Man you just nailed what I've never been able to put my finger on about Zelda. I love the original Zelda, and I always find myself interested in each new Zelda game, but I haven't really liked any of them since the original. The exploration is all I cared about in that game. Drop me in the middle of nowhere and give me a wooden sword. No talk bubbles to click through, no horribly mindless errands to run for characters about which I couldn't be bothered to give a damn. Just let me go on my way!
That's just it, we're apparently not looking for smart. From the article:
The next level of AI, Mazerole predicts, is dynamic, independent interactions between characters in a game. Two of them move and bump into one another, and the two happen to be aggressive, and they begin to fight--that's when we'll have turned a corner. So the goal is, apparently, to make assholes. Surly aggressive assholes. Funny how much intelligence it takes to simulate incompetence.
Yea. I mean they should just use the d-pad for that game too. Feedback issues solved, slam dunk!
Proper feedback's pretty rare in all games man (if you can even called rumbling feedback), and until they come out with a fullscale Darth Vader robot with which to duel and play father-son catch, I'll certainly settle for the wiimote game thank you.
That's because *cough* it was the only *cough* reason to even own *cough* and original *cough* XBox (yea I owned one).
Seriously though, Microsoft should spend some of that Halo 3 marketting money on some actual non-Halo game dev. Nintendo, and even Sony, make good first-party game(s!) for their consoles. MS OTOH, as with Windows, relies on third party software a little too much. Halo's a decent game, but it does make Microsoft look rather one-trick-pony. Have you played their other games? And what on earth did they do to Rare? That studio used to be something. Shame.
Google is the #1 company that has been fighting AGAINST government intrusion into search. Totally. Like, they should rename themselves the Ministry of Love, so we all know just how committed they are to human happiness.
I read somewhere about a middleware package that did accomplished dynamic walking. IIRC it accepted some form of skeleton and managed to create a walk from that through some form of AI learning. I distinctly remember a quote from a spokesman from the company admitting they didn't really know how their software works! It just does. I don't think I've heard anything else about it since, this was a few years ago, so I assume the walk cycles it created were unacceptably clumsy or that game devs just don't know what to do with such capabilities yet. It will certainly be a paradigm shift, especially for animators, but that tech is out there. They've been studying this stuff in robotics for decades.
Short of fluid dynamics and soft bodies, I think we have most of the major areas of physics, as they would apply to a game situation, under control. Motor control will probably be one of the more useful things you could pass off to a PPU. It's time to put some simple brains in rag dolls.
I don't have a PS3 or a 360 for that matter. And no I'm not a Second Lifer, but I don't understand the knee-jerk reaction of deriding something that's so "like Second Life." Ignoring the odder antisocialites that parade around Linden's little world and looking at what Second Life is aiming for just ask yourself what's so bad about that? When I first heard about Second Life I was pretty shocked that anyone was even trying that sort of thing as I thought, and still do think, that the tech for it is still some years off. Maybe not, we'll see when Home comes out if it's got the chops to be interesting. It probably won't be all that great as I think that Sony just isn't the right company for something like that (Valve has more heart), but if they've really been working on it all these years (which would explain why they didn't try anything remotely interesting with PS2 Online, even while losing some real ground to XBox Live) then I'm interested in waiting to see.
It's being described as a MMOG, but what we're really talking about is the next generation of the user interface. We used to use punch cards, then we talked to command prompts (I know many still do), then it was the prettier and prettier GUIs. The next logical step is a sort of MMOG whereby you talk to avatars and use virtual terminals. Instead of your friends being in different chat windows they'll be in different characters. It's the kind of thing Virtual Reality never did give us. It's really no different functionally than a basic windowed menu interface, but it is indeed more immersive and whoever finally gets that formula right will really have something on their hands, especially with all these kids growing up accustomed to social networks. Once again with Live, as with Windows, Microsoft has the install base, but they really don't have any imagination. Maybe Sony will with Home, maybe not. I want to play in the world of Idoru, whoever finally builds it.
IANACR (I am not a cryptology researcher) Alright that's the last straw. What is this fascination with IANA* acronyms? It's useless to create an acronym for something if you always have to list the words that comprise it directly after, and it's highly unlikely anyone will adopt your new acronym to the point of making it ubiquitous enough to no longer warrant the explanation. Is there some secret club I'm unaware of where people meet and share experiences of not being something? If you're going to use the IANA*, then be a man and refuse to list the meaning upon peril of incoherency!
And we should make it so, that it doesn't interfere with the plural of vir (man). "There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
- Agent Smith
Hell if it's 2D use Flex. You'll be able to deploy to multiple platforms (unlike DirectX) through Apollo, or just throw that sucker in a browser with Flash. And you don't get much more high-level than Actionscript 3.0, it's a managed language. Flash gets a bad rap for all the banner crap developed with it, but it's pretty crazy what you can do with Actionscript these days.
I don't see what the big deal is here. Assuming ~20 megs average for a FLAC file, 30,000 songs comes out to just under 600 gigs. That should be plenty for anyone!
That kind of stuff would also save time, after the considerable initial time spent building the AI system, on content creation by no longer having to build in that kind of stuff in the levels themselves (then playtesting it and revising). You could just make a level, drop them in, and they'd goto work, assuming the AI was solid. Looking at products like euphoria, there is clearly a market for some incredible middleware packages to be developed in this area, making the potential investment for game devs much easier to manage.
I dunno. However many AI tasks it would take to keep my "enemies" from rubbing their faces into a wall, while I basically just put them down like a mad cow, would be right by me.
Actually if you're referring to this line:
This appears to be protection against 3rd party applications writing out their own databases. Then what they're saying is third party applications can't write their own version of the iTunes database. Rockbox is a complete firmware replacement and can write it's own database any way it pleases. You can just copy files to the iPod like it were a regular external hdd, so they can even have a logical file system structure (meaning instead of a bunch of folders with useless, indescriptively named files of albums spread out all over the place, you could have a saner, more browsable file tree--for say, retrieving files back off your iPod for sharing at a friend's house). Rockbox maintains it's own database, it isn't written by an external application. Of course, there are pros and cons to that. Would be nice if Rockbox had it's own iTunesesque app actually.
Now that I think about it, it kinda seems like the next logical step actually. Port iTunes to Linux and then they have control of iPods on all 3 major platforms. Seems more sensible than just locking Linux users out of ITMS entirely. Although iTunes is pretty bloated and who knows how much of a pain it would be to port to Linux.
If you're using only Linux, then you're not using iTunes, and unless you have a some separate access to a computer with iTunes you're not using ITMS. So why use the proprietary database format of iTunes at all? Just use rockbox and treat your iPod like what it is, a mass storage device. Easier manage your files that way anyway. Headline really should read Apple Cuts Off ITMS From Potential Users.
There's plenty more at which to spew vitriol. I particularly liked this one:
Admittedly though, since I work in the technical area, I don't read very many books. Almost none in fact. Hear that? If you work in a technical field you probably have no imagination. Imagine that! Actually, he seems perfect for the position at Microsoft.
Animal Crossing doesn't have a picture of a Warrior and a Wolf on the box art, implying it's some sort of adventure game. It's very cute and very easy to leave on the store shelf and avoid. Twilight Princess lied to me. Actually, they should have just made Animal Crossing: Twilight Princess. Then everyone would have been blown away by how badass a social simulator could be:)
It really is an insipid game though. Like I said, I played it for 5 hours before finally just saying fuck this. I was really trying to like it. Conversely (and at the risk of actually tying this back into the OT:), I didn't find the first hour of Bully to be boring at all, and it just kept getting better and better. I was actually surprised you get to go out into the town at one point, thinking you'd be confined to the school the whole time. There is plenty of helping characters in that game too, but the game never makes you feel like an asshole for doing so. Maybe because I'd rather help a few hapless nerds get one over on some bullies (or do some bullying myself) than be an errand boy for a few bumpkins (fantasy rednecks are still just rednecks) in a lifeless village. OTOH, Bully's setting feels way more lively, with all kinds of stuff going on around you, plenty of story and interaction. But hey that's just my opinion, here's hoping the next Zelda is more interesting.
Are you saying that the 360 doesn't have a huge library of a bazillion amazing games that in no way are shiny retreads of crap software from last generation with an abysmal dearth of any true innovation? Are you saying that Halo 3 isn't going to be as if clippings from the divine hair of Jesus Christ were pounded into gold dust and pressed onto a disc for the world to revel in the most amazing and completely original FPS experience ever made (for the third time)?
Look pal, Gears of War is like pussy dipped in chocolate and covered in candy sprinkles and if its splendor isn't enough to convince you that any console that doesn't have the number 360 in it's name is totally suxxors, then you you are a thinking rational human being who probably doesn't breathe through his mouth.
Me I'll still just be playing my monotonous yet preciously satisfying Counterstrike for another six years, fairly confident that little of value will be produced that might cause me to pop up my head and look for even a moment into the vast vapid wasteland that is Microsoft's/EA's/Sony's modern video games industry.
Not true. I played Twilight Princess for about 5 hours before finally realizing I just plain hated the game. I think a lot of that was the trauma I experienced in that first village though. Everywhere I went the tedium of my actions just kept reminding me of how pointless and insulting my activities were in that first village.
"You mean you won't open your fucking store because your pussy is aloof? Fuck you lady I'm trying to go on a quest here!"
Then you had to appease the cat too! And he was finicky!! Where's the grab-cat-by-tail-and-move-on button? Or the murder-diptshit-storekeeper button?!
I liked the fishing actually. I wish the game was just fishing with Zelda characters, I would have kept playing. I never felt bored playing Bully.
In the M-rated version, Rockstar has added both an extreme blur effect and in most cases darkened the graphics so that it is nearly impossible to make any sense of what is going on. Players will be able to see character movement, blood splatters, and sometimes they may catch a glimpse of an identifiable action (for example, Danny jamming nails into the legs of a chair-bound opponent), but mostly it's guesswork - a garbled, motiony mess that's far less satisfying. Well fuck it then. I mean really. Personally I've always hated stealth games. They're boring. As Sam Fischer or Solid Snake you're just a wanker in tight pants girl-palming your way through each snore-inducing level. In Manhunt, at least you have actual climaxes. In Manhunt you are a maniac. It's the Quake 3 Arena of stealth games. It's gritty, it's ugly. It has great weapon progression (finally getting a gun actually feels empowering). It has superb sound design. It has atmosphere. It has Brian Cox! And yea it's brutal as hell. It was the only game I ever played that made people leave the room, creeped out by the sounds victims made as they died. That is something special.
I've been psyched about the sequel, and was hopeful things would work out. Now I read that you once had the ability to rip a guy's nuts off with a pair of plyers. Well I wish I never knew that! What milk-toast ESRB namby-pamby shook his limp-wristed finger at that and demanded, with effeminate indignation, that it be excised? I hope they take that weapon completely out of the game, otherwise I'm going to be thinking the whole time of just how much I wish I could neuter my victims with it. That just ain't right.
If the game doesn't interest you then good for you. Don't like these types of games? Vote with your wallet then. Don't think this sort of entertainment should be available at all? Where's your campaign to shutdown Fangoria magazine? Some people like gore. Didn't like the original Manhunt? Fine then. I did. I loved it and I've really been looking forward to the sequel. It was one of the reasons I bought a Wii. Look I'll play Mario Galaxy or Little Big Planet. I like cute too! But pardon me if I just want a little unabashed violence, a little balls in a game every once and a while. Mean, malicious and sweaty! While you're all out playing space marine in fluorescent green armor shooting each other in the fanny with guns like the Needler (oooh scandal!), ignoring the homoerotic undertones of the whole gay pageant you've for months been pining away for, I'll be wondering what might have been.
Nope.
And I was just pointing out how oversimplified your analogy was. I don't think anyone is complaining about simple serial number activation, but when you start adding dongles (hardware or software) and other software that pollutes an operating system and remains even after said software is uninstalled, you're crossing a line. And such software still inevitably fails to avoid being pirated. But keep on fighting that good fight you magnificent red-blooded American! Yeehaw!
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Man you just nailed what I've never been able to put my finger on about Zelda. I love the original Zelda, and I always find myself interested in each new Zelda game, but I haven't really liked any of them since the original. The exploration is all I cared about in that game. Drop me in the middle of nowhere and give me a wooden sword. No talk bubbles to click through, no horribly mindless errands to run for characters about which I couldn't be bothered to give a damn. Just let me go on my way!
Yea. I mean they should just use the d-pad for that game too. Feedback issues solved, slam dunk!
Proper feedback's pretty rare in all games man (if you can even called rumbling feedback), and until they come out with a fullscale Darth Vader robot with which to duel and play father-son catch, I'll certainly settle for the wiimote game thank you.
That's because *cough* it was the only *cough* reason to even own *cough* and original *cough* XBox (yea I owned one).
Seriously though, Microsoft should spend some of that Halo 3 marketting money on some actual non-Halo game dev. Nintendo, and even Sony, make good first-party game(s!) for their consoles. MS OTOH, as with Windows, relies on third party software a little too much. Halo's a decent game, but it does make Microsoft look rather one-trick-pony. Have you played their other games? And what on earth did they do to Rare? That studio used to be something. Shame.
Just watch a half hour of Fox News each week. That should balance it out.
Warning: Don't go over that half-hour.
A wolf in sheep's clothing eats more...
I read somewhere about a middleware package that did accomplished dynamic walking. IIRC it accepted some form of skeleton and managed to create a walk from that through some form of AI learning. I distinctly remember a quote from a spokesman from the company admitting they didn't really know how their software works! It just does. I don't think I've heard anything else about it since, this was a few years ago, so I assume the walk cycles it created were unacceptably clumsy or that game devs just don't know what to do with such capabilities yet. It will certainly be a paradigm shift, especially for animators, but that tech is out there. They've been studying this stuff in robotics for decades.
Short of fluid dynamics and soft bodies, I think we have most of the major areas of physics, as they would apply to a game situation, under control. Motor control will probably be one of the more useful things you could pass off to a PPU. It's time to put some simple brains in rag dolls.
I don't have a PS3 or a 360 for that matter. And no I'm not a Second Lifer, but I don't understand the knee-jerk reaction of deriding something that's so "like Second Life." Ignoring the odder antisocialites that parade around Linden's little world and looking at what Second Life is aiming for just ask yourself what's so bad about that? When I first heard about Second Life I was pretty shocked that anyone was even trying that sort of thing as I thought, and still do think, that the tech for it is still some years off. Maybe not, we'll see when Home comes out if it's got the chops to be interesting. It probably won't be all that great as I think that Sony just isn't the right company for something like that (Valve has more heart), but if they've really been working on it all these years (which would explain why they didn't try anything remotely interesting with PS2 Online, even while losing some real ground to XBox Live) then I'm interested in waiting to see.
It's being described as a MMOG, but what we're really talking about is the next generation of the user interface. We used to use punch cards, then we talked to command prompts (I know many still do), then it was the prettier and prettier GUIs. The next logical step is a sort of MMOG whereby you talk to avatars and use virtual terminals. Instead of your friends being in different chat windows they'll be in different characters. It's the kind of thing Virtual Reality never did give us. It's really no different functionally than a basic windowed menu interface, but it is indeed more immersive and whoever finally gets that formula right will really have something on their hands, especially with all these kids growing up accustomed to social networks. Once again with Live, as with Windows, Microsoft has the install base, but they really don't have any imagination. Maybe Sony will with Home, maybe not. I want to play in the world of Idoru, whoever finally builds it.
"There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You're a plague and we are the cure."
- Agent Smith
Hell if it's 2D use Flex. You'll be able to deploy to multiple platforms (unlike DirectX) through Apollo, or just throw that sucker in a browser with Flash. And you don't get much more high-level than Actionscript 3.0, it's a managed language. Flash gets a bad rap for all the banner crap developed with it, but it's pretty crazy what you can do with Actionscript these days.
I don't see what the big deal is here. Assuming ~20 megs average for a FLAC file, 30,000 songs comes out to just under 600 gigs. That should be plenty for anyone!
That kind of stuff would also save time, after the considerable initial time spent building the AI system, on content creation by no longer having to build in that kind of stuff in the levels themselves (then playtesting it and revising). You could just make a level, drop them in, and they'd goto work, assuming the AI was solid. Looking at products like euphoria, there is clearly a market for some incredible middleware packages to be developed in this area, making the potential investment for game devs much easier to manage.
I dunno. However many AI tasks it would take to keep my "enemies" from rubbing their faces into a wall, while I basically just put them down like a mad cow, would be right by me.
Now that I think about it, it kinda seems like the next logical step actually. Port iTunes to Linux and then they have control of iPods on all 3 major platforms. Seems more sensible than just locking Linux users out of ITMS entirely. Although iTunes is pretty bloated and who knows how much of a pain it would be to port to Linux.
If you're using only Linux, then you're not using iTunes, and unless you have a some separate access to a computer with iTunes you're not using ITMS. So why use the proprietary database format of iTunes at all? Just use rockbox and treat your iPod like what it is, a mass storage device. Easier manage your files that way anyway. Headline really should read Apple Cuts Off ITMS From Potential Users.
Animal Crossing doesn't have a picture of a Warrior and a Wolf on the box art, implying it's some sort of adventure game. It's very cute and very easy to leave on the store shelf and avoid. Twilight Princess lied to me. Actually, they should have just made Animal Crossing: Twilight Princess. Then everyone would have been blown away by how badass a social simulator could be:)
It really is an insipid game though. Like I said, I played it for 5 hours before finally just saying fuck this. I was really trying to like it. Conversely (and at the risk of actually tying this back into the OT:), I didn't find the first hour of Bully to be boring at all, and it just kept getting better and better. I was actually surprised you get to go out into the town at one point, thinking you'd be confined to the school the whole time. There is plenty of helping characters in that game too, but the game never makes you feel like an asshole for doing so. Maybe because I'd rather help a few hapless nerds get one over on some bullies (or do some bullying myself) than be an errand boy for a few bumpkins (fantasy rednecks are still just rednecks) in a lifeless village. OTOH, Bully's setting feels way more lively, with all kinds of stuff going on around you, plenty of story and interaction. But hey that's just my opinion, here's hoping the next Zelda is more interesting.
Are you saying that the 360 doesn't have a huge library of a bazillion amazing games that in no way are shiny retreads of crap software from last generation with an abysmal dearth of any true innovation? Are you saying that Halo 3 isn't going to be as if clippings from the divine hair of Jesus Christ were pounded into gold dust and pressed onto a disc for the world to revel in the most amazing and completely original FPS experience ever made (for the third time)?
Look pal, Gears of War is like pussy dipped in chocolate and covered in candy sprinkles and if its splendor isn't enough to convince you that any console that doesn't have the number 360 in it's name is totally suxxors, then you you are a thinking rational human being who probably doesn't breathe through his mouth.
Me I'll still just be playing my monotonous yet preciously satisfying Counterstrike for another six years, fairly confident that little of value will be produced that might cause me to pop up my head and look for even a moment into the vast vapid wasteland that is Microsoft's/EA's/Sony's modern video games industry.
Not true. I played Twilight Princess for about 5 hours before finally realizing I just plain hated the game. I think a lot of that was the trauma I experienced in that first village though. Everywhere I went the tedium of my actions just kept reminding me of how pointless and insulting my activities were in that first village.
"You mean you won't open your fucking store because your pussy is aloof? Fuck you lady I'm trying to go on a quest here!" Then you had to appease the cat too! And he was finicky!! Where's the grab-cat-by-tail-and-move-on button? Or the murder-diptshit-storekeeper button?!
I liked the fishing actually. I wish the game was just fishing with Zelda characters, I would have kept playing. I never felt bored playing Bully.
I've been psyched about the sequel, and was hopeful things would work out. Now I read that you once had the ability to rip a guy's nuts off with a pair of plyers. Well I wish I never knew that! What milk-toast ESRB namby-pamby shook his limp-wristed finger at that and demanded, with effeminate indignation, that it be excised? I hope they take that weapon completely out of the game, otherwise I'm going to be thinking the whole time of just how much I wish I could neuter my victims with it. That just ain't right.
If the game doesn't interest you then good for you. Don't like these types of games? Vote with your wallet then. Don't think this sort of entertainment should be available at all? Where's your campaign to shutdown Fangoria magazine? Some people like gore. Didn't like the original Manhunt? Fine then. I did. I loved it and I've really been looking forward to the sequel. It was one of the reasons I bought a Wii. Look I'll play Mario Galaxy or Little Big Planet. I like cute too! But pardon me if I just want a little unabashed violence, a little balls in a game every once and a while. Mean, malicious and sweaty! While you're all out playing space marine in fluorescent green armor shooting each other in the fanny with guns like the Needler (oooh scandal!), ignoring the homoerotic undertones of the whole gay pageant you've for months been pining away for, I'll be wondering what might have been.
Yea go ahead. Take my karma!
Nope. And I was just pointing out how oversimplified your analogy was. I don't think anyone is complaining about simple serial number activation, but when you start adding dongles (hardware or software) and other software that pollutes an operating system and remains even after said software is uninstalled, you're crossing a line. And such software still inevitably fails to avoid being pirated. But keep on fighting that good fight you magnificent red-blooded American! Yeehaw!