That was sort of my point. If we are virtually invincible with conventional warfare, then it's sort of silly to expect many people to want to take us on that way. This is part of why American bravado about non-conventional warfare is so silly: what other sort of warfare have WE left anyone who opposes us? We bitch about people not confronting us openly, but that would be downright stupid.
Care to explain how that statement shows conciet and ignorance? It's a reality: in most stages, most countries don't even attempt to compete with the U.S. Nobody else in the world even has active super-carrier battlegroups. We have eight, with a ninth on the way. We have subs that are basically like the sub from Hunt from Red October: they can run so quiet and so deep that they can take out entire fleets without danger to themselves. Our current generation of planes were built to combat a next-generation of MiGs that were never even designed, much less built. And this is almost irrelevant, because we can take out airfields before anyone else even manages to launch fighters or bombers against us.
Of course asymetric warfare can pose a threat to us. But that's half the point: our military is geared to take on other militaries, not gaggles of people hiding in buildings with RPGs. The very tactic of driving tanks through cities is an example of how we're equipped for precisely the wrong kinds of conflict. We don't need better armored tanks in cities, we need vehicles that are actually appropriate to that sort of setting.
Almost nobody uses DU but us anyway. All of this is pretty much overkill. Our military tech is at least a decade or two ahead of everyone else on the planet, and no one is making any moves to close this gap while we are spending reams on pulling away even farther. The vast majority of our deaths come not when we are in our mega-tanks of doom, but when we are walking around unprotected.
I agree it was pretty messed up when it came out: they never should have said that it had left beta (especially given that the beta was more stable). But now that there's plenty of capacity and a better trickle system, it's working pretty darn nice. Condition Zero and Codename Gordon both pre-loaded and released without any major hitches (and CZ featured almost 2G of content). The next version should have optional upload contribution feature as well as more features for managing bandwidth usage courtesy of BT's creator, which will help even more.
Well, I don't agree. I like steam now. It was a mess when it first went out of beta. I have no idea what "fixing CS" means. The only such problem I know of is the one where the maps don't have enough spawns for 32 people. Whatever your issue is, think: is it really a problem with steam as a concept, or is it a bug they could fix if you alerted them to it?
As for end-user advantages, they can release tiny patches and new features far more often without users having to constantly patch things. The integrated system for managing all your games works pretty darn well.
You're clueless. There is no such thing as "good code" that is unhackable. Fact is, if hackers get to see everything that's going on behind the scenes in a program, it makes their job LOTS easier, no matter how well it is written.
VAC is actually pretty darn good right now. The thing is, even if it is slow to update, the punishment (permanent banning from all secure servers) is harsh enough that it has a pretty major deterrent effect.
"It's pretty clear that they just capitalized on the source code leak as an excuse to slip the release date."
Cept, that's not what happened. The only thing anyone said about the leak delaying the game was that it would delay it more. They had already admitted that the game wouldn't be done on time, with or without the leak, just a few days after they admitted to the delay.
I don't know, I think breaking into someone's private systems, reading through their emails, and helping themselves to code they don't own or have any right to is "a problem." But then, I'm not an asshole.
Way to exagerrate. Steam was buggy at the start, but pretty much everyone now likes it. And they haven't just been fixing bugs with it, but also adding new features and games.
This is exactly what good game designers do really well. The original Deus Ex excelled at this, and Half-Life had it down as an art (HL2 sounds to be even more in line with this philosophy: they say that a lot of the times playtesters didn't even know that they could do certain things, so Valve had to script the NPCs to do it occasionally as part of the story just to demonstrate the basic techniques)
Am I the only one who took the "try EVERY route" approach to situations like this? I mean, unless I was later able to come to the other side of that window or door, I'd almost always double back and try to explore every single area.
HL2 promises to be somewhat linear in pathing (i.e. through the map, cept on the more open ended areas like the lakebed), but more complex in the sorts of things you can do with the environment to solve problems. I think it very much will live up to that hype. From what people who played the leak tell me, the game was already pretty much at that level of coolness even back then, a year ago. It just wasn't put together in game form yet. Suffice to say that the gravity gun/tossing objects around isn't the only form of physics interaction they've thought up.
Re:NCR, all too familiar. Lots of companies fading
on
The 3Com Saga
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· Score: 1
Oh, and geez: they announced that they are porting their ENTIRE line of games over to Source, giving them all new art, models, animation, effects, sounds, etc. That's a pretty darn big deal for the community, especially the Counter-Striker zealots.
HL2 I think the community good will is actually spiking up again after a depressing year. It all still rests on whether Valve puts out the stuff they claim is coming (SDK components, the funny little Codename Gordon "Metal Slug-life" Flash game, official steam inclusion of mods, etc.), but there is a lot more "the end is near" signs now than back in the errie silence of pre-Sept. 24 of last year.
Doom 3 (X-Box):
I'm a PC purist, so I can't claim to want to cripple this game by playing it on an Xbox. But I was impressed by some of the effects (the melty skin effect is sweet), and I do think it'll fairly fun to play. I think the real downer in games like this is knowing how great it could look on a PC, and having to settle for the Xbox version. It has pretty much the lowest quality of dynamic lighting that the engine runs. Bah.
It really is. But then, at this point, I'm not sure who to credit: the engine makers, or the people who make DirectX and write the drivers for video cards. I mean, so much of the WOW power of these next-next gen games comes from using what are pretty standard and well known shaders and effects. Sure, it takes work to program it all into an engine, but provided you are willing to spend the money and target a certain level of hardware, it just doesn't seem as ingenious or a singular an achievement anymore. I mean, the engine looks incredible... but they are running it and targeting it on tip top hardware. Of course it looks better than stuff out today. And anyone else that targets the same specs is probably going to be able to do all the same things. I think it's really coming down, these days, less to the engine and more to the talent of the game designers and artists.
I doubt mid next year: they are targeting 2006. They really need to get a much much larger chunk of players onto 64bit systems and GPUs that are better than the 9800Pro era.
"that's kinda funny...since they blamed it on the "hacker" that leaked the source code."
Lies. On Sept. 29, 2003 Gabe straight out said that the leak did not cause the delay. It did cause A delay, but after they finally owned up to the delay on Sept. 23, they were very clear and honest after Sept. 30 that it wouldn't have been ready for Sept. 30 leak or no leak.
You know, I don't get the animosity towards Halo. The fact is, Halo was a great FPS, even by PC standards, and it's only real suck point was the indoor level design, which was as repetative and meaningless as hell. If almost the entire game had been those outdoor sequences, and if the indoor ones had just taken out the repitition, it would been golden.
Slashdot Mirror
That was sort of my point. If we are virtually invincible with conventional warfare, then it's sort of silly to expect many people to want to take us on that way. This is part of why American bravado about non-conventional warfare is so silly: what other sort of warfare have WE left anyone who opposes us? We bitch about people not confronting us openly, but that would be downright stupid.
Care to explain how that statement shows conciet and ignorance? It's a reality: in most stages, most countries don't even attempt to compete with the U.S. Nobody else in the world even has active super-carrier battlegroups. We have eight, with a ninth on the way. We have subs that are basically like the sub from Hunt from Red October: they can run so quiet and so deep that they can take out entire fleets without danger to themselves. Our current generation of planes were built to combat a next-generation of MiGs that were never even designed, much less built. And this is almost irrelevant, because we can take out airfields before anyone else even manages to launch fighters or bombers against us.
Of course asymetric warfare can pose a threat to us. But that's half the point: our military is geared to take on other militaries, not gaggles of people hiding in buildings with RPGs. The very tactic of driving tanks through cities is an example of how we're equipped for precisely the wrong kinds of conflict. We don't need better armored tanks in cities, we need vehicles that are actually appropriate to that sort of setting.
Almost nobody uses DU but us anyway. All of this is pretty much overkill. Our military tech is at least a decade or two ahead of everyone else on the planet, and no one is making any moves to close this gap while we are spending reams on pulling away even farther. The vast majority of our deaths come not when we are in our mega-tanks of doom, but when we are walking around unprotected.
I agree it was pretty messed up when it came out: they never should have said that it had left beta (especially given that the beta was more stable). But now that there's plenty of capacity and a better trickle system, it's working pretty darn nice. Condition Zero and Codename Gordon both pre-loaded and released without any major hitches (and CZ featured almost 2G of content). The next version should have optional upload contribution feature as well as more features for managing bandwidth usage courtesy of BT's creator, which will help even more.
Well, I don't agree. I like steam now. It was a mess when it first went out of beta. I have no idea what "fixing CS" means. The only such problem I know of is the one where the maps don't have enough spawns for 32 people. Whatever your issue is, think: is it really a problem with steam as a concept, or is it a bug they could fix if you alerted them to it?
As for end-user advantages, they can release tiny patches and new features far more often without users having to constantly patch things. The integrated system for managing all your games works pretty darn well.
You're clueless. There is no such thing as "good code" that is unhackable. Fact is, if hackers get to see everything that's going on behind the scenes in a program, it makes their job LOTS easier, no matter how well it is written.
VAC is actually pretty darn good right now. The thing is, even if it is slow to update, the punishment (permanent banning from all secure servers) is harsh enough that it has a pretty major deterrent effect.
"It's pretty clear that they just capitalized on the source code leak as an excuse to slip the release date."
Cept, that's not what happened. The only thing anyone said about the leak delaying the game was that it would delay it more. They had already admitted that the game wouldn't be done on time, with or without the leak, just a few days after they admitted to the delay.
I don't know, I think breaking into someone's private systems, reading through their emails, and helping themselves to code they don't own or have any right to is "a problem." But then, I'm not an asshole.
Way to exagerrate. Steam was buggy at the start, but pretty much everyone now likes it. And they haven't just been fixing bugs with it, but also adding new features and games.
There's Dragon Warrior Cart?!!! Is it as fun as Mario Cart?
This is exactly what good game designers do really well. The original Deus Ex excelled at this, and Half-Life had it down as an art (HL2 sounds to be even more in line with this philosophy: they say that a lot of the times playtesters didn't even know that they could do certain things, so Valve had to script the NPCs to do it occasionally as part of the story just to demonstrate the basic techniques)
Am I the only one who took the "try EVERY route" approach to situations like this? I mean, unless I was later able to come to the other side of that window or door, I'd almost always double back and try to explore every single area.
HL2 promises to be somewhat linear in pathing (i.e. through the map, cept on the more open ended areas like the lakebed), but more complex in the sorts of things you can do with the environment to solve problems. I think it very much will live up to that hype. From what people who played the leak tell me, the game was already pretty much at that level of coolness even back then, a year ago. It just wasn't put together in game form yet. Suffice to say that the gravity gun/tossing objects around isn't the only form of physics interaction they've thought up.
"Posting as AC for job protection ..."
It didn't work. You're fired.
Oh, and geez: they announced that they are porting their ENTIRE line of games over to Source, giving them all new art, models, animation, effects, sounds, etc. That's a pretty darn big deal for the community, especially the Counter-Striker zealots.
HL2
I think the community good will is actually spiking up again after a depressing year. It all still rests on whether Valve puts out the stuff they claim is coming (SDK components, the funny little Codename Gordon "Metal Slug-life" Flash game, official steam inclusion of mods, etc.), but there is a lot more "the end is near" signs now than back in the errie silence of pre-Sept. 24 of last year.
Doom 3 (X-Box):
I'm a PC purist, so I can't claim to want to cripple this game by playing it on an Xbox. But I was impressed by some of the effects (the melty skin effect is sweet), and I do think it'll fairly fun to play. I think the real downer in games like this is knowing how great it could look on a PC, and having to settle for the Xbox version. It has pretty much the lowest quality of dynamic lighting that the engine runs. Bah.
That's what you get for not reading the whole post that you are responding to. :)
It really is. But then, at this point, I'm not sure who to credit: the engine makers, or the people who make DirectX and write the drivers for video cards. I mean, so much of the WOW power of these next-next gen games comes from using what are pretty standard and well known shaders and effects. Sure, it takes work to program it all into an engine, but provided you are willing to spend the money and target a certain level of hardware, it just doesn't seem as ingenious or a singular an achievement anymore. I mean, the engine looks incredible... but they are running it and targeting it on tip top hardware. Of course it looks better than stuff out today. And anyone else that targets the same specs is probably going to be able to do all the same things. I think it's really coming down, these days, less to the engine and more to the talent of the game designers and artists.
I doubt mid next year: they are targeting 2006. They really need to get a much much larger chunk of players onto 64bit systems and GPUs that are better than the 9800Pro era.
"that's kinda funny...since they blamed it on the "hacker" that leaked the source code."
Lies. On Sept. 29, 2003 Gabe straight out said that the leak did not cause the delay. It did cause A delay, but after they finally owned up to the delay on Sept. 23, they were very clear and honest after Sept. 30 that it wouldn't have been ready for Sept. 30 leak or no leak.
You Linux geeks exist to run our Counter-Strike dedicated servers, and nothing more. Get back in the kitchen/server cluster!
(j/k, we love you dearly)
You know, I don't get the animosity towards Halo. The fact is, Halo was a great FPS, even by PC standards, and it's only real suck point was the indoor level design, which was as repetative and meaningless as hell. If almost the entire game had been those outdoor sequences, and if the indoor ones had just taken out the repitition, it would been golden.
It just started pre-loading tonight. :)
Yes, it has it. OMG that footage....