Re:Everquest?
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Saving MUDs?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Actually, NWN has a persistent data storage system coming out with its next patch. It's in testing right now and a number of persistent world developers are gleefully hacking away at it -- the end result should be what you're looking for, a small-scale, MUD style world with full graphical support.
The D&D combat system is entrenched but that hasn't stopped many people from coding their own enhancements and replacement subsystems. For instance, I'm making a Final Fight / Golden Axe style arcade brawler using NWN, thanks to some custom spawning, treasure, and weapon systems.
You hit the Konami booth and didn't even mention the Bemani games? Alright, I'll pick up the slack...
DDRMAX 2 - More Konami-made tracks, but also some new-to-DDR American music complete with music video accompaniment. Nothing really outlandishly awful so far, and they've got 'Days Go By' by Death in Vegas, which is a plus for me. The game sports a new look 'n feel.
DDR ULTRAMIX - DDR comes to X-Box, with lots of rehash tracks from various mixes, but a few new modes to go with it and a return of the polygonal dancer. No poly boost on them, though, they're still as blocky as ever.
Karaoke Revolution - Not sure about he title, but yes, they're working on a karaoke game. W00t. Sounds like the X-Box Music Mixer will do the same thing on the other side of the console fence.
Para Para Paradise? Anybody know if this is coming stateside? I saw a release date on some online store, but that's meaningless...
The game takes place AFTER the trilogy. That in itself kind of trashes the series, since it confirms that the war is not over, the agents are still in control, and the Matrix itself still exists.
Uh... yay. We win. Possibly.
I was quite excited about the whole cross-media storytelling planned for the last two movies, the way the plot would expand to fill all relevant games and films and animes and such. However, like Japan's similar efforts with the.hack series, it's better in theory than execution since the end result is disjointed. I'd still love to see the idea of multimedia (as in, more than one medium) storytelling done right, but it's been an uphill climb to get something smooth and palatable...
Monkey Island, disproving 2-D vs. 3-D
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Sam & Max in 3D
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I seem to be the only person on earth with this view, but:
MI3 was worse than MI4, despite MI3 being 2-D and MI4 being 3-D.
MI3: Rehashed jokes, rehashed puzzles, pitiful explanation of MI2's ending, very few puzzles or NPCs who remain in my memory after the game's over, truncated ending sequence, ugly sprite scaling.
MI4: Fun 'commercialism' theme, new villian, more memorable characters, new twists on the series, better humor (albeit this is subjective).
I don't care what dimension the game extends into as long as it's fun, and MI3 was boring and insulting compared to the much more entertaining MI4. If they want to do Sam 'n Max in 3-D so be it, and as long as it's SAM AND MAX and not a pale imitation (FT2, Action Game(tm)!) it'll be entertaining. Don't be a dimensional elitist.
Um...NO! I just have to say that as a single player game, NWN was very impressive, However on the multiplayer side it sucked big time. However it did get us to restart an old D&D pen and paper group around here...
Were you using the Gamespy browser to try to find games? If so, yes, it sucks. Gamespy is a terrible way to set up a D&D game -- D&D is not something where you can join some stranger's server right in the middle and play away, and a lot of the persistent worlds out there are weak.
But if you used a real, D&D oriented matching service like NeverwinterConnections.com, then you'd be in gaming nirvana. Setting up an actual adventure session in advance, getting a party together, then roleplaying through with live DMs... that's quite fun and that's really the way the game was meant to be played. This isn't DOOM, it takes some preplanning and forethought to get it right.
Do we really WANT our sims to get old and die?
on
The Sims 2 Announced
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· Score: 3, Funny
I mean, wasn't half the fandom surrounding The Sims based on recreating celebs or X-Men and stuff? Do we really want to take the time and energy to make Sailor Moon in The Sims and then have her get old and fat and sit around complaining about taxes until she croaks, then we get her mutant pink haired offspring running around?
More seriously, it's a bit like the problem with the sim-kids in the first game. You have no control over them beyond their name, so if you're trying to assemble a house of people from your own imagination rather than from a host of random 'DNA' variables, you're out of luck.
But hey, what do I know? Clearly Maxis understands why The Sims are fun better than me. Look at how great TSO is!...right.
...is a loop sequencer. A loop can be any sound, a synth, a guitar, a drumline, a bassline, a vocal, name it. The program sequences the loops, lets you get nitty-gritty to make mini-melodies out of one shot sounds and use THOSE as loops, etc. It's like Acid Music but it can delve down a level.
I've done plenty of music in MG2, and enjoyed it a lot. The hard part is getting a quality recording off your PS2, and IMPORTING loops from an external source. Nasty, and requires a special purpose sampler device. That's what in the end drove me to using a PC program to do a similar function (Acid Music).
Well, there's always Contra: Shattered Soldier, which was a pure 2-D scrolling platform shooter done with 3-D graphics. VERY nice visually. Only failing was its obsession with unlockable content and bosses -- most of the gameplay is in boss fights, not in the actual platforming sections that comprised most of the stage in the original Contra.
If Metal Slug brings its brand of weird humor and powerups to a 3-D envrion Contra style, it could really work out nicely.
It looks like it's ideal for simple platforming games, ala Commander Keen (although every demo screen showed very small playable sprites) or Gauntlet. NES era style, albeit with 32-bit color sprites.
What about other 2-D scrolling style games, though? I've got a particularly keen (gag) interest in doing a Final Fight / Golden Axe style brawler, but there doesn't seem to be any 2.5D style graphical support here, just Flatland style mapping. Is there a similar project which is more applicable to brawlers?
This thread has shuffled off into slashdot obscurity, but in the interest of answering your question:
www.neverwinterconnections.com
That's how you meet people. The site is a matching service which is designed specifically to get groups of players together. I didn't know anybody personally who I could play with either, but I've met lots of terrific people through here and have joined guild-like groups that spawned out of NWC that really helped me in my mod development and provided me plenty of games to play in.
Granted, it's not as easy as walking up to a stranger in an MMORPG and saying "Wanna party up?" but that's an advantage -- since the investment is more key than some passing grouping with people you may never see again, you really get to know folks.
For every problem, fan communities can come up with a solution.
...if you do buy it, it's one more purchase towards the break-even point, and that'll enable Trixter and his band of psychotic vidcap guys to make volume two.
The DVD doesn't cost too much, has no CSS encoding or region encoding making it quite geek-friendly. It runs demos you'll likely never be able to see again due to obsolete hardware issues. It runs modern ones you can show off to your less knowledgeable friends to ooh and aah them. The running audio commentary provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about the scene, some great background information, and in some cases comments directly from those responsible for the video itself.
In short, it's worth it. So very, very worth it. And if you want an Amiga or C64 disc, the best thing you can do is buy this PC disc; without profit from this DVD there won't be a v2.
I'll second that. Once you take 'Massively' out of MMORPG, you lose a lot of problems the genre presents you with and gain a whole lot of power. You choose when you want to play, who you want to play with (so you don't have to deal with griefers at ALL) and what exactly you're going to play.
Couple that with an excellent matching service like www.NeverwinterConnections.com and you have the idea envrion for online RPG gaming. It's as close to pencil 'n paper as you can get, with the power of not needing everybody in the same room at the same time. Who needs massively multiplayer? As long as you're having fun, that's what counts.
Still has shoulder buttons, though.
on
New Gameboy Announced
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Very nice design (I love the square clamshell approach) but I still can't play it as easily as I could play the original Game Boy. I may be one of the only people on the planet that this affects, but there's no way I can use the shoulder buttons on the GBA -- and lo and behold, they've carried over to this new one, despite a generally boxy-flat design.
Shoulder triggers of any kind are very difficult to use for physically disabled gamers, such as LPs or other syndromes which deform the hands. Face buttons, no problem; you brace the controller against a flat surface like a table and you can mash away in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to your heart's delight.
But when you have to wrap your fingers around to reach the 'ergonomic' buttons, well, then you have problems. Dreamcast controllers gave me all manners of trouble since the triggers were analog, underneath the thing, and in some games unmappable and mandatory. Nintendo 64 controllers were just a joke, with buttons all over the place including a trigger on the bottom of the thing -- even a joypad shaped controller a friend offered me had a trigger UNDER the joypad! Insane!
For portable systems, you have no choice of simply plugging in a new controller that meets your needs. It's an integrated unit. It's not economically feasible to make an alternative unit which has four face buttons instead of two face + two shoulder just to accommodate a small percentage of your gaming audience. Understandable, but it's a shame, really. I'd kill to have Advance Wars and Tony Hawk handy for long trips.
...since you can whip open the toolkit and give yourself +1 Uber Glowing Longsword of l33tness and 20 levels of XP, it makes the whole collecting-stuff-and-points issue moot. Once that's shoved out of the way the only fun you'll have with the game is with the genuine roleplaying experience -- what do you DO with your glowing sword, once you've got it? Granted, not many NWN modules have gotten to the point where the roleplaying is emphasized over the Monty Haul, but they're definitely getting there and it's an eventuality.
I don't mean to do a 'nwn r0xx0rz uo suxx0rz' post, but really, this is really the problem with any persistent world MMORPG -- yes, they have roleplaying elements, but the core of the game basically Progress Quest. How much l3wt can you acquire? How uber can you get? How many days will it take you to get there, and if there is no limit, how many days until you get bored? It's less a roleplaying game and more a game, if that makes sense.
Once you realize that, paying more and more money just for more points makes perfect sense -- and is nonsense at the same time.
That's true; the DMCA is the weapon here. It's also why finding mod chips for PS2s is night impossible, since Sony goes after anybody selling them like a shark that smells blood.
Plus modding PS2's seems to be an imprecise science, but good luck finding ANY chip compared to the ubiqituous modchips available for the PS1.
Even if they were only used to defeat the 'region encoding' on games and not be able to play CD-Rs, that's a circumvention device and they can nail you for it.
It's really a shame; there are so many great Japanese games that I'm never going to get to play. I can't even import a Japanese PS2 easily, since Sony's clamping down on that, too.
Speaking as an authentic disabled person, I'd say that robots are snazzy and neat and cool and not really going to make a major difference in most disabiled folks lives. A simple matter of little gadgets or tricks and techniques has covered the "day to day living" gap nicely for me using stuff I could find at a dollar store or have made for me by bending plastic into various shapes and stuff.
So I see the guy's point that inventing these things 'for the disabled' isn't particularly spectacular.
What disabled folks need more than robots are things that you can't easily fix or build... laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (to establish equal footing and allow even for simple things like curb cuts in sidewalks) to solutions to social hurdles and social perceptions. Those are the bigger, more critical issues. Being able to brush your teeth in the morning is just a matter of finding the right trick; being able to hold a job and interact with your peers without hassle is considerably more complicated.
Online publishing isn't always intended to be one's primary source of revenue. I think this example and the Stephen King experiments show that at least for now, we don't have a workable system that will allow someone to live off what they're writing online. (Closest I've seen are extremely popular webcomics like Penny and 8-bit, but they also have side businesses and advertising and sometimes don't meet their goals.) It's not time for pro writing online yet. I have faith that a workable formula will be found, but until then, it's not a bet I'd wanna take.
For folks like me who are just publishing because they like to write and something compells them so that they HAVE to write, with the end result being freely available, it's much easier. I've got a day job that pays the bills so I can come home and write. Works pretty well in terms of keeping me in the black...
The problem then becomes 'Death by Popularity'. As much as we love the internet as a bastion of free speech and free expression and so on and so forth, bandwidth is decidedly NOT free. The slashdot effect can pretty much wipe out your website -- and then your ISP will cheerfully charge you for all that traffic brought on by thousands of happy readers enjoying your work.
Even pro sites and webcomics have this problem, where they start small, get popular, and get crushed by bandwidth costs from so many people simply digging their stuff. It's even worse for aspiring independent bands; the RIAA can afford to pipe thousands of MP3s off a website (even if they don't wanna), but Joe Q. Guitar Player might not be able to.
I really hope someone comes up with a technology or a revnue model that works. I'll keep writing regardless of whether or not it turns a penny, but it'd be one less headache if I didn't have to worry about my work costing me an arm and a leg to get out there.
Obligatory whoring plug for said work: Unreal Estate, a scifi comedy. It's got open source reality innit. Whee! Now let's see if it survives the link being posted to slashdot. (Probably will since nobody reads comments, right? *EL WINK*)
How many here would actually give up the internet in protest?
An interesting question, but how about this one instead:
How many here would actually give up BROADBAND internet in protest?
I seriously considered sticking with my narrowband ISP in protest of the madness that's going on in the cable/DSL industry. Yes, I love high bandwidth, but I love the security / stability / competition / freedom that narrowbanders provide a wee bit more. In the end I went with getting a cable modem once it finally reached my suburb, but if I have to drop it in the future to avoid censorship issues and price hikes and copyright baron monitoring... I will.
The Internet is only as free as the next link up the chain, folks. Be careful who you latch on to.
You can't go wrong with Demotivators in calendar or poster form. Heck, every one even lists 'disaffected students' as an ideal target audience!
Okay, so they're not illegal, but they'll give your bright-eyed student a glimpse at the future of things to come after they start actively using your other gifts...
Windows Update fatally crashes my system each time I go to download all the 'critical updates' my system needs. Which means that I'm unable to actually patch my boxen, unless I maybe reinstall the operating system, which would make me lose all my application settings/components and be forced to reinstall them, etc, etc.
One central source, one update system. One critical point of failure. One of the many problems that come with having one operating system to rule them all and in the darkness find them...
Boy, do I hope nobody tries to r00t my 98 box. After plugging in my shiny new cable modem it probably looks real attractive now.
I make a habit of reading Yahoo!'s Reuters provided news spools before hitting Slashdot each morning. I saw the same article there -- but there was no mention whatsoever of WHY Electronic Arts was turning down Microsoft.
Then here we have the NYT article and it's got not just one but multiple quotes slamming Microsoft's policy regarding online game servers. I wonder why one media source covered that angle and others didn't?
Of course, since I don't wanna scream conspiracy without screaming it from two directions, it could either be because Microsoft leaned on Rueters not to report that bit, or because NYT was digging for any dirt they could blow out of proportion in order to make it look like they were scooping their rivals. Who knows?
Either way, consolidating servers like Microsoft is proposing is the same My Way Or The Highway tactics that nearly crushed Nintendo in the last generation of the console wars. Guess they didn't learn.
I second that. One of the heralds of classic gaming is that it's easy to get into -- Pac-Man moves around the maze eating dots, okay. The Paperboy throws newspapers, get 'em on the porch, okay. There are nuances and patterns to learn, sure, but we're not talking about 50,000 combo tricks and special techniques and secrets and play variants you need to master in order to have fun at the game. We're talking a game you can drop a quarter into, have a few minutes of fun, and then you're done -- simple, fun, fast, and never tires out.
There are thankfully some modern games with this mentality, but not enough. My favorite right now and the reason I keep my Dreamcast plugged in is Power Stone (first one, not the second). A dirt simple 'fighting game' which is really more of a crazed, high energy Hollywood movie brawl. I can play that as long or as short as I like and still have plenty of fun. AND it had those flashy gosh-wow 3-D graphics that the previous post condemned, too, go figure.
Also of note is that a lot of American arcades are taking this 'Pick up and play' route as well. 'Adult' oriented arcades like Dave & Busters don't even have joystick based games anymore, it's all simulators (adults know how to drive a car or ski down a mountain) or shooting games. Stuff that ANYBODY could play without hitting GameFAQs to memorize all the small details first.
I'm surprised nobody's really picked up on this -- the radio interviewer even disregarded it ("Putting aside the politics, insert smarky comment here").
It does call into question the nature of copyright, once you break something down to its core elements. The reason why MIDI was used? Because it's a mathematical representation of a string of notes, rather than a copy of an actual copyrighted performance of those notes. The reason why dictionary samples were used instead of a better synthesizer? Well, think about this: are the sampled words copyrighted? The dictionary sites they were lifted from could claim copyright, but do they really own the rights to a sound bite of a proununciation of an english word? What if I recorded myself saying it? What if you take their recordings and make sentences, who owns the rights then, the composer/assembler or the dictionary or what?
I LOVE how jumbled the legal issues get surrounding this. Of course, I'm sure the RIAA will get them shut down ASAP to prove they own the right to every aspect of our culture, including our own commentary upon that culture.
As a writer, I'd say he has half a point here.
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Dog Bites Website
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Putting aside Katzbashing, he has a point: the Internet is giving hobbyists and individual enterprenuers new avenues for getting their work out there.
Writing is one of the best examples, even better than musicians or possibly game creators, since the web is at heart a text based medium. The traditional publishing method (submissions, rejections, contracts, printings, promotions, sales, yadda) is laborious and iffy... online, you just post your webpage and you're done. Advertising to subcultural niches that would find your work interesting can be very effective; success/popularity can be found in modest amounts while completely bypassing the traditional channels.
But something Katz isn't seeing here is that online grassroots success != bigtime financial success. If someone wants to make it as a mainstream author on the NYT best seller list, putting your work on a website and grassrooting is not going to do that. Selling anything online, particularly with the 'I Want It Free' mentality, is difficult at best. If you're fine with 'smalltime' work or hobbyist tinkering, though, that's probably okay for you (assuming you can afford the bandwidth to make it happen; webcomic authors have this problem in spades).
Case example, which I swear is not a plug. Myself, everything I've ever written is out there for free. The majority of it fits into the niche subculture of 'anime fanfiction', so that works perfectly; I couldn't make money off it anyway, and grassroots hype and advertising makes perfect sense. Plus, using the audience I build from that, I can branch off into things like my original works which I CAN market. But being the next John Grisham by my internet doodlings? No. Even if I was at that level of writing quality (frankly, I think I am...) I know this is not the road to that goal.
So yes, new doors are opened by the potential of online promotion and distribution. But they're not the SAME doors you could open going the usual way.
The latest Akira DVD release has a completely redone script / sub track / dub track that's a more accurate translation of the original. That means we've got as perfect a version as we can get (and with decent dubbing, too!). Stephen can go and make his version; maybe it'll be entertaining.
Now, if they pull the DVD off shelves or never released one in the first place, assuming that the watered down hackjob version Mr. Blade is gonna produce is the best one, then I'd be raging upset. As is I'm only mildly amused, but slightly perturbed at what this means for the future...
If more movie hauses decide this is the way to go -- remake rather than port over. Anime's just starting to get a slim toehold on American theatres (Princess Mononoke, Vampire Hunter D) and having remakes shove them aside is not good.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, NWN has a persistent data storage system coming out with its next patch. It's in testing right now and a number of persistent world developers are gleefully hacking away at it -- the end result should be what you're looking for, a small-scale, MUD style world with full graphical support.
The D&D combat system is entrenched but that hasn't stopped many people from coding their own enhancements and replacement subsystems. For instance, I'm making a Final Fight / Golden Axe style arcade brawler using NWN, thanks to some custom spawning, treasure, and weapon systems.
You hit the Konami booth and didn't even mention the Bemani games? Alright, I'll pick up the slack...
DDRMAX 2 - More Konami-made tracks, but also some new-to-DDR American music complete with music video accompaniment. Nothing really outlandishly awful so far, and they've got 'Days Go By' by Death in Vegas, which is a plus for me. The game sports a new look 'n feel.
DDR ULTRAMIX - DDR comes to X-Box, with lots of rehash tracks from various mixes, but a few new modes to go with it and a return of the polygonal dancer. No poly boost on them, though, they're still as blocky as ever.
Karaoke Revolution - Not sure about he title, but yes, they're working on a karaoke game. W00t. Sounds like the X-Box Music Mixer will do the same thing on the other side of the console fence.
Para Para Paradise? Anybody know if this is coming stateside? I saw a release date on some online store, but that's meaningless...
The game takes place AFTER the trilogy. That in itself kind of trashes the series, since it confirms that the war is not over, the agents are still in control, and the Matrix itself still exists.
Uh... yay. We win. Possibly.
I was quite excited about the whole cross-media storytelling planned for the last two movies, the way the plot would expand to fill all relevant games and films and animes and such. However, like Japan's similar efforts with the .hack series, it's better in theory than execution since the end result is disjointed. I'd still love to see the idea of multimedia (as in, more than one medium) storytelling done right, but it's been an uphill climb to get something smooth and palatable...
I seem to be the only person on earth with this view, but:
MI3 was worse than MI4, despite MI3 being 2-D and MI4 being 3-D.
MI3: Rehashed jokes, rehashed puzzles, pitiful explanation of MI2's ending, very few puzzles or NPCs who remain in my memory after the game's over, truncated ending sequence, ugly sprite scaling.
MI4: Fun 'commercialism' theme, new villian, more memorable characters, new twists on the series, better humor (albeit this is subjective).
I don't care what dimension the game extends into as long as it's fun, and MI3 was boring and insulting compared to the much more entertaining MI4. If they want to do Sam 'n Max in 3-D so be it, and as long as it's SAM AND MAX and not a pale imitation (FT2, Action Game(tm)!) it'll be entertaining. Don't be a dimensional elitist.
Um...NO! I just have to say that as a single player game, NWN was very impressive, However on the multiplayer side it sucked big time. However it did get us to restart an old D&D pen and paper group around here...
Were you using the Gamespy browser to try to find games? If so, yes, it sucks. Gamespy is a terrible way to set up a D&D game -- D&D is not something where you can join some stranger's server right in the middle and play away, and a lot of the persistent worlds out there are weak.
But if you used a real, D&D oriented matching service like NeverwinterConnections.com, then you'd be in gaming nirvana. Setting up an actual adventure session in advance, getting a party together, then roleplaying through with live DMs... that's quite fun and that's really the way the game was meant to be played. This isn't DOOM, it takes some preplanning and forethought to get it right.
I mean, wasn't half the fandom surrounding The Sims based on recreating celebs or X-Men and stuff? Do we really want to take the time and energy to make Sailor Moon in The Sims and then have her get old and fat and sit around complaining about taxes until she croaks, then we get her mutant pink haired offspring running around?
More seriously, it's a bit like the problem with the sim-kids in the first game. You have no control over them beyond their name, so if you're trying to assemble a house of people from your own imagination rather than from a host of random 'DNA' variables, you're out of luck.
But hey, what do I know? Clearly Maxis understands why The Sims are fun better than me. Look at how great TSO is! ...right.
...is a loop sequencer. A loop can be any sound, a synth, a guitar, a drumline, a bassline, a vocal, name it. The program sequences the loops, lets you get nitty-gritty to make mini-melodies out of one shot sounds and use THOSE as loops, etc. It's like Acid Music but it can delve down a level.
I've done plenty of music in MG2, and enjoyed it a lot. The hard part is getting a quality recording off your PS2, and IMPORTING loops from an external source. Nasty, and requires a special purpose sampler device. That's what in the end drove me to using a PC program to do a similar function (Acid Music).
Well, there's always Contra: Shattered Soldier, which was a pure 2-D scrolling platform shooter done with 3-D graphics. VERY nice visually. Only failing was its obsession with unlockable content and bosses -- most of the gameplay is in boss fights, not in the actual platforming sections that comprised most of the stage in the original Contra.
If Metal Slug brings its brand of weird humor and powerups to a 3-D envrion Contra style, it could really work out nicely.
It looks like it's ideal for simple platforming games, ala Commander Keen (although every demo screen showed very small playable sprites) or Gauntlet. NES era style, albeit with 32-bit color sprites.
What about other 2-D scrolling style games, though? I've got a particularly keen (gag) interest in doing a Final Fight / Golden Axe style brawler, but there doesn't seem to be any 2.5D style graphical support here, just Flatland style mapping. Is there a similar project which is more applicable to brawlers?
This thread has shuffled off into slashdot obscurity, but in the interest of answering your question:
www.neverwinterconnections.com
That's how you meet people. The site is a matching service which is designed specifically to get groups of players together. I didn't know anybody personally who I could play with either, but I've met lots of terrific people through here and have joined guild-like groups that spawned out of NWC that really helped me in my mod development and provided me plenty of games to play in.
Granted, it's not as easy as walking up to a stranger in an MMORPG and saying "Wanna party up?" but that's an advantage -- since the investment is more key than some passing grouping with people you may never see again, you really get to know folks.
For every problem, fan communities can come up with a solution.
...if you do buy it, it's one more purchase towards the break-even point, and that'll enable Trixter and his band of psychotic vidcap guys to make volume two.
The DVD doesn't cost too much, has no CSS encoding or region encoding making it quite geek-friendly. It runs demos you'll likely never be able to see again due to obsolete hardware issues. It runs modern ones you can show off to your less knowledgeable friends to ooh and aah them. The running audio commentary provides plenty of amusing anecdotes about the scene, some great background information, and in some cases comments directly from those responsible for the video itself.
In short, it's worth it. So very, very worth it. And if you want an Amiga or C64 disc, the best thing you can do is buy this PC disc; without profit from this DVD there won't be a v2.
I'll second that. Once you take 'Massively' out of MMORPG, you lose a lot of problems the genre presents you with and gain a whole lot of power. You choose when you want to play, who you want to play with (so you don't have to deal with griefers at ALL) and what exactly you're going to play.
Couple that with an excellent matching service like www.NeverwinterConnections.com and you have the idea envrion for online RPG gaming. It's as close to pencil 'n paper as you can get, with the power of not needing everybody in the same room at the same time. Who needs massively multiplayer? As long as you're having fun, that's what counts.
Very nice design (I love the square clamshell approach) but I still can't play it as easily as I could play the original Game Boy. I may be one of the only people on the planet that this affects, but there's no way I can use the shoulder buttons on the GBA -- and lo and behold, they've carried over to this new one, despite a generally boxy-flat design.
Shoulder triggers of any kind are very difficult to use for physically disabled gamers, such as LPs or other syndromes which deform the hands. Face buttons, no problem; you brace the controller against a flat surface like a table and you can mash away in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 to your heart's delight.
But when you have to wrap your fingers around to reach the 'ergonomic' buttons, well, then you have problems. Dreamcast controllers gave me all manners of trouble since the triggers were analog, underneath the thing, and in some games unmappable and mandatory. Nintendo 64 controllers were just a joke, with buttons all over the place including a trigger on the bottom of the thing -- even a joypad shaped controller a friend offered me had a trigger UNDER the joypad! Insane!
For portable systems, you have no choice of simply plugging in a new controller that meets your needs. It's an integrated unit. It's not economically feasible to make an alternative unit which has four face buttons instead of two face + two shoulder just to accommodate a small percentage of your gaming audience. Understandable, but it's a shame, really. I'd kill to have Advance Wars and Tony Hawk handy for long trips.
...since you can whip open the toolkit and give yourself +1 Uber Glowing Longsword of l33tness and 20 levels of XP, it makes the whole collecting-stuff-and-points issue moot. Once that's shoved out of the way the only fun you'll have with the game is with the genuine roleplaying experience -- what do you DO with your glowing sword, once you've got it? Granted, not many NWN modules have gotten to the point where the roleplaying is emphasized over the Monty Haul, but they're definitely getting there and it's an eventuality.
I don't mean to do a 'nwn r0xx0rz uo suxx0rz' post, but really, this is really the problem with any persistent world MMORPG -- yes, they have roleplaying elements, but the core of the game basically Progress Quest. How much l3wt can you acquire? How uber can you get? How many days will it take you to get there, and if there is no limit, how many days until you get bored? It's less a roleplaying game and more a game, if that makes sense.
Once you realize that, paying more and more money just for more points makes perfect sense -- and is nonsense at the same time.
That's true; the DMCA is the weapon here. It's also why finding mod chips for PS2s is night impossible, since Sony goes after anybody selling them like a shark that smells blood.
Plus modding PS2's seems to be an imprecise science, but good luck finding ANY chip compared to the ubiqituous modchips available for the PS1.
Even if they were only used to defeat the 'region encoding' on games and not be able to play CD-Rs, that's a circumvention device and they can nail you for it.
It's really a shame; there are so many great Japanese games that I'm never going to get to play. I can't even import a Japanese PS2 easily, since Sony's clamping down on that, too.
Speaking as an authentic disabled person, I'd say that robots are snazzy and neat and cool and not really going to make a major difference in most disabiled folks lives. A simple matter of little gadgets or tricks and techniques has covered the "day to day living" gap nicely for me using stuff I could find at a dollar store or have made for me by bending plastic into various shapes and stuff.
So I see the guy's point that inventing these things 'for the disabled' isn't particularly spectacular.
What disabled folks need more than robots are things that you can't easily fix or build... laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (to establish equal footing and allow even for simple things like curb cuts in sidewalks) to solutions to social hurdles and social perceptions. Those are the bigger, more critical issues. Being able to brush your teeth in the morning is just a matter of finding the right trick; being able to hold a job and interact with your peers without hassle is considerably more complicated.
Online publishing isn't always intended to be one's primary source of revenue. I think this example and the Stephen King experiments show that at least for now, we don't have a workable system that will allow someone to live off what they're writing online. (Closest I've seen are extremely popular webcomics like Penny and 8-bit, but they also have side businesses and advertising and sometimes don't meet their goals.) It's not time for pro writing online yet. I have faith that a workable formula will be found, but until then, it's not a bet I'd wanna take.
For folks like me who are just publishing because they like to write and something compells them so that they HAVE to write, with the end result being freely available, it's much easier. I've got a day job that pays the bills so I can come home and write. Works pretty well in terms of keeping me in the black...
The problem then becomes 'Death by Popularity'. As much as we love the internet as a bastion of free speech and free expression and so on and so forth, bandwidth is decidedly NOT free. The slashdot effect can pretty much wipe out your website -- and then your ISP will cheerfully charge you for all that traffic brought on by thousands of happy readers enjoying your work.
Even pro sites and webcomics have this problem, where they start small, get popular, and get crushed by bandwidth costs from so many people simply digging their stuff. It's even worse for aspiring independent bands; the RIAA can afford to pipe thousands of MP3s off a website (even if they don't wanna), but Joe Q. Guitar Player might not be able to.
I really hope someone comes up with a technology or a revnue model that works. I'll keep writing regardless of whether or not it turns a penny, but it'd be one less headache if I didn't have to worry about my work costing me an arm and a leg to get out there.
Obligatory whoring plug for said work: Unreal Estate, a scifi comedy. It's got open source reality innit. Whee! Now let's see if it survives the link being posted to slashdot. (Probably will since nobody reads comments, right? *EL WINK*)
How many here would actually give up the internet in protest?
An interesting question, but how about this one instead:
How many here would actually give up BROADBAND internet in protest?
I seriously considered sticking with my narrowband ISP in protest of the madness that's going on in the cable/DSL industry. Yes, I love high bandwidth, but I love the security / stability / competition / freedom that narrowbanders provide a wee bit more. In the end I went with getting a cable modem once it finally reached my suburb, but if I have to drop it in the future to avoid censorship issues and price hikes and copyright baron monitoring... I will.
The Internet is only as free as the next link up the chain, folks. Be careful who you latch on to.
You can't go wrong with Demotivators in calendar or poster form. Heck, every one even lists 'disaffected students' as an ideal target audience!
Okay, so they're not illegal, but they'll give your bright-eyed student a glimpse at the future of things to come after they start actively using your other gifts...
Windows Update fatally crashes my system each time I go to download all the 'critical updates' my system needs. Which means that I'm unable to actually patch my boxen, unless I maybe reinstall the operating system, which would make me lose all my application settings/components and be forced to reinstall them, etc, etc.
One central source, one update system. One critical point of failure. One of the many problems that come with having one operating system to rule them all and in the darkness find them...
Boy, do I hope nobody tries to r00t my 98 box. After plugging in my shiny new cable modem it probably looks real attractive now.
I make a habit of reading Yahoo!'s Reuters provided news spools before hitting Slashdot each morning. I saw the same article there -- but there was no mention whatsoever of WHY Electronic Arts was turning down Microsoft.
Then here we have the NYT article and it's got not just one but multiple quotes slamming Microsoft's policy regarding online game servers. I wonder why one media source covered that angle and others didn't?
Of course, since I don't wanna scream conspiracy without screaming it from two directions, it could either be because Microsoft leaned on Rueters not to report that bit, or because NYT was digging for any dirt they could blow out of proportion in order to make it look like they were scooping their rivals. Who knows?
Either way, consolidating servers like Microsoft is proposing is the same My Way Or The Highway tactics that nearly crushed Nintendo in the last generation of the console wars. Guess they didn't learn.
I second that. One of the heralds of classic gaming is that it's easy to get into -- Pac-Man moves around the maze eating dots, okay. The Paperboy throws newspapers, get 'em on the porch, okay. There are nuances and patterns to learn, sure, but we're not talking about 50,000 combo tricks and special techniques and secrets and play variants you need to master in order to have fun at the game. We're talking a game you can drop a quarter into, have a few minutes of fun, and then you're done -- simple, fun, fast, and never tires out.
There are thankfully some modern games with this mentality, but not enough. My favorite right now and the reason I keep my Dreamcast plugged in is Power Stone (first one, not the second). A dirt simple 'fighting game' which is really more of a crazed, high energy Hollywood movie brawl. I can play that as long or as short as I like and still have plenty of fun. AND it had those flashy gosh-wow 3-D graphics that the previous post condemned, too, go figure.
Also of note is that a lot of American arcades are taking this 'Pick up and play' route as well. 'Adult' oriented arcades like Dave & Busters don't even have joystick based games anymore, it's all simulators (adults know how to drive a car or ski down a mountain) or shooting games. Stuff that ANYBODY could play without hitting GameFAQs to memorize all the small details first.
I'm surprised nobody's really picked up on this -- the radio interviewer even disregarded it ("Putting aside the politics, insert smarky comment here").
It does call into question the nature of copyright, once you break something down to its core elements. The reason why MIDI was used? Because it's a mathematical representation of a string of notes, rather than a copy of an actual copyrighted performance of those notes. The reason why dictionary samples were used instead of a better synthesizer? Well, think about this: are the sampled words copyrighted? The dictionary sites they were lifted from could claim copyright, but do they really own the rights to a sound bite of a proununciation of an english word? What if I recorded myself saying it? What if you take their recordings and make sentences, who owns the rights then, the composer/assembler or the dictionary or what?
I LOVE how jumbled the legal issues get surrounding this. Of course, I'm sure the RIAA will get them shut down ASAP to prove they own the right to every aspect of our culture, including our own commentary upon that culture.
Putting aside Katzbashing, he has a point: the Internet is giving hobbyists and individual enterprenuers new avenues for getting their work out there.
Writing is one of the best examples, even better than musicians or possibly game creators, since the web is at heart a text based medium. The traditional publishing method (submissions, rejections, contracts, printings, promotions, sales, yadda) is laborious and iffy... online, you just post your webpage and you're done. Advertising to subcultural niches that would find your work interesting can be very effective; success/popularity can be found in modest amounts while completely bypassing the traditional channels.
But something Katz isn't seeing here is that online grassroots success != bigtime financial success. If someone wants to make it as a mainstream author on the NYT best seller list, putting your work on a website and grassrooting is not going to do that. Selling anything online, particularly with the 'I Want It Free' mentality, is difficult at best. If you're fine with 'smalltime' work or hobbyist tinkering, though, that's probably okay for you (assuming you can afford the bandwidth to make it happen; webcomic authors have this problem in spades).
Case example, which I swear is not a plug. Myself, everything I've ever written is out there for free. The majority of it fits into the niche subculture of 'anime fanfiction', so that works perfectly; I couldn't make money off it anyway, and grassroots hype and advertising makes perfect sense. Plus, using the audience I build from that, I can branch off into things like my original works which I CAN market. But being the next John Grisham by my internet doodlings? No. Even if I was at that level of writing quality (frankly, I think I am...) I know this is not the road to that goal.
So yes, new doors are opened by the potential of online promotion and distribution. But they're not the SAME doors you could open going the usual way.
The latest Akira DVD release has a completely redone script / sub track / dub track that's a more accurate translation of the original. That means we've got as perfect a version as we can get (and with decent dubbing, too!). Stephen can go and make his version; maybe it'll be entertaining.
Now, if they pull the DVD off shelves or never released one in the first place, assuming that the watered down hackjob version Mr. Blade is gonna produce is the best one, then I'd be raging upset. As is I'm only mildly amused, but slightly perturbed at what this means for the future...
If more movie hauses decide this is the way to go -- remake rather than port over. Anime's just starting to get a slim toehold on American theatres (Princess Mononoke, Vampire Hunter D) and having remakes shove them aside is not good.