prefer 4-player games. I get really pissed off at games that offer me vs. wife via splitscreen, but when we go online, only one of us can go online. Totally ruins the whole point of online if I can't play at the same time as my wife.
IIRC, only one game supports that - Serious Sam. It was released for the PC.
There are practical reasons why there's generally no split-screen support for online-play. While it is possible, it means that two clients are linked - one cannot decide to leave without either idling or taking the other player along with the disconnect. (Well, it is possible, but probably will unnecessairly complicate the netcode and client code.)
In addition, it interferes with communication with other online players - you can't talk without letting the other person with you what's going on. While this is resolved by having both of you on the same team, see the above rule about disconnecting - the teams can instantly become lopsided as soon as you disconnect. (e.g. a 6v6 match suddenly becomes a 4v6 - or worse a 5v6 becoming a 3v6. ) While these games heal eventually, it is much more of a shock when two players leave at once when compared to two players leaving within 1 minute or so.
At this point, the technology doesn't exist to do it well enough to keep it from getting repetitive. You just can't link things together with the subtlety and detail that a human can.
The roteness you describe can still apply to games that use static mission generation, such as Crime Cities. While there is a wide variety of backgrounds for the missions in the game, the all come down to destroying enemies. Even one of the first missions, where you simply have to pickup survey equipment, involves enemies that attack you. This ignores guarenteed failure missions, where it underhandedly states "Mission Failed" regardless of what you do (for example, you go to a depot to pickup an item, but fail the mission because they realise someone else did it first.)
The roteness increases on Very Hard difficulty, when the enemies are whittled down with the ultimate tactic while you do not take damage with their inaccurrate shots. Eventually, you reach a point in the game where you have to destroy a large quantity of enemies with extremely basic equipment and resources - which is much more tedious than most randomly generated missions.
(BTW, the ultimate tactic in Crime Cities is to move in reverse, strafe left/right, align the targetting rings with your targetting recticule and open fire while rapidly cycling through lasers and sonic weaponry. This is slightly less effective in protection missions, but works wonders.)
So in games that do it (Freelancer would be an example) the variation actually makes it more rote.
In the case of Freelancer, there wasn't much variation to begin with. There were a few mission types that you'll recognize:
- Destroy a group of fighters. - Capture an enemy leader for bounty. - Destroy contraband from some enemies - Destroy an outpost.
This isn't much of a dataset to work with when attempting to create dynamic missions. You can even tell for yourself, as the manual contained an storyline-based mission where a character had a contract with the Navy to transport goods from one place to another (although this is technically implied in the goods transportation gameplay mechanics.) The roteness of the gameplay can easily be fixed by improving the variety of the missions so that it would take a greater amount of time before bordem sets in.
There were escort missions suggested for one of Freelancers patches or expansion packs, which is one way to make things longer (and it doesn't even have to rely on scripting as enemies naturally attack trade lanes to interfere with excorting.) This mission type, even if it may be tedious, can still give information about lucrative trade routes, provided the game doesn't do something silly such as schedule a long-range shipment with a net profit of $2 per unit.
However, beyond this it becomes increasingly difficult to make new mission creation templates, but every one that is created will help slow down the bordem.
This sort of system is designed to minimize hold time, especially with large companies. It works to something the scale of HP, Linksys, etc. as they slow down the customer long enough that their technician hold time appear to be more negligable than it really is.
I have been in contact with Tech support for more than just HP/Linksys. For Cisco, their busy periods has customer service reps take a record of the call and have a technician call you back shortly. With RIM, Blackberry hold times are generally about 1 hour during "busy" periods and thus the automated system doesn't really slow people down. (Rather, they have their automated system keep track of what was entered to speed things up slightly. ) In both of these cases, troubleshooting is measured in hours rather than minutes and any repetition would do much more harm than good as it makes them look like they don't want to provide support.
Some may argue (and probably will) but I have always found Scheme to be an interesting language to lets kids play with because of the "instant gratification" of an interpreted language's "read-eval-print" paradigm.
That's a feature of the interpreter being used, not a feature of the language.
In any case, teaching a programming language requires learning it beforehand in order to understand the concepts of the language. There was an IFComp entry called "Lists and Lists" that provides the basics on how to do anything serious about the language.
The game itself might actually be difficult (without using the hint system). While I could do everything but the final problem (the pocket function), I still have a bit of trouble debugging those programs. This means that it may actually be difficult to assist the students to find out what's going wrong (although the in-game editor isn't the best, you probably want an external editor.)
Are you teaching a regular stream of students or the "gifted" stream? Also, which grade level are you teaching? The answers differ depending on what you want to do.
While you did mention the answer in the posting, it's still a bit vague. 10-13 years is a large age group - 10 year olds may minimally grasp the concept, while 13 year olds may need something a bit more complex.
My first lesson will be the board game c-jump, but after that?
You can do something much cheaper - draw a flowchart. The computer thinks just like that - it mechanically goes to one instruction and executes it, and goes along based on what comes next.
While C-Jump may make the learning portion fun, you might want to consider LOGO instead - the users can provide commands, and get an instant result on screen (where the turtle draws a line.)
The contestants are: Kids programming language KPL (ab VB.net derivate; Java using BlueJ; Greenfoot (and the BlueJ); and HTML. Does it sound like I'm on the right track or should I try something completely different?
FYI, HTML is a typesetting language - not a programming language. No matter how hard you try, you cannot parse an HTML document using HTML. (If you come up with a webpage that does that, then you are embedding a program that is Javascript or some other document embeded programming language.) In addition, if you don't teach HTML properly, you'll have pages that use tons of as opposed to tables to align text (or the now-preferred alignment method.)
I won't comment on the three languages, but make sure you review the languages beforehand to see how well you can learn them. There is no better way to determine which programming language is the most suitable.
You'll be learning a new planet every year from now on too, if you keep Pluto within the definition of a planet.
I'm willing to consider arguments where Pluto should be declared a non-planet because it is too small. I see where the argument is coming from, as Pluto has less than one-half the Radius of Mercury (thus being 1/8th the size.)
Of course, since Mercury is still a planet because it is large enough, why are Ganymade, and Titan treated as moons rather than the planets that are? They are both larger than Mercury and are round enough to qualify.
Based on Orbital Data, Mercury also has a large inclination and Eccentricity when compared to Venus through Neptune. If Pluto isn't a "normal" planet because of these reasons, Mercury shouldn't be either.
I don't know if it's a flaw or more of a "how the heck do you code something like that?" Give each soldier a call_out() function to scan the battle for targets they are strong against every second or two? That would be alot of resources in 8-player games with 200-man armies.
This is generally the same problem as detecting units entering firing range in the first place. The only difference is that you are now performing this detection if the unit is making an "ineffective" attack.
It's also amazing how they manage to detect units entering firing range. Of course, it's not that difficult - as you may know, Doom uses something called a "Blockmap" that stores which items are located in each 64x64 grid. A similar optimization is possible for RTS games, where it keeps track of which units are within a certain 64x64 grid/section.
That sounds suspiciously like a rout -- which is generally a bad thing in warfare.
It was. My forces got stomped by a massed frontal retalatory defence, and I'm tried to cut my losses (especially the fast moving knights that are generally expensive) - however, there isn't really an easy method for an orderly retreat as most RTS systems are based around "every-man-for-himself" tactics.
In this case, the rout isn't too bad, as I was routing to a defended area that wasn't too far away. I've built up a few towers, plus there was a very heavy artillery piece that cuts enemy units to shreads (a map-specific unit).
(Of course, the tactic I was trying to perform was not the intended method to advance the campaign - but at least I gained a few levels out of it.)
Sounds reasonable to me. I wouldn't want my soldiers to just go ahead and keep advancing before I can scout out the area ahead.
Actually, the solders stop in their tracks - not at the desgnated target. You can tell what I'm referring to once you play C&C:RA after playing C&C:RA2. Here's what's unfolds:
- You have 10 tanks at Location A (Base), and 10 tanks at Location B (recent battle area). - You select the tanks at Location A and B, and assign them to group 1. - The enemy starts attacking. You order group 1 to destroy these forces. - The result in RA: you have 10 tanks standing still between Location A and B. - The result in RA2: you have 10 tanks at Location B. Your other 10 tanks will arrive shortly.
The other RTS I've played (age of empires and mythology) are much more intuitive.
Intuitiveness is not the problem. AoE and AoM are highly intuitive. The main issue is micromanagement.
Even the best games in the genre suffer from this flaw at an extremely core level. If a unit (e.g. basic infantry) finds a target, it will keep firing at that target until it leaves range, dies, is killed itself, or is given another order. (Depending on it's "command", it may choose to pursue and engage.) This is a flaw in itself, as you will have basic infantry trying to take out tanks rather than rocket soldiers.
Here's a issue specific to AoE/AoM. When you have a group of units retreat from a combat, they maintain the same speed and do it in formation (unless you select individual units or just the fastest units in the group.) Wouldn't you love to have a double-right-click cause them to break formation and sprint to where they should go?
And now, for a nearly-global issue. When making an attack, it is highly intuitive to click on the unit or building you wish to attack. However, it is not intuitive that units stop in their tracks as soon as the designated target is blown up - this isn't a problem for a group by itself, but is more serious if you just recently added units to that group from your base.
Select worker, select building, click somewhere to build. If you want to add more, drag over an area of workers (or double-click for all visible), then right click on the building. If it's already built, they'll do whatever that building does when you click.
That's acutally standard unit behaviour, no different than casting "spells". It just happens that these workers have spells that cost resources and product a building as an end-result.
That interface style also has a minor issue - you need to find your workers (unless you have a hotkey that selects idle workers.) Wouldn't it be better to have a build command that automatically commands the nearest idle worker to make the structure? This is similar to the method used in Rise of Legends, with the exception that there are no workers required to construct a building.
Its amazing that nintendo was cool enough to release a commericial as a film and kids would flock to see it?
You shouldn't expect anything less from the communist propoganda campaign - it targets children when they are very young as they are the most mallable to ideas. (Okay, bad running joke.)
On a more serious note, people do watch video games as movies. There's the classic Speed Demos Archive for games as they were meant to be played, and then the Tool Assisted Speedruns for those wanting to drop their jaw in disbelief.
One of the problems with these kinds of games already, is that public servers tend to get unbalanced quickly. The players on the winning team keep playing, and the players on the losing team quit. New players join, and usually get put on the losing team because they have fewer numbers.
There's a quick fix available to cut down on this sort of problem. If team loadouts appear to be lopsided by numbers, give a very slight damage boost to the weaker team or some other subtle advantage. Naturally, this should be available as an option.
For example, TF and TFC do not return the flag to the enemy base (if the runner get killed) until the idle time expires, which helps prevent the 0-0 score deadlock on overpopulated servers. If there's twice as many people on the red team as the blue team, then the timers adjust themselves so that the blue flag can get returned within 10 seconds rather than the standard 30 or so.
If you want, a high-turnover rate may be factored by having newly joined players counting as 75% of a player, and include an algorithm that eventually shifts them to full player status.
So, why don't people do that in real sword fights?
For one, it leaves you vulnerable to attack. Unless you are doing some very blatent feigning (i.e. you know what you're doing), a semi-experienced swordsman would just hit you in an area not protected by your sword. Alternativly, it just takes one well-placed attack that a parry doesn't have much effect (or even worse, the attacker takes control of your blade so that a parry does not work.)
Next, flailing your sword about tends to exert fatigue. You don't want that.
Noooo... Why do they insist on ripping out the heart of Japanese games?
In some cases, it's mandatory. Star Ocean, for one, had a language specific puzzle that got damaged because of a straight literal translation. (FYI, there wasn't any official translations, only fan-made ones.) If there's no straight translation possible, you have to make substitutions that have a different meaning but similar idea.
If it's anything more than that, then the localization has a great chance of killing the plot, humor, or other things. It can also cause confusion among fans, such as trying to tell the difference between FF II (the sequel to FF) and FF II (the american version of FF IV).
Think about it--what is more important--the questions about the 2004 vote or copying a CD?
I can answer that... but which of those two generates more debate?
In the 2004 vote, some people feel that it's simply a repeat of 2000 (even if it was toned down by media). In the case of copying a CD, you'll have neat flamewars arising from whether or not theft includes "copyright infringement".
The same applies to developments... there aren't going to be new developments on the 2004 vote every month, but copyright infringement incidents (or potential incidents) can easily occurr more frequently than that.
"There are lot of PC based video chat programs out there now, but every one I've tried lately seems to have pretty low-quality video even when both participants have cable-modem and high quality USB2 or Firewire cameras.
Cable modem? That's why.
Let's assume that you are have a 300kbps upload rate (which is on the low side for cable, but will do.) You are also dealing with a video compression codec that needs to be real-time (i.e. low-compression). In some cases, you have more than one person in the video chat, either requiring a multicast or multiple connections.
In addition, you are not wanting to fill that entire 300kbps - that would choke the connection and cause issues if you happen to be on a slow period (or otherwise slow down the connection for other things.) Effectivly, you have a 128kbps bitrate, possibly 64kbps.
While that bitrate can provide acceptable movie quality, it flings you into "low-quality" world. Unless this is the exact bitrate you are looking for (i.e. this is "high-quality" video conferencing), you'll have to deal with the image quality that you've got. Alternativly, get a fibre-optic conneftion so that you can have an ultra-high bitrate.
D-pads and sticks very rarely have to be used together, so we just moved our thumbs from the D-pad to the left stick and TA DAR problem solved.
If you carefully read my posting, you will notice that I already stated that.
As demonstrated by games such as Goldeneye, you need to use the D-pad and stick to both move and look at the same time. While this doesn't represent most games, Goldeneye is part of a genre popular enough to make this significant.
Saying that D-pads and sticks (or two sticks) aren't needed to be used at the same time would be no different than saying that a keyboard and mouse aren't needed to be used at the same time.
The buttons are there incase the designers want to use them, that doesn't mean EVERY game uses all of them at once.
Games that don't use all buttons at once can be resolved by using any alternate grip. For example, laying the controller down, and mashing the buttons from above.
Only now are games rated in terms of hours gameplay. And what's considered a good game offers 30 hours. I challenge any youngster to finish, for example, Head Over Heals in that time.
Games within that era: - Generally didn't have saved games. (Passwords/passcodes qualify as saves.) - May have loading times between screens. - May rely on manually creating maps to navigate around. - In case of puzzle games (which were common at the time), cause the game's plot to be blocked if the person can't solve a given puzzle. - Usually had a fixed number of "lives" (that emulates an arcade-continue system with a fixed number of credits). - Sometimes did not receive the technology from the U.S.S. Framerate.
While Head over Heels does not experience all of these problems, these are the exact things that can prevent people from playing these old games (ignoring emulators.)
BTW, "hours" of gameplay is not a good metric for puzzle-oriented or adventure games - these games generally focus on puzzles where time to the solution may vary based on trial or error, logic, or some other tactics. Regardless of solving path, it just takes one deadlock that prevents the player from proceeding - unless he uses a walkthrough which disqualifies him from finishing the game within the 30-hour contest.
The same applies to the IFComp, which scales games to two hours - it just takes one puzzle that you can't solve to force you past the two hour-barrier.
Today's controllers are becoming more and more complicated and require greater dexterity to master.
No, today's controllers require a grip which does not comfortably fit in the hand when you want access to all buttons all at once (and a game that requires that probably shouldn't be released.)
Here's a quick way to handle most situations (assuming you have what I have, a Cyborg P2500): - Left palm on left grip, right palm on right grip. - Middle fingers on shoulder buttons. - Left index finger on D-pad. - Right index finer on 6-button array. Most often, you won't need to press more than one of those buttons at once. - Left thumb on left analog stick. - Right thumb on right analog stick.
Alternativly, rest the gamepad on a surface, and use another grip you perfer.
BTW, if you have dexterity problems arising from this grip, you'll probably have dexterity problems handling a simpler controller. Dexterity issues primairly arise from the D-pad or analogue controller, not reaction on when to press a certain button.
If you instead have arthritis problems, I can't comment on what to do then. However, you'll probably have the same issue from regular controllers unless you use a "non-standard" grip.
That seems like a great idea, but why give them three chances? Three's enough that they can fuck up a few times and not really care. Two might scare 'em a little more. But then, it doesn't matter because there's no way in hell that Congress would pass any of this. They would fight it nail and tooth.
They will fight it, because it is a bad idea.
While the first amendment is clear and solid, what would happen if it turned out that laws prohibiting yelling "fire" in a theatre were unconstitutional?
It is more of a problem in other countries, where there is a constitutional right to whatever - but it is not a solid guarentee as given by the US first amendment. Even though it is "harder" to product an unconstututional law, a law prohibiting Child Pornography was declared unconstitutional. Granted, the legislation was rushed through because there was a problem occurring that needed to be resolved as soon as possible.
Here's another example: The Aztec religion generally involved human sacrifice. Are laws that prohibit such killing considered to be an unconstitutional infringement on religion, or must this sort of religion be stamped out at all costs?
Surely it's just an added precaution in case something was _missed_ in coding.
If that's the case, then why doesn't the application ask the operating system to degrade it's privilages so that it will only have access to the current user account as opposed to the entire system?
Novell Netware's permissions allow this sort of stuff through their security equivalances policies. User A can be security equivalent to User B, while User B is security equivalent to Group C - However, User A IS NOT security equivalent to Group C, since these permissions don't daisy-chain across multiple associations.
Thus, you have a pseudo-account that's security equivalant to a specific user but not the administrators group - and an administrator can then safely run any "insecure" software that would not want to run as root.
All Microsoft would have to do to prevent home users from runiing as Admin would be to put a check in MS Office and IE to make both of them fail to run on any admn account or possable put up a big ugly dialog box "You ar running as admin, Continue?, Are you sure? Really continue?"
That approach has been taken by some minor software projects - by preventing use of the root account. This takes the wrong approach to security - it enocurages lax code under the false assumption that it couldn't possibly inflict system-wide damage. It is the computer equivalany of sweeping dirt under the rug to make things look clean.
Better systems do: - Not permit reckless actions through interface flaws (e.g. not designing your system to do an easy "rm -rf/") - Not premit applications to auto-execute (e.g. what Firefox does to embedded objects and Javascript by default) - Not contain buffer overflow possibilities (e.g. use C-style strings carelessly.)
1. Why didn't microsoft try to get rid of all security vulnerabilities in other releases prior to shipping?
The same reason Microsoft doesn't try to get rid of security vulnerabities in MS-Dos and Windows 3.11. It's considered "don't-even-bother", as those computers just barely got a hard drive and adding user-accounts would massivly break 99% of existing applications.
BTW, OpenBSD didn't remove every security vulnerability either, as demonstrated by the new class of attack that was recently discovered. This would be the string format vulnerability.
2. Who at microsoft would even claim such a thing?
Anyone can - it's merely a project "which aims at getting rid of all security vulnerabilities before shipping", as opposed to a project "which removes all security vulnerabilities before shipping." Bashing Microsoft because of this plan is no different than bashing OpenBSD.
The article mentions using hair gel as a working solution. The main issue here is that there's no information about the kind of hair-gel being used. A quick search on Google Images shows hair gels from different manufacturers. If it turns out that you need to use a specific hair gel, then you've probably messed up your CD.
It's better to use commercial products to remove scratches as opposed to plopping random substances on your disk. If you need to use the commercial product more than once for a given CD, either you need to take better care of it, or you need to make a backup.
One of my friends loves using computers and wants to get a "computer job", but the Comp Sci classes he's tried to sign up for have Math pre-reqs and he's lousy at that.
In general, that's why Computer Science was seperated from Computer Programming. While math is a prerequisite for both courses, the latter puts much less focus on math by only teaching the 'basics'.
You will need to know math at the most basic level, even if you don't use it in day-to-day programs. While advanced math won't be necessary for most situations, don't be suprised when you do.
Seriously, in today's call center you are not allowed to hang up on customers. Never, no matter how much they abuse you, no matter how stupid they are.
This, however, is not a universial edict. There are call centers available that permit hanging up in very specific circumstances - these are breifed to the agents beforehand either through quality staff or through management.
One of the most common hang-up reasons is the customer not remaining on the line - if the agent does not have any response within 2-3 minutes (less in a busy period), it simply gets logged as a dropped call.
Do something. Like turn the computer off and tell the kid to go play outside for a while?
There's a slight problem - there is nothing to do outside.
My best outdoor childhood memories generally involve me playing by myself, being bored, or walking around aimlessly. That is the result of plopping a whole school of students into two 15-minute recesses or a single 30-minute lunch period.
After the 30-minutes of bordem, I generally want to stay inside afterward since I don't see anything of interest outside (couldn't even explore the surrounding stores because we were required to stay on school property.)
Some people like to make life a lot more complicated than it needs to be.
I find myself wanting to do something constantly - the main reason I purchased a laptop. While I don't use the laptop constantly, doing a little nibbling on some programs at least does something to cancel absolute bordem on a ~2-hour bustrip. (Did I mention my 12-hour shift?)
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IIRC, only one game supports that - Serious Sam. It was released for the PC.
There are practical reasons why there's generally no split-screen support for online-play. While it is possible, it means that two clients are linked - one cannot decide to leave without either idling or taking the other player along with the disconnect. (Well, it is possible, but probably will unnecessairly complicate the netcode and client code.)
In addition, it interferes with communication with other online players - you can't talk without letting the other person with you what's going on. While this is resolved by having both of you on the same team, see the above rule about disconnecting - the teams can instantly become lopsided as soon as you disconnect. (e.g. a 6v6 match suddenly becomes a 4v6 - or worse a 5v6 becoming a 3v6. ) While these games heal eventually, it is much more of a shock when two players leave at once when compared to two players leaving within 1 minute or so.
The roteness you describe can still apply to games that use static mission generation, such as Crime Cities. While there is a wide variety of backgrounds for the missions in the game, the all come down to destroying enemies. Even one of the first missions, where you simply have to pickup survey equipment, involves enemies that attack you. This ignores guarenteed failure missions, where it underhandedly states "Mission Failed" regardless of what you do (for example, you go to a depot to pickup an item, but fail the mission because they realise someone else did it first.)
The roteness increases on Very Hard difficulty, when the enemies are whittled down with the ultimate tactic while you do not take damage with their inaccurrate shots. Eventually, you reach a point in the game where you have to destroy a large quantity of enemies with extremely basic equipment and resources - which is much more tedious than most randomly generated missions.
(BTW, the ultimate tactic in Crime Cities is to move in reverse, strafe left/right, align the targetting rings with your targetting recticule and open fire while rapidly cycling through lasers and sonic weaponry. This is slightly less effective in protection missions, but works wonders.)
In the case of Freelancer, there wasn't much variation to begin with. There were a few mission types that you'll recognize:
- Destroy a group of fighters.
- Capture an enemy leader for bounty.
- Destroy contraband from some enemies
- Destroy an outpost.
This isn't much of a dataset to work with when attempting to create dynamic missions. You can even tell for yourself, as the manual contained an storyline-based mission where a character had a contract with the Navy to transport goods from one place to another (although this is technically implied in the goods transportation gameplay mechanics.) The roteness of the gameplay can easily be fixed by improving the variety of the missions so that it would take a greater amount of time before bordem sets in.
There were escort missions suggested for one of Freelancers patches or expansion packs, which is one way to make things longer (and it doesn't even have to rely on scripting as enemies naturally attack trade lanes to interfere with excorting.) This mission type, even if it may be tedious, can still give information about lucrative trade routes, provided the game doesn't do something silly such as schedule a long-range shipment with a net profit of $2 per unit.
However, beyond this it becomes increasingly difficult to make new mission creation templates, but every one that is created will help slow down the bordem.
This sort of system is designed to minimize hold time, especially with large companies. It works to something the scale of HP, Linksys, etc. as they slow down the customer long enough that their technician hold time appear to be more negligable than it really is.
I have been in contact with Tech support for more than just HP/Linksys. For Cisco, their busy periods has customer service reps take a record of the call and have a technician call you back shortly. With RIM, Blackberry hold times are generally about 1 hour during "busy" periods and thus the automated system doesn't really slow people down. (Rather, they have their automated system keep track of what was entered to speed things up slightly. ) In both of these cases, troubleshooting is measured in hours rather than minutes and any repetition would do much more harm than good as it makes them look like they don't want to provide support.
That's a feature of the interpreter being used, not a feature of the language.
In any case, teaching a programming language requires learning it beforehand in order to understand the concepts of the language. There was an IFComp entry called "Lists and Lists" that provides the basics on how to do anything serious about the language.
The game itself might actually be difficult (without using the hint system). While I could do everything but the final problem (the pocket function), I still have a bit of trouble debugging those programs. This means that it may actually be difficult to assist the students to find out what's going wrong (although the in-game editor isn't the best, you probably want an external editor.)
Are you teaching a regular stream of students or the "gifted" stream? Also, which grade level are you teaching? The answers differ depending on what you want to do.
While you did mention the answer in the posting, it's still a bit vague. 10-13 years is a large age group - 10 year olds may minimally grasp the concept, while 13 year olds may need something a bit more complex.
You can do something much cheaper - draw a flowchart. The computer thinks just like that - it mechanically goes to one instruction and executes it, and goes along based on what comes next.
While C-Jump may make the learning portion fun, you might want to consider LOGO instead - the users can provide commands, and get an instant result on screen (where the turtle draws a line.)
FYI, HTML is a typesetting language - not a programming language. No matter how hard you try, you cannot parse an HTML document using HTML. (If you come up with a webpage that does that, then you are embedding a program that is Javascript or some other document embeded programming language.) In addition, if you don't teach HTML properly, you'll have pages that use tons of as opposed to tables to align text (or the now-preferred alignment method.)
I won't comment on the three languages, but make sure you review the languages beforehand to see how well you can learn them. There is no better way to determine which programming language is the most suitable.
I'm willing to consider arguments where Pluto should be declared a non-planet because it is too small. I see where the argument is coming from, as Pluto has less than one-half the Radius of Mercury (thus being 1/8th the size.)
Of course, since Mercury is still a planet because it is large enough, why are Ganymade, and Titan treated as moons rather than the planets that are? They are both larger than Mercury and are round enough to qualify.
Based on Orbital Data, Mercury also has a large inclination and Eccentricity when compared to Venus through Neptune. If Pluto isn't a "normal" planet because of these reasons, Mercury shouldn't be either.
This is generally the same problem as detecting units entering firing range in the first place. The only difference is that you are now performing this detection if the unit is making an "ineffective" attack.
It's also amazing how they manage to detect units entering firing range. Of course, it's not that difficult - as you may know, Doom uses something called a "Blockmap" that stores which items are located in each 64x64 grid. A similar optimization is possible for RTS games, where it keeps track of which units are within a certain 64x64 grid/section.
It was. My forces got stomped by a massed frontal retalatory defence, and I'm tried to cut my losses (especially the fast moving knights that are generally expensive) - however, there isn't really an easy method for an orderly retreat as most RTS systems are based around "every-man-for-himself" tactics.
In this case, the rout isn't too bad, as I was routing to a defended area that wasn't too far away. I've built up a few towers, plus there was a very heavy artillery piece that cuts enemy units to shreads (a map-specific unit).
(Of course, the tactic I was trying to perform was not the intended method to advance the campaign - but at least I gained a few levels out of it.)
Actually, the solders stop in their tracks - not at the desgnated target. You can tell what I'm referring to once you play C&C:RA after playing C&C:RA2. Here's what's unfolds:
- You have 10 tanks at Location A (Base), and 10 tanks at Location B (recent battle area).
- You select the tanks at Location A and B, and assign them to group 1.
- The enemy starts attacking. You order group 1 to destroy these forces.
- The result in RA: you have 10 tanks standing still between Location A and B.
- The result in RA2: you have 10 tanks at Location B. Your other 10 tanks will arrive shortly.
Intuitiveness is not the problem. AoE and AoM are highly intuitive. The main issue is micromanagement.
Even the best games in the genre suffer from this flaw at an extremely core level. If a unit (e.g. basic infantry) finds a target, it will keep firing at that target until it leaves range, dies, is killed itself, or is given another order. (Depending on it's "command", it may choose to pursue and engage.) This is a flaw in itself, as you will have basic infantry trying to take out tanks rather than rocket soldiers.
Here's a issue specific to AoE/AoM. When you have a group of units retreat from a combat, they maintain the same speed and do it in formation (unless you select individual units or just the fastest units in the group.) Wouldn't you love to have a double-right-click cause them to break formation and sprint to where they should go?
And now, for a nearly-global issue. When making an attack, it is highly intuitive to click on the unit or building you wish to attack. However, it is not intuitive that units stop in their tracks as soon as the designated target is blown up - this isn't a problem for a group by itself, but is more serious if you just recently added units to that group from your base.
That's acutally standard unit behaviour, no different than casting "spells". It just happens that these workers have spells that cost resources and product a building as an end-result.
That interface style also has a minor issue - you need to find your workers (unless you have a hotkey that selects idle workers.) Wouldn't it be better to have a build command that automatically commands the nearest idle worker to make the structure? This is similar to the method used in Rise of Legends, with the exception that there are no workers required to construct a building.
You shouldn't expect anything less from the communist propoganda campaign - it targets children when they are very young as they are the most mallable to ideas. (Okay, bad running joke.)
On a more serious note, people do watch video games as movies. There's the classic Speed Demos Archive for games as they were meant to be played, and then the Tool Assisted Speedruns for those wanting to drop their jaw in disbelief.
There's a quick fix available to cut down on this sort of problem. If team loadouts appear to be lopsided by numbers, give a very slight damage boost to the weaker team or some other subtle advantage. Naturally, this should be available as an option.
For example, TF and TFC do not return the flag to the enemy base (if the runner get killed) until the idle time expires, which helps prevent the 0-0 score deadlock on overpopulated servers. If there's twice as many people on the red team as the blue team, then the timers adjust themselves so that the blue flag can get returned within 10 seconds rather than the standard 30 or so.
If you want, a high-turnover rate may be factored by having newly joined players counting as 75% of a player, and include an algorithm that eventually shifts them to full player status.
For one, it leaves you vulnerable to attack. Unless you are doing some very blatent feigning (i.e. you know what you're doing), a semi-experienced swordsman would just hit you in an area not protected by your sword. Alternativly, it just takes one well-placed attack that a parry doesn't have much effect (or even worse, the attacker takes control of your blade so that a parry does not work.)
Next, flailing your sword about tends to exert fatigue. You don't want that.
In some cases, it's mandatory. Star Ocean, for one, had a language specific puzzle that got damaged because of a straight literal translation. (FYI, there wasn't any official translations, only fan-made ones.) If there's no straight translation possible, you have to make substitutions that have a different meaning but similar idea.
If it's anything more than that, then the localization has a great chance of killing the plot, humor, or other things. It can also cause confusion among fans, such as trying to tell the difference between FF II (the sequel to FF) and FF II (the american version of FF IV).
I can answer that... but which of those two generates more debate?
In the 2004 vote, some people feel that it's simply a repeat of 2000 (even if it was toned down by media). In the case of copying a CD, you'll have neat flamewars arising from whether or not theft includes "copyright infringement".
The same applies to developments... there aren't going to be new developments on the 2004 vote every month, but copyright infringement incidents (or potential incidents) can easily occurr more frequently than that.
Cable modem? That's why.
Let's assume that you are have a 300kbps upload rate (which is on the low side for cable, but will do.) You are also dealing with a video compression codec that needs to be real-time (i.e. low-compression). In some cases, you have more than one person in the video chat, either requiring a multicast or multiple connections.
In addition, you are not wanting to fill that entire 300kbps - that would choke the connection and cause issues if you happen to be on a slow period (or otherwise slow down the connection for other things.) Effectivly, you have a 128kbps bitrate, possibly 64kbps.
While that bitrate can provide acceptable movie quality, it flings you into "low-quality" world. Unless this is the exact bitrate you are looking for (i.e. this is "high-quality" video conferencing), you'll have to deal with the image quality that you've got. Alternativly, get a fibre-optic conneftion so that you can have an ultra-high bitrate.
If you carefully read my posting, you will notice that I already stated that.
As demonstrated by games such as Goldeneye, you need to use the D-pad and stick to both move and look at the same time. While this doesn't represent most games, Goldeneye is part of a genre popular enough to make this significant.
Saying that D-pads and sticks (or two sticks) aren't needed to be used at the same time would be no different than saying that a keyboard and mouse aren't needed to be used at the same time.
Games that don't use all buttons at once can be resolved by using any alternate grip. For example, laying the controller down, and mashing the buttons from above.
Games within that era:
- Generally didn't have saved games. (Passwords/passcodes qualify as saves.)
- May have loading times between screens.
- May rely on manually creating maps to navigate around.
- In case of puzzle games (which were common at the time), cause the game's plot to be blocked if the person can't solve a given puzzle.
- Usually had a fixed number of "lives" (that emulates an arcade-continue system with a fixed number of credits).
- Sometimes did not receive the technology from the U.S.S. Framerate.
While Head over Heels does not experience all of these problems, these are the exact things that can prevent people from playing these old games (ignoring emulators.)
BTW, "hours" of gameplay is not a good metric for puzzle-oriented or adventure games - these games generally focus on puzzles where time to the solution may vary based on trial or error, logic, or some other tactics. Regardless of solving path, it just takes one deadlock that prevents the player from proceeding - unless he uses a walkthrough which disqualifies him from finishing the game within the 30-hour contest.
The same applies to the IFComp, which scales games to two hours - it just takes one puzzle that you can't solve to force you past the two hour-barrier.
No, today's controllers require a grip which does not comfortably fit in the hand when you want access to all buttons all at once (and a game that requires that probably shouldn't be released.)
Here's a quick way to handle most situations (assuming you have what I have, a Cyborg P2500):
- Left palm on left grip, right palm on right grip.
- Middle fingers on shoulder buttons.
- Left index finger on D-pad.
- Right index finer on 6-button array. Most often, you won't need to press more than one of those buttons at once.
- Left thumb on left analog stick.
- Right thumb on right analog stick.
Alternativly, rest the gamepad on a surface, and use another grip you perfer.
BTW, if you have dexterity problems arising from this grip, you'll probably have dexterity problems handling a simpler controller. Dexterity issues primairly arise from the D-pad or analogue controller, not reaction on when to press a certain button.
If you instead have arthritis problems, I can't comment on what to do then. However, you'll probably have the same issue from regular controllers unless you use a "non-standard" grip.
They will fight it, because it is a bad idea.
While the first amendment is clear and solid, what would happen if it turned out that laws prohibiting yelling "fire" in a theatre were unconstitutional?
It is more of a problem in other countries, where there is a constitutional right to whatever - but it is not a solid guarentee as given by the US first amendment. Even though it is "harder" to product an unconstututional law, a law prohibiting Child Pornography was declared unconstitutional. Granted, the legislation was rushed through because there was a problem occurring that needed to be resolved as soon as possible.
Here's another example: The Aztec religion generally involved human sacrifice. Are laws that prohibit such killing considered to be an unconstitutional infringement on religion, or must this sort of religion be stamped out at all costs?
If that's the case, then why doesn't the application ask the operating system to degrade it's privilages so that it will only have access to the current user account as opposed to the entire system?
Novell Netware's permissions allow this sort of stuff through their security equivalances policies. User A can be security equivalent to User B, while User B is security equivalent to Group C - However, User A IS NOT security equivalent to Group C, since these permissions don't daisy-chain across multiple associations.
Thus, you have a pseudo-account that's security equivalant to a specific user but not the administrators group - and an administrator can then safely run any "insecure" software that would not want to run as root.
That approach has been taken by some minor software projects - by preventing use of the root account. This takes the wrong approach to security - it enocurages lax code under the false assumption that it couldn't possibly inflict system-wide damage. It is the computer equivalany of sweeping dirt under the rug to make things look clean.
Better systems do:
- Not permit reckless actions through interface flaws (e.g. not designing your system to do an easy "rm -rf
- Not premit applications to auto-execute (e.g. what Firefox does to embedded objects and Javascript by default)
- Not contain buffer overflow possibilities (e.g. use C-style strings carelessly.)
The same reason Microsoft doesn't try to get rid of security vulnerabities in MS-Dos and Windows 3.11. It's considered "don't-even-bother", as those computers just barely got a hard drive and adding user-accounts would massivly break 99% of existing applications.
BTW, OpenBSD didn't remove every security vulnerability either, as demonstrated by the new class of attack that was recently discovered. This would be the string format vulnerability.
Anyone can - it's merely a project "which aims at getting rid of all security vulnerabilities before shipping", as opposed to a project "which removes all security vulnerabilities before shipping." Bashing Microsoft because of this plan is no different than bashing OpenBSD.
The article mentions using hair gel as a working solution. The main issue here is that there's no information about the kind of hair-gel being used. A quick search on Google Images shows hair gels from different manufacturers. If it turns out that you need to use a specific hair gel, then you've probably messed up your CD.
It's better to use commercial products to remove scratches as opposed to plopping random substances on your disk. If you need to use the commercial product more than once for a given CD, either you need to take better care of it, or you need to make a backup.
In general, that's why Computer Science was seperated from Computer Programming. While math is a prerequisite for both courses, the latter puts much less focus on math by only teaching the 'basics'.
You will need to know math at the most basic level, even if you don't use it in day-to-day programs. While advanced math won't be necessary for most situations, don't be suprised when you do.
This, however, is not a universial edict. There are call centers available that permit hanging up in very specific circumstances - these are breifed to the agents beforehand either through quality staff or through management.
One of the most common hang-up reasons is the customer not remaining on the line - if the agent does not have any response within 2-3 minutes (less in a busy period), it simply gets logged as a dropped call.
There's a slight problem - there is nothing to do outside.
My best outdoor childhood memories generally involve me playing by myself, being bored, or walking around aimlessly. That is the result of plopping a whole school of students into two 15-minute recesses or a single 30-minute lunch period.
After the 30-minutes of bordem, I generally want to stay inside afterward since I don't see anything of interest outside (couldn't even explore the surrounding stores because we were required to stay on school property.)
I find myself wanting to do something constantly - the main reason I purchased a laptop. While I don't use the laptop constantly, doing a little nibbling on some programs at least does something to cancel absolute bordem on a ~2-hour bustrip. (Did I mention my 12-hour shift?)