---There's a brief mention of the universe, and the focus immediately shifts to the earth.---
The "heavens" is not any sort of reference to the "universe." No one even knew what a "universe" was back then.
---So, what is the point in studying a system that will be obsolete in 100 years when you could be studying one that will be useful for eons?---
First, because the latter system is not even guaranteed to even exist, let alone have any intelligible, testible features, so how can we study it at all? Second, because studying the universe, no matter how emphemeral, has allowed tons and tons of very functional, practical understanding of the world around us and how it works.
The engine apparently makes heavy use of dynamic LOD on just about everything in the game. Not only are far away objects given a gradually scaling lower LOD, but it also scales down the more characters are in a scene. Basically, it targets a particular stready framerate, and scales down features to acheive it. Same thing in multiplayer: far away enemies don't send out all their animation frames, saving bandwidth (though I wonder how that'll work for a sniper zoom?)
If it became big enough, the black hole would start falling through to the center of the earth. It would not, however, swallow the earth, because it wouldn't ever gain enough mass to do so, even after eating a very tiny tunnel straight through from one side of the planet to the other, after which it would ossilate back and forth through that tunnel. Or... it would if not for the various other gravitational forces that change direction (mainly the moon) ever so slightly knocking it off course, making it dig a new tunnel every trip through. I'm still now sure if it would ever get big enough to start to make a serious change in any short length of time.
No, Half-life DID have a playable demo. They played through the bug level and the underground tunnels levels in real time. Several of the e3 articles commented on it.
For IGN, D3 wasn't qualified to be in the running, because it didn't have a playable demo, just a movie. I don't know if Gamespy had such restrictions or not.
Look, I don't know how dense you are, but the fact that they are competitors doesn't prevent them from colluding, acting exactly as one big monopoly. If given the option between competing and colluding, they can make themselves all better off, they will do so, as long as they can find some way to enforce the collusion. When was the last time you saw a price war between studios?
Doom3 wont work at all on anything less than a GeForce3. HL2 will run on a TNT2 era card, but without most of the glam. The HL2 e3 demos were on a Radeon 9800pro with a 3gHz P4: you'll probably need something like that if you really want it to look THAT gorgeous. Somewhere in the middle, however, will still work and look great. Source is pretty amazing in terms of its scalability: pretty much any system faster than a 700mHz P3 and TNT2-era card can get a game that looks like what you'd expect from the best games that system is used to displaying.
Hell, check out the demo for Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. They have a tech demo level just freaking full of all the goddamn reflective teapots you could ever desire, along with some really odd metal morphing blob. And they're from Croatia!
If you can believe it, the minimum specs for HL2 are a 700mHz Intel P3 or equivalent and a TNT2 era 3d card. Gabe Newell states in the gamespot interview that what mainly scales away is the extra eye candy: people will still be able to play the game even on a low-end system.
And this is known as collusion: which is the exact same effect as a monopoly. I guess if all the oil companies get together to agree to keep prices high, that's not a monopoly, since they are all competitors, right?
Ah: so businesses should collude to keep prices high.... why again? Can you explain what deviation from free market theory you're talking about here: why wouldn't an equilibrium be reached, whereby people's demands for quality movies would be represented accurately in how much they are willing to pay?
I don't even understand the headlines. How can they be making less profit simply by selling fewer Gamecubes? I thought the whole point of consoles was that you LOSE money for each console sold, but gain it back in game liscences and you rown in-house games?
I agree. I think, in part, it's actually because of their "kid" focus. Other systems, looking primarily after the older and more adult market, just fall back on the same bloody battle games. Nintendo, however, can't rely on that crutch too much without losing the parent-approved youth purchases, and so it has to come up with really fun game concepts that aren't just another shoot-em up. The result is lots of really nutty, out-there stuff that breaks the mold.
According to what Gabe wrote back to an inquiring user, most physics events can be set to either happen client or server side. That is, larger objects that affect gameplay (like tables and doors) can be controlled on the server side so that they are the same for all clients, while smaller detail objects (like coke cans) can be rendered purely on the client side. You can thus control what will be universal and what will be client side effects. I have a feeling, however, that environments still can't be anywhere as interactive as they appear in the SP game: that would require huge amounts of bandwidth (essentially keeping track of the position and orientation of every major object in the game, not just the player characters). We'll see. And... we'll mod.
Valve really is the tip-top of the FPS community, not just because they have the most well-selling game and online prescence, but because they really seem to care. As of this weekend, they were actually returning emails to individual people who had written in asking questions about the HL2. That's cool: all this power and money hasn't gone to their heads: it's apparently all gone into making the new games. This is likewise apparent from the interviews with Valve members: they've really obviously been up late at night thinking about how to make the best game experience they can: dreaming big and then taking the time to make it happen. They're incredibly lucky to have the luxury to do this, and, amazingly, they don't seem to be squandering it.
I also think you have to give D3 its due. This really looks like the first game since the original Doom where id has taken to heart the need to have a real progressing sequence of interesting and creepy events, rather than just room after room of monsters and key hunts. So I have high hopes that they'll be able to redeem themselves in the SP FPS genre, instead of just always making the best graphical engines and some of the best netcode. The engine is already an incredible sight to behold.
That's true, if you personally want to buy and own all the hardware for other people to play it on: I thought you were talking about a single computer vs. and Xbox.
Why do you think the game features matresses as one of the main physical objects in the game? Buncha male geeks at Valve probably blew most of their globs of money and the last 5 years trying to build a 3d simulation of a really springy matress and a realistic looking girl... then suddenly realized that with just a little extra work, they could probably make a FPSshooter game on the side just to help finance the further development of simulated silk sheets.
The Valve team really must have been locked away in caves for the past five years. Otherwise, how could they not realize that having characters yelling STRIDER!!!! all the time would bring about totally wrongheaded associations with gamers?
When I first saw the vids, I thought that Half-life2 was featuring some sort of acid-trip simulation, the way the colors and contrast kept changing and squirming around on the screen. Stupid video cameras...
That's kinda weird: HL had a really decent software renderer, probably one of the best. It wasn't as smoothed over as a D3d or GL version, but it was still very playable and very good looking for its time. But then, I haven't even heard of your old graphics card.:)
3000$? No way. I've been looking on pricewatch, and I can upgrade my system from a 700mhz 192RAM TNT2 to a 2.6gig 512RAM with a Radeon9000 series or FX level card for less than 500$. What are you spending 3000$ on?
Slashdot Mirror
---There's a brief mention of the universe, and the focus immediately shifts to the earth.---
The "heavens" is not any sort of reference to the "universe." No one even knew what a "universe" was back then.
---So, what is the point in studying a system that will be obsolete in 100 years when you could be studying one that will be useful for eons?---
First, because the latter system is not even guaranteed to even exist, let alone have any intelligible, testible features, so how can we study it at all? Second, because studying the universe, no matter how emphemeral, has allowed tons and tons of very functional, practical understanding of the world around us and how it works.
The engine apparently makes heavy use of dynamic LOD on just about everything in the game. Not only are far away objects given a gradually scaling lower LOD, but it also scales down the more characters are in a scene. Basically, it targets a particular stready framerate, and scales down features to acheive it. Same thing in multiplayer: far away enemies don't send out all their animation frames, saving bandwidth (though I wonder how that'll work for a sniper zoom?)
If it became big enough, the black hole would start falling through to the center of the earth. It would not, however, swallow the earth, because it wouldn't ever gain enough mass to do so, even after eating a very tiny tunnel straight through from one side of the planet to the other, after which it would ossilate back and forth through that tunnel. Or... it would if not for the various other gravitational forces that change direction (mainly the moon) ever so slightly knocking it off course, making it dig a new tunnel every trip through. I'm still now sure if it would ever get big enough to start to make a serious change in any short length of time.
No, Half-life DID have a playable demo. They played through the bug level and the underground tunnels levels in real time. Several of the e3 articles commented on it.
Ha ha. First I thought it was going to be funny, and then it wasn't! What a comic genius!
For IGN, D3 wasn't qualified to be in the running, because it didn't have a playable demo, just a movie. I don't know if Gamespy had such restrictions or not.
Look, I don't know how dense you are, but the fact that they are competitors doesn't prevent them from colluding, acting exactly as one big monopoly. If given the option between competing and colluding, they can make themselves all better off, they will do so, as long as they can find some way to enforce the collusion. When was the last time you saw a price war between studios?
Doom3 wont work at all on anything less than a GeForce3. HL2 will run on a TNT2 era card, but without most of the glam. The HL2 e3 demos were on a Radeon 9800pro with a 3gHz P4: you'll probably need something like that if you really want it to look THAT gorgeous. Somewhere in the middle, however, will still work and look great. Source is pretty amazing in terms of its scalability: pretty much any system faster than a 700mHz P3 and TNT2-era card can get a game that looks like what you'd expect from the best games that system is used to displaying.
[I]games run just fine, why upgrade?
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Hell, check out the demo for Serious Sam: The Second Encounter. They have a tech demo level just freaking full of all the goddamn reflective teapots you could ever desire, along with some really odd metal morphing blob. And they're from Croatia!
If you can believe it, the minimum specs for HL2 are a 700mHz Intel P3 or equivalent and a TNT2 era 3d card. Gabe Newell states in the gamespot interview that what mainly scales away is the extra eye candy: people will still be able to play the game even on a low-end system.
And this is known as collusion: which is the exact same effect as a monopoly. I guess if all the oil companies get together to agree to keep prices high, that's not a monopoly, since they are all competitors, right?
Ah: so businesses should collude to keep prices high.... why again? Can you explain what deviation from free market theory you're talking about here: why wouldn't an equilibrium be reached, whereby people's demands for quality movies would be represented accurately in how much they are willing to pay?
I don't even understand the headlines. How can they be making less profit simply by selling fewer Gamecubes? I thought the whole point of consoles was that you LOSE money for each console sold, but gain it back in game liscences and you rown in-house games?
I agree. I think, in part, it's actually because of their "kid" focus. Other systems, looking primarily after the older and more adult market, just fall back on the same bloody battle games. Nintendo, however, can't rely on that crutch too much without losing the parent-approved youth purchases, and so it has to come up with really fun game concepts that aren't just another shoot-em up. The result is lots of really nutty, out-there stuff that breaks the mold.
Wow: they had DNF on display at e3? Even though they released it months ago ahead of schedule? That's dedication, man.
According to what Gabe wrote back to an inquiring user, most physics events can be set to either happen client or server side. That is, larger objects that affect gameplay (like tables and doors) can be controlled on the server side so that they are the same for all clients, while smaller detail objects (like coke cans) can be rendered purely on the client side. You can thus control what will be universal and what will be client side effects. I have a feeling, however, that environments still can't be anywhere as interactive as they appear in the SP game: that would require huge amounts of bandwidth (essentially keeping track of the position and orientation of every major object in the game, not just the player characters). We'll see. And... we'll mod.
Valve really is the tip-top of the FPS community, not just because they have the most well-selling game and online prescence, but because they really seem to care. As of this weekend, they were actually returning emails to individual people who had written in asking questions about the HL2. That's cool: all this power and money hasn't gone to their heads: it's apparently all gone into making the new games. This is likewise apparent from the interviews with Valve members: they've really obviously been up late at night thinking about how to make the best game experience they can: dreaming big and then taking the time to make it happen. They're incredibly lucky to have the luxury to do this, and, amazingly, they don't seem to be squandering it.
I also think you have to give D3 its due. This really looks like the first game since the original Doom where id has taken to heart the need to have a real progressing sequence of interesting and creepy events, rather than just room after room of monsters and key hunts. So I have high hopes that they'll be able to redeem themselves in the SP FPS genre, instead of just always making the best graphical engines and some of the best netcode. The engine is already an incredible sight to behold.
Ah, but what if it uses those pixels to simulate a Universal T-Machine... :)
That's true, if you personally want to buy and own all the hardware for other people to play it on: I thought you were talking about a single computer vs. and Xbox.
Why do you think the game features matresses as one of the main physical objects in the game? Buncha male geeks at Valve probably blew most of their globs of money and the last 5 years trying to build a 3d simulation of a really springy matress and a realistic looking girl... then suddenly realized that with just a little extra work, they could probably make a FPSshooter game on the side just to help finance the further development of simulated silk sheets.
The Valve team really must have been locked away in caves for the past five years. Otherwise, how could they not realize that having characters yelling STRIDER!!!! all the time would bring about totally wrongheaded associations with gamers?
When I first saw the vids, I thought that Half-life2 was featuring some sort of acid-trip simulation, the way the colors and contrast kept changing and squirming around on the screen. Stupid video cameras...
That's kinda weird: HL had a really decent software renderer, probably one of the best. It wasn't as smoothed over as a D3d or GL version, but it was still very playable and very good looking for its time. But then, I haven't even heard of your old graphics card. :)
3000$? No way. I've been looking on pricewatch, and I can upgrade my system from a 700mhz 192RAM TNT2 to a 2.6gig 512RAM with a Radeon9000 series or FX level card for less than 500$. What are you spending 3000$ on?