So why does dedicated servers tell you their current FPS when logging in? And, I have noticed that if the server is too weak, the game lags badly. It seems like it can't supply the clients with the motion information fast enough.
Oh, and 110ms in ping is nothing. I play on a Breezenet radio link and have seen pings between 40 and 400 - at around 300 it becomes a nuisance. Then again, I'm a n00B and probably wouldn't recognize the value of a good ping if it came up and knifed me from behind.;-)
Oh well, I was rich for almost a full day. Back to playing the ponies, I guess.;-)
But I got another idea reading your post - what if you just designed a universal interface between different games? So the next time [insert major game manufacturer] makes a game of a suitable type, it can interface with the Big Game server network and talk to games from [insert other major game manufacturer]. This would probably speed up the evolution needed and eventually grow into the Big Game network we want. Just look at the number of CS servers world-wide - if they could all interconnect and cooperate, they would easily have enough CPU and bandwidth to support this. Just using the same format for the maps, textures and a common protocol for movements and stuff would go a long way.
Couldn't he claim he was soliciting work while being on TV? That has to beat putting a "Job wanted - mows lawns, watches TV, eats chips, washes cars" ad in the local paper.
Well, while one side would have Apaches, the other would have Stingers they bought on eBay.:-) Those kind of imbalances can exist in any game - what if one side had 100 foot soldiers with M-16s and the other 200 with knives? Who would win? If the battle took place in a twisty maze of narrow passages? On the town square? Balancing gameplay would be a task for the servers but I agree - it would be difficult.
TeamKillers could be a problem, yes - this borders on the cheating problem. Maybe a ranking system where you have to start flying supplies a while before you can apply for a B52? Or maybe simply turning friendly fire off?
The other day, while playing Counterstrike online, the thought occured to me to use the same basic rendering engine for more than just a lot of FPS games. I have heard of someone building a flightsim around the QII engine, but never seen it. Yesterday, a friend told me about C&C Renegade, a FPS game based on Command & Conquer.
So what if someone (this means iD, Blizzard, Westwood and/or Sierra/ValvE) were to make a hypermassive multiplayer online RTS/RPG/FPS? With almost all aspects of war integrated? Imagine someone playing a flesh-and-blood general on a tactical level, sending out orders to real, live players in a flight sim with F/A-18 Hornets to attack a SAM site staffed with more real, live people. On the ground, there would be battles fought between tanks and Delta Force-style snipers would seek out the opponent's leaders.
The client would use the same basic engine for gameplay with different GUIs for the different levels, kinda like Counterstrike is a mod to Half-Life which basically is a mod of Quake. When starting, you select if you want to be Air Force, Navy or Army and then what you want to do: Pilot a fighter, manage supply routes, man a SAM battery, aim a howitzer, crack enemy codes or be a grunt with a machine gun. Imagine the clans/platoons/squadrons that would evolve. Positions that no one wants would be filled by computer-generated players on the servers. Ah, the servers. One game on a cluster of servers world-wide. And there would be real-world money in it. Arms dealers would spring up on eBay. Whoever makes this game will be rich - if they do it right. And I've got prior art.;-)
Of course, this doesn't have to be set in a realistic world, the Game could easily work StarCraft-style or for NOD vs GDI or for replaying most of WWII.
Now, methinks this can be built. Should it be done? Would it help ease tension in the world - act as an outlet for agression if you could bomb the crap out of a simulated Afghanistan? Or would Al-Qaida use it as a training camp? Discuss.
One client to fight them all, and on the battlefield smite them.
people who didn't buy the game) people can now play online.
I bought the game (StarCraft Battle Chest), got my legit CD key and still can't play online since the key was "banned". E-mail to Blizzard tech support sent me to a local distributor that won't even answer my mail. Where does that leave me?
I still haven't figured out what happens if you should run into something that blocks the wheels, like a curb or any random piece of debris that may be lying on the road/sidewalk. Would the Segway suddenly throw you off like a high-tech mechanical bull? Should you wear a helmet on this thing?
odd fossil-like oddities discovered in meteoric fragments from Mars are actually petrified bacteria.
I would be petrified too if I was chased into a piece of rock by a killer virus. Scary stuff.
But wouldn't NASA just have to send a few guys on a field trip into Area 51 and see how they solved the problem? (Training for this mission would of course consist of all-day playing of Half-Life 'til they got it right)
A few months ago I bought a factory new stock Amiga 1200. Since then, I have added an old 4 gig 2.5" Toshiba laptop hard drive and am thinking about a '060/PPC card with some serious RAM (on an Amiga, 16 MB is really lots and lots of RAM).
A few years ago, I lived a coupla miles from the old Commodore Sweden HQ and they didn't take down the old sign until recently and every time I passed by on my bike or in my car, I'd shed a tear thinking about the good times I had with my amigas and how different the world could have been, if only... If only Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali hadn't been such greedy bastards. They must have been grown out of a baboon's ass - there is no way in hell those two idiots could have been born and raised by humans. No, I'm not bitter. I'm BITTER!.
Let me go, I feel much better now! No, don't make me run XP again - NOOOOOooooo!
The other article linked to from the one in the submission says:
Next they send a 3.7-microsecond long laser pulse into the caesium cell, which is 6 centimetres long, and show that, at the correct wavelength, it emerges from the cell 62 nanoseconds sooner than would be expected if it had travelled at the speed of light. 62 nanoseconds might not sound like much, but since it should only take 0.2 nanoseconds for the pulse to pass through the cell, this means that the pulse has been travelling at 310 times the speed of light. Moreover, unlike previous superluminal experiments, the input and output pulse shapes are essentially the same.
Correct me when I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that the pulse went out of the cell 61.8 ns before it went in? When I try to picture this phenomena my brain just overloads and dumps the core.
The only.tv domain I can think of offhand is the infamous Bang Bus. It's sick, it's perverted and I don't get neither paid nor laid for shamelessly advertising it like this. Please don't go there.
The Maximog is a real Humvee-killer and it should respond nicely to having the trailer gutted and filled with Linux boxen on fold-out tables with a canvas roof and tent chairs.
(To the Moderator: Yes, this post was designed to be modded as "Funny" or "Redundant" Go right ahead and do that, but if you label it as "Insightful", you need to up your medication dosage. OK? Fine.:-)
doesn't Microsoft do all development in Redmond, and satellite offices are merely sales and consulting?
Yes, with a single exception: Microsoft Mobile Internet Business Unit in Sweden, or MIBU (MMI was taken and MSMI sounded too much like "a mess am I"). This unit used to be Sendit until Bill & Ballmer took out their fat wallets and bought the place and integrated it with the Exchange Wireless Group in Mordor. I used to work at Sendit, but I quit that same day. No, I'm not at all bitter that those evil bastards ruined the free republic of Sendit. It's their money and they use it as they wish.
I was close to being in charge of a small-scale version of this concept last year (financing fell through) - we had the bunker/air raid shelter staked out and all. We were going to offer secure web hosting but mostly going for the off-site data backup and storage market - kinda like an underground Sealand, without the AAA.:-)
I don't know if there's anything online, but back in '97 or '98 we (I used to work for TenFour) licensed a translation engine that could auto-detect the language used in e-mail messages. I'm not sure how it did it, but I'd guess that it simply looked for common, tell-tale, words like "and" in the different languages.
Our product was aptly named TFS Translator. The engine was called Barcelona, made by Globalink, until recently Lernout & Hauspie and currently ScanSoft. (Some people have too much money) Link to the current product based on that engine. They also have some tips on what to keep in mind if you are preparing a text for automatic translation. Ah, they finally added Japanese! Konnichi-wa, Anjin-San!:-)
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Oh, and 110ms in ping is nothing. I play on a Breezenet radio link and have seen pings between 40 and 400 - at around 300 it becomes a nuisance. Then again, I'm a n00B and probably wouldn't recognize the value of a good ping if it came up and knifed me from behind. ;-)
www.slackers.net
www.slackers.com
slackers.org couldn't even be bothered to respond. :-)
But I got another idea reading your post - what if you just designed a universal interface between different games? So the next time [insert major game manufacturer] makes a game of a suitable type, it can interface with the Big Game server network and talk to games from [insert other major game manufacturer]. This would probably speed up the evolution needed and eventually grow into the Big Game network we want. Just look at the number of CS servers world-wide - if they could all interconnect and cooperate, they would easily have enough CPU and bandwidth to support this. Just using the same format for the maps, textures and a common protocol for movements and stuff would go a long way.
I don't know if the 99% utilization is a good way to measure load though - do you remember how many FPS the server managed with 20 ppl online?
"Will work for 15 minutes of fame"
TeamKillers could be a problem, yes - this borders on the cheating problem. Maybe a ranking system where you have to start flying supplies a while before you can apply for a B52? Or maybe simply turning friendly fire off?
So what if someone (this means iD, Blizzard, Westwood and/or Sierra/ValvE) were to make a hypermassive multiplayer online RTS/RPG/FPS? With almost all aspects of war integrated? Imagine someone playing a flesh-and-blood general on a tactical level, sending out orders to real, live players in a flight sim with F/A-18 Hornets to attack a SAM site staffed with more real, live people. On the ground, there would be battles fought between tanks and Delta Force-style snipers would seek out the opponent's leaders.
The client would use the same basic engine for gameplay with different GUIs for the different levels, kinda like Counterstrike is a mod to Half-Life which basically is a mod of Quake. When starting, you select if you want to be Air Force, Navy or Army and then what you want to do: Pilot a fighter, manage supply routes, man a SAM battery, aim a howitzer, crack enemy codes or be a grunt with a machine gun. Imagine the clans/platoons/squadrons that would evolve. Positions that no one wants would be filled by computer-generated players on the servers. Ah, the servers. One game on a cluster of servers world-wide. And there would be real-world money in it. Arms dealers would spring up on eBay. Whoever makes this game will be rich - if they do it right. And I've got prior art. ;-)
Of course, this doesn't have to be set in a realistic world, the Game could easily work StarCraft-style or for NOD vs GDI or for replaying most of WWII.
Now, methinks this can be built. Should it be done? Would it help ease tension in the world - act as an outlet for agression if you could bomb the crap out of a simulated Afghanistan? Or would Al-Qaida use it as a training camp? Discuss.
One client to fight them all, and on the battlefield smite them.
Well, I mailed them as soon as I read your reply. No response yet.
I bought the game (StarCraft Battle Chest), got my legit CD key and still can't play online since the key was "banned". E-mail to Blizzard tech support sent me to a local distributor that won't even answer my mail. Where does that leave me?
I still haven't figured out what happens if you should run into something that blocks the wheels, like a curb or any random piece of debris that may be lying on the road/sidewalk. Would the Segway suddenly throw you off like a high-tech mechanical bull? Should you wear a helmet on this thing?
I would be petrified too if I was chased into a piece of rock by a killer virus. Scary stuff.
But wouldn't NASA just have to send a few guys on a field trip into Area 51 and see how they solved the problem? (Training for this mission would of course consist of all-day playing of Half-Life 'til they got it right)
A few years ago, I lived a coupla miles from the old Commodore Sweden HQ and they didn't take down the old sign until recently and every time I passed by on my bike or in my car, I'd shed a tear thinking about the good times I had with my amigas and how different the world could have been, if only... If only Irving Gould and Mehdi Ali hadn't been such greedy bastards. They must have been grown out of a baboon's ass - there is no way in hell those two idiots could have been born and raised by humans. No, I'm not bitter. I'm BITTER!.
Let me go, I feel much better now! No, don't make me run XP again - NOOOOOooooo!
I'm not so sure, myself. :-)
Hey, that's a good one. I've been using the name "Outbreak" myself. :-)
Believe it or not, this post started out seriously but just kinda went downhill from "foxy". I'm too tired for this shit. G'night.
Next they send a 3.7-microsecond long laser pulse into the caesium cell, which is 6 centimetres long, and show that, at the correct wavelength, it emerges from the cell 62 nanoseconds sooner than would be expected if it had travelled at the speed of light. 62 nanoseconds might not sound like much, but since it should only take 0.2 nanoseconds for the pulse to pass through the cell, this means that the pulse has been travelling at 310 times the speed of light. Moreover, unlike previous superluminal experiments, the input and output pulse shapes are essentially the same.
Correct me when I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that the pulse went out of the cell 61.8 ns before it went in? When I try to picture this phenomena my brain just overloads and dumps the core.
Are you serious?
The only .tv domain I can think of offhand is the infamous Bang Bus. It's sick, it's perverted and I don't get neither paid nor laid for shamelessly advertising it like this. Please don't go there.
(To the Moderator: Yes, this post was designed to be modded as "Funny" or "Redundant" Go right ahead and do that, but if you label it as "Insightful", you need to up your medication dosage. OK? Fine. :-)
Yes, with a single exception: Microsoft Mobile Internet Business Unit in Sweden, or MIBU (MMI was taken and MSMI sounded too much like "a mess am I"). This unit used to be Sendit until Bill & Ballmer took out their fat wallets and bought the place and integrated it with the Exchange Wireless Group in Mordor. I used to work at Sendit, but I quit that same day. No, I'm not at all bitter that those evil bastards ruined the free republic of Sendit. It's their money and they use it as they wish.
Pirate! :-)
DUCK!
I was close to being in charge of a small-scale version of this concept last year (financing fell through) - we had the bunker/air raid shelter staked out and all. We were going to offer secure web hosting but mostly going for the off-site data backup and storage market - kinda like an underground Sealand, without the AAA. :-)
I agree. Anyone got the GPS coordinates for Bill's office? :-)
Our product was aptly named TFS Translator. The engine was called Barcelona, made by Globalink, until recently Lernout & Hauspie and currently ScanSoft. (Some people have too much money) Link to the current product based on that engine. They also have some tips on what to keep in mind if you are preparing a text for automatic translation. Ah, they finally added Japanese! Konnichi-wa, Anjin-San! :-)