And like any software gaming company, EA has had it's share of stinkers, too. (I have almost - after intense exorcism - forgotten about the one with the baby angel you fly around possessing people, which I purchased during one of those 24-hour brain tumors you get every year during flu season.)
Actually, the game you refer to was undoubtably Messiah, published by Interplay -- who has/had no connection to EA.
> 1. Stop releasing sequels. > 4. Stop relying on special effects. > 5. Write a good story, dammit.
March of the Penguins
Broken Flowers
The Aristocrats
Hustle & Flow
Grizzly Man
Cinderella Man
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Murderball
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
And those are just the current releases. Check 'em out on rottentomatoes.com or your favorite movie site. No sequels, no remakes, no special effects, and good writing (or good moviemaking) in spades.
GTA is essentially a rated R piece of entertainment. Unfortunately for the ESRB, they've gone with an unknown set of ratings for games: T, M, AO. If the game had been rated R instead all along, would you have the same objections?
(And after the discovery of the 'hot coffee' mod, they could have changed the rating to NC-17 and all would be well.)
- Baldur's Gate Series - Warcraft Series - Diablo Series - Starcraft
all were programmed entirely to the DirectX APIs for their first release. There were subsequent porting projects to bring them cross platform.
There's just so little value in "cross-platform" development when 99.5% of your intended audience is running the the same platform. In any case Direct3D's driver support is generally better.
Rescue Raiders beat them all...
on
HIstory of RTS Games
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Rescue Raiders, an Apple II game put out by Sirtech in the early eighties ('83 or '84) beat them all to the punch. It was a 2d side scroller, but it had most all the elements of present day RTSes. (it most resembled Herzog Zwei)
You piloted a helicopter (a la Choplifter), but this chopper had a main gun, anti-air missiles, and bombs. You had to progress from the left side of the battle field to the right and kill your enemy's base. To help you do this, you could "summon" tanks, infantry, missile launchers, and demolition trucks. The goal essentially was to attack, and protect a demolition truck long enough for it to get to the other side and blow up your enemy's base.
Think about it you pay taxes part of those taxes pay your salary. In this case since the public paid for the code to be written it should be able to be used by anyone who wants to at will.
Well... by that logic I should be able to download and use Carnivore... or any of the multitude of fascinating signal analysis programs developed by the NSA, including the classified ones...
Or perhaps code developed for SDI during the '80s?
Oxryly
Re:PC is hardly dead - but it may not be very well
on
Vanishing Game Genres
·
· Score: 1
There are people out there fighting the good fight. Its difficult, and the odds are against you, but truly different and original games are being made right now.
They do provide with a service (which you must pay for) after you purchase the TiVo unit.
AFAIK, the TiVo is fairly useless without that service, so: if they suspend the service for hacking your TiVo to add a second hard drive, there's really not much use in hacking it *and* the/. community has another evil corporation to hate for removing the user's right to tamper with their unit.
Basically you've said that if you separate design from implementation, the entire process goes smoother. I agree heartily.
Determining whether a problem or necessary addition is located in the implementation or the design aspect is crucial to proceeding correctly.
So in light of this, coder's block is your brain telling you that the design is incomplete or even incorrect! Proceeding with implementation will garner you bugs and problems down the line.
Honesty is the best policy... Mozilla as open source is becoming a bit of a failure.
Its time to complete the post mortem and move on.
Oxryly
Code as free speech? It won't hold up....
on
NYT On DeCSS Case
·
· Score: 1
Consider Lessig's argument that "Code is law".
If code were to be protected as free speech, and law is implemented in code, that opens the door for unjust and unethical laws to be passed (written) and subsequently protected by the first amendment.
Its the collision of two lawyerly views of code, and the result is quite a mess.
Are you interested in cash donations like this? Or will they cause legal headaches, bureacracy, etc...etc...? Say the word and I'll send some your way (via PayPal).
Every thing from a virtual file system, to memory management, to memory protection, multiple users, and a robust networking system, all take there toll on system performance, and frankly, are useless on a console.
Ha! Are you a C64 programmer? Everything you list, apart from multiple users, is a huge boon to a next generation game! A robust networking system? Have you played Q3, UT, or Everquest...? Its essential! Memory management? With only 64mb of physical memory VM its a huge plus!
While PSX2 starts with totally writing to the metal, then adds ease of use things such as OpenGL and other libraries, Linux starts out with a very abstracted system.
This is one of the primary complaints against the PSX2. It requires too much "writing to the metal". Its very difficult to program, and as a result nearly the entire first round of games (as far as the recent E3 showed) are graphically unimpressive. They are choppy and don't look much different than dreamcast games. The PSX2's biggest benefit will be backwards compatibility...
That brings to issue the problematic hard drives. While great for a set top box, they are relativly useless for a console,
Don't quote me on this but I believe, like with the X-Box, that the hard drive will be there for VM swapping... making the 64mb RAM less of a hard limit. In any case swapping to a hard drive sure beats doing custom swapping from a CD or DVD.
People don't want to put up with patches, upgrading, or the difficulties of managing a PC
There is very little in the Indrema console description that indicates that patches, hardware upgrades, or "management" will be absolutely necessary.
Patches will probably not be feasible: developers have no way of guaranteeing users will be able to get the patch. People with the console connected to the net will be in the minority, so most games will be singleplayer unpatchable, just like with the other consoles.
The upgradeable GPU at worst will look like a Sega Genesis CD32... that is a device that may not be successful or required and certainly won't detract from the basic system as it ships.
As for management? It seems to me that the system will be just like a playstation... stick the DVD in and hit the power button and wait, then play!
I think overall they do have a good plan, and the pitfalls they face will stem from NVidia providing them with fast working drivers and developers getting on the bandwagon with titles.
But you're right... Doom has been done, and so much of what made it great can't be redone at this point.
First Looking Glass closes down, now this news: it seems a depressing trend is starting.
Bold original new PC games (maybe console games too) are too risky. The financial backing tends to suffer... just see Interplay's and Acclaims potential delisting from NASDAQ.
Id had the money to do new original stuff, but they're reverting to the old school. How unfortunate.
4.
Early Comments. This would be sticky. And I really think the USPTO would have problems. Along with those who would be applying for the patent. If my patent application is rejected, then I can still develop it in secret. However, that secret would be out of the bag in this case.
You might let your secret out of the bag; but in the end, if it was a "patentable" secret, all your potential competitors whom you've tipped off will be out of luck... your patent will stick.
This doesn't address the most difficult parts of this problem: multimedia. Images and sounds don't have the equivalent of ASCII. There is no universal standard that all tools access the same. GIF used to be like that, but look what happened to it. JPEG is nice, but its lossy, so there goes your perfect archive.
Then there is the further problem of giving Joe Computer User out there the capability of building a "digital" history. With companies like Kodak and Apple goading people to using proprietary data formats like FlashPix or Quicktime its an uphill battle. And once again, there's no ASCII equivalent to fall back upon.
Ugh... this really brings back the corporatism fueled pessimism I was feeling earlier with the DVD/DeCSS debacle.
Note that the content they are fighting about is not necessarily endemic to DVDs. You could produce a new format (or even use something not so well suited, like CD) and put CSS encrypted content on there, and you'd have the same legal battle.
So the key is to start using the enormous storing power of DVDs without encryption.
Imagine if someone out there produced an online movie store that was like mp3.com.... you go there, buy a DVD, and immediately download the *unencrypted*.vob files to burn onto your own personal DVD. Voila... your have a nice DVD with no pesky CSS.
I'm a professional game developer and I've been using W2K for over six months now. The only reason I reboot is due to bugs in the immature D3D hardware acceleration drivers, and that particular problem is mostly gone and anyway up to NVidia or 3dfx to fix now.
I value the stability, speed, compatability, and ease of use/installation/maintenance. On those points W2k scores well. But again, YMMV... I crash it maybe twice a month at most. And it runs *everything* I'd like it to (except Battlezone II, but they're working on it =).
However, it does not matter. The right to free speech has never been an abolute right. You may be prosecuted for yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, likewise you may be prosecuted for photocopying a book and distributing copies.
In this particular case, the right to free speech is being subtlely encroached upon further, on the basis that it is already a "compromised" right.
You no longer have the right to circumvent technological controls on copywritten material. You do not have the right to traffick in material (code in this case) that aids or makes possible the circumvention of those technological controls over the copywritten material.
The rights of the producer of the material (in this case the studios) to create the controls has precedence over your right to bypass those controls. The large private corporation is being given the benefit of the doubt, and you are not. Its a blanket restriction and it says so in black and white in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It is law. The judges ruling merely reflects that law.
The code is free speech, but it is illegal as a result of its purpose. Additionally, the DMCA outlaws trafficking of the code, and that is what is at stake in this case.
Welcome to the new digital world. Enjoy your stay courtesy of Sony, MGM, AOL, Microsoft, Time-Warner, etc. etc. Oh yeah, and national borders no longer protect you.
Slashdot Mirror
I've had a dual tuner 250 Gb HD Tivo for 2 years now... what the hell is this announcement about??
Actually, the game you refer to was undoubtably Messiah, published by Interplay -- who has/had no connection to EA.
Oxryly
> 1. Stop releasing sequels.
> 4. Stop relying on special effects.
> 5. Write a good story, dammit.
March of the Penguins
Broken Flowers
The Aristocrats
Hustle & Flow
Grizzly Man
Cinderella Man
The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Me and You and Everyone We Know
Murderball
The 40-Year-Old Virgin
And those are just the current releases. Check 'em out on rottentomatoes.com or your favorite movie site. No sequels, no remakes, no special effects, and good writing (or good moviemaking) in spades.
Oxryly
GTA is essentially a rated R piece of entertainment. Unfortunately for the ESRB, they've gone with an unknown set of ratings for games: T, M, AO. If the game had been rated R instead all along, would you have the same objections?
(And after the discovery of the 'hot coffee' mod, they could have changed the rating to NC-17 and all would be well.)
So, to paraphrase General Eisenhower: when writing working software the UML is useless, but producing the UML is essential.
Oxryly
That list isn't entirely accurate. I know that
- Baldur's Gate Series
- Warcraft Series
- Diablo Series
- Starcraft
all were programmed entirely to the DirectX APIs for their first release. There were subsequent porting projects to bring them cross platform.
There's just so little value in "cross-platform" development when 99.5% of your intended audience is running the the same platform. In any case Direct3D's driver support is generally better.
Oxryly
Oxryly
Rescue Raiders, an Apple II game put out by Sirtech in the early eighties ('83 or '84) beat them all to the punch. It was a 2d side scroller, but it had most all the elements of present day RTSes. (it most resembled Herzog Zwei)
You piloted a helicopter (a la Choplifter), but this chopper had a main gun, anti-air missiles, and bombs. You had to progress from the left side of the battle field to the right and kill your enemy's base. To help you do this, you could "summon" tanks, infantry, missile launchers, and demolition trucks. The goal essentially was to attack, and protect a demolition truck long enough for it to get to the other side and blow up your enemy's base.
See the link for more details.
Oxryly
Its not like Microsoft's buy in to Corel was a hostile takeover. Blame Microsoft all you want but Corel went into this partnership knowingly...
Perhaps if they had stuck to their guns, left MS out in the cold and stayed in the Linux business, nothing would be different today ???
Oxryly
It is a personal scooter powered by human urine (with the help of something vaguely like the Stirling engine). You heard it here first!
Oxryly
Or perhaps code developed for SDI during the '80s?
Oxryly
There are people out there fighting the good fight. Its difficult, and the odds are against you, but truly different and original games are being made right now.
(Shameless plug alert) Take a look at Sacrifice
Oxryly
Who would ever seriously consider trying to port *or* run X on a PDA???
Is that not like trying to stuff 12 people in a phone booth? Its a trick... its a practical waste of hardware.
Oxryly
They do provide with a service (which you must pay for) after you purchase the TiVo unit.
/. community has another evil corporation to hate for removing the user's right to tamper with their unit.
/. news.
AFAIK, the TiVo is fairly useless without that service, so: if they suspend the service for hacking your TiVo to add a second hard drive, there's really not much use in hacking it *and* the
Thus the view that this story is
Oxryly
Interesting...
Basically you've said that if you separate design from implementation, the entire process goes smoother. I agree heartily.
Determining whether a problem or necessary addition is located in the implementation or the design aspect is crucial to proceeding correctly.
So in light of this, coder's block is your brain telling you that the design is incomplete or even incorrect! Proceeding with implementation will garner you bugs and problems down the line.
Oxryly
Honesty is the best policy... Mozilla as open source is becoming a bit of a failure.
Its time to complete the post mortem and move on.
Oxryly
Consider Lessig's argument that "Code is law".
If code were to be protected as free speech, and law is implemented in code, that opens the door for unjust and unethical laws to be passed (written) and subsequently protected by the first amendment.
Its the collision of two lawyerly views of code, and the result is quite a mess.
Oxryly
So Rusty, if you're reading this...
Are you interested in cash donations like this? Or will they cause legal headaches, bureacracy, etc...etc...? Say the word and I'll send some your way (via PayPal).
Oxryly
I think your agrument has several holes.
Every thing from a virtual file system, to memory management, to memory protection, multiple users, and a robust networking system, all take there toll on system performance, and frankly, are useless on a console.
Ha! Are you a C64 programmer? Everything you list, apart from multiple users, is a huge boon to a next generation game! A robust networking system? Have you played Q3, UT, or Everquest...? Its essential! Memory management? With only 64mb of physical memory VM its a huge plus!
While PSX2 starts with totally writing to the metal, then adds ease of use things such as OpenGL and other libraries, Linux starts out with a very abstracted system.
This is one of the primary complaints against the PSX2. It requires too much "writing to the metal". Its very difficult to program, and as a result nearly the entire first round of games (as far as the recent E3 showed) are graphically unimpressive. They are choppy and don't look much different than dreamcast games. The PSX2's biggest benefit will be backwards compatibility...
That brings to issue the problematic hard drives. While great for a set top box, they are relativly useless for a console,
Don't quote me on this but I believe, like with the X-Box, that the hard drive will be there for VM swapping... making the 64mb RAM less of a hard limit. In any case swapping to a hard drive sure beats doing custom swapping from a CD or DVD.
People don't want to put up with patches, upgrading, or the difficulties of managing a PC
There is very little in the Indrema console description that indicates that patches, hardware upgrades, or "management" will be absolutely necessary.
Patches will probably not be feasible: developers have no way of guaranteeing users will be able to get the patch. People with the console connected to the net will be in the minority, so most games will be singleplayer unpatchable, just like with the other consoles.
The upgradeable GPU at worst will look like a Sega Genesis CD32... that is a device that may not be successful or required and certainly won't detract from the basic system as it ships.
As for management? It seems to me that the system will be just like a playstation... stick the DVD in and hit the power button and wait, then play!
I think overall they do have a good plan, and the pitfalls they face will stem from NVidia providing them with fast working drivers and developers getting on the bandwagon with titles.
Oxryly
...so true, so highly rated, yet so few replies!
But you're right... Doom has been done, and so much of what made it great can't be redone at this point.
First Looking Glass closes down, now this news: it seems a depressing trend is starting.
Bold original new PC games (maybe console games too) are too risky. The financial backing tends to suffer... just see Interplay's and Acclaims potential delisting from NASDAQ.
Id had the money to do new original stuff, but they're reverting to the old school. How unfortunate.
Oxryly
Oxryly
This doesn't address the most difficult parts of this problem: multimedia. Images and sounds don't have the equivalent of ASCII. There is no universal standard that all tools access the same. GIF used to be like that, but look what happened to it. JPEG is nice, but its lossy, so there goes your perfect archive.
Then there is the further problem of giving Joe Computer User out there the capability of building a "digital" history. With companies like Kodak and Apple goading people to using proprietary data formats like FlashPix or Quicktime its an uphill battle. And once again, there's no ASCII equivalent to fall back upon.
Ugh... this really brings back the corporatism fueled pessimism I was feeling earlier with the DVD/DeCSS debacle.
Oxryly
Hmmm...
.vob files to burn onto your own personal DVD. Voila... your have a nice DVD with no pesky CSS.
Note that the content they are fighting about is not necessarily endemic to DVDs. You could produce a new format (or even use something not so well suited, like CD) and put CSS encrypted content on there, and you'd have the same legal battle.
So the key is to start using the enormous storing power of DVDs without encryption.
Imagine if someone out there produced an online movie store that was like mp3.com.... you go there, buy a DVD, and immediately download the *unencrypted*
Oxryly
Well your mileage may vary
I'm a professional game developer and I've been using W2K for over six months now. The only reason I reboot is due to bugs in the immature D3D hardware acceleration drivers, and that particular problem is mostly gone and anyway up to NVidia or 3dfx to fix now.
I value the stability, speed, compatability, and ease of use/installation/maintenance. On those points W2k scores well. But again, YMMV... I crash it maybe twice a month at most. And it runs *everything* I'd like it to (except Battlezone II, but they're working on it =).
Oxryly
Well, you are correct. The code is free speech.
However, it does not matter. The right to free speech has never been an abolute right. You may be prosecuted for yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater, likewise you may be prosecuted for photocopying a book and distributing copies.
In this particular case, the right to free speech is being subtlely encroached upon further, on the basis that it is already a "compromised" right.
You no longer have the right to circumvent technological controls on copywritten material. You do not have the right to traffick in material (code in this case) that aids or makes possible the circumvention of those technological controls over the copywritten material.
The rights of the producer of the material (in this case the studios) to create the controls has precedence over your right to bypass those controls. The large private corporation is being given the benefit of the doubt, and you are not. Its a blanket restriction and it says so in black and white in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). It is law. The judges ruling merely reflects that law.
The code is free speech, but it is illegal as a result of its purpose. Additionally, the DMCA outlaws trafficking of the code, and that is what is at stake in this case.
Welcome to the new digital world. Enjoy your stay courtesy of Sony, MGM, AOL, Microsoft, Time-Warner, etc. etc. Oh yeah, and national borders no longer protect you.
Oxryly