I was very happy when Final Fantasy finally gave up the "save all teh crystals" plot in FF6 (not that I'm saying it can't be done well, but FF4's "Oh noes! They've got all the crystals! But wait there's more underground! Oh noes, they've got all the crystals...but there's more on teh moon!" was a bit contrived for my liking).
Mario switched from linear levels, to backtrackable worlds, to multiplayable worlds. I agree with the GP it's about time to switch.
My current meals after work consist solely of peanut-only peanut butter on whole grain bread and I've kicked the caffeine habit as well. And while the peanut butter is literally 50% fat, altering that and exercising a wee bit has put me under 160 for the first time. (Yeah, I weighed less when I was a little younger, but I also wasn't 6 feet tall).
It's definitely interesting how replacing sugar calories with fat calories actually helps.
Oh. And where do you get the good hard cider (or what brand can I look for)? (I'm a beer junkie, and I typically enjoy Woodchuck's cider varieties, but if there's better stuff, sign me up=))
Actually, being a mouse/keyboard guy myself, I think the metroid prime series is the best approximation of FPS on console (and I haven't yet played 3, which is supposed to be by far the best). Have you played MP 3? I'm just curious as I haven't heard anyone compare the three control schemes (mouse/keyboard, dual analogue, Wiimote)?
I think it's inevitable that the internet replaces traditional media but it means the death of the super star. We'll go back to more regional artists with few cross region cross overs if there is a lack of a artificial national hype machine like the labels.
So why aren't podcasts/webcasts and other new media "regional"? Ask a Ninja and other internet shows don't seem to have any geographic area....
I think fragmentation will occur, but I think it will be along more niche lines, just as we have lately. When I was a teenager, I listened to a "rock" station. They'd play Pink Floyd and Nirvana's newest stuff back to back. In a short time, there was no "rock" station any more. We have modern rock, classic rock, 80s rock, soft rock, indy rock, progressive rock, alternative, etc.; even good indy stations segmented their shows into similarly narrow buckets, and sometimes even narrower ones, like psychedelic rock in San Francisco from the 60's that never broke into the top 100. When the first radio generation speaks, there was mostly just "radio" -- without so many categories and sub-sub-genres with entire stations devoted to their worship.
Of course, the mystical musicians who found their own genres, will still be forced to wander as they always have.
Since HL1, they've used Linux for player run servers. Since it's an FPS, you can imagine you're much more sensitive to lag than in any MMO (especially counter-strike with its 1 shot kills with many weapons (headshot with most any rifle)). I seriously doubt Valve is sticking its foot in that door or you'd see some mention of cluster-based computing or distributed networks (both of which a key to MMO design).
While the description talks about algorithms and real-time, not a word is mentioned of OpenGL or similar graphics background. All the more reason to think Linux is being used backend somehow.
I loved HL2, but honestly, Bioshock had much more of a story and was more immersing. The place had a distinct culture and feel that not only pervaded the dialog, but even the posters on the wall, the vending machines, and the PA announcements.
No RPG elements See, I'm going to have to simply disagree here. There was at least one series moral choices in the game (from a story perspective) and a completely configurable character ability system from the ability system perspective. Granted, you only got "experience" for defeating one type of enemy, but modifying one's own genetic material on-the-fly seems just about at home in a steampunk RPG as changing armor or classes in a fantasy one.
Linear maps Some of the later maps were most definitely non-linear. The game is non-linear in about the same way that metroid is, but not as much.
I love HL2 so I won't try to compare these games other than to say their definitely in the same league.
I image it won't be long before people get things like Mail.app, google maps, and the other iPhone apps working on the iPhone Touch
Bit of a Freudian slip there? Go get the iPhone instead. It's now almost the same price as the iPod touch, but with phone functionality. As much as I'd like a mobile email reader, I'd also like something to carry music. 16 GB is just not enough.
There's a lot of speculation that this may cause the applicant pool to increase, and schools forced to become more selective. Interestingly though, after the first four years, there's going to be a large pool of teachers able to teach the new freshman (or at least a large pool of TAs for the large lecture hall classes so students can get individualized instruction). Thinking about it this way, the only cost the students accrue (net) to the system is their room and board, plus the time of the professors who teach higher level classes. Granted, the higher level classes are more expensive, but many of them are under-filled anyway as so many students are culled during freshman/sophomore year (at least, in engineering I've noticed).
You could have an RPG exploring a character as he discovers that he is a gay -- not that this would be the entire plot of the game, merely an element.
Sexuality has already been in video games, and I think it can be tasteful and hilarious. Recall Cloud in FF7, cross-dressing to fool a pimp into letting him into his bedroom. Granted, I've yet to see a game to use sexuality in a romantic context (except possibly the Sims), but it takes a lot more effort to develop a plot line to allow such feelings to be created than the casual laugh. There's allusions to stuff occurring in romantic context -- but it's a hint, not really "talked about" explicitly.
For the art-movie fan, think of Amelie as an example of using sex in a similar way. Throughout the movie, sexuality is looked at as a punch-line -- explicit acts abound. But the most erotic moment in the movie (at least to me), is the final scene, involving nothing beyond the PG rating.
Art generally "shows" things rather than "telling" things -- the latter is for politicians. I think it's very possible a story-strong game could use elements the same way a movie does -- simply by having elements.
There's this other story from a certain "News for Nerds" outlet about the same city considering electronic surveillance. Consider ~5% of the people who live in Shenzhen are employed by this person (WSJ reports factory having 270K employees out of a population of 6M) or maybe who would manufacture said devices, and the stories seem rather related to me.
Not that I'm suggesting a conspiracy, just pointing out that two stories on the front page take place in the same geographic location.
One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping.
I suppose in Shenzhen, everyone sleeps with their eyes open. Or maybe, he saw the intruder in a telepathic dream! With nocturnal vigilance like this, what more security do you need!
I never said any of the great painters was technically unskilled -- merely less skilled than some virtuosoes who relied solely upon skill to achieve their worth. If one objectively compared the lighting elements and texture in a Picasso to a Jan Van Eyck for example, the latter is definitely more skilled in his use of lighting and the complexities of color. In music, pick a classical guitarist who graduated from any university and they have more skill than Kurt Cobain ever did. But since art isn't about technical skill, it doesn't matter. Super Mario Bros will always be a better game than Daikana;)
It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
This is not an attack against the poster, it's pointing out that everyone tends to notice when people are black but not when they're Scots. When 'being black' and 'being Scottish' mean the same thing in this country, either racism will be over or we'll have some unhappy Scots;)
(Is pointing out African American are underprivileged and discriminated against as a class flamebait?)
Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
There's nothing wrong with marketing towards certain kinds of women though. There's been plenty of math and philosophy courses filled with sport metaphors to market to jocks. Why not one build one around fashion? Anything that gets people learning is good, whether or not I'd personally appreciate it.
He never said he wanted to shut the internet down. From TFA: I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.
I think it would be an incredible experiment to have everyone wear no clothes to work! Does that mean I want to see you naked? Does that even mean I want to have everyone wear no clothes to work?
I'm in school to get a good job, and there's no way in Hell I'd be in the humanities. (I'd like a JOB when I graduate, and skills that will have some sort of actual use)
I'd like to think you're in school to learn -- both socially and academically. There's a lot more to life than getting a job when you graduate. If you're ever interested in social learning, you may want to try some of these strange so-called humanities courses; they may not get you a job, but they've helped me understand the humans with whom I work;) Sign up for marching band, be a theater stage-hand if you don't have time for an actual course. Don't count someone out as an intellectual because they're not an engineer; Alan Greenspan was a music performance major, and the most brilliant computer geek/mathematician I know gave it up to be a professional trumpet player.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently it goes:
2, 3, 95, 98, ME, XP, Vista, 7!
No wonder kids have so much trouble at math....
Sleep is for the week
Is the spelling of "week" in your sig intentional? If so it's hilarious;)
Disgaea is 2D in the same way that Wolfenstein 3D (and Doom 2) are 2D...as in, they just use sprites.
I was very happy when Final Fantasy finally gave up the "save all teh crystals" plot in FF6 (not that I'm saying it can't be done well, but FF4's "Oh noes! They've got all the crystals! But wait there's more underground! Oh noes, they've got all the crystals...but there's more on teh moon!" was a bit contrived for my liking).
Mario switched from linear levels, to backtrackable worlds, to multiplayable worlds. I agree with the GP it's about time to switch.
I felt like I was reading my own life there;)
My current meals after work consist solely of peanut-only peanut butter on whole grain bread and I've kicked the caffeine habit as well. And while the peanut butter is literally 50% fat, altering that and exercising a wee bit has put me under 160 for the first time. (Yeah, I weighed less when I was a little younger, but I also wasn't 6 feet tall).
It's definitely interesting how replacing sugar calories with fat calories actually helps.
Oh. And where do you get the good hard cider (or what brand can I look for)? (I'm a beer junkie, and I typically enjoy Woodchuck's cider varieties, but if there's better stuff, sign me up=))
Love your sig.
Actually, being a mouse/keyboard guy myself, I think the metroid prime series is the best approximation of FPS on console (and I haven't yet played 3, which is supposed to be by far the best). Have you played MP 3? I'm just curious as I haven't heard anyone compare the three control schemes (mouse/keyboard, dual analogue, Wiimote)?
I think it's inevitable that the internet replaces traditional media but it means the death of the super star. We'll go back to more regional artists with few cross region cross overs if there is a lack of a artificial national hype machine like the labels.
So why aren't podcasts/webcasts and other new media "regional"? Ask a Ninja and other internet shows don't seem to have any geographic area....
I think fragmentation will occur, but I think it will be along more niche lines, just as we have lately. When I was a teenager, I listened to a "rock" station. They'd play Pink Floyd and Nirvana's newest stuff back to back. In a short time, there was no "rock" station any more. We have modern rock, classic rock, 80s rock, soft rock, indy rock, progressive rock, alternative, etc.; even good indy stations segmented their shows into similarly narrow buckets, and sometimes even narrower ones, like psychedelic rock in San Francisco from the 60's that never broke into the top 100. When the first radio generation speaks, there was mostly just "radio" -- without so many categories and sub-sub-genres with entire stations devoted to their worship.
Of course, the mystical musicians who found their own genres, will still be forced to wander as they always have.
According to TFA, "Files from SpiralFrog are digitally protected and can be played on mp3 players, but cannot be burned to CDs".
I'm not aware of any way MP3 files can be "digitally protected" and not burned to CD.
I think the general argument is valid, but we're judging movies/books/Miss Missouri not as an writer, but as a reader.
As a reader, I can most definitely say he was overly tedious -- but I shouldn't be able to make that argument if I hadn't read but his books.
Since HL1, they've used Linux for player run servers. Since it's an FPS, you can imagine you're much more sensitive to lag than in any MMO (especially counter-strike with its 1 shot kills with many weapons (headshot with most any rifle)). I seriously doubt Valve is sticking its foot in that door or you'd see some mention of cluster-based computing or distributed networks (both of which a key to MMO design).
While the description talks about algorithms and real-time, not a word is mentioned of OpenGL or similar graphics background. All the more reason to think Linux is being used backend somehow.
I loved HL2, but honestly, Bioshock had much more of a story and was more immersing. The place had a distinct culture and feel that not only pervaded the dialog, but even the posters on the wall, the vending machines, and the PA announcements.
No RPG elements
See, I'm going to have to simply disagree here. There was at least one series moral choices in the game (from a story perspective) and a completely configurable character ability system from the ability system perspective. Granted, you only got "experience" for defeating one type of enemy, but modifying one's own genetic material on-the-fly seems just about at home in a steampunk RPG as changing armor or classes in a fantasy one.
Linear maps
Some of the later maps were most definitely non-linear. The game is non-linear in about the same way that metroid is, but not as much.
I love HL2 so I won't try to compare these games other than to say their definitely in the same league.
I had the same exact experience with the water. My second that was "Why isn't the character moving?";)
The enemy of your enemy is someone you can use against your enemy, and then steamroll later when his/her defenses are down. Best friend I ever had=)
Putty is 412 KB for an SSH client that supports window resizing and has no installer! Doesn't hurt that it's open source either.
I image it won't be long before people get things like Mail.app, google maps, and the other iPhone apps working on the iPhone Touch
Bit of a Freudian slip there? Go get the iPhone instead. It's now almost the same price as the iPod touch, but with phone functionality. As much as I'd like a mobile email reader, I'd also like something to carry music. 16 GB is just not enough.
There's a lot of speculation that this may cause the applicant pool to increase, and schools forced to become more selective. Interestingly though, after the first four years, there's going to be a large pool of teachers able to teach the new freshman (or at least a large pool of TAs for the large lecture hall classes so students can get individualized instruction). Thinking about it this way, the only cost the students accrue (net) to the system is their room and board, plus the time of the professors who teach higher level classes. Granted, the higher level classes are more expensive, but many of them are under-filled anyway as so many students are culled during freshman/sophomore year (at least, in engineering I've noticed).
You could have an RPG exploring a character as he discovers that he is a gay -- not that this would be the entire plot of the game, merely an element.
Sexuality has already been in video games, and I think it can be tasteful and hilarious. Recall Cloud in FF7, cross-dressing to fool a pimp into letting him into his bedroom. Granted, I've yet to see a game to use sexuality in a romantic context (except possibly the Sims), but it takes a lot more effort to develop a plot line to allow such feelings to be created than the casual laugh. There's allusions to stuff occurring in romantic context -- but it's a hint, not really "talked about" explicitly.
For the art-movie fan, think of Amelie as an example of using sex in a similar way. Throughout the movie, sexuality is looked at as a punch-line -- explicit acts abound. But the most erotic moment in the movie (at least to me), is the final scene, involving nothing beyond the PG rating.
Art generally "shows" things rather than "telling" things -- the latter is for politicians. I think it's very possible a story-strong game could use elements the same way a movie does -- simply by having elements.
There's this other story from a certain "News for Nerds" outlet about the same city considering electronic surveillance. Consider ~5% of the people who live in Shenzhen are employed by this person (WSJ reports factory having 270K employees out of a population of 6M) or maybe who would manufacture said devices, and the stories seem rather related to me.
Not that I'm suggesting a conspiracy, just pointing out that two stories on the front page take place in the same geographic location.
One of my friend who lived at the 20th floor of a condo building in a nice neighborhood saw an intruder in the middle of one night while he was sleeping.
I suppose in Shenzhen, everyone sleeps with their eyes open. Or maybe, he saw the intruder in a telepathic dream! With nocturnal vigilance like this, what more security do you need!
I never said any of the great painters was technically unskilled -- merely less skilled than some virtuosoes who relied solely upon skill to achieve their worth. If one objectively compared the lighting elements and texture in a Picasso to a Jan Van Eyck for example, the latter is definitely more skilled in his use of lighting and the complexities of color. In music, pick a classical guitarist who graduated from any university and they have more skill than Kurt Cobain ever did. But since art isn't about technical skill, it doesn't matter. Super Mario Bros will always be a better game than Daikana;)
It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
This is not an attack against the poster, it's pointing out that everyone tends to notice when people are black but not when they're Scots. When 'being black' and 'being Scottish' mean the same thing in this country, either racism will be over or we'll have some unhappy Scots;)
(Is pointing out African American are underprivileged and discriminated against as a class flamebait?)
Like when someone feels the need to comment about how well Colin Powell speaks. There's an unspoken 'and he's black' that is left hanging for the listener to fill in by themselves.
It's funny how people choose which races to recognize and which ones not. You could've replaced the unspoken with 'and he's Scottish', which is an equally valid statement. But you didn't, and why it seems obvious that you didn't is the heart of the issue.
There's nothing wrong with marketing towards certain kinds of women though. There's been plenty of math and philosophy courses filled with sport metaphors to market to jocks. Why not one build one around fashion? Anything that gets people learning is good, whether or not I'd personally appreciate it.
He never said he wanted to shut the internet down. From TFA:
I do think it would be an incredible experiment to shut down the whole internet for five years and see what sort of art is produced over that span.
I think it would be an incredible experiment to have everyone wear no clothes to work! Does that mean I want to see you naked? Does that even mean I want to have everyone wear no clothes to work?
I'm in school to get a good job, and there's no way in Hell I'd be in the humanities. (I'd like a JOB when I graduate, and skills that will have some sort of actual use)
I'd like to think you're in school to learn -- both socially and academically. There's a lot more to life than getting a job when you graduate. If you're ever interested in social learning, you may want to try some of these strange so-called humanities courses; they may not get you a job, but they've helped me understand the humans with whom I work;) Sign up for marching band, be a theater stage-hand if you don't have time for an actual course. Don't count someone out as an intellectual because they're not an engineer; Alan Greenspan was a music performance major, and the most brilliant computer geek/mathematician I know gave it up to be a professional trumpet player.