Well Microsoft's added voice communications into DirectX, so each game developer for Windows won't have to recreate this stuff, they'll just code some generic interfaces into the API.
For the same sort of thing, but cross-platform, there's HawkNL
HawkNL is a nice LPGL library (currently with Win and Linux support) for doing, among other things, voice over IP.
Its targeted at game programmers, to be integrated in-game, as a cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's DirectPlay and DirectPlay voice, but could be used to do a stand-alone VOIP app as well (though I am not aware of any currently).
I'm not making judgements one way or another. There's a lot to be said for ego and the quest for attention. I believe it helps progress (but not quite to the ends-justify-the-means extent that an objectivist does).
I was simply pointing out that there are reasons other than "love of the code", etc, that people write OS software.
Theres only one company to blame: The one who made the gfx chip.
No specs = no hardware acceleration = no performance. Gotta love cirrus logic or SiS in that respect.
1) Why should the company release specs for the graphics chip of a console? Getting X ported to the Dreamcast is a neat hack, but hardly helps the graphics chip manufacturer in any substantial way.
2) The Dreamcast uses a modified version of NEC's PVR chips, which are fairly well documented. So, the ones to blame would be the people that ported this, as they just took the easiest possible approach (note: I don't blame them for this..I think its cool that it runs at all...I'm just disagreeing with the parent post).
Re:Do they stream the patches, too?
on
Gaming On Demand
·
· Score: 1
rampant piracy is already occuring. Anyone that would go through the trouble of trying to pirate these games for full use would more easily be able to download the crack of the retail/CD version of the game.
Also...Most games these days dont come with much more than a box (that's 20 times larger than it needs to be for the purposes of shelf-visibility)...So you don't lose much by just downloading the rental version.
And, finally, there's a ton of games that I'd rent for some time limit but wouldn't shell out $50+ dollars for a permanent copy because they just don't have enough replayability.
As mentioned in the article, they aren't collecting from people streaming for fun...They just want a small percentage from people who actually make money from streaming MP3s.
I've never had a problem with the MP3 patent..Sure, its nice to have freely available alternatives like Vorbis, but MP3 isn't exactly like One-click-shopping. There's a real basis of years-long research and development behind it, and it was certainly a non-obvious invention.
Actually Unisys got a pretty tidy sum from software authors with programs that supported GIF and large corporate web sites that used GIF images and didn't want to deal with the potential patent liability.
Just because Joe Average didn't pay (directly) out of his pocket doesn't mean they didn't rake in some serious money.
If Free Software is really as much of a benefit to users as its proponents claim, surely it will overtake Microsoft simply by the process of evolution, and the fittest competitor surviving, right?
Oh, users are stupid and don't know better than to use Microsoft software? Well, then Free Software programmers are better off going away and creating an objectivist community somewhere in the mountains and just leaving society to its own stupidity. Don't delay, go now!
Or, maybe, most Free Software isn't worth the bits its magnetized on. For every Apache and gcc there's 10,000 useless Perl scripts or window managers that seem to have been written by (infinity - 1) monkeys.
And then there's the problem of Free Software not innovating. Its all well and good for Slashdot users to snicker at Microsoft for its overuse of the word innovation, but can anyone name any really innovative Free Software? In my experience 99.99% of all Free Software projects are poorly written clones of existing commercial products.
I'm no open source zealot. I have certain issues with many of the political aspects of open source software..But, I must admit the emulation scene is an example of open source software living up to its true potential (actually one of the FEW real-world examples, IMO).
Since many emulator authors release their code, there's a large library of existing emulation cores for CPUs, control chips, sound chips, etc. Most new systems use at least some off the shelf components (the CPU, for one, tends to be 'off-the-shelf')...this gives emulation authors of today a good jump on things..they can concentrate solely on reverse engineering the new/proprietary
pieces of a system making their work still hard but definately faster.
If you murder someone on your bosses orders, should you be held accountable? Of course. I'm not saying this is anything close to murder, but just using an absurd example to show that just because your boss tells you to do something doesn't mean you can break the law, which is what this guy did. All in all, I think Chicago and some of the other cities did overreact quite a bit, but clearly IBM and certain employees did break laws, whether we agree with them (the laws) or not.
Can Joe Blow go and buy this at Walmart, and still be able to play against the computer with no net connection?
Nope. Its an MMORPG. Like Everquest or Asheron's Call. No single player game.
How much is this going to cost? or is it one of those servers that it costs to connect to?
Probably about the same as EverQuest or Asheron's Call -- $50 for the game (at first, will drop to $30 or so quickly), and approximately $10 per month in subscription fees to connect and play.
The graphics look kick @SS, but, how will it look on my P2 400 with Voodoo3?
Probably like (plain old) ass. But oh well, there's only so much that can be done with a P2/V3.
Do you have to play an actual character from Starwars, or can you create your own (ex. Slartibartfast, or something)
You HAVE to play as your own character. The game features races that appear in the movie, but since its a huge online game, not everyone can be a real character from the movie. From what I've read, the movie characters will pop up but as non-player AI characters, or as admin-controlled characters.
Is every character in it played by someone, including Shop keepers, Drunks, etc?
Doubtful, I'm sure lots of the characters you encounter will be AI controlled, as in other online RPGs.
How expansive of a universe comes on the cd?
Everytime you go to a new planet, do you have to download maps?
From what I've read the initial game will be pretty big. I'm not sure whether they will use the Asheron's Call model of expansion (free downloads every month that make the world bigger) or the Everquest method, which forces you to buy expansion packs at $20-$30 a pop. Probably the latter since its worked fairly well for them in Everquest (this game is being developed by the same company, Verant/Sony).
Re:looks like lucas art's gaming division has matu
on
Star Wars Galaxies
·
· Score: 1
Actually LucasArts has gone to shit in recent years. The only games they have developed worth playing in recent memory are Grim Fandango and Monkey Island 4.
The games they are involved with that are looking good are actually being developed by 3rd parties. Verant/Sony (makers of EQ) is developing Galaxies. And the new Star Wars RTS is being developed by Ensemble (using the Age of Empires engine).
I realize the Jar Jar bashing is a joke (and yes, it would be fun), but Star Wars Galaxies takes place in 'classic' Star Wars time, not prequel time...So Jar Jar is probably already dead in its time frame.
The MBR FUD story was great, but the more baseless Microsoft bashing on Slashdot the better!
Well, er...In reality, game consoles running BETA code on BETA hardware can crash. Even if the hardware and its OS were final, its not hard to write code that will crash any console, they certainly aren't designed to be crash proof. Demos crash. Happens all the time, and I've seen it happen on other console systems. Sometimes even with released games on final systems there are repeatable bugs that will lock a game up.
The perceived stability of consoles comes from the fact that software titles are painstakingly QAed both in-house by the developer and quality control for the console maker who OKs the publishing (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, previously Sega, etc).
It would be nice if Slashdot would get off the crazy MS bashing thing a bit. I don't say this because I am a huge fan of Microsoft -- they certainly do plenty of things worth snickering at or calling them out on. But they also do some things very well.. Giving them no credit and pointing out every mistake or gaff that Microsoft makes (and blowing them out of proportion) just weakens your voice when you are discussing issues with REAL merit.
Kind of like the boy who cried wolf the Slashdot editors sound like a bunch of whiny little bitches and people who aren't blind anti-Microsoft zealots begin to assume everything Slashdot posts about Microsoft should be taken with a huge truckload of salt.
Uh, not that it matters much now but the original poster actually said DirectX, which is more than Direct3D. The reply to the original author is the post that limited the topic to Direct3D, ignoring that its only one part of the full DirectX libraries.
This is what killed 3D0 (as a hardware maker, they still make software).
To profit off the boxes all of the consumer electronics companies made from 3D0's specs they had to charge like $700 for the system, at the time. It was a dismal failure.
I disagree. I found both Neverwhere and Stardust to be great novels. Also, a number of the short stories in Smoke & Mirrors were quite good. I didn't care much for Good Omens, but that was a shared-effort and done quite a long time ago.
Along with Clive Barker, Gaiman is one of the only people out there writing really creative 'fantasy' fiction, IMO.
Could someone please stop Jon Katz from reviewing movies here? There are at least 2 reasons why he shouldn't be:
1) Quite a few of the movies have nothing what-so-ever to do with 'nerd news'. I'm a movie fan myself and see quite a lot of movies, and I do like to read reviews. By why oh why would a movie like Knight's Tale be reviewed on Slashdot? Seriously, Slashdot editors, you need to stick to the nerd-niche that has made this site famous, otherwise you cheapen the Slashdot 'brand'. There's plenty of sites that cater specifically for those looking for movie reviews. Katz' inane blathering can't compete with them, so don't try. If Katz wants to review Anti-Trust or even the Matrix, or other such movies that have at least some geek-bent, I wouldn't have such a problem, but why these other flicks, why on Slashdot?
2) Katz is a terrible reviewer. As others have pointed out, he liked Knight's Tale for a lot of the same reasons he seemed to hate Mummy Returns, and he didn't adequately explain why. Also, the factual error regarding Heath Ledger's first American appearance shows that he is incapable of even simple fact checking (20 seconds on IMDB would have cleared this up.)
The only property that is worthy of the name is tangible property. Anything else, ideas, inventions, formulae, equations, drawings, pictures, music, etc... are up for grab. If you can't chain it or lock it up or put a fence around it, it does not belong to you. Like it or lump it.
By your argument your personal information (credit/health/etc records, in digital, not hard-copy form) does not belong to you. Therefore any company can freely use/abuse this information for any purpose. You don't care right, because you don't own that information, and information wants to be free?
I hate some aspects of Intellectual Property (stupid patents, etc) as much as the next Slashdotter, but I'm always amused that the people who scream the loudest about how information wants to be free are also the first to whine, moan, and ask for government intervention when companies abuse THEIR personal information.
Look how much AOL paid for ICQ (of course, most of that money was just to gain the userbase).
Yes, the technical aspects behind IM aren't rocket science.. But most of the money isnt for the technology, per se, as much as it is simply to gain the services/support of the Jabber developers who have already clearly built a good, working product.
Its true that there's many programmers that could knock off a usable IM solution in their spare time over a couple of month period -- but how do you know how good their solution will be until they actually do it? Jabber, at this point, is pretty well proven and the developers now have a ton of experience dealing with all the different open and closed IM protocols.
What would be best for Linux gamers in the short term would be a perfect port of the Win32 runtime including support for all devices via DirectX. Basically, a bug-free Wine with full DirectX8 support including hardware acceleration, etc.
This would allow gamers to run the maximum amount of games under Linux, therefore its the best short term fix.
Obviously, the ideal overall solution is to get native ports of games. But as we all know from past experiments, this is a hard nut to crack. Most game companies won't bother with Linux (not even a Loki or other 3rd party port) until it can show good game sales numbers...and it won't show good game sales numbers until there are more games available.
I hate to be the one to rain on everyone's parade, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Linux to become a widely supported gaming OS any time in the forseeable future.. A lot of game companies these days are debating moving over to console games exclusively. The hardcore 'techie' companies, like id and Epic, are unlikely to abandon the PC as a platform, but lots of other companies are really considering it. Console games generally sell many more units than PC games and are far easier to QA due to the standarized platform. Consider that these companies are wanting to drop their Windows support because the potential base of gamers with hardware to support their newer games is smaller than consoles, and the potential for tech support problems is much higher. Those two factors are magnified thousands of times over on Linux...
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh shut up.
For the same sort of thing, but cross-platform, there's HawkNL
Its targeted at game programmers, to be integrated in-game, as a cross-platform alternative to Microsoft's DirectPlay and DirectPlay voice, but could be used to do a stand-alone VOIP app as well (though I am not aware of any currently).
I was simply pointing out that there are reasons other than "love of the code", etc, that people write OS software.
Don't forget ego and self-promotion. If you don't think those play a big part for many Open Source developers you are deluding yourself.
Theres only one company to blame: The one who made the gfx chip. No specs = no hardware acceleration = no performance. Gotta love cirrus logic or SiS in that respect.
1) Why should the company release specs for the graphics chip of a console? Getting X ported to the Dreamcast is a neat hack, but hardly helps the graphics chip manufacturer in any substantial way.
2) The Dreamcast uses a modified version of NEC's PVR chips, which are fairly well documented. So, the ones to blame would be the people that ported this, as they just took the easiest possible approach (note: I don't blame them for this..I think its cool that it runs at all...I'm just disagreeing with the parent post).
Black & White...so disappointing.
Also...Most games these days dont come with much more than a box (that's 20 times larger than it needs to be for the purposes of shelf-visibility)...So you don't lose much by just downloading the rental version.
And, finally, there's a ton of games that I'd rent for some time limit but wouldn't shell out $50+ dollars for a permanent copy because they just don't have enough replayability.
I've never had a problem with the MP3 patent..Sure, its nice to have freely available alternatives like Vorbis, but MP3 isn't exactly like One-click-shopping. There's a real basis of years-long research and development behind it, and it was certainly a non-obvious invention.
Just because Joe Average didn't pay (directly) out of his pocket doesn't mean they didn't rake in some serious money.
And the entire "End of the Affair" movie was hilarious...Too bad they were going for drama.
Oh, users are stupid and don't know better than to use Microsoft software? Well, then Free Software programmers are better off going away and creating an objectivist community somewhere in the mountains and just leaving society to its own stupidity. Don't delay, go now!
Or, maybe, most Free Software isn't worth the bits its magnetized on. For every Apache and gcc there's 10,000 useless Perl scripts or window managers that seem to have been written by (infinity - 1) monkeys.
And then there's the problem of Free Software not innovating. Its all well and good for Slashdot users to snicker at Microsoft for its overuse of the word innovation, but can anyone name any really innovative Free Software? In my experience 99.99% of all Free Software projects are poorly written clones of existing commercial products.
Since many emulator authors release their code, there's a large library of existing emulation cores for CPUs, control chips, sound chips, etc. Most new systems use at least some off the shelf components (the CPU, for one, tends to be 'off-the-shelf')...this gives emulation authors of today a good jump on things..they can concentrate solely on reverse engineering the new/proprietary pieces of a system making their work still hard but definately faster.
If you murder someone on your bosses orders, should you be held accountable? Of course. I'm not saying this is anything close to murder, but just using an absurd example to show that just because your boss tells you to do something doesn't mean you can break the law, which is what this guy did. All in all, I think Chicago and some of the other cities did overreact quite a bit, but clearly IBM and certain employees did break laws, whether we agree with them (the laws) or not.
Nope. Its an MMORPG. Like Everquest or Asheron's Call. No single player game.
How much is this going to cost? or is it one of those servers that it costs to connect to?
Probably about the same as EverQuest or Asheron's Call -- $50 for the game (at first, will drop to $30 or so quickly), and approximately $10 per month in subscription fees to connect and play.
The graphics look kick @SS, but, how will it look on my P2 400 with Voodoo3?
Probably like (plain old) ass. But oh well, there's only so much that can be done with a P2/V3.
Do you have to play an actual character from Starwars, or can you create your own (ex. Slartibartfast, or something)
You HAVE to play as your own character. The game features races that appear in the movie, but since its a huge online game, not everyone can be a real character from the movie. From what I've read, the movie characters will pop up but as non-player AI characters, or as admin-controlled characters.
Is every character in it played by someone, including Shop keepers, Drunks, etc?
Doubtful, I'm sure lots of the characters you encounter will be AI controlled, as in other online RPGs.
How expansive of a universe comes on the cd? Everytime you go to a new planet, do you have to download maps?
From what I've read the initial game will be pretty big. I'm not sure whether they will use the Asheron's Call model of expansion (free downloads every month that make the world bigger) or the Everquest method, which forces you to buy expansion packs at $20-$30 a pop. Probably the latter since its worked fairly well for them in Everquest (this game is being developed by the same company, Verant/Sony).
The games they are involved with that are looking good are actually being developed by 3rd parties. Verant/Sony (makers of EQ) is developing Galaxies. And the new Star Wars RTS is being developed by Ensemble (using the Age of Empires engine).
I realize the Jar Jar bashing is a joke (and yes, it would be fun), but Star Wars Galaxies takes place in 'classic' Star Wars time, not prequel time...So Jar Jar is probably already dead in its time frame.
Well, er...In reality, game consoles running BETA code on BETA hardware can crash. Even if the hardware and its OS were final, its not hard to write code that will crash any console, they certainly aren't designed to be crash proof. Demos crash. Happens all the time, and I've seen it happen on other console systems. Sometimes even with released games on final systems there are repeatable bugs that will lock a game up.
The perceived stability of consoles comes from the fact that software titles are painstakingly QAed both in-house by the developer and quality control for the console maker who OKs the publishing (Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, previously Sega, etc).
It would be nice if Slashdot would get off the crazy MS bashing thing a bit. I don't say this because I am a huge fan of Microsoft -- they certainly do plenty of things worth snickering at or calling them out on. But they also do some things very well.. Giving them no credit and pointing out every mistake or gaff that Microsoft makes (and blowing them out of proportion) just weakens your voice when you are discussing issues with REAL merit.
Kind of like the boy who cried wolf the Slashdot editors sound like a bunch of whiny little bitches and people who aren't blind anti-Microsoft zealots begin to assume everything Slashdot posts about Microsoft should be taken with a huge truckload of salt.
Uh, not that it matters much now but the original poster actually said DirectX, which is more than Direct3D. The reply to the original author is the post that limited the topic to Direct3D, ignoring that its only one part of the full DirectX libraries.
To profit off the boxes all of the consumer electronics companies made from 3D0's specs they had to charge like $700 for the system, at the time. It was a dismal failure.
Along with Clive Barker, Gaiman is one of the only people out there writing really creative 'fantasy' fiction, IMO.
Looking forward to this book quite a bit...
(Of course, the graphic novels are great too.)
1) Quite a few of the movies have nothing what-so-ever to do with 'nerd news'. I'm a movie fan myself and see quite a lot of movies, and I do like to read reviews. By why oh why would a movie like Knight's Tale be reviewed on Slashdot? Seriously, Slashdot editors, you need to stick to the nerd-niche that has made this site famous, otherwise you cheapen the Slashdot 'brand'. There's plenty of sites that cater specifically for those looking for movie reviews. Katz' inane blathering can't compete with them, so don't try. If Katz wants to review Anti-Trust or even the Matrix, or other such movies that have at least some geek-bent, I wouldn't have such a problem, but why these other flicks, why on Slashdot?
2) Katz is a terrible reviewer. As others have pointed out, he liked Knight's Tale for a lot of the same reasons he seemed to hate Mummy Returns, and he didn't adequately explain why. Also, the factual error regarding Heath Ledger's first American appearance shows that he is incapable of even simple fact checking (20 seconds on IMDB would have cleared this up.)
By your argument your personal information (credit/health/etc records, in digital, not hard-copy form) does not belong to you. Therefore any company can freely use/abuse this information for any purpose. You don't care right, because you don't own that information, and information wants to be free?
I hate some aspects of Intellectual Property (stupid patents, etc) as much as the next Slashdotter, but I'm always amused that the people who scream the loudest about how information wants to be free are also the first to whine, moan, and ask for government intervention when companies abuse THEIR personal information.
Yes, the technical aspects behind IM aren't rocket science.. But most of the money isnt for the technology, per se, as much as it is simply to gain the services/support of the Jabber developers who have already clearly built a good, working product.
Its true that there's many programmers that could knock off a usable IM solution in their spare time over a couple of month period -- but how do you know how good their solution will be until they actually do it? Jabber, at this point, is pretty well proven and the developers now have a ton of experience dealing with all the different open and closed IM protocols.
That's what the money is for.
Obviously, the ideal overall solution is to get native ports of games. But as we all know from past experiments, this is a hard nut to crack. Most game companies won't bother with Linux (not even a Loki or other 3rd party port) until it can show good game sales numbers...and it won't show good game sales numbers until there are more games available.
I hate to be the one to rain on everyone's parade, but I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Linux to become a widely supported gaming OS any time in the forseeable future.. A lot of game companies these days are debating moving over to console games exclusively. The hardcore 'techie' companies, like id and Epic, are unlikely to abandon the PC as a platform, but lots of other companies are really considering it. Console games generally sell many more units than PC games and are far easier to QA due to the standarized platform. Consider that these companies are wanting to drop their Windows support because the potential base of gamers with hardware to support their newer games is smaller than consoles, and the potential for tech support problems is much higher. Those two factors are magnified thousands of times over on Linux...