if this really does turn out to be a major trend, a positive side effect would be a lot more consideration for low bandwidth users. Sites may return to being trimmer, more text-oriented. You know, like the original vision Tim Berners-Lee had for the web!
It's hardly an original point, but it's worth mentioning in the context of this story. Most of the useful information I get from the web is text.
E.g., slashdot, virtua fighter websites, drudgereport, etc.
The main exception to this is probably mapquest. The rest of my browsing is work research and/or entertainment. My point is that very often 90% of the data I download is extraneous images and other content (e.g., ads, decorations, other blah...) that I pay zero attention to. (BTW, I have T3 at work and DSL at home).
On a dial-up connection (and I used to use one, from *Australia*) this is really annoying. With broadband it's not so bad -- but what could be better than surfing a more text-based web with broadband? There wouldn't _be_ download time as such -- the amount of time it takes to d/l a pageful of text is trivial compared to the time it takes to find ther server, and (often) for the server to retrieve/generate the page.
So in some ways a mass defection back to modems would be a healthy thing for the web.
[Here's a cut'n'paste of a post I made to another forum about my visit to the LA Cube Club]
Just thought I'd post a quick post-mortem of the LA "Cube Club" Game Cube launch promo.
We drove down to Hollywood last night to check it out. Basically it was a room full of cubes in cabinets (you know the type -- console behind perspex with controller hanging out... big tv). There were probably 40 or 50 of these. There were also a bunch of "private rooms" (maybe six of these) set up with home theatre setups.
Then there was a (really good) PA and a (OK) DJ spinning thumping techno. They were going for a rave vibe... but it was a like a drug and alcohol free rave with no girls:) Lots of couches though, which was cool. And lights, etc.
Free stuff was thin on the ground. Got a little foam cube thing that you have to put together like a jigsaw, a Gameboy Advance sticker, some cube fake tattoos a cool little demo CD (PC-format movies, but GC size). A lame comic that I can't be bothered reading. Oh wait I checked it's DC "Young Justice". No idea why we got that, but my friend got "Sport Illustrated for Kids" so I guess it could've been worse.
So, games!
There were heaps of peeps (line outside) so the only games I actually played were Pikmin (my main interest in going was to see this game in action) and Monkey Ball. Both were excellent. Pikmin is a really quite novel gameplay concept, and surprised me by being pretty friendly to pick up 'n play.
If you haven't heard about Pikmin, you're a tiny space dude who has crashed in a garden (? - that's what it looks like). You've got to repair your craft, but to that you need to recruit a squad of Pikmin. These are little chaps who grow in the ground. You uproot them with your glowing circle thingie and they follow you around and doing your bidding. By the end of my turns I had like 40 Pikmin, but I believe you can get way more.
The squad AI and pathfinding is top notch, and the animation and effects are cool (watching the Pikmin attack things is both cute and cool).
Monkey Ball was awesome fun. Go Sega! Looks cool, plays great. I played with three complete strangers. We took turns rolling down a kind of ski-ramp and launching into the air. You then split open your ball (like the name suggests in Monkey Ball you play a monkey in a ball) and use it as a glider. You glide down and attempt to land on a target for points. It's tricky and fun, and reminds me of landing in Pilot Wings. No bad thing.
Star Wars looked great. There was a basketball game (NBA Courtside?... can't be bothered checking names) that looked nice, but a bit slow and mannered. Nice looking NFL game.
Wace Race looked good but very first-gen, if you know what I mean. Not as impressive as some of the other titles. I didn't get a hands on, but I imagine it plays like the N64 version. If so, cool, 'coz that was a fun game.
There was a decent looking RPG called "Eternal Dark" (or Darkness, or something). Didn't spend a lot of time looking, and it's not really an RPG (it reminded me of Soul Reaver a little).
Luigi's Mansion looked lower-res than I expected. Also first-gen, I guess. Still there was some nice detail in the environments. The use of a flashlight as a key gameplay element really shows off the power of the cube. The real time shadows and everything look really nice. The game seems to be based on the Ghostbusters vibe of sucking up ghosts. Again I didn't play this hands on so I wasn't 100% sure how it worked. But it looked fun. I've heard it's very short... a sugar rush to hold us over until Mario Sunshine I guess.
Star Fox: Dino Planet (or whatever) was there. The character models were cool and detailed, but the world really showed it's N-64 origins. Low detail geometry, high detail textures. The gameplay resembled Zelda (Ocarina) as much as anything (but I'm sure I'm wrong about that).
Oh, like everyone says, the controller rules -- I like the dual-shock style built in rumble.
Anyway, it was a fun night, and I think anyone would have come away with a favourable impression of the cube.
One of the first things that struck me as a I watched the CNN coverage was the date - September 11th.
In Australia there was a very large protest in Melbourne called S11 on September 11th, 2000.
It was one of the global anti-WTO protests -- this one coincided with the Global Economic Forum, and it's stated aim was to disrupt the meeting (mission accomplished, AFAIK). I'm not sure whether S11 took place in other places in the world.
Frankly I think it's probably just a co-incidence. The chief target (World Trade Center) suits the politics, but taking the lives of two planeloads of innocent people (condolences where appropriate -- I can't think of anything more horrible) does not.
Wow, I'm a little bit alarmed that so far the list seems to consist of:
Lemmings
Sim-*
The Sims
How strict is this no violence policy? I mean obviously "Soldier of Fortune" and "Kingpin" are out, but what about:
Age of Empires
Civ series
StarCraft
There's lots of sports games (FIFA), driving games, flight-sims, etc. that aren't violent.
There's also:
ThemePark World
Rollercoaster Tycoon (many variants of both I think)
You don't specify platform, but I guess PC. If you're on a console you've got a lot more options... as well as the sports/driving games there's heaps of cutesy-but-brain-bending puzzle games amongst the fighting/blowing stuff up/organ muching zombie games.
The GameCube can be relied upon to feature non-violent content (Pikmin looks intriguing).
I think it is a kind of mental laziness on the part of the cheater.
Playing the kind of metagame you describe requires that you are prepared to inconsistently violate the internal logic of the game.
The key word is "inconsistently". Because the received rewards are, as you say, "in the game" while the methods used to get those rewards are outside the game.
Which is more mentally lazy:
1) Voluntarily and actively suspending your disbelief for the duration of a movie in an attempt to apprehend the work as the director intended, or
2) Continually noting (or worse, commenting on) aspects of the movie (e.g., casting, technical) that could be defined as "outside the context"?
I do acknowledge your point, which is that there can be no comparison between cheaters and non-cheaters since they are playing different games, but I don't agree that the non-cheaters are necessarily more mentally lazy.
Re:Did anyone expect another outcome?
on
Indrema No More
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· Score: 1
Small, but important, distinction:
Dreamcast is dead. Sega are most assuredly not dead, having AAA releases scheduled for all major platforms (PS2, X-Box, GBA, and surely GameCube sooner or later).
Sega are very much alive, my friend, and scaring the bejesus out of EA:)
"Although one may successfully argue that a brilliant proof or algorithm is art, I don't think that the converse can be shown."
What exactly is the converse? That a piece of art is a 'brilliant proof or algorithm'? That's either sloppy thinking or sloppy phrasing. I'll assume the latter.
Maybe it's just me, but the idea that art does or does not require 'rigor' strikes me as bizarre. You can be painstakingly rigorous and create art, you can be entirely random and create art.
The idea that 'a piece of code' -- even if I assume you mean a non-trivial piece code -- requires rigor is equally bizarre. I once wrote a working MIDI file generator, the source code of which made experienced programmers cry and rend their garments. It's hard to imagine anything less rigorous! But it worked... so in what sense did it _require_ rigor?
Rigor may be desirable, but it's not _necessarily_ required for code, mathematics _or_ art.
That's a terrible test. Emotional response depends at least as much on the emotional state of the viewer as it does on external stimulus (say, viewing a painting or listening to a piece of music).
The same person might be moved to tears by a song on one occasion, but barely notice the same song on another. Depends what mood they're in. Does this mean that the song was art, but now is not?
"Musical composition is basically just mathematics"?
Have you ever heard the term "sweeping generalisation"? I'll assume that you write music, and therefore are speaking from your own experience. I imagine that you mean you write music based on the numerical frequencies of the notes (expressed in Hz) as opposed to the _sound_ of those notes? If so, you'd be one of a very few composers who do so.
Personally, I write music based on what sounds good. Sometimes I have allowed mathematics to define the form or structure of a composition (once wrote a piece where each bar had a different time signature -- a fibonacci sequence). But in general it's all about how it sounds for me, and I would venture for most other composers.
I think when people say things like "musical composition is basically just mathematics" they actually _mean_ "musical composition can be analysed in terms of mathematics". A very different thing.
I do agree that it takes as much skill to write a (good) program in C as it does to write a good sonnet.
But there are differences in writing a program and writing a sonnet. I seems to me that you can usually pick a meaningful factor to quantify with a (non-trivial) C program. You can justifiably say that a program is "better" if it:
- executes more quickly
- uses less RAM
- crashes less often
I'm not sure you can do the same for a sonnet. Attempting to draw up a similar list quickly sounds silly! Can you justifiably say a sonnet is "better" if it:
- can be read more quickly (on average) than other sonnets?
- uses less letters?
- er... has less swear words in it?
I don't know. It's an interesting topic, but one that lends itself to kneejerk responses ("ah it's all the same thing, so why ask the question?").
VO:OT rules. The control config you want is B. It's the same as A except you can hold down the A button (guard) and use left and right on the d-pad to rotate on the spot. I preferred the Saturn controls too, but control config B makes the DC version _heaps_ better once you get used to it.
Of course, the twinsticks is what you really need...
I think that's pretty harsh. I use Win2K all day every day and must say I find it pretty good. The stability versus 98 is incredible. Certainly on a par with the RH 6.2 box that sits right next to it (i.e., neither crashes, ever. Even though I run pre-alpha deep in development software all day on the Win2K box).
Unlike most people I use "My Computer" windows (i.e., no explorer list of folders in a seperate pane) to browse through my hard drive. I barely touch the mouse after double clicking on the shortcut on my desktop to the correct directory. I simply type the first few letters of each directory I want to go to, then hit Enter. Backspace to reverse up the dir tree. Drill down to the file I want, hit Enter to launch it (I have all my file associations set properly... I find this is easier to manage under Win2K as well).
This method is extremely quick. I also use 4NT (shell replacement) when I need to do command line stuff. Some things are just easier from the command line, and 4NT has [Tab] filename completion (the only indispensable CLI tool IMO).
...to your post! How can you judge a band after listening to _one song_? John Linnel is a musical genius disguised as a geek rock pioneer. Show some respect.
Consoles would be obsolete except for hardcore gamers??? You gotta be kidding me! A big console title can do upwards of 5,000,000 copies (Goldeneye on the N64 did more than 7,000,000).
I guess there's more hardcore gamers than I thought!?
Yeah it's a reasonably neat idea... but as a keen gamer I am disappointed that the game look isn't more authentically recreated. They don't look like game screenshots at all.
Most isometric games run in lower resolutions and use a limited colour palette (e.g. 256 colours). Most are tile based, which yields "perfect" angles and a certain repetitive look.
This art is obviously a tip of a hat to that style, but hasn't captured it at all. I think it's probably because the production process was entirely different (I don't think the artist actually made a "JFK assassination" tile set then built an isometric game-style map out of it).
Don't know why, but that shits me. I think the work would have been better/more powerful if the shots _really_ looked like games. Like, made you do a double take.
In any case no matter how jarring s/he got it, it wouldn't touch Custer's Revenge!
I live in QLD Australia. In June '99 the Federal Government made an amendment to the Broadcasting Services Act. This amendment introduced a "complaint based" internet censorship system. It came came into effect one the 1st of January 2000.
I haven't noticed the slightest bit of difference. There was a lot of puffing and blowing in Parliament about Protecting the Children and applying the same standards we have for movies and TV to the internet. There was talk of filtering all packets that came into Australia after the (startlingly obvious) point was made that most content viewed in Australia is hosted overseas.
Informed opinion (i.e., that of people who actually used computers/the internet) was that the proposed scheme was ludicrous and unworkable (ISPs are legally require to "make available" client side filtering software, although no-one seems to know if use of them is supposed to be mandatory), and time has shown that opinion to be correct. The scheme isn't the slightest hinderance to accessing "undesirable" content, it has cost millions of taxpayer dollars, and it has made Australia look like an IT backwater (which it isn't). Check out this link for an overview of the law.
At the time I said to people "this is the thin edge of a nasty wedge", and I'm still concerned that I may be right. While the law in its current form is more stupid than problematic, I'm deeply uncomfortable that it sits there packing some nasty penalties for non-complying ISPs. When there's a precedent for blocking one form of "undesirable content" it means that the infrastructure is right there when the government wants to block another form of "undesirable content".
shareware playstation games? Sure! Remember Net Yaroze, the consumer dev kit? That thing was really popular for a while... lets hope there'll be one for PSX2 (or even Dreamcast or X-Box!).
I think a lot of it can be attributed to a 2D viewpoint, which of course most "classic" games have. This is similar to, but more specific than, the "limitations of technology make you more creative" argument.
A 2D viewpoint means that the designer of the game can force you to play from the optimal perspective for that type of gameplay. For example, Atari 2600 Combat works really well top-down, as does 1942, Xevious and Frogger.
Imagine playing Combat from a side view perspective, or Donkey Kong from a 2D top down perspective...
While I believe we are getting better and better at it, it's still fairly early days for the 3D perspective. We often give the player too much freedom, or make that freedom to difficult to understand and control. This usually makes the game harder, less direct, and -- I think -- less satisfying.
Currently, the most successful 3D games limit either limit the degrees of camera freedom available to the player, or use a first-person perspective (which has the advantage of being very similar to RL).
A lot of this comes down to interface. I don't think any game but Quake does a _really_ seamless job of immersing you in a 3D game world -- the kind of immersion that, say, Defender gives you effortlessly. This is, of course, highly subjective.
An _excellent_ case study is Konami's brilliant "Metal Gear Solid" on the PSX. If you analyse the gameplay, a lot of it is Pacman. Although the world is polygons, not sprites, the camera is often locked to an (almost) topdown perspective, and the map layouts are very grid/maze like.
Of course, MGS features many sections with different perspectives(including first person), but I believe my point is valid.
One last point: "classic" gaming is alive and well on the Dreamcast. Chu Chu Rocket is new-school 2D puzzling of superior quality. Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move) 4 is a fantastic "classic" puzzle game. And Namco have just released Mr. Driller, a total old-school arcade throwback.
Well, first of all it's not that different. It looks and plays very much like the first Diablo. But there are some key differences:
1) the maps are _much_ bigger.
2) due to 1), you can now run as well as walk. This is a Good Thing.
3) the combat is more or less identical (stand and slash), but you can now simply hold the LMB down and your character will repeatedly hack away. No more RSI!
4) you can get NPC characters who follow you around and help you fight.
5) the skill system is much more involved (it's now a "skill tree").
6) small but cool difference: "socketed" weapons. These are weapons that have sockets for gems you can collect. Naturally, the slotting a sapphire in to a club makes the club a better weapon (!?).
And that, as far as I can tell, is the extent of the difference! Oh, the character classes are different, yet somehow exactly the same:)
...I sometimes think that with all the "we're changing the world" talk we forget to appreciate the little things.
I spent last new year's eve at Uluru (aka "Ayer's Rock", in outback Australia). Against much sensible and well meaning advice, I took my PII-400 laptop with me.
While we were camped there, we made a song with the assistance of about 35 people who had come to Uluru from all around the world. We had them say "happy new year" in their native language. It was an amazing gathering, very joyous. Perhaps it would have happened without the tech (the laptop, which did the recording and sequencing), but the follow-up wouldn't.
We gave the URL of our website out to everyone there, and when we got home a couple of weeks later I mp3ed the song and uploaded it. We got mail from all around the world from people who had been there, and from people who hadn't (somehow!).
This was, and is, amazing to me. All of this stuff is possible, technically, with analogue tech. But I don't fool myself that it would have happened without digital technology -- it certainly woudn't have happened anywhere near as quickly or spontaneously.
>that there really is no revolution, >but it is being marketed anyway.
Do you mean really _is_ a revolution?
If so, I am reminded of "All Tomorrow's Parties" (William Gibson). There is a nice speech -- I don't have it front of me, and I can't remember the character's name -- about how there are now no true countercultures, thanks to the relentless marketing. They simply become mainstream too soon to develop into anything fully-fledged.
I think it's true. The hippy movement is a good example of a genuine counter culture. The rave movement is another one, but the progress from true underground to "techno-lite" and f*ckin' Moby in however many ads has been very quick. Too quick, because -- as Gibson pointed out -- these things are picked up and relentlessly exploited for marketing purposes before they've had a chance to mature.
FWIW, I just went and ordered a copy of No Logo. Looks like it's right up my alley. So _there's_ a triumph of marketing! Also, be sure and check out:
Slashdot Mirror
I've used a U2A for around a year and it's great. I've used it live (laptop -> U2A -> Alesis 3630 Compresser -> desk) and had happy results.
grib.
if this really does turn out to be a major trend, a positive side effect would be a lot more consideration for low bandwidth users. Sites may return to being trimmer, more text-oriented. You know, like the original vision Tim Berners-Lee had for the web!
It's hardly an original point, but it's worth mentioning in the context of this story. Most of the useful information I get from the web is text.
E.g., slashdot, virtua fighter websites, drudgereport, etc.
The main exception to this is probably mapquest. The rest of my browsing is work research and/or entertainment. My point is that very often 90% of the data I download is extraneous images and other content (e.g., ads, decorations, other blah...) that I pay zero attention to. (BTW, I have T3 at work and DSL at home).
On a dial-up connection (and I used to use one, from *Australia*) this is really annoying. With broadband it's not so bad -- but what could be better than surfing a more text-based web with broadband? There wouldn't _be_ download time as such -- the amount of time it takes to d/l a pageful of text is trivial compared to the time it takes to find ther server, and (often) for the server to retrieve/generate the page.
So in some ways a mass defection back to modems would be a healthy thing for the web.
grib.
[Here's a cut'n'paste of a post I made to another forum about my visit to the LA Cube Club]
:) Lots of couches though, which was cool. And lights, etc.
Just thought I'd post a quick post-mortem of the LA "Cube Club" Game Cube launch promo.
We drove down to Hollywood last night to check it out. Basically it was a room full of cubes in cabinets (you know the type -- console behind perspex with controller hanging out... big tv). There were probably 40 or 50 of these. There were also a bunch of "private rooms" (maybe six of these) set up with home theatre setups.
Then there was a (really good) PA and a (OK) DJ spinning thumping techno. They were going for a rave vibe... but it was a like a drug and alcohol free rave with no girls
Free stuff was thin on the ground. Got a little foam cube thing that you have to put together like a jigsaw, a Gameboy Advance sticker, some cube fake tattoos a cool little demo CD (PC-format movies, but GC size). A lame comic that I can't be bothered reading. Oh wait I checked it's DC "Young Justice". No idea why we got that, but my friend got "Sport Illustrated for Kids" so I guess it could've been worse.
So, games!
There were heaps of peeps (line outside) so the only games I actually played were Pikmin (my main interest in going was to see this game in action) and Monkey Ball. Both were excellent. Pikmin is a really quite novel gameplay concept, and surprised me by being pretty friendly to pick up 'n play.
If you haven't heard about Pikmin, you're a tiny space dude who has crashed in a garden (? - that's what it looks like). You've got to repair your craft, but to that you need to recruit a squad of Pikmin. These are little chaps who grow in the ground. You uproot them with your glowing circle thingie and they follow you around and doing your bidding. By the end of my turns I had like 40 Pikmin, but I believe you can get way more.
The squad AI and pathfinding is top notch, and the animation and effects are cool (watching the Pikmin attack things is both cute and cool).
Monkey Ball was awesome fun. Go Sega! Looks cool, plays great. I played with three complete strangers. We took turns rolling down a kind of ski-ramp and launching into the air. You then split open your ball (like the name suggests in Monkey Ball you play a monkey in a ball) and use it as a glider. You glide down and attempt to land on a target for points. It's tricky and fun, and reminds me of landing in Pilot Wings. No bad thing.
Star Wars looked great. There was a basketball game (NBA Courtside?... can't be bothered checking names) that looked nice, but a bit slow and mannered. Nice looking NFL game.
Wace Race looked good but very first-gen, if you know what I mean. Not as impressive as some of the other titles. I didn't get a hands on, but I imagine it plays like the N64 version. If so, cool, 'coz that was a fun game.
There was a decent looking RPG called "Eternal Dark" (or Darkness, or something). Didn't spend a lot of time looking, and it's not really an RPG (it reminded me of Soul Reaver a little).
Luigi's Mansion looked lower-res than I expected. Also first-gen, I guess. Still there was some nice detail in the environments. The use of a flashlight as a key gameplay element really shows off the power of the cube. The real time shadows and everything look really nice. The game seems to be based on the Ghostbusters vibe of sucking up ghosts. Again I didn't play this hands on so I wasn't 100% sure how it worked. But it looked fun. I've heard it's very short... a sugar rush to hold us over until Mario Sunshine I guess.
Star Fox: Dino Planet (or whatever) was there. The character models were cool and detailed, but the world really showed it's N-64 origins. Low detail geometry, high detail textures. The gameplay resembled Zelda (Ocarina) as much as anything (but I'm sure I'm wrong about that).
Oh, like everyone says, the controller rules -- I like the dual-shock style built in rumble.
Anyway, it was a fun night, and I think anyone would have come away with a favourable impression of the cube.
gribbly
There's a very good Greg Egan novel called Permutation City that takes the concept of shared computing power a long way.
I don't have time to explain -- just wanted to plug a good book of (at least marginal) relevance to this topic!
One of the first things that struck me as a I watched the CNN coverage was the date - September 11th.
In Australia there was a very large protest in Melbourne called S11 on September 11th, 2000.
It was one of the global anti-WTO protests -- this one coincided with the Global Economic Forum, and it's stated aim was to disrupt the meeting (mission accomplished, AFAIK). I'm not sure whether S11 took place in other places in the world.
The "official" site is here.
Frankly I think it's probably just a co-incidence. The chief target (World Trade Center) suits the politics, but taking the lives of two planeloads of innocent people (condolences where appropriate -- I can't think of anything more horrible) does not.
grib.
Wow, I'm a little bit alarmed that so far the list seems to consist of:
Lemmings
Sim-*
The Sims
How strict is this no violence policy? I mean obviously "Soldier of Fortune" and "Kingpin" are out, but what about:
Age of Empires
Civ series
StarCraft
There's lots of sports games (FIFA), driving games, flight-sims, etc. that aren't violent.
There's also:
ThemePark World
Rollercoaster Tycoon (many variants of both I think)
You don't specify platform, but I guess PC. If you're on a console you've got a lot more options... as well as the sports/driving games there's heaps of cutesy-but-brain-bending puzzle games amongst the fighting/blowing stuff up/organ muching zombie games.
The GameCube can be relied upon to feature non-violent content (Pikmin looks intriguing).
I think it is a kind of mental laziness on the part of the cheater.
Playing the kind of metagame you describe requires that you are prepared to inconsistently violate the internal logic of the game.
The key word is "inconsistently". Because the received rewards are, as you say, "in the game" while the methods used to get those rewards are outside the game.
Which is more mentally lazy:
1) Voluntarily and actively suspending your disbelief for the duration of a movie in an attempt to apprehend the work as the director intended, or
2) Continually noting (or worse, commenting on) aspects of the movie (e.g., casting, technical) that could be defined as "outside the context"?
I do acknowledge your point, which is that there can be no comparison between cheaters and non-cheaters since they are playing different games, but I don't agree that the non-cheaters are necessarily more mentally lazy.
Small, but important, distinction:
Dreamcast is dead. Sega are most assuredly not dead, having AAA releases scheduled for all major platforms (PS2, X-Box, GBA, and surely GameCube sooner or later).
Sega are very much alive, my friend, and scaring the bejesus out of EA :)
"Although one may successfully argue that a brilliant proof or algorithm is art, I don't think that the converse can be shown."
What exactly is the converse? That a piece of art is a 'brilliant proof or algorithm'? That's either sloppy thinking or sloppy phrasing. I'll assume the latter.
Maybe it's just me, but the idea that art does or does not require 'rigor' strikes me as bizarre. You can be painstakingly rigorous and create art, you can be entirely random and create art.
The idea that 'a piece of code' -- even if I assume you mean a non-trivial piece code -- requires rigor is equally bizarre. I once wrote a working MIDI file generator, the source code of which made experienced programmers cry and rend their garments. It's hard to imagine anything less rigorous! But it worked... so in what sense did it _require_ rigor?
Rigor may be desirable, but it's not _necessarily_ required for code, mathematics _or_ art.
grib.
That's a terrible test. Emotional response depends at least as much on the emotional state of the viewer as it does on external stimulus (say, viewing a painting or listening to a piece of music).
The same person might be moved to tears by a song on one occasion, but barely notice the same song on another. Depends what mood they're in. Does this mean that the song was art, but now is not?
grib.
No, the answer to the question "what makes a person an artist?" is:
"possession of, and demonstrated willingness to wear, a beret".
=]
grib.
"Musical composition is basically just mathematics"?
Have you ever heard the term "sweeping generalisation"? I'll assume that you write music, and therefore are speaking from your own experience. I imagine that you mean you write music based on the numerical frequencies of the notes (expressed in Hz) as opposed to the _sound_ of those notes? If so, you'd be one of a very few composers who do so.
Personally, I write music based on what sounds good. Sometimes I have allowed mathematics to define the form or structure of a composition (once wrote a piece where each bar had a different time signature -- a fibonacci sequence). But in general it's all about how it sounds for me, and I would venture for most other composers.
I think when people say things like "musical composition is basically just mathematics" they actually _mean_ "musical composition can be analysed in terms of mathematics". A very different thing.
I do agree that it takes as much skill to write a (good) program in C as it does to write a good sonnet.
But there are differences in writing a program and writing a sonnet. I seems to me that you can usually pick a meaningful factor to quantify with a (non-trivial) C program. You can justifiably say that a program is "better" if it:
- executes more quickly
- uses less RAM
- crashes less often
I'm not sure you can do the same for a sonnet. Attempting to draw up a similar list quickly sounds silly! Can you justifiably say a sonnet is "better" if it:
- can be read more quickly (on average) than other sonnets?
- uses less letters?
- er... has less swear words in it?
I don't know. It's an interesting topic, but one that lends itself to kneejerk responses ("ah it's all the same thing, so why ask the question?").
grib.
VO:OT rules. The control config you want is B. It's the same as A except you can hold down the A button (guard) and use left and right on the d-pad to rotate on the spot. I preferred the Saturn controls too, but control config B makes the DC version _heaps_ better once you get used to it.
Of course, the twinsticks is what you really need...
gr1b
>Window's UI is hardly useable for daily work
I think that's pretty harsh. I use Win2K all day every day and must say I find it pretty good. The stability versus 98 is incredible. Certainly on a par with the RH 6.2 box that sits right next to it (i.e., neither crashes, ever. Even though I run pre-alpha deep in development software all day on the Win2K box).
Unlike most people I use "My Computer" windows (i.e., no explorer list of folders in a seperate pane) to browse through my hard drive. I barely touch the mouse after double clicking on the shortcut on my desktop to the correct directory. I simply type the first few letters of each directory I want to go to, then hit Enter. Backspace to reverse up the dir tree. Drill down to the file I want, hit Enter to launch it (I have all my file associations set properly... I find this is easier to manage under Win2K as well).
This method is extremely quick. I also use 4NT (shell replacement) when I need to do command line stuff. Some things are just easier from the command line, and 4NT has [Tab] filename completion (the only indispensable CLI tool IMO).
All in all, this is a good work environment!
grib.
...to your post! How can you judge a band after listening to _one song_? John Linnel is a musical genius disguised as a geek rock pioneer. Show some respect.
gribbly.
Consoles would be obsolete except for hardcore gamers??? You gotta be kidding me! A big console title can do upwards of 5,000,000 copies (Goldeneye on the N64 did more than 7,000,000).
I guess there's more hardcore gamers than I thought!?
:-/
PS2 vs DC? Dreamcast, easy win.
grib.
Um, you do realize that the spheres don't roll around on the floor don't you? They're mounted in a frame and roll (in place) on a "bearing" of air...
Why would you want two people in one sphere? You'd just hook up a couple of spheres and meet people in the virtual world...
*shrug*
Yeah it's a reasonably neat idea... but as a keen gamer I am disappointed that the game look isn't more authentically recreated. They don't look like game screenshots at all.
Most isometric games run in lower resolutions and use a limited colour palette (e.g. 256 colours). Most are tile based, which yields "perfect" angles and a certain repetitive look.
This art is obviously a tip of a hat to that style, but hasn't captured it at all. I think it's probably because the production process was entirely different (I don't think the artist actually made a "JFK assassination" tile set then built an isometric game-style map out of it).
Don't know why, but that shits me. I think the work would have been better/more powerful if the shots _really_ looked like games. Like, made you do a double take.
In any case no matter how jarring s/he got it, it wouldn't touch Custer's Revenge!
grib.
I live in QLD Australia. In June '99 the Federal Government made an amendment to the Broadcasting Services Act. This amendment introduced a "complaint based" internet censorship system. It came came into effect one the 1st of January 2000.
I haven't noticed the slightest bit of difference. There was a lot of puffing and blowing in Parliament about Protecting the Children and applying the same standards we have for movies and TV to the internet. There was talk of filtering all packets that came into Australia after the (startlingly obvious) point was made that most content viewed in Australia is hosted overseas.
Informed opinion (i.e., that of people who actually used computers/the internet) was that the proposed scheme was ludicrous and unworkable (ISPs are legally require to "make available" client side filtering software, although no-one seems to know if use of them is supposed to be mandatory), and time has shown that opinion to be correct. The scheme isn't the slightest hinderance to accessing "undesirable" content, it has cost millions of taxpayer dollars, and it has made Australia look like an IT backwater (which it isn't). Check out this link for an overview of the law.
At the time I said to people "this is the thin edge of a nasty wedge", and I'm still concerned that I may be right. While the law in its current form is more stupid than problematic, I'm deeply uncomfortable that it sits there packing some nasty penalties for non-complying ISPs. When there's a precedent for blocking one form of "undesirable content" it means that the infrastructure is right there when the government wants to block another form of "undesirable content".
Hope this helps for your article!
grib.
shareware playstation games? Sure! Remember Net Yaroze, the consumer dev kit? That thing was really popular for a while... lets hope there'll be one for PSX2 (or even Dreamcast or X-Box!).
Here's a link!
gribbly
I think a lot of it can be attributed to a 2D viewpoint, which of course most "classic" games have. This is similar to, but more specific than, the "limitations of technology make you more creative" argument.
A 2D viewpoint means that the designer of the game can force you to play from the optimal perspective for that type of gameplay. For example, Atari 2600 Combat works really well top-down, as does 1942, Xevious and Frogger.
Imagine playing Combat from a side view perspective, or Donkey Kong from a 2D top down perspective...
While I believe we are getting better and better at it, it's still fairly early days for the 3D perspective. We often give the player too much freedom, or make that freedom to difficult to understand and control. This usually makes the game harder, less direct, and -- I think -- less satisfying.
Currently, the most successful 3D games limit either limit the degrees of camera freedom available to the player, or use a first-person perspective (which has the advantage of being very similar to RL).
A lot of this comes down to interface. I don't think any game but Quake does a _really_ seamless job of immersing you in a 3D game world -- the kind of immersion that, say, Defender gives you effortlessly. This is, of course, highly subjective.
An _excellent_ case study is Konami's brilliant "Metal Gear Solid" on the PSX. If you analyse the gameplay, a lot of it is Pacman. Although the world is polygons, not sprites, the camera is often locked to an (almost) topdown perspective, and the map layouts are very grid/maze like.
Of course, MGS features many sections with different perspectives(including first person), but I believe my point is valid.
One last point: "classic" gaming is alive and well on the Dreamcast. Chu Chu Rocket is new-school 2D puzzling of superior quality. Puzzle Bobble (aka Bust-a-Move) 4 is a fantastic "classic" puzzle game. And Namco have just released Mr. Driller, a total old-school arcade throwback.
Enjoy!
grib.
No, that would be Conker's Bad Fur Day, an upcoming N-64 game by Rare. I kid you not, inebreation and subsequent urination are a gameplay feature.
!!!
gribbly.
Well, first of all it's not that different. It looks and plays very much like the first Diablo. But there are some key differences:
:)
1) the maps are _much_ bigger.
2) due to 1), you can now run as well as walk. This is a Good Thing.
3) the combat is more or less identical (stand and slash), but you can now simply hold the LMB down and your character will repeatedly hack away. No more RSI!
4) you can get NPC characters who follow you around and help you fight.
5) the skill system is much more involved (it's now a "skill tree").
6) small but cool difference: "socketed" weapons. These are weapons that have sockets for gems you can collect. Naturally, the slotting a sapphire in to a club makes the club a better weapon (!?).
And that, as far as I can tell, is the extent of the difference! Oh, the character classes are different, yet somehow exactly the same
If it ain't broke, don't fix it =
grib.
...I sometimes think that with all the "we're changing the world" talk we forget to appreciate the little things.
I spent last new year's eve at Uluru (aka "Ayer's Rock", in outback Australia). Against much sensible and well meaning advice, I took my PII-400 laptop with me.
While we were camped there, we made a song with the assistance of about 35 people who had come to Uluru from all around the world. We had them say "happy new year" in their native language. It was an amazing gathering, very joyous. Perhaps it would have happened without the tech (the laptop, which did the recording and sequencing), but the follow-up wouldn't.
We gave the URL of our website out to everyone there, and when we got home a couple of weeks later I mp3ed the song and uploaded it. We got mail from all around the world from people who had been there, and from people who hadn't (somehow!).
You can hear the song for yourself!
This was, and is, amazing to me. All of this stuff is possible, technically, with analogue tech. But I don't fool myself that it would have happened without digital technology -- it certainly woudn't have happened anywhere near as quickly or spontaneously.
!!!
grib.
>that there really is no revolution,
>but it is being marketed anyway.
Do you mean really _is_ a revolution?
If so, I am reminded of "All Tomorrow's Parties" (William Gibson). There is a nice speech -- I don't have it front of me, and I can't remember the character's name -- about how there are now no true countercultures, thanks to the relentless marketing. They simply become mainstream too soon to develop into anything fully-fledged.
I think it's true. The hippy movement is a good example of a genuine counter culture. The rave movement is another one, but the progress from true underground to "techno-lite" and f*ckin' Moby in however many ads has been very quick. Too quick, because -- as Gibson pointed out -- these things are picked up and relentlessly exploited for marketing purposes before they've had a chance to mature.
FWIW, I just went and ordered a copy of No Logo. Looks like it's right up my alley. So _there's_ a triumph of marketing! Also, be sure and check out:
http://www.adbusters.org/
da grib.