent fantasies...

nice colors

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. This page glows. Some pages can manage to fark up my brain like that, and most that do, make me nauseous. This glowing purple is really cool. I hope it doesn't give me a headache. If it does, it's bad design, but damn, it sure looks nice. Of course, my monitor is on "full burn", so my eyes are toast anyway.

Colour

[Anonymous Coward]

I love it!

Electric-violet. Looks just like a real corona discharge.

THE PURPLE!

[Mindwarp]

The purple! It burns my eyes!

Re:THE PURPLE!

[Forkenhoppen]

Agreed.

Why not a pixellated version of the logo instead? That purple.. burns..

Fuck You

[Anonymous Coward]

Listen jackass,
my point was that you contradicted yourself. If you want to add a whole slew of quantifying statements, that's fine. But what you originally wrote didn't make any fucking sense. Instead of babbling away like a little girl with a skinned knee, why don't you just admit that you made two statements that contradict each other in the same post? It's okay to admit you made a fucking mistake. I'm not arguing with you over what the magic fucking number is. I'm merely trying to point out that you said
1)a webpage should have no more than 6 colors.
2)a webpage should have fewer than 6 colors.
These two statements contradict each other moron! You should just fucking apologize to me already, you douchebag.

I also might suggest you shut the fuck up and stop being a pansy. I don't have to be tolerant. Sure, your mommy and daddy taught you to be tolerant of others and that is being reinforced at the local middle school where you attend BUT I don't have to fucking buy into it! I don't have to accept people who are different just because society says so. You want me to tolerate child molestors and faggots and blacks and other people who lead vile lifestyles? Fuck you! I will continue to stand up for what is morally right and if you don't like it, you can eat my shit out of the toilet, asshole.

Re:Fuck You

[KiahZero]

1)a webpage should have no more than 6 colors.
2)a webpage should have fewer than 6 colors.
These two statements contradict each other moron!

That's funny, because they don't. Maybe you were trying to be funny and failed miserably, but if you're going to make fun of someone, at least make sure you're not making a stupid mistake.

1) Webpage.color <= 6 colors
2) Webpage.color < 6 colors
Comment two is simply a stricter version of comment one. The only contradiction to comment one would be
Webpage.color > 6 colors, or "A webpage should have more than six colors."

As for your last paragraph, I feel obligated to be tolerant of you... that doesn't mean I can't point out that you're a tool.

You want me to tolerate child molestors and faggots and blacks and other people who lead vile lifestyles?

Damn those blacks for living! How dare they claim they have a fundamental right to exist?

Re:Fuck You

[KiahZero]

God you're fun to goad. Just a big ball of agnst, aren't you?

Definitions for contradict from American Heritage Dictionary:
1. To assert or express the opposite of (a statement).
2. To deny the statement of. See Synonyms at deny.
3. To be contrary to; be inconsistent with.

I'll admit you might have a case that the two statements contradict one another under the third definition, and in that case you'd be right. However, the first and second definitions are far more common.

Going back to what the original guy said:
For every good webpage, there should be a color scheme or at least 3 colors, but no more than 6 (6 is just too many, IMO).

Interpreted:
Absolute_Acceptable_Color_Num <= 6 //no more than 6
Opinion_Color_Num != 6 //6 is just too many, IMO

Granted, this is different than what I said before. This is because I went all the way back up to the parent and checked exactly how he set up his restrictions.

As a mathematical test, < is in fact more strict a test than <=. Similarly, the clause inside the parentheses simply strengthens the bounds of acceptable color. He allows 6 colors, then mentions that in an optimal situation, not even 6 colors would not be allowed.

On an unrelated note, I like how you assume that:
1) I would take Visual Basic classes, since that language is so painfully easy to learn that no one in their right mind would have to take classes to pick up. Also, had you read some of my previous posts, you would realize that I'm running Linux (MDK, working on Gentoo, & Debian), and therefore VB would be of little practical use to me.
2) That I would be at a community college, as I sit in my dorm room.
3) That I'm gay, even though I just got off the phone with my girlfriend of a year and 9 months.

There's an art to insulting someone without repeating words and phrases over and over again ('moron', 'faggot', etc). I suggest you learn it.

Re:Fuck You

[Matrix272]

And despite all that you've tried to explain, you're still an idiot. No matter how much logic one might have on their side, it means nothing if they can't communicate it to others.

Maybe you missed the point of my original post... that, IN MY FUCKING OPINION, 6 colors is too many to have on one webpage. At the same time, some pages can pull it off pretty nicely. So, if page.color = 6 && color.scheme == annoying, then webpage == bad.

I hope that clears it all up, you goddamn loser. Most of these things could be explained easily to a 4 year old, but apparently even a degree-holding graduate of the Technical Institute of Zimbabwe can't understand relatively simple statements without having it thoroughly explained. I feel that the most important thing you'll ever do in your life is supply the rest of us with fries and cokes. I appreciate such an accomplishment, and feel that you've a valuable addition to the workforce of the world. Having said so, I don't want to diminish your concept of self-worth any more than I already have.

Katz Game Reviews!

[Pyrosophy]

Maybe this is what JonKatz working on during his absence up for the last year or so!

...so the question is has he just been waiting around for games.slashdot.org to launch, or has he been working on his own game so he can review it ASAP?

Re:Katz Game Reviews!

[jcast]

JK hasn't been absent, he just hasn't been posting stories. He posted a comment just last Wednesday!

Problems Already..

[Guppy06]

"But as the section grows, we expect that readers will use the Games Submissions Bin to submit stories directly to Simoniker and CowboyNeal."

Which means each article will be posted by Simoniker and CowboyNeal.

Simple fix for the colors

[KlausBreuer]

May I suggest a simple fix:

ZAP

Works great, I use it a lot.
And Games.Slashdot is suddenly a lot easier on the eyes...

Sweet!

[Rudy Rodarte]

Now I have a place to discuss new games with my fellow /.ers. Ok, let me ask, does anyone know of a good SNES controller -> USB/COM/LPT adapter?

More good colors

[Pyrosophy]

Notable colors also include:

#024601 - dingy, unjust, prison-like
#070476 - patriotic (#040776 if you're brit)
#853593 - Catchy, but better with one more bit
#867530 - Ditto
#525600 - "Seasons of Love"
#042903 - Contemporary (#290403 as well)

need anime.slashdot.org

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all that's needed is anime.slashdot.org, since it doesn't have much to do with technology either.

Actually, checking the DNS, I am surprised to find that it actually does exist, but it just takes you to the regular Slashdot page (apparently).

MetaGaming MasteryMysteryMash

[SEWilco]

Also announced was user-operated MetaGaming MasteryMysteryMash, where Games.Slashdot.Org users play at rating the strength of play opinion control from previous questions of best unknown improvements toward code avoidance rule enforcement prevention within the announcements from the user industry.

Slashdot is proud to continue its leadership in useful information rating systems.

Love the Colors

[pagen]

Great job! Yea! Thank You! Yea!!

Need a BIG FAT LINK

[superpulpsicle]

On the frontpage of slashdot, I should see a huge link to games.slashdot.org. Otherwise this will be forgotten as well as other subdomains. I emphasize the word "huge".

Re:Need a BIG FAT LINK

[Anonymous Coward]

Change your preferences so that all stories go to the front page for you. All hard-core slashdotters use the everything to the front page view. If you don't, you are a lightweight.

PS2.slashdot.org

[superpulpsicle]

Here's your chance to bring M$ down some more.

I would actually suggest gamecube.slashdot.org if the majority audience here was under the age of 13. HAHAHAHA

Computer Games Only?

[AdamJ]

Haven't seen this mentioned in any other +3 or above posts, but: is this section for computer games only, or will it cover role-playing games, LARPs, board games, card games, etc?

Thanks

[Compact Dick]

for the info and for clearing things up. Do you know of any links to the article by chance?

Re:Thanks

[radish]

Try this. I may have misremembered some of the details but it's all in here. I should have put the link on my original post.

Hope it helps :)

Well this is all well and good but...

[ellem]

when will there be an

ellem.slashdot.org ? for all the stories rejected from me!

Re:Well this is all well and good but...

[Frobnicator]

That's supposed to be what http://www.slashdot.org/~ellem/journal is for.

scripting.slashdot.org now !

[hemabe]

I would like to see a scripting.slashdot.org for news about perl, python, ruby etc.

Is someone (CmdrTaco) thinking about this?

Re:scripting.slashdot.org now !

[Pathwalker]

Why so general?
scripting.slashdot.org can be broken down into:

• perl.scripting.slashdot.org
• sh.scripting.slashdot.org
• pike.scripting.slashdot.org
• python.scripting.slashdot.org
• ruby.scripting.slashdot.org
• malbolge.scripting.slashdot.org

and many others!

Its about time!

[MrJones]

Nice choice! I love PC game news and since we are near this big E3 2003, this section comes just at the right time.

Hear a Webdesigner: The colors suck!

[Qbertino]

Suckage is bad! Give the gaming site a redesign. Puuleeze!

Shouldn't the icon be...

[Mac Degger]

...an animated gif of a game of Pong?

Probably just looking to boost advertising revenue

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that that's a bad thing - they can probably charge more for the more targeted advertising - and people are probably less likely to get annoyed by irrelevant ads.

Epilepsy

[borgasm]

Good lord....change the color scheme....

I think the electron guns on my monitors just blew.

hmm...

[abhisarda]

is that Duke Nukem Forever that I'm seeing on the horizon ?! Nah..nevermind.. I must be seeing things because of that purple thingy.
*ducks*

IAWTP

[sulli]

If it ain't ugly, it ain't slashdot.

My question: WTF about the big Vertical Ad that my subscription won't block?

Re:IAWTP

[Cyris]

Yeah, I dont mind the ad that is at the very top, but that side ad kinda sucks.. the colors will take some getting used to, but they arent so bad.

Regarding Game Advertisements

[Lord_Dweomer]

Will we be seeing stories on "incredible new games that will revolutionize the gaming world" that just happen to be paid for by sponsors? What is the games.slashdot.org policy on this one, same as the regular slashdot policy?

It looks like the Peppermill Casino.

[User 956]

Seriously. The games.slashdot color scheme would be right at home. Maybe taco's trying to tell us something about the type of gaming that he's really into.

another game site...

[VS1]

theres bluesnews.com (my fav) shacknews, gamespot, gamespy, and now this.

games.slashdot better have something special going for it, or it'll just be ignored by the gaming masses.

Eeegads, Batman!

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy ugly colors, batman! They hurt my eyes more than Joker's neon-green jumpsuit!

What, only computer games???

[corbettw]

It seems like the focus of the new games section is going to only be computer games. What about the latest news from Games Workshop, or TSR, or Wizkids? Surprisingly, some of us enjoy playing games that require a little more imagination and/or artistic ability than just killing your best friend with an Uzi (not that that isn't fun itself, mind you).

Egads!

[Anonymous Coward]

This sexy purple is making my nipples tingle!

What we're playing

[Kalak]

A link to a journal entry with notes on playing, comments, impressions etc. would be interesting. I can find a link to the pricing on Zelda w/o CT's help, but reading something may interest me enough to go look at reviews, etc.

Make these more than just a curiosity. I see pudge is playing with the twins tonight....whee....

Re:Original content? SUGARBITCH sugarbitch

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be unny if you weren't so bitter.

But at the tim of writing this, your parent is modded:

30% Informative
40% Interesting
30% Underrated

Shouldn't there be a lameness mod filter to prevent sucking up?