If we had the discipline (as an industry) to write just one game for every game released, they'd all be AAA, and turn at healthy profit at $30 retail.
This right here is why I like indie games SO much. They don't do much, but they do what they do VERY well. I wish more games were built like indie games.
All sounds very civil but that not how it works here (U.S.). Most states have Right To Work laws (look it up, it sucks - basically union busting/slow erosion)
Not if you live in the Free North.
Not really, I live in Ohio which also has this. I would consider it to be the north (though I guess not northeast or northwest).
but then there was the game-breaking Metroid: Other M bug
Which one? I played all the way through the game without any game-breaking bugs.
Of course, given the horrible Metroid:Fusionness of the game, that might well be the bug you're talking about.
Yeah, this is the one Metroid that I wouldn't even consider to be a Metroid game. It reminds me of FF13. A long linear cut scene filled game that only near the very end lets you explore. Exploring is at least half the reason I play a Metroid game. I didn't see the bugs described, but then again I gave up on it about 60-70% through the game.
Forgive my lack of knowledge as Delphi developer, but what is F# and does it have any advantages over, say, C#?
Well really the power of F# comes from the functional programming style. So there are much easier, cleaner ways to do some things in F# than C#. They both have the same capabilities, the way you implement and code them is just different. Also, with the ability to have F# and C# code call each other makes it so you can have the benefits of object oriented (C#) along with the benefits of functional (F#) while having clean code in both.
Maybe you missed the memo - the majority of the country opposes the healthcare reform that got passed. Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.
This is what I really fear. There are a lot of good things in the healthcare bill that I hope stick around. It also should be noted that the majority of really good features of it don't start until 2014 so checking on how good it is at this point is not going to get you good data. Hopefully the pre-existing conditions part of the healthcare bill sticks around, though to keep that you need a lot of the rest of the bill.
Because that's what you find in JIS X 0213:2000. Even if you simplify it to just what is needed for basic literacy, you are talking 2000 characters. If you have that many characters your choices are either a lot of keys, a lot of modifier keys, or some kind of transliteration which is what it done now. There is just no way around this. You cannot have a language that is composed of a ton of glyphs but yet also have some extremely simple, small, entry system.
You can have a simple system with few characters, like we do now, but you have to enter multiple ones to specify the glyph you want. You could have a direct entry system where one keypress is one glyph, but you'd need a massive amount of keys. You could have a system with a small number of keys and a ton of modifier keys, but then you have to remember what modifier, or modifier combination, gives what. There is no easy, small, direct system, there cannot be.
Also, is it any more tedious than any Latin/Germanic language that only uses a small character set? While you may enter more characters than final glyphs, do you enter more characters than you would to express the same idea in French or English?
Well with Japanese at least it isn't so bad. Essentially one can write / read japanese using hiragana. So the characters are just typed in as they sound. When a combination of characters makes a hiragana character it is usually put in, then when the word is complete (space or end of sentence indicator) it preselects the most likely Kanji character to replace those characters. If it isn't the most used kanji you can hit down or use the mouse to pick the right character. Usually it does a decent job of picking since there aren't too many choices for a given word. In the cases of conjugation or foreign words you can have it just leave the hiragana or switch it to the katakana. Hope that helps for those that haven't tried typing Japanese on a computer.
Oh, it should also be noted that some Japanese keyboards have the hiragana characters on the keyboard rather than the Alphabet. Though it seems to mostly be as small characters in the corner of the keys.
Err...exactly why is there a choice to vote in Spanish or English?
I mean...is it not a requirement for those coming to this country, to attain citizenship to show on the exams, a proficiency in English??
And you do have to be a citizen of the US in order to vote, don't you?
Right, but there isn't a national language by law. Currently English is the default language used because the majority speaks / reads it. If they did enact a law for a particular language to be the national language then I would agree that there would be no need to have alternates for voting.
I sure don't see the kind of numbers Gartner is talking about. I see lots of iPhones, not many Androids, and never hear "civilians" talking about the Android. There is a Android kiosk in my local mall - I don't see any lines in front of it.
So, pardon me if I doubt.
Whereas I barely see any apple products anymore. In fact I have several friends who this year switched from iPhone to Android in part because of the antenna problems with iPhone and the 4G android that came out. After the fact they really enjoyed the android more than the iPhone they had.
I think part of the problem is this statement:
"The book is formatted only for the Kindle right now, but the author explains how it can be converted for other readers, since there's no DRM."
Right, you can convert it. But the average user isn't going to do this. Why do this when you could easily sell an epub version on a multi-device site, or put out versions for the big 3 (nook, sony, kindle). Only doing one of the three is part of the reason buying e-books right now can be REALLY frustrating. It feels like it is a console war with only some of the books being out for particular devices.
FFXIV isn't being released on the Xbox 360. It's a PS3/PC "exclusive."
So, yeah - given how horrible the Windows version is, that might explain why there's no Xbox 360 version. They simply have no one who knows how to write code for the Xbox 360 or Windows.
What is strange about this is that there is at least one group at square that does in fact know how to write windows code for games. Last Remnant is the game I'm referring to. Admittedly the console versions were buggy as hell, but the pc game worked great. Still there are so many problems with FF14 at the moment that I'm not sure it can be fixed in time.
Well I live in Ohio. I think it is more that I'm in an apartment. The living room is long and thin, so the distance from tv to edge of couch is the 7 feet. We do have a coffee table that is also long and thin, so it is probably 2-3 feet of the 7. The rest being the walking room. It doesn't seem cramped to me, but then I guess I haven't really ever had a space that could even do 15 feet if I wanted.
It's not an age thing, since my daughter's TV (46") is about 12' away. So is it geographical?
I mean with 6', I don't see how you can fit in a coffee table and still have room for your legs. The couch takes up 3' alone.
What area of the country are you in?
Well I checked last night and our tv is 7 feet from where we sit to view it. It is only a 720p 40 inch tv, but we certainly can tell the difference from dvd and blu-ray. Area of the country shouldn't make any difference since you're indoors when you watch it...
Rumor is (and it is just rumor) that episode 3 has been renamed Half Life 3 and will be longer than half life 2 and the two episodes. In this scenario I think the time taken is justified.
That makes a lot of sense. I have a feeling it has to do with the portal gun, which seems as though it will be used in HL3. Also, if that is the case I'm betting it will get more attention once Portal 2 comes out.
Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.
15 feet? Well no wonder. Most every time I've seen tv set ups it is at most 10 feet, and even then everyone I know has distances closer to 6 feet. If you have that kind of distance you should look into projection hd. You can make it a bunch bigger for just moving it back a bit farther.
Whoever did 10-2 should be shot... and from that point it just tanked. I'm not taking into account the MMORPG... but the normal serious completely tanked. The story was confusing, if not completely lost... and the target audience changed vastly. It's not Final Fantasy anymore... it's a Uwe Boll made movie now.
Get back to original storylines and release a game that's worth playing. Not just for cash.
The reason, at least in my opinion, that this happened is because of the core people behind FF. Final Fantasy 9 was really the last one with a decent number of the core people that created / made the series. After 9 it felt like a change in director or change in author. It had some key elements but it just wasn't the same.
At this point I'm going back and trying the dragon warrior/quest series. I doubt I'll ever play another FF after what happened with 13.
PC games have definitely become cheaper. I remember in the 90s paying £40 for some games (I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!), usually though they were around the £29.99 mark with the odd £34.99 game. At the start of this century they seemed to all pretty much go up to £34.99 as standard, but in recent years the trend has reversed, and £24.99 seems to be common for new releases, sometimes even lower - £22.99 or so.
There is also the fact that most PC games are now bought exclusively over download services like Steam. In Steam's case there are also sales. It seems very rare nowadays for console games to ever have changes in price, other than because of age.
Actually, what's funny about that is that last year I bought some Activision Blizzard stock (ATVI on NASDAQ). I had a little leftover money, and I figured that with such a strong release schedule for 2010, there must have been room for growth in the stock. And guess what's happened - the stock is currently down from where I bought it, from about $11.70 at this point last year to about $11.00 today.
The problem is not Blizzard. The problem is Activision. Their side of this is sinking games like no ones business. Think about how they dealt with modern warfare debacle and how guitar hero is now more like guitar zero. Their goal in the game business is to extract as much money from franchises as possible. This means the games will just not be as good as before. Blizzard is the only good thing coming out of that stock so be glad it is as high as it is.
I generally only believe reviews by friends that have similar games they enjoy. A good example of getting completely off target reviews online is "metroid: other m". That game has got to be the worst metroid made yet. It isn't really a score of 0 - 10 but instead most review sites only range between 6 - 10. Which can mean that a score 8 or 9 mean nothing. Ah well...
Am I the only one who never goes to the google page for searching and instead always uses the google search through the search bar in the browser? It just seems so much easier and quicker, especially when you know the keyboard commands to jump to that text entry. I guess I'm just in the minority.
Slashdot Mirror
If we had the discipline (as an industry) to write just one game for every game released, they'd all be AAA, and turn at healthy profit at $30 retail.
This right here is why I like indie games SO much. They don't do much, but they do what they do VERY well. I wish more games were built like indie games.
All sounds very civil but that not how it works here (U.S.). Most states have Right To Work laws (look it up, it sucks - basically union busting/slow erosion)
Not if you live in the Free North.
Not really, I live in Ohio which also has this. I would consider it to be the north (though I guess not northeast or northwest).
but then there was the game-breaking Metroid: Other M bug
Which one? I played all the way through the game without any game-breaking bugs.
Of course, given the horrible Metroid:Fusionness of the game, that might well be the bug you're talking about.
Yeah, this is the one Metroid that I wouldn't even consider to be a Metroid game. It reminds me of FF13. A long linear cut scene filled game that only near the very end lets you explore. Exploring is at least half the reason I play a Metroid game. I didn't see the bugs described, but then again I gave up on it about 60-70% through the game.
Forgive my lack of knowledge as Delphi developer, but what is F# and does it have any advantages over, say, C#?
Well really the power of F# comes from the functional programming style. So there are much easier, cleaner ways to do some things in F# than C#. They both have the same capabilities, the way you implement and code them is just different. Also, with the ability to have F# and C# code call each other makes it so you can have the benefits of object oriented (C#) along with the benefits of functional (F#) while having clean code in both.
Maybe you missed the memo - the majority of the country opposes the healthcare reform that got passed. Many of them are the people who just did they annual enrollment and discovered how much more their premiums went up because of it.
This is what I really fear. There are a lot of good things in the healthcare bill that I hope stick around. It also should be noted that the majority of really good features of it don't start until 2014 so checking on how good it is at this point is not going to get you good data. Hopefully the pre-existing conditions part of the healthcare bill sticks around, though to keep that you need a lot of the rest of the bill.
Because that's what you find in JIS X 0213:2000. Even if you simplify it to just what is needed for basic literacy, you are talking 2000 characters. If you have that many characters your choices are either a lot of keys, a lot of modifier keys, or some kind of transliteration which is what it done now. There is just no way around this. You cannot have a language that is composed of a ton of glyphs but yet also have some extremely simple, small, entry system.
You can have a simple system with few characters, like we do now, but you have to enter multiple ones to specify the glyph you want. You could have a direct entry system where one keypress is one glyph, but you'd need a massive amount of keys. You could have a system with a small number of keys and a ton of modifier keys, but then you have to remember what modifier, or modifier combination, gives what. There is no easy, small, direct system, there cannot be.
Also, is it any more tedious than any Latin/Germanic language that only uses a small character set? While you may enter more characters than final glyphs, do you enter more characters than you would to express the same idea in French or English?
Well with Japanese at least it isn't so bad. Essentially one can write / read japanese using hiragana. So the characters are just typed in as they sound. When a combination of characters makes a hiragana character it is usually put in, then when the word is complete (space or end of sentence indicator) it preselects the most likely Kanji character to replace those characters. If it isn't the most used kanji you can hit down or use the mouse to pick the right character. Usually it does a decent job of picking since there aren't too many choices for a given word. In the cases of conjugation or foreign words you can have it just leave the hiragana or switch it to the katakana. Hope that helps for those that haven't tried typing Japanese on a computer.
Oh, it should also be noted that some Japanese keyboards have the hiragana characters on the keyboard rather than the Alphabet. Though it seems to mostly be as small characters in the corner of the keys.
My abode is hopefully not the weakest link. Though I guess the apartment I live in certainly could use some more security features.
Err...exactly why is there a choice to vote in Spanish or English?
I mean...is it not a requirement for those coming to this country, to attain citizenship to show on the exams, a proficiency in English??
And you do have to be a citizen of the US in order to vote, don't you?
Right, but there isn't a national language by law. Currently English is the default language used because the majority speaks / reads it. If they did enact a law for a particular language to be the national language then I would agree that there would be no need to have alternates for voting.
I sure don't see the kind of numbers Gartner is talking about. I see lots of iPhones, not many Androids, and never hear "civilians" talking about the Android. There is a Android kiosk in my local mall - I don't see any lines in front of it.
So, pardon me if I doubt.
Whereas I barely see any apple products anymore. In fact I have several friends who this year switched from iPhone to Android in part because of the antenna problems with iPhone and the 4G android that came out. After the fact they really enjoyed the android more than the iPhone they had.
Or...
Under-the-skin indicator for blood sugar levels in diabetics.
There is actually a tattoo in the works that does this. Here is the link: diabetes tattoo But using leds instead could work too.
9) in 12 months make the book available to other buyers (other ebook retailers, physical books, etc)
What? How is this a good idea. I guess e-book is more associated with the kindle rather than all the other devices.
Oh, and heres my book if you want a copy!
Where's the e-book you mentioned? Also, which sites did you put the e-book on?
I think part of the problem is this statement: "The book is formatted only for the Kindle right now, but the author explains how it can be converted for other readers, since there's no DRM." Right, you can convert it. But the average user isn't going to do this. Why do this when you could easily sell an epub version on a multi-device site, or put out versions for the big 3 (nook, sony, kindle). Only doing one of the three is part of the reason buying e-books right now can be REALLY frustrating. It feels like it is a console war with only some of the books being out for particular devices.
FFXIV isn't being released on the Xbox 360. It's a PS3/PC "exclusive."
So, yeah - given how horrible the Windows version is, that might explain why there's no Xbox 360 version. They simply have no one who knows how to write code for the Xbox 360 or Windows.
What is strange about this is that there is at least one group at square that does in fact know how to write windows code for games. Last Remnant is the game I'm referring to. Admittedly the console versions were buggy as hell, but the pc game worked great. Still there are so many problems with FF14 at the moment that I'm not sure it can be fixed in time.
Well I live in Ohio. I think it is more that I'm in an apartment. The living room is long and thin, so the distance from tv to edge of couch is the 7 feet. We do have a coffee table that is also long and thin, so it is probably 2-3 feet of the 7. The rest being the walking room. It doesn't seem cramped to me, but then I guess I haven't really ever had a space that could even do 15 feet if I wanted.
It's not an age thing, since my daughter's TV (46") is about 12' away. So is it geographical?
I mean with 6', I don't see how you can fit in a coffee table and still have room for your legs. The couch takes up 3' alone.
What area of the country are you in?
Well I checked last night and our tv is 7 feet from where we sit to view it. It is only a 720p 40 inch tv, but we certainly can tell the difference from dvd and blu-ray. Area of the country shouldn't make any difference since you're indoors when you watch it...
Rumor is (and it is just rumor) that episode 3 has been renamed Half Life 3 and will be longer than half life 2 and the two episodes. In this scenario I think the time taken is justified.
That makes a lot of sense. I have a feeling it has to do with the portal gun, which seems as though it will be used in HL3. Also, if that is the case I'm betting it will get more attention once Portal 2 comes out.
Exactly. I did the math once and at 15', the difference between DVD and HD is meaningless on a 46" screen. Pretty meaningless on a 55" screen.
15 feet? Well no wonder. Most every time I've seen tv set ups it is at most 10 feet, and even then everyone I know has distances closer to 6 feet. If you have that kind of distance you should look into projection hd. You can make it a bunch bigger for just moving it back a bit farther.
Whoever did 10-2 should be shot... and from that point it just tanked. I'm not taking into account the MMORPG... but the normal serious completely tanked. The story was confusing, if not completely lost... and the target audience changed vastly. It's not Final Fantasy anymore... it's a Uwe Boll made movie now.
Get back to original storylines and release a game that's worth playing. Not just for cash.
The reason, at least in my opinion, that this happened is because of the core people behind FF. Final Fantasy 9 was really the last one with a decent number of the core people that created / made the series. After 9 it felt like a change in director or change in author. It had some key elements but it just wasn't the same. At this point I'm going back and trying the dragon warrior/quest series. I doubt I'll ever play another FF after what happened with 13.
On a side note: is copy paste somehow destroyed on /.? I was trying to copy the name from Wikipedia but it will not paste.
This seems to be a problem with how it is coded for particular browsers. Copy/paste works fine for me using firefox 4beta6.
And to a more important matter: since when and why can't i copy paste into my comments?
I think this is a browser specific bug with the /. code. Firefox 4 beta 6 works fine with it. I think I last saw that chrome was having issues with it.
PC games have definitely become cheaper. I remember in the 90s paying £40 for some games (I paid £44.99 for Warcraft II as it was the cheapest I could find it at on release!), usually though they were around the £29.99 mark with the odd £34.99 game. At the start of this century they seemed to all pretty much go up to £34.99 as standard, but in recent years the trend has reversed, and £24.99 seems to be common for new releases, sometimes even lower - £22.99 or so.
There is also the fact that most PC games are now bought exclusively over download services like Steam. In Steam's case there are also sales. It seems very rare nowadays for console games to ever have changes in price, other than because of age.
Actually, what's funny about that is that last year I bought some Activision Blizzard stock (ATVI on NASDAQ). I had a little leftover money, and I figured that with such a strong release schedule for 2010, there must have been room for growth in the stock. And guess what's happened - the stock is currently down from where I bought it, from about $11.70 at this point last year to about $11.00 today.
The problem is not Blizzard. The problem is Activision. Their side of this is sinking games like no ones business. Think about how they dealt with modern warfare debacle and how guitar hero is now more like guitar zero. Their goal in the game business is to extract as much money from franchises as possible. This means the games will just not be as good as before. Blizzard is the only good thing coming out of that stock so be glad it is as high as it is.
I generally only believe reviews by friends that have similar games they enjoy. A good example of getting completely off target reviews online is "metroid: other m". That game has got to be the worst metroid made yet. It isn't really a score of 0 - 10 but instead most review sites only range between 6 - 10. Which can mean that a score 8 or 9 mean nothing. Ah well...
Am I the only one who never goes to the google page for searching and instead always uses the google search through the search bar in the browser? It just seems so much easier and quicker, especially when you know the keyboard commands to jump to that text entry. I guess I'm just in the minority.