But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
Is it just me, or is Hemos in an unusually argumentative mood this morning? He isn't usually that sarcastic.
In all seriousness, though, don't underestimate the possibility that there may have been a historical Atlantis. Remember, historians used to believe that Troy was only a myth. There's nothing particularly improbable about an ancient city existing, nor is it improbable that it might be destroyed in a manner similar to Pompeii. Personally, though, I have my doubts about this particular discovery. The man who announced it sounds a little flaky, I wonder if he either made up the evidence, or misinterpreted it. But that doesn't mean that Atlantis will never be found, or that it doesn't exist. Whether it will be as spectacular a find as people seem to hope for is another question.
I can't read the articles due to slashdotting, but I was wondering, does anyone know if there are plans for a Windows version? I know this is intended to bring RAD design to Linux, but I think a lot of Windows users would be attracted to a free, open source alternative to Visual Basic, particularly considering how expensive.Net tools can be.
I've been reading these wrap-ups for awhile now, and IMHO, they're really great for the indie scene. What indies need is online magazines like Game Tunnel that give honest, tough reviews that showcase what's out there. Publicity means money. Money means more indie development. And more indie development means more alternatives to the shovelware of the week you get at the local game store. Obviously, there's a lot of poor quality indie and shareware games. However, what strikes me on reading these kinds of reviews is just how many good titles there are today. You're seeing things like Gish and Crimsonland that you'd never see on a store shelf. At a time when the big development houses are largely producing shovelware, it seems like the indie gaming scene is becoming stronger and stronger.
Interesting. I think I'm starting to see Sony's strategy. They're rolling out a console that can probably play blu-ray DVD movies. They recently bought MGM, giving Sony the rights to rerelease all of MGM's movies on DVD. With PS3 to put players into the market, and with MGM movies to release, it sounds like sony has put a lot of thought into making their blu-ray standard a success.
Depends on your definition of a soul. Personally, I'd say an alien has a soul if:
1. It has a sense of morality. 2. It has the ability to choose whether or not it will follow said morality at any given moment. 3. It is capable of choosing to engage in altruistic behaviour.
Not counting the terrible made for tv movie, there were 3 Masters. First, they had Roger Delgado. Then he died, so they had the Master be disfigured, and wear a rubber mask. Then they had him steal the body of Nyssa's father, Anthony Ainley.
Yeah, they should definitely bring back the Master. remember, since he's a time lord, they can have any actor they want play him. Hopefully they'll get someone good at being menacing and psychotic. After all, this is a villian who habitually killed the family members of the Doctor's sidekicks.
Actually, money isn't behind this fallout. Basically, when Terry Nation died, he was pissed of at the BBC, and pretty much didn't want them to have the Daleks under most circumstances. So I'm not surprised that the estate is being picky.
As for the new show, I don't think the lack of Daleks will really hurt it. If you watch the old shows, they had a pretty big variety of popular villians. The Daleks didn't appear in most episodes. The BBC still has lots of other classic villians they can use, like cybermen, autons, the Black Guardian, and the Master, who was always popular. They also had some great baddies that were only on for one storyline, like Sutekh or the Tractators. Really, though, they should also be making up new villians and characters as well, not just using old ones.
As a hobbiest who likes to program in DirectX, I'm rather excited about the XBox live style functionality. It might not matter much for a big company, but if you're just one guy coding up a game by yourself, being able to offer that kind of multiplayer support is a godsend. Ironically, Microsoft may be actually helping out the little guy for once. These tools could make it a lot easier to create indie games (If you don't mind the awful DirectX style interface, that is).
Look, there really doesn't have to be any kind of secret deal going on. Carmack said that he preferred ATI last year. A lot of work and changes could have been made in a year's time. For one thing, a year ago most of the optimizations probably had not been made. So, NVidia might really have the best card for the job.
I'm really glad that the GIMP's continuing its tradition of Windows support. I can't help but think that this could do a lot to promote free software. Someone who's never used free software before may not want to leap to a whole other operating system, but if you hand them a copy of the GIMP, and tell them "It's like Photoshop, but free", they'll get right into it. If there were more applications like the GIMP, I think it'd be a lot easier to ease people towards the large scale use of free software.
Me, I'm coding a game under Windows, and using the GIMP for the art work even as we speak. Rock on, GIMP 2.0!
Is this timeline really optimistic? Bear in mind that Europe has never had a manned spaceflight mission before. Can they pull off a Mars mission? Maybe they'd be better off teaming up with Russia or the US. Or both.
As people are saying above, the concession stand's where you're going to make your money. If you want people to hang out, and you want to turn a profit, you have to sqeeze money out of the customers. Look at it this way. To survive, you need to make an average of X dollars per hour. Say you have N customers. That means you need to get an average of X/N dollars an hour. Most places do this by charging at actual fee per hour. You want to do it largely through other means. This will mainly consist of selling extra services to the customers. Like food. Make it a bit expensive; people will get it anyway, because it's convenient. Or, do what bars do. Have expensive beverages, and cheap salty foods to encourage drink sales. Also, see if you can do advertising or marketing angles. For example, see if a local computer game store might be interested in selling games to your customers to take home in exchange for a commision.
What I'm intrigued by is PSP's hardware based support for Nurbs. Traditionally, a lot of processing in games is devoted to high polygon counts in order to simulate curved shapes. If the support is really there, this could lead to some really interesting effects. It could also mean that the graphics wouldn't be as bad as the processor speed implies. If NURBS are done quickly, and they cause a reduction in the polygon count, you could see pretty good performance, particularly when the system has to show lots of organic looking objects, like people.
Actually, there are copies of the format available. In fact, many DirectX game programming books actually teach you how to write a loader. I think it's just that MSDN is horrible for actually finding the info you want.
I'd really like to see Blender support a wider variety of file formats for exporting objects. Particularly.X files. I know that Microsoft fromats don't really sit well with many in the Open Source community, but I'd be nice if there was a nice, free, open source way of creating.X files. (and it goes with Blender's game making focus)
The flavor is a dark one (of course) that we think will really strike a chord with gamers around the world.
Not to criticize or anything, but have the Blizzard (or ex-Blizzard) folks ever made anything with a plot the isn't dark? Where you know, maybe no major characters lose their eternal souls to aliens, or demons or what not...
A lot of people here have concluded that the Phantom is a con. They then say that it will never work, because the console sounds like it's going to suck. However, if this is a con, it does not matter what gamers think. This sort of racket (assuming it is a racket) is designed to hook not gamers, but investors.
Now, most investors have never played a game in their lives. They have no idea what makes a console successful or unsuccessful. So all the makers of the Phantom would have to do would be to make it sound appealing to investors:
1. Lots of buzzwords: Check. 2. Subscription services, meaning a continuous flow of revenue: Check 3. Commonly used parts, so there will be no manufacturing hastles: Check.
So, you can see that this console isn't designed to appeal to gamers, it's designed to appeal to naive venture capitalists.
Personally, I decided I wasn't interested when the developers said that being a Jedi was going to be next to impossible. Now, I understand why they did this. It's tough to have a universe where everyones a Jedi, and there's a risk that that would've happened. But... Jedi are a pretty big thing in the Star Wars universe, and they're what everyone wants to be. No one's going to pay $15 a month to be a baker or a dancer. Add to that the fact that so far there are no spaceships to fly around in (Yes, I know they're supposed to be added in later; but they're asking me to pay them now, not later), and you have very little Star Wars in your Star Wars game, as quite a bit of the movies are Jedi and people flying around in spaceships! As a result, I think the game is a tough sell, and the people running the forums are sensing that, and are getting worried. Hence the desire to eliminate bad PR.
Firstly, I doubt this is entirely workable. There's too much unsecured legacy code that no one's going to want to rewrite.
But mainly, this is simply the wrong attitude. If someone breaks into your house, it is the burglar's fault. It isn't your fault for not surrounding your house with barbed wire and a pack of rabid dogs. While I agree that penalties for hackers are often overly harsh, that doesn't change the fact that they knowingly committed a crime of their own free will, and should be punished for it. Hackers are responsible for their own actions. It's that simple.
In your works you tend to try to pick out trends that'll continue into the future, i.e. organ transplants leading to increased capital punishment and organ thieves, or the role playing game's transformation into "Dream Park" style VR environments. What do you see as the next series of advancements and trends that will affect us in the future?
My guess is that because their system can take PC games, they're claiming that every game made for the PC counts as a game for their platform. Hence the 32,000 games. Thing is, though, if all their platform is is just a PC, why not just buy a PC? I mean, with the X-Box you had a PC, but a PC that can play many propriatary games. That attracts customers. This system, i'd guess, doesn't offer any games you can't play elsewhere. Also, I know most slashdotters have broadband, but a lot of folks don't. Making broadband as the way you buy your games insures that the people who don't want to or can't pay for broadband won't use your system. Never make it difficult for your customers to buy things and give you money....
If these people want to succeed, they really need to have an easy, non broadband way to order games, and they need to have content for their platform that you can't get anywhere else. I'm not saying these people will fail, but as things stand their business model doesn't look promising.
Slashdot Mirror
But, no, that wouldn't be a simplistic enough answer to be sound-bitten into oblivion.
Is it just me, or is Hemos in an unusually argumentative mood this morning? He isn't usually that sarcastic.
In all seriousness, though, don't underestimate the possibility that there may have been a historical Atlantis. Remember, historians used to believe that Troy was only a myth. There's nothing particularly improbable about an ancient city existing, nor is it improbable that it might be destroyed in a manner similar to Pompeii. Personally, though, I have my doubts about this particular discovery. The man who announced it sounds a little flaky, I wonder if he either made up the evidence, or misinterpreted it. But that doesn't mean that Atlantis will never be found, or that it doesn't exist. Whether it will be as spectacular a find as people seem to hope for is another question.
I can't read the articles due to slashdotting, but I was wondering, does anyone know if there are plans for a Windows version? I know this is intended to bring RAD design to Linux, but I think a lot of Windows users would be attracted to a free, open source alternative to Visual Basic, particularly considering how expensive .Net tools can be.
I've been reading these wrap-ups for awhile now, and IMHO, they're really great for the indie scene. What indies need is online magazines like Game Tunnel that give honest, tough reviews that showcase what's out there. Publicity means money. Money means more indie development. And more indie development means more alternatives to the shovelware of the week you get at the local game store. Obviously, there's a lot of poor quality indie and shareware games. However, what strikes me on reading these kinds of reviews is just how many good titles there are today. You're seeing things like Gish and Crimsonland that you'd never see on a store shelf. At a time when the big development houses are largely producing shovelware, it seems like the indie gaming scene is becoming stronger and stronger.
Interesting. I think I'm starting to see Sony's strategy. They're rolling out a console that can probably play blu-ray DVD movies. They recently bought MGM, giving Sony the rights to rerelease all of MGM's movies on DVD. With PS3 to put players into the market, and with MGM movies to release, it sounds like sony has put a lot of thought into making their blu-ray standard a success.
Be careful! Los Alamos knows the weirding way!
Depends on your definition of a soul. Personally, I'd say an alien has a soul if:
1. It has a sense of morality.
2. It has the ability to choose whether or not it will follow said morality at any given moment.
3. It is capable of choosing to engage in altruistic behaviour.
Not counting the terrible made for tv movie, there were 3 Masters. First, they had Roger Delgado. Then he died, so they had the Master be disfigured, and wear a rubber mask. Then they had him steal the body of Nyssa's father, Anthony Ainley.
Yeah, they should definitely bring back the Master. remember, since he's a time lord, they can have any actor they want play him. Hopefully they'll get someone good at being menacing and psychotic. After all, this is a villian who habitually killed the family members of the Doctor's sidekicks.
Actually, money isn't behind this fallout. Basically, when Terry Nation died, he was pissed of at the BBC, and pretty much didn't want them to have the Daleks under most circumstances. So I'm not surprised that the estate is being picky.
As for the new show, I don't think the lack of Daleks will really hurt it. If you watch the old shows, they had a pretty big variety of popular villians. The Daleks didn't appear in most episodes. The BBC still has lots of other classic villians they can use, like cybermen, autons, the Black Guardian, and the Master, who was always popular. They also had some great baddies that were only on for one storyline, like Sutekh or the Tractators. Really, though, they should also be making up new villians and characters as well, not just using old ones.
As a hobbiest who likes to program in DirectX, I'm rather excited about the XBox live style functionality. It might not matter much for a big company, but if you're just one guy coding up a game by yourself, being able to offer that kind of multiplayer support is a godsend. Ironically, Microsoft may be actually helping out the little guy for once. These tools could make it a lot easier to create indie games (If you don't mind the awful DirectX style interface, that is).
Look, there really doesn't have to be any kind of secret deal going on. Carmack said that he preferred ATI last year. A lot of work and changes could have been made in a year's time. For one thing, a year ago most of the optimizations probably had not been made. So, NVidia might really have the best card for the job.
I'm really glad that the GIMP's continuing its tradition of Windows support. I can't help but think that this could do a lot to promote free software. Someone who's never used free software before may not want to leap to a whole other operating system, but if you hand them a copy of the GIMP, and tell them "It's like Photoshop, but free", they'll get right into it. If there were more applications like the GIMP, I think it'd be a lot easier to ease people towards the large scale use of free software.
Me, I'm coding a game under Windows, and using the GIMP for the art work even as we speak. Rock on, GIMP 2.0!
Is this timeline really optimistic? Bear in mind that Europe has never had a manned spaceflight mission before. Can they pull off a Mars mission? Maybe they'd be better off teaming up with Russia or the US. Or both.
As people are saying above, the concession stand's where you're going to make your money. If you want people to hang out, and you want to turn a profit, you have to sqeeze money out of the customers. Look at it this way. To survive, you need to make an average of X dollars per hour. Say you have N customers. That means you need to get an average of X/N dollars an hour. Most places do this by charging at actual fee per hour. You want to do it largely through other means. This will mainly consist of selling extra services to the customers. Like food. Make it a bit expensive; people will get it anyway, because it's convenient. Or, do what bars do. Have expensive beverages, and cheap salty foods to encourage drink sales. Also, see if you can do advertising or marketing angles. For example, see if a local computer game store might be interested in selling games to your customers to take home in exchange for a commision.
What I'm intrigued by is PSP's hardware based support for Nurbs. Traditionally, a lot of processing in games is devoted to high polygon counts in order to simulate curved shapes. If the support is really there, this could lead to some really interesting effects. It could also mean that the graphics wouldn't be as bad as the processor speed implies. If NURBS are done quickly, and they cause a reduction in the polygon count, you could see pretty good performance, particularly when the system has to show lots of organic looking objects, like people.
Actually, there are copies of the format available. In fact, many DirectX game programming books actually teach you how to write a loader. I think it's just that MSDN is horrible for actually finding the info you want.
I'd really like to see Blender support a wider variety of file formats for exporting objects. Particularly .X files. I know that Microsoft fromats don't really sit well with many in the Open Source community, but I'd be nice if there was a nice, free, open source way of creating .X files. (and it goes with Blender's game making focus)
The flavor is a dark one (of course) that we think will really strike a chord with gamers around the world.
Not to criticize or anything, but have the Blizzard (or ex-Blizzard) folks ever made anything with a plot the isn't dark? Where you know, maybe no major characters lose their eternal souls to aliens, or demons or what not...
I think their dev team needs a hug.
A lot of people here have concluded that the Phantom is a con. They then say that it will never work, because the console sounds like it's going to suck. However, if this is a con, it does not matter what gamers think. This sort of racket (assuming it is a racket) is designed to hook not gamers, but investors.
Now, most investors have never played a game in their lives. They have no idea what makes a console successful or unsuccessful. So all the makers of the Phantom would have to do would be to make it sound appealing to investors:
1. Lots of buzzwords: Check.
2. Subscription services, meaning a continuous flow of revenue: Check
3. Commonly used parts, so there will be no manufacturing hastles: Check.
So, you can see that this console isn't designed to appeal to gamers, it's designed to appeal to naive venture capitalists.
Personally, I decided I wasn't interested when the developers said that being a Jedi was going to be next to impossible. Now, I understand why they did this. It's tough to have a universe where everyones a Jedi, and there's a risk that that would've happened. But... Jedi are a pretty big thing in the Star Wars universe, and they're what everyone wants to be. No one's going to pay $15 a month to be a baker or a dancer. Add to that the fact that so far there are no spaceships to fly around in (Yes, I know they're supposed to be added in later; but they're asking me to pay them now, not later), and you have very little Star Wars in your Star Wars game, as quite a bit of the movies are Jedi and people flying around in spaceships! As a result, I think the game is a tough sell, and the people running the forums are sensing that, and are getting worried. Hence the desire to eliminate bad PR.
Firstly, I doubt this is entirely workable. There's too much unsecured legacy code that no one's going to want to rewrite.
But mainly, this is simply the wrong attitude. If someone breaks into your house, it is the burglar's fault. It isn't your fault for not surrounding your house with barbed wire and a pack of rabid dogs. While I agree that penalties for hackers are often overly harsh, that doesn't change the fact that they knowingly committed a crime of their own free will, and should be punished for it. Hackers are responsible for their own actions. It's that simple.
Actually, that annoying thing was a dagit
In your works you tend to try to pick out trends that'll continue into the future, i.e. organ transplants leading to increased capital punishment and organ thieves, or the role playing game's transformation into "Dream Park" style VR environments. What do you see as the next series of advancements and trends that will affect us in the future?
My guess is that because their system can take PC games, they're claiming that every game made for the PC counts as a game for their platform. Hence the 32,000 games. Thing is, though, if all their platform is is just a PC, why not just buy a PC? I mean, with the X-Box you had a PC, but a PC that can play many propriatary games. That attracts customers. This system, i'd guess, doesn't offer any games you can't play elsewhere. Also, I know most slashdotters have broadband, but a lot of folks don't. Making broadband as the way you buy your games insures that the people who don't want to or can't pay for broadband won't use your system. Never make it difficult for your customers to buy things and give you money....
If these people want to succeed, they really need to have an easy, non broadband way to order games, and they need to have content for their platform that you can't get anywhere else. I'm not saying these people will fail, but as things stand their business model doesn't look promising.
In other news, shortly after being dismissed the former employee had an unfortunate accident resulting in the breaking of both his kneecaps.