The landing and Mako driving parts always reminded me of Star Control 2 and driving around searching for minerals and biological samples and such. God I loved that game! I wish they'd make something similiar with Mass Effect.
How about instead of buying your gear and upgrades, you only got the blueprints, and you needed to gather the raw materials on the planets you land on? That'd give me incentive to explore, and there'd be more valuable or rare materials on the dangerous worlds.
Now, this is all fun and all, and "sticking it to the man", but for fuck's sake, it's just HD-DVD cracking. And who's going to do that? Honestly? Just pirates mostly. Now, if this suppressed message and internet revolt were based around something big, like, say some secret about Bush and Cheney and the Iraqistan war, and if it were they who were trying to suppress it, that... would be.... awesome. And sort of Woodstockish. And a revolution.
But this is kind of lame. I for one don't give a flying fuck about HD DVD or Blu-Ray. DVDs are just fine for me.
Actually, the daily schedule idea for NPCs goes back to the old Ultima series. I think it was Ultima V that did it first, although I could be wrong.
On Oblivion, though, you make it sound more simplistic than it is, there is some level of AI/scripting intelligence to enemies, but still, lower-level and weakened enemies still keep coming for the most part. Occasionaly they do other things. There's a mod that makes animals behave more real world-like, over at http://www.tessource.net/files/cache/index.html, lots of other good stuff there too.
On the other hand, most online multiplayer games I've played aren't much better. In Shooters, for instance, when you die you almost always respawn instantly afterwards, and it's a simple matter of finding a better gun than the default and you're back to where you were before. So most players don't use any strategy and aren't too concerned if they die on a straight ahead attack at you; they'll just respawn and give you payback.
What I found confusing is that later on Vader doesn't seem to know Leia is his daughter, yet he knows Luke is his son.
Simple enough explanation: At end of Ep. 3, he's told that Padme and the baby died because of him. He didn't know there were twins...apparently despite a pangalactic civilization and hyperadvanced technology, their obstetrics technology is in the dark ages.
Also, it's Episode V (or between IV and V) that he learns that the pilot who destroyed the Death Star was named Luke Skywalker...I guess Obi-Wan was hoping Darth Vader would never make the connection...........whereas Leia's last name was Organa.
Still, you'd think a "force-sensitive" would be able to know these sorts of things, especially about their own children.
BAH. Enough over-analyzing Star Wars. Can't believe I've stooped to this!:P
I salute you, sir, for creating a new unit of measurement!
Fuckton ( Pronunciation: 'f&k 't&n) Abbr.: FkT Function: noun Etymology: Slashdot.org, 4/19/2006, FlameboyC11) 1. A large measure of something, bigger than a metric assload.
Usage: "With a fuckton of ram, most of the programs you're running won't get paged as the game soaks up ram, so they're just as responsive as they were before you started up Quake4."
Wait a minute, cellphones have flash memory of their own that's going to be constantly bathed in the RF emitting from the antenna just a few inches from them whenever the phone is on. I've never heard of a cellphone's memory erasing or corrupting itself, so I call bogus.
Seriously, though, the OS X on PC is a lot further behind Windows on Mac, even though the former has been available in the wild since last summer. Lots and lots of driver issues, limited hardware support. But, my own PC is this close to being my new Mac, though. Just waiting for some enterprising programmers/hackers to come up with fully working NVidia drivers, have working digital output of audio, and it'd be nice to be able to use my mobo's built-in NIC, and my Sony DVD-DL drive too.
But that said, it's pretty amazing they've already got a game working here. Nice.
I'm far from an expert, but the failure rate for modern flash is much much better than for hard disks. Something like millions of write operations per bit before failure.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't lots of enterprise-class servers, routers, switches, etc. booted from PC-card style flash drives?
...but still too expensive for the common user. $750-1000 for 32 GB...I think not. And while the performance numbers they quoted are better than the average laptop sized HDD and about on-par with desktop dized ones, 57/32 MB/s still isn't even saturating the bandwidth of modern hard disk interfaces.
When are we going to see flash type drives that are cheap AND super fast? After all, secondary storage is perhaps the only remaining perfomance bottleneck in computers these days (well, that and crappy ISPs that don't/can't give you more than a few mips up and a little more down, but I digress.)
Oh man, did this dredge up a bad memory. I was a Trekkie geek like you back in Junior High. I read Star Trek books for book reports, and had to stand in front of class and give them orally. (AHem..., pervs.)
One time I just froze. I had read the book, but when I walked up to the teacher's desk and turned to face the class, I completely forgot everything! I sort of stammered for a few minutes, with everyone looking at me like I'm the world's biggest douche. Finally the teacher prompted me..."and what did Spock do in this situation...", etc. And I took it from there.
This is something that really bothers me about MMORPGs. NPCs give you quests that are written up to be *so* urgent that you gather X and Y and sometimes Z, and bring it all to them, then go out and rinse and repeat. And what happens to this stuff? Just **poof** deleted!
I'm wondering if i should try another game instead.
...for is for Black Isle (Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic...) to do a similar RPG treatment for the Star Trek universe. That could be really cool.
Although what I'd like even better would be an open-ended game, a la Grand Theft Auto, where you can just go explore the Federation and uncharted space and get into mini-adventures aside from any big main quest there might be. Could be truly unlimited possibilities.
Being a Mac newbie I wasn't aware of the cult following surrounding the G4 cube, and there are calls to bring this form factor back. Apparently it actually had upgradable video. Maybe with the new Intel chips it could shake off the heat issues.
Well, the Mini is sort of the successor to the Cube, although its CPU and GPU are soldered. But the way I figure it, its only $500, so you buy one, wait a year and the new one will be faster and have better video. Probably for the price you'd pay for a CPU and GPU upgrade in an upgradeable machine.
Then again, since it's the bottom of the barrel Mac, it's the red-headed stepchild of Apple. Hasn't gotten any love from them since introduced. I'm just hoping they'll update it soon and not let it die.
I'd love to know how well games run with Rosetta as well. Although what I'd really like to know is how many games developers will be releasing updated universal binaries for their games.
It's cool that the Core Duo is socketed, so there's the possibility of a CPU upgrade in the future for the first time in a Mac in a long time. How about the Ati X1600? Any luck there? I'm sure it'd be fine for today's games, but what about a couple years from now?
And, goddammit! I got a Mini last year and I was looking forward to a new Intelimini. I've already got a great 20" flat panel that I can share with the Mac and PC, and I don't want an iMac because of that.
When I used to have a dual display setup (PowerBook G4 and a 19" LCD), I'd have the big display be my main screen, centered visually, with the 'book on the side as an extra.
the noise from the computer is drowned by the noise of blood running through my ears
Damn, you can hear blood running through your ears? Either you have super-hearing, or some bizarre anatomy going on there.
I have had mild tinnitus for as long as I can remember, and in a quiet to near quiet environment the ringing can be very annoying. For that reason I like to have a fan noise in the background, but computer fans and drives aren't quite the right sound.
Why was GP modded as flamebait? Doesn't seem like it to me.
It's true that science and technology answer some types of questions and provide us with certain tools and luxuries, but other more mundane stuff seems to go without explanation, like these lights.
One wonders, then, how X-Files survived for 7 seasons?
Aside from that anomaly, I'd tend to agree. The broadcast media revolution can't happen soon enough. Give me the good stuff on-demand on my computer for a reasonable fee (and without asinine DRM), and say goodbye to all the crap that's on the TV.
Podcasting is (hopefully) doing that for radio, will there be something similar for sci-fi/drama TV?
I've been mulling over whether or not to cancel my sat TV service and just go with bit torrent stuff or Netflix DVDs. The thing is, who knows how long it'll be before TV and movie torrents get completely shut down? And I while I do occasionally download "copyrighted content", the lawsuits and harassment by the *AAs are at the back if my mind.
The new video download service from iTunes is a legitimate alternative, I suppose, but 2 things need to happen. One, lower the price for god sakes, at least offer some sort of subscription or a la carte system (pay $50/mo for unlimited shows, or $50 one time for 100 shows?) And two, get lots and lots of good content, although if the service pans out like the music service did, then this will solve itself in a few months.
I know...I know, the topic of the thread was getting rid of TV entirely, including the habit of watching all the Hollywood garbage. But I for one like watching certain shows and news. I could do without commercials though.
...Unless all these tools run on a (artificially or naturally) scarce resource such as petroleum, which is controlled by gigantic soulless corporations. Then you have ridiculous fluctuations in prices, and since your whole economy needs energy derived from petroleum, everything is more expensive when the price of oil/gasoline/natural gas go up.
Maybe someday we'll have the equivalent of "cold-fusion" powered devices that get their energy so cheaply, if not for free, that your idea of a positive feedback loop society will take place. Right now the only loop I can make out for sure is that the rich keep getting richer...
Re:how many people actually _like_ windows?
on
Pepping Up Windows
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· Score: 1
I, for one, use the Windows Classic theme solely because the Luna theme looks like a PlaySkool interface with its awful color-set and huge title bars and buttons.
And, while I've tried skinning Windows with various programs, I like to keep my machine lean as I use it mainly for for games and don't want odd crashes and system resources being used up for no good reason.
How about a true civilization game versus...
on
Ask Sid Meier
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· Score: 2, Interesting
an interactive history lesson?
Don't get me wrong, I've been enthralled by Civ ever since I first saw it on my high school's computer lab computers. And I did learn a thing or two about history from the game.
But...it's not really your own civilization you are creating. Its a sort of interactive history lesson, with specific technological breakthroughs, wonders of the world, historic figures, and even the artifact of the Christian calendar.
But it seems to me, that if you were to truly rewind the clock and let history unravel in a different direction, many things would be different, not just the calendar! Why not start at year 0 and count up from then instead of the contrived system of some odd number of years between turns that changes as time moves on?
Science and technology hasn't always been a march towards progress that's more or less fueled by money. Sometimes there's a great leap forward brought about by a controversial figure. Perhaps a sort of random event engine in the game could replicate this. For instance, the player might be working on stamping out religious and political unrest in his empire, when he suddenly discovers that a figure (say Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or, maybe it doesn't need to be a scientific person, maybe a Martin Luther or a Thomas Jefferson, the name could optionally be randomly generated but their contribution to history would be the equivalent) has appeared and gives the player an empire changing choice, either maintain the status quo or embrace a new paradigm. These could be random events, not entirely dependent on an Earth-like history.
Also, perhaps the same idea could be applied to the wonders of the world.
To me, this would be even more satisfying and enthralling. Don't just recreate history as the Romans, Babylonians, Chinese or the Americans, but as a whole new people who the player can shape into one of those civilzations, or something entirely new. Cultures are dynamic, not static as in the Civilization (and other such games.) They're molded by the people who live in them, leaders, thinkers, malcontents and common people.
Now, if only I could get paid to come up with ideas like you do.:-)
Where do you live? I used to work for a small local ISP, and in dealing with Verizon about customers' DSL problems, we regularly would request VZ to remove load coils. AFAIK, they're required to do so as long as they're withing the normal maximum loop length of DSL (18,000 FT last I checked).
If you're way the hell out from a CO then, yeah, they probably won't remove it and you're SOL.
How the hell are you getting a landline for so cheap?? My brother is able to get it for that, but only because he's disabled and on a very low income so they give him a special deal.
But I was paying $25-30/mo for basic service. I dumped it a month and a half ago and went naked DSL. Still, I do wish I could receive calls for free on my cell phone. Pain in the ass.
Slashdot Mirror
The landing and Mako driving parts always reminded me of Star Control 2 and driving around searching for minerals and biological samples and such. God I loved that game! I wish they'd make something similiar with Mass Effect.
How about instead of buying your gear and upgrades, you only got the blueprints, and you needed to gather the raw materials on the planets you land on? That'd give me incentive to explore, and there'd be more valuable or rare materials on the dangerous worlds.
movies.
Now, this is all fun and all, and "sticking it to the man", but for fuck's sake, it's just HD-DVD cracking. And who's going to do that? Honestly? Just pirates mostly. Now, if this suppressed message and internet revolt were based around something big, like, say some secret about Bush and Cheney and the Iraqistan war, and if it were they who were trying to suppress it, that... would be.... awesome. And sort of Woodstockish. And a revolution.
But this is kind of lame. I for one don't give a flying fuck about HD DVD or Blu-Ray. DVDs are just fine for me.
Actually, the daily schedule idea for NPCs goes back to the old Ultima series. I think it was Ultima V that did it first, although I could be wrong.
On Oblivion, though, you make it sound more simplistic than it is, there is some level of AI/scripting intelligence to enemies, but still, lower-level and weakened enemies still keep coming for the most part. Occasionaly they do other things. There's a mod that makes animals behave more real world-like, over at http://www.tessource.net/files/cache/index.html, lots of other good stuff there too.
On the other hand, most online multiplayer games I've played aren't much better. In Shooters, for instance, when you die you almost always respawn instantly afterwards, and it's a simple matter of finding a better gun than the default and you're back to where you were before. So most players don't use any strategy and aren't too concerned if they die on a straight ahead attack at you; they'll just respawn and give you payback.
What I found confusing is that later on Vader doesn't seem to know Leia is his daughter, yet he knows Luke is his son.
...whereas Leia's last name was Organa.
:P
Simple enough explanation: At end of Ep. 3, he's told that Padme and the baby died because of him. He didn't know there were twins...apparently despite a pangalactic civilization and hyperadvanced technology, their obstetrics technology is in the dark ages.
Also, it's Episode V (or between IV and V) that he learns that the pilot who destroyed the Death Star was named Luke Skywalker...I guess Obi-Wan was hoping Darth Vader would never make the connection........
Still, you'd think a "force-sensitive" would be able to know these sorts of things, especially about their own children.
BAH. Enough over-analyzing Star Wars. Can't believe I've stooped to this!
I salute you, sir, for creating a new unit of measurement!
Fuckton ( Pronunciation: 'f&k 't&n)
Abbr.: FkT
Function: noun
Etymology: Slashdot.org, 4/19/2006, FlameboyC11)
1. A large measure of something, bigger than a metric assload.
Usage:
"With a fuckton of ram, most of the programs you're running won't get paged as the game soaks up ram, so they're just as responsive as they were before you started up Quake4."
Wait a minute, cellphones have flash memory of their own that's going to be constantly bathed in the RF emitting from the antenna just a few inches from them whenever the phone is on. I've never heard of a cellphone's memory erasing or corrupting itself, so I call bogus.
It's been done. Where have you been, friend?
Seriously, though, the OS X on PC is a lot further behind Windows on Mac, even though the former has been available in the wild since last summer. Lots and lots of driver issues, limited hardware support. But, my own PC is this close to being my new Mac, though. Just waiting for some enterprising programmers/hackers to come up with fully working NVidia drivers, have working digital output of audio, and it'd be nice to be able to use my mobo's built-in NIC, and my Sony DVD-DL drive too.
But that said, it's pretty amazing they've already got a game working here. Nice.
I'm far from an expert, but the failure rate for modern flash is much much better than for hard disks. Something like millions of write operations per bit before failure.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't lots of enterprise-class servers, routers, switches, etc. booted from PC-card style flash drives?
...but still too expensive for the common user. $750-1000 for 32 GB...I think not. And while the performance numbers they quoted are better than the average laptop sized HDD and about on-par with desktop dized ones, 57/32 MB/s still isn't even saturating the bandwidth of modern hard disk interfaces.
When are we going to see flash type drives that are cheap AND super fast? After all, secondary storage is perhaps the only remaining perfomance bottleneck in computers these days (well, that and crappy ISPs that don't/can't give you more than a few mips up and a little more down, but I digress.)
Oh man, did this dredge up a bad memory. I was a Trekkie geek like you back in Junior High. I read Star Trek books for book reports, and had to stand in front of class and give them orally. (AHem..., pervs.)
One time I just froze. I had read the book, but when I walked up to the teacher's desk and turned to face the class, I completely forgot everything! I sort of stammered for a few minutes, with everyone looking at me like I'm the world's biggest douche. Finally the teacher prompted me..."and what did Spock do in this situation...", etc. And I took it from there.
Holy crap was that embarrassing.
This is something that really bothers me about MMORPGs. NPCs give you quests that are written up to be *so* urgent that you gather X and Y and sometimes Z, and bring it all to them, then go out and rinse and repeat. And what happens to this stuff? Just **poof** deleted!
I'm wondering if i should try another game instead.
...for is for Black Isle (Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic...) to do a similar RPG treatment for the Star Trek universe. That could be really cool.
Although what I'd like even better would be an open-ended game, a la Grand Theft Auto, where you can just go explore the Federation and uncharted space and get into mini-adventures aside from any big main quest there might be. Could be truly unlimited possibilities.
Being a Mac newbie I wasn't aware of the cult following surrounding the G4 cube, and there are calls to bring this form factor back. Apparently it actually had upgradable video. Maybe with the new Intel chips it could shake off the heat issues.
Well, the Mini is sort of the successor to the Cube, although its CPU and GPU are soldered. But the way I figure it, its only $500, so you buy one, wait a year and the new one will be faster and have better video. Probably for the price you'd pay for a CPU and GPU upgrade in an upgradeable machine.
Then again, since it's the bottom of the barrel Mac, it's the red-headed stepchild of Apple. Hasn't gotten any love from them since introduced. I'm just hoping they'll update it soon and not let it die.
I'd love to know how well games run with Rosetta as well. Although what I'd really like to know is how many games developers will be releasing updated universal binaries for their games.
It's cool that the Core Duo is socketed, so there's the possibility of a CPU upgrade in the future for the first time in a Mac in a long time. How about the Ati X1600? Any luck there? I'm sure it'd be fine for today's games, but what about a couple years from now?
And, goddammit! I got a Mini last year and I was looking forward to a new Intelimini. I've already got a great 20" flat panel that I can share with the Mac and PC, and I don't want an iMac because of that.
When I used to have a dual display setup (PowerBook G4 and a 19" LCD), I'd have the big display be my main screen, centered visually, with the 'book on the side as an extra.
Damn, you can hear blood running through your ears? Either you have super-hearing, or some bizarre anatomy going on there.
I have had mild tinnitus for as long as I can remember, and in a quiet to near quiet environment the ringing can be very annoying. For that reason I like to have a fan noise in the background, but computer fans and drives aren't quite the right sound.
Why was GP modded as flamebait? Doesn't seem like it to me.
It's true that science and technology answer some types of questions and provide us with certain tools and luxuries, but other more mundane stuff seems to go without explanation, like these lights.
And, on a cursory examination of the sites listed, I couldn't find any photos or video (other than this http://utdallas.edu/~roddy/Marfa_Lights/car1.WMV which is just a highway in the dark.)
One wonders, then, how X-Files survived for 7 seasons?
Aside from that anomaly, I'd tend to agree. The broadcast media revolution can't happen soon enough. Give me the good stuff on-demand on my computer for a reasonable fee (and without asinine DRM), and say goodbye to all the crap that's on the TV.
Podcasting is (hopefully) doing that for radio, will there be something similar for sci-fi/drama TV?
I've been mulling over whether or not to cancel my sat TV service and just go with bit torrent stuff or Netflix DVDs. The thing is, who knows how long it'll be before TV and movie torrents get completely shut down? And I while I do occasionally download "copyrighted content", the lawsuits and harassment by the *AAs are at the back if my mind.
The new video download service from iTunes is a legitimate alternative, I suppose, but 2 things need to happen. One, lower the price for god sakes, at least offer some sort of subscription or a la carte system (pay $50/mo for unlimited shows, or $50 one time for 100 shows?) And two, get lots and lots of good content, although if the service pans out like the music service did, then this will solve itself in a few months.
I know...I know, the topic of the thread was getting rid of TV entirely, including the habit of watching all the Hollywood garbage. But I for one like watching certain shows and news. I could do without commercials though.
...Unless all these tools run on a (artificially or naturally) scarce resource such as petroleum, which is controlled by gigantic soulless corporations. Then you have ridiculous fluctuations in prices, and since your whole economy needs energy derived from petroleum, everything is more expensive when the price of oil/gasoline/natural gas go up.
Maybe someday we'll have the equivalent of "cold-fusion" powered devices that get their energy so cheaply, if not for free, that your idea of a positive feedback loop society will take place. Right now the only loop I can make out for sure is that the rich keep getting richer...
I, for one, use the Windows Classic theme solely because the Luna theme looks like a PlaySkool interface with its awful color-set and huge title bars and buttons.
And, while I've tried skinning Windows with various programs, I like to keep my machine lean as I use it mainly for for games and don't want odd crashes and system resources being used up for no good reason.
an interactive history lesson?
:-)
Don't get me wrong, I've been enthralled by Civ ever since I first saw it on my high school's computer lab computers. And I did learn a thing or two about history from the game.
But...it's not really your own civilization you are creating. Its a sort of interactive history lesson, with specific technological breakthroughs, wonders of the world, historic figures, and even the artifact of the Christian calendar.
But it seems to me, that if you were to truly rewind the clock and let history unravel in a different direction, many things would be different, not just the calendar! Why not start at year 0 and count up from then instead of the contrived system of some odd number of years between turns that changes as time moves on?
Science and technology hasn't always been a march towards progress that's more or less fueled by money. Sometimes there's a great leap forward brought about by a controversial figure. Perhaps a sort of random event engine in the game could replicate this. For instance, the player might be working on stamping out religious and political unrest in his empire, when he suddenly discovers that a figure (say Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, or, maybe it doesn't need to be a scientific person, maybe a Martin Luther or a Thomas Jefferson, the name could optionally be randomly generated but their contribution to history would be the equivalent) has appeared and gives the player an empire changing choice, either maintain the status quo or embrace a new paradigm. These could be random events, not entirely dependent on an Earth-like history.
Also, perhaps the same idea could be applied to the wonders of the world.
To me, this would be even more satisfying and enthralling. Don't just recreate history as the Romans, Babylonians, Chinese or the Americans, but as a whole new people who the player can shape into one of those civilzations, or something entirely new. Cultures are dynamic, not static as in the Civilization (and other such games.) They're molded by the people who live in them, leaders, thinkers, malcontents and common people.
Now, if only I could get paid to come up with ideas like you do.
Where do you live? I used to work for a small local ISP, and in dealing with Verizon about customers' DSL problems, we regularly would request VZ to remove load coils. AFAIK, they're required to do so as long as they're withing the normal maximum loop length of DSL (18,000 FT last I checked).
If you're way the hell out from a CO then, yeah, they probably won't remove it and you're SOL.
How the hell are you getting a landline for so cheap?? My brother is able to get it for that, but only because he's disabled and on a very low income so they give him a special deal.
But I was paying $25-30/mo for basic service. I dumped it a month and a half ago and went naked DSL. Still, I do wish I could receive calls for free on my cell phone. Pain in the ass.