The only consoles to approach a ten-year lifespan in the United States were the Atari VCS/2600 and the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
The Intellivision should also be showing a 10+ year lifespan, but someone screwed up by the numbers. The charts list the Intellivision as ending in 1984. This was the date that Mattel Electronics closed down, however, not the date that the Intellivision stopped being supported. A former VP of Mattel purchased the Intellivision properties and formed INTV Corp. Not only did they release new games, but the old system was re-released as the "Super Pro System" and later the "Intellivision System III".
How many consoles have games available ten years after launch?
The Atari 2600 was available until around 1990. It launched in 1977.
The Intellivision was available until the early 90's. It launched in 1980.
The NES was available until 1995, being launched in America around 1985/86. ('85 was the test market.)
The Famicom was released in 1983, and ran until 2003, for a complete run of 20 years. (!)
Re:Timetable
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 3, Informative
They do use a portal engine. Pretty much everything since Quake 1 uses portal rendering, even some Doom sourceports have it now.
Portal effects and Portal Engine are not the same concept. Portal Effects are merely the ability to render through a warp in space. (e.g. Create a jumpgate that shows through to the other side.) A Portal Engine, on the other hand, is built with Portal Space (4 walls and two ceilings, even if there's no physical object at that location) at its core. Portal Engines allow for things like modifiable/destructable terrain and zero-cost for invisible polygons.
Everything from Quake to Doom 3, however, is still based on the concept of pre-generating level information inside a BSP tree. If you try to modify or destroy the terrain in real-time, you run the risk of rendering objects incorrectly. Worst case, you could slow the engine to a crawl.
There's a good article on building a Portal Engine here. I think you'll find that it's stupidly easy to grasp once you understand the basics, but very difficult to build a complex engine on top of.
Re:Timetable
on
Prey Review
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
It takes 9 years to develop a first person shooter? Really??
No, not really. Prey was (wisely) shelved after the developers couldn't work the kinks out of the Portal Engine. The concept was revived years later, but running on a commecial engine (Doom 3) rather than on the original Portal Engine. What's amazing is that:
1. The game came out at all. (This just doesn't happen in this genre; DNF not withstanding.)
2. They managed to maintain a lot of the portal effects without using a Portal Engine.
Am I alone in not being attracted by all these bells and whistles phones have these days?
No, you're not. I had the opportunity to play with the Q phone at the new Motorola store in downtown Chicago. (Which is not odd at all when you consider that the Q is ALL they sell. Who came up with THAT marketing idea?) My initial reaction was this: It's a piece of technological junk that does very little over top of existing handsets, has a confusing interface (in the finest tradition of Motorola), and is really more of a status symbol than anything else.
It might have had a fighting chance of competing with the Treo had Motorola thought to include a stylus or a thumbstick, or SOMETHING. Instead, what I saw was the standard phone controls, very similar to the ring on the Razr. The salesperson hyped it up as some sort of super-interface, but I just wasn't seeing it. The only advantage it had was the keypad. Also, the salespeople couldn't give any satisfactory answers to how the device would communicate with a corporate exchange server other than "you can sync it with your desktop or download mail from Hotmail and Yahoo." Well, that's just a killer feature, isn't it?
If you're in Chicago, feel free to stop by downtown and see for yourself. Otherwise, my opinion is that you're better with a late-model Razr or Slvr.
BTW, "i love bees" is a reference to another online reality game of the same name. It's like they took all the technology-related pop culture and spread references to it throughout the file.
Interestingly, there seems to be a theme of ficticious conspiracy theory running through the file. References to DaVinci Code, Backward Record Messages, CRYPTONOMICON, aliens, "The Beast" reality game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Doctor Who all appear in that output.
If you look at the end of the file, it seems that Rose managed to plant "Bad Wolf" in there. So I wonder when Rose and the Doctor are going to show up and stop the alien monsters from crashing the contest?:P
The color of "natural glass" is green to bluish green. This colour is caused by naturally occurring iron impurities in the sand. Common glass today usually has a slight green or blue tint, arising from these same impurities. Glassmakers learned to make coloured glass by adding metallic compounds and mineral oxides to produce brilliant hues of red, green, and blue - the colours of gemstones. When gem-cutters learned to cut glass, they found clear glass was an excellent refractor of light. The earliest known beads from Egypt were made during the New Kingdom, about 1500 BC and came in a variety of colours. They were made by winding molten glass around a metal bar and were highly prized as a trading commodity, especially blue ones because they were reported to have magical powers.
The Egyptians also made small jars and bottles using the core-formed method. Glass threads were wound around a bag of sand tied to a rod and the glass was continually reheated to fuse the threads together. The glass had to be kept in motion until the required shape and thickness was achieved. The final step was to allow the rod to cool then to puncture the bag and remove the rod. The Egyptians also formed the first coloured glass rods which they used to create colourful beads and decorations, they also worked with cast glass. [2]. By the 5th century BCE this technology had spread to at least Greece. In the first century BC there were many glass centres located around the Mediterranean and at the eastern end of the Mediterranean glass blowing, both free-blowing and mould-blowing, was discovered.
Considering that the Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to master glassworks, it seems somewhat unlikely that the Pharaoh's prized gem would be mere glass. Unless, that is, there were other legends or sources of value attributed to the gem. Given the unusual color of the glass (for the period), it seems quite reasonable that it being formed by "the light of a thousand suns" was the source of its value.
Prey had 10 years to show off their portal tech. They couldn't do it.
This is blatently incorrect. Prey DID show off their portal tech. (To just anyone and everyone they could!) What they couldn't do was make an actual game out of it. Cool tech, but it ended up being nothing more than a research project.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Any game maker who wants to implement Portal Technology is going to study 2 examples. The first one is Descent's 360 degree engine. The second is the Prey portal technology that allowed worlds to collapse in on themselves. Once you understand how portals work (it's a bloody easy concept), creating those effects follows quite easily.
So again, it's impossible to say that Portal and its predecessor were not influenced by Prey.
On the wiki article on this they mention how this game has been in development before Prey was released
Read the wiki article on Prey. It's been in development since 1995. (!) I remember the original PC Gamer spread which discussed all the cool features that portal technology would allow. As it worked out, however, the technology was a bit too complex and was shelved. A new version was later created with a different codebase and released in 2006.
So I think that it's hard NOT to say that Portal was influenced by Prey. A total ripoff? Probably not. But definitely influenced.
'Scuse me? I'm fairly certain I haven't been linking off to there. I haven't even been around much lately! If you can prove otherwise, then please accept my apologies for using it to chastise and otherwise make fun of the poor Dvorak-loving original poster.
If you can't prove otherwise, then you may wish to seek medical attention for your odd bouts of Deja Vu. If you can't prove otherwise, then you may wish to seek medical attention for your odd bouts of Deja Vu.:p
Oh, I fully agree that there is a place for interactive fiction. Those who know me, know that I've been decrying the lack of new graphical adventure games for a while now. My only point is that a story is NOT a requirement to make a good game.:)
You are an intrepid Slashdotter on a mission to collect karma points. Armed with only your trusty language skills, you must brave the dangers of trolls and downmodding. Can you do it, or will you be the next to end up at -1...
Street Fighter II had a story; in fact, it had a different story for each playable character. True, all eight of them were simple variations on "I must beat the last opponent because of reason x, but still.
You consider an ending sequence to be the same thing as a narrative story? Ooo-kay.
I doubt that millions of fans even remember S.T.U.N. Runner.
It made it into the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 pack right alongside Rush 2049. So it must be at least somewhat well remembered.;)
The plot is the fairly static concept of what you're doing, while the Story is the narrative that slowly exposes the plot. The old games had a plot, but they lacked any sort of narrative short of an end-game sequence. This has been hashed, rehased, and hashed again every time this subject comes up on Slashdot; always to the same conclusion.
You can't sit there and tell me there's no story in Street Fighter
I can and I will sit here and state that Street Fighter II was without a story.
don't try and tell me that STUN Runner or SFRUSH are good games though
Don't try to push your personal preferences on everyone. STUN Runner and SFRush are awesome games. Just because you don't like them doesn't change the fact that millions of fans would agree with me.
if someone like Jaffe could make a game chock full of gameplay w/o the story, don't you think it would have been done already? [...] Try and find a good storyless game like those in the past 5 years? Did you?
Allow me to introduce you to my good friends Sid Meier and Will Wright. Say hello guys! Hey, can you tell us about your great new games like Civilization IV and The Sims? How many millions of dollars did these games net you? You know, I hear that you guys managed to pull off these games with no storyline what-so-ever! That's just incredible! I've heard about games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, but your offering take the cake!
Isn't technology incredible? Now back to AcidLacedPenguiN for a gloomy weather forecast.
So now I can pay to spend an ungodly amount of time and energy to get some 320x240 jittery so-so contrast version of some big screen movie. And I'll have to watch it in a certain time period or lose it? Or, they'll restrict the number of times I can watch it? Somebody pinch me, I must be dreaming. Could life really be this good?
I dunno. Do you ever visit Blockbuster or use Netflix? Then this may be "too good to be true" as long as the price is reasonable (read: WAY BETTER THAN BLOCKBUSTER), the selection is good, and I get a whole week to rent it. I've used Movielink for a similar service, and I have to say that it's actually quite nice.
While I have a few nits with MovieLink, the only real complaint I have is that their selection sucks. When a new movie comes to DVD, you can forget about finding it on Movielink. First you have to wait to see if it's a failure, then you can rent it three months later. Gee, thanks MPAA members. You're killing your own movie rental service that was supposed to pave the way to the future. (Actually, I think it was to keep Congress off their backs.)
I for one look forward to Apple's offerings. And if you don't like it, don't buy it. No one is forcing you. Besides, Apple also offers the purchase of movies and TV shows for oddballs like you who wish to own every movie they watch. (Really, I think you're probably complaining because it's going to make DVD burning habits look even less legit.)
I normally lose interest and never finish games if they have no story.
Really? So you must not have been a fan of Street Fighter II, Wolf3D, Galaga, Quake, S.T.U.N. Runner, Killer Instinct, San Francisco Rush, After Burner, Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Starfox, Contra, Lemmings, etc., etc., etc.
How sad.:(
More likely, you've just forgotten that games can be fun without being a cinematic, first-person shooter.
We don't want anything to encourage people to try to watch movies while driving. Those in-car dvd players should be for passenger use only.
That's not just a good idea, it's the law. *rolls eyes*
That doesn't stop the controls for changing the movie from being in the front seat. While the driver probably shouldn't be messing with the movie controls while (s)he's driving, there's nothing saying that the passenger shouldn't.
There is a standardized digital interface (but not a cradle/dock.) It's called a USB mass stoarge device.
That doesn't work on anything purchased from iTunes or a WMP Store. Not to mention custom encodings like FLAC or OGG. All it does is add complexity to the car's system in order to support MP3 decoding. A standardized interface would provide high-speed channels for decoded audio/video content, tagging, a command interface, power, and ground. Not to mention that the standard could also define a form-factor so as to allow all compliant devices fit in a secure cradle. While some devices might require an adapter, it will at least keep the device from flying around when you take a corner just a smidge too fast.
If the iPod responded to instructions from the cd-changer buttons, you'd have an interface more suited to the car.
Agreed. Now that cars are moving away from having tape decks anyway, there really needs to be a good way to interface musical devices. Especially since "musical devices" now encompass in-car movie playing. The best method would be a standardized docking cradle with a digital interface. Just pop your iPod (or any other audio/visual device) into the cradle and go. The iPod would respond to commands from the vehicle, allowing the driver to use the steering wheel controls instead of the controls on the iPod.
Gen 1 devices that supported this interface would probably require an adapter to fit the cradle and translate commands.
Gen 2 devices would probably be designed around the interface.
Gen 3 devices might even go wireless, thus nullifying the need to dock the device.
Slashdot Mirror
The Intellivision should also be showing a 10+ year lifespan, but someone screwed up by the numbers. The charts list the Intellivision as ending in 1984. This was the date that Mattel Electronics closed down, however, not the date that the Intellivision stopped being supported. A former VP of Mattel purchased the Intellivision properties and formed INTV Corp. Not only did they release new games, but the old system was re-released as the "Super Pro System" and later the "Intellivision System III".
The Atari 2600 was available until around 1990. It launched in 1977.
The Intellivision was available until the early 90's. It launched in 1980.
The NES was available until 1995, being launched in America around 1985/86. ('85 was the test market.)
The Famicom was released in 1983, and ran until 2003, for a complete run of 20 years. (!)
Portal effects and Portal Engine are not the same concept. Portal Effects are merely the ability to render through a warp in space. (e.g. Create a jumpgate that shows through to the other side.) A Portal Engine, on the other hand, is built with Portal Space (4 walls and two ceilings, even if there's no physical object at that location) at its core. Portal Engines allow for things like modifiable/destructable terrain and zero-cost for invisible polygons.
Everything from Quake to Doom 3, however, is still based on the concept of pre-generating level information inside a BSP tree. If you try to modify or destroy the terrain in real-time, you run the risk of rendering objects incorrectly. Worst case, you could slow the engine to a crawl.
There's a good article on building a Portal Engine here. I think you'll find that it's stupidly easy to grasp once you understand the basics, but very difficult to build a complex engine on top of.
No, not really. Prey was (wisely) shelved after the developers couldn't work the kinks out of the Portal Engine. The concept was revived years later, but running on a commecial engine (Doom 3) rather than on the original Portal Engine. What's amazing is that:
1. The game came out at all. (This just doesn't happen in this genre; DNF not withstanding.)
2. They managed to maintain a lot of the portal effects without using a Portal Engine.
No, you're not. I had the opportunity to play with the Q phone at the new Motorola store in downtown Chicago. (Which is not odd at all when you consider that the Q is ALL they sell. Who came up with THAT marketing idea?) My initial reaction was this: It's a piece of technological junk that does very little over top of existing handsets, has a confusing interface (in the finest tradition of Motorola), and is really more of a status symbol than anything else.
It might have had a fighting chance of competing with the Treo had Motorola thought to include a stylus or a thumbstick, or SOMETHING. Instead, what I saw was the standard phone controls, very similar to the ring on the Razr. The salesperson hyped it up as some sort of super-interface, but I just wasn't seeing it. The only advantage it had was the keypad. Also, the salespeople couldn't give any satisfactory answers to how the device would communicate with a corporate exchange server other than "you can sync it with your desktop or download mail from Hotmail and Yahoo." Well, that's just a killer feature, isn't it?
If you're in Chicago, feel free to stop by downtown and see for yourself. Otherwise, my opinion is that you're better with a late-model Razr or Slvr.
BTW, "i love bees" is a reference to another online reality game of the same name. It's like they took all the technology-related pop culture and spread references to it throughout the file.
Interestingly, there seems to be a theme of ficticious conspiracy theory running through the file. References to DaVinci Code, Backward Record Messages, CRYPTONOMICON, aliens, "The Beast" reality game, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and Doctor Who all appear in that output.
If you look at the end of the file, it seems that Rose managed to plant "Bad Wolf" in there. So I wonder when Rose and the Doctor are going to show up and stop the alien monsters from crashing the contest? :P
Considering that the Egyptians were one of the first civilizations to master glassworks, it seems somewhat unlikely that the Pharaoh's prized gem would be mere glass. Unless, that is, there were other legends or sources of value attributed to the gem. Given the unusual color of the glass (for the period), it seems quite reasonable that it being formed by "the light of a thousand suns" was the source of its value.
This is blatently incorrect. Prey DID show off their portal tech. (To just anyone and everyone they could!) What they couldn't do was make an actual game out of it. Cool tech, but it ended up being nothing more than a research project.
Fast forward to the 21st century. Any game maker who wants to implement Portal Technology is going to study 2 examples. The first one is Descent's 360 degree engine. The second is the Prey portal technology that allowed worlds to collapse in on themselves. Once you understand how portals work (it's a bloody easy concept), creating those effects follows quite easily.
So again, it's impossible to say that Portal and its predecessor were not influenced by Prey.
Read the wiki article on Prey. It's been in development since 1995. (!) I remember the original PC Gamer spread which discussed all the cool features that portal technology would allow. As it worked out, however, the technology was a bit too complex and was shelved. A new version was later created with a different codebase and released in 2006.
So I think that it's hard NOT to say that Portal was influenced by Prey. A total ripoff? Probably not. But definitely influenced.
"Apparently, I'm given to making statements prior to my online 'birth'. A troll on Slashdot said so, so it must be true." --AKAImBatman, 1996
"What's Slashdot?" --CmdrTaco, 1996
'Scuse me? I'm fairly certain I haven't been linking off to there. I haven't even been around much lately! If you can prove otherwise, then please accept my apologies for using it to chastise and otherwise make fun of the poor Dvorak-loving original poster.
:p
If you can't prove otherwise, then you may wish to seek medical attention for your odd bouts of Deja Vu. If you can't prove otherwise, then you may wish to seek medical attention for your odd bouts of Deja Vu.
Yes, he is rather brilliant, isn't he?
Oh, I fully agree that there is a place for interactive fiction. Those who know me, know that I've been decrying the lack of new graphical adventure games for a while now. My only point is that a story is NOT a requirement to make a good game. :)
Look ma, I wrote a story! *rolls eyes*
You consider an ending sequence to be the same thing as a narrative story? Ooo-kay.
It made it into the Midway Arcade Treasures 3 pack right alongside Rush 2049. So it must be at least somewhat well remembered.
Plot != Storyline
The plot is the fairly static concept of what you're doing, while the Story is the narrative that slowly exposes the plot. The old games had a plot, but they lacked any sort of narrative short of an end-game sequence. This has been hashed, rehased, and hashed again every time this subject comes up on Slashdot; always to the same conclusion.
Sorry.
Please deposit 25 cents for another lesson.
I can and I will sit here and state that Street Fighter II was without a story.
Don't try to push your personal preferences on everyone. STUN Runner and SFRush are awesome games. Just because you don't like them doesn't change the fact that millions of fans would agree with me.
Allow me to introduce you to my good friends Sid Meier and Will Wright. Say hello guys! Hey, can you tell us about your great new games like Civilization IV and The Sims? How many millions of dollars did these games net you? You know, I hear that you guys managed to pull off these games with no storyline what-so-ever! That's just incredible! I've heard about games like Roller Coaster Tycoon, but your offering take the cake!
Isn't technology incredible? Now back to AcidLacedPenguiN for a gloomy weather forecast.
I hate to be cliche, but go read a book. Life is too short to play lousy games just to "experiece" a thoroughly rehashed story.
I dunno. Do you ever visit Blockbuster or use Netflix? Then this may be "too good to be true" as long as the price is reasonable (read: WAY BETTER THAN BLOCKBUSTER), the selection is good, and I get a whole week to rent it. I've used Movielink for a similar service, and I have to say that it's actually quite nice.
While I have a few nits with MovieLink, the only real complaint I have is that their selection sucks. When a new movie comes to DVD, you can forget about finding it on Movielink. First you have to wait to see if it's a failure, then you can rent it three months later. Gee, thanks MPAA members. You're killing your own movie rental service that was supposed to pave the way to the future. (Actually, I think it was to keep Congress off their backs.)
I for one look forward to Apple's offerings. And if you don't like it, don't buy it. No one is forcing you. Besides, Apple also offers the purchase of movies and TV shows for oddballs like you who wish to own every movie they watch. (Really, I think you're probably complaining because it's going to make DVD burning habits look even less legit.)
Really? So you must not have been a fan of Street Fighter II, Wolf3D, Galaga, Quake, S.T.U.N. Runner, Killer Instinct, San Francisco Rush, After Burner, Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog, Starfox, Contra, Lemmings, etc., etc., etc.
How sad.
More likely, you've just forgotten that games can be fun without being a cinematic, first-person shooter.
That's not just a good idea, it's the law. *rolls eyes*
That doesn't stop the controls for changing the movie from being in the front seat. While the driver probably shouldn't be messing with the movie controls while (s)he's driving, there's nothing saying that the passenger shouldn't.
That doesn't work on anything purchased from iTunes or a WMP Store. Not to mention custom encodings like FLAC or OGG. All it does is add complexity to the car's system in order to support MP3 decoding. A standardized interface would provide high-speed channels for decoded audio/video content, tagging, a command interface, power, and ground. Not to mention that the standard could also define a form-factor so as to allow all compliant devices fit in a secure cradle. While some devices might require an adapter, it will at least keep the device from flying around when you take a corner just a smidge too fast.
USB mass storage won't do any of that today.
Agreed. Now that cars are moving away from having tape decks anyway, there really needs to be a good way to interface musical devices. Especially since "musical devices" now encompass in-car movie playing. The best method would be a standardized docking cradle with a digital interface. Just pop your iPod (or any other audio/visual device) into the cradle and go. The iPod would respond to commands from the vehicle, allowing the driver to use the steering wheel controls instead of the controls on the iPod.
Gen 1 devices that supported this interface would probably require an adapter to fit the cradle and translate commands.
Gen 2 devices would probably be designed around the interface.
Gen 3 devices might even go wireless, thus nullifying the need to dock the device.