And with the advent of the Turntable as Instrument you somehow think that we know less about vinyl than you? Not to be aggressive (which that first sentence is, I can see) but the development of modern Hip-hop/Electronica/Jungle/2-step/etc DJ/Turntalbist culture the vinyl LP is probably more important now than it has been since the advent of the tape cassette [addict.com].
Maybe more important to creation of the music and the live presentation of it, but not to unwashed masses of teens who buy it. Take 100 average teenagers and how many of them actually own a turntable and have vinyl records in their bedroom? Not a huge percentage I would wager.
Yea, the little memo comment was a bit agressive, but don't take offense 'cause none was meant. Most of the young teens that I've come in to contact around here don't know that much about records - all they've ever had has been CD's and cassettes (which they seem to look down on).
In my experience, saying the term "B-side" to them usually gets me a blank stare. On the 'flip side' though, these kids usually know better than I how to burn a CD with more than 77 minutes of music on it and not wind up with a toasted disk...
Another factor, I believe, in the "slowing" (read: anything less than 10% year to year growth) sales of the Music companies has been their deliberate decision to abandon the "Single" in CD format, reducing the choice a person has when they hear a single song that they like to A) Buy the entire CD at $18+ for the known 4 minutes of good music and take a chance on the rest or B) oh wait, there is no other valid 'choice' as defined by the RIAA.
I wish I had the link to a recent online news story I read which talked with the industry reps who discussed their decision to abandon Singles as they felt it was cutting into their album sales.
It seems to me that they believe that when a consumer can't get just the muisc they want a la carte, they would be willing to buy a whole lot of extra music to get it. In this situation what they should be selling is the single in downloadable and usable (read MP3) form for a small price. (Memo to Record industry: charging $7.99 for one song when there is no physical cost of goods and encoding it in a format that users can't play on their iPod/Rio/Empeg/Nomad/Archos/Etc isn't going to fool very many consumers).
I can recall back in the late '80, I used to buy a lot of "45's".. that is 7-inch records with one song on each side (Memo to 13-year old 'l33t doods': this is where the terms "A-Side" and "B-Side" came from). In fact, I bought about 250 7-inch singles a year. At $1.99 each, I could affort to take a chance on music I wasn't 100% sure about.
In the early '90's the record companies moved to put out Singles, both 7-inch (2 songs) and 12-inch (3+ songs/Remixes) in CD format. I even bought some of those 3-inch CD-Singles in mini-longboxes (remember those).
Selection of CD singles in the USA, at least at the retail level, seemed to peak in mid '90s and has really diminished in the past 5 years.
However, this situation seems to be confined mostly to US retail. Amazon is good source for CD singles, and in Europe the format is much more popular, so ironically sources like Amazon.uk are great for getting singles to popular songs in the USA.
So this is where the availability of single song MP3 files, available for download, could be doing damage... entirely because they are filling a nitch and need that consumers have, but the labels have abandoned. A lot of those people who download probably would be good customers to buy a cheap CD single, if it was available and had the content they wanted.
Qualifications: I've written two post-mortems for Game Developer magazine: for Age of Empires, and Age of Empires2: Age of Kings.
First off, know that the editors *strongly* encourage the writers of the Post-Mortems to follow a 5/5 format: 5 positive things followed by 5 negative things, wrapped by an introduction and a conclusion.
Not all off the post-mortems in game developer magazine tell the full story, especially in the "what went wrong" section. As someone on the inside, I've known about some of the problems/wierdness during the development of other companies games. Then when I've read the post-mortem in Game Developer magazine, I've seen some of the following:
1) Serious development problem not mentioned at all- all 5 "what went wrong" items being less serious than the problem I knew about. A general desire not to make the game or company look too bad.
2) The "what went wrong" items being turned into false positives... like the job interview coach telling you to answer the question about your weakness with something the company would see as a positive (i.e. "well, I have a tendancy to work too much and not ever leave until late...")
3) The author only concentrating on his department or speciality, giving a less balanced picture of the development process. i.e. The Art director is writing the post mortem and all he talks about are the issues the art department faced, while ignoring the programming, etc.
The CPU was boxed, and the approved heatsink has been checked for attachment.
The case has 3x 80mm fans in it, plus a chip fan on the mother board. Other chips (video card, etc) have heat sinks. There is also a slim fan/heat sink attached to the bottom of the hard drive.
Internally, Round cabes are used for all interconnects for maximal airflow in the case.
The PCI cards are spaced out to insure a empty card slot on each side of every card.
I've monitored the the CPU and case with the onboard temperature sensors/utility and the chassis tempuratue stabilizes at about 38 degrees centigrade, while the CPU stabilizes at about 46 degrees, unless I'm running a 3d intensive game, then it heats up to about 52 degrees.
The lockups have occured when the system is warm or cold; and the only things that have caused their frequency to changs has been when drivers/patches have been applied.
The idea that one spot on the motherboard is too hot is interesting.... but once you read the steps I've taken to keep the system cool, then you'll probably agree that if such a thing is happening, then it is a design flaw in the motherboard layout which should be a problem with all examples of that motherboard.
Also, with the lockups occuring at times when the system hasn't been given a chance to warm up, that suggests that overheating is the wrong culprit to look at.
After assembling a new system consisting of an Antec case, Soyo Dragon Plus motheboard, 1GB Corsair DDR RAM, XP 1800+ CPU, 64MB GeForce 2 Ti, Sound Blaster Audigy, Yamaha CD-RW and Adaptec 2930 SCSI card (Notice the lack of cheap components), I've discovered that the VIA chipsets and Nvidia videocards have a history of not getting along, with all fingers pointing at the KT266A chipset.
Running Win2K Pro (fully updated), and the latest BIOS and drivers for everything, and not overclocking a darn thing, I'm still suffering random system lockups doing simple activites such as broswing the web. Games are too tempermental to seriously play. (It was really bad before I uninstalled the latest MS win2K rollup update - click on any browser link and have a 15% chance of the system hanging...)
I bought the Dragon Plus Motherboard based on all the wonderful online reviews of the board and chipset. Not one said anything about the lack of stability with the KT266A chipset, or any problems with lockups. Later, doing some google searching turned up message boards full of other people experiencing the exact same problems. The only "solution" discovered (and even recommended on the Soyo web site) is to drop the RAM/Bus speed to 100Mhz from 133Mhz. That kind of defeats the purpose of making a fast machine...
Now I'm trying to research a motherboard replacment (which means resintalling the OS and most software - shoot an afternoon there) based on stability first, then performance. I'm thinking nForce, but we'll see...
It's a shame to waste the money on motherboard I'm going to throw out, but there wasn't a warning to be found when I did my initial research. (Note to self: Use google more for these kinds of things)
Since the site was/.'ed I couldn't get the files to check out.
In any case, if it as hoax as being reported, most of my comments still stand - that the archeticural differences and unique chipset features of the xBox would be the hardest things to emulate in a way that provided adequate performance.
I still remember when UltraHLE came out - and with that in mind, I don't dismiss the possibilut of Xbox emulation - I just don't think it'll be practical in a way like MAME is for a long, long time.
(Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not represent those of my employer)
I don't think we are going to see complete emulation because there a few things that the NV2A chipset can do like some of the shader operations (and games like Shrek that use them out the wazoo and nearly max out internal bandwidth while doing so) that just aren't possible on other existing video chipsets, or are terribly impractical on a non unified memory system (like treating your z-buffer as a texture and processing it back through the shaders - putting your AGP bus into a read dword/write dword back loop would kill all performance)
The games they have working are games that probably don't use features that were new to xbox/NV2A chipset, or stress the system to its limits. i.e. games that closly resemble their PC counterparts. Later Xbox releases are much more likely to take advantage of the system's features and push it to limits, makeing them much harder to emulate.
However, this could change once nVidia releases it successor to the NV20/GeForce 3, as that product may include all of the functionality of the NV2A chipset used in the Xbox. The Unified Memory/bandwidth situation will remain a problem and bottleneck though.
Still, I don't think this will make a big difference - I prefer playing my console games on a console and my PC games on a PC, and I suspect most people who play these games will be the same way.
(Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not represent those of my employer)
Actually, eMpeg (Rio Car) units are upgradable
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80 Gig MP3 Player
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· Score: 2
They have a cradle inside that holds 2x 2.5 inch laptop drives. Several owners have units that have been upgraded to 96gb (2x 48gb drives)
Someone (IBM I think) just released a 60gb laptop drive, so it's only a short time until someone has a 120gb eMpeg player.
Additionally, a digital radio tuner is available, so the eMpeg can be a complete replacment for the head unit in you car. Oh, and it's removable and has additional outputs so you can take it inside and connect it directly to your home stereo.
And it should be noted that the eMpeg firmware/OS (Linux powered as if you didn't know) is constantly being upgraded and new features added. How many other car stereos can say that? (or that they have built in Ethernet)
Production has ceased, but the units are still available (until stock runs out). And the prices were just cut: I think the 10gb Rio Car is now $799
For 3d apps that's an interesting trade off: More precision at 2 data items or more throughput at 4 data items.
That still doesn't invalidate the point about precision for scientific and engineering applications, and understanding that it may be a factor in deciding what systems to run said apps on.
One thing I don't see mentioned here is what degree of precision that SSE-2 has. I'm guessing that it only works on 32-bit floats.
The SSE instructions on the P-III operate on 32-bit float, while the x87 FPU instructions work on 80 bit floats ( You can load 32-bit, 64-bit and 80-bit floats into the FPU registers and they are all expanded to 80-bits). Intermediate FPU results are computed/stored with 80-bit values. For SSE I believe (I could be wrong) that everything is 32-bit internally and register wise.
For scientific and engineering, 32-bits of floating point (7-8 digits of precision) just doesn't cut it. Most people I know doing that kind of work on a PC (well, both of them) use the FPU but not SSE for that reason. They have apps that take days to perform a single calculation - lots of time for accumulated precision errors to become a factor.
32-bit floats are currently enough for most 3D-graphics work (at PC resolutions), and those games ^h^h^h^h^h apps are probably a bigger consideration in driving mainstream CPU development. Given that the SSE/2 instructions have multiple math units to perform ops in parallel, there has to be a big transistor savings to have less precision.
I would bet that the FPU floating point precision on those Sun, Irix, and Alpha boxes is higher than 32-bits.
Yes, that was me several years before I made the jump to the game industry. All I had at the time was the MS Basic compiler, so I made my library for it.
The Mode X library wasn't exactly the way I got into the industry. After that I did a bunch of other graphics stuff and wrote a few articles for Game Developer Magazine in 94-95. I looked for a gaming job for a couple of years off and on when I found Ensemble. I was picky and it paid off.
Yes. Delphi 1.0 (16-bit) was used for the prototype, but the code was then switched to a full Win32 app and C++ (MS Visual C++ 4.2 was used to compile the release version of Age of Empires) immediately after that. The game as shipped is fully C++ code (and fully OO)... well, except for the 12,000 or so lines of assembly in the renderer.
Many variables remained 16-bit integers (Vestage of Delphi 1.0) despite the performance hit (never had time to run them all down and change them). Also the code for the in-game UI elements was very heavily influenced by the Borland VCL's design (working with what we were familair with).
Though I appreciate the sentiment, you got some key facts wrong. As someone who was there (interviewed before a publisher was found, hired just after, and wrote a very good chunck of the code in Age of Empires) I can attempt to clear it up, set the record straight, and shed some light on the process.
-- Standard Disclaimer -- The contents of this post are the personal views and recoletions of the author and not representing Ensemble Studios and/or Microsoft.
Tony Goodman is a business man and a first-rate gamer who dreamed of creating PC games and the company that would realize them. However, economic reality being what it is, he started out by creating a company that created Database tools (Paradox) and provided consuting services to local businesses. That company was Ensemble Corporation.
The company grew and prosepered. Along the way Tony and others learned a lot through the school of experience and mistakes about how to run a company successly. Eventually the company was succfull enough that Tony had enough resources to boot-strap start something that would become a game company.
At this time, Tony had NO connections to Microsoft or any other game publishers. Repeat, no contacts at Microsoft (Hell, they were using Borland products at the consulting firm).
He did however have a friend from 15 years ago (His college gaming club), Bruce Shelly, who had gone on to a successful career in the Game Industry (Co-designing Civilization with Sid Meier among other things). He called up Bruce, and over a period of time convicned him to join the effort he was starting.
With a couple fellow game-company believers they hired a couple people (game programmer and artist) to work full time on a game prototype. This first prototype was more Civ like and called "Dawn of Man". It was written in Delphi 1.0 and fit on One single floppy disk.
As the game was being developed by the programmers and artists, Tony and his tiny Management team were working on the Business side of things.
Now I can't stress enough how having great skills at running a small business is as important as having great skills at making a game. BOTH sides have to be there for things to turn out mega-successful.
Anyway, then the Dawn of Man prototype was to a point it could be shown, Tony Goodman went (along with a couple others) to GDC (The Computer Game Developers Conference) to shop around for publishers. With much salesmanship expended, eventually three publishers showed some interest: Seventh Level, Hasbro, and Microsoft.
At that time (late '95 to early '96) Microsoft was a nobody in the PC games arena. (They were just about to come out with Deadly Tide and Microsoft Soccer -- which would go on to sell something like 3000 units)
A company discussion and vote was held to determine which publisher to go with. It was close... we almost went with Seventh Level (Remember them) , but we chose Microsoft instead. Why? Because 1) they offered a good contract that was competitive with the others, 2) they offered better hope for international distribution (though we didn't realized then how important that would be) and 3) they had their act together business-wise better than other publishers. It often is a dog-eat-dog world when dealing with game publishers, but MS's size gave their games group an advantage.. they didn't have to screw us around on the little points and they were hungry (the MS PC games groups) to make themselves into a publisher to contend with.
Anyway, from there a lot of hard work occured and passion resulted in some truly great games. Insdutry Contacts may get you the initial meetings, but you need the whole enchelada in place to make great games.
-Matt "The Optimizer" Pritchard
Re:Game Developers ARE optimizing for Modems too m
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The Modem Lives On
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· Score: 1
Network Address Translation does present a problem mixing players inside and behind the NAT gatway; sometimes it is made worse by which NAT soultion is being used. Firewalls also present problems.
I can say that Ensemble is working on developments for our future titles to help when some players are NAT'ed. This is not an easy task.
I usually ignore all the dorks who come out of the woodwork to flame me when I post here, but since you asked a question in an intelligent manner, you deserve a reply.
Ensemble Studios is a self-owned, privately held company. It is 100% independant at this time, and 100% committed to making great games.
Ensemble Studios has no present connection to Microsoft other than a developer-publisher relationship for their first two games, and their expansion packs.
The past has no significance for future games. Ensemble re-evaluates the situation each time it comes up and chooses the best publisher for the situation. In the past, Microsoft has had the most to offer.
It's worth noting that when Ensemble was shopping around what would become the original Age of Empires, nearly every other publisher chose not to return our calls, not seeing much potential in the game. The games group at Microsoft, on the other hand, thought we had the potential for something special, and fully supported us to do the game right, even as the game wound up taking an extra year. This, when it is far more common to see unfinished games shoved out the door to meet some marketing deadline. The rest, as they say, is history.
Re:Game Developers ARE optimizing for Modems
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The Modem Lives On
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· Score: 1
Just wait until you see RTS3....;-) The online portion is a quantum leap forward.
Game Developers ARE optimizing for Modems
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The Modem Lives On
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· Score: 5
As a programmer directly involved with a very popular online game, the Age of Empires series, I can tell you online gameplay with a modem connection is taken very, very seriously.
If fact... Two of our very brilliant communcations programmers, Mark Terrano and Paul Bettner are giving a presentation on this very subject at the international Game Developer's Conference next month in San Jose, CA. (Go to www.gdconf.com and check out their presentation "1600 Archers on a 28.8 modem" (Actually, I just checked the site and they don't appear to have the full schedule posted yet, and the author search just goes off into la-la land)
Anyway, the things we at Ensemble do to insure good modem play include:
* Having our 8-player dedicated testing area not only include a LAN connection, but modems on each computer. Modem based playtests are conducted using up to 8 different dial-up ISP's.
* Periodically auditing network communcations bandwidth usage over the course of an entire game to determine peak bandwidth requirments. Network packets are optimized for minimal size even before they are compressed. Our performance target is for comm usage not to ever exceed about 24K BPS of bandwidth in both directions.
* In our new 16-station playtest facility that is currently under construction, we will have a fancy phone line simulator device that allows for controlled degration of line conditions.
* Tuning the communications code to account for the types of pings geographically diverse modem users are likely to encounter. (our games can dynamically adjust the communications turn length to adapt to shifting pings).
* Showing each user, while they are playing the game, an indication of the communcation link performance to every other player. This allows people to quickly determine who is the person whose connection has just gone to crap.
* And we added in Age of Kings, the ability to save and restore a multiplayer game when someone gets disconnected or crashes.
I could go on, but I just wanted to get across that we do spend real effort on all applicable fronts to make as good an experience as possible for modem-users.
Now this is no indication of what other developers do, and other types of game may be more sensitive to ping than bandwidth.. etc.. etc.. As allways, Your mileage may vary.
The truth is that Baldur's Gate had very little to nothing to do with it directly. Unlike some of our competitiors, we did a huge amount of research in the form of focus groups, usability testing, market research, etc.. ad nausium.
The research and testing concentrated on RTS games in general and especially our first game, Age of Empires. If any of the hundreds of people that provided feedback (of one form or another) were familiar with BG, then the influence would have come from there.
What came out of it was that our designers had profiles of various "player types" who played our first game, with info on what the game experience was like for them (their best and worst feature lists and wish lists if you will). From that a big problem identified for the casual player was that there were moments in the game then things got too overwhelming (remember unlike BG, 2 side clashing could involve 100+ units in AoK) causing the player to throw their hands up in the air and go "AAacck!"
And if I recall correctly, we had AoK in development for over a year when BG came out (still a year to go before it was done), and I think the pause mode for input was in the game by that time.
Still... In both cases you can see the driving force behind the feature was to make a better game for all types of players (the pause feature being totally controlled by the user, thus fits different users playstyles.)
I see that another poster already mentioned Fallout where you stop the realtime mode for turn-based combat.
Believe it or not, one of the biggest of what people think of as "pure" RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games actually has a form of turn based play. Age of Empires II:Age of Kings (and the Conquerors Expansion), when played in single player mode, allows the player to stop the game (just hit the pause key) at any time, and scroll around, check units, and issue new orders to their hearts content. When they are done, they unpause the game, and play resumes with the new orders. This creates a hybred mode, where a human player can issue destailed orders and micromanage the game as well as if not better than the computer opponents, even if they have over one hundred active units in the game.
The reason we (the guys who made the Age of Empires games) added this feature, was in response to direct feedback from focus groups made up of people who play our games. They told us what they like and dislike, and how they want to go about playing the game.
If you were to guess from all the hype and reviews, you would think that 50-75% of our audience plays the game in online multi-player mode. In truth, it's more like 7-15% multiplayer, with a huge and vast demographic of people who like to play against the computer. Mostly, these people are not "hard-core" gamers, but 'normal' or 'casual' game players.
This large group that doesn't play online, isn't always accustom to playing the game at a relentless pace. They like being able to stop and ponder specific situations and spend time plotting their strategy.
Unfortunatly, we found we can't let multiplayer games do this, because 2 or more players won't agree on when to pause and when to go... Trust us: it would be very ugly if they could do that.
Its pretty much a safe bet that you will this functionality, if not even more extended 'turn based like' features in the single-player component of all of our future strategy games.
What's happened is that the real-time model provides some play benefits over turn-based for a trade off price: I.e. when 100 units goes into battle in AoE or Starcraft the Unit AI stands in and allows for the battle to be resolved in under a minute, while taking limited but significant decision input from the player (i.e. like which units get targeted first, etc). Done in true turn-based fashion, with 100 units to individually order, it might take 30 to 60 minutes for the same battle to play out, thus changing the game playing experience radically.
Turned based play elements offer the player some gameplay benefits too.. they giving the player time to think, plan complex maneuvers, micromange, and be thourough in ways that the continous turn system of an RTS game can not provide.
Anyway, with respect to the editorial, I think they were a bit too negative in tone. When developers are trying to make a game as good as possible, they'll do what it take to provide maximum gameplay benefits. In many cases that probably will mean games with multiple modes - real time for those portions when its more exciting/interesting and turn-based for when it provides more control.
And as for pure turn-based games? They'll be back around... (In fact, they'll never really go away).
You are making a big, big assumption here. And that is that none of the incremental/update releases are going to cause problems or corrupt data.
One big advantage of using Static software is just that: it's static. Normally, barring some external event like running out of disk space, I expect that my copy of office 96 or whatever will run tommorow exactly the same as it is running today.
What happens when overnight, the automatically distributed and updated version of MyWordProcessor (version 11.02.31.21383) brings with it another new version NET.socks.dll that has a huge security hole that was added because the programmers who updated the "Track Changes->Compare Documents->Automatically" command to work fully across the new.net@work document model needed some hooks in the network API?
What happens is that millions of systems have had their security compromised and don't even know it. The first people to know will be the ones looking for it; the security guys and the hackers. Lets hope the former always get there first. Oh wait, that assuming the company supplying the software will want to fix and update immediately, even if no one has been compromised yet.
The other big problem is the automatic updating of my data files. What happens if an update corrupts or otherwise can't handle a tiny (or not so small) percentage of user's files (because of specific feature combos used in that file, for example)?
What happens is that some small percentage of people have been selected at random to be SCREWED with respect to their documents. Will the subscription update models allow users to go back to previous versions? I don't think so. Besides, if I try opening a file with the newer version, and it auto-converts my documents to the newer format, and in the process some of documents get screwed, then if I can go back to the previosu version (why would they let me? Then I'd have grounds not to pay them) I'd better have made backups of my document files that I didn't know I'd need because I didn't know the "upgrade" is coming.
On that train of thought; what happens if I need to load up some docuemnt from four years ago that I've got backed up offline? Will mySubscriptionWare(tm) be able to read it, even though it's been updated every quarter since then (16 updates)? or am I screwed, unable to access my prior work because it was stored offline, and that file version is no longer supported? With no original disk to install the program I used to create it, what will I do?
Ok, the above isn't to say that it's all doom and gloom, but rather to point out that subscription ware it going to be a double-edged sword. And when you are talking about tens of millions of users (in the case of the largest company), problems that slip past testing and effect.001% of users, will be hurting thousands of people.
My Generation's "Kennedy was Shot" moment
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The Challenger
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· Score: 5
Growing up I had heard that just about everyone older than I remebered exactly here they were when president Kennedy was assasinated. Since I, and my friends, weren't born then, this was just evidence of a generational gulf between us.
We finally understood what they were talking about when we lost Challenger. All of my gen-x friends still today can clearly recall where they were and what they were doing when they learned the news. (I was in the Student Union in Ann Arbor, MI getting something to eat and trying to impress some girl at the time. I ran back into my dorm to tell the other guys what had happened.)
For us, this was our equvalent of the "Kennedy assasination" a defining moment for our generation where one of the core rules of the universe as we know it suffers a hard fault. The generaton that comes after us will not/can not really relate to something they've only heard about as 'history'. In time, I'm sure their generation will have an event that has a simiar effect on them. I can only hope that it will be notable for it's improbability, and not it's disasterous effects (like the first use of a nuclear weapon by terorists).
On a completely different thread: I was at the Kennedy Space Center about 2 weeks ago, just before the launch of the Shuttle Atlantis was scrubbed. I stood on a launch platform there, eactly 224 feet below the spot where 3 men lost their lives in the Apollo 1 command module. It was somber moment, disturbed only by the crying babies and infants that seemed to be issued to every second family that walked through the gates.
Even with such noisy distractions, I encourage every person here to visit the Space Center if they have the opprotunity. Seeing the place in photos does not do it justice.
Palm brings serious benefits to Patient side too..
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Digital Doctoring
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· Score: 4
I've learned about this first-hand: Last year, My wife was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in the aftermath of a failed pregnancy.
People diagnosed with Type II diabetes often have to test their blood seven (7!) times a day (or more!) in the first few years, and record the results, time/date, and diet info for their doctors. Manually, this can be a pain in the ass, especially when full records for 2 months need to be given to a doctor.
Right after being diagnosed, my wife found out about Glucopilot (see http://www.healthetech.com/), an award-winning program for the palm OS, which prompted her to buy a Palm V and a hard case. It does a wonderful job of recording, handling, and outputting & graphing the data. With the purchase of a small cable (made one myself, ha!) it can read the output of some blood sugar testers directly and eliminate the manual entry of numbers all together.
Her doctors, both of whom where unfamiliar with the program, were astounded by it and the detailed data it provided when she show it to them, and they began mentioning it to their other patients.
It's not just the Glucopilot software though, My wife found several other programs for the Palm that she uses to track diet, and other medical info like details on her menstral cycle, sudden sickenesses, and anything else.
Where this really makes the impact is on the day-to-day lifestyle front. She has a tiny case that she carries with her eveywhere she goes because it is so compact and totable. It holds her Palm V, and her blood testing gear. Because the form factor is so friendly, and the software provides such immediate feedback on blood-level trends, etc, she has displayed incredible dicipline in taking readings and entering data as it occurs. And that dicipline has seriously impressed me and her doctors, and is probably why they are saying she will be able to control the condition without needing insulin shots, etc.
The palm has been great for collecting all my loose data in one place, and I see specialized, easy-to-use medical tracking and info software as providing great benefit to people who have problems that are ongoing and have to shared with their doctors.
I don't know of/can't discuss an AoE for the Xbox at this time. That could change though. There were aborted playstation (aoe 1) and dreamcast (aoe 2) ports, and there is a PS2 port of AoE 2 still in the works.
Games like AoE don't translate easily to the console for a number of reasons including:
1) Control/Input scheme - A lot of changes have to be made when leaving a keyboard/mouse input scheme behind, and some ease of use usually gets lost.
2) Resoultion & Display. NTSC TV's display of a 640x480 screen is normally a bit blurry and washed out. AoE defaulted to 800x600 and AoK 1024x768 (800 min, 1280 max) and the graphics were very crisp. The reduced viewing area changes the amount of information you can see at one time and affects gameplay, plus the art and scale has to be overhauled to look ok on a TV set.
A couple of people have taken my prior post to mean that I actively dislike Blizzard, and that just isn't true.
When I said I had a big question, I meant just that - it is a Question that interests me.
Blizzard can fix this particular problem independant from having to acknowledge publically that it was hacked and players were damaged. So the question remains: Will they say something they don't have to?
I find it interesting because because of all the factors involved (installed base of game, popularity, striking at top (most time invested) players, etc) and am curious as to how it will play out.
Personally, most of the guys at Blizzard I've met in person are pretty cool, and some of them wanted to talk about specific things that happened to D1. (BTW: What I asked them was to discuss the technicals on problem they had already fixed so both the problem and a solution could be presented - Thus educating other developers while not putting the current D1 player base in any possible harm - The guys in the trenches were cool with it, but when they ran it up the chain of command is when it hit the snag)
I do stand up for my personal belief that faliure to disclose successful cheats is not the best thing to do. The developers and publishers do not have exclusive control of the flow of information about their games (/shudders at the thought) and therefore run a considerable risk of being cast in a bad light and upsetting the people who are, after all, their paying customers when an exploit becomes well known (or posted to/.;-) I do believe that acknowledging problems and telling people what is being done to fix them is a better way to service your online community, and has fewer downsides.
I regret any confusion my prior comments may have caused.
Slashdot Mirror
And with the advent of the Turntable as Instrument you somehow think that we know less about vinyl than you? Not to be aggressive (which that first sentence is, I can see) but the development of modern Hip-hop/Electronica/Jungle/2-step/etc DJ/Turntalbist culture the vinyl LP is probably more important now than it has been since the advent of the tape cassette [addict.com].
Maybe more important to creation of the music and the live presentation of it, but not to unwashed masses of teens who buy it. Take 100 average teenagers and how many of them actually own a turntable and have vinyl records in their bedroom? Not a huge percentage I would wager.
Yea, the little memo comment was a bit agressive, but don't take offense 'cause none was meant. Most of the young teens that I've come in to contact around here don't know that much about records - all they've ever had has been CD's and cassettes (which they seem to look down on).
In my experience, saying the term "B-side" to them usually gets me a blank stare. On the 'flip side' though, these kids usually know better than I how to burn a CD with more than 77 minutes of music on it and not wind up with a toasted disk...
Another factor, I believe, in the "slowing" (read: anything less than 10% year to year growth) sales of the Music companies has been their deliberate decision to abandon the "Single" in CD format, reducing the choice a person has when they hear a single song that they like to A) Buy the entire CD at $18+ for the known 4 minutes of good music and take a chance on the rest or B) oh wait, there is no other valid 'choice' as defined by the RIAA.
.. that is 7-inch records with one song on each side (Memo to 13-year old 'l33t doods': this is where the terms "A-Side" and "B-Side" came from). In fact, I bought about 250 7-inch singles a year. At $1.99 each, I could affort to take a chance on music I wasn't 100% sure about.
I wish I had the link to a recent online news story I read which talked with the industry reps who discussed their decision to abandon Singles as they felt it was cutting into their album sales.
It seems to me that they believe that when a consumer can't get just the muisc they want a la carte, they would be willing to buy a whole lot of extra music to get it. In this situation what they should be selling is the single in downloadable and usable (read MP3) form for a small price. (Memo to Record industry: charging $7.99 for one song when there is no physical cost of goods and encoding it in a format that users can't play on their iPod/Rio/Empeg/Nomad/Archos/Etc isn't going to fool very many consumers).
I can recall back in the late '80, I used to buy a lot of "45's"
In the early '90's the record companies moved to put out Singles, both 7-inch (2 songs) and 12-inch (3+ songs/Remixes) in CD format. I even bought some of those 3-inch CD-Singles in mini-longboxes (remember those).
Selection of CD singles in the USA, at least at the retail level, seemed to peak in mid '90s and has really diminished in the past 5 years.
However, this situation seems to be confined mostly to US retail. Amazon is good source for CD singles, and in Europe the format is much more popular, so ironically sources like Amazon.uk are great for getting singles to popular songs in the USA.
So this is where the availability of single song MP3 files, available for download, could be doing damage... entirely because they are filling a nitch and need that consumers have, but the labels have abandoned. A lot of those people who download probably would be good customers to buy a cheap CD single, if it was available and had the content they wanted.
Qualifications: I've written two post-mortems for Game Developer magazine: for Age of Empires, and Age of Empires2: Age of Kings.
First off, know that the editors *strongly* encourage the writers of the Post-Mortems to follow a 5/5 format: 5 positive things followed by 5 negative things, wrapped by an introduction and a conclusion.
Not all off the post-mortems in game developer magazine tell the full story, especially in the "what went wrong" section. As someone on the inside, I've known about some of the problems/wierdness during the development of other companies games. Then when I've read the post-mortem in Game Developer magazine, I've seen some of the following:
1) Serious development problem not mentioned at all- all 5 "what went wrong" items being less serious than the problem I knew about. A general desire not to make the game or company look too bad.
2) The "what went wrong" items being turned into false positives... like the job interview coach telling you to answer the question about your weakness with something the company would see as a positive (i.e. "well, I have a tendancy to work too much and not ever leave until late...")
3) The author only concentrating on his department or speciality, giving a less balanced picture of the development process. i.e. The Art director is writing the post mortem and all he talks about are the issues the art department faced, while ignoring the programming, etc.
-Matt P
A quick rundown of the steps taken:
The CPU was boxed, and the approved heatsink has been checked for attachment.
The case has 3x 80mm fans in it, plus a chip fan on the mother board. Other chips (video card, etc) have heat sinks. There is also a slim fan/heat sink attached to the bottom of the hard drive.
Internally, Round cabes are used for all interconnects for maximal airflow in the case.
The PCI cards are spaced out to insure a empty card slot on each side of every card.
I've monitored the the CPU and case with the onboard temperature sensors/utility and the chassis tempuratue stabilizes at about 38 degrees centigrade, while the CPU stabilizes at about 46 degrees, unless I'm running a 3d intensive game, then it heats up to about 52 degrees.
The lockups have occured when the system is warm or cold; and the only things that have caused their frequency to changs has been when drivers/patches have been applied.
The idea that one spot on the motherboard is too hot is interesting.... but once you read the steps I've taken to keep the system cool, then you'll probably agree that if such a thing is happening, then it is a design flaw in the motherboard layout which should be a problem with all examples of that motherboard.
Also, with the lockups occuring at times when the system hasn't been given a chance to warm up, that suggests that overheating is the wrong culprit to look at.
-Matt
After assembling a new system consisting of an Antec case, Soyo Dragon Plus motheboard, 1GB Corsair DDR RAM, XP 1800+ CPU, 64MB GeForce 2 Ti, Sound Blaster Audigy, Yamaha CD-RW and Adaptec 2930 SCSI card (Notice the lack of cheap components), I've discovered that the VIA chipsets and Nvidia videocards have a history of not getting along, with all fingers pointing at the KT266A chipset.
Running Win2K Pro (fully updated), and the latest BIOS and drivers for everything, and not overclocking a darn thing, I'm still suffering random system lockups doing simple activites such as broswing the web. Games are too tempermental to seriously play. (It was really bad before I uninstalled the latest MS win2K rollup update - click on any browser link and have a 15% chance of the system hanging...)
I bought the Dragon Plus Motherboard based on all the wonderful online reviews of the board and chipset. Not one said anything about the lack of stability with the KT266A chipset, or any problems with lockups. Later, doing some google searching turned up message boards full of other people experiencing the exact same problems. The only "solution" discovered (and even recommended on the Soyo web site) is to drop the RAM/Bus speed to 100Mhz from 133Mhz. That kind of defeats the purpose of making a fast machine...
Now I'm trying to research a motherboard replacment (which means resintalling the OS and most software - shoot an afternoon there) based on stability first, then performance. I'm thinking nForce, but we'll see...
It's a shame to waste the money on motherboard I'm going to throw out, but there wasn't a warning to be found when I did my initial research. (Note to self: Use google more for these kinds of things)
-Matt
Since the site was /.'ed I couldn't get the files to check out.
In any case, if it as hoax as being reported, most of my comments still stand - that the archeticural differences and unique chipset features of the xBox would be the hardest things to emulate in a way that provided adequate performance.
I still remember when UltraHLE came out - and with that in mind, I don't dismiss the possibilut of Xbox emulation - I just don't think it'll be practical in a way like MAME is for a long, long time.
(Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not represent those of my employer)
I don't think we are going to see complete emulation because there a few things that the NV2A chipset can do like some of the shader operations (and games like Shrek that use them out the wazoo and nearly max out internal bandwidth while doing so) that just aren't possible on other existing video chipsets, or are terribly impractical on a non unified memory system (like treating your z-buffer as a texture and processing it back through the shaders - putting your AGP bus into a read dword/write dword back loop would kill all performance)
The games they have working are games that probably don't use features that were new to xbox/NV2A chipset, or stress the system to its limits. i.e. games that closly resemble their PC counterparts. Later Xbox releases are much more likely to take advantage of the system's features and push it to limits, makeing them much harder to emulate.
However, this could change once nVidia releases it successor to the NV20/GeForce 3, as that product may include all of the functionality of the NV2A chipset used in the Xbox. The Unified Memory/bandwidth situation will remain a problem and bottleneck though.
Still, I don't think this will make a big difference - I prefer playing my console games on a console and my PC games on a PC, and I suspect most people who play these games will be the same way.
(Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not represent those of my employer)
They have a cradle inside that holds 2x 2.5 inch laptop drives. Several owners have units that have been upgraded to 96gb (2x 48gb drives)
Someone (IBM I think) just released a 60gb laptop drive, so it's only a short time until someone has a 120gb eMpeg player.
Additionally, a digital radio tuner is available, so the eMpeg can be a complete replacment for the head unit in you car. Oh, and it's removable and has additional outputs so you can take it inside and connect it directly to your home stereo.
And it should be noted that the eMpeg firmware/OS (Linux powered as if you didn't know) is constantly being upgraded and new features added. How many other car stereos can say that? (or that they have built in Ethernet)
Production has ceased, but the units are still available (until stock runs out). And the prices were just cut: I think the 10gb Rio Car is now $799
for more info: check out http://www.riohome.com/CarAudio.htm
-Mp
64-bits, Cool. Hey, I said it was guess. :-)
For 3d apps that's an interesting trade off: More precision at 2 data items or more throughput at 4 data items.
That still doesn't invalidate the point about precision for scientific and engineering applications, and understanding that it may be a factor in deciding what systems to run said apps on.
-Mp
One thing I don't see mentioned here is what degree of precision that SSE-2 has. I'm guessing that it only works on 32-bit floats.
The SSE instructions on the P-III operate on 32-bit float, while the x87 FPU instructions work on 80 bit floats ( You can load 32-bit, 64-bit and 80-bit floats into the FPU registers and they are all expanded to 80-bits). Intermediate FPU results are computed/stored with 80-bit values. For SSE I believe (I could be wrong) that everything is 32-bit internally and register wise.
For scientific and engineering, 32-bits of floating point (7-8 digits of precision) just doesn't cut it. Most people I know doing that kind of work on a PC (well, both of them) use the FPU but not SSE for that reason. They have apps that take days to perform a single calculation - lots of time for accumulated precision errors to become a factor.
32-bit floats are currently enough for most 3D-graphics work (at PC resolutions), and those games ^h^h^h^h^h apps are probably a bigger consideration in driving mainstream CPU development. Given that the SSE/2 instructions have multiple math units to perform ops in parallel, there has to be a big transistor savings to have less precision.
I would bet that the FPU floating point precision on those Sun, Irix, and Alpha boxes is higher than 32-bits.
-Mp
Yes, that was me several years before I made the jump to the game industry. All I had at the time was the MS Basic compiler, so I made my library for it.
The Mode X library wasn't exactly the way I got into the industry. After that I did a bunch of other graphics stuff and wrote a few articles for Game Developer Magazine in 94-95. I looked for a gaming job for a couple of years off and on when I found Ensemble. I was picky and it paid off.
Yes. Delphi 1.0 (16-bit) was used for the prototype, but the code was then switched to a full Win32 app and C++ (MS Visual C++ 4.2 was used to compile the release version of Age of Empires) immediately after that. The game as shipped is fully C++ code (and fully OO)... well, except for the 12,000 or so lines of assembly in the renderer.
Many variables remained 16-bit integers (Vestage of Delphi 1.0) despite the performance hit (never had time to run them all down and change them). Also the code for the in-game UI elements was very heavily influenced by the Borland VCL's design (working with what we were familair with).
I'm very sorry about that - my post is riddled with misspellings and typos.
In my defense, when I wrote the above comment, I had to write the whole thing one-handed as I was holding my newborn daughter in the other.
Though I appreciate the sentiment, you got some key facts wrong. As someone who was there (interviewed before a publisher was found, hired just after, and wrote a very good chunck of the code in Age of Empires) I can attempt to clear it up, set the record straight, and shed some light on the process.
-- Standard Disclaimer -- The contents of this post are the personal views and recoletions of the author and not representing Ensemble Studios and/or Microsoft.
Tony Goodman is a business man and a first-rate gamer who dreamed of creating PC games and the company that would realize them. However, economic reality being what it is, he started out by creating a company that created Database tools (Paradox) and provided consuting services to local businesses. That company was Ensemble Corporation.
The company grew and prosepered. Along the way Tony and others learned a lot through the school of experience and mistakes about how to run a company successly. Eventually the company was succfull enough that Tony had enough resources to boot-strap start something that would become a game company.
At this time, Tony had NO connections to Microsoft or any other game publishers. Repeat, no contacts at Microsoft (Hell, they were using Borland products at the consulting firm).
He did however have a friend from 15 years ago (His college gaming club), Bruce Shelly, who had gone on to a successful career in the Game Industry (Co-designing Civilization with Sid Meier among other things). He called up Bruce, and over a period of time convicned him to join the effort he was starting.
With a couple fellow game-company believers they hired a couple people (game programmer and artist) to work full time on a game prototype. This first prototype was more Civ like and called "Dawn of Man". It was written in Delphi 1.0 and fit on One single floppy disk.
As the game was being developed by the programmers and artists, Tony and his tiny Management team were working on the Business side of things.
Now I can't stress enough how having great skills at running a small business is as important as having great skills at making a game. BOTH sides have to be there for things to turn out mega-successful.
Anyway, then the Dawn of Man prototype was to a point it could be shown, Tony Goodman went (along with a couple others) to GDC (The Computer Game Developers Conference) to shop around for publishers. With much salesmanship expended, eventually three publishers showed some interest: Seventh Level, Hasbro, and Microsoft.
At that time (late '95 to early '96) Microsoft was a nobody in the PC games arena. (They were just about to come out with Deadly Tide and Microsoft Soccer -- which would go on to sell something like 3000 units)
A company discussion and vote was held to determine which publisher to go with. It was close... we almost went with Seventh Level (Remember them) , but we chose Microsoft instead. Why? Because 1) they offered a good contract that was competitive with the others, 2) they offered better hope for international distribution (though we didn't realized then how important that would be) and 3) they had their act together business-wise better than other publishers. It often is a dog-eat-dog world when dealing with game publishers, but MS's size gave their games group an advantage.. they didn't have to screw us around on the little points and they were hungry (the MS PC games groups) to make themselves into a publisher to contend with.
Anyway, from there a lot of hard work occured and passion resulted in some truly great games. Insdutry Contacts may get you the initial meetings, but you need the whole enchelada in place to make great games.
-Matt "The Optimizer" Pritchard
Network Address Translation does present a problem mixing players inside and behind the NAT gatway; sometimes it is made worse by which NAT soultion is being used. Firewalls also present problems.
I can say that Ensemble is working on developments for our future titles to help when some players are NAT'ed. This is not an easy task.
I usually ignore all the dorks who come out of the woodwork to flame me when I post here, but since you asked a question in an intelligent manner, you deserve a reply.
Ensemble Studios is a self-owned, privately held company. It is 100% independant at this time, and 100% committed to making great games.
Ensemble Studios has no present connection to Microsoft other than a developer-publisher relationship for their first two games, and their expansion packs.
The past has no significance for future games. Ensemble re-evaluates the situation each time it comes up and chooses the best publisher for the situation. In the past, Microsoft has had the most to offer.
It's worth noting that when Ensemble was shopping around what would become the original Age of Empires, nearly every other publisher chose not to return our calls, not seeing much potential in the game. The games group at Microsoft, on the other hand, thought we had the potential for something special, and fully supported us to do the game right, even as the game wound up taking an extra year. This, when it is far more common to see unfinished games shoved out the door to meet some marketing deadline. The rest, as they say, is history.
Just wait until you see RTS3.... ;-) The online portion is a quantum leap forward.
As a programmer directly involved with a very popular online game, the Age of Empires series, I can tell you online gameplay with a modem connection is taken very, very seriously.
If fact... Two of our very brilliant communcations programmers, Mark Terrano and Paul Bettner are giving a presentation on this very subject at the international Game Developer's Conference next month in San Jose, CA. (Go to www.gdconf.com and check out their presentation "1600 Archers on a 28.8 modem" (Actually, I just checked the site and they don't appear to have the full schedule posted yet, and the author search just goes off into la-la land)
Anyway, the things we at Ensemble do to insure good modem play include:
* Having our 8-player dedicated testing area not only include a LAN connection, but modems on each computer. Modem based playtests are conducted using up to 8 different dial-up ISP's.
* Periodically auditing network communcations bandwidth usage over the course of an entire game to determine peak bandwidth requirments. Network packets are optimized for minimal size even before they are compressed. Our performance target is for comm usage not to ever exceed about 24K BPS of bandwidth in both directions.
* In our new 16-station playtest facility that is currently under construction, we will have a fancy phone line simulator device that allows for controlled degration of line conditions.
* Tuning the communications code to account for the types of pings geographically diverse modem users are likely to encounter. (our games can dynamically adjust the communications turn length to adapt to shifting pings).
* Showing each user, while they are playing the game, an indication of the communcation link performance to every other player. This allows people to quickly determine who is the person whose connection has just gone to crap.
* And we added in Age of Kings, the ability to save and restore a multiplayer game when someone gets disconnected or crashes.
I could go on, but I just wanted to get across that we do spend real effort on all applicable fronts to make as good an experience as possible for modem-users.
Now this is no indication of what other developers do, and other types of game may be more sensitive to ping than bandwidth.. etc.. etc.. As allways, Your mileage may vary.
-Mp
The truth is that Baldur's Gate had very little to nothing to do with it directly. Unlike some of our competitiors, we did a huge amount of research in the form of focus groups, usability testing, market research, etc.. ad nausium.
The research and testing concentrated on RTS games in general and especially our first game, Age of Empires. If any of the hundreds of people that provided feedback (of one form or another) were familiar with BG, then the influence would have come from there.
What came out of it was that our designers had profiles of various "player types" who played our first game, with info on what the game experience was like for them (their best and worst feature lists and wish lists if you will). From that a big problem identified for the casual player was that there were moments in the game then things got too overwhelming (remember unlike BG, 2 side clashing could involve 100+ units in AoK) causing the player to throw their hands up in the air and go "AAacck!"
And if I recall correctly, we had AoK in development for over a year when BG came out (still a year to go before it was done), and I think the pause mode for input was in the game by that time.
Still... In both cases you can see the driving force behind the feature was to make a better game for all types of players (the pause feature being totally controlled by the user, thus fits different users playstyles.)
I see that another poster already mentioned Fallout where you stop the realtime mode for turn-based combat.
Believe it or not, one of the biggest of what people think of as "pure" RTS (Real-Time Strategy) games actually has a form of turn based play. Age of Empires II:Age of Kings (and the Conquerors Expansion), when played in single player mode, allows the player to stop the game (just hit the pause key) at any time, and scroll around, check units, and issue new orders to their hearts content. When they are done, they unpause the game, and play resumes with the new orders. This creates a hybred mode, where a human player can issue destailed orders and micromanage the game as well as if not better than the computer opponents, even if they have over one hundred active units in the game.
The reason we (the guys who made the Age of Empires games) added this feature, was in response to direct feedback from focus groups made up of people who play our games. They told us what they like and dislike, and how they want to go about playing the game.
If you were to guess from all the hype and reviews, you would think that 50-75% of our audience plays the game in online multi-player mode. In truth, it's more like 7-15% multiplayer, with a huge and vast demographic of people who like to play against the computer. Mostly, these people are not "hard-core" gamers, but 'normal' or 'casual' game players.
This large group that doesn't play online, isn't always accustom to playing the game at a relentless pace. They like being able to stop and ponder specific situations and spend time plotting their strategy.
Unfortunatly, we found we can't let multiplayer games do this, because 2 or more players won't agree on when to pause and when to go... Trust us: it would be very ugly if they could do that.
Its pretty much a safe bet that you will this functionality, if not even more extended 'turn based like' features in the single-player component of all of our future strategy games.
What's happened is that the real-time model provides some play benefits over turn-based for a trade off price: I.e. when 100 units goes into battle in AoE or Starcraft the Unit AI stands in and allows for the battle to be resolved in under a minute, while taking limited but significant decision input from the player (i.e. like which units get targeted first, etc). Done in true turn-based fashion, with 100 units to individually order, it might take 30 to 60 minutes for the same battle to play out, thus changing the game playing experience radically.
Turned based play elements offer the player some gameplay benefits too.. they giving the player time to think, plan complex maneuvers, micromange, and be thourough in ways that the continous turn system of an RTS game can not provide.
Anyway, with respect to the editorial, I think they were a bit too negative in tone. When developers are trying to make a game as good as possible, they'll do what it take to provide maximum gameplay benefits. In many cases that probably will mean games with multiple modes - real time for those portions when its more exciting/interesting and turn-based for when it provides more control.
And as for pure turn-based games? They'll be back around... (In fact, they'll never really go away).
-Mp
You are making a big, big assumption here. And that is that none of the incremental/update releases are going to cause problems or corrupt data.
.net@work document model needed some hooks in the network API?
.001% of users, will be hurting thousands of people.
One big advantage of using Static software is just that: it's static. Normally, barring some external event like running out of disk space, I expect that my copy of office 96 or whatever will run tommorow exactly the same as it is running today.
What happens when overnight, the automatically distributed and updated version of MyWordProcessor (version 11.02.31.21383) brings with it another new version NET.socks.dll that has a huge security hole that was added because the programmers who updated the "Track Changes->Compare Documents->Automatically" command to work fully across the new
What happens is that millions of systems have had their security compromised and don't even know it. The first people to know will be the ones looking for it; the security guys and the hackers. Lets hope the former always get there first. Oh wait, that assuming the company supplying the software will want to fix and update immediately, even if no one has been compromised yet.
The other big problem is the automatic updating of my data files. What happens if an update corrupts or otherwise can't handle a tiny (or not so small) percentage of user's files (because of specific feature combos used in that file, for example)?
What happens is that some small percentage of people have been selected at random to be SCREWED with respect to their documents. Will the subscription update models allow users to go back to previous versions? I don't think so. Besides, if I try opening a file with the newer version, and it auto-converts my documents to the newer format, and in the process some of documents get screwed, then if I can go back to the previosu version (why would they let me? Then I'd have grounds not to pay them) I'd better have made backups of my document files that I didn't know I'd need because I didn't know the "upgrade" is coming.
On that train of thought; what happens if I need to load up some docuemnt from four years ago that I've got backed up offline? Will mySubscriptionWare(tm) be able to read it, even though it's been updated every quarter since then (16 updates)? or am I screwed, unable to access my prior work because it was stored offline, and that file version is no longer supported? With no original disk to install the program I used to create it, what will I do?
Ok, the above isn't to say that it's all doom and gloom, but rather to point out that subscription ware it going to be a double-edged sword. And when you are talking about tens of millions of users (in the case of the largest company), problems that slip past testing and effect
Growing up I had heard that just about everyone older than I remebered exactly here they were when president Kennedy was assasinated. Since I, and my friends, weren't born then, this was just evidence of a generational gulf between us.
We finally understood what they were talking about when we lost Challenger. All of my gen-x friends still today can clearly recall where they were and what they were doing when they learned the news. (I was in the Student Union in Ann Arbor, MI getting something to eat and trying to impress some girl at the time. I ran back into my dorm to tell the other guys what had happened.)
For us, this was our equvalent of the "Kennedy assasination" a defining moment for our generation where one of the core rules of the universe as we know it suffers a hard fault. The generaton that comes after us will not/can not really relate to something they've only heard about as 'history'. In time, I'm sure their generation will have an event that has a simiar effect on them. I can only hope that it will be notable for it's improbability, and not it's disasterous effects (like the first use of a nuclear weapon by terorists).
On a completely different thread: I was at the Kennedy Space Center about 2 weeks ago, just before the launch of the Shuttle Atlantis was scrubbed. I stood on a launch platform there, eactly 224 feet below the spot where 3 men lost their lives in the Apollo 1 command module. It was somber moment, disturbed only by the crying babies and infants that seemed to be issued to every second family that walked through the gates.
Even with such noisy distractions, I encourage every person here to visit the Space Center if they have the opprotunity. Seeing the place in photos does not do it justice.
I've learned about this first-hand: Last year, My wife was diagnosed with Type II diabetes in the aftermath of a failed pregnancy.
People diagnosed with Type II diabetes often have to test their blood seven (7!) times a day (or more!) in the first few years, and record the results, time/date, and diet info for their doctors. Manually, this can be a pain in the ass, especially when full records for 2 months need to be given to a doctor.
Right after being diagnosed, my wife found out about Glucopilot (see http://www.healthetech.com/), an award-winning program for the palm OS, which prompted her to buy a Palm V and a hard case. It does a wonderful job of recording, handling, and outputting & graphing the data. With the purchase of a small cable (made one myself, ha!) it can read the output of some blood sugar testers directly and eliminate the manual entry of numbers all together.
Her doctors, both of whom where unfamiliar with the program, were astounded by it and the detailed data it provided when she show it to them, and they began mentioning it to their other patients.
It's not just the Glucopilot software though, My wife found several other programs for the Palm that she uses to track diet, and other medical info like details on her menstral cycle, sudden sickenesses, and anything else.
Where this really makes the impact is on the day-to-day lifestyle front. She has a tiny case that she carries with her eveywhere she goes because it is so compact and totable. It holds her Palm V, and her blood testing gear. Because the form factor is so friendly, and the software provides such immediate feedback on blood-level trends, etc, she has displayed incredible dicipline in taking readings and entering data as it occurs. And that dicipline has seriously impressed me and her doctors, and is probably why they are saying she will be able to control the condition without needing insulin shots, etc.
The palm has been great for collecting all my loose data in one place, and I see specialized, easy-to-use medical tracking and info software as providing great benefit to people who have problems that are ongoing and have to shared with their doctors.
I don't know of/can't discuss an AoE for the Xbox at this time. That could change though. There were aborted playstation (aoe 1) and dreamcast (aoe 2) ports, and there is a PS2 port of AoE 2 still in the works.
Games like AoE don't translate easily to the console for a number of reasons including:
1) Control/Input scheme - A lot of changes have to be made when leaving a keyboard/mouse input scheme behind, and some ease of use usually gets lost.
2) Resoultion & Display. NTSC TV's display of a 640x480 screen is normally a bit blurry and washed out. AoE defaulted to 800x600 and AoK 1024x768 (800 min, 1280 max) and the graphics were very crisp. The reduced viewing area changes the amount of information you can see at one time and affects gameplay, plus the art and scale has to be overhauled to look ok on a TV set.
-Matt
A couple of people have taken my prior post to mean that I actively dislike Blizzard, and that just isn't true.
/. ;-) I do believe that acknowledging problems and telling people what is being done to fix them is a better way to service your online community, and has fewer downsides.
When I said I had a big question, I meant just that - it is a Question that interests me.
Blizzard can fix this particular problem independant from having to acknowledge publically that it was hacked and players were damaged. So the question remains: Will they say something they don't have to?
I find it interesting because because of all the factors involved (installed base of game, popularity, striking at top (most time invested) players, etc) and am curious as to how it will play out.
Personally, most of the guys at Blizzard I've met in person are pretty cool, and some of them wanted to talk about specific things that happened to D1. (BTW: What I asked them was to discuss the technicals on problem they had already fixed so both the problem and a solution could be presented - Thus educating other developers while not putting the current D1 player base in any possible harm - The guys in the trenches were cool with it, but when they ran it up the chain of command is when it hit the snag)
I do stand up for my personal belief that faliure to disclose successful cheats is not the best thing to do. The developers and publishers do not have exclusive control of the flow of information about their games (/shudders at the thought) and therefore run a considerable risk of being cast in a bad light and upsetting the people who are, after all, their paying customers when an exploit becomes well known (or posted to
I regret any confusion my prior comments may have caused.
-Matt Pritchard