And yet even though you and I both know this, neither one of us is likely to want to die any earlier than is necessary (or more bluntly, if given the option to take medicine or perform a procedure to extend our lives in some way, we'll take it despite knowing it's purely for selfish reasons despite the facts above).
In all the games that have implemented motion blur, the ONLY games I've every managed to tolerate their version has been Crysis 1 and games running the Source engine. With Crysis (so long as you're using high quality blur with DirectX 10) it works properly, such that the player's weapon isn't blurred but the rest of the world is, so it actually looks quite nice and realistic. The Source engine isn't quite as advanced but it's a lot more subtle, and only really becomes dramatic after falling or bouncing around really fast (particularly the Portal games). But games like Mass Effect 1 & 2, Amnesia, and OSS games like Nexuiz and Xonotic, the motion blur is more annoying and smeary than anything (and particularly the last too, it affects the ability to see properly on the peripheral, a BAD THING with a multiplayer game)
In other words, if motion blur is enabled in iodoom3, it better bloody be tweakable!
Thanks for doing this. I've always appreciated the work you and your team have done with ioquake3 and figured that it would be you guys who'd take on on the iodoom3 project. If you can make headway soon it'll help prevent unnecessary fragmentation of the Doom 3 engine.
It was also (despite the fact that console ports existed) a defiantly PC-centric game, with no silly 2-weapon limits, no cover-based mechanics and lots of nice, precise combat. I actually replayed it earlier this year and it still holds up reasonably well, even if the engine looks slightly dated now.
I also replayed it earlier this year and agree with you. Don't forget also, it doesn't have regenerating health (another staple of modern FPS games), which on the hardest difficulty (General) is something one can almost start to miss. I can't believe I'm saying that I miss health regen... my God, modern games have turned me into a pussy.
Since OpenArena is almost completely identical to Quake 3 in terms of gameplay/feel/physics/weapons/etc (it's basically Quake 3 with GPLed assets), you must also be suggesting that Quake 3 sucks ass. In which case I bid you a GOOD DAY sir!
(minus rendering of stencil shadows via the 'depth fail' method, a functionality commonly known as 'Carmack's Reverse').
I though Carmack had produced a workaround for the patent issue brought on by the original "depth fail" method of stencil shadows. The summary (and to some extend the README.txt file in the base of the GitHub project) suggests that the stencil shadow rendering functionality is completely missing - as in, no shadows at all. That doesn't sound like a workaround so much as ripping out a core component of the engine. If so this greatly reduces the immersiveness of the engine (and its usefulness in total conversion mods like The Dark Mod). Hopefully someone can clarify as to whether this is true or I'm just reading things incorrectly.
I actually had a feeling it was going to be a bad decision later, but I don't like having items on my goals screen that aren't cleared, so I figured what the heck.
Anyways, my rant was a bit harsh in retrospect. I don't like DRM, and wish Steam didn't use it, however I don't expect the gaming world to change any time soon and it's really, really hard to go back to indie titles after playing top-tier games all my life. I dunno.
Beg your pardon? Where can I find an easy to use paint program in a typical Linux distro? GIMP doesn't count and any alternatives I've tried like Pinta are rather crash-happy.
I'm not a huge fan of MS Paint due to its limitations (Paint.NET's my poison), but at least they HAVE something easy and capable compared to what the Linux community has been able to provide... or haven't in this case.
If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck fixing my fucking printer issues and sound cutting out in Linux, compared to the glorious "it works flawlessly" experience with Windows 7. If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck playing crap little "old-school" styled indie games instead of something immersive and deep like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which is only available on Steam, which of course uses DRM).
Perhaps less troll-like, if I followed that philosophy I'd miss out on a great number of wonderful things and my computing life would be less fun and somewhat more stressful (or put another way, the things I'd miss out on would reduce the pleasure I get from computers). Sometimes we have to compromise to get what we want.
I swear these articles are sometimes just an excuse for people on Slashdot to write posts on how awesome their son or daughter is, how they aren't affected by tech and how amazing their kid is compared to everyone else.
Well of course US customs were confused as to why she had so many books. They probably couldn't comprehend that someone in the US would actually read books, much less several of them.
OK that was probably a cheap shot at the US again, but damnit they deserve it.:)
Now all we need are transforming vehicles and if I get into trouble I can just shout out "BUMBLEBEE!!!" and my car will not only drive itself up to me on its own, but hopefully blow up other cars in the process.
You're right, Photoshop ain't cheap. But it is however very easy to pirate - just download the Master Collection trial from the Adobe web site, find a key on TPB and grab a "host file" blocking script that will redirect all known Adobe activation servers to 127.0.0.1. Heck I'd do that for them and package it nicely with a series of easy instructions to follow. In the end they'll get the best tools available, they'll be part of the crowd that can "Photoshop" images rather than "GIMP" them, and they'll be none the wiser because no-one gives a shit if you give them pirated software.
[blockquote]Right, because wine and virtualbox are somehow not good enough to run windows software.[blockquote] Well, they aren't. WINE introduces regressions with each new version, so who in their right mind would want to rely on WINE to run either necessary software or games without fiddling/troubleshooting? As for Virtualbox, it's slow.
[blockquote]Better to stay where the viruses are, where the system takes twice the resources it needs, where the providing company has a history of illegal activity, where bugs take years to get fixed, where if you don't like OS-feature-X too bad.[/blockquote] If you're getting viruses in Windows, maybe you just don't know how to use computers properly. It's funny how the Linux zealots seem to talk about viruses the most, even though they aren't actually a concern if you employ some basic security habits. As for the rest, I find Windows 7 faster than Ubuntu 11.10, far less buggy and much more pleasant to use as a desktop OS. Illegal activity? Sure that bugs me, but using Linux is such a bad experience these days that Microsoft's behavior isn't enough to pull up with the shit that is Linux on the desktop.
[blockquote]You'd be amazed at how many people are using linux. And if you are in the server world, Unix is pretty much where it's at.[/blockquote] Sure. We use Linux at work in embedded systems as well as servers. That's where Linux is strongest in - not on the desktop. But desktop software is what this fucking thread is all about moron, which is why I'm not mentioning anything else.
I've had the same nagging feeling over my use of Steam - will it work in 10-20 years from now, or will Valve have closed down and terminated the servers? Since it's such a nagging feeling it's kinda ruined my interest for a while in purchasing more games on Steam, but recently I've managed to resolve this to my satisfaction with a little logic:
1. Gabe Newell (owner of Valve/Steam) has publicly stated that if (God-forbid) the time comes to close down Valve, there will be a patch released to allow Steam clients to launch without requiring a connection to the authentication servers, basically making them standalone launchers. This claim has been repeated elsewhere by fanboys and continues to be stated if someone raises this issue, and given this isn't a legally-binding promise I have no real faith in it being executed should the worst happens, but it's at least some sort of acknowledgement.
2. All games on Steam that are not MMORPGs (and hence wouldn't benefit from being standalone anyway) have a crack floating around on the Internet, as the DRM for Steam was defeated ages ago. Should it be necessary, I would just have to acquire all the cracks for my purchased games and it would end the problem entirely. This would be made easier since if Valve did go down, a LOT of people would be wanting these cracks, and so an unofficial repository on TPB or whatever would inevitably appear.
3. Would I even want to play such games in the future? I can't stand playing DOOM/Quake/Quake 2/old adventure games anymore. Even with source ports of their engines to incorporate modern effects and features, often enough the gameplay has aged far too much. Not that the Call of Duty crap is any better, but I prefer games with more depth like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which incidentally has a working, patched crack which I tested recently anyway). Besides, some old games are just too ugly to have much fun with once your standards for graphics quality has been risen to modern standards. Doesn't mean I'm a graphics whole, but pixelated DOS games are only really good for nostalgia in most cases.
4. The nature of scale means a HUGE number of people would be affected by Steam being disconnected. It stands to reason a solution to help everyone continue to run the games they purchased would naturally result from such a size of affected people. Community-based solutions from some smart gamers who are also programmers can result in wonderful things.
Oh, and by the way - who cares about installing Windows "legally" if the activation servers go down for an old version? If you're already paid for it, you shouldn't feel bad about obtaining an activation crack to continue to use the software you bought. There's nothing wrong about empowering yourself in such a situation.
tl;dr - if software requires activation, a solution that allows you to still run the software if the server is down has likely already been found, or if it affects enough people, will be found.
If you're trying to spread the news about Free Software, the only effective way to do it is to SHOW them.
Careful though. Most decent open-source software is actually a clone of some proprietary software (the proprietary software often being better anyway), and hence if you show off something like LibreOffice, GIMP, SuperTuxKart or anything else that is clearly a knock-off of a well-known proprietary package, you're going to have that pointed out to you. Once this happens you cannot really get away from that, because it then suggests to the person the idea that open-source software is just a series of copycats of the "real" stuff... which I have to admit is a very common truth.
As for multiple desktops, I can think of three free virtual desktop programs for Windows (two of which integrated nicely with Windows 7) such that a person does not need to give up the wide range of premium software you'd find in Windows and can still enjoy Linux-style desktops. Better to stay where the software is, learn how to empower yourself and fill in the gaps when possible, than give it all up for a 1% OS.
Only 7GB (compressed) and will provide many hours of bedside reading.
That would only be of interest if the recipient didn't have any form of Internet and in your example, didn't have a laptop with a wireless connection. Otherwise it seems like a waste of bandwidth.
Slashdot is just following the media's lead (particularly FOX News), where for a headline it poses a question rather of a fact or accusation. That way, controversy can be manufactured by stating something controversial in question form (regardless of whether it's actually true or not), and if it's complete rubbish the media is let off the hook because they never actually stated it to be a fact.
To be honest I agree with the assessment that the US is losing its innovative edge; I just don't like the phrasing.
Dia is complete and utter rubbish. The UI is so crap I'd pay full retail for Visio just because the stress isn't worth the benefit of being free. That said, I've used LibreOffice Draw at work and that is actually a very good alternative to Visio for the purposes of what I used it for (flow charts).
Nope. I tried playing Doom in a source engine port (Doomsday Engine) recently. It was nice to use modern features such as mouse look and jumping with an OpenGL renderer, but ultimately I got bored because I've moved on from the old stuff. I can still enjoy games like Deus Ex 1 though, but game which are too old generally don't age well when you've become accustomed to modern graphics and gameplay.
Hell Valve could kill kittens and use their blood to fuel their servers
Wait... are you saying kitteh sacrifices are NOT part of standard server administration? Shit, I'm not quite sure what my boss is going to say when he finds out how I run things...
Slashdot Mirror
Sycraft-fu, your posts are consistently accurate, informative and insightful. Could you at least pretend to troll once in a while? It's much more fun!
And yet even though you and I both know this, neither one of us is likely to want to die any earlier than is necessary (or more bluntly, if given the option to take medicine or perform a procedure to extend our lives in some way, we'll take it despite knowing it's purely for selfish reasons despite the facts above).
In all the games that have implemented motion blur, the ONLY games I've every managed to tolerate their version has been Crysis 1 and games running the Source engine. With Crysis (so long as you're using high quality blur with DirectX 10) it works properly, such that the player's weapon isn't blurred but the rest of the world is, so it actually looks quite nice and realistic. The Source engine isn't quite as advanced but it's a lot more subtle, and only really becomes dramatic after falling or bouncing around really fast (particularly the Portal games). But games like Mass Effect 1 & 2, Amnesia, and OSS games like Nexuiz and Xonotic, the motion blur is more annoying and smeary than anything (and particularly the last too, it affects the ability to see properly on the peripheral, a BAD THING with a multiplayer game)
In other words, if motion blur is enabled in iodoom3, it better bloody be tweakable!
Thanks for doing this. I've always appreciated the work you and your team have done with ioquake3 and figured that it would be you guys who'd take on on the iodoom3 project. If you can make headway soon it'll help prevent unnecessary fragmentation of the Doom 3 engine.
I also replayed it earlier this year and agree with you. Don't forget also, it doesn't have regenerating health (another staple of modern FPS games), which on the hardest difficulty (General) is something one can almost start to miss. I can't believe I'm saying that I miss health regen... my God, modern games have turned me into a pussy.
Lemme guess, you don't have a TV either but want to tell the world regardless?
Since OpenArena is almost completely identical to Quake 3 in terms of gameplay/feel/physics/weapons/etc (it's basically Quake 3 with GPLed assets), you must also be suggesting that Quake 3 sucks ass. In which case I bid you a GOOD DAY sir!
I though Carmack had produced a workaround for the patent issue brought on by the original "depth fail" method of stencil shadows. The summary (and to some extend the README.txt file in the base of the GitHub project) suggests that the stencil shadow rendering functionality is completely missing - as in, no shadows at all. That doesn't sound like a workaround so much as ripping out a core component of the engine. If so this greatly reduces the immersiveness of the engine (and its usefulness in total conversion mods like The Dark Mod). Hopefully someone can clarify as to whether this is true or I'm just reading things incorrectly.
Well... OK you got me. I actually did. :)
I actually had a feeling it was going to be a bad decision later, but I don't like having items on my goals screen that aren't cleared, so I figured what the heck.
Anyways, my rant was a bit harsh in retrospect. I don't like DRM, and wish Steam didn't use it, however I don't expect the gaming world to change any time soon and it's really, really hard to go back to indie titles after playing top-tier games all my life. I dunno.
It has never been said that it has never been said that raising children should be easy.
Beg your pardon? Where can I find an easy to use paint program in a typical Linux distro? GIMP doesn't count and any alternatives I've tried like Pinta are rather crash-happy.
I'm not a huge fan of MS Paint due to its limitations (Paint.NET's my poison), but at least they HAVE something easy and capable compared to what the Linux community has been able to provide... or haven't in this case.
Ahem. /rant
If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck fixing my fucking printer issues and sound cutting out in Linux, compared to the glorious "it works flawlessly" experience with Windows 7. If I followed that philosophy I'd be stuck playing crap little "old-school" styled indie games instead of something immersive and deep like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which is only available on Steam, which of course uses DRM).
Perhaps less troll-like, if I followed that philosophy I'd miss out on a great number of wonderful things and my computing life would be less fun and somewhat more stressful (or put another way, the things I'd miss out on would reduce the pleasure I get from computers). Sometimes we have to compromise to get what we want.
I swear these articles are sometimes just an excuse for people on Slashdot to write posts on how awesome their son or daughter is, how they aren't affected by tech and how amazing their kid is compared to everyone else.
Well of course US customs were confused as to why she had so many books. They probably couldn't comprehend that someone in the US would actually read books, much less several of them.
OK that was probably a cheap shot at the US again, but damnit they deserve it. :)
Now all we need are transforming vehicles and if I get into trouble I can just shout out "BUMBLEBEE!!!" and my car will not only drive itself up to me on its own, but hopefully blow up other cars in the process.
You're right, Photoshop ain't cheap. But it is however very easy to pirate - just download the Master Collection trial from the Adobe web site, find a key on TPB and grab a "host file" blocking script that will redirect all known Adobe activation servers to 127.0.0.1. Heck I'd do that for them and package it nicely with a series of easy instructions to follow. In the end they'll get the best tools available, they'll be part of the crowd that can "Photoshop" images rather than "GIMP" them, and they'll be none the wiser because no-one gives a shit if you give them pirated software.
[blockquote]Right, because wine and virtualbox are somehow not good enough to run windows software.[blockquote]
Well, they aren't. WINE introduces regressions with each new version, so who in their right mind would want to rely on WINE to run either necessary software or games without fiddling/troubleshooting? As for Virtualbox, it's slow.
[blockquote]Better to stay where the viruses are, where the system takes twice the resources it needs, where the providing company has a history of illegal activity, where bugs take years to get fixed, where if you don't like OS-feature-X too bad.[/blockquote]
If you're getting viruses in Windows, maybe you just don't know how to use computers properly. It's funny how the Linux zealots seem to talk about viruses the most, even though they aren't actually a concern if you employ some basic security habits. As for the rest, I find Windows 7 faster than Ubuntu 11.10, far less buggy and much more pleasant to use as a desktop OS. Illegal activity? Sure that bugs me, but using Linux is such a bad experience these days that Microsoft's behavior isn't enough to pull up with the shit that is Linux on the desktop.
[blockquote]You'd be amazed at how many people are using linux. And if you are in the server world, Unix is pretty much where it's at.[/blockquote]
Sure. We use Linux at work in embedded systems as well as servers. That's where Linux is strongest in - not on the desktop. But desktop software is what this fucking thread is all about moron, which is why I'm not mentioning anything else.
I've had the same nagging feeling over my use of Steam - will it work in 10-20 years from now, or will Valve have closed down and terminated the servers? Since it's such a nagging feeling it's kinda ruined my interest for a while in purchasing more games on Steam, but recently I've managed to resolve this to my satisfaction with a little logic:
1. Gabe Newell (owner of Valve/Steam) has publicly stated that if (God-forbid) the time comes to close down Valve, there will be a patch released to allow Steam clients to launch without requiring a connection to the authentication servers, basically making them standalone launchers. This claim has been repeated elsewhere by fanboys and continues to be stated if someone raises this issue, and given this isn't a legally-binding promise I have no real faith in it being executed should the worst happens, but it's at least some sort of acknowledgement.
2. All games on Steam that are not MMORPGs (and hence wouldn't benefit from being standalone anyway) have a crack floating around on the Internet, as the DRM for Steam was defeated ages ago. Should it be necessary, I would just have to acquire all the cracks for my purchased games and it would end the problem entirely. This would be made easier since if Valve did go down, a LOT of people would be wanting these cracks, and so an unofficial repository on TPB or whatever would inevitably appear.
3. Would I even want to play such games in the future? I can't stand playing DOOM/Quake/Quake 2/old adventure games anymore. Even with source ports of their engines to incorporate modern effects and features, often enough the gameplay has aged far too much. Not that the Call of Duty crap is any better, but I prefer games with more depth like Deus Ex: Human Revolution (which incidentally has a working, patched crack which I tested recently anyway). Besides, some old games are just too ugly to have much fun with once your standards for graphics quality has been risen to modern standards. Doesn't mean I'm a graphics whole, but pixelated DOS games are only really good for nostalgia in most cases.
4. The nature of scale means a HUGE number of people would be affected by Steam being disconnected. It stands to reason a solution to help everyone continue to run the games they purchased would naturally result from such a size of affected people. Community-based solutions from some smart gamers who are also programmers can result in wonderful things.
Oh, and by the way - who cares about installing Windows "legally" if the activation servers go down for an old version? If you're already paid for it, you shouldn't feel bad about obtaining an activation crack to continue to use the software you bought. There's nothing wrong about empowering yourself in such a situation.
tl;dr - if software requires activation, a solution that allows you to still run the software if the server is down has likely already been found, or if it affects enough people, will be found.
Careful though. Most decent open-source software is actually a clone of some proprietary software (the proprietary software often being better anyway), and hence if you show off something like LibreOffice, GIMP, SuperTuxKart or anything else that is clearly a knock-off of a well-known proprietary package, you're going to have that pointed out to you. Once this happens you cannot really get away from that, because it then suggests to the person the idea that open-source software is just a series of copycats of the "real" stuff... which I have to admit is a very common truth.
As for multiple desktops, I can think of three free virtual desktop programs for Windows (two of which integrated nicely with Windows 7) such that a person does not need to give up the wide range of premium software you'd find in Windows and can still enjoy Linux-style desktops. Better to stay where the software is, learn how to empower yourself and fill in the gaps when possible, than give it all up for a 1% OS.
That would only be of interest if the recipient didn't have any form of Internet and in your example, didn't have a laptop with a wireless connection. Otherwise it seems like a waste of bandwidth.
Not to be (deliberately) insensitive, but how will this affect the development of Diaspora?
Slashdot is just following the media's lead (particularly FOX News), where for a headline it poses a question rather of a fact or accusation. That way, controversy can be manufactured by stating something controversial in question form (regardless of whether it's actually true or not), and if it's complete rubbish the media is let off the hook because they never actually stated it to be a fact.
To be honest I agree with the assessment that the US is losing its innovative edge; I just don't like the phrasing.
Dia is complete and utter rubbish. The UI is so crap I'd pay full retail for Visio just because the stress isn't worth the benefit of being free. That said, I've used LibreOffice Draw at work and that is actually a very good alternative to Visio for the purposes of what I used it for (flow charts).
Nope. I tried playing Doom in a source engine port (Doomsday Engine) recently. It was nice to use modern features such as mouse look and jumping with an OpenGL renderer, but ultimately I got bored because I've moved on from the old stuff. I can still enjoy games like Deus Ex 1 though, but game which are too old generally don't age well when you've become accustomed to modern graphics and gameplay.
Wait... are you saying kitteh sacrifices are NOT part of standard server administration? Shit, I'm not quite sure what my boss is going to say when he finds out how I run things...