As someone, who was with the series from the very beginning (Yep, Akalabeth and all the spinoffs too.), I think I speak for all fans of Ultima when I say...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
That said, I feel this particular title should stay buried under hazy, but beautiful memories, as one of the precursors of RPGs, and a very good series of games. Reviving this as anything other than an RPG game dilutes it's essence - it's amazing storyline, great set of characters and innovative approaches to quests.
I don't know how it works in the US, but in Europe (or at least where I live) there are 348576384756876 different, conflicting coding standards for infrared messages, so the only real place for your Universal Remote is in the trash can.
Not that I condone using phones for remote control...
Based on observation, L4D server searches are country-limited. Living in central europe, I find myself almost always connected to either german or russian servers, which to me isn't in any way good - i get >150ms pings from them, and most of the time they're filled with custom config files that allow such bullshit like three tanks/witches in a row on one map. I would love a server selection option for the lobby leader.
Onboard, no matter how hard it pains me to say it now, isn't always worse than an external solution. Although this particular model wouldn't stand up to, i dunno, an Auzentech or something, it still beats, hands down, most of the crap Creative can muster, with the sole exception of EAX, which is only used for gaming, anyway.
Virtual instruments mostly. A lot of current audio plugins (VST/DX, no experience with macs) are real (and i mean REAL) CPU/RAM hogs. Today, even a simple fm synth with a bit of magical dsp thingamabobs is going to eat into your CPU big time. For instance, Image-Line's Sytrus, a brilliant software FM/Additive synth can eat anything up to 30% of processing time. As for RAM, there are gigantic sample banks out there, easily bigger than a blu-ray disc (Vienna Instruments for example) that don't come with a custom VSTi/DXi sampler, and are thus unoptimized for low/mid-end usage.
And the sound card? IMO, that's pretty much audio voodoo, with differences unhearable between this high-end piece and cheaper products designed for studio usage (eg. the E-Mu 0404/1212m line). You could make the argument that the AC/DC converters do a better job, but the truth is, more distortion and noise gets through from your external hardware than from the card itself. On that, however, I wouldn't quote me, that's just personal experience, and I haven't been around audio production that much.
"Gigamesh" is the perfect example of how to ruin a perfectly good book with too in-depth reviews, though in my opinion the whole damn book is really good. There's a copy up on books.google, translated by Michael Kandel - as far as a native speaker of Polish (with an upcoming BA in english. Wish me luck!) can tell you, a pretty faithful translation. There's also a small article up on Wikipedia.
Speed is precious too. Executable packers make sense when your.exe is something like 40MB, because your stupid project manager forced you to include a bunch of idiotic resources into it, something along the lines of bitmaps and uncompressed wave files (true story!). It may sound funny, but with current run-of-the-mill consumer CPUs it is actually faster to read a small file from the HD and uncompress a resource than to wait for the whole executable to load all this bloat. Still, we're talking about a speed difference of around 300-400ms (yes, i took these out from my ass, but those were results of our crappy testbed), so it's not something a typical consumer would notice, although pretty numbers are a good thing when your boss doesn't know shit about computers.
Doesn't seem to me like games are a good medium to spread your political messages - after all, games are... well, games. You play them to have fun, not to be fed loads of political horsecrap. Those so inclined may as well analyze, event after event, the ideological backgrounds of each turn taken by the game's story, but seriously, that's not where the "entertainment" bit is at. And gamers are there for entertainment.
Slashdot Mirror
Pah! Finally, those uncultured stem cells will learn the finer arts of high society!
As someone, who was with the series from the very beginning (Yep, Akalabeth and all the spinoffs too.), I think I speak for all fans of Ultima when I say...
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
That said, I feel this particular title should stay buried under hazy, but beautiful memories, as one of the precursors of RPGs, and a very good series of games. Reviving this as anything other than an RPG game dilutes it's essence - it's amazing storyline, great set of characters and innovative approaches to quests.
...have absolutely nothing on the admins of it-he.org
Read their Ultima sections.
Reeeead them.
As somebody completely unrelated to the submitted entry or Anon-a-blog, I'm also pretty much cool with it!
Let me be the first to voice the opinion of laid off IT workers:
Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!
I wish I had modpoints, I'd mod up the fuck out of your post!
I don't know how it works in the US, but in Europe (or at least where I live) there are 348576384756876 different, conflicting coding standards for infrared messages, so the only real place for your Universal Remote is in the trash can.
Not that I condone using phones for remote control...
Based on observation, L4D server searches are country-limited. Living in central europe, I find myself almost always connected to either german or russian servers, which to me isn't in any way good - i get >150ms pings from them, and most of the time they're filled with custom config files that allow such bullshit like three tanks/witches in a row on one map. I would love a server selection option for the lobby leader.
Onboard, no matter how hard it pains me to say it now, isn't always worse than an external solution. Although this particular model wouldn't stand up to, i dunno, an Auzentech or something, it still beats, hands down, most of the crap Creative can muster, with the sole exception of EAX, which is only used for gaming, anyway.
Virtual instruments mostly. A lot of current audio plugins (VST/DX, no experience with macs) are real (and i mean REAL) CPU/RAM hogs. Today, even a simple fm synth with a bit of magical dsp thingamabobs is going to eat into your CPU big time. For instance, Image-Line's Sytrus, a brilliant software FM/Additive synth can eat anything up to 30% of processing time. As for RAM, there are gigantic sample banks out there, easily bigger than a blu-ray disc (Vienna Instruments for example) that don't come with a custom VSTi/DXi sampler, and are thus unoptimized for low/mid-end usage.
And the sound card? IMO, that's pretty much audio voodoo, with differences unhearable between this high-end piece and cheaper products designed for studio usage (eg. the E-Mu 0404/1212m line). You could make the argument that the AC/DC converters do a better job, but the truth is, more distortion and noise gets through from your external hardware than from the card itself. On that, however, I wouldn't quote me, that's just personal experience, and I haven't been around audio production that much.
RSS? We don't need no steenking RSS!
Yeah yeah, get off my lawn, insensitive clod, etc. etc. etc.
Specialists editors.
Unless they plan to hire Stephen Hawking, i don't see how this is going to work.
So they're effectively removing their only reason to be respected - articles reviewed by specialists?
Wow, I can't believe they don't see what's wrong with this decision.
:facepalm:
"Gigamesh" is the perfect example of how to ruin a perfectly good book with too in-depth reviews, though in my opinion the whole damn book is really good. There's a copy up on books.google, translated by Michael Kandel - as far as a native speaker of Polish (with an upcoming BA in english. Wish me luck!) can tell you, a pretty faithful translation. There's also a small article up on Wikipedia.
OmniWeb, obviously!
Welp, that about makes it for today's bad joke limit. I retreat to my underground sanctuary...
Well there you go, ruin all my fun with your silly math thingamabob. Thanks a lot!
Oh, and to whoever modded OP as insightful:
God damn it man, you need to leave your house once in a while.
I didn't mean the "really rich and posh part of Europe" though... :)
Well my TABLE LAMP boots in 50ms! Beat THAT!
(And to all you electrotech-people, yes, i live in Europe, 50Hz here. You may laugh now.)
Surely you mean "Fresh prince scent"?
Then i have just one tip for you:
Run. Don't turn back, run! RUN!
Somehow my mind refuses to acknowledge that "w" in "Twitterverse".
And thus my imagination brewed a beautiful image...
For a truly internet-friendly explanation:
Innocence is like loli before your ingame avatar gets his hands on her.
*a loud "oooooooh, i get it!" runs through the audience*
There you go! :)
> Ram is precious, HD space isn't.
Speed is precious too. Executable packers make sense when your .exe is something like 40MB, because your stupid project manager forced you to include a bunch of idiotic resources into it, something along the lines of bitmaps and uncompressed wave files (true story!). It may sound funny, but with current run-of-the-mill consumer CPUs it is actually faster to read a small file from the HD and uncompress a resource than to wait for the whole executable to load all this bloat. Still, we're talking about a speed difference of around 300-400ms (yes, i took these out from my ass, but those were results of our crappy testbed), so it's not something a typical consumer would notice, although pretty numbers are a good thing when your boss doesn't know shit about computers.
Doesn't seem to me like games are a good medium to spread your political messages - after all, games are... well, games. You play them to have fun, not to be fed loads of political horsecrap. Those so inclined may as well analyze, event after event, the ideological backgrounds of each turn taken by the game's story, but seriously, that's not where the "entertainment" bit is at. And gamers are there for entertainment.
Looks to me like a non-story.