I wonder why that is? Where is your Diablo? Or its ancestors? Why don't you play them if graphics don't matter so much?
Diablo didn't have a whole lot of narration. No puzzles to speak of, and the gameplay wasn't terribly good compared to later games.
But you do raise a valid point - I enjoyed Titan Quest even more than Diablo II, so clearly graphics are important - I just don't rate them at the very top.
What is rather telling is that ALL of the games you mention are sequels. Sequels that were produced for far more powerful hardware then the originals.
1) I never played Disciples. I can't comment on it. 2) Psychonauts wasn't a sequel. 3) Beyond Good & Evil wasn't a sequel. 4) I was referring to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I don't believe it's a sequel, though if you count the 2D originals, who knows? 5) Warcraft III is a sequel, but even Warcraft II had narration. I don't consider Wc3's graphics to be "good" or "superior", but the custom maps definitely are.
I also found Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (a game that got horrible ratings) to be more immersive than Oblivion. It had less graphical issues, way better combat, and everything that spoke had a unique voice. The story was balony, but the way it was presented made it okay.
I fully agree with you. I'm more impressed by advances in story telling tech, than fancy graphics. Mass Effect, for example.
Mind you, both never hurt.
In the past I was always more immersed in narrated games like Diablo II, than newer, more graphical games like Oblivion. Poor narration and amazing graphics (marred by the occasional horrible texture) really detracted from the experience, not to mention the totally unbalanced combat. I got much more pleasure out of earlier games.
Diablo II, Disciples II, Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, Warcraft III; They have narration, solid gameplay, puzzles to solve(in some), and decent enough graphics not to detract from the experience.
You know, the perfect example of this is the Gamecube and Wii.
The Wii is basically an overclocked gamecube with some new input devices. (oversimplification, but you get the idea)
Compare 2001 Gamecube games to 2008/2009 Wii games, and look at the difference in graphics quality. Twilight Princess is available on gamecube, and it puts earlier titles to shame.
So yes, I agree - software already defines the console.
In other news - Adobe's installer doesn't properly install for my Firefox Portable, either - but if I use 7-zip to manually unzip it and throw it in Firefox's plugin folder, then it works fine.:D
I'm so glad they switched away from that crappy WISE installer. Those installers couldn't be unzipped by anything I know of.
I don't know - Windows 7 feels pretty snappy on an old 3.0ghz P4 I have sitting next to me. Snappier than Vista on a Q6600, actually.
Vista has a noticeable delay whenever doing anything. It's short, but it's many miliseconds slower than the P4, and many miliseconds slower than my old Athlon XP w/ Win2k.
I'm talking about stuff like opening the start menu, clicking a systemtray icon and waiting for a menu to pop up, or opening a folder and waiting for the contents to display. (this last one is horrible on Vista)
Want proof? Open your System32 folder (or equivalent, for 64bit Vista/Win7) and see how long it takes to display. After a reboot, my Win2k box takes approximately a quarter to a half second, to display in list format. The P4/Win7 box takes about a second. Vista takes about 3-4 seconds to pop up.
Why? No clue. Logically, older computers with older HDDs would take longer. Clearly Microsoft mucked something up.
Mod parent up. He's the only guy in this whole tree of posts to understand mhz isn't everything.
Many ARM SoCs have co-processors called DSPs, which can help decode video. Last-generation DSPs could manage 720p/1080p, so Youtube shouldn't cause it to break a sweat.
Or if it does break a sweat, at least it won't stutter.;)
Which makes sense on a desktop pc or even a server where you can have gobs of ram. There are lots places where it still makes little sense to use three bytes that way; places where you might need / want to implement DNS. I would hate to throw three bytes per string away on an carrier class router or switch for instance.
Valid point, but most C programs these days don't even bother to optimize down from int to short int or byte.
Int to byte is 3 bytes, right there.:P
And honestly, better algorithms have a bigger impact than 3 bytes spent on the length of a string.
That 500 year old tree living in some national park must be absolutely brilliant compared to my meagre mind!
And that strange fungus colony that's been growing and taking over a mountainside, for who knows how long - I need to go bask in its great intellect, and learn off of it!
And does ARM actually make a desktop-class CPU (as compared to Intel/AMD's mid or high end cpu's)?
ARM CPUs are advancing faster than x86 CPUs.
The Cortex A8 has roughly P3 performance (per clock), and clock speeds varying from 600-1000mhz. This is without Out of Order execution, 64bit support, or any other fancy stuff. The power envelope is about 50 milliwatts load. Most SoCs bundling GPU, DSP, LCD controller, wifi, etc. consume around or under a watt.
The Cortex A9 should be significantly faster. If I recall correctly, it has OoOe and sports a 2-4 core multicore architecture, with increased clockspeeds, in the same power envelope. Look up TI's OMAP4 SoCs. When these are released in 2010, we'll have Pentium D/GeForce 6600 level performance using up a hundred or so milliwatts, and generating a completely negligible amount of heat.
That ought to be enough for anybody.;) If you need longer, there's special buffer classes that can go longer.
The string also chooses between ASCII and Unicode when initialized, (you can manually set char encoding, as well) so properly cleaned/trimmed ASCII strings don't waste any memory. (Except for the 3 bytes extra that go into a length int, instead of a null char - but those 3 bytes also give you an amazing speedup when you need to know the length of the string.)
>>>Except Windows apps from today still run on a 10-year old Windows 2000 machine, for the most part.
If you stick with free software, sure.
But all the storebought stuff won't run on a Win2k machine. It was about two years ago that I noticed many games wouldn't run on Win2k, as well as video encoding tools, etc.
It seems that for Windows, you have about 5-6 years that stuff will support your OS, and then you have to upgrade.
I'd like an Outpost 2 reboot. I can't think of any games since, that had the same level of micromanagement and colony building that Outpost 2 did.
Fighting natural disasters is fun - worrying about making sure your stuff doesn't get hit by meteors... micromanaging repair bots after a big earthquake... relocating your entire base because a damn volcano erupted and swallowed it... dealing with huge vortex clouds ripping up all your stuff.
Fun!
Oh sure, there was combat too - but disasters were a big part of it, unlike most games.
The biggest advantage for a console is you at least know games designed for the console will run fast as long as you own it.
Some console games drop as low as 30fps. On PC, I can lower detail levels to acquire a higher framerate.
Any game I buy for PC today will run at roughly the same speed as long as I own it. I consider being able to buy the newest games(without an upgrade) a perk, rather than a negative, even if I have to set the detail levels to *gasp* high or medium.
Slashdot Mirror
Low blow man, low blow.
Ahh man, my back is killing me for fixing ruffs all day long.
I know I want to pay $6,500 dollars for a laptop with a 5" screen!
Me too! I heard it plays WoW!
Seems acceptable. Except that they already pay back less for the power you generate than what they charge for the power you consume.
The Wii is a party console. Your post supports that.
Use it for what it is!
much as disbanding our police departments would lead to a lower crime rate.
You know, you might be on to something here. Up in Canada we have far fewer police, and our crime rate is about half per capita.
Correlation is not causation.
Go back to the future, you time travelling scum!
Well, I'm doing my part to help female representation. Every chance I get, I choose Zoey! ;)
I wonder why that is? Where is your Diablo? Or its ancestors? Why don't you play them if graphics don't matter so much?
Diablo didn't have a whole lot of narration. No puzzles to speak of, and the gameplay wasn't terribly good compared to later games.
But you do raise a valid point - I enjoyed Titan Quest even more than Diablo II, so clearly graphics are important - I just don't rate them at the very top.
What is rather telling is that ALL of the games you mention are sequels. Sequels that were produced for far more powerful hardware then the originals.
1) I never played Disciples. I can't comment on it.
2) Psychonauts wasn't a sequel.
3) Beyond Good & Evil wasn't a sequel.
4) I was referring to Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. I don't believe it's a sequel, though if you count the 2D originals, who knows?
5) Warcraft III is a sequel, but even Warcraft II had narration. I don't consider Wc3's graphics to be "good" or "superior", but the custom maps definitely are.
I also found Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (a game that got horrible ratings) to be more immersive than Oblivion. It had less graphical issues, way better combat, and everything that spoke had a unique voice. The story was balony, but the way it was presented made it okay.
I guess I'd never be satisfied by an amazing MUD.
That makes no sense.
The installer asked me to close Chrome when I ran it, so it does recognize the browser.
Right - but not enough to actually copy the damn file.
Next thing you'll be arguing that it's Canonical's fault that Microsoft Office doesn't work on linux.
Installer failed. Move along. I'm sure Adobe will fix it eventually.
I fully agree with you. I'm more impressed by advances in story telling tech, than fancy graphics. Mass Effect, for example.
Mind you, both never hurt.
In the past I was always more immersed in narrated games like Diablo II, than newer, more graphical games like Oblivion. Poor narration and amazing graphics (marred by the occasional horrible texture) really detracted from the experience, not to mention the totally unbalanced combat. I got much more pleasure out of earlier games.
Diablo II, Disciples II, Prince of Persia, Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, Warcraft III; They have narration, solid gameplay, puzzles to solve(in some), and decent enough graphics not to detract from the experience.
You know, the perfect example of this is the Gamecube and Wii.
The Wii is basically an overclocked gamecube with some new input devices. (oversimplification, but you get the idea)
Compare 2001 Gamecube games to 2008/2009 Wii games, and look at the difference in graphics quality. Twilight Princess is available on gamecube, and it puts earlier titles to shame.
So yes, I agree - software already defines the console.
Google? You mean Adobe, right?
In other news - Adobe's installer doesn't properly install for my Firefox Portable, either - but if I use 7-zip to manually unzip it and throw it in Firefox's plugin folder, then it works fine. :D
I'm so glad they switched away from that crappy WISE installer. Those installers couldn't be unzipped by anything I know of.
I don't know - Windows 7 feels pretty snappy on an old 3.0ghz P4 I have sitting next to me. Snappier than Vista on a Q6600, actually.
Vista has a noticeable delay whenever doing anything. It's short, but it's many miliseconds slower than the P4, and many miliseconds slower than my old Athlon XP w/ Win2k.
I'm talking about stuff like opening the start menu, clicking a systemtray icon and waiting for a menu to pop up, or opening a folder and waiting for the contents to display. (this last one is horrible on Vista)
Want proof? Open your System32 folder (or equivalent, for 64bit Vista/Win7) and see how long it takes to display. After a reboot, my Win2k box takes approximately a quarter to a half second, to display in list format. The P4/Win7 box takes about a second. Vista takes about 3-4 seconds to pop up.
Why? No clue. Logically, older computers with older HDDs would take longer. Clearly Microsoft mucked something up.
Mod parent up. He's the only guy in this whole tree of posts to understand mhz isn't everything.
Many ARM SoCs have co-processors called DSPs, which can help decode video. Last-generation DSPs could manage 720p/1080p, so Youtube shouldn't cause it to break a sweat.
Or if it does break a sweat, at least it won't stutter. ;)
Which makes sense on a desktop pc or even a server where you can have gobs of ram. There are lots places where it still makes little sense to use three bytes that way; places where you might need / want to implement DNS. I would hate to throw three bytes per string away on an carrier class router or switch for instance.
Valid point, but most C programs these days don't even bother to optimize down from int to short int or byte.
Int to byte is 3 bytes, right there. :P
And honestly, better algorithms have a bigger impact than 3 bytes spent on the length of a string.
That 500 year old tree living in some national park must be absolutely brilliant compared to my meagre mind!
And that strange fungus colony that's been growing and taking over a mountainside, for who knows how long - I need to go bask in its great intellect, and learn off of it!
And does ARM actually make a desktop-class CPU (as compared to Intel/AMD's mid or high end cpu's)?
ARM CPUs are advancing faster than x86 CPUs.
The Cortex A8 has roughly P3 performance (per clock), and clock speeds varying from 600-1000mhz. This is without Out of Order execution, 64bit support, or any other fancy stuff. The power envelope is about 50 milliwatts load. Most SoCs bundling GPU, DSP, LCD controller, wifi, etc. consume around or under a watt.
The Cortex A9 should be significantly faster. If I recall correctly, it has OoOe and sports a 2-4 core multicore architecture, with increased clockspeeds, in the same power envelope. Look up TI's OMAP4 SoCs. When these are released in 2010, we'll have Pentium D/GeForce 6600 level performance using up a hundred or so milliwatts, and generating a completely negligible amount of heat.
Now maybe you can see the implications of this?
Go read the full article, it's much longer but very well analyzes why it's more used by AI aficionados rather than regular users.
He makes some interesting and valid points. ...which will hold true until AIs are built that are smarter than us.
Questionable morality fits better than conspiracy.
You would not be happy, I assure you, if prices at Fry's and Microcenter were as high as prices are at retail stores in France.
But prices were already high before the EU came into existance?
Java strings!
32bit signed int, max length 2GB.
That ought to be enough for anybody. ;) If you need longer, there's special buffer classes that can go longer.
The string also chooses between ASCII and Unicode when initialized, (you can manually set char encoding, as well) so properly cleaned/trimmed ASCII strings don't waste any memory. (Except for the 3 bytes extra that go into a length int, instead of a null char - but those 3 bytes also give you an amazing speedup when you need to know the length of the string.)
I believe C# implements Strings in a similar way.
Before they get this working properly.
At least one company already figured out movement. Speech and conversations are probably next.
http://www.naturalmotion.com/euphoria.htm
>>>Except Windows apps from today still run on a 10-year old Windows 2000 machine, for the most part.
If you stick with free software, sure.
But all the storebought stuff won't run on a Win2k machine. It was about two years ago that I noticed many games wouldn't run on Win2k, as well as video encoding tools, etc.
It seems that for Windows, you have about 5-6 years that stuff will support your OS, and then you have to upgrade.
I never knew the Chinese thought so very little of themselves.
And you drew this conclusion about well over a billion people, based on the actions of how many?
This just in: Politicians suck, everywhere!
I'd like an Outpost 2 reboot. I can't think of any games since, that had the same level of micromanagement and colony building that Outpost 2 did.
Fighting natural disasters is fun - worrying about making sure your stuff doesn't get hit by meteors... micromanaging repair bots after a big earthquake... relocating your entire base because a damn volcano erupted and swallowed it... dealing with huge vortex clouds ripping up all your stuff.
Fun!
Oh sure, there was combat too - but disasters were a big part of it, unlike most games.
The biggest advantage for a console is you at least know games designed for the console will run fast as long as you own it.
Some console games drop as low as 30fps. On PC, I can lower detail levels to acquire a higher framerate.
Any game I buy for PC today will run at roughly the same speed as long as I own it. I consider being able to buy the newest games(without an upgrade) a perk, rather than a negative, even if I have to set the detail levels to *gasp* high or medium.