That site works well for regular boxes. However, CRTs are slightly different because it does not have uniform mass distribution.
A few years ago, I tried picking up a CRT from the back (since I didn't know the center of mass.) Because I didn't have enough arm strength, it wouldn't even lift from the desk (and causing my parents to say that I didn't get enough exercise.)
The correct solution was to pick up the CRT with the screen facing me, and having it lean against the chest. This diverted some of the weight from the arms to the main body, thus allowing the CRT to be carried and/or held.
As far as I know, this is the only special case for lifting, as CRTs are generally at desk-level. Lifting boxes of canned goods (which can be just as heavy) doesn't have this advantage, since the center of gravity isn't offset in the same manner as a CRT.
(I think my technical explaination may be off - but the conclusion seems to be correct.)
There's only three problems with CRTs: 1. Size. 2. Low refresh rates. 3. Bright images.
First is captain obvious - if you don't have space for a CRT, don't install one.
Second only applies to cheapo models that only work at 60Hz at a given resolution. These units should be thrown out as they are an ergonomic disaster - the real minimum should be 72Hz.
The third is fixed by lowering brightness to a level that doesn't cause headaches.
CRT monitors are not a problem if they at least meet minimum standards. (Such as not being a 14" monitor that displays 1024x768 Interlace.) Likewise, LCD monitors are not a problem if they meet minimum standards (such as not being worse than Class II for dead pixel quantity.)
1. Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then. I make games for a living. Actually, gamers want AI that isn't too smart.
Actually, most long term gamers do. If they want to play against a simple AI, then they'd just go for an old game written in 1995 or earlier.
What's "too hard" for some people is still "pushover" for others. ID Software already learned this from Doom 1.1 (and Quake 1/2) that a Nightmare mode is mandatory - for players that blaze through the hardest conventional difficulty but need an extra challenge.
There are some cases where improving the AI is impossible. That's where you need to enter the realm of "cheating" - but always make sure that the AI can play at it's best for players that request it.
Anybody play Thief? Harder difficulty actually makes the guards/Hammerites/bad guys more sensitive to where you are, more responsive to your noises...bloody great game!
That's Thief III, not Thief.
The difficulty settings in the original Thief game affected monster placement and objectives - higher difficulty settings required you to perform more objectives, such as stealing additional loot, not killing civilians/anyone, and so on.
Now would this work on machines that dont have raw-socket support?
Actually, it won't work at all. If you spoof your IP address, the host that replies to incoming requests will send the information to the address being spoofed. In other words, you get nothing back, and cannot download anything.
The term the article submitter was looking for is "Proxying", not "Spoofing." Even if he did mean Proxying, it doesn't do much as it means that an investigation can target any person along the chain for infringement. Given that the software was used to distribute warez, there would be no problem getting a conviction (ignoring technicalities), even if it means tweaking the laws slightly.
Re:Gamers never know what's good for them
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A Gamer's Manifesto
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I play Quake 3 (against bots; yes, I'm lame) a lot, and I'm really good with rockets on one level. I can often shoot a rocket and predict where it will knock a bot, and send another one to meet it. I can predict where bots will fire their rockets, and side step and avoid them a fair amount. I can outmaneuver them, because I can figure out what's going to happen a little before it happens. Against hardcore bots, I can consistently win with a score of about double the best bot.
I've checked the source code, and Nightmare skill bots do the exact same damage as the player. It only seems to do more damage, since the enemies are perfectly accurrate with shotguns and tend to grab every single item they can get.
Bots are also limited by available weapons - for example, Ranger in Q3DM1 is weaker than Phobos in Q3DM2 because of available weapory (and perhaps their AI parameters as well.) While bots are perfectly accurate with rockets, a skilled player can dodge them without too much problem - they have a velocity. However, Q3DM2 puts more reliance on Plasma and hitscan weaponry, where projectile velocity is faster and harder to dodge.
Making the AI better doesn't mean making the computer twice as accurate (as many people here seem to be suggesting); it means making the computer aim about as well as me, but making it use better tactics to defeat me. Have it hide, or predict my actions a little. Something like that.
This is the general route that developers should be taking. However, there isn't much tactics to do when playing with moving turrets aside from point and fire. In some cases, no tactics are possible as the Quad damage powerup gives a tell-tale glow.
The best that can be done is determine which choke points exist at a given time, and to find an alternate route. Other than that, it's a matter of who gets to hit who first - and there isn't really any other difference between the last two difficulty levels other than accurracy.
Yes, I know it's difficult, and I don't expect it very soon. However, arguing that Quake and UT have the better AI than we can possibly handle is misleading, because a lot of that is not about, "the computer can outsmart me;" it's about, "the computer can point at things better than I can." (disclaimer: UT2003 and 2004 may have been better in this regard, I never got too into them; but Quake 3 certainly doesn't fit the bill).
After playing Quake 3 and UT2004, I'm not sure which one has the better AI - they both have their own attributes (e.g. Quake does supressing fire, while the UT AI has it's own distinctive strengths. ) However, I'd ultimatly recommend the latter, as it has a bit more potential to know how to play a given map - in addition to having eight difficulty levels. However, difficulty is still ranked in enemy reaction and accurracy (where Inhuman is as tough as it gets without going up against highly accurrate bots.).
I've noticed with UT2K4 that bots are a bit less willing to walk into some traps. While they sometimes will do so, the developers recognized this problem and made adjustments (but they still fall for some tricks.) They also seem to know when to grab the double damage powerup - although this isn't really a problem since most players tend to know when to grab it as well.
But in any case, enough source should be available to allow improving the bots for either game. You may need to spend time learning the SDK, but upgradesare possible.
Flight simulator would be a good illustration of your point. While I'm sure it's great for aviation freaks it's just cumbersome and tedious for the average player such as myself.
Flight Simulators won't be a problem if:
- There is a tutorial that teaches how to take off and land and explains the different controls.
- If the player can't land (e.g. there isn't an explicit tutorial that would be useful), there would be an option for automatic landing. (OP Flash does this, or at least simlifies it so that you don't have to worry about crashing.) - That the human and AI players follow the same flight model. (Fair Strike would be one example - player is bound by simulator rules, but AIs get to fly their choppers in action mode. This means they can take extra damage as well.)
Flight simulators don't need to be frustrating. All that's needed is an option to add realism as the player skill progresses, as in the many combat flight simulators released in ~1992-5.
1. Let me play the game at the most difficult level RIGHT AWAY. I absolutely hate playing a game through twice. I'd rather play a hard than a game where I have to play it on an easy setting, and then 'get' to play it again on hard.
And that's not all... the harder difficulty level simply gives the player less hitpoints (which doesn't do a thing since health packs simply re-heal by a raw number rather than a percentage), and gives monsters more hitpoints (requiring trips between the combat area and the pub that supplies ammo).
2. Include more multiplayer options. Why can't we play multiplayer on every one of the singleplayer maps? They're obviously in the game. I understand if MP isn't the focus, they don't want to spend a lot of time on extra maps, but at least let us play on the ones that are there.
Multiplayer doesn't always work on singleplayer maps. For example, the map is designed to be more linear.
Doom/Doom 2 is a good example here - there are some areas that are closed until the player presses the a switch to open the door (or when another player opens it from the other side.) In some cases, certain places only open in Deathmatch, such as the BFG room in MAP07 - leading to questions about why you can't enter those locations.
Wrong on ammo starvation, totally acceptable challenge element.
Depends on the setting.
For example, Deux Ex: Invisible War was very light on the ammunition side, in a setting where ammo clips should normally be plentiful. (It's meant to be a stealth game, but still, such an issue tends to stick out.)
Basically all of his complaints that go along the lines of OMG REPEATING PARTS OF GAME IS STUPID I HAVE KIDS ETC are bad. Requiring a player to complete a certain whole segment of a game without losing is perfectly reasonable.
Normally, I'd agree.
However, most games tend to fall into a pattern where gameplay does not change from session to session, allowing the player to eventually determine an optimal run for the first half of the segment. In this special case, if the player can consistantly get an optimal result for this section, why can't that section be skipped without the tedious run?
BTW, Unskippable cinametics are never acceptable. In fact, they radiate with an aura of poor ability and make the game look like it is missing polish. (2-4x time compression is minimally acceptable, such as in AquaNox. It could be better, but it shows the developers know that something needed to be done.)
Their reluctance to talk about specifics on the technology is what worries me. What if their DRM mistakenly identifies something on my hard disk as copyright material and prevents me from using my own very legal data? We can't be sure it won't thanks to jolly old intel.
A more practical angle of attack is defragmentation. Just pick some random defragger, and the CPU itself will not be able to tell if it's being read for execution purposes or for data purposes unless it gets help from the Operating System.
But in any case, this is probably covered. Most "real" DRM systems should revolve around determining whether the encrypted content belongs on the hard drive (e.g. it came directly from an installation CD) and unlocking the unencrypted portion when the license is verified. The question becomes where the DRM information will be stored -and DeepFreeze could easily prevent the Hard Drive from being one point as it always resets the state upon system restart.
Wrong! Installing drivers is not a major cause of reboots on Windows. The only time you absolutely need to reboot is if you update the boot disk driver.
I've required post-install reboots in the following situations: - Video device driver installations. (Win95-A also required restarting when you changed bit-depth.) - Microsoft Age of Mythology, when it installed MS-XML on a system that did not include it previously. (Which seems to explain why it needs Admin privilages to install. System was XP.) - Clone-CD, which needed to install a custom driver for it's CD management. (Not sure if the latest version has this problem on XP, but a previous version did require a restart.) - Installations that need to update a file, but where that file is in use by another process. (E.g. Installing Getright 5.1 when Getright 5.0 is running - although the newest installers will attempt to shut down existing instances of Getright.) - One version of Norton Anti-Virus needed a restart to get working on WinME. (Not sure if it's required to get the driver installed, but at least one restart was required in WinME if you didn't apply the update that fixed a known crash.) - Rude installers that simply shut down the computer without asking (or giving an option otherwise). Best way to work around this using the Group Policy editor and require typing in a reason for reboot - if this isn't available, open up Notepad and type in something. As a last resort, you can use Task Manager (or Process Explorer) to kill the process that's about to do the restart.
No - there was a class of multimedia keyboards released in the Windows 95 era, which generally required a customized driver.
One example: - The keyboard that was with a NEC computer purchased in ~1997 had kays that allowed launching special tasks. At the time, a special driver was required as well. - Some functions of the driver adjusted sound volume, and provided visual feedback on the screen. This OSD was not compatable with DirectX/OpenGL applications and tended to mess up the display. - There was also a problem with the keyboard where it would sometimes stop registering keys. Uninstalling the specialized driver fixed the problem, and it returned when the driver was re-installed. (I know this is a software problem, as I written assembly to reset the keyboard state. I know how to duplicate this problem in software - it's not a hardware issue at all.) - Aside from volume control, none of the "multimedia" functions were really used.
BTW, at the time, the "multimedia" buzzword was applied to any animated video with sound, even if it was a small 64x40 clip as was done in some "educational" software that couldn't tell the difference between a correct answer on the first try, and a correct answer after trying every other possible combination.
How many people out there who run web browsers have added their user to the local Administrator group or just log in as administrator
Too many, mainly because there's too many applications that demand escalated user privilages (sometimes giving false negatives where permissions exist but aren't detected by the program). Sure, you could open those applications using the "Run As..." command, but that gets tedious.
Netscape Communicator 4.73 - provided rendering bugs get fixed, plugin support removed, and Javascript permanently disabled. In this case, you have the usability of the Netscape browser with the security of Lynx.
Want CSS? Easily added since it has no executable code.
JavaScript may be a problem - but if it is written from scratch with proper security analysis (e.g. not being stupid), it can be added. If this means it won't have much use, then so be it.
DHTML/XML/Advanced Rendering Format? No problem - it can be added - as long as the user can peel away occluding layers.
Flash/Java support? Included only when you click on the puzzle piece icon that requires the plugin. This is necessairy since plugins are a common cause of problems, and it will not fsck up the usability. (The puzzle piece is shown if a plugin isn't installed - there's no reason why it can't be shown if the plugin is installed but not running.) In addition, give the option to "kill" a plugin, (such as the Jabster ringtone flash ads that chew up 100 CPU.)
OTH, FF has a "build in" security design that offers a much robust approach to protect the user from Internet's risks
FF's security system is useless as long as it auto-executes anything - including "harmless" Javascript.
As an example, I'll point to a poorly written redirect script - early versions of Netscape/IE would load the new site as if it were a redirect, but the back button would no longer function as expected since the script would execute immediatly.
Mozilla's approach to security seems to be identical to Microsoft Windows 9x: Everything (include FBI tracking) can be done until the browser is locked down. The correct approach is used in the style of Novell Netware - nothing is available unless permission is granted (and it shouldn't be explicit pop-ups asking for permission either - a simple icon in the status bar that shows what needs to execute will suffice).
FPS games are worse. Near the top of some ranking? Expect kiddies on your team to frag you or throw flash grenades in your face... simply so that you'll lose your ranking.
Quake: Team Fortress included an option that mirrors damage that registered on teammates (regardless of the normal FF setting.)
Because of this, there is absolutly no reason stat tracking servers should keep track of death caused by habitual team-killers.
The situation becomes harder with Team-Harmers, but any decent stat tracker can compensate for that as well (e.g. slightly reduce benefit for targets that were TH'ed to near death.)
The last problem is with players that knowingly throw themselved in the line of fire... this is fixable but requires a bit of work, counting the damage received by the same team and enemy team, along with damage inflicted. In addition, there needs to be some form of distinction between malicious FF and accidental FF... but it can still be fixed.
1. Tranporting device - I can Translocate across a map but it doesn't make it fun.
That's why it's an option in UT2K4. It's left on by default, but it's an option.
FYI, I wouldn't risk turning it off, since maps are balanced to require it. (They are playable without, but I wouldn't take that chance.)
The real fun comes with tactical use of the translocator - place it at a guard location, watch a person walk by and teleport in behind him. It also gets fun when you realize that the beacon was damaged.:)
2. Voice chat - I don't want to hear 13 year olds scream. Let them type their crap out. I rarely hear anything useful on team based FPS voice chat.
I'm interested where you get that information or which games you played - when I've been playing TFC and other HL-based games, team chat gets used to inform other players of an upcoming plan (mass rush) or an incoming spy of some sort. It might not be as fast as hitting F8 for a "Incoming enemy" macro, but it is helpful if you don't want to waste time typing.
Besides, if those 13-year olds scream, most real games allow you to mute them.
3. Stat Tracking Stuff - This seems to create a bunch of people playing to keep up their stats. These are the guys endlessly killing people at spawn points like its a RPG.
What's wrong with stats? They may seems silly, but it is very useful to keep players in their proper skill level - and also bring cheaters into the veteren bracket more quickly where they more frequently get called out for cheating.
Spawnkilling is fixed with respawn invulnerability, combined with reasonable respawn selection (e.g. not one with a nearby enemy/sniper pointing at respawn).
4. Stupid Mods - The developers spent 3 years balancing the settings. 12 year old spent 2 minutes messing the settings up.
This is the only problem that exists for most online games... however, this can be fixed by filtering out non-vanilla (or non-whitelisted) mods. Hopefully, a later edition of the game gives finer control over which mods get "supressed", along with filtering out individual servers that have their own personal mod that trashes gameplay.
I know that this problem trashed Tribes 1 - the most stupid mod kicked the player out of inventory selection after 10 seconds, saying to use favourites. Problem - the server had mods that incldued other weaponry, and you could not configure favourited without being in that inventory screen.
Your complaints are valid overall, but are easily negated by properly designing games with the needs of the player. And as you know, the needs of the player have been identified for the past 10 years - first starting with 'w','a','s','d', and moving on to more important issues.
If you only ever download "shared" content and never buy any you are what warez dudes would call a leech.
Actually, "leech" refers to downloading of content without giving back (e.g. clicking on banners, clicking on vote links, etc.) It is normally applied for excessive downloading (e.g. 2+ connections at once) but can be stretched to almost anyone.
The term you're looking for is "freeloader", where everything is done without paying money. It doesn't that the user won't support the site - it just means no money is paid.
It looks like the other posters beat me to it, but SDL is one library that simplifies things a lot. There is no need for 3D Rendering for games - it can be a simple 2D platform game or something just as simple.
The real problem in writing the game is the lack of information on how to write one properly. For example, I tried writing a vertical shooter in VB using stock controls - this failed miserably because I was stuck with a low FPS, and because of the lack of a double buffer. On the other hand, using Allegro would have simplified things a lot as there are known tutorials for getting things done.
VB or C or Delphi - it's not gonna be easy. 15-20 years ago that would've been a valid point though. Today - you need to learn a whole pack of stuff even to start.
The solution is to an incremental approach. First, you start off with something simple - such as an array of 25 checkboxes (where the puzzle is to uncheck them all.)
After that, have them upgrade the interface to something more fancy by adding in graphics and other media, and perhaps show how them how to animate the graphics.
The only "issue" is that this generally takes an entire semester or term. This might not look as good on paper as it seems you are only teaching one thing. In reality, you are simply teaching many things that will get integreated into one program - just like a compiler integrates a buffer, tokenizer, and parser.
There is no such thing as "innocent animals", they are all guilty of the high crime of "being made from meat". Punishable by death by grilling.
I couldn't find a way to agree more. After all, these "homo sapien" units are very delicious, and are considered quite a delicasy.
After all, humans were created by an intellegent designer, to make them as tasty as possible. The only problem is that the design isn't perfect - their sentience wasn't restricted well enough and as a result, they don't like being harvested for food...
All the games with videogame licenses are sucktastic?
Nothing happens - cause that basically covers 95% of the movie-based games.
The only reason you see "low-quality" games getting into the finalists is because there isn't much competition in this field - you only see games based around well-known franchises, and with nothing coming from individual works. (The only exception is Blair Witch, which was popular enough anyway.)
Which would you rather play, a computer game that takes forty hours to complete or one that lasts just a few minutes? Don't be too quick to answer. The former asks for a serious time commitment.
For me, the answer is easy - the 40 hour game. Unless it's poorly designed, any modern game should be choppable into 5-15 minute increments via use of saved games.
Any game that can be completed within 5 minutes or less is also writable within 24 hours - it does not have much depth, and won't retain interest for very long unless it finds a way to snag a player (e.g. Tetris.)
(BTW, I don't consider a scrolling shoorter like Tumiki Fighers to be a 5-15 minute game, because the player needs to progress his skill to go through the entire game. )
I did watch the Matrix. However, it seems someone is mistaking fiction for reality. (Clue: it's not me!).
Your original argument:
If there is a Creator and a creation, that Creator MUST, by default, be more powerful and better than its creation.
This is easily proven incorrect. For example, let's say that two "average" parents copulate and produce a pro-wrestler or some other extremely exceptional person...
The problem with statements such as the one you presented is that it only takes one counter-example to prove it wrong. Even if the example doesn't prove anything, it can easily be combined with other known and established material.
BTW, most science fiction authors take the opposite belief, where a "creator" (in most cases, a human) can create something that is suicidally dangerous. It may be something simple such as a group of super-soldiers that making a coup and taking control of the world government, but it could instead be a rogue Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network that creates a new super-virus to facilitate conquest of a planet.
Population (year 2000): 1,815, Est. population in July 2002: 1,878 (+3.5% change) Males: 902 (49.7%), Females: 913 (50.3%)
This isnt even a meaningful population count for discussion.
So a population of 1878 isn't meaningful population. Might as well say that 1879 isn't meaningful either - it's just one additional person to a meaningless population.
This means that 1879 isn't a meaningful population. Might as well say that 1880 isn't meaningful either - it's just one additional person to a meaningless population.
As established above, 1880 isn't meaningful.... [Repeat until population reaches 20 billion.]
That region is quite red now and voted for Bush unanimously
The fact that the region is now communist and voted for bush isn't relevant.
The discussion is really about the school board bashing one common theory in favour of another theory - for religious purposes. If they really wanted it for academic purposes, they would also expain potential flaws in their replacement theory (e.g. An intellegent design wouldn't have been created with mass stupidity as an average result, unless we were a failed experiment or were genetically engineered by aliens to be harvested for food. Neither of these cases is very good in the religious aspect.)
Intellegent design may be a good theory, since those two choices are still plausable. However, it should never be presented as fact, and must be discussed as a theory (just like they're doing with evolution.)
Slashdot Mirror
I was on dial-up at the time. So there. ;)
That site works well for regular boxes. However, CRTs are slightly different because it does not have uniform mass distribution.
A few years ago, I tried picking up a CRT from the back (since I didn't know the center of mass.) Because I didn't have enough arm strength, it wouldn't even lift from the desk (and causing my parents to say that I didn't get enough exercise.)
The correct solution was to pick up the CRT with the screen facing me, and having it lean against the chest. This diverted some of the weight from the arms to the main body, thus allowing the CRT to be carried and/or held.
As far as I know, this is the only special case for lifting, as CRTs are generally at desk-level. Lifting boxes of canned goods (which can be just as heavy) doesn't have this advantage, since the center of gravity isn't offset in the same manner as a CRT.
(I think my technical explaination may be off - but the conclusion seems to be correct.)
1. Size.
2. Low refresh rates.
3. Bright images.
First is captain obvious - if you don't have space for a CRT, don't install one.
Second only applies to cheapo models that only work at 60Hz at a given resolution. These units should be thrown out as they are an ergonomic disaster - the real minimum should be 72Hz.
The third is fixed by lowering brightness to a level that doesn't cause headaches.
CRT monitors are not a problem if they at least meet minimum standards. (Such as not being a 14" monitor that displays 1024x768 Interlace.) Likewise, LCD monitors are not a problem if they meet minimum standards (such as not being worse than Class II for dead pixel quantity.)
Actually, most long term gamers do. If they want to play against a simple AI, then they'd just go for an old game written in 1995 or earlier.
What's "too hard" for some people is still "pushover" for others. ID Software already learned this from Doom 1.1 (and Quake 1/2) that a Nightmare mode is mandatory - for players that blaze through the hardest conventional difficulty but need an extra challenge.
There are some cases where improving the AI is impossible. That's where you need to enter the realm of "cheating" - but always make sure that the AI can play at it's best for players that request it.
The difficulty settings in the original Thief game affected monster placement and objectives - higher difficulty settings required you to perform more objectives, such as stealing additional loot, not killing civilians/anyone, and so on.
The term the article submitter was looking for is "Proxying", not "Spoofing." Even if he did mean Proxying, it doesn't do much as it means that an investigation can target any person along the chain for infringement. Given that the software was used to distribute warez, there would be no problem getting a conviction (ignoring technicalities), even if it means tweaking the laws slightly.
I've checked the source code, and Nightmare skill bots do the exact same damage as the player. It only seems to do more damage, since the enemies are perfectly accurrate with shotguns and tend to grab every single item they can get.
Bots are also limited by available weapons - for example, Ranger in Q3DM1 is weaker than Phobos in Q3DM2 because of available weapory (and perhaps their AI parameters as well.) While bots are perfectly accurate with rockets, a skilled player can dodge them without too much problem - they have a velocity. However, Q3DM2 puts more reliance on Plasma and hitscan weaponry, where projectile velocity is faster and harder to dodge.
This is the general route that developers should be taking. However, there isn't much tactics to do when playing with moving turrets aside from point and fire. In some cases, no tactics are possible as the Quad damage powerup gives a tell-tale glow.
The best that can be done is determine which choke points exist at a given time, and to find an alternate route. Other than that, it's a matter of who gets to hit who first - and there isn't really any other difference between the last two difficulty levels other than accurracy.
After playing Quake 3 and UT2004, I'm not sure which one has the better AI - they both have their own attributes (e.g. Quake does supressing fire, while the UT AI has it's own distinctive strengths. ) However, I'd ultimatly recommend the latter, as it has a bit more potential to know how to play a given map - in addition to having eight difficulty levels. However, difficulty is still ranked in enemy reaction and accurracy (where Inhuman is as tough as it gets without going up against highly accurrate bots.).
I've noticed with UT2K4 that bots are a bit less willing to walk into some traps. While they sometimes will do so, the developers recognized this problem and made adjustments (but they still fall for some tricks.) They also seem to know when to grab the double damage powerup - although this isn't really a problem since most players tend to know when to grab it as well.
But in any case, enough source should be available to allow improving the bots for either game. You may need to spend time learning the SDK, but upgradesare possible.
Flight Simulators won't be a problem if:
- There is a tutorial that teaches how to take off and land and explains the different controls.
- If the player can't land (e.g. there isn't an explicit tutorial that would be useful), there would be an option for automatic landing. (OP Flash does this, or at least simlifies it so that you don't have to worry about crashing.)
- That the human and AI players follow the same flight model. (Fair Strike would be one example - player is bound by simulator rules, but AIs get to fly their choppers in action mode. This means they can take extra damage as well.)
Flight simulators don't need to be frustrating. All that's needed is an option to add realism as the player skill progresses, as in the many combat flight simulators released in ~1992-5.
And that's not all... the harder difficulty level simply gives the player less hitpoints (which doesn't do a thing since health packs simply re-heal by a raw number rather than a percentage), and gives monsters more hitpoints (requiring trips between the combat area and the pub that supplies ammo).
Multiplayer doesn't always work on singleplayer maps. For example, the map is designed to be more linear.
Doom/Doom 2 is a good example here - there are some areas that are closed until the player presses the a switch to open the door (or when another player opens it from the other side.) In some cases, certain places only open in Deathmatch, such as the BFG room in MAP07 - leading to questions about why you can't enter those locations.
For example, Deux Ex: Invisible War was very light on the ammunition side, in a setting where ammo clips should normally be plentiful. (It's meant to be a stealth game, but still, such an issue tends to stick out.)
Normally, I'd agree.
However, most games tend to fall into a pattern where gameplay does not change from session to session, allowing the player to eventually determine an optimal run for the first half of the segment. In this special case, if the player can consistantly get an optimal result for this section, why can't that section be skipped without the tedious run?
BTW, Unskippable cinametics are never acceptable. In fact, they radiate with an aura of poor ability and make the game look like it is missing polish. (2-4x time compression is minimally acceptable, such as in AquaNox. It could be better, but it shows the developers know that something needed to be done.)
A more practical angle of attack is defragmentation. Just pick some random defragger, and the CPU itself will not be able to tell if it's being read for execution purposes or for data purposes unless it gets help from the Operating System.
But in any case, this is probably covered. Most "real" DRM systems should revolve around determining whether the encrypted content belongs on the hard drive (e.g. it came directly from an installation CD) and unlocking the unencrypted portion when the license is verified. The question becomes where the DRM information will be stored -and DeepFreeze could easily prevent the Hard Drive from being one point as it always resets the state upon system restart.
I've required post-install reboots in the following situations:
- Video device driver installations. (Win95-A also required restarting when you changed bit-depth.)
- Microsoft Age of Mythology, when it installed MS-XML on a system that did not include it previously. (Which seems to explain why it needs Admin privilages to install. System was XP.)
- Clone-CD, which needed to install a custom driver for it's CD management. (Not sure if the latest version has this problem on XP, but a previous version did require a restart.)
- Installations that need to update a file, but where that file is in use by another process. (E.g. Installing Getright 5.1 when Getright 5.0 is running - although the newest installers will attempt to shut down existing instances of Getright.)
- One version of Norton Anti-Virus needed a restart to get working on WinME. (Not sure if it's required to get the driver installed, but at least one restart was required in WinME if you didn't apply the update that fixed a known crash.)
- Rude installers that simply shut down the computer without asking (or giving an option otherwise). Best way to work around this using the Group Policy editor and require typing in a reason for reboot - if this isn't available, open up Notepad and type in something. As a last resort, you can use Task Manager (or Process Explorer) to kill the process that's about to do the restart.
No - there was a class of multimedia keyboards released in the Windows 95 era, which generally required a customized driver.
One example:
- The keyboard that was with a NEC computer purchased in ~1997 had kays that allowed launching special tasks. At the time, a special driver was required as well.
- Some functions of the driver adjusted sound volume, and provided visual feedback on the screen. This OSD was not compatable with DirectX/OpenGL applications and tended to mess up the display.
- There was also a problem with the keyboard where it would sometimes stop registering keys. Uninstalling the specialized driver fixed the problem, and it returned when the driver was re-installed. (I know this is a software problem, as I written assembly to reset the keyboard state. I know how to duplicate this problem in software - it's not a hardware issue at all.)
- Aside from volume control, none of the "multimedia" functions were really used.
BTW, at the time, the "multimedia" buzzword was applied to any animated video with sound, even if it was a small 64x40 clip as was done in some "educational" software that couldn't tell the difference between a correct answer on the first try, and a correct answer after trying every other possible combination.
Netscape Communicator 4.73 - provided rendering bugs get fixed, plugin support removed, and Javascript permanently disabled. In this case, you have the usability of the Netscape browser with the security of Lynx.
Want CSS? Easily added since it has no executable code.
JavaScript may be a problem - but if it is written from scratch with proper security analysis (e.g. not being stupid), it can be added. If this means it won't have much use, then so be it.
DHTML/XML/Advanced Rendering Format? No problem - it can be added - as long as the user can peel away occluding layers.
Flash/Java support? Included only when you click on the puzzle piece icon that requires the plugin. This is necessairy since plugins are a common cause of problems, and it will not fsck up the usability. (The puzzle piece is shown if a plugin isn't installed - there's no reason why it can't be shown if the plugin is installed but not running.) In addition, give the option to "kill" a plugin, (such as the Jabster ringtone flash ads that chew up 100 CPU.)
FF's security system is useless as long as it auto-executes anything - including "harmless" Javascript.
As an example, I'll point to a poorly written redirect script - early versions of Netscape/IE would load the new site as if it were a redirect, but the back button would no longer function as expected since the script would execute immediatly.
Mozilla's approach to security seems to be identical to Microsoft Windows 9x: Everything (include FBI tracking) can be done until the browser is locked down. The correct approach is used in the style of Novell Netware - nothing is available unless permission is granted (and it shouldn't be explicit pop-ups asking for permission either - a simple icon in the status bar that shows what needs to execute will suffice).
Quake: Team Fortress included an option that mirrors damage that registered on teammates (regardless of the normal FF setting.)
Because of this, there is absolutly no reason stat tracking servers should keep track of death caused by habitual team-killers.
The situation becomes harder with Team-Harmers, but any decent stat tracker can compensate for that as well (e.g. slightly reduce benefit for targets that were TH'ed to near death.)
The last problem is with players that knowingly throw themselved in the line of fire... this is fixable but requires a bit of work, counting the damage received by the same team and enemy team, along with damage inflicted. In addition, there needs to be some form of distinction between malicious FF and accidental FF... but it can still be fixed.
FYI, I wouldn't risk turning it off, since maps are balanced to require it. (They are playable without, but I wouldn't take that chance.)
The real fun comes with tactical use of the translocator - place it at a guard location, watch a person walk by and teleport in behind him. It also gets fun when you realize that the beacon was damaged.
I'm interested where you get that information or which games you played - when I've been playing TFC and other HL-based games, team chat gets used to inform other players of an upcoming plan (mass rush) or an incoming spy of some sort. It might not be as fast as hitting F8 for a "Incoming enemy" macro, but it is helpful if you don't want to waste time typing.
Besides, if those 13-year olds scream, most real games allow you to mute them.
What's wrong with stats? They may seems silly, but it is very useful to keep players in their proper skill level - and also bring cheaters into the veteren bracket more quickly where they more frequently get called out for cheating.
Spawnkilling is fixed with respawn invulnerability, combined with reasonable respawn selection (e.g. not one with a nearby enemy/sniper pointing at respawn).
This is the only problem that exists for most online games... however, this can be fixed by filtering out non-vanilla (or non-whitelisted) mods. Hopefully, a later edition of the game gives finer control over which mods get "supressed", along with filtering out individual servers that have their own personal mod that trashes gameplay.
I know that this problem trashed Tribes 1 - the most stupid mod kicked the player out of inventory selection after 10 seconds, saying to use favourites. Problem - the server had mods that incldued other weaponry, and you could not configure favourited without being in that inventory screen.
Your complaints are valid overall, but are easily negated by properly designing games with the needs of the player. And as you know, the needs of the player have been identified for the past 10 years - first starting with 'w','a','s','d', and moving on to more important issues.
Actually, "leech" refers to downloading of content without giving back (e.g. clicking on banners, clicking on vote links, etc.) It is normally applied for excessive downloading (e.g. 2+ connections at once) but can be stretched to almost anyone.
The term you're looking for is "freeloader", where everything is done without paying money. It doesn't that the user won't support the site - it just means no money is paid.
It looks like the other posters beat me to it, but SDL is one library that simplifies things a lot. There is no need for 3D Rendering for games - it can be a simple 2D platform game or something just as simple.
The real problem in writing the game is the lack of information on how to write one properly. For example, I tried writing a vertical shooter in VB using stock controls - this failed miserably because I was stuck with a low FPS, and because of the lack of a double buffer. On the other hand, using Allegro would have simplified things a lot as there are known tutorials for getting things done.
The solution is to an incremental approach. First, you start off with something simple - such as an array of 25 checkboxes (where the puzzle is to uncheck them all.)
After that, have them upgrade the interface to something more fancy by adding in graphics and other media, and perhaps show how them how to animate the graphics.
The only "issue" is that this generally takes an entire semester or term. This might not look as good on paper as it seems you are only teaching one thing. In reality, you are simply teaching many things that will get integreated into one program - just like a compiler integrates a buffer, tokenizer, and parser.
I couldn't find a way to agree more. After all, these "homo sapien" units are very delicious, and are considered quite a delicasy.
After all, humans were created by an intellegent designer, to make them as tasty as possible. The only problem is that the design isn't perfect - their sentience wasn't restricted well enough and as a result, they don't like being harvested for food...
Nothing happens - cause that basically covers 95% of the movie-based games.
The only reason you see "low-quality" games getting into the finalists is because there isn't much competition in this field - you only see games based around well-known franchises, and with nothing coming from individual works. (The only exception is Blair Witch, which was popular enough anyway.)
For me, the answer is easy - the 40 hour game. Unless it's poorly designed, any modern game should be choppable into 5-15 minute increments via use of saved games.
Any game that can be completed within 5 minutes or less is also writable within 24 hours - it does not have much depth, and won't retain interest for very long unless it finds a way to snag a player (e.g. Tetris.)
(BTW, I don't consider a scrolling shoorter like Tumiki Fighers to be a 5-15 minute game, because the player needs to progress his skill to go through the entire game. )
Your original argument:
This is easily proven incorrect. For example, let's say that two "average" parents copulate and produce a pro-wrestler or some other extremely exceptional person...
The problem with statements such as the one you presented is that it only takes one counter-example to prove it wrong. Even if the example doesn't prove anything, it can easily be combined with other known and established material.
BTW, most science fiction authors take the opposite belief, where a "creator" (in most cases, a human) can create something that is suicidally dangerous. It may be something simple such as a group of super-soldiers that making a coup and taking control of the world government, but it could instead be a rogue Sentient Hyper-Optimized Data Access Network that creates a new super-virus to facilitate conquest of a planet.
So a population of 1878 isn't meaningful population. Might as well say that 1879 isn't meaningful either - it's just one additional person to a meaningless population.
This means that 1879 isn't a meaningful population. Might as well say that 1880 isn't meaningful either - it's just one additional person to a meaningless population.
As established above, 1880 isn't meaningful.... [Repeat until population reaches 20 billion.]
The fact that the region is now communist and voted for bush isn't relevant.
The discussion is really about the school board bashing one common theory in favour of another theory - for religious purposes. If they really wanted it for academic purposes, they would also expain potential flaws in their replacement theory (e.g. An intellegent design wouldn't have been created with mass stupidity as an average result, unless we were a failed experiment or were genetically engineered by aliens to be harvested for food. Neither of these cases is very good in the religious aspect.)
Intellegent design may be a good theory, since those two choices are still plausable. However, it should never be presented as fact, and must be discussed as a theory (just like they're doing with evolution.)