A. I'm pretty sure the TNT2 guy was joking. B. 22FPS is perfectly fine. The problem comes when your framerate jumps around - if it's constant, it's not a huge problem as long as it's not too low.
As far as making a real dent in software sales there... well, let's just say that I went to four or five different malls in Malaysia when I was there and not once did I see any legit software offered.
So, now we're going to get a game that won't run on C3s (Cyrixes), will have millions of NPCs who sound alike, and will have us falling into the void every time we bump into a corner.
That and they'd get dinged on it if they didn't give their journalists the freedom to write well. They/are/ trying to be a reputable source of information.:)
I don't know about you, but I run Windows (2000 these days), keep it updated, I recently installed a firewall, I use Firefox instead of IE, I use Pegasus Mail and occasionally run Ad-Aware. Also, I haven't had a virus scanner installed since 1999.
I've never had a problem with a viral infection (although I admit Blaster scared me). I ran an online virus checker - twice - in the past month, and it found nothing despite my never having used it before on my personal desktop system(s). I guess I'm just incredibly lucky or something, right?;p
Windows isn't a blackhole for viruses as some people like to overemphasize it as. Windows is a blackhole for people who do silly things like run ridiculous software or click on attachments when they shouldn't.
...that is, they probably didn't want to cannibalize that cash cow of theirs to feed another world. I believe that was pretty much the reason why they canned UO2 way back when.
It's not just another MMORPG; Garriott's Tabula Rasa is supposed to be very different, combining aspects of single-player games (ie. you are the big hero, unique quests, etcetera) with a community setup (so you meet and come across other players who have their own unique quests which may intersect with your own). Garriott and his team's gone back to try to figure out what makes games fun, working off of that concept; I've spoken to another designer who explained that game-making was typically creating a lot of systems and hoping that the end-product will be fun.
Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm looking forward to their creation. =)
Yay LEDs, they're the wave of the future because they're all blue and such. It reminds me of those old Flash Gordon episodes where everything was polished chrome and looked like it could kill you if someone flicked a switch somewhere.
Oh yeah, and I already can't reach the site. *laugh*
Ouch! So much for customer satisfaction...
on
The 3Com Saga
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
That's a very damning look at 3com... customers are supposed to be one of the most important things to a company (because if they're not happy, what're they going to do? Not come back, that's what) but the article insinuates that they dumped them like a cart full of wrinkled potatoes.
I still like their products... or did like their products, I'm not sure how this outsourcing will affect their quality of goods. It seems like they're stripping away the one thing that people still like about them.
...were so buggy? The only major bug in UVII: Black Gate at first release was the key bug, where you would lose a key whenever you went to sleep - but they quickly fixed that with a patch (I admit it was the first time I ever had to patch a game, though). I don't remember encountering any game-breaking bugs in UVIII either, aside from that game simply not being finished. In Serpent Isle, there was a room that you couldn't leave after entering - of course, that room was an easter egg anyway, so it did not at all affect the gameplay.
I'm not saying none were buggy, but I think you exaggerate overly much.;)
I have a There.come beta account. Or/had/ a beta account... I don't even know if they still are in that stage, I never bothered to pursue it after I captured the CD and discovered that IE had to be set as default browser.;)
From what I read of There.com, the world seemed to be a marketer's utopia; the essential keystone of the world would be that you'd pay real money to buy virtual accessories so you could fit in with the rest of the population. Now, while I'm not going to rip on the flagrant shallowness of such an existence, I would like to note that I can already do that in real life and derive a more concrete sense of accomplishment doing so. Sort of.
I feel that purely social realities are profitable and sustainable (ignoring M* of old), but that they aren't approaching it from the right perspective. They should take on a more design-centric process for developing these things.
Someone posted about Furcadia earlier. The nice thing about Furcadia is that you have the freedom of doing many things there - just socializing with friends, roleplaying, even scripting and designing new areas for people to explore. The other really nice thing is that they don't make you pay out the nose to access the community.
Note: That was not my auction... but I wish it were! Somebody sold a gmail invite for $130USD a little while ago, but the market's become quickly saturated and they're going for a lot less now. It makes sense though - the only people buying these are buying good and unique aliases before they're all taken. I myself sold an invitation a while ago (to a lawyer, no less), although for a lot less than what that invitation went for.
It's very interesting the way they approached the design of the game. Instead of pouncing on a smattering of ideas and play mechanics and pushing them together, Long and Garriott whent back to basics and tried to figure out exactly what makes games fun, and how they could narrow down gameplay to these specifications. Instead of making "just another MMO game", they're trying to do something newish and somewhat untried by combining many styles of play and interaction from various different genres. While it's not completely free of derivation (*grin*), the concepts just may work - perhaps not altogether, but overall the game sounds like a pleasure. I suppose in a way, this sounds like those cross-genre titles that've been failing to dominate sales in the past decade, but the problem with them is that [I suspect oft-times] the developers took discrete and traditional modes of play [for those genres] and tried to cobble them together with narry a thought about how players would appreciate them and how the game experience would be altered according to the mindsets that came with them.
There are specific design processes that they are utilizing here that are significant, irregardless of their knowledge of them - they're trying to focus on how users experience and deal with/enjoy games instead of just trying ideas out in a shotgun approach.
I think I'm going to put my money on it when it finally debuts.
Bart had had his tool shut down by Microsoft before. In fact, he had to redo some work and submit it to Microsoft for them to okay it; I'm assuming that approval hasn't changed, assuming his continuing work is also very much original.
Slashdot Mirror
A. I'm pretty sure the TNT2 guy was joking.
B. 22FPS is perfectly fine. The problem comes when your framerate jumps around - if it's constant, it's not a huge problem as long as it's not too low.
I don't know. A console makes a great content delivery system and opens up the marketplace to further datamining.
Off-topic, and unimportant, but that Apple description reads like one of those old 80's advertisements where they dream up scenarios for you.
As far as making a real dent in software sales there... well, let's just say that I went to four or five different malls in Malaysia when I was there and not once did I see any legit software offered.
So, now we're going to get a game that won't run on C3s (Cyrixes), will have millions of NPCs who sound alike, and will have us falling into the void every time we bump into a corner.
That and they'd get dinged on it if they didn't give their journalists the freedom to write well. They /are/ trying to be a reputable source of information. :)
I don't know about you, but I run Windows (2000 these days), keep it updated, I recently installed a firewall, I use Firefox instead of IE, I use Pegasus Mail and occasionally run Ad-Aware. Also, I haven't had a virus scanner installed since 1999.
;p
I've never had a problem with a viral infection (although I admit Blaster scared me). I ran an online virus checker - twice - in the past month, and it found nothing despite my never having used it before on my personal desktop system(s). I guess I'm just incredibly lucky or something, right?
Windows isn't a blackhole for viruses as some people like to overemphasize it as. Windows is a blackhole for people who do silly things like run ridiculous software or click on attachments when they shouldn't.
...that is, they probably didn't want to cannibalize that cash cow of theirs to feed another world. I believe that was pretty much the reason why they canned UO2 way back when.
Goooo Marvin!
I think I'll stick with gmail. For one thing, they don't want to know where you live and what you named your pet!
...except that there's a 10mb limit on message sizes. I suppose they don't want people warezing or using their servers as data backup.
It's not just another MMORPG; Garriott's Tabula Rasa is supposed to be very different, combining aspects of single-player games (ie. you are the big hero, unique quests, etcetera) with a community setup (so you meet and come across other players who have their own unique quests which may intersect with your own). Garriott and his team's gone back to try to figure out what makes games fun, working off of that concept; I've spoken to another designer who explained that game-making was typically creating a lot of systems and hoping that the end-product will be fun.
Anyway, as I'm sure you can tell, I'm looking forward to their creation. =)
Yay LEDs, they're the wave of the future because they're all blue and such. It reminds me of those old Flash Gordon episodes where everything was polished chrome and looked like it could kill you if someone flicked a switch somewhere.
Oh yeah, and I already can't reach the site. *laugh*
That's a very damning look at 3com... customers are supposed to be one of the most important things to a company (because if they're not happy, what're they going to do? Not come back, that's what) but the article insinuates that they dumped them like a cart full of wrinkled potatoes.
I still like their products... or did like their products, I'm not sure how this outsourcing will affect their quality of goods. It seems like they're stripping away the one thing that people still like about them.
Oh well. I wish them luck.
A tough united stand is what we need to get rid of spam. Filters, large fines (unless they're -really- large) and self-policing restrictions won't.
This reminds me of how Al Capone (I think) got thrown in jail for tax evasion.
Hmm. Since when did they build another bridge out of town?
...were so buggy? The only major bug in UVII: Black Gate at first release was the key bug, where you would lose a key whenever you went to sleep - but they quickly fixed that with a patch (I admit it was the first time I ever had to patch a game, though). I don't remember encountering any game-breaking bugs in UVIII either, aside from that game simply not being finished. In Serpent Isle, there was a room that you couldn't leave after entering - of course, that room was an easter egg anyway, so it did not at all affect the gameplay.
;)
I'm not saying none were buggy, but I think you exaggerate overly much.
I have a There.come beta account. Or /had/ a beta account... I don't even know if they still are in that stage, I never bothered to pursue it after I captured the CD and discovered that IE had to be set as default browser. ;)
From what I read of There.com, the world seemed to be a marketer's utopia; the essential keystone of the world would be that you'd pay real money to buy virtual accessories so you could fit in with the rest of the population. Now, while I'm not going to rip on the flagrant shallowness of such an existence, I would like to note that I can already do that in real life and derive a more concrete sense of accomplishment doing so. Sort of.
I feel that purely social realities are profitable and sustainable (ignoring M* of old), but that they aren't approaching it from the right perspective. They should take on a more design-centric process for developing these things.
Someone posted about Furcadia earlier. The nice thing about Furcadia is that you have the freedom of doing many things there - just socializing with friends, roleplaying, even scripting and designing new areas for people to explore. The other really nice thing is that they don't make you pay out the nose to access the community.
That and the worth would be constantly fluctuating... like other currency, actually. Now, I only wish that I could actually read the article...
...it reminds me of the phage/bacteriophage, actually. If I recall, those viruses kill bacteria(judging from the name...) by infecting them.
This goes on to remind me of that recent anti-HIV virus that's been in the news.
http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&categ ory=4291&item=3675169168&rd=1
Note: That was not my auction... but I wish it were! Somebody sold a gmail invite for $130USD a little while ago, but the market's become quickly saturated and they're going for a lot less now. It makes sense though - the only people buying these are buying good and unique aliases before they're all taken. I myself sold an invitation a while ago (to a lawyer, no less), although for a lot less than what that invitation went for.
It's very interesting the way they approached the design of the game. Instead of pouncing on a smattering of ideas and play mechanics and pushing them together, Long and Garriott whent back to basics and tried to figure out exactly what makes games fun, and how they could narrow down gameplay to these specifications. Instead of making "just another MMO game", they're trying to do something newish and somewhat untried by combining many styles of play and interaction from various different genres. While it's not completely free of derivation (*grin*), the concepts just may work - perhaps not altogether, but overall the game sounds like a pleasure. I suppose in a way, this sounds like those cross-genre titles that've been failing to dominate sales in the past decade, but the problem with them is that [I suspect oft-times] the developers took discrete and traditional modes of play [for those genres] and tried to cobble them together with narry a thought about how players would appreciate them and how the game experience would be altered according to the mindsets that came with them.
There are specific design processes that they are utilizing here that are significant, irregardless of their knowledge of them - they're trying to focus on how users experience and deal with/enjoy games instead of just trying ideas out in a shotgun approach.
I think I'm going to put my money on it when it finally debuts.
Yay. I first heard of them - on Slashdot, even - when they sued a spammer and won. :) I can afford to respect a company who will sue a spammer. ;)
Jane's Simulations.
Bart had had his tool shut down by Microsoft before. In fact, he had to redo some work and submit it to Microsoft for them to okay it; I'm assuming that approval hasn't changed, assuming his continuing work is also very much original.