They failed only in that they did not respect one of the primary laws of RPGs; if it has stats, it can be defeated.
Rather than actually flooding that room with the 'radiated' property, which interacts with with, as many have noted, your rad resistance and what not, they should have created a new property; 'deadly radiation' or something. Upon entering the room, your radcounter should have been overridden to 'off the scale,' and here's the important part, regardless of radresistance or any other perk, skill, equipment, or anything. Your POV should have fallen instantly to the floor, and you should have had only the ability to crawl slowly to the keyboard. Your hands should have appeared in front of you, with a crawling animation, with the skin visibly cooking, peeling, sloughing off. This should also have acted as a timer for how long you have to actually get to the damn keyboard. It should have been possible to die on the way there (maybe it is at the moment, but I don't think so.)
Quite honestly, I think Nintendo simply recognized the fact that both the N64 and the Gamecube mainly played first-party games. Quite honestly, the only devs I can think of that really developed *for* any of those platforms were Rare and Factor 5. So, if they're not going to be attracting third party studios, why bother building a monster machine to attract them?
Besides, games on all platforms are getting easier all the time.
After watching my 11 year old daughter sit down with a brand new copy of Pokemon: Platinum or whatever the new one is, and the strat guide, I went off on an 'In my day....' diatribe.
One of the things I mentioned was the lack of gamefaqs.com or strat guides in my day; you figured it out, or you quit. Hell, I tried beating QfG 4 for YEARS before I finally found out, through the magic of the Intarwebs, that the game shipped with a story-killing bug.
The other thing I mentioned was Nintendo-hard. Then I started looking into NES/SNES emus for the Xbox. Little buggers will quit rolling their eyes at me soon enough.:-)
FF7 for the PC tends to look great, because there aren't many textures; most of it is shading. A notable exception is Barrett's arm tattoo. But the increase in resolution is handy.
FF8 PC, on the other hand, uses textures pretty heavily, and doesn't work out as well...
Dude, this is Slashdot. People will cry 'Just like the BSD license? Yet ANOTHER thing M$ has stolen! Man, can't they even come up with their own LICENSE?'
Yeah, I figured all that out a bit later. I was wondering why the 'published after May 2008' thing, but then realized that that must be when the started the whole 'authorization required' bit.
Does this also remove the other aspects of SecureROM, other than just 'number of installs?' Like the whole 'Hey, you have Nero installed! Therefore, you can't run this game! How dare you have standard computer equipment like a CD burner installed in your computer!'
As I recall from watching Space Camp as a child, it involves a vacuum.
Oh, and I'd assume the facilities don't differ between males and females; sure, guys can aim, but do you really want to be experimenting with Newton's laws with a stream of piss? Think 'rebound'.
No, to be strictly accurate, it used Open Firmware. Still you have to jump through a lot of hoops to load Linux onto it. I still remember the Battery Ritual....
Four comments in, and the server is pooched.
Now, to keep this somewhat relevent, I had a hell of a time with hard drives when I tried to get Yellow Dog Linux running on an Apple Network Server, oh, eight years ago.
Let alone the BIOS and stuff; oh, the hoops you had to jump through to get that to go!
Microsoft, inspired perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps
Yup. Cuz nobody's every thought about a package manager before. Especially not one with a nice, GUI front end.
Hey, maybe Microsoft will adopt something similar for the Xbox 360. You know, to make it easier to download add-ons, small games, videos, and so on. They could call it, I don't know, Xbox Live Marketplace or something. Too bad it's too late for them to have done it for the Xbox. Real shame that.
There was a great commercial from Germany for a language course. It involved a new recruit being shown the machines in a Coast Guard type setup, and left for his shift. Time passes, and he gets a frantic call from a British accent. "Is anybody out there, can you hear us?" that sort of thing.
Hesitantly, he keys the mic, and says, in school-drill English, that he does, in fact hear them.
"Thank God!" the Brit exclaims. "We are sinking! We are sinking! Do you hear us?"
Shrugging slightly, the German CG officer asks "....vhat are you zhinking about?"
F to the Y to the I, with the 360 rechargable kit, you plug in the controller, and turn off the 360. It will leave the USB port powered, to recharge the controller; once the controller's fully charged, the 360 will depower the USB port. Pretty slick.
Oh, and the rechargable battery pack just replaces the AA pack, so you can switch back as required.
The punchline to the story is kinda funny, too. Programmer We should port Windows to protected mode. Techie Manager Can't be done. Programmer It's running downstairs.
Go read 'On Killing' by Lt. Col (I think) Dave Grossman. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but the research itself is fine.
He points out that humans, like most other animals, have built-in, dare I say, rules about violence. Dominate/submit, posturing, all that sort of thing.
Note, of course, that he never says humans aren't violent; just that, like in the animal kingdom, the violence is, by and large, not fatal.
Slashdot Mirror
They failed only in that they did not respect one of the primary laws of RPGs; if it has stats, it can be defeated.
Rather than actually flooding that room with the 'radiated' property, which interacts with with, as many have noted, your rad resistance and what not, they should have created a new property; 'deadly radiation' or something. Upon entering the room, your radcounter should have been overridden to 'off the scale,' and here's the important part, regardless of radresistance or any other perk, skill, equipment, or anything. Your POV should have fallen instantly to the floor, and you should have had only the ability to crawl slowly to the keyboard. Your hands should have appeared in front of you, with a crawling animation, with the skin visibly cooking, peeling, sloughing off. This should also have acted as a timer for how long you have to actually get to the damn keyboard. It should have been possible to die on the way there (maybe it is at the moment, but I don't think so.)
And isn't it handy that for people who *do* happen to want WiFi on their 360, they can then purchase a WiFi adaptor.
What if I want to purchase a PS3 without paying for any built-in wifi bits?
My 360 is closer to my telly than my Wii is.
Quite honestly, I think Nintendo simply recognized the fact that both the N64 and the Gamecube mainly played first-party games. Quite honestly, the only devs I can think of that really developed *for* any of those platforms were Rare and Factor 5. So, if they're not going to be attracting third party studios, why bother building a monster machine to attract them?
After watching my 11 year old daughter sit down with a brand new copy of Pokemon: Platinum or whatever the new one is, and the strat guide, I went off on an 'In my day....' diatribe.
One of the things I mentioned was the lack of gamefaqs.com or strat guides in my day; you figured it out, or you quit. Hell, I tried beating QfG 4 for YEARS before I finally found out, through the magic of the Intarwebs, that the game shipped with a story-killing bug.
The other thing I mentioned was Nintendo-hard. Then I started looking into NES/SNES emus for the Xbox. Little buggers will quit rolling their eyes at me soon enough. :-)
Lets not forget the Kindle App available for iPhone and iTouch.
FF7 for the PC tends to look great, because there aren't many textures; most of it is shading. A notable exception is Barrett's arm tattoo. But the increase in resolution is handy.
FF8 PC, on the other hand, uses textures pretty heavily, and doesn't work out as well...
Sadly, you can just picture it.
"Hey, we need a timer for our core temp regulation system." "Umm, there's a clock applet with sample code..." "Perfect!"
Isn't that 'grog?'
In this case, a British Navy ship which pulled patrol duty looking for slavers, pirates and the like.
Back when the British Empire ruled the oceans, it was considered an excellent way to a) train and maintain sailors and b) do some public good.
Dude, this is Slashdot. People will cry 'Just like the BSD license? Yet ANOTHER thing M$ has stolen! Man, can't they even come up with their own LICENSE?'
No, you are a number. Look, it's 1393489!
Yeah, I figured all that out a bit later. I was wondering why the 'published after May 2008' thing, but then realized that that must be when the started the whole 'authorization required' bit.
VERY disappointing.
If only there was some way to slay a lower-UID user and take their power for your own....there can be only 00000001!
Does this also remove the other aspects of SecureROM, other than just 'number of installs?' Like the whole 'Hey, you have Nero installed! Therefore, you can't run this game! How dare you have standard computer equipment like a CD burner installed in your computer!'
Like I said, imagnine an athletic cup on the end of a vacuum, and you have the idea.
Hell, an airplane-style toilet with suction built in would probably suffice.
As I recall from watching Space Camp as a child, it involves a vacuum.
Oh, and I'd assume the facilities don't differ between males and females; sure, guys can aim, but do you really want to be experimenting with Newton's laws with a stream of piss? Think 'rebound'.
No, to be strictly accurate, it used Open Firmware. Still you have to jump through a lot of hoops to load Linux onto it. I still remember the Battery Ritual....
Four comments in, and the server is pooched. Now, to keep this somewhat relevent, I had a hell of a time with hard drives when I tried to get Yellow Dog Linux running on an Apple Network Server, oh, eight years ago. Let alone the BIOS and stuff; oh, the hoops you had to jump through to get that to go!
But what is it about the Mac that enables bbedit? What is Windows/Linux/OS/2/whatever missing that prevents bbedit from being ported?
Yup. Cuz nobody's every thought about a package manager before. Especially not one with a nice, GUI front end.
Hey, maybe Microsoft will adopt something similar for the Xbox 360. You know, to make it easier to download add-ons, small games, videos, and so on. They could call it, I don't know, Xbox Live Marketplace or something. Too bad it's too late for them to have done it for the Xbox. Real shame that.
There was a great commercial from Germany for a language course. It involved a new recruit being shown the machines in a Coast Guard type setup, and left for his shift. Time passes, and he gets a frantic call from a British accent. "Is anybody out there, can you hear us?" that sort of thing.
Hesitantly, he keys the mic, and says, in school-drill English, that he does, in fact hear them.
"Thank God!" the Brit exclaims. "We are sinking! We are sinking! Do you hear us?"
Shrugging slightly, the German CG officer asks "....vhat are you zhinking about?"
F to the Y to the I, with the 360 rechargable kit, you plug in the controller, and turn off the 360. It will leave the USB port powered, to recharge the controller; once the controller's fully charged, the 360 will depower the USB port. Pretty slick.
Oh, and the rechargable battery pack just replaces the AA pack, so you can switch back as required.
The punchline to the story is kinda funny, too.
Programmer We should port Windows to protected mode.
Techie Manager Can't be done.
Programmer It's running downstairs.
I think I know who you're talking about.
Go read 'On Killing' by Lt. Col (I think) Dave Grossman. I don't agree with all of his conclusions, but the research itself is fine.
He points out that humans, like most other animals, have built-in, dare I say, rules about violence. Dominate/submit, posturing, all that sort of thing.
Note, of course, that he never says humans aren't violent; just that, like in the animal kingdom, the violence is, by and large, not fatal.