Games of extreme challenge are either the result of rushed production with little real testing and correction of game balance. Or designers making the games to be a struggle in the misconceived idea that people will play it more because of all the retrying and struggle.
I switched from the my AMD supplied Sempron 2800+ (socket 754) cooler to the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro reviewed in the article. I found that Arctic cooler made an over 10 Celsius cooling difference compared to the stock AMD cooler. I guess AMD includes much beefier coolers with their higher end CPUs?
IMO, Guild Wars is a good attempt at a "casual gamers" massively multiplayer online game.
Here are some of my experiences from playing Guild Wars:
There is very little if any tedious travel from place to place. The player can simply click on the map to travel to any city (once that city has been discovered).
The game's level progression is more designed around accomplishing quests and team based missions and not killing creatures purely for experience sake.
A player can group up with AI controlled characters to do quests if there is no one to group with at any give time. Generally it is better to group with real life players but AI characters do a good job filling in where no human player can be found. This can cut down on a lot of wasted time looking for certain classes to fill out a balanced group.
The quest system is designed to keep a player moving through the world of the game naturally. Almost always a quest entails a player to travel to the next city where there is almost always new quests or missions to do. One is never left wondering what to do or where to go next
The map also clearly marks where to adventure to for a given quest. This cuts down on a lot of wandering and wasting time. Another interesting aspect of the map is that players in your adventure party can draw with their mouse on the map that is shown to other players. This allows tactics and directions to be given to everyone in a clear and simultaneous manner.
And arguably most importantly, there are no monthly subscription costs. A player can take all the time they want progressing through the game. There is no feeling of pressure due to mounting subscription costs. If a player needs to take two months off from the game, they can come back at no cost to them and pick up where they left off.
All in all, I'd recommend Guild Wars to anyone curious about MMOGs but were afraid of the time sink and complexity of them.
Re:But what about galactic cohesion?
on
Dark Matter Discovered
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
From what I read in the article this discovery does not answer the galaxy rotation velocity curve problem. Meaning maybe there is a different type of mass in between the stars in all galaxies. Or Baryons cannot be detected in these areas by Chandra?
This will go over big with the nearly 3 billion people (or about half the world's population) living on less than $2 a day.
I'm not putting down an honest effort here. I'm just suggesting there might be more important goals than trying to get everyone in the world a PC right now.
If anyone hasn't seen Triumph of the Nerds by Cringely, I highly recommend seeing it. It's the best documentary about computing ever made. It offers a historic and insightful view of the people that created the personal computing industry. Cringely interviews everyone from Gates and Jobs to relative unknowns like the creator of the MITS Altair computer.
What really makes it a great documentary is that it's as entertaining as it is interesting. Not an easy thing at all to do given the subject matter but Cringely pulls it off in spades.
Here in SF where Craig's List (CL) started and is king, the San Francisco Chronicle's classified section has dried up to a fraction of what it was in the past.
It has gotten so bad that the Chronicle will run many types of classified ads indefinitely once the ad is placed.
CL is the first place the majority of bay area folks look to buy and sell their stuff or find an apartment.
From what I've read Craig is true stand up guy. He passed up multi-millions during the dot.com heyday to keep Craig's List free from corporate control and undesired influences.
To give you an idea of the amount of money Craig passed on, a former partner sold his 25% stake in CL for $10+ million after the dot.com crash to eBay.
WoW over Half Life 2? I'm not so sure about that. HL2 is more ground breaking than WoW, IMO. WoW is a very polished MMO. But what is new about it?
HL2 is breaks new ground of because the environments are more than pretty window dressing. One is constantly challenged to look at the world and think about what is available to allow the objective to be accomplished more efficiently. This in addition to HL2 being a very polished FPS.
To put these odds in terms us slashdotters will understand, the odds that this asteroid will hit earth are better than the odds of rolling a '20' with a twenty-sided die 2 times in a row.
I work for a company that has its office next to Genetic Savings & Clone in Sausalito, CA.
Recently Genetic Savings & Clone has had to hire security guards to patrol their office because they are getting bomb threats.
Mind you this place is only in business to clone pets (cats and dogs) not people. But this is upsetting people to the point where they are threatening to bomb the place?! Wow. I don't get it.
And it doesn't make me feel any better about sharing a common bathroom with them either.
Very positive San Francisco Chronicle review
on
Firefox News Roundup
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
The San Francisco Chronicle is the largest circulation newspaper in the Bay Area. They wrote a very positive review about FireFox vs. Internet Explorer this week. It was on the front page of Monday's Technology section.
Internet Explorer has new foe - Firefox 1.0 beats Microsoft browser in several areas SF Chronicle Review
5PM EST exit polls... From an email sent by a Demo staffer on the Hill.
PRESIDENTIAL FLorida: Kerry up by four Ohio: Kerry up by five Michigan: Kerry up by four Pennsyvlania: Kerry up by 16 Iowa: Kerry up by 2 Wisconsin: Kerry up by 5 Minnesota: Kerry up by 15 Nevada: Bush up by one New Mexico: tied at 49 Virginia: Bush up by one North Carolina: Bush up by 5 Maine: 55-44 Kerry, with Kerry winning both congressional districts avoiding an electoral college split. Colorado: Kerry inched up to 51-49 lead as of 3 pm
Re:Nice little blurb about Windows...
on
The Ultimate MacDate
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Solution for this problem for Windows users:
Move your Windows task bar to the left or right side of your screen. (I prefer the left side.) In a vertical task bar configuration you can have 40-50 applications open before the bar 'fills up'. I also turn off 'always on top' so I can get the full use of my screen. This also allows you to set the task bar's horizontal width so you can read the applications' names displayed in the task bar. Clicking on the visible edge of the task bar brings it to the foreground if I need to access any thing on the task bar itself.
Forget about hard media installs. We should be moving away from that. It makes sense on multiple fronts for people with broadband connection to the Internet to download their games directly from the developer.
It's a much cheaper distribution method
Automatic updates and expansions
No retail (no middleman) price mark up which should result in cheaper games
Game developers ultimately see more return on their investment which will yield better funded (and higher quaility) games in the future.
Supply of uranium for nuclear power is limited?
on
China Goes Nuclear
·
· Score: 1
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I thought if the entire world switched over to uranium nuclear power, it would exhaust the worlds uranium supply in around 50 years? (In less time mind you than the world's oil supplies are current being depleted.)
Don't get me wrong. I think nuclear power is unfairly stigmatized in the US and should be reexamined. I'm just staying it's far from a long term solution. And maybe the money would be better spent on researching and building an infrastructure based around renewable energy like solar and hydroelectric?
Good question. The difference the 'Anonymous call blocking' feature gives me is that it keeps my phone from ringing at all if an anonymous telemarketer calls. Unless the anonymous person presses '5' and leaves a recorded message the call never goes through.
This spoofing system is a telemarketer's dream for two reasons.
1.) Nearly all telemarketers have their Caller ID blocked because they don't want to actual name to appear in people's caller ID display and thus keep people from picking up the phone.
2.) I pay about $4 a month to have SBC (my local phone company) block all 'Anonymous' calls incoming to my phone. The caller has to leave a message or unblock their number to for call to be successfully connected. This filtering has reduced the number of unsolicited telemarketer calls by over an order of magnitude.
Now, telemarketers can falsely spoof any name and number they wish. They already know my full name and phone number and easily could construct a database of people that are related to me. For example, I could now see my Mom's name and phone number every time a telemarketer calls me. Now both my caller ID and Anonymous caller ID blocking is circumvented. Now I am totally unable to avoid the torrent of calls from telemarketers that has plagued my phone number for years.
I was surprised to find out that the motion picture rating system is a voluntary system. It is enforced by the ownership/management of a theater and not by law (like age limits on alcohol or driving).
I found this out when Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was released this year. There was such an uproar about the film being rated 'R' (and thus a "Bush led conspiracy to keeping some people from seeing it") that a couple of theater owners in the Bay Area said they wouldn't enforce the 'R' rating on the film.
I'm not sure what would happen if a theater owner consistently ignored the rating system.
"players assume the role of the most feared predator on earth, the Great White Shark."
The Great White Shark isn't even the most feared predator in the oceanic food chain. The Orca is the ocean's top predator. Orcas have been know to kill Great White Sharks.
As the article says: Videogames - The New Rock'n'Roll, there could be some truth in that.
I wonder if the rise of video game sales can be directly correlated to the dramatic decline of music sales? Kids are at home playing games instead of listen to albums/CDs?
I don't even know why Yahoo! allows post on news stories anymore. In theory it seems like a very good idea but in practice devolves into a cesspool of near pointless negativity and flame wars. Literially hundreds of thousands of flaming posts for popular stories.
I swear there are groups of early teenage boys out there who's stole focus is to start flame wars on Yahoo! message boards. It's a bastion for ignored and disenfranchised youth. Message boards in general are great for people looking for attention not matter what form it takes.
There is a great documentary somewhere in that culture. What type of person is doing all this pointless posting and why?
Slashdot Mirror
Games of extreme challenge are either the result of rushed production with little real testing and correction of game balance. Or designers making the games to be a struggle in the misconceived idea that people will play it more because of all the retrying and struggle.
Games are an escape from your job, and not a job.
I switched from the my AMD supplied Sempron 2800+ (socket 754) cooler to the Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro reviewed in the article. I found that Arctic cooler made an over 10 Celsius cooling difference compared to the stock AMD cooler. I guess AMD includes much beefier coolers with their higher end CPUs?
Here are some of my experiences from playing Guild Wars:
- There is very little if any tedious travel from place to place. The player can simply click on the map to travel to any city (once that city has been discovered).
- The game's level progression is more designed around accomplishing quests and team based missions and not killing creatures purely for experience sake.
- A player can group up with AI controlled characters to do quests if there is no one to group with at any give time. Generally it is better to group with real life players but AI characters do a good job filling in where no human player can be found. This can cut down on a lot of wasted time looking for certain classes to fill out a balanced group.
- The quest system is designed to keep a player moving through the world of the game naturally. Almost always a quest entails a player to travel to the next city where there is almost always new quests or missions to do. One is never left wondering what to do or where to go next
- The map also clearly marks where to adventure to for a given quest. This cuts down on a lot of wandering and wasting time. Another interesting aspect of the map is that players in your adventure party can draw with their mouse on the map that is shown to other players. This allows tactics and directions to be given to everyone in a clear and simultaneous manner.
- And arguably most importantly, there are no monthly subscription costs. A player can take all the time they want progressing through the game. There is no feeling of pressure due to mounting subscription costs. If a player needs to take two months off from the game, they can come back at no cost to them and pick up where they left off.
All in all, I'd recommend Guild Wars to anyone curious about MMOGs but were afraid of the time sink and complexity of them.From what I read in the article this discovery does not answer the galaxy rotation velocity curve problem. Meaning maybe there is a different type of mass in between the stars in all galaxies. Or Baryons cannot be detected in these areas by Chandra?
Galaxy rotation velocity curve Java applet explains this problem.
This will go over big with the nearly 3 billion people (or about half the world's population) living on less than $2 a day.
I'm not putting down an honest effort here. I'm just suggesting there might be more important goals than trying to get everyone in the world a PC right now.
I can see it now at EA's corporate offices:
<mr. burns> Excellent... </mr. burns>
If anyone hasn't seen Triumph of the Nerds by Cringely, I highly recommend seeing it. It's the best documentary about computing ever made. It offers a historic and insightful view of the people that created the personal computing industry. Cringely interviews everyone from Gates and Jobs to relative unknowns like the creator of the MITS Altair computer.
What really makes it a great documentary is that it's as entertaining as it is interesting. Not an easy thing at all to do given the subject matter but Cringely pulls it off in spades.
Here in SF where Craig's List (CL) started and is king, the San Francisco Chronicle's classified section has dried up to a fraction of what it was in the past.
It has gotten so bad that the Chronicle will run many types of classified ads indefinitely once the ad is placed.
CL is the first place the majority of bay area folks look to buy and sell their stuff or find an apartment.
From what I've read Craig is true stand up guy. He passed up multi-millions during the dot.com heyday to keep Craig's List free from corporate control and undesired influences.
To give you an idea of the amount of money Craig passed on, a former partner sold his 25% stake in CL for $10+ million after the dot.com crash to eBay.
WoW over Half Life 2? I'm not so sure about that. HL2 is more ground breaking than WoW, IMO. WoW is a very polished MMO. But what is new about it?
HL2 is breaks new ground of because the environments are more than pretty window dressing. One is constantly challenged to look at the world and think about what is available to allow the objective to be accomplished more efficiently. This in addition to HL2 being a very polished FPS.
To put these odds in terms us slashdotters will understand, the odds that this asteroid will hit earth are better than the odds of rolling a '20' with a twenty-sided die 2 times in a row.
Not to alarm people further, but April 13, 2029 is also a Friday the 13th!
I know a lot of MMO wives that started with this similar philosophy. Many of them became just as addicted as their husbands.
I work for a company that has its office next to Genetic Savings & Clone in Sausalito, CA.
Recently Genetic Savings & Clone has had to hire security guards to patrol their office because they are getting bomb threats.
Mind you this place is only in business to clone pets (cats and dogs) not people. But this is upsetting people to the point where they are threatening to bomb the place?! Wow. I don't get it.
And it doesn't make me feel any better about sharing a common bathroom with them either.
The San Francisco Chronicle is the largest circulation newspaper in the Bay Area. They wrote a very positive review about FireFox vs. Internet Explorer this week. It was on the front page of Monday's Technology section.
Internet Explorer has new foe - Firefox 1.0 beats Microsoft browser in several areas
SF Chronicle Review
Take these with a grain of salt but here you go:
5PM EST exit polls... From an email sent by a Demo staffer on the Hill.
PRESIDENTIAL
FLorida: Kerry up by four
Ohio: Kerry up by five
Michigan: Kerry up by four
Pennsyvlania: Kerry up by 16
Iowa: Kerry up by 2
Wisconsin: Kerry up by 5
Minnesota: Kerry up by 15
Nevada: Bush up by one
New Mexico: tied at 49
Virginia: Bush up by one
North Carolina: Bush up by 5
Maine: 55-44 Kerry, with Kerry winning both congressional districts avoiding an electoral college split.
Colorado: Kerry inched up to 51-49 lead as of 3 pm
Solution for this problem for Windows users:
Move your Windows task bar to the left or right side of your screen. (I prefer the left side.) In a vertical task bar configuration you can have 40-50 applications open before the bar 'fills up'. I also turn off 'always on top' so I can get the full use of my screen. This also allows you to set the task bar's horizontal width so you can read the applications' names displayed in the task bar. Clicking on the visible edge of the task bar brings it to the foreground if I need to access any thing on the task bar itself.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but I thought if the entire world switched over to uranium nuclear power, it would exhaust the worlds uranium supply in around 50 years? (In less time mind you than the world's oil supplies are current being depleted.)
Don't get me wrong. I think nuclear power is unfairly stigmatized in the US and should be reexamined. I'm just staying it's far from a long term solution. And maybe the money would be better spent on researching and building an infrastructure based around renewable energy like solar and hydroelectric?
Good question. The difference the 'Anonymous call blocking' feature gives me is that it keeps my phone from ringing at all if an anonymous telemarketer calls. Unless the anonymous person presses '5' and leaves a recorded message the call never goes through.
This spoofing system is a telemarketer's dream for two reasons.
1.) Nearly all telemarketers have their Caller ID blocked because they don't want to actual name to appear in people's caller ID display and thus keep people from picking up the phone.
2.) I pay about $4 a month to have SBC (my local phone company) block all 'Anonymous' calls incoming to my phone. The caller has to leave a message or unblock their number to for call to be successfully connected. This filtering has reduced the number of unsolicited telemarketer calls by over an order of magnitude.
Now, telemarketers can falsely spoof any name and number they wish. They already know my full name and phone number and easily could construct a database of people that are related to me. For example, I could now see my Mom's name and phone number every time a telemarketer calls me. Now both my caller ID and Anonymous caller ID blocking is circumvented. Now I am totally unable to avoid the torrent of calls from telemarketers that has plagued my phone number for years.
This is has to be made illegal.
I was surprised to find out that the motion picture rating system is a voluntary system. It is enforced by the ownership/management of a theater and not by law (like age limits on alcohol or driving).
I found this out when Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was released this year. There was such an uproar about the film being rated 'R' (and thus a "Bush led conspiracy to keeping some people from seeing it") that a couple of theater owners in the Bay Area said they wouldn't enforce the 'R' rating on the film.
I'm not sure what would happen if a theater owner consistently ignored the rating system.
"players assume the role of the most feared predator on earth, the Great White Shark."
The Great White Shark isn't even the most feared predator in the oceanic food chain. The Orca is the ocean's top predator. Orcas have been know to kill Great White Sharks.
As the article says: Videogames - The New Rock'n'Roll, there could be some truth in that.
I wonder if the rise of video game sales can be directly correlated to the dramatic decline of music sales? Kids are at home playing games instead of listen to albums/CDs?
It's pretty astounding that major jump from 32-bit to 64-bit processing isn't even mentioned by Intel.
Think about how big a jump it was from the i286 to i386 (16-bit to 32-bit.) That release was a major deal for Intel.
I don't even know why Yahoo! allows post on news stories anymore. In theory it seems like a very good idea but in practice devolves into a cesspool of near pointless negativity and flame wars. Literially hundreds of thousands of flaming posts for popular stories.
I swear there are groups of early teenage boys out there who's stole focus is to start flame wars on Yahoo! message boards. It's a bastion for ignored and disenfranchised youth. Message boards in general are great for people looking for attention not matter what form it takes.
There is a great documentary somewhere in that culture. What type of person is doing all this pointless posting and why?