Don't be a photard, dude, and think for a second about what you're saying before looking stupid. What if we had one of these robots sniff a bomb from the mid-90s, and this fingerprint evidence cracked open a terrorist cell in the USA? And just what if it was the terrorist cell that spearheaded 9/11? Thousands of families would be safe and the two towers would be standing today, and all because of a few geeks from Toronto and Calgary.
Even the smallest things like finger prints can prevent thousands of deaths.
I'm Canadian and I'm always really happy when I hear of advances in science from our great nation. I'm tired of hearing Canada being labled as a safe-haven for terrorists, and it makes me proud to know that our universities are continuing to contribute to the capture and conviction of terrorists all over the world. By securing the lives of law enforcement officials everywhere, Canada has contributed to making everyone safer, and in turn, improving the quality of life in America. I also can't wait to see an episode of CSI (or CSI Miami) with this little techno-wonder in action!
That's a totally stupid rule. So now all us Geeks not only have to be chained to the desk for 18 hours a day, we don't get the compensation for it? You try it, damned politicians!!! Thankfully, I am Canadian and any journey south would be under contract stipulating that overtime hours are paid at double-time. Just so you know, that contract re-negotiation can give you some leverage to get what you want, and that even if the law says one thing, you can still negotiate yourself out of these kinds of compensation ruts. Don't take no for an answer. Unionize and strike, need be.
So now that our laptops are going to be classified as weapons, us Geeks are even closer to being chained to the desk, sadly enough. This is not funny, because I just chewed through my posie straps last week, and managed to roam the floor above me. Now that my laptop is a deadly weapon, I guess I should go re-tie those knots and just give up.
I think we played frizbee with ours... seriously. But I do remember using Web Crawler quite frequently at the Internet Cafe in Kingston. Oh those were the days....:-)
I can remember really digging the simple search interface.
Okay so how long before someone writes a malicious virus/trojan/spyware and sends it to everyone? *sigh* What is it with these programmers that they become so disgruntled that they write malicious code, anyway? I've just been spending the last few days cleaning off my wife's computer after some really nasty spyware got lodged on it; you know the Golden Palace Casino? Well they had dug themselves into her computer pretty much like a tick sucking on the last living thing in all of Texas! There should be some vigilante justice against anyone who would code something malicious, if you ask me. Sadly all we do is remove it and wait till the next batch...:-(
Not even Ad Aware could clean what they put on... I think I finally cleaned it, thankfully, but what a pain in the arse.
... that 1/3 of email is *not* spam. Where do they get these figures from? Is there a computer that tallies all the spam up, and if so, why can't it just kill the spam along the way?
Have you ever driven in Montreal? 98mph is not uncommon among the citizens of that city. I'm from Ontario and compared to Monteal, Toronto driving is like riding a pony at the kiddie zoo.
Once I can remember driving along minding my own business when two cars passed our double lane traffic on either side travelling about the same speed, while there was a traffic jam. Road rage is not at all uncommon on the roads in Montreal. And with the road conditions, it's a wonder how more accidents don't occur!
The fact he was going 98mph doesn't mean much; I wouldn't be surprised if the driver was drinking a beer, smoking, talking on the cell phone and writing notes on his dashboard sticky pad, at the time of the accident!
> Since when is the MPAA a wing of the RIAA? I fucking swear, 90% of Slashdot posters just make everything up on the fucking spot and post like they have some form of digital Tourette's and just can't help themselves.
"A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective."
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Strategic Assessments
The point is, RIAA and MPAA share the same goals; crush p2p and keep everything the way it was in 1980.
> Umm, there's a big difference between having a bunch of connected tables in memory and a distributed database system.
I would have to agree with you, but you can't deny that the use of distributed databases must be the proper direction of video game architecture. Look at MMORPGs, for example. They exist only because of the client/server architecture that relies on redundant distributed databases, or else it's going to cost them a great deal of money when the servers go down, or when a problem causes the player storage databases to lose sync, become corrupt and crash.
> I think your article makes a few good points that are entirely misguided and more applicable to ToEE (a mediocre game at best) than to the d20 system as a whole (which has been behind a number of stellar computerized RPG's).
You are welcome to this opinion and it would not be entirely inaccurate; but let's face it, I was talking about CRPGs and PnP, not specifically d20. True, I did use d20 as the primary example in the article, yet I was not bashing d20 for any reason. I was suggesting that with some standards compliance, much like we have seen with w3.org's XHTML and CSS, that RPG audiences would strongly benefit.
> The first two of these are major issues, and are probably the biggest obstacles in developing a good computerized RPG.
I would have to agree with you here; there is room for vast improvement in all CRPGs using PnP rulesets and I look forward to raising the bar with standards that work.
> Not having a human GM is a really big deal.
Again, I have to agree with you because I know this is true. Programmers can simulate the decisions the GM is going to make, and they can only go so far right now, but soon enough we will be in the position technologically to adapt systems that can interpret and prepropose new situations better than they do. Gandalf said that even the most powerful creatures can never see all ends and I really agree with him; video game designers can not see all ends, and GMs can't either. The difference is really felt when publishers put a great deal of money and effort into design teams, in order to enable a greater Return on Experience (ROE) for their games.
> I also think that you're unclear about where the line between d20 and D&D is drawn.
That was intentional because I believe we must look at many different systems if we are going to create meta rules that can profitably be adopted by companies producing PnP games.
> Look at everything that Bioware has produced over the last six years
Okay, now imagine how amazing the games would be if the team didn't have to struggle to meet the rules exceptions! Bioware spent a great deal of time tweaking the rules so they could work with CRPG, and let me just say that Bioware did an excellent job. Free up 750% of their time, and you would have seen more titles, more content, longer stories and even better profits for that company.
Standards Compliance saves time and money, because the meta rules all work to be a foundation for the actual rules; and if the foundations are all the same, the games we love can be compatible with eachother. Wouldn't it be cool to bring characters from one game into another? Even from unrelated titles? Proprietary code means that there has never been a product from publisher A that worked with publisher B's new product, but I maintain that if this compatibility existed, everyone would be loving the games universe, and everyone developing games would be even richer.
Like what if you bought Arcanum, and you played it but the audience fell off and there weren't any players around anymore? Well if you could take your character and import them into NWN, you may be inclined to buy NWN instead of being a hold-out. Then you could adventure with new people and use data from Arcanum's RPGSC files to enable NWN to work.
> And if you're talking standardization of rules, thi
Here is why monopolies are really harmful for business. What if Apple wasn't there for Real to look at for partnership? Monopolies only help deteriorate the creativity and human progress. Foward thinking companies realize that in order to perform excellent corporate execution, symbiotic relationships are not only necessary, they are profitable.
And just think of all the Pee Wee Hermans out there who will avoid doing nasty-assed things in public, now that they know they could be seen and arrested. I bet quite a few more people engauge in heavy sexual activity in theatres than we'd suspect.
DVDs aren't that expensive anymore... it's worth it to buy a movie rather than even rent one, if you know it's a good film. Plus you avoid late fees (and I've paid likely thousands of dollars in those over the years!!!)
I strongly disagree with the MPAA and RIAA's tactics in general, but I do believe that movies recorded in theatres should be stopped because they are low quality!!
This must be some kind of mistake? Al Gore invented the web, because it says so right here: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet" - Al Gore
> The "written over night, on a whim, with an eye to making money" is actually a pretty good description. Fortunately, most games from that generation are long forgotten.
I howled when I first read this. You have captured the true sentiment of my article, and RPGSC. However, many of the rules get picked up again, after they have been forgotten, and they sneak their way into campaigns and source books too. It's because there is no litmus test for RPG, and it's sad that standards are missing from these games, because standards would make all our jobs/live/profit margins easier, if you ask me.
> RP isn't about numbers: It's about telling stories. Computers are really bad at making things up on the fly - which is sometimes vital to telling a good story.
I wholeheartedly agree. We need to get all the exceptions out of all the PPRPGs out there so that we can focus on getting better stories for CRPGs.
> Have you ever seen a CRPG where you could go "Screw it. I don't care about this city or these people. I'm the hell out of here!" In a live game, your GM can either bulldoze you back into the prepared story, OR they can, if they're good, adjust on the fly so everyone can have fun.
We usually have it so that forces in the world make it impossible to leave, because DMs spend so much time designing the campaigns that it's sad to see all that hard work go to waste; but it's nice to have a say in the setting ahead of time, before all the prep work is done.
> The original article, as far as I can tell, was pointing out the simple fact that what works well for a pencil and paper game (AD&D, D20, Hero, GURPS, Storyteller, etc.) may suck horribly as the bases for a CRPG.
And might I add that standards are what is needed to bridge the gap, to save the CRPG makers time and generate more profit for the PnP folks. Let's face it, PnP authors greatly outrank many video game designers in terms of creativity and capability for RPG design.
> Having actually implemented AD&D rules in a commercial video game (way, way back in 1989) , I can say that the rules SUCK for computer implementation. There are special cases and exceptions to everything.
This is indeed a very insightful comment; and it re-inforces the basic claim of my article. The exceptions are what makes it difficult to create a CRPG out of PnP rules, and debug efficiently.
> The rules aren't really that important in a video game, as opposed to a pen and paper RPG. It's mostly done behind the scenes.
Well, that makes for a lot of different games, but it also adds to the development cycle, if you ask me. Do you know how long it takes to build the kind of rules that exist in many RPGs? Standardization could limit the length of time it takes tenfold, because rules could be moved from game to game, publisher to publisher, and that would make all our lives/jobs/profit margins easier.
> Well the paper rules never cover anything about behaviour of the monsters in these situations unless it's something like fear/flee response, it's the GM that does so.
Actually the PnP rules used *do* cover monster behaviour. I won't post the spell's rules here because of copyright, but that stats area next to the description of monsters indicates intelligence and the rules explain how behaviour is affected by intelligence. I can understand how you would miss this fact, because you have to connect the dots in order to fully understand the connection, but you really should research more before stating blatant falsehoods.
You are correct about how this could be an AI problem, yet to me I think the developers did this behaviour deliberately. They left out many of the rules for Meld into Stone, as well; like the damage you take when the spell expires. The fact that the use of concentration was required in TOEE doesn't seem to be present in the rules, although I could be slightly misinterpreting them...
Slashdot Mirror
We now need a McDonald's topic, as they have adopted the lovable penguin.
Don't be a photard, dude, and think for a second about what you're saying before looking stupid. What if we had one of these robots sniff a bomb from the mid-90s, and this fingerprint evidence cracked open a terrorist cell in the USA? And just what if it was the terrorist cell that spearheaded 9/11? Thousands of families would be safe and the two towers would be standing today, and all because of a few geeks from Toronto and Calgary.
Even the smallest things like finger prints can prevent thousands of deaths.
I'm Canadian and I'm always really happy when I hear of advances in science from our great nation. I'm tired of hearing Canada being labled as a safe-haven for terrorists, and it makes me proud to know that our universities are continuing to contribute to the capture and conviction of terrorists all over the world. By securing the lives of law enforcement officials everywhere, Canada has contributed to making everyone safer, and in turn, improving the quality of life in America. I also can't wait to see an episode of CSI (or CSI Miami) with this little techno-wonder in action!
That's a totally stupid rule. So now all us Geeks not only have to be chained to the desk for 18 hours a day, we don't get the compensation for it? You try it, damned politicians!!! Thankfully, I am Canadian and any journey south would be under contract stipulating that overtime hours are paid at double-time. Just so you know, that contract re-negotiation can give you some leverage to get what you want, and that even if the law says one thing, you can still negotiate yourself out of these kinds of compensation ruts. Don't take no for an answer. Unionize and strike, need be.
So now that our laptops are going to be classified as weapons, us Geeks are even closer to being chained to the desk, sadly enough. This is not funny, because I just chewed through my posie straps last week, and managed to roam the floor above me. Now that my laptop is a deadly weapon, I guess I should go re-tie those knots and just give up.
> Add "unique" style to code and you have just become a sloppy programmer.
That is unless your unique style just saved the company $2mil... then you're just a quickly forgotten hero.
> Shouldn't our brave men and women at least have something reliable like linux?
The Al-Qaida uses windows (and doors).
> Any tips?
:-)
Put your rage in it and then throw. Oh, and flick your wrist. Oh, and take the packaging off first!
I think we played frizbee with ours... seriously. But I do remember using Web Crawler quite frequently at the Internet Cafe in Kingston. Oh those were the days.... :-)
I can remember really digging the simple search interface.
Okay so how long before someone writes a malicious virus/trojan/spyware and sends it to everyone? *sigh* What is it with these programmers that they become so disgruntled that they write malicious code, anyway? I've just been spending the last few days cleaning off my wife's computer after some really nasty spyware got lodged on it; you know the Golden Palace Casino? Well they had dug themselves into her computer pretty much like a tick sucking on the last living thing in all of Texas! There should be some vigilante justice against anyone who would code something malicious, if you ask me. Sadly all we do is remove it and wait till the next batch... :-(
Not even Ad Aware could clean what they put on... I think I finally cleaned it, thankfully, but what a pain in the arse.
... that 1/3 of email is *not* spam. Where do they get these figures from? Is there a computer that tallies all the spam up, and if so, why can't it just kill the spam along the way?
I wouldn't be surprised if these letters were copyright (c) 2004, MPAA... :-)
> Sharing the same goals (because you face similar threats) does not make one party the wing of the other.
To share the same rule book, same objectives, same power and resources, does.
Have you ever driven in Montreal?
98mph is not uncommon among the citizens of that city. I'm from Ontario and compared to Monteal, Toronto driving is like riding a pony at the kiddie zoo.
Once I can remember driving along minding my own business when two cars passed our double lane traffic on either side travelling about the same speed, while there was a traffic jam. Road rage is not at all uncommon on the roads in Montreal. And with the road conditions, it's a wonder how more accidents don't occur!
The fact he was going 98mph doesn't mean much; I wouldn't be surprised if the driver was drinking a beer, smoking, talking on the cell phone and writing notes on his dashboard sticky pad, at the time of the accident!
> Since when is the MPAA a wing of the RIAA? I fucking swear, 90% of Slashdot posters just make everything up on the fucking spot and post like they have some form of digital Tourette's and just can't help themselves.
"A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective."
Sun-tzu, The Art of War. Strategic Assessments
The point is, RIAA and MPAA share the same goals; crush p2p and keep everything the way it was in 1980.
> Umm, there's a big difference between having a bunch of connected tables in memory and a distributed database system.
I would have to agree with you, but you can't deny that the use of distributed databases must be the proper direction of video game architecture. Look at MMORPGs, for example. They exist only because of the client/server architecture that relies on redundant distributed databases, or else it's going to cost them a great deal of money when the servers go down, or when a problem causes the player storage databases to lose sync, become corrupt and crash.
> I think your article makes a few good points that are entirely misguided and more applicable to ToEE (a mediocre game at best) than to the d20 system as a whole (which has been behind a number of stellar computerized RPG's).
You are welcome to this opinion and it would not be entirely inaccurate; but let's face it, I was talking about CRPGs and PnP, not specifically d20. True, I did use d20 as the primary example in the article, yet I was not bashing d20 for any reason. I was suggesting that with some standards compliance, much like we have seen with w3.org's XHTML and CSS, that RPG audiences would strongly benefit.
> The first two of these are major issues, and are probably the biggest obstacles in developing a good computerized RPG.
I would have to agree with you here; there is room for vast improvement in all CRPGs using PnP rulesets and I look forward to raising the bar with standards that work.
> Not having a human GM is a really big deal.
Again, I have to agree with you because I know this is true. Programmers can simulate the decisions the GM is going to make, and they can only go so far right now, but soon enough we will be in the position technologically to adapt systems that can interpret and prepropose new situations better than they do. Gandalf said that even the most powerful creatures can never see all ends and I really agree with him; video game designers can not see all ends, and GMs can't either. The difference is really felt when publishers put a great deal of money and effort into design teams, in order to enable a greater Return on Experience (ROE) for their games.
> I also think that you're unclear about where the line between d20 and D&D is drawn.
That was intentional because I believe we must look at many different systems if we are going to create meta rules that can profitably be adopted by companies producing PnP games.
> Look at everything that Bioware has produced over the last six years
Okay, now imagine how amazing the games would be if the team didn't have to struggle to meet the rules exceptions! Bioware spent a great deal of time tweaking the rules so they could work with CRPG, and let me just say that Bioware did an excellent job. Free up 750% of their time, and you would have seen more titles, more content, longer stories and even better profits for that company.
Standards Compliance saves time and money, because the meta rules all work to be a foundation for the actual rules; and if the foundations are all the same, the games we love can be compatible with eachother. Wouldn't it be cool to bring characters from one game into another? Even from unrelated titles? Proprietary code means that there has never been a product from publisher A that worked with publisher B's new product, but I maintain that if this compatibility existed, everyone would be loving the games universe, and everyone developing games would be even richer.
Like what if you bought Arcanum, and you played it but the audience fell off and there weren't any players around anymore? Well if you could take your character and import them into NWN, you may be inclined to buy NWN instead of being a hold-out. Then you could adventure with new people and use data from Arcanum's RPGSC files to enable NWN to work.
> And if you're talking standardization of rules, thi
Here is why monopolies are really harmful for business. What if Apple wasn't there for Real to look at for partnership? Monopolies only help deteriorate the creativity and human progress. Foward thinking companies realize that in order to perform excellent corporate execution, symbiotic relationships are not only necessary, they are profitable.
> The lesson is clear: stay out of movie theaters and you won't get arrested.
No it's the MPAA, and they are a wing of the RIAA, so their goal is to deter business. You read the statement correctly...
Did I read this correctly?
> Motion Picture Ass. Head Jack Valenti
Ass Head, eh? Nice one!
And just think of all the Pee Wee Hermans out there who will avoid doing nasty-assed things in public, now that they know they could be seen and arrested. I bet quite a few more people engauge in heavy sexual activity in theatres than we'd suspect.
DVDs aren't that expensive anymore... it's worth it to buy a movie rather than even rent one, if you know it's a good film. Plus you avoid late fees (and I've paid likely thousands of dollars in those over the years!!!)
I strongly disagree with the MPAA and RIAA's tactics in general, but I do believe that movies recorded in theatres should be stopped because they are low quality!!
This must be some kind of mistake? Al Gore invented the web, because it says so right here: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet" - Al Gore
> The "written over night, on a whim, with an eye to making money" is actually a pretty good description. Fortunately, most games from that generation are long forgotten.
I howled when I first read this. You have captured the true sentiment of my article, and RPGSC. However, many of the rules get picked up again, after they have been forgotten, and they sneak their way into campaigns and source books too. It's because there is no litmus test for RPG, and it's sad that standards are missing from these games, because standards would make all our jobs/live/profit margins easier, if you ask me.
> RP isn't about numbers: It's about telling stories. Computers are really bad at making things up on the fly - which is sometimes vital to telling a good story.
I wholeheartedly agree. We need to get all the exceptions out of all the PPRPGs out there so that we can focus on getting better stories for CRPGs.
> Have you ever seen a CRPG where you could go "Screw it. I don't care about this city or these people. I'm the hell out of here!" In a live game, your GM can either bulldoze you back into the prepared story, OR they can, if they're good, adjust on the fly so everyone can have fun.
We usually have it so that forces in the world make it impossible to leave, because DMs spend so much time designing the campaigns that it's sad to see all that hard work go to waste; but it's nice to have a say in the setting ahead of time, before all the prep work is done.
> The original article, as far as I can tell, was pointing out the simple fact that what works well for a pencil and paper game (AD&D, D20, Hero, GURPS, Storyteller, etc.) may suck horribly as the bases for a CRPG.
And might I add that standards are what is needed to bridge the gap, to save the CRPG makers time and generate more profit for the PnP folks. Let's face it, PnP authors greatly outrank many video game designers in terms of creativity and capability for RPG design.
> Having actually implemented AD&D rules in a commercial video game (way, way back in 1989) , I can say that the rules SUCK for computer implementation. There are special cases and exceptions to everything.
This is indeed a very insightful comment; and it re-inforces the basic claim of my article. The exceptions are what makes it difficult to create a CRPG out of PnP rules, and debug efficiently.
I enjoyed BG quite a bit, I might add.
> The rules aren't really that important in a video game, as opposed to a pen and paper RPG. It's mostly done behind the scenes.
Well, that makes for a lot of different games, but it also adds to the development cycle, if you ask me. Do you know how long it takes to build the kind of rules that exist in many RPGs? Standardization could limit the length of time it takes tenfold, because rules could be moved from game to game, publisher to publisher, and that would make all our lives/jobs/profit margins easier.
> Well the paper rules never cover anything about behaviour of the monsters in these situations unless it's something like fear/flee response, it's the GM that does so.
:-)
Actually the PnP rules used *do* cover monster behaviour. I won't post the spell's rules here because of copyright, but that stats area next to the description of monsters indicates intelligence and the rules explain how behaviour is affected by intelligence. I can understand how you would miss this fact, because you have to connect the dots in order to fully understand the connection, but you really should research more before stating blatant falsehoods.
You are correct about how this could be an AI problem, yet to me I think the developers did this behaviour deliberately. They left out many of the rules for Meld into Stone, as well; like the damage you take when the spell expires. The fact that the use of concentration was required in TOEE doesn't seem to be present in the rules, although I could be slightly misinterpreting them...
Anyway, feel free to respond.