The problem there is this only works if one controls the _entire_ URL.
I had pages on AOL's FTP/webspace since its inception through AOL's ``sunsetting'' those services --- unfortunately, I published a number of papers which had links to http://members.aol.com/willadams so all the printed copies are out of date since there's no way to update them to http://mysite.verizon.net/william_franklin_adams/
It's this sort of thing which makes the MLA's decision to omit hard-coded URLs from their references....
The original Coca Cola recipe had a _tiny_ amount of cocaine, which was the _smallest_ possible amount which was left in it due to limitations of processing coca leaves at that time --- something like one part in 50 million.
::sigh:: apparently the moderators never played _The Colossal Cave Adventure_. Hint, the standard ``magic word'' which would allow one to continue playing past the time limit imposed by some administrators was ``xyzzy'' (but usually sysadmins who imposed such time limits changed the magic word).
Fortunately one can read a Literate Programming commented version of the source code:
If a player has an account w/ $1,000 dollars worth of gold and gear and that account is deleted will the company directly reimburse the player?
If a company has a game world w/ 1,000 players, each of whom has $1,000 and the company decides to close the game world down will they have to have $1,000,000 on the books to pay off the players?
There was an interesting fictional treatment on this in _Dragon Magazine_ ages ago though, ``Catacomb'' by Henry Melton I believe it was which shows one potentially expensive aspect of such a game.
Steve Jobs promised that closing down the Newton division would result in innovative devices --- who knew it'd take this long --- I still want a device w/ handwriting recognition and a larger screen though.
Because the Wii Motion Plus has a pass-through to accept a Nunchuck, but most (all?) of the current Wii Zapper designs won't work w/ a dongle in place (I've got a wireless Kama Nuncuck replacement and had to make a Wii Zapper to use it in pistol mode) --- and IME there're a lot of times when the control of the Wii Zapper isn't quite fine enough to get perfectly centered on target w/o some twitching, so if the Wii Motion Plus would allow more precise targeting a new Wii Zapper would be welcome.
William (who want something w/ the weaponry variety of Ghost Squad and the targeting variety and excellent interface of Link's Crossbow Training and the fluid switch between first and third-person of Quantum of Solace)
The thing is, _Link's Crossbow Training_ has some first person shooter ``ranger'' levels which are very well done and a lot of fun (I enjoy the game so much I make Wii Zappers out of wood and give them to co-workers and friends along w/ used copies of the game) and most of the highly-acclaimed games have made excellent use of the Nunchuck for movement:
- Metroid Prime: Corruption
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
- Call of Duty: World at War
Yeah. I bought Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors for that sake --- it's a lot of fun, though short, w/ almost painfully cute monster graphics, but one can't block w/ the Nunchuck (have to toggle into shield mode --- one doesn't use the Nunchuk as a shield 'cause they use rotation which apparently only the Wii Remote provides), and there's only one opponent w/ a sword (the final boss) and one doesn't get to fence w/ him, just strike when one has a chance, block when possible &c.
Pros:
- it actually uses the Wii Remote
- fun, one of the few RPGs
Cons:
- the interface is fussy, requiring one to manually indicate when targetting other than the center of the screen
- detection of movements and mapping them to the screen is erratic, not quite to the point of frustration, but close
- the Nunchuck is not used as the shield
- no fencing w/ sword-wielding opponents
- no ability to move during combat
- the game is built on rails w/ a few branches
- limited options (basically slashing or thrusting)
Of all of these, the only things the Wii Motion Plus can help w/ are detection of movement and possibly allowing one to move in combat and hopefully limited options --- the balance is a matter of gameplay design, which all-too often is lacking in contemporary games.
But if they do a sequel, or an improved version, I'd probably buy it.
Stuff in Mac OS X which I miss when using my Windows Tablet PC (leaving out stuff which seems to be addressed in Windows 7):
- Miller column file browser
- Services
- pervasive PDF-oriented imaging model
- sophisticated per-window layering of windows, not per-application
- sophisticated command line w/ excellent support for drag-drop and the ability to interact w/ graphical applications using pbcopy and pbpaste
- X/Window (having to install cygwin and apps which aren't in their apps list, e.g., fontforge is a nuisance)
- sophisticated support for Unicode --- why isn't Palatino Linotype as useful in WordPad as Hoefler Text is in TextEdit.app
- a font format w/ multiple design axes --- play around w/ Skia in XeTeX or Purgatory Design's Intaglio.app
Lots of other geeky stuff (such as emacs keyboard shortcuts everywhere (even in dialog boxes)), but those are the things a user will notice.
As I noted in another post I've actually tried to turn around when playing. Improvement in this area would be welcome, but for the current system it's a matter of balancing responsiveness and twitchiness and most games tend to be conservative, hence less responsive.
Aiming based on the Wii remote is somewhat improvable by adjustment in some games and Ghostsquad does afford the option of turning the aiming reticle off.
The real question this poses is when will consoles begin to offer multiple display out connectors and options for controlling what point of view a display shows, so that one could begin to work towards a full 360 degree view
My metric for games isn't whether I win or lose, but how much fun I have and how it's played.
I push a mouse around quite enough at work, and I've zero interest in sitting and playing a game by pushing a mouse around --- that's the big win on the Wii --- it makes new forms of gaming possible.
It would be interesting to see how players using different control systems would do in competitive play though.
ledow said: > you can't beat a keyboard/mouse combo for FPS
?!?
Let me introduce you to the Wii Zapper.
Wii Zapper, please meet Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol.
Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol, please meet:
- Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles (unfortunately v4 Wii edition doesn't work w/ a normal Zapper)
- Quantum of Solace
- House of the Dead Chop Til You Drop
- Call of Duty World at War
- Medal of Honor Heroes 2
- Call of Duty 3
- Wiiware: Onslaught
Even Link's Crossbow Training has some quite good ``Ranger'' level where one moves about in a 3D terrain to shoot enemies.
William (whose first project after getting a Wii was to make a Zapper out of Legos, then, since that was too expensive crafted a couple at his basement workbench out of wood to give away w/ used copies of _Link's Crossbow Training_ at work --- really do need to draw up the plans for those...)
Or at least do something interesting like having a second display function as a keyboard.
Above all, update InkWell and provide good support for use as an ebook reader which could do.pdf annotations (adding a.pdf preview of all documents to file bundles would be ideal if such annotations could then be synched back into the document when it was opened in the originating app).
While I rarely re-watch movies, I do enjoy listening to soundtracks, so will usually purchase those for movies which I enjoy --- unfortunately the soundtrack for _The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_ was an Apple-exclusive in the US (though I see now that it was released internationally so I guess I'll have to get the import).
I rather wish that there was the same sort of creativity in the packaging which one used to see in older games or albums --- I still have the box for Apple's game _Through the Looking Glass_ and wish I still had Alice Cooper's _From the Inside_....
William
Re:1996 nothing...
on
Jurassic Web
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Spyglass corporation's Mosaic was licensed by a company called Microsoft as the basis for a browser which they named Internet Explorer --- Spyglass had an absolutely fantastic deal where they got royalties on _every sale_ of the browser.
That would only apply if Wii consoles were as prevalent as DVD players have become --- there's an inevitably smaller market to sell to for a console (or PC or Mac) title.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem there is this only works if one controls the _entire_ URL.
I had pages on AOL's FTP/webspace since its inception through AOL's ``sunsetting'' those services --- unfortunately, I published a number of papers which had links to http://members.aol.com/willadams so all the printed copies are out of date since there's no way to update them to http://mysite.verizon.net/william_franklin_adams/
It's this sort of thing which makes the MLA's decision to omit hard-coded URLs from their references....
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/03/11/mla
But that's ignoring the problem.
William
The original Coca Cola recipe had a _tiny_ amount of cocaine, which was the _smallest_ possible amount which was left in it due to limitations of processing coca leaves at that time --- something like one part in 50 million.
William
you said:
>#4) solid state drive. Didn't exist then, and doesn't sell well vs. a hard drive now.
Well, there were a number of even earlier laptops which had solid-state persistent storage:
- GRiD Compass (also the later GRiD Case) --- ~768Kb of Bubble memory
- NEC Ultralight - 1 or 2MB of RAM w/ battery backing
William
(who owned a GRiDCase III plus and an NEC Ultralite 2MB model)
::sigh:: apparently the moderators never played _The Colossal Cave Adventure_. Hint, the standard ``magic word'' which would allow one to continue playing past the time limit imposed by some administrators was ``xyzzy'' (but usually sysadmins who imposed such time limits changed the magic word).
Fortunately one can read a Literate Programming commented version of the source code:
From:
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs.html
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/programs/advent.w.gz
William
If a player has an account w/ $1,000 dollars worth of gold and gear and that account is deleted will the company directly reimburse the player?
If a company has a game world w/ 1,000 players, each of whom has $1,000 and the company decides to close the game world down will they have to have $1,000,000 on the books to pay off the players?
There was an interesting fictional treatment on this in _Dragon Magazine_ ages ago though, ``Catacomb'' by Henry Melton I believe it was which shows one potentially expensive aspect of such a game.
William
ages ago:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/hunter-warrior.htm
Steve Jobs promised that closing down the Newton division would result in innovative devices --- who knew it'd take this long --- I still want a device w/ handwriting recognition and a larger screen though.
William
The traditional way to describe it is:
- Starship Troopers is written for World War II Vets in the early stages of a Cold War world
- The Forever War is written for Vietnam Vets in the later stages of a Cold War world
William
(who would give a lot to see a Starship Troopers which was an accurate adaptation of the book as written by Heinlein)
Because the Wii Motion Plus has a pass-through to accept a Nunchuck, but most (all?) of the current Wii Zapper designs won't work w/ a dongle in place (I've got a wireless Kama Nuncuck replacement and had to make a Wii Zapper to use it in pistol mode) --- and IME there're a lot of times when the control of the Wii Zapper isn't quite fine enough to get perfectly centered on target w/o some twitching, so if the Wii Motion Plus would allow more precise targeting a new Wii Zapper would be welcome.
William
and what will be the pack-in for it?
William
(who want something w/ the weaponry variety of Ghost Squad and the targeting variety and excellent interface of Link's Crossbow Training and the fluid switch between first and third-person of Quantum of Solace)
The thing is, _Link's Crossbow Training_ has some first person shooter ``ranger'' levels which are very well done and a lot of fun (I enjoy the game so much I make Wii Zappers out of wood and give them to co-workers and friends along w/ used copies of the game) and most of the highly-acclaimed games have made excellent use of the Nunchuck for movement:
- Metroid Prime: Corruption
- Super Mario Galaxy
- Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
- Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition
- Call of Duty: World at War
William
Yeah. I bought Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors for that sake --- it's a lot of fun, though short, w/ almost painfully cute monster graphics, but one can't block w/ the Nunchuck (have to toggle into shield mode --- one doesn't use the Nunchuk as a shield 'cause they use rotation which apparently only the Wii Remote provides), and there's only one opponent w/ a sword (the final boss) and one doesn't get to fence w/ him, just strike when one has a chance, block when possible &c.
Pros:
- it actually uses the Wii Remote
- fun, one of the few RPGs
Cons:
- the interface is fussy, requiring one to manually indicate when targetting other than the center of the screen
- detection of movements and mapping them to the screen is erratic, not quite to the point of frustration, but close
- the Nunchuck is not used as the shield
- no fencing w/ sword-wielding opponents
- no ability to move during combat
- the game is built on rails w/ a few branches
- limited options (basically slashing or thrusting)
Of all of these, the only things the Wii Motion Plus can help w/ are detection of movement and possibly allowing one to move in combat and hopefully limited options --- the balance is a matter of gameplay design, which all-too often is lacking in contemporary games.
But if they do a sequel, or an improved version, I'd probably buy it.
William
Five licenses, less than $200:
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Version-10-5-6-Leopard-5-User/dp/B000BR0NPO
(and no feature variation betwixt home and work)
How much will 5 upgrades to Windows 7 cost me?
William
The Greeks invented everything --- all else is variation.
William
Stuff in Mac OS X which I miss when using my Windows Tablet PC (leaving out stuff which seems to be addressed in Windows 7):
- Miller column file browser
- Services
- pervasive PDF-oriented imaging model
- sophisticated per-window layering of windows, not per-application
- sophisticated command line w/ excellent support for drag-drop and the ability to interact w/ graphical applications using pbcopy and pbpaste
- X/Window (having to install cygwin and apps which aren't in their apps list, e.g., fontforge is a nuisance)
- sophisticated support for Unicode --- why isn't Palatino Linotype as useful in WordPad as Hoefler Text is in TextEdit.app
- a font format w/ multiple design axes --- play around w/ Skia in XeTeX or Purgatory Design's Intaglio.app
Lots of other geeky stuff (such as emacs keyboard shortcuts everywhere (even in dialog boxes)), but those are the things a user will notice.
William
ob. SF reference, ``The Mechanic'' in the collection _Space Lash_ (also published as _Small Changes_)
William
As I noted in another post I've actually tried to turn around when playing. Improvement in this area would be welcome, but for the current system it's a matter of balancing responsiveness and twitchiness and most games tend to be conservative, hence less responsive.
Aiming based on the Wii remote is somewhat improvable by adjustment in some games and Ghostsquad does afford the option of turning the aiming reticle off.
The real question this poses is when will consoles begin to offer multiple display out connectors and options for controlling what point of view a display shows, so that one could begin to work towards a full 360 degree view
William
My metric for games isn't whether I win or lose, but how much fun I have and how it's played.
I push a mouse around quite enough at work, and I've zero interest in sitting and playing a game by pushing a mouse around --- that's the big win on the Wii --- it makes new forms of gaming possible.
It would be interesting to see how players using different control systems would do in competitive play though.
William
I've actually tried to do that --- but if one controls one's reactions the control system will rotate one in place.
William
ledow said:
> you can't beat a keyboard/mouse combo for FPS
?!?
Let me introduce you to the Wii Zapper.
Wii Zapper, please meet Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol.
Nyko Perfect Shot Pistol, please meet:
- Resident Evil Umbrella Chronicles (unfortunately v4 Wii edition doesn't work w/ a normal Zapper)
- Quantum of Solace
- House of the Dead Chop Til You Drop
- Call of Duty World at War
- Medal of Honor Heroes 2
- Call of Duty 3
- Wiiware: Onslaught
Even Link's Crossbow Training has some quite good ``Ranger'' level where one moves about in a 3D terrain to shoot enemies.
William
(whose first project after getting a Wii was to make a Zapper out of Legos, then, since that was too expensive crafted a couple at his basement workbench out of wood to give away w/ used copies of _Link's Crossbow Training_ at work --- really do need to draw up the plans for those...)
Or at least do something interesting like having a second display function as a keyboard.
Above all, update InkWell and provide good support for use as an ebook reader which could do .pdf annotations (adding a .pdf preview of all documents to file bundles would be ideal if such annotations could then be synched back into the document when it was opened in the originating app).
William
Hasn't everyone seen ``Doom as a tool for system administration''?
http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/doom/
William
Agree.
While I rarely re-watch movies, I do enjoy listening to soundtracks, so will usually purchase those for movies which I enjoy --- unfortunately the soundtrack for _The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen_ was an Apple-exclusive in the US (though I see now that it was released internationally so I guess I'll have to get the import).
I rather wish that there was the same sort of creativity in the packaging which one used to see in older games or albums --- I still have the box for Apple's game _Through the Looking Glass_ and wish I still had Alice Cooper's _From the Inside_....
William
Spyglass corporation's Mosaic was licensed by a company called Microsoft as the basis for a browser which they named Internet Explorer --- Spyglass had an absolutely fantastic deal where they got royalties on _every sale_ of the browser.
William
That would only apply if Wii consoles were as prevalent as DVD players have become --- there's an inevitably smaller market to sell to for a console (or PC or Mac) title.
William
GNUstep is used in production software now --- most visibly NovaMind uses GNUstep to make their Mac OS X diagramming app available for Windows.
But one should never allow facts to get in the way of one's preconceptions, right?
William