"Who wants to share an IP with roommates when it means you can't frag each other on the same server because the server sees 4 connections from the same IP and drops them all?"
Huh? I've been gaming behind a router using NAT since the Quake 2 days. Never had a problem. The only time I've needed to do special configuration was when I was running a game server behing the router. Just had to forward ports.
"Anyways, yes, they're wiping out the XP installs on these machines (Dell Optiplex 270's) and installing Win 98 SE on them."
Now I would REALLY love to hear the justification for this. Never mind that you are paying for the Windows XP licenses on those machines. I mean what possible justification exists? Windows 98 more secure? More stable? My mind boggles. This idiot needs a fast track to the unemployment line. He's the kind of fool that gives IT a bad name. Whatever anyone wants to say about how much Windows sucks, 2000 and XP suck far less than 98.
"Secondly, the X-Box had virtually no 'digital convergance' value. There were unlicensed software for it that added that feature, but because it was unlicensed, you cannot call that a feature of the platform."
Agreed that it wasn't a part of the platform. But the number of people that went out and modded their Xboxes may have helped to indicate to Microsoft that it is the right time for a "convergence box". One not based on Windows Media Center, but a lower cost offering.
I'd have to say Speedball and Speedball 2 were the best games to come out of the Bitmap Brothers. I thought the Chaos Engine games were pretty fun too. And of course had that distinctive graphic look. Speedball still lives on in GBA and Pocket PC forms. Interestingly, while we are on the topic of Xenons - there is a downloadable Xenon 2000 game at the Bitmap Brothers website:
If you're a person like myself, you aren't using the hardware information to make a purchase decision. You are just interested in the technology. There is some pretty cool technical design in the hardware for these next generation consoles.
Typing "cd/." takes you to the root - just as typing "cd/". There is no point to typing the dot. The real reason for name is outlined in the faq:
"Slashdot" is a sort of obnoxious parody of a URL. When I originally registered the domain, I wanted to make the URL silly, and unpronounceable. Try reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org/ and you'll see what I mean. Of course my cocky little joke has turned around and bit me in the butt because now I am called upon constantly to tell people my URL or email address. I can't tell you how many people respond confused "So do I spell out the 'dot' or is that just a period?"
As in telling someone got to "h t t p colon slash slash slash dot dot org" is very confusing.
"but Microsoft is developing those games on Mac first, then porting them to XBox360"
Using a similar hardware platform as a development environment is a standard practice and in NO way means that the games will see the light of day on the dev platform (in this case the Mac). What the hell does it matter if the games are developed on a Mac if they are released for Xbox 360? And this isn't a case of PORTING either. Development does not equal porting. The Mac makes sense as a PowerPC development platform for PowerPC based consoles. Afterall a G5 is not going to have the custom hardware the 360 has, and no way in hell that Mac mini Radeon 9200 is going to run the graphics - even though both are ATI video cards. You might be interested to know that this isn't the first time Apple computers have been used as console development machines. The Apple IIgs was used as the dev platform for the Super Nintendo, because both used the 65816 processor. And exactly how many of those games were published on the IIgs? I'm hoping your post was an attempt at sarcasm or something. If you were serious you have an astoundingly goofy logic process.
More than enough space to replace the hard drive in a standard businesss computer or thin client. If the reliability exceeds hard drives and the cost is comparable, I could see these being very useful.
"I was also quite surprised on how Anakin and Obi could perform great feats of acrobatics 2 feet above millions of gallons of lava without breaking a sweat."
You underestimate the power of the Jedi's Secret(tm) anti-perspirent. It's strong enough for a bantha but made for a Master. Now available in Fresh Sith Scent too!
The point made in Episode 3 is that the dark side is about power and ascending to higher and higher levels of power. It's the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Any means can be used to justify the gain of power. Other Sith are fodder to be killed in the quest for power just as much as the Jedi. Darth Sidious states that he killed his master. It seems to be the natural progression for Sith.
We have a 300MB cap on our email boxes at work. When it gets full people can't send any more mail and I tell them to delete some of transfer it off the system. So I had one user who said "I always delete email and it still says I have to much." I took a look on her system and saw that she had decided to use the "Deleted Items" box as a filing system. She had a whole heirarchy of folders in deleted items, nicely sorting her "deleted" mail. Is it just me or is "Deleted Items" about the stupidest name? I mean if it's deleted shouldn't it be gone? Shouldn't it be "Place where you put stuff before you delete it"?
"I doubt either has ever been proven to make anyone more likely to commit a violent act. And I doubt either makes someone more effective at it."
Well, if you are training on military simulation software you are likely on a career path which involves the possibility of being required to perform violent acts or by your actions order others to perform violent acts. As for whether war simulations make someone more effective at committing a violent act, you'd think that the military would probably be hoping that it does. As in the training allows the military to take out the enemy more efficiently with less allied casualties.
The tone of your post implied "who cares they're not WoW". And yes from a mass market viewpoint you're probably correct. Although Final Fantasy and Lineage 2 numbers are huge as well (although outside of the U.S. primarily). WoW is seeing a boost of interest from the launch of the European servers as well. However in game and in the forums I see a lot of bored level 60s wondering "what now?" The time it takes to go 0-60 in WoW is pretty short by MMO standards. This is good initially because it makes players feel like they are already making progress. But after hitting 60 in 3 or 4 months, that feeling of progress stops. If all those players that signed up for WoW as their first MMO, some of them are likely to be interested in something new once they've "finished" WoW.
I agree completely. Morrowind was an awesome, vast, beautiful and terribly LONELY world. I remember being up late one night trudging through the continent. It was dark, the rains set in. There I was in the middle of nowhere in the gloom all alone. It was kind of depressing. I guess on one hand it's cool that a game can envoke that type of feeling. On the other hand I would have enjoyed having a buddy or two along for the journey. I play MMOs now, but primarily with a couple of real life friends. Something that Morrowind would be perfect for.
45 minutes of adverts? No it's not like that. It's probably about 15-20 mins for previews and adverts at least where I live (USA). I sure wouldn't want a split in the middle of the movie to play adverts. I mean it would take your focus out of the film.
"Theatres apparently make little money off the actual movies"
Yes but the movie studios make lots off of the movies. They call the shots. Check out the reply to my post at the bottom from the theater employee.
Probably true - I haven't downloaded it so I don't know first hand. I did notice that there is a set of files to fix the aspect ration problem making the rounds as well. I thought this just set it to 16:9, which means even with the fix it might still be off. I didn't mean to suggest that this rip was a perfect alternative to seeing the movie in the theater. Just that it's simple to get these downloaded files playing back on the home tv. I really think movie downloads impacts the rental or DVD purchase markets more than first run. The quality of DVD rips is quite good.
Re:Distinctions between AAA and "lesser" games.
on
The Path to AAA Games
·
· Score: 1
Rise of Nations and Rome Total War were great on the RTS side. I don't know if they classify as AAA games. Personally I think the term "AAA" is just marketing bullshit for a game the company wants to hype through the wazoo because they need to recoup the fuckwad of cash they dumped to make it - whether it's actually good or not is irrelevant.
Um, Quake 3 is just a little bit older than Halo 2. Saying "I don't play Quake 3 because it doesn't have these Halo 2 features" is like saying "Quake 3 sucks because it doesn't have planes and tanks like Battlefield 1942". It's irrelevant. Newer games benefit from new game innovations. I stopped playing Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament when Battlefield 1942 came out because the new game had all sort of interesting new features. Quake 3 is not perfect, and neither is Halo 2. Quake 3 was a pretty fun game that didn't quite live up to the legacy of Quake 2. You can say that Quake 3 is the point when Unreal over took Quake as the basic FPS of choice, especially with the mod community (ok, ok, so maybe the Half Life engine was number 1 - but for the life of me I'll never understand why people liked to mod it so much - it's my least favorite).
Slashdot Mirror
"Who wants to share an IP with roommates when it means you can't frag each other on the same server because the server sees 4 connections from the same IP and drops them all?"
Huh? I've been gaming behind a router using NAT since the Quake 2 days. Never had a problem. The only time I've needed to do special configuration was when I was running a game server behing the router. Just had to forward ports.
"Anyways, yes, they're wiping out the XP installs on these machines (Dell Optiplex 270's) and installing Win 98 SE on them."
Now I would REALLY love to hear the justification for this. Never mind that you are paying for the Windows XP licenses on those machines. I mean what possible justification exists?
Windows 98 more secure? More stable? My mind boggles.
This idiot needs a fast track to the unemployment line. He's the kind of fool that gives IT a bad name.
Whatever anyone wants to say about how much Windows sucks, 2000 and XP suck far less than 98.
"Secondly, the X-Box had virtually no 'digital convergance' value. There were unlicensed software for it that added that feature, but because it was unlicensed, you cannot call that a feature of the platform."
Agreed that it wasn't a part of the platform. But the number of people that went out and modded their Xboxes may have helped to indicate to Microsoft that it is the right time for a "convergence box". One not based on Windows Media Center, but a lower cost offering.
Is it just me or is Slashdot sounding more and more like Fark every day?
I'd have to say Speedball and Speedball 2 were the best games to come out of the Bitmap Brothers. I thought the Chaos Engine games were pretty fun too. And of course had that distinctive graphic look.
Speedball still lives on in GBA and Pocket PC forms.
Interestingly, while we are on the topic of Xenons - there is a downloadable Xenon 2000 game at the Bitmap Brothers website:
Xenon 2000
Looks like something they put together for the UK PC Format magazine.
If you're a person like myself, you aren't using the hardware information to make a purchase decision. You are just interested in the technology. There is some pretty cool technical design in the hardware for these next generation consoles.
Typing "cd /." takes you to the root - just as typing "cd /". There is no point to typing the dot.
The real reason for name is outlined in the faq:
"Slashdot" is a sort of obnoxious parody of a URL. When I originally registered the domain, I wanted to make the URL silly, and unpronounceable. Try reading out the full URL to http://slashdot.org/ and you'll see what I mean. Of course my cocky little joke has turned around and bit me in the butt because now I am called upon constantly to tell people my URL or email address. I can't tell you how many people respond confused "So do I spell out the 'dot' or is that just a period?"
As in telling someone got to "h t t p colon slash slash slash dot dot org" is very confusing.
You're not the only one. If I remember correctly the actual gameplay on Xenon 2 wasn't that great. Nice flashy effects and cool song though.
"but Microsoft is developing those games on Mac first, then porting them to XBox360"
Using a similar hardware platform as a development environment is a standard practice and in NO way means that the games will see the light of day on the dev platform (in this case the Mac).
What the hell does it matter if the games are developed on a Mac if they are released for Xbox 360? And this isn't a case of PORTING either. Development does not equal porting. The Mac makes sense as a PowerPC development platform for PowerPC based consoles. Afterall a G5 is not going to have the custom hardware the 360 has, and no way in hell that Mac mini Radeon 9200 is going to run the graphics - even though both are ATI video cards.
You might be interested to know that this isn't the first time Apple computers have been used as console development machines. The Apple IIgs was used as the dev platform for the Super Nintendo, because both used the 65816 processor. And exactly how many of those games were published on the IIgs?
I'm hoping your post was an attempt at sarcasm or something. If you were serious you have an astoundingly goofy logic process.
More than enough space to replace the hard drive in a standard businesss computer or thin client.
If the reliability exceeds hard drives and the cost is comparable, I could see these being very useful.
Intel now ships 64bit x86 chips known as EMT64.
"I was also quite surprised on how Anakin and Obi could perform great feats of acrobatics 2 feet above millions of gallons of lava without breaking a sweat."
You underestimate the power of the Jedi's Secret(tm) anti-perspirent. It's strong enough for a bantha but made for a Master.
Now available in Fresh Sith Scent too!
Yeah but boy did she have some HORRIBLE hairdos in episode 3.
The point made in Episode 3 is that the dark side is about power and ascending to higher and higher levels of power. It's the old "absolute power corrupts absolutely". Any means can be used to justify the gain of power.
Other Sith are fodder to be killed in the quest for power just as much as the Jedi. Darth Sidious states that he killed his master. It seems to be the natural progression for Sith.
Picard/Crusher?
...oh you mean Beverly.
No! Say it isn't so!
We have a 300MB cap on our email boxes at work. When it gets full people can't send any more mail and I tell them to delete some of transfer it off the system.
So I had one user who said "I always delete email and it still says I have to much."
I took a look on her system and saw that she had decided to use the "Deleted Items" box as a filing system. She had a whole heirarchy of folders in deleted items, nicely sorting her "deleted" mail.
Is it just me or is "Deleted Items" about the stupidest name? I mean if it's deleted shouldn't it be gone? Shouldn't it be "Place where you put stuff before you delete it"?
"I doubt either has ever been proven to make anyone more likely to commit a violent act. And I doubt either makes someone more effective at it."
Well, if you are training on military simulation software you are likely on a career path which involves the possibility of being required to perform violent acts or by your actions order others to perform violent acts.
As for whether war simulations make someone more effective at committing a violent act, you'd think that the military would probably be hoping that it does. As in the training allows the military to take out the enemy more efficiently with less allied casualties.
Sorry to inform you, all those "simulations" were really the real war, Ender.
The tone of your post implied "who cares they're not WoW". And yes from a mass market viewpoint you're probably correct. Although Final Fantasy and Lineage 2 numbers are huge as well (although outside of the U.S. primarily).
WoW is seeing a boost of interest from the launch of the European servers as well. However in game and in the forums I see a lot of bored level 60s wondering "what now?"
The time it takes to go 0-60 in WoW is pretty short by MMO standards. This is good initially because it makes players feel like they are already making progress. But after hitting 60 in 3 or 4 months, that feeling of progress stops.
If all those players that signed up for WoW as their first MMO, some of them are likely to be interested in something new once they've "finished" WoW.
I agree completely. Morrowind was an awesome, vast, beautiful and terribly LONELY world.
I remember being up late one night trudging through the continent. It was dark, the rains set in. There I was in the middle of nowhere in the gloom all alone. It was kind of depressing. I guess on one hand it's cool that a game can envoke that type of feeling. On the other hand I would have enjoyed having a buddy or two along for the journey.
I play MMOs now, but primarily with a couple of real life friends. Something that Morrowind would be perfect for.
45 minutes of adverts? No it's not like that. It's probably about 15-20 mins for previews and adverts at least where I live (USA).
I sure wouldn't want a split in the middle of the movie to play adverts. I mean it would take your focus out of the film.
"Theatres apparently make little money off the actual movies"
Yes but the movie studios make lots off of the movies. They call the shots. Check out the reply to my post at the bottom from the theater employee.
Probably true - I haven't downloaded it so I don't know first hand. I did notice that there is a set of files to fix the aspect ration problem making the rounds as well. I thought this just set it to 16:9, which means even with the fix it might still be off.
I didn't mean to suggest that this rip was a perfect alternative to seeing the movie in the theater. Just that it's simple to get these downloaded files playing back on the home tv.
I really think movie downloads impacts the rental or DVD purchase markets more than first run. The quality of DVD rips is quite good.
Rise of Nations and Rome Total War were great on the RTS side. I don't know if they classify as AAA games.
Personally I think the term "AAA" is just marketing bullshit for a game the company wants to hype through the wazoo because they need to recoup the fuckwad of cash they dumped to make it - whether it's actually good or not is irrelevant.
Um, Quake 3 is just a little bit older than Halo 2. Saying "I don't play Quake 3 because it doesn't have these Halo 2 features" is like saying "Quake 3 sucks because it doesn't have planes and tanks like Battlefield 1942". It's irrelevant. Newer games benefit from new game innovations.
I stopped playing Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament when Battlefield 1942 came out because the new game had all sort of interesting new features.
Quake 3 is not perfect, and neither is Halo 2. Quake 3 was a pretty fun game that didn't quite live up to the legacy of Quake 2. You can say that Quake 3 is the point when Unreal over took Quake as the basic FPS of choice, especially with the mod community (ok, ok, so maybe the Half Life engine was number 1 - but for the life of me I'll never understand why people liked to mod it so much - it's my least favorite).
Um. This is a Maxis game. As in the same people that made Sim City.