Even though a comment of mine further down the list wishes for a parser to be in a game, the parser could sometimes kill a puzzle. That was horrid. You had the right idea the entire time, but whomever programmed that one puzzle into the game was looking for a very specific word choice otherwise it was no go. If I remember correctly, King's Quest 3 had an instance of this when attempting to turn the wizard into a cat. I gave up on the game at this point. Went back to it about 5 years ago, decided to finish the game, downloaded the walkthrough,etc etc. Got back to that point, found out that my original idea was correct, I just hadn't been typing the command in the way the game wanted me to. Some people if given a time machine would go back in time and give themselves the winning lotto numbers, sports picks, whatever. I'd go back in time and tell myself what I needed to type to turn that damn wizard into a cat.
Oh Zak McKracken, one of the fondest games of my youth and probably one of the most painful (if not THE most painful) game to try and play now.
Fucking keyboard cursor interface my ass. Whoever thought that selecting words from a list (using the keyboard to move a graphical cursor) instead of just implementing a parser needs to have their head examined.
As someone who played the shit out of the original X-Wing back in the day, I've always wished someone would put out a remake, sequel, or even just a non-movie IP based space combat sim modeled after X-Wing and with all the bells and whistles of modern gaming.
A deathstar-esque run, with on-line co-op and voice chat would be awesome.
When I was 8-12, I thought adventure games were pretty awesome. I rarely beat them, and figured it was just a lack of creativity/ingenuity on my part. Even though I failed and failed and failed some more, I love solving puzzles/problems (I'm a technician by trade and math student by hobby currently) and spent hours going over the same few screens, scouring for clues that I missed, inventory combinations I hadn't tried (and in the days of the infamous parser, word combinations I hadn't tried). I'd spend hours doing this.
Then I got a little older, installed a few of the old games out of nostalgia's sake (even still have a few of the more memorable ones installed) and given that I don't have hours to spend staring at the same screen, decided to give up, look up some FAQs and at least push my way through the story (some of those games had some really well written ones). At this point I discovered that my failures were not entirely due to a lack of problem solving ability on my part, as I found that the majority of puzzles I had always gotten stuck on lacked any sort of logic at all (I believe there is an excellent write up on Gabriel Knight 3's issues somewhere on the net). They required the kind of creativity and problem solving ability you get at 4am from numerous bongs, a few beers and the inability to click where you want to click.
And before anyone "wooshes" me, I totally got the sarcasm in the parent and just felt this was the perfect spot for a mini-rant =)
I have a job that involves a lot of travel for lengthy periods of time. I like to bring a console along with me to pass the time in the evenings along with some potential local multiplayer with coworkers (my laptop can easily take care of the first, much more limited for the second). Unfortunately, myself and my coworkers comprise a small segment of the market, so I doubt our plight would be a concern (plus I'm sure quite a few coworkers will buy one anyway and only use it at home).
Just to add confusion, I'm going to start pimping the following date format: %YYY!MM@DD#YY:HH(MM)^SS"SSS&ZZZZZ= Where YYY is the first 3 digits of a 5 digit year (and it will start fresh from July 19th this year being the first day of the year). MM will be the 2 digit month in a 13 month year (with 00 reserved for new years day, the only day of the year that is month less). DD will range from 01 to 28, except for the new year day which will be 00. HH and MM will be standard hours and minutes as we use them now, SS"SSS will be seconds (SS) and milliseconds (SSS) and ZZZZZ will be the +/- offset in hours and minutes from UTC. So on July 19th this year the date format will read: %000!00@00#00:00(00^00"0000&+0000= (for UTC)
I think we can all agree that adoption of the above standard worldwide will greatly improve everything and for the programmers, you have a ton of special characters to mark the start of new fields making it easy to separate out the parts you need. Also, since it implies a shift of calander, we no longer have to worry about the number of days in each month as it is fixed at 28. New years day will also not count as a day of the week, and keeping with the much hated/lauded American convention, !01@01 will always be a Sunday, and the week will always start on Sunday. This also has the benefit that your birthday will always fall on the same day of the week, as will all other holidays. The benefits of this to school and commerce should be obvious.
It could be worse, while Japan will generally work on the same year as everyone else, sometimes they like to throw in the traditional dates where the year is based on the current emperor, which means if you want to convert from one to the other you need a few history books.
Actually, that is just common usage in the states. I'm American, I live in the states, and I use YYYYMMDD, YYYY-MM-DD, DDMMMYY, DDMMMYYYY, DD/MM/YY, DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY, MM/DD/YY among others rather often. I mostly prefer YYYYMMDD and its variants as it's easy to sort in chronological order.
*note: I don't just arbitrarily choose a format, if I'm choosing the format I use YYYYMMDD, if someone else chose the format it could be any of the above.
There are quite a few first world countries that don't observe it (Most of Australia, Japan, S. Korea to name a few). I still find it completely unnecessary. Hell even one of the original proponents of it back in the day was mostly interested in being able to squeeze out a few extra holes of golf in the evening. As much as I enjoy golf, it's not a good reason to muck with our clocks.
Uh, DST has nothing to do with safety of children walking to school. DST extends EVENING daylight hours in the SUMMER. So unless your children walk to school in the evening in summer, DST has no effect on them. Not shifting back to standard time in the winter (or shifting back too late) may cause them to have to walk to school in the dark, but if they live far enough north, the only solution might be to have school start later rather than fancy clock changes.
DST is pointless, and every time we go on DST I lose an hour of sleep.
With that much of a shift, what the hell does DST give you?
So in the summer, which is typically when you are on DST (unless you crazy europeans do it backwards), if night hits at 23:30, scrapping DST would have night hit at 22:30 instead, it gets dark earlier. Granted, daylight would hit at 02:00 but hey, dark curtains (not that it's really that much different from 03:00).
Even where I currently live, in the winter I commute both ways in the dark. DST is not in effect in the winter and does nothing to change the fact that I get significantly less than 10 hours of sunlight in winter. For a typical 8 hour work day (especially if lunch does not count towards those 8 hours), If you get less than 10 hours of daylight in winter, You will have a hard time having both sides of the commute during daylight hours regardless of how you set your clocks.
A little late to this discussion but oh well. I just spent 6 and a half years in a country that does not observe daylight savings time. Guess what? They get by just fine. Oh and from a latitiude perspective, that country stretches from almost as far south as the southern tip of florida, to a bit farther than Buffalo, New York (where I grew up).
Oh, and as far as not commuting in the dark goes, we switch BACK to standard time in the fall for this (and in some places, like Buffalo, and my current place of residence in Washington, morning commute is still in the dark during winter).
Scrap DST and put us all on standard or put us all on UTC. At least if we're in standard the math between local time and UTC doesn't change at all ever unlike it does with UTC.
Not all DLC operates in that manner. Out of the games I've played over the past few years, DA:O was the only one with anything like that. Other games may have had options for DLC in the system menus, but not in the game space itself. I heard Dead Space 3 has something similar, and though I do like the series, the combination of that and the demo have pushed me away. I'm cool with DLC, I'm even cool with microtransactions, so long as they stay the hell out of my gamespace (and aren't pay to win).
I really disliked Cities XL. On the surface it seems like a reasonably polished product, but certain game concepts seemed kind of weird. I definitely didn't like the method of zoning - zoning residential space for 'working class' or 'business' workers is one example.
*troll* So what you're saying is that it's the communist version of sim-city? */troll*
I once marinated turkey breasts in a mixture of apple cider vinegar, honey, and chipotle Tabasco sauce and then cooked sous vide. It was ridiculously delicious.
It could work if they make a movie that exists within the half-life/portal universe and doesn't try to retell the story of the games or some such crap.
Some back story for Aperture, or a side story that takes place between half-life 1 and 2 might actually be cool.
A movie featuring Gordon or Chell as anything other than a cameo or reference would kind of kill it. (ie, backstory of Aperture showing a baby Chell in a crib or nameplate on a door, or on a display, fine, trying to give Chell any more characterization than that would destory the character in the games).
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Even though a comment of mine further down the list wishes for a parser to be in a game, the parser could sometimes kill a puzzle. That was horrid. You had the right idea the entire time, but whomever programmed that one puzzle into the game was looking for a very specific word choice otherwise it was no go. If I remember correctly, King's Quest 3 had an instance of this when attempting to turn the wizard into a cat. I gave up on the game at this point. Went back to it about 5 years ago, decided to finish the game, downloaded the walkthrough,etc etc. Got back to that point, found out that my original idea was correct, I just hadn't been typing the command in the way the game wanted me to. Some people if given a time machine would go back in time and give themselves the winning lotto numbers, sports picks, whatever. I'd go back in time and tell myself what I needed to type to turn that damn wizard into a cat.
Oh Zak McKracken, one of the fondest games of my youth and probably one of the most painful (if not THE most painful) game to try and play now.
Fucking keyboard cursor interface my ass. Whoever thought that selecting words from a list (using the keyboard to move a graphical cursor) instead of just implementing a parser needs to have their head examined.
As someone who played the shit out of the original X-Wing back in the day, I've always wished someone would put out a remake, sequel, or even just a non-movie IP based space combat sim modeled after X-Wing and with all the bells and whistles of modern gaming.
A deathstar-esque run, with on-line co-op and voice chat would be awesome.
When I was 8-12, I thought adventure games were pretty awesome. I rarely beat them, and figured it was just a lack of creativity/ingenuity on my part. Even though I failed and failed and failed some more, I love solving puzzles/problems (I'm a technician by trade and math student by hobby currently) and spent hours going over the same few screens, scouring for clues that I missed, inventory combinations I hadn't tried (and in the days of the infamous parser, word combinations I hadn't tried). I'd spend hours doing this.
Then I got a little older, installed a few of the old games out of nostalgia's sake (even still have a few of the more memorable ones installed) and given that I don't have hours to spend staring at the same screen, decided to give up, look up some FAQs and at least push my way through the story (some of those games had some really well written ones). At this point I discovered that my failures were not entirely due to a lack of problem solving ability on my part, as I found that the majority of puzzles I had always gotten stuck on lacked any sort of logic at all (I believe there is an excellent write up on Gabriel Knight 3's issues somewhere on the net). They required the kind of creativity and problem solving ability you get at 4am from numerous bongs, a few beers and the inability to click where you want to click.
And before anyone "wooshes" me, I totally got the sarcasm in the parent and just felt this was the perfect spot for a mini-rant =)
Oh, I most definitely will not.
I have a job that involves a lot of travel for lengthy periods of time. I like to bring a console along with me to pass the time in the evenings along with some potential local multiplayer with coworkers (my laptop can easily take care of the first, much more limited for the second). Unfortunately, myself and my coworkers comprise a small segment of the market, so I doubt our plight would be a concern (plus I'm sure quite a few coworkers will buy one anyway and only use it at home).
That goes on every year. Some people lack a sense of humor, and think it is a horrible waste of time.
Every effort should be made to annoy the crap out of those people.
One is culturally acceptable, the other is not? Only difference as far as I can tell.
Just to add confusion, I'm going to start pimping the following date format:
%YYY!MM@DD#YY:HH(MM)^SS"SSS&ZZZZZ=
Where YYY is the first 3 digits of a 5 digit year (and it will start fresh from July 19th this year being the first day of the year). MM will be the 2 digit month in a 13 month year (with 00 reserved for new years day, the only day of the year that is month less). DD will range from 01 to 28, except for the new year day which will be 00. HH and MM will be standard hours and minutes as we use them now, SS"SSS will be seconds (SS) and milliseconds (SSS) and ZZZZZ will be the +/- offset in hours and minutes from UTC. So on July 19th this year the date format will read: %000!00@00#00:00(00^00"0000&+0000= (for UTC)
I think we can all agree that adoption of the above standard worldwide will greatly improve everything and for the programmers, you have a ton of special characters to mark the start of new fields making it easy to separate out the parts you need. Also, since it implies a shift of calander, we no longer have to worry about the number of days in each month as it is fixed at 28. New years day will also not count as a day of the week, and keeping with the much hated/lauded American convention, !01@01 will always be a Sunday, and the week will always start on Sunday. This also has the benefit that your birthday will always fall on the same day of the week, as will all other holidays. The benefits of this to school and commerce should be obvious.
It could be worse, while Japan will generally work on the same year as everyone else, sometimes they like to throw in the traditional dates where the year is based on the current emperor, which means if you want to convert from one to the other you need a few history books.
And then there are people like me who would prefer the opposite ;)
Actually, that is just common usage in the states. I'm American, I live in the states, and I use YYYYMMDD, YYYY-MM-DD, DDMMMYY, DDMMMYYYY, DD/MM/YY, DD/MM/YYYY, MM/DD/YYYY, MM/DD/YY among others rather often. I mostly prefer YYYYMMDD and its variants as it's easy to sort in chronological order.
*note: I don't just arbitrarily choose a format, if I'm choosing the format I use YYYYMMDD, if someone else chose the format it could be any of the above.
There are quite a few first world countries that don't observe it (Most of Australia, Japan, S. Korea to name a few). I still find it completely unnecessary. Hell even one of the original proponents of it back in the day was mostly interested in being able to squeeze out a few extra holes of golf in the evening. As much as I enjoy golf, it's not a good reason to muck with our clocks.
Uh, DST has nothing to do with safety of children walking to school. DST extends EVENING daylight hours in the SUMMER. So unless your children walk to school in the evening in summer, DST has no effect on them. Not shifting back to standard time in the winter (or shifting back too late) may cause them to have to walk to school in the dark, but if they live far enough north, the only solution might be to have school start later rather than fancy clock changes.
DST is pointless, and every time we go on DST I lose an hour of sleep.
Other way around, we Fall back and then never spring forward again ;)
With that much of a shift, what the hell does DST give you?
So in the summer, which is typically when you are on DST (unless you crazy europeans do it backwards), if night hits at 23:30, scrapping DST would have night hit at 22:30 instead, it gets dark earlier. Granted, daylight would hit at 02:00 but hey, dark curtains (not that it's really that much different from 03:00).
Even where I currently live, in the winter I commute both ways in the dark. DST is not in effect in the winter and does nothing to change the fact that I get significantly less than 10 hours of sunlight in winter. For a typical 8 hour work day (especially if lunch does not count towards those 8 hours), If you get less than 10 hours of daylight in winter, You will have a hard time having both sides of the commute during daylight hours regardless of how you set your clocks.
A little late to this discussion but oh well. I just spent 6 and a half years in a country that does not observe daylight savings time. Guess what? They get by just fine. Oh and from a latitiude perspective, that country stretches from almost as far south as the southern tip of florida, to a bit farther than Buffalo, New York (where I grew up).
Oh, and as far as not commuting in the dark goes, we switch BACK to standard time in the fall for this (and in some places, like Buffalo, and my current place of residence in Washington, morning commute is still in the dark during winter).
Scrap DST and put us all on standard or put us all on UTC. At least if we're in standard the math between local time and UTC doesn't change at all ever unlike it does with UTC.
Not all DLC operates in that manner. Out of the games I've played over the past few years, DA:O was the only one with anything like that. Other games may have had options for DLC in the system menus, but not in the game space itself. I heard Dead Space 3 has something similar, and though I do like the series, the combination of that and the demo have pushed me away. I'm cool with DLC, I'm even cool with microtransactions, so long as they stay the hell out of my gamespace (and aren't pay to win).
I really disliked Cities XL. On the surface it seems like a reasonably polished product, but certain game concepts seemed kind of weird. I definitely didn't like the method of zoning - zoning residential space for 'working class' or 'business' workers is one example.
*troll* So what you're saying is that it's the communist version of sim-city? */troll*
Nature abhors chemicals.
I once marinated turkey breasts in a mixture of apple cider vinegar, honey, and chipotle Tabasco sauce and then cooked sous vide. It was ridiculously delicious.
I'm not too sure about that... I know quite a large number of swipers with kids.
So the next iteration will be Xbox 360 180?
wait wait wait... you're telling me I can log into my router? Would that make me a h4x0r?
It could work if they make a movie that exists within the half-life/portal universe and doesn't try to retell the story of the games or some such crap.
Some back story for Aperture, or a side story that takes place between half-life 1 and 2 might actually be cool.
A movie featuring Gordon or Chell as anything other than a cameo or reference would kind of kill it. (ie, backstory of Aperture showing a baby Chell in a crib or nameplate on a door, or on a display, fine, trying to give Chell any more characterization than that would destory the character in the games).
TNG was really where ST came into it's prime regarding scientific accuracy, flux capacitors and all!