NIVIDIA corporate policy isn't any better than anyone elses and in some aspect worse.
Got any actual evidence? Linkage? etc.
Hey I feel for you. 3dfx was a sad company to see go, but if it was because of NVIDIA, it would be because NVIDIA makes way better products than 3dfx could. 3dfx was out competed.
ATI's facility shrouded in secrecy and NVIDIA's is quite open
This is evidence of NVIDIA's greatness. 3dfx might still be around if it weren't for better business systems analysis. NVIDIA is like a breath of fresh air when it comes to corp policy... etc.
Excuse me, Utmah Putakkamanabalon... are you a terrorist? No? Well the computer says you are a terrorist. Please board the Terrorist Only flight by following the blue line...
I hope spammers read that book. Then maybe I won't get twenty Viagra emails... just one, or better yet... An unsolicited email directed at my love for video games instead of incessant "free" sex spam.
MySQL can't be a real threat until they handle stored procs (version 5?). MySQL is a great db, however... especially with phpMyAdmin. QQuick & easy to get a blog or/. type site started.
You can sign a petition to get Crusher back on Nemisis, HERE.
Re:Moving production to Asia?
on
IBM Spins Down
·
· Score: 1
I'd rather be out of a job for a few months in a prosperous country than to have a stable secure job working for the government in a country of distributed poverty.
Meta Modding here and when I read this, I nearly jumped to my feet and applauded. Then I realized I might scare my wife if I did that.
Very good point, and yet not necessarily a popular one. Politics are funny that way in that they tend to seed their own needs before the needs of others, and I often wonder how we might obtain a society of learned elders without the corrupting influences.
The obvious goal in any society is to place wise and selfless people in positions of power. Mortality seems to be the only thing preventing this from happening, however.
Okay geeks... let's find the most selfless people and make them immortals!!!
lkaos: Splitting game design into concept design and engine development is indeed a wise decision. Fundamentals of game design reside mostly in concept, since it is concept that is almost timeless, as if it were limestone, layered with sediments and dreams. Concept goes on, and builds with time, yet it never completely overwrites what was once there. Layer upon layer of game concept cloud our games today. Games in future might still rest on some tenets developed today. Games a thousand years ago help establish video games today. What are some games that were not around back then? Where is the next new thing?
Engine design is more of a history lesson, than a design lesson. Some day we might have video games without engines, or without engines as we know them today. Spending time working on engines is a great way to get into the industry, yet the half-life of that kind of knowledge is short (pardon the pun). The industry is always pushing for new design, better graphics... etc. Well much of the design in games today has never really evolved beyond predecessors. Street fighter becomes Virtua Fighter 4. The Grand Theft Auto experience has roots in crime games, dating back to TI 99/4A adventure games written in Extended Basic.
Television and film each have impacted video games (not the other way around). GTA3 is a lot like Crime story, except you get to be the bad guy. That Max Payne look-alike also looks like the actor from Crime Story! So he's a look-alike's look-alike! Yikes! How far off am I?
Design might not have to be new, but wouldn't it be cool if it was new and playable and fun? The best way to be new is by finding new paradigms or refining old ones. The Quake game paradigm can't be refined much more, except with new engines and more glitz, newer characters, richer stories. All that is coming to game design with our without my course, so I hope to zoom in on the concepts that exist and trying to find new concepts, if that is at all possible. Students won't lose any marks for refining old game types (quake style, golf... etc), yet they can expect lots of questions on tests relating to the fundamental principles of game design, which are largely common sense.
The Game Institute is packed with courses (mostly programming based). I couldn't find anything that parallels what we want to do, yet to legitimize my proposal of the game design course, showing other successful ventures will help our cause.
A buddy of mine who was working at Monolith at the time, sent me a copy of Septerra Core. He sent me his copy because he didn't like it. Monolith somehow acquired Septerra Core -- they didn't design it, per se. I didn't like Septerra Core either, and I'm not sure if it was for subjective reasons or not, but I'll try to explain. When I received the package it came with the game plus all the Septerra Core trading cards, which were about the size of Tarot cards and they had all the characters from the game. That was cool.
The game didn't play right for my tastes. You might very well enjoy it, but I had a hard time with it. Maybe I am outside their target market, but it seemed like Septerra Core was very niche. I ran into some bugs too, which never helps my opinion of a game.
Overall, the game's graphics engine is old, and you will most likely enjoy the story -- if you can find it. Objectively, Septerra Core lacked impeccability.
Thanks for your well wishing, eugene! I think that with the right people we can make this class a success. Already I have received a nod from a some industry people, which took me by surprise. Looks like we might have some special guests this year after all! This is indeed exciting for me, and I look forward to teaching this material, provided we are approved. They seemed positive at the college, so sooner or later, I will post an announcement about it here, or at my site (if posting is turned off in this thread).
I'm the guy who is planning the gd course. Feel free to respond to me here about it and I will monitor this thread. I would be happy to hear anything that you guys have to say about the subject matter.
This isn't about karma or anything like that, at all... just want to know what you think.
I would like to thank those who have shown an interest so far in this process.
So far I have prepared a site to notify students of their marks, hand out assignments and post notes and news. This entire course is expected to be online via IRC. During the whole time, I expect to be accessible to the students on a one on one level as much as possible. My goal is to keep the price down and class size down (per section). 20 students per section is a goal that sounds effective.
Course content will focus on the archetypes intrinsic to all games and zoom in on the games that are successful (board and you control a paddle that whacks a ball back and forth because everybody loves tennis and ping pong, right?" See the agreement? Every game there is comes down to this principle and I am going to develop these ideas for the course in such a way as to get the students thinking. One assignment involves creating necessary elements for a new game, never before created. If I can find the game a student hands in, they get zero! (within reason)
Why level design? If there is any form of design in game design, it starts with the levels and entities that occupy them. The rules and other such things all come secondary to the form and function of the environment. Instead of level design, if I chose game programming as a medium for a game design course, I could propound things like the necessity of using Pointers until I'm blue in the face, while next year someone could optimize a third party driver, that actually rewires the way data is handled on the heap so all that work we did was for nothing, or worse off - has to be reworked entirely. In reality, the engines are always changing, and the companies making games are adapting short lifespan techniques to obtain the desired look and feel they want. I understand we might be all using database driven operating systems soon, so that has to impact game design in a good way. What we do today we won't do tomorrow - except for that common denominator called level design. Until someone figures out how to come up with algorithm based games that write their own levels (in a true sense, not abstractly), you can expect to find level design as the front runner to any form of game development - even though the programmers might claim that their entity work is more important. It's really the same thing, now isn't it?
Even now, the industry is leaning toward how a game looks often more than how it plays. Only a handful of games are balanced enough to look good and play good.
What this means to our course, is that it's best to understand game design from a level designer's perspective before getting bogged down in the rapidly changing elements in game programming, models, art or sound.
Level design transfers between all games without much of a difference. 3d or 2d, there are principles delivered in level design that are not so fundamental in other arts.
Students of the course, in all likelihood, could focus on any game, and are all expected to bring discussion to the table as a portion of their grade.
Assignments and tests can come from the perspective of any number of games, provided the points are proven by the student.
Three major assignments and two online tests are also anticipated. The tests can be written in such a manner to prevent cheating, too.
I expect this to be a fun course with lots to offer anyone who wants to get into the industry and stay.
Does anyone have a link that shows why AMD systems run hot? I'd like to see some unbiased info about that. I'm split between Intel, AMD and Mac. AMD users seem to really love their systems, almost as much as Mac users. Intel users seem to be quite indifferent (they often zoom in on video cards instead of processors for discussions). I guess I'd just like to get the big picture. Any suggestions?
A couple buddies and I expect to bring my DemiGod Assassin character out of retirement for a major throwdown against the cast and crew of Lord of the Rings. Should be a blast. The whole premise of the campaign is that Nekrull, my character, is going to visit Middle Earth from his home in the Forgotten Realms, and steal the ring or win it somehow. Could be interesting... especially with all the beer that is to be consumed in the process. If he succeeds, the ring will leave Middle Earth. If he fails, he will die permanently, never to be played again (until the next stoopid D&D idea comes along).
Not to be a big prude but CounterStrike doesn't have it's own rendering engine. Contrary to popular belief, CS is not a game, but a modification to Half Life that happens to be more popular than most games -- including Half Life.
Google timeline... Hey I guess they really do pay attention to the search querries at these engines. Now that they know what we're thinking, will they be forced to act on piracy searches? I wonder if they send the ips out to the government of people looking for stuff they shouldn't be.
I have a site that gets a lot of traffic from Google because of articles and such, but even writing about warez gets me hits from people looking to get pirated software. What are the ethics here? Does Google or any search engine have to publish the IPs to the government of people looking for stuff they shouldn't be?
Side note.. I can actually remember searching for a desktop image on Google that they have in this Zeitgeist. Creepy.
And how are we supposed to remember these 5 or so pieces of abstract art in sequence? They all look the same to me!! I expect that most users would store them as image files in sequence in a file and lock them up with an alphanumeric password.
I think that this article also sheds light on the adversarial system of criminal justice. Being that the justice system only thrives on crime, the only people who have the power to thwart crime are too biased to fully eliminate it. To supress crime is good for business, while to eliminate it would be catastrophic to the ecconomy (security, law, justice).
Instant messaging for GBA. Now that's a dumb idea. GBA is just a whack product that makes me angry thinking about it.
I bought my wife a GBA because she really wanted it. As soon as we brought it home we realized it was missing something! Backlighting. DUH. I'm spoiled but I guess I just thought that the people at Nintendo weren't stupid. Guess I was wrong.
So I went back to the store and picked up a "Shark Lite". What a poor product! Whenever she tried to play with the Shark Lite, it would be in her way or it would cause a reflective glare.
Back to the lamp behind her head while she plays. Oh the whole GBA backlight problem gives me post-purchase depression.
What a nuisance it is to try and play a game on the GBA when you need to position yourself in a contorted manner just to get to see what you're doing in the game.
Who knows, maybe my 1 year old daughter will find a use for it.
Yeah there is a distinct possibility that the bug exists on the Xbox but that's not all. There are most likely other bugs since Microsoft is a patch monger. Rather than fully test software, MS takes a fire-ranger approach -- they practically wrote the book on patching. Poor bastards who bought Xboxes... not only do you need a $3000 (can) HDTV just to get 800x600 resolution, but you also get to fill your hard drive with patches and updates. I wonder if they will release a monitor connection peripheral. Even then, I still can't believe MS listed the Xbox hard drive as a feature and not a requirement!
Slashdot Mirror
NIVIDIA corporate policy isn't any better than anyone elses and in some aspect worse.
Got any actual evidence? Linkage? etc.
Hey I feel for you. 3dfx was a sad company to see go, but if it was because of NVIDIA, it would be because NVIDIA makes way better products than 3dfx could. 3dfx was out competed.
ATI's facility shrouded in secrecy and NVIDIA's is quite open
This is evidence of NVIDIA's greatness. 3dfx might still be around if it weren't for better business systems analysis. NVIDIA is like a breath of fresh air when it comes to corp policy... etc.
Nah, the terrorists will always stick with low-tech methods because Allah says high-tech is the devil.
Excuse me, Utmah Putakkamanabalon... are you a terrorist? No? Well the computer says you are a terrorist. Please board the Terrorist Only flight by following the blue line...
I hope spammers read that book. Then maybe I won't get twenty Viagra emails... just one, or better yet... An unsolicited email directed at my love for video games instead of incessant "free" sex spam.
MySQL can't be a real threat until they handle stored procs (version 5?). MySQL is a great db, however... especially with phpMyAdmin. QQuick & easy to get a blog or /. type site started.
You can sign a petition to get Crusher back on Nemisis, HERE.
I'd rather be out of a job for a few months in a prosperous country than to have a stable secure job working for the government in a country of distributed poverty.
Meta Modding here and when I read this, I nearly jumped to my feet and applauded. Then I realized I might scare my wife if I did that.
Very good point, and yet not necessarily a popular one. Politics are funny that way in that they tend to seed their own needs before the needs of others, and I often wonder how we might obtain a society of learned elders without the corrupting influences.
The obvious goal in any society is to place wise and selfless people in positions of power. Mortality seems to be the only thing preventing this from happening, however.
Okay geeks... let's find the most selfless people and make them immortals!!!
~d
In fact there is a very real possibility that this approach could turn the enemy into a bunch of friendly peaceful pot smoking farmers ..
They'd be too busy thanking us to shoot! Especially since we'd have to drop a lot of water in some of those dry areas...
~d
lkaos:
Splitting game design into concept design and engine development is indeed a wise decision. Fundamentals of game design reside mostly in concept, since it is concept that is almost timeless, as if it were limestone, layered with sediments and dreams. Concept goes on, and builds with time, yet it never completely overwrites what was once there. Layer upon layer of game concept cloud our games today. Games in future might still rest on some tenets developed today. Games a thousand years ago help establish video games today. What are some games that were not around back then? Where is the next new thing?
Engine design is more of a history lesson, than a design lesson. Some day we might have video games without engines, or without engines as we know them today. Spending time working on engines is a great way to get into the industry, yet the half-life of that kind of knowledge is short (pardon the pun). The industry is always pushing for new design, better graphics... etc. Well much of the design in games today has never really evolved beyond predecessors. Street fighter becomes Virtua Fighter 4. The Grand Theft Auto experience has roots in crime games, dating back to TI 99/4A adventure games written in Extended Basic.
Television and film each have impacted video games (not the other way around). GTA3 is a lot like Crime story, except you get to be the bad guy. That Max Payne look-alike also looks like the actor from Crime Story! So he's a look-alike's look-alike! Yikes! How far off am I?
Design might not have to be new, but wouldn't it be cool if it was new and playable and fun? The best way to be new is by finding new paradigms or refining old ones. The Quake game paradigm can't be refined much more, except with new engines and more glitz, newer characters, richer stories. All that is coming to game design with our without my course, so I hope to zoom in on the concepts that exist and trying to find new concepts, if that is at all possible. Students won't lose any marks for refining old game types (quake style, golf... etc), yet they can expect lots of questions on tests relating to the fundamental principles of game design, which are largely common sense.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
The Game Institute is packed with courses (mostly programming based). I couldn't find anything that parallels what we want to do, yet to legitimize my proposal of the game design course, showing other successful ventures will help our cause.
Thanks for that link!
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
A buddy of mine who was working at Monolith at the time, sent me a copy of Septerra Core. He sent me his copy because he didn't like it. Monolith somehow acquired Septerra Core -- they didn't design it, per se. I didn't like Septerra Core either, and I'm not sure if it was for subjective reasons or not, but I'll try to explain. When I received the package it came with the game plus all the Septerra Core trading cards, which were about the size of Tarot cards and they had all the characters from the game. That was cool.
The game didn't play right for my tastes. You might very well enjoy it, but I had a hard time with it. Maybe I am outside their target market, but it seemed like Septerra Core was very niche. I ran into some bugs too, which never helps my opinion of a game.
Overall, the game's graphics engine is old, and you will most likely enjoy the story -- if you can find it. Objectively, Septerra Core lacked impeccability.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
Thanks for your well wishing, eugene! I think that with the right people we can make this class a success. Already I have received a nod from a some industry people, which took me by surprise. Looks like we might have some special guests this year after all! This is indeed exciting for me, and I look forward to teaching this material, provided we are approved. They seemed positive at the college, so sooner or later, I will post an announcement about it here, or at my site (if posting is turned off in this thread).
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
I'm the guy who is planning the gd course. Feel free to respond to me here about it and I will monitor this thread. I would be happy to hear anything that you guys have to say about the subject matter.
This isn't about karma or anything like that, at all... just want to know what you think.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
Thanks for posting that, Cliff.
I would like to thank those who have shown an interest so far in this process.
So far I have prepared a site to notify students of their marks, hand out assignments and post notes and news. This entire course is expected to be online via IRC. During the whole time, I expect to be accessible to the students on a one on one level as much as possible. My goal is to keep the price down and class size down (per section). 20 students per section is a goal that sounds effective.
Course content will focus on the archetypes intrinsic to all games and zoom in on the games that are successful (board and you control a paddle that whacks a ball back and forth because everybody loves tennis and ping pong, right?" See the agreement? Every game there is comes down to this principle and I am going to develop these ideas for the course in such a way as to get the students thinking. One assignment involves creating necessary elements for a new game, never before created. If I can find the game a student hands in, they get zero! (within reason)
Why level design? If there is any form of design in game design, it starts with the levels and entities that occupy them. The rules and other such things all come secondary to the form and function of the environment. Instead of level design, if I chose game programming as a medium for a game design course, I could propound things like the necessity of using Pointers until I'm blue in the face, while next year someone could optimize a third party driver, that actually rewires the way data is handled on the heap so all that work we did was for nothing, or worse off - has to be reworked entirely. In reality, the engines are always changing, and the companies making games are adapting short lifespan techniques to obtain the desired look and feel they want. I understand we might be all using database driven operating systems soon, so that has to impact game design in a good way. What we do today we won't do tomorrow - except for that common denominator called level design. Until someone figures out how to come up with algorithm based games that write their own levels (in a true sense, not abstractly), you can expect to find level design as the front runner to any form of game development - even though the programmers might claim that their entity work is more important. It's really the same thing, now isn't it?
Even now, the industry is leaning toward how a game looks often more than how it plays. Only a handful of games are balanced enough to look good and play good.
What this means to our course, is that it's best to understand game design from a level designer's perspective before getting bogged down in the rapidly changing elements in game programming, models, art or sound.
Level design transfers between all games without much of a difference. 3d or 2d, there are principles delivered in level design that are not so fundamental in other arts.
Students of the course, in all likelihood, could focus on any game, and are all expected to bring discussion to the table as a portion of their grade.
Assignments and tests can come from the perspective of any number of games, provided the points are proven by the student.
Three major assignments and two online tests are also anticipated. The tests can be written in such a manner to prevent cheating, too.
I expect this to be a fun course with lots to offer anyone who wants to get into the industry and stay.
Scott 'dolo' Leonard
Dteam. Games & More.
http://dynamic3.gamespy.com/~dteam/
Experience only comes with mistakes. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.
Does anyone have a link that shows why AMD systems run hot? I'd like to see some unbiased info about that. I'm split between Intel, AMD and Mac. AMD users seem to really love their systems, almost as much as Mac users. Intel users seem to be quite indifferent (they often zoom in on video cards instead of processors for discussions). I guess I'd just like to get the big picture. Any suggestions?
A couple buddies and I expect to bring my DemiGod Assassin character out of retirement for a major throwdown against the cast and crew of Lord of the Rings. Should be a blast. The whole premise of the campaign is that Nekrull, my character, is going to visit Middle Earth from his home in the Forgotten Realms, and steal the ring or win it somehow. Could be interesting... especially with all the beer that is to be consumed in the process. If he succeeds, the ring will leave Middle Earth. If he fails, he will die permanently, never to be played again (until the next stoopid D&D idea comes along).
Not to be a big prude but CounterStrike doesn't have it's own rendering engine. Contrary to popular belief, CS is not a game, but a modification to Half Life that happens to be more popular than most games -- including Half Life.
Google timeline... Hey I guess they really do pay attention to the search querries at these engines. Now that they know what we're thinking, will they be forced to act on piracy searches? I wonder if they send the ips out to the government of people looking for stuff they shouldn't be.
I have a site that gets a lot of traffic from Google because of articles and such, but even writing about warez gets me hits from people looking to get pirated software. What are the ethics here? Does Google or any search engine have to publish the IPs to the government of people looking for stuff they shouldn't be?
Side note.. I can actually remember searching for a desktop image on Google that they have in this Zeitgeist. Creepy.
And how are we supposed to remember these 5 or so pieces of abstract art in sequence? They all look the same to me!! I expect that most users would store them as image files in sequence in a file and lock them up with an alphanumeric password.
I think that this article also sheds light on the adversarial system of criminal justice. Being that the justice system only thrives on crime, the only people who have the power to thwart crime are too biased to fully eliminate it. To supress crime is good for business, while to eliminate it would be catastrophic to the ecconomy (security, law, justice).
I bought my wife a GBA because she really wanted it. As soon as we brought it home we realized it was missing something! Backlighting. DUH. I'm spoiled but I guess I just thought that the people at Nintendo weren't stupid. Guess I was wrong.
So I went back to the store and picked up a "Shark Lite". What a poor product! Whenever she tried to play with the Shark Lite, it would be in her way or it would cause a reflective glare.
Back to the lamp behind her head while she plays. Oh the whole GBA backlight problem gives me post-purchase depression.
What a nuisance it is to try and play a game on the GBA when you need to position yourself in a contorted manner just to get to see what you're doing in the game.
Who knows, maybe my 1 year old daughter will find a use for it.
Yeah there is a distinct possibility that the bug exists on the Xbox but that's not all. There are most likely other bugs since Microsoft is a patch monger. Rather than fully test software, MS takes a fire-ranger approach -- they practically wrote the book on patching. Poor bastards who bought Xboxes... not only do you need a $3000 (can) HDTV just to get 800x600 resolution, but you also get to fill your hard drive with patches and updates. I wonder if they will release a monitor connection peripheral. Even then, I still can't believe MS listed the Xbox hard drive as a feature and not a requirement!
This XP problem only spells trouble for Xbox users. The only real use for the hard drive is to install patches. What a cheapskate way to do things.