Well, you can always grab some of the 40,000 mods they have for the game to make it more difficult or more fun.
It's a sandbox game with tons of mods. At this point, you can make the game pretty much any experience you want, by either using other people's mods (as simple as clicking a button in Steam) or creating your own.
That's what this is really about, litigious companies like Volt Pictures have formed the Voltron of Copyright Trolls and now are complaining that they do not have enough fodder to feed their ambulance chasing lawyers to send out threatening (and misleading) settlement letters too.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm sure you are a bit crispy after being exposed to the Slashdot crowd in full force;)
ClanLib would have been awesome 20 years ago, when I was playing around with some game ideas, and I kind of wish I had known about it when I was writing Xbox homebrew (MXM, X-Marbles). These days, the library is kind of secondary to the tools and frameworks for building games, and more often than not, decent games require a team to build.
That said, ClanLib might not be a bad base if a group of motivated individuals wanted to expand it into such a tool. Open source projects are always welcome (My Media X Menu was the first "open source" dashboard for XBox in the scene and helped lots of other projects with code, including XBMP/XBMC/Kodi in the early days).
The only real beef most of the slashdotters here had was with the bold comparison to Unity and Unreal Engine and the faulty claim. Just dial it back next time, emphasize the open source aspect, and maybe put out a call for more developers to get involved?
Target a high-level goal - a framework that can create a game with minimal lines of actual code, and a visual tool (perhaps leveraging an existing open source IDE) to tie in elements and generate some code behind the scenes. More importantly, get somebody to put a few games together and offer them up on Desura or a similar Indie outfit, to show what can be done.
Unity has a web player, as well. It also supports C# scripts in all of those environments (Javascript being the other scripting language it can use).
The other thing I didn't mention is that ClanLib simply cannot be as robust as the major players - who absolutely have to respond to bug reports and have literally millions (billions?) of hours of real usage in complex games.
Oh... and let's not forget third party support. Tools and plug-ins provide smoother workflow management, whether it's a single developer or a 100-member team. Last time I checked, my tools didn't have "Export for ClanLib" options, but they usually have "Export for Unity" or "Export for UDK" options.
Really, I can't recommend enough that Rombust should go out, download Unity 5 and give it a whirl. It might be disheartening, but Rombust should not go through life ignorant of the competition, developing ClanLib. I hope that doesn't become a show-stopper, because developers should have choices; perhaps it will put the developers of ClanLib down the right path to make a "5.0" that DOES include the elements needed to actually compete.
Obviously, the rombust and the developers of ClanLib have never worked with a real game engine. It's already been noted that the claims in the summary are ridiculously ignorant (or outright shameful lies).
Let's examine the issue in details:
1. The Examples page for ClanLib seems like a joke. At the very least, this seems incredibly immature and unprofessional. 2. Not a single example of a real game written with ClanLib can be easily found. 16 years, and all they have to show for it is a feature in an old book on C++ game development. 3. No IDE... for game engines, the IDE is far more than a tool to write code - it's a way for a team of professionals to tie in their elements visually, in an organized way. It provides immediate feedback, which increases productivity. 4. ClanLib requires in-depth development before you see anything remotely operational in a game. Real game engines allow you almost immediate results, and even better, support scripting at a minimal level to create actual games (while allowing in-depth programming at the same time), because they already have a framework in place.
ClanLib has to deliver a LOT more than it currently does to be taken seriously. Unity, UDK, Corona, Adobe Air... all have options that allow developers to create games with no investment up front, and often no royalties at lower sales levels (and if you reach $100k sales, the fractional cost of the game engine is not really an issue). To be perfectly honest, I find it a bit insulting that this was presented on Slashdot the way it was. Slashdot-worthy? Questionable, but to tout it as a real competitor to Unity and UDK is downright wrong at every level.
Musk knows that to reduce the cost of EVs, the cost of making batteries has to go down, and the easiest way to do that, AND the best way to build up infrastructure, is to ramp up production.
That's what this is all about - not about making money, at least in the short term. Tesla just needs to have sales drive (and justify) the increase in production, and when the price of making those batteries drop, EV sales will become more attractive to a larger customer base, thus ramping up production more... rinse, lather, repeat.
Audio-based watermarking that survives a variety of attempts to process it, and even overcomes being recorded second-hand....and yet, all it requires is somebody digging into a Blu-ray player's firmware to determine the detection algorithm.
There are claims by products $$$$ that it has been cracked, but all of those methods involve a database for specific films to apply their "fix".
...and what part of my comparing it to what my son's typical usage are you unable to process? My post infers that he regularly uses 3GB of data monthly on BoostMobile (see the part about him exceeding his data cap), which costs him $40/month and uses the same network as Google's Fi service. As a bonus, he doesn't have to use a specific, single model of phone.
Under Google's Fi service, basic service $20+ 3GB data $30 = $50
I guess math and reading comprehension is difficult for you?
I told him to use the library of music he already has, which is quite extensive (he's 22 and out of the house), but being young and lazy about stuff like this, things probably won't change.
The problem with the rollover is that my son listens to Pandora... and often hits his cap every month. He'd never have rollover, and instead of throttling, he'd just get cut off.
I'm sure a big part of that $200 million is the current valuation of the land, which he bought over 20 years ago.
I'd be surprised if at least $120 million of that number is the result of the increase in the property value for the land.
He's getting relief from property taxes and using land that would otherwise sit vacant. He gets a huge tax write off, something he likely needs for the next few years as his structured buy-out from Disney stacks up in his bank account.
At the same time, he does something good for the community while sticking it to his stuck up neighbors.
Nope. When they landed in Syracuse, they were in the 100 mile "Border Zone" where the government has declared they can seize any electronic equipment, for any reason.
Wake me when tape is reliable AND costs 10% of the $/GB of hard drive storage.
Worthwhile for enterprise... maybe. I haven't even looked at a tape backup in decades, but I do not relish paying more for a single tape than an entire 2TB HDD... as a consumer, or even as an enthusiast. It's cheaper and possibly more reliable to do backups to BD-R at this point, or simply use redundant HDDs as backup devices.
I will start a new religion, where upon "dark" and "light" days will alternate. As a member, you will be obliged only to serve somebody of darker skin or lighter skin, depending on the day, all others will be turned away.
For example, If Tuesday is a "dark" day, you only are allowed to do business with or assist people with darker skin. The next day, you will only do business with those of a lighter skin shade.
Those without skin, or matching your own skin color are not to be dealt with, ever, as it is sinful.
Hopefully this also sees a reduction in the cost of SSDs to bring them closer in line with platter drives, which have only just started dropping into the $30/TB range once more (since the Thai floods gave manufacturers their own Sumitomo excuse to drive up prices).
If the market had progressed more realistically, platter drives would be $15/TB and we'd already have consumer-level 10TB drives, but Seagate and Western Digital took a breathing period to reap profits, allowing SSD technology to start playing catch-up....not that SSD makers are off the hook... they've gone to smaller fab processes that shortened the life of NANDs and also have kept prices from falling at a reasonable rate, too.
I think we are two or three breakthroughs from reaching parity on cost per byte for platter and solid state tech, at which point, platter technology will likely become a very small niche market.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you can always grab some of the 40,000 mods they have for the game to make it more difficult or more fun.
It's a sandbox game with tons of mods. At this point, you can make the game pretty much any experience you want, by either using other people's mods (as simple as clicking a button in Steam) or creating your own.
That's kind of the point of the article.
That's what this is really about, litigious companies like Volt Pictures have formed the Voltron of Copyright Trolls and now are complaining that they do not have enough fodder to feed their ambulance chasing lawyers to send out threatening (and misleading) settlement letters too.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm sure you are a bit crispy after being exposed to the Slashdot crowd in full force ;)
ClanLib would have been awesome 20 years ago, when I was playing around with some game ideas, and I kind of wish I had known about it when I was writing Xbox homebrew (MXM, X-Marbles). These days, the library is kind of secondary to the tools and frameworks for building games, and more often than not, decent games require a team to build.
That said, ClanLib might not be a bad base if a group of motivated individuals wanted to expand it into such a tool. Open source projects are always welcome (My Media X Menu was the first "open source" dashboard for XBox in the scene and helped lots of other projects with code, including XBMP/XBMC/Kodi in the early days).
The only real beef most of the slashdotters here had was with the bold comparison to Unity and Unreal Engine and the faulty claim. Just dial it back next time, emphasize the open source aspect, and maybe put out a call for more developers to get involved?
Target a high-level goal - a framework that can create a game with minimal lines of actual code, and a visual tool (perhaps leveraging an existing open source IDE) to tie in elements and generate some code behind the scenes. More importantly, get somebody to put a few games together and offer them up on Desura or a similar Indie outfit, to show what can be done.
Unity has a web player, as well. It also supports C# scripts in all of those environments (Javascript being the other scripting language it can use).
The other thing I didn't mention is that ClanLib simply cannot be as robust as the major players - who absolutely have to respond to bug reports and have literally millions (billions?) of hours of real usage in complex games.
Oh... and let's not forget third party support. Tools and plug-ins provide smoother workflow management, whether it's a single developer or a 100-member team. Last time I checked, my tools didn't have "Export for ClanLib" options, but they usually have "Export for Unity" or "Export for UDK" options.
Really, I can't recommend enough that Rombust should go out, download Unity 5 and give it a whirl. It might be disheartening, but Rombust should not go through life ignorant of the competition, developing ClanLib. I hope that doesn't become a show-stopper, because developers should have choices; perhaps it will put the developers of ClanLib down the right path to make a "5.0" that DOES include the elements needed to actually compete.
Obviously, the rombust and the developers of ClanLib have never worked with a real game engine. It's already been noted that the claims in the summary are ridiculously ignorant (or outright shameful lies).
Let's examine the issue in details:
1. The Examples page for ClanLib seems like a joke. At the very least, this seems incredibly immature and unprofessional.
2. Not a single example of a real game written with ClanLib can be easily found. 16 years, and all they have to show for it is a feature in an old book on C++ game development.
3. No IDE... for game engines, the IDE is far more than a tool to write code - it's a way for a team of professionals to tie in their elements visually, in an organized way. It provides immediate feedback, which increases productivity.
4. ClanLib requires in-depth development before you see anything remotely operational in a game. Real game engines allow you almost immediate results, and even better, support scripting at a minimal level to create actual games (while allowing in-depth programming at the same time), because they already have a framework in place.
ClanLib has to deliver a LOT more than it currently does to be taken seriously. Unity, UDK, Corona, Adobe Air... all have options that allow developers to create games with no investment up front, and often no royalties at lower sales levels (and if you reach $100k sales, the fractional cost of the game engine is not really an issue). To be perfectly honest, I find it a bit insulting that this was presented on Slashdot the way it was. Slashdot-worthy? Questionable, but to tout it as a real competitor to Unity and UDK is downright wrong at every level.
Musk knows that to reduce the cost of EVs, the cost of making batteries has to go down, and the easiest way to do that, AND the best way to build up infrastructure, is to ramp up production.
That's what this is all about - not about making money, at least in the short term. Tesla just needs to have sales drive (and justify) the increase in production, and when the price of making those batteries drop, EV sales will become more attractive to a larger customer base, thus ramping up production more... rinse, lather, repeat.
Peter Brady nods his head sagely....
Hopefully, the exports will be off the charts. California needs the economic growth.
Audio-based watermarking that survives a variety of attempts to process it, and even overcomes being recorded second-hand. ...and yet, all it requires is somebody digging into a Blu-ray player's firmware to determine the detection algorithm.
There are claims by products $$$$ that it has been cracked, but all of those methods involve a database for specific films to apply their "fix".
Some I know have issues calculating the age of the earth, usually off by a few orders of magnitude.
...and what part of my comparing it to what my son's typical usage are you unable to process? My post infers that he regularly uses 3GB of data monthly on BoostMobile (see the part about him exceeding his data cap), which costs him $40/month and uses the same network as Google's Fi service. As a bonus, he doesn't have to use a specific, single model of phone.
Under Google's Fi service, basic service $20+ 3GB data $30 = $50
I guess math and reading comprehension is difficult for you?
I told him to use the library of music he already has, which is quite extensive (he's 22 and out of the house), but being young and lazy about stuff like this, things probably won't change.
$20 (basic phone service)+$30 (3GB data) = $50
At least, the last time I checked, 20+30=50.
Maybe you should stick to homeschooling.
The problem with the rollover is that my son listens to Pandora... and often hits his cap every month. He'd never have rollover, and instead of throttling, he'd just get cut off.
Also, he'd have no choice in the devices he used.
$50 a month to match my son's BoostMobile plan, except he still gets data (at 2G speeds) after he exceeds his limit, and pays $40/month.
Come on, Google, you used to be cool.
I'm sure a big part of that $200 million is the current valuation of the land, which he bought over 20 years ago.
I'd be surprised if at least $120 million of that number is the result of the increase in the property value for the land.
He's getting relief from property taxes and using land that would otherwise sit vacant. He gets a huge tax write off, something he likely needs for the next few years as his structured buy-out from Disney stacks up in his bank account.
At the same time, he does something good for the community while sticking it to his stuck up neighbors.
Nope. When they landed in Syracuse, they were in the 100 mile "Border Zone" where the government has declared they can seize any electronic equipment, for any reason.
Syracuse is, as the crow flies, within 100 miles of the Canadian border. His equipment belongs to the US government now.
Wake me when tape is reliable AND costs 10% of the $/GB of hard drive storage.
Worthwhile for enterprise... maybe. I haven't even looked at a tape backup in decades, but I do not relish paying more for a single tape than an entire 2TB HDD... as a consumer, or even as an enthusiast. It's cheaper and possibly more reliable to do backups to BD-R at this point, or simply use redundant HDDs as backup devices.
Apple will surely be updating shortly to close the loophole that has people installing PopcornTime on their iPhones...
Link
I'm surprised this isn't bigger news.
I wouldn't mind a 39" curved monitor with 8k resolution, along with two 4k displays (left and right) oriented in portrait for my workstation.
Computer monitors are the one application of curved displays that actually makes sense.
I like my 3 WQHD displays, but there are still times when I'd like a bit more "space" for development and debugging.
Apple forces you to submit apps using the most recent releases of OSX through their proprietary "app loader"
Of course, the same thing COULD be accomplished using a web-based uploader, but that isn't the "Apple way"
A much more literate reference, and more suited to an April Fool's fake story.
sigh....
I will start a new religion, where upon "dark" and "light" days will alternate. As a member, you will be obliged only to serve somebody of darker skin or lighter skin, depending on the day, all others will be turned away.
For example, If Tuesday is a "dark" day, you only are allowed to do business with or assist people with darker skin. The next day, you will only do business with those of a lighter skin shade.
Those without skin, or matching your own skin color are not to be dealt with, ever, as it is sinful.
Religious freedom!
Hopefully this also sees a reduction in the cost of SSDs to bring them closer in line with platter drives, which have only just started dropping into the $30/TB range once more (since the Thai floods gave manufacturers their own Sumitomo excuse to drive up prices).
If the market had progressed more realistically, platter drives would be $15/TB and we'd already have consumer-level 10TB drives, but Seagate and Western Digital took a breathing period to reap profits, allowing SSD technology to start playing catch-up. ...not that SSD makers are off the hook... they've gone to smaller fab processes that shortened the life of NANDs and also have kept prices from falling at a reasonable rate, too.
I think we are two or three breakthroughs from reaching parity on cost per byte for platter and solid state tech, at which point, platter technology will likely become a very small niche market.