Please good sir, point me in the direction of the competitive Tetris league. I watched "The King of Kong" but I haven't heard about such a thing for Tetris.
If the overwhelming majority of gamers don't finish the game in the first place, how would replayability help?
I think the main thing here is that developers will take a great game mechanic, like Mirror's Edge type gymnastics, and then strrrrreeeeetch it out to the point where it becomes more overplayed and boring than last year's summer radio hit. Once you hit the point where all the novelty of the gametype is worn out and they're just decreasing the margins for error/increasing skill level, most people get bored with it and move on. That might be why competitive FPS games tend to have more staying power; they're more of a sport than some sort of clever puzzle/timing game.
he craft is supposed to orbit Earth for several weeks, maneuver in orbit, and glide its way to a landing strip at Vandenberg Air Force Base, in California
Really this just sounds like a fancier version of the SR-71/U-2 spyplane. Spy satellite are great things and can photograph pretty much anything given a long enough period of time; the problem is they're only going to be over the exact patch of dirt you're interested in perhaps once a week, and it might be cloudy (or night time!) when that happens.
Enter the spy plane. The U-2 and SR-71 (and A-12, but that was discontinued in the 60's) are designed to get "now" pics without having to wait. Call up Bobby Hill AFB in California or Hank Hill AFB in Virginia and in 8 hours you can get an up to date photograph of exactly what's going on anywhere in the world.
Now imagine you combine the two. The availability and speed of a spy plane, but the international benefit of staying out of of your enemy's airspace. Plus, due to the momentum it has, it stays in orbit for weeks, so after you buzz Moscow, you can do a course correction to your flying twinkie and hit up St. Petersburg, Beijing, Pyongyang, or Tehran to see where the weapons shipments are headed. Course corrections cost a lot of fuel for a satellite, which will be in orbit for years or decades, but course correction fuel on a reusable satellite that will only be up for a matter of weeks is cheap.
I'm pretty sure the only way torrent sites could possibly be more convenient than they already are would be to have them email you (or SMS you!) when new torrents are available. I'm sure this exists in some form somewhere. Bit torrent clients have long had plugins capable of monitoring RSS feeds and auto-downloading from those, but without specific standards in place it still seems a bit fragmented and a bit outside of "consumer simple" in terms of configuration. The Hulu pass thing sounds great, but until they offer true 720p you can still get better choices elsewhere.
I can hardly wait, just another 6-8 months before Hulu and Netflix go full 720p, unlimited streaming for less than $20/month combined including taxes. I'd even pay an extra $10/mo for Hulu+ with HBO and Showtime (and AMC for Mad Men)
I recently had to explain how OTA works for my mother; she'd forgotten how it works after 10 years of cable TV. Or maybe I just don't call her often enough.
Depends on your usage pattern. Most people don't upgrade the coils in their toaster for a more even toast, or faster toast. I think if you asked most users, they would prefer their laptop to be hermetically sealed, so they don't have to worry about crumbs/drink spills. Gamers will almost always buy a desktop or console, but a lot of non-gamers will just pick up a $400-600 laptop and use that until either the screen breaks, or the virus infestation gets so bad after a few years that they opt to upgrade. It doesn't take much CPU to check Facebook or Email and run a chat client simultaneously - the iPhone is "good enough" for most people, but you can't write a book report on it... yet. Many "desktop" computers today are just a laptop board & hard drive inside a smaller case; the only thing they're lacking is the onboard UPS of a laptop.
I realize I live in an apartment, but Damn, your monthly TV/Communications bill is higher than my highest electric bill, and I live in Dallas Texas where the A/C pretty much runs continuously June-October. There are a lot of hobbies you can do for $200 a month, like Sailing, Amateur Race Car driving, traveling internationally and more. The cost of a used beginner's sailboat/racecar costs about the same as the 65" TV you're probably enjoying watching your $200/mo cable TV, not to mention the couch you had to buy to be able to watch $200 worth of cable TV a month:)
It's probably enough money to support the company while they rebuild after being let loose from under Microsoft's wing for what.. 8 years now? You need a huge chunk of investment cash flow from somewhere to support a major studio while they build a new AAA level blockbuster game. Activision will be breathing down their neck to see a first release inside of two years, so expect it to be shitty. They won't have the luxury of time to put out a top notch game like Blizzard does. Does anyone remember Blizzard announcing that FPS game "Ghost"? Luckily Bungie is sitting on the Myth property, along with... well, [googles bungie's properties owned] uh, Marathon, and Oni [googles "Oni"]. So unless their plan is to release Myth 4 less than two years after Starcraft II, they'll be building some sort of new property just to generate cash. I'm doubtful if much of the creative staff that built Myth and Halo still work for the company.
What is up with the rushing new versions out the door?
Well, look at the other extreme; Debian sat on the Woody stable release for what, six years before Sarge was announced as 'stable'? I would rather have a slightly buggy release out of the box than no release with no support at all. I will probably sit on 9.10 UNR for my netbook for a few more months, myself. Wireless support is right up there with basic things like BIOS, USB and VGA support when it comes to netbooks. I'll forgive any bug except something essential like that. That said I'm glad they're releasing regular updates, even if they don't quite "get" it initially. I am willing to wait through a month of buggy beta testers:)
More than likely the Halo 2 servers are running on a PC, be it virtualized or other. Microsoft is completely rewriting the Halo codebase from the ground up for Halo 4 or whatever it is they're calling it. Considering most people bought the game for the multiplayer releasing the source code for the servers is a small concession to make. Usually I could care less, but unless MS offers Halo 2 on the 360 live arcade for free to existing owners, Microsoft is kind of screwing over their customer base.
I bought counter strike back in 1998, but I still pull it out and play it from time to time. Hell, it's Valve's most popular game to date*, even today. To top that off, Valve upgraded me to the Valve Platinum Pack for using the HL CD key that came with the copy of HL I bought just for Counter-Strike. The only thing Microsoft supports beyond the scheduled lifespan of the product is old Windows and Office updates as near as I can tell, never games.
Valve actively supports their games and player base, Microsoft turns their back on them. Which one do you want to support?
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*Actually right now it's COD4, but that's because they just had a $15 steam sale on it.
Are people honestly arguing that we should use more paper because the people who stand to financially benefit from using more paper said so? Have we gotten to be that stupid?
I don't usually directly link to images, but this is a prime example. It's so absurd I don't have any reason to believe it's not real.
But, as usual, Snopes proves me wrong. Turns out it's fake.
Anyways, this is basically what the paper companies are attempting to do. If they even manage to decrease the decline from 4% to 3%, they've succeeded in saving a lot of people's jobs.
Most small offices I know of are still using office 97-2000. MS would have to cut legacy support for office 97-2000 from their own products to really cripple small offices.
Where the heck are you living that you're getting gouged for $0.48/kwh? I thought I was getting sent through the ringer at $0.17 last summer. but switched to a different billing service for $0.099/kwh for a 12 month period. Dallas, TX typically has higher power rates than most areas.
Hell, motorcycle companies have been doing the same thing for year^H^H^H decades. Honda's Rebel hasn't really changed much since the late 70's. Most motorcycles under 500ccs only recently moved away from carburettors, mostly due to emissions requirements, but the frame and engine block remain largely the same as when they were designed in the late 1970s. They still get 50mpg and will out accelerate most any passenger car on the road without any modifications.
Ford used the same basic design in the Mustang from 1978 up until 1998 or so - most parts are interchangeable. The backseats of the Camaro/Firebirds from the early 1970's all the way until they were discontinued in 2000 will simply snap in and out from model to model with no modifications needed. The chevy V8 smallblock lasted how long? 50, 60 years?
The battle system for Final Fantasy hasn't changed appreciably since the first model either.
Eventually a mechanism becomes refined enough that it simply works with little to no maintenance and it simply isn't cost effective to develop something better. Look at Valve's Source engine or the Unreal engine; countless games produced over the past five years on platforms that haven't changed drastically. Game engine design has hit a glass wall until the hardware makes a significant generational jump. The next major jump will see photorealistic character models, but right now we've hit a sweet spot where the art department can be relatively small and still get the job done in a reasonable time line, and still look convincing.
Jeff Vogel wrote FF1-6? Only read the first three paragraphs to the block quote. Arguably 7-9 contain the same core mechanisms. Only in 10 do you lose the "go anywhere overworld map".
It would have been nice if they'd released that patch at launch, when my friends were still interested in playing the game. Everyone I know is going to weigh their purchase very carefully if they see the multiplayer is handled via gamespy ever again.
I wasn't aware Borderlands was released on anything other than Steam.
No tv/no console krew represent
The PC implementation of borderlands used some sort of gamespy matchmaking service that was somehow worse than windows live for games, plus Gearbox/Gamespy never published a "ports you need open" guide, at least not for the first month, after which nobody played it out of frustration/diablo2 style weapons hacks
It was a terrible PC port of a console game and the cracks really showed through when it came to the god-awful network code. Rumor has it some of that was patched in a later DLC but I don't care enough to confirm:P but yes i think the subtle point you were making is that perhaps consoles really are easier sometimes.
Did anyone play Borderlands for the PC? Remember what a nightmare it was to get multiplayer working on that thing? uPnP sorts out some bits, but having a file that you can upload to the firewall to configure that would be nice. There are scores of profitable websites out there that will walk you through how to configure your router for bit torrent -- clearly there's a need for Something Better. If not config scripts/files, then something else.
Anyone have a link to some of the better pics of the ash explosion? There was a great thumbnail sized pic that was circulating on all the news stories when it first erupted but nobody's seen the high res original yet. Post cool, high res ash explosion pics in your replies. Thanks!
Slashdot Mirror
Please good sir, point me in the direction of the competitive Tetris league. I watched "The King of Kong" but I haven't heard about such a thing for Tetris.
I think the main thing here is that developers will take a great game mechanic, like Mirror's Edge type gymnastics, and then strrrrreeeeetch it out to the point where it becomes more overplayed and boring than last year's summer radio hit. Once you hit the point where all the novelty of the gametype is worn out and they're just decreasing the margins for error/increasing skill level, most people get bored with it and move on. That might be why competitive FPS games tend to have more staying power; they're more of a sport than some sort of clever puzzle/timing game.
Really this just sounds like a fancier version of the SR-71/U-2 spyplane. Spy satellite are great things and can photograph pretty much anything given a long enough period of time; the problem is they're only going to be over the exact patch of dirt you're interested in perhaps once a week, and it might be cloudy (or night time!) when that happens.
Enter the spy plane. The U-2 and SR-71 (and A-12, but that was discontinued in the 60's) are designed to get "now" pics without having to wait. Call up Bobby Hill AFB in California or Hank Hill AFB in Virginia and in 8 hours you can get an up to date photograph of exactly what's going on anywhere in the world.
Now imagine you combine the two. The availability and speed of a spy plane, but the international benefit of staying out of of your enemy's airspace. Plus, due to the momentum it has, it stays in orbit for weeks, so after you buzz Moscow, you can do a course correction to your flying twinkie and hit up St. Petersburg, Beijing, Pyongyang, or Tehran to see where the weapons shipments are headed. Course corrections cost a lot of fuel for a satellite, which will be in orbit for years or decades, but course correction fuel on a reusable satellite that will only be up for a matter of weeks is cheap.
Also it's a lot harder to hit a new sattelite with an unknown and changing orbit. The chinese have proven that they can knock a U-2 flying at 90,000ft out of the air.
Subject says it all.
The coast is going to be a strange place in 80 years with wind farms a mile deep around our coast. The ultimate naval great wall?
What happens when you purchase the camera second hand? Rent the camera?
I'm pretty sure the only way torrent sites could possibly be more convenient than they already are would be to have them email you (or SMS you!) when new torrents are available. I'm sure this exists in some form somewhere. Bit torrent clients have long had plugins capable of monitoring RSS feeds and auto-downloading from those, but without specific standards in place it still seems a bit fragmented and a bit outside of "consumer simple" in terms of configuration. The Hulu pass thing sounds great, but until they offer true 720p you can still get better choices elsewhere.
I can hardly wait, just another 6-8 months before Hulu and Netflix go full 720p, unlimited streaming for less than $20/month combined including taxes. I'd even pay an extra $10/mo for Hulu+ with HBO and Showtime (and AMC for Mad Men)
I recently had to explain how OTA works for my mother; she'd forgotten how it works after 10 years of cable TV. Or maybe I just don't call her often enough.
Depends on your usage pattern. Most people don't upgrade the coils in their toaster for a more even toast, or faster toast. I think if you asked most users, they would prefer their laptop to be hermetically sealed, so they don't have to worry about crumbs/drink spills. Gamers will almost always buy a desktop or console, but a lot of non-gamers will just pick up a $400-600 laptop and use that until either the screen breaks, or the virus infestation gets so bad after a few years that they opt to upgrade. It doesn't take much CPU to check Facebook or Email and run a chat client simultaneously - the iPhone is "good enough" for most people, but you can't write a book report on it... yet. Many "desktop" computers today are just a laptop board & hard drive inside a smaller case; the only thing they're lacking is the onboard UPS of a laptop.
oops forgot to close the -b- tag properly.
I realize I live in an apartment, but Damn, your monthly TV/Communications bill is higher than my highest electric bill, and I live in Dallas Texas where the A/C pretty much runs continuously June-October. There are a lot of hobbies you can do for $200 a month, like Sailing, Amateur Race Car driving, traveling internationally and more. The cost of a used beginner's sailboat/racecar costs about the same as the 65" TV you're probably enjoying watching your $200/mo cable TV, not to mention the couch you had to buy to be able to watch $200 worth of cable TV a month :)
It's probably enough money to support the company while they rebuild after being let loose from under Microsoft's wing for what.. 8 years now? You need a huge chunk of investment cash flow from somewhere to support a major studio while they build a new AAA level blockbuster game. Activision will be breathing down their neck to see a first release inside of two years, so expect it to be shitty. They won't have the luxury of time to put out a top notch game like Blizzard does. Does anyone remember Blizzard announcing that FPS game "Ghost"? Luckily Bungie is sitting on the Myth property, along with ... well, [googles bungie's properties owned] uh, Marathon, and Oni [googles "Oni"]. So unless their plan is to release Myth 4 less than two years after Starcraft II, they'll be building some sort of new property just to generate cash. I'm doubtful if much of the creative staff that built Myth and Halo still work for the company.
Chances are your netbook performance will drop with an OS upgrade anyways. I'll probably test it out via a flash drive in a few months...
Well, look at the other extreme; Debian sat on the Woody stable release for what, six years before Sarge was announced as 'stable'? I would rather have a slightly buggy release out of the box than no release with no support at all. I will probably sit on 9.10 UNR for my netbook for a few more months, myself. Wireless support is right up there with basic things like BIOS, USB and VGA support when it comes to netbooks. I'll forgive any bug except something essential like that. That said I'm glad they're releasing regular updates, even if they don't quite "get" it initially. I am willing to wait through a month of buggy beta testers :)
More than likely the Halo 2 servers are running on a PC, be it virtualized or other. Microsoft is completely rewriting the Halo codebase from the ground up for Halo 4 or whatever it is they're calling it. Considering most people bought the game for the multiplayer releasing the source code for the servers is a small concession to make. Usually I could care less, but unless MS offers Halo 2 on the 360 live arcade for free to existing owners, Microsoft is kind of screwing over their customer base.
I bought counter strike back in 1998, but I still pull it out and play it from time to time. Hell, it's Valve's most popular game to date*, even today. To top that off, Valve upgraded me to the Valve Platinum Pack for using the HL CD key that came with the copy of HL I bought just for Counter-Strike. The only thing Microsoft supports beyond the scheduled lifespan of the product is old Windows and Office updates as near as I can tell, never games.
Valve actively supports their games and player base, Microsoft turns their back on them. Which one do you want to support?
-
*Actually right now it's COD4, but that's because they just had a $15 steam sale on it.
I don't usually directly link to images, but this is a prime example. It's so absurd I don't have any reason to believe it's not real.
They're happy because they eat LARD - Issued by the Lard Information Council
But, as usual, Snopes proves me wrong. Turns out it's fake.
Anyways, this is basically what the paper companies are attempting to do. If they even manage to decrease the decline from 4% to 3%, they've succeeded in saving a lot of people's jobs.
Most small offices I know of are still using office 97-2000. MS would have to cut legacy support for office 97-2000 from their own products to really cripple small offices.
Where the heck are you living that you're getting gouged for $0.48/kwh? I thought I was getting sent through the ringer at $0.17 last summer. but switched to a different billing service for $0.099/kwh for a 12 month period. Dallas, TX typically has higher power rates than most areas.
Hell, motorcycle companies have been doing the same thing for year^H^H^H decades. Honda's Rebel hasn't really changed much since the late 70's. Most motorcycles under 500ccs only recently moved away from carburettors, mostly due to emissions requirements, but the frame and engine block remain largely the same as when they were designed in the late 1970s. They still get 50mpg and will out accelerate most any passenger car on the road without any modifications.
Ford used the same basic design in the Mustang from 1978 up until 1998 or so - most parts are interchangeable. The backseats of the Camaro/Firebirds from the early 1970's all the way until they were discontinued in 2000 will simply snap in and out from model to model with no modifications needed. The chevy V8 smallblock lasted how long? 50, 60 years?
The battle system for Final Fantasy hasn't changed appreciably since the first model either.
Eventually a mechanism becomes refined enough that it simply works with little to no maintenance and it simply isn't cost effective to develop something better. Look at Valve's Source engine or the Unreal engine; countless games produced over the past five years on platforms that haven't changed drastically. Game engine design has hit a glass wall until the hardware makes a significant generational jump. The next major jump will see photorealistic character models, but right now we've hit a sweet spot where the art department can be relatively small and still get the job done in a reasonable time line, and still look convincing.
Jeff Vogel wrote FF1-6? Only read the first three paragraphs to the block quote. Arguably 7-9 contain the same core mechanisms. Only in 10 do you lose the "go anywhere overworld map".
It would have been nice if they'd released that patch at launch, when my friends were still interested in playing the game. Everyone I know is going to weigh their purchase very carefully if they see the multiplayer is handled via gamespy ever again.
I wasn't aware Borderlands was released on anything other than Steam.
:P but yes i think the subtle point you were making is that perhaps consoles really are easier sometimes.
No tv/no console krew represent
The PC implementation of borderlands used some sort of gamespy matchmaking service that was somehow worse than windows live for games, plus Gearbox/Gamespy never published a "ports you need open" guide, at least not for the first month, after which nobody played it out of frustration/diablo2 style weapons hacks
It was a terrible PC port of a console game and the cracks really showed through when it came to the god-awful network code. Rumor has it some of that was patched in a later DLC but I don't care enough to confirm
Did anyone play Borderlands for the PC? Remember what a nightmare it was to get multiplayer working on that thing? uPnP sorts out some bits, but having a file that you can upload to the firewall to configure that would be nice. There are scores of profitable websites out there that will walk you through how to configure your router for bit torrent -- clearly there's a need for Something Better. If not config scripts/files, then something else.
I still can't host Borderlands multiplayer games.
Indeed; the disassembly photos are blatantly missing. Something here is not quite right...
Anyone have a link to some of the better pics of the ash explosion? There was a great thumbnail sized pic that was circulating on all the news stories when it first erupted but nobody's seen the high res original yet. Post cool, high res ash explosion pics in your replies. Thanks!
[citation needed]
slashdot needs a [citation needed] function like facebook has for liking status updates.
Hadlock and27 other people require[citation needed]