Well, it was on an ancient PC. If I recall correctly, you couldn't start the game more than 5 times without buying it, though I simply delta'd the savegame file and looked for the counter byte, then wrote a batch file combined with a tiny program to reset that byte before starting the game.
I guess if you were capable of solving all 120 levels without help, getting around the demo security, 't'warn't no thang...:(
> Designing new areas would be quite the cool endgame for WoW lvl 60s.
Weren't you paying attention to the original article? The ability to sit on your ass longer than other, more skilled people would not make you able to design a good "area" in any way whatsoever.
It's almost impossible to come up with legitimate puzzle-solving missions that won't be listed on websites with full, step-by-step solutions 20 minutes after they go live.
Yes, you can decide to forego the web sites, but you're back to the original article's thesis: You'll still be standing there with less quality items than those with the time and magical ability to avoid bed sores on their @$$.
And he's right. There was that study last year where top programmers are 4x as productive as the average ones, and there were problems they could solve that average ones could not no matter how much time they were given.
Yes, an RPG is the exact opposite of reality in that respect. Yet you cannot put in intellectual challenges because people will just go to Allakazham and get the answers.
The only intellectual challenge that was never solved in an RPG of which I'm aware was the original way for a paladin in EQ to gain the Fiery Avenger supersword. After six months in which the company swore it was in the game and that the quest was tested to work, but nobody on any server had gotten it, they changed the quest to make it easier.
Of course, whether the quest was due to intellectual difficulty or only partly that, and partly that someone, somewhere on some server would stumble across something at some stage (or multiple stages) remains to be seen.
There used to be rumours of a giant clockwork dragon in or under the gnome city, and a gnome-donated tower in one of the human cities. Nothing. And what's up with those various strange alters and whatnot all over the EQ planet (one, for example, is where the two named beetles in Mountains of whatver hang out, others in NRO.) Nothing.
And people are cleverer than the game designers could possibly imagine. The "clockwork dragon" theory was shot down when someone figured out how to load up all the zones in the tutorial application and you could go exploring. Nothing, not even in any of the normally unvisitable god zones.
Still, one can get a good feeling of accomplishment, say, beating all 125 levels of the original Lemmings without looking up solutions. Yeah, that guy with a giant L on his forehead finished first because he looked up the answers. Woo. Hoo.
"Cocktail", get it? It's a story about bartenders, but it's also a story (a tale) about men. Get it? Get it? Can someone please slam us over the head even harder? Ok, "Pussy Galore" was funny and clever in a campy sort of way. "Octopussy" was just stupid.
I wonder if the body design slider will let you make a human 6'6". I had no idea Riker was actually that tall, and Worf only a little shorter (and looking equal thanks to the headridge.)
Not that a 3 foot tall human wouldn't be just as strong, or be able to take the same 72 shots from a phaser before dying, er, becoming stunned.
And I can't wait to play a Vulcan and their "streakbreaker" random number generator code makes first attempts at neck pinches fail 85% of the time. Woo hoo!
Yeah, I'm pissed. My dancer in Star Wars can't use her sliced Naboobian pistol anymore.
I'll be happy no matter what it looks like as long as I don't have to grind for 3 days just to get Academy approval to set my phaser on "2 shots to kill a rat" from the original "5 shots to kill a rat".
Thanks! My kid just typed this in and all it does is unlock Aladdin Coffee, where he gets it on with Princess Poopstool, or whatever the hell her name is.:(
Eh, you can't go back and re-enjoy it with the same enthusiasm. Especially if you've never played them before.
Both Lode Runner (an ancient Macintosh platformer -- how ancient? Note no qualifiers on the phrase "Macintosh") and Pitfall were stunners for their time. Yet both re-issues of them as well as re-envisionings in modern 3D always fall flat. You just can't live up to the original no matter how hard you try. For every Aliens, there's a dozen Matrix sequels. For every Terminator II, there's two dozen Kill Bill Vol. 2's.
> And that, as far as I know, killed its sales. There have been no further games involving sacrifices, if you'll notice.
When I think back to the best RTS games, they are in this order:
1. Sacrifice 2. Total Annhilation 3. Dungeon Keeper I 4. Dungeon Keeper II 5. Starcraft
Note 3 of the 5 have unacceptable premises. In DK, you capture and convert, via torture, the good guys to your evil ways. Yet that was really just a small part and in all three cases, was not at the core of why the games were awesome to play.
> I think [Sacrifice] wasn't popular because it was completely different > than all the other RTSs out there, totally unique.
And yet a pretty, but gameplay-wise complete turd like Warcraft III comes along in a feeble attempt to be a squad-based combat RTS, and sells millions more. Hint: That was slapped on in partial response to Sacrifice. "Upkeep"? Bzzzt! Sorry, poor game design re-writing the gameplay at the last second.
Apparently both the sarcastic humor as well as the deliberate placement of emoticons, which this very article is about was lost on the moderator.
See the GP had commented on how lazy he was and it was nice to find a link that gave him everything he needed. I made the script kiddie joke in this context combined with the larger need-of-emoticon context and......well, why bother. Hopefully a metamod'll handle this with a gun in an alley.
> Even if we aren't the cause of global warming, reducing > pollution will ultimately increase our standards of living.
As long as it does not affect the power of the economy. Last century was rife with political "experiments" that demonstrated government intervention (noble intention or otherwise) slowed economic development, if not flat-out caused retrograde changes to the quality of living. Assuming living was even possible, which it was not for tens of millions.
That's the counter-intuitive concept of economics -- the worst case scenarios, but with an adaptive, throbbing economy, might end up with better quality of life than, say, less than worst case scenarios + massive government intervention.
It also seeks omnipotent knowledge of you, for the purpose of sending you to the bad place for thinking lustful thoughts.
Why people object when the government does this, but slobberingly fall to their knees in praise when God does it, I'll never know. Dare one think the unthinkable thought? That God is an ass not deserving of worship?
Nah! A few more centuries of pop culture percolation required...
Not true at all. They have the interest that promoted the creation of the copyright and patent items in the Constitution, which is to say, to promote development of new inventions and works by securing for their creators a limited but exclusive right to their creations. This advances technology as well as culture much faster than it otherwise would. That is of significant interest to consumers.
And, quite frankly, it's probably of greater overall importance than is "fair use". Not that that implies there should be no fair use, but let's keep things in perspective.
> Seriously, I hate DRM. It screws with software licensing, > it screws with fair use, it screws with copyright expiration > and it screws with history.
I concur. However, let's face facts. It also screws with copying CDs and DVDs from friends, which is the real impetus behind the politics for and against.
After all, if nobody did this and only did fair use copying, the companies wouldn't give a rat's ass.
> Ingle \In"gle\, n. [derived from Angel] > A paramour; a favourite; a sweetheart;
So a slashdotter would not normally say "No hablo Ingle", as that doesn't make sense. A slashdotter would say, "No tengo Ingle", "I don't have a paramour, a sweetheart."
> the constitution says nothing about not letting religion > influence congress. so technically, there is nothing wrong with that.
Politicians are free to run on an arbitrarily religious platform if they like. Religious people are free to vote for them (or not.) But the only laws they can pass are ones that are constitutional.
It's astounding how people on the left love the idea of virtually unlimited democracy when it comes to instantiating socialist institutions like national health care, but suddenly get very nervous when the religious start winning elections. Especially when said victories slowly pack the court to overturn a century of Supreme Court precedence. Which they had no problem with in the 1930's.
Live by the populist sword, die by the populist sword. You have no philosophy to stand on -- just a bunch of philosophical arguments you pay attention to, only when it suits you.
And no, I'm not religious. I'm an athiest -- and a libertarian, the political athiest. I'm a skeptic about ghosts and spirits and gods and Big Feet -- and about politics.
> As a tabletop RPG gamemaster, I've been thinking about > what GMs can learn from World of Warcraft ever since I > first logged in. After close to 200 hours of WoW time, > I've come up with 9 lessons GMs can learn from World of Warcraft.
Here's five more, courtesy of the Imp:
1. People will perform boring, repetitive tasks ad infinitum if you give them little rewards. Note to self: figure out way to make lad enjoy and remember to take the trash out each week.
2. Giving something a glowing green, blue, or purple label will make them drool. See also: yellow, gold label. Note to self: re-wrap packages of broccoli and Brussels sprouts in shiny gold foil.
3. Mini-games like throwing a snowball or medicine ball, or leaping high into the air and turning into a snowman can entertain for hours. Note to self: raid bargain bin at CompUSA, splice in calls to said games via !shell commands to some 3D game with a scripting engine, and direct child's face to new "game" the way Benny Hill redirect's the lilolman's face, turning it with both hands then slapping him on the back of the head.
4. After 80 years of moving at a snail's pace, gaining a hideously expensive horse that lets you move at 1.5 x a snail's pace is, for some reason, considered awesome. Note to self: all he needs is a rusty 10 speed, not a car. Put green bow on it with gold foil lettering, "Awesum-o Speed Demon!"
5. Miniscule, statistically insignificant bonuses are slobbered over due to mathematical illiteracy. Note to self: Also add "+5 Iron -- Increases Strength" in shiny purple foil to broccoli, Brussels sprouts
Slashdot Mirror
> That was Alderaan blowing up.
I suppose that means we were in line with the explosive ring on it. And if there isn't one, there soon will be.
Well, it was on an ancient PC. If I recall correctly, you couldn't start the game more than 5 times without buying it, though I simply delta'd the savegame file and looked for the counter byte, then wrote a batch file combined with a tiny program to reset that byte before starting the game.
:(
I guess if you were capable of solving all 120 levels without help, getting around the demo security, 't'warn't no thang...
> Designing new areas would be quite the cool endgame for WoW lvl 60s.
Weren't you paying attention to the original article? The ability to sit on your ass longer than other, more skilled people would not make you able to design a good "area" in any way whatsoever.
It's almost impossible to come up with legitimate puzzle-solving missions that won't be listed on websites with full, step-by-step solutions 20 minutes after they go live.
Yes, you can decide to forego the web sites, but you're back to the original article's thesis: You'll still be standing there with less quality items than those with the time and magical ability to avoid bed sores on their @$$.
And he's right. There was that study last year where top programmers are 4x as productive as the average ones, and there were problems they could solve that average ones could not no matter how much time they were given.
Yes, an RPG is the exact opposite of reality in that respect. Yet you cannot put in intellectual challenges because people will just go to Allakazham and get the answers.
The only intellectual challenge that was never solved in an RPG of which I'm aware was the original way for a paladin in EQ to gain the Fiery Avenger supersword. After six months in which the company swore it was in the game and that the quest was tested to work, but nobody on any server had gotten it, they changed the quest to make it easier.
Of course, whether the quest was due to intellectual difficulty or only partly that, and partly that someone, somewhere on some server would stumble across something at some stage (or multiple stages) remains to be seen.
There used to be rumours of a giant clockwork dragon in or under the gnome city, and a gnome-donated tower in one of the human cities. Nothing. And what's up with those various strange alters and whatnot all over the EQ planet (one, for example, is where the two named beetles in Mountains of whatver hang out, others in NRO.) Nothing.
And people are cleverer than the game designers could possibly imagine. The "clockwork dragon" theory was shot down when someone figured out how to load up all the zones in the tutorial application and you could go exploring. Nothing, not even in any of the normally unvisitable god zones.
Still, one can get a good feeling of accomplishment, say, beating all 125 levels of the original Lemmings without looking up solutions. Yeah, that guy with a giant L on his forehead finished first because he looked up the answers. Woo. Hoo.
"Cocktail", get it? It's a story about bartenders, but it's also a story (a tale) about men. Get it? Get it? Can someone please slam us over the head even harder? Ok, "Pussy Galore" was funny and clever in a campy sort of way. "Octopussy" was just stupid.
> If I create a video and I don't want it shown somewhere,
> then I should have the right to dictate that.
While I agree, putting something on the Internet is kind of a funny thing to do if you don't want it shown somewhere.
I wonder if the body design slider will let you make a human 6'6". I had no idea Riker was actually that tall, and Worf only a little shorter (and looking equal thanks to the headridge.)
Not that a 3 foot tall human wouldn't be just as strong, or be able to take the same 72 shots from a phaser before dying, er, becoming stunned.
And I can't wait to play a Vulcan and their "streakbreaker" random number generator code makes first attempts at neck pinches fail 85% of the time. Woo hoo!
Yeah, I'm pissed. My dancer in Star Wars can't use her sliced Naboobian pistol anymore.
I'll be happy no matter what it looks like as long as I don't have to grind for 3 days just to get Academy approval to set my phaser on "2 shots to kill a rat" from the original "5 shots to kill a rat".
Thanks! My kid just typed this in and all it does is unlock Aladdin Coffee, where he gets it on with Princess Poopstool, or whatever the hell her name is. :(
Eh, you can't go back and re-enjoy it with the same enthusiasm. Especially if you've never played them before.
Both Lode Runner (an ancient Macintosh platformer -- how ancient? Note no qualifiers on the phrase "Macintosh") and Pitfall were stunners for their time. Yet both re-issues of them as well as re-envisionings in modern 3D always fall flat. You just can't live up to the original no matter how hard you try. For every Aliens, there's a dozen Matrix sequels. For every Terminator II, there's two dozen Kill Bill Vol. 2's.
> And that, as far as I know, killed its sales. There have been no further games involving sacrifices, if you'll notice.
When I think back to the best RTS games, they are in this order:
1. Sacrifice
2. Total Annhilation
3. Dungeon Keeper I
4. Dungeon Keeper II
5. Starcraft
Note 3 of the 5 have unacceptable premises. In DK, you capture and convert, via torture, the good guys to your evil ways. Yet that was really just a small part and in all three cases, was not at the core of why the games were awesome to play.
> I think [Sacrifice] wasn't popular because it was completely different
> than all the other RTSs out there, totally unique.
And yet a pretty, but gameplay-wise complete turd like Warcraft III comes along in a feeble attempt to be a squad-based combat RTS, and sells millions more. Hint: That was slapped on in partial response to Sacrifice. "Upkeep"? Bzzzt! Sorry, poor game design re-writing the gameplay at the last second.
With 2.5 handguns per person in Detroit? And cities like that are where they make jets and tanks and things. You know, the stuff that does the wipin'?
Apparently both the sarcastic humor as well as the deliberate placement of emoticons, which this very article is about was lost on the moderator.
...well, why bother. Hopefully a metamod'll handle this with a gun in an alley.
See the GP had commented on how lazy he was and it was nice to find a link that gave him everything he needed. I made the script kiddie joke in this context combined with the larger need-of-emoticon context and...
That's socially retarded, numbino.
> Even if we aren't the cause of global warming, reducing
> pollution will ultimately increase our standards of living.
As long as it does not affect the power of the economy. Last century was rife with political "experiments" that demonstrated government intervention (noble intention or otherwise) slowed economic development, if not flat-out caused retrograde changes to the quality of living. Assuming living was even possible, which it was not for tens of millions.
That's the counter-intuitive concept of economics -- the worst case scenarios, but with an adaptive, throbbing economy, might end up with better quality of life than, say, less than worst case scenarios + massive government intervention.
> For me, it's even replaced God.
It also seeks omnipotent knowledge of you, for the purpose of sending you to the bad place for thinking lustful thoughts.
Why people object when the government does this, but slobberingly fall to their knees in praise when God does it, I'll never know. Dare one think the unthinkable thought? That God is an ass not deserving of worship?
Nah! A few more centuries of pop culture percolation required...
> Consumers have no interest in DRM at all.
Not true at all. They have the interest that promoted the creation of the copyright and patent items in the Constitution, which is to say, to promote development of new inventions and works by securing for their creators a limited but exclusive right to their creations. This advances technology as well as culture much faster than it otherwise would. That is of significant interest to consumers.
And, quite frankly, it's probably of greater overall importance than is "fair use". Not that that implies there should be no fair use, but let's keep things in perspective.
> Seriously, I hate DRM. It screws with software licensing,
> it screws with fair use, it screws with copyright expiration
> and it screws with history.
I concur. However, let's face facts. It also screws with copying CDs and DVDs from friends, which is the real impetus behind the politics for and against.
After all, if nobody did this and only did fair use copying, the companies wouldn't give a rat's ass.
> Ingle \In"gle\, n. [derived from Angel]
> A paramour; a favourite; a sweetheart;
So a slashdotter would not normally say "No hablo Ingle", as that doesn't make sense. A slashdotter would say, "No tengo Ingle", "I don't have a paramour, a sweetheart."
> the constitution says nothing about not letting religion
> influence congress. so technically, there is nothing wrong with that.
Politicians are free to run on an arbitrarily religious platform if they like. Religious people are free to vote for them (or not.) But the only laws they can pass are ones that are constitutional.
It's astounding how people on the left love the idea of virtually unlimited democracy when it comes to instantiating socialist institutions like national health care, but suddenly get very nervous when the religious start winning elections. Especially when said victories slowly pack the court to overturn a century of Supreme Court precedence. Which they had no problem with in the 1930's.
Live by the populist sword, die by the populist sword. You have no philosophy to stand on -- just a bunch of philosophical arguments you pay attention to, only when it suits you.
And no, I'm not religious. I'm an athiest -- and a libertarian, the political athiest. I'm a skeptic about ghosts and spirits and gods and Big Feet -- and about politics.
> "If you can speak of technical things only in technical
> terms, you do not understand them."- Albert Einstein
Hence Slashdot descriptions of Natalie Portman only mentioning how hot she is, rather than that she is an Oscar-nominated actress.
Oh, snaaap!
You're fired.
Meanwhile, back in the real world where actual corporations want actual solutions...
Fucking script kiddie. >:(
=D
> As a tabletop RPG gamemaster, I've been thinking about
> what GMs can learn from World of Warcraft ever since I
> first logged in. After close to 200 hours of WoW time,
> I've come up with 9 lessons GMs can learn from World of Warcraft.
Here's five more, courtesy of the Imp:
1. People will perform boring, repetitive tasks ad infinitum if you give them little rewards. Note to self: figure out way to make lad enjoy and remember to take the trash out each week.
2. Giving something a glowing green, blue, or purple label will make them drool. See also: yellow, gold label. Note to self: re-wrap packages of broccoli and Brussels sprouts in shiny gold foil.
3. Mini-games like throwing a snowball or medicine ball, or leaping high into the air and turning into a snowman can entertain for hours. Note to self: raid bargain bin at CompUSA, splice in calls to said games via !shell commands to some 3D game with a scripting engine, and direct child's face to new "game" the way Benny Hill redirect's the lilolman's face, turning it with both hands then slapping him on the back of the head.
4. After 80 years of moving at a snail's pace, gaining a hideously expensive horse that lets you move at 1.5 x a snail's pace is, for some reason, considered awesome. Note to self: all he needs is a rusty 10 speed, not a car. Put green bow on it with gold foil lettering, "Awesum-o Speed Demon!"
5. Miniscule, statistically insignificant bonuses are slobbered over due to mathematical illiteracy. Note to self: Also add "+5 Iron -- Increases Strength" in shiny purple foil to broccoli, Brussels sprouts