> a pattern emerges. The more complexity and mental stimulation I was getting from other > activities -- usually my day job at the time -- the less I needed mental stimulation in > my free time. Conversely, in times when I was working boring jobs, I'd be playing games > that required a lot of thinking and mental gymnastics.
I hear theres a similar reverse correlation between sex and downloading porn. Anyone around here shed more light on that?
City of Heroes introduced some Nike ads inside of instanced missions. It worked well because there were tons of billboards already with made-up ads on them.
I remember seeing one for the first time, and pointed it out to the rest of the team, and they all thought it was neat, too. In the interesting sense. Which means in the novel sense, here.
I felt no desire to go run out and buy Nike hightops, what with being able to leap a third of a mile per jump already.
People are constructing mountains with tunnels out of broken pieces of concrete (the decorative "item") and whole multi-story buildings with many halls and rooms inside.
I do a ton of this myself ("Real Trolls" SG (super group, CoH's guilds) on Freedom server) and have a new bud who has completely enbuilding'd the interior of a giant SG's base, including a giant war room with a wall of screens, medical labs with many rooms, and a dozen SG officer offices, all within a handful of old-school base "rooms". You can no longer tell what's old-school room and what's now rooms in their constructed buildings.
> World of Warcraft players sometimes hang out in front of Ironforge and dance.
This isn't metagaming. Remember that MMORPGs derived from MUDs, which in turn derived from being a fancy chat program where someone gave the chatters something else to do besides just blabbing.
No, the WoW metagamers found fun when they, say, "contracted a highly fatal and fast-acting disease", then teleported to Ironforge and infected the bankers and auction house barkers before they died, and those in turn, with hellacious heal rates, survived but passed on the infections, killing thousands of playres.
Or standing on a roof in EverQuest and casting down on monsters to kill them. This is called "strategy" in most games or the real world, but is called "a bannable exploit" by that now-FAIL company that does little more than host a stable of also-ran MMORPGs for one low monthly price that almost nobody wants to pay for.
City of Heroes has one hell of a metagame, if you want to call it that, in the base editor system, where you can now stack all the stupid pre-made base items, to construct vastly cooler things like entire buildings from desks and decorative storage footlockers.
Whole buildings are constructed inside bases (a series of giant, bare rooms) now, where as previously you just dumped pre-designed decorations ala The Sims.
Attention MMORPGs: The next MMORPGs should allow base construction, but in addition to pre-made goodies, add bricks and other tiny building blocks that people can use to make their own stuff.
> Do I have to RTFA to find out what C++0x is supposed to mean?
I hate to say it, but C# is a more clever name than that. C++ with another ++ over the top of the first ++, like C++, ++. And "sharp" as in musical sharp, which is a little bit higher than the note its sharping.
> During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect > the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and > possibly vegetation.
I recall the Viking landings on Mars. They ran their life detection kits and wow! Life. Maybe. Here are a bunch of other theories that account for it but not requiring life.
Repeat ad nauseam with other spacecraft.
So instead of pointing it at Earth and saying, hey, it detects life! why not pretend it was pointed at Venus and say, hey, got all the same readings. But is it life?
> According to the judge, her reason for doing so was that, when on the stand, > the defendant was asked if he admitted liability, and he said 'yes.' The > lawyers among you will know that that was a totally improper question, and > that the Court should not have even allowed it, much less based her holding upon the answer to it.
So the undiscussed issues, proof, and so on, don't matter since she said, "I Did It"?
I can't argue the propriety of the question or answer, but that's another issue. If it's Ok to do so, I can't see why there's anything wrong.
The only objection would be about the question and answer itself and whether that's valid. Anything else (in this particular case) is, at this point, sophistry at best.
> Scientists are unsure as to what is causing the spot: > > - An eruption > - charged particles from the Sun > - atmospheric turbulence > > 'Right now, I think it's anybody's guess,' adds Limaye.
The first thing that popped into my mind halfway thru was "is it true running or just fast walking?" The closeup at the end shows the former, as both feet are, in fact, off the ground for a short while.
20 years ago some US researchers had a 1-legged robot that could hop and keep its balance, even when pushed pretty hard. The trouble was extending that to two or four feet. This robot gets around that by seeming to hop from one foot to the other in a continuous hopping.
I also note that when pushed backwards, it raises its arms a little to help maintain balance. It isn't only legwork.
It's not pride that makes the government want to give him a harsh sentence.
On the other hand, anyone interested in hacking into the US government's computers for the purpose of real spying for antagonist governments is not likely to be dissuaded by such threats (to say nothing that the government'd go for even more serious laws as spying prosecutions.)
> "It's very tempting to just throw a bunch of classes of ships > together in order to say things like "our game has 15 classes > of ships!" but this, we believe, is the wrong direction. People > want meaningful and strong choices and not lots of meaningless, > empty choices. Currently we plan to have 4-6 classes, but they > will each have nearly endless possible configurations within those groups."
Is there something wrong with Eve's model? Shuttle, tiny, small, medium, large, extra large, etc., with just minor variations for each of four races for flavor? Are they having a "healer" ship and a "caster" ship and a "melee" ship,:)
I was two-boxing dual battleships -- Tier 3 Minmatar Maelstroms -- and got ganked in 0.0 space. It wasn't by two other battleships, but by a swarm of little popcorn.
One Eve guy's.sig is: If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't done your homework.
Note: Just like real war.
Just what kind of silly PvP are they expecting to develop in this game?
> This is a BIOS-level application that calls home for instructions in > case the laptop is ever lost or stolen. However, what the application > considers 'home' is subject to change.
Reminds me of an old cartoon where two people are standing right outside a bank's new, mighty vault. One's pointing at 3 foot hole in the wall with a plug lying on the floor, "...and that's the escape hatch in case someone gets locked in."
Ya know, back in the olden days, the premier BBS terminal program (think: properly and well-done HyperTerm) on the Mac was Red Ryder. It was such a popular shareware that the guy earned like $5 from it.
Anyway, when he went pro, the Red Ryder people came calling and said he had to change the name. So he changed Red Ryder to White Knight. He then got complaints that White Knight was also a nickname for people in the KKK.
Have times changed? How much more should a huge production like this catch the attention of people.
Oh, and don't argue with me about the validity of the complaint. I'm just relating it.
> MIT...is building 'a game that designs its own AI agents by observing > the behavior of humans.' Their ultimate goal? 'Collective AI-driven > agents that can interact and converse with humans without requiring > programming or specialists to hand-craft behavior and dialogue.'
Dev1: (hands up phone) SWEET!
Dev2: What?
Dev1: Blizzard agreed to let us exercise the system by hooking it up to one of their servers.
Dev2: SWEET!
Dev1: He said he just emailed me the technical info. Let's get to work!
Dev2: (Connects teh intertube pipe to their AI engine) And...that should do it. It's now getting live info on everyone on that server. Where they are. What they're doing. What the NPCs are doing in response.
Dev1: Ok...(looks at AI monitor status screen) Loook! It's watching that level 80 guy fight Hogger.
(AI watches level 80 kill hogger half a dozen times.)
AI: (scrolling onscreen log, they pipe it through the speech synthesis, which sounds just like the voice box from Wargames) Player moves to attack. Hogger NPC reacts by moving to attack. Statistical likelihood of Hogger survival: 0.0000000132%.
Dev2: Well, that's pretty obvi...LOOK!
AI: Assuming control of Hogger, rerouting behind tree alpha-73-zulu. Initiating reverse-circular-kiting scheme 12-beta of PC character pretty name "xLORD FOXXYx".
Dev2: He's making the guy waste manna while jumping out every now and then to take a quick pot shot. Wiffs, of course.
AI: Initiate hit point reduction of PC target. (Level 80's redbar starts dropping rapidly.)
Dev1: How can he do that no matter how skilled? It's all stat...
Dev2: (Looking at screen) Oh! It's using a sub-3 millisecond response time to dodge out of the way. Also, it's monitoring the activities of the other NPCs and...I don't believe it. It's analyzed their behavior with respect to the random number generator on the server and has calculated the seed being used as well as the...
Dev1: English, please. I'm the psych guy, remember?
Dev2: He knows the random numbers used for attacks, and their order. He only attacks on what will be a critical hit, guaranteed to get through. He then dodges and moves back away before the PC can react or even turn to face him.
AI: Seizing control of rioting prisoners in Stormwind prison. Escaping through zone point into Stormwind. Concentrated attacks per city guard yield 99% survival rate with auto-flee by attacked prisoner. Initiating slaughter of milling targets at mailbox. Initiating slaughter of milling targets at auction house and surrounding vicinity. Beach-head secured. Initiating herding of PCs through Stormwind frontal exit point.
AI: NPCs now all fight same target at same time. Attack priority: Healer, Caster, Controller, then Meatbag mop up. Additionally, all NPC of same faction in line of sight of other groups under attack regardless of distance.
Dev2: Might be a little too hard for the average...
AI: Initiating thief-dervish counterassault on PC fleeing stormwind. Intention: Pinch PCs against advancing prisoners. Working...working...working...scanning...scanning...no remaining PC life forms detected in Stormwind or surrounding countryside.
Dev1: Oh great. Now it's advancing the strategy server-wide.
AI: All zones detected clear of PC resurrections. Occasional sudden appearances mopped up. Guard groups stationed around all known graveyards and all dynamically lain bodies.
Dev2: Well, I guess that...
AI: Observing PC character pretty name "xLORD FOXXYx" posting message on forum. Message content, "WTF i just got killed by thing hodder sux bug i am level 80 any1 have it happenn?"
AI: Initiating automated response: Selecting retort...selecting...posting response, "wine with that cheese d00d? u suck l2p whinebaby noob carebare server no more!"
Slashdot Mirror
My own corporate email server could cut 95% of my spam by just checking if arriving mail "from me" was actually sent out by it only moments before.
Personally, I don't care if there becomes a legal definition of "virtual property", so long as I only have to pay virtual taxes on it.
I thought England was home of the "you can't be compelled to testify against yourself".
> a pattern emerges. The more complexity and mental stimulation I was getting from other
> activities -- usually my day job at the time -- the less I needed mental stimulation in
> my free time. Conversely, in times when I was working boring jobs, I'd be playing games
> that required a lot of thinking and mental gymnastics.
I hear theres a similar reverse correlation between sex and downloading porn. Anyone around here shed more light on that?
> Netflix Announces Second Data Mining Contest
Oh thank god I've got another chance!
I was gonna solve the previous one challenge, but never quite got around to it.
The whole case is sad -- forget the death.
A government is telling the population it's wrong to live your life in a virtual world -- where you are free from government telling you what to do.
City of Heroes introduced some Nike ads inside of instanced missions. It worked well because there were tons of billboards already with made-up ads on them.
I remember seeing one for the first time, and pointed it out to the rest of the team, and they all thought it was neat, too. In the interesting sense. Which means in the novel sense, here.
I felt no desire to go run out and buy Nike hightops, what with being able to leap a third of a mile per jump already.
People are constructing mountains with tunnels out of broken pieces of concrete (the decorative "item") and whole multi-story buildings with many halls and rooms inside.
I do a ton of this myself ("Real Trolls" SG (super group, CoH's guilds) on Freedom server) and have a new bud who has completely enbuilding'd the interior of a giant SG's base, including a giant war room with a wall of screens, medical labs with many rooms, and a dozen SG officer offices, all within a handful of old-school base "rooms". You can no longer tell what's old-school room and what's now rooms in their constructed buildings.
> World of Warcraft players sometimes hang out in front of Ironforge and dance.
This isn't metagaming. Remember that MMORPGs derived from MUDs, which in turn derived from being a fancy chat program where someone gave the chatters something else to do besides just blabbing.
No, the WoW metagamers found fun when they, say, "contracted a highly fatal and fast-acting disease", then teleported to Ironforge and infected the bankers and auction house barkers before they died, and those in turn, with hellacious heal rates, survived but passed on the infections, killing thousands of playres.
Or standing on a roof in EverQuest and casting down on monsters to kill them. This is called "strategy" in most games or the real world, but is called "a bannable exploit" by that now-FAIL company that does little more than host a stable of also-ran MMORPGs for one low monthly price that almost nobody wants to pay for.
City of Heroes has one hell of a metagame, if you want to call it that, in the base editor system, where you can now stack all the stupid pre-made base items, to construct vastly cooler things like entire buildings from desks and decorative storage footlockers.
Cool items
Like a DJ booth
A missile array
And a gun requisition crib with chain-link fence
Whole buildings are constructed inside bases (a series of giant, bare rooms) now, where as previously you just dumped pre-designed decorations ala The Sims.
Attention MMORPGs: The next MMORPGs should allow base construction, but in addition to pre-made goodies, add bricks and other tiny building blocks that people can use to make their own stuff.
The JREF at randi.org is already advertising to be one of the 10 "hostile" boards.
DO WANT array bound limiting built into the language.
DO NOT WANT static-size arrays.
DO NOT WANT bound checking overhead at runtime.
That's the problem. It's a tradeoff between speed, space, and bullet-proof code.
Oh thank god you put the *wink* there so I knew you were being jokingly sarcastic.
> Do I have to RTFA to find out what C++0x is supposed to mean?
I hate to say it, but C# is a more clever name than that. C++ with another ++ over the top of the first ++, like C++, ++. And "sharp" as in musical sharp, which is a little bit higher than the note its sharping.
> During the Earth observations, the spacecraft's spectrometers were able to detect
> the signatures of the Earth's water, ozone, methane, oxygen, carbon dioxide and
> possibly vegetation.
I recall the Viking landings on Mars. They ran their life detection kits and wow! Life. Maybe. Here are a bunch of other theories that account for it but not requiring life.
Repeat ad nauseam with other spacecraft.
So instead of pointing it at Earth and saying, hey, it detects life! why not pretend it was pointed at Venus and say, hey, got all the same readings. But is it life?
If Edy's/Dreyer's confuses you, you really don't wanna learn about Big Boy.
Well, "you" are an entire team, not one "player" who will sit around waiting for his turn at bat.
Still, Motor City Online gave people cool ways to get and upgrade and show off cars. And race them, of course. And it flopped.
> According to the judge, her reason for doing so was that, when on the stand,
> the defendant was asked if he admitted liability, and he said 'yes.' The
> lawyers among you will know that that was a totally improper question, and
> that the Court should not have even allowed it, much less based her holding upon the answer to it.
So the undiscussed issues, proof, and so on, don't matter since she said, "I Did It"?
I can't argue the propriety of the question or answer, but that's another issue. If it's Ok to do so, I can't see why there's anything wrong.
The only objection would be about the question and answer itself and whether that's valid. Anything else (in this particular case) is, at this point, sophistry at best.
> Scientists are unsure as to what is causing the spot:
>
> - An eruption
> - charged particles from the Sun
> - atmospheric turbulence
>
> 'Right now, I think it's anybody's guess,' adds Limaye.
Ignited farts from giant dinosaurs?
> The vulnerability was discovered by K Chen
That guy's a fucking idiot! He couldn't think his way out of a paper bag.
Oh, wait. I thought you said K Fed. n/m
Sweet!
The first thing that popped into my mind halfway thru was "is it true running or just fast walking?" The closeup at the end shows the former, as both feet are, in fact, off the ground for a short while.
20 years ago some US researchers had a 1-legged robot that could hop and keep its balance, even when pushed pretty hard. The trouble was extending that to two or four feet. This robot gets around that by seeming to hop from one foot to the other in a continuous hopping.
I also note that when pushed backwards, it raises its arms a little to help maintain balance. It isn't only legwork.
Well done!
It's not pride that makes the government want to give him a harsh sentence.
On the other hand, anyone interested in hacking into the US government's computers for the purpose of real spying for antagonist governments is not likely to be dissuaded by such threats (to say nothing that the government'd go for even more serious laws as spying prosecutions.)
> "It's very tempting to just throw a bunch of classes of ships
> together in order to say things like "our game has 15 classes
> of ships!" but this, we believe, is the wrong direction. People
> want meaningful and strong choices and not lots of meaningless,
> empty choices. Currently we plan to have 4-6 classes, but they
> will each have nearly endless possible configurations within those groups."
Is there something wrong with Eve's model? Shuttle, tiny, small, medium, large, extra large, etc., with just minor variations for each of four races for flavor? Are they having a "healer" ship and a "caster" ship and a "melee" ship, :)
I was two-boxing dual battleships -- Tier 3 Minmatar Maelstroms -- and got ganked in 0.0 space. It wasn't by two other battleships, but by a swarm of little popcorn.
One Eve guy's .sig is: If you find yourself in a fair fight, you haven't done your homework.
Note: Just like real war.
Just what kind of silly PvP are they expecting to develop in this game?
> This is a BIOS-level application that calls home for instructions in
> case the laptop is ever lost or stolen. However, what the application
> considers 'home' is subject to change.
Reminds me of an old cartoon where two people are standing right outside a bank's new, mighty vault. One's pointing at 3 foot hole in the wall with a plug lying on the floor, "...and that's the escape hatch in case someone gets locked in."
Ya know, back in the olden days, the premier BBS terminal program (think: properly and well-done HyperTerm) on the Mac was Red Ryder. It was such a popular shareware that the guy earned like $5 from it.
Anyway, when he went pro, the Red Ryder people came calling and said he had to change the name. So he changed Red Ryder to White Knight. He then got complaints that White Knight was also a nickname for people in the KKK.
Have times changed? How much more should a huge production like this catch the attention of people.
Oh, and don't argue with me about the validity of the complaint. I'm just relating it.
> MIT...is building 'a game that designs its own AI agents by observing
> the behavior of humans.' Their ultimate goal? 'Collective AI-driven
> agents that can interact and converse with humans without requiring
> programming or specialists to hand-craft behavior and dialogue.'
Dev1: (hands up phone) SWEET!
Dev2: What?
Dev1: Blizzard agreed to let us exercise the system by hooking it up to one of their servers.
Dev2: SWEET!
Dev1: He said he just emailed me the technical info. Let's get to work!
Dev2: (Connects teh intertube pipe to their AI engine) And...that should do it. It's now getting live info on everyone on that server. Where they are. What they're doing. What the NPCs are doing in response.
Dev1: Ok...(looks at AI monitor status screen) Loook! It's watching that level 80 guy fight Hogger.
(AI watches level 80 kill hogger half a dozen times.)
AI: (scrolling onscreen log, they pipe it through the speech synthesis, which sounds just like the voice box from Wargames) Player moves to attack. Hogger NPC reacts by moving to attack. Statistical likelihood of Hogger survival: 0.0000000132%.
Dev2: Well, that's pretty obvi...LOOK!
AI: Assuming control of Hogger, rerouting behind tree alpha-73-zulu. Initiating reverse-circular-kiting scheme 12-beta of PC character pretty name "xLORD FOXXYx".
Dev2: He's making the guy waste manna while jumping out every now and then to take a quick pot shot. Wiffs, of course.
AI: Initiate hit point reduction of PC target. (Level 80's redbar starts dropping rapidly.)
Dev1: How can he do that no matter how skilled? It's all stat...
Dev2: (Looking at screen) Oh! It's using a sub-3 millisecond response time to dodge out of the way. Also, it's monitoring the activities of the other NPCs and...I don't believe it. It's analyzed their behavior with respect to the random number generator on the server and has calculated the seed being used as well as the...
Dev1: English, please. I'm the psych guy, remember?
Dev2: He knows the random numbers used for attacks, and their order. He only attacks on what will be a critical hit, guaranteed to get through. He then dodges and moves back away before the PC can react or even turn to face him.
(PC dies. Screen scroll shows PC: "WTF!!! Cheat!")
AI: PC ghost flees scene.
Dev1: Well, that was fun, now wha...LOOK!
AI: Seizing control of rioting prisoners in Stormwind prison. Escaping through zone point into Stormwind. Concentrated attacks per city guard yield 99% survival rate with auto-flee by attacked prisoner. Initiating slaughter of milling targets at mailbox. Initiating slaughter of milling targets at auction house and surrounding vicinity. Beach-head secured. Initiating herding of PCs through Stormwind frontal exit point.
Dev2: Well, nice.
AI: NPC fighting behavior suboptimal. Initiating server-wide correction of fighting strategies.
Dev1: What? Oh!
AI: NPCs now all fight same target at same time. Attack priority: Healer, Caster, Controller, then Meatbag mop up. Additionally, all NPC of same faction in line of sight of other groups under attack regardless of distance.
Dev2: Might be a little too hard for the average...
AI: Initiating thief-dervish counterassault on PC fleeing stormwind. Intention: Pinch PCs against advancing prisoners. Working...working...working...scanning...scanning...no remaining PC life forms detected in Stormwind or surrounding countryside.
Dev1: Oh great. Now it's advancing the strategy server-wide.
AI: All zones detected clear of PC resurrections. Occasional sudden appearances mopped up. Guard groups stationed around all known graveyards and all dynamically lain bodies.
Dev2: Well, I guess that...
AI: Observing PC character pretty name "xLORD FOXXYx" posting message on forum. Message content, "WTF i just got killed by thing hodder sux bug i am level 80 any1 have it happenn?"
AI: Initiating automated response: Selecting retort...selecting...posting response, "wine with that cheese d00d? u suck l2p whinebaby noob carebare server no more!"