When "limitations" are mentioned, I think about the GTA series (well, 3, VC and SA) in general.
30fps limit and/or 60hz on computer.
Think about it for a second, 30fps limit on machines that can churn out 2 to 5x that amount?
Or the 60hz, which gets even more painful to my eyes as time goes on? Hell, I've amazed people by being able to look at a monitor and tell the diff between 60/75/85hz w/o looking at the display properties. 60hz hurts (pun intended), 75hz is tolerable and 85hz and above is best looking and I can't see the flicker.
Taken together, if you use directX's allowable refresh rates to change per resolutions you get all sorts of anomolies in GTA3/vc/sa, like buildings that disapper, curbs/trees/cars that aren't drawn until/after you've hit them.
Worst one was in SA trying to get to a clamshell w/o the "frame limiter on", you'd think that parachuting in dropping into the water and swimming from there would give me enough time? Nope, drowned no matter what. Turned on the limiter, swam down, got the shell and got back up with more than 1/2 lung capacity.
Starwars battelfront, IIRC from a friend of mine, had similar issues, made worse by consoles and pc's playing online.
It comes down to: console games work within the strenghts/limits of the console, pc's OTOH have to work within the real limits of the hardware or the artificial limits of console ports or both.
SA was the best/worst example of this. Freedom to roam, graphically stunning, little load time (I got no more than a 2 second tick of the SATA drive), but you still had drowning without the frame limiter and teleporting cars, and disappearing scenery if not at 60hz (sometimes the 60hz unlock was applied w/o user intervention and had to be locked manually, AFAIR).
I've generally noticed pc -> console ports do better than v/v, because to cut the game down to fit a console is easy, building a game back up to not look crappy on a pc rarely works (i.e. Thief3, Deus Ex:IW)
it makes us Canadians look like a bunch of jackasses (I fear I've left an opening for mockery here).
Oh, y'all don't need much help, I mean seriously: censor the internet, hockey, ice fishing, cheap beer and expensive cigarettes? What kind of country is that?
It takes valuable space on the keyboard and rarely gets used.
SO YOU SAY, BUT I STILL CAN'T FIND IT. DOES THIS MEAN I SHOULD REINSTALL AOL?
(/.'er please note, this is in jest. any spelling mistakes are because of tears streaming down my face as I type this because I could not resist and don't want to alert the boss. got to go outside...now).
"Bad command or file name" is about as informative as "If you don't know what you did wrong, I'm not going to tell you".
Of course the part left out of the article is that most of the males were too slow to respond. In 50% of the cases, Reasons ranged from "one handed typing", "sticky keys" and "fapping"... census takers were not sure how, or if they wanted to respond after cleaning their keyboards for the sixth time.
I'm forgoing mod points to reply and get a bit of perspective on this, because I'm suprised I missed/don't recall some of the things that the article talks about.
Rather intriguing to find out Syndicate got its start on Amiga (tunnel vision, or not).
Lest you think me a heathen/n00b, I got my start on the Atari2600 (Asteroids, Atlantis, Subterrania, Tanks), then a Classic Nintendo (Rolling Thunder, Metroid, Double Dragon--to the point me and roommate almost got murdered by our 3rd roomie). Mid to late 80's
Then on to systems I never owned, but had access to: Few Friend's Commodor(s) (SP?) Tetris, Monkey Island, Hunt for Red October (always beat the roomies high score. Wasn't his, but his good friend's, while said friend was out to sea.) Three people, three games, hours of fun/wasted time. Heck, Monkey Island was done in shifts, sometimes. (end of 80's, beginning of 90's)
I think there was an new machine later, it was either a C64 or Amiga that had Red October, also. But was way too difficult as ships never used depth charges, but those mini-torpedoes that fired straight down and never missed. (90 to 92'ish)
Prince of Persia on a supervisor/friend's machine...286 or 386, and BBS's, and seeing a "PC" and what computers could do by the time my enlistment ended in 93'ish.
That out of the way, I've never heard of Populous or Another World, but Syndicate I'd played on my PC after playing DooM a year after it came out (no interest until I played it, same with Descent).
But Syndicate +/- American Revolt and Hi Octane (Bullfrog, IIRC) were some of the most fun and addictive game in the past 10 years or so.
So I guess I'm asking of/. and those with a bit more gaming experience, did these titles die with the platform, fade slow/fast after other machines came around or some other reason. (I think Worms had a PC port as I recall several people telling me about it during my MW2 revival stage.)
if Bethesda ever figured out the reason for the "Stutter Bug"?
Common factor seemed to be 200+ hours of gameplay and the animations for doors (fire, too) would "Stutter" so badly in ruins it was impossible to do anything.
Thank $deity for the mod community and someone with a savegame 30'ish seconds before the bug.
Sounds very similar to this particular bug, but where I stopped playing was a month or so after that bug was fixed by the mod community.
Several long continuous threads might still exist on elderscrolls.com.
(edit before post: and the disappearing items "fix" was to "take all" and place the items back one at a time...thx a lot, Bsoft...how about a "Put all" button, or, "always keep this item".
Simple this to make the game less tedious/annoying. (Ignoring the book shelf, display case perfectionists. Yeah, yeah, I was one, too, to a degree).
Bottom line: file operations in Vista suck, even if your HD is fast and you have lots of RAM.
My question is: for all users, or some...? I really doubt this happens everywhere, I had the Vista RC2 until recently on my modest machine and copying/moving was as fast as on XP (i.e. normal).
Generalizing that in Vista these are slow kinda skews the issue: quite possibly this is not just unfixable bloat, but is caused by something specific and will be fixed in the coming weeks.
(tounge in cheek)
Start -> run -> cmd
Ping cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com
Pinging cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>15s TTL=558 Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>25s TTL=558 Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>15s TTL=558 Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>35s TTL=558
I imagine in the RC2 days the server wasn't so busy, and the fix makes it a local service.
Perhaps Vista in an acronym for Very Intense Snitching Tattling Arse-kissing (of the MAFIAA).
You have Vista Home, Vista Home Premium, Vista Business, Vista Enterprise and Vista Ultimate.
$deity, how far we've come in 20-odd years... Unicies would have a lineup like the way Vista does now and became one of the very topics vocalized by MS: "Unix is TOO fragmented" and...
Is that it (Vista) doesn't play nicely with AD domains.
Does not interoperate with other systems very well.
*coff*
My, my, my. re-inventing unix, poorly and repeating the mistakes of history.
(negated by their monopoly in OS's within a year as another predicted, I'm sure)
In the US Air Force, this has already happened in the form of the Standard Desktop Configuration Image that we install on all PCs. This started the middle of last year.
I became aware of this via relatives whom work in a secure environment...something along the lines of:
"The computers were so fucked up today because of the secure network/machine config/etc that they had to wait 6+ hours before it was fixed".
Slashdot Mirror
When "limitations" are mentioned, I think about the GTA series (well, 3, VC and SA) in general.
30fps limit and/or 60hz on computer.
Think about it for a second, 30fps limit on machines that can churn out 2 to 5x that amount?
Or the 60hz, which gets even more painful to my eyes as time goes on? Hell, I've amazed people
by being able to look at a monitor and tell the diff between 60/75/85hz w/o looking at the display
properties. 60hz hurts (pun intended), 75hz is tolerable and 85hz and above is best looking and I
can't see the flicker.
Taken together, if you use directX's allowable refresh rates to change per resolutions you get all sorts
of anomolies in GTA3/vc/sa, like buildings that disapper, curbs/trees/cars that aren't drawn until/after
you've hit them.
Worst one was in SA trying to get to a clamshell w/o the "frame limiter on", you'd think that parachuting in
dropping into the water and swimming from there would give me enough time? Nope, drowned no matter what.
Turned on the limiter, swam down, got the shell and got back up with more than 1/2 lung capacity.
Starwars battelfront, IIRC from a friend of mine, had similar issues, made worse by consoles and pc's
playing online.
It comes down to: console games work within the strenghts/limits of the console, pc's OTOH have to work
within the real limits of the hardware or the artificial limits of console ports or both.
SA was the best/worst example of this. Freedom to roam, graphically stunning, little load time (I got
no more than a 2 second tick of the SATA drive), but you still had drowning without the frame limiter and
teleporting cars, and disappearing scenery if not at 60hz (sometimes the 60hz unlock was applied w/o
user intervention and had to be locked manually, AFAIR).
I've generally noticed pc -> console ports do better than v/v, because to cut the game down to fit a
console is easy, building a game back up to not look crappy on a pc rarely works (i.e. Thief3, Deus Ex:IW)
It doesn't, but I think General U.S. Grant was one of the first to use it as a tactic.
Industrial Warfare, only the retail version of it.
Volume, pricing to kill off the opposition.
Oh, y'all don't need much help, I mean seriously: censor the internet, hockey, ice fishing, cheap beer and expensive cigarettes? What kind of country is that?
Aboot time, eh?
(I kid, I kid)
Is Gabe using Outlook, again? Shame, shame, shame, figured he'd learn the first time.
I guess HL3 will be delayed again because of hackers. Damn those hackers!
Makes you wonder if Valve has a S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
WHICH ONE IS THE CAPS LOCK KEY?
SO YOU SAY, BUT I STILL CAN'T FIND IT. DOES THIS MEAN I SHOULD REINSTALL AOL?
(/.'er please note, this is in jest. any spelling mistakes are because of tears streaming down
my face as I type this because I could not resist and don't want to alert the boss. got to go
outside...now).
And the cause for 99.9% of those Buffer underruns on Windows machine?
(say it with me now, kids)
Auto-RUN
Almost a nice little rhyme, eh? Autorun equals underrun.
Back when CDRs cheapest disk was $10, an expensive lesson to learn because of idiotic presets.
Considering as someone once put it;
"Bad command or file name" is about as informative as "If you don't know what you did wrong, I'm not going to tell you".
Of course the part left out of the article is that most of the males were too slow to respond.
In 50% of the cases, Reasons ranged from "one handed typing", "sticky keys" and "fapping"... census takers were
not sure how, or if they wanted to respond after cleaning their keyboards for the sixth time.
boicott?
I think you need to buy a different vowel, unless this is meant as:
Boicott: v. When a fanboi of a product/corp. boycotts the same corp/products.
Either we've invented a new word and definition, or my spelling isn't worth a damn.
I'm forgoing mod points to reply and get a bit of perspective on this, because I'm suprised I missed/don't recall
/. and those with a bit more gaming experience, did these titles die with the platform, fade slow/fast after other machines came around or some other reason. (I think Worms had a PC port as
some of the things that the article talks about.
Rather intriguing to find out Syndicate got its start on Amiga (tunnel vision, or not).
Lest you think me a heathen/n00b, I got my start on the Atari2600 (Asteroids, Atlantis, Subterrania, Tanks), then
a Classic Nintendo (Rolling Thunder, Metroid, Double Dragon--to the point me and roommate almost got murdered by our 3rd roomie). Mid to late 80's
Then on to systems I never owned, but had access to: Few Friend's Commodor(s) (SP?) Tetris, Monkey Island, Hunt for Red October (always beat the roomies high score. Wasn't his, but his good friend's, while said friend was out to sea.) Three people, three games, hours of fun/wasted time. Heck, Monkey Island was done in shifts, sometimes.
(end of 80's, beginning of 90's)
I think there was an new machine later, it was either a C64 or Amiga that had Red October, also. But was way too
difficult as ships never used depth charges, but those mini-torpedoes that fired straight down and never missed.
(90 to 92'ish)
Prince of Persia on a supervisor/friend's machine...286 or 386, and BBS's, and seeing a "PC" and what computers
could do by the time my enlistment ended in 93'ish.
That out of the way, I've never heard of Populous or Another World, but Syndicate I'd played on my PC after playing DooM a year after it came out (no interest until I played it, same with Descent).
But Syndicate +/- American Revolt and Hi Octane (Bullfrog, IIRC) were some of the most fun and addictive game
in the past 10 years or so.
So I guess I'm asking of
I recall several people telling me about it during my MW2 revival stage.)
Actually, "Alliterating Apes" accepted before that.
if Bethesda ever figured out the reason for the "Stutter Bug"?
Common factor seemed to be 200+ hours of gameplay and the animations for doors (fire, too) would
"Stutter" so badly in ruins it was impossible to do anything.
Thank $deity for the mod community and someone with a savegame 30'ish seconds before the bug.
Sounds very similar to this particular bug, but where I stopped playing was a month or so
after that bug was fixed by the mod community.
Several long continuous threads might still exist on elderscrolls.com.
(edit before post: and the disappearing items "fix" was to "take all" and place the items back one at a
time...thx a lot, Bsoft...how about a "Put all" button, or, "always keep this item".
Simple this to make the game less tedious/annoying.
(Ignoring the book shelf, display case perfectionists.
Yeah, yeah, I was one, too, to a degree).
This produce does what it is supposed to....
Heh, just when I thought my reading skills went to shit with "Bad Meth Causes Explosion at CERN Collider",
an honest to $deity real typo.
Initial reply was: "Of course Apples are produce...errr..."
Apple produces a product that is not produce. Dude.
Thanks for the chuckle and double-take.
I blame S.T.A.L.K.E.R, amazing how fast it becomes 1am after dinner.
Well, the word marketing was in close proximity, I was just suprised nobody picked up on it sooner.
Gawd, I can see the new
Has netcraft confirmed this?
...because they're not staring at the blinky cursors, but at the blinky lights on the switches.
Like, for instance that switch over th...Oooohhh, blinky lights. Pretty.
Nah, TV just lowers it and/or slows it down.
Powerpoint, on the other hand has been doing it for years, on *both* sides of the projector.
Can't really use the acronym for Powerpoint Meeting Syndrome...it's take for some reason.
IOW, "Mine's smaller than yours...ha ha!"
Wait, I didn't mean it like that! Stop laughing!
there are no blueray hddvd usenet gr... (user is duct taped to chair and muzzled by greybeards)#*&^$)No Carrier.
(tounge in cheek)
Start -> run -> cmd
Ping cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com
Pinging cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>15s TTL=558
Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>25s TTL=558
Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>15s TTL=558
Reply from cancel_or_allow.microsoft.com: bytes=32 time>35s TTL=558
I imagine in the RC2 days the server wasn't so busy, and the fix makes it a local service.
Perhaps Vista in an acronym for Very Intense Snitching Tattling Arse-kissing (of the MAFIAA).
Inquiring, tinfoil covered minds want to know.
(/TIC)
Bow-chicka-bow-wow!
Actually, if "lamb" is not gender specific then would it be "lesbeeaaaan" or change to "A little lamb had Mary".
Still, Bow-chicka-bow-wow!
/. headline: A Million-Dollar Laptop Created and has a diamond power button.
In other news' headlines: A 10K dollars webserver destroyed and looks like it was hit with a diamond cutting tool.
Gizmag IT people proudly exclaimed to newspeople "We got featured on Slasduhhh...what's that SMELL!?"
Ah, thanks, I missed that one.
If it did not have that hoover vacuum cleaner/blower attached to it, I'd consider it.
Sticks out way too far for my case, judging by the measurements...double height I could live with, but the
width is a bit too much.
$deity, how far we've come in 20-odd years... Unicies would have a lineup like the way Vista does now
and became one of the very topics vocalized by MS: "Unix is TOO fragmented" and...
Does not interoperate with other systems very well.
*coff*
My, my, my. re-inventing unix, poorly and repeating the mistakes of history.
(negated by their monopoly in OS's within a year as another predicted, I'm sure)
Bravo, two birds with one stone.
I noticed that she never pronounces SUSE so I'm assuming that means that even Novell doesn't know how to pronounce it.
I thought similarly, instead of the lulaby music, should have been Simon and Garfunkel's "wake up little
SUSE/suzie".
In the US Air Force, this has already happened in the form of the Standard Desktop Configuration Image that we install on all PCs. This started the middle of last year.
I became aware of this via relatives whom work in a secure environment...something along the lines of:
"The computers were so fucked up today because of the secure network/machine config/etc that they had to
wait 6+ hours before it was fixed".
So, yeah, so secure it can't be used.
Oh, wait...windows...never mind.