Really? And people enjoy this? The knuckles stages in Sonic Adv 2 were easily the most excruciatingly dull gameplay experiences of my life. Poorly translated and inspecific clues (what shade of orange? All the ground is orange! WTF is the "Rock Statue!"?) A whole game like that would make me impale my control pad into my eyes.
Well, they're designed to *feel* clicky, not just make noise. But yes, I agree about the noise, as it often wakes my wife up. I know some people need that tactile feedback, but I'd just rather have damper pad there in behind the keys.
Well, the problem is that Microsoft's competition is based on leveraging prior successes - not by actually performing better in a new market. They don't win by being better than the competition, they win by throwing money at the problem until the competition can no longer keep up, and then once they own the market they just milk it like a cash cow. Look at IE - nothing but minor incremental bugfixes for about a decade, until all of a sudden Firefox comes along and IE is booming with new features.
Yeah - there's a basic failure of logic here in the concept of an MMORPG, or at least, the MMO-Roguelike concept.
"Let's go onto a server with thousands of players, each with unique characters and personalities - and then ignore them all and fight computer-generated monsters".
It seems rather pointless. Like they ignore their biggest attribute - player interactions - and try and divert characters away from each other.
Another oddity - "let's make a game that's character class and race based, providing an incredible variety of possible characters. However, let's make it require a monstrous amount of work to change classes/characters (like working your way back up to a decent level) so that players never get to see 90% of the content our developers slaved over, because they're stuck with only 1 or 2 setups." I mean really - why do games advertise dozens of class-race combinations? The average player's not gonna see more than 4 of them. This isn't like Street Fighter, where you can easily try out and practice with every character.
Consider how rarely new slashdot accounts must be created. Far less often than posting frequency. So, simply create a new account, note the number, and then make a gag referring to the next number past that one.
Don't get me wrong, I support open source as well, but in cases where you are going to view the source rarely, if ever, why bother?
This sounds like an argument saying that whether or not a product is open-sourced is irrelevant.
My point wasn't arguing against.net - I use it happily, and am comfortable knowing that Mono is available. I'm just pointing out the folley of people who say "why does it matter if product X is open-source?" -- One should avoid basing a product on a platform where only commercial impelemntations are available.
What about lawn-bowling, crokinole, pool, etc - various low-exertion games in which players can affect each other.
And consider a marathon, or a ralley, where the rules try and avoid letting the players affect each other, and the entire form of interaction is psychological. In a 100 meter dash, the other players might not exist - and yet you hear players talk, and they talk all about the "strategy of pacing the other players" etc.
Then no state does, nor country. It's pretty much consistent across the board - law trumps contracts. It's illegal to tell someone to shoot themselves in the head, and as such you will not find a state where I can sign a contract requiring me to shoot a hole through my head and have it be upheld.
You just hate California because it's full of those evil liberals.
Simple - what happens if the platform goes away? What happens if microsoft moves away from.NET, and you want to move to a new platform (PowerPC for example). Hell, what happens if 20 years from now you find you need an old tool you made in C#? Will it still work? Will there be a compatible.NET run-time for 256-bit computers?
Part of the commercial reason to use opensource is to future-proof yourself against long-term eventualities like this. If Java decides to stop letting you bundle the JVM with your OS, then you can't provide OpenOffice anymore without paying them. If MS stops supporting a platform, then you're screwed if there's an unworkable bug and you're stuck on the platform.
Fundamentally, when you invest labour on designing products and infrastructure based on a closed-license platform, you gain fealty to them. They now control you - they can make you lose the use of the product of your labour. They can stop providing their product, they can refuse to fix un-workaround-able bugs, or they can just go out of business and leave you high and dry.
With opensource, you can lose your support provider, but you can never lose the platform - at worst, you may have to maintain it yourself.
Yes, you may even have a solid, bullet-proof contract with your provider - but what happens when they go out of business?
bull. My dad had one of those, and Spanish is his first language - he still talks about the jokes his friends would tell. Nova was definitely the source of jokes in Spanish.
Good to see fellow Niven fans in here. The corresponding Chrichton vehicle that people keep mentioning sounds like his generic "new technology creates monster that runs around killing people" rather than actually exploring the ramifications.
Niven played with this concept a lot too, it appears in an extreme form in many of his novels and short stories. For example, in the Gil Hamilton detective stories, a man is killed by being hooked up to such an ecstacy device through a cord too short to allow him to reach the kitchen, so he starves to death rather than disconnect the device (much of the story debates whether or not this was a suicide).
Personally, I like Niven's writing better than Crichton's.
I disagree. MMORPGs create a server load that dwarfs that of XBox Live. Plus, they involve much higher maintenance in terms of new content and administration. Very few MMOs can get by without a subscription model, and Live kinda precludes a subscription, since you're already paying for Live.
If anything, MS could make one big, beefy MMO for Live and just accept that the admin costs of it will make it a net loss, but use it as a vehicle to get people onto Live.
As much as I adore VOOT, V-On wouldn't be so hot, just 'cause it's only really designed for 2 players. Maybe you could do team games, but I doubt it. Online games are much better with more people - I'd want Armored Core (but the stats would have to be tweaked - you have too much health in AC to be good for Deathmatch).
Heheh, funny mods don't improve karma, so he'll hit the hole pretty fast as he gets modded down with karma-impacting mods and modded up with karma-useless "funny".
The flash anim is a big one. How many times have we all wanted to maximize Homestar Runner, or any of the stuff at NewGrounds? That would be a handy extension for FireFox.
Well, no, it's not a better option. For those who don't need the feature, it makes the browser bloated.
What they need is to include these crucial extensions in the installer as optional packages. The firefox installer should come with a laundry-list of important extensions nicely bundled together and thoroughly documented so that a user can either a) just get the minimum or b) make it a point to grab the tools they need. It keeps the core browser light, but it means that people with specific (but common) wants/needs don't need to go hunting around the extension page.
Simple packs like "Usability", "Internet Explorer Familiarity", "Web Developer", "Power User", "Multinational", etc. that bundle together commonly used relevant extensions would go a long way.
Play UT2k4. While most of the vehicular weaponry in UT2k4 is similarly underpowered, the tank shells are a violent exception. Being attacked by a tank from long range is pretty much certain death for even a large group on foot in ONS.
Well, aiming is a limitation. Consoles lack pointing devices, which keeps them both out of strat and fps titles. The fps console titles have compensated by being lethargicly slow, or providing heavy auto-aim, in comparison to their PC counterparts. Remember the complaints about the sluggish pace in the PC port of Halo? That's because that's as fast as you can aim with a gamepad.
BF2 can work on both because vehicles work fine with analog sticks, and BF2 infantry aren't as blazingly fast as, say, ut2k4 infantry.
Likewise, there was BeOS and Next, which were both good attempts to make new OS's, but fell flat because an OS is more than just a product - it's a platform, and platforms need a lot of inertia to survive - either from age, or from a big push from a lot of businesses. Next survived in OSX because Apple combined the innovation of Next with the Mac's inertia. BeOS had no such benefactor - it's still around as some small retail OS that nobody uses, and an opensource project with insufficient support.
Yes, because the perspective that the game is presented tells you everything you need to know about the gameplay. Genre jumping games do not exist - Deus Ex was just your imagination.
I'm not saying that this title won't be another run-n-gun or stealth title - but marketeers call anything from first person an FPS, weather it is an adventure, action, strategy, whatever. Likewise, putting a game in behind-view doesn't make it an "adventure" title. Two of the best RPGs I ever played took place entirely in spaceships, with most characters simply being images on the communicator screen.
Personally, I prefer when advancement and adventure based games let you handle combat yourself, rather than issuing spells and commands. I got a lot more out of Star Control II than the comparable Final Fantasy titles of the time, and I'm sure many Tactics and X-Com fans vouch for how much nicer RPG-style attribute-based combat is in a tactical environment, even if it no longer follows the FF1-style conventions of an RPG.
Oddly enough, this is why I wish the controller hardware on PSP and DS were swapped. The conventional gamepad of the PSP is more suitable for the fun, kiddy-games that Nintendo is stereotyped for, and the stylus is far better for FPS and strategy games that the more "adult" PSP is likely to get.
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Then go to work an hour early.
Really? And people enjoy this? The knuckles stages in Sonic Adv 2 were easily the most excruciatingly dull gameplay experiences of my life. Poorly translated and inspecific clues (what shade of orange? All the ground is orange! WTF is the "Rock Statue!"?) A whole game like that would make me impale my control pad into my eyes.
But yeah, JSR was cool.
Well, they're designed to *feel* clicky, not just make noise. But yes, I agree about the noise, as it often wakes my wife up. I know some people need that tactile feedback, but I'd just rather have damper pad there in behind the keys.
Well, the problem is that Microsoft's competition is based on leveraging prior successes - not by actually performing better in a new market. They don't win by being better than the competition, they win by throwing money at the problem until the competition can no longer keep up, and then once they own the market they just milk it like a cash cow. Look at IE - nothing but minor incremental bugfixes for about a decade, until all of a sudden Firefox comes along and IE is booming with new features.
Yeah - there's a basic failure of logic here in the concept of an MMORPG, or at least, the MMO-Roguelike concept.
"Let's go onto a server with thousands of players, each with unique characters and personalities - and then ignore them all and fight computer-generated monsters".
It seems rather pointless. Like they ignore their biggest attribute - player interactions - and try and divert characters away from each other.
Another oddity - "let's make a game that's character class and race based, providing an incredible variety of possible characters. However, let's make it require a monstrous amount of work to change classes/characters (like working your way back up to a decent level) so that players never get to see 90% of the content our developers slaved over, because they're stuck with only 1 or 2 setups." I mean really - why do games advertise dozens of class-race combinations? The average player's not gonna see more than 4 of them. This isn't like Street Fighter, where you can easily try out and practice with every character.
Consider how rarely new slashdot accounts must be created. Far less often than posting frequency. So, simply create a new account, note the number, and then make a gag referring to the next number past that one.
Don't get me wrong, I support open source as well, but in cases where you are going to view the source rarely, if ever, why bother?
.net - I use it happily, and am comfortable knowing that Mono is available. I'm just pointing out the folley of people who say "why does it matter if product X is open-source?" -- One should avoid basing a product on a platform where only commercial impelemntations are available.
This sounds like an argument saying that whether or not a product is open-sourced is irrelevant.
My point wasn't arguing against
What about lawn-bowling, crokinole, pool, etc - various low-exertion games in which players can affect each other.
And consider a marathon, or a ralley, where the rules try and avoid letting the players affect each other, and the entire form of interaction is psychological. In a 100 meter dash, the other players might not exist - and yet you hear players talk, and they talk all about the "strategy of pacing the other players" etc.
And then consider curling.
Then no state does, nor country. It's pretty much consistent across the board - law trumps contracts. It's illegal to tell someone to shoot themselves in the head, and as such you will not find a state where I can sign a contract requiring me to shoot a hole through my head and have it be upheld.
You just hate California because it's full of those evil liberals.
Simple - what happens if the platform goes away? What happens if microsoft moves away from .NET, and you want to move to a new platform (PowerPC for example). Hell, what happens if 20 years from now you find you need an old tool you made in C#? Will it still work? Will there be a compatible .NET run-time for 256-bit computers?
Part of the commercial reason to use opensource is to future-proof yourself against long-term eventualities like this. If Java decides to stop letting you bundle the JVM with your OS, then you can't provide OpenOffice anymore without paying them. If MS stops supporting a platform, then you're screwed if there's an unworkable bug and you're stuck on the platform.
Fundamentally, when you invest labour on designing products and infrastructure based on a closed-license platform, you gain fealty to them. They now control you - they can make you lose the use of the product of your labour. They can stop providing their product, they can refuse to fix un-workaround-able bugs, or they can just go out of business and leave you high and dry.
With opensource, you can lose your support provider, but you can never lose the platform - at worst, you may have to maintain it yourself.
Yes, you may even have a solid, bullet-proof contract with your provider - but what happens when they go out of business?
bull. My dad had one of those, and Spanish is his first language - he still talks about the jokes his friends would tell. Nova was definitely the source of jokes in Spanish.
iirc, the name was "placenta". The boss also took the time to point out how funding depends on the coolness of the project name.
Good to see fellow Niven fans in here. The corresponding Chrichton vehicle that people keep mentioning sounds like his generic "new technology creates monster that runs around killing people" rather than actually exploring the ramifications.
Niven played with this concept a lot too, it appears in an extreme form in many of his novels and short stories. For example, in the Gil Hamilton detective stories, a man is killed by being hooked up to such an ecstacy device through a cord too short to allow him to reach the kitchen, so he starves to death rather than disconnect the device (much of the story debates whether or not this was a suicide).
Personally, I like Niven's writing better than Crichton's.
I disagree. MMORPGs create a server load that dwarfs that of XBox Live. Plus, they involve much higher maintenance in terms of new content and administration. Very few MMOs can get by without a subscription model, and Live kinda precludes a subscription, since you're already paying for Live.
If anything, MS could make one big, beefy MMO for Live and just accept that the admin costs of it will make it a net loss, but use it as a vehicle to get people onto Live.
As much as I adore VOOT, V-On wouldn't be so hot, just 'cause it's only really designed for 2 players. Maybe you could do team games, but I doubt it. Online games are much better with more people - I'd want Armored Core (but the stats would have to be tweaked - you have too much health in AC to be good for Deathmatch).
Heheh, funny mods don't improve karma, so he'll hit the hole pretty fast as he gets modded down with karma-impacting mods and modded up with karma-useless "funny".
The flash anim is a big one. How many times have we all wanted to maximize Homestar Runner, or any of the stuff at NewGrounds? That would be a handy extension for FireFox.
Well, no, it's not a better option. For those who don't need the feature, it makes the browser bloated.
What they need is to include these crucial extensions in the installer as optional packages. The firefox installer should come with a laundry-list of important extensions nicely bundled together and thoroughly documented so that a user can either a) just get the minimum or b) make it a point to grab the tools they need. It keeps the core browser light, but it means that people with specific (but common) wants/needs don't need to go hunting around the extension page.
Simple packs like "Usability", "Internet Explorer Familiarity", "Web Developer", "Power User", "Multinational", etc. that bundle together commonly used relevant extensions would go a long way.
Those are dull metals. Highly reflective metals (like aluminum foil) would do better.
Play UT2k4. While most of the vehicular weaponry in UT2k4 is similarly underpowered, the tank shells are a violent exception. Being attacked by a tank from long range is pretty much certain death for even a large group on foot in ONS.
Well, aiming is a limitation. Consoles lack pointing devices, which keeps them both out of strat and fps titles. The fps console titles have compensated by being lethargicly slow, or providing heavy auto-aim, in comparison to their PC counterparts. Remember the complaints about the sluggish pace in the PC port of Halo? That's because that's as fast as you can aim with a gamepad.
BF2 can work on both because vehicles work fine with analog sticks, and BF2 infantry aren't as blazingly fast as, say, ut2k4 infantry.
Likewise, there was BeOS and Next, which were both good attempts to make new OS's, but fell flat because an OS is more than just a product - it's a platform, and platforms need a lot of inertia to survive - either from age, or from a big push from a lot of businesses. Next survived in OSX because Apple combined the innovation of Next with the Mac's inertia. BeOS had no such benefactor - it's still around as some small retail OS that nobody uses, and an opensource project with insufficient support.
Yes, because the perspective that the game is presented tells you everything you need to know about the gameplay. Genre jumping games do not exist - Deus Ex was just your imagination.
I'm not saying that this title won't be another run-n-gun or stealth title - but marketeers call anything from first person an FPS, weather it is an adventure, action, strategy, whatever. Likewise, putting a game in behind-view doesn't make it an "adventure" title. Two of the best RPGs I ever played took place entirely in spaceships, with most characters simply being images on the communicator screen.
Personally, I prefer when advancement and adventure based games let you handle combat yourself, rather than issuing spells and commands. I got a lot more out of Star Control II than the comparable Final Fantasy titles of the time, and I'm sure many Tactics and X-Com fans vouch for how much nicer RPG-style attribute-based combat is in a tactical environment, even if it no longer follows the FF1-style conventions of an RPG.
Oddly enough, this is why I wish the controller hardware on PSP and DS were swapped. The conventional gamepad of the PSP is more suitable for the fun, kiddy-games that Nintendo is stereotyped for, and the stylus is far better for FPS and strategy games that the more "adult" PSP is likely to get.
well, there's sunbird, but that's been stuck at v0.2 for a dog's age.