I understand what you are saying but given that Christian groups have been around as long as WoW has been out and are quite open about their own existence (what player hasnt noticed them), why has Blizzard not even once tried to enforce this rule upon them? Its possible they did and no one heard about it, but thats something of a moot point since we just do not know unless Blizzard says they did. From the context of the entire thing, especially with Christian groups in such prominence for this long, it comes off pretty strongly that Blizzard is selectively applying its rules here.
... sensitive real-world subjects -- such as religious, sexual, or political preference, for example -- have had a tendency to result in communication between players that often breaks down into harassment.
So my question is, why haven't they taken any action against the Christian guilds? Nothing against Christian guilds, but they obviously exist and it seems no action has previously been taken regarding their existence before this GLBT debacle. Personally, I think Blizzard is blowing this issue since they never took action on 'sensitive real-world subjects' before this point, atleast with religious guilds, so it definitely seems that they are applying a double-standard here. Given the immature atmosphere of any online game, having a guild of like-minded folk whos first reaction to any intelligent piece of personal information is NOT to curse and mock the individual, well, that seems like something that should be encouraged rather than dismissed. Otherwise, Blizzard should start the Great Guild Purge of 2006 and get cracking on those religious guilds (and if they exist, political guilds, never seen any though) as well as any other 'sensitive real world topics' instead of their current method of selective enforcement.
This is an all-around fantastic game. It's showing its age, but still looks excellent graphically.
I agree completely, as far as space-sims go, Freespace II is the single best overall, even compared to newer ones such as the X series and Freelancer which was a bit more arcadey.
However, theres good news regarding the game's aging graphics. If you are unaware, Volition released the source code for FS2 a whiles back and since then the players have unified their efforts into the FS2 Source Code Project in which they are introducing the newer graphical effects as well as completely rehauling the games assets ranging from high-res textures, higher poly models and redone backgrounds. I definitely recommend you check it out; the only problem is that if you download any user-made campaigns, they need to be SCP compatible due to some of the newer stuff introduced with it. Check it out: Hard-Light Forums. The wiki covers how to install it.
I thought you should know 'Kingdom for Sale' is by Terry Brooks (not Pratchett, very different writer) and as far as fantasy-humor goes, is not very good in my opinion though his Shannarra series is entertaining if devoid of any real substance. Good Omens should not be compared to the rest of Pratchett's writing since it was a co-authored project and has a different, more ominous tone than most of his other books, something Gaiman is excellent at. Personally, I think 'Small Gods' is the single best Discworld book due to it being the most 'serious' in that it does take a great look at established religion and has some excellent characters that change throughout the book, and it stands completely on its own. If you want to start off though, the first two books that debued Discworld, 'The Colour of Magic' and 'The Light Fantastic' are also excellent though more in the vein of fantasy parody than the satire of 'Small Gods'.
This article nails the issue on the head and voices a common complaint of mine regardling cinematics in games. The single greatest source of irritation for me is watching a 3 - 5 minute FMV (full motion video) segment and then once its over and the mission/chapter/whatever starts, realizing that whatever was in that video has no effect at all what so ever on the gameplay or how I will continue playing the game. Funnily enough, as a kid, FMV was all the rage (remember the Multimedia/CDROM explosion) and I ate it up without hesitation. Video games with real life video in them, awesome, thats like something out of the movies! But now, about 90% of the time, if possible, I will just skip the FMV (assuming like the author noted, that its possible, damn thats annoying) since its usually not too great and also completely irrelevant to the gameplay that follows. Note that this is also due to the fact that very often, game stories are nothing more than half-hazardly used glue to keep levels/missions together; if you remove the story, the game loses some context but the mission objectives remain nonetheless.
Its kind of how a soldier IRL is given a set of orders but is rarely given a great deal of context regarding their orders outside of the immediate need of whats required to complete their mission. Johnny Soldier just needs to know that he needs to storm that building and secure 3 known surviving civilians and eliminate any hostiles. Whether that building was is additionally the center of a complex political plot involving several governments and trans-national companies is largely irrelevant to his mission.
Games with FMV will give you a nice 5 minute cinematic on that whole political plot and then will put you, virtual Johnny Solder into the mission with the actual objectives (secure building, rescue civs, eliminate hostiles), and in the end, that whole cinematic doesnt matter one bit when completing your mission so long as you just follow your objectives. Maybe a scripted event happens relating back, but more often than not, theres only the mission. This is also partially to blame on the saturation of purely linear stories and largely non-open games. The future is surely in games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion rather than Final Fantasy since while Final Fantasy may tell some nice stories, the games are little more than interactive showcases for stories. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed FF as a kid but these days I prefer the gameplay itself to be the sole means of telling the story as well as the ability for emergent gameplay as the article said, and non-linearity. Heres a salute to all those that are forging that road into the emergent future.
I am going to have to disagree with your assessment of no-one playing America's Army or UT2004. I just really quickly loaded up a server browser to see how many people were playing, and currently (at 4:30pm EST):
UT2004: there are 212 servers and 1526 players spread between those servers, though notably, few are filled to the max and only 2 dozen or so support 32 players.
America's Army: there are 621 servers with 8102 players currently playing, and unlike UT2k4, it seems to enjoy a large share of of 28 to 26 player servers some of which are maxed out with players.
Team Fortress Classic: 197 servers, 1588 players spread between them, only 3 servers are max filled and only a dozen or so support more 32 players.
TFC is still being played cause very simply, if you are addicted to TFC, you arent getting that fix anywhere else at the moment; believe it or not, theres still about 60 Quakeworld TF servers running with a couple hundred players.
I have to agree about BF2 to a degree, lots of asshat-ism and the server browser is frankly a piece of crap, but its not a bad game in of itself. But your point is taken; theres a lot of great MP games that just die as far as their MP goes since people stop playing and move onto newer shit, but I mean, thats kinda the nature of things. Things change, we move on to newer things; besides LANs or bots, you have little choice but to move on with everyone else regardless. But I won't deny that looking at the Quake1 cd in my cd-case often brings a mild feeling of nostalgic depression from seeing something that once was great and pretty much no longer is beyond talking of it as a classic and the memories. Those are probably what matter in the end.
RFID Wont Help Your Lunch
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RFID Cookware
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· Score: 0, Redundant
If CmdrTaco wants to stop burning his lunch, he will stop making the same mistake nearly everyone else does when burning stuff: they forget that its cooking in the first place. Whenever you are burning something, I'd say roughly about 95% of the time it can be attributed to the fact that you forgot it was cooking in the first place or were otherwise engaged elsewhere (playing a video game, doing a seperate cooking step, etc) and you missed your time cue to remove the food from the heat source. So what you really arent fancy RFID device, what you need are some decent kitchen timers, nothing fancy, just something that is loud and will let you know when its time is up. Now, if the RFID device could somehow detect that the food was burning and the subsequently turn off the heat source, that might be useful, though any hardcore cook would not likely ever use any of these type of devices beyond perhaps a digital meat thermometer. The market is definitely tech-toy lovers and people who can't cook (note, these two catagories may possibly be mutually inclusive).
That's probably the most annoying part of it all: the problems I mentioned aren't like Star Wars Galaxies level balancing issues in which by making a single change, you automatically piss off a couple thousand people. No, its a simple matter of making the menu system and server browser work which I figure is several orders of magnitude lower in complexity than the game engine itself. Assuming they couldnt fix it for the games release, it should have been dealt with on the first patch. Disappointing to see something you enjoy get such shoddy handling by the company that published it.
Its funny, with any other decently made game, Id be jumping at an opportunity for more content but while BF2 is very fun to play, the stuff that happens ouside of the actual game really drags it down. Like as you mentioned, the TERRIBLE menu system which somehow is worst than BF1942's menu system (1942's wasnt too bad, but aren't interfaces supposed to get better, not worst?). The most glaring and sad of these problems is the fact that the server browser is essentially broken and needs to be coddled to work. Basically, you hit the update button and DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE, since if you do, all of a sudden, the list of servers is non-existant or bizarrely truncated. Keep hitting that update button again, it won't do jack until you restart the entire game. Thats right, you need to quit BF2 and restart it just because you decided to use the server filters which are right there in the server browser but yet break the entire thing once you use them.
What makes this so sad is that: 1) The game purposely nerfed the single-player side of the game as a way to motivate *cough* force players to play online if they really wanted to feel the full scope of the game. 2) They impliment an entire online ranking system complete with weapon-unlocks and such for these purposes. 3) Despite this focus on MP, the server browser was roughly 50% broken on the games release, often freezing the entire game and requiring the user to restart the game just to be able to join a server to play the damn thing. Wtf?
Now, I will admit, once you get past these annoyances and enter an actual server, I've always had a great deal of fun playing the damn game. Thus, it stumps me to think of why the game engine performs better and is more reliable than the menu system. The fact that BF2 has gotten 3 patches so far (pretty sure its 3), including the one released AFTER the special forces expansion and the menus are still broken is one sad ass commentary on EA's support system. Its only in the upcoming patch that the team has indicated it will fix the broken server browser. Sorry, but 3 patches and an expansion later and you still haven't fixed a basic problem that allows players to play your game without a lot of hassles, thats retarded/negligent/shows a total lack of care for your customers.
In conclusion of this rant I say, A) I shall continue to enjoy BF2 in its original form plus patches (hopefully including the one that supposedly will fix the server browsr), B) Fuck the special forces expansion especially since some of the stuff in it should have debatably been included in BF2 originally, C) Fuck any booster packs, get fixing basic problems with the game and maybe I will feel confident that any product I purchased will not immediately be dropped for the next for-pay expansion regardless of its problems. I hope that a majority of the original customers of the game do the same since EA has a bad habit of expansioning-away its original game problems.
Maybe its just me but given all the current issues that are cropping up with the NSA and the president doing electronic taps without warrents or oversight, that worrying about cookies is probably something that is of much lesser importance? Possibly laughably so in comparison. The people who run John McCain's senate site probably are not going to use that data to link you to some terrorist plot or whatever have you; no, some guys in the NSA are going to skip the whole cute cookies bit and get straight down to a direct-line tap where they see everything that moves across the line, and they are going to do it based on what they think, no judges required. I am not saying, 'Who cares' since it is important that federal websites follow federal guidelines regarding privacy, but I really hope that we all dont start getting caught up in regulating federal website cookies while the real flagarent, Big-Brother level infringement goes on undiscussed.
They aren't doing Southpark in 3D for the realistic shadows or paper textures, they're using Maya since it allows them much more freedom in the long run with the characters and animation, the very reason they would not use flash or any other 2D program. Character animation in Maya is great & intuitive, especially with animation as simple as Southparks, so they have all their characters in 3D which can be place in any position, any perspective, etc within their scenes. When a character turns around in the show, the animators have keyframed the characters poses, and instead of having to have an artist draw a cell of animation for each perspective of the character (front, rear, side, etc etc etc), they just turn them around in 3D, flatten the animation curves to give it that instant-motion look and they gotta working scene. A majority of their work is very likely the character animations, scene creation, lip-sync and post-render touch up to remove anything that might not have rendered the way they like.
If they used a 2D program, they would be spending more time dealing with the technical aspect of animation rather than just moving the characters around and putting them where they want them. This is not because 3D is better but simply because it is far more efficient and allows them more flexibility. As far as the paper-look, thats simply a matter of the render engine & post-render effects, nothing that couldn't be done with a 2D program either, but does take a decent amount of time to get looking good, atleast to the degree that post-render touchup will not take much time.
I would not be surprised if most cartoons in the future moved to 3D since the time-savings can really add up if you get a good setup going, and most cartoons animation movement quality is low to begin with so they can save themselves money on all aspects of it from time saved in the character animation phase.
Its funny you hit upon that line in my response as thats probably one of my biggest problems these days with the multiplayer games in general is that people take it way too damn seriously, to a degree that it actually becomes stressful to play. Given that I've just come home from working all day in an office with its own stresses due to deadlines, etc, why the hell would I want to actually pay money to experience further stress from players who for some reason think their character's level is going to affect their ability to get into college or find a job. Though its not entirely in good spirit, I always have a nice moment of schadenfreude if a team I am playing on beats another team of people who are taking the very game seriously; if that same team I am on loses, then we just laugh at our mistakes and give it another go. What happened to the days of just having fun for the hell of it?
Yea, Zonks little comment at the end seems like praise devoid of meaning, as if I recall, the best part about PnP D&D is that you were sitting around with friends, having a good time, hopefully not taking it too seriously. I want to know how an MMORPG is going to recreate the PnP environment, as the statement means more than just replicating all the PnP calculations on the computer, it means recreating the atmosphere that made it fun to goto someones unfurnished basement for the night and play a somewhat goofy game but you loved every minute of it. Neverwinter Nights was fun, and it had a shitload of the PnP rules within it but by no means, even with an active DM running the session, was it comparable to a PnP game beyond the fact that the games ruleset was the same. Its the difference between online poker and sitting down with friends and playing, it just aint the same. I have not played the beta, perhaps someone who has could jump in with their take on Zonk's statement.
Given that computer users have been getting near HD-quality & better for a while, it is really only important for the console systems, and as such is naturally a selling point. HD in of itself is not important as is the overall fact that game engines & hardware are improving very quickly, now approaching cinematic quality in certain instances. High resolution art will become more common in-game, not just in prerendered sequences and thus greater time & energy will need to be spend on creating those assets, but this was going to happen without HD, just look at where the Unreal3 engine is heading.
My argument is mainly that this is not a result of HD; HD has just appeared at a time when this is now possible. If we had HD 10 years ago, we would have high resolution displays with low resolution games & art. If we still didnt have HD today, we'd still have pretty nice computer monitors which would take advantage of the high resolution artwork that UE3 and the like is offering. HD just ensures it will be spread into the mainstream even faster through consoles as opposed to computers. Hopefully it will also raise the expectations of game art & assets in general for all games & systems.
I was going to post this myself, but you hit it on the head. We can also assume the poster & editor have no idea about AI systems or ever read any science fiction stories as saying an AI is self-aware is the equivalent of saying, 'I have the cure for cancer' in the medical field. Or maybe it was a ploy to garner more interest in the article.
Metroid Makes the Gender Arbitrary
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The Samus Mystique
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· Score: 5, Insightful
While I agree with the author that more realistic renditions of females as people as opposed to objects needs to be done, I hardly consider Samus to be representative of this as her sex is completely arbitrary to the gameplay and in fact is only revealed in the very end of Super Metroid in a 'look whos inside' type of way. In fact, I would argue that No One Lives Forever, even with Cait Archer wearing her sexy jumpsuits, makes for a better female role than Samus as she actually speaks and makes her personality known throughout the game. While shes still representative of the sexual-object female spy, its done purposefully tongue-in-cheek the entire time, and her lines do not lend towards her being a 'dumb broad with guns'.
Another and better example is Alyx from Half-Life 2: Shes dressed sensibly and while cute, is not super-hot or a walking example of anatomical disproportion. Her lines are ones you'd expect from an intelligent person in her situation and shes more than capable of fending for herself as she does many times in the games, sometimes it seemed better than yourself as Gordon. Other than Alyx, its hard to name a female character that is like her in her sensibilities and generally realistic interactions; she was a person. Even Cait Archer is a purposeful stereotype for all her interactions & cleverness.
I look forward for the day that females in games are representated as people and not simply as women.
No doubt its a sword that cuts both ways, any body thats created, its members will have personal agendas, thats just the nature of humans and politics. You have good points, its something worth debating in the real arena. I think my really big concern with this is actually demonstrated with this back-and-forth you & I have been having. We both disagree on how this should be handled, but we both recognize theres valid reasons for either implimentation and are not getting mired in 'We Invented It First' or 'Its Ours Too' arguments as they're foolish and ultimately pointless for resolving this issue. I just worry that people will start a political battle around this and in the process, they are going to damage the very thing in question, all over politics and power which are ever present. This is is not some urgent issue that needs a fix now, its an issue that needs careful consideration over time to come up with something that will last and work and goes beyond the politics of this moment.
I know what you are saying and I agree it is good that it does not have its own military force (we start getting into World Government territory there). The UN rules by the mandate given to it by its member nations, if the member nations refuse to recognise it or play by the rules theres little it can do beyond sanctions assuming the rest of the body wishes to do that. However, I would argue that what you said is the reason for them not to be the holders of the ICANN crown since as you point out, unless the member states cooperate, nothing happens. Because of this deadlocking, stuff moves slow or not at all, so disagreements disrupt the process even though they are needed. A body that rules without disagreement on everything, especially on issues as diverse as those dealt with in the UN, probably has something wrong with it.
Recognising this, I think its best if that is left to its owin more of its current form though as a non-profit, international body. It currently works in that while not everyone is happy, the system is not broken which is not to say it couldnt use improvement. Turning it into a UN run committee would not qualify as an improvement in my mind. The last thing we need is politicians making this a power struggle in which the items in question are wrecked by hubris, power-grabs, politics, spitefulness, and so on. This is an example of what I think the private sector is best suited for instead of immersing ICANN in a UN-structured body and all the politics that carries with it. The internet was started by US government investment and exploded with both US & international private investment. No need to bring it back into the government fold at this point.
While the UN is effective overall in a way, it is terrible at timely reponse to anything, especially if theres any disagreement. Look at the genocides that have gone on in the last 15 years and you'll notice the time between antrocities being reported & the UN actually doing something besides just talking is so long that usually either the genocide is done or well underway. Now thats something important, atleast I think so, and as such demands a quick response; it NEEDS a quick response.
Going back to the internet issue, I think its a terrible idea to give the UN to perform the function of ICANN simply since its slow speed could be crippling to the rapid pace at which the internet and internet politics moves. Add on top of that disparities in whats considered free speech in say America vs certain European nations which tend to not protect racist speech. The moment there is any disagreement in the massive rule-by-committee that is the UN, everything starts crawling.
I think the UN is great for dealing with broad issues like Mine proliferation, international security issues, the creation of the ICC, etc, but when it comes to specialized stuff like this and in addition that requires a body that has a reasonable response time, the UN is not suited at all. I think the best option is an international non-profit organization, run by a small committee whom consist of members of the nations concerned. There is a shitload of details that we could discuss; should members be elected, should it be by appointment, are seats permanent, are they temporary, etc. However, the core issue is that the organization is not shackled by a 300-member committee that is in turn trying to deal with a shitload of other issues. As a rule, the more functionality you try to lump into such an organization, the slower it is to deal with the issues relating to that function. Witness FEMA under the Office of Homeland Security in the USA, bad idea all around and we've all seen the results. Here's for an independant body, let the UN do its other jobs and thus both are better for it.
The terms being used lately have been pretty vague and incorrect. Sony is not releasing a free MMORPG, its releasing a non-subscription based MMORPG in which you pay for it once. Then the question comes about, are they going to do what Guild Wars does? As Guild Wars is not a true MMORPG but rather a pseudo one with MMO elements since with the exception of the cities, everything is instanced. This keeps their costs lower as well, so I wonder whether Sony will be going the same route as well. We need to come up with a term to describe these games as calling them MMORPGs is misleading. Diablo2 was not considered an MMORPG, and it wasnt, but if you remove all the shiny stuff, thats what Guild Wars is undernearth for the most part: communal meeting points (Battle.net) that are jump points for quests and missions. I own Guild Wars, its great fun, but it shouldn't be called an MMORPG anymore than Diablo II on Battle.net should be called one. Perhaps MRPG or something along those lines.
Actually, the issue is not whether Iraq was a threat; of course it was a threat so long as Saddam was the head of the state. The question is whether he was an immanent threat. We now know he was not and there are questions about the portrayal of him as such.
I found a cool little teach-programming game called CeeBot (has been featured on slashdot before I believe), and it would be excellent for teaching you the basics. I've played it myself as a programmer as a puzzle-game since some of the later parts are challenging logic wise. In the end though as many posters have indicated, 'just do it' is the main course of action and learning based off your needs to start with. Think of a very simple application and then code it, whether its an address book or a small card game. To those ends, I recommend something like Python or Perl (though perl is a bit less structured than Python) since they're evolved languages and have greater out-of-the-box functionality. I tend to think of C++ as being given a hammer & screw driver to make a car, you need to use those 2 tools to manufacture the rest of the tools and then after that, make the actual car. Python & Perl give you pretty much all the tools you need, you just need to worry about the car itself.
That being said, the one of the best resources for programming (besides the actual language documentation itself) is Usenet (specifically, using Google groups to search), since it goes back to the creation of the internet & is fully archived, you have at your disposal stuff that goes back to 1981. Barring that, there's always google & forums.
I am trying to understand here, how much of this is pure politics (ie, maintaining control), and how much of this is a technical issue. As a rule of thumb, if it ain't broke, you dont fix it. This isnt to say that the current setup if optimal, but this seems like a rush to remove control of TLDs from the USA without actually addressing any technical issue or problem? My other problem is that given how long it takes for the UN to do anything at all, giving them control of this seems like a potential mixture for problems down the road. Throw in the EU as a controlling party, and the mixture becomes more complicated further since its composed of member states that need to agree on this stuff as well as a whole.
I definitely agree that the process should be more international, but not a moment before there is something there that would make the transition as smooth as possible. Right now, this smells of "first we'll take control, then we'll think of what to do with it", and it will hang in limbo for a couple years while everyone is asking, "why did we do this in the first place, shit worked before?"
I don't get how this actually translates to someone wanting or not wanting to buy a XBox360. I figure, if someone wants one, they will likely be of the mind that they will be buying one regardless any supply issues. On the flip side, hearing this does not make you more likely to want to buy a xbox if you haven't already. I can somewhat see the 'marketing trick' in that people who want one will be even more eager to ensure they get theirs first, but that doesn't translate to more sales in the long run.
Slashdot Mirror
I understand what you are saying but given that Christian groups have been around as long as WoW has been out and are quite open about their own existence (what player hasnt noticed them), why has Blizzard not even once tried to enforce this rule upon them? Its possible they did and no one heard about it, but thats something of a moot point since we just do not know unless Blizzard says they did. From the context of the entire thing, especially with Christian groups in such prominence for this long, it comes off pretty strongly that Blizzard is selectively applying its rules here.
... sensitive real-world subjects -- such as religious, sexual, or political preference, for example -- have had a tendency to result in communication between players that often breaks down into harassment.
So my question is, why haven't they taken any action against the Christian guilds? Nothing against Christian guilds, but they obviously exist and it seems no action has previously been taken regarding their existence before this GLBT debacle. Personally, I think Blizzard is blowing this issue since they never took action on 'sensitive real-world subjects' before this point, atleast with religious guilds, so it definitely seems that they are applying a double-standard here. Given the immature atmosphere of any online game, having a guild of like-minded folk whos first reaction to any intelligent piece of personal information is NOT to curse and mock the individual, well, that seems like something that should be encouraged rather than dismissed. Otherwise, Blizzard should start the Great Guild Purge of 2006 and get cracking on those religious guilds (and if they exist, political guilds, never seen any though) as well as any other 'sensitive real world topics' instead of their current method of selective enforcement.
This is an all-around fantastic game. It's showing its age, but still looks excellent graphically.
I agree completely, as far as space-sims go, Freespace II is the single best overall, even compared to newer ones such as the X series and Freelancer which was a bit more arcadey.
However, theres good news regarding the game's aging graphics. If you are unaware, Volition released the source code for FS2 a whiles back and since then the players have unified their efforts into the FS2 Source Code Project in which they are introducing the newer graphical effects as well as completely rehauling the games assets ranging from high-res textures, higher poly models and redone backgrounds. I definitely recommend you check it out; the only problem is that if you download any user-made campaigns, they need to be SCP compatible due to some of the newer stuff introduced with it. Check it out: Hard-Light Forums. The wiki covers how to install it.
I thought you should know 'Kingdom for Sale' is by Terry Brooks (not Pratchett, very different writer) and as far as fantasy-humor goes, is not very good in my opinion though his Shannarra series is entertaining if devoid of any real substance. Good Omens should not be compared to the rest of Pratchett's writing since it was a co-authored project and has a different, more ominous tone than most of his other books, something Gaiman is excellent at. Personally, I think 'Small Gods' is the single best Discworld book due to it being the most 'serious' in that it does take a great look at established religion and has some excellent characters that change throughout the book, and it stands completely on its own. If you want to start off though, the first two books that debued Discworld, 'The Colour of Magic' and 'The Light Fantastic' are also excellent though more in the vein of fantasy parody than the satire of 'Small Gods'.
This article nails the issue on the head and voices a common complaint of mine regardling cinematics in games. The single greatest source of irritation for me is watching a 3 - 5 minute FMV (full motion video) segment and then once its over and the mission/chapter/whatever starts, realizing that whatever was in that video has no effect at all what so ever on the gameplay or how I will continue playing the game. Funnily enough, as a kid, FMV was all the rage (remember the Multimedia/CDROM explosion) and I ate it up without hesitation. Video games with real life video in them, awesome, thats like something out of the movies! But now, about 90% of the time, if possible, I will just skip the FMV (assuming like the author noted, that its possible, damn thats annoying) since its usually not too great and also completely irrelevant to the gameplay that follows. Note that this is also due to the fact that very often, game stories are nothing more than half-hazardly used glue to keep levels/missions together; if you remove the story, the game loses some context but the mission objectives remain nonetheless.
Its kind of how a soldier IRL is given a set of orders but is rarely given a great deal of context regarding their orders outside of the immediate need of whats required to complete their mission. Johnny Soldier just needs to know that he needs to storm that building and secure 3 known surviving civilians and eliminate any hostiles. Whether that building was is additionally the center of a complex political plot involving several governments and trans-national companies is largely irrelevant to his mission.
Games with FMV will give you a nice 5 minute cinematic on that whole political plot and then will put you, virtual Johnny Solder into the mission with the actual objectives (secure building, rescue civs, eliminate hostiles), and in the end, that whole cinematic doesnt matter one bit when completing your mission so long as you just follow your objectives. Maybe a scripted event happens relating back, but more often than not, theres only the mission. This is also partially to blame on the saturation of purely linear stories and largely non-open games. The future is surely in games like Elder Scrolls Oblivion rather than Final Fantasy since while Final Fantasy may tell some nice stories, the games are little more than interactive showcases for stories. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed FF as a kid but these days I prefer the gameplay itself to be the sole means of telling the story as well as the ability for emergent gameplay as the article said, and non-linearity. Heres a salute to all those that are forging that road into the emergent future.
I am going to have to disagree with your assessment of no-one playing America's Army or UT2004. I just really quickly loaded up a server browser to see how many people were playing, and currently (at 4:30pm EST):
UT2004: there are 212 servers and 1526 players spread between those servers, though notably, few are filled to the max and only 2 dozen or so support 32 players.
America's Army: there are 621 servers with 8102 players currently playing, and unlike UT2k4, it seems to enjoy a large share of of 28 to 26 player servers some of which are maxed out with players.
Team Fortress Classic: 197 servers, 1588 players spread between them, only 3 servers are max filled and only a dozen or so support more 32 players.
TFC is still being played cause very simply, if you are addicted to TFC, you arent getting that fix anywhere else at the moment; believe it or not, theres still about 60 Quakeworld TF servers running with a couple hundred players.
I have to agree about BF2 to a degree, lots of asshat-ism and the server browser is frankly a piece of crap, but its not a bad game in of itself. But your point is taken; theres a lot of great MP games that just die as far as their MP goes since people stop playing and move onto newer shit, but I mean, thats kinda the nature of things. Things change, we move on to newer things; besides LANs or bots, you have little choice but to move on with everyone else regardless. But I won't deny that looking at the Quake1 cd in my cd-case often brings a mild feeling of nostalgic depression from seeing something that once was great and pretty much no longer is beyond talking of it as a classic and the memories. Those are probably what matter in the end.
If CmdrTaco wants to stop burning his lunch, he will stop making the same mistake nearly everyone else does when burning stuff: they forget that its cooking in the first place. Whenever you are burning something, I'd say roughly about 95% of the time it can be attributed to the fact that you forgot it was cooking in the first place or were otherwise engaged elsewhere (playing a video game, doing a seperate cooking step, etc) and you missed your time cue to remove the food from the heat source. So what you really arent fancy RFID device, what you need are some decent kitchen timers, nothing fancy, just something that is loud and will let you know when its time is up. Now, if the RFID device could somehow detect that the food was burning and the subsequently turn off the heat source, that might be useful, though any hardcore cook would not likely ever use any of these type of devices beyond perhaps a digital meat thermometer. The market is definitely tech-toy lovers and people who can't cook (note, these two catagories may possibly be mutually inclusive).
That's probably the most annoying part of it all: the problems I mentioned aren't like Star Wars Galaxies level balancing issues in which by making a single change, you automatically piss off a couple thousand people. No, its a simple matter of making the menu system and server browser work which I figure is several orders of magnitude lower in complexity than the game engine itself. Assuming they couldnt fix it for the games release, it should have been dealt with on the first patch. Disappointing to see something you enjoy get such shoddy handling by the company that published it.
Its funny, with any other decently made game, Id be jumping at an opportunity for more content but while BF2 is very fun to play, the stuff that happens ouside of the actual game really drags it down. Like as you mentioned, the TERRIBLE menu system which somehow is worst than BF1942's menu system (1942's wasnt too bad, but aren't interfaces supposed to get better, not worst?). The most glaring and sad of these problems is the fact that the server browser is essentially broken and needs to be coddled to work. Basically, you hit the update button and DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE, since if you do, all of a sudden, the list of servers is non-existant or bizarrely truncated. Keep hitting that update button again, it won't do jack until you restart the entire game. Thats right, you need to quit BF2 and restart it just because you decided to use the server filters which are right there in the server browser but yet break the entire thing once you use them.
What makes this so sad is that: 1) The game purposely nerfed the single-player side of the game as a way to motivate *cough* force players to play online if they really wanted to feel the full scope of the game. 2) They impliment an entire online ranking system complete with weapon-unlocks and such for these purposes. 3) Despite this focus on MP, the server browser was roughly 50% broken on the games release, often freezing the entire game and requiring the user to restart the game just to be able to join a server to play the damn thing. Wtf?
Now, I will admit, once you get past these annoyances and enter an actual server, I've always had a great deal of fun playing the damn game. Thus, it stumps me to think of why the game engine performs better and is more reliable than the menu system. The fact that BF2 has gotten 3 patches so far (pretty sure its 3), including the one released AFTER the special forces expansion and the menus are still broken is one sad ass commentary on EA's support system. Its only in the upcoming patch that the team has indicated it will fix the broken server browser. Sorry, but 3 patches and an expansion later and you still haven't fixed a basic problem that allows players to play your game without a lot of hassles, thats retarded/negligent/shows a total lack of care for your customers.
In conclusion of this rant I say, A) I shall continue to enjoy BF2 in its original form plus patches (hopefully including the one that supposedly will fix the server browsr), B) Fuck the special forces expansion especially since some of the stuff in it should have debatably been included in BF2 originally, C) Fuck any booster packs, get fixing basic problems with the game and maybe I will feel confident that any product I purchased will not immediately be dropped for the next for-pay expansion regardless of its problems. I hope that a majority of the original customers of the game do the same since EA has a bad habit of expansioning-away its original game problems.
If they're going to make the show 'politically correct' by including a girl on the IT staff, wheres the jive-talking, good natured black guy?!
Maybe its just me but given all the current issues that are cropping up with the NSA and the president doing electronic taps without warrents or oversight, that worrying about cookies is probably something that is of much lesser importance? Possibly laughably so in comparison. The people who run John McCain's senate site probably are not going to use that data to link you to some terrorist plot or whatever have you; no, some guys in the NSA are going to skip the whole cute cookies bit and get straight down to a direct-line tap where they see everything that moves across the line, and they are going to do it based on what they think, no judges required. I am not saying, 'Who cares' since it is important that federal websites follow federal guidelines regarding privacy, but I really hope that we all dont start getting caught up in regulating federal website cookies while the real flagarent, Big-Brother level infringement goes on undiscussed.
They aren't doing Southpark in 3D for the realistic shadows or paper textures, they're using Maya since it allows them much more freedom in the long run with the characters and animation, the very reason they would not use flash or any other 2D program. Character animation in Maya is great & intuitive, especially with animation as simple as Southparks, so they have all their characters in 3D which can be place in any position, any perspective, etc within their scenes. When a character turns around in the show, the animators have keyframed the characters poses, and instead of having to have an artist draw a cell of animation for each perspective of the character (front, rear, side, etc etc etc), they just turn them around in 3D, flatten the animation curves to give it that instant-motion look and they gotta working scene. A majority of their work is very likely the character animations, scene creation, lip-sync and post-render touch up to remove anything that might not have rendered the way they like.
If they used a 2D program, they would be spending more time dealing with the technical aspect of animation rather than just moving the characters around and putting them where they want them. This is not because 3D is better but simply because it is far more efficient and allows them more flexibility. As far as the paper-look, thats simply a matter of the render engine & post-render effects, nothing that couldn't be done with a 2D program either, but does take a decent amount of time to get looking good, atleast to the degree that post-render touchup will not take much time.
I would not be surprised if most cartoons in the future moved to 3D since the time-savings can really add up if you get a good setup going, and most cartoons animation movement quality is low to begin with so they can save themselves money on all aspects of it from time saved in the character animation phase.
Its funny you hit upon that line in my response as thats probably one of my biggest problems these days with the multiplayer games in general is that people take it way too damn seriously, to a degree that it actually becomes stressful to play. Given that I've just come home from working all day in an office with its own stresses due to deadlines, etc, why the hell would I want to actually pay money to experience further stress from players who for some reason think their character's level is going to affect their ability to get into college or find a job. Though its not entirely in good spirit, I always have a nice moment of schadenfreude if a team I am playing on beats another team of people who are taking the very game seriously; if that same team I am on loses, then we just laugh at our mistakes and give it another go. What happened to the days of just having fun for the hell of it?
Yea, Zonks little comment at the end seems like praise devoid of meaning, as if I recall, the best part about PnP D&D is that you were sitting around with friends, having a good time, hopefully not taking it too seriously. I want to know how an MMORPG is going to recreate the PnP environment, as the statement means more than just replicating all the PnP calculations on the computer, it means recreating the atmosphere that made it fun to goto someones unfurnished basement for the night and play a somewhat goofy game but you loved every minute of it. Neverwinter Nights was fun, and it had a shitload of the PnP rules within it but by no means, even with an active DM running the session, was it comparable to a PnP game beyond the fact that the games ruleset was the same. Its the difference between online poker and sitting down with friends and playing, it just aint the same. I have not played the beta, perhaps someone who has could jump in with their take on Zonk's statement.
Given that computer users have been getting near HD-quality & better for a while, it is really only important for the console systems, and as such is naturally a selling point. HD in of itself is not important as is the overall fact that game engines & hardware are improving very quickly, now approaching cinematic quality in certain instances. High resolution art will become more common in-game, not just in prerendered sequences and thus greater time & energy will need to be spend on creating those assets, but this was going to happen without HD, just look at where the Unreal3 engine is heading.
My argument is mainly that this is not a result of HD; HD has just appeared at a time when this is now possible. If we had HD 10 years ago, we would have high resolution displays with low resolution games & art. If we still didnt have HD today, we'd still have pretty nice computer monitors which would take advantage of the high resolution artwork that UE3 and the like is offering. HD just ensures it will be spread into the mainstream even faster through consoles as opposed to computers. Hopefully it will also raise the expectations of game art & assets in general for all games & systems.
I was going to post this myself, but you hit it on the head. We can also assume the poster & editor have no idea about AI systems or ever read any science fiction stories as saying an AI is self-aware is the equivalent of saying, 'I have the cure for cancer' in the medical field. Or maybe it was a ploy to garner more interest in the article.
While I agree with the author that more realistic renditions of females as people as opposed to objects needs to be done, I hardly consider Samus to be representative of this as her sex is completely arbitrary to the gameplay and in fact is only revealed in the very end of Super Metroid in a 'look whos inside' type of way. In fact, I would argue that No One Lives Forever, even with Cait Archer wearing her sexy jumpsuits, makes for a better female role than Samus as she actually speaks and makes her personality known throughout the game. While shes still representative of the sexual-object female spy, its done purposefully tongue-in-cheek the entire time, and her lines do not lend towards her being a 'dumb broad with guns'.
Another and better example is Alyx from Half-Life 2: Shes dressed sensibly and while cute, is not super-hot or a walking example of anatomical disproportion. Her lines are ones you'd expect from an intelligent person in her situation and shes more than capable of fending for herself as she does many times in the games, sometimes it seemed better than yourself as Gordon. Other than Alyx, its hard to name a female character that is like her in her sensibilities and generally realistic interactions; she was a person. Even Cait Archer is a purposeful stereotype for all her interactions & cleverness.
I look forward for the day that females in games are representated as people and not simply as women.
No doubt its a sword that cuts both ways, any body thats created, its members will have personal agendas, thats just the nature of humans and politics. You have good points, its something worth debating in the real arena. I think my really big concern with this is actually demonstrated with this back-and-forth you & I have been having. We both disagree on how this should be handled, but we both recognize theres valid reasons for either implimentation and are not getting mired in 'We Invented It First' or 'Its Ours Too' arguments as they're foolish and ultimately pointless for resolving this issue. I just worry that people will start a political battle around this and in the process, they are going to damage the very thing in question, all over politics and power which are ever present. This is is not some urgent issue that needs a fix now, its an issue that needs careful consideration over time to come up with something that will last and work and goes beyond the politics of this moment.
I know what you are saying and I agree it is good that it does not have its own military force (we start getting into World Government territory there). The UN rules by the mandate given to it by its member nations, if the member nations refuse to recognise it or play by the rules theres little it can do beyond sanctions assuming the rest of the body wishes to do that. However, I would argue that what you said is the reason for them not to be the holders of the ICANN crown since as you point out, unless the member states cooperate, nothing happens. Because of this deadlocking, stuff moves slow or not at all, so disagreements disrupt the process even though they are needed. A body that rules without disagreement on everything, especially on issues as diverse as those dealt with in the UN, probably has something wrong with it.
Recognising this, I think its best if that is left to its owin more of its current form though as a non-profit, international body. It currently works in that while not everyone is happy, the system is not broken which is not to say it couldnt use improvement. Turning it into a UN run committee would not qualify as an improvement in my mind. The last thing we need is politicians making this a power struggle in which the items in question are wrecked by hubris, power-grabs, politics, spitefulness, and so on. This is an example of what I think the private sector is best suited for instead of immersing ICANN in a UN-structured body and all the politics that carries with it. The internet was started by US government investment and exploded with both US & international private investment. No need to bring it back into the government fold at this point.
While the UN is effective overall in a way, it is terrible at timely reponse to anything, especially if theres any disagreement. Look at the genocides that have gone on in the last 15 years and you'll notice the time between antrocities being reported & the UN actually doing something besides just talking is so long that usually either the genocide is done or well underway. Now thats something important, atleast I think so, and as such demands a quick response; it NEEDS a quick response.
Going back to the internet issue, I think its a terrible idea to give the UN to perform the function of ICANN simply since its slow speed could be crippling to the rapid pace at which the internet and internet politics moves. Add on top of that disparities in whats considered free speech in say America vs certain European nations which tend to not protect racist speech. The moment there is any disagreement in the massive rule-by-committee that is the UN, everything starts crawling.
I think the UN is great for dealing with broad issues like Mine proliferation, international security issues, the creation of the ICC, etc, but when it comes to specialized stuff like this and in addition that requires a body that has a reasonable response time, the UN is not suited at all. I think the best option is an international non-profit organization, run by a small committee whom consist of members of the nations concerned. There is a shitload of details that we could discuss; should members be elected, should it be by appointment, are seats permanent, are they temporary, etc. However, the core issue is that the organization is not shackled by a 300-member committee that is in turn trying to deal with a shitload of other issues. As a rule, the more functionality you try to lump into such an organization, the slower it is to deal with the issues relating to that function. Witness FEMA under the Office of Homeland Security in the USA, bad idea all around and we've all seen the results. Here's for an independant body, let the UN do its other jobs and thus both are better for it.
The terms being used lately have been pretty vague and incorrect. Sony is not releasing a free MMORPG, its releasing a non-subscription based MMORPG in which you pay for it once. Then the question comes about, are they going to do what Guild Wars does? As Guild Wars is not a true MMORPG but rather a pseudo one with MMO elements since with the exception of the cities, everything is instanced. This keeps their costs lower as well, so I wonder whether Sony will be going the same route as well. We need to come up with a term to describe these games as calling them MMORPGs is misleading. Diablo2 was not considered an MMORPG, and it wasnt, but if you remove all the shiny stuff, thats what Guild Wars is undernearth for the most part: communal meeting points (Battle.net) that are jump points for quests and missions. I own Guild Wars, its great fun, but it shouldn't be called an MMORPG anymore than Diablo II on Battle.net should be called one. Perhaps MRPG or something along those lines.
Actually, the issue is not whether Iraq was a threat; of course it was a threat so long as Saddam was the head of the state. The question is whether he was an immanent threat. We now know he was not and there are questions about the portrayal of him as such.
I found a cool little teach-programming game called CeeBot (has been featured on slashdot before I believe), and it would be excellent for teaching you the basics. I've played it myself as a programmer as a puzzle-game since some of the later parts are challenging logic wise. In the end though as many posters have indicated, 'just do it' is the main course of action and learning based off your needs to start with. Think of a very simple application and then code it, whether its an address book or a small card game. To those ends, I recommend something like Python or Perl (though perl is a bit less structured than Python) since they're evolved languages and have greater out-of-the-box functionality. I tend to think of C++ as being given a hammer & screw driver to make a car, you need to use those 2 tools to manufacture the rest of the tools and then after that, make the actual car. Python & Perl give you pretty much all the tools you need, you just need to worry about the car itself.
That being said, the one of the best resources for programming (besides the actual language documentation itself) is Usenet (specifically, using Google groups to search), since it goes back to the creation of the internet & is fully archived, you have at your disposal stuff that goes back to 1981. Barring that, there's always google & forums.
I am trying to understand here, how much of this is pure politics (ie, maintaining control), and how much of this is a technical issue. As a rule of thumb, if it ain't broke, you dont fix it. This isnt to say that the current setup if optimal, but this seems like a rush to remove control of TLDs from the USA without actually addressing any technical issue or problem? My other problem is that given how long it takes for the UN to do anything at all, giving them control of this seems like a potential mixture for problems down the road. Throw in the EU as a controlling party, and the mixture becomes more complicated further since its composed of member states that need to agree on this stuff as well as a whole.
I definitely agree that the process should be more international, but not a moment before there is something there that would make the transition as smooth as possible. Right now, this smells of "first we'll take control, then we'll think of what to do with it", and it will hang in limbo for a couple years while everyone is asking, "why did we do this in the first place, shit worked before?"
I don't get how this actually translates to someone wanting or not wanting to buy a XBox360. I figure, if someone wants one, they will likely be of the mind that they will be buying one regardless any supply issues. On the flip side, hearing this does not make you more likely to want to buy a xbox if you haven't already. I can somewhat see the 'marketing trick' in that people who want one will be even more eager to ensure they get theirs first, but that doesn't translate to more sales in the long run.