The problem you have is not with DRM, it's with restrictive DRM.
To have a true DRM we need to have a system that is supported on all three platforms, Macs, Windows and Linux. At the same time we have to have freedom to move our "account" from one to the other, the ability to redownload music and the ability to have a way to copy the files in case of issues.
An even better DRM would be a server based system so if the server ever closed shop it would unlock all the music and files, of course this would never happen because of coporations but it's a possibility.
Why are we arresting these men under a Wire act that was written in 1961. The simple answer? We can't prosecute them under any other law. Gambling is illegal but because they arn't in america they arn't liable.
The sad thing is that Americans want gambling, obviously. But they are accusing a EUROPEAN company, of breaking an American statute dealing with american "wires".
Btw check the wikipedia article closely. "The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and not other types of online gambling. The Supreme Court has not officially ruled on the meaning of the Federal Wire Act as it pertains to online gambling." The real question is was the betting on american sports?
The sad fact is as an American I feel bad in this case. Every time we take an obscure law and hold someone under it, something that someone goes "oh we can nail them for that" and others go "that's clever", I die a little inside. The founding fathers didn't say "let's be clever" They said "let's make a country and laws". They didn't look for some loophole with the british, they busted some barrels of tea, got liquored up and won a war (not all in that order or the same night... I hope).
If America really believes something like this is wrong make a law. If America really believes something like this is acceptable revoke the law. America is a very easy place but we make everything complex like this shit.
Don't hold your breath, I have a feeling that nugget will still be there at least for Vista.
I'm still waiting for biometrics where I sit infront of a computer my personal login immediatly gets set up before I turn on the monitor. My data is pulled up, and if I want I can lock it so someone else can look at the code in my seat.
"What are your thoughts -- do Firefox and the open source community welcome this kind of analysis?"
No we prefer to be ignorant of the problems in software we write, we prefer to assume everything is perfect.
OF COURSE people prefer indepth analysis. I'm sure someone was like "damm it" when they got the report because they thought their code was flawproof but with the whole world as a consumer, people want to know what they can fix and make better, especially firefox who's core idea is create a browser that doesn't have problems like this.
Firefox is trying to build a better browser, the only way that can happen is if they get great and specific feedback ("the browser's too slow" doesn't help. "The browser's too slow when I go to this site" does.) Why would anyone not one an indepth analysis of a product you're currently working on? (the only time that sucks is if youre finishing it up for the final version and you will never work on it again and someone tells you about a year's worth of work left)
Basically any game can fit into one of these genres, many will fit in two (an action role playing game. An driving Simulation)
You can expand your genre list more and more but the fact is every time you have them all next year there's a new one that people are trying to make up. However it's not a "GTA" genre, at best it's a free roaming genre, but in reality it's an Action Adventure game.
There's many sub genres that can tacked on underneath it all. The only problem with games with this simplistic approach is Niche games and stuff that defies convention, you will never be able to label those because the whole point of them is that they defy conventions like genres, that's why many places have Miscellaneous, as well as "compilation" which spans all genres (aka Activision Anthology)
This is the best answer though because it's specific and precise. Most games will be one genre with a second as a sub genre (the Adventure game that has a lot of action and so on) but that's fine.
It's more stable then expected, but most critics (at least security critics) still say it's FAR buggier then it should be.
Either way though it's only the first RC, there's almost definatly 2 behind it coming down the pipe, so it's not big deal. still Vista will only give us marginal improvements on XP except graphics then demand double the hardware resources, which is completely unfair because at the same time I'll have to still keep my Anti-virus on the system, my Firewall, and so on, so the little benefits they give will not be enough.
The funniest thing is Directx 10 will not be adopted like people think, sure for office programs it will, but when Doom 4 ships will carmack say "fuck the Xp users" or rather "oh there's about equal users for xp and vista.. why not just do Directx9?" Somehow I think the latter is what most companies will say. It's one thing to adopt a better API, it's quite another thing to screw over half the buying public, when on a PC you already need every sale you can get.
Schilling is a great pitcher, McFarlane is a great artist, Salvatore is a great writer (screw you for what you did in Vector prime.... still pissed)
Why does this sound like a chance to watch a epic disaster from the begining. It's like the hindenburg only starting from when they started working on the airship. Titanic as the first beam is laid down.
All I can say is this will be hilarious. None of these guys know anything about programming (McFarlane's work with Soul Calibur doesn't count), and unless they are working with RPG Maker, I can already see arguements between these three and their programming team. I can also see no arguements, and people given free reign as programmers. Either way we're talking landmark disaster the size of Daikatana, but with out the retarded lead programmer.
Think about it, with this chip they'll get stuck at 200x speed fast (aka they will still get stuck at the same speed, they'll just think about it 200 times. note, you'll see no difference)
Bad AI is bad ai, a faster chip will not help flaws like this. Many games have very stupid AI, but because they don't think, they take a fast thought and just do that they look "intellegent". I've seen enough stupid AI to know stupid AI isn't a processor's fault, it's a computer's fault. The player will interact and the computer gets bonuses so people are like "boy this is hard" but the fact is it's just cheap.
A computer AI can instantly take a perfect head shot with any gun 100 percent of the time, a good ai will not. A better AI will sometimes be able to do it even if you're moving, but it'll be a rarer occurance. And games already have this.
And currently yes we do have MORE than enough processing power to deal with AI, especially with no Physics to deal with. A couple games my fellow co-workers have shipped have great ai, the problem is the player will interact with them so fast that they will immediatly target you and focus there. We've seen it in Oblivion and other games, AI has reached a new height, we don't need better AI any more, we need learning systems. We can create well built AI all we want but until the AI learns the player's attacks it can be, will be, and is exploited. Speed is not an issue to AI.
Seriously is anyone taking Sony seriously? They are pushing blu-ray for a variety of reasons (I can understand most of them), but still. Sony needs to take a long hard look at themselves, the little bit I wanted a PS3 before has dropped. I was an early adopter for the PS2, and a couple years ago my laser got out of sync, I sent it back to them once, it took them over a month to return it. After that I learned how to repair that problemy myself.
However now they are pushing blu-ray and it's caused them a lot of problems, they've dropped anything else problematic, but in the end they lost a huge amount of fans. No rumble, late and weak motion controls, less exclusive games every month (amazing), the list is piling up. Every press release by them or about them in the last 6 monthes have been negative because it's just another mistake they made.
I hope when the system comes out they get their brains back because as it's going now the Ps3 is becoming the laughing stock. Hell the laughing is so loud we're forgetting the dreamcast (what's copy protection), the Jaguar (atari!) and the Sega CD and 32x (who needs to pay 200 for a console, just by a add-on for that much, then buy another for full power).
Seriously, were we expecting them to fix anything? Honestly the security alone is still completely busted, the graphics are the only draw, wait is this a 360 game? (I love the 360 but I see a couple graphics over substance there).
Then again Microsoft has always done a couple Release candidates, but even so from the sound of it there's still more then enough security holes to last the IT industry years of work before Microsoft's next failure in Operating systems. It's one thing to try to imitate OSX, but they ignore the core of OSX's beauty, a *NIX backbone that has been constantly worked on, and any user can improve it. Just releasing a version of Windows with a better but more hardware dependant front end, do we really need a OS that is double the Hardware recommendation as the predecessor? Then we have Microsoft trying to force users to upgrade to it to get DirectX 10 for their gaming needs which ends up hurting their position. Besides which most gaming companies will not ignore the fact that those who still use XP can't use DirectX 10, either they will allow legacy compatibility, or they will just continue to use 9.3c.
Personally I will not upgrade til long after the abnormally high price drop, and long after DirectX 10 is out and has been engineered to work on XP as well either through public demand or hackers who see the need.
I'm willing to put money on the fact that next week we'll find out the HDMI connector on the PS3 is non standardized, so you'd have to buy Sony's brand of cable only to use it. Of course that will only cost the consumer 99 dollars, similar to the Xbox's Wireless USB Adapter.
I'd make fun of sony but it's just another in it's long line of "screw the consumer" moves. All I can do now is shake my head and wonder when they will start medicating the designers.
Hey zonk if you have a quota and need to fill it just by posting random journal entries, try posting one that doesn't used a bastardized form of a word like "0day". That was made for warez, not exploits.
Btw the NYSE company isn't even named it coudl be any entertainment company from Universal studios to a small IPO that is making a casual game for people that costs 2 dollars, as well as single computer on a lan. With no meantion of if these are "honey pots" which will get people's attention but it will actually have no access to the real network since it's segregated.
I think slash dot needs to stop posting "news that's not news" and start pointing "news that matters" again.
actually did something to benefit the industry? I can live with the hot coffee "whistleblower". He at least found something unique, but the people who pulled out guns and killed innocent people are on the list for what? For Doom mods? If you could use a computer and write a simple line of code you could mod Doom, it wasn't just a simple game to mod it was beyond easy.
It's not like they did anything to really change the world, they just played videogames so the MEDIA actually blamed videogames, they don't appear to have actually changed video games in any particular way except to give it huge media attention (attributed to that moron Clinton claiming how Doom and Mortal kombat (1) were hurting our kids and shouldn't be sold... 5 years after their release. If it wasn't for the media using the story for everything then we wouldn't have gave a shit about two idiots and we wouldn't have even realized they played games, they would just be known as too idiots with guns.
I mean you have a list of influencial gamers, Penny arcade, the hackers on Ms. Pacman, the guys who did Counterstrike, the single most popular mod ever, and yet somehow you diminish them all by putting these two guys who just snapped and tried to kill people. Exactly how does that make them pioneers?
It is the nature of a business.
on
Duke in Trouble?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You get burnt out in the game industry unless you're constantly shipping high quality titles. Turn over in a couple years isn't amazing, but it's not a great thing.
The fact is after EVERY game there's a good amount of turn over and even then that's a game that takes 2-4 years. People wanted to stay with the company til the game goes gold then leave. Duke Nukem has been going for far longer than any other game it's not a shock people are leaving the company now, especially before people have seen the game.
This might mean the game isn't amazing or up to par and people want to cash out now, but more likely it's business as usual.
Re:So wait. You expect people to surpass the best?
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 1
The problem with dynamic content is that WoW is enormous and now we're talking about making it dynamic. I've seen procedural synthesis and it doesn't work on large scale models unless you want everything to be the same. Dynamic dungeons would be very cool, but at the end to balance each of the 1000 models you have to work tediously on the design of just that dungeon. Take into the account that as it is most dungeons arn't even run until late game now you are just causing complications again for late game.
Procedural Synthesis is still not even near the level that people believe it is. The biggest problem is do you make dynamic content on the server side and cause new headaches for the backbone team (which won't be done because they already have enormous staffs taking care of stuff) or do you have dynamic content of which the player adds (of which then you'll have "super kewl fortress of lewt" appearing at some point. Even disabling stupid names requires a lot of work and the benefits tend to outway the additional GMs that you have to have in place for naming.
Why is this always a problem, see some group you want to be friends with, ask if you can join them for lunch, and chat. Do this every so often as long as you feel there's a chance in.
See someone you want in your group invite to a group lunch or what ever. If they so no ask again. Don't ask more then 3 times a week, and don't ask for a 1 on 1 style lunch (especially if it's the opposite sex) at least at first.
This isn't rocket science but it is human dynamics and believe me that's a challenging issue even for the smartest people. The simplest thing is to involve them, but don't talk around them. Don't change your topic because your in mixed company (though try not to start the "who was hotter Lori Loughlin or Tiffany Amber Thiessan. Because Tiffany always wins") but also be sensative to who's there. Ask opinions if they are shy, if they are a soft talker listen closely.
Over time you'll learn about them, talk to them about shared interests, after a while an offtopic won't hurt if they seem to enjoy talking about them for what ever reason then it's an open door (don't devote the lunch to the who's hotter though)
Just remember joining a clique isn't a daily thing, or something that happens over night, but at the same time just because a member is in a clique doesn't mean they'll always hang out. Having two cliques that hang out at times is good too.
The whole thing is to start a communication system and at least help it grow at first, but remember two people may never become friends, there just might be nothing there to foster friendship, so if it fails the best thing to do is be friendly and let it be. Something might spark a friendship later, like you wearing a football shirt for the Patriots and you find out you both grew up in Boston... you never know.
Re:So wait. You expect people to surpass the best?
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 1
I never said the game has to be the same, if you read my post you'd understand, the way you APPROACH the game is the same. I'll restate the simple parts you need a well established world already, if you make up a world no one is going to listen and if it's a world similar to another you still have to make people avoid the clone comparision.
You have to have your team know the world. Not just have read the books, or designs, but make sure they have made a game or two so they know indepth "Aragorn is a very quiet guy, while merry and pippin is the comic relief" And you have to give them time because the more ai and the more characters you have in the world the better it is.
I never said make WoW, I said approach the game the same way in that you don't a basic MMORPG with out even getting close to the idea of the universe. Star wars galaxies didn't even have a good flight system, however flight is everything in Star Wars. Worlds are good, but people want to fly the ships rather then run around gathering plants. Lord of the rings from the main books is the huge part is an evolving world that changes from light to dark and epic battles, it's not about exploration it's about the major battle and the fact that their multiple sides to the battle.
So wait. You expect people to surpass the best?
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Let's look at this rationally, Wow isn't just a great game it's a phenomonial game. Just like EverQuest wasn't a great game it was a phenomonial game when it first came out. It's like Super Mario Brothers 3, best selling game ever. But is it beatable?
Well to beat WoW you need to approach it the same way. Take a well built world that has been seen in multiple games that everyone knows and loves, something like Mario or Zelda (note Final Fantasy doesn't have the same world so it doesn't work the same way) Make it identifiable but playable, allow the players to play any of the major races, Invent a couple new ones and you should have WoW.
The problem is no one has a game that was as popular as Warcraft available for this quite yet. And those that do arn't willing to go to MMORPG. Mario and Zelda will never be MMORPG if there's a god in heaven. Stuff like Command and Conquer doesn't have the races to go along. GAmes like Final Fantasy doesn't have a viable world.
The problem really comes in when games try to be so different it hurts. Star wars galaxies anyone? If there was a game world that could be better than WoW it would be Star wars, but there's not enough developer items. LOTR is coming soon but isn't sounding like a strong contender. Star trek could work, Ender's game would be fun but too obscure.
The problem is for something like WoW you need to have Devs who've created successful games in the world, interest in going into MMORPG, and the patience and money to really create solid beta, Just paying a company money to make a MMORPG won't work because they might not work with the source material, they might not have enough time, they might just not understand the material (Scarface? The main character is going to get up from the ending, so the whole moral is gone and it's a stupid run and gun). WoW will be beaten, but probably not for another 4-5 years. But that's ok. That's actually the way MMORPGS work. They have very long life times but it also takes a long time to create a successful one.
Either 2 or 3 million or what ever the population of earth is now. Any time you have groups you'll always have room for more. that's why for a while we had libertarian Democrats and Conservative democrats and such.
The simple fact is there really is two. Casual gamers and "serious" gamers. The casual gamer is a gamer who spends 10 bucks on a game some one who doesn't actually game as a hobby, but more as a "oh that's fun" idea. Then there's the "serious gamer" They are the ones who will buy video game systems, and upgrade computers for games.
Sure there's people who are both or neither but honestly all the subdivisions are dealt with in other areas.
In reality there's 4 type of gamer also. The Explorer, the Socializer, the Competitor, and the achiever. There pretty obvious (explore the whole map, Chat while playing, Beat others, beat goals). But the fact is when you build a game you try to target them all. The base fact though is these 4 have nothing to do with the casual or serious. It's just another way to categorize people.
The 6 idea works but in the end people will realize there's only two main catagories and these are just subdivisions of them.
I've dealings with an E-store that is going to deliver some anime books to me, however for the last week I have yet to receive a response, my package has not been sent according to the site but I've 0 response with them. It's horrid.
Personally if you're in the service industry a fast response gets you more business. A response "we'll get back to you with in 24 hours" is all most people need right away. It shows you're worthy of doing business.
If you ignore people you'll lose business obviously and a delayed response is just as bad as ignoring people.
Some companies have made me very happy. I got a form letter from Namcobandai, but Nippon Ichi Software America gave me a personalized letter (probably a form letter for Disgaea, but the opening was personalized to my letter).
It's not hard to do this. The problem is saying "It will take time" but the fact is no one wants to wait forever, it's always better to solve the problems right away but no one ever said too much true correspondence is a bad thing.
Because that guy will have to constantly cast reveal invisible... Which is the best part of the rogue. You'll see the guy casting reveal invisible so someone will pull him away if you want to sneak in. A rogue isn't a brute who runs through a dungeon with out looking, the rogue is the thinker who when attacks with initive can lay a beat down.
Plus most reveal spells usually has a distance, so imagine if it's range is 10 feet. The caster has X HP.
My character has stealth, and has a range of 11 feet for his ultima. ultima does X*2 damage on a direct hit. Plus my caster took the skill of silent casting.
My point is that it should be a AMAZING character, but in a extremely poorly generated system it is possible to do a at the same time another character has finished with his very strong warrior class. Even in great systems some form of this is possible unless you start requiring feats before other feats, and skills before other skills. And then that's more of a hybrid than anything. (you take points in each class type)
Btw in WoW A 10 warrior can probably take on a 15 caster if he knows what he's doing, and the caster is naked (assuming the caster is being smart,) At the same time that 10 warrior probably won't even hit a 60 no matter what, or if he hits it's 1 point of damage. It might be more when she's naked but not likely enough to satisfy you.
My point in the second quoted paragraph is what do you the designer want from your game, if you want the character to decide an actual character that needs to be well formed to win the game, skill is important, but if every character can win the game it's a class based system for you. The problem is not giving the player a way out of the skill system hurts the game experience if the required skill is too obscure or if there's only 3 possible ways to complete the game, then the skill system is flawed too. (I got to the end of KOTOR and I couldn't win at all because the enemy was cheap, and I was light sided. Second playthrough I went full dark and it wasn't even a fight. Of course then if I choose ONE different option the final ending would be light side. So that to me was a poorly designed system overall).
And when I speak of rule changes then I mostly am speaking of full redesign of the rules. Not minor changes. D&D has lasted 3 generations because the rule changes took years to happen. Imagine if after the first three monthes of D&D 5th edition, you immediatly get D&D 6th edition with 100 percent new rules? People won't accept that, and will stick with 5th or drop it all together (of course most wouldn't even move from third)
The problem with relying on players to balance by using the same exploits is if they are obscure it doesn't work unless you know them, and some of us don't want to be min/maxing losers. If I wanted I could figure out a way to get every feat, argue every roll of the dice, and bitch about every negative I got in a D&D game along with my min/maxing friend, but in the end I rather roleplay a real character who has flaws rather then find a flawless character and just run around
Because then everyone realizes what a crock it actually is.
If everyone cut one needless trip to the store out of their week we'd all save 1.5 billiong gallons of energy.
If everyone cut out steak on one day, we'd save 4.5 million cows.
If everyone picked up a penny the inflation in america would go down 100 thousand dollars.
Yes I'm just pulling these figures out of my butt, but the simple fact is if everyone Actually did this type of thing we'd be able to do something, however most people will never see this story or idea.
Hell if every person in america shut off a light when they left a room we'd have enough energy to power those 1.5 million houses. But alas it ain't happening either.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem you have is not with DRM, it's with restrictive DRM.
To have a true DRM we need to have a system that is supported on all three platforms, Macs, Windows and Linux. At the same time we have to have freedom to move our "account" from one to the other, the ability to redownload music and the ability to have a way to copy the files in case of issues.
An even better DRM would be a server based system so if the server ever closed shop it would unlock all the music and files, of course this would never happen because of coporations but it's a possibility.
can't be prosecuted.
Why are we arresting these men under a Wire act that was written in 1961. The simple answer? We can't prosecute them under any other law. Gambling is illegal but because they arn't in america they arn't liable.
The sad thing is that Americans want gambling, obviously. But they are accusing a EUROPEAN company, of breaking an American statute dealing with american "wires".
Btw check the wikipedia article closely. "The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that the Wire Act applies only to sports betting and not other types of online gambling. The Supreme Court has not officially ruled on the meaning of the Federal Wire Act as it pertains to online gambling." The real question is was the betting on american sports?
The sad fact is as an American I feel bad in this case. Every time we take an obscure law and hold someone under it, something that someone goes "oh we can nail them for that" and others go "that's clever", I die a little inside. The founding fathers didn't say "let's be clever" They said "let's make a country and laws". They didn't look for some loophole with the british, they busted some barrels of tea, got liquored up and won a war (not all in that order or the same night... I hope).
If America really believes something like this is wrong make a law. If America really believes something like this is acceptable revoke the law. America is a very easy place but we make everything complex like this shit.
Don't hold your breath, I have a feeling that nugget will still be there at least for Vista.
I'm still waiting for biometrics where I sit infront of a computer my personal login immediatly gets set up before I turn on the monitor. My data is pulled up, and if I want I can lock it so someone else can look at the code in my seat.
"What are your thoughts -- do Firefox and the open source community welcome this kind of analysis?"
No we prefer to be ignorant of the problems in software we write, we prefer to assume everything is perfect.
OF COURSE people prefer indepth analysis. I'm sure someone was like "damm it" when they got the report because they thought their code was flawproof but with the whole world as a consumer, people want to know what they can fix and make better, especially firefox who's core idea is create a browser that doesn't have problems like this.
Firefox is trying to build a better browser, the only way that can happen is if they get great and specific feedback ("the browser's too slow" doesn't help. "The browser's too slow when I go to this site" does.) Why would anyone not one an indepth analysis of a product you're currently working on? (the only time that sucks is if youre finishing it up for the final version and you will never work on it again and someone tells you about a year's worth of work left)
Action | Adventure | Driving | Puzzle | Role-Playing | Simulation | Sports | Strategy
And if you want Driving is a sport.
Basically any game can fit into one of these genres, many will fit in two (an action role playing game. An driving Simulation)
You can expand your genre list more and more but the fact is every time you have them all next year there's a new one that people are trying to make up. However it's not a "GTA" genre, at best it's a free roaming genre, but in reality it's an Action Adventure game.
There's many sub genres that can tacked on underneath it all. The only problem with games with this simplistic approach is Niche games and stuff that defies convention, you will never be able to label those because the whole point of them is that they defy conventions like genres, that's why many places have Miscellaneous, as well as "compilation" which spans all genres (aka Activision Anthology)
This is the best answer though because it's specific and precise. Most games will be one genre with a second as a sub genre (the Adventure game that has a lot of action and so on) but that's fine.
It's more stable then expected, but most critics (at least security critics) still say it's FAR buggier then it should be.
Either way though it's only the first RC, there's almost definatly 2 behind it coming down the pipe, so it's not big deal. still Vista will only give us marginal improvements on XP except graphics then demand double the hardware resources, which is completely unfair because at the same time I'll have to still keep my Anti-virus on the system, my Firewall, and so on, so the little benefits they give will not be enough.
The funniest thing is Directx 10 will not be adopted like people think, sure for office programs it will, but when Doom 4 ships will carmack say "fuck the Xp users" or rather "oh there's about equal users for xp and vista.. why not just do Directx9?" Somehow I think the latter is what most companies will say. It's one thing to adopt a better API, it's quite another thing to screw over half the buying public, when on a PC you already need every sale you can get.
Schilling is a great pitcher, McFarlane is a great artist, Salvatore is a great writer (screw you for what you did in Vector prime.... still pissed)
Why does this sound like a chance to watch a epic disaster from the begining. It's like the hindenburg only starting from when they started working on the airship. Titanic as the first beam is laid down.
All I can say is this will be hilarious. None of these guys know anything about programming (McFarlane's work with Soul Calibur doesn't count), and unless they are working with RPG Maker, I can already see arguements between these three and their programming team. I can also see no arguements, and people given free reign as programmers. Either way we're talking landmark disaster the size of Daikatana, but with out the retarded lead programmer.
In other news, yeaaa green monster, GO SOXES!
Think about it, with this chip they'll get stuck at 200x speed fast (aka they will still get stuck at the same speed, they'll just think about it 200 times. note, you'll see no difference)
Bad AI is bad ai, a faster chip will not help flaws like this. Many games have very stupid AI, but because they don't think, they take a fast thought and just do that they look "intellegent". I've seen enough stupid AI to know stupid AI isn't a processor's fault, it's a computer's fault. The player will interact and the computer gets bonuses so people are like "boy this is hard" but the fact is it's just cheap.
A computer AI can instantly take a perfect head shot with any gun 100 percent of the time, a good ai will not. A better AI will sometimes be able to do it even if you're moving, but it'll be a rarer occurance. And games already have this.
And currently yes we do have MORE than enough processing power to deal with AI, especially with no Physics to deal with. A couple games my fellow co-workers have shipped have great ai, the problem is the player will interact with them so fast that they will immediatly target you and focus there. We've seen it in Oblivion and other games, AI has reached a new height, we don't need better AI any more, we need learning systems. We can create well built AI all we want but until the AI learns the player's attacks it can be, will be, and is exploited. Speed is not an issue to AI.
Seriously is anyone taking Sony seriously? They are pushing blu-ray for a variety of reasons (I can understand most of them), but still. Sony needs to take a long hard look at themselves, the little bit I wanted a PS3 before has dropped. I was an early adopter for the PS2, and a couple years ago my laser got out of sync, I sent it back to them once, it took them over a month to return it. After that I learned how to repair that problemy myself.
However now they are pushing blu-ray and it's caused them a lot of problems, they've dropped anything else problematic, but in the end they lost a huge amount of fans. No rumble, late and weak motion controls, less exclusive games every month (amazing), the list is piling up. Every press release by them or about them in the last 6 monthes have been negative because it's just another mistake they made.
I hope when the system comes out they get their brains back because as it's going now the Ps3 is becoming the laughing stock. Hell the laughing is so loud we're forgetting the dreamcast (what's copy protection), the Jaguar (atari!) and the Sega CD and 32x (who needs to pay 200 for a console, just by a add-on for that much, then buy another for full power).
Seriously, were we expecting them to fix anything? Honestly the security alone is still completely busted, the graphics are the only draw, wait is this a 360 game? (I love the 360 but I see a couple graphics over substance there).
Then again Microsoft has always done a couple Release candidates, but even so from the sound of it there's still more then enough security holes to last the IT industry years of work before Microsoft's next failure in Operating systems. It's one thing to try to imitate OSX, but they ignore the core of OSX's beauty, a *NIX backbone that has been constantly worked on, and any user can improve it. Just releasing a version of Windows with a better but more hardware dependant front end, do we really need a OS that is double the Hardware recommendation as the predecessor? Then we have Microsoft trying to force users to upgrade to it to get DirectX 10 for their gaming needs which ends up hurting their position. Besides which most gaming companies will not ignore the fact that those who still use XP can't use DirectX 10, either they will allow legacy compatibility, or they will just continue to use 9.3c.
Personally I will not upgrade til long after the abnormally high price drop, and long after DirectX 10 is out and has been engineered to work on XP as well either through public demand or hackers who see the need.
I'm willing to put money on the fact that next week we'll find out the HDMI connector on the PS3 is non standardized, so you'd have to buy Sony's brand of cable only to use it. Of course that will only cost the consumer 99 dollars, similar to the Xbox's Wireless USB Adapter.
I'd make fun of sony but it's just another in it's long line of "screw the consumer" moves. All I can do now is shake my head and wonder when they will start medicating the designers.
Hey zonk if you have a quota and need to fill it just by posting random journal entries, try posting one that doesn't used a bastardized form of a word like "0day". That was made for warez, not exploits.
Btw the NYSE company isn't even named it coudl be any entertainment company from Universal studios to a small IPO that is making a casual game for people that costs 2 dollars, as well as single computer on a lan. With no meantion of if these are "honey pots" which will get people's attention but it will actually have no access to the real network since it's segregated.
I think slash dot needs to stop posting "news that's not news" and start pointing "news that matters" again.
actually did something to benefit the industry? I can live with the hot coffee "whistleblower". He at least found something unique, but the people who pulled out guns and killed innocent people are on the list for what? For Doom mods? If you could use a computer and write a simple line of code you could mod Doom, it wasn't just a simple game to mod it was beyond easy.
It's not like they did anything to really change the world, they just played videogames so the MEDIA actually blamed videogames, they don't appear to have actually changed video games in any particular way except to give it huge media attention (attributed to that moron Clinton claiming how Doom and Mortal kombat (1) were hurting our kids and shouldn't be sold... 5 years after their release. If it wasn't for the media using the story for everything then we wouldn't have gave a shit about two idiots and we wouldn't have even realized they played games, they would just be known as too idiots with guns.
I mean you have a list of influencial gamers, Penny arcade, the hackers on Ms. Pacman, the guys who did Counterstrike, the single most popular mod ever, and yet somehow you diminish them all by putting these two guys who just snapped and tried to kill people. Exactly how does that make them pioneers?
You get burnt out in the game industry unless you're constantly shipping high quality titles. Turn over in a couple years isn't amazing, but it's not a great thing.
The fact is after EVERY game there's a good amount of turn over and even then that's a game that takes 2-4 years. People wanted to stay with the company til the game goes gold then leave. Duke Nukem has been going for far longer than any other game it's not a shock people are leaving the company now, especially before people have seen the game.
This might mean the game isn't amazing or up to par and people want to cash out now, but more likely it's business as usual.
The problem with dynamic content is that WoW is enormous and now we're talking about making it dynamic. I've seen procedural synthesis and it doesn't work on large scale models unless you want everything to be the same. Dynamic dungeons would be very cool, but at the end to balance each of the 1000 models you have to work tediously on the design of just that dungeon. Take into the account that as it is most dungeons arn't even run until late game now you are just causing complications again for late game.
Procedural Synthesis is still not even near the level that people believe it is. The biggest problem is do you make dynamic content on the server side and cause new headaches for the backbone team (which won't be done because they already have enormous staffs taking care of stuff) or do you have dynamic content of which the player adds (of which then you'll have "super kewl fortress of lewt" appearing at some point. Even disabling stupid names requires a lot of work and the benefits tend to outway the additional GMs that you have to have in place for naming.
Why is this always a problem, see some group you want to be friends with, ask if you can join them for lunch, and chat. Do this every so often as long as you feel there's a chance in.
See someone you want in your group invite to a group lunch or what ever. If they so no ask again. Don't ask more then 3 times a week, and don't ask for a 1 on 1 style lunch (especially if it's the opposite sex) at least at first.
This isn't rocket science but it is human dynamics and believe me that's a challenging issue even for the smartest people. The simplest thing is to involve them, but don't talk around them. Don't change your topic because your in mixed company (though try not to start the "who was hotter Lori Loughlin or Tiffany Amber Thiessan. Because Tiffany always wins") but also be sensative to who's there. Ask opinions if they are shy, if they are a soft talker listen closely.
Over time you'll learn about them, talk to them about shared interests, after a while an offtopic won't hurt if they seem to enjoy talking about them for what ever reason then it's an open door (don't devote the lunch to the who's hotter though)
Just remember joining a clique isn't a daily thing, or something that happens over night, but at the same time just because a member is in a clique doesn't mean they'll always hang out. Having two cliques that hang out at times is good too.
The whole thing is to start a communication system and at least help it grow at first, but remember two people may never become friends, there just might be nothing there to foster friendship, so if it fails the best thing to do is be friendly and let it be. Something might spark a friendship later, like you wearing a football shirt for the Patriots and you find out you both grew up in Boston... you never know.
I never said the game has to be the same, if you read my post you'd understand, the way you APPROACH the game is the same. I'll restate the simple parts you need a well established world already, if you make up a world no one is going to listen and if it's a world similar to another you still have to make people avoid the clone comparision.
You have to have your team know the world. Not just have read the books, or designs, but make sure they have made a game or two so they know indepth "Aragorn is a very quiet guy, while merry and pippin is the comic relief" And you have to give them time because the more ai and the more characters you have in the world the better it is.
I never said make WoW, I said approach the game the same way in that you don't a basic MMORPG with out even getting close to the idea of the universe. Star wars galaxies didn't even have a good flight system, however flight is everything in Star Wars. Worlds are good, but people want to fly the ships rather then run around gathering plants. Lord of the rings from the main books is the huge part is an evolving world that changes from light to dark and epic battles, it's not about exploration it's about the major battle and the fact that their multiple sides to the battle.
Let's look at this rationally, Wow isn't just a great game it's a phenomonial game. Just like EverQuest wasn't a great game it was a phenomonial game when it first came out. It's like Super Mario Brothers 3, best selling game ever. But is it beatable?
Well to beat WoW you need to approach it the same way. Take a well built world that has been seen in multiple games that everyone knows and loves, something like Mario or Zelda (note Final Fantasy doesn't have the same world so it doesn't work the same way) Make it identifiable but playable, allow the players to play any of the major races, Invent a couple new ones and you should have WoW.
The problem is no one has a game that was as popular as Warcraft available for this quite yet. And those that do arn't willing to go to MMORPG. Mario and Zelda will never be MMORPG if there's a god in heaven. Stuff like Command and Conquer doesn't have the races to go along. GAmes like Final Fantasy doesn't have a viable world.
The problem really comes in when games try to be so different it hurts. Star wars galaxies anyone? If there was a game world that could be better than WoW it would be Star wars, but there's not enough developer items. LOTR is coming soon but isn't sounding like a strong contender. Star trek could work, Ender's game would be fun but too obscure.
The problem is for something like WoW you need to have Devs who've created successful games in the world, interest in going into MMORPG, and the patience and money to really create solid beta, Just paying a company money to make a MMORPG won't work because they might not work with the source material, they might not have enough time, they might just not understand the material (Scarface? The main character is going to get up from the ending, so the whole moral is gone and it's a stupid run and gun). WoW will be beaten, but probably not for another 4-5 years. But that's ok. That's actually the way MMORPGS work. They have very long life times but it also takes a long time to create a successful one.
If that's true then it's hilarious. Lawyers created spam *applauds*.
:).
However no one will ever believe that
Either 2 or 3 million or what ever the population of earth is now. Any time you have groups you'll always have room for more. that's why for a while we had libertarian Democrats and Conservative democrats and such.
The simple fact is there really is two. Casual gamers and "serious" gamers. The casual gamer is a gamer who spends 10 bucks on a game some one who doesn't actually game as a hobby, but more as a "oh that's fun" idea. Then there's the "serious gamer" They are the ones who will buy video game systems, and upgrade computers for games.
Sure there's people who are both or neither but honestly all the subdivisions are dealt with in other areas.
In reality there's 4 type of gamer also. The Explorer, the Socializer, the Competitor, and the achiever. There pretty obvious (explore the whole map, Chat while playing, Beat others, beat goals). But the fact is when you build a game you try to target them all. The base fact though is these 4 have nothing to do with the casual or serious. It's just another way to categorize people.
The 6 idea works but in the end people will realize there's only two main catagories and these are just subdivisions of them.
I've dealings with an E-store that is going to deliver some anime books to me, however for the last week I have yet to receive a response, my package has not been sent according to the site but I've 0 response with them. It's horrid.
Personally if you're in the service industry a fast response gets you more business. A response "we'll get back to you with in 24 hours" is all most people need right away. It shows you're worthy of doing business.
If you ignore people you'll lose business obviously and a delayed response is just as bad as ignoring people.
Some companies have made me very happy. I got a form letter from Namcobandai, but Nippon Ichi Software America gave me a personalized letter (probably a form letter for Disgaea, but the opening was personalized to my letter).
It's not hard to do this. The problem is saying "It will take time" but the fact is no one wants to wait forever, it's always better to solve the problems right away but no one ever said too much true correspondence is a bad thing.
Then again I'm sure that is how spam got started.
Because that guy will have to constantly cast reveal invisible... Which is the best part of the rogue. You'll see the guy casting reveal invisible so someone will pull him away if you want to sneak in. A rogue isn't a brute who runs through a dungeon with out looking, the rogue is the thinker who when attacks with initive can lay a beat down.
Plus most reveal spells usually has a distance, so imagine if it's range is 10 feet. The caster has X HP.
My character has stealth, and has a range of 11 feet for his ultima. ultima does X*2 damage on a direct hit. Plus my caster took the skill of silent casting.
My character wins.
I figured I got that backwards *shrugs*
I'm sure the basic point of "How do I actually get everyone to do it" came through.
My point is that it should be a AMAZING character, but in a extremely poorly generated system it is possible to do a at the same time another character has finished with his very strong warrior class. Even in great systems some form of this is possible unless you start requiring feats before other feats, and skills before other skills. And then that's more of a hybrid than anything. (you take points in each class type)
Btw in WoW A 10 warrior can probably take on a 15 caster if he knows what he's doing, and the caster is naked (assuming the caster is being smart,) At the same time that 10 warrior probably won't even hit a 60 no matter what, or if he hits it's 1 point of damage. It might be more when she's naked but not likely enough to satisfy you.
My point in the second quoted paragraph is what do you the designer want from your game, if you want the character to decide an actual character that needs to be well formed to win the game, skill is important, but if every character can win the game it's a class based system for you. The problem is not giving the player a way out of the skill system hurts the game experience if the required skill is too obscure or if there's only 3 possible ways to complete the game, then the skill system is flawed too. (I got to the end of KOTOR and I couldn't win at all because the enemy was cheap, and I was light sided. Second playthrough I went full dark and it wasn't even a fight. Of course then if I choose ONE different option the final ending would be light side. So that to me was a poorly designed system overall).
And when I speak of rule changes then I mostly am speaking of full redesign of the rules. Not minor changes. D&D has lasted 3 generations because the rule changes took years to happen. Imagine if after the first three monthes of D&D 5th edition, you immediatly get D&D 6th edition with 100 percent new rules? People won't accept that, and will stick with 5th or drop it all together (of course most wouldn't even move from third)
The problem with relying on players to balance by using the same exploits is if they are obscure it doesn't work unless you know them, and some of us don't want to be min/maxing losers. If I wanted I could figure out a way to get every feat, argue every roll of the dice, and bitch about every negative I got in a D&D game along with my min/maxing friend, but in the end I rather roleplay a real character who has flaws rather then find a flawless character and just run around
Because then everyone realizes what a crock it actually is.
If everyone cut one needless trip to the store out of their week we'd all save 1.5 billiong gallons of energy.
If everyone cut out steak on one day, we'd save 4.5 million cows.
If everyone picked up a penny the inflation in america would go down 100 thousand dollars.
Yes I'm just pulling these figures out of my butt, but the simple fact is if everyone Actually did this type of thing we'd be able to do something, however most people will never see this story or idea.
Hell if every person in america shut off a light when they left a room we'd have enough energy to power those 1.5 million houses. But alas it ain't happening either.