Yes. Yes it is. At least, it's better than a game with a really really fantastically good engine with a crappy interface and crappy gameplay.
A game isn't about the tech behind it. You're thinking of a tech demo there. A game is about the user, and allowing that user to interact with the toy world you've made. And there's NOTHING that can screw that up faster than a retarded interface. Unresponsive controls, a bodgy autocam that won't stop looking at the wall while you're getting killed by aliens, a confusing interface which doesn't give you the information you need... any of those will slaughter a game even if it's _perfect_ in every other imaginable way.
There are a few problems with open source game development:
1) The gameplay experience is 90% artwork. I don't just mean graphics - the sounds, backgrounds/levels, animation, gameplay, level design, storyline etc. are all artwork. Generally, Open Source contributors are programmers. The phrase "programmer art" was coined for a reason.
2) Unified vision. A game needs a single strong creative vision to be built around. All that artwork in point 1 needs to follow a coherent theme, fit together stylistically, and integrate into a believable world. Unified vision and consistent style is... well, not what open source is best at.
3) Games suffer far more than any other software (IMO) from the "second 90%" syndrome. That is, you get the game to what you think is 90% complete and realise that you have "the other 90%" to go before it's really finished, polished, and fun. The end of that first 90% is where many (if not most) commercial games finish, and when you rely not on venture capital but purely on your developers having fun, let me tell you from experience that the second 90% is not in any way fun, especially when you're just getting started on it.
Oooh, I'm gonna get the hate for this one.:P But it's true... and IWACGD (I was a commercial game developer, and hope to be again someday in the future).
For all you paranoid conspiracy theorists out there that are busy shitting bricks, I will be developing a USB based jamming device that will saturate the area with dummy signals. Please send $100 via brown paper bag on doorstep courier.
I'm interested in buying one of your devices. There are... agencies... who would be very interested to know what I know.
What? You want my address? WHY? No, I can't come and pick it up, THEY'll see me. Courier companies report to the NSA so I can't use one of them. None of my friends can be trusted, I know two of them are spies for Botswana independence movement... WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT? Is this to do with case 44318? Oh god, that twinkie WAS a tracking device, wasn't it?
...cash is too traceable, do you accept payment in ingots of Cobalt?
Holy circular logic batman, that's because you can only store a small fraction of the energy that is produced when using the motors as generators.
Um, hi. I'm not sure exactly why you think that "you can only store a small fraction of the energy that is produced when using the motors as generators", because that's completely incorrect. In an emergency stop the motor may not be able to provide sufficient regen torque to stop you completely, but most EVs on the roads these days are home conversions using sealed lead acid batteries, which can charge just as fast as they can discharge. You can drive these vehicles using regen braking almost to the exclusion of friction brakes. I think what you meant is that going from mechanical -> electric -> chemical -> electric -> mechanical energy results in horrible overall wheels-to-battery-to-wheels efficiency even IF you're losing very little energy to friction (ie. low speed stop/go traffic)... but I'm really not sure because you were somewhat incoherent.
In other words, your comment was 100% a big fucking waste of time which could have been solved by actually reading the comment you're replying to.
Not so much, but thanks for playing.
I must concur, however, about hybrids being a boondoggle (most of their efficiency improvements come, as I said before, from improved air and rolling resistances, coupled with smaller, more efficient engines). At least they're not as bad as fuel cells. The real solution is (and has always been) battery electric with a removable internal combustion range-extender module for long tricks.
You're 100% right - none of them are direct competition for a PvE open-world MMO (although say 70% of PvE and 90%+ of PvP in WoW these days occurs inside instances, but that's another story). That said, all of the titles I mentioned were touted by rabid fanboys on the WoW forums as "WoW killers" for months or years before their release. And all of them have failed to grab any appreciable share of the 'fantasy based rpg-style online game' supergenre off WoW .
I have a saying, one that I've used since Guild Wars became the first game to be touted as a 'WoW killer'. That saying is "they'll come crawling back!" So far it's held true for Guild Wars, Hellgate: London (although that's not directly competing with WoW I guess), AoC, WAR... every time, if people are still playing one MMO after moving to the new game, they'll be playing WoW.:P It was funniest for the original Guild Wars launch because people were posting "so long, suckers" and "lol kiddies, im gonna go play a real game now", and 2 months later it's "lfm heroics".:P
...which takes years and years. Remember when A123 Systems announced their Altair Nano-based LiPoly batteries with uber high discharge rates? (A123 have licensed this tech too, FTFA). They've had working batteries for 3 years or more, and are now powering the top electric drag car and bike, but still don't sell anything bigger than a raw testing kit with 6 x 3.2v cells.
Apparently they have approval to build a factory now, though, so if they start mass production it might help prices a little.
<tinfoil>I read somewhere that the reason we're still using NiMH batteries instead of lithium is that they were developed based on technology lifecycles of 10-15 years, so manufacturers don't want to retool for lithium until they've recouped the research and tooling costs for NiMH</tinfoil>
That's one of the big things that AC Propulsion have been going on about for years; Vehicle-to-Grid as a part of widespread EV ownership. The idea is that when you get home from work, you'll plug your car in and it will partially power your house while you're doing all your cooking, watching your bigass TV with the aircon on, etc. Then once the power demand peak has passed later in the evening, it will charge using offpeak power (which is cheaper at night anyway because cooler ambient temperature = more efficient power generation).
Of course, there are two major, major problems with this plan. The first being that batteries are expensive and have a limited cycle life that usually degrades fast with increasing average cycle depth. IIRC, sealed lead acid batteries can take 40,000 charge cycles when only discharged by 10-20%, but when taken down to 80% discharge that drops to more like 500-600 cycles. The second problem is that we rely on our cars to be available at any stage. If your kid finds her way into the medicine cabinet at 2am you want to get in the car and drive her to hospital NOW, not find out is that your car's flat and it'll take an hour for the ambulance to arrive.
Australia is always in the middle of a 10 year drought, even when there's 2m of flood water on the ground.:P True, wind turbines are probably more practical unless you have your own personal waterfall (which my cousins on the Coromandel Peninsula actually do, lucky buggers). I still like solar fired steam though, more practical for large power stations (although I believe a wind tower is even better for very large values of 'large').
This is so very painfully true. What makes me really, really angry is that if you (as a defendant) lie in court, it's perjury and you're in deep shit. If the police officer lies in court, the judge smiles and nods. If you call them on it, the judge says "ok, well we'll ignore that bit".
Last time I was there (about 5 years ago) we were driving through the south island and I counted over a hundred of the buggers during a 2-hour journey. Compare that to Australia were you can drive in a straight line for 3 days without seeing a drop of water and you'll see where I'm coming from.
That's a generator to produce 100hp continuously, probably including the internal combustion engine to run it. Unlike fuel engines (which are rated at peak power), heavy electric machinery tends to be rated at continuous (and sometimes unventilated) power. Many home-done EV conversions use 12 - 20hp motors and run them at higher voltage with blower fans.
As Rich0 said, below, the electric motor in a hybrid car doubles as a generator during braking. However, I disagree that we won't see 200hp motors being used for braking - since the motor has the same power capacity when used as a generator, we'll see 200hp regen braking when we see 200hp electric sports cars, which won't be long after batteries with the advertised capabilities here hit the market.
Actually, from what I've read on the EV mailing list, regenerative braking doesn't make that much of a difference to EV range, somewhere around 10%. Most of the range savings to me made are in aerodynamics and low rolling resistance tyres.
You Americans and your crazy low voltage power lines! Here in Australia, most wall outlets are rated (I believe) at 10 amps maximum, which equates to roughly 2kW. By a strange coincidence most kettles, vacuum cleaners etc. are roughly 2kW in power (and are sold by power output, not just amperage).
The crazy thing is what you could do with these batteries in a drag car. Top fuel drag cars weigh ~1000kg (if my quick googlation is correct) and output up to 1500kW. A 60-liter battery back could output the same amount of power while cutting the weight of the car by at least a couple of hundred kilos.
Just wait for electrics to be banned from drag racing because they don't make enough noise and smoke... well actually smoke I can see happening.
5) The manager quits because you just cut his pay by $10k a year and the shop down the road is willing to pay him $65k because he spun them a story of how profits are up $6k over last year.
Um, for starters, you're not going to be plugging all those cars in at the same time if each one's only plugged in for 10 seconds.
Secondly, generally EV-sized batteries are fast-charged by using a 'dump pack', an identical fully charged pack of batteries that can supply as much current as the flat one can eat up. The important number is the continuous current draw, not peak.
That's what makes small, high-current batteries so good. Imagine a car window motor which pulls, say, 5 amps at 12 volts. You need to run 5amp wiring to it. But assume that the motor only needs to run for a few seconds at a time, very infrequently - instead of running 5 amp wiring, you can simply put a battery next to the motor that's sufficient to run it for a minute or so, and trickle charge the battery over the car's CAN bus.
Another use (actually this is one I read about where ultracaps are useful) is making a hard drive that doesn't lose data when the power drops during a write operation. Basically the cap would store enough energy for the drive to detect loss of external power, finish writing its buffer, and park itself before it ran flat.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. Yes it is. At least, it's better than a game with a really really fantastically good engine with a crappy interface and crappy gameplay.
A game isn't about the tech behind it. You're thinking of a tech demo there. A game is about the user, and allowing that user to interact with the toy world you've made. And there's NOTHING that can screw that up faster than a retarded interface. Unresponsive controls, a bodgy autocam that won't stop looking at the wall while you're getting killed by aliens, a confusing interface which doesn't give you the information you need... any of those will slaughter a game even if it's _perfect_ in every other imaginable way.
There are a few problems with open source game development:
:P But it's true... and IWACGD (I was a commercial game developer, and hope to be again someday in the future).
1) The gameplay experience is 90% artwork. I don't just mean graphics - the sounds, backgrounds/levels, animation, gameplay, level design, storyline etc. are all artwork. Generally, Open Source contributors are programmers. The phrase "programmer art" was coined for a reason.
2) Unified vision. A game needs a single strong creative vision to be built around. All that artwork in point 1 needs to follow a coherent theme, fit together stylistically, and integrate into a believable world. Unified vision and consistent style is... well, not what open source is best at.
3) Games suffer far more than any other software (IMO) from the "second 90%" syndrome. That is, you get the game to what you think is 90% complete and realise that you have "the other 90%" to go before it's really finished, polished, and fun. The end of that first 90% is where many (if not most) commercial games finish, and when you rely not on venture capital but purely on your developers having fun, let me tell you from experience that the second 90% is not in any way fun, especially when you're just getting started on it.
Oooh, I'm gonna get the hate for this one.
For all you paranoid conspiracy theorists out there that are busy shitting bricks, I will be developing a USB based jamming device that will saturate the area with dummy signals. Please send $100 via brown paper bag on doorstep courier.
I'm interested in buying one of your devices. There are... agencies... who would be very interested to know what I know.
What? You want my address? WHY? No, I can't come and pick it up, THEY'll see me. Courier companies report to the NSA so I can't use one of them. None of my friends can be trusted, I know two of them are spies for Botswana independence movement... WHO ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT? Is this to do with case 44318? Oh god, that twinkie WAS a tracking device, wasn't it?
...cash is too traceable, do you accept payment in ingots of Cobalt?
Curse you, Google, you have failed me again!! *ships them a load of Sony batteries* :P
Make it 240-liter battery pack then, but that's still 250kg or so, much lighter than a bigass supercharged V8.
Holy circular logic batman, that's because you can only store a small fraction of the energy that is produced when using the motors as generators.
Um, hi. I'm not sure exactly why you think that "you can only store a small fraction of the energy that is produced when using the motors as generators", because that's completely incorrect. In an emergency stop the motor may not be able to provide sufficient regen torque to stop you completely, but most EVs on the roads these days are home conversions using sealed lead acid batteries, which can charge just as fast as they can discharge. You can drive these vehicles using regen braking almost to the exclusion of friction brakes. I think what you meant is that going from mechanical -> electric -> chemical -> electric -> mechanical energy results in horrible overall wheels-to-battery-to-wheels efficiency even IF you're losing very little energy to friction (ie. low speed stop/go traffic)... but I'm really not sure because you were somewhat incoherent.
In other words, your comment was 100% a big fucking waste of time which could have been solved by actually reading the comment you're replying to.
Not so much, but thanks for playing.
I must concur, however, about hybrids being a boondoggle (most of their efficiency improvements come, as I said before, from improved air and rolling resistances, coupled with smaller, more efficient engines). At least they're not as bad as fuel cells. The real solution is (and has always been) battery electric with a removable internal combustion range-extender module for long tricks.
The Great Firewall of Kevin Rudd, probably. :(
You're 100% right - none of them are direct competition for a PvE open-world MMO (although say 70% of PvE and 90%+ of PvP in WoW these days occurs inside instances, but that's another story). That said, all of the titles I mentioned were touted by rabid fanboys on the WoW forums as "WoW killers" for months or years before their release. And all of them have failed to grab any appreciable share of the 'fantasy based rpg-style online game' supergenre off WoW .
I have a saying, one that I've used since Guild Wars became the first game to be touted as a 'WoW killer'. That saying is "they'll come crawling back!" So far it's held true for Guild Wars, Hellgate: London (although that's not directly competing with WoW I guess), AoC, WAR... every time, if people are still playing one MMO after moving to the new game, they'll be playing WoW. :P It was funniest for the original Guild Wars launch because people were posting "so long, suckers" and "lol kiddies, im gonna go play a real game now", and 2 months later it's "lfm heroics". :P
'Complete lack of surprise' would also have been satisfyingly apposite.
...which takes years and years. Remember when A123 Systems announced their Altair Nano-based LiPoly batteries with uber high discharge rates? (A123 have licensed this tech too, FTFA). They've had working batteries for 3 years or more, and are now powering the top electric drag car and bike, but still don't sell anything bigger than a raw testing kit with 6 x 3.2v cells.
Apparently they have approval to build a factory now, though, so if they start mass production it might help prices a little.
<tinfoil>I read somewhere that the reason we're still using NiMH batteries instead of lithium is that they were developed based on technology lifecycles of 10-15 years, so manufacturers don't want to retool for lithium until they've recouped the research and tooling costs for NiMH</tinfoil>
That's one of the big things that AC Propulsion have been going on about for years; Vehicle-to-Grid as a part of widespread EV ownership. The idea is that when you get home from work, you'll plug your car in and it will partially power your house while you're doing all your cooking, watching your bigass TV with the aircon on, etc. Then once the power demand peak has passed later in the evening, it will charge using offpeak power (which is cheaper at night anyway because cooler ambient temperature = more efficient power generation).
Of course, there are two major, major problems with this plan. The first being that batteries are expensive and have a limited cycle life that usually degrades fast with increasing average cycle depth. IIRC, sealed lead acid batteries can take 40,000 charge cycles when only discharged by 10-20%, but when taken down to 80% discharge that drops to more like 500-600 cycles. The second problem is that we rely on our cars to be available at any stage. If your kid finds her way into the medicine cabinet at 2am you want to get in the car and drive her to hospital NOW, not find out is that your car's flat and it'll take an hour for the ambulance to arrive.
In the words of the late Doctor Asimov: "What you're really saying is 'Up with Slavery for Other People!'"
He shoost, he scroes! GAAAAOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!
Using all caps is what you're *meant* to do when someone scores a gaol, silly flitter!
Schooner? I'd rather a pint!
Australia is always in the middle of a 10 year drought, even when there's 2m of flood water on the ground. :P True, wind turbines are probably more practical unless you have your own personal waterfall (which my cousins on the Coromandel Peninsula actually do, lucky buggers). I still like solar fired steam though, more practical for large power stations (although I believe a wind tower is even better for very large values of 'large').
This is so very painfully true. What makes me really, really angry is that if you (as a defendant) lie in court, it's perjury and you're in deep shit. If the police officer lies in court, the judge smiles and nods. If you call them on it, the judge says "ok, well we'll ignore that bit".
Justice system: 1. Justice: 0.
Last time I was there (about 5 years ago) we were driving through the south island and I counted over a hundred of the buggers during a 2-hour journey. Compare that to Australia were you can drive in a straight line for 3 days without seeing a drop of water and you'll see where I'm coming from.
That's a generator to produce 100hp continuously, probably including the internal combustion engine to run it. Unlike fuel engines (which are rated at peak power), heavy electric machinery tends to be rated at continuous (and sometimes unventilated) power. Many home-done EV conversions use 12 - 20hp motors and run them at higher voltage with blower fans.
As Rich0 said, below, the electric motor in a hybrid car doubles as a generator during braking. However, I disagree that we won't see 200hp motors being used for braking - since the motor has the same power capacity when used as a generator, we'll see 200hp regen braking when we see 200hp electric sports cars, which won't be long after batteries with the advertised capabilities here hit the market.
Actually, from what I've read on the EV mailing list, regenerative braking doesn't make that much of a difference to EV range, somewhere around 10%. Most of the range savings to me made are in aerodynamics and low rolling resistance tyres.
Whoosh.
You Americans and your crazy low voltage power lines! Here in Australia, most wall outlets are rated (I believe) at 10 amps maximum, which equates to roughly 2kW. By a strange coincidence most kettles, vacuum cleaners etc. are roughly 2kW in power (and are sold by power output, not just amperage).
The crazy thing is what you could do with these batteries in a drag car. Top fuel drag cars weigh ~1000kg (if my quick googlation is correct) and output up to 1500kW. A 60-liter battery back could output the same amount of power while cutting the weight of the car by at least a couple of hundred kilos.
Just wait for electrics to be banned from drag racing because they don't make enough noise and smoke... well actually smoke I can see happening.
5) The manager quits because you just cut his pay by $10k a year and the shop down the road is willing to pay him $65k because he spun them a story of how profits are up $6k over last year.
Elegant, but waterfalls are too hard to find (unless you live in New Zealand). Me, I'm going to cook up a solar fired steam turbine. :)
Um, for starters, you're not going to be plugging all those cars in at the same time if each one's only plugged in for 10 seconds.
Secondly, generally EV-sized batteries are fast-charged by using a 'dump pack', an identical fully charged pack of batteries that can supply as much current as the flat one can eat up. The important number is the continuous current draw, not peak.
That's what makes small, high-current batteries so good. Imagine a car window motor which pulls, say, 5 amps at 12 volts. You need to run 5amp wiring to it. But assume that the motor only needs to run for a few seconds at a time, very infrequently - instead of running 5 amp wiring, you can simply put a battery next to the motor that's sufficient to run it for a minute or so, and trickle charge the battery over the car's CAN bus.
Another use (actually this is one I read about where ultracaps are useful) is making a hard drive that doesn't lose data when the power drops during a write operation. Basically the cap would store enough energy for the drive to detect loss of external power, finish writing its buffer, and park itself before it ran flat.