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User: Polyphemis

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  1. Re:game?? on XBox Now Your Personal Fitness Trainer? · · Score: 1

    It also tracks your progress over time, plans your diet, and has a series of interesting unlockables over time as you progress. It's extremely interactive, personalized and customizable.

    (I worked on it.)

  2. Re: Grammar Nazi on XBox Now Your Personal Fitness Trainer? · · Score: 1

    Doh! You're right. I checked dictionary.com to be sure:

    The traditional rule states that the whole comprises the parts and the parts compose the whole. In strict usage: The Union comprises 50 states. Fifty states compose (or constitute or make up) the Union. Even though careful writers often maintain this distinction, comprise is increasingly used in place of compose, especially in the passive: The Union is comprised of 50 states. Our surveys show that opposition to this usage is abating. In the 1960s, 53 percent of the Usage Panel found this usage unacceptable; in 1996, only 35 percent objected.

    Thanks for the correction. Duh me. :)

  3. I worked on this. :) on XBox Now Your Personal Fitness Trainer? · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I worked on Yourself Fitness for a couple months earlier this year, designing the interface. The product looks terrific and could really work. The team they've put on this is comprised of highly skilled professionals from all around the industry.

    Some people are confused when they first hear about it, thinking it may not work, but you'd really be surprised. I'm not sure how much I'm allowed to say about it, but from what I've seen, they've got a very well-thought out plan for the game and they're hitting all the right notes as it develops. It looks like a really solid product that I'd recommend for women everywhere.

  4. Re:I disagree. on Sam & Max Sequel Canceled · · Score: 1

    Basically you're trying to compare a market with heavy competition to a market with lower demand.

    The problem with the adventure games market is that the last few LA adventure games (*the* adventure games) haven't sold well. It's possible that the game was running behind schedule, and it started to cost more than they expected to make off it.

    It's a shame... I'd have loved to have played a new Sam & Max. :(

  5. Re:I disagree. on Sam & Max Sequel Canceled · · Score: 1

    Oh, I completely agree. I think that a good adventure game, marketed properly, could make an absolute KILLING if given the chance. It's just hard finding people willing to put money down on it. Can't blame them, really. Like the original poster said, I wish publishers would allow little art-house studios to push the limits of what is done in games and innovate like mad.

    Actually, Will Wright, creator of the Sims, supposedly has his own little game lab where he experiments with new game ideas, most of which never see the light of day. It's the only one of it's kind I've heard of, and EA is fully behind it. After The Sims (which they initially attempted to cancel on several occasions), how could they not?

  6. Re:I disagree. on Sam & Max Sequel Canceled · · Score: 1

    Lucasarts... SHOULD be expected to "give something back"

    LucasArts shouldn't be "expected" to do SHIT except to protect their bottom line. Yes, it'd be awesome if they'd dust off their old intellectual properties and make new games out of them. In fact, I'd be first in line to buy any of them. I just don't think I should "expect" them to do anything but ensure that they keep themselves profitable, and hold onto my hopes that they'll do the cool thing someday. :)

  7. I disagree. on Sam & Max Sequel Canceled · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's always a good time to release a good game.

    I strongly disagree. A lot of good games get BURIED at Christmas time when the market is too saturated with new releases, and you can also kill a game by releasing it too closely to a similar product.

    Mythica recently got cancelled for the same reasons. Probably nothing wrong with it, just that there are too many MMORPGs. It may have been the best game ever, but UO, EQ and AC got there first, and the risk of getting buried underneath them was too great.

    The PC adventure market is mostly dead. No reason to go into reasons why, but who in their right mind would fund a game in a dead market? Sometimes a game comes along that can surprise everybody, but not that often.

  8. I'd rather.. on Digital 'Ghosts' To Guide Students On Campus · · Score: 1

    ...train one to scream randomly. Imagine walking down a hall, minding your own business, and then wet yourself when one the ghost begins shrieking so loud the floor tiles rattle, and then suddenly stops, and doesn't say anything more.

  9. Re:Story of Duke Nukem Forever? on 2003 Vaporware Awards · · Score: 1

    The story? It's still in development after having undergone two major engine changes, several smaller ones and countless tech overhauls to keep it modern. With all the technological advancement in games that's happened since the game was announced, frankly, I'm glad they're trying to keep it modern because I'd hate to see it released and look 3 years old. It's been a really tough time for game developers staying modern and staying competitive these past few years and that's all they've been trying to do.

    People call it vaporware because they're ignorant. They don't know what's going on inside the company and feel they have to draw baseless conclusions from thin air.

  10. Re:War Games? on Army to use MMOG for Simulation Training · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't we be spending this money on teaching people how NOT to kill each other, or adressing the issues that make it so people want to kill their fellow man in the first place?

    Well, yeah, that'd be nice, but that will never happen. We'd have to train everyone in the world for that to actually work, and people aren't reasonable or intelligent enough to ever accept that kind of training on a large scale. It's easier to hate than think, so hate will nearly always win.

    I'm just glad we do have a strong and capable army. I'd never want to be a part of it myself, but this army has done a lot for us as a country and preserving our freedom. I don't like that some situations have no recourse but to be settled with violence, but if that's the only way to solve it, then expediency wins.

    I know this could easily turn into a fiery discussion, so I'd like to say that I have no interest at all in pursuing unrelated exceptions to what I've said. I'm well aware that there's a thousand books' worth of exceptions and disclaimers that could be said about this subject. However, they don't have anything to do with my main point: people will never be good enough to end violence, and I'd rather we used it when necessary than take chances.

  11. Re:Oooh, Color-Coded!!! on Passenger Risk Database to be Implemented in U.S. · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For example, a village with a population of 50 in the middle of Wyoming would be required to have a full-time guard on the water tower!

    Great example. That reminds me of something I found interesting. Earlier this year, I got in a conversation with someone that worked for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation whose job became miserable because of these terror alerts. Every time one came down the wire, they had to send crews out to every major overpass in Oklahoma every hour as well as performing mass inspections over all the major roads in the state every single day. Everyone there had to work overtime all the time to keep all that going for every alert. The alerts became so frequent and proved to be so pointless that the entire department actually started deliberately ignoring the warnings because it cost them SO much time, effort money to respond to them while other, more important things weren't getting done.

  12. A big fat target! on RIAA Takes the Fight to the Streets · · Score: 1

    Well, there you go, boys. Now's your chance!Couldn't ask for a much better target than that, could you? I'll pay $250 per pelt!

    Seriously though, at least they're going after people that are actually profiting directly from piracy. Yes, I did RTFA and what that litlte man did was wrong.

    Still, it bothers that they've essentially hired mercenaries to do these shakedowns and are impersonating police...

  13. Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant on What You Can't Say · · Score: 1

    I was always under the impression that black people using that word was a way to devalue the word itself and "take it back" so it doesn't have as much meaning as when it's used hatefully.

  14. Sad face? on Build Your Own Scanning Tunneling Microscope · · Score: 4, Funny

    Interestingly, their licensing terms sound open source-ish to me: '(

    heh, did anyone else quickly glance at that and think he was making a sad crying face because it sounded open source?

    "Uh oh! It sounds like open source! :'("

  15. Re:Home Depot Gift Card on Weird Presents Anyone? · · Score: 1

    Really?!

    Hell, I just checked their website myself and you're right, they're closer than my fiancee told me. Fuck! I can't figure why she thought it was 50 miles. I really should have checked it myself first.

    Thanks, ACs!

  16. Home Depot Gift Card on Weird Presents Anyone? · · Score: 4, Funny

    I recently moved out on my own into an apartment in Portland with my fiancee, and this Christmas from my brother I got a $25 gift certificate from Home Depot... now, at first glance that might make sense, but if he'd checked he'd have realized that:

    1) The nearest Home Depot is 50 miles away and I don't have a car.

    2) You can't use them online.

    3) There's hardly anything there you can buy for $25 that isn't sold by the pound anyway.

    I'm selling it back to my dad for cash and thanking my brother politely for the thoughtful gift.

  17. Re:Actually Believed? on Asimov's "I, Robot" Gets Movie Treatment · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But, it looks like it'll be a mess. It'll turn into a Will Smith and CG robot cheesefest.

    Don't be so hasty... the director is Alex Proyas, who did The Crow and Dark City, two terrific movies, imo. Proyas has had a pretty good track record so far, so at least give him a chance at a real trailer before writing the movie off completely.

  18. Re:Blooper? on Interview with Peter Jackson on LoTR Bloopers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Decided I'd rather post than mod. :)

    I don't agree. It's been a bit over a year since I've last reread the LOTR books, but the one thing I remember is the complete lack of any kind of dramatic tension whatsoever for the first half or so of the work, and then, toward the end, turning it WAY up. I thought Peter Jackson conveyed the escalating tension and drama nicely, as well as including the necessary reprieve from the tension. I got exactly the same feeling from the Shire scenes as I did from when I first read the book, and that says a lot to me.

    The first two movies, if done exactly like the book's tone, would have been as boring as if they'd stayed in the Shire the whole time and lived their simple little lives like happy little folk. I still love the books, but honestly, even the tense moments in the first half of the book were quickly dampened by the gushy feelgoodness they found around nearly every corner.

    I'm no film savant, and I'm sure there were many things I don't recall that Peter may have goofed on (Gimli does comes to mind however), but I think that this trilogy is probably the best possible result of a LOTR movie, at least for this decade.

  19. Re:2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 19... on Winamp 2 + Winamp 3 = Winamp 5! · · Score: 1

    Well, hey, don't feel bad there. After all, we've all once gotten a little fuzzy on our Fibonacci calculations early in the morn, haven't we? If I had a penny for every time I've done that...

  20. Re:(Insert DNF joke here) on Nominations for 2003 Vaporware Awards · · Score: 1

    I guess I imagined the wealth of screenshots, gigabytes of ingame video and the leaked build then? Perhaps I also hallucinated the firsthand accounts of the people present at the initial public presentation of the engine's capabilities, or all computer gaming magazines' abundance of coverage late summer?

    The only way you could get further from vaporware than that is if you could already buy it in stores.

  21. Re:(Insert DNF joke here) on Nominations for 2003 Vaporware Awards · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Finally, someone that has their facts straight and isn't talking out of their ass!

    Two minor corrections, the total amount earned from Max Payne was $40 million, but that was divided between 3DR and Remedy and I'm not sure which way it was split so you could well be right on 3DR's part. Also, I'm almost positive that Shadow Warrior was developed by an outside company and published under 3DR's name.

    To the parent's parent: Yes, 3DR still is working on DNF, my best friend works has worked there for two years and I got to see part of the game at one point. And yes, it is taking a damned long time, and it's really anybody's guess as to why it's taking such a long time. However, that's not a license to make shit up and claim to know something you don't because there's nothing in your post that even approaches fact.

    I realize my claim to have actually seen the game has no immediately verifiable basis here, so let's approach it from a different angle and look at the logic: Which of these two scenarios is more likely to exist: 1) A game company that employs 20+ people to sit around and play games all day for seven years, or 2) A company working on a game that's taking an absurd amount of time due to some manner of internal problems (be it high turnover, multiple engine switches, mismanagement, who can say*)?

    Sure, the former idea is juicy and amusing to think about and earn mod points from, but that kind of shit simply doesn't happen. How could anyone in their right mind believe something that childish? Remember, Half-Life 2 was complete vaporware until a few short months ago.

    * - I'd like to note that I'm not saying any of these necessarily exists (except the multiple engine switches which is publicly known), I'm just naming common problems game companies in general have.

  22. Re:Movie rentals on DVD Forum Approves HD-DVD Standard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yikes! I hadn't realized that. I just asked my fiancee about it, and she's not surprised. Blockbuster apparently takes some losses with the special deals they have, such as the Rewards program that grants free rentals every week, and the promotions like pre-paying for an upcoming movie release and getting a card full of free rentals for six weeks leading up to the movie release. And, of course, the MASSIVE amounts of merchandise that's stolen from Blockbuster every day from customers and employees alike.

    On one particularly bad day, ONE guy walked into Blockbuster with a backpack and loaded it up with half the store's supply of games and walked right out, unchallenged, because the employees were busy with other customers. My fiancee also worked with a manager who eventually got fired for being lazy and incompetent shortly before they discovered that she had secretly been stealing thousands of dollars worth of food and brand new DVDs the entire time she'd been working there. By the time they'd realized, it was apparently too late to take action on it.

    I suppose that, with all that in mind, they really are taking it pretty hard after all. Damn.

  23. Re:Movie rentals on DVD Forum Approves HD-DVD Standard · · Score: 2, Informative

    Where did you hear this?

    That doesn't sound like a particularly good idea on Blockbuster's part, if it's true. Blockbuster rakes in shit-tons of money from their rentals. They buy DVDs in bulk for $1 to $5 each (source: my fiancee, who worked at Blockbuster for a year until last month) and after only ONE rental per DVD, they've already broken even and begun to profit! Then they keep the movies around for years and rake in profit off of those. When the movies move off the New Releases wall to make room for the newer movies, and the excess copies go into the Previously Viewed sale area and sell for $10 - 17 each.

    Let's take a quick look at the kind of money they make doing this.

    For popular movies, they'll buy, say, 50 copies to fill up a wall. As soon as that's released, every copy will be rented out at nearly any given time for, eh, let's say a month. They're all 2-day rentals, so let's do the math: $4 per rental + 15 rentals a month = $60 gross - $5 for the initial cost of the DVD itself = $55 profit per copy. $55 * 50 = $2750 profit on a $250 investment.

    That's $2750 profit per new movie, for one month, assuming each movie stays out for the maximum time allowed. Usually 8 to 10 movies come out per month. At the end of the New Releases run, they sell them for even more pure profit. On top of that, they don't pay their employees shit, so they're making tons of money here.

    So why would they abandon this business model in favor of one with far smaller profit margins? They'd have to keep replenishing their stock repeatedly and the manufacturers would have to lower their prices on DVDs to make this an acceptable business model to Blockbuster.

    Source: My fiancee, who worked at Blockbuster for a year until last month.

  24. Re:bittorrent on Homemade Star Wars Flick/Fanimatrix Movie · · Score: 2, Funny
    Posting BitTorrent links alone is one of the most retarded ways to try to distribute your work.

    I agree. I'd much rather not be able to contact the server at all. :)

  25. File sharing is NOT the only reason for broadband on SBC Refuses To Name File-Sharing Users · · Score: 4, Insightful
    File sharing is the only reason to have broadband.

    I realize this isn't the main point of your post by any means, but I'd like to point out that there are LEGAL and legitimate uses \ needs for broadband.

    I'm a remote contract artist working in game development. I work fulltime hours from home and have to be on call constantly and able to quickly and reliably send and receive my assignments at a moment's notice. I'm working for two companies right now, one of which is developing a full game in a very tight six-month development cycle, so having constant, fast and reliable connectivity is a must.

    Even more importantly than simply sending and receiving assignments from my bosses, I have to log into the SourceSafe (a central repository for all the latest project files) several times daily and download the latest version of however much of the project I need, usually ranging from 1mb to 600mb.

    Keeping current with the rest of the team remotely is VITAL in my line of work, and it would be impossible to do on dialup. By the time I downloaded half or even a fourth of the project, it would probably be updated by then and I'd have to download it all again. Without broadband, I'd be shit out of luck and out of a job.

    I guess by a very broad definition that this does fall under 'file sharing' but it's almost certainly not in the same sense that you meant it. :)