Yeah, CNET is having a top 10 celebration for its 10th aniversary... can we just point everyone to it rather than having to make each one a new article!?
The Jade Empire cutscenes aren't "pixelized" because they are compressed, it's because they use the game engine to render the cutscene!
This is a fairly common way to do cutscenes these days (GTA, the Bioware games, many PC games like DOOM3, etc). IMO it tends to keep you in the game by not switching to prerendered content. FFX prerendered cutscenes were amazing for the first, like 3 hours, then honestly it started getting a bit tiring...
1080i games will finally start using the space on a DVD, but it would take almost 7 CDs worth of data to fill a single layer DVD... (ie 14 for dual layer!) There are quite a few PC games with a LOT of hi-res textures these days and they are nowhere near that. Plus, the whole point of the PS3/XBox360 is that they can render HD-quality 3D in real time (which uses a lot less space for textures and geometry than HD prerendered content would).
Anyway, I agree theoretially Blu-Ray's capacity would give PS3 games more potential, but I'd put money MS or Sony can get by with 9GB for the next few years and no one will know the difference (the MASSIVE amount of resources required to create a great looking HD-res game will be the bottleneck...)
Absolutely! This is the first movie I thought of. Fifth Element? Independence Day!? Give me a break. Neither of those movies can hammer a six inch spike through a board with... um, nevermind.
Shed the myth! Hard disks for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems boot very fast, there is no need to keep your computer on if you will not be using it for a long time.
Shed the myth! Power saving modes for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems use very little power in standby, there is no need to turn your computer off if you will not be using it for a long time.
Sorry, couldn't resist... anyway, I agree with most of your statement, I just think a properly configured machine doesn't have to be manually turned off when you aren't using it.
Actually, it's a LOT more than a block converter. That just modulates analog frequencies - a device to do what he wants would have to decode the MPEG streams for all channels, then re-encode them all to NTSC analog and modulate to whatever frequencies he wants to tune to on his TVs.
Given that ATSC tuner/decoder boxes cost a couple hundred (and only have 1 tuner), hardware to do this for all ATSC channels could get pretty expensive...
I said "10K LESS", not "10K OR LESS"! No, I can't personally imagine paying under $10K for a car:) Though my Integra was only $15K when I bought it over 10 years ago, and the damn thing runs as well as it did when I got it. Which is too bad, I vowed to wait until it dies (or at least needs major service) before I get a new car...
Anyway, my point was to respond to someone who said a car is a necessity but video games are a luxury, while the truth is that most people spend SO MUCH more money on the "luxury" of a nice car than is NECESSARY. Which is perfectly fine, I plan to do just that.
Problem: I need a car to get to work. If it breaks, I must replace it. I do not need video games, though I do want them very badly
People may need a car to get to work, but they rarely NEED one of the $30k+ SUVs that are everywhere these days.
I'm sure upwards of 1/2 the money spent on vehicles these days (at least in the SF Bay Area, jeesh!) is more about luxury than necessity. It's all about disposable income at that point. Spend $10k less on a car and that buys you a LOT of video games. Not that I'm arguing against getting a nice car... you make the money, go spend it on whatever luxuries you want...
You didn't read his post, eh? IT WAS A JOKE! It was all about how to get back into your own country through the usual "illegal" channels that are used daily by thousands of people, anyway...
I'm sure I posted this same rant to/. in the past (go ahead mark me redundant:) - but the last time I had RealPlayer installed on a Windows PC it cost me over $60. I had an ISDN router that auto-dialed, and even though I was careful to disable all the "visible" RealPlayer spyware settings, it STILL decided to send packets home every 5 minutes (I believe my call timeout was 3 minutes). Never again (unless I get a check for $60 in the mail from Mr. Glaser, I suppose...)
I don't think the original poster was necessarily using "sold out" as a bad term... I don't see anything wrong with working hard, taking risks, putting value into your company, and then finally getting something back from it. That's what a "startup" of any type is all about, why is a game developer any different?
Molyneux & Garriot are good examples of those who DID "sell out" (ie cashed in!), and just used that to go start up the next venture & try to innovate again...
All significant AOL users do. It stands for America Online. More importantly, all significant languages used on a large ISP can be cataloged and matched with digital dictionary files.
I have ~20 people on my AIM Buddy list (via GAIM - I use YM for most messaging anyway, but that's a tangent...) Not a SINGLE one is an AOL subscriber. Anyone can use AIM. There are a LOT of non native-English speakers around the world using it.
I never said the VFS was brilliant or even invented for Linux. I did say it's a good OO abstraction (especially for those who somehow think OO has to imply an OO language...) and I would assume Linus knows it well. Say what you want about the Linux kernel or its software engineering (I agree, stability of interfaces is definitely NOT its strength!), but I think Linus has at least proved he's not "clueless".
No exaggeration to my comment - I still believe it's a better OO concept than the original poster will ever come up with... you at least seem to have some useful technical argument in your statements, even if it's not really arguing anything I actually said or implied in my post:)
Oh you have asked him about "OO" yourself, "PimpDawg"? Have you ever even looked at the Linux kernel source? The VFS is a better OO abstraction than anything you will ever come up with in your lifetime. How did this get modded above -1?
Second, games are already multithreaded, but simply moving the sound and input to seperate threads doesn't do anything. You will get less than 1% CPU usage on the second CPU
Try using Intel's new "HD Audio" (or VIA's Envy24T, etc) and see if it uses less than 1% for audio processing. Sure, if you buy a $200 Audigy card you'll probably get down to 5% CPU for audio, but I imagine the dual core will cost less than that, will have more CPU to spare and be more useful for general purpose applications, too.
So I guess my point is that the 'killer app' that starts widespread adaptation of HDTV may have nothing to do with television at all, but rather with the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PC.
You mean PS3, Xbox2, and Gamecube Revolution (or whatever they will call it).
Gotta say playing PC games on an HDTV is most definitely NOT a killer app. I admit it could be very cool for the geek FPS crowd (possibly me included...:), but it's NOT going to be one of the markets that significantly adds to the bottom line...
Still laughing? I'm 8 years out, working for a company every one of you would know, that gives me a new company car every year. Most of the people I work with have 10-25 years experience. Oh yea and last year I cleared $99,700.
What did your big name school that took you an additional 2 years (2 years you were not earning 40-60K and also not saving for retirement), that cost anywhere from 2-3 times a much make you?
1. Crappy filesystem. Resier4 or XFS is what UNIX should have started with and even now we don't have file versioning.
2. POSIX permisions suck. The suid bit sucks even more. ACL's make more sense, and UNIX should have had them from the start. If we're doing it now, capabilities would be even better.
I agree that there is a lot of less than ideal legacy still around, but saying "UNIX should have started with this" is like saying computers should have started with a 3GHz processor and a gigabyte of RAM and they'd be MUCH faster! UNIX and its variants have been under development for 30 years, concepts (and implementations) like journalling filesystems and ACLs don't just spring up overnight.
Agreed. Games are already going the way of television, rife with horribly intrusive advertising combined with zero departure from a few formulaic moneymakers.
I agree with you that there will be a lot of crap put out that just tries to play off of the success of the big titles - but it's not like this hasn't been happening for years in the game industry already. One of the differences from Hollywood is that gamers seem to be much more discriminating than moviegoers. Which makes sense, I would be more likely to throw away $9 by being talked into a crappy movie, but I am much more selective about where I plop down my $50.
I have been contributor to the big grosses of several of the hits this year (GTA, HL2, Far Cry, Halo 2) and I have to say I have not been disappointed yet...
Macintosh are clearly not subject any level of systematic attack. Windows machines are. I suspect the authors knew this, which would explain why they came to the conclusions that they did.
Why should this matter? Sounds like a plus for Macs to me. Not having bought an Apple since they screwed me on the IIgs, I would not say I'm biased. Though after having a Win2k fully patched machine hacked within 2 hours after putting it on the Internet w/out a firewall (my Linux server had a disk failure:) I am definitely not a fan of MS security...
Compare it to 3 year old console FPS (or hell, most 3 year old PC FPS) and, yeah, it pretty much dominates. Wait a few weeks and compare Halo 2 to the current crop for a fair comparison.
That being said, I am looking forward to GTA: San Andreas tomorrow more than any console game EVER:)
I'm just so annoyed by people who trash a console for no good reason. XBox, PS2, GC are all capable of great games. And I have played a number of them on each.
I love how this happens with Google... this/. story is the number 2 news item on the parent post's link to Google... aaargh, my head... Googloop strikes again!
Because China became a nuclear capable nation in 1964. Now they have well over a billion people, and are inevitably headed towards being the #2 superpower after the US... if you want to go tell them they aren't allowed nukes, please go ahead...
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, CNET is having a top 10 celebration for its 10th aniversary... can we just point everyone to it rather than having to make each one a new article!?
a g=bottom
http://www.cnet.com/4520-11136_1-6250162-1.html?t
The Jade Empire cutscenes aren't "pixelized" because they are compressed, it's because they use the game engine to render the cutscene!
This is a fairly common way to do cutscenes these days (GTA, the Bioware games, many PC games like DOOM3, etc). IMO it tends to keep you in the game by not switching to prerendered content. FFX prerendered cutscenes were amazing for the first, like 3 hours, then honestly it started getting a bit tiring...
1080i games will finally start using the space on a DVD, but it would take almost 7 CDs worth of data to fill a single layer DVD... (ie 14 for dual layer!) There are quite a few PC games with a LOT of hi-res textures these days and they are nowhere near that. Plus, the whole point of the PS3/XBox360 is that they can render HD-quality 3D in real time (which uses a lot less space for textures and geometry than HD prerendered content would).
Anyway, I agree theoretially Blu-Ray's capacity would give PS3 games more potential, but I'd put money MS or Sony can get by with 9GB for the next few years and no one will know the difference (the MASSIVE amount of resources required to create a great looking HD-res game will be the bottleneck...)
Absolutely! This is the first movie I thought of. Fifth Element? Independence Day!? Give me a break. Neither of those movies can hammer a six inch spike through a board with... um, nevermind.
Shed the myth! Hard disks for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems boot very fast, there is no need to keep your computer on if you will not be using it for a long time.
Shed the myth! Power saving modes for the most part are now better designed than back in the days, systems use very little power in standby, there is no need to turn your computer off if you will not be using it for a long time.
Sorry, couldn't resist... anyway, I agree with most of your statement, I just think a properly configured machine doesn't have to be manually turned off when you aren't using it.
What you're asking for is a block converter.
Actually, it's a LOT more than a block converter. That just modulates analog frequencies - a device to do what he wants would have to decode the MPEG streams for all channels, then re-encode them all to NTSC analog and modulate to whatever frequencies he wants to tune to on his TVs.
Given that ATSC tuner/decoder boxes cost a couple hundred (and only have 1 tuner), hardware to do this for all ATSC channels could get pretty expensive...
Yow. I saw a Prius on the side of the highway this morning - I was wondering what could have gone wrong with it, since it looked brand new.
:)
The driver was wandering around the hood looking like he wanted to open it, but had no idea what to do when he did
I said "10K LESS", not "10K OR LESS"! No, I can't personally imagine paying under $10K for a car :) Though my Integra was only $15K when I bought it over 10 years ago, and the damn thing runs as well as it did when I got it. Which is too bad, I vowed to wait until it dies (or at least needs major service) before I get a new car...
Anyway, my point was to respond to someone who said a car is a necessity but video games are a luxury, while the truth is that most people spend SO MUCH more money on the "luxury" of a nice car than is NECESSARY. Which is perfectly fine, I plan to do just that.
Problem: I need a car to get to work. If it breaks, I must replace it. I do not need video games, though I do want them very badly
People may need a car to get to work, but they rarely NEED one of the $30k+ SUVs that are everywhere these days.
I'm sure upwards of 1/2 the money spent on vehicles these days (at least in the SF Bay Area, jeesh!) is more about luxury than necessity. It's all about disposable income at that point. Spend $10k less on a car and that buys you a LOT of video games. Not that I'm arguing against getting a nice car... you make the money, go spend it on whatever luxuries you want...
You didn't read his post, eh? IT WAS A JOKE! It was all about how to get back into your own country through the usual "illegal" channels that are used daily by thousands of people, anyway...
I'm sure I posted this same rant to /. in the past (go ahead mark me redundant :) - but the last time I had RealPlayer installed on a Windows PC it cost me over $60. I had an ISDN router that auto-dialed, and even though I was careful to disable all the "visible" RealPlayer spyware settings, it STILL decided to send packets home every 5 minutes (I believe my call timeout was 3 minutes). Never again (unless I get a check for $60 in the mail from Mr. Glaser, I suppose...)
I don't think the original poster was necessarily using "sold out" as a bad term... I don't see anything wrong with working hard, taking risks, putting value into your company, and then finally getting something back from it. That's what a "startup" of any type is all about, why is a game developer any different?
Molyneux & Garriot are good examples of those who DID "sell out" (ie cashed in!), and just used that to go start up the next venture & try to innovate again...
All significant AOL users do. It stands for America Online. More importantly, all significant languages used on a large ISP can be cataloged and matched with digital dictionary files.
I have ~20 people on my AIM Buddy list (via GAIM - I use YM for most messaging anyway, but that's a tangent...) Not a SINGLE one is an AOL subscriber. Anyone can use AIM. There are a LOT of non native-English speakers around the world using it.
I never said the VFS was brilliant or even invented for Linux. I did say it's a good OO abstraction (especially for those who somehow think OO has to imply an OO language...) and I would assume Linus knows it well. Say what you want about the Linux kernel or its software engineering (I agree, stability of interfaces is definitely NOT its strength!), but I think Linus has at least proved he's not "clueless".
:)
No exaggeration to my comment - I still believe it's a better OO concept than the original poster will ever come up with... you at least seem to have some useful technical argument in your statements, even if it's not really arguing anything I actually said or implied in my post
Oh you have asked him about "OO" yourself, "PimpDawg"?
Have you ever even looked at the Linux kernel source? The VFS is a better OO abstraction than anything you will ever come up with in your lifetime.
How did this get modded above -1?
Second, games are already multithreaded, but simply moving the sound and input to seperate threads doesn't do anything. You will get less than 1% CPU usage on the second CPU
Try using Intel's new "HD Audio" (or VIA's Envy24T, etc) and see if it uses less than 1% for audio processing. Sure, if you buy a $200 Audigy card you'll probably get down to 5% CPU for audio, but I imagine the dual core will cost less than that, will have more CPU to spare and be more useful for general purpose applications, too.
So I guess my point is that the 'killer app' that starts widespread adaptation of HDTV may have nothing to do with television at all, but rather with the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, and PC.
:), but it's NOT going to be one of the markets that significantly adds to the bottom line...
You mean PS3, Xbox2, and Gamecube Revolution (or whatever they will call it).
Gotta say playing PC games on an HDTV is most definitely NOT a killer app. I admit it could be very cool for the geek FPS crowd (possibly me included...
Still laughing? I'm 8 years out, working for a company every one of you would know, that gives me a new company car every year. Most of the people I work with have 10-25 years experience. Oh yea and last year I cleared $99,700.
What did your big name school that took you an additional 2 years (2 years you were not earning 40-60K and also not saving for retirement), that cost anywhere from 2-3 times a much make you?
Humble?
How do you use base 256 in a URL in any useful way? Remember, you need to represent each digit as a single character.
Anyway, the patent does NOT just state base 30 as the only way to encode these values, that's only one example!
It's actually trying to patent base-ANYTHING numbers combined with representing floating point as integers (ie FIXED POINT!?)
Amazing.
2. POSIX permisions suck. The suid bit sucks even more. ACL's make more sense, and UNIX should have had them from the start. If we're doing it now, capabilities would be even better.
I agree that there is a lot of less than ideal legacy still around, but saying "UNIX should have started with this" is like saying computers should have started with a 3GHz processor and a gigabyte of RAM and they'd be MUCH faster! UNIX and its variants have been under development for 30 years, concepts (and implementations) like journalling filesystems and ACLs don't just spring up overnight.
http://www.mini-itx.com/projects/gingerbreadvillag e/
I agree with you that there will be a lot of crap put out that just tries to play off of the success of the big titles - but it's not like this hasn't been happening for years in the game industry already. One of the differences from Hollywood is that gamers seem to be much more discriminating than moviegoers. Which makes sense, I would be more likely to throw away $9 by being talked into a crappy movie, but I am much more selective about where I plop down my $50.
I have been contributor to the big grosses of several of the hits this year (GTA, HL2, Far Cry, Halo 2) and I have to say I have not been disappointed yet...
Why should this matter? Sounds like a plus for Macs to me. Not having bought an Apple since they screwed me on the IIgs, I would not say I'm biased. Though after having a Win2k fully patched machine hacked within 2 hours after putting it on the Internet w/out a firewall (my Linux server had a disk failure :) I am definitely not a fan of MS security...
HALO IS THREE YEARS OLD.
:)
Compare it to 3 year old console FPS (or hell, most 3 year old PC FPS) and, yeah, it pretty much dominates. Wait a few weeks and compare Halo 2 to the current crop for a fair comparison.
That being said, I am looking forward to GTA: San Andreas tomorrow more than any console game EVER
I'm just so annoyed by people who trash a console for no good reason. XBox, PS2, GC are all capable of great games. And I have played a number of them on each.
I love how this happens with Google... this /. story is the number 2 news item on the parent post's link to Google... aaargh, my head... Googloop strikes again!
Because China became a nuclear capable nation in 1964. Now they have well over a billion people, and are inevitably headed towards being the #2 superpower after the US... if you want to go tell them they aren't allowed nukes, please go ahead...