In your haste to rant about how much you hate everyone else on then Intarweb, you've missed or ignored a pretty major point: Flash is just a tool. How about this:
HTML is a lead lined cudgel with which talentless unfunny people can create their poorly designed and impossible-to-navigate websites. (or, if they're really talentless, they just ship them off to sites like geocities.com) I have personally lost count of the number of times I've had my browsing experience ruined by an annoying as hell animated gif banner ad spawning in the middle of my screen, or a homepage so slowed and crippled by dynamic HTML that I left and never returned.
I suspect most of us would agree with that to an extent, but we don't vow never to look at a webpage again.
Some Flash is very good. Deal with it, move on, use the appropriate browser/plugin to make Flash content optional.
...you realise that it isn't a linear scale. Trying to make a G5 cluster which achieved 4.8 gigaflops per processor would take more than the 4400 processors, and thus would easily take more than 300 more processors than are used for the Itanium cluster.
300 processors. Thats 150 dual-processor boxes. I can't be bothered working it out now, but how far that goes to eliminating the power & heat advantage the G5 has would be interesting to find out...
(I am a Game Developer) and I'm trying to work out why this article was posted. Its too advanced for beginners, its not detailed enough for professionals. Its basically a list of the names & very basic approaches of a few graphics algorithms. I suppose people vaguely interested who know the basics but haven't tried some of these out are the target audience.
Anyone there fit the bill? Did you like this article? Was it helpful and informative?
Well, I'm a games programmer, I've also been using computers for over 20 years, and I suspect that the key to Linux is NOT a games-based distro. My thinking is as follows:
Hardcore gamers go where the games are. That is currently either Windows or consoles. Casual gamers can't use and probably won't learn Linux. I mean, I have trouble using Linux, and I'm the one writing the games, how do you think the poor punter walking into EB or wherever is going to respond to trying to learn it? And do you think they're going to do it just for games? Hmm...
As many other posters have pointed out, Windows didn't become a decent gaming platform for many years, and many iterations of DirectX. Yes, there were good games, but the biggest things started happening with DX. Think back beyond that to the DOS gaming days. That is pretty much where we are with Linux right now.
Is there a solution to this? I'm not sure. Some sort of DirectX-a-like might help games development, but the usability and marketing and so on all have to work before people will know that you CAN play games on Linux, and that they WILL work. Getting them to know what Linux is might also be a good start...
Yes, Lua makes things like this, and separating game flow and logic from the guts of the game engine, much easier to sketch out.
It is also a huge pain in the ass to debug heavily-scripted games. We've reached the stage in the game I'm working on just now that AI coding is being moved back into C from Lua just so it can be more easily debugged...
If you're talking about the ability to play games, then yes. However, the Xbox doesn't have a DVD writer or the ability to act as a PVR (unless you mod it), and those are the selling points of the PSX...
If you look throughout the Internet, most data recovery companies are claiming 20, 30 and even 40 years of data recovery experience. That's bull. These companies are 'chop shops' with a decent website that are luring suckers into data recovery disasters.
Then:
Know with ACR Data Recovery, your media will be recovered by data recovery technicians with almost 20 years of experience...
He's admitting that his own company is a chop-shop! Thanks for the heads-up...:)
...but without all those lovely console advantages like the uniform hardware target, well-designed controllers, and (in the case of America's Army at least) some decent gameplay in the games!
1) MS shows Windows source to China, then produces kick-ass version of Linux. Kick-assedness taken back into mainstream Linux, thanks to the GPL.
2) MS has a look at shiny new-kick-assedness Linux source (hey, its open!), spots something similar to the code they showed China (or similar enough to please a finned lawyer-shark), sues everyone who ever used Linux, everyone who ever met them, and some people who look like them.
3) Profit!!! (by destroying, or at least hurting, many Linux vendors, and setting back the 'political' progress Linux has made with big business.
Clearly a level of exaggeration in there, but I wouldn't put it past those wily scoundrels at MS to be hoping for something like this...
...and I don't think I'm hugely paranoid about evil government and so on, but I suspect most of the things that TIA was going to do are probably already going on in one form or another behind the scenes.
Maybe the only good thing about formalising it would be that at least there'd be some sort of accountability...
There's certainly a group of programmers (most of whom are good programmers) who really truly love what they do, and will work terrible hours because of that love.
Yes. Most of us work in games and get paid less than all those 'serious' proper working programmers:)
A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl.
I suspect there are projects which wouldn't, you know. How about a nice web applet with 3D rotating thingies in it?
But seriously, even if his example about database interaction is correct (I don't know if he's really going about it in a way that works to Java's advantage, or if he's stuck in his scripting language ways), we must all know that there are situations in which Java's nature will mean it is the best tool for a job.
...for smaller developers, at least. Consoles are the playground for big developers, for quite a few reasons - they're technologically often very different to PCs (PS2), expensive to get development hardware for (but illegal to chip), expensive to license, hard to get publishing and distribution. So, smaller & independant developers/companies should be targetting computers instead. Download SDKs for free (including things like SDL, DirectX, whatever), low-cost development hardware, and easy, independant publishing and distribution via the internet. As consoles get bigger and scarier, game developers will need to focus more time, effort and resources to capitalise on them. With home computers, at least you get a head start...
I work in the games industry, and am fairly active in the warez scene (I like to see when games I work on make it to IRC/ftp servers). I also live in Europe...
Almost all of the biggest and best warez groups are from Europe, but most of the sources for downloads are in the USA. This has been the case for many years, and doesn't really seem to have changed much since the widespread availability of broadband in Europe.
For what its worth, the quickest a game I've worked on has been released was about 4 weeks before it went gold (leaked by someone who works for the publisher, we had unique IDs in the builds:)
Nope, that's not right - the Dell/Intel benchmarks were provided by Apple, and had been taken with Hyperthreading turned off (sugar put in the petrol tank, to use your analogy).
Apple has deliberately turned off processor features on the other platforms that would have led to their 'fastest in the world' claim being untrue. That's the point of the article. Cross-platform benchmarking IS hard, but deliberately crippling what you benchmark against in order to look better makes it seem that your software/hardware/whatever just isn't as good as what you're comparing it to...
1) Change the name of the project, removing the source of the confusion with the Blizzard titles
then
2) Remove anything which looked like it might directly infringe on Blizzard's IP (I'm guessing there's things like similar artwork here, since gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted).
This would leave the cease-and-desist without a legal leg to stand on, as the grounds it had been sent under were no longer valid. After all, plenty of people out there clone other games, it looks like these guys just cloned *Craft a bit too closely and have annoyed someone with a lawyer...
Slashdot Mirror
In your haste to rant about how much you hate everyone else on then Intarweb, you've missed or ignored a pretty major point: Flash is just a tool. How about this:
HTML is a lead lined cudgel with which talentless unfunny people can create their poorly designed and impossible-to-navigate websites. (or, if they're really talentless, they just ship them off to sites like geocities.com) I have personally lost count of the number of times I've had my browsing experience ruined by an annoying as hell animated gif banner ad spawning in the middle of my screen, or a homepage so slowed and crippled by dynamic HTML that I left and never returned.
I suspect most of us would agree with that to an extent, but we don't vow never to look at a webpage again.
Some Flash is very good. Deal with it, move on, use the appropriate browser/plugin to make Flash content optional.
Errata: it would take 4335 G5s to get a 19.94 teraflops cluster assuming linear scaling, not the 4400 I stated. Whoops :)
...you realise that it isn't a linear scale. Trying to make a G5 cluster which achieved 4.8 gigaflops per processor would take more than the 4400 processors, and thus would easily take more than 300 more processors than are used for the Itanium cluster.
300 processors. Thats 150 dual-processor boxes. I can't be bothered working it out now, but how far that goes to eliminating the power & heat advantage the G5 has would be interesting to find out...
(I am a Game Developer) and I'm trying to work out why this article was posted. Its too advanced for beginners, its not detailed enough for professionals. Its basically a list of the names & very basic approaches of a few graphics algorithms. I suppose people vaguely interested who know the basics but haven't tried some of these out are the target audience.
Anyone there fit the bill? Did you like this article? Was it helpful and informative?
Well, I'm a games programmer, I've also been using computers for over 20 years, and I suspect that the key to Linux is NOT a games-based distro. My thinking is as follows:
Hardcore gamers go where the games are. That is currently either Windows or consoles. Casual gamers can't use and probably won't learn Linux. I mean, I have trouble using Linux, and I'm the one writing the games, how do you think the poor punter walking into EB or wherever is going to respond to trying to learn it? And do you think they're going to do it just for games? Hmm...
As many other posters have pointed out, Windows didn't become a decent gaming platform for many years, and many iterations of DirectX. Yes, there were good games, but the biggest things started happening with DX. Think back beyond that to the DOS gaming days. That is pretty much where we are with Linux right now.
Is there a solution to this? I'm not sure. Some sort of DirectX-a-like might help games development, but the usability and marketing and so on all have to work before people will know that you CAN play games on Linux, and that they WILL work. Getting them to know what Linux is might also be a good start...
Yes, Lua makes things like this, and separating game flow and logic from the guts of the game engine, much easier to sketch out.
It is also a huge pain in the ass to debug heavily-scripted games. We've reached the stage in the game I'm working on just now that AI coding is being moved back into C from Lua just so it can be more easily debugged...
Like Spaceballs, Hot Shots, etc? Since when was making money off of a parody such a bad thing, as long as there is no mistaking it for the original?
If you're talking about the ability to play games, then yes. However, the Xbox doesn't have a DVD writer or the ability to act as a PVR (unless you mod it), and those are the selling points of the PSX...
Then:
He's admitting that his own company is a chop-shop! Thanks for the heads-up...
...but without all those lovely console advantages like the uniform hardware target, well-designed controllers, and (in the case of America's Army at least) some decent gameplay in the games!
:)
Where do I sign up?
1) MS shows Windows source to China, then produces kick-ass version of Linux. Kick-assedness taken back into mainstream Linux, thanks to the GPL.
2) MS has a look at shiny new-kick-assedness Linux source (hey, its open!), spots something similar to the code they showed China (or similar enough to please a finned lawyer-shark), sues everyone who ever used Linux, everyone who ever met them, and some people who look like them.
3) Profit!!! (by destroying, or at least hurting, many Linux vendors, and setting back the 'political' progress Linux has made with big business.
Clearly a level of exaggeration in there, but I wouldn't put it past those wily scoundrels at MS to be hoping for something like this...
...and I don't think I'm hugely paranoid about evil government and so on, but I suspect most of the things that TIA was going to do are probably already going on in one form or another behind the scenes.
Maybe the only good thing about formalising it would be that at least there'd be some sort of accountability...
He must know how trollish he is being here...
A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl.
I suspect there are projects which wouldn't, you know. How about a nice web applet with 3D rotating thingies in it?
But seriously, even if his example about database interaction is correct (I don't know if he's really going about it in a way that works to Java's advantage, or if he's stuck in his scripting language ways), we must all know that there are situations in which Java's nature will mean it is the best tool for a job.
Work harder, yes. Work smarter and/or more efficiently (in financial terms)? That is an entirely different question, and I don't know the answer...
...for smaller developers, at least. Consoles are the playground for big developers, for quite a few reasons - they're technologically often very different to PCs (PS2), expensive to get development hardware for (but illegal to chip), expensive to license, hard to get publishing and distribution. So, smaller & independant developers/companies should be targetting computers instead. Download SDKs for free (including things like SDL, DirectX, whatever), low-cost development hardware, and easy, independant publishing and distribution via the internet. As consoles get bigger and scarier, game developers will need to focus more time, effort and resources to capitalise on them. With home computers, at least you get a head start...
I work in the games industry, and am fairly active in the warez scene (I like to see when games I work on make it to IRC/ftp servers). I also live in Europe...
:)
Almost all of the biggest and best warez groups are from Europe, but most of the sources for downloads are in the USA. This has been the case for many years, and doesn't really seem to have changed much since the widespread availability of broadband in Europe.
For what its worth, the quickest a game I've worked on has been released was about 4 weeks before it went gold (leaked by someone who works for the publisher, we had unique IDs in the builds
...to mention kangaroos, barbies, shrimps, or anything to do with Australia gets to follow him, but without a chute... :)
...but read Stephen Donaldson's "Thomas Covenant" books. Top class!
Most of the game programmers I know use Linux. Why don't we make Linux games? Hint - its not because we don't like Linux...
Nope, that's not right - the Dell/Intel benchmarks were provided by Apple, and had been taken with Hyperthreading turned off (sugar put in the petrol tank, to use your analogy).
Still think its OK?
I was going to mod you down, but...
Apple has deliberately turned off processor features on the other platforms that would have led to their 'fastest in the world' claim being untrue. That's the point of the article. Cross-platform benchmarking IS hard, but deliberately crippling what you benchmark against in order to look better makes it seem that your software/hardware/whatever just isn't as good as what you're comparing it to...
Disclaimer: IANAL, but I am a games programmer...
Why didn't the project team just:
1) Change the name of the project, removing the source of the confusion with the Blizzard titles
then
2) Remove anything which looked like it might directly infringe on Blizzard's IP (I'm guessing there's things like similar artwork here, since gameplay mechanics cannot be copyrighted).
This would leave the cease-and-desist without a legal leg to stand on, as the grounds it had been sent under were no longer valid. After all, plenty of people out there clone other games, it looks like these guys just cloned *Craft a bit too closely and have annoyed someone with a lawyer...