If everyone who signed the petition canceled their pre-order and/or boycotts the game, that's already over $5mil in lost sales. I'm guessing that through word of mouth that number will certainly go up.
Of course, some people (like me) who sign the petition have ordered the console, not the PC, version, and I lack the balls to cancel my console copy in support of my PC player brethren, Yeah, I came out of the PC scene, and I think it was shabby for IW to keep the dedicated server change quiet until less than a month before release, but I'm still getting my MW2 for the Xbox 360. Besides, I got my ass roundly kicked by those PC guys every time I went online in CoD4. The console guys are much easier targets.
Exactly what I was going to suggest. And, instead of bulky discs, get thumbdrives or SD cards. You can often get a 16 gb drive for $30 from the links on Dealhack or other such bargain sites.
On the Xbox 360, at least, there was a deliberate decision by Microsoft, AFAIK, NOT to include provision for keyboard & mouse use, despite many old school PC players crying for such.
However, for keyboard & mouse players, there's a solution that does work, as long as you have a PC near your XBOX 360, the XIM, Xbox Input Machine:
I play on the 360 with a mouse & keyboard using an XFPS keyboard adapter and an XIM module I bought ready-made on eBay. (It set me back $90 for the XFPS adapter & around $80 for the XIM adapter.) For me, at least, the experience is virtually the same as playing on a PC -- except I don't have to worry about upgrading my videocard to play the next hot FPS title...
I'll always play games on the PC, but, as long as I can kludge keyboard & mouse use on a console, it'll be my primary platform for gaming.
Re:Most humans aren't that smart
on
The State of Game AI
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Just ensure that basic stuff like navigation is better. Stuff doesn't have to be that smart, but at least they shouldn't be totally stupid - they should be able to walk around stuff without getting stuck - even a "dumb" animal can navigate open spaces better than many computer controlled stuff in games."
A lot of games -- even high profile games like Halo 3 -- can't get this fundamental down. God forbid you have an AI character driving your Warthog anywhere. You're sure to ram into a tree or rock & get hopelessly stuck. Some older games have done it right. The original UT had a nice user-variable scale of skill for its bots & you could opt for bots which ramped up their skill to match your performance. And the original Half-life grunts seemed like NPC geniuses to me: retreating when under pressure, throwing grenades to cover their retreat, & then flanking... That game is 10 yrs old, but few games seem to have achieved that level of AI optimization.
"haha. yeah right, it's so mature and grown-up walking round with a plastic copy of a virtual weapon from a computer game"
You don't "walk around with it." You play with the replica BR55 Battle Rifle when no one's around (your office, den, or basement), and then hurriedly put it back on its altar when someone approaches. If you're going to walk around with it, you'd need to put on your home-made $15 Mjolnir Mark VI assault armor. As in:
I sure feel like I've done a billion Windows installs (and re-installs... and re-re-installs) building and maintaining homebrew PCs for the past 17 years...
Fascinating speculative work on the building of black hole to use as a portal to another part of the universe. Comes off as SF, but is fact-based. Here's his website: http://www.adrianberry.net/
Standard disclaimers apply; read The Iron Sun years and years ago. Don't know how the physics have held up over the years, but it's a rockin read.
"1) The Mailers started white then turned red (Embarrassment about obscene profits?)"
And they were quite sturdy, some type of thin cardboard. I actually thought they were a better, more protective mailer, but not as cost-effective for Netflix, probably.
After the white mailers were discontinued, I was getting yellow paper Netflix envelopes, a transitional format before the current red envelopes started being used...
The teflon coating found on many armor-piercing rounds for small arms has no effect on the armor-piercing ability of the ammunition. The teflon coat is to protect the barrel from excess wear caused by the hard materials of the projectile. Armor-piercing properties come from the composition of the projectile or from a insert of a harder substance incorporated into the projectile.
Current Issue Skeptic has Mythbuster Interview
on
Ask The Mythbusters
·
· Score: 1
They nabbed the cover, too. No excerpts on the website for their interview, tho... The interview is excellent, and it answers a lot of the questions posed by folks here. Link to the Skeptic site follows:
I read something similar to this (using airborne micro-organisms) in Adrian Berry's _The Next 10,000 Years_, I think. The idea was to precipitate the water vapor out of the Venerian atmos, preferably by using oxygen-producing life-forms... Cool book. Also extremely cool is )_The Iron Sun_, in which Berry postulates building a black hole to use as a terminal in a cosmic subway. He oughta turn it into a novel...
TheGavster wrote: "There's always been QA in the form of 'official' accessories. Forcing *everyone* to use the official accessory licensing program just means that those of us willing to accept a crappy headset at a reduced price are out of luck."
Yeah, but it also means that those of us who might like _alternative_ periperhals (that are not necessarily crappy) not sanctified by M$ are also excluded. When I play Halo with my friends, I play using a mouse/keyboard through an adapter that lets me play like I do all my PC FPS games. M$'s DRM would have likely prevented me from doing that.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.cyriak.co.uk/lhc/lhc-webcams.html
And can I have my droud back, please?
Thanks
-- BMO
I've got a tasp here to "make your day" till you get your droud back.
http://www.grapheine.com/bombaytv/movie-uk-31de7bb64cbf9e4a316dbbd1a6b769ad.html
If everyone who signed the petition canceled their pre-order and/or boycotts the game, that's already over $5mil in lost sales. I'm guessing that through word of mouth that number will certainly go up.
Of course, some people (like me) who sign the petition have ordered the console, not the PC, version, and I lack the balls to cancel my console copy in support of my PC player brethren, Yeah, I came out of the PC scene, and I think it was shabby for IW to keep the dedicated server change quiet until less than a month before release, but I'm still getting my MW2 for the Xbox 360. Besides, I got my ass roundly kicked by those PC guys every time I went online in CoD4. The console guys are much easier targets.
I've got 2 exes who demonstrate the effect on this male lingered for years before wearing off...
Exactly what I was going to suggest. And, instead of bulky discs, get thumbdrives or SD cards. You can often get a 16 gb drive for $30 from the links on Dealhack or other such bargain sites.
Judging by the pricing of Windows 7 Ultimate, it's business as usual at Microsoft.
On the Xbox 360, at least, there was a deliberate decision by Microsoft, AFAIK, NOT to include provision for keyboard & mouse use, despite many old school PC players crying for such.
However, for keyboard & mouse players, there's a solution that does work, as long as you have a PC near your XBOX 360, the XIM, Xbox Input Machine:
http://obsiv.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!948789BF56FAF394!282.entry?wa=wsignin1.0&sa=884097234
I play on the 360 with a mouse & keyboard using an XFPS keyboard adapter and an XIM module I bought ready-made on eBay. (It set me back $90 for the XFPS adapter & around $80 for the XIM adapter.) For me, at least, the experience is virtually the same as playing on a PC -- except I don't have to worry about upgrading my videocard to play the next hot FPS title...
I'll always play games on the PC, but, as long as I can kludge keyboard & mouse use on a console, it'll be my primary platform for gaming.
"Just ensure that basic stuff like navigation is better. Stuff doesn't have to be that smart, but at least they shouldn't be totally stupid - they should be able to walk around stuff without getting stuck - even a "dumb" animal can navigate open spaces better than many computer controlled stuff in games."
A lot of games -- even high profile games like Halo 3 -- can't get this fundamental down. God forbid you have an AI character driving your Warthog anywhere. You're sure to ram into a tree or rock & get hopelessly stuck. Some older games have done it right. The original UT had a nice user-variable scale of skill for its bots & you could opt for bots which ramped up their skill to match your performance. And the original Half-life grunts seemed like NPC geniuses to me: retreating when under pressure, throwing grenades to cover their retreat, & then flanking... That game is 10 yrs old, but few games seem to have achieved that level of AI optimization.
"haha. yeah right, it's so mature and grown-up walking round with a plastic copy of a virtual weapon from a computer game"
You don't "walk around with it." You play with the replica BR55 Battle Rifle when no one's around (your office, den, or basement), and then hurriedly put it back on its altar when someone approaches. If you're going to walk around with it, you'd need to put on your home-made $15 Mjolnir Mark VI assault armor. As in:
http://halo.bungie.org/misc/cb_mcsuit.html
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAF5FxzZ17E
and
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAF5FxzZ17E
I sure feel like I've done a billion Windows installs (and re-installs... and re-re-installs) building and maintaining homebrew PCs for the past 17 years...
Fascinating speculative work on the building of black hole to use as a portal to another part of the universe. Comes off as SF, but is fact-based. Here's his website: http://www.adrianberry.net/
Standard disclaimers apply; read The Iron Sun years and years ago. Don't know how the physics have held up over the years, but it's a rockin read.
Link to YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snfc_wNWqSU
it'll be a big hit on Woot!
Hmmm. Pacemaker for the brain... Here's a cautionary note from Michael Crichton: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072267/
kratei wrote:
"1) The Mailers started white then turned red (Embarrassment about obscene profits?)"
And they were quite sturdy, some type of thin cardboard. I actually thought they were a better, more protective mailer, but not as cost-effective for Netflix, probably.
After the white mailers were discontinued, I was getting yellow paper Netflix envelopes, a transitional format before the current red envelopes started being used...
I hear the EU has hired a bill collection agency from Nigeria.
"How about teflon-coated bullets?"
FWIW:
The teflon coating found on many armor-piercing rounds for small arms has no effect on the armor-piercing ability of the ammunition. The teflon coat is to protect the barrel from excess wear caused by the hard materials of the projectile. Armor-piercing properties come from the composition of the projectile or from a insert of a harder substance incorporated into the projectile.
They nabbed the cover, too. No excerpts on the website for their interview, tho... The interview is excellent, and it answers a lot of the questions posed by folks here. Link to the Skeptic site follows:
http://www.skeptic.com/index.html
I thought these guys just announced their recommitment to Windoze gaming...
Maybe an emulator for the Xbox/Xbox 360, allowing PC users to play Xbox games on their PC?
I read something similar to this (using airborne micro-organisms) in Adrian Berry's _The Next 10,000 Years_, I think. The idea was to precipitate the water vapor out of the Venerian atmos, preferably by using oxygen-producing life-forms... Cool book. Also extremely cool is )_The Iron Sun_, in which Berry postulates building a black hole to use as a terminal in a cosmic subway. He oughta turn it into a novel...
TheGavster wrote: "There's always been QA in the form of 'official' accessories. Forcing *everyone* to use the official accessory licensing program just means that those of us willing to accept a crappy headset at a reduced price are out of luck."
Yeah, but it also means that those of us who might like _alternative_ periperhals (that are not necessarily crappy) not sanctified by M$ are also excluded. When I play Halo with my friends, I play using a mouse/keyboard through an adapter that lets me play like I do all my PC FPS games. M$'s DRM would have likely prevented me from doing that.
View this thread & scroll down to the new "Steam" logo some clever dick animated:
i nk =1218760
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDL
Once the dual-layers are bought, the ultra-high density DVD-burners/players with 20+ Gigs of capacity, will be available...