My naming convention is minor female characters from Greek mythology.
What is the name of your computer?
I'm currently sat at "chryseis", my main home box. Under my desk is "nysa", my old Amiga A1200. At work, the Linux machine I usually use is "elektra"; I also have an UltraSPARC on my desk called "theia".
My browser homepage is set to "http://localhost/dwww", which is mapped to the web-based Debian documentation package. My system's docs in all formats (HTML, man pages, Info manuals) are just a click or two away.
Nintendo technically should call it Gameboy 1, 2, 3, 4
Why? Because Sony does?
"Playstation 2", "Playstation 3", "Xbox 2", "Pentium 4" etc. sound so... bland. Product names are more interesting than mere numbers. Of course, a bad name can doom a product, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
Though it's reasonable to have a few sidequest bosses more difficult than the final boss, the final boss should definitely be tougher than all the previous regular-game bosses, and most of the sidequest bosses, unless there is a specific, given reason for him/her/it/them not to be.
Not sure I agree with that, as far as console RPGs are concerned anyway. I'll stick to discussung the FF series because, like you, that's what I know.
Back as far as FFIV, the FF series has been increasingly story-driven - the story is really the point of the game. That's how it seems to me, anyway. Therefore, I think that everyone who starts the game should be able to finish it, so they can see how the story ends. The main game should thus be relatively easy, with all the challenge for the hardcore crowd in subquests.
Final Fantasy VIII and X both took this route: FFVIII using level-matched enemies; FFX by just being a fairly easy game. But both games have a fair number of optional bosses which are very difficult to beat, providing an extra challenge for anyone so inclined. (The European version of FFX has even more than the North American version: Omega Weapon has ten times as much HP, and there are evil versions of all the Aeons to track down and kill. (Or, in my case, track down and get killed by)).
Final Fantasy IX follows your suggested pattern more; the difficulty ramps up over the course of the game; the final dungeon is particularly nasty, and the end boss is just horrible. Nice closing FMV as a reward, though:-)
Actually, "HD drive" is fine: it expands to "hard disk drive". Personally, I've used "HDD" as the abbreviation for same for years, since "HD" used to be taken by "high density" (for floppies).
What other Square Enix games would you like to see on Game Boy Advance?
Chrono Trigger. It's never been officially released in Europe (we didn't get the SNES original or the PSX port). A GBA remake would be most welcome.
It could be a straight port, reproducing the SNES original as faithfully as possible; or it could be a reinterpretation, with new game mechanics around the original story (e.g. a new battle system based on Chrono Cross's excellent system).
a modern Squaresoft RPG drama, joining a bunch of ragtag characters as they embark upon an epic adventure, or
an old-style "twitch" game played on reactions alone, no story to speak of, no reward besides beating an arbitrary high score, and "game over" if I lose concentration for so much as a millisecond,
I'll take the modern game any day of the week. I didn't like classic games back in the day, and I don't like them now.
At least with LiveJournal, you can disable anonymous comments. It means that people without LJ accounts can't comment, but I find that preferable to having my journal spammed or trolled.
...Synsoniq is a good online shop. Most of my game soundtrack CDs have come from there. (Though I'm going to have to defect to somewhere else for a copy of The Black Mages, which Synsoniq inexplicably don't seem to stock).
Final Fantasy games (that I've played, at least) have had consistently awesome soundtracks.
You can buy arranged versions on CD, too. The FFVIII piano CD is very pleasant to listen to at work; the FFVIII orchestral CD sounds like a movie score.
Icing on the cake: the CDs are put out by Japanese publishers, so no money goes to the RIAA, AFAIK.
Banknotes don't last forever. In a few years' time, the old-style $20 notes will have been withdrawn by banks simply because they're old and tatty and falling apart. (By which time, the counterfeiters will have figured out how to forge the new notes, but hey).
The two things in Final Fantasy that made it so difficult was that you were limited to 6-9 spell points per spell level (versus having a pool of magic points)
And no Ethers to replenish them; and once your white mage had run out, you had a tough time healing yourself because the potions were pathetically weak, and there were no Hi-Potions or similar.
and there were no save points within dungeons and towers (which became much more of a PITA towards the end of the game).
The last dungeon was by far the worst. Once I'd used my 99 potions up, I had to resort to scummy tactics to get through: memo-save every few steps, restarting the game and restoring the memo-save if I got into a random battle that looked like it would cost me a lot of HP. Since the NES version didn't (AFAIK) have the memo-save feature, I'd have been unable to beat the dungeon if I'd been playing that version.
(And then I got to Chaos, and he was a piece of cake. Phew).
I do love the idea of encounter points for enemies
They tended to be positioned stategically in front of treasure chests; a forerunner to the monster-in-a-box traps found in the later FFs. (The canonical example of which being in FFV's final dungeon: a superboss in a treasure chest. In two different places. Caught me out both times. Argh).
The SNES version of FFIV was never released in Europe. The PSX version was FFIV's first outing in Europe. Same for FFVI.
And yes, it is a difficult game. It's got nothing on FFI, though; that really is difficult. When I got FF Origins, I selected "normal" difficulty, thinking "I beat FFIV, how hard can this be?" More fool me...
(Chrono Trigger has never been released in Europe. We didn't even get the PSX version. Thank goodness for ZSNES).
"You have requested $40. Last week, you withdrew $50. Are you sure that you don't need the extra $10?"
"You appear to be paying your credit card bill. I see that you have $2,000 credit remaining. Would you like me to order the latest quality products from Microsoft for you?"
A patch for Debian stable is available already. If you're running Debian on a server and have ssh installed, "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" should pick it up. The new package version is 1:3.4p1-1.1.
Dynamic libraries may be treated differently. It is more difficult to try to partially load them. I'm not sure how Linux handles this.
Using mmap(2). Virtual memory is allocated for the library, but no physical memory is initially allocated to back the virtual store. When a page from the library is required, a page fault occurs, and it is demand-loaded; thus only code that is actually being used gets loaded into physical RAM. The memory allocated for a library is marked shared, so only one copy of the library code is required in RAM, no matter how many processes are using it. Data pages are copy-on-write.
You can read the man page for mmap() for more information on memory-mapped files, shared memory etc.
(Disclaimer: I am not a kernel programmer; this is simply my naive understanding of how it basically works).
Since the Final Fantasies they have been making games easier for the US.
Nowadays, the story has become the point of playing a Final Fantasy game. I think that's why the difficulty level has been adjusted: everyone who starts the game should be able to finish it to see how the story ends. You can progress through a Final Fantasy story without having to keep stopping to spend hours levelling up. And that's the way it should be, IMHO.
However, the FF series also caters for those gamers who like a challenge by typically including side-quests which you have to explore to discover, and superbosses which are very difficult, usually much harder than the end-of-story battles. People who want to spend ages exploring to find all the secrets or training their party to beat the superbosses are welcome to do that; people who can't be bothered with all the hardcore stuff and just want to enjoy a story are welcome to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
My naming convention is minor female characters from Greek mythology.
What is the name of your computer?
I'm currently sat at "chryseis", my main home box. Under my desk is "nysa", my old Amiga A1200. At work, the Linux machine I usually use is "elektra"; I also have an UltraSPARC on my desk called "theia".
-Stephen
Also modplug plays more formats and is better, although is win32 only
There's a port to XMMS. Works for me.
-Stephen
My browser homepage is set to "http://localhost/dwww", which is mapped to the web-based Debian documentation package. My system's docs in all formats (HTML, man pages, Info manuals) are just a click or two away.
-Stephen
Nintendo technically should call it Gameboy 1, 2, 3, 4
Why? Because Sony does?
"Playstation 2", "Playstation 3", "Xbox 2", "Pentium 4" etc. sound so... bland. Product names are more interesting than mere numbers. Of course, a bad name can doom a product, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
All JMHO, of course.
-Stephen
Though it's reasonable to have a few sidequest bosses more difficult than the final boss, the final boss should definitely be tougher than all the previous regular-game bosses, and most of the sidequest bosses, unless there is a specific, given reason for him/her/it/them not to be.
:-)
Not sure I agree with that, as far as console RPGs are concerned anyway. I'll stick to discussung the FF series because, like you, that's what I know.
Back as far as FFIV, the FF series has been increasingly story-driven - the story is really the point of the game. That's how it seems to me, anyway. Therefore, I think that everyone who starts the game should be able to finish it, so they can see how the story ends. The main game should thus be relatively easy, with all the challenge for the hardcore crowd in subquests.
Final Fantasy VIII and X both took this route: FFVIII using level-matched enemies; FFX by just being a fairly easy game. But both games have a fair number of optional bosses which are very difficult to beat, providing an extra challenge for anyone so inclined. (The European version of FFX has even more than the North American version: Omega Weapon has ten times as much HP, and there are evil versions of all the Aeons to track down and kill. (Or, in my case, track down and get killed by)).
Final Fantasy IX follows your suggested pattern more; the difficulty ramps up over the course of the game; the final dungeon is particularly nasty, and the end boss is just horrible. Nice closing FMV as a reward, though
-Stephen
I saw a great obscured address a few years back. Using the system, "me@example.com" would be obscured something like this:
m |
|em|ee|at|ee|ecks|ay|em|pee|ell|ee|dot|see|oh|e
No way that a harvester is getting at that! Probably not very portable across accents, mind.
-Stephen
I am talking about the director or producer who took over for the last year of Tom Baker.
You had everything right except the name: it was John-Nathan Turner. Terry Nation was the guy who created the Daleks.
-Stephen
Actually, "HD drive" is fine: it expands to "hard disk drive". Personally, I've used "HDD" as the abbreviation for same for years, since "HD" used to be taken by "high density" (for floppies).
"PIN number" is my pet hate.
-Stephen
What other Square Enix games would you like to see on Game Boy Advance?
Chrono Trigger. It's never been officially released in Europe (we didn't get the SNES original or the PSX port). A GBA remake would be most welcome.
It could be a straight port, reproducing the SNES original as faithfully as possible; or it could be a reinterpretation, with new game mechanics around the original story (e.g. a new battle system based on Chrono Cross's excellent system).
-Stephen
Given the choice between:
- a modern Squaresoft RPG drama, joining a bunch of ragtag characters as they embark upon an epic adventure, or
- an old-style "twitch" game played on reactions alone, no story to speak of, no reward besides beating an arbitrary high score, and "game over" if I lose concentration for so much as a millisecond,
I'll take the modern game any day of the week. I didn't like classic games back in the day, and I don't like them now.-Stephen
Are there other, genuine examples of MS community sites?
The Code Project might qualify - a code-sharing/tutorial/discussion site, aimed exclusively (I think) at Windows coders.
-Stephen
At least with LiveJournal, you can disable anonymous comments. It means that people without LJ accounts can't comment, but I find that preferable to having my journal spammed or trolled.
-Stephen
...Synsoniq is a good online shop. Most of my game soundtrack CDs have come from there. (Though I'm going to have to defect to somewhere else for a copy of The Black Mages, which Synsoniq inexplicably don't seem to stock).
-Stephen
Never eat the blue M&Ms. Just trust me on this one.. let's just say blue == best mind control wavelength.
The red M&Ms, on the other hand, free your mind completely.
-Stephen
Final Fantasy games (that I've played, at least) have had consistently awesome soundtracks.
You can buy arranged versions on CD, too. The FFVIII piano CD is very pleasant to listen to at work; the FFVIII orchestral CD sounds like a movie score.
Icing on the cake: the CDs are put out by Japanese publishers, so no money goes to the RIAA, AFAIK.
-Stephen
Banknotes don't last forever. In a few years' time, the old-style $20 notes will have been withdrawn by banks simply because they're old and tatty and falling apart. (By which time, the counterfeiters will have figured out how to forge the new notes, but hey).
-Stephen
"[I]t looks like you're holding a giant ear"".
-Stephen
The two things in Final Fantasy that made it so difficult was that you were limited to 6-9 spell points per spell level (versus having a pool of magic points)
And no Ethers to replenish them; and once your white mage had run out, you had a tough time healing yourself because the potions were pathetically weak, and there were no Hi-Potions or similar.
and there were no save points within dungeons and towers (which became much more of a PITA towards the end of the game).
The last dungeon was by far the worst. Once I'd used my 99 potions up, I had to resort to scummy tactics to get through: memo-save every few steps, restarting the game and restoring the memo-save if I got into a random battle that looked like it would cost me a lot of HP. Since the NES version didn't (AFAIK) have the memo-save feature, I'd have been unable to beat the dungeon if I'd been playing that version.
(And then I got to Chaos, and he was a piece of cake. Phew).
I do love the idea of encounter points for enemies
They tended to be positioned stategically in front of treasure chests; a forerunner to the monster-in-a-box traps found in the later FFs. (The canonical example of which being in FFV's final dungeon: a superboss in a treasure chest. In two different places. Caught me out both times. Argh).
-Stephen
(and possibly the European as well)
The SNES version of FFIV was never released in Europe. The PSX version was FFIV's first outing in Europe. Same for FFVI.
And yes, it is a difficult game. It's got nothing on FFI, though; that really is difficult. When I got FF Origins, I selected "normal" difficulty, thinking "I beat FFIV, how hard can this be?" More fool me...
(Chrono Trigger has never been released in Europe. We didn't even get the PSX version. Thank goodness for ZSNES).
-Stephen
I would expect IBM to be pushing a linux-based solution.
bash$ withdraw --pounds 50 --account 1234578 --sort-code 99-88-77 --pin 9999
-Stephen
"You have requested $40. Last week, you withdrew $50. Are you sure that you don't need the extra $10?"
"You appear to be paying your credit card bill. I see that you have $2,000 credit remaining. Would you like me to order the latest quality products from Microsoft for you?"
-Stephen
A patch for Debian stable is available already. If you're running Debian on a server and have ssh installed, "apt-get update; apt-get upgrade" should pick it up. The new package version is 1:3.4p1-1.1.
-Stephen
Dynamic libraries may be treated differently. It is more difficult to try to partially load them. I'm not sure how Linux handles this.
Using mmap(2). Virtual memory is allocated for the library, but no physical memory is initially allocated to back the virtual store. When a page from the library is required, a page fault occurs, and it is demand-loaded; thus only code that is actually being used gets loaded into physical RAM. The memory allocated for a library is marked shared, so only one copy of the library code is required in RAM, no matter how many processes are using it. Data pages are copy-on-write.
You can read the man page for mmap() for more information on memory-mapped files, shared memory etc.
(Disclaimer: I am not a kernel programmer; this is simply my naive understanding of how it basically works).
-Stephen
Since the Final Fantasies they have been making games easier for the US.
Nowadays, the story has become the point of playing a Final Fantasy game. I think that's why the difficulty level has been adjusted: everyone who starts the game should be able to finish it to see how the story ends. You can progress through a Final Fantasy story without having to keep stopping to spend hours levelling up. And that's the way it should be, IMHO.
However, the FF series also caters for those gamers who like a challenge by typically including side-quests which you have to explore to discover, and superbosses which are very difficult, usually much harder than the end-of-story battles. People who want to spend ages exploring to find all the secrets or training their party to beat the superbosses are welcome to do that; people who can't be bothered with all the hardcore stuff and just want to enjoy a story are welcome to do that.
-Stephen
Ok, so why the hell does everybody know this thing's catch phrase?
Maybe they're all parents with small children. Which makes me wonder what they're doing reading Slashdot...
-Stephen