Memetic AI for Neverwinter Nights. This stuff is pretty innovative, at least in theory, and I hope they eventually get to the 1.0 phase with more than just the groundwork done. The approach it takes might be an interesting, even intuitive, way for building the NPC/creature behavior from ground up.
And Game Boy didn't have any kind of region lockout at all, I think. I frequently saw US games being sold here, without any kinds of disclaimers about incompatibility. Worked fine and didn't have a strangely translated manual. (I have to say that in recent times, the manual translation quality has gone way up. Maybe switching to another importer helped? =)
Some games did have warnings but worked fine (a friend of mine let me play his Double Dragon game, and it had "only for USA" or something like that on the title screen, but it worked fine otherwise).
There are possibly some inter-version incompatibilities though what comes to link play - I hear Pokemon will freak out if used with different language cart...
Why is it that so many Unix/Linux programs (and everything else, for that matter) do not provide simple screenshots on their products websites?
Lilypond not only has screenshots, but a very comprehensive tour. Well, these aren't really screenshots, but rather the final output - it's a command-line program, after all. They do have some interesting examples with proper screenshots, too.
Bah. Has it ever looked like something other? I think not =)
Oooo, the Suck article. I've missed it. =)
Look how far we have come since 1999! Geeks don't jabber at mic anymore, and the Obligatory Nonsensical Answer has evolved (much to everyone's displeasure)!
And look at the technological advances in the news: Enlightenment has become a mature technology by becoming vaporware! The DVD playing issue has been fixed (and legal issues almost settled) without harming animals! BSD is not only repeatedly ignored, but also dying!
That would be silly, because it would be stooping to the IE's level.
If I ever see a web page that specifically excludes me because I use a Non-Supported Browser, or deliberately crashes my browser, I'm not going to listen to that web designer's plea of Using Another Browser. Instead, I go elsewhere.
No real problems, except a) it's SDL 1.1 application, and modern dists (Debian Unstable) don't come with SDL 1.1 anymore so I need to use the static build, and b) bungie.net isn't anymore, and ProjectMagma doesn't have Linux builds yet (seems like they need to start over with Linux because they didn't get the Loki source code along with other M2 sources...).
So it works for single play, not really much success with multiplayer...
Well, I'm not exactly qualified to give a complete answer, because there's so much of games for Linux... Here are just some of my favorites. There are more.
Good open-source games: Nethack, MegaMek (the bot player sucks, might be fun with multiplayer), Scorched3D, The Ur-Quan Masters, Clanbomber, bzflag...
Good commercial games: Neverwinter Nights, Quake series (Urban Terror on Q3A rules, RTCW:Enemy Territory is free too...), most Loki titles (Myth II was cool, though nowadays sadly not patched; Sid Meier's Alpha Centari still works fine and rules hard)...
...so I can figure out if I can finally buy a copy of the Alpha Centauri port. Thanks kids.
Heh. I bought my copy of SMAC Planetary Pack about a week after Loki went bust. Of course, this was through a local Linux book retailer. Sad to see a cool game company go just after they ship a title that interested me a lot.
Look around. Chances are that it's still available through some legit channels - but I'm guessing it's these days not as abundant as some other Loki games (I'm specifically talking of Q3A, or course), being released so close to the death of the company.
Now, on the other hand, I wish I would be able to get a copy of Linux version of Deus Ex, which AFAIK wasn't released at all... =)
Ever tried telling people on phone how to do a task in Windows?
"Click Edit, Options, and... err, wait, yeah, Page settings, Margins..." (5 minutes later, or 10 minutes if you don't have the same program in front of you) "Wha? I told you to click on OK, not Cancel!" (10 minutes fly by...) "So it doesn't work? What do you mean there's a setting like that? Why didn't you say so? I'm deaf and stupid. Sorry."
As opposed to:
"Just type '/sbin/ifconfig ppp0'....Wha? that's 'slash-s-b-i-n-slash...'" and a moment later "So it isn't even connected. Right. Try typing 'pon'."
The GUIs may be good to work with, but CLI is easier to explain. Especially if you're used to doing GUI things in one way and others do it the other way.
GUI is like a religion - you "learn" it, and only you can explain what it means to you. CLI is like science - you learn it, you can explain it, and it means the same thing to everyone - except people who argue about "useless uses of cat(1)" and proper order of parameters, and whether to use sed(1) or perl(1), of course.
Just like in the good old days... "Congratulations, you have set up your account. Would you like to install Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator?" (Or these days Mozilla.)
PostgreSQL on a game console: "My pistol will perform a SELECT query on a bullet and then use it to perform an INSERT INTO query on your head and truncate your life, you denormalized villain!"
(from a SA game review)
I could have sworn I've seen an Atari-to-USB adapter before, though, but maybe it was just an Atari-to-PCJoystick adapter after all... frankly, it's strange that no one has come up with these before.
I have had one complaint about USB: It's not so easy for random people to make hardware based on USB. Back in the C64 days, everyone who could hold a soldering iron could make all sorts of weird widgets to connect to the computer. Especially controllers. Almost everyone I knew who had any kind of access to parts had built themselves a reset switch or a game controller, or in latter times, an 1541-to-PC cable (I, with more than a little help from my father, have done all three =)... can't say that's going to take off on PC world, unless "legacy adapters" like these joystick adapters or serial-to-USB adapters take off!
Will the next generation of ink jet cartridge refillers work the same way? That way the printer won't ever notice the cartridge is empty, which was probably sort of what these DRM things relied on... of course, won't be long before the printer makers figure that out, but still.
Yes. had it been a remote one, the better analogy would be to send letters through an extremely overworked post office where the folks handling everything will stamp okay everything that has anything that has words "approval stamp here".
Or something. My explanation skills are considerably lower than they used to do (or maybe they werent that good to begin with).
Sure. A program can ask the operating system kernel to Do Things. Now, someone has found out that when you ask the kernel to Do Things certain way, the kernel subsequently thinks you are the Boss.
Like, you have this stack of forms you want the computer signed. You hand them over to the computer. One of the papers is "Do whatever I say" form that would give you the Power. The computer won't read it and just signs it along with the others, then hands you the forms back.
From what I understood, the Apocalypses and Exegesises (eh, however the heck it's pluralized) will each cover a chapter of the Camel Book. This was number 7; chapter 7 in Programming Perl is Formats.
Formats are marjor boring stuff, and as noted not even part of the core language anymore... but they need to be covered.
So, I take the next ones will be References, then Data Structures (hmm, I suppose there aren't that much to add here?), and then we get to object-oriented topics, which should be very interesting. (Shall it be Revealed that there indeed shall be "$foo is private"? Shall the Snake be slain and the Gem cut?)
There's 33 chapters, so there's a lot of stuff to cover, but I don't think they're going to spend much time on some chapters (particularly Perl as Culture (ch. 22-27), which covers just basic theory of good coding practices and portability, and the Reference Manual (ch 28-33) - though I hope Damian shows off some stuff when they get to Chapter 27, subtopic "Perl Poetry"...)
Wow, a Flash authoring program that does SVG as well. Way cool.
Now we just need one more thing: A vector art program that also has "bitmap" tools. This was one of the features that impressed me most in Flash: Paint using an ordinary paintbrush and fill tools, for example, and it turns it into vectors - without need to mess around with bezier tool or other stuff like that.
The front molding is all one piece that comes off with a specialized tool. It said in the article that only a Volvo technician could take it off. Obvioiusly because they wouldn't sell the tools to the mass market.
Heh. How long before we hear car mechanics going like...
"Look, I don't have the necessary tool here, just wait a moment..." (Gnashes teeth and almost bites the cigarette in half, picks a short metal stick from the toolbox, pokes it in one of the holes under the car and the front of the car opens right up) "I hate these new cars."
...or...
"This is one of them newfangled ones that don't have right hood. Special tools, schmecial tools... Hold this wrench a while, will you? I need to concentrate." (Does a Kung Fu crane pose for a moment with eyes closed - no screaming, though - then suddenly kicks a specific location of the side of the car, making the front open) "See? Easy when you know how!"
Yeah, but just wait until the gamers start waiting for the first patch to the game... Game release in (conservatively estimating) 2020, the 1.1 patch in 2085!
Modern games are starting to get the amount of challenge right.
The old games weren't great entertainment. The challenge was mostly based on the fact that to succeed you had to try to play through the thing a lot of times.
I used to understand this kind of games. Nowadays, if I can't get through some spot in a game with 10 or 15 deaths and reloads (or less, depending on the temper), I'm going to curse the developers to lowest pits of hell for not balancing the game properly, then Enable the Cheat Mode.
When playing games, it's important to Do Things. Doing Things should not be too easy but also not too hard - reasonable. If Doing Stuff is getting more frustrating than it should, it's time to consider whether or not it's a good thing or not. Probably not.
Game designers should start thinking what "challenging" really means. It doesn't have to mean "you just die more often because you're just as slow as yesterday". When Challenge is in attaining the objective, it's good, if it's in the fundamental structure of the game, it's bad.
It's 4:30 in the morning. I need to go to bed. Hope I won't get nightmares about load screens on Normal Difficulty.
I beg of you, how do you bail out more "gracefully" than this?
Dunno, trap mysql_connect() somehow so it won't emit an error message to the output if it fails? I guess it can be done. I don't care enough right now to check right now, never directly coded for MySQL myself, and the time I actually did we had a homegrown DB abstraction API that handled it for us, and it wasn't written by me =)
Though, I find it annoying that PHP cheerfully tells all pathnames and commands and such to outside world. In ideal world, the user from localhost (or a specific "developer's host") should get a detailed error message ("Unable to connect to db foo on bar in whatever.php line 666: Too many connections") while the rest of the world should get some less specific error message ("Unable to connect to the database. Please try again later.")
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Memetic AI for Neverwinter Nights. This stuff is pretty innovative, at least in theory, and I hope they eventually get to the 1.0 phase with more than just the groundwork done. The approach it takes might be an interesting, even intuitive, way for building the NPC/creature behavior from ground up.
And Game Boy didn't have any kind of region lockout at all, I think. I frequently saw US games being sold here, without any kinds of disclaimers about incompatibility. Worked fine and didn't have a strangely translated manual. (I have to say that in recent times, the manual translation quality has gone way up. Maybe switching to another importer helped? =)
Some games did have warnings but worked fine (a friend of mine let me play his Double Dragon game, and it had "only for USA" or something like that on the title screen, but it worked fine otherwise).
There are possibly some inter-version incompatibilities though what comes to link play - I hear Pokemon will freak out if used with different language cart...
Lilypond not only has screenshots, but a very comprehensive tour. Well, these aren't really screenshots, but rather the final output - it's a command-line program, after all. They do have some interesting examples with proper screenshots, too.
Bah. Has it ever looked like something other? I think not =)
Oooo, the Suck article. I've missed it. =)
Look how far we have come since 1999! Geeks don't jabber at mic anymore, and the Obligatory Nonsensical Answer has evolved (much to everyone's displeasure)!
And look at the technological advances in the news: Enlightenment has become a mature technology by becoming vaporware! The DVD playing issue has been fixed (and legal issues almost settled) without harming animals! BSD is not only repeatedly ignored, but also dying!
That would be silly, because it would be stooping to the IE's level.
If I ever see a web page that specifically excludes me because I use a Non-Supported Browser, or deliberately crashes my browser, I'm not going to listen to that web designer's plea of Using Another Browser. Instead, I go elsewhere.
But if I see a site promoting the author's favorite browser in a sensible, non-intrusive way, I'm not annoyed at all - still might not be interested to switch this very instant, but at least I'm not annoyed. =)
Didn't we learn anything from the last browser wars?
No real problems, except a) it's SDL 1.1 application, and modern dists (Debian Unstable) don't come with SDL 1.1 anymore so I need to use the static build, and b) bungie.net isn't anymore, and ProjectMagma doesn't have Linux builds yet (seems like they need to start over with Linux because they didn't get the Loki source code along with other M2 sources...).
So it works for single play, not really much success with multiplayer...
Well, I'm not exactly qualified to give a complete answer, because there's so much of games for Linux... Here are just some of my favorites. There are more.
Good open-source games: Nethack, MegaMek (the bot player sucks, might be fun with multiplayer), Scorched3D, The Ur-Quan Masters, Clanbomber, bzflag...
Good commercial games: Neverwinter Nights, Quake series (Urban Terror on Q3A rules, RTCW:Enemy Territory is free too...), most Loki titles (Myth II was cool, though nowadays sadly not patched; Sid Meier's Alpha Centari still works fine and rules hard)...
Pffff.
Loki.
And that's all I've got to say about this topic. =)
Heh. I bought my copy of SMAC Planetary Pack about a week after Loki went bust. Of course, this was through a local Linux book retailer. Sad to see a cool game company go just after they ship a title that interested me a lot.
Look around. Chances are that it's still available through some legit channels - but I'm guessing it's these days not as abundant as some other Loki games (I'm specifically talking of Q3A, or course), being released so close to the death of the company.
Now, on the other hand, I wish I would be able to get a copy of Linux version of Deus Ex, which AFAIK wasn't released at all... =)
Ever tried telling people on phone how to do a task in Windows?
"Click Edit, Options, and... err, wait, yeah, Page settings, Margins..." (5 minutes later, or 10 minutes if you don't have the same program in front of you) "Wha? I told you to click on OK, not Cancel!" (10 minutes fly by...) "So it doesn't work? What do you mean there's a setting like that? Why didn't you say so? I'm deaf and stupid. Sorry."
As opposed to:
"Just type '/sbin/ifconfig ppp0'. ...Wha? that's 'slash-s-b-i-n-slash...'" and a moment later "So it isn't even connected. Right. Try typing 'pon'."
The GUIs may be good to work with, but CLI is easier to explain. Especially if you're used to doing GUI things in one way and others do it the other way.
GUI is like a religion - you "learn" it, and only you can explain what it means to you. CLI is like science - you learn it, you can explain it, and it means the same thing to everyone - except people who argue about "useless uses of cat(1)" and proper order of parameters, and whether to use sed(1) or perl(1), of course.
And now I need the freaking coffee already.
Eep! Windows 3.1 was the first Windows to offer any kind of support for sound cards and stuff. Here's a trip down the memory lane.
And just look at the GUI back then and compare to the newer ones. Back then, they really could concentrate on What Mattered!
You don't.
Your Internet Service Provider does.
Just like in the good old days... "Congratulations, you have set up your account. Would you like to install Internet Explorer or Netscape Communicator?" (Or these days Mozilla.)
PostgreSQL on a game console: "My pistol will perform a SELECT query on a bullet and then use it to perform an INSERT INTO query on your head and truncate your life, you denormalized villain!"
(from a SA game review)
This will let people use the One True Joystick on modern hardware.
I could have sworn I've seen an Atari-to-USB adapter before, though, but maybe it was just an Atari-to-PCJoystick adapter after all... frankly, it's strange that no one has come up with these before.
I have had one complaint about USB: It's not so easy for random people to make hardware based on USB. Back in the C64 days, everyone who could hold a soldering iron could make all sorts of weird widgets to connect to the computer. Especially controllers. Almost everyone I knew who had any kind of access to parts had built themselves a reset switch or a game controller, or in latter times, an 1541-to-PC cable (I, with more than a little help from my father, have done all three =) ... can't say that's going to take off on PC world, unless "legacy adapters" like these joystick adapters or serial-to-USB adapters take off!
So it re-inked while it was in use, eh?
Will the next generation of ink jet cartridge refillers work the same way? That way the printer won't ever notice the cartridge is empty, which was probably sort of what these DRM things relied on... of course, won't be long before the printer makers figure that out, but still.
Yes. had it been a remote one, the better analogy would be to send letters through an extremely overworked post office where the folks handling everything will stamp okay everything that has anything that has words "approval stamp here".
Or something. My explanation skills are considerably lower than they used to do (or maybe they werent that good to begin with).
Sure. A program can ask the operating system kernel to Do Things. Now, someone has found out that when you ask the kernel to Do Things certain way, the kernel subsequently thinks you are the Boss.
Like, you have this stack of forms you want the computer signed. You hand them over to the computer. One of the papers is "Do whatever I say" form that would give you the Power. The computer won't read it and just signs it along with the others, then hands you the forms back.
How's that for an explanation?
From what I understood, the Apocalypses and Exegesises (eh, however the heck it's pluralized) will each cover a chapter of the Camel Book. This was number 7; chapter 7 in Programming Perl is Formats.
Formats are marjor boring stuff, and as noted not even part of the core language anymore... but they need to be covered.
So, I take the next ones will be References, then Data Structures (hmm, I suppose there aren't that much to add here?), and then we get to object-oriented topics, which should be very interesting. (Shall it be Revealed that there indeed shall be "$foo is private"? Shall the Snake be slain and the Gem cut?)
There's 33 chapters, so there's a lot of stuff to cover, but I don't think they're going to spend much time on some chapters (particularly Perl as Culture (ch. 22-27), which covers just basic theory of good coding practices and portability, and the Reference Manual (ch 28-33) - though I hope Damian shows off some stuff when they get to Chapter 27, subtopic "Perl Poetry"...)
Maybe someone ported wmquake for Windows and HL... or maybe it gave them... er, ideas.
Heh. Wonder what Leonardo da Vinci would have done if he had access to the Internet? =)
Wow, a Flash authoring program that does SVG as well. Way cool.
Now we just need one more thing: A vector art program that also has "bitmap" tools. This was one of the features that impressed me most in Flash: Paint using an ordinary paintbrush and fill tools, for example, and it turns it into vectors - without need to mess around with bezier tool or other stuff like that.
Heh. How long before we hear car mechanics going like...
"Look, I don't have the necessary tool here, just wait a moment..." (Gnashes teeth and almost bites the cigarette in half, picks a short metal stick from the toolbox, pokes it in one of the holes under the car and the front of the car opens right up) "I hate these new cars."
...or...
"This is one of them newfangled ones that don't have right hood. Special tools, schmecial tools... Hold this wrench a while, will you? I need to concentrate." (Does a Kung Fu crane pose for a moment with eyes closed - no screaming, though - then suddenly kicks a specific location of the side of the car, making the front open) "See? Easy when you know how!"
Yeah, but just wait until the gamers start waiting for the first patch to the game... Game release in (conservatively estimating) 2020, the 1.1 patch in 2085!
Modern games are starting to get the amount of challenge right.
The old games weren't great entertainment. The challenge was mostly based on the fact that to succeed you had to try to play through the thing a lot of times.
I used to understand this kind of games. Nowadays, if I can't get through some spot in a game with 10 or 15 deaths and reloads (or less, depending on the temper), I'm going to curse the developers to lowest pits of hell for not balancing the game properly, then Enable the Cheat Mode.
When playing games, it's important to Do Things. Doing Things should not be too easy but also not too hard - reasonable. If Doing Stuff is getting more frustrating than it should, it's time to consider whether or not it's a good thing or not. Probably not.
Game designers should start thinking what "challenging" really means. It doesn't have to mean "you just die more often because you're just as slow as yesterday". When Challenge is in attaining the objective, it's good, if it's in the fundamental structure of the game, it's bad.
It's 4:30 in the morning. I need to go to bed. Hope I won't get nightmares about load screens on Normal Difficulty.
Dunno, trap mysql_connect() somehow so it won't emit an error message to the output if it fails? I guess it can be done. I don't care enough right now to check right now, never directly coded for MySQL myself, and the time I actually did we had a homegrown DB abstraction API that handled it for us, and it wasn't written by me =)
Though, I find it annoying that PHP cheerfully tells all pathnames and commands and such to outside world. In ideal world, the user from localhost (or a specific "developer's host") should get a detailed error message ("Unable to connect to db foo on bar in whatever.php line 666: Too many connections") while the rest of the world should get some less specific error message ("Unable to connect to the database. Please try again later.")