MegaMek is not fully official. The canon Timber Wolves are Primary, A, B, C, D and Pryde. They all have missiles. Also, the descriptions of omnimechs make it clear that not all weapon systems are necessarily omni-spec, some are actually hardwired.
The thing is, what power gamers miss is the SPIRIT of the game itself, and make up pathetic rationalizations for breaking it willy-nilly. Then again, most all of them can do is fight on featureless boards. Taking your MegaMek example, most powergamers in the various leagues drop from the game as soon as people start putting out serious terrain, just like they didn't bother to show up for serious tabletop games that featured terrains and other things that made it far more tactical. And that's the thing the "highly optimised" setups miss out on. They have just crunched some numbers to benefit them on a featureless table, or at the most minimal terrain. The canon setups are based on the spirit of the game, that battlefields vary from plains, to tight-up urban combat, or combat in the mountains, or forests, for a certain amount of self-sufficience according to what the spirit of the game and its setting is.
It made a lot of sense, actually, especially when looking at how true it was to the boardgame(that is, VERY true. There were no official published Timber Wolf variants without missiles for example, only power gaming munchkins who are mentally unable to use common sense published variants)
MW4 made more sense. And in fact, the Omnimechs DID have omni slots that could take any weapon type. And those omni slots were in the expected places. Like in the arms on the Timber Wolf/Mad Cat for example.
Dual display, or real SGI dual head? (Back in the day, dual head capability on SGI workstations was having 2 physical users able to use the same machine simultaneously, with one display, one keyboard+mouse each. It was a major feature for Octane's and Onyx's)
"I bet you're the type that hand-codes everything in assembler "because it's faster"."
Only if the situation requires it. Then again, I get well-paid for when I actually have to do so, and the compiler monkeys from academia are unable to deal with it. What you can bet on, however, is that I map out exactly what needs to be achieved, what problems I will encounter, and what solutions are appropriate, before I even consider writing the first line of code.
As for "faster", in quite a few cases, it still is, because compilers are still only as smart as the programmer who wrote it. But mostly, I use assembler in embedded apps nowadays, and more for exact control and issues with fitting it all into memory, like when there's only 10kiB available for use at BEST.
Other than that, I use C++, Java, Fortran and Erlang. Looking into ADA also.
"If you're shipping more library code than application code, that's a good thing. It means you're not reinventing the wheel."
If you never reinvent the wheel, you do not get any better wheels. Now, we do have better wheels, and our vehicles are far more efficient, because some engineer somewhere said "To hell with all the conservative and/or lazy retards who thinks this is ok because it works, I'll make a better wheel"
"Great! Put em in the GC library, so the rest of us don't have to think about it."
Rather, remove non-thinking academically trained compiler monkeys from the loop, makes for far more efficient and reliable software.
"However, "making code run faster" is what you do after the code runs, and does what it's supposed to do, and is modular, flexible, and maintainable. And even then, you're often faced with a very clear question of programmer time vs CPU time. Sometimes it's worth it (games, embedded systems) -- often times, you do the simplest performance hacks you can, and throw hardware at the rest."
No, making code run faster is something any serious developer does already in the design stage. Modularity and flexibility is evaluated for necessity at this stage too. Not all software needs to be either of those. As for throwing more hardware at it, that's just a crutch. I've already seen some competitors of mine collapse because they ran into situations where a doubling of the hardware only lead to 10% improved performance. Two weeks extra programmer time yielded 30%, without requiring hardware upgrades, and the associated costs of additional space, power and cooling requirements(Anyone who doesn't factor that in is extremely stupid)
Overall, laziness has turned the computing world into an incredibly resource wasting field. I'd actually go so far as to say that most companies have a waste approaching 50% when you actually analyze how much flooring space is used, how much power, how much cooling, how much unnecessary cabling. In fact, long-term thinking has, just like in economy, been told to "go to hell", for short-term comfort.
"Erm, why the hell not? Good programmers, even the best programmers (in fact especially the best programmers), will just use qsort() (or the equivalent for the language they're using). Then, IF performance on their lowest-spec target hardware is unacceptable, they will profile their code and find out what's taking the time. And then, IF it's the sorting algorithm that's the bottleneck, only THEN will they implement a more specific version. Anything else is a waste of time and an additional risk of introducing unnecessary bugs."
Wrong. Mediocre(at best) programmers who think they are good will do that. GOOD programmers, especially the best ones, will look at what the app requires in the design stage, before even the first line of code is written.
There were programs like Enforcer that added 3rd-party MMU. The lack of changes to support MMU in AmigaOS itself was due to management not wanting to do it.
Actually, SGI's X-server and Window Manager are the only ones I've used I've felt have been decent, especially when working with graphics.
Personally, I'd just like to see anyone associated with X development(No matter which project) dragged out to a dump and shot, for perpetrating a serious crime against computing .
Yes, but it's a lesser issue, compared to all the issues with piston engines, and compared to the advantages the Wankel engines bring. 1.3l Wankel comparable to a 2l+ fourstroke piston engine in power output, less mass, less space needed for the engine, so more optimally designed crumplezones can be designed, and the car overall lighter anyway is a win-win
"Driving smaller cars with smaller, more efficient engines uses less fuel. Modern 2L 4cyl engines can generate as much power as a gas guzzling V8 (I am sitting at 124kW from a naturally aspirated 2L motor and fuel consumption is BETTER than an equivalently powered V6 from another manufacturer)."
Even more useful would be to stop using piston engines. Wankel engines like the Renesis for example are far more fuel and power efficient than piston engines of the same volume and weight, and very easy to adapt to alternative fuels.
Speaking as someone who's got some schooling and background in graphical design: No, I wouldn't hire that designer. Photoshop is just that much more useful. Odds are the "designer" working with gimp will be spending so much time coding that he won't be doing much real work. Even with the film gimp modifications etc, it can't compete with Photoshop, really. And that's feature wise.
When it comes to workflow/UI, it's even worse. GIMP is designed by a programmer for another programmer, thinking that it works well for everyone. Photoshop... well, let's just say that when I tossed it in front of my dad the first time yeaaars ago, as a photographer without previous computer image editing experience, he found it perfectly intuitive. That's because hundreds of graphical artists, photographers etc have shaped the forming of it over the years, and the Adobe coders having to do it the way the artists like it. Another awesome program from Adobe that has no match at all in the Open Source world: Lightroom. Yes, the program can be sluggish when working with large pictures/large collections. But it's still better than the alternatives, because you get an excellent overview of what you're doing.
That's a serious problem with GUI/workflow development, and most obvious in the Open Source world: If you come with suggestions for improvements, you may just get told to fuck off, basically, which happened to my dad. He spent about 5 hours writing an email, outlining what he thought needed changing in GIMP after testing it.
And there we get to both the massive multiplayer part, namely, ASK, and the curiosity part, namely start looking around.
One of the big drawbacks with the game having grown, and it having been made easier and more "accessible" over the years, is that rookies actually have it harder now. Sure, it's easier to get into ships, it's easier to be a tackler in PvP etc. But you can't really luck out in your exploration. For that, you need to train lots of skills. I remember back in late 2004/early 2005, a friend of mine was a rookie, 3 months in-game. While others, far more rich people were still afraid of low-sec etc, and were fairly poor due to just doing lvl 3's(And lvl 4's were not fully mapped out yet), this guy was already cruising low-sec, ratting in 0.0 and farming complexes, making several hundreds of millions of ISK in a good week. At the time, that was a HUGE amount of ISK. The thing is, no probing was needed to find complexes, which meant rookies could luck out in their exploration. Instead, caving in to pressure, the game has been wowified, i.e made more "accessible", but also more linear, which is kinda sad.
For those who are familiar with the subject, and the terrain, yes it does. Simply put: To reach where they want to go, they have to cross crevasses, steep(3m+) ice walls, extremely rough ice that is also sharp etc
Actually, while testing the Apocrypha client on SISI, my GMA950 equipped laptop is actually getting more FPS in space using Premium Lite than it ever got with the classic client.
Because EVE is far more tactical, and offers strategic play too.
And don't bring up the nonsense about how "Jumpgate requires SKILLBASED piloting", it's just bullshit. It requires twitch-based reflexes and some skills pertaining to that, while EVE requires a more tactical skillset, that is, analysing your position, strengths and weaknesses of your group/ship, of the ships of your enemies etc.
A 2-way conflict is nothing at all compared to the big scraps.
And from your description, it sounds like you're a mission runner based in empire, with a corp that doesn't know how to fit for PvP properly etc?
The thing is, EVE requires you to THINK: You have to MAKE the tide change, you're not given that for free. Then again, that's also why the average age in EVE is over 25, while WoW's is below 20.
WoW's UI? You mean that shit which reduces the need for player skill by automating so many things that you may just as well use a bot?
Flight IS fun. It's not Star Wars. It's not Freelancer. If you want to play those games, go play those games. EVE focuses on a larger scale. Hell, we wish we could get rid of all the dopeheads who've gotten delusions of being Luke Skywalker from the game.
As for skillpoints. Specialize. And, it's not WoW. A fairly new player who's learned the game mechanics well can beat veterans. It's just a matter of getting past 2 things: Psychological blocks regarding "level"/age, and to actually engage the brain. KNowledge of game mechanics and the act of using your brain is more important than the skill points. There's even been a few hilarious events lately where swarms of pilots in noobships(the utterly weak starter ships) have taken out highly skilled pilots in Heavy Assault Cruisers. Meanwhile, in contrast to that, WoW is all about memorizing encounters, using specific UI addons and stringing up macros, and little else.
Have fun trying to setup a 10-way political clusterfuck complete with battles, logistics, intel gathering etc involving hundreds and even thousands of players using something like D&D. It just shows what the problem is: People just can't envision the scale of things.
Content in EVE is playing together with other players, with or against yet more players.
Tactics is the art of how to deploy your forces to achieve an objective, for example on platoon level how to place your squads, if you do bounding overwatch or travelling overwatch while advancing etc.
Strategy is 95% the shuffling of material, troops and intel so the tacticians can do their job. I.e, logistics. The remaining 5% is trying to figure out where the enemy is, where he'll go, and how you can disrupt that by where you want your forces. Which is also logistics.
Slashdot Mirror
MegaMek is not fully official. The canon Timber Wolves are Primary, A, B, C, D and Pryde. They all have missiles. Also, the descriptions of omnimechs make it clear that not all weapon systems are necessarily omni-spec, some are actually hardwired.
The thing is, what power gamers miss is the SPIRIT of the game itself, and make up pathetic rationalizations for breaking it willy-nilly. Then again, most all of them can do is fight on featureless boards. Taking your MegaMek example, most powergamers in the various leagues drop from the game as soon as people start putting out serious terrain, just like they didn't bother to show up for serious tabletop games that featured terrains and other things that made it far more tactical. And that's the thing the "highly optimised" setups miss out on. They have just crunched some numbers to benefit them on a featureless table, or at the most minimal terrain. The canon setups are based on the spirit of the game, that battlefields vary from plains, to tight-up urban combat, or combat in the mountains, or forests, for a certain amount of self-sufficience according to what the spirit of the game and its setting is.
It made a lot of sense, actually, especially when looking at how true it was to the boardgame(that is, VERY true. There were no official published Timber Wolf variants without missiles for example, only power gaming munchkins who are mentally unable to use common sense published variants)
MW4 made more sense. And in fact, the Omnimechs DID have omni slots that could take any weapon type. And those omni slots were in the expected places. Like in the arms on the Timber Wolf/Mad Cat for example.
Dual display, or real SGI dual head? (Back in the day, dual head capability on SGI workstations was having 2 physical users able to use the same machine simultaneously, with one display, one keyboard+mouse each. It was a major feature for Octane's and Onyx's)
"I bet you're the type that hand-codes everything in assembler "because it's faster"."
Only if the situation requires it. Then again, I get well-paid for when I actually have to do so, and the compiler monkeys from academia are unable to deal with it. What you can bet on, however, is that I map out exactly what needs to be achieved, what problems I will encounter, and what solutions are appropriate, before I even consider writing the first line of code.
As for "faster", in quite a few cases, it still is, because compilers are still only as smart as the programmer who wrote it. But mostly, I use assembler in embedded apps nowadays, and more for exact control and issues with fitting it all into memory, like when there's only 10kiB available for use at BEST.
Other than that, I use C++, Java, Fortran and Erlang. Looking into ADA also.
"If you're shipping more library code than application code, that's a good thing. It means you're not reinventing the wheel."
If you never reinvent the wheel, you do not get any better wheels. Now, we do have better wheels, and our vehicles are far more efficient, because some engineer somewhere said "To hell with all the conservative and/or lazy retards who thinks this is ok because it works, I'll make a better wheel"
"Great! Put em in the GC library, so the rest of us don't have to think about it."
Rather, remove non-thinking academically trained compiler monkeys from the loop, makes for far more efficient and reliable software.
"However, "making code run faster" is what you do after the code runs, and does what it's supposed to do, and is modular, flexible, and maintainable. And even then, you're often faced with a very clear question of programmer time vs CPU time. Sometimes it's worth it (games, embedded systems) -- often times, you do the simplest performance hacks you can, and throw hardware at the rest."
No, making code run faster is something any serious developer does already in the design stage. Modularity and flexibility is evaluated for necessity at this stage too. Not all software needs to be either of those. As for throwing more hardware at it, that's just a crutch. I've already seen some competitors of mine collapse because they ran into situations where a doubling of the hardware only lead to 10% improved performance. Two weeks extra programmer time yielded 30%, without requiring hardware upgrades, and the associated costs of additional space, power and cooling requirements(Anyone who doesn't factor that in is extremely stupid)
Overall, laziness has turned the computing world into an incredibly resource wasting field. I'd actually go so far as to say that most companies have a waste approaching 50% when you actually analyze how much flooring space is used, how much power, how much cooling, how much unnecessary cabling. In fact, long-term thinking has, just like in economy, been told to "go to hell", for short-term comfort.
"Erm, why the hell not? Good programmers, even the best programmers (in fact especially the best programmers), will just use qsort() (or the equivalent for the language they're using). Then, IF performance on their lowest-spec target hardware is unacceptable, they will profile their code and find out what's taking the time. And then, IF it's the sorting algorithm that's the bottleneck, only THEN will they implement a more specific version. Anything else is a waste of time and an additional risk of introducing unnecessary bugs."
Wrong. Mediocre(at best) programmers who think they are good will do that. GOOD programmers, especially the best ones, will look at what the app requires in the design stage, before even the first line of code is written.
There were programs like Enforcer that added 3rd-party MMU. The lack of changes to support MMU in AmigaOS itself was due to management not wanting to do it.
Actually, SGI's X-server and Window Manager are the only ones I've used I've felt have been decent, especially when working with graphics.
Personally, I'd just like to see anyone associated with X development(No matter which project) dragged out to a dump and shot, for perpetrating a serious crime against computing .
Yes, but it's a lesser issue, compared to all the issues with piston engines, and compared to the advantages the Wankel engines bring. 1.3l Wankel comparable to a 2l+ fourstroke piston engine in power output, less mass, less space needed for the engine, so more optimally designed crumplezones can be designed, and the car overall lighter anyway is a win-win
"Driving smaller cars with smaller, more efficient engines uses less fuel. Modern 2L 4cyl engines can generate as much power as a gas guzzling V8 (I am sitting at 124kW from a naturally aspirated 2L motor and fuel consumption is BETTER than an equivalently powered V6 from another manufacturer)."
Even more useful would be to stop using piston engines. Wankel engines like the Renesis for example are far more fuel and power efficient than piston engines of the same volume and weight, and very easy to adapt to alternative fuels.
Speaking as someone who's got some schooling and background in graphical design: No, I wouldn't hire that designer. Photoshop is just that much more useful. Odds are the "designer" working with gimp will be spending so much time coding that he won't be doing much real work. Even with the film gimp modifications etc, it can't compete with Photoshop, really. And that's feature wise.
When it comes to workflow/UI, it's even worse. GIMP is designed by a programmer for another programmer, thinking that it works well for everyone. Photoshop... well, let's just say that when I tossed it in front of my dad the first time yeaaars ago, as a photographer without previous computer image editing experience, he found it perfectly intuitive. That's because hundreds of graphical artists, photographers etc have shaped the forming of it over the years, and the Adobe coders having to do it the way the artists like it. Another awesome program from Adobe that has no match at all in the Open Source world: Lightroom. Yes, the program can be sluggish when working with large pictures/large collections. But it's still better than the alternatives, because you get an excellent overview of what you're doing.
That's a serious problem with GUI/workflow development, and most obvious in the Open Source world: If you come with suggestions for improvements, you may just get told to fuck off, basically, which happened to my dad. He spent about 5 hours writing an email, outlining what he thought needed changing in GIMP after testing it.
And there we get to both the massive multiplayer part, namely, ASK, and the curiosity part, namely start looking around.
One of the big drawbacks with the game having grown, and it having been made easier and more "accessible" over the years, is that rookies actually have it harder now. Sure, it's easier to get into ships, it's easier to be a tackler in PvP etc. But you can't really luck out in your exploration. For that, you need to train lots of skills. I remember back in late 2004/early 2005, a friend of mine was a rookie, 3 months in-game. While others, far more rich people were still afraid of low-sec etc, and were fairly poor due to just doing lvl 3's(And lvl 4's were not fully mapped out yet), this guy was already cruising low-sec, ratting in 0.0 and farming complexes, making several hundreds of millions of ISK in a good week. At the time, that was a HUGE amount of ISK. The thing is, no probing was needed to find complexes, which meant rookies could luck out in their exploration. Instead, caving in to pressure, the game has been wowified, i.e made more "accessible", but also more linear, which is kinda sad.
For those who are familiar with the subject, and the terrain, yes it does. Simply put: To reach where they want to go, they have to cross crevasses, steep(3m+) ice walls, extremely rough ice that is also sharp etc
*Shrugs* Don't really know. I know I'm not alone there either. But I also betatested the original Jumpgate so that could be the reason.
As to the game. It's... nice, though I still prefer the more tactical and strategic elements of EVE.
Signups have been open since summer last year, and I got my beta account in december
It's been available for beta testing for a while now ;)
Actually, while testing the Apocrypha client on SISI, my GMA950 equipped laptop is actually getting more FPS in space using Premium Lite than it ever got with the classic client.
Because EVE is far more tactical, and offers strategic play too.
And don't bring up the nonsense about how "Jumpgate requires SKILLBASED piloting", it's just bullshit. It requires twitch-based reflexes and some skills pertaining to that, while EVE requires a more tactical skillset, that is, analysing your position, strengths and weaknesses of your group/ship, of the ships of your enemies etc.
How about using your brain and looking under scheduled tasks? Just like you'd look for something like that under Cron-jobs on any Unix platform.
A 2-way conflict is nothing at all compared to the big scraps.
And from your description, it sounds like you're a mission runner based in empire, with a corp that doesn't know how to fit for PvP properly etc?
The thing is, EVE requires you to THINK: You have to MAKE the tide change, you're not given that for free. Then again, that's also why the average age in EVE is over 25, while WoW's is below 20.
Quest lines? this is not WoW.
WoW's UI? You mean that shit which reduces the need for player skill by automating so many things that you may just as well use a bot?
Flight IS fun. It's not Star Wars. It's not Freelancer. If you want to play those games, go play those games. EVE focuses on a larger scale. Hell, we wish we could get rid of all the dopeheads who've gotten delusions of being Luke Skywalker from the game.
As for skillpoints. Specialize. And, it's not WoW. A fairly new player who's learned the game mechanics well can beat veterans. It's just a matter of getting past 2 things: Psychological blocks regarding "level"/age, and to actually engage the brain. KNowledge of game mechanics and the act of using your brain is more important than the skill points. There's even been a few hilarious events lately where swarms of pilots in noobships(the utterly weak starter ships) have taken out highly skilled pilots in Heavy Assault Cruisers. Meanwhile, in contrast to that, WoW is all about memorizing encounters, using specific UI addons and stringing up macros, and little else.
Have fun trying to setup a 10-way political clusterfuck complete with battles, logistics, intel gathering etc involving hundreds and even thousands of players using something like D&D. It just shows what the problem is: People just can't envision the scale of things.
Content in EVE is playing together with other players, with or against yet more players.
Missions are just there to make money. The content of the game is the player vs player interactions, be it combat, trade, diplomacy or whatever.
Tactics is certainly not a synonym for strategy.
Tactics is the art of how to deploy your forces to achieve an objective, for example on platoon level how to place your squads, if you do bounding overwatch or travelling overwatch while advancing etc.
Strategy is 95% the shuffling of material, troops and intel so the tacticians can do their job. I.e, logistics. The remaining 5% is trying to figure out where the enemy is, where he'll go, and how you can disrupt that by where you want your forces. Which is also logistics.