Fools idol (the boss you describe) is overcome by exploring the level and noticing the dude saying "i wont interfere i promise" who is right next to the boss. If you are impatient and go straight to the boss without exploring you are punished, but then it lets you escape the fight after the realisation that the boss is immortal so... not that unfair.
It does have it's moments where it requires trial and error, but it overcomes them (for the most part, old hero is an exception to this) with clever level design and tons of shortcuts.
When you complete the game you go to "new game +" and can replay the game with all your epic gear so you can easily get anything you missed the first time (like the alternate ending, and numerous "tendency events" that are hard to get in 1 play through).
It's quite apparent, but i'll say it anyway - i am a huge DS nerd ^_^. I'll admit it's not everyone's idea of fun but for what it aspires to be, it's a very good game.
I would argue that a lack of checkpoints rewards cautious and skilled game play rather than "punishing failure" but that's just me. If a game gives you a checkpoint every 5 minutes there's absolutely no reason not to brute force your way through a problem by throwing corpse after corpse at it.
I gotta say +1 to GameMaker. It would be something you could do together with a younger child and a smart 9 year old will be making his own games before too long. It's such a rewarding way to be learning programming because almost everything you learn has results that can be seen graphically straight away.
Hehehe...in my old job i was maintaining a lot of code written by the boss' son (yeah...) and he would comment *every* *single* *line* with gems such as "// Add One To IntNumMgrxXDYGZ" next to a ++ operation, with no mention anywhere of what "IntNumMgrxXDYGZ" stood for, what it was used for or anything remotely useful, and even at the end of tiny 4 line blocks he would write "}// End If" or "}// End For" i assume because he learnt with visual basic and found it helpful. Always Capitalising The First Letter Of Every Word For Some Reason.
Still, it was very therapeutic purging it all and condensing it down in to elegant readable code with a small paragraph of comments explaining the "why".
"Hell, they'd even let you smoke during the flight."
I sure as hell don't miss breathing other peoples poison.
Fun fact: Air quality on planes was better when you could smoke, as they had to pump fresh air in all the time. Now we breathe recycled air because it saves money.
Gamemaker as in the gamemaker created by Mark Overmars? That thing definitely does not suck ass! What better way to get young minds interested in programming than giving them a tool like gamemaker? It's perfect for getting you over that initial hurdle where you don't know enough about programming to get anything worth while done in a "real" environment.
I'm from Taunton, Somerset but i don't think you can have been referring to me in your last sentence.
Even just in this one county accents can vary from barely noticeable soft-southern english to almost incomprehensible west-country gibberish. I wouldn't count on it being to everyone's tastes.
Bill Bailey and Russel Howard are both somerset boys and both occasionally slip in to very west-country accents.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4PTQCN8Juo
"Gamemaker" is what got me in to programming. It's a game creation tool (for windows only unfortunately) which is perfect for introducing someone to and sparking their interest in programming. I think i was actually about 14 when i started using it. It lets you create simpler games with no knowledge of code (just drag and drop action blocks in to events) and so it gives a very high ratio of "satisfaction from cool end results":"effort put in to learn skills".
Soon however you find your creativity in game design held back by the drag and drop tools and you start dragging in "code blocks" which is the gateway in to real programming. It uses a nice high level interpreted language which is... well very forgiving. Again you get maximum reward in terms of cool end results for the work you put in to learn the skills.
Then after a year or so you realise the limitations of the environment you've spent so long learning and you move on to grown up languages and you despair at how much effort is required just to get an empty window to display, but you soldier on....
i have the same netbook, and it's currently my only operational machine... so i'd be very appreciative if you could tell me how to get the touchpad to behave, and also how to stop the screen tearing (it's the same with and without compiz).
great little machine tho! perfect for taking notes at lectures.
i have a samsung nc1 netbook with a "AR242x 802.11abg" wireless chipset. currently i have to compile the drivers for it to get it to work... does this mean in subsequent releases of the kernel that it will just work?
they're finally allowing psp direct access to the store. i think it was in the recent 5.00 update, but if not certainly it is coming soon.
still it is an epic fail not have included it from the start. i also don't like how the psp doesn't maintain a connection to a wifi point, you have to connect "on demand" for anything that requires network access.
tekken 5 online works beautifully over the internet. if the connection is fast enough (and "fast enough" isn't really that fast), the lag is completely unnoticeable. even reversals work perfectly (if you press a button combo in a half second window as the enemy attacks you throw them to the ground). so i don't quite see why they're bitching so much. it can and has been done!
well done, labour government, for spending so much money on this watertight security system that i had to spend over £70 to renew my passport. it should be nothing more than a book ffs!
LittleBigPlanet and Mirrors Edge? Seems he has conveniently brushed over these non sequential titles.
Also, he complains that the games industry is too corporate, but is the film/tv industry any different? You always have to wade through the sea of commercial crap to reach the idyllic island of media that is actually worth watching/playing/whatever.
i had the same thought but it could be worked around. you could have the government pay for all the replacement batteries up front and then reclaim that money by taxing the electric car drivers proportionally to the amount they use their car. data to determine how much each driver uses their car could be collected by using number plate recognition technology at the battery swap stations
perhaps with kubuntu... but i am running ubuntu and just downloaded firefox; double clicking the download in ff's download manager launched the installer and so did double clicking the exe from the file manager.
ok i'm just gunna go ahead and admit to being a little wasted and apologise for that post... thinking about it, it's completely redundant and whatever point i was trying to make totally didn't come across... i just talked about bees....
i see this "no one cares what OS they use" argument thrown around a lot... but perhaps no one cares because so far there has not been a need to care. everything is windows.
it's like people not "caring" whether their watch is powered by batteries or bees. of course they don't care; all watches you can buy are powered by batteries.
if there suddenly became a huge amount of bee powered watches and people bought them because they didn't care, they soon would care when they found it doesn't work with their batteries.
i think that metaphor has been spread about as far as it can go.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah i agree. Ban shoes too, to prevent peoples heads getting kicked in.
No, the nutjob with a gun managed to slaughter a classroom. The nutjob with the knife failed to kill anyone.
Fools idol (the boss you describe) is overcome by exploring the level and noticing the dude saying "i wont interfere i promise" who is right next to the boss. If you are impatient and go straight to the boss without exploring you are punished, but then it lets you escape the fight after the realisation that the boss is immortal so... not that unfair.
It does have it's moments where it requires trial and error, but it overcomes them (for the most part, old hero is an exception to this) with clever level design and tons of shortcuts.
When you complete the game you go to "new game +" and can replay the game with all your epic gear so you can easily get anything you missed the first time (like the alternate ending, and numerous "tendency events" that are hard to get in 1 play through).
It's quite apparent, but i'll say it anyway - i am a huge DS nerd ^_^. I'll admit it's not everyone's idea of fun but for what it aspires to be, it's a very good game.
I would argue that a lack of checkpoints rewards cautious and skilled game play rather than "punishing failure" but that's just me. If a game gives you a checkpoint every 5 minutes there's absolutely no reason not to brute force your way through a problem by throwing corpse after corpse at it.
I gotta say +1 to GameMaker. It would be something you could do together with a younger child and a smart 9 year old will be making his own games before too long. It's such a rewarding way to be learning programming because almost everything you learn has results that can be seen graphically straight away.
Hehehe...in my old job i was maintaining a lot of code written by the boss' son (yeah...) and he would comment *every* *single* *line* with gems such as "// Add One To IntNumMgrxXDYGZ" next to a ++ operation, with no mention anywhere of what "IntNumMgrxXDYGZ" stood for, what it was used for or anything remotely useful, and even at the end of tiny 4 line blocks he would write "} // End If" or "} // End For" i assume because he learnt with visual basic and found it helpful. Always Capitalising The First Letter Of Every Word For Some Reason.
Still, it was very therapeutic purging it all and condensing it down in to elegant readable code with a small paragraph of comments explaining the "why".
"Hell, they'd even let you smoke during the flight."
I sure as hell don't miss breathing other peoples poison.
Fun fact: Air quality on planes was better when you could smoke, as they had to pump fresh air in all the time. Now we breathe recycled air because it saves money.
Gamemaker as in the gamemaker created by Mark Overmars? That thing definitely does not suck ass! What better way to get young minds interested in programming than giving them a tool like gamemaker? It's perfect for getting you over that initial hurdle where you don't know enough about programming to get anything worth while done in a "real" environment.
I'm from Taunton, Somerset but i don't think you can have been referring to me in your last sentence. Even just in this one county accents can vary from barely noticeable soft-southern english to almost incomprehensible west-country gibberish. I wouldn't count on it being to everyone's tastes. Bill Bailey and Russel Howard are both somerset boys and both occasionally slip in to very west-country accents. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4PTQCN8Juo
"Gamemaker" is what got me in to programming. It's a game creation tool (for windows only unfortunately) which is perfect for introducing someone to and sparking their interest in programming. I think i was actually about 14 when i started using it. It lets you create simpler games with no knowledge of code (just drag and drop action blocks in to events) and so it gives a very high ratio of "satisfaction from cool end results":"effort put in to learn skills".
Soon however you find your creativity in game design held back by the drag and drop tools and you start dragging in "code blocks" which is the gateway in to real programming. It uses a nice high level interpreted language which is... well very forgiving. Again you get maximum reward in terms of cool end results for the work you put in to learn the skills.
Then after a year or so you realise the limitations of the environment you've spent so long learning and you move on to grown up languages and you despair at how much effort is required just to get an empty window to display, but you soldier on....
Well... that's my story
i have the same netbook, and it's currently my only operational machine... so i'd be very appreciative if you could tell me how to get the touchpad to behave, and also how to stop the screen tearing (it's the same with and without compiz).
great little machine tho! perfect for taking notes at lectures.
doesn't windows have an equivalent of wget?
oh is that behaviour due to this bug???? because that was happening on my dad's ubuntu computer
hehehehehe that comment has made me laugh more than any comment i've read on slashdot. kudos!
of all the people i know who've taken coke (which is quite a lot, including me) none have become addicted
it is true that once you have 1 line you want another as soon as the affects wear off, but the same can be said for pringles.
having a few lines at a party isn't going to make you in to the archetypal drug addict.
i have a samsung nc1 netbook with a "AR242x 802.11abg" wireless chipset. currently i have to compile the drivers for it to get it to work... does this mean in subsequent releases of the kernel that it will just work?
finally i can legitimately use the "does it run linux" meme!
it's pretty rudimentary to spoof a mac address, so long as you can modify the software
they're finally allowing psp direct access to the store. i think it was in the recent 5.00 update, but if not certainly it is coming soon.
still it is an epic fail not have included it from the start. i also don't like how the psp doesn't maintain a connection to a wifi point, you have to connect "on demand" for anything that requires network access.
tekken 5 online works beautifully over the internet. if the connection is fast enough (and "fast enough" isn't really that fast), the lag is completely unnoticeable. even reversals work perfectly (if you press a button combo in a half second window as the enemy attacks you throw them to the ground). so i don't quite see why they're bitching so much. it can and has been done!
well done, labour government, for spending so much money on this watertight security system that i had to spend over £70 to renew my passport. it should be nothing more than a book ffs!
LittleBigPlanet and Mirrors Edge? Seems he has conveniently brushed over these non sequential titles.
Also, he complains that the games industry is too corporate, but is the film/tv industry any different? You always have to wade through the sea of commercial crap to reach the idyllic island of media that is actually worth watching/playing/whatever.
i had the same thought but it could be worked around. you could have the government pay for all the replacement batteries up front and then reclaim that money by taxing the electric car drivers proportionally to the amount they use their car. data to determine how much each driver uses their car could be collected by using number plate recognition technology at the battery swap stations
perhaps with kubuntu... but i am running ubuntu and just downloaded firefox; double clicking the download in ff's download manager launched the installer and so did double clicking the exe from the file manager.
Everyone knows you have to discover mathematics before you can build catapults
ok i'm just gunna go ahead and admit to being a little wasted and apologise for that post... thinking about it, it's completely redundant and whatever point i was trying to make totally didn't come across... i just talked about bees....
i see this "no one cares what OS they use" argument thrown around a lot... but perhaps no one cares because so far there has not been a need to care. everything is windows.
it's like people not "caring" whether their watch is powered by batteries or bees. of course they don't care; all watches you can buy are powered by batteries.
if there suddenly became a huge amount of bee powered watches and people bought them because they didn't care, they soon would care when they found it doesn't work with their batteries.
i think that metaphor has been spread about as far as it can go.