"If we haven't had a serious hit in the last 2k yrs what do you think the chances of us getting one in the few years since we've had the technology to see them?"
Exactly! That's just what the asteriods want us to think. See, once we've spent all the world's nations' emergency budgets on asteroid-fighting equipment... that's when the Alien invasion comes!
So, we've got to convince the world's leaders to save their Asteroids quarters for fighting Space Invaders instead!
Hey! What're you all laughing at?!? This is a perfectly legitimate discussion here! We're even forming Political Action Committees as we speak! Now, if only we could find a good PAC Man...
(Score: -1024, Grooaaaaannnnnnnn..., my head hurts...)
At this point in time, Spurious George would like to apologize for the wholesale massacre of several beloved cheesy 80's arcade icons, and would like to squarely pin the blame on the aliens... Next time, we promise to wear our aluminum wrap helmets, to, ahem, "foil" the alien mind control devices...
(Loud "WHAP" noise, followed by the sound of slimy space creatures slurping and crunching the remains of Spurious George's mangled corpse. Audience cheers. Momentarily. Then the dark shadow of a near-Earth asteriod appears overhead. Panic ensues. Loud "crunch" noise. Audience's response is justifiably lukewarm. The End. Don't say we didn't warn you.)
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Hehe... I've been getting pointed to reciprocality.org left and right this week... after reading the 1st chapter of the Programmer's Stone, I'm convinced that this stuff ought to be required reading!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
These balloons using a newly discovered technique to automatically inflate based on a combination of a volatile liquid stored in the balloon itself and the atmospheric pressure on Mars. This was previously impossible apparently.
Man, don't you just hate it when NASA screws with the laws of Physics?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
"You've heard of "Cops in Shops"; where police officers pose as civilians in stores? Some of them pose as the guy behind the register, busting minors trying to buy alcohol. Some pose as customers, busting stores that sell alcohol/cigarettes to minors."
So... what happens when one cop's pretending to be the vendor and another is pretending to be the alcohol/cigarette-buying minor?
Who gets to bust whom?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
"Education is bad enough in this country without making it even more difficult for people to get their hands on books."
Yep. The ability to quickly and easily copy books drives literacy up, improving culture, etc. That's why that whole "Renaissance" thing took off after a certain Mr. Gutenberg made his printing press.
Even in the Dark Ages, not all classical knowledge was lost, because of monks painstakingly copying ancient manuscripts.
So, without any ability to copy books, or even pass them on to another person, (and with electronic books being even more frail than real books), our society will quickly shift to a situation that makes the original Dark Ages look like a golden age in comparison.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
"Oh dear! The computer games industry is going away! I'm going to have to get...a different software engineering job!
"No Georgie! Please no! I don't want to make over a hundred thousand dollars a year doing something ELSE! "
"I don't see anything like that at all! Nothing will ever threaten our
dominance of the earth! We're perfectly safe and you guys will never amount to anything."
"I can't wait for those killer
Penguin games!!!
"Haw haw.... look at all those pathetic, puny little mammals... they're so tiny and weak compared to us! In 10 million years they'll still be puny and
weak, and in 20 million years they'll still be getting squished underfoot as we nonchalantly step on them without even noticing..."
"So long you sad little fuck."
"(Buries head in sand, in a futile, pathetic attempt to hide from
the inevitable)"
Come on, you're making this waaaay too easy for me... must be that scaly walnut-sized brain of yours, ya overweight lizard!
Incidentally, I'd bet you'd be hard-pressed to name a single title you've produced that a) is/was commercially successful, and b) is still remembered fondly by gamers. Big-shot commercial developer, indeed!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Hehehe... you do seem to have an ulterior motive for defending commercial games, don't you... it's your livelihood!
Well, I certainly do hope that my predictions come true ASAP, if only to starve your ass!
Frankly, the thought of having to compete with free beer alone is making you run up a cold sweat!
Add to that the horror of the competition all working together just to kill your precious business model... well, I'm sure you've already shat yourself in terror as the stark reality of your utter insignificance to the world at large finally hit home.
Picture it this way:
Dinosaur: Haw haw.... look at all those pathetic, puny little mammals... they're so tiny and weak compared to us! In 10 million years they'll still be puny and weak, and in 20 million years they'll still be getting squished underfoot as we nonchalantly step on them without even noticing...
Puny Little Mammal: Hey, see that giant, fiery rock hurtling down from the sky? Maybe you guys won't last so long after all!
Big, Bloated, Walnut-Size-Brained Dinosaur: (stares desperately at the ground) I don't see anything like that at all! Nothing will ever threaten our dominance of the earth! We're perfectly safe and you guys will never amount to anything. (Buries head in sand, in a futile, pathetic attempt to hide from the inevitable)
So, you see, the moral of this story is that I'm cute and fuzzy and the wave of the future, and you're scaly, corpulent, hideous, stupid, obsolescent, and doomed.
Any questions?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
"You are one stupid mofo if you think that the open source crowd will ever make ANY game that isn't a joke compared to real game dev houses, let
alone threaten them across the board!"
Nah.
If you can get a common opensource engine going, then opensource games can adapt and evolve just by swapping a new version of a dynamic library.
That gives them more staying power, and the "all-time classics" will have a tremendous advantage over whatever crap the commercial game industry cranks out, since the latter can't compete solely on the basis of having the latest and greatest engine.
So, you're gonna see proprietary commercial gaming go down the toilet (except consoles might survive a bit longer), and only the most outstanding, inventive games will have a chance.
The state of Open Source gaming right now is hampered by a lack of good, free software implementations of things like 3D modelers/animation programs, and mature common engines (although a few show promise). The fact that they've got anything out at the moment even remotely resembling "the hottest commercial game at the time" shows the sheer dedication and perseverance of these coders, and as the infrastructure matures, the number of programmers, designers, artists, etc., willing to tackle the problems of writing complex, modern video games will drastically increase. So the proprietary vendors damn well should be scared.
I do predict, however, that "in four years from now" you will no longer be a faux-cynical 12 year old, and your perspective may change, even if you need to be hit over the head with incontrovertible proof.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
I have a hunch that sooner or later we're going to run into a scenario where an outside source of funds (gov't, private philanthropists, whatever), start to see a need to help fund work the less "sexy" open source projects, and regardless of how these seemingly-boring infrastructure and business apps get written, they will trigger an incredible burst of development in all open/free/etc. software projects.
So, once powerful interests realize that free and open code benefits everyone, software companies will become contractors, and work on the stuff that nobody wants to do for fun....
Of course, game companies may not fare as well when more of the game-creation tools (Game SDKs, miscellaneous libs, 3d modelling and animation tools, etc.) mature, and make it possible for more professional-quality games to be cranked out by amateur [game] coders.
That said, there'll probably never be a shortage of GPL'ed, overhead, tilebased, half-finished adventure/RPGs, but there may be room for proprietary vendors to succeed in selling truly groundbreaking titles, or separating the code for game engines from the artwork/music/storylines.
Either way, commercially-produced games will have to get much more creative and innovative to survive.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Probably not. But when porting GCC to MS environments (DJGPP, Cygnus), and when porting source files from DOS to Unix-like environment, people probably found that CR/LF tolerance is a sight more useful than originally anticipated, and therefore included it into the main GCC codebase.
All it probably* does is treat both CR and LF as line-ending whitespace (line-ending in order to recognize a trailing backslash character; otherwise the position of whitespace is not that important, as long as various tokens are properly separated), and compile normally.
* Of course, this is all just my best guess, since I haven't taken a real look at the actual code of GCC, nor talked with its designers or implementors. So maybe they actually use some magic formula with an all-powerful AI to recognize CR/LF combos, but I'm probably pretty close with the previous hypothesis. But for all I know, I certainly could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that CR+LF is a horrible DOS-ism that hearkens back to TeleTYpe days.
Incidentally, interesting looking game(s) you've got there... gawdz I miss Allegro, although right now I'm in between game SDKs (leaning toward SDL, although also wishing that ClanLib would get their act together and "officially" update their docs and API. But I digress...:)
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Umm... that part got commented out... most users complained that it was too much strain on their system's resources... we find that the whine() version sells more copies of the software by doing less, yet seeming more appealing to the average user.
After all, whine() has a much greater ease of use than act(), so the latter is relegated to a much smaller niche market of do-it-yourselfer types.
Now, one may complain that whine() has a "monopoly" on the software market, but even that complaining goes to show how prevalent, and popular the whine() method has become.
Other popular options are pray(), ignore(), and pretend_to_be_jaded_thinking_it_will_make_you_seem _hip_and_sophisticated_ in_a_coffee_shop_self_styled_pseudo_intellectual_s ort_of_way();
But, when it's all said and done, amongst the vast majority of the terminally dumbed-down populace, whine() wins the day.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
The scene:Frodo and Samwise are following Gollum up the windswept crags of Mordor. Suddenly, off in the distance, a strange, darkish creature appears...
Frodo: "Aww, crap! Not another Nazgul!"
Samwise: "Umm... Hey, Fro, that doesn't look much like a Nazgul to me!"
Gollum: "Then what the hell issss it?"
Samwise:(squinting) "Uh, I think it's a... it's a penguin!"
Frodo: "WTF!!?!?! There are no frickin penguins in Middle Earth!"
Gollum: "It'sss thosssse damn foolsss in ssspecial effectsss! They've ssscrewed up our precioussss movie, they did, they did!"
Frodo: "Hey, penguin! Get the hell out of here! We're trying to make a movie, dammit!"
Gollum: "Curssse thossse Open Ssssource bassstardssss! Thisss really pisssesss me off!"
Samwise:(Squints again) "Oh, never mind... it looks like it is a Nazgul after all! My bad!"
Frodo:(Smacks Samwise) "Dumbass!! Hobbits never, ever say 'My bad!'" (Looks over at Gollum) "And what are you looking at, you shriveley little gimp?"
Gollum: "That'sss it! Ssscrew you guyssss; I'm going home!"
THE END
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Obviously this "NetHack" thing is a conspiracy by these "hackers" to somehow "Hack" the "Net" in order to bring down the glorious Hollywood, the last bastion of civilization!
After that, it's only a short time until the minions of Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth (sp?) take over the world!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Slashdot Mirror
Great... the last thing I need is some script kiddie burning my turkey!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Don't listen to him! It's them Aliens talking!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
jeez. from now on, I promise to remember to log off of slashdot *before* I leave the computer lab
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Exactly! That's just what the asteriods want us to think. See, once we've spent all the world's nations' emergency budgets on asteroid-fighting equipment... that's when the Alien invasion comes!
So, we've got to convince the world's leaders to save their Asteroids quarters for fighting Space Invaders instead!
Hey! What're you all laughing at?!? This is a perfectly legitimate discussion here! We're even forming Political Action Committees as we speak! Now, if only we could find a good PAC Man...
(Score: -1024, Grooaaaaannnnnnnn..., my head hurts...)
At this point in time, Spurious George would like to apologize for the wholesale massacre of several beloved cheesy 80's arcade icons, and would like to squarely pin the blame on the aliens... Next time, we promise to wear our aluminum wrap helmets, to, ahem, "foil" the alien mind control devices...
(Loud "WHAP" noise, followed by the sound of slimy space creatures slurping and crunching the remains of Spurious George's mangled corpse. Audience cheers. Momentarily. Then the dark shadow of a near-Earth asteriod appears overhead. Panic ensues. Loud "crunch" noise. Audience's response is justifiably lukewarm. The End. Don't say we didn't warn you.)
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Hehe... I've been getting pointed to reciprocality.org left and right this week... after reading the 1st chapter of the Programmer's Stone, I'm convinced that this stuff ought to be required reading!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Man, don't you just hate it when NASA screws with the laws of Physics?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Quite interesting, it is.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
{*sniffle*}
Robots are people too, dammit!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
(Hehe... did Pandora's box run Linux?)
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Luckily for them, the U.S. military has only had limited success in developing a paper bag large enough to hold an entire enemy navy.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
One of the few cases where a bad drug habit can save you money!
Of course, pay-per-neuron licenses will be a big hit with politicians and judges, since they'd be getting at least a 50% discount!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Foo takes a lifetime to master!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
So... what happens when one cop's pretending to be the vendor and another is pretending to be the alcohol/cigarette-buying minor?
Who gets to bust whom?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
C'mon... Bolo, anyone?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Yep. The ability to quickly and easily copy books drives literacy up, improving culture, etc. That's why that whole "Renaissance" thing took off after a certain Mr. Gutenberg made his printing press.
Even in the Dark Ages, not all classical knowledge was lost, because of monks painstakingly copying ancient manuscripts.
So, without any ability to copy books, or even pass them on to another person, (and with electronic books being even more frail than real books), our society will quickly shift to a situation that makes the original Dark Ages look like a golden age in comparison.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Not to mention, IMO, that it seems incredibly tacky. Is all this obsession over domain names just a sign that the current system royally sucks?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
"No Georgie! Please no! I don't want to make over a hundred thousand dollars a year doing something ELSE! "
"I don't see anything like that at all! Nothing will ever threaten our dominance of the earth! We're perfectly safe and you guys will never amount to anything."
"Haw haw.... look at all those pathetic, puny little mammals... they're so tiny and weak compared to us! In 10 million years they'll still be puny and weak, and in 20 million years they'll still be getting squished underfoot as we nonchalantly step on them without even noticing..."
"(Buries head in sand, in a futile, pathetic attempt to hide from the inevitable)"
Come on, you're making this waaaay too easy for me... must be that scaly walnut-sized brain of yours, ya overweight lizard!
Incidentally, I'd bet you'd be hard-pressed to name a single title you've produced that a) is/was commercially successful, and b) is still remembered fondly by gamers. Big-shot commercial developer, indeed!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Well, I certainly do hope that my predictions come true ASAP, if only to starve your ass!
Frankly, the thought of having to compete with free beer alone is making you run up a cold sweat!
Add to that the horror of the competition all working together just to kill your precious business model... well, I'm sure you've already shat yourself in terror as the stark reality of your utter insignificance to the world at large finally hit home.
Picture it this way:
Dinosaur: Haw haw.... look at all those pathetic, puny little mammals... they're so tiny and weak compared to us! In 10 million years they'll still be puny and weak, and in 20 million years they'll still be getting squished underfoot as we nonchalantly step on them without even noticing...
Puny Little Mammal: Hey, see that giant, fiery rock hurtling down from the sky? Maybe you guys won't last so long after all!
Big, Bloated, Walnut-Size-Brained Dinosaur: (stares desperately at the ground) I don't see anything like that at all! Nothing will ever threaten our dominance of the earth! We're perfectly safe and you guys will never amount to anything. (Buries head in sand, in a futile, pathetic attempt to hide from the inevitable)
So, you see, the moral of this story is that I'm cute and fuzzy and the wave of the future, and you're scaly, corpulent, hideous, stupid, obsolescent, and doomed.
Any questions?
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Suuure... maybe we'd all use better encapsulation in a perfect() world....
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
"You are one stupid mofo if you think that the open source crowd will ever make ANY game that isn't a joke compared to real game dev houses, let alone threaten them across the board!"
Nah.
If you can get a common opensource engine going, then opensource games can adapt and evolve just by swapping a new version of a dynamic library. That gives them more staying power, and the "all-time classics" will have a tremendous advantage over whatever crap the commercial game industry cranks out, since the latter can't compete solely on the basis of having the latest and greatest engine.
So, you're gonna see proprietary commercial gaming go down the toilet (except consoles might survive a bit longer), and only the most outstanding, inventive games will have a chance.
The state of Open Source gaming right now is hampered by a lack of good, free software implementations of things like 3D modelers/animation programs, and mature common engines (although a few show promise). The fact that they've got anything out at the moment even remotely resembling "the hottest commercial game at the time" shows the sheer dedication and perseverance of these coders, and as the infrastructure matures, the number of programmers, designers, artists, etc., willing to tackle the problems of writing complex, modern video games will drastically increase. So the proprietary vendors damn well should be scared.
I do predict, however, that "in four years from now" you will no longer be a faux-cynical 12 year old, and your perspective may change, even if you need to be hit over the head with incontrovertible proof.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
So, once powerful interests realize that free and open code benefits everyone, software companies will become contractors, and work on the stuff that nobody wants to do for fun....
Of course, game companies may not fare as well when more of the game-creation tools (Game SDKs, miscellaneous libs, 3d modelling and animation tools, etc.) mature, and make it possible for more professional-quality games to be cranked out by amateur [game] coders.
That said, there'll probably never be a shortage of GPL'ed, overhead, tilebased, half-finished adventure/RPGs, but there may be room for proprietary vendors to succeed in selling truly groundbreaking titles, or separating the code for game engines from the artwork/music/storylines.
Either way, commercially-produced games will have to get much more creative and innovative to survive.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
All it probably* does is treat both CR and LF as line-ending whitespace (line-ending in order to recognize a trailing backslash character; otherwise the position of whitespace is not that important, as long as various tokens are properly separated), and compile normally.
* Of course, this is all just my best guess, since I haven't taken a real look at the actual code of GCC, nor talked with its designers or implementors. So maybe they actually use some magic formula with an all-powerful AI to recognize CR/LF combos, but I'm probably pretty close with the previous hypothesis. But for all I know, I certainly could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that CR+LF is a horrible DOS-ism that hearkens back to TeleTYpe days.
Incidentally, interesting looking game(s) you've got there... gawdz I miss Allegro, although right now I'm in between game SDKs (leaning toward SDL, although also wishing that ClanLib would get their act together and "officially" update their docs and API. But I digress... :)
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
After all, whine() has a much greater ease of use than act(), so the latter is relegated to a much smaller niche market of do-it-yourselfer types.
Now, one may complain that whine() has a "monopoly" on the software market, but even that complaining goes to show how prevalent, and popular the whine() method has become.
Other popular options are pray(), ignore(), and pretend_to_be_jaded_thinking_it_will_make_you_seem _hip_and_sophisticated_ in_a_coffee_shop_self_styled_pseudo_intellectual_s ort_of_way();
But, when it's all said and done, amongst the vast majority of the terminally dumbed-down populace, whine() wins the day.
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
Frodo: "Aww, crap! Not another Nazgul!"
Samwise: "Umm... Hey, Fro, that doesn't look much like a Nazgul to me!"
Gollum: "Then what the hell issss it?"
Samwise: (squinting) "Uh, I think it's a... it's a penguin!"
Frodo: "WTF!!?!?! There are no frickin penguins in Middle Earth!"
Gollum: "It'sss thosssse damn foolsss in ssspecial effectsss! They've ssscrewed up our precioussss movie, they did, they did!"
Frodo: "Hey, penguin! Get the hell out of here! We're trying to make a movie, dammit!"
Gollum: "Curssse thossse Open Ssssource bassstardssss! Thisss really pisssesss me off!"
Samwise: (Squints again) "Oh, never mind... it looks like it is a Nazgul after all! My bad!"
Frodo: (Smacks Samwise) "Dumbass!! Hobbits never, ever say 'My bad!'"
(Looks over at Gollum) "And what are you looking at, you shriveley little gimp?"
Gollum: "That'sss it! Ssscrew you guyssss; I'm going home!"
THE END
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);
After that, it's only a short time until the minions of Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth (sp?) take over the world!
--
while ( !universe->perfect() ) {
hack (reality);