a grumpy and gruff war monger who, as the post states, was taken away from the latest issue of Punishment Monthly and a carton of cigarettes to deal with cheaters.... or an admin working for Valve who decided to add a bit of levity to the announcement that some cheaters were caught?
I play quite a bit of TF2, I don't cheat, and I was still unhappy being on the receiving ends of those words.
For the "Fail" blog post it was accusing players of 'illegitimately' farming achievements by using an external program. In case anyone was wondering, you need achievements to unlock additional weaponry to use in game. Now this seems fine in principle, but practically it makes no sense. Anyone can start their own server by clicking on the "Create Server" button and farm a ton of those achievements. For example, in the last scout update there was a handful that dealt with capturing points and intelligence. It's easy enough to run in an empty server to capture points and intelligence and start to get unlockable weaponry. And if you're lucky enough to be part of a clan with a private server, it takes all of 15 minutes to 'farm' the other achievements out with clan mates. Is this any more 'illegitimate' than using an external program? Achievements are supposed to be personal gratification, something you can aspire to, not something that's required to get something more out of your game. I play FPS's to avoid the grind. Why should it feel like I'm playing WOW suddenly everytime there's an unlockable update?
Not that today's games are going to run much faster with this, but upcoming titles will.
I'm not entirely sold on that point. I'd imagine that developers already try to throw as much rendering information into the card's memory as-is allowing for the "overflow" to be stored in system memory. But I would imagine this process is done transparently by the driver anyway (AFAIK). Removing this "overflow" for most current games could improve performance by the same amount as any other newer games that come to market.
Maybe I'm just crazy but why is this considered such a "bad" idea?
Sure it would be a hell of a lot of work to the kernel to have it compatible with existing binaries and drivers, but I would imagine that Windows 7 kernel development is too. I mean it seems like a crazy idea, but doesn't it have a smidgen of merit to it?
Final Fantasy 7 was one of those games for me that I would seriously question on whether or not I was actually having fun amidst an admittedly somewhat interesting story line. The actual "game" portion which involved either running around doing mini quests (like dressing up as a girl) or doing battles which were, in my opinion, okay at best. Do you find doing battles fun or is it just gratifying to level up and "grind" your characters for higher powers?
There was some cool story-oriented parts that you could not have told through another medium. The coolest was being able to relive your "memories" by playing through them. That is something that you cannot do in another medium. And FFVII did a very good job of it.
The problem is if you just took the story and told it like a novel or a movie it probably wouldn't be very good (it was definitely good, just not blockbuster material IMHO). And if you took out the story would it make for a good game? Absolutely not. At least not compared to any other RPG before it.
The main infatuation with FFVII probably lies on the fact that it does play though like a reasonably good novel and it was probably one of the first good examples to do so. But I'm of the opinion that if I want a good game, I want to play and have fun. And if I want a good story I'll read a good book. But if you give me something mediocre on both ends and mash it together, I'll find the end result just slightly better than the sum of its parts - but not ecstatic about the game.
Seriously, I'm all up for well told stories in a game, but when it interferes with the game and game mechanics it has the potential to make the gameplay seriously suffer. And if the story is only so-so, then the entire game sucks that much more (and why have the story in the first place?)
If you have a story to tell that needs to be told interactively, a game is a great medium to do it in. If you have a story to tell where the audience is supposed to mainly watch and listen, make a movie. If you have an indepth story with deep characters, a huge plotline, where no interaction is really necessary - write a novel. And if you have NONE of the above, reconsider what you're making story-wise. Your medium is your message after all.
There really seems to be some sort of confusion about what medium a story should be told in.
...a tape or location where I know I can look to find the "good" copy that contains the official tree of code that represents what is going into my product.
In a distributed environment usually there's someone's (or a group's) repository that's considered more important than others. In a software setting this could be a Lead Engineer's/QA/Certification's repository. Depending on what your definition of the "good" repository is, you would take the copy from the right place. It opens up in terms of flexibility what code you actually want to get to work with. The upcoming released version of your software from QA, the next-generation stuff that developers are working on, or maybe a new feature that you here so-and-so is working on...
I don't want to be "pulling" fixes from engineers, I want engineers "pushing" fixes into a known-good integration environment.
But you have someone who needs to approve a change to a central repository that everyone shares. Right? That person would probably want to examine those changes before they're committed. The only difference between distributed and centralized, in this case, is that it's a required step. Everyone is responsible for their own repository.
By integrity - I mean ensuring that you have all of the fixes you want to have from everyone who should be making changes on a project Again, in a centralized system, someone has to have the responsibility that all "fixes" have been made which isn't much different from a distributed model. And technically anyone is free to make changes to a project locally on their own machine. They just have to notify the "higher" person saying "Hey I've got a fix for so-and-so", and in a controlled manner they can decide whether or not to accept the changes into their own repository.
I'm no expert on distributed revision control, so anyone please feel free to correct me.
Frankly, for corporate work, I don't understand why you would want the backup and integrity hassles of a distributed version control system.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the major selling point of distributed revision control? The idea being that since it is a distributed repository, everyone has a "backup" of someone else's repository (depending where they got their code from). No distributed copy is necessarily considered more important than another. However in a corporate environment I would imagine it works out quite well since there's an inherent hierarchy. Those "higher up" can pull changes from those "below". Those "higher" repositories you could (and probably should) backup.
As far as integrity goes I think one of the main goals of both Mecurial and Git was to protecting against corruption (using a SHA1 hash). You're much more likely to get corruption through CVS and SVN, which is awful considering it's in a central location.
Have you gone back and played the original Doom(s) recently? IMHO the problem is Doom and Doom 2 were way more fun than Doom 3. Doom 3 was just a much slower Doom and Doom 2. Doom 3 also wasn't that scary, but admittedly it had a few moments.
And yes, games can be reasonably faster paced and scary! Undying was a really neat game, a good storyline, and it was pretty creepy sometimes. Didn't people also find Quake to be kinda creepy for it's time (and more so than Doom 3 now)?
And with Doom 3? You're basically left with a game that's slow, not that fun, and not even that scary. So what exactly were you left with? A really shiny, graphically immersive and beautiful, but mediocre game.
No sir/madam. If the mods are generous and mod this up, history will record you as a troll, you will be hidden from most filters, and I will be recorded as the first poster.
A quick search said nothing about power consumption. If these transistors are really small, but leaky as hell with subthreshold leakage then what's the point? The chip might have to manage heat/power in such a way that there's a large portion of the die dedicated to it.
But if they start borrowing and eating your already limited bandwidth and start choking your connection. Then just use some form of encryption and be done with it (AES).
It doesn't really matter whether or not it's illegal, they put themselves at risk if they transmit wireless on an unencrypted connection
Why can't we license software we write anyway we choose?
If I've written a software which, by default, I already own the copyright to, why can't I choose which license to release it under? You might be using other software under a different license to support your own. But having that 3rd party software restrict which license you can choose seems absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. Please, someone enlighten me why this happens
It might be considered a surprise considering you can release your software for free (as in beer). But you can't really release the source for free (as in speech) under a GPL.
If want to release "free" software, it's hard to believe you have to do so restrictively.
Slashdot Mirror
a grumpy and gruff war monger who, as the post states, was taken away from the latest issue of Punishment Monthly and a carton of cigarettes to deal with cheaters.... or an admin working for Valve who decided to add a bit of levity to the announcement that some cheaters were caught?
I play quite a bit of TF2, I don't cheat, and I was still unhappy being on the receiving ends of those words.
For the "Fail" blog post it was accusing players of 'illegitimately' farming achievements by using an external program. In case anyone was wondering, you need achievements to unlock additional weaponry to use in game. Now this seems fine in principle, but practically it makes no sense. Anyone can start their own server by clicking on the "Create Server" button and farm a ton of those achievements. For example, in the last scout update there was a handful that dealt with capturing points and intelligence. It's easy enough to run in an empty server to capture points and intelligence and start to get unlockable weaponry. And if you're lucky enough to be part of a clan with a private server, it takes all of 15 minutes to 'farm' the other achievements out with clan mates. Is this any more 'illegitimate' than using an external program? Achievements are supposed to be personal gratification, something you can aspire to, not something that's required to get something more out of your game. I play FPS's to avoid the grind. Why should it feel like I'm playing WOW suddenly everytime there's an unlockable update?
That would be Vim.
All of you and your bad puns can piss off.
*Game designer thinks*
A prince! Of... persia!
Not that today's games are going to run much faster with this, but upcoming titles will.
I'm not entirely sold on that point. I'd imagine that developers already try to throw as much rendering information into the card's memory as-is allowing for the "overflow" to be stored in system memory. But I would imagine this process is done transparently by the driver anyway (AFAIK). Removing this "overflow" for most current games could improve performance by the same amount as any other newer games that come to market.
Maybe I'm just crazy but why is this considered such a "bad" idea?
Sure it would be a hell of a lot of work to the kernel to have it compatible with existing binaries and drivers, but I would imagine that Windows 7 kernel development is too. I mean it seems like a crazy idea, but doesn't it have a smidgen of merit to it?
Do you think we'll see a way to extend our lifetime substantially within our lifetime? Within yours specifically?
Well at least there are options like the Google App Engine
Politicians only get so far as their voters.
Of a successful game?! NO WAY. This is going to really change how games are made...
Final Fantasy 7 was one of those games for me that I would seriously question on whether or not I was actually having fun amidst an admittedly somewhat interesting story line. The actual "game" portion which involved either running around doing mini quests (like dressing up as a girl) or doing battles which were, in my opinion, okay at best. Do you find doing battles fun or is it just gratifying to level up and "grind" your characters for higher powers?
There was some cool story-oriented parts that you could not have told through another medium. The coolest was being able to relive your "memories" by playing through them. That is something that you cannot do in another medium. And FFVII did a very good job of it.
The problem is if you just took the story and told it like a novel or a movie it probably wouldn't be very good (it was definitely good, just not blockbuster material IMHO). And if you took out the story would it make for a good game? Absolutely not. At least not compared to any other RPG before it.
The main infatuation with FFVII probably lies on the fact that it does play though like a reasonably good novel and it was probably one of the first good examples to do so. But I'm of the opinion that if I want a good game, I want to play and have fun. And if I want a good story I'll read a good book. But if you give me something mediocre on both ends and mash it together, I'll find the end result just slightly better than the sum of its parts - but not ecstatic about the game.
Easy answer - just add female nudity.
Title fixed.
Seriously, I'm all up for well told stories in a game, but when it interferes with the game and game mechanics it has the potential to make the gameplay seriously suffer. And if the story is only so-so, then the entire game sucks that much more (and why have the story in the first place?)
If you have a story to tell that needs to be told interactively, a game is a great medium to do it in. If you have a story to tell where the audience is supposed to mainly watch and listen, make a movie. If you have an indepth story with deep characters, a huge plotline, where no interaction is really necessary - write a novel. And if you have NONE of the above, reconsider what you're making story-wise. Your medium is your message after all.
There really seems to be some sort of confusion about what medium a story should be told in.
Basse is "low" in french. "Low sixteen" corresponding to the hex-like 2nd second stanza?
BUTTERCUP: Who are you?
MAN IN BLACK: I am no one to be trifled with, that is all you ever need know.
BUTTERCUP: To think -- all that time it was your cryptographic protocol that was poorly seeded.
MAN IN BLACK: They were both poorly seeded. I spent the morning downloading a patch to build an immunity to keys being guessed.
...a tape or location where I know I can look to find the "good" copy that contains the official tree of code that represents what is going into my product.In a distributed environment usually there's someone's (or a group's) repository that's considered more important than others. In a software setting this could be a Lead Engineer's/QA/Certification's repository. Depending on what your definition of the "good" repository is, you would take the copy from the right place. It opens up in terms of flexibility what code you actually want to get to work with. The upcoming released version of your software from QA, the next-generation stuff that developers are working on, or maybe a new feature that you here so-and-so is working on...
I don't want to be "pulling" fixes from engineers, I want engineers "pushing" fixes into a known-good integration environment.But you have someone who needs to approve a change to a central repository that everyone shares. Right? That person would probably want to examine those changes before they're committed. The only difference between distributed and centralized, in this case, is that it's a required step. Everyone is responsible for their own repository.
By integrity - I mean ensuring that you have all of the fixes you want to have from everyone who should be making changes on a project Again, in a centralized system, someone has to have the responsibility that all "fixes" have been made which isn't much different from a distributed model. And technically anyone is free to make changes to a project locally on their own machine. They just have to notify the "higher" person saying "Hey I've got a fix for so-and-so", and in a controlled manner they can decide whether or not to accept the changes into their own repository.I'm no expert on distributed revision control, so anyone please feel free to correct me.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the major selling point of distributed revision control? The idea being that since it is a distributed repository, everyone has a "backup" of someone else's repository (depending where they got their code from). No distributed copy is necessarily considered more important than another. However in a corporate environment I would imagine it works out quite well since there's an inherent hierarchy. Those "higher up" can pull changes from those "below". Those "higher" repositories you could (and probably should) backup.
As far as integrity goes I think one of the main goals of both Mecurial and Git was to protecting against corruption (using a SHA1 hash). You're much more likely to get corruption through CVS and SVN, which is awful considering it's in a central location.
Which is great as long as it's fun.
Have you gone back and played the original Doom(s) recently? IMHO the problem is Doom and Doom 2 were way more fun than Doom 3. Doom 3 was just a much slower Doom and Doom 2. Doom 3 also wasn't that scary, but admittedly it had a few moments.
And yes, games can be reasonably faster paced and scary! Undying was a really neat game, a good storyline, and it was pretty creepy sometimes. Didn't people also find Quake to be kinda creepy for it's time (and more so than Doom 3 now)?
And with Doom 3? You're basically left with a game that's slow, not that fun, and not even that scary. So what exactly were you left with? A really shiny, graphically immersive and beautiful, but mediocre game.
No sir/madam. If the mods are generous and mod this up, history will record you as a troll, you will be hidden from most filters, and I will be recorded as the first poster.
A quick search said nothing about power consumption. If these transistors are really small, but leaky as hell with subthreshold leakage then what's the point? The chip might have to manage heat/power in such a way that there's a large portion of the die dedicated to it.
Also, what "atom" size are we talking about here?
I'm not a botanist, but I believe a Hydroponic solution would solve most, if not all the issues you've listed there.
But if they start borrowing and eating your already limited bandwidth and start choking your connection. Then just use some form of encryption and be done with it (AES).
It doesn't really matter whether or not it's illegal, they put themselves at risk if they transmit wireless on an unencrypted connection
Why can't we license software we write anyway we choose?
If I've written a software which, by default, I already own the copyright to, why can't I choose which license to release it under? You might be using other software under a different license to support your own. But having that 3rd party software restrict which license you can choose seems absolutely ridiculous and unnecessary. Please, someone enlighten me why this happens
It might be considered a surprise considering you can release your software for free (as in beer). But you can't really release the source for free (as in speech) under a GPL.
If want to release "free" software, it's hard to believe you have to do so restrictively.