"You need to make demos for Game Boy and PlayStation as well" They are currently talking about doing mmrpgs... I hardly think the GBA and Playstation are the best platforms for massively multiplayer online games are they?
"And the Xbox is not the #1 console" Until it is released, it is not a console at all, just an upcoming product. Waiting until it is released before you make your determination of whether or not it is #1 is probably a good idea.
I imagine there is no technical reason why there couldnt be a redundancy scheme, but when talking about irc, it is probably more the cost of adding on servers... just to run irc. This would be a great idea for a game that shares servers, but I think most people dont want to invest this heavily in irc servers... it is just irc after all. Im sure I will now be flamed by all the irc lubbers out there, lemmie get the flame suit real quick
for those interested, and unable to access the macnn site, visit this link. Seems to work nicely. Mucho thanks to Andrew Welch for being the smartey man he is
Anyone know what this useful little tip is, as the bulletin board for macnn seems to have died a horrible death, and is no longer reachable? I guess UltimateBB isnt so ultimate after all....
DVD RAM is great for backing up gigs at a time, if you happen to have a drive. I just simply put the disc in, drag everything I want to save to it, and eject it. Works for me like a floppy with some major room on it. YMMV of course
yes, i have a 6220, which was often considered the worst PowerPC machine ever made. It served me just fine for a few years tho, and i occasionally still use it for the tv card, which was quite a big deal back then. When I got my first playstation, I didnt have an adapter i needed to hook it up to my tv, and didnt realize till I got home. Not wanting to go back out that day, I simply plugged it into the tv card and played on the 6220:)
not only are they just laying off 50 people, but with all the new people they are hiring for the apple stores, they will end up with MORE employees AFTER the layoff. hardly a sign of struggle if you ask me
If we use military force against Afghanistan, we might end up using Pakistan as a base for some of our operations. This article, altho a bit dated, has interesting information about Pakistan and the 'Jihad Schools' located there. It helps shed some light on how our troops might be thought of and treated if they were stationed in Pakistan. Sounds like it would be a pretty hostile environment
the difference being, major developers were open to an OSX based off of Next. They were not interested in a BeOS based Mac. This probably had much to do with the decision. It doesnt matter how easy to port it is if the developers have no interest. Im not saying they were right for not being interested in a Be based mac, but for whatever reason they weren't, and that makes all the difference in the world.
I will agree to disagree with you on many of the points, except a few. Applications: Been to bebits.com. yes, there is an impressive library of software there. The fact is tho, the major players in the software industry arent there. Ill quote myself from an above reply... "I never meant there wasn't any software available by the way.. I know better than that. But you can get no-name apps for any OS you want, tons of em. big deal. You think BigCompany Inc wants to use "Joe's Handy Spreadsheet," or "Dave's Photoshop-like Art Studio"? Most companies, and home users want brands they have heard of. Im not saying no one developed for BeOS, just that the major players were conspicuously absent." When Apple was shopping for an OS base, they asked developers what they thought about the BeOS solution. None of them were pleased.
Next up, the 400 million pricetag for Next. Like I said, I thought it was a bit excessive too when it happened. But the thing is, Jobs really did save the company. He did a nice 180, and the only reason Apple is still around to, imho, is because of the changes he made. I strongly feel that if Job's hadnt returned to the helm, Amelio would have driven the company into the ground, but not before he sucked all of the money out of it he could. The man was a leech. His pay was drastically out of line with his performance. So as far as I'm concerned, the 400 mil was a bargain if it saved the company, although i did honestly feel differently when it happened.
As for your other points... well, honestly, they are really speculation... as were my points you responded to. Honestly, we dont know how long it would have taken to get a BeOS based MacOS out, nor do we know what all making the compatibility layer would have involved compared to Next. Nor do we know their would be more apps, with either solution. I shouldn't have included those in my arguments. My bad. do what you will to my karma
Photoshop? coming.... Office? coming.... Quicken? available now. Granted, they aren't here for OSX yet, with the exception of Quicken, but they were never available for BeOS in the first place. I never meant there wasn't any software available by the way.. I know better than that. But you can get no-name apps for any OS you want, tons of em. big deal. You think BigCompany Inc wants to use "Joe's Handy Spreadsheet," or "Dave's Photoshop-like Art Studio"? Most companies, and home users want brands they have heard of. Im not saying no one developed for BeOS, just that the major players were conspicuously absent.
1. plenty of apps are using Cocoa (updated Next API). Im using one right now, Omniweb. There are plenty more.
2. If you believe developers, many of them doing carbon ports now are thinking cocoa for future releases further down the road.
3. "it had an excellent API that would have actually seen full support by developers"... just like BeOS saw 'full' support from developers? How many major BeOS apps are there? BeOS Photoshop? BeOS Office? BeOS Quicken? I havent heard of any of these.
4. regardless of how you feel about the iMac and cube, Jobs saved Apple. No two ways about it. If they had chosen BeOS, more than likely Apple wouldn't have made it. You may see that as an argument in your favor, but thats just trolltalk
"OS X is a hog, plain and simple - Not that XP isn't, but you can run pretty much anything under Windows 98 Second Edition, except for a few apps like SoftImage, which most people don't care about. You can get quite a bit done under Win98SE on a P2-class system with only 64MB of ram, as long as you don't want to play current games or anything."
WinXP is a hog, plain and simple - Not that OSX isn't, but you can run pretty much anything under MacOS9, except for a few apps like SoftImage, which most people don't care about. You can get quite a bit done under MacOS9 on a 603 class system with only 64MB of ram, as long as you don't want to play current games or anything.
I'm sure I will get modded down, but it is no more of a troll than the parent, and just as accurate.
Yea, instead of using Next, which many considered to be a developer's dream, they should have used BeOS, an OS that you can count on your fingers the number of developers for it. Apple made the right choice. Sure, maybe 400 million was a bit much to pay, but it will pay off in the long run. Using Next allowed Apple to release OSX in a much quicker time frame than would have been possible otherwise. They spent years and countless millions developing the illfated Copeland and nothing came of it. Compared to that, they had developers release of rhapsody ready to test relatively quickly. Add to this the fact that BeOS doesn't even run on the last 2, soon to be 3 generations of PowerPC chips. If Apple had used BeOS, it probably wouldnt be out yet, would more than likely have no backwards compatibility (classic layer) and would have even less native apps than OSX does. BeOS was neat, and the BeBoxes were cool hardware at the time, but anyone that actually uses a Mac should be glad that Apple didnt go with BeOS.
I also am 28, and i know why this has affected me so much. I was at home, sick, and watching the launch when the Challenger exploded. It really had a profound effect on me, and was the first thing that came to mind today when watching the images on TV. I think when that happened to Challenger, people our age were still young and fairly innocent, and it was a huge shock to us that such a disaster was happening. That same kind of shock registered with me today, and I found myself sobbing at the loss. I feel like something has been taken from me again, and it weighs heavy on me.
I work for a company, that among other things, buys computer equipment from failing companies to resell it. As a bonus for moving a bunch of equipment one day, my boss let me take home a dat tape drive, and about 80 2 gigabytes tapes from the site we were on, which happened to be an accountant. Well, turns out those dat tapes i got werent new, but were the financial records for every single one of their clients starting in 1996. I had complete records of all client data for a good 4 years just because they were lazy once the hammer fell on them. My point? You trust your stockbroker? Don't. You trust your accountant? Don't. You trust anyone with info you dont want others to see? Don't. It is a harsh world, and when a company goes belly up, whether it is a magazine, a stockbroker, or an accountant, there is a good chance your data could wind up in the hands of someone less scrupulous than me. btw, those dat tapes, I pulled the tape out of the cassettes and destroyed them. it may sound like overkill, but if anything happens to one of these companies down the line, I have no interest in owning a copy of their financial information.
Moral to the story? Basically, watch your back. If you employ an accounting firm, and they go belly up, be sure you get your records back from them. This is just one shining example I gained from experience.
According to Bungie, it isn't Microsoft's decision to make about what platforms Halo end up on. The only obligation they have to MS in that sense is to make sure it arrives for XBox first. If you believe the Bungie developers, they operrate pretty independantly within the MS corporation.
I assume the cdrom drive is to install drivers for the dvd drive. not sure why 16x would be required tho, other than maybe a computer with a slower drive would more than likely not be up to snuff for a dvd-rw drive
$30 price difference can also matter. When I went to buy Q3A for my Mac, which was admittedly about 2 months after release, it was priced at $49.99, while the windows version one aisle over was a paltry $20, and no linux version in site at the store at all. Needless to say a sale went to the windows version that day. Perhaps instead of releasing different cds for different platforms, just release one cd with all the binaries, or instructions for downloading the binaries for your OS. If you are really interested in how many of each OS are running your games, then maybe create some form of registration mechanism where 'What OS are you using?' is asked. I would bet that at least the linux and mac users would be willing to answer a few questions, if just for the sole purpose of letting you know what OS they run your game on. just a thought.
I had a cigarette with ken Hoekstra today
on
Quake 4 Announced
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I believe that is how his name is spelled. He is one of the major badasses at Raven software. Saw him when we went outside to have a smoke, so he was on the receiving end of our little quiz (as well as picture taking session). At this point, the only thing done for Q4 is the contract, and a few possible ideas. Thats all. They dont know how gameplay will be. They dont have the story fleshed out. They just have a piece of paper with signatures. So, speculate all you want, nothing is decided.
That being said, i think raven will do a great job with the project, judging from previous and upcoming work. Soldier of fortune 2 looks amazing, and is a lot of fun to play. They added a lot of value to the Q3 engine, and Im sure they will do the same in their own way with Q4. They plan on pretty much finishing up SOF2 before starting heavy duty work on Q4. Part of the reason for this is just to finish SOF2, and another reason is to let the Doom3 tech get a bit more mature before they start tweaking it for their own purposes.
one more quick thing.. the footage used to show off the work on the doom3 engine... amazing... and chilling. I cant say how Doom3 will turn out in the end, but I can say that it has all the potential that the original did, as far as edge of your seat action goes. Add to that interaction you never dreamed of with the old doom, some nice AI (understatement) and you have a real potential winner again.
i just dont see it that way. I program in c when i can, and in perl for work. As far as hobby programming goes, it has all been geared twoards games, which was about the hardest kind of programming to do on pre OSX macs. Granted, these types of things have gotten easier over the years, but when I started, there were no 'Game Sprockets' and you had to do your own sound/blitter/networking/etc. OSX is changing this dramatically. I was nervous about programming for OSX. I was scared a lot of the skills I had learned would be useless... and you know what? Many of them were... But the thing is, with the way such things work now, it just took me a few days to get up to date with where I had been. BTW, this is using cocoa, the new framework... not carbon, which is meant to migrate apps from os9. If you think programming for OSX is hard, then you flat out havent given it a good try, and that is all there is to it. If you know what you are doing, you can develop a cocoa app in about 1/3 the time of other apps. For an example, purely off the top of my head... take the game Alice. The port to Mac OSX was at first playable within a few *days* and ready for release a few short weeks after that. If you have programmed for Mac OS in the past, you should know this would more than likely not be possible in that timeframe. OSX is a developers dream, just as NextStep was considered a dev's dream. I dont think of OSX as bloated, I tend to think of it as beefy. No matter what your tastes, there should be a good hunk of meat there able to satisfy you
I think a lot of the reason people focus on how well it sounds at low bitrates is because of the popularity of shoutcast/icecast/etc. Most people at this point just dont have the bandwidth to listen to a 64k, 128k, or 192k stream.
Slashdot Mirror
"You need to make demos for Game Boy and PlayStation as well"
They are currently talking about doing mmrpgs... I hardly think the GBA and Playstation are the best platforms for massively multiplayer online games are they?
"And the Xbox is not the #1 console"
Until it is released, it is not a console at all, just an upcoming product. Waiting until it is released before you make your determination of whether or not it is #1 is probably a good idea.
I imagine there is no technical reason why there couldnt be a redundancy scheme, but when talking about irc, it is probably more the cost of adding on servers... just to run irc. This would be a great idea for a game that shares servers, but I think most people dont want to invest this heavily in irc servers... it is just irc after all. Im sure I will now be flamed by all the irc lubbers out there, lemmie get the flame suit real quick
for those interested, and unable to access the macnn site, visit this link. Seems to work nicely. Mucho thanks to Andrew Welch for being the smartey man he is
Anyone know what this useful little tip is, as the bulletin board for macnn seems to have died a horrible death, and is no longer reachable? I guess UltimateBB isnt so ultimate after all....
Apple doesnt own Sorenson, it isnt theirs to relicense
DVD RAM is great for backing up gigs at a time, if you happen to have a drive. I just simply put the disc in, drag everything I want to save to it, and eject it. Works for me like a floppy with some major room on it. YMMV of course
yes, i have a 6220, which was often considered the worst PowerPC machine ever made. It served me just fine for a few years tho, and i occasionally still use it for the tv card, which was quite a big deal back then. When I got my first playstation, I didnt have an adapter i needed to hook it up to my tv, and didnt realize till I got home. Not wanting to go back out that day, I simply plugged it into the tv card and played on the 6220 :)
not only are they just laying off 50 people, but with all the new people they are hiring for the apple stores, they will end up with MORE employees AFTER the layoff. hardly a sign of struggle if you ask me
If we use military force against Afghanistan, we might end up using Pakistan as a base for some of our operations. This article, altho a bit dated, has interesting information about Pakistan and the 'Jihad Schools' located there. It helps shed some light on how our troops might be thought of and treated if they were stationed in Pakistan. Sounds like it would be a pretty hostile environment
the difference being, major developers were open to an OSX based off of Next. They were not interested in a BeOS based Mac. This probably had much to do with the decision. It doesnt matter how easy to port it is if the developers have no interest. Im not saying they were right for not being interested in a Be based mac, but for whatever reason they weren't, and that makes all the difference in the world.
I will agree to disagree with you on many of the points, except a few.
Applications: Been to bebits.com. yes, there is an impressive library of software there. The fact is tho, the major players in the software industry arent there. Ill quote myself from an above reply... "I never meant there wasn't any software available by the way.. I know better than that. But you can get no-name apps for any OS you want, tons of em. big deal. You think BigCompany Inc wants to use "Joe's Handy Spreadsheet," or "Dave's Photoshop-like Art Studio"? Most companies, and home users want brands they have heard of. Im not saying no one developed for BeOS, just that the major players were conspicuously absent." When Apple was shopping for an OS base, they asked developers what they thought about the BeOS solution. None of them were pleased.
Next up, the 400 million pricetag for Next. Like I said, I thought it was a bit excessive too when it happened. But the thing is, Jobs really did save the company. He did a nice 180, and the only reason Apple is still around to, imho, is because of the changes he made. I strongly feel that if Job's hadnt returned to the helm, Amelio would have driven the company into the ground, but not before he sucked all of the money out of it he could. The man was a leech. His pay was drastically out of line with his performance. So as far as I'm concerned, the 400 mil was a bargain if it saved the company, although i did honestly feel differently when it happened.
As for your other points... well, honestly, they are really speculation... as were my points you responded to. Honestly, we dont know how long it would have taken to get a BeOS based MacOS out, nor do we know what all making the compatibility layer would have involved compared to Next. Nor do we know their would be more apps, with either solution. I shouldn't have included those in my arguments. My bad. do what you will to my karma
Photoshop? coming.... Office? coming.... Quicken? available now. Granted, they aren't here for OSX yet, with the exception of Quicken, but they were never available for BeOS in the first place. I never meant there wasn't any software available by the way.. I know better than that. But you can get no-name apps for any OS you want, tons of em. big deal. You think BigCompany Inc wants to use "Joe's Handy Spreadsheet," or "Dave's Photoshop-like Art Studio"? Most companies, and home users want brands they have heard of. Im not saying no one developed for BeOS, just that the major players were conspicuously absent.
1. plenty of apps are using Cocoa (updated Next API). Im using one right now, Omniweb. There are plenty more.
2. If you believe developers, many of them doing carbon ports now are thinking cocoa for future releases further down the road.
3. "it had an excellent API that would have actually seen full support by developers"... just like BeOS saw 'full' support from developers? How many major BeOS apps are there? BeOS Photoshop? BeOS Office? BeOS Quicken? I havent heard of any of these.
4. regardless of how you feel about the iMac and cube, Jobs saved Apple. No two ways about it. If they had chosen BeOS, more than likely Apple wouldn't have made it. You may see that as an argument in your favor, but thats just trolltalk
"OS X is a hog, plain and simple - Not that XP isn't, but you can run pretty much anything under Windows 98 Second Edition, except for a few apps like SoftImage, which most people don't care about. You can get quite a bit done under Win98SE on a P2-class system with only 64MB of ram, as long as you don't want to play current games or anything."
WinXP is a hog, plain and simple - Not that OSX isn't, but you can run pretty much anything under MacOS9, except for a few apps like SoftImage, which most people don't care about. You can get quite a bit done under MacOS9 on a 603 class system with only 64MB of ram, as long as you don't want to play current games or anything.
I'm sure I will get modded down, but it is no more of a troll than the parent, and just as accurate.
Yea, instead of using Next, which many considered to be a developer's dream, they should have used BeOS, an OS that you can count on your fingers the number of developers for it. Apple made the right choice. Sure, maybe 400 million was a bit much to pay, but it will pay off in the long run. Using Next allowed Apple to release OSX in a much quicker time frame than would have been possible otherwise. They spent years and countless millions developing the illfated Copeland and nothing came of it. Compared to that, they had developers release of rhapsody ready to test relatively quickly. Add to this the fact that BeOS doesn't even run on the last 2, soon to be 3 generations of PowerPC chips. If Apple had used BeOS, it probably wouldnt be out yet, would more than likely have no backwards compatibility (classic layer) and would have even less native apps than OSX does. BeOS was neat, and the BeBoxes were cool hardware at the time, but anyone that actually uses a Mac should be glad that Apple didnt go with BeOS.
I also am 28, and i know why this has affected me so much. I was at home, sick, and watching the launch when the Challenger exploded. It really had a profound effect on me, and was the first thing that came to mind today when watching the images on TV. I think when that happened to Challenger, people our age were still young and fairly innocent, and it was a huge shock to us that such a disaster was happening. That same kind of shock registered with me today, and I found myself sobbing at the loss. I feel like something has been taken from me again, and it weighs heavy on me.
I work for a company, that among other things, buys computer equipment from failing companies to resell it. As a bonus for moving a bunch of equipment one day, my boss let me take home a dat tape drive, and about 80 2 gigabytes tapes from the site we were on, which happened to be an accountant. Well, turns out those dat tapes i got werent new, but were the financial records for every single one of their clients starting in 1996. I had complete records of all client data for a good 4 years just because they were lazy once the hammer fell on them. My point? You trust your stockbroker? Don't. You trust your accountant? Don't. You trust anyone with info you dont want others to see? Don't. It is a harsh world, and when a company goes belly up, whether it is a magazine, a stockbroker, or an accountant, there is a good chance your data could wind up in the hands of someone less scrupulous than me. btw, those dat tapes, I pulled the tape out of the cassettes and destroyed them. it may sound like overkill, but if anything happens to one of these companies down the line, I have no interest in owning a copy of their financial information.
Moral to the story? Basically, watch your back. If you employ an accounting firm, and they go belly up, be sure you get your records back from them. This is just one shining example I gained from experience.
yes, the version of doom for sega was for 32x. i bought a 32x addon just for doom. yes i was that lame. you may now shoot me
it doesnt use those floppies. the bezels in the front swing up on a hinge to reveal the real drives. neat
According to Bungie, it isn't Microsoft's decision to make about what platforms Halo end up on. The only obligation they have to MS in that sense is to make sure it arrives for XBox first. If you believe the Bungie developers, they operrate pretty independantly within the MS corporation.
I assume the cdrom drive is to install drivers for the dvd drive. not sure why 16x would be required tho, other than maybe a computer with a slower drive would more than likely not be up to snuff for a dvd-rw drive
$30 price difference can also matter. When I went to buy Q3A for my Mac, which was admittedly about 2 months after release, it was priced at $49.99, while the windows version one aisle over was a paltry $20, and no linux version in site at the store at all. Needless to say a sale went to the windows version that day. Perhaps instead of releasing different cds for different platforms, just release one cd with all the binaries, or instructions for downloading the binaries for your OS. If you are really interested in how many of each OS are running your games, then maybe create some form of registration mechanism where 'What OS are you using?' is asked. I would bet that at least the linux and mac users would be willing to answer a few questions, if just for the sole purpose of letting you know what OS they run your game on. just a thought.
I believe that is how his name is spelled. He is one of the major badasses at Raven software. Saw him when we went outside to have a smoke, so he was on the receiving end of our little quiz (as well as picture taking session). At this point, the only thing done for Q4 is the contract, and a few possible ideas. Thats all. They dont know how gameplay will be. They dont have the story fleshed out. They just have a piece of paper with signatures. So, speculate all you want, nothing is decided.
That being said, i think raven will do a great job with the project, judging from previous and upcoming work. Soldier of fortune 2 looks amazing, and is a lot of fun to play. They added a lot of value to the Q3 engine, and Im sure they will do the same in their own way with Q4. They plan on pretty much finishing up SOF2 before starting heavy duty work on Q4. Part of the reason for this is just to finish SOF2, and another reason is to let the Doom3 tech get a bit more mature before they start tweaking it for their own purposes.
one more quick thing.. the footage used to show off the work on the doom3 engine... amazing... and chilling. I cant say how Doom3 will turn out in the end, but I can say that it has all the potential that the original did, as far as edge of your seat action goes. Add to that interaction you never dreamed of with the old doom, some nice AI (understatement) and you have a real potential winner again.
i just dont see it that way. I program in c when i can, and in perl for work. As far as hobby programming goes, it has all been geared twoards games, which was about the hardest kind of programming to do on pre OSX macs. Granted, these types of things have gotten easier over the years, but when I started, there were no 'Game Sprockets' and you had to do your own sound/blitter/networking/etc. OSX is changing this dramatically. I was nervous about programming for OSX. I was scared a lot of the skills I had learned would be useless... and you know what? Many of them were... But the thing is, with the way such things work now, it just took me a few days to get up to date with where I had been. BTW, this is using cocoa, the new framework... not carbon, which is meant to migrate apps from os9. If you think programming for OSX is hard, then you flat out havent given it a good try, and that is all there is to it. If you know what you are doing, you can develop a cocoa app in about 1/3 the time of other apps. For an example, purely off the top of my head... take the game Alice. The port to Mac OSX was at first playable within a few *days* and ready for release a few short weeks after that. If you have programmed for Mac OS in the past, you should know this would more than likely not be possible in that timeframe. OSX is a developers dream, just as NextStep was considered a dev's dream. I dont think of OSX as bloated, I tend to think of it as beefy. No matter what your tastes, there should be a good hunk of meat there able to satisfy you
I think a lot of the reason people focus on how well it sounds at low bitrates is because of the popularity of shoutcast/icecast/etc. Most people at this point just dont have the bandwidth to listen to a 64k, 128k, or 192k stream.