The 'experts only' gatekeeper on the information entered into the system results in a relatively barren knowledge base. It doesn't parse natural language all that well (for example: "population of Austin Texas verse population of Dallas Texas produces no result). It's slow.
Not terribly useful outside of a few specific domains. I don't foresee myself using it often, maybe not at all.
You've come to the conclusion that a particular game is a treadmill that rewards time spent playing over all other considerations......so you spend even more money on it, on top of the subscription fee, in order to get to the part of the game you actually want to play, ie the part that isn't such a treadmill. In response to all those dollars, the MMO market is flooded with treadmills....exactly the sort of game you obviously don't want to play.
Anyway, in a PvE game like Everquest, your buying the chance to bash a dragon shaped 3d model instead of a rat or goblin shaped 3d model. What's the frigging point?
Agreed that Guild Wars is a step in the right direction. EQ2-Ebay isn't....it's just feeding more dollars into a tedious game; the result will be "EQ3: Even Bigger Treadmill" instead of Sony branching out to make a MMO that doesn't vacuum up dollars/time/human souls.
The actual beta client for Guild Wars was a shockly small download. As you enter an area (or boot up the game itself), content and other crap is downloaded to your hard drive.
Guild Wars is constantly patching itself. It's one of GW's touted features.
Put the cash where it belongs: in the hands the designers, artists, coders, and testers who slave hundreds upon hundreds of man hours to put out a modern game.
In ten years (if not sooner), software will be able to generate completely natural sounding voices anyway. Screw SAG.
There's a funny episode coming up (episode 7 I think), rougly 98.6% more funny than anything I've seen on SG1.
Don't judge bsg until you see episodes 10, 12, and 13. SG1, while an entertaining show, looks like garbage when compared to the these episodes.
I half expect the Trek-execs saw these three episodes and decided to run up the white flag. Must be sweet justice for Ron Moore to see ideas orginally meant for Voyager (he was overruled by Berman/Braga) on the screen, working, and praised by fans n' critics alike.
I dislike the way mmorpgs have shaped up. No permadeath, limited PvP, endless level grinds with the sole purpose of achieving a high enough level to grind again in a "more dangerous" zone. Not good tools for fantasy storytelling.
(see armageddon.org for an close example of what I'd like to see in a big commericial mmorpg)...played in the WoW beta out of morbid curiosity.
It turns out WoW's actually a good game. It has just about everything I hate about the average mmorpg, but still manages to be addictive fun. Like a Nintendo game, WoW just oozes quality and playability.
Exploring is fun, grinding for the sake of grinding basically doesn't exist, crafting isn't annoying, finding a group and fun quests to do with that group is super easy. Music's decent, in some spots pretty good. Graphics are, imho, amazing. There are areas in the games that are simply works of art--exploring the geometry and looking at the pretty textures is sometimes more fun than bashing the beasties decorating the landscapes.
EQ2's graphics might be more whiz-bang, but I think there's better craftsmenship in WoW's enviroments. (though I haven't spent but a few hours looking at someelse's copy of EQ2) And WoW still manages to run quite smoothly on crap computers.
If there's 5000 players, there's 5000 potential content designers.
I don't think the solution is to invent a massive AI, but to figure out a way to leverage the creativity of the player base.
For example, let's imagine a dungeon hack type game wherein the ultimate goal is to own your own dungeon. Players roll up characters and send them off into other player's dungeons to get slaughtered or come away with treasure (which they can use as a nest egg for their own dungeon, or to improve their characters.)
As a dungeon master, your goal would be to aquire hero corpses from as many different players as possible. You'd have to seed your dungeon with bait, come up with fair challenges, deck the halls with interesting decor, and advertise the existance of your deathtrap (perhaps via treasure maps).
Fair dungeons (with a good risk vs. reward) that change often would naturally generate the most dead heros. Too easy, and you lose your treasure stake without killing any adventurers. Too hard, and players just won't visit.
Diebold and friends have in all likelihood stolen the most important election of our lifetime. We never know for certain, because the real results of the election may have deleted forever, with a few presses of a backspace key.
Others have already said the obvious: the exit polls don't match up to the Diebold tabulations. The record number of new voters all casting ballots for an embattled incumbent seems incredibly unlikely. In my mind, this portents a new era in American politics: the most cunning cheater always wins. And with the Republicans gaining more and more ground thanks to Diebold and other dirty tricks, they'll be the ones in the best position to cheat.
We can be certain that the Republican's new electronic apparatus will entrench itself further and grow in sophistication--unless it is stopped right now. Diebold will be emboldened by this victory, and the people Diebold put in power won't lift a finger to stop it. In few short years, even the Supreme Court will probably be stacked with men who essentially owe their jobs to Diebold.
The media is filled with cowards will we now shift to the right in response to the wind. If the Diebold story doesn't make huge headlines now, then it never will.
What difference does it make it you can get record number of people to the polls if an evil nazi-nerd can push a button and erase all those votes?
Reform of the election process should become everyone's #1 issue. Protests of epic proportions are needed, because as of right now, all the suffrage gained since the dawn of the Union is in peril.
Right now, no one aside from Diebold has the right to vote. Not even the white landowners.
I hate level advancement for the sake of level advancement.
You've worked a 10 hr week grinding away at killing rats, and have what? Woot, now you can grind away at orcs. And after that, maybe ogres, onwards until the mud/mmorpg runs out of content.
Lame. Boring. Doesn't live up to the potential of the game.
You've got thousands of people all playing the same game, but beyond an immediate group and the vendors most of those other players effect your character's personal world not one bit. You might as well be playing on a server with just 10 friends.
Ditch level/skill advancement and replace it with social advancement. The whole idea of having a 120th level fighter/mage on a mmorpg instead of a solo game is so it can be compared with other players' characters.
So make it official: social standing is the attribute improved via gameplay. Every meaningful action rises your character up a social ladder. Skills and powers stay in the same ballpark as a brand new character.
Fights and other moments of excitment wouldn't be end-goal, just the obstacles. For example, you might gain standing in the Explorer's guild if you visit an espicially dangerous location. You'd also get standing via leading other players to these same special spots (which might be points of interest to their profession).
You'd gain standing in the crafting guild by making a rare object...even a starting character would be able to build these rare objects if they have the tools and materials. The adventure would be finding the exotic materials and tools required to make the object. The character's who made the best object of type B (the best sword, the armor, etc.) would receive the most social points, and down the line from there.
High social standing would give your character more access to the poltical aspects of the game, as well as perks. The top tier of the explorer's guild might recieve access to a cool mode of travel, for example.
>If you looked at sites like kernel.org, >slashdot, etc, then that'd skew it in the opposite >direction
Let's look at slashdot then. How many people use IE to read slashdot? It wouldn't surprise me if the numbers were near identical to the general population.
>more reason why a work of interactive fiction >would have been better as plain old >noninteractive fiction.
Interaction creates a sense of immersion, drawing the reader into the story--literally linking the fate of the main character and the reader.
Plus, some people enjoy solving text adventure style puzzles.
Try Photopia by Adam Cadre, generally regarded as being one of the best pieces of modern interactive fiction. Like most IFComp entries, it's a short game--playing it all the way through will only cost you an hour or two of time.
If you end up enjoying Photopia, try downloading other past winners of the IFComp.
This is not score 3: Informative, it's score -5: Clueless newbie giving bad information. The moderaters suck.
Most modern IF runs on a virtual machine. The z-machine is the most commonly used, TADS a close second, and Glulx is designed as a replacement for the z-machine. The games in the comp are written using a variety of virtual machines (including one Java entry and a couple VB entries), but half the games this year are written using the z-machine.
For windows, the best interpreters I've found are WinFrotz (for z-machine games), HTML-TADS (for TADs games), and the Windows version of Glulx (for Glulx games). None of these programs will screw up your system folder, or indeed, even write anything at all to your system folder.
You can find these programs using Google or by following links from the IF comp page.
I'm almost sorry to see this story posted here. If you are new to IF or a casual player, the best thing to do is wait for mid-November when the results are posted and only play the the top 5 games.
I've already played through all the games, and can assure everyone that the top five will be worth your time--incredible experiences!
In the meantime, you might want to try playing some of the winners from previous years. You will probably be amazed by the quality of these homespun games. Interactive Fiction has become one of the best, most vibrant Do-It-Yourself communities on the net.
The best of modern IF doesn't feel at all like Dungeons and Dragons (ie, Zork). These are quality, mature short stories that just happen to also be games.
As hinted at by other replys to this message, erasmatazz is considered a joke by the regular rec.arts.int-fiction community.
BTW, mid-November you can check out rec.games.int-fiction and rec.arts.int-fiction for the results of comp2001. It's considered extermely impolite to discuss particular games on open forums until the votes have been counted and released (mid-November).
The war of Nerds vs. Jocks has always seemed silly to me. Both groups seek power and social acceptance, they only differ in method.
Case in point: the ppl who insist that the fact that they have a nice computer job now while their more jockish peers pump gas for a living is a victory.
Everyone deserves to be able to make a decent living, regardless of how much of a shithead they were in HS. To suggest otherwise is to be a shithead outside of HS--which IMHO is less forgivable.
As for the dorkboy who bravely refused his crown:
This lil' nerd has parents willing and finacially eager to sue over something as moot as a suspension. This lil' nerd has enough friends and supporters to successfully win a popularity contest. This lil' nerd not only participated in the contest itself, but served on the student group responsible for organizing the popularity contest.
I think he was looking for some attention to stroke his long hard ego with, with noble intentions thrown in as an excuse.
Slashdot Mirror
True enough, it works when entered with the correct spelling. Though entering the (misspelled, retarded) query into google has actual results.
The 'experts only' gatekeeper on the information entered into the system results in a relatively barren knowledge base. It doesn't parse natural language all that well (for example: "population of Austin Texas verse population of Dallas Texas produces no result). It's slow.
Not terribly useful outside of a few specific domains. I don't foresee myself using it often, maybe not at all.
Spore has nothing to do with evolution. Gameplay seems more like Intelligent Design, with the player in the role of God.
You've come to the conclusion that a particular game is a treadmill that rewards time spent playing over all other considerations... ...so you spend even more money on it, on top of the subscription fee, in order to get to the part of the game you actually want to play, ie the part that isn't such a treadmill. In response to all those dollars, the MMO market is flooded with treadmills....exactly the sort of game you obviously don't want to play.
Anyway, in a PvE game like Everquest, your buying the chance to bash a dragon shaped 3d model instead of a rat or goblin shaped 3d model. What's the frigging point?
Agreed that Guild Wars is a step in the right direction. EQ2-Ebay isn't....it's just feeding more dollars into a tedious game; the result will be "EQ3: Even Bigger Treadmill" instead of Sony branching out to make a MMO that doesn't vacuum up dollars/time/human souls.
Funny thing:
The actual beta client for Guild Wars was a shockly small download. As you enter an area (or boot up the game itself), content and other crap is downloaded to your hard drive.
Guild Wars is constantly patching itself. It's one of GW's touted features.
Amen.
Put the cash where it belongs: in the hands the designers, artists, coders, and testers who slave hundreds upon hundreds of man hours to put out a modern game.
In ten years (if not sooner), software will be able to generate completely natural sounding voices anyway. Screw SAG.
Yes, the hit show.
. sh tml
The hit show that recently beat out the Royal Wedding in UK ratings (8.3 million viewers vs. 6.2 million):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/news/drwh.../10/18419
Article sounds like the author is trying to convince himself that he picked the right horse.
Nothing to see here.
The parent needs to be modded up.
Good find.
There's a funny episode coming up (episode 7 I think), rougly 98.6% more funny than anything I've seen on SG1.
Don't judge bsg until you see episodes 10, 12, and 13. SG1, while an entertaining show, looks like garbage when compared to the these episodes.
I half expect the Trek-execs saw these three episodes and decided to run up the white flag. Must be sweet justice for Ron Moore to see ideas orginally meant for Voyager (he was overruled by Berman/Braga) on the screen, working, and praised by fans n' critics alike.
I dislike the way mmorpgs have shaped up. No permadeath, limited PvP, endless level grinds with the sole purpose of achieving a high enough level to grind again in a "more dangerous" zone. Not good tools for fantasy storytelling.
...played in the WoW beta out of morbid curiosity.
(see armageddon.org for an close example of what I'd like to see in a big commericial mmorpg)
It turns out WoW's actually a good game. It has just about everything I hate about the average mmorpg, but still manages to be addictive fun. Like a Nintendo game, WoW just oozes quality and playability.
Exploring is fun, grinding for the sake of grinding basically doesn't exist, crafting isn't annoying, finding a group and fun quests to do with that group is super easy. Music's decent, in some spots pretty good. Graphics are, imho, amazing. There are areas in the games that are simply works of art--exploring the geometry and looking at the pretty textures is sometimes more fun than bashing the beasties decorating the landscapes.
EQ2's graphics might be more whiz-bang, but I think there's better craftsmenship in WoW's enviroments. (though I haven't spent but a few hours looking at someelse's copy of EQ2) And WoW still manages to run quite smoothly on crap computers.
I'm shocked that blizzard managed to pull it off.
If there's 5000 players, there's 5000 potential content designers.
I don't think the solution is to invent a massive AI, but to figure out a way to leverage the creativity of the player base.
For example, let's imagine a dungeon hack type game wherein the ultimate goal is to own your own dungeon. Players roll up characters and send them off into other player's dungeons to get slaughtered or come away with treasure (which they can use as a nest egg for their own dungeon, or to improve their characters.)
As a dungeon master, your goal would be to aquire hero corpses from as many different players as possible. You'd have to seed your dungeon with bait, come up with fair challenges, deck the halls with interesting decor, and advertise the existance of your deathtrap (perhaps via treasure maps).
Fair dungeons (with a good risk vs. reward) that change often would naturally generate the most dead heros. Too easy, and you lose your treasure stake without killing any adventurers. Too hard, and players just won't visit.
Diebold and friends have in all likelihood stolen the most important election of our lifetime. We never know for certain, because the real results of the election may have deleted forever, with a few presses of a backspace key.
Others have already said the obvious: the exit polls don't match up to the Diebold tabulations. The record number of new voters all casting ballots for an embattled incumbent seems incredibly unlikely. In my mind, this portents a new era in American politics: the most cunning cheater always wins. And with the Republicans gaining more and more ground thanks to Diebold and other dirty tricks, they'll be the ones in the best position to cheat.
We can be certain that the Republican's new electronic apparatus will entrench itself further and grow in sophistication--unless it is stopped right now. Diebold will be emboldened by this victory, and the people Diebold put in power won't lift a finger to stop it. In few short years, even the Supreme Court will probably be stacked with men who essentially owe their jobs to Diebold.
The media is filled with cowards will we now shift to the right in response to the wind. If the Diebold story doesn't make huge headlines now, then it never will.
What difference does it make it you can get record number of people to the polls if an evil nazi-nerd can push a button and erase all those votes?
Reform of the election process should become everyone's #1 issue. Protests of epic proportions are needed, because as of right now, all the suffrage gained since the dawn of the Union is in peril.
Right now, no one aside from Diebold has the right to vote. Not even the white landowners.
I hate level advancement for the sake of level advancement.
You've worked a 10 hr week grinding away at killing rats, and have what? Woot, now you can grind away at orcs. And after that, maybe ogres, onwards until the mud/mmorpg runs out of content.
Lame. Boring. Doesn't live up to the potential of the game.
You've got thousands of people all playing the same game, but beyond an immediate group and the vendors most of those other players effect your character's personal world not one bit. You might as well be playing on a server with just 10 friends.
Ditch level/skill advancement and replace it with social advancement. The whole idea of having a 120th level fighter/mage on a mmorpg instead of a solo game is so it can be compared with other players' characters.
So make it official: social standing is the attribute improved via gameplay. Every meaningful action rises your character up a social ladder. Skills and powers stay in the same ballpark as a brand new character.
Fights and other moments of excitment wouldn't be end-goal, just the obstacles. For example, you might gain standing in the Explorer's guild if you visit an espicially dangerous location. You'd also get standing via leading other players to these same special spots (which might be points of interest to their profession).
You'd gain standing in the crafting guild by making a rare object...even a starting character would be able to build these rare objects if they have the tools and materials. The adventure would be finding the exotic materials and tools required to make the object. The character's who made the best object of type B (the best sword, the armor, etc.) would receive the most social points, and down the line from there.
High social standing would give your character more access to the poltical aspects of the game, as well as perks. The top tier of the explorer's guild might recieve access to a cool mode of travel, for example.
>If you looked at sites like kernel.org,
>slashdot, etc, then that'd skew it in the opposite
>direction
Let's look at slashdot then. How many people use IE to read slashdot? It wouldn't surprise me if the numbers were near identical to the general population.
>more reason why a work of interactive fiction
>would have been better as plain old
>noninteractive fiction.
Interaction creates a sense of immersion, drawing the reader into the story--literally linking the fate of the main character and the reader.
Plus, some people enjoy solving text adventure style puzzles.
Try Photopia by Adam Cadre, generally regarded as being one of the best pieces of modern interactive fiction. Like most IFComp entries, it's a short game--playing it all the way through will only cost you an hour or two of time.
If you end up enjoying Photopia, try downloading other past winners of the IFComp.
This is not score 3: Informative, it's score -5: Clueless newbie giving bad information. The moderaters suck.
Most modern IF runs on a virtual machine. The z-machine is the most commonly used, TADS a close second, and Glulx is designed as a replacement for the z-machine. The games in the comp are written using a variety of virtual machines (including one Java entry and a couple VB entries), but half the games this year are written using the z-machine.
For windows, the best interpreters I've found are WinFrotz (for z-machine games), HTML-TADS (for TADs games), and the Windows version of Glulx (for Glulx games). None of these programs will screw up your system folder, or indeed, even write anything at all to your system folder.
You can find these programs using Google or by following links from the IF comp page.
I'm almost sorry to see this story posted here. If you are new to IF or a casual player, the best thing to do is wait for mid-November when the results are posted and only play the the top 5 games.
I've already played through all the games, and can assure everyone that the top five will be worth your time--incredible experiences!
In the meantime, you might want to try playing some of the winners from previous years. You will probably be amazed by the quality of these homespun games. Interactive Fiction has become one of the best, most vibrant Do-It-Yourself communities on the net.
The best of modern IF doesn't feel at all like Dungeons and Dragons (ie, Zork). These are quality, mature short stories that just happen to also be games.
As hinted at by other replys to this message, erasmatazz is considered a joke by the regular rec.arts.int-fiction community.
BTW, mid-November you can check out rec.games.int-fiction and rec.arts.int-fiction for the results of comp2001. It's considered extermely impolite to discuss particular games on open forums until the votes have been counted and released (mid-November).
The war of Nerds vs. Jocks has always seemed silly to me. Both groups seek power and social acceptance, they only differ in method.
Case in point: the ppl who insist that the fact that they have a nice computer job now while their more jockish peers pump gas for a living is a victory.
Everyone deserves to be able to make a decent living, regardless of how much of a shithead they were in HS. To suggest otherwise is to be a shithead outside of HS--which IMHO is less forgivable.
As for the dorkboy who bravely refused his crown:
This lil' nerd has parents willing and finacially eager to sue over something as moot as a suspension. This lil' nerd has enough friends and supporters to successfully win a popularity contest. This lil' nerd not only participated in the contest itself, but served on the student group responsible for organizing the popularity contest.
I think he was looking for some attention to stroke his long hard ego with, with noble intentions thrown in as an excuse.
And here I am giving it to him.
bah,
dorkmonger