I paged through a few of the sites. Looks like typical vaporware to me. While Microsoft showed what looked like real circuit boards, they really didn't show any games or even demos running on it. Meanwhile, Sony has a bunch of slides and the external casing of their new console... but we see no circuit board and the demos they showed could have been pre-rendered or could have been running on an extremely highend workstation.
Since when has it become the norm to bluff what you have?
Bittorrent is still here. So are TV rip groups who make high-quality TV rips by using HDTV digital satellites. All that was lost was a few sites that index said torrents. You can still get all of your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent from global search and index sites like Torrent Spy.
Most people don't realize this, but the GBA had backwards compatibility with GB, SGB, and GBC games by including a Gameboy Color on a chip. The older gameboy carts are larger and have a different voltage, so when they are in, the hardware activates the GBC on a chip. When GBA games are in the slot, it activates the GBA circuitry. Both can't be active at the same time. Since many people like to use Flash carts for the GBA, so that they can make a game playlist of their favorite titles, similar to how an MP3 player lets you make a music playlist of your favorite tunes, all without lugging around the original media... work began on an unofficial, yet high-quality Gameboy emulator for the Gameboy Advance, so that people could use a GBA flash cart to include a playlist of their favorite GBA titles as well as their favorite GBC, SGB, and GB titles.
Little did people know at the time that the GBC-on-a-chip would be done away with in Nintendo's next portable. Hence the Gameboy emulator for the GBA became even more important.
So to play old (non-Advance) Gameboy games on a DS, get a GBA flash cart. Put Goomba (GB emulator for the GBA) on it, and then you can play GB and SGB games on your DS. Of course, with the SGB games will play as if they are in a black and white Gameboy and not a Super Gameboy, so you won't get the Super Gameboy enhancements, such as more colors, borders, and other special features.
There are many other uses for these flash carts than piracy. Rip your own games and make your own multi-carts of your favorite titles. I have a multi-cart containing my favorite NES titles along with my favorite GB titles. So one little cart can fit hundreds of great games. That way I can have a variety of great games (puzzle, action, rpg, racing, shooter, etc) without lugging around handfuls of carts.
One last note. The Goomba page I linked above is the official site, but it lacks the most recent version, which can be found at the author's personal page. You can also find the latest version of his NES emulator for the GBA.
Funny how an unofficial NES emulator existed for the GBA long before Nintendo got around to re-releasing their classic series for the GBA. Too little, too late, Nintendo. I still have over 100 NES carts in my closet. I am not about to pay full price for them all over again, and yes I still enjoy playing them.
Xbox games are written in a high-level language, typically C++, and they are written towards a high-level API for graphics, sound, user input, etc. If Microsoft decides to change the hardware, the API and language stay mostly the same, so porting to the new console is a relatively easy task as the feature set on the new Xbox is a strict super set of the feature set on the old Xbox.
Most people don't know this, but the original Xbox went through several revisions, which made significant changes to the firmware, chipsets, and other hardware used inside the box. These changes were significant enough to break certain lower-level unofficial programs such as BIOS loaders and modchip BIOSes.
My point is that the new Xbox is most likely not backwards compatible in the traditional sense. However, Microsoft designed the development tools in a way that allows easy porting to other Microsoft platforms, assuming developers use good programming practices.
But the current Xbox has been emulating the previous generation: PSX and N64 for years now! I don't think there is a Dreamcast emulator, but technically, the Dreamcast is in the same generation as the Xbox... remember, Sega wanted to jump into the next generation really early?
So you are wrong. I bet the new Xbox could use software emulation to support old games. However, I doubt there will be an official software emulator.
The question is, will it be software modifiable, like the current Xbox? Will it have a built in harddrive and crappy security that allows for people to mod their Xbox 360 without a modchip? I sure hope so. Until then, I will continue to use my Xbox on a daily basis, for watching xvid movies and playing emulated classic games.
Actually, GBC and GBA games use two completely different sets of hardware. Most gamers confuse this issue because the GBA and GBA SP systems contain a GBC on a chip for backwards compatibility. This is possible because the GBC hardware is so old that it can now be reduced down to a single chip. Note that the Nintendo DS has removed this feature, so it can only play DS and GBA games, but not GBC games.
My point is that if you can emulate GBA games, it does not mean that you can emulate GBC games. They are two completely different things to emulate. Furthermore, some emulators go ahead and combine GB, SGB, GBC, and GBA emulators into one application, again, because gamers wouldn't understand why each emulator was separated into its own application.
If you don't want a slightly better card, then just buy a new card every 5 years, which is effectively what console gamers do when they buy the next generation console 5 years after buying last generation's greatest console. The beauty of PC hardware is that you can upgrade when you want, you have more options as to how to upgrade, who to buy from, etc.
If you are not a religious nutcase and you are not in the USA, don't fucking apologize. DO SOMETHING. You are to blame for letting these rabid fundamentalists take over. YOU have to stop them.
Sound familiar? Yup, you and the racist buddy you support sound like this. Non-Americans are just as much to blame as Americans. This crap has more to do with those that support this kind of crap, e.g. racism, wars, versus people who are rational. You are turning towards the camp of crap with your racist rants.
It isn't hard to accidentally fall into the wrong. I am sure Osama and Bush's people once had good intentions. As with you and yours.
You are just a bigot. Be honest with yourself. I am not a religious nutcase, I voted against Bush two times now, and I was against his war against Iraq. Yet I am to be blamed? What did I do to deserve blame? What did you do to not be blamed? Oh, yeah, you aren't a citizen of the USA, yet I am, so you are right and I am wrong. You are a pathetic, fucking racist piece of shit. So let me turn your crap back in your face you whiney brat!
If you are not a religious nutcase but you are not in the USA, don't fucking apologize. DO SOMETHING. You are to blame for letting these rabid fundamentalists take over. YOU have to stop them.
This is a game that anybody can get into. It combines massively multiplayer RPGs with games like Super Puzzle Fighter, where the game action is represented as a puzzle. Fighting is Super Puzzle Fighter-like, while other duties in the game involve playing a different puzzle. You should give the free trial a go. It is allot of fun.
Yeah, Doom years after everybody moved onto Quake. And a stripped down version of Quake, with crappier graphics, smaller maps, etc, also without networking, moddability... it was basically only Quake in trademark - it was a totally different game than the PC Quake.
Halo is a big deal to console gamers who missed out on the great FPS games seen on the PC for years before Halo was released for the Xbox. Doom1 and 2, Quake1, Half-Life, etc. I can't wait for a very popular RTS to be released for one of the consoles, just to have every idiot gamer with no apperciation for history to spout off as to how revolutionary their RTS game is.
Every game aspect of Halo was done before in one PC FPS or another. The original Quake did allot, since it was the first FPS "in the modern form", i.e. internet based multiplayer, true 3D environment, full 3D graphics, and easy mod-ability with its own scripting language, etc.
However, the only vehicle mods that I can think of for Quake were ones that involved jumping into a large swivling cannon turrent. You could pop in and out of it, but it couldn't move. There were vehicle mods that always kept you in the vehicle, such as Qrally, that tank mod, that plane mod, and that hover board mod. Full vehicles came later with Tribes, I think. But again, Tribes did it before Halo.
The first FPS was released in 1980, with Battlezone, where you drive around a tank from the first person perspective in a 3D world, and you shoot things. It used vector graphics to draw wire frame 3D objects. So I think Dvorak is wrong. Allot has changed in the gaming industry since 1980. Inexpensive gaming PCs, internet multiplayer, etc... that really added to the ability of gamers to form international communities around games. That has to be considered a big change.
But yeah, games can be very derivative, and this has not changed since 1980. Look back even then, everybody was copying eachother. There will a million and one Pacman rip-offs in the early 80s. Before 1980, there were tons of Pong rip offs.
Why hasn't the PC done it, while the Amiga did 20 years ago? Well, the Amiga was designed, while the PC as we know it today evolved, many times in a very ad-hoc manner. Similarly, compare a natural language such as English with one of the many psuedo natural languages like Lojban. Why are things this way? Legacy. PC's are popular because of legacy-technology reasons, and they are also flawed because of their support for this legacy technology. The same goes for natural languages like English, versus designed languages like Lojban.
I should also add that even if an advantage is not visually apparent, it can still be an advantage. The fact that the mouse movement is logically updated more frequently can also lead to additional advantages. Take an extreme case using an bitmap drawing tool like Gimp or Photoshop. If I drag the drawing tool in a circle, the smoothness of the circle that is drawn is not determined by my CRT's refresh rate, it is determined by my mouse's polling rate as each poll returns an X-axis and Y-axis movement delta. The slower the rate, the more "jaggy" and unsmooth the drawn circle.
In the extreme case, the CRT can not refresh at all, say by turning it off or by breaking it so that it continues to display the same beginning image permenantly. Obviously the circle won't be any different, keeping the movement of the mouse constant.
First off, a CRT's refresh rate can be above 100hz, but even so, the CRT's refresh rate is not synchronized with the mouse polling rate. So the cursor drawn to the screen is done so using the last mouse polling data. With 125hz, this means the data could be 8 miliseconds old, while with 500hz, the data is a maximum of 2 miliseconds old. Hence there is less lag in physical mouse movement and its logical and visual effect.
It is actually more complicated than that, but those lag values are for lag due to mouse rate alone. Of course the CRT refresh rate introduces its own lag. But in short, keeping monitor refresh rate constant, because the monitor is not synchronized with the mouse, increasing the polling rate of the mouse makes for an improvement. Conversly the same can be said for increasing the refresh rate of the monitor.
You don't have to take my word for it. If you are already using a good USB mouse at 125hz, try it at 500hz. You will notice the difference. Once you use 500hz for several days, try switching back to 125hz. You will hate it. The difference is even more noticable with higher resolution mice, such as 800 dpi and 1600 dpi optical mice because the movement delta can be quite large and a delay of 8 miliseconds of a large delta "feels" awkward.
Of course, if you use a very crappy low resolution USB mouse, the difference is harder to notice.
One feature that isn't talked about much, but is very popular amongst gamers is the configurable USB mouse polling rate. For years it has been available as a kernel patch, but now it has finally been included in the kernel. This means no more recompiling your kernel just to increase your mouse polling rate from 125hz to 500hz. It can now be set from your boot loader or from the command prompt.
Why is this so great? Well, the typical polling rate of 125hz for USB mice is noticably less smooth than a polling rate of 500hz, whether you are using your mouse in games or a desktop app. For this reason many people preferred to use PS2 mice, as they could be polled at up to 200hz. Now with this new feature, PS2 can be retired. Get yourself a high resolution USB optical mouse and set the polling rate to 500hz.
Apparently you have never played Quakeworld, which is where Quake 2, Quake 3, and mods such as CPMA got their inspiration from. Quakeworld is even faster than CPMA btw. Also, since the client and server are free and open source, with ports to most computer platforms, there is little reason not to play if all you want is hardcore, fast, and furious deathmatch.
You also still have the option of playing the original Quake COOP and the original Teamfortress, just as it is still fun to play other old games like Chess.
Just curious, are there any commercial theaters that show every recent release with subtitles? It would be wrong of our society if such a thing didn't exist, as it is quite easy to produce. It is standard for TV, right?
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I paged through a few of the sites. Looks like typical vaporware to me. While Microsoft showed what looked like real circuit boards, they really didn't show any games or even demos running on it. Meanwhile, Sony has a bunch of slides and the external casing of their new console... but we see no circuit board and the demos they showed could have been pre-rendered or could have been running on an extremely highend workstation.
Since when has it become the norm to bluff what you have?
Bittorrent is still here. So are TV rip groups who make high-quality TV rips by using HDTV digital satellites. All that was lost was a few sites that index said torrents. You can still get all of your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent from global search and index sites like Torrent Spy.
You can still get all of your favorite TV shows via BitTorrent from search sites like Torrent Spy.
Most people don't realize this, but the GBA had backwards compatibility with GB, SGB, and GBC games by including a Gameboy Color on a chip. The older gameboy carts are larger and have a different voltage, so when they are in, the hardware activates the GBC on a chip. When GBA games are in the slot, it activates the GBA circuitry. Both can't be active at the same time. Since many people like to use Flash carts for the GBA, so that they can make a game playlist of their favorite titles, similar to how an MP3 player lets you make a music playlist of your favorite tunes, all without lugging around the original media... work began on an unofficial, yet high-quality Gameboy emulator for the Gameboy Advance, so that people could use a GBA flash cart to include a playlist of their favorite GBA titles as well as their favorite GBC, SGB, and GB titles.
Little did people know at the time that the GBC-on-a-chip would be done away with in Nintendo's next portable. Hence the Gameboy emulator for the GBA became even more important.
So to play old (non-Advance) Gameboy games on a DS, get a GBA flash cart. Put Goomba (GB emulator for the GBA) on it, and then you can play GB and SGB games on your DS. Of course, with the SGB games will play as if they are in a black and white Gameboy and not a Super Gameboy, so you won't get the Super Gameboy enhancements, such as more colors, borders, and other special features.
There are many other uses for these flash carts than piracy. Rip your own games and make your own multi-carts of your favorite titles. I have a multi-cart containing my favorite NES titles along with my favorite GB titles. So one little cart can fit hundreds of great games. That way I can have a variety of great games (puzzle, action, rpg, racing, shooter, etc) without lugging around handfuls of carts.
One last note. The Goomba page I linked above is the official site, but it lacks the most recent version, which can be found at the author's personal page. You can also find the latest version of his NES emulator for the GBA.
Funny how an unofficial NES emulator existed for the GBA long before Nintendo got around to re-releasing their classic series for the GBA. Too little, too late, Nintendo. I still have over 100 NES carts in my closet. I am not about to pay full price for them all over again, and yes I still enjoy playing them.
Xbox games are written in a high-level language, typically C++, and they are written towards a high-level API for graphics, sound, user input, etc. If Microsoft decides to change the hardware, the API and language stay mostly the same, so porting to the new console is a relatively easy task as the feature set on the new Xbox is a strict super set of the feature set on the old Xbox.
Most people don't know this, but the original Xbox went through several revisions, which made significant changes to the firmware, chipsets, and other hardware used inside the box. These changes were significant enough to break certain lower-level unofficial programs such as BIOS loaders and modchip BIOSes.
My point is that the new Xbox is most likely not backwards compatible in the traditional sense. However, Microsoft designed the development tools in a way that allows easy porting to other Microsoft platforms, assuming developers use good programming practices.
Yeah, but divx is a terrible name for a codec, as it is also the name of the failed disposable DVD system.
But the current Xbox has been emulating the previous generation: PSX and N64 for years now! I don't think there is a Dreamcast emulator, but technically, the Dreamcast is in the same generation as the Xbox... remember, Sega wanted to jump into the next generation really early?
So you are wrong. I bet the new Xbox could use software emulation to support old games. However, I doubt there will be an official software emulator.
Most shows on BT are in xvid, not divx. The rip community, TV or DVD, has been mostly xvid for a while now. Why does everybody still talk about divx?
The question is, will it be software modifiable, like the current Xbox? Will it have a built in harddrive and crappy security that allows for people to mod their Xbox 360 without a modchip? I sure hope so. Until then, I will continue to use my Xbox on a daily basis, for watching xvid movies and playing emulated classic games.
Actually, GBC and GBA games use two completely different sets of hardware. Most gamers confuse this issue because the GBA and GBA SP systems contain a GBC on a chip for backwards compatibility. This is possible because the GBC hardware is so old that it can now be reduced down to a single chip. Note that the Nintendo DS has removed this feature, so it can only play DS and GBA games, but not GBC games.
My point is that if you can emulate GBA games, it does not mean that you can emulate GBC games. They are two completely different things to emulate. Furthermore, some emulators go ahead and combine GB, SGB, GBC, and GBA emulators into one application, again, because gamers wouldn't understand why each emulator was separated into its own application.
If you don't want a slightly better card, then just buy a new card every 5 years, which is effectively what console gamers do when they buy the next generation console 5 years after buying last generation's greatest console. The beauty of PC hardware is that you can upgrade when you want, you have more options as to how to upgrade, who to buy from, etc.
You caved into your anger and made a generalization that all Americans are to blame for the fundies.
If you are not a religious nutcase and you are not in the USA, don't fucking apologize. DO SOMETHING. You are to blame for letting these rabid fundamentalists take over. YOU have to stop them.
Sound familiar? Yup, you and the racist buddy you support sound like this. Non-Americans are just as much to blame as Americans. This crap has more to do with those that support this kind of crap, e.g. racism, wars, versus people who are rational. You are turning towards the camp of crap with your racist rants.
It isn't hard to accidentally fall into the wrong. I am sure Osama and Bush's people once had good intentions. As with you and yours.
You are just a bigot. Be honest with yourself. I am not a religious nutcase, I voted against Bush two times now, and I was against his war against Iraq. Yet I am to be blamed? What did I do to deserve blame? What did you do to not be blamed? Oh, yeah, you aren't a citizen of the USA, yet I am, so you are right and I am wrong. You are a pathetic, fucking racist piece of shit. So let me turn your crap back in your face you whiney brat!
If you are not a religious nutcase but you are not in the USA, don't fucking apologize. DO SOMETHING. You are to blame for letting these rabid fundamentalists take over. YOU have to stop them.
This is a game that anybody can get into. It combines massively multiplayer RPGs with games like Super Puzzle Fighter, where the game action is represented as a puzzle. Fighting is Super Puzzle Fighter-like, while other duties in the game involve playing a different puzzle. You should give the free trial a go. It is allot of fun.
Yeah, Doom years after everybody moved onto Quake. And a stripped down version of Quake, with crappier graphics, smaller maps, etc, also without networking, moddability... it was basically only Quake in trademark - it was a totally different game than the PC Quake.
Halo is a big deal to console gamers who missed out on the great FPS games seen on the PC for years before Halo was released for the Xbox. Doom1 and 2, Quake1, Half-Life, etc. I can't wait for a very popular RTS to be released for one of the consoles, just to have every idiot gamer with no apperciation for history to spout off as to how revolutionary their RTS game is.
Every game aspect of Halo was done before in one PC FPS or another. The original Quake did allot, since it was the first FPS "in the modern form", i.e. internet based multiplayer, true 3D environment, full 3D graphics, and easy mod-ability with its own scripting language, etc.
However, the only vehicle mods that I can think of for Quake were ones that involved jumping into a large swivling cannon turrent. You could pop in and out of it, but it couldn't move. There were vehicle mods that always kept you in the vehicle, such as Qrally, that tank mod, that plane mod, and that hover board mod. Full vehicles came later with Tribes, I think. But again, Tribes did it before Halo.
So yeah, Halo, nothing new here.
The first FPS was released in 1980, with Battlezone, where you drive around a tank from the first person perspective in a 3D world, and you shoot things. It used vector graphics to draw wire frame 3D objects. So I think Dvorak is wrong. Allot has changed in the gaming industry since 1980. Inexpensive gaming PCs, internet multiplayer, etc... that really added to the ability of gamers to form international communities around games. That has to be considered a big change.
But yeah, games can be very derivative, and this has not changed since 1980. Look back even then, everybody was copying eachother. There will a million and one Pacman rip-offs in the early 80s. Before 1980, there were tons of Pong rip offs.
Why hasn't the PC done it, while the Amiga did 20 years ago? Well, the Amiga was designed, while the PC as we know it today evolved, many times in a very ad-hoc manner. Similarly, compare a natural language such as English with one of the many psuedo natural languages like Lojban. Why are things this way? Legacy. PC's are popular because of legacy-technology reasons, and they are also flawed because of their support for this legacy technology. The same goes for natural languages like English, versus designed languages like Lojban.
I should also add that even if an advantage is not visually apparent, it can still be an advantage. The fact that the mouse movement is logically updated more frequently can also lead to additional advantages. Take an extreme case using an bitmap drawing tool like Gimp or Photoshop. If I drag the drawing tool in a circle, the smoothness of the circle that is drawn is not determined by my CRT's refresh rate, it is determined by my mouse's polling rate as each poll returns an X-axis and Y-axis movement delta. The slower the rate, the more "jaggy" and unsmooth the drawn circle.
In the extreme case, the CRT can not refresh at all, say by turning it off or by breaking it so that it continues to display the same beginning image permenantly. Obviously the circle won't be any different, keeping the movement of the mouse constant.
First off, a CRT's refresh rate can be above 100hz, but even so, the CRT's refresh rate is not synchronized with the mouse polling rate. So the cursor drawn to the screen is done so using the last mouse polling data. With 125hz, this means the data could be 8 miliseconds old, while with 500hz, the data is a maximum of 2 miliseconds old. Hence there is less lag in physical mouse movement and its logical and visual effect.
It is actually more complicated than that, but those lag values are for lag due to mouse rate alone. Of course the CRT refresh rate introduces its own lag. But in short, keeping monitor refresh rate constant, because the monitor is not synchronized with the mouse, increasing the polling rate of the mouse makes for an improvement. Conversly the same can be said for increasing the refresh rate of the monitor.
You don't have to take my word for it. If you are already using a good USB mouse at 125hz, try it at 500hz. You will notice the difference. Once you use 500hz for several days, try switching back to 125hz. You will hate it. The difference is even more noticable with higher resolution mice, such as 800 dpi and 1600 dpi optical mice because the movement delta can be quite large and a delay of 8 miliseconds of a large delta "feels" awkward.
Of course, if you use a very crappy low resolution USB mouse, the difference is harder to notice.
One feature that isn't talked about much, but is very popular amongst gamers is the configurable USB mouse polling rate. For years it has been available as a kernel patch, but now it has finally been included in the kernel. This means no more recompiling your kernel just to increase your mouse polling rate from 125hz to 500hz. It can now be set from your boot loader or from the command prompt.
Why is this so great? Well, the typical polling rate of 125hz for USB mice is noticably less smooth than a polling rate of 500hz, whether you are using your mouse in games or a desktop app. For this reason many people preferred to use PS2 mice, as they could be polled at up to 200hz. Now with this new feature, PS2 can be retired. Get yourself a high resolution USB optical mouse and set the polling rate to 500hz.
You can feel the difference.
Apparently you have never played Quakeworld, which is where Quake 2, Quake 3, and mods such as CPMA got their inspiration from. Quakeworld is even faster than CPMA btw. Also, since the client and server are free and open source, with ports to most computer platforms, there is little reason not to play if all you want is hardcore, fast, and furious deathmatch.
You also still have the option of playing the original Quake COOP and the original Teamfortress, just as it is still fun to play other old games like Chess.
Just curious, are there any commercial theaters that show every recent release with subtitles? It would be wrong of our society if such a thing didn't exist, as it is quite easy to produce. It is standard for TV, right?