Note at the end of the article it says the suggested price is $20. It mentioned an included DVD as well. If you get a CD with an album and game, and a DVD, $20 is ok, but otherwise it's pricy. If the one track game is inflating the price, that's not so hot, but if they didn't add anything to the cost by including the game, that's really awesome. I've always liked enhanced CDs, though not when they make it annoyingly difficult to watch the stuff (like the ones that require a network connection to read the data on the CD).
Of course, the article doesn't state either way whether there will still be a pack-in/free game/Game Boy Player, or if they are moving to only a demo disc inside. Most of the freebie games are now player's choice titles, so it's still $130 as opposed to $150, so that can still help.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you are expecting or doing here. Would it be possible under the Perforce license to license the development code under one license (BSD, or something that lets you use code more or less how you feel), with only the final, downloadable releases released under the GPL? I mean, I can take GPL code and sell it as a closed-source product to someone if all the code is mine to license how I see fit.
Quite true. And keep in mind also that 2/3 of the content of Salmon of Doubt is previously published material, which was in magazines and other places, just never collected. It also contains some of his most beautiful writing, which did have a place, but now more people can enjoy it as it's accessible. (I'm speaking specifically of the manta article)
I know, it's a kludge to a kludge, but there are often GameShark codes that circumvent the mod-chip check. And newer mod chips act in "stealth" mode to avoid that test.
Fair enough. It should be noted that my use of Windows primarily consists of installing Diablo, or launching Explorer to remove a slash from a filename after iTunes mucked it up.
I really don't think they meant optional in the sense that the GPL software should be binary only. I think he meant optional in that each program should be packaged. Sure, many (maybe even most) programs come packaged -- for some version of some distribution. You run into lots of chances for incompatibilites that I rarely see on Windows. In fact, it's this irregularity in packaging that made me switch from Red Hat to Slackware. Slack plays much nicer with a hybrid of packages and source compiles.
I'll grant that sometimes people link to the GNOME libraries when they don't need to (e.g. grip only uses a couple calls from GNOME libs). But, it's not like you have to *run* the environment to use programs like this. I run straight Sawfish, but use GNOME apps all the time, just having the libraries and whatnot installed.
I have a larger problem with the odd KDE app I want to run, as they often start up the session management, and all sorts of odds and ends that slow me down.
Yes, consoles are worse in terms of allowing patches, but, as this article implies, they are fantasic generally for squishing bugs before they get out. I've only ever played two games with showstopping bugs (Metroid Prime froze, but only once, and Mortal Kombat II for SNES wouldn't let you play pong). Everything else is so minor as to be something that you have to make effort to trigger (the minus world in Super Mario Bros.). In fact, this was also the state of affairs before the internet. Software just plain worked as intended (and not in the Verant sense), because there was no economical way to send out patches. But, since there is a way now (it's also known as "burden the gamer"), companies demand faster action to get sales.
Sadly, this doesn't seem like there's any feasible way to change this, without blowing up the internet, and making CDs expensive to produce again.
Oops. You're absolutely right. Those were also the first games to use the vertical scrolling, as I recall. Metroid at least had to switch between vertical and horizontal scrolling at a bubble door, which is why that bug works (those were the areas where the scrolling switched).
Almost. The NES version only lost one level (the pie factory). The 2600, Intellivision, etc versions also lost the elevator level. In the earliest NES games, they hadn't figured out how to use memory mappers to access larger amounts of data, so the earliest games were incredibly small. All those early carts (even through Zelda and Metroid) dump to about 40 k.
The NES was an incredible feat, though. Since it only used a bit of internal hardware, it then relied on large amounts of processor in the cart. That's why it's so hard to emulate the console. By contrast, only a handful of SNES games (Super FX games, and Mega Man X 2 and X 3) have any processing hardware in the cart.
Nor do I, but I don't think price fixing counts as part of an accounting investigation. I think price-fixing would be more the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission. Also bear in mind that the article even is fair enough to note that being part of a probe is not intrinsically any indication of guilt.
Also, regarding price-fixing, stores have sales on games fairly often. If they never did, then the fixing issue may come into play more.
I can appriciate the need for them to implement a "confirmation" action (Did you send this?), to stop spoofing, spamming, etc. However, the "pre-email questionaire" seems a little extreme. I suppose the goal is to ask "are you an insightful commentator or a raving lunatic?", but it takes a "are you a patriot or a terrorist?" tone about it.
Of course, it's now harder to complain to them about it, as well.
It will be coming out for all three (Win, OS X, Linux) platforms. Carmack's use of OpenGL makes the port pretty easy. Also, I personally think there's a bit of a chance of some more Linux ports now that Mac uses unixy coding systems (note how fast America's Army came out for the Mac after the Linux version. It's because of how much code was sharable between the two.) Of course, as Id always does, it'll make us pay a bundle to upgrade our computers cause we like the pretty things.
There's one substantial problem with that. In Donkey Kong, you have to complete a level on a single life. Infinite lives won't help if you can't complete a certain level.
I'm not up on MAME cheating, so I can't verify, but it seems that MAME could handle the kill screen. After reading the run-down, it seems that all it is is a level where the timer ticks too fast to make it to the top. If you want a simulation, run around a level until the timer runs out (an elevator stage would be best, as you could just stand there). It's not like the Pac-Man bug where half the screen garbles at the last level.
Ack! Imwheel is an ancient crutch. Any reasonably modern software understands the wheel directly. And anyway, if you don't have ZAxisMapping set up to begin with, imwheel won't help.
Probably, you just got a bad KVM. My IOGear chugs along happily.
Not only do you lose the composite out (really bad for me, cause I don't truck with RF these days), there's also a missing capacitor that causes some on-screen banding. Stay away. They're crappy.
Or you could note that it's out of print, and bidding at $90+ on ebay. Try www.lacegem.com. Still $50+ after shipping from England, but it's the best I can find.
For all the good Transgaming is doing (mmm... Starcraft), it should be noted that the Sims only works if you get the special Mandrake Gaming Edition of it. It contains hacks to the Sims code that lets it work in Wine. The standard store-bought version doesn't work at all.
I've been thrilled with emusic for 12 months now. It's also worth noting that they have provided funding for the freeamp mp3 player and reiserfs, so they are Linux friendly.
Many CD-Rs are "invisible" to DVD players' lasers. The specs should mention whether they can handle CD-R(W)s. Here's a link to a part of a DVD FAQ with a little more info.
http://www.dvdcity.com/officialfaq.html#2.4.3
Andy
The other instructions were just for the warp zone. Not an easter egg. What you want to do, it go to the 1-2 end of the level. Stand on the pipe that would take you back above ground. Break the second and third bricks from the right (so there is one hanging over before the wall). Stand on the left corner of the pipe, crouch, then stay crouched and jump up and to the right, releasing down as you jump. With luck, and a lot of patience, you will end up going through the wall to the warp zone pipes. If you go in the center one, you will end up in world 2-2 (the water one), but it will be called "World -1" (hence it's being known as the "minus zone"). When you go into the pipe at the end, you will start again at the beginning of the world. Fun, eh? Also, there is a way to become small and fiery at the same time. mwu-ha-ha. Andy
Slashdot Mirror
Note at the end of the article it says the suggested price is $20. It mentioned an included DVD as well. If you get a CD with an album and game, and a DVD, $20 is ok, but otherwise it's pricy. If the one track game is inflating the price, that's not so hot, but if they didn't add anything to the cost by including the game, that's really awesome. I've always liked enhanced CDs, though not when they make it annoyingly difficult to watch the stuff (like the ones that require a network connection to read the data on the CD).
Of course, the article doesn't state either way whether there will still be a pack-in/free game/Game Boy Player, or if they are moving to only a demo disc inside. Most of the freebie games are now player's choice titles, so it's still $130 as opposed to $150, so that can still help.
Perhaps I misunderstand what you are expecting or doing here. Would it be possible under the Perforce license to license the development code under one license (BSD, or something that lets you use code more or less how you feel), with only the final, downloadable releases released under the GPL? I mean, I can take GPL code and sell it as a closed-source product to someone if all the code is mine to license how I see fit.
Quite true. And keep in mind also that 2/3 of the content of Salmon of Doubt is previously published material, which was in magazines and other places, just never collected. It also contains some of his most beautiful writing, which did have a place, but now more people can enjoy it as it's accessible. (I'm speaking specifically of the manta article)
I know, it's a kludge to a kludge, but there are often GameShark codes that circumvent the mod-chip check. And newer mod chips act in "stealth" mode to avoid that test.
Bungie.org is a fan site. Bungie.net is the official Bungie site.
Fair enough. It should be noted that my use of Windows primarily consists of installing Diablo, or launching Explorer to remove a slash from a filename after iTunes mucked it up.
I really don't think they meant optional in the sense that the GPL software should be binary only. I think he meant optional in that each program should be packaged. Sure, many (maybe even most) programs come packaged -- for some version of some distribution. You run into lots of chances for incompatibilites that I rarely see on Windows. In fact, it's this irregularity in packaging that made me switch from Red Hat to Slackware. Slack plays much nicer with a hybrid of packages and source compiles.
I'll grant that sometimes people link to the GNOME libraries when they don't need to (e.g. grip only uses a couple calls from GNOME libs). But, it's not like you have to *run* the environment to use programs like this. I run straight Sawfish, but use GNOME apps all the time, just having the libraries and whatnot installed.
I have a larger problem with the odd KDE app I want to run, as they often start up the session management, and all sorts of odds and ends that slow me down.
Yes, consoles are worse in terms of allowing patches, but, as this article implies, they are fantasic generally for squishing bugs before they get out. I've only ever played two games with showstopping bugs (Metroid Prime froze, but only once, and Mortal Kombat II for SNES wouldn't let you play pong). Everything else is so minor as to be something that you have to make effort to trigger (the minus world in Super Mario Bros.). In fact, this was also the state of affairs before the internet. Software just plain worked as intended (and not in the Verant sense), because there was no economical way to send out patches. But, since there is a way now (it's also known as "burden the gamer"), companies demand faster action to get sales.
Sadly, this doesn't seem like there's any feasible way to change this, without blowing up the internet, and making CDs expensive to produce again.
Oops. You're absolutely right. Those were also the first games to use the vertical scrolling, as I recall. Metroid at least had to switch between vertical and horizontal scrolling at a bubble door, which is why that bug works (those were the areas where the scrolling switched).
Almost. The NES version only lost one level (the pie factory). The 2600, Intellivision, etc versions also lost the elevator level. In the earliest NES games, they hadn't figured out how to use memory mappers to access larger amounts of data, so the earliest games were incredibly small. All those early carts (even through Zelda and Metroid) dump to about 40 k.
The NES was an incredible feat, though. Since it only used a bit of internal hardware, it then relied on large amounts of processor in the cart. That's why it's so hard to emulate the console. By contrast, only a handful of SNES games (Super FX games, and Mega Man X 2 and X 3) have any processing hardware in the cart.
Nor do I, but I don't think price fixing counts as part of an accounting investigation. I think price-fixing would be more the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission. Also bear in mind that the article even is fair enough to note that being part of a probe is not intrinsically any indication of guilt.
;)
Also, regarding price-fixing, stores have sales on games fairly often. If they never did, then the fixing issue may come into play more.
I'm still waiting on my check from the RIAA
I can appriciate the need for them to implement a "confirmation" action (Did you send this?), to stop spoofing, spamming, etc. However, the "pre-email questionaire" seems a little extreme. I suppose the goal is to ask "are you an insightful commentator or a raving lunatic?", but it takes a "are you a patriot or a terrorist?" tone about it.
Of course, it's now harder to complain to them about it, as well.
It will be coming out for all three (Win, OS X, Linux) platforms. Carmack's use of OpenGL makes the port pretty easy. Also, I personally think there's a bit of a chance of some more Linux ports now that Mac uses unixy coding systems (note how fast America's Army came out for the Mac after the Linux version. It's because of how much code was sharable between the two.) Of course, as Id always does, it'll make us pay a bundle to upgrade our computers cause we like the pretty things.
There's one substantial problem with that. In Donkey Kong, you have to complete a level on a single life. Infinite lives won't help if you can't complete a certain level.
I'm not up on MAME cheating, so I can't verify, but it seems that MAME could handle the kill screen. After reading the run-down, it seems that all it is is a level where the timer ticks too fast to make it to the top. If you want a simulation, run around a level until the timer runs out (an elevator stage would be best, as you could just stand there). It's not like the Pac-Man bug where half the screen garbles at the last level.
Ack! Imwheel is an ancient crutch. Any reasonably modern software understands the wheel directly. And anyway, if you don't have ZAxisMapping set up to begin with, imwheel won't help.
Probably, you just got a bad KVM. My IOGear chugs along happily.
Not only do you lose the composite out (really bad for me, cause I don't truck with RF these days), there's also a missing capacitor that causes some on-screen banding. Stay away. They're crappy.
Or you could note that it's out of print, and bidding at $90+ on ebay. Try www.lacegem.com. Still $50+ after shipping from England, but it's the best I can find.
For all the good Transgaming is doing (mmm... Starcraft), it should be noted that the Sims only works if you get the special Mandrake Gaming Edition of it. It contains hacks to the Sims code that lets it work in Wine. The standard store-bought version doesn't work at all.
I've been thrilled with emusic for 12 months now. It's also worth noting that they have provided funding for the freeamp mp3 player and reiserfs, so they are Linux friendly.
Many CD-Rs are "invisible" to DVD players' lasers. The specs should mention whether they can handle CD-R(W)s. Here's a link to a part of a DVD FAQ with a little more info. http://www.dvdcity.com/officialfaq.html#2.4.3 Andy
The other instructions were just for the warp zone. Not an easter egg. What you want to do, it go to the 1-2 end of the level. Stand on the pipe that would take you back above ground. Break the second and third bricks from the right (so there is one hanging over before the wall). Stand on the left corner of the pipe, crouch, then stay crouched and jump up and to the right, releasing down as you jump. With luck, and a lot of patience, you will end up going through the wall to the warp zone pipes. If you go in the center one, you will end up in world 2-2 (the water one), but it will be called "World -1" (hence it's being known as the "minus zone"). When you go into the pipe at the end, you will start again at the beginning of the world. Fun, eh? Also, there is a way to become small and fiery at the same time. mwu-ha-ha. Andy