you lose spirit points regardless of if you kill a non-believer coming at you with a gun (self defense, not necessarily a sin) or just gun down neutral folks for the heck of it (murder, which is a sin).
So, which commandment was it again that said "Thou shalt not kill?" Methinks someone is using the US legal system to decide religious matters, a spiritually brilliant move. I think that one is on the short list of rules for a reason...
I wouldn't say all console launch lineups are terrible. At least, some of the best games have been launch games: Super Mario Bros, Super Mario World, Mario 64, Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, Halo, and Zelda:TP. Although Soul Calibur and Zelda:TP are ports.
While Halo wasn't technically a port of something with an already released version like SC, it was originally a PC/Mac game that had a substantial amount of progress made on it before being moved to the Xbox, more like Zelda, but development of the original version wasn't continued like with the GC version of Zelda (although the final version of Halo was then ported back to the PC/Mac later on, which I've always found kind of funny).
Using an external mouse does fix it entirely. It might not the only way, though. There also happen to be modifier keys which can be used in conjunction with clicking, and one of them (control) happens to by default do the same thing as right clicking. Of course, various others can be used for different things in different combinations when writing an app like the one you describe; try holding down shift, control, option, and command in different combinations with the mouse pointer over a link in Safari if you haven't. That last part is only useful when porting things, but I don't know what level control-click is handled at. Maybe it's low enough that it works when running stuff like that in Parallels or something (not that I have any idea why the problem came up exactly, but I can make random guesses, heh).
I personally find it a lot faster to have a lot of modifiers and only one button on the trackpad when using a laptop, but that might just be because of the way I do things. I have big hands and can just about reach all the keys, plus the trackpad with my thumbs, all at the same time, but that's with my thumbs horizontally across the trackpad and button, and a second button would just be in the way, on my iBook, at least. I don't know whether I get more annoyed by the presence of a second button, mouse nipples in the middle of the keyboard, or tap-to-click being on...
My mouse for my PC desktop has a few buttons and a scrollwheel, though, and that's what I prefer when using a regular mouse and keyboard setup. Different things for different situations. Windows and Linux would be pretty awkward to use without something like that anyway.
P.S. Does anyone know of a good Mac usenet/email group for learning all I can about the Mac? Professionally, I have been programming Windows and Linux for 10 years so I do not want my hand held or told "you don't need to know that". A lot of the tips/solutions/etc I have been finding for Mac releated questions have been more for the "I want it to just work and don't care how" crowd. I am more of the "I love Linux and want to get dirty with my new Mac" crowd.
I have no idea if this is at all related to what you meant, but when I saw "email group" and "programming for 10 years", the first thing I thought of was this. The Apple Mailing Lists have a bunch of developer-related stuff, and there's plenty of stuff to go through in the archives, too. Check the list of lists to see if there's anything of interest.
People have already mentioned a bunch of other stuff that occurred to me as I was going through the comments, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, StarCraft, Bubble Bobble, and so on. I make a point of replaying StarCon2 every couple years, though. The port of it, The Ur-Quan Masters, which runs on modern OSes, makes me very happy, and it's free. I spent months and months playing through the single player setting and playing multiplayer with my friends when I was younger, and it's still just as fun.
Secret of Mana might deserve an honorable mention from me. A couple friends and I got together last year to play it again with three players, which makes the game a lot of fun. Unfortunately we didn't get to finish it before one of them moved across the country. I haven't gotten to play the game all the way through with three people since high school.
Technically I suppose I tend to pull out Legend of Mana more often, mostly because I really like the art style and music. Hmm. Didn't see Dr. Mario skimming through the comments, either. Screw making this into a list or a coherent post. I have to go. Submit button, I choose you!
The interview itself has been posted in pieces over the past few weeks, starting with this segment. It's been ongoing, and it's pretty interesting stuff, if you're into that sort of thing. There was a story posted on Slashdot a week or two ago that mentioned it, even, but it hardly had any replies, so I don't know if that's a sign that no one read it, or what.
Anyway, as I posted on that story back then, among other things, the interview mentions some things that I've seen people here talking about, like the possibility of distributing independent games via the Virtual Console system. They seem to be considering it and possibly in favor of it as high up as Iwata. It goes into a whole lot more detail than the Ars Technica summary does, and the more recent segments talk about some of the software design elements, not just the hardware side of things. Interesting reading.
Heh. It probably doesn't slow down running with 256MB of RAM because that's not enough for OS X to be fast in the first place. It's always been intolerably slow for me with anything less than 512MB, regardless of the CPU, even just using Safari and Terminal to do a few things. There's a reason they've sold all new Macs with 512MB of RAM or more for a while now and the number one recommendation everyone's made for a while before that was to increase the memory of the ones that came with 256MB to at least 512MB (and why everyone complained for so long that they sold them with that little to begin with).
Here's something in Vol. 3 Part 2, which must've been put up more recently, that some people might find interesting, since I've seen its possibilities discussed repeatedly:
Tamaki: Yes. To be honest, I only came to understand this way of thought when I started working on Wii's system functions. But like we've said, when you think of the variety of individuals that make up a family, and their range of interests, you understand that variations in price are only natural. There are people who won't hesitate to purchase expensive products because they like them, and there are people who will scour flyers and coupons everyday for a good deal. Just as it's only natural for people to frequent different kinds of restaurants, it's only natural for products to be sold at a range of prices. The Shopping Channel is full of potential in the sense that it will allow us to sell software and expand our user-base, outside the bounds of the traditional software pricing framework. Needless to say, products distributed by conventional channels of distribution are still important. However, if the Shopping Channel makes it possible for simple ideas and small experimental titles to be sold at a lower price, I think this would greatly expand the possibilities of what developers can do. Iwata: It's even conceivable that we'll take titles that have been popular on the Shopping Channel and further polish them up to be sold as a packaged software with the MSRP accepted in the existing distribution channels. Talking of potential, we may even be able to create an opportunity for amateur developers where they can release games that they have made, although this will be hard to do in the immediate future. The mechanics of the games industry at the moment doesn't allow games to be sold unless they're widely advertised by major publishers to earn greater profit. This seals off gateways into the game industry for new talents. Tamaki: That's right. Maybe the Shopping Channel will open up some doors.
I have never been to a concert where I hear the sound coming from the guitar instead of the amp unless of course, it was acoustic. The point I'm trying to make is that is that it woudln't be "so much cooler!" if the sound came out of the controller.
Yeah, at a big concert, you'll never hear anything like that. You pretty much have to be the one holding the instrument to hear any of the sounds coming from it. Even when I've played at some bars, I usually haven't been able to hear anything like that much, because the acoustics suck at some of them, and the sounds from our drummer behind me and the monitors in front of me make it hard enough to hear what everyone's playing, much less little stuff like that. It's a lot easier to tell while practicing, not performing, so it really would probably be more of one of those "yeah, that's sort of neat that they can do it" things in the game that's not all that essential.
I bought this digital piano that actaully feels closer to the grands at my lessons than the upright at my parents house. I guess it's not so bad when you get used to it. The sound is obvoiusly different, but at least you don't have to worrry about tuning.
I used to work at a music store a few years ago, and I got to fool around with all the keyboards and electric pianos we sold. They're a lot nicer than I remember them being when I was younger. They're still not quite the same, but some of them are pretty decent. Not only do real pianos need tuning, you can't plug headphones into them at three in the morning when other people want to sleep, and they're a lot harder to record when you come up with some little thing you think is interesting and don't want to forget it. Stupid lack of line out on analog instruments. They're a lot harder to move, too.
A bunch of people did buy the Xbox to run various things on it like XBMC and not to play Xbox games. However, that increased the number of Xboxes sold, and they were able to say, "Hey, look at us. We have the number two console (by a bit), even ahead of Nintendo's. Come make games for us!" It makes them credible, whether or not more Xboxes were actually sold for playing games than GameCubes or not (probably, since I'm guessing the XBMC etc. market doesn't make up the whole 3 million difference, but that's hard to measure). And now the successor to it is doing pretty well, at least in the US so far. Their goal seems to be more long term than "make money immediately" with a lot of these things, and it might actually work. They can afford to lose some money for a while until they establish a strong enough foothold in a new market and try to figure out how to make the right product or how to make money off it with version 3.
As an anti-Microsoft person, this is why I'm hoping that Rockbox can be ported to run on the Zune. That way, I can buy a Zune, get a great piece of hardware (MS is known for selling pretty decent hardware: mice, etc.) at an ultra-cheap price, cause MS to lose money by selling it to me below cost, and then run great software on it and play my Oggs, while never buying Windows or any other MS software.
If you're really anti-Microsoft, you won't buy one at all, not matter what's ported to it. They lose more if no one buys it at all. They've already paid a lot of money for R&D, which goes to waste (somewhat: maybe they got something useful from it that can be applied towards something else, but everything towards that specific product is sunk) if no one buys them. If people do buy a bunch of them, though, eventually at some point it's going to become cheap enough to make them that they stop losing money on them. Regardless of when that happens, the more people buy them, the more widely it will be supported, which makes it more attractive, which gets more people to buy them, which gets them more market share, which... Not exactly what I would think "an anti-Microsoft person" would be hoping for.
Heh. I almost went to that with my friend who works at Whatif (who used to be my roommate), because I used to know someone who worked at Harmonix while they were making Amplitude (who also used to be my roommate, oddly enough) and wanted to see if anyone was there who might remember him and wanted to know what he was up to. I was running late, though, and I didn't make it over there.
No it wouldn't. Are you on crack!? You would have sounds coming from two places. Where would you rather have the sound coming from, a little tiny speaker from the controller, or your home-theatre surround system?
Have you even played Guitar Hero?
Have you ever played a guitar? Ok, so technically I play the bass most of the time, but I fool around on the guitar now and then, and this applies to both. The instrument itself isn't silent. Your fingers on the strings/frets and the pick on the strings make plenty of noise if you're right next to the guitar/bass, especially if you don't have the amp turned up to head-exploding sound levels. If you turn the amp down/off, the instrument itself makes all sorts of noises you can hear when you play it, and you can still hear some of them over the amplified sound, depending on how cleanly you're playing, how loud you have it turned up, what tone you're using, whether you're playing with other people, and so on.
I guess my point is that if they really wanted to make it accurate, they could use both the speaker in the controller and the normal sound output from the console combined. For the most part, the sound coming from the controller would probably be pretty subtleif they did that and not stand out too much if you weren't paying attention to it, especially if you have your speakers turned up, but little things like that can make a difference if you're used to the real thing. It's stuff like that that brings it a little closer (and little stuff like that that annoys me about a lot of keyboards after playing the piano for over 20 years, heh).
Now if you want to bring books into it, here's a great example. The Little Prince is presented as a children's book (I first read it as a kid, and it's used when first learning foreign languages, like in my friend's French class in high school) and is about what a kid/child-like character thinks of the world. It even has pictures in it. However, even though it can be read and enjoyed by someone at a relatively young age, it has some pretty important insights in it that serve as good reminders to anyone who reads or rereads it as they get older and can appreciate it more...assuming they don't mind reading a book with large print and occasional illustrations. They're the people who it really holds the most meaning for.
In the same way, a lot of Nintendo's games are accessible to a large range of people, and different people get different things out of them. Several different people can play the same game, and one can take a few months playing a little bit here and there to just take their time and go through the game. Another will get really excited about it, spend two months reading every little detail about it before it comes out, and not put it down for a week after they get it. Maybe a kid gets it as a present and can't quite make it to the end. Someone else plays through over and over to record an absurdly low time to put up on the Speed Demos Archive.
They're not the only ones who make stuff like that, and not everything they make is like that. More than other large game companies, though, they seem to, to some extent, and they've outright stated that that's one of their goals with the DS and Wii as systems.
As far as individual games and individual players go, if a particular game doesn't fit a particular person's taste, obviously that's fine. There are a lot of people who don't give them a chance in the first place, though. It's good to see that some people do even when they don't entirely agree with choices made about the games and still enjoy them somewhat.
More people should give more things out there a chance, not just Nintendo's games. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there in the world. In the worst case, you don't like it, can spend a few minutes thinking about why you don't, and know a little better what you do like. Maybe you'll even find something you really like that you wouldn't have otherwise. It's worked for me. ('you's being 'you' in general, not the poster I'm replying to)
Lets also not forget that the best gaming computer also has many other uses.
Indeed, and I use my computer for a lot of different things. For one thing, you don't have to convince me of anything. If you didn't notice, I happen to like computers and consoles; that's why I have both. On the other hand, does being able to see the status my bank account or write a book report on my computer make it any better at playing games? Not last time I checked. It's certainly a very important additional value, and I spend dozens of hours a week doing things with my computer (not surprising for someone hanging around on Slashdot), but most of those things don't affect my gaming experience in any way and aren't directly involved in a comparison.
For me, personally, they detract from it sometimes. When I've got a bunch of stuff running on my computer, some of which might even be considered "real work", sometimes I can't just start up a game in the middle of all of it if I want to take a break, depending on the game and what kinds of other stuff I already have going. I will be very happy when I have a second computer again and I can un-consolidate some of the stuff I do. Everything I work on, all my music, all my movies, all my non-console games, and all other media are all through the same computer. Yeah, computers can do a lot of stuff, but what if someone else (not necessarily me) wants to do something else at the same time?
When the console is 'expired' that is nothign you can do for it. You put it away and it collects dust in the closet. After all, how many consoles do you have room for on one TV anyway? With a computer, you may have to buy a new video card and you're good for a few more years. Buy a few more components (MB, RAM, CPU) in those couple of years and your good for a long while. Far cheaper than buying everything again.
Well, at my last apartment, I think we had room for every Nintendo console from the NES to the GameCube (partly because the SNES through GameCube can use the same cable if you swap it between them, since you're not going to use them at the same time), a PS2 (plus PS1 games), and a DreamCast just fine, and they all got used (plus a PC in the next room for other games, and my laptop that I usually dragged in there).
There must be some reason that it was fairly popular to have an NES or SNES in college dorms a few years ago (might still be, but I haven't been to one since my younger sister graduated), emulation is popular on PCs, and Nintendo and Sony are both offering download services for old games with their new consoles. For that matter, there must be some reason that DOSbox and ScummVM (both for playing old PC games) keep getting discussed on Slashdot, and projects like The Ur-Quan Masters port old PC games like StarCon2 (which I have very fond memories of and replay every few years) and get tons of downloads.
And how many normal, average people replace the motherboards and CPUs in their computers instead of buying a new computer after a few years? You might. I might. But people who just buy computers to have a computer, to "use the Internets" and play games? Some upgrading is definitely done, but you might be giving them a little too much credit. I know my dad has bought more RAM a few times and maybe a hard drive once, but more than that might be pushing it. Heh.
Then once the new console is realease, the old is worthless and collects dust. Game development for the older platform is promptly stopped. Also the prices of consoles have been steadly rising to revile that of mid end computers. When your PC is obsolete, many of the parts can be moved to the new system. If you don't want to do that, you still have something that can do email and internet. It doesn't become totally worthless.
The old one isn't worthless, like I said, but it is definitely true that game development does start to taper off. It doesn't stop immediately, but after a year or so, it tends to usuall
Disclaimer: It's not so much that I'm disagreeing with you as that what you said got me thinking about the way people argue about the topic in general.
Maybe you're not as technically adept as you think. If you were, you'd have a boot menu that properly setup the dos game by not loading drivers not needed.
Yeah, there were a lot of useful little things like that you could do to make your life easier. On the other hand, you've never had to with consoles. They don't tend to need updated software or new hardware or to be properly configured for things to run properly, because they just work because they're all the same (No, I don't need people to point out exceptions, thanks; I have an N64 with the memory expansion, and that was an (arguably) stupid idea. Developers hardly use things like that if they aren't included with the console. See also: PS2 hard drive). Of course, one of the tradeoffs is that you've never been able to get a fancy new video card for them, for example, and until recently, you haven't been able to get new content or mods for games, while at least as far back as things like Doom, there was a pretty good community of people trading WAD files.
(not that current consoles last at most 3 years, before the next gen comes out)
Now that's just not even true. The average time between console generations since the original NES came out has been about five years, which is plenty of time to get a lot of use out of each set of hardware, just like you don't need to upgrade your PC constantly, either.
I own more than half a dozen consoles and handhelds from the past 20 years right now, am going to buy a Wii, and am in the middle of putting together a new PC for gaming. I played PC and Mac games growing up, most consoles that have come out along the way, and a little stuff in arcades, too. You know what? They're all good (except for the ones that suck; we won't talk about those). I might not like what some of the companies do sometimes, or some of the hardware might be better or worse than others at other times, but when it comes to the games, are they fun? Yeah. A lot of them are, on each of those systems, from all points in time. In my experience, at least.
Oops. Didn't see this for a couple days while I was out of town.
Windows has the advantage when an app requires no menu. Macs have an advantage when an app is maximized (no title bar).
Last time I checked, all windows in XP and OS X have a title bar. In Windows, those that have menu bars have those beneath that as well. If you compare by dragging a window in OS X against the menu bar at the top of the screen, it's about the same size. The difference is that there are a bunch of menu bar/title bar pairs all over the place in Windows. I can't think of a lot of stuff other than PuTTY off the top of my head that doesn't have menus. Anyway, that really isn't that a big deal, and I'm mostly thinking out loud, or whatever it is one does into a text box.
That would explain why you think Fitt's "law" still applies.
I think the reason I still think it applies is that it takes me a lot less time to find stuff that's on the edges of the screen, which is why I put windows that I use a lot there. It's a little bit slower to accurately point at the tab bar in my browser with the mouse to switch to specific tabs, and they're only a few dozen pixels away from things on the screen border that are noticeably quicker to hit. There's also a reason I have my screensaver activate and lock my screen when I flick the pointer into a certain corner of the screen; it's a whole lot faster and easier than finding an arbitrary spot in the middle of it. Of course it's less of a big deal at higher resolutions (when you have to move much farther than before) than it used to be, but it's still relevant to some extent.
Eh. If you're into that sort of thing. I still like my Grados more than anything. They're sexy. Well, not everyone thinks so to look at (they're not exactly modern-looking headphones and can be an acquired taste), but they sound great, and that's all I care about.
I think taht the general public's conception of Sony's PlayStation 3 in respect to the function of the HDMI port is that it is an integral and necessary component of the Sony Blu-Ray DRM for video playback.
More realistically, I think most of the general public thinks, "HDMI? What the %!$!# does that mean?" The vast majority of people don't spend their time on Slashdot debating with a bunch of dorks like us about what the outcome will be of including or not including a cable with a game console. If they even care about the PS3, which a large part of the general public doesn't, most of them just want to play games.
"I prefer this to the approach of replicating the same application menus in each window, but each to their own."
Except there's no downside to doing that and they take up no more space, but to each their own.
Aside from the implications of Fitt's law, they do take up more space. There's a menu bar in every single window instead of just a single menu bar in one place on the screen, so you have an amount of space used based on the number of windows open and the total width of the windows, instead of a single strip across the top of the screen. Yes, I do stop and think about things like this and turn off non-essential toolbars in apps I use and get annoyed when new versions of things waste more space in the interface. Heh. Maybe it comes from a couple years being stuck back in 640x480 with a crappy video card a few years ago.
The really funny part is that you can use AppleScript to tell QuickTime Player to play a video full screen even without QT Pro, or at least you used to be able to. I haven't tried lately. It only disables the menu option in the app, not the functionality itself, if memory serves me right.
The camera's a pretty big pain in the ass at times, especially after getting used to games that have come out since then and improved on things like that, but I've never had a problem with any of the other controls, neither when it was new nor when going back and playing it again more recently and comparing it to newer games.
And I kind of liked that there were multiple things to do in each level; a lot of them were a pretty decent size, so putting stars in different parts of them made people explore different areas of them and let them flesh the levels out a lot more. Previous Mario games didn't have single levels with anywhere near as much stuff in them to just run around and screw around with.
Now, I could look at the paragraph about being influenced by "paid reviews" and "inferior systems" and wonder where your bias lies, but I suspect that's not worth anyone's time if that's how strongly you feel. Likewise, I won't bother getting into a discussion about how maybe you and some other people happen to not like it for those reasons you've stated, but most people seem to think it's pretty good, and it's a matter of opinion either way, because you sound pretty convinced that you're right, and those other people are all a bunch of dumbasses.
I was not a fan of the P4, and I don't think it really lived up to their hopes for it. The Pentium M was a pretty encouraging sign of things to come, though. It was a very nice step up for mobile use, while the G4 was essentially stagnant for a really, really long time, other than speed increases. Everyone liked to talk about the next big thing that was the rumor that would solve that problem, but there never really was any sign that anything really existed. The G5-in-a-laptop was just never going to happen (people think the MacBooks get a little hot now?), and the Freescale stuff always seemed like kind of sort of they might be working on something cool...no, really!
And I'm writing this from an iBook G4 that's showing its age more and more every couple months and hoping it'll magically have a Core Duo in it one morning instead.
Slashdot Mirror
you lose spirit points regardless of if you kill a non-believer coming at you with a gun (self defense, not necessarily a sin) or just gun down neutral folks for the heck of it (murder, which is a sin).
So, which commandment was it again that said "Thou shalt not kill?" Methinks someone is using the US legal system to decide religious matters, a spiritually brilliant move. I think that one is on the short list of rules for a reason...
I wouldn't say all console launch lineups are terrible. At least, some of the best games have been launch games: Super Mario Bros, Super Mario World, Mario 64, Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, Halo, and Zelda:TP. Although Soul Calibur and Zelda:TP are ports.
While Halo wasn't technically a port of something with an already released version like SC, it was originally a PC/Mac game that had a substantial amount of progress made on it before being moved to the Xbox, more like Zelda, but development of the original version wasn't continued like with the GC version of Zelda (although the final version of Halo was then ported back to the PC/Mac later on, which I've always found kind of funny).
Using an external mouse does fix it entirely. It might not the only way, though. There also happen to be modifier keys which can be used in conjunction with clicking, and one of them (control) happens to by default do the same thing as right clicking. Of course, various others can be used for different things in different combinations when writing an app like the one you describe; try holding down shift, control, option, and command in different combinations with the mouse pointer over a link in Safari if you haven't. That last part is only useful when porting things, but I don't know what level control-click is handled at. Maybe it's low enough that it works when running stuff like that in Parallels or something (not that I have any idea why the problem came up exactly, but I can make random guesses, heh).
I personally find it a lot faster to have a lot of modifiers and only one button on the trackpad when using a laptop, but that might just be because of the way I do things. I have big hands and can just about reach all the keys, plus the trackpad with my thumbs, all at the same time, but that's with my thumbs horizontally across the trackpad and button, and a second button would just be in the way, on my iBook, at least. I don't know whether I get more annoyed by the presence of a second button, mouse nipples in the middle of the keyboard, or tap-to-click being on...
My mouse for my PC desktop has a few buttons and a scrollwheel, though, and that's what I prefer when using a regular mouse and keyboard setup. Different things for different situations. Windows and Linux would be pretty awkward to use without something like that anyway.
P.S. Does anyone know of a good Mac usenet/email group for learning all I can about the Mac? Professionally, I have been programming Windows and Linux for 10 years so I do not want my hand held or told "you don't need to know that". A lot of the tips/solutions/etc I have been finding for Mac releated questions have been more for the "I want it to just work and don't care how" crowd. I am more of the "I love Linux and want to get dirty with my new Mac" crowd.
I have no idea if this is at all related to what you meant, but when I saw "email group" and "programming for 10 years", the first thing I thought of was this. The Apple Mailing Lists have a bunch of developer-related stuff, and there's plenty of stuff to go through in the archives, too. Check the list of lists to see if there's anything of interest.
People have already mentioned a bunch of other stuff that occurred to me as I was going through the comments, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Super Mario World, Super Metroid, StarCraft, Bubble Bobble, and so on. I make a point of replaying StarCon2 every couple years, though. The port of it, The Ur-Quan Masters, which runs on modern OSes, makes me very happy, and it's free. I spent months and months playing through the single player setting and playing multiplayer with my friends when I was younger, and it's still just as fun.
Secret of Mana might deserve an honorable mention from me. A couple friends and I got together last year to play it again with three players, which makes the game a lot of fun. Unfortunately we didn't get to finish it before one of them moved across the country. I haven't gotten to play the game all the way through with three people since high school.
Technically I suppose I tend to pull out Legend of Mana more often, mostly because I really like the art style and music. Hmm. Didn't see Dr. Mario skimming through the comments, either. Screw making this into a list or a coherent post. I have to go. Submit button, I choose you!
The interview itself has been posted in pieces over the past few weeks, starting with this segment. It's been ongoing, and it's pretty interesting stuff, if you're into that sort of thing. There was a story posted on Slashdot a week or two ago that mentioned it, even, but it hardly had any replies, so I don't know if that's a sign that no one read it, or what.
Anyway, as I posted on that story back then, among other things, the interview mentions some things that I've seen people here talking about, like the possibility of distributing independent games via the Virtual Console system. They seem to be considering it and possibly in favor of it as high up as Iwata. It goes into a whole lot more detail than the Ars Technica summary does, and the more recent segments talk about some of the software design elements, not just the hardware side of things. Interesting reading.
Heh. It probably doesn't slow down running with 256MB of RAM because that's not enough for OS X to be fast in the first place. It's always been intolerably slow for me with anything less than 512MB, regardless of the CPU, even just using Safari and Terminal to do a few things. There's a reason they've sold all new Macs with 512MB of RAM or more for a while now and the number one recommendation everyone's made for a while before that was to increase the memory of the ones that came with 256MB to at least 512MB (and why everyone complained for so long that they sold them with that little to begin with).
Here's something in Vol. 3 Part 2, which must've been put up more recently, that some people might find interesting, since I've seen its possibilities discussed repeatedly:
Tamaki: Yes. To be honest, I only came to understand this way of thought when I started working on Wii's system functions. But like we've said, when you think of the variety of individuals that make up a family, and their range of interests, you understand that variations in price are only natural. There are people who won't hesitate to purchase expensive products because they like them, and there are people who will scour flyers and coupons everyday for a good deal. Just as it's only natural for people to frequent different kinds of restaurants, it's only natural for products to be sold at a range of prices. The Shopping Channel is full of potential in the sense that it will allow us to sell software and expand our user-base, outside the bounds of the traditional software pricing framework. Needless to say, products distributed by conventional channels of distribution are still important. However, if the Shopping Channel makes it possible for simple ideas and small experimental titles to be sold at a lower price, I think this would greatly expand the possibilities of what developers can do.
Iwata: It's even conceivable that we'll take titles that have been popular on the Shopping Channel and further polish them up to be sold as a packaged software with the MSRP accepted in the existing distribution channels. Talking of potential, we may even be able to create an opportunity for amateur developers where they can release games that they have made, although this will be hard to do in the immediate future. The mechanics of the games industry at the moment doesn't allow games to be sold unless they're widely advertised by major publishers to earn greater profit. This seals off gateways into the game industry for new talents.
Tamaki: That's right. Maybe the Shopping Channel will open up some doors.
[...]
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k3w1d00d: W3ll, th15 15 14m3 n0w. Y0u guy5 5uck.
k3w1d00d has left the game.
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"MOM! Dad pwned me again!"
Your sig is possibly the best part of that coming after all the rest and what makes it so good. Heh.
I have never been to a concert where I hear the sound coming from the guitar instead of the amp unless of course, it was acoustic. The point I'm trying to make is that is that it woudln't be "so much cooler!" if the sound came out of the controller.
Yeah, at a big concert, you'll never hear anything like that. You pretty much have to be the one holding the instrument to hear any of the sounds coming from it. Even when I've played at some bars, I usually haven't been able to hear anything like that much, because the acoustics suck at some of them, and the sounds from our drummer behind me and the monitors in front of me make it hard enough to hear what everyone's playing, much less little stuff like that. It's a lot easier to tell while practicing, not performing, so it really would probably be more of one of those "yeah, that's sort of neat that they can do it" things in the game that's not all that essential.
I bought this digital piano that actaully feels closer to the grands at my lessons than the upright at my parents house. I guess it's not so bad when you get used to it. The sound is obvoiusly different, but at least you don't have to worrry about tuning.
I used to work at a music store a few years ago, and I got to fool around with all the keyboards and electric pianos we sold. They're a lot nicer than I remember them being when I was younger. They're still not quite the same, but some of them are pretty decent. Not only do real pianos need tuning, you can't plug headphones into them at three in the morning when other people want to sleep, and they're a lot harder to record when you come up with some little thing you think is interesting and don't want to forget it. Stupid lack of line out on analog instruments. They're a lot harder to move, too.
A bunch of people did buy the Xbox to run various things on it like XBMC and not to play Xbox games. However, that increased the number of Xboxes sold, and they were able to say, "Hey, look at us. We have the number two console (by a bit), even ahead of Nintendo's. Come make games for us!" It makes them credible, whether or not more Xboxes were actually sold for playing games than GameCubes or not (probably, since I'm guessing the XBMC etc. market doesn't make up the whole 3 million difference, but that's hard to measure). And now the successor to it is doing pretty well, at least in the US so far. Their goal seems to be more long term than "make money immediately" with a lot of these things, and it might actually work. They can afford to lose some money for a while until they establish a strong enough foothold in a new market and try to figure out how to make the right product or how to make money off it with version 3.
As an anti-Microsoft person, this is why I'm hoping that Rockbox can be ported to run on the Zune. That way, I can buy a Zune, get a great piece of hardware (MS is known for selling pretty decent hardware: mice, etc.) at an ultra-cheap price, cause MS to lose money by selling it to me below cost, and then run great software on it and play my Oggs, while never buying Windows or any other MS software.
If you're really anti-Microsoft, you won't buy one at all, not matter what's ported to it. They lose more if no one buys it at all. They've already paid a lot of money for R&D, which goes to waste (somewhat: maybe they got something useful from it that can be applied towards something else, but everything towards that specific product is sunk) if no one buys them. If people do buy a bunch of them, though, eventually at some point it's going to become cheap enough to make them that they stop losing money on them. Regardless of when that happens, the more people buy them, the more widely it will be supported, which makes it more attractive, which gets more people to buy them, which gets them more market share, which... Not exactly what I would think "an anti-Microsoft person" would be hoping for.
Heh. I almost went to that with my friend who works at Whatif (who used to be my roommate), because I used to know someone who worked at Harmonix while they were making Amplitude (who also used to be my roommate, oddly enough) and wanted to see if anyone was there who might remember him and wanted to know what he was up to. I was running late, though, and I didn't make it over there.
No it wouldn't. Are you on crack!? You would have sounds coming from two places. Where would you rather have the sound coming from, a little tiny speaker from the controller, or your home-theatre surround system?
Have you even played Guitar Hero?
Have you ever played a guitar? Ok, so technically I play the bass most of the time, but I fool around on the guitar now and then, and this applies to both. The instrument itself isn't silent. Your fingers on the strings/frets and the pick on the strings make plenty of noise if you're right next to the guitar/bass, especially if you don't have the amp turned up to head-exploding sound levels. If you turn the amp down/off, the instrument itself makes all sorts of noises you can hear when you play it, and you can still hear some of them over the amplified sound, depending on how cleanly you're playing, how loud you have it turned up, what tone you're using, whether you're playing with other people, and so on.
I guess my point is that if they really wanted to make it accurate, they could use both the speaker in the controller and the normal sound output from the console combined. For the most part, the sound coming from the controller would probably be pretty subtleif they did that and not stand out too much if you weren't paying attention to it, especially if you have your speakers turned up, but little things like that can make a difference if you're used to the real thing. It's stuff like that that brings it a little closer (and little stuff like that that annoys me about a lot of keyboards after playing the piano for over 20 years, heh).
Now if you want to bring books into it, here's a great example. The Little Prince is presented as a children's book (I first read it as a kid, and it's used when first learning foreign languages, like in my friend's French class in high school) and is about what a kid/child-like character thinks of the world. It even has pictures in it. However, even though it can be read and enjoyed by someone at a relatively young age, it has some pretty important insights in it that serve as good reminders to anyone who reads or rereads it as they get older and can appreciate it more...assuming they don't mind reading a book with large print and occasional illustrations. They're the people who it really holds the most meaning for.
In the same way, a lot of Nintendo's games are accessible to a large range of people, and different people get different things out of them. Several different people can play the same game, and one can take a few months playing a little bit here and there to just take their time and go through the game. Another will get really excited about it, spend two months reading every little detail about it before it comes out, and not put it down for a week after they get it. Maybe a kid gets it as a present and can't quite make it to the end. Someone else plays through over and over to record an absurdly low time to put up on the Speed Demos Archive.
They're not the only ones who make stuff like that, and not everything they make is like that. More than other large game companies, though, they seem to, to some extent, and they've outright stated that that's one of their goals with the DS and Wii as systems.
As far as individual games and individual players go, if a particular game doesn't fit a particular person's taste, obviously that's fine. There are a lot of people who don't give them a chance in the first place, though. It's good to see that some people do even when they don't entirely agree with choices made about the games and still enjoy them somewhat.
More people should give more things out there a chance, not just Nintendo's games. There's a lot of interesting stuff out there in the world. In the worst case, you don't like it, can spend a few minutes thinking about why you don't, and know a little better what you do like. Maybe you'll even find something you really like that you wouldn't have otherwise. It's worked for me. ('you's being 'you' in general, not the poster I'm replying to)
Lets also not forget that the best gaming computer also has many other uses.
Indeed, and I use my computer for a lot of different things. For one thing, you don't have to convince me of anything. If you didn't notice, I happen to like computers and consoles; that's why I have both. On the other hand, does being able to see the status my bank account or write a book report on my computer make it any better at playing games? Not last time I checked. It's certainly a very important additional value, and I spend dozens of hours a week doing things with my computer (not surprising for someone hanging around on Slashdot), but most of those things don't affect my gaming experience in any way and aren't directly involved in a comparison.
For me, personally, they detract from it sometimes. When I've got a bunch of stuff running on my computer, some of which might even be considered "real work", sometimes I can't just start up a game in the middle of all of it if I want to take a break, depending on the game and what kinds of other stuff I already have going. I will be very happy when I have a second computer again and I can un-consolidate some of the stuff I do. Everything I work on, all my music, all my movies, all my non-console games, and all other media are all through the same computer. Yeah, computers can do a lot of stuff, but what if someone else (not necessarily me) wants to do something else at the same time?
When the console is 'expired' that is nothign you can do for it. You put it away and it collects dust in the closet. After all, how many consoles do you have room for on one TV anyway? With a computer, you may have to buy a new video card and you're good for a few more years. Buy a few more components (MB, RAM, CPU) in those couple of years and your good for a long while. Far cheaper than buying everything again.
Well, at my last apartment, I think we had room for every Nintendo console from the NES to the GameCube (partly because the SNES through GameCube can use the same cable if you swap it between them, since you're not going to use them at the same time), a PS2 (plus PS1 games), and a DreamCast just fine, and they all got used (plus a PC in the next room for other games, and my laptop that I usually dragged in there).
There must be some reason that it was fairly popular to have an NES or SNES in college dorms a few years ago (might still be, but I haven't been to one since my younger sister graduated), emulation is popular on PCs, and Nintendo and Sony are both offering download services for old games with their new consoles. For that matter, there must be some reason that DOSbox and ScummVM (both for playing old PC games) keep getting discussed on Slashdot, and projects like The Ur-Quan Masters port old PC games like StarCon2 (which I have very fond memories of and replay every few years) and get tons of downloads.
And how many normal, average people replace the motherboards and CPUs in their computers instead of buying a new computer after a few years? You might. I might. But people who just buy computers to have a computer, to "use the Internets" and play games? Some upgrading is definitely done, but you might be giving them a little too much credit. I know my dad has bought more RAM a few times and maybe a hard drive once, but more than that might be pushing it. Heh.
Then once the new console is realease, the old is worthless and collects dust. Game development for the older platform is promptly stopped. Also the prices of consoles have been steadly rising to revile that of mid end computers. When your PC is obsolete, many of the parts can be moved to the new system. If you don't want to do that, you still have something that can do email and internet. It doesn't become totally worthless.
The old one isn't worthless, like I said, but it is definitely true that game development does start to taper off. It doesn't stop immediately, but after a year or so, it tends to usuall
Disclaimer: It's not so much that I'm disagreeing with you as that what you said got me thinking about the way people argue about the topic in general.
Maybe you're not as technically adept as you think. If you were, you'd have a boot menu that properly setup the dos game by not loading drivers not needed.
Yeah, there were a lot of useful little things like that you could do to make your life easier. On the other hand, you've never had to with consoles. They don't tend to need updated software or new hardware or to be properly configured for things to run properly, because they just work because they're all the same (No, I don't need people to point out exceptions, thanks; I have an N64 with the memory expansion, and that was an (arguably) stupid idea. Developers hardly use things like that if they aren't included with the console. See also: PS2 hard drive). Of course, one of the tradeoffs is that you've never been able to get a fancy new video card for them, for example, and until recently, you haven't been able to get new content or mods for games, while at least as far back as things like Doom, there was a pretty good community of people trading WAD files.
(not that current consoles last at most 3 years, before the next gen comes out)
Now that's just not even true. The average time between console generations since the original NES came out has been about five years, which is plenty of time to get a lot of use out of each set of hardware, just like you don't need to upgrade your PC constantly, either.
I own more than half a dozen consoles and handhelds from the past 20 years right now, am going to buy a Wii, and am in the middle of putting together a new PC for gaming. I played PC and Mac games growing up, most consoles that have come out along the way, and a little stuff in arcades, too. You know what? They're all good (except for the ones that suck; we won't talk about those). I might not like what some of the companies do sometimes, or some of the hardware might be better or worse than others at other times, but when it comes to the games, are they fun? Yeah. A lot of them are, on each of those systems, from all points in time. In my experience, at least.
Oops. Didn't see this for a couple days while I was out of town.
Windows has the advantage when an app requires no menu. Macs have an advantage when an app is maximized (no title bar).
Last time I checked, all windows in XP and OS X have a title bar. In Windows, those that have menu bars have those beneath that as well. If you compare by dragging a window in OS X against the menu bar at the top of the screen, it's about the same size. The difference is that there are a bunch of menu bar/title bar pairs all over the place in Windows. I can't think of a lot of stuff other than PuTTY off the top of my head that doesn't have menus. Anyway, that really isn't that a big deal, and I'm mostly thinking out loud, or whatever it is one does into a text box.
That would explain why you think Fitt's "law" still applies.
I think the reason I still think it applies is that it takes me a lot less time to find stuff that's on the edges of the screen, which is why I put windows that I use a lot there. It's a little bit slower to accurately point at the tab bar in my browser with the mouse to switch to specific tabs, and they're only a few dozen pixels away from things on the screen border that are noticeably quicker to hit. There's also a reason I have my screensaver activate and lock my screen when I flick the pointer into a certain corner of the screen; it's a whole lot faster and easier than finding an arbitrary spot in the middle of it. Of course it's less of a big deal at higher resolutions (when you have to move much farther than before) than it used to be, but it's still relevant to some extent.
sony still makes the best headphones
Eh. If you're into that sort of thing. I still like my Grados more than anything. They're sexy. Well, not everyone thinks so to look at (they're not exactly modern-looking headphones and can be an acquired taste), but they sound great, and that's all I care about.
I think taht the general public's conception of Sony's PlayStation 3 in respect to the function of the HDMI port is that it is an integral and necessary component of the Sony Blu-Ray DRM for video playback.
More realistically, I think most of the general public thinks, "HDMI? What the %!$!# does that mean?" The vast majority of people don't spend their time on Slashdot debating with a bunch of dorks like us about what the outcome will be of including or not including a cable with a game console. If they even care about the PS3, which a large part of the general public doesn't, most of them just want to play games.
"I prefer this to the approach of replicating the same application menus in each window, but each to their own."
Except there's no downside to doing that and they take up no more space, but to each their own.
Aside from the implications of Fitt's law, they do take up more space. There's a menu bar in every single window instead of just a single menu bar in one place on the screen, so you have an amount of space used based on the number of windows open and the total width of the windows, instead of a single strip across the top of the screen. Yes, I do stop and think about things like this and turn off non-essential toolbars in apps I use and get annoyed when new versions of things waste more space in the interface. Heh. Maybe it comes from a couple years being stuck back in 640x480 with a crappy video card a few years ago.
The really funny part is that you can use AppleScript to tell QuickTime Player to play a video full screen even without QT Pro, or at least you used to be able to. I haven't tried lately. It only disables the menu option in the app, not the functionality itself, if memory serves me right.
The camera's a pretty big pain in the ass at times, especially after getting used to games that have come out since then and improved on things like that, but I've never had a problem with any of the other controls, neither when it was new nor when going back and playing it again more recently and comparing it to newer games.
And I kind of liked that there were multiple things to do in each level; a lot of them were a pretty decent size, so putting stars in different parts of them made people explore different areas of them and let them flesh the levels out a lot more. Previous Mario games didn't have single levels with anywhere near as much stuff in them to just run around and screw around with.
Now, I could look at the paragraph about being influenced by "paid reviews" and "inferior systems" and wonder where your bias lies, but I suspect that's not worth anyone's time if that's how strongly you feel. Likewise, I won't bother getting into a discussion about how maybe you and some other people happen to not like it for those reasons you've stated, but most people seem to think it's pretty good, and it's a matter of opinion either way, because you sound pretty convinced that you're right, and those other people are all a bunch of dumbasses.
Well, good day, sir.
I think you dropped your space bar. I'll let you know if I see it.
I was not a fan of the P4, and I don't think it really lived up to their hopes for it. The Pentium M was a pretty encouraging sign of things to come, though. It was a very nice step up for mobile use, while the G4 was essentially stagnant for a really, really long time, other than speed increases. Everyone liked to talk about the next big thing that was the rumor that would solve that problem, but there never really was any sign that anything really existed. The G5-in-a-laptop was just never going to happen (people think the MacBooks get a little hot now?), and the Freescale stuff always seemed like kind of sort of they might be working on something cool...no, really!
And I'm writing this from an iBook G4 that's showing its age more and more every couple months and hoping it'll magically have a Core Duo in it one morning instead.