This. GoW co-op with a friend (split-screen or two-console in the same room) is so much fun. I also recommend Army of Two for fun shooty co-op, though you do have to get past the fist-pounding "yay, murder!" aspect.
Most action games, including GoW, are actually ludicrous in the sheer amount and pace of movement they encourage from players.
Well, I think some of them are covered (ha) by the presence of 'armor' (or 'shields' ala Halo) that provide protection from flak. Soldiers stay in cover and don't move much in a real-world battle because nobody wants to be turned into mush. If they had magical gear that could completely protect them, at least for a while, even from just light fire, you can bet tactics would change again. And no, real-world armor doesn't count: it only covers parts of your body, and even then isn't 100% effective. In the GoW case, no shields, so you need cover, but you do have regenerating health (not to mention picking up fallen allies), which gives you some ability to reposition or charge the enemy.
GoW has generally been more subtle, I think.
Except for the Hive levels in GoW2...stupid popup cover. -_-
Exactly. I never liked white stuff like wonderbread, but for the past few years I've been lucky to live in a small town that has five (!) great, small bakeries near it. I've started to find that I can't stand any of the "normal" mass-produced, preserved, shipped-from-500+-miles-away bread at all anymore. Even the so-called 'natural', 'organic' stuff you can find at a giant grocery store is mushy, funky, and sweet(?!?!?) How can people eat this stuff? How could I?
I suppose it's the 'boiled frog' thing, but it just amazes me how something as fundamental as bread has been turned from an enjoyable, nutritious food into synthetic goop, and we haven't strung up the people responsible.
The parts of W7 that are 'usable' are basically exact copies of Mac OS X things. From 'pin to Dock^H^H^H^HTaskbar', to vector icons (though I don't know, I didn't even try Vista, so maybe the unabashed copying started there).
Unfortunately for them, it's at an OS 10.0 level. Networking is miserable, especially backwards-compatible networking (I have yet to get W7 to see XP/Mac SMB machines on my workgroup), every setting now takes two or three times as many clicks to change, you can enlarge icons and text, but only so far (no 10-foot interface).
I installed a school copy on a school computer to try it out. I was hoping to go to 7 at home so I could get 64-bit (more RAM), and DX10/11. I'm one more crash/random IP address loss/file sharing frustration/primal scream away from giving up and going back to XP.
Was Vista actually worse than this? How is that possible?
Maybe the universe is some sort of giant 'virtual particle'-esq expression. With virtual/free-energy particles, there is nothing, then there's a pair of particles, and then there's nothing again. So perhaps there was nothing, then there was a pair of universes (matter/anti-matter?), and then will be nothing.
Of course, it raises a question: in quantum, virtual particles are allowed because they exist for a short time (the energy-time expression of the uncertainty relation). That's because our 'vacuum' isn't really 'nothing'. If the universe exists within a true, timeless nothing, then the whole energy-time-uncertainty-virtual-blah thing kinda breaks down. If not, then that implies that time is not a facet of our universe alone and that our universe is 'contained' within some other...thing.
I once wrote a 'creation myth' for a mythology course. It basically started out, "First, there was nothing. But that was boring, so something happened."
We're here because we're here because we're here...
Something that always makes discussions like this a bit fuzzy: are some/all utilities generally included in the 'rent' overseas? I know people who have 'cheap' rent, but then additional hundreds of dollars in electric and (in my area) oil heating bills, internet, etc.
Er, a lot of the boards I've seen have the SATA controller connected internally to a PCIe bridge. Besides that, even with PCIe 1.0 you get 250MB/s per lane. A 4x card thus readily beats SATA. A 16x 2.0 card would 8GB/s. I want an SSD that can fill that.
Precisely. Sitting and just listening to music (or even having it on while doing something low-key like reading) just isn't done anymore (hell, just reading isn't done much anymore).
I don't think a car is a terrible place to listen to music if you've got a decent sound system and a car with reasonable seals. Radio has gotten so bad that if I listen to a CD or ipod on my car stereo, and then switch to radio, it makes me very sad.
And now explain it to your middle-managers in a way that makes them comfortable with your decisions. Hint: staring at the floor, twitching, obsessively rubbing the food stain on the right side of your shirt, and stuttering are not helpful. No matter how much you'd like everyone to be a computer, they are not. Communication skills are important. Endless good ideas have been lost to the ages because the person who came up with them could not explain them, clearly, to the people who are actually in charge.
And what happens? Bridges collapse. People die of radiation poisoning. Rollercoasters fly off the rails. The fact that you must be articulate to be heard may in fact be a problem with the system, but some fault also lies with myopic techies who refuse to admit that there is any value outside of their figures. I'd rather have a single articulate engineer with a liberal arts background than a dozen shut-ins who get defensive when you ask them about their circuit board designs because OF COURSE IT ARE RIGHT YOU FOOL, I AM GENIUS!!!!.
Hey, they can't all be works of Ron Moore, and frankly who would want that? BSG was great, but it was also more than a bit.....emo.
The effects of Destiny wafting through space were beautiful, so there's -some- visual artistry at least.
Actually, I'm rather hoping there's -more- 'cheesy' shots like that. Something that definitely felt different about Destiny when compared to Atlantis and SG1's worlds was that it made me feel a little claustrophobic.
Lots of SG1 took place outdoors, and Atlantis had plenty of open rooms and balconies and etc, and a brighter color scheme. Destiny, with its dark halls, dead ends and traps and the bulk of the ship unknown and closed off feels more like a labyrinth. Where's the Minotaur?
I also like the fact (and I hope they stick to it) that weapons are limited. Let's see some improvised Kino-launcher weapons, and swords and spears! I know, I know, unlikely--they'll probably find an armory or something in episode 5, but I can dream.
And IMO, anyone who thinks that, in all the endless universe, there is not one form of life that will find a way to survive to the chilly end, nor is there any possibility of life forming in the deep future, is way too pessimistic.
It's an interesting question because of philosophical questions it raises.
What is survival? What if we (and by 'we' I mean living creatures in the broadest-possible scope) manage to create a perfect machine? Something from pure fields and laws we can't even imagine now. The ideal engine, with no loss for a given calculation. If we store a mind in such a machine, has that mind survived? With no energy input or output, there can be no net change. Is a mind, which may be conscious and unfathomably complex, but which is nevertheless perfectly static, truly alive?
What is life? If we reject the static mind and say that there must be some energy gain and loss in order to truly qualify as a surviving life form, then what are the options? We consume the universe, yes, and then? Can we move on to others? Is there meaning in such survival?
Someone above mentioned Baxter's Manifold: Time, and that had an interesting take on the whole thing. The end idea being that the best outcome is one in which maximum diversity is achieved. That is, that a given universe's best 'final outcome' is that which creates more universes. In a way this is an answer to "The Last Question". Rather than reversing entropy in a given universe, we create new universes that, in effect, decrease entropy for the set of all universes. The more universes we have, the more possibilities are expressed. Of course Baxter adds in the possibility that a 'parent' universe can impart some facets of itself to its 'children', which leads me to wonder about 'natural selection' among universes. If the 'best' universe is one that reproduces the most, then isn't the end result a multiverse full of universes that only exist for a fractional second before exploding into newer universes? Whee!
Of course, 'fraction of a second' may be meaningless if 'time' is an concept that differs from universe to universe, so perhaps it doesn't matter to multiversal evolution. Hell, maybe a universe could be its own parent.
1) Need Ancient gene to activate?
2) Maybe Ancient touch screens are of the capacitive sort. Need a living finger to poke it. Though yeah, I guess then an amputated finger might work.:P
Going by the names of the initial episodes, it is _very_ BSG. Air. Power. Water. Food. Some of the same things BSG dealt with. Not that this is a bad thing--these are legit issues for both situations, and provide a good way to flesh out the characters.
As for a recurring antagonist, I'm going to guess that the mysterious attacker who did all the damage to Destiny may eventually take that part.
Slashdot Mirror
Paid by the institutes...which, for an astro mission, probably got the money from NSF or NASA grants.
It's even better if you imagine they're both wearing monocles.
This. GoW co-op with a friend (split-screen or two-console in the same room) is so much fun. I also recommend Army of Two for fun shooty co-op, though you do have to get past the fist-pounding "yay, murder!" aspect.
Most action games, including GoW, are actually ludicrous in the sheer amount and pace of movement they encourage from players.
Well, I think some of them are covered (ha) by the presence of 'armor' (or 'shields' ala Halo) that provide protection from flak. Soldiers stay in cover and don't move much in a real-world battle because nobody wants to be turned into mush. If they had magical gear that could completely protect them, at least for a while, even from just light fire, you can bet tactics would change again. And no, real-world armor doesn't count: it only covers parts of your body, and even then isn't 100% effective. In the GoW case, no shields, so you need cover, but you do have regenerating health (not to mention picking up fallen allies), which gives you some ability to reposition or charge the enemy.
GoW has generally been more subtle, I think.
Except for the Hive levels in GoW2...stupid popup cover. -_-
Try buying bread from a bakery...
Exactly. I never liked white stuff like wonderbread, but for the past few years I've been lucky to live in a small town that has five (!) great, small bakeries near it. I've started to find that I can't stand any of the "normal" mass-produced, preserved, shipped-from-500+-miles-away bread at all anymore. Even the so-called 'natural', 'organic' stuff you can find at a giant grocery store is mushy, funky, and sweet(?!?!?) How can people eat this stuff? How could I?
I suppose it's the 'boiled frog' thing, but it just amazes me how something as fundamental as bread has been turned from an enjoyable, nutritious food into synthetic goop, and we haven't strung up the people responsible.
...you're one of those weirdos who reads the end of a book first, aren't you?
Of all the days not to have mod points...
The parts of W7 that are 'usable' are basically exact copies of Mac OS X things. From 'pin to Dock^H^H^H^HTaskbar', to vector icons (though I don't know, I didn't even try Vista, so maybe the unabashed copying started there).
Unfortunately for them, it's at an OS 10.0 level. Networking is miserable, especially backwards-compatible networking (I have yet to get W7 to see XP/Mac SMB machines on my workgroup), every setting now takes two or three times as many clicks to change, you can enlarge icons and text, but only so far (no 10-foot interface).
I installed a school copy on a school computer to try it out. I was hoping to go to 7 at home so I could get 64-bit (more RAM), and DX10/11. I'm one more crash/random IP address loss/file sharing frustration/primal scream away from giving up and going back to XP.
Was Vista actually worse than this? How is that possible?
Maybe the universe is some sort of giant 'virtual particle'-esq expression. With virtual/free-energy particles, there is nothing, then there's a pair of particles, and then there's nothing again. So perhaps there was nothing, then there was a pair of universes (matter/anti-matter?), and then will be nothing.
Of course, it raises a question: in quantum, virtual particles are allowed because they exist for a short time (the energy-time expression of the uncertainty relation). That's because our 'vacuum' isn't really 'nothing'. If the universe exists within a true, timeless nothing, then the whole energy-time-uncertainty-virtual-blah thing kinda breaks down. If not, then that implies that time is not a facet of our universe alone and that our universe is 'contained' within some other...thing.
I once wrote a 'creation myth' for a mythology course. It basically started out, "First, there was nothing. But that was boring, so something happened."
We're here because we're here because we're here...
Need more jiggawatts!!!!!
Something that always makes discussions like this a bit fuzzy: are some/all utilities generally included in the 'rent' overseas? I know people who have 'cheap' rent, but then additional hundreds of dollars in electric and (in my area) oil heating bills, internet, etc.
But then he wouldn't be OVER NINE^H^H^H^HTWENTY THOUSAAAAAAND!!!!!
Damn filter. Faaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiil.
Yamato Cannon.
Er, a lot of the boards I've seen have the SATA controller connected internally to a PCIe bridge. Besides that, even with PCIe 1.0 you get 250MB/s per lane. A 4x card thus readily beats SATA. A 16x 2.0 card would 8GB/s. I want an SSD that can fill that.
*cough*and for $100 plz*cough*
...might as well dream big.
Precisely. Sitting and just listening to music (or even having it on while doing something low-key like reading) just isn't done anymore (hell, just reading isn't done much anymore).
I don't think a car is a terrible place to listen to music if you've got a decent sound system and a car with reasonable seals. Radio has gotten so bad that if I listen to a CD or ipod on my car stereo, and then switch to radio, it makes me very sad.
Um...fried tofu covered in bacon salt?
Wow, an AC with no imagination and a religious nut. Not exactly the conversation I had hoped for.
And now explain it to your middle-managers in a way that makes them comfortable with your decisions. Hint: staring at the floor, twitching, obsessively rubbing the food stain on the right side of your shirt, and stuttering are not helpful. No matter how much you'd like everyone to be a computer, they are not. Communication skills are important. Endless good ideas have been lost to the ages because the person who came up with them could not explain them, clearly, to the people who are actually in charge.
And what happens? Bridges collapse. People die of radiation poisoning. Rollercoasters fly off the rails. The fact that you must be articulate to be heard may in fact be a problem with the system, but some fault also lies with myopic techies who refuse to admit that there is any value outside of their figures. I'd rather have a single articulate engineer with a liberal arts background than a dozen shut-ins who get defensive when you ask them about their circuit board designs because OF COURSE IT ARE RIGHT YOU FOOL, I AM GENIUS!!!!.
And yes, I speak from experience...sigh.
Hey, they can't all be works of Ron Moore, and frankly who would want that? BSG was great, but it was also more than a bit.....emo.
The effects of Destiny wafting through space were beautiful, so there's -some- visual artistry at least.
Actually, I'm rather hoping there's -more- 'cheesy' shots like that. Something that definitely felt different about Destiny when compared to Atlantis and SG1's worlds was that it made me feel a little claustrophobic.
Lots of SG1 took place outdoors, and Atlantis had plenty of open rooms and balconies and etc, and a brighter color scheme. Destiny, with its dark halls, dead ends and traps and the bulk of the ship unknown and closed off feels more like a labyrinth. Where's the Minotaur?
I also like the fact (and I hope they stick to it) that weapons are limited. Let's see some improvised Kino-launcher weapons, and swords and spears! I know, I know, unlikely--they'll probably find an armory or something in episode 5, but I can dream.
And IMO, anyone who thinks that, in all the endless universe, there is not one form of life that will find a way to survive to the chilly end, nor is there any possibility of life forming in the deep future, is way too pessimistic.
It's an interesting question because of philosophical questions it raises.
What is survival? What if we (and by 'we' I mean living creatures in the broadest-possible scope) manage to create a perfect machine? Something from pure fields and laws we can't even imagine now. The ideal engine, with no loss for a given calculation. If we store a mind in such a machine, has that mind survived? With no energy input or output, there can be no net change. Is a mind, which may be conscious and unfathomably complex, but which is nevertheless perfectly static, truly alive?
What is life? If we reject the static mind and say that there must be some energy gain and loss in order to truly qualify as a surviving life form, then what are the options? We consume the universe, yes, and then? Can we move on to others? Is there meaning in such survival?
Someone above mentioned Baxter's Manifold: Time, and that had an interesting take on the whole thing. The end idea being that the best outcome is one in which maximum diversity is achieved. That is, that a given universe's best 'final outcome' is that which creates more universes. In a way this is an answer to "The Last Question". Rather than reversing entropy in a given universe, we create new universes that, in effect, decrease entropy for the set of all universes. The more universes we have, the more possibilities are expressed. Of course Baxter adds in the possibility that a 'parent' universe can impart some facets of itself to its 'children', which leads me to wonder about 'natural selection' among universes. If the 'best' universe is one that reproduces the most, then isn't the end result a multiverse full of universes that only exist for a fractional second before exploding into newer universes? Whee!
Of course, 'fraction of a second' may be meaningless if 'time' is an concept that differs from universe to universe, so perhaps it doesn't matter to multiversal evolution. Hell, maybe a universe could be its own parent.
...Oh look, I've gone cross-eyed.
Wibble.
Turkey bacon?
1) Need Ancient gene to activate? 2) Maybe Ancient touch screens are of the capacitive sort. Need a living finger to poke it. Though yeah, I guess then an amputated finger might work. :P
More fun that way. :D
Tapping in Brit mode pwns.
Going by the names of the initial episodes, it is _very_ BSG. Air. Power. Water. Food. Some of the same things BSG dealt with. Not that this is a bad thing--these are legit issues for both situations, and provide a good way to flesh out the characters. As for a recurring antagonist, I'm going to guess that the mysterious attacker who did all the damage to Destiny may eventually take that part.