This in fact might be considered a good way to do things. You may have the parties pick their best candidates, then by lottery have a president chosen from the candidates. Randomization tends to even things out in the long run. Things are never too bad, nor too good.
A question: Has anyone put together an Open Source voting protocol?
Religion is exactly 100 percent 180 degrees from science. Anyone who thinks otherwise is thinking wrong. Wrong as in "not correct". Wrong as in "untruthful". Wrong as in 1 = 2. Wrong as in black = white.
Anyone who states that religion isn't mutually exclusive from science believes in miracles and is most likely religious in the first place. I cannot even fathom the depths of illogic that goes on in thinking that way. Religion is about picking an idea about the way you think the world works and.....NEVER CHANGING IT. That is NOT the way science works. Science is about picking an idea about the way the world works and actually testing it to FIND OUT IF IT IS TRUE. True as in equal to reality. That is what truth means, an equivalence between the way you think the world works and the way it actually works.
The difference between those who truely believe in things and those who doubt is that those who doubt leave a wake of truths in their path.
I guess it isn't illogical that people who believe science isn't mutually exclusive from religion are themselves religious. Wake up.
After thinking about this over night it occured to me that what I'm suggesting is that their be more "instruments" in the game to use AND more combinations of capabilities with those instruments.
Let's start off with your characters own body movement. You can stand and you can crouch. I think most games have that. But what about rolling or the lean dodge (like in the matrix). How about something I can do with my hands other than hold the weapon. At least Halo allows you to whack your opponent over the head with a gun. Jumping is good, but it doesn't have much use other than to get up on something. How about I be able to run, strafe, jump, flip and roll, all while dodging some bullets, finally grabing the flag, which I may use the flag pole to catapult myself to freedom? Mostly this is about using combinations of keys seperately or all together so that I can do multiple things at once to "avoid getting shot" by a guy who just runs around and shoots. What I'm looking for is the ability to hone your movements so precisely that someone else in the game thinks to himself "Whoa! I cannot believe he did that!" The more keys and combinational effects there are, the more it seems like a real world experience. Being versatile is good.
Let's say you have eight buttons you can press for various effects on each instrument, including your body. That gives you up to 256 different movement and instrument combinations. The problem however is that the left hand (or the right hand, if you are a leftie) generally only has 5 fingers on it. So you can really only do 5 things at once right? Right, well sort-of. See most key press effects disappear as soon as you let off the key. What about allowing the movement or "ability" to continue for given amount of time. That way when you let go of your previous key you can go to another key and use it "in combination" with the last. In that way you can get more than 2^5 combinations. The physics engine for the body needs to allow for forward momentum effects as well. I should be able to need to run to perform some gymnastic effects. Also, even though you might be limited to 2^5, or 2^8, physical effects, you have much more flexability with the mouses almost analog turn capabilites. I should be able to "bend" in the air like a "reed" to achieve some physical effects.
How about some instruments or weapons that also require some combinational keys to perform different actions. Granted, the grappling hook only had a one button click on/off option, but the person who thought of it in Quake allowed timing to be a part of the effect. You click your mouse button and the grapple starts to shoot out, but you could release the button "before" the grappled hit anything at it would retract. So using this feature allowed you to click really fast for close range opponents to "stab" them to death. Or, you could alternatively allow the grapple to "stick" into the ceiling, then as you are being pulled up, release the button before you reached the top. When that happened you would be catapulted up, over, and around things because you gain the grapple momentum while being pulled up.
The only thing that didn't really work with the grapple that would have been fun would be ability to swing around corners. You could accomplish that by pressing a key to stop the grapple pull at a certain length. You simply aim and shoot while running at a corner or stationary object, then get swung around.
You can be I will be playing Tribes Vengeance. I absolutely loved Tribes and Tribes 2. Halo to me is really an FPS shooter for beginners. A sort of "FPS for Dummies" kind of game. Tribes had a much richer experience and depth.
By the way, I am refering to on-line multiplayer combat, not the single player experience. I don't like single player games anymore. AI simply doesn't have any aggression or motives behind it. Playing the computer is like having sex with a blow up doll. Although I commend id software for making Doom III. I get no thrills shooting dumb automatons.
I'm probably going to blow any karma I have left but I need to say what's on my mind.
Look, I've been playing FPS games on the PC since Doom I. And even earlier played FPS games on arcade machines. This, the most advance Halo yet, just seems to be the same old game. What you do is pick up a gun and run run run, shoot shoot, run run run run run, shoot, run run, shoot, run, shoot shoot shoot, run run run, etc. Occasionally you get in a vehicle and drive, but then you get out and do more running and shooting. The driving part doesn't require much effort.
Frankly, as a die hard FPS'er I'm tired of it. When are the game makers going to create a game in which you can have physical talents and abilities as well as a straight shot? When are we going to get devices in the games that take some dexterity with the keyboard and mouse to use? When are we going to get points based on other skills? It's like all they think the keyboard and mouse are useful for are aiming and shooting. Not true.
I'll give you an example. There was once a device called a grappling hook that was added to the game of Quake. In the beginning, this device just seemed to be something that you would use occasionally and seemed to be somewhat of a toy. But to me, I began to use it professionally when CTF came out. The grapple offered an extra element in the game for players that didn't neccessarily want to become excellent shooters, but wanted other "trades" or "abilities" where they might be proficient. In my example I became the best darned offensive flag grabber there was. I could swoop down out of the air, grab the flag, then fly off like Spiderman before anyone could get a shot off. My team would defend me while I got in a base then back out with the flag. I scored flag points as well as frag points. The grapple offered a freedom of expression because it required a bit of finesse of manual dexterity with the mouse while using the keyboard for movement. The better players learn over time that certain keyboard and mouse setups work better for this different "ability". Other abilities were seen as "rocket jumps" for example. Some people developed the skill over time. As well as Quake III offered jump pads that would allow you to move the mouse in certain ways to allow a bit of gymnastics that could be honed over time.
Using "abilities" is a good bit like guitar or instrument playing. It requires you to develop manual skills with your hands and require watchful eyes with a bit of "feeling" for network latencies. You get better than other players over time when you "practice". The same cannot be said of simply running around, aiming, and shooting. Sure, it takes "some" skill to aim correctly, but it also becomes tiresome if that is all you are able to do. This is especially true if someone starts kicking you butt because they developed some "bot" shooting software. If you had some "abilities" in the game you may be able to evade even the "bot" software. For example, I was able to work the grappling fast enough to cause my character to move between frames causing bots to miss. This was a most amazing and enjoyable experience...while it lasted. Some die hard conservative FPS'er from Id decided he didn't like the grapple because it was causing so much turmoil. Apparently people were having a hard time shooting grapple users. Duh! So the grapple was removed. Now, most all games are like Halo, they put you in a box canyon, then you run and shoot. BORE the F' -ing.
Tribes was a game that offered a bit of "abilities" playing. But it was more of a "trades" game. Depeding of the weapons you could choose, you had to pick a class. Class playing is OK, but it isn't quite the same effect as "abilities" playing because you can't decide at any point to switch classes, drop what you are doing, and start shooting or grappling like you can in the real world. If I "see" an "instrument" I think I can use, I should be able to pick it up and try it at any time. I may "become" good at it, maybe not. May
"...gamers expect more in the way of extra stuff that most buyers simply don't care about, like case mods and LED lighting..."
I'm a hard core gamer and I certainly don't care if my PC has any "mods" other than those that would actually add to its performance. I want a faster bus, lower heat, more L1 or L2 cache, faster graphics card, error correcting memory, better software drivers, faster CDROM drive, faster CPU, etc. I don't need any fangled L.E.Ds on my case. I would rather have a case like a PowerMac G5...solid and well built with no frills.
I also don't want to drive a pimped up Honda Accord either. I'd much rather have a real sports car than imitation fluff. Just what are these gamer "wanna'be's" compensating for?
I'm well past my prime as a gamer. I've got seniority on your ass, and I'm here to tell you that advanced gaming is disappearing at the same rate as good music. The fact that you mention "Linkin Park" and not "Genesis" or "Rush" just shows your age in so many of its adolescent colors!
I don't want to limit id software's advanced games to 2%. I just wish they would limited it to less than 30 percent of the installed base of machines. That's a big difference. You've definitely got me all wrong here.
And if the game id had showed us at Macworld had actually came out four years ago (or even two years ago), then I would have "shit in my pants". But it didn't. That's my point. This game is a bit late. It looks good, I would say even great. But it doesn't strike me with the same "awe" that inspired me when I first ran Doom 1. I will remember that day for the rest of my life.
The problem is in "ultra quality" mode the graphics don't actually get "better". They just use the full bitmap textures instead of the compressed ones. There's not actually any more depth to the code that generates the scene, or more accurately, nothing will be added to the scene that you can't see in the regular mode except detail. This is completely different than switching to a primitive "ray traced" mode for example where your PC is sucked dry of all its CPU for the purpose of doing something in real time. Why for example do the characters continue to look as mere automatons where there mouths don't match their speech? Why do the visuals still look cartoon'ish? Does "ultra quality" mode use any floating point at all for high resolution color? 24 bits per color RGB? I've seen better graphic environments in "Uru".
In a sense it really isn't id's fault. The problem is that the game development ran long and is overdue. This game "should" have come out over a year and a half ago. The 3D engine technology is now out-of-date, being based on cards 2 years or older. I found the same thing happened when I bought "Halo" for the PC. I "expected" the game to be "better", more detailed, and with higher res graphics. What I found was a game that was only a little better in graphic capability than "Tribes 2", which is now well over 3.5 years old. A 2004 game should have 2004 graphic capabilities, not 2001.
I doubt you were even around when Doom 1 came out. It's a real shame that you've even posted a reply to a long time gamer such as me. I've been around since the beginning.
No, "I" used to love id "so much" because they did things that "other" game companies wouldn't try. Making Doom III run on a console is tanamount to professional treason.
From all the graphics I've seen, Doom III certainly does not "push the limits" on modern hardware. In fact the game looks like a more adanced and rendered "Halo". It looks like the character maps and 3D engine were created two years ago and nothing but story line and graphics were added since then.
And for your information, "rich kids" were all that could afford PCs in the early days. You should pay a penalty for getting the best, that's the way the world works. If everyone catered to the lowest common denominator we'd end up buying everything at the dollar store.
I would like to see a game so advanced that only the few can play it. That's the way it worked for Doom 1, that's the way it should continue to work. That drives the industry, that moves things forward. It gives people something to look forward to. If you don't have any forward vision, then why are you here?
For those who played Doom countless times and long hours during those early years, I always thought it would have been cool and fun if id would have at least re-created Doom 1 Level 1 in modern high res 3D graphics. Just for fun, they could have opened the Doom III game the exact same way, with you pointing a pistol looking into that pool of water. Not that I'm saying it should look exactly the same, because level 1 was a bit sparse. They could have simply preserved the character and scene while adding in more graphic density or depth.
In fact, what would have been a rather cool way to begin Doom III would have been not being able to get out of the level 1 remake without jumping out of the windows (the ones you could never jump out of on Doom 1, that look out towards the mountains. You then begin your game in the area that you could never see completely into below the windows. A completely new area.
On an unrelated note I feel like id has really let me down. I know many people feel that the game graphics are incredible and fantastic. But I can't help feel a bit disappointed by the fact that this game was made to run well on X-boxes as well as PCs. The X-box technology is now outdated and it appears the Doom III engine isn't maxing out modern PCs capabilities. You see, when id designed Doom 1 for the PC, the game software maxed out what a PC of that era was capable of. In fact even more so, you had to run the game with a small window just to get good frame rates. I remmember needing to play the game in a small window because I was on a 486 DX-33. Later, I got a 486-66 and was able to run it at full res.
What I'm saying here is that id has basically sold out to the masses by making a game that runs on as much hardware out there as possible. As some game reviewers have mentioned, you don't really lose that much even running it at 640x480. I think it would have been cool if Doom III was so sophisticated that it required 3Ghz CPUs, 1 Gig RAM, with a minimum res of 1280x1024, was sold on DVDs only, and that it did some kind of real time ray tracing to get photo realism. In my view, the potential of what id could have tried to do was squandered by the need to make quick profits, instead of steadily increasing sales generated by forthcomming equipment that was capable of running the game. id software had done a dis-service to the industry. Instead of needing to upgrade my hardware, it appears the game will run fine, even on an old dusty X-box. Shame on id, and shame on John Carmack for jumping out of the advanced graphics world in which he was king, and into the world of amature rocketry engineering. Carmack basically squandered the time he could have used to produce a game as advanced as the one that "could" have been made. Too bad for us, too bad for id, and too bad for the industry. I will not be buying new hardware, or advanced graphics cards if I don't have a game that can throttle them into the ground...so that I may look even further forward to my next upgrade.
Sorry for the rant. I just can't believe this game was made to be run on a silly console. I may be wrong, but I believe that at the time it was produced, Doom 1 was not capable on running on any home console. It's a shame that Doom III is.
...aren't theater prices higher now than they ever have been? I mean really the prices have become so high that I'm boycotting prime time movies. And people are still packing in the theaters?
Americans are either making way to much money or our priorities are screwed up. How can we teach big corporate business a lesson if we keep handing them over wads of cash? I'm noticing that my youthful idealism is now being crushed by the realization that I'm now becomming a crotchety old man!
When I first started listening to compressed music I didn't know what to listen for, but after successive types of music were listened to I found that there is a definite difference. To me the difference shot out at me when I noticed that music with a lot of reverb, phasing, and flanging in it was missing those elements completely. Many 70's tracks and some modern N.I.N. stuff just totally lose their "power" and "drive" when listened to from compressed. Some N.I.N music that is extremely complex in noise character with flanging like "Just like you imagined" from "The Fragile" lose the element that make it so powerfull. At first you might not notice, and if you listen to compressed audio all the time, you won't know what you have missed. But, go back some time and listen to the real track off CD, you might be amazed to find that it is a more enjoyable experience.
Basically I'm making the statement that most music is fine compressed, but there's definitely some music that you should "never" compress, or more precisely music that can't be compressed without losing it's character.
No, it's a perfect application for multicast which every PHB network manager conveniently discarded. Why-o-why did multicast die!?? It would have allowed T.V. over the internet...but noooo...every single company controlling the Internet wanted to use unicast because "they" could control the horizontal, and the vertical. So now the amount of traffic increases based non-linearly on how many companies are offering video services. LAME.
Related to this, since I've gotten into networking, oh 18 years or so ago, I've been told that it is illegal to develop your own encryption that can't be broken by the government. So you either don't use encryption, or you must use a publicly available encryption like WEP, SSL, etc.
What I want to know is, is this true? Would sending random looking data to some IP addresses get you into trouble?
"The number Google is finite, but it's so large that it is infinite for all practical purposes."
Even a Googleplex is as far away from infinity as is the number 1. Few people really get infinity...even artists. Practical purposes maybe, but close to infinity? Infinity isn't a number at all. It is a symbol for continuousness.
Is it illegal to open a UDP connection to any random IP address and send series of packets containing completely random data? Would this trigger a probe somewhere by the government?
Another method of hiding a conversation would be to simply have two people connect to the same game server at a certain time of the day. The two people would then simply convert the data they want to send to gun coordinate aiming info. Since both clients receive each others gun coordinates all you have to do is decode this info on the other end. There are millions of ways to hide information these days. Are the chats that occur during most games monitored by the government in the first place?
"... Cold hearted orb that rules the night. Removes the colors from our sight. Red is grey and yellow white, but we decide which is right, and which is an illusion."
Nights In White Satin Days Of Future Passed The Moody Blues
That is NOT what I said. I said that scripting languages like Perl...are "bloated". In this manner as in most uses, the term "bloat" is relative. What I mean when I say bloat is totally dependent on startup time and memory usage. When you startup a shell, you will see that it starts up much faster and uses much less memory than Perl or Python. Am I wrong? I did NOT say that shell scripting was "as functional as" Perl.
Your reaction however in my experience is typical of most Perl programmers. But here again, we have a language (Perl) that has been stretched beyond it's intended purposes. Why is Perl used for process control an management these days? It is because over time people get used to using a single language almost exclusively for the purposes of specialization. If you can't specialize, you will never be good at what you are doing. It's the "jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome. The people who became good at Perl decided to stretch the language into performing things that were originally outside of its character. This is where bloat and uglyness begins. I think it is actually better to use those languages and scripting techniques that fit the problem situation the best. In this case we are discussing shell scripting, which traditionally means process management and control, not parsing of text to generate reports.
I suppose it would be nice to generate a gaussian map of languages vs. realms of use. This might make it easier to decide which ones would be better suited to a specific task.
I don't think Perl or Python are "bloated" for their intended purposes. I could change my sentence to read "...shell scripting is a bit too thin to be used for anything beyond process management and control. For the actual development of applications you should use the more streamlined and efficient Perl, or Python". But applications are not what we are talking about doing here. We are talking about shell scripting, which in my view, Perl is not suited for...although you can. This is much like using VB instead of command shell. Why would I write a full fledged VB application just to startup or stop processes?
If you think you've got a language that is best for everything, then I've got a bridge to sell you.
Slashdot Mirror
"So I said, if you've got a ship that can carry a tank, why not put guns on the ship instead?"
...that Mozilla isn't half bad! :)
This in fact might be considered a good way to do things. You may have the parties pick their best candidates, then by lottery have a president chosen from the candidates. Randomization tends to even things out in the long run. Things are never too bad, nor too good.
A question: Has anyone put together an Open Source voting protocol?
+1
Religion is exactly 100 percent 180 degrees from science. Anyone who thinks otherwise is thinking wrong. Wrong as in "not correct". Wrong as in "untruthful". Wrong as in 1 = 2. Wrong as in black = white.
Anyone who states that religion isn't mutually exclusive from science believes in miracles and is most likely religious in the first place. I cannot even fathom the depths of illogic that goes on in thinking that way. Religion is about picking an idea about the way you think the world works and.....NEVER CHANGING IT. That is NOT the way science works. Science is about picking an idea about the way the world works and actually testing it to FIND OUT IF IT IS TRUE. True as in equal to reality. That is what truth means, an equivalence between the way you think the world works and the way it actually works.
The difference between those who truely believe in things and those who doubt is that those who doubt leave a wake of truths in their path.
I guess it isn't illogical that people who believe science isn't mutually exclusive from religion are themselves religious. Wake up.
After thinking about this over night it occured to me that what I'm suggesting is that their be more "instruments" in the game to use AND more combinations of capabilities with those instruments.
Let's start off with your characters own body movement. You can stand and you can crouch. I think most games have that. But what about rolling or the lean dodge (like in the matrix). How about something I can do with my hands other than hold the weapon. At least Halo allows you to whack your opponent over the head with a gun. Jumping is good, but it doesn't have much use other than to get up on something. How about I be able to run, strafe, jump, flip and roll, all while dodging some bullets, finally grabing the flag, which I may use the flag pole to catapult myself to freedom? Mostly this is about using combinations of keys seperately or all together so that I can do multiple things at once to "avoid getting shot" by a guy who just runs around and shoots. What I'm looking for is the ability to hone your movements so precisely that someone else in the game thinks to himself "Whoa! I cannot believe he did that!" The more keys and combinational effects there are, the more it seems like a real world experience. Being versatile is good.
Let's say you have eight buttons you can press for various effects on each instrument, including your body. That gives you up to 256 different movement and instrument combinations. The problem however is that the left hand (or the right hand, if you are a leftie) generally only has 5 fingers on it. So you can really only do 5 things at once right? Right, well sort-of. See most key press effects disappear as soon as you let off the key. What about allowing the movement or "ability" to continue for given amount of time. That way when you let go of your previous key you can go to another key and use it "in combination" with the last. In that way you can get more than 2^5 combinations. The physics engine for the body needs to allow for forward momentum effects as well. I should be able to need to run to perform some gymnastic effects. Also, even though you might be limited to 2^5, or 2^8, physical effects, you have much more flexability with the mouses almost analog turn capabilites. I should be able to "bend" in the air like a "reed" to achieve some physical effects.
How about some instruments or weapons that also require some combinational keys to perform different actions. Granted, the grappling hook only had a one button click on/off option, but the person who thought of it in Quake allowed timing to be a part of the effect. You click your mouse button and the grapple starts to shoot out, but you could release the button "before" the grappled hit anything at it would retract. So using this feature allowed you to click really fast for close range opponents to "stab" them to death. Or, you could alternatively allow the grapple to "stick" into the ceiling, then as you are being pulled up, release the button before you reached the top. When that happened you would be catapulted up, over, and around things because you gain the grapple momentum while being pulled up.
The only thing that didn't really work with the grapple that would have been fun would be ability to swing around corners. You could accomplish that by pressing a key to stop the grapple pull at a certain length. You simply aim and shoot while running at a corner or stationary object, then get swung around.
You can be I will be playing Tribes Vengeance. I absolutely loved Tribes and Tribes 2. Halo to me is really an FPS shooter for beginners. A sort of "FPS for Dummies" kind of game. Tribes had a much richer experience and depth.
By the way, I am refering to on-line multiplayer combat, not the single player experience. I don't like single player games anymore. AI simply doesn't have any aggression or motives behind it. Playing the computer is like having sex with a blow up doll. Although I commend id software for making Doom III. I get no thrills shooting dumb automatons.
I'm probably going to blow any karma I have left but I need to say what's on my mind.
Look, I've been playing FPS games on the PC since Doom I. And even earlier played FPS games on arcade machines. This, the most advance Halo yet, just seems to be the same old game. What you do is pick up a gun and run run run, shoot shoot, run run run run run, shoot, run run, shoot, run, shoot shoot shoot, run run run, etc. Occasionally you get in a vehicle and drive, but then you get out and do more running and shooting. The driving part doesn't require much effort.
Frankly, as a die hard FPS'er I'm tired of it. When are the game makers going to create a game in which you can have physical talents and abilities as well as a straight shot? When are we going to get devices in the games that take some dexterity with the keyboard and mouse to use? When are we going to get points based on other skills? It's like all they think the keyboard and mouse are useful for are aiming and shooting. Not true.
I'll give you an example. There was once a device called a grappling hook that was added to the game of Quake. In the beginning, this device just seemed to be something that you would use occasionally and seemed to be somewhat of a toy. But to me, I began to use it professionally when CTF came out. The grapple offered an extra element in the game for players that didn't neccessarily want to become excellent shooters, but wanted other "trades" or "abilities" where they might be proficient. In my example I became the best darned offensive flag grabber there was. I could swoop down out of the air, grab the flag, then fly off like Spiderman before anyone could get a shot off. My team would defend me while I got in a base then back out with the flag. I scored flag points as well as frag points. The grapple offered a freedom of expression because it required a bit of finesse of manual dexterity with the mouse while using the keyboard for movement. The better players learn over time that certain keyboard and mouse setups work better for this different "ability". Other abilities were seen as "rocket jumps" for example. Some people developed the skill over time. As well as Quake III offered jump pads that would allow you to move the mouse in certain ways to allow a bit of gymnastics that could be honed over time.
Using "abilities" is a good bit like guitar or instrument playing. It requires you to develop manual skills with your hands and require watchful eyes with a bit of "feeling" for network latencies. You get better than other players over time when you "practice". The same cannot be said of simply running around, aiming, and shooting. Sure, it takes "some" skill to aim correctly, but it also becomes tiresome if that is all you are able to do. This is especially true if someone starts kicking you butt because they developed some "bot" shooting software. If you had some "abilities" in the game you may be able to evade even the "bot" software. For example, I was able to work the grappling fast enough to cause my character to move between frames causing bots to miss. This was a most amazing and enjoyable experience...while it lasted. Some die hard conservative FPS'er from Id decided he didn't like the grapple because it was causing so much turmoil. Apparently people were having a hard time shooting grapple users. Duh! So the grapple was removed. Now, most all games are like Halo, they put you in a box canyon, then you run and shoot. BORE the F' -ing.
Tribes was a game that offered a bit of "abilities" playing. But it was more of a "trades" game. Depeding of the weapons you could choose, you had to pick a class. Class playing is OK, but it isn't quite the same effect as "abilities" playing because you can't decide at any point to switch classes, drop what you are doing, and start shooting or grappling like you can in the real world. If I "see" an "instrument" I think I can use, I should be able to pick it up and try it at any time. I may "become" good at it, maybe not. May
"...gamers expect more in the way of extra stuff that most buyers simply don't care about, like case mods and LED lighting..."
I'm a hard core gamer and I certainly don't care if my PC has any "mods" other than those that would actually add to its performance. I want a faster bus, lower heat, more L1 or L2 cache, faster graphics card, error correcting memory, better software drivers, faster CDROM drive, faster CPU, etc. I don't need any fangled L.E.Ds on my case. I would rather have a case like a PowerMac G5...solid and well built with no frills.
I also don't want to drive a pimped up Honda Accord either. I'd much rather have a real sports car than imitation fluff. Just what are these gamer "wanna'be's" compensating for?
Save your money. Get a real machine.
...you can't win if you don't enter. :)
I'm well past my prime as a gamer. I've got seniority on your ass, and I'm here to tell you that advanced gaming is disappearing at the same rate as good music. The fact that you mention "Linkin Park" and not "Genesis" or "Rush" just shows your age in so many of its adolescent colors!
I don't want to limit id software's advanced games to 2%. I just wish they would limited it to less than 30 percent of the installed base of machines. That's a big difference. You've definitely got me all wrong here.
And if the game id had showed us at Macworld had actually came out four years ago (or even two years ago), then I would have "shit in my pants". But it didn't. That's my point. This game is a bit late. It looks good, I would say even great. But it doesn't strike me with the same "awe" that inspired me when I first ran Doom 1. I will remember that day for the rest of my life.
The problem is in "ultra quality" mode the graphics don't actually get "better". They just use the full bitmap textures instead of the compressed ones. There's not actually any more depth to the code that generates the scene, or more accurately, nothing will be added to the scene that you can't see in the regular mode except detail. This is completely different than switching to a primitive "ray traced" mode for example where your PC is sucked dry of all its CPU for the purpose of doing something in real time. Why for example do the characters continue to look as mere automatons where there mouths don't match their speech? Why do the visuals still look cartoon'ish? Does "ultra quality" mode use any floating point at all for high resolution color? 24 bits per color RGB? I've seen better graphic environments in "Uru".
In a sense it really isn't id's fault. The problem is that the game development ran long and is overdue. This game "should" have come out over a year and a half ago. The 3D engine technology is now out-of-date, being based on cards 2 years or older. I found the same thing happened when I bought "Halo" for the PC. I "expected" the game to be "better", more detailed, and with higher res graphics. What I found was a game that was only a little better in graphic capability than "Tribes 2", which is now well over 3.5 years old. A 2004 game should have 2004 graphic capabilities, not 2001.
I doubt you were even around when Doom 1 came out. It's a real shame that you've even posted a reply to a long time gamer such as me. I've been around since the beginning.
No, "I" used to love id "so much" because they did things that "other" game companies wouldn't try. Making Doom III run on a console is tanamount to professional treason.
From all the graphics I've seen, Doom III certainly does not "push the limits" on modern hardware. In fact the game looks like a more adanced and rendered "Halo". It looks like the character maps and 3D engine were created two years ago and nothing but story line and graphics were added since then.
And for your information, "rich kids" were all that could afford PCs in the early days. You should pay a penalty for getting the best, that's the way the world works. If everyone catered to the lowest common denominator we'd end up buying everything at the dollar store.
I would like to see a game so advanced that only the few can play it. That's the way it worked for Doom 1, that's the way it should continue to work. That drives the industry, that moves things forward. It gives people something to look forward to. If you don't have any forward vision, then why are you here?
For those who played Doom countless times and long hours during those early years, I always thought it would have been cool and fun if id would have at least re-created Doom 1 Level 1 in modern high res 3D graphics. Just for fun, they could have opened the Doom III game the exact same way, with you pointing a pistol looking into that pool of water. Not that I'm saying it should look exactly the same, because level 1 was a bit sparse. They could have simply preserved the character and scene while adding in more graphic density or depth.
In fact, what would have been a rather cool way to begin Doom III would have been not being able to get out of the level 1 remake without jumping out of the windows (the ones you could never jump out of on Doom 1, that look out towards the mountains. You then begin your game in the area that you could never see completely into below the windows. A completely new area.
On an unrelated note I feel like id has really let me down. I know many people feel that the game graphics are incredible and fantastic. But I can't help feel a bit disappointed by the fact that this game was made to run well on X-boxes as well as PCs. The X-box technology is now outdated and it appears the Doom III engine isn't maxing out modern PCs capabilities. You see, when id designed Doom 1 for the PC, the game software maxed out what a PC of that era was capable of. In fact even more so, you had to run the game with a small window just to get good frame rates. I remmember needing to play the game in a small window because I was on a 486 DX-33. Later, I got a 486-66 and was able to run it at full res.
What I'm saying here is that id has basically sold out to the masses by making a game that runs on as much hardware out there as possible. As some game reviewers have mentioned, you don't really lose that much even running it at 640x480. I think it would have been cool if Doom III was so sophisticated that it required 3Ghz CPUs, 1 Gig RAM, with a minimum res of 1280x1024, was sold on DVDs only, and that it did some kind of real time ray tracing to get photo realism. In my view, the potential of what id could have tried to do was squandered by the need to make quick profits, instead of steadily increasing sales generated by forthcomming equipment that was capable of running the game. id software had done a dis-service to the industry. Instead of needing to upgrade my hardware, it appears the game will run fine, even on an old dusty X-box. Shame on id, and shame on John Carmack for jumping out of the advanced graphics world in which he was king, and into the world of amature rocketry engineering. Carmack basically squandered the time he could have used to produce a game as advanced as the one that "could" have been made. Too bad for us, too bad for id, and too bad for the industry. I will not be buying new hardware, or advanced graphics cards if I don't have a game that can throttle them into the ground...so that I may look even further forward to my next upgrade.
Sorry for the rant. I just can't believe this game was made to be run on a silly console. I may be wrong, but I believe that at the time it was produced, Doom 1 was not capable on running on any home console. It's a shame that Doom III is.
+2
...aren't theater prices higher now than they ever have been? I mean really the prices have become so high that I'm boycotting prime time movies. And people are still packing in the theaters?
Americans are either making way to much money or our priorities are screwed up. How can we teach big corporate business a lesson if we keep handing them over wads of cash? I'm noticing that my youthful idealism is now being crushed by the realization that I'm now becomming a crotchety old man!
When I first started listening to compressed music I didn't know what to listen for, but after successive types of music were listened to I found that there is a definite difference. To me the difference shot out at me when I noticed that music with a lot of reverb, phasing, and flanging in it was missing those elements completely. Many 70's tracks and some modern N.I.N. stuff just totally lose their "power" and "drive" when listened to from compressed. Some N.I.N music that is extremely complex in noise character with flanging like "Just like you imagined" from "The Fragile" lose the element that make it so powerfull. At first you might not notice, and if you listen to compressed audio all the time, you won't know what you have missed. But, go back some time and listen to the real track off CD, you might be amazed to find that it is a more enjoyable experience.
Basically I'm making the statement that most music is fine compressed, but there's definitely some music that you should "never" compress, or more precisely music that can't be compressed without losing it's character.
+1
No, it's a perfect application for multicast which every PHB network manager conveniently discarded. Why-o-why did multicast die!?? It would have allowed T.V. over the internet...but noooo...every single company controlling the Internet wanted to use unicast because "they" could control the horizontal, and the vertical. So now the amount of traffic increases based non-linearly on how many companies are offering video services. LAME.
Related to this, since I've gotten into networking, oh 18 years or so ago, I've been told that it is illegal to develop your own encryption that can't be broken by the government. So you either don't use encryption, or you must use a publicly available encryption like WEP, SSL, etc.
What I want to know is, is this true? Would sending random looking data to some IP addresses get you into trouble?
-1
Aren't you assuming that the relationship between the number of bits in the password and the number of bits in the hash are not one to one?
If the number of bits possible in the password are 256, 512, or 1024, then password strength definitely does matter.
+2
I thought this was a Playboy subscription. Did someone change the wording here?
+1
...that the only reason Linux continues to exist is because of Linus'es maniacal grip on one kernel version and what goes into it?
;)
So...just thinking to myself, um, what happens if Linus is...snuffed out?
-1
One of those artists said...
"The number Google is finite, but it's so large that it is infinite for all practical purposes."
Even a Googleplex is as far away from infinity as is the number 1. Few people really get infinity...even artists. Practical purposes maybe, but close to infinity? Infinity isn't a number at all. It is a symbol for continuousness.
+1
"So I said, if you've got a ship that can carry a tank, why not put guns on the ship instead???"
"Shut up, you're ruining the moment!"
+1
Is it illegal to open a UDP connection to any random IP address and send series of packets containing completely random data? Would this trigger a probe somewhere by the government?
Another method of hiding a conversation would be to simply have two people connect to the same game server at a certain time of the day. The two people would then simply convert the data they want to send to gun coordinate aiming info. Since both clients receive each others gun coordinates all you have to do is decode this info on the other end. There are millions of ways to hide information these days. Are the chats that occur during most games monitored by the government in the first place?
Just asking.
+2
"...
Cold hearted orb that rules the night.
Removes the colors from our sight.
Red is grey and yellow white,
but we decide which is right,
and which is an illusion."
Nights In White Satin
Days Of Future Passed
The Moody Blues
+1
I don't see these around anymore even though I've got one in a laptop. They were excruciatingly slow. I don't even think you can buy media these days.
+1
That is NOT what I said. I said that scripting languages like Perl...are "bloated". In this manner as in most uses, the term "bloat" is relative. What I mean when I say bloat is totally dependent on startup time and memory usage. When you startup a shell, you will see that it starts up much faster and uses much less memory than Perl or Python. Am I wrong? I did NOT say that shell scripting was "as functional as" Perl.
Your reaction however in my experience is typical of most Perl programmers. But here again, we have a language (Perl) that has been stretched beyond it's intended purposes. Why is Perl used for process control an management these days? It is because over time people get used to using a single language almost exclusively for the purposes of specialization. If you can't specialize, you will never be good at what you are doing. It's the "jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome. The people who became good at Perl decided to stretch the language into performing things that were originally outside of its character. This is where bloat and uglyness begins. I think it is actually better to use those languages and scripting techniques that fit the problem situation the best. In this case we are discussing shell scripting, which traditionally means process management and control, not parsing of text to generate reports.
I suppose it would be nice to generate a gaussian map of languages vs. realms of use. This might make it easier to decide which ones would be better suited to a specific task.
I don't think Perl or Python are "bloated" for their intended purposes. I could change my sentence to read "...shell scripting is a bit too thin to be used for anything beyond process management and control. For the actual development of applications you should use the more streamlined and efficient Perl, or Python". But applications are not what we are talking about doing here. We are talking about shell scripting, which in my view, Perl is not suited for...although you can. This is much like using VB instead of command shell. Why would I write a full fledged VB application just to startup or stop processes?
If you think you've got a language that is best for everything, then I've got a bridge to sell you.