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Turn Your New Opteron Into A One-Game Console
An anonymous reader writes "A new 64-bit Linux CD can instantly turn an AMD Opteron-equipped PC into the ultimate gaming console, according to Super Computer Inc. (SCI). The company has created a distribution of the popular America's Army multi-player strategy game on a bootable Linux CD, that it says was developed in partnership with AMD, nVidia, and the US Army."
Good to know the hords of gamers with opteron's can play the world's best games....in 64
try 100s... www.mame.net
If that's the killer niche app for the opteron, I feel sorry for AMD!...
Daniel
Carpe Diem
Didn't Gentoo already do this when they created an Americas Army LiveCD for "any" x86 system?
Well, alright, it didn't actually run on "any" system - maybe on ran on "some" systems but I seem to remember this was quite a while back when Icculus first ported it.
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
How much is an Opteron system? How much is a GameCube?
Where do I sign up?
Maybe they can release instructions on how to dissemble my car and build a go cart out of the parts.
Oh? Kind of how Gentoo Games [ www.gentoogames.com ] has done sucessfully for months now? Yea.
Why would you ever want a console that only plays a single game? I thought the whole point was being able to switch between games. In this case, the writer of the news blurb fails to realize that you could switch between several such self-booting, self-contained discs (such as the UT2k3 Linux LiveCDs that Gentoo made) and then your PC would be kinda like a console system in that you don't need to muss with drivers or OS configuration outside of the game to set things up properly.
... The Ultimate Gaming Console except any 128 bit machine and the upcomming PS3. When compared to anything other than those systems, it's the ulitmate. yeah.
There is a project going on called Advance CD which utilizes the same concept of the bootable linux CD "game console" though it uses mame... I like the idea of the "Bootable CD game" and could be the next generation of a way to distrubute them? -Henry
--- #@$DF@#2%@^%3^&*$%FRHG%%[NO CARRIER]
...but without all those lovely console advantages like the uniform hardware target, well-designed controllers, and (in the case of America's Army at least) some decent gameplay in the games!
:)
Where do I sign up?
Game dev and music blog
Gentoo Games did this first!
wouldn't a linux distro as gaming OS be the coolest thing ever? if a lot of game developers would focus on one linux distro, and gaming hw makers would focus their drivers developement on it.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
How far we've come since the days of Apple IIe and Commodore64 and Kaypro. With all this new technology, it's interesting to see the return of the "Application Diskette".
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
but what about ATI cards?
drop this into an opteron with an nvidia card it should say.
Okay so I'm replying to myself but is the 'significant' difference here the 64bit port? - Is it wildly different from the 32bit version of AA or is it just quicker?
Anyone have any further info on this 64bit port as the article seems a little thin in that respect....
Ripping an new rectum in the fabric of spacetime.
Why in the world would anyone WANT to do this? Sounds like a major step backwards, having to reboot your machine to play a game.
Using Linux for a CD-ROM bootable game is no simple thing. It assumes full and excellent detection of hardware: graphics, sounds,...
/home. Need new software? Download a new ISO, burn it. Take any PC (office, home, cybercafe), insert CD, boot, insert dongle, work/play.
I see the future and it looks like this: a bootable Linux CD with my choice of applications, and a USB dongle with my
It is a revolutionary way of using PCs. And only possible (AFAICS) with Linux and the kind of support provided by Knoppix et al.
I predict 12 months before bootable Linux CDs become a completely standard model for games and application distribution, and 24 months before Microsoft attempt an imitation.
Just love it...
Ceci n'est pas une signature
... the game isn't any good.
From the article: The experience for the end-user is fast and powerful game playing that boots in under one minute, without the usual overhead from the legacy operating systems traditionally used in the gaming industry, SCI claims.
This leads me to assume they mean the stand-up arcade consoles which might run thousands of dollars, instead of a few hundred bucks for a home gaming gadget.
...are missing the point. This isn't a permanent change to your computer it's a way to get the best performance for your games. You're not turning a $2000 machine into a $150 toy you're maxing out your machine for a certain task. How often are you multi-tasking while playing a game like America's Army? Not often. When you're playing a game best to get all of the potential of your machine focused on putting out the most frames per second, most textured and anti-aliased pixels, and least lag. End of story...
Except that I will say this sounds like a cool idea and I will definitely give it a shot.
~Dan
http://www.pbase.com/efatapo
There are always posts about where can linux break out and really take over market share (i.e. desktop, server, etc...), and when i first read the story, I didn't really see the point to this. But then:
.02.
From the article:
"The fact that America's Army is available in 64-bit on the GameStorm CD allows gamers to get a taste of the next generation of gaming just by inserting a CD and powering up the computer," said Major Bret Wilson, Operations Officer for America's Army.
This really does make sense to me. P.C.s in my mind are just better for the serious gamer, and hardware issues aside, if they can actually get to a point of porting single CD games like this, it could really create an exciting new breed of "console games." I'd love to just pop in a disk of Baldur's Gate, Nascar, Halflife, etc... and get the best of both worlds. Quick access to the game w/o the hassle of an install and all the advantages of the superior AI seen on the p.c. platform as compared to the console platform.
Add in the capability to save games and "ini" info to a CDR or Floppy and you are good to go.
just my
jeff
This would make it very easy to play games places that you aren't supposed to be playing games. School computer labs for instance, where the networks are good, and the computers are great, and... they use them for MS Word. Or cube farms.
Now, all that's needed is a hotkey to eject the CD and kill the machine in case Someone approaches...
Karma: \Kar"ma\, n. [Skr.] (Buddhism) One's acts considered as fixing one's lot in the future existence.
Imagine the day when all games are delivered in this way. You get the best OS available and instantly into action with your hardware fully utilized.
For the gamers that always want maximum frames per second this must be a dream. Nothing extra claiming memory and other resources in the background. It's just the game and you! Not to mention how this would boost Linux game development.
Ciryon
The Ask Slashdot article Live CD for PC Games?
Now it sucks even faster.
The return of the Pong Console!!!
Ya know, I was only joking with my friends that it is only a matter of time before someone proposes the return of the application disk. Amazing how fast things like this happen.
What would be neat is for someone to do the same thing to boot straight into Open Office, ideal for a diskless network workstation for an office, wouldn't you think? A kernel totally optimized for word processing in the system's CD-ROM. No concerns about your staff playing Q3A when you're not looking.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The entire develpment and support cycle for the creation of the game, plus maintaining the servers, paying artists, EVERYTHING, is a tiny fraction of the cost of one (1) fighter jet. Or tank. It might be as much as 4 or 5 jeeps. It's probably a tiny fraction of the cost that the Army spends on maintaing and opening recruiting offices, and sending flyers to high school seniors. Get some perspective, here. If you're going to be bothered about what your tax dollars do, you've got alot more options. For example, far more of it goes to ACTUALLY killing people, rather than simulating killing people.
I look at the development of such games as just another form of training, a supplement if you will. It allows the Army to reach a greater variety of potential recruits. Nothing wrong with that.
I don't know much about AA, but wouldn't you want to save a game somehow? How do you do that?
A new 64-bit Linux CD can instantly turn an AMD Opteron-equipped PC into the ultimate gaming console, according to Super Computer Inc. (SCI).
P.S. You (probably) also need an nvidia graphics card.
Company Marketing Manager Jay Majumdar says America's Army on GameStorm will be distributed free by AMD with Opteron-equipped PCs
Translation: People buying a $3000 PC won't notice an extra $50.
Anyway, I guess I'm being too hard on them. It's cool, I hope it works, if it's been done before and they're using that work (as some have suggested), I hope they give credit.
"Now gluttony and exploitation serves eight!" - TV's Frank
No, not at all. They are given x-dollars per year to recruit and that's how they decided to spent part of their budget. It's been working very well for them. It helps desensitize potential recruits and helps show some of what the Army is about. They are coming with some additional training tidbits and features in the future too.
Even if you don't join the army, the basic first aid awareness offered in the game is enough to help people understand some very, very, basic first aid information.
Overall, I think it's one of the best ways our country could be spending our dollars. After all, it's either this or more people canvassing highschools. What's the difference? If it helps only the really gung-ho join, then that's all the better. If it helps shy away those that didn't "realize" that when you join the army, you might go to war, even better still!
I have often wondered why games on the PC usually have to be installed to HD and clutter it up!. It makes so much more sense to be able to bypass your desktop and the rest of it.
The Amiga could do this years ago, and it usually meant you could get the best performance out of the machine.
I suppose the reason it became difficult to do this on the PC was due to the proprietary nature of the Micro$oft operating system.. kinda makes it difficult to ship it on cd with a game!. The Amiga never had this issue since everything it needed was on Rom. Linux could make self booting games a reality again, this is a good thing and potentially it could make windows only games a thing of the past, since a self booting CD is os independant.
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I'm so glad we're finally moving to 64-bit technology if it makes this kind of thing possible!
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
Besides, maybe the game will teach some kids who would not get along well to avoid joining the military, and get others who would enjoy it and would fit well to join. That can only save us money and increase efficiency. So in the end, it may be a win, even from a purely financial standpoint.
As for training kids to kill, I think we've seen that the ability to blow people up with grenade launchers in games does not translate directly into being able to plug a bunch of kids with your dad's hunting rifle.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
how long before we have another columbine-type scenario where the kids have learned team combat tactics from playing these kinds of games and are far more successful?
Just have armed teachers camping at the respawn points. That'll learn'em!
It's rare that I look at a new idea being done with Linux and get depressed instead of excited, but this definitely qualifies. This is a fairly bad idea. As people pointed out in a recent Slashdot discussion, OS-with-game means that the game will soon stop working on new hardware for which there is no support, requires rebooting to play the game, doesn't let you take advantages of the OS *anyway* (I mean, the only role the OS plays in something like this is in what kind of sound latency you're seeing).
May we never see th
I don't think this is going to happen either, but you've come up with the silly reasons.
There are lots of software that runs off of MS OSs and not Linux. There are tonnes of games like this alone
Developers write for what people have. They write stuff for Windows, GameCubes, and whatever else. Using a bootable CD would mean that, instead of writing for Windows or Linux, they'd be writing a game for "a pc". They could do this with a bootable Windows disk too, if not for licensing issues.
There is a reason why we moved to harddrives, its more convient.
Booting and running from a disk do not preclude using the hard disk to store/cache data.
Uptime anyone? What the use of Linux stability if you have to reboot it every time you want to switch an application?
You're right, this isn't a good way to play games on your servers if they need to stay up all the time. Or something.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
Now I know why I've been getting my butt handed to me on the Radio Antenna map...all those 64bit AA consoles are whipping my poor little 32bit linux box... :(
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
First, this game does a reasonable job of showing that it isn't all glory, you survive the hits, and there is death. These "games" can also be used internally to evaluate tactics and such. It also advertises the Army to people, and much of it without silly preconceptions (as in its Gomer Pyle like)
... its not many, its FEW. As a percentage is wasn't meaningful.
to the point of "many soldiers"
As for this leading to "Columbine" situations, I think that is very far fetched. This game does nothing to dilute someone's morals, knowledge of right and wrong, or inhibition to break the law. That is societal, and it comes from parents, peers, and the rest of the people met. If anything TV is more damning than any game.
Lastly, if you want real wastes of money perhaps you should start bitching a EIC, pork-barrel politics, and government employee pensions systems. If you want to worry about your rights being trampled then I suggest you wake up and look at all the property seizures going on daily by governments across the country. If you want to see a big waste of money go ask your school board why they have such high adminstrator to student ratios (or worse, admin to teaher)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
by the fact that your tax dollars (if you live in the US) are going to create a game which simulates basic training? it's one thing if a private company wants to do it, but don't do it with my money!
And what dent would not spending money on this have on the 399.1 billion dollar military budget?
I call troll, sneaky bastard.
I am so sick of hearing about Gentoo everytime I read Slashdot. If Gentoo were a living person I would kick him in the ghoulies.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
:-)
I guess there's very little you can say to talk him into using Gentoo?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
with their personal server thingy? Store all your files on it, put it in your pocket, and access them wirelessly wherever you go. (As long as wherever you go has a PC to access them from, of course.)
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
...that this little screed wasn't instantly modded "offtopic" and I have to read it even set at +5.
"i don't want to pay to train kids to kill"
Then don't pay taxes. AFAIK the game is rated M, for 17+, and the Army's been teaching 18 year olds to kill for a LOOONG time. So they're a year early? BFD. Maybe a responsible parent will look at the game and make the judgement for their "kid".
Oh yeah, and if they say the kid can't play this game, they better not let them watch broadcast TV, cable, or movies, either.
-Styopa
I really take issue with the perception of military spending, and I'm not even in the military or even involved in it in any significant way. There are good reasons for the seemingly high-dollar items in a bill of materials.
For your padded nuts, when you make a fighter jet capable of Mach 1+, things are really different than assembling a set of bookcases. If those nuts get a nick in them, you create a stress point. Subject that nut to the varying loads and temperature changes that a jet does, just idling there, and that thing may crack and let go. Then your turbine engine gets a nut fragment in the blades, the engine explodes, and people die. All because some snippy little civilian bitched about padded nuts.
Guess what? A military-grade 486, which is still used in volume, costs close to $500. It is radiation hardened and hermetically sealed, because when you get way up high like we often do, alpha particles start bombarding your plane, causing Single-Event Upsets, which is a bit flip. Suddenly your nav system thinks you're in the southern hemisphere and the jet flips over. Thus, rad-hard and multiple redundant systems, just to deal with those pesky particles that get shot at us constantly from space.
The money spent on developing AA was peanuts compared to the cost of one F-16. The military has hundreds of F-16s. Lay off.
I predict 12 months before bootable Linux CDs become a completely standard model for games and application distribution
I predict the entire computer gaming and applications industry will not follow your lead. Just a hunch, but it seems slightly beyond farfetched to think that anyone who sells software for money would consider a bootable Linux CD the ideal method of application distribution. It's especially farfetched to think they'd drop everything they're doing and begin selling their products this way.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I'm sorry this is not a reference to utexaspunk or anyone else here nonetheless this has to be said GAMES DO NOT A COLUMBINE KILLER or VIOLENT CHILD MAKE. Fact is if a child wants to go on a killing spree they will do it regardless of what games they have played for that matter any person can do the same. Too many people (read especially absentee and IMO worthless parents) would like to blame games for their failings as parents the pc, game console, tv, were NEVER meant to be babysitters and in this age of latchkey kids and dual income families more parents are expecting this from them. If parents spent more time watching their own damn children and talking with them and being involved in their life and development Columbine like incidents would not be as prevalent. Actually how often do we really see a Columbine like incident? NOT TOO OFTEN. But the media and people who do not want violent games out there would like to make you think they happen everyday. I agree even one death is too much especially in such a violent manner but you can't take the freedom to play these games away from people who are old enough and mature enough to play them. And as far as the US government spending money on something like America's Army I say it's a great idea because some of the people who play it just might end up serving our country and not sitting on the sidelines. Granted some of the reasons we have been forced into situations (G.Dubya Bush's inferiority complex and hard on for Hussein and Iraqi oil to name a few) don't make sense and should never have forced us into controversy, BUT when we need the armed forces which we indeed will someday I'd like to know there's enough of them to protect the country if that becomes necessary. Traditional recruiting for the armed forces has gone stagnant and this is just the next wave and I personally support it 100 percent with my tax dollars.
Doesn't bother me. I think that America's Army is a far cry from the latest commerical FPS games, when it comes to encouraging random machine gun rampages. In fact I believe it does more to discourage that kind of behavior.
It's also pretty inexpensive compared to hundreds of other things I should be worried that tax dollars are paying for. Recently a woman won approximately $300,000 in a suit against the government. She had been placed in a position where she earned over $100,000 per year, but was given nothing to do; after three years of that she claimed that her career was damaged because she lacked job skills due to not doing anything.
...
It's time we place blame where blame belongs...on the sorry ass parents that allow their children to get there hands on guns in the first place or play games that teach them to kill (if you believe that's what they do, I don't) and stop blaming everything thing on the planet for the total lack of parenting skills that most adults with children today possess. This is just a game and is used to attract those of appropriate age to the army and the basic army tactics. It in very little way is anything close to the real thing. Trust me I know, I have been in the army for 14 years and saw combat in more than one 3rd world country. Video games aren't real combat and will not prepare you for it. It's time we stop passing the buck for bad children and look right at mom and dad when the kids think its ok to pull a trigger on another human being.
Karma: a simple way of silencing those with unpopular views regardless how correct or just that view might be.
to some degree. It won't prevent people from hacking the data stream with another computer on the same network like what was done with everquest. But it will stop the script kiddies that develop programs to play the game for them while they are afk.
Is this a good idea? Dunno. I kinda like being able to do more than one thing with my computer while playing online games. But I also like knowing that I won't be nerfed to hell and back by developers trying to compensate for the people who play 24x7 using scripts.
Of course, it's harder to "acquire" rom images, now that Mame.dk is not allowing downloads. It was bound to happen; it's still a shame it did.
Or... it's a game.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Just because the game is bundled with the OS, doesn't mean you can't get it un-bundled as well, or that you couldn't get it to work outside of the CD.
It's a good thing, just not as good as it could be.
As it stands, it may bring a few players over that would have otherwise stayed away from a Linux version or port of their products.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Wow. It is really sad if THIS is what gets your panties all up in a bunch in regards to what your tax money is being spent on.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
FYI,
You can download America's Army from multiple sources very quickly at magnetmix.com. It'll download off of everyone who has downloaded it on Gnutella.
But... Isn't that true, though?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
ok- allow me to clarify, for all the people who took my point to mean something else.
1)yes, i know the government wastes money on tons of other things. and every one of those wasteful government expenditures is justified by someone who says "hey, well we waste money on all these other projects, what harm is this?"
2)i'm not saying that this game turns people into crazed killers, but that it is desensitizing and teaches them war tactics in a way that they understand, outside of the army's supervision, and that these tactics can be applied adversely.
3)this is not to say that there aren't other games out there that do the same things, but those games weren't made with MY money.
4)i'm all for training recruits well. and if computer games work well for that, that's great. the problem is that the people this game is marketed to ARE NOT RECRUITS, and are not supervised or being taught the discipline that goes along with military training.
5)and yes, I do vote.
Since it is a bootable CD, how are you changing your system into anything? You hard disk can still contain your usual OS / apps.
Also, it would seem to be the equivalent to a console game having to reboot on new game insertion (everytime you put in a new CD ROM).
come on fhqwhgads
i'm bothered by that as well. that doesn't make the game any more justified.
How far from a normal pc is a Xbox? If anyone ever gets Linux loading on a Xbox without having to resort to any hacks expect an explosion of these types of cds.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Should we forget Movix? Movix is a tiny Linux distro that goes at the begining of CDs with movies on them to make them play without having to wory about people having their computers setup properly. I'm planning to make my wedding video and time surrounding (not the actual event of) my baby being born available to my realatives this way. Most of them don't have internet access and those that do aren't necessarily adept enough to get CODECs and the like. Between the Americas Army disk, the UT2k3 Disk, and Movix Linux is finding it's place on Windows machines and theoreticaly computers without hard disk at all. If this keeps going screw the X-Box, make generic consoles with the nForce chip, loads of RAM and no HDD. Save game progress on standard run of the mill smartcards and the like. USB keyboards, joysticks and gamepads will now rule. This is a geniune idea, wonder if I could make a few bucks?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
"by the fact that your tax dollars (if you live in the US) are going to create a game which simulates basic training? it's one thing if a private company wants to do it, but don't do it with my money!"
Grow up. I don't want to pay for Social Security because GenX won't be getting anything lavish as that, but I still have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for murderers on death row for 20 years, but I have to pay for it. I don't want to pay for lazy people with fake disabilities robbing our safety net, but I pay for it. Maybe you should write Osama or some of the other people we pay our taxes to the military to protect us from for some generous health care options. I'm sure he'd truly respect your pacifist beliefs just as much as he professes his loathing of socialists and other so-called infidels. Or say Mr. Hussein who some people around the world claim we illegally removed from power. I'm sure he'd thank you by introducing you to one of his industrial sized plastic shredders as a token of appreciation.
As for America's Army, its a great way to train basics to people interested in the Army experience in the leisure of their own home. When our country was founded (and before that, with the colonies and the homeland aka the United Kingdom), every able bodied man and teen were expected to be trained to protect their homes via the militia experience. Would you prefer the States offer militia training? Switzerland does. Would that make you shut up? How about compulsory military service when you turn 18, like how Greece, Russia, and Israel all require? And what about the fact that America's Army is rated M for Mature, meaning it is meant for 17 year olds and up, which is the very age someone can be recruited into the U.S. Military? Compare that with television commercials for the military that any child can watch on television, monitored or unmonitored? Doesn't that bother you more?
Video games have a long history of being dual-use technology. Atari's "Battlezone" (the first arcade tank simulator) impressed the U.S. Army so much they asked Atari to make some modified versions of it for training purposes back in 1980. The game was designed to be fun; it was not meant to be a pro-military tool. Atari did jump at the contract, and they did make one of the creators of the game modify it for the Army's needs before he quit. But the history of man being inhuman to his fellow man long predates the arrival of movies, television, and videogames. U.S. soldiers shooting children on the Trail of Tears happened long before "Pong" hit the scene in 1972.
Columbine was the fermentation of years of bullying two intelligent misfits who finally cracked and unleashed their own personal demons upon their tormenters and others who failed to prevent their debasement amongst their peers. It is not related to them bowling or how they loved to play *Doom* or listen to Marilyn Manson. Do you want to ban Pac-Man because it might promote cannibalism?
Ergo, your argument is null and void.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
It's probably a tiny fraction of the cost that the Army spends on maintaing and opening recruiting offices, and sending flyers to high school seniors.
It is a rather small portion of their recruiting budget. One of the early press releases for the game mentioned the actual percentage, but I don't recall what it was. Several articles reference that it cost over $6.3 Million to develop and a few more recent articles mention that it has paid for itself (which earlier articles referenced as 300-400 recruits, meaning that the average cost of recruiting is ~$15,750 per person or more).
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Boy, this is *exactly* like the old days of floppies like Pirates!, Starflight, or Test Drive, where all you'd do is pop the disc in there and boot from the floopy.
Does that mean by 8086 IBM "clone" was the "ultimate gaming console"?
Why not make storage bootable?
/home with your OS and apps of choice would work as well.
Ok, ok, there are problems with this, but as storage becomes smaller and smaller, why not simply have a media card to contain all of this? I think that I have seen GB sized portable storage stuff (CompactFlash, USB keychain-type devices, etc.). These exceed CD storage. DVD would be an option as well, obviously.
As prices drop and hardware detection improves, there would be many specialized applications where storing the app and the OS on a completely removable disk would be possible. I've seen people mention MAME as a possibility (if you do it on CF, you could distribute the package and allow the addition of ROMs to avoid liability). A portable
Companies could possibly use something like this under certain circumstances (consulting firms that already "hotel" employees) to avoid having people lug around laptops -- give 'em a PDA with a CF card and set them loose. The home "hotel" could have plain old dummy terminals that would just require the user to plug in the CF card to start rolling. When logged into a "hotel" workstation, perhaps there would be a backup of new data on the card to a manly file system to deal with the inevitable "I lost my card" problems that will arise with tiny storage media.
Security is an issue, but it's nothing that encryption couldn't solve or at least address in most circumstances.
The "America's Army" application is just a slice of what could be done with this idea. I see a lot of people rejecting the idea of a specific disk for loading and running a single app and requiring a reboot for every app, but this does not need to be the case. The limitation of the America's Army thing (if used in an expanded manner) could be overcome with rewritable (not necessarily CD or DVD) media. Don't look at what the "America's Army" disc is -- look at how the idea could be extended and applied. Knoppix and things along those lines are just a start.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Linux has several other better freer games available than AA; AA requires you to register with the army so they can send you spam and try to recruit you because that is the point of AA, in addition to making you slog your way through bootcamp and whatnot and not directly into the action which totally and completely cripples the idea of a fast loading easy playing game from a cd to test the power of a 64 bit processor w/ actual software. Where as you can get ET for free which also runs on linux... how much code re-write is necessary to take advantage of 64 bit? does it matter with something like these games? Although i'm not a fan of gentoo myself anyway when they released the disk that came with the unreal 2003 demo when it wa sbrand new i had ad isk of that handy... why team up w/ the army when all they want is to exploit the situation trying to get boys to play their game and like i well enough to do it for real. I think AA is extraordinairely underhanded, cigarette marketing is even less direct than this and our taxes paid for it's development.
Nope, I'm not bothered with it. For some reason, I don't think the government really needs after ID though. With our trading practices, it is atleast nice to know that we can turn completely imperialisc if we had to because the rest of the world considers us broke except for our military.
You, sir, are full of s**t.
If an F-16 is so fragile that nicked nut can cause it to explode in mid-air, how does it handle combat?
Many people here seem to be complaining that this reduces your PC to a console device, which it does in a way. I also see complaints that this will "return us to the days of DOS" with reboots and memory management etc.
I doubt either situation is the case. What I actually expect is that this is a great short term solution to the problem of not having a mainstream 64 bit OS on the desktop for PC's. This gives the Opteron a chance to shine as the game will be compliled for 64bit, as well as the OS that runs under it - 64bit Linux.
Microsoft has not released 64bit XP except to subscribers AFAIK - and it won't be available until 2004 anyhow.
"But wait!" I hear you cry - you could continue to use Linux on the desktop yadda yadda... That is not the target of this thing. It is a quick and dirty solution to getting a 64bit game out the door and into the players hands. Yes - you could do this with Linux alone, and no boot disc, however, most people who play America's Army don't use Linux - or even MacOS X for that matter. They use Windows.
This then, is a good win for Linux - some of the users may realize that they are using Linux, and become intrigued by it if America's Army runs much better in this form. More "joe sixpack" users may start to take notice of this strange OS. Furthermore, with the lag time that Microsoft will have in getting a 64bit OS out to the public, and with the avalibility of the Opteron right now, we may see more Linux games!
This is a good thing!
So stop whining about it, for the love of god. It is no wonder that people may not want to support Linux apps if as soon as one is released in any form, all the slashbots start complaining about it.
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
If you want a dedicated 64 bit $3000 console to play this edition on, where's the port for the G5? I'd think the G5 would be the most uniform platform to work with on simplifying what needed to be supported via the stripped down Linux. Is the lack of a 64-bit Yellow Dog distribution the culprit behind this, or did the powers-that-be simply want to make some brownie points with the AMD fans first (not to mention that AMD and Nvidia kicked down development cash and perhaps Apple didn't?)?
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
make a custom Knoppix boot with a game already on it, and almost any X86 PC can be turned into a gaming console by booting the custom Knoppix CD that loads right into the game. No install needed, just need to be able to boot off a CD-ROM.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
...be able to play more than *one* game...? :P
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
Best arcade game ever. Hands down.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
In a nation in which the military specifies that invididual nuts must come in their own box with padding - padding!
I've been to a shop where they make said nuts. The machinist showed me the highly precice lathe on which each nut is and made to incredible precision. He then took one of the nuts, lifted it 3 inches above the table and dropped it. He then dunked the nut in some die and showed me under a blacklight exactly why that nut would be rejected if he sent it to Pratt and Whitney to be used in a fighter engine, simply because it was dropped three inches. The boxes are padded for a reason: Without the padding 99% of the nuts would be ruined just by bumping against other nuts in a box. The precision is required to make the engines safe and reliable. Since the nuts need to be perfect, the padding saves money.
Then you'd better ban all books about war (fact and fiction), Sun Tzu's writings, and let's not forget television.
How is this statement any better than what the RIAA says about P2P? If you are file sharing you must be pirating. You are correct, evil is defined by knowledge and tools, not actions.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
this is not to say that there aren't other games out there that do the same things, but those games weren't made with MY money. i'm all for training recruits well. and if computer games work well for that, that's great. the problem is that the people this game is marketed to ARE NOT RECRUITS
The problem with this argument is that America's Army isn't a training tool so much as a recruiting one. And in that respect it is a very well devised one.
Previous Army recruiting tended to focus on things like "Be All That You Can Be" or a poster of Uncle Sam saying "I Want You". That's nice and all, but signing up for the military is a serious commitment and that sort of advertising doesn't do much to tell potential recruits what is in store for them. They still think it's all Beetle Bailey and Gomer Pyle or whatever preconceptions they have of the military.
The Army's current recruiting methods are different. They have things like America's Army, which is a computer simulation of some of the aspects of training they would encounter. The Army also has Web broadcasts of new soldiers in training so people can know what to expect if they sign up. They also seem to be helping Discovery channel and such with a lot of documentaries that let people learn what military training is about.
Personally, I applaud this approach. America's Army probably cost about as much to make as a couple thirty-second TV spots of Abrams Tanks and Old Glory, and is a lot more informative.
Well, I have to both agree and disagree on this issue... Got a few relatives in a few branches of service, and do government contract work myself. And from what I've seen, while there are a lot of cases of civilians getting bitchy about actually justified costs, there are just as many(if not more) cases of exorbitant costs that really are waste.
A good example of a real life justified expense is hammers. Huge complaints over how 'a hammer you could go and pick up at the hardware store' was being bought for way too much money. Turns out, the hammers were used near jet fuel, thus they had to be made out of a pricier material because your standard hammer from a hardware store would cause sparks. Sparks and jet fuel aren't a nice combination.
On the other hand, there are cases where there is a lot of waste. Designing coffee makers that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, with the requirements that they be capable of surviving a plane crash that would kill all the occupants(Makes you wonder who will drink the coffee). Or fuses being bought for about a hundred bucks. No special requirements, not held to any 'stricter' testing than standard civilian fuses.
Sometimes the high dollar items are justified, sometimes they aren't... From the few that I've been able to look into, I've seen more that weren't justified, but still close to even... It's not right to just make a blanket statement about military spending always being over the top, but it's not exactly a good idea to ignore the cases when they are being wasteful.
And it should be acknowledged that military wastefulness(when they are honestly being wasteful) isn't always the militaries fault. Sometime's it is, sometimes it boils down to congress...
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. The mass produced CD-ROMs can include software at the kernel level that would enable them to read parts of the CD that are unreadable by copy software. This would be an almost foolproof form of copy protection. I'm not a CD wiz, but I believe it is possible.
They would also be able to open their market share to users of Windows (tm) as well as those of us who prefer to use an alternative Operating System (i.e. as long as it is x86 it will work).
This is a BIG deal. Microsoft has been pushing their 'directx' stuff as a way to get a high-quality gaming experience while still running Windows and is up to 'Directx 9' I think. Those of us who have struggled to get cranky directx Windows games to run know what a miserable kludge the directx thing is and will immediately embrace the idea of the bootable linux CD as an alternative gaming platform. Even Windows users will become big Linux fans if they can just boot from a CD-ROM and run a high-quality game. Microsoft has pushed Directx as a replacement for DOS as a gaming platform but no one has ever loved (or even liked) directx and now it looks as if Linux has skewered it right through its gizzard.
I agree with all of what you you said, but I have to point out that the analogy you chose was a bad one.
:)
The winner of the World Poker Championship at Binion's Casino in Las Vegas for this year was a first time entrant named Chris Moneymaker. He credits his time spent on internet based gambling sites as the reason he won.
One person out of how many internet poker players?
The OP insinuated that AA is training legions of killer kids. However, that isn't the case. My analogy is fine, because you've only pointed to one person, not a legion of poker champs. Also, just because internet poker apparently helped one person does not mean that it would help me.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Just incase nobody else mentioned it.... http://gentoogames.com/
t ter.xml.
Access to ISO's via ftp/ bittorent
America's Army + Castle Wolfenstein
I especially recommend Castle Wolfenstein, 87.3% guarantee you will like it if you give it a chance.
More about gentoo games here http://www.gentoo.org/news/en/gwn/20030519-newsle
"/"Reality
I looked at all the standard sites, and I don't see an AMD64 version available for download anywhere. It also didn't give any download site in the article.
Where can we download this little marvel??
What happens when new hardware comes out that isn't supported by the CD? Download and burn a new one? Not everyone has broadband or patience.
-]Phreak Out[-
Wasn't the DreamCast like this? Essentially it was OS less and booted off the disc? IIRC the devkits were only available for WinCE and Linux, so all the games were one of those platforms.
Shhhh! Everyone quiet! Now, can you hear sobbing in Redmond? Think about it, what is the one thing that is stopping people from switching to Linux? Office apps? - Linux has plenty of those Stability? Security? Price? Come on, I dual boot into Windows, because I want to play games. The moment that games come without need for Windows I'll never pirate a Microsoft product again...
Well, if enough people don't upgrade because the hardware isn't supported, it might cause the HW manufactures to build to some form of standard. It might also be possible for the games to be written to look for specific drivers (ex sound and video) on the harddrive and if they exist there to use them, and if not to use the default driver. I know there are some issues involved with the CD-ROM bootable game, but I still think it can be a viable form of software distribution.
Win32
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
jet.com
...if you have permission to boot from CD-ROM already, I think they've had a security problem for a long time. Btw, schools aren't too bright already. Back in my days we all used to play this fun 2-player game, the name escapes me at the moment. But it wasn't more than half a megabyte, so the original was on my e-mail account all three years I was there, copied it back onto the network (after a little cloak&dagger stuff to hide me) every time it was deleted.
Particularly one time freaked the admin out. He came in, saw everybody playing, gave the thunder speech and grabbed a machine to delete it from the network. I went about getting my copy, made all the necessary arrangements. When he left the machine, before he had even exited the room, the game was back on the network. Once he was out the door, I announced that it was back. When he came back 5 minutes later and everybody was playing again, he threatened to evict everyone in the room, close off the computer labs, plus if he found the culprit, a few things I think are illegal in civilized countries. Didn't stop me tho.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
A USB memory card? Works much the same way for consoles... the only catch being that a lot of PC's don't have frontal USB ports (but they would, if demand came about).
Where is this UT2k3 disk of which you speak?
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
But this is a 64bit CD!
I've had the amd64 (nee x86-64) manuals that AMD is giving away for free on x86-64.org for a while now. I've been waiting for the Opteron and the Athlon64 with anticipation. And part of the deal with amd64 is that, while AMD was defining a new x86-ish ISA, they made some other changes -- like doubling the number of general purpose registers as well as the number of registers available for MMX and SSE.
But these extra registers are only available when using the new amd64 ISA -- i.e. when executing 64 bit code. We've seen lots of benchmarks and tests with the introduction of the Athlon64 running 32 bit windows, but next to none of the amd64 architecture in 64 bit mode.
But this CD boots the amd64 port of Linux, capable of using all 16 GPRs. And it reads like the America's Army version on the CD was compiled 64 bit too -- so it has access to 16 GPRs, 16 MMX and 16 XMM registers instead of the 8 available to standard x86.
It's the first 64bit game available for the Opteron and Athlon64! Somebody needs to go get this CD and benchmark it next to a 32bit x86 version of America's Army. Anyone, anyone?
"That's all I have to say about that" --Forrest Gump
An F-16 handles combat just fine, thanks to the measures taken by our fine engineers. A nick in a piece of stressed metal will be the first place it fails, all things being equal. If you've ever been around engines, even car engines, you'd see a lot of measures taken to avoid stress and potential failure points. I.E., special screw thread shapes to avoid a sharp trough angle, which will be a point of failure should it be over stressed. Most connecting rod bearing bolts are built this way now (that's for I.C. engines, a jet doesn't have such a thing).
For the record, I don't know that an F-16 uses nuts from a padded case in the turbine. My point was that unless the right parts are used, and kept in good shape, there will be big problems. Witness the maintenance schedule on a Blackhawk helicopter; they need to completely inspect and rebuild the main rotor blades every few hundred operational hours. Those costs add up pretty quickly.
It costs a lot to have the best prepared and most advanced military force in the world. The alternative is to let ourselves be invaded by Canada, eh?
I remember a few years ago an article in GamePro or some other game-rag about the Army using StarCraft for squad based training. I thought it was pretty neat but couldn't exactly see how it was helping them.
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
I don't want or need to reboot multiple times to play multiple games. In fact, nobody does, which is why games and applications will never be distributed as bootable Linux-based CD ROMs.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You'd think this would be an obvious thing for Linux game distributors to do. That way, non-Linux users can still play the game just by booting off the CD.
(Plans for leveraging this strategy into Console World Domination!!!!! are beyond the scope of this post.)
Would this be a good answer?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Thank you sir
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I don't want or need to reboot multiple times to play multiple games.
Neither do I, I admit.
In fact, nobody does
Sure they do. We call them "console owners", and their systems even power cycle each time they switch games.
I don't want or need to reboot multiple times to play multiple games. In fact, nobody does.
Sure they do. We call them "console owners", and their systems even power cycle each time they switch games.
Yes, but they also take 5 seconds to reboot. A PC takes anywhere from a minute to "go make yourself an omelette".
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
hahahahaha, that's a pretty funny joke. Hardware standards...... Go tell that one to NVidia, ATI, S3, and Matrox.
-]Phreak Out[-
It sucks for game distribution, but bootable Linux CDs that go right into a full featured OS (X, a DE, some kind of Office progs, a browser, etc) is really cool when I want to show someone else Linux.
I honestly try to show as many people as I can that it is a viable alternative and not just a nerd OS anymore.
"Linux would be too complicated for me. I'm not really good with computers in the first place."
"Well... try this and tell me what you think."
"I can make my desktop look like that!? That's really nice. Oh... and I like these programs. There's a program here like Trillian too. I thought Linux was harder than Windows."
Hell, I'm putting both my parents on Linux now and my girlfriend just put a second hard drive in her box for a Gentoo installation.
"y the fact that your tax dollars (if you live in the US) are going to create a game which simulates basic training?"
No.
" it's one thing if a private company wants to do it, but don't do it with my money!"
Why not? This game is better than most that are out there from a moral point of view. When you die in this game, you die. You don't respawn. Kind of like real life.
So what if they use tax dollars with it? They want people to join the Army. That Army is there to keep you living your happy care-free life.
" the basic training exercises were specifically designed to desensitize soldiers' human instinct not to kill people after studies post-WWII found that many soldiers never fired their weapons."
Damn straight. We definitely don't want our soldiers knowing how to kill!
" but i don't want to pay to train kids to kill."
I hate to break it to you, but they're not teaching you how to kill here. They're trying to get you interested into joining the Army. Using a mouse to aim a cursor and click does not a killer make.
"how long before we have another columbine-type scenario where the kids have learned team combat tactics from playing these kinds of games and are far more successful?"
This game will not cause another Columbine. Vice City will not cause another Columbine. Maryiln Manson will not cause another Columbine. None of these games would have taught any of those kids how to have been more affective at killing. Assuming so is ridiculous, and shows how uninformed you are about what playing a game is really like. I have to ask though, why is your energy being directed at video games? Why not paintball?
I hate to break this to you, but you are really misguided. You're worried about the game funding a game that 'teaches kids to kill', despite the fact that it clearly illustrates to the gamers that when they die, they die. Shoot your own team mate, go to jail. You can't run uber fast, you can't jump uber high, and you MUST follow the rules of your instructor. (i.e. if you aim your gun at him, you're busted.)
Sorry bud, all I detect here is a knee-jerk games are bad reaction.
"Derp de derp."
You've raised a good point. It'd be nice of the government made games in place of all of its advertizing. At least I actually get something for my tax dollars.
Plus, think of the possibilities. BATF: The Adventure - A tactical combat games that shows it's players how to torch religious fanatics in the comfort of their own compound and shoot child carrying mothers in the head.
I would buy that game. And even better, since the government made it, it would be free!
We could even get more local. Highway Patrol: The Road Warriors. Get paid under the table as you meet ticket quotas for the month by nailing people doing 68 in the 65 zones. Upgrade your stock HP vehicle with parts confiscated from "illegals" and unlock special "donut locations."
And finally, Hicktown Police: You sure do got a purdy mouth. This is the best one. Pull over vehicles passing through town and throw the poor, big-city prick in jail overnight and make him call his family so they can Western Union him the cash to get out. While he waits have fun sodomizing him and any minority inmates with a plundger.
Honestly, the market for government games is fun. Why have kids thinking they're space aliens with a rocket launcher when we have a chance to expose them to real crime like working for the government.
IRS: Resistance is Futile. Get bonus points every time you confiscate all the property of a small family barely getting by!
Corporations could even improve their image! RIAA: The Game. A strategy game where you pick out the weakest targets, 12-year-olds in the projects and old ladies and sue them.
Sorry... I got on a role there.
configs and , although not for AA, SAVE GAMES! If more games are made available like this, can users really be expected to store their saves to removable media?
Tierce
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
Do they have a different CD for ATI cards?
the above is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect that of the little voices in my head
There's no comparison between what can be learned between a video game an d a sport like football, imo. WHich could of been interpretted from my previous post. Tho maybe int he future video games will change so there can be a comparison.
My friend and I were working on the idea of a gaming optomized OS (one that ran only one game so as to optomize hardware usage) but I looks like we were too slow. It's good as a gamer to see it though.
-Tim Louden
It's a nice little marketing play by AMD. Nothing more, nothing less. If you buy an AMD64 for work and won't (or aren't allowed!) to install games on it, then this gives you a chance to try it out. No big deal either way.
Well the boot disk only works with Opterons, while Knoppix will work with almost any X86 system.
Why mention Knoppix? Why not? I think it is a good Linux Distro that can boot off a CD-ROM and has some uses if games are bundled with it. Not everyone can afford an Opteron, after all.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.