Eclipse and CDT already run on Java, atop GDB. It's just up to WRS to port whatever OS-aware bits they want to the new Eclipse/CDT architecture, and to make sure that there is a working GDB that can target their hardware.
I am willing to bet that this new Linux strategy is most of the reason they've been toying with the move to Eclipse/CDT in the first place...
I am sick to death of having to hear the usual 10 year old idiots swearing up a storm and calling everyone a faggot over the headset. Now I can hear them do it... in Cantonese!!!
Somebody eviscerate me with sharpened stick please...
'On an intellectual-property level'
What does this mean? It's a computer, they can't port the games?
Well, if you think about it, most of the games won't be just writing to DirectX/Direct3D only. Most or all of the pretty engines are going to be writing (for example) shader code directly for the Nvidia GPU that is built in to the XBOX.
Since we know that XBOX++ will not contain an Nvidia GPU (they're going with ATI instead), it is pretty safe to say that using binaries compiled for the current XBOX will not work. If they did, then that would mean that the graphics chips would have to be functionally identical (or at least close enough) to the Nvidia part. Nvidia probably holds a bunch of patents surrounding the chip which currently preclude this unless MS and/or ATI wants to get sued to oblivion.
Guns are for killing. Maybe killing people, maybe killing animals. Killing anyway.
Those guns which aren't used for killing are used for such pleasures as holding up 7-11 stores, holding the upper hand in a fight, stealing, etc.
Have a look at the US - the most 'relaxed' gun laws around, and the highest incidence of violent crime around.
Remember: guns don't kill; people kill; people with GUNS.
Ok trollboy, I'll feed you...
Personally I like to use my guns for target practice, i.e. making holes in paper targets and then letting my friends (who are REALLY good) humiliate me because they shot a better score than I did. No killing involved, unless you're going to get pedantic and count the trees that were killed to make the paper for the target.
Believe it or not, the majority of gun owners are not raving psychos and criminals as you imply.
You know, while this may seem like a troll comment, I have to admit that with enough wanking, you probably would develop carpal tunnel. Hmmm... guess I need to test that theory out!
We need a Mod option for -1 (Ewwww, don't wanna think about it)
UbiSoft showed that even with the limitations the PS2 has compared to the Xbox and GC, that you can still make a great looking game (Splinter Cell) and have it on all the consoles. In fact, IIRC, UbiSoft actually re-wrote all the rendering abilities for each console to be console specific, so that it would look good on all of them.
Actually, they had to do more than just re-write the renderer. The actually had to tune the content as well so the PS2 and GC could handle it. E.g., in several of the Myanmar levels, they had to make the streets just a bit narrower, and in some places shorter, so that the PS2 wouldn't choke on the level.
Then comes along Counter-Strike on Xbox Live, where the goddamn mute function simply doesn't work
At least it has a mute function. Mechassault has absolutely no way of muting anyone except for unplugging you headset, and that doesn't let you hear anyone at all.
Note to developers: do not create an Xbox Live enabled title without the ability to mute individuals. There is nothing more annoying than trying to play a game while someone pipes in what they consider music over your headset, or while they sing, or spout annoying gibberish, or whatever.
Oh yeah, and if you're going to make a toggle button for global/team chat, wouldn't it make more sense to make the default be team chat? What made them think that by default I want an open channel to everyone in the game? Arg.
Honestly, I am more interested in how they can recognize banknotes algorithmically.
If you can detect faces in images by computing a database of eigenfaces, and computing an image's representation as a vector in the resulting so-called "face space", then I see no reason one cannot do this with eigendollars as well.
I'm also somewhat surprised the arcade games didn't do more of this; this dynamic difficulty level is much more addictive then the monotonically increasing (and always huge) difficulty employed by modern games.
Although it definitely helps the profitability of an arcade game to be fun/addictive, one has to remember that the point of an arcade machine is to keep the player plugging those quarters in. If they made it too difficult to lose the game, you'd never put any more money in.
The trick is to somehow take the player through some optimally contrived series of peaks and valleys wherein you addict them just enough that they will put that one more quarter in to continue should they die/fail, and then crush them mercilessly so that they are in fact forced to do so if they want to keep playing.
And yes, I know it's been a damn long time since arcade games cost a quarter, but I'm a child of the 80's:-)
Link in parent's sig opens about 100 browser windows. I didn't stick around to figure out what they all were doing, but a lot of them had "tubgirl" in the title.
The PS2 and XBOX both have USB support. Both have third party keyboards available. Adding mouse support would be trivial. I am unfamiliar with the input methods available on the Gamecube, but I assume there is no technical reason why this could not be done there as well.
If lack of keyboard and a mouse is all that is keeping the PC gaming scene alive, then consider it on death's door.
There is nothing stopping console developers from supporting keyboards now. And given that you can get PS2/XBOX to USB adapters, mice are not hard to follow, if they really want to support them.
The reason the developers don't support them however is that there is a stratification of the user base, i.e., since these add-ons do not ship with the console, not all users have them, and developers tend to service the lowest common denominator of their user base where at all possible.
I see it as a pretty easy thing to convince the consumer that paying a little extra for a console that comes with a keyboard and a mouse. You can bet your booty that if Microsoft were to create an XBOX (or heck, to remove the chances of stratification altogether, let's say XBOX2) bundle that included a keyboard, a mouse, and an version of Internet Explorer with MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player, it would sell very well. Having an extra computer in the house is never a bad thing, both from a gamer's point of view, and from the point of view of any parents that might be holding the purse-strings of young gamers (it keeps the goddamned kids off of the real computer so that daddy can surf for pr0n in peace).
Hell, I don't see why they wouldn't want to throw in MS-Office while they were at it. It's not like they give a shit about the anti-trust ramifications of it. And then what have you got? A kick ass console that is also a really cheap computer that will do 95% of what the average computer user does. Guess which console Mommy & Daddy are going to decide to buy for Junior then?
Anyway, back to the original point... From there, support in the games for these peripherals would come. If everyone has it, then it's stupid for the developers not to support it.
So, I think the days where the input devices argument still holds are numbered. If a chump like me can come up with a plan to increase console sales by edging into the conventional PC markets, you can bet MS has already been planning it for a long time now. They just have a lot of patience, and the fat bank account to allow them to bide their time.
The question is whether or not this is a good thing.
Mechanik
Re:Tonight, Live on TV: Starcraft Tournament Final
on
Paid to Play Video Games
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I heard in Korea they broadcast computer games over cable tv, with comentators and the full suite.
Ok, call me a geek but I think I would actually find this interesting. Of course, they'd have to be able to freely spectate within the game so that they could fully show the audience what was going on. And I actually want them to talk to the participants and get the lowdown on what their strategy is for the current game. Of course, this means you can't let the other team overhear them.
I'm thinking Iron Chef meets Starcraft, only without the constant use of fish.
("Moderately" because I wouldn't say it's widely known, but it's not little known either. And hey, it's probably offtopic, but who cares, it's interesting...)
With the given info stated in the article, these results mean nothing. Yes, it says footage from video games was shown to the survey participants, but it doesn't say what footage. Was the footage truly representative of the game? Did it show the nastiest, most controversial content that the game had to offer?
Fictitious example: They show you footage from Grand Theft Auto III, but all they show you doing is racing your car around town, and don't show you killing Chinese Triad members with a flamethrower, screwing hookers to up your health points, beating up random pedestrians with a baseball bat, etc. If you're not shown anything nasty, of course you're going to say the rating is a good match or is too strict. If all they show is you racing around trying to get fast times, they'll probably think that the worst content this game has to offer is encouraging you to break traffic laws. Of course, anyone familiar with the game knows better.
Without knowing the games they showed the survey participants and what particular content from those games was shown, these numbers are pretty meaningless.
Note that this is not to say that the footage shown was not representative. It might have been. We just don't know.
Note also that as previously stated, I am playing Devil's Advocate here. Personally I think the ratings system as already implemented is pretty darn good. It just bugs me when people trot out statistics like these that quite possibly don't mean shit because statistics are so easily manipulated. Even when I agree with them, it still bothers me.
The more complex games are made even more difficult to play by the compromised controller setup. The Intellivision had intricate controllers featuring a numeric keypad. Certain games required the use of the keypad and a special printed overlay to indicate command functions -- something impossible to replicate on PS2 or XBox controllers. To compensate, a single button press brings up an interactive onscreen image of the Intellivision controller, complete with the proper overlay for the current game. It's a nice touch, but not as helpful as it could be -- the controller graphic obscures a large portion of the game action (which doesn't pause), and the overlay text is hard to read even on a large television. This makes even the simple act of choosing menu selections unnecessarily difficult; inputting keypad entries during the actual gameplay is even harder.
Ok, I know from having had one myself as a kid that the "average" Intellivision game would be quite playable on a modern console controller, as a lot of them just used the directional disc and the fire button. However, some of them would be just plain impossible given the cumbersome "chording" you would have to do with an XBOX or Ps2 controller to get all of the key combinations.
A game like TRON Deadly Disks would be almost impossible to play. (BTW, don't hassle me on interchanging "disc" for "disk", as "disk" was what they used in the game.) In that particular game, you had to use the whole keypad, as you could either throw your disk (using the fire button and aiming with the controllers directional disc), or hold onto your disk and block with it. But when you blocked you had to press the number on the keypad in order to block in the appropriate direction. Try doing that while remembering that (a fictitious example) A + B + Left trigger corresponds to "1" on the old numeric keypad, which you then have to remember corresponded to "block diagonally up/left" in the game. Ugh.
I'm sure they have tried to pick games which used the least number of buttons, but to really recreate the experience for me, I wish this (and the direct to TV versions) came with a replica of the original controller, so that I could actually play everything the way it was meant to be played. The ergonomics and the logic of the way the controls are laid out, even for relatively simple games, would get screwed up pretty quickly as well. Even the direct to TV versions come with some bastardized version of a modern controller, reminiscent of the PS2 or XBOX
Hobbit "Merry" would be a faggot with a penchant for saying things that made everyone else in the movie think he was "Gay", though the audience would know better.
Come on. We all know that if any of them had homosexual tendencies, it was Sam Gamgee.
Hell, I'm sure he would have finally scored with Frodo by the end of The Two Towers if it hadn't been for Gollum cock-blocking him the whole time...
You know, I don't think that the pictures of Ashe are really of the same person. this one not only has blonde hair as opposed to brown, but she also has significantly smaller breasts than this one.
Well, we all know that the PS2 hardware is starting to show its age. They probably realized half-way through development that the hardware wasn't up to the task so they had to reduce the Boobygon (TM) count:-)
So let's see, this will let you add a total of, what, like 4 whole games to your library for your non-N-Gage phone?
Don't get me wrong, it's still neat in a way, but "Crappy game system with no games gets cracked so you can play those nonexistant games elsewhere" seems somewhat underwhelming.
Not sure if I will be lynched for this (I have a friend working in the industry that hates the show), but I am very partial to Electric Playground.
The skits are usually funny (yes, sometimes they are dumb, especially in the older shows, but they've gotten a lot better), but more importantly, the reviews are no-holds barred. If they hate a game, they have no qualms about giving it a 2/10 and ripping the shit out of it point by point.
Slashdot Mirror
So, how far does Linux have to come to match these tools?
Considering that they are thinking about moving to an Eclipse/CDT-based IDE, hopefully Linux won't really have to do much of anything.
Eclipse and CDT already run on Java, atop GDB. It's just up to WRS to port whatever OS-aware bits they want to the new Eclipse/CDT architecture, and to make sure that there is a working GDB that can target their hardware.
I am willing to bet that this new Linux strategy is most of the reason they've been toying with the move to Eclipse/CDT in the first place...
Mechanik
Yeah, I find I need to "tickle the monster" at least twice a day to keep my switch flipped.
Er, I mean... no...
So, here's an idea of what's in the download that you may find interesting[...]
Note that the vehicles are only available in the Onslaught game type.
I am REALLY liking Onslaught mode. Those vehicles rock. The bots seem a little too good at picking off the air units though.
Mechanik
I am sick to death of having to hear the usual 10 year old idiots swearing up a storm and calling everyone a faggot over the headset. Now I can hear them do it... in Cantonese!!!
Somebody eviscerate me with sharpened stick please...
Mechanik
'On an intellectual-property level' What does this mean? It's a computer, they can't port the games?
Well, if you think about it, most of the games won't be just writing to DirectX/Direct3D only. Most or all of the pretty engines are going to be writing (for example) shader code directly for the Nvidia GPU that is built in to the XBOX.
Since we know that XBOX++ will not contain an Nvidia GPU (they're going with ATI instead), it is pretty safe to say that using binaries compiled for the current XBOX will not work. If they did, then that would mean that the graphics chips would have to be functionally identical (or at least close enough) to the Nvidia part. Nvidia probably holds a bunch of patents surrounding the chip which currently preclude this unless MS and/or ATI wants to get sued to oblivion.
Mechanik
Bullshit.
Guns are for killing. Maybe killing people, maybe killing animals. Killing anyway.
Those guns which aren't used for killing are used for such pleasures as holding up 7-11 stores, holding the upper hand in a fight, stealing, etc.
Have a look at the US - the most 'relaxed' gun laws around, and the highest incidence of violent crime around.
Remember: guns don't kill; people kill; people with GUNS.
Ok trollboy, I'll feed you...
Personally I like to use my guns for target practice, i.e. making holes in paper targets and then letting my friends (who are REALLY good) humiliate me because they shot a better score than I did. No killing involved, unless you're going to get pedantic and count the trees that were killed to make the paper for the target.
Believe it or not, the majority of gun owners are not raving psychos and criminals as you imply.
Mechanik
You know, while this may seem like a troll comment, I have to admit that with enough wanking, you probably would develop carpal tunnel. Hmmm... guess I need to test that theory out!
We need a Mod option for -1 (Ewwww, don't wanna think about it)
Mechanik
UbiSoft showed that even with the limitations the PS2 has compared to the Xbox and GC, that you can still make a great looking game (Splinter Cell) and have it on all the consoles. In fact, IIRC, UbiSoft actually re-wrote all the rendering abilities for each console to be console specific, so that it would look good on all of them.
Actually, they had to do more than just re-write the renderer. The actually had to tune the content as well so the PS2 and GC could handle it. E.g., in several of the Myanmar levels, they had to make the streets just a bit narrower, and in some places shorter, so that the PS2 wouldn't choke on the level.
Mechanik
Uhm, yes, it does have an option to mute.
I will have to try that, but it would be nice if it was in the documentation somewhere, which to my knowledge it is not.
Mechanik
Then comes along Counter-Strike on Xbox Live, where the goddamn mute function simply doesn't work
At least it has a mute function. Mechassault has absolutely no way of muting anyone except for unplugging you headset, and that doesn't let you hear anyone at all.
Note to developers: do not create an Xbox Live enabled title without the ability to mute individuals. There is nothing more annoying than trying to play a game while someone pipes in what they consider music over your headset, or while they sing, or spout annoying gibberish, or whatever.
Oh yeah, and if you're going to make a toggle button for global/team chat, wouldn't it make more sense to make the default be team chat? What made them think that by default I want an open channel to everyone in the game? Arg.
Mechanik
Honestly, I am more interested in how they can recognize banknotes algorithmically.
If you can detect faces in images by computing a database of eigenfaces, and computing an image's representation as a vector in the resulting so-called "face space", then I see no reason one cannot do this with eigendollars as well.
Mechanik
I'm also somewhat surprised the arcade games didn't do more of this; this dynamic difficulty level is much more addictive then the monotonically increasing (and always huge) difficulty employed by modern games.
:-)
Although it definitely helps the profitability of an arcade game to be fun/addictive, one has to remember that the point of an arcade machine is to keep the player plugging those quarters in. If they made it too difficult to lose the game, you'd never put any more money in.
The trick is to somehow take the player through some optimally contrived series of peaks and valleys wherein you addict them just enough that they will put that one more quarter in to continue should they die/fail, and then crush them mercilessly so that they are in fact forced to do so if they want to keep playing.
And yes, I know it's been a damn long time since arcade games cost a quarter, but I'm a child of the 80's
Mechanik
Link in parent's sig opens about 100 browser windows. I didn't stick around to figure out what they all were doing, but a lot of them had "tubgirl" in the title.
Avoid like the plague
Without a mouse or keyboard?
The PS2 and XBOX both have USB support. Both have third party keyboards available. Adding mouse support would be trivial. I am unfamiliar with the input methods available on the Gamecube, but I assume there is no technical reason why this could not be done there as well.
If lack of keyboard and a mouse is all that is keeping the PC gaming scene alive, then consider it on death's door.
There is nothing stopping console developers from supporting keyboards now. And given that you can get PS2/XBOX to USB adapters, mice are not hard to follow, if they really want to support them.
The reason the developers don't support them however is that there is a stratification of the user base, i.e., since these add-ons do not ship with the console, not all users have them, and developers tend to service the lowest common denominator of their user base where at all possible.
I see it as a pretty easy thing to convince the consumer that paying a little extra for a console that comes with a keyboard and a mouse. You can bet your booty that if Microsoft were to create an XBOX (or heck, to remove the chances of stratification altogether, let's say XBOX2) bundle that included a keyboard, a mouse, and an version of Internet Explorer with MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player, it would sell very well. Having an extra computer in the house is never a bad thing, both from a gamer's point of view, and from the point of view of any parents that might be holding the purse-strings of young gamers (it keeps the goddamned kids off of the real computer so that daddy can surf for pr0n in peace).
Hell, I don't see why they wouldn't want to throw in MS-Office while they were at it. It's not like they give a shit about the anti-trust ramifications of it. And then what have you got? A kick ass console that is also a really cheap computer that will do 95% of what the average computer user does. Guess which console Mommy & Daddy are going to decide to buy for Junior then?
Anyway, back to the original point... From there, support in the games for these peripherals would come. If everyone has it, then it's stupid for the developers not to support it.
So, I think the days where the input devices argument still holds are numbered. If a chump like me can come up with a plan to increase console sales by edging into the conventional PC markets, you can bet MS has already been planning it for a long time now. They just have a lot of patience, and the fat bank account to allow them to bide their time.
The question is whether or not this is a good thing.
Mechanik
I heard in Korea they broadcast computer games over cable tv, with comentators and the full suite.
Ok, call me a geek but I think I would actually find this interesting. Of course, they'd have to be able to freely spectate within the game so that they could fully show the audience what was going on. And I actually want them to talk to the participants and get the lowdown on what their strategy is for the current game. Of course, this means you can't let the other team overhear them.
I'm thinking Iron Chef meets Starcraft, only without the constant use of fish.
Mechanik
Moderately known fact:
("Moderately" because I wouldn't say it's widely known, but it's not little known either. And hey, it's probably offtopic, but who cares, it's interesting...)
The hacker 'zine Phrack was named after this.
Mechanik
Ok, playing Devil's Advocate here...
With the given info stated in the article, these results mean nothing. Yes, it says footage from video games was shown to the survey participants, but it doesn't say what footage. Was the footage truly representative of the game? Did it show the nastiest, most controversial content that the game had to offer?
Fictitious example: They show you footage from Grand Theft Auto III, but all they show you doing is racing your car around town, and don't show you killing Chinese Triad members with a flamethrower, screwing hookers to up your health points, beating up random pedestrians with a baseball bat, etc. If you're not shown anything nasty, of course you're going to say the rating is a good match or is too strict. If all they show is you racing around trying to get fast times, they'll probably think that the worst content this game has to offer is encouraging you to break traffic laws. Of course, anyone familiar with the game knows better.
Without knowing the games they showed the survey participants and what particular content from those games was shown, these numbers are pretty meaningless.
Note that this is not to say that the footage shown was not representative. It might have been. We just don't know.
Note also that as previously stated, I am playing Devil's Advocate here. Personally I think the ratings system as already implemented is pretty darn good. It just bugs me when people trot out statistics like these that quite possibly don't mean shit because statistics are so easily manipulated. Even when I agree with them, it still bothers me.
Mechanik
From the article:
The more complex games are made even more difficult to play by the compromised controller setup. The Intellivision had intricate controllers featuring a numeric keypad. Certain games required the use of the keypad and a special printed overlay to indicate command functions -- something impossible to replicate on PS2 or XBox controllers. To compensate, a single button press brings up an interactive onscreen image of the Intellivision controller, complete with the proper overlay for the current game. It's a nice touch, but not as helpful as it could be -- the controller graphic obscures a large portion of the game action (which doesn't pause), and the overlay text is hard to read even on a large television. This makes even the simple act of choosing menu selections unnecessarily difficult; inputting keypad entries during the actual gameplay is even harder.
Ok, I know from having had one myself as a kid that the "average" Intellivision game would be quite playable on a modern console controller, as a lot of them just used the directional disc and the fire button. However, some of them would be just plain impossible given the cumbersome "chording" you would have to do with an XBOX or Ps2 controller to get all of the key combinations.
Take a look at this image of the Intellivision to see what I mean, or this one of the Intellivision II.
A game like TRON Deadly Disks would be almost impossible to play. (BTW, don't hassle me on interchanging "disc" for "disk", as "disk" was what they used in the game.) In that particular game, you had to use the whole keypad, as you could either throw your disk (using the fire button and aiming with the controllers directional disc), or hold onto your disk and block with it. But when you blocked you had to press the number on the keypad in order to block in the appropriate direction. Try doing that while remembering that (a fictitious example) A + B + Left trigger corresponds to "1" on the old numeric keypad, which you then have to remember corresponded to "block diagonally up/left" in the game. Ugh.
I'm sure they have tried to pick games which used the least number of buttons, but to really recreate the experience for me, I wish this (and the direct to TV versions) came with a replica of the original controller, so that I could actually play everything the way it was meant to be played. The ergonomics and the logic of the way the controls are laid out, even for relatively simple games, would get screwed up pretty quickly as well. Even the direct to TV versions come with some bastardized version of a modern controller, reminiscent of the PS2 or XBOX
Mechanik
Hobbit "Merry" would be a faggot with a penchant for saying things that made everyone else in the movie think he was "Gay", though the audience would know better.
Come on. We all know that if any of them had homosexual tendencies, it was Sam Gamgee.
Hell, I'm sure he would have finally scored with Frodo by the end of The Two Towers if it hadn't been for Gollum cock-blocking him the whole time...
Mechanik
You know, I don't think that the pictures of Ashe are really of the same person. this one not only has blonde hair as opposed to brown, but she also has significantly smaller breasts than this one.
:-)
Well, we all know that the PS2 hardware is starting to show its age. They probably realized half-way through development that the hardware wasn't up to the task so they had to reduce the Boobygon (TM) count
Mechanik
Apparently, the only social network they recognize is the one amongst windows users. Well, I guess there's always slashdot...
:-)
Yeah because we all know how socially adept Slashdotters are...
Half of us probably looked at the term "social networking" and were hoping that it was some sort of geekspeak for sex.
Mechanik
So let's see, this will let you add a total of, what, like 4 whole games to your library for your non-N-Gage phone?
Don't get me wrong, it's still neat in a way, but "Crappy game system with no games gets cracked so you can play those nonexistant games elsewhere" seems somewhat underwhelming.
Mechanik
Not sure if I will be lynched for this (I have a friend working in the industry that hates the show), but I am very partial to Electric Playground.
The skits are usually funny (yes, sometimes they are dumb, especially in the older shows, but they've gotten a lot better), but more importantly, the reviews are no-holds barred. If they hate a game, they have no qualms about giving it a 2/10 and ripping the shit out of it point by point.
Mechanik
Rare has made some great stuff, but I want to see them do more with a 3D environment than hide a bunch of fucking coins or gems or dildos.
No, that will be Techmo with its sequel to DOA: Extreme Beach Volleyball. They'll up the ante from buying your girls just swimsuits...
Mechanik
between a "Slash your throat and rape your wife" pirate and a "Burn a copy of windows XP" priate.
Yes, but at least the former has gotten laid at some point...
And don't get me started on the third kind of pirates, namely the ones that slash your wife and rape your throat...
Mechanik