So long as the game is "reduce the other team's score to 0," you're going to have these verbs:
- reduce enemy's score
- increase allies's score The game is going to focus on these verbs with a very tight focus; the 'damage (per second)' and 'healer' roles. These are the only two that really matter, because the only way you can win is with enough uses of that first verb. Hell, you don't even need the second verb, just have a high enough score on your team that the other team can't possibly reduce it to 0 in time. This strategy used when attempting a "defeat the boss in less than X minutes" challenge -- just one verb, used over and over again.
There are two more roles that are emergent properties of this system (which means they will appear whether you plan for it or not):
- improve allies's performance
- impair enemy's performance These are the 'buffer' and 'debuffer' roles. 'Tanks' from EverQuest, WoWarcraft and other DikuMUD-based MMOs fall into the 'debuffer' role because they force the computer-controlled enemies to chose an sub-optimal target for their "reduce enemy's score" actions. To be exact, their actions are going through the the tank as a bottleneck, so that allies can focus all their "increase allies's score" actions. If they can't be that bottleneck (such as dealing with a PvP team of opponents), the tank's debuffs are ineffective, and the enemy's ability to reduce your team's score is unimpaired.
If you want to get rid of this "four-part trinity" inherited from DikuMUDs, then you have to get rid of the hitpoints mechanic as the only means of resolving contests.
You can get a guess from his achievements.
5906 quests completed, at an average of 14.55 quests per day = 405.9 days played. Probably 405.9 days online with the game, since he's got achievements from events that were over a year ago.
"We should obfuscate the machine's use so hackers won't see easy targets."
You have to be kidding me. Most of the attacks won't bother trying to decypher some elaborate naming scheme, or get HR records to find out who's the CFO -- they'll just carpet bomb the entire network, and exploit any vulnerabilities they find. Frankly, if you have a hacker who already has access to the HR records BEFORE they break in, you've got a bigger problem, like maybe an inside job.
Workstation -> username. So when someone's downloading streaming porn and it's clobbering your bandwidth, you know who it is immediately. When the workstation changes hands to a new user, you should re-image the machine anyways.
We had the "serial number, referenced to a database" method at three locations, and each time I'd find out that someone was rushed and didn't update the database (or updated the wrong database), and I'd have to spend an afternoon validating all the entries again. This only served to slow me down, and didn't slow down our break-ins at all (which were, by the way, autonomous viruses and worms, not humans who could comprehend hostnames no matter what info we put there).
However, I did find some value in not naming machines by their purpose -- we did have a virus breakout that looked for machines named 'mail','smtp' or 'mx' for possible spam relays.
("why so many virus problems in places where you work?" I hear you ask. "are you some kind of shit IT guy?" No, I'm an IT guy that deals with C*Os who feel they don't have to follow the rules, and I get punished when I impose the rules upon them, even if it's for ISO 9001 compliance. Makes me sick; welcome to Toronto.)
I thought Tabula Rasa had that effect, where you could move the battle's front lines, and this would spawn new vendors and checkpoints in your conquered territories.
The technology was always there, starting with Anarchy Online(1) and instanced dungeons. Now we have our instance gateways overlapping the "overworld" geography. You could probably detect where the seams are if you walked to the phasing area side-by-side with a friend who hasn't started the quests to develop the area, and watch for them to disappear.
(1: yes yes, Anarchy Online wasn't the first, it was [insert MUDs name here]. Everything came from MUDs but try telling kids these days and you just get blank stares.)
Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warns that the Interstate Highway system has become a sanctuary for out-of-town criminals and the only way to rectify this is to create a second, more secure series of streets, avenues and highways. Hoover explains that, in order to successfully fight organized crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with interstate law enforcement officials. The problem is 48 states's legal systems are unprepared for the fight, which is why he claims we must change the structure of automotive travel.
In related news, 1 in 5 American adults have been solicited by the Mafia for illegal bathtub gin during prohibition. Is your family safe from booze-o-philes?!
Sadly, the doctors I've been to have been the equivalent of level-1 tech support, who want me to reboot my orthopedic footwear to solve a problem with my respiratory drivers, run expensive software from Pfzitersoft despite side-effects with my mood applications, and refuse to talk to me if they find out I've been using open-source herbal supplements.
I'm sure that there are doctors I can trust, but the last one I met who gave gold-level tech support retired years ago. Sadly, level-1 tech support means wasting an afternoon on the phone, whereas level-1 med support means I've wasted months or a year each time.
Do we have a shortage of good medical professionals, or do I just have bad luck?
I think you (and TFA) are suffering from Golden Age Syndrome. What you remember of the past seems better than what you're looking at now because you don't bother remembering the bad stuff. Hell, the really bad stuff was so bad that you didn't even hear about it.
Music is probably the best way to express this, since record label promotion departments strongly push bands before finding out if they will sell. Think about your favourite music from teenage years (and how appalled you are that this music is called "retro" now). Does 'NSYNC, Bros, or New Kids On The Block get any playtime on "retro" radio? How about Milli Vanilli? Samantha Fox? I could go on with music or video games that were godawful and were spawned from the era anyone calls "a golden age."
200,000 Kroner to replace the battery pack? (as of 2007-07-31, that's $34402 USD)
Repalced every seven to ten years? Jeez louise, that's a lot of money just to move carbon emissions around.
I trust everyone here is smart enough to realize that electric-powered devices don't eliminate carbon emissions, it only moves them to the generating plants. #include <inconvenient_truth.h>;/* coal & oil power plants, blah blah */
I keep hearing about "Braid," and now it's won an award, but where is it? The official link is "http://none", and the publisher's website says "nothing to see here."
Sure, independent developers don't have the marketing/promotion engines of the big houses, but this seems as if the publisher is hiding.
However, in a free market one or more competitors will set their price/below/ the manufacturing cost (*cough* XBox *cough*), banking on forcing out their competition and later raising their prices to make the money back. If successful, this can bring about a monopoly (or monopoly by consortium, if undercutters have to make a deal amongst themselves *cough* Edison *cough*), or the undercutters could undercut themselves out of existence too.
It sure is nifty when you can make keyboards that have a smaller desk footprint, but are they forgetting that human hands have to use this thing? Chording shouldn't require the same finger to touch two different keys at once, nor two adjacent fingers on the same hand. If you need to place your hands too close together, you're going to increase wrist injury.
A big reason why wristwatch calculators didn't take off is because the buttons were too small to touch individually. Celphone and built-in PDA keyboards are failing for the same reason. I believe the pre-Java Blackberry pagers are about as small as you can get -- and that requires two-finger (or two-thumb) typing anyways.
> So, for example, a specialist helmsman would be able to turn a starship more > efficiently and execute more complicated manoeuveurs. Make it so that master > engineers could coax more speed from a ship's engine and repair shields faster.
You're describing ship's crews and ship-to-ship combat in Yohoho Puzzle Pirates, an already existing MMORPG
Londonderry, Briton: (AP) Former duke James Wendermite (who abdicated to his son in 1437) proposes to the King that political negotiations with elves and fairie-folk should be established. "We being known thee French are having relations secret with thee Seelie for generations anon," said the former Duke, "and wee be losing a diplomatic advantage greatly. Any humbly-man kens thar boogums and sprites in meadows nearby, and evidences of Pookas are seen by thee painting of the sky. Iffen wee deal not with the Seelie, war will come on our doorstep like a dragon."
Commentators at the local pub "The Slashed Dotte" helpfully reported to the King examples of how fairie magic could construct trebuchets against which the Crown could mount no defense, and the deplorable state of his Majesty's infantry. "Aye been serving in me Lord's militia ever since I be 12," says local, "and I tain't seen nothin' that could stand agains' fairies. There be not enough iron for horseshoes for all the kings men, ne'er you mind a breastplate for each soldier, which is what we would needin'. Oooch, but then they be tricking our farmers, and we be food without. Why is not the King be making iron breastplates for every serf in his domain? Fairies be a threat most dire!"
Duke Johnathan Wendermite apolgized for his father's behaviour later the same day.
My girlfriend would sit and watch me play, and she's freak out by the ambient sounds; somehow the murderous spider monkeys made her particularily spooked. I liked it because she'd snuggle up to me in bed afterwards all scared and "big guy protect me from the monkeys."
When she started mumbling "I need meat for my little ones" during the day, then *I* was spooked.
Oddly enough, at one of my jobs I was that guy who would ask "who are you? why are you here?" to strangers walking around unescorted. I would usually escort them to whomever they were supposedly visiting, or I'd take them to reception and tell them to wait there for their appointment.
I got some strong hinting that I should stop doing that because I was "harrassing VIPs," namely potential investors. I did the same at another job, where I wasn't discourgaged, but people thought I was amusing. I know I was the only person doing this because I sat at the back of the building.
Education, education, education. Security is not something you do once and forget about -- it's an attitude.
Apocryphal, but could be true: I heard that diamonds were no big thing until the 19th century. Queen Victoria of England was touring the colonies, and in South Africa the locals were futzing over what to show her. "India's got tea and silk, we were established for producing slaves... oh, that's no good anymore. We have to show her we're a valuable part of the empire somehow!" So, the locals pumped up the importance of the local gemstones with a PR campaign to make these hard-glass stones hip and cool. When the Queen showed up, her entourage bought it hook, line and sinker.
If true, it's one of the better examples of a 'fad' or engineered need, almost a century before designer jeans.
I work at a medium, mango-hued company and we had to implement the same policy for "security reasons." I get about three calls a week asking for passwords to be reset.
The 90-day, eight character line-noise password policy has nothing to do with security: it's required for our security certification by a security company who has a good reputation. Either we comply with whatever such a company tells us to do, or banks and merchants and credit companies will refuse to do business with us. Oh, and we have to pick the right company so that we don't have to pay another >$10,000 to get re-certified by another expensive name.
I find I have the opposite problem: I often get hired on as a programmer, but inevitably my job becomes sysadmin and tech support. "Oh, I know I should be talking to the other guy, but he doesn't know how to..." and so on. Eventually, I gave up and got a sysadmin job.
By a strange coincidence, now as a sysadmin I'm asked to fix things that the developers have written, and to write internal tools.
> Can't play.ogg, but why would I want to re-encode all my music?
Funny, that's exactly the reason why I want something that plays.ogg files. I'd dread the day that the Frauhoffer Institute pulls a tantrum like Unisys did with LZW and GIF. Why do I have to reencode everything into.mp3?
This reminds me of a law that's gone out-of-fashion here in Toronto, Canada. When I first moved here in the '90s, it was illegal for stores to be open on the day after Christmas... but the Eaton's department store would. They figured that they made more money than the fine. As the years went by, more and more stores on Yonge Street followed Eaton's example. Today, Yonge Street is busier the day after Christmas than any Saturday... despite the fact that it's illegal.
Slashdot Mirror
If someone hasn't already mentioned it, AugReal pets are described faithfully in the children's cartoon show "Denn Coil".
Check it out.
So long as the game is "reduce the other team's score to 0," you're going to have these verbs:
- reduce enemy's score
- increase allies's score
The game is going to focus on these verbs with a very tight focus; the 'damage (per second)' and 'healer' roles. These are the only two that really matter, because the only way you can win is with enough uses of that first verb. Hell, you don't even need the second verb, just have a high enough score on your team that the other team can't possibly reduce it to 0 in time. This strategy used when attempting a "defeat the boss in less than X minutes" challenge -- just one verb, used over and over again.
There are two more roles that are emergent properties of this system (which means they will appear whether you plan for it or not):
- improve allies's performance
- impair enemy's performance
These are the 'buffer' and 'debuffer' roles. 'Tanks' from EverQuest, WoWarcraft and other DikuMUD-based MMOs fall into the 'debuffer' role because they force the computer-controlled enemies to chose an sub-optimal target for their "reduce enemy's score" actions. To be exact, their actions are going through the the tank as a bottleneck, so that allies can focus all their "increase allies's score" actions. If they can't be that bottleneck (such as dealing with a PvP team of opponents), the tank's debuffs are ineffective, and the enemy's ability to reduce your team's score is unimpaired.
If you want to get rid of this "four-part trinity" inherited from DikuMUDs, then you have to get rid of the hitpoints mechanic as the only means of resolving contests.
You can get a guess from his achievements. 5906 quests completed, at an average of 14.55 quests per day = 405.9 days played. Probably 405.9 days online with the game, since he's got achievements from events that were over a year ago.
Ghod I HATED this argument at the IT department.
"We should obfuscate the machine's use so hackers won't see easy targets."
You have to be kidding me. Most of the attacks won't bother trying to decypher some elaborate naming scheme, or get HR records to find out who's the CFO -- they'll just carpet bomb the entire network, and exploit any vulnerabilities they find. Frankly, if you have a hacker who already has access to the HR records BEFORE they break in, you've got a bigger problem, like maybe an inside job.
Workstation -> username. So when someone's downloading streaming porn and it's clobbering your bandwidth, you know who it is immediately. When the workstation changes hands to a new user, you should re-image the machine anyways.
We had the "serial number, referenced to a database" method at three locations, and each time I'd find out that someone was rushed and didn't update the database (or updated the wrong database), and I'd have to spend an afternoon validating all the entries again. This only served to slow me down, and didn't slow down our break-ins at all (which were, by the way, autonomous viruses and worms, not humans who could comprehend hostnames no matter what info we put there).
However, I did find some value in not naming machines by their purpose -- we did have a virus breakout that looked for machines named 'mail','smtp' or 'mx' for possible spam relays.
("why so many virus problems in places where you work?" I hear you ask. "are you some kind of shit IT guy?" No, I'm an IT guy that deals with C*Os who feel they don't have to follow the rules, and I get punished when I impose the rules upon them, even if it's for ISO 9001 compliance. Makes me sick; welcome to Toronto.)
I thought Tabula Rasa had that effect, where you could move the battle's front lines, and this would spawn new vendors and checkpoints in your conquered territories.
The technology was always there, starting with Anarchy Online(1) and instanced dungeons. Now we have our instance gateways overlapping the "overworld" geography. You could probably detect where the seams are if you walked to the phasing area side-by-side with a friend who hasn't started the quests to develop the area, and watch for them to disappear.
(1: yes yes, Anarchy Online wasn't the first, it was [insert MUDs name here]. Everything came from MUDs but try telling kids these days and you just get blank stares.)
Former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover warns that the Interstate Highway system has become a sanctuary for out-of-town criminals and the only way to rectify this is to create a second, more secure series of streets, avenues and highways. Hoover explains that, in order to successfully fight organized crime, law enforcement officials need to move much faster than average investigators and cooperate with interstate law enforcement officials. The problem is 48 states's legal systems are unprepared for the fight, which is why he claims we must change the structure of automotive travel.
In related news, 1 in 5 American adults have been solicited by the Mafia for illegal bathtub gin during prohibition. Is your family safe from booze-o-philes?!
Mannybooks.net has been taken over by the domain squatter "information.com"... unless you are just trying to drive traffic to that place?
I wish I had mod points to sink #21770638.
Sadly, the doctors I've been to have been the equivalent of level-1 tech support, who want me to reboot my orthopedic footwear to solve a problem with my respiratory drivers, run expensive software from Pfzitersoft despite side-effects with my mood applications, and refuse to talk to me if they find out I've been using open-source herbal supplements.
I'm sure that there are doctors I can trust, but the last one I met who gave gold-level tech support retired years ago. Sadly, level-1 tech support means wasting an afternoon on the phone, whereas level-1 med support means I've wasted months or a year each time.
Do we have a shortage of good medical professionals, or do I just have bad luck?
I think you (and TFA) are suffering from Golden Age Syndrome.
What you remember of the past seems better than what you're looking at now because you don't bother remembering the bad stuff. Hell, the really bad stuff was so bad that you didn't even hear about it.
Music is probably the best way to express this, since record label promotion departments strongly push bands before finding out if they will sell. Think about your favourite music from teenage years (and how appalled you are that this music is called "retro" now). Does 'NSYNC, Bros, or New Kids On The Block get any playtime on "retro" radio? How about Milli Vanilli? Samantha Fox? I could go on with music or video games that were godawful and were spawned from the era anyone calls "a golden age."
Perception is everything.
200,000 Kroner to replace the battery pack? (as of 2007-07-31, that's $34402 USD) Repalced every seven to ten years? Jeez louise, that's a lot of money just to move carbon emissions around. I trust everyone here is smart enough to realize that electric-powered devices don't eliminate carbon emissions, it only moves them to the generating plants. /* coal & oil power plants, blah blah */
#include <inconvenient_truth.h>;
I keep hearing about "Braid," and now it's won an award, but where is it?
The official link is "http://none", and the publisher's website says "nothing to see here."
Sure, independent developers don't have the marketing/promotion engines of the big houses, but this seems as if the publisher is hiding.
...and are not sufficiently adorned with adequate warnings...
"I'm not saying we should kill all the stupid people. Just remove all the warning labels from things, and let nature take it's course."
- orginal speaker unknown
However, in a free market one or more competitors will set their price /below/ the manufacturing cost (*cough* XBox *cough*), banking on forcing out their competition and later raising their prices to make the money back.
If successful, this can bring about a monopoly (or monopoly by consortium, if undercutters have to make a deal amongst themselves *cough* Edison *cough*), or the undercutters could undercut themselves out of existence too.
It sure is nifty when you can make keyboards that have a smaller desk footprint, but are they forgetting that human hands have to use this thing? Chording shouldn't require the same finger to touch two different keys at once, nor two adjacent fingers on the same hand. If you need to place your hands too close together, you're going to increase wrist injury.
A big reason why wristwatch calculators didn't take off is because the buttons were too small to touch individually. Celphone and built-in PDA keyboards are failing for the same reason. I believe the pre-Java Blackberry pagers are about as small as you can get -- and that requires two-finger (or two-thumb) typing anyways.
Why aren't we using the chording keyboard that court stenographers use?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stenotype
> So, for example, a specialist helmsman would be able to turn a starship more
> efficiently and execute more complicated manoeuveurs. Make it so that master
> engineers could coax more speed from a ship's engine and repair shields faster.
You're describing ship's crews and ship-to-ship combat in Yohoho Puzzle Pirates, an already existing MMORPG
Londonderry, Briton: (AP) Former duke James Wendermite (who abdicated to his son in 1437) proposes to the King that political negotiations with elves and fairie-folk should be established. "We being known thee French are having relations secret with thee Seelie for generations anon," said the former Duke, "and wee be losing a diplomatic advantage greatly. Any humbly-man kens thar boogums and sprites in meadows nearby, and evidences of Pookas are seen by thee painting of the sky. Iffen wee deal not with the Seelie, war will come on our doorstep like a dragon."
Commentators at the local pub "The Slashed Dotte" helpfully reported to the King examples of how fairie magic could construct trebuchets against which the Crown could mount no defense, and the deplorable state of his Majesty's infantry. "Aye been serving in me Lord's militia ever since I be 12," says local, "and I tain't seen nothin' that could stand agains' fairies. There be not enough iron for horseshoes for all the kings men, ne'er you mind a breastplate for each soldier, which is what we would needin'. Oooch, but then they be tricking our farmers, and we be food without. Why is not the King be making iron breastplates for every serf in his domain? Fairies be a threat most dire!"
Duke Johnathan Wendermite apolgized for his father's behaviour later the same day.
My girlfriend would sit and watch me play, and she's freak out by the ambient sounds; somehow the murderous spider monkeys made her particularily spooked. I liked it because she'd snuggle up to me in bed afterwards all scared and "big guy protect me from the monkeys."
When she started mumbling "I need meat for my little ones" during the day, then *I* was spooked.
Oddly enough, at one of my jobs I was that guy who would ask "who are you? why are you here?" to strangers walking around unescorted. I would usually escort them to whomever they were supposedly visiting, or I'd take them to reception and tell them to wait there for their appointment.
I got some strong hinting that I should stop doing that because I was "harrassing VIPs," namely potential investors. I did the same at another job, where I wasn't discourgaged, but people thought I was amusing. I know I was the only person doing this because I sat at the back of the building.
Education, education, education. Security is not something you do once and forget about -- it's an attitude.
I'm afraid America has already gone in that direction. They've been hiring "contractors" to help out with military actions.
Apocryphal, but could be true: I heard that diamonds were no big thing until the 19th century. Queen Victoria of England was touring the colonies, and in South Africa the locals were futzing over what to show her. "India's got tea and silk, we were established for producing slaves... oh, that's no good anymore. We have to show her we're a valuable part of the empire somehow!" So, the locals pumped up the importance of the local gemstones with a PR campaign to make these hard-glass stones hip and cool. When the Queen showed up, her entourage bought it hook, line and sinker.
If true, it's one of the better examples of a 'fad' or engineered need, almost a century before designer jeans.
I work at a medium, mango-hued company and we had to implement the same policy for "security reasons." I get about three calls a week asking for passwords to be reset.
The 90-day, eight character line-noise password policy has nothing to do with security: it's required for our security certification by a security company who has a good reputation. Either we comply with whatever such a company tells us to do, or banks and merchants and credit companies will refuse to do business with us. Oh, and we have to pick the right company so that we don't have to pay another >$10,000 to get re-certified by another expensive name.
Sucks, but c'est l'entreprise.
I find I have the opposite problem: I often get hired on as a programmer, but inevitably my job becomes sysadmin and tech support. "Oh, I know I should be talking to the other guy, but he doesn't know how to..." and so on. Eventually, I gave up and got a sysadmin job.
By a strange coincidence, now as a sysadmin I'm asked to fix things that the developers have written, and to write internal tools.
> Can't play .ogg, but why would I want to re-encode all my music?
.ogg files. I'd dread the day that the Frauhoffer Institute pulls a tantrum like Unisys did with LZW and GIF. Why do I have to reencode everything into .mp3?
Funny, that's exactly the reason why I want something that plays
Pity that explorer.exe == iexplorer.exe, and explorer.exe is the shell, eh?
May I suggest an alternate shell?
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bb4win/
This reminds me of a law that's gone out-of-fashion here in Toronto, Canada. When I first moved here in the '90s, it was illegal for stores to be open on the day after Christmas... but the Eaton's department store would. They figured that they made more money than the fine. As the years went by, more and more stores on Yonge Street followed Eaton's example. Today, Yonge Street is busier the day after Christmas than any Saturday... despite the fact that it's illegal.