I have a Dreamcast and PS2 right now, and plan to get a Gameboy Advance as soon as it comes out, because I have a feeling it'll have the most innovative games we'll ever see in the next 5 years.
Thank goodness for emulators enhancing the look of games, now I can enjoy those with better graphics via the 2xSAI engine or just newer 3D cards used for PSX, N64, and arcade games even...
Are you kidding? People should be forced to buy new hardware. Upgrade those Riva 128's! I've had bump mapping since the Voodoo2, and I want to SEE THIS IN A GAME! People, start programming for the high end and forget about the guy who walked into Radio Shack and bought the first computer he saw to use the Internet and work on homework. These aren't gamers. If I buy a GeForce 2 GTS, I want to see all it has to offer!
Just don't let it take over the entire development. If necessary, program an excellent game first, and then bring it up to standard concerning today's video cards. The store I go to doesn't sell anything less than a GeForce or Radeon or Voodoo 5, and games shouldn't support anything less. Come on, the GeForce has been around for a while now. Those NVidia tech demos weren't created just to look pretty, you can actually make great effects in games too, so use 'em!
I'm glad someone said it. I'm tired of being bogged down in a sea of FPS and RTS games on PC, and I've found myself ignoring them more and more until the only thing I can stand playing nowadays is games on an emulator. I don't like PC games anymore. I am sick of having to choose between 20 different FPS games when I want to play something, and not having any other options like a good snowboard game or beat-em-up a la Double Dragon (I screamed when I heard Metroid would be turned into an FPS)
Funny things have been happening in the industry too, great games like Wipeout XL are getting no PC sequels. We're lacking in popular genres. Ever take a look at what fighting games have come out in the past five years?
Whatever happened to the great innovation PCs had without 3D accelerators? Commander Keen, One Must Fall, Terminal Velocity, Jazz Jackrabbit, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Hero's Quest... We even had our own version of Contra called Duke Nukem II! Have you ever noticed that the same companies making these wonderful games only want to heavily market their FPS's, and RTS's (save LucasArts obsessed with racing games)?
Other than RPGs which reel me in with their story, the last few games I found myself addicted to are Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSX), Ghost in the Shell (PSX), Soul Calibur (DC), Dracula X (PCE CD), and Ridge Racer V for lack of finding equivilants on PC. But why can't my ultimate gaming machine with a 900MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM and a GeForce 2 GTS provide me with ultimate games?
Or even ultimate graphics? Lately the only game that has impressed me on PC since Unreal has been Serious Sam. I know the topic was complaining about advances in graphics, but on the PC I don't see it. I was more impressed by the stylistic and incredibly well modeled Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast than say, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. Despite people claiming those games have such excellent graphics, I just find them bland, and every effect is just a common staple these days.
I wonder what will happen to things that use RAMBUS? Such as the PlayStation 2, and N64. Well, the N64 is on its way out but the PS2 has just begun, yet is already well established. They can't be expected to change the specs of their system at this point in time!
I believe in using the right tool for the right job. This is just a personal choice but I am curious as to why one wouldn't use the tool that is obviously more suited for the job?
If CPUs will be open source, everyone will release their own version of it which is probably bound to have some that work differently. Programmeres may have to take into account for a lot of "Cyrixes" out there, who knows what people will do to modify the CPUs to better suit their neads yet cause a widespread incompatibility issue which software developers would have to compensate for. Look how many distros of Linux are out there and then look how many times you have to release a package, creating different ones that work with each distro. I don't want to have to deal with that, and I don't want to start seeing "Required: AMD, Intel, or VIA/Cyrix CPU" and my CPU would not happen to be on that list... Look how bad-off Super 7 was... Granted they will have the source available so they won't have to resort to reverse-engineering, but it just shows that no matter how close you are you can be so far off as to cause annoying incompatibilities with hardware and software.
That's stupid though, what if a car is out of control and you need to speed up to get out of the way? Or a falling rock?
Obviously speeding is used to get away from danger as well as to cause it. I wonder how many families will sue because their now-dead relative was not able to control his car in order to get out of an emergency...
IGNDC: We'll get to one of those in a bit. But in general, that's the question on everybody's mind -- looking at how Sega is getting into licensing content, there's always the big looming question of Sega's future, whether there will be a Dreamcast 2 or whether Sega will go software-only, whether SOJ will start developing for other platforms... With the history of the Saturn and an opportunity to bury that history, we wanted to give you a chance to say that Sega is definitely dedicated to the Dreamcast.
Peter Moore: We are fully committed to the Dreamcast. I said earlier about, before I got into the industry, how surprised I was that the Saturn wasn't in the game for five years -- and it actually was, but... Well, you were there. The Dreamcast sold more units in its first four days than Saturn sold in its first year. There's no comparison there. And after the dust settles on this holiday, the Dreamcast will be at a very critical mass that will continue to be attractive to third parties. That said, I know we will lose some third parties -- everybody's ready to jump on to the next thing, and with two brand new competitors ready next year, everybody's ready to dip their toes into new water, and there's an ocean of water out there...
If you're not using a lot of applications simply because they are made by Microsoft... what are you thinking? Believe it or not, some quality software has come out of MS. I don't think anyone would care about Wine if that weren't true.
Hmm, haven't heard of Fry's. I'll look on EBWorld but there are no Electronic Boutiques around here. As a rule I never order anything online, no matter how much cheaper it is, since it's a lot more annoying to return it, and if I buy it in person, I get it right away. Which is more fun.
Well I was pretty disappointed when I took my PS2 home and discovered there was no way to network it. Then I looked at how much I used my DC online... really, never. I have Quake 3 for it but never bothered to go online with it (I figured I'd get clobbered by those who have DC mice and keyboards... I don't know where to get the mouse). No big deal. Online gaming wasn't one of my favourite aspects of gaming in general anyway, and besides, there are up to four players on each system and they can all be in the same room!
I still like the DC better for games at the moment, but I heard that Sony released new devkits that allow debugging of the VU0 and VU1 (among other things) which will allow much better use of all three processors. Hopefully developers will make good use of this, but we'll definitely have to wait a while to see any vast improvements due to development cycle time.
I do, however, love SSX, even though I disliked games such as Tony Hawk et al.
Funny though, the game I play most is Final Fantasy 9 for the original PSX (albiet using my PS2).
Why not just program it to make the proper Win32 API calls? It would be more efficient and require less libraries loaded into RAM.
> No, winamp is a proprietary API, and they're both reinventing the wheel.
Winamp is not an API, it is simply an application with its own built-in skinning technique. GTK is reinventing the wheel in Win32's case, (in X's it IS the wheel).
I would prefer if Winamp didn't use skins at all and followed suit of my personal preferences applied to the entire operating system to keep everything unobtrusive and commonplace. If they had the option to turn this off, great. Luckily I can customize it to look like everything else, but it is a hassle changing it accordingly every time I make any changes.
This argument, however, isn't about Winamp, it's about Everybuddy which doesn't feature skinning as a main "selling" point. Skinning is not one of Everybuddy's main features.
To properly emulate Everybuddy in a Win32 environment, you would have to use the common API as it is done in X. X's common API for drawing windows is GTK, Win32 has its own. To make the Win32 equivilant, you should use the Win32 API.
Using GTK will only make it less efficient by loading up libraries where a similar function already exists without it. GTK routines are less efficient since it goes through the Win32 API anyhow, and the rest of its functions would simply be overhead. Writing a wrapper to make GTK behave like the Win32 API is just redundant and even MORE overhead. Why not just code it with straight Win32 API calls in the first place?
I hope they will choose someone who can make an excellent quality AIM-compatible messaging client.
I need AIM to keep contact with others who refuse to use other instant messaging services or those who are confused by the idea, but AIM is a big security flaw so I am definitely looking for another way to communicate with them.
The problem is that AIM constantly pops up windows when users message me, and there is a possibility of me typing in important and private information at the time. With the AIM message window popping up without discretion, I could be halfway through what I'm typing and hit enter, and realize that I just sent that message out for someone else to see!
Another problem is that AIM is just aggravating, when I am talking to five different people privately, I see blue blinking task bars littered around causing stress. For some reason many blue blinking boxes blinking at different (and fast) intervals start to piss me off! MSN Messenger even does so, especially when I'm trying to enjoy an article on slashdot while chatting with a friend at the same time. I'm reading a paragraph, and I plan to check back on my friend every 30 seconds to see if they've written, but I can't enjoy the article because the blinking is constantly nagging at me.
Personally the best option I've found is ICQ's system tray icon simply taking on the appearance of a message. It's unobtrusive, not annoying, and I can check it whenever I want without it nagging at me. Plus, I don't have to be "away" all the time preventing chatting with my friends simply because I try to keep information private or my nerves calm!
Well sure I use Winamp, but it doesn't require external libraries such as the GTK. GTK is basically a partial API, whereas Winamp just contains its own proprietary skinning technique. This is definitely not obtrusive, since it doesn't re-invent the wheel.
GTK, however, is basically reinventing the wheel. Some would argue that it brings greater ease to porting apps to Win32. That's great, but that doesn't mean it's the best way of doing it. For an instant messaging client such as Everybuddy, it would be best to use the Windows API since it is somewhat of a productivity app and skinability isn't one of its main features, that is just a by-product of GTK. This is why using the standard Windows API calls would allow for a better translation to Win32, it would be the *nix version's equivilant (plus be more efficient and optimized for the platform than if it were to use GTK).
I have tried it, crashes on exit, plus it looks as ugly as the lovechild of Gilbert Godfrey and Julia Childs.
Personally about the Whislter skins, I'm just impressed that they've succeeded in a stable and very usable skinning technique for the Win32 interface. I haven't run into any problems, and that's the best part.
As for GTK for Windows, it's not the standard GUI, so what's the point? I don't want to have to install these libraries just for one application, plus then if Everybuddy for Win32 uses it, it will end up looking different than all of my other Win32 applications which use the standard GUI calls.
GTK has its purpose in X, but in Win32 there is already a standard GUI, there's no need for it.
On another note, anyone recall what happened to MyCQ? It seems to be dead. Even though they claim it isn't, I haven't seen an update for many many many months.
Is someone working on porting Everybuddy to Win32? Did anyone check out Odigo 3.0?
Personally I would like to see Everybuddy ported to Win32, it seems like a great program. Hopefully, using the standard Win32 GUI API calls instead of custom or GTK ones, especially since Whistler will feature its own skinning method, and afaik, GTK for Windows is not that stable (or popular, and who needs more libraries?).
- Will glide be dead? (please please please)
- Will NVidia OpenSource their drivers like 3dfx did? (Doubtful)
- Will 3dfx continue to supply 3D arcade hardware?
- What will happen to "Rampage"?
- Who will compete with NVidia? ATI, Matrox... anyone else? I doubt think these two will be able compete against NVidia + 3dfx... though if ATI continues getting better, maybe, but they don't have nearly as big a following at the moment.
Well, I meant to say you can do anything on the internet now, bandwidth just determines how long you have to wait. I know there are many ways bandwidth can improve things, such as latency issues, but basically the same content can still be provided if the user is patient enough.
The only thing that you'd need major bandwidth for is realtime applications... but before that comes I think we need to improve the content provided.
Personally though, I'd hate to use the internet for everything. I like owning things, like movies, so I can take them to other peoples' houses or whatever. Imagine a system like DivX? I like taking my magazines with me on the ride to work, I like watching TV from my bed not in front of a computer... and even then a TV is much less expensive and already delivers the content without any problems. Maybe there is room for improvement... but from the perspective of making the internet an all-in-one deal, sounds kinda annoying to the end user...
Slashdot Mirror
I have a Dreamcast and PS2 right now, and plan to get a Gameboy Advance as soon as it comes out, because I have a feeling it'll have the most innovative games we'll ever see in the next 5 years.
Thank goodness for emulators enhancing the look of games, now I can enjoy those with better graphics via the 2xSAI engine or just newer 3D cards used for PSX, N64, and arcade games even...
Just don't let it take over the entire development. If necessary, program an excellent game first, and then bring it up to standard concerning today's video cards. The store I go to doesn't sell anything less than a GeForce or Radeon or Voodoo 5, and games shouldn't support anything less. Come on, the GeForce has been around for a while now. Those NVidia tech demos weren't created just to look pretty, you can actually make great effects in games too, so use 'em!
Funny things have been happening in the industry too, great games like Wipeout XL are getting no PC sequels. We're lacking in popular genres. Ever take a look at what fighting games have come out in the past five years?
Whatever happened to the great innovation PCs had without 3D accelerators? Commander Keen, One Must Fall, Terminal Velocity, Jazz Jackrabbit, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max, Hero's Quest... We even had our own version of Contra called Duke Nukem II! Have you ever noticed that the same companies making these wonderful games only want to heavily market their FPS's, and RTS's (save LucasArts obsessed with racing games)?
Other than RPGs which reel me in with their story, the last few games I found myself addicted to are Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (PSX), Ghost in the Shell (PSX), Soul Calibur (DC), Dracula X (PCE CD), and Ridge Racer V for lack of finding equivilants on PC. But why can't my ultimate gaming machine with a 900MHz CPU and 256MB of RAM and a GeForce 2 GTS provide me with ultimate games?
Or even ultimate graphics? Lately the only game that has impressed me on PC since Unreal has been Serious Sam. I know the topic was complaining about advances in graphics, but on the PC I don't see it. I was more impressed by the stylistic and incredibly well modeled Sonic Adventure on Dreamcast than say, Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament. Despite people claiming those games have such excellent graphics, I just find them bland, and every effect is just a common staple these days.
Oh well that's the end of that!
I wonder what will happen to things that use RAMBUS? Such as the PlayStation 2, and N64. Well, the N64 is on its way out but the PS2 has just begun, yet is already well established. They can't be expected to change the specs of their system at this point in time!
If you try an ATI Rage 128 with ATI's DVD player you'll get the same results as the G4 with the ATI card.
I believe in using the right tool for the right job. This is just a personal choice but I am curious as to why one wouldn't use the tool that is obviously more suited for the job?
If CPUs will be open source, everyone will release their own version of it which is probably bound to have some that work differently. Programmeres may have to take into account for a lot of "Cyrixes" out there, who knows what people will do to modify the CPUs to better suit their neads yet cause a widespread incompatibility issue which software developers would have to compensate for. Look how many distros of Linux are out there and then look how many times you have to release a package, creating different ones that work with each distro. I don't want to have to deal with that, and I don't want to start seeing "Required: AMD, Intel, or VIA/Cyrix CPU" and my CPU would not happen to be on that list... Look how bad-off Super 7 was... Granted they will have the source available so they won't have to resort to reverse-engineering, but it just shows that no matter how close you are you can be so far off as to cause annoying incompatibilities with hardware and software.
That's stupid though, what if a car is out of control and you need to speed up to get out of the way? Or a falling rock? Obviously speeding is used to get away from danger as well as to cause it. I wonder how many families will sue because their now-dead relative was not able to control his car in order to get out of an emergency...
Just one word... RAMBUS
I feel the same about my PS2. Luckily I have a Dreamcast as well. (Which I bought before the PS2, by the way).
IGNDC: We'll get to one of those in a bit. But in general, that's the question on everybody's mind -- looking at how Sega is getting into licensing content, there's always the big looming question of Sega's future, whether there will be a Dreamcast 2 or whether Sega will go software-only, whether SOJ will start developing for other platforms... With the history of the Saturn and an opportunity to bury that history, we wanted to give you a chance to say that Sega is definitely dedicated to the Dreamcast.
Peter Moore: We are fully committed to the Dreamcast. I said earlier about, before I got into the industry, how surprised I was that the Saturn wasn't in the game for five years -- and it actually was, but... Well, you were there. The Dreamcast sold more units in its first four days than Saturn sold in its first year. There's no comparison there. And after the dust settles on this holiday, the Dreamcast will be at a very critical mass that will continue to be attractive to third parties. That said, I know we will lose some third parties -- everybody's ready to jump on to the next thing, and with two brand new competitors ready next year, everybody's ready to dip their toes into new water, and there's an ocean of water out there...
If you're not using a lot of applications simply because they are made by Microsoft... what are you thinking? Believe it or not, some quality software has come out of MS. I don't think anyone would care about Wine if that weren't true.
Hmm, haven't heard of Fry's. I'll look on EBWorld but there are no Electronic Boutiques around here. As a rule I never order anything online, no matter how much cheaper it is, since it's a lot more annoying to return it, and if I buy it in person, I get it right away. Which is more fun.
I still like the DC better for games at the moment, but I heard that Sony released new devkits that allow debugging of the VU0 and VU1 (among other things) which will allow much better use of all three processors. Hopefully developers will make good use of this, but we'll definitely have to wait a while to see any vast improvements due to development cycle time.
I do, however, love SSX, even though I disliked games such as Tony Hawk et al.
Funny though, the game I play most is Final Fantasy 9 for the original PSX (albiet using my PS2).
How did you get a company to produce your product from that idea?
How about mario taking magic mushrooms to "power up", or eating a plant to get "fire power"?
> No, winamp is a proprietary API, and they're both reinventing the wheel.
Winamp is not an API, it is simply an application with its own built-in skinning technique. GTK is reinventing the wheel in Win32's case, (in X's it IS the wheel).
I would prefer if Winamp didn't use skins at all and followed suit of my personal preferences applied to the entire operating system to keep everything unobtrusive and commonplace. If they had the option to turn this off, great. Luckily I can customize it to look like everything else, but it is a hassle changing it accordingly every time I make any changes.
This argument, however, isn't about Winamp, it's about Everybuddy which doesn't feature skinning as a main "selling" point. Skinning is not one of Everybuddy's main features.
To properly emulate Everybuddy in a Win32 environment, you would have to use the common API as it is done in X. X's common API for drawing windows is GTK, Win32 has its own. To make the Win32 equivilant, you should use the Win32 API.
Using GTK will only make it less efficient by loading up libraries where a similar function already exists without it. GTK routines are less efficient since it goes through the Win32 API anyhow, and the rest of its functions would simply be overhead. Writing a wrapper to make GTK behave like the Win32 API is just redundant and even MORE overhead. Why not just code it with straight Win32 API calls in the first place?
I need AIM to keep contact with others who refuse to use other instant messaging services or those who are confused by the idea, but AIM is a big security flaw so I am definitely looking for another way to communicate with them.
The problem is that AIM constantly pops up windows when users message me, and there is a possibility of me typing in important and private information at the time. With the AIM message window popping up without discretion, I could be halfway through what I'm typing and hit enter, and realize that I just sent that message out for someone else to see!
Another problem is that AIM is just aggravating, when I am talking to five different people privately, I see blue blinking task bars littered around causing stress. For some reason many blue blinking boxes blinking at different (and fast) intervals start to piss me off! MSN Messenger even does so, especially when I'm trying to enjoy an article on slashdot while chatting with a friend at the same time. I'm reading a paragraph, and I plan to check back on my friend every 30 seconds to see if they've written, but I can't enjoy the article because the blinking is constantly nagging at me.
Personally the best option I've found is ICQ's system tray icon simply taking on the appearance of a message. It's unobtrusive, not annoying, and I can check it whenever I want without it nagging at me. Plus, I don't have to be "away" all the time preventing chatting with my friends simply because I try to keep information private or my nerves calm!
GTK, however, is basically reinventing the wheel. Some would argue that it brings greater ease to porting apps to Win32. That's great, but that doesn't mean it's the best way of doing it. For an instant messaging client such as Everybuddy, it would be best to use the Windows API since it is somewhat of a productivity app and skinability isn't one of its main features, that is just a by-product of GTK. This is why using the standard Windows API calls would allow for a better translation to Win32, it would be the *nix version's equivilant (plus be more efficient and optimized for the platform than if it were to use GTK).
Great :) I really hope it works out. Good luck to you
Personally about the Whislter skins, I'm just impressed that they've succeeded in a stable and very usable skinning technique for the Win32 interface. I haven't run into any problems, and that's the best part.
As for GTK for Windows, it's not the standard GUI, so what's the point? I don't want to have to install these libraries just for one application, plus then if Everybuddy for Win32 uses it, it will end up looking different than all of my other Win32 applications which use the standard GUI calls.
GTK has its purpose in X, but in Win32 there is already a standard GUI, there's no need for it.
On another note, anyone recall what happened to MyCQ? It seems to be dead. Even though they claim it isn't, I haven't seen an update for many many many months.
Personally I would like to see Everybuddy ported to Win32, it seems like a great program. Hopefully, using the standard Win32 GUI API calls instead of custom or GTK ones, especially since Whistler will feature its own skinning method, and afaik, GTK for Windows is not that stable (or popular, and who needs more libraries?).
- Will glide be dead? (please please please)
- Will NVidia OpenSource their drivers like 3dfx did? (Doubtful)
- Will 3dfx continue to supply 3D arcade hardware?
- What will happen to "Rampage"?
- Who will compete with NVidia? ATI, Matrox... anyone else? I doubt think these two will be able compete against NVidia + 3dfx... though if ATI continues getting better, maybe, but they don't have nearly as big a following at the moment.
The only thing that you'd need major bandwidth for is realtime applications... but before that comes I think we need to improve the content provided.
Personally though, I'd hate to use the internet for everything. I like owning things, like movies, so I can take them to other peoples' houses or whatever. Imagine a system like DivX? I like taking my magazines with me on the ride to work, I like watching TV from my bed not in front of a computer... and even then a TV is much less expensive and already delivers the content without any problems. Maybe there is room for improvement... but from the perspective of making the internet an all-in-one deal, sounds kinda annoying to the end user...