Some of us (the same types that mv/bin/csh/usr/games) would argue that csh should be EASIER to kill, not harder. And shell scripts written in csh should be the easiest of all to kill!
Some info about the re-release that I haven't seen covered here yet:
The Network's victory conditions have been changed, again. In the original little thin box set (with expansion sets 1 and 2 (and 3, but nobody ever used 3)) the Network had a special victory condition of 15 transferable power. Since it starts with 7, getting that 8 wasn't too hard-- IF any transferable power came up at all. The problem always was that everyone wanted transferable power, so the Network had to hope that the cards came up right so they could get what they needed to win.
The (first) Deluxe edition came out, with regular-sized playing cards instead of miniatures (yay) and cardboard money instead of paper (boo), and changed that to 20 transferable power. In our experience (myself and friends) this became nearly impossible. 13 xferable power is a *lot*, considering that only 1 group (the CIA) has 4, only a handful (5 or 6) of groups have 3, and maybe a quarter of the groups total have any.
Now in the new re-released deluxe, that's been upped *again* to *TWENTY-FIVE* (25). What I want to know is: has anyone *ever* played the Network in the new deluxe edition and won? IMHO the Network is now tougher to win with than the Servants of Cthulhu, who were never given a prayer to win by anyone.
Some cards were changed around as well between old Deluxe and new Deluxe; if there's sufficient interest I'll drag out my copies of both and diff 'em and see how it comes out. The only difference that I can remember right now is that the Semiconscious Liberation Army seemed to have been weakened (lost its transferable power, only +1 to destroy any group now.)
Also, for those who were talking about Hacker (another SJG release), there's a supplement called Hacker II: The Dark Side that has some neat stuff in it. Viruses, black Ice, outdials, more cards, more system expansions, more funny systems that can be added to the net with wacky specials, multiple accounts per system, even a 'net worm that can be released. I haven't had a chance to play it with the expansion set yet, but it looks good. Anyone have comments on the playability?
Ok, here's some info that I collected about Gauntlet (the original, not II) back from when it was in the Purdue Student Union (circa 1987-1988) and I used to play it all the time.
The player score will store 8 digits but only displays the rightmost 7 digits. Someone at Purdue ran the Elf score up to 11 million; it had the #1 spot, with my 4.5 million in #2.
Player health will store (at least) 6 digits but only displays the rightmost 5. I've personally ran my health up over 100,000 and had no problems at all when it came back below 100K.
I didn't observe this personally, but the person that scored the 11M score claims that after level 999, it goes back to level 8 (as you know, the first 7 levels are static). My best was a 10-hour game where I scored 4.5 million and completed 450 levels, getting my health up to around 110K or so.
Player health ticks down at the rate of 53 per minute; the person with the 11M game let the game sit overnight (while the arcade was closed), and ran off 60K health overnight.
All this was done on an original Gauntlet machine, one which didn't have the food chip modification (the one that randomly deletes some food). The game was set on the toughest difficulty; of course the standard difficulty setting only affects how fast the generators generate monsters.
As far as a perfect Gauntlet game goes, it's possible to go quite a ways without being hit by a monster. There was a certain nasty corner on level 4 where it was difficult to clear w/o getting hit by at least 1 ghost; it was doable though. I myself have made it through level 5 (the demon level) without taking any demon hits, and since our standard way of doing level 6 (the sorcerer level) was to wait ~200 health for the walls to turn to exits and kill them shooting over the exits (it was easy to regain the health with the 3 foods on that level and make a small health profit).
By the way, in case you're wondering, the version of Gauntlet that's on the Playstation is the one WITH the food chip modification; IMHO it makes the game much less fun, because there are many places in the game where a food is holding back monsters or whatever and having that food not be there makes the game much tougher than the loss of 100 health. I don't know about the MAME rom, I haven't played it.
If anyone else wants more Gauntlet info, just ask.
Quick, before you post a flame of these people here on slashdot--
Send them email instead pointing out exactly how and why they're wrong. Don't bother to flame; flames will just make them think the free software people are a bunch of assholes.
Take your time writing the email, too; it's not like here where if you get your reply off first you'll get your article listed at the top. Better that they get instead a bunch of well-thought-through messages than anything else. If you can't think what exactly to say, go read what other people have written in the past about free/open/* software and crib from that; there's no shame in borrowing good ideas, as long as you don't claim that you thought them up all by yourself.
In short, do something that helps. Sure, ranting on here is stress-relieving and fun at times, but here you're preaching to the choir. Better to help get the word out to the unwashed masses.
Old Bill Gates had a farm W-I-N N-T And on that farm he had some FUD W-I-N N-T With a FUD FUD here, and a FUD FUD there Here a FUD, there a FUD, everywhere a FUD FUD Ol' Bill Gates had a farm, W-I-N N-T.
Another day, another heaping hunk of smeg from Ziff-Davis. Yawn. As I mentioned before, I've loathed Ziff-Davis ever since they bought and folded Creative Computing (remember them? the very first computer magazine ever?). They understand nothing but greed, and never will understand anything else. The only thing we should do is point and laugh at them.
Personally, I've loathed Ziff-Davis ever since they bought and subsequently folded Creative Computing (remember it?) way back when. It's no wonder they're in bed with Microsoft-- greed is the only language they understand. This kind of FUD doesn't surprise me one bit.
When I got my plates in GA about a year ago, I wanted BSD UNIX as my plates, but that was too long (6 characters max in GA). So on a whim I asked them to check UNIX for me, and no one currently had it. So it's mine now, whee. Back in IN George Goble had UNIX so I couldn't get it there. No idea who has it in the other 48 states, but if there's anyone else out there, feel free to post.
Personally I give 2:1 odds that this particular Anonymous Coward actually works for Microsoft. This looks exactly like the kind of post that they tend to post-- namely the 'other companies do the same thing, just Microsoft is better at it', and 'Microsoft makes the best products in the world'. Both of which are of course total $#!+. 'nuff said in response to a lamer like this.
Having played pinball since 1983 or so (which hardly makes me the longest or oldest player out there), I view the Pinball 2000 with a mixture of opinions.
First of all, I really hope that P2K (if you don't mind the abbreviation) helps the pinball industry get out of the slump that I've heard it's been in of late. The last thing I want is to see pinball machines go the way of the DeLorean and the Amiga.
However, I hope that the modularity and the amount of change that this project represents doesn't kill off a lot of the creativity and innovation that has been evident in some of the best pinball machines made in the last 25 years (sorry, I'm not as familiar with the electromech era as I'd like to be).
I can't help but think that a lot of the machines made in that era have features that could never be done with Pinball 2000. Sure, there are the obvious ones like the nearly vertical second playfield in Banzai Run, and the subterranean reverse-angle playfield in Haunted House and Black Hole (I seriously doubt they allow the depth in the playfield necessary for that), but also simple stuff like the top-of-the-backbox attention-getting gimmicks like the flashing red light on the top of High Speed, the 3 of them on F-14 Tomcat, the fan that blows air in your face on Whirlwind, the Dalek on Dr. Who, etc., as well as the extra flipper button that was used for various effects like the magna-save on Black Knight and Black Knight 2000, and the weird in-outlane combo on BMX and Dungeons & Dragons, and especially the really fun tricks like the shaker that made Earthshaker live up to its name. Also I note with some sadness that the P2K chassis has a plunge button, not a real plunger, so the real plunger may in fact be gone forever.
I really hope that Pinball 2000 does in fact take the pinball experience to new and greater heights, but I'm very concerned that it may kill off the very creativity that has kept pinball going (and that has largely disappeared from the video game industry) for years and years.
Slashdot Mirror
Some of us (the same types that mv /bin/csh /usr/games) would argue that csh should be EASIER to kill, not harder. And shell scripts written in csh should be the easiest of all to kill!
Some info about the re-release that I haven't seen covered here yet:
The Network's victory conditions have been changed, again. In the original little thin box set (with expansion sets 1 and 2 (and 3, but nobody ever used 3)) the Network had a special victory condition of 15 transferable power. Since it starts with 7, getting that 8 wasn't too hard-- IF any transferable power came up at all. The problem always was that everyone wanted transferable power, so the Network had to hope that the cards came up right so they could get what they needed to win.
The (first) Deluxe edition came out, with regular-sized playing cards instead of miniatures (yay) and cardboard money instead of paper (boo), and changed that to 20 transferable power. In our experience (myself and friends) this became nearly impossible. 13 xferable power is a *lot*, considering that only 1 group (the CIA) has 4, only a handful (5 or 6) of groups have 3, and maybe a quarter of the groups total have any.
Now in the new re-released deluxe, that's been upped *again* to *TWENTY-FIVE* (25). What I want to know is: has anyone *ever* played the Network in the new deluxe edition and won? IMHO the Network is now tougher to win with than the Servants of Cthulhu, who were never given a prayer to win by anyone.
Some cards were changed around as well between old Deluxe and new Deluxe; if there's sufficient interest I'll drag out my copies of both and diff 'em and see how it comes out. The only difference that I can remember right now is that the Semiconscious Liberation Army seemed to have been weakened (lost its transferable power, only +1 to destroy any group now.)
Also, for those who were talking about Hacker (another SJG release), there's a supplement called Hacker II: The Dark Side that has some neat stuff in it. Viruses, black Ice, outdials, more cards, more system expansions, more funny systems that can be added to the net with wacky specials, multiple accounts per system, even a 'net worm that can be released. I haven't had a chance to play it with the expansion set yet, but it looks good. Anyone have comments on the playability?
Ok, here's some info that I collected about Gauntlet (the original, not II) back from when it was in the Purdue Student Union (circa 1987-1988) and I used to play it all the time.
The player score will store 8 digits but only displays the rightmost 7 digits. Someone at Purdue ran the Elf score up to 11 million; it had the #1 spot, with my 4.5 million in #2.
Player health will store (at least) 6 digits but only displays the rightmost 5. I've personally ran my health up over 100,000 and had no problems at all when it came back below 100K.
I didn't observe this personally, but the person that scored the 11M score claims that after level 999, it goes back to level 8 (as you know, the first 7 levels are static). My best was a 10-hour game where I scored 4.5 million and completed 450 levels, getting my health up to around 110K or so.
Player health ticks down at the rate of 53 per minute; the person with the 11M game let the game sit overnight (while the arcade was closed), and ran off 60K health overnight.
All this was done on an original Gauntlet machine, one which didn't have the food chip modification (the one that randomly deletes some food). The game was set on the toughest difficulty; of course the standard difficulty setting only affects how fast the generators generate monsters.
As far as a perfect Gauntlet game goes, it's possible to go quite a ways without being hit by a monster. There was a certain nasty corner on level 4 where it was difficult to clear w/o getting hit by at least 1 ghost; it was doable though. I myself have made it through level 5 (the demon level) without taking any demon hits, and since our standard way of doing level 6 (the sorcerer level) was to wait ~200 health for the walls to turn to exits and kill them shooting over the exits (it was easy to regain the health with the 3 foods on that level and make a small health profit).
By the way, in case you're wondering, the version of Gauntlet that's on the Playstation is the one WITH the food chip modification; IMHO it makes the game much less fun, because there are many places in the game where a food is holding back monsters or whatever and having that food not be there makes the game much tougher than the loss of 100 health. I don't know about the MAME rom, I haven't played it.
If anyone else wants more Gauntlet info, just ask.
In particular under that URL at attrition.org, be sure to take a look at:
l
http://www.attrition.org/negation/www/tech.01.htm
It's a shell history file from an account JP had a year ago or so. It pretty much speaks for itself as far as his Unix ability and his activities.
Quick, before you post a flame of these people here on slashdot--
Send them email instead pointing out exactly how and why they're wrong. Don't bother to flame; flames will just make them think the free software people are a bunch of assholes.
Take your time writing the email, too; it's not like here where if you get your reply off first you'll get your article listed at the top. Better that they get instead a bunch of well-thought-through messages than anything else. If you can't think what exactly to say, go read what other people have written in the past about free/open/* software and crib from that; there's no shame in borrowing good ideas, as long as you don't claim that you thought them up all by yourself.
In short, do something that helps. Sure, ranting on here is stress-relieving and fun at times, but here you're preaching to the choir. Better to help get the word out to the unwashed masses.
Old Bill Gates had a farm
W-I-N N-T
And on that farm he had some FUD
W-I-N N-T
With a FUD FUD here, and a FUD FUD there
Here a FUD, there a FUD, everywhere a FUD FUD
Ol' Bill Gates had a farm, W-I-N N-T.
And that's all I have to say about that.
Another day, another heaping hunk of smeg from Ziff-Davis. Yawn. As I mentioned before, I've loathed Ziff-Davis ever since they bought and folded Creative Computing (remember them? the very first computer magazine ever?). They understand nothing but greed, and never will understand anything else. The only thing we should do is point and laugh at them.
Personally, I've loathed Ziff-Davis ever since they bought and subsequently folded Creative Computing (remember it?) way back when. It's no wonder they're in bed with Microsoft-- greed is the only language they understand. This kind of FUD doesn't surprise me one bit.
When I got my plates in GA about a year ago, I wanted BSD UNIX as my plates, but that was too long (6 characters max in GA). So on a whim I asked them to check UNIX for me, and no one currently had it. So it's mine now, whee. Back in IN George Goble had UNIX so I couldn't get it there. No idea who has it in the other 48 states, but if there's anyone else out there, feel free to post.
Personally I give 2:1 odds that this particular Anonymous Coward actually works for Microsoft. This looks exactly like the kind of post that they tend to post-- namely the 'other companies do the same thing, just Microsoft is better at it', and 'Microsoft makes the best products in the world'. Both of which are of course total $#!+. 'nuff said in response to a lamer like this.
Having played pinball since 1983 or so (which hardly makes me the longest or oldest player out there), I view the Pinball 2000 with a mixture of opinions.
First of all, I really hope that P2K (if you don't mind the abbreviation) helps the pinball industry get out of the slump that I've heard it's been in of late. The last thing I want is to see pinball machines go the way of the DeLorean and the Amiga.
However, I hope that the modularity and the amount of change that this project represents doesn't kill off a lot of the creativity and innovation that has been evident in some of the best pinball machines made in the last 25 years (sorry, I'm not as familiar with the electromech era as I'd like to be).
I can't help but think that a lot of the machines made in that era have features that could never be done with Pinball 2000. Sure, there are the obvious ones like the nearly vertical second playfield in Banzai Run, and the subterranean reverse-angle playfield in Haunted House and Black Hole (I seriously doubt they allow the depth in the playfield necessary for that), but also simple stuff like the top-of-the-backbox attention-getting gimmicks like the flashing red light on the top of High Speed, the 3 of them on F-14 Tomcat, the fan that blows air in your face on Whirlwind, the Dalek on Dr. Who, etc., as well as the extra flipper button that was used for various effects like the magna-save on Black Knight and Black Knight 2000, and the weird in-outlane combo on BMX and Dungeons & Dragons, and especially the really fun tricks like the shaker that made Earthshaker live up to its name. Also I note with some sadness that the P2K chassis has a plunge button, not a real plunger, so the real plunger may in fact be gone forever.
I really hope that Pinball 2000 does in fact take the pinball experience to new and greater heights, but I'm very concerned that it may kill off the very creativity that has kept pinball going (and that has largely disappeared from the video game industry) for years and years.