Seriously, I always thought the N64 controller was *the* masterpiece of ergonomic controller design. Not only did it fit most hands perfectly, but it was versatile, offering three distinct gripping areas, the middle one feeling nicely like a gun for those shooter games.
Now they go and throw it away for a DualShock PSX rip-off? Bah.
Shigeru Miyamoto commented in an interview that while Americans generally liked the N64 controller, Japanese people generally considered it too large.
If history is any indicator, they'll make one or two expensive expansion devices which will be supported by 1 good game, and 10-15 utterly horrid games that were produced only to take advantage of the "expansion gimmick".
Don't you think the history of Nintendo is more relevant than the history of the (Atari 2600 / Colecovision / Sega Master System ) ?
Nintendo made the R.O.B. for the original NES, which qualifies as an expensive expansion device, though it was supported by only 2 games that I remember. I don't think they made anything for the SNES. The 64DD perhaps qualifies for the N64, but it was only released in Japan, so I don't know much about it. Recently the trend has been to smaller, relatively cheap expansions that are released with a good game and continue to be well supported, such as the Rumble Pack and Expansion Pack.
Yay, a box for those of us who have small hands. A 10 year old or a nerdess.
Or, say, as a random example, a Japanese person.
Re:You couldn't be more wrong.
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And obviously whoever is behind this, fears death, because they haven't taken accountability for it. These people aren't fearless, they're cowards.
Bullshit. They obviously don't have a deathwish, as they haven't taken accountability for it. They are significantly more likely to die now then they were a few days ago, and they knew that would happen. Cowards wouldn't have done this.
Making these terrorists out to be somehow braver than Americans is simply false. Up to 300 firefighters risked and lost their lives trying to save people at the WTC. They knew they were at risk, and put their lives in harms way to help someone else. This is bravery on a national scale. A few terrorists lost their lives, to perform a dispicable and cowardly act, this is not bravery.
The firefighters risked a chance at dying, knowing that even if they did they could almost certaintly save people. The terrorists *planned* to die in order to accomplish their mission, and must have known there was a chance of dying without accomplishing the mission. That is bravery of the very highest level. Yes, their act was despicable, but being evil is not the same thing as being cowardly, and being brave is not the same thing as being good.
Take a look at Zillions of Games (http://www.zillions-of-games.com). It plays chess (and tons of variations), checkers, and many, many other perfect-information games, and has it's own LISP-ish programming language to add your own games.
Windows comes "free" on mainstream PCs today because computer sellers put it there. At least one (HP? Compaq? I don't remember) has said if there was an alternative to Windows they would take it.
Here's an attempt at an alternative. There definitely *is* a market.
What makes a religion "legitimate" in the eyes of the government?
Going totally from memory, it requires "sincere belief". There was some case of a prisoner claiming his religion required some sort of better treatment than he was getting, I think he wanted certain foods, or some such that way. It was pretty clearly a case (like this) of making up a religion for a specific purpose.
I don't recall it real clearly, but it was something like that. Hopefully this is enough someone interested can find more info about it.
The FCC's e911 regulation means that mobile phones will now give their location using GPS coordinates...
To pick a bone, this is wrong. Mobile phones won't come with GPS receivers.
You're both wrong. Some, but not all, phones will come with GPS receicers. e911 regulations have already forced the cell phone companies to declare whether they are using a handset-based method (almost certiantly GPS) or a network-based method. There are companies going both ways. Sprint will be using GPS.
What the hell are you talking about!? NVidia doesn't advertise for the X-Box either.
Not true. See http://www.nvidia.com/products.nsf/xbox.html
They have a list of their products by platform, and under Game Console they have Xbox and not Indrema. I agree that you can't blame NVidia for Indrema's troubles, but they certaintly aren't treating the two consoles equally.
I wonder what, if anything, this will mean for GameXchange, the game project site that CollabNet built for Indrema.
The big subject of Indrema's dev chat yesterday was what to do with IDN and GameXchange if Indrema goes under. (Which they will unless they get more funding. They said they should know by the end of the week.)
Nintendo is going to die a horrible death when it discovers its biggest franchise go out of style in about 9 months, and then all the money spent on special edition Gameboys, games, and addonpacks that do nothing but feature Pokemon colors and characters. And I will look forward to it.
Don't be an idiot. Have any of Nintendo's big video game franchises ever gone out of style? (or any other major game makers franchise, for that matter.) Zelda's still going strong, and Mario's still around. Some twenty years after the original, Donkey Kong 64 made more money than any other video game in 1999 and was the fifth best selling game in 2000. The four best selling video games were all Pokemon, as was the seventh. According to Nintendo, Pokemon game sales accounted for a sixth of all video game sales in 2000.
Video game franchises almost never "go out of style" in nine months, and no other video game franchise has ever come close to the popularity of Pokemon. It is more likely that Microsoft will go out of style in nine months than Pokemon doing so.
Two words: Offline multiplayer. That's the reason I prefer console games to PC games. I don't know if the XBox will have enough good multiplayer games that I'll want it, though. Computer ports are generally very bad for offline multiplayer - split screen FPSs suck, IMO.
Civilivation was not innovative. It was based on the board game of the same name made by Avalon Hill - a game that is in Games Magazine's Hall of Fame. The game industry does pretty good at innovating. The video game industry is another story.
This is not a "challenge to game designers". Nor does it have anything at all to do with the "game industry". There is no shortage of innovation in the game industry, where gameplay has been and always will be king.
The problem is with video game designers, and the video game industry. If the whole video game industry weren't under a collective delusion that they are the game industry, they could learn a lot from standard games.
No, I'm not discussing the portability of the Java bytecode. I'm talking the portability of Java source code, which can be compiled to either Java bytecode or a native x86 executable in the exact same manner as C or C++ source code.
But in my feeling (and Bjarne Stroustrup's opinion too) Java is not platform-independent, but a proprietary platform unto itself.
You're apparently not aware of GCJ. It compiles Java natively, so even if you consider the JVM to be a single platform, Java is still platform-independent.
something that would have been really inappropriate to do in Java, as this was meant to be a free downloadable app for which tech support costs had to be near zero, and we could not expect our users to install a Java runtime.
A free downloadable app can be written in Java without requiring a runtime - or it can be downloaded and run securely by using a runtime.
You also don't have to wait until a needed version of some targeted runtime is available on any platform to be able to run your application with cross-platform C++ libraries like Xerces - because there are no runtimes.
With GCJ you don't need to wait for a needed version of some targeted runtime - because, while there are runtimes, you don't need them. You may need to wait for the compiler, but that's the case for every language at first.
If more powerful players than you want to trip each other up with competing initiatives - well, just let them, and go on about your business by using open source like Xerces-C.
If you're going purely open-source, you're probably using GCC anyway, and 3.0 will include the ability to compile Java, so that's no reason to avoid Java.
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Sega was in first place and actually the Dreamcast still has more units Sold than PS2, Xbox and Gamecube.
But the Genesis was in third place for over a year, wasn't it?
Yes, but there were irrelevent long before that.
Not really. The Genesis was in third place for well over a year (I think), and the Dreamcast was not irrelevent throughout it's entire existance.
Xbox will be dead in a year. The game industry doesn't give a shit about third place (ask Sega).
Sega stayed alive in third place for considerably more than a year.
Seriously, I always thought the N64 controller was *the* masterpiece of ergonomic controller design. Not only did it fit most hands perfectly, but it was versatile, offering three distinct gripping areas, the middle one feeling nicely like a gun for those shooter games.
Now they go and throw it away for a DualShock PSX rip-off? Bah.
Shigeru Miyamoto commented in an interview that while Americans generally liked the N64 controller, Japanese people generally considered it too large.
If history is any indicator, they'll make one or two expensive expansion devices which will be supported by 1 good game, and 10-15 utterly horrid games that were produced only to take advantage of the "expansion gimmick".
Don't you think the history of Nintendo is more relevant than the history of the (Atari 2600 / Colecovision / Sega Master System ) ?
Nintendo made the R.O.B. for the original NES, which qualifies as an expensive expansion device, though it was supported by only 2 games that I remember. I don't think they made anything for the SNES. The 64DD perhaps qualifies for the N64, but it was only released in Japan, so I don't know much about it. Recently the trend has been to smaller, relatively cheap expansions that are released with a good game and continue to be well supported, such as the Rumble Pack and Expansion Pack.
Yay, a box for those of us who have small hands. A 10 year old or a nerdess.
Or, say, as a random example, a Japanese person.
And obviously whoever is behind this, fears death, because they haven't taken accountability for it. These people aren't fearless, they're cowards.
Bullshit. They obviously don't have a deathwish, as they haven't taken accountability for it. They are significantly more likely to die now then they were a few days ago, and they knew that would happen. Cowards wouldn't have done this.
Making these terrorists out to be somehow braver than Americans is simply false. Up to 300 firefighters risked and lost their lives trying to save people at the WTC. They knew they were at risk, and put their lives in harms way to help someone else. This is bravery on a national scale. A few terrorists lost their lives, to perform a dispicable and cowardly act, this is not bravery.
The firefighters risked a chance at dying, knowing that even if they did they could almost certaintly save people. The terrorists *planned* to die in order to accomplish their mission, and must have known there was a chance of dying without accomplishing the mission. That is bravery of the very highest level. Yes, their act was despicable, but being evil is not the same thing as being cowardly, and being brave is not the same thing as being good.
Take a look at Zillions of Games (http://www.zillions-of-games.com). It plays chess (and tons of variations), checkers, and many, many other perfect-information games, and has it's own LISP-ish programming language to add your own games.
Windows comes "free" on mainstream PCs today because computer sellers put it there. At least one (HP? Compaq? I don't remember) has said if there was an alternative to Windows they would take it.
Here's an attempt at an alternative. There definitely *is* a market.
What makes a religion "legitimate" in the eyes of the government?
Going totally from memory, it requires "sincere belief". There was some case of a prisoner claiming his religion required some sort of better treatment than he was getting, I think he wanted certain foods, or some such that way. It was pretty clearly a case (like this) of making up a religion for a specific purpose.
I don't recall it real clearly, but it was something like that. Hopefully this is enough someone interested can find more info about it.
The FCC's e911 regulation means that mobile phones will now give their location using GPS coordinates...
To pick a bone, this is wrong. Mobile phones won't come with GPS receivers.
You're both wrong. Some, but not all, phones will come with GPS receicers. e911 regulations have already forced the cell phone companies to declare whether they are using a handset-based method (almost certiantly GPS) or a network-based method. There are companies going both ways. Sprint will be using GPS.
What the hell are you talking about!? NVidia doesn't advertise for the X-Box either.
Not true. See http://www.nvidia.com/products.nsf/xbox.html
They have a list of their products by platform, and under Game Console they have Xbox and not Indrema. I agree that you can't blame NVidia for Indrema's troubles, but they certaintly aren't treating the two consoles equally.
I wonder what, if anything, this will mean for GameXchange, the game project site that CollabNet built for Indrema.
The big subject of Indrema's dev chat yesterday was what to do with IDN and GameXchange if Indrema goes under. (Which they will unless they get more funding. They said they should know by the end of the week.)
Someone suspects Microsoft of violating the GPL.
This isn't news for anyone, and it doesn't matter.
Nintendo is going to die a horrible death when it discovers its biggest franchise go out of style in about 9 months, and then all the money spent on special edition Gameboys, games, and addonpacks that do nothing but feature Pokemon colors and characters. And I will look forward to it.
Don't be an idiot. Have any of Nintendo's big video game franchises ever gone out of style? (or any other major game makers franchise, for that matter.) Zelda's still going strong, and Mario's still around. Some twenty years after the original, Donkey Kong 64 made more money than any other video game in 1999 and was the fifth best selling game in 2000. The four best selling video games were all Pokemon, as was the seventh. According to Nintendo, Pokemon game sales accounted for a sixth of all video game sales in 2000.
Video game franchises almost never "go out of style" in nine months, and no other video game franchise has ever come close to the popularity of Pokemon. It is more likely that Microsoft will go out of style in nine months than Pokemon doing so.
Two words: Offline multiplayer. That's the reason I prefer console games to PC games. I don't know if the XBox will have enough good multiplayer games that I'll want it, though. Computer ports are generally very bad for offline multiplayer - split screen FPSs suck, IMO.
But the X-Box hasn't been released yet!
Well, you could argue this on semantics. It hasn't been released publicly, but I'll bet Jeff Tunnell already has one.
The difference between Katz and napster users is napster users exchange other peoples IP for free, Katz wanted to do it for money.
Napster wanted to make money off of their service. That was what Metallica objected to most strongly.
They did make a Diablo film last century. "Diablo: The Calling" was just the cutscenes from Diablo II, but it was a film, and released in 1999.
Google turned up this Salon article about it.
20 years? Come on. That's how long the gaming industry has existed!
Well, give or take a couple of orders of magnitude.
There were games before video games, believe it or not.
Civilivation was not innovative. It was based on the board game of the same name made by Avalon Hill - a game that is in Games Magazine's Hall of Fame. The game industry does pretty good at innovating. The video game industry is another story.
This is not a "challenge to game designers". Nor does it have anything at all to do with the "game industry". There is no shortage of innovation in the game industry, where gameplay has been and always will be king.
The problem is with video game designers, and the video game industry. If the whole video game industry weren't under a collective delusion that they are the game industry, they could learn a lot from standard games.
PrettyPoly is another option. It's still in alpha though. See prettypoly.sourceforge.net.
No, I'm not discussing the portability of the Java bytecode. I'm talking the portability of Java source code, which can be compiled to either Java bytecode or a native x86 executable in the exact same manner as C or C++ source code.
But in my feeling (and Bjarne Stroustrup's opinion too) Java is not platform-independent, but a proprietary platform unto itself.
You're apparently not aware of GCJ. It compiles Java natively, so even if you consider the JVM to be a single platform, Java is still platform-independent.
something that would have been really inappropriate to do in Java, as this was meant to be a free downloadable app for which tech support costs had to be near zero, and we could not expect our users to install a Java runtime.
A free downloadable app can be written in Java without requiring a runtime - or it can be downloaded and run securely by using a runtime.
You also don't have to wait until a needed version of some targeted runtime is available on any platform to be able to run your application with cross-platform C++ libraries like Xerces - because there are no runtimes.
With GCJ you don't need to wait for a needed version of some targeted runtime - because, while there are runtimes, you don't need them. You may need to wait for the compiler, but that's the case for every language at first.
If more powerful players than you want to trip each other up with competing initiatives - well, just let them, and go on about your business by using open source like Xerces-C.
If you're going purely open-source, you're probably using GCC anyway, and 3.0 will include the ability to compile Java, so that's no reason to avoid Java.