Mmm. The only computer games that I play on my computer are Warcraft 3, UT2003 (against bots!) and Master of Orion.
But the things I play the most on it are emulators, say Zsnes, Gens, NeoRage, epsxe etc.
While Master of Orion is fun, I can't remember it making me laugh like Mario Kart Double Dash or Smash Brothers Melee. Sometimes you want to exercise your brain while playing, but consoles are good for this also; just grab FFTactics for the psone, or Fire Emblem for the GBA.
And since I work (and study) now, I want the best experience posible in the shortest amount of time. And blasting your friends with a red shell is way funnier than obliterating some planet after hours of planning.
I despise this trend about considering PDF valid web links. Depending on what you seek, you can find a lot of links to PDFs, which are generally not navegable, and weight a lot. I don't think that the google option "view as html" is such a good idea. They are just validating the post of PDFs on the web.
To be honest, this sounds rather useful, altho in an unfortunately "only for Microsoft developers" way. Porting apps between consoles and computers takes time, a lot of time, simply because portable toolkits don't exist, yet. Standard sets of game controllers between computers and consoles don't sound bad either, altho those have existed for some time.
Sega used Renderware for Sonic Heroes, and the game looks good(not great, but good) on each platform, PS2, GC and Xbox. Apparently Renderware supports PC also but I don't know more examples.
Renderware is a good thing. The Microsoft solution will only have support for MS platforms (PC, XBox, etc). Renderware may be a better solution, at least for this generation of consoles.
The fact that you bring up Doom 2 really makes the poster's point for them. Frankly the closest thing to Diablo was Gauntlet, and the two are distinctly different games. I think that Diablo qualifies as revolutionary and not just evolutionary, not least because anyone can play it.
You are just ignorant. Diablo is a commercial roguelike. Those games are called roguelike, because they all resemble the clasic game "rogue". In those games you control a character that ihas stats just like in a RPG, but the focus is on exploring a dungeon, and killing endless waves of monsters.
The most famous roguelikes today include:
-Nethack -ADOM -Angband -Diablo (of course!)
Of those four, the best is clearly Angband, because it is based on the Tolkien Universe (you get to kill Morgoth, the master of Sauron), but mainly because it is the roguelike in which you kill more monsters:)
Yeah, Diablo it is jusr a dumbed down roguelike, with actual graphics instead of ascii. Since Roguelikes are great games, Diablo was a success.
There would for all intents and purposes be two teams. The merovingians minions who would be easier to play for newbies. Being able to run over any surface, like a vampire, or be able to take collosall amounts of damage, like a werewolf sans silver, etc. They wouldn't have a bullet-time ability, but they might be naturally faster etc.
And the humans. Who would start out start out basically as pussies, but should they survive could be superbad ass. But when you die, or after a certain number of times, you gotta make another conscript.
The Agents would for the most part be badass bots. But with a ranking system. The best players could be invited to be agents for limited periods of time. Localize the Agents to have last names generic to the users local.
Nah, why bother? they can always make you kill hundreds of rats, birds and whatever animal they want. Look at Star Wars Galaxies for an example:)
I don't think your case would stand on court. You buyed the game, and the game still WORKS. The only thing you cannot do is to access some extra service that the same company provides, and that they are probably providing without any obligation to the buyer of the said game (like Battle.net for Starcraft) or that you are paying for, but not without some extra contract (like some MMORPG account).
And maybe they WILL fight for the case in a small court. If some random cheater is banned from a server, and then he files a claim and gets $500, don't you think that thousands of cheaters will try to do the same?
You're missing my point. No, consoles didn't really need a DVD player but they were better for it. More features = better. DVD players are a lot cheaper now but when this round of consoles came out, they were more than the $50 difference between a GC and a PS2 or Xbox. Nintendo was taking a "our machine is a pure game machine!" stance, which was a red herring to distract you from the truth: They were cutting features to provide a lower cost.
They were selling a pure game machine. The lack of DVD playing not only cut on price, but also on piracy, which is rampant on the other two systems.
However, is clear that the PS2 sold more due to DVD playing. The games available for it sucked for at least six months after launch.
I'm sure people will find a use for the instant chat and other crap that gets dumped into the DS. But if you're going to dump everything but the kitchen sink into a game machine, it looks a little hypocritical when you were lambasting your competitors for doing the same a few years prior.
Instant messaging can be useful for gaming, at least for matchmaking, and even for playing. Have you ever played a PC game online?
And if you look at the specifications for the PSP, the DS again looks like the pure gaming machine.
I think that the DS will be marketed as a high end portable machine, to cut market from the PSP. As such is a great idea.
There's strategy games. Just because it's a game with very little chance (i.e chess) doesn't mean that writing the AI is easy. Though the Civ3 AI is really good, I don't consider it by any means infallible. Perhaps the best example for AI in strategy is Magic: The Gathering. Years ago, they came out with a PC version with AI. The problem was that the AI could never understand the strategies behind different deck and thus couldn't play them effectively. I think designing a good MTG AI would be much tougher than a good GO AI.
Although I don't know how complex can be the design of a good M:tG AI, I know that the state of the art Go AIs get their ass handed to them by almost anyone with some knowledge of Go.
Other side of videogame AI that is interesting, is simulating realistic behaviour of third persons (which are not opponents or equals of the player) like all those hookers or police on GTA. If they have complex but razonable behaviour, they make the game more enjoyable.
...kinda like the India/Pakistan virus conflict, in which official Pakistani sites were savaged by such infamous groups as Indian Snakes and Indian Hackers Club...
Seems like virus writers also got oursourced to India!!
AFAIK it is public domain, but you may run into some problems, because a lot of people have expanded the mythos, so probably it is not everything on the public domain.
On the other hand, Superman and Mickey Mouse will be copyrighted as long as their parent compnaies have money.
One EMP burst and every automobile that has an Engine Control Computer within range of the EMP is dead.
Yeah, those pesky Terran Science Vessels stop the traffic whenever they want. Who do they tnink they are? And if you start yto walk to your job, they irradiate you, and you die.
AFAIK, EMPs aren't easy to produce, but on a nuclear scenario, it could still be a problem
SSMB:melee has a incredible soundtrack, but they made one strange decision. The remix of Yoshi theme (the one from Super Mario World 1) was done with a banjoo, instead a piano. The original one was so a piano...
In fact, Carmack himself has said that DirectX is very good, except the 3D part (Direct3D, or hwatever they call it nowadays), which, he said, should be replaced with OpenGL.
And, have you tried to program something using OpenGL. It IS a kludgey hack, the classical MS API, big, ugly, and hard to use. (yes, you are right, OpenGL only does video...for an open source gaming API, try SDL. maybe not as powerful as DirectX, but MUCH more usable)
That makes me think of BAD (as in very evil) user interfaces at museums, some stores, etc. I have no problem with normal controls in videogames. They are quick and are precise. A touchscreen is slow and er...unprecise.
It would be stupid for them to not have enough GCs to meet demand. This makes me remember when PS2 was launched, and there were not enough units in America to meer demand.
Since Nintendo, at some point stopped the manufacturing of GC, they must have keeped all this time a low hardware stock (at least GCs...GBA's stock must be huge). That hit them now.
Sure, that's good... until they outsource those jobs, too. What we should watch out for is that companies don't start a race towards the bottom, where everyone is fighting for scraps and the jobs go to the lowest bidder.
Well, you know that Microsoft maybe evil, a monopoly, and a lot of other things, but it is not stupid. they are not going to send their knowledge/knowhow out to India.
What!? they already did it...oh well, it is just tech support, but it is a start. Forget everything I said.
Is in fact very simple. Business should outsource whatever doesn't add value to them. Storage, burocracy, etc.
Since on IT, the people actually developing the software ADD value to the business, because the better the developers, the better (well...ideally) should be the final product/service, outsourcing them is, well stupid.
Companies just want to look better on profits for the next quarter.
I guess that the right balance is that basic SERVICES should get at least one open source implementation, regardless the existance of a propietary solution. I mean Operative Systems, DB, web servers, file systems, maybe some media players, browsers, implementation of standards (compilers), etc.
This fosters the IT business, by making it inexpensive to start one (no licenses fees).
Other software, like more specialized things, anything that will have just one user (that may be some other business) will never get an open source version, due to the nature of the business.
But what about all the inbetweens programs? where do you draw the line?
Re:Bad form to reply to one's own posts, but...
on
Voice Of The Fire
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
After reading Watchmen and Crisis of the Infinte Earths, I found a proposal for a new crossover, sort of ragnarok of superheroes. Some people guess that Kingdom Come was inspired by this proposal, which was not accepted (but it is still copyright of DC.
The GCN control is almost perfect. The only complain I have is the odd positioned Z button. It would be perfect if the Z were UNDER the shoulder, and not where it is. It fits my hand in an awesome way (granted, hand size cause that YMMV) and the c-stick is placed incredible well for camera control.
The PS2 controller is good also. I find that the buttons placed like the snes buttons are harder to press than the more intuitive GCN buttons. And the four triggers aren't confortable like they are placed. R2 and L2 should be positioned in a way for you to press them with your middle finger.
The NES pad was the least ergonomic control ever. It was plain bad. Nostalgia doesn't change that fact... Unless your are masochist, of course:)
And a GBA IS better than a Turbo Express/Lynx. Much better procesor, graphics, sounds, and battery life. Yeah, it is still mainly 2D (it can do some 3d, look at Doom and Sonic Battle), but, everybody knows that 3D alone can't make a good game.
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Mmm. The only computer games that I play on my computer are Warcraft 3, UT2003 (against bots!) and Master of Orion.
But the things I play the most on it are emulators, say Zsnes, Gens, NeoRage, epsxe etc.
While Master of Orion is fun, I can't remember it making me laugh like Mario Kart Double Dash or Smash Brothers Melee. Sometimes you want to exercise your brain while playing, but consoles are good for this also; just grab FFTactics for the psone, or Fire Emblem for the GBA.
And since I work (and study) now, I want the best experience posible in the shortest amount of time. And blasting your friends with a red shell is way funnier than obliterating some planet after hours of planning.
I despise this trend about considering PDF valid web links. Depending on what you seek, you can find a lot of links to PDFs, which are generally not navegable, and weight a lot. I don't think that the google option "view as html" is such a good idea. They are just validating the post of PDFs on the web.
To be honest, this sounds rather useful, altho in an unfortunately "only for Microsoft developers" way. Porting apps between consoles and computers takes time, a lot of time, simply because portable toolkits don't exist, yet. Standard sets of game controllers between computers and consoles don't sound bad either, altho those have existed for some time.
Sega used Renderware for Sonic Heroes, and the game looks good(not great, but good) on each platform, PS2, GC and Xbox. Apparently Renderware supports PC also but I don't know more examples.
Renderware is a good thing. The Microsoft solution will only have support for MS platforms (PC, XBox, etc). Renderware may be a better solution, at least for this generation of consoles.
The fact that you bring up Doom 2 really makes the poster's point for them. Frankly the closest thing to Diablo was Gauntlet, and the two are distinctly different games. I think that Diablo qualifies as revolutionary and not just evolutionary, not least because anyone can play it.
:)
You are just ignorant. Diablo is a commercial roguelike. Those games are called roguelike, because they all resemble the clasic game "rogue". In those games you control a character that ihas stats just like in a RPG, but the focus is on exploring a dungeon, and killing endless waves of monsters.
The most famous roguelikes today include:
-Nethack
-ADOM
-Angband
-Diablo (of course!)
Of those four, the best is clearly Angband, because it is based on the Tolkien Universe (you get to kill Morgoth, the master of Sauron), but mainly because it is the roguelike in which you kill more monsters
Yeah, Diablo it is jusr a dumbed down roguelike, with actual graphics instead of ascii. Since Roguelikes are great games, Diablo was a success.
There would for all intents and purposes be two teams. The merovingians minions who would be easier to play for newbies. Being able to run over any surface, like a vampire, or be able to take collosall amounts of damage, like a werewolf sans silver, etc. They wouldn't have a bullet-time ability, but they might be naturally faster etc.
:)
And the humans. Who would start out start out basically as pussies, but should they survive could be superbad ass. But when you die, or after a certain number of times, you gotta make another conscript.
The Agents would for the most part be badass bots. But with a ranking system. The best players could be invited to be agents for limited periods of time. Localize the Agents to have last names generic to the users local.
Nah, why bother? they can always make you kill hundreds of rats, birds and whatever animal they want. Look at Star Wars Galaxies for an example
I don't think your case would stand on court. You buyed the game, and the game still WORKS. The only thing you cannot do is to access some extra service that the same company provides, and that they are probably providing without any obligation to the buyer of the said game (like Battle.net for Starcraft) or that you are paying for, but not without some extra contract (like some MMORPG account).
And maybe they WILL fight for the case in a small court. If some random cheater is banned from a server, and then he files a claim and gets $500, don't you think that thousands of cheaters will try to do the same?
You're missing my point. No, consoles didn't really need a DVD player but they were better for it. More features = better. DVD players are a lot cheaper now but when this round of consoles came out, they were more than the $50 difference between a GC and a PS2 or Xbox. Nintendo was taking a "our machine is a pure game machine!" stance, which was a red herring to distract you from the truth: They were cutting features to provide a lower cost.
They were selling a pure game machine. The lack of DVD playing not only cut on price, but also on piracy, which is rampant on the other two systems.
However, is clear that the PS2 sold more due to DVD playing. The games available for it sucked for at least six months after launch.
I'm sure people will find a use for the instant chat and other crap that gets dumped into the DS. But if you're going to dump everything but the kitchen sink into a game machine, it looks a little hypocritical when you were lambasting your competitors for doing the same a few years prior.
Instant messaging can be useful for gaming, at least for matchmaking, and even for playing. Have you ever played a PC game online?
And if you look at the specifications for the PSP, the DS again looks like the pure gaming machine.
I think that the DS will be marketed as a high end portable machine, to cut market from the PSP. As such is a great idea.
There's strategy games. Just because it's a game with very little chance (i.e chess) doesn't mean that writing the AI is easy. Though the Civ3 AI is really good, I don't consider it by any means infallible. Perhaps the best example for AI in strategy is Magic: The Gathering. Years ago, they came out with a PC version with AI. The problem was that the AI could never understand the strategies behind different deck and thus couldn't play them effectively. I think designing a good MTG AI would be much tougher than a good GO AI.
Although I don't know how complex can be the design of a good M:tG AI, I know that the state of the art Go AIs get their ass handed to them by almost anyone with some knowledge of Go.
Other side of videogame AI that is interesting, is simulating realistic behaviour of third persons (which are not opponents or equals of the player) like all those hookers or police on GTA. If they have complex but razonable behaviour, they make the game more enjoyable.
I guess they are trying to give a social side to playing videogames on your gba. The CCG comunity is huge and this is a big plus for this games.
Yeah multiplayer in GBs has never been an issue, except for this little and unknown game called POKEMON, you know.
...kinda like the India/Pakistan virus conflict, in which official Pakistani sites were savaged by such infamous groups as Indian Snakes and Indian Hackers Club...
Seems like virus writers also got oursourced to India!!
AFAIK it is public domain, but you may run into some problems, because a lot of people have expanded the mythos, so probably it is not everything on the public domain.
On the other hand, Superman and Mickey Mouse will be copyrighted as long as their parent compnaies have money.
One EMP burst and every automobile that has an Engine Control Computer within range of the EMP is dead.
Yeah, those pesky Terran Science Vessels stop the traffic whenever they want. Who do they tnink they are? And if you start yto walk to your job, they irradiate you, and you die.
AFAIK, EMPs aren't easy to produce, but on a nuclear scenario, it could still be a problem
SSMB:melee has a incredible soundtrack, but they made one strange decision. The remix of Yoshi theme (the one from Super Mario World 1) was done with a banjoo, instead a piano. The original one was so a piano...
Let MS hope that I will install Longhorn :D
In fact, Carmack himself has said that DirectX is very good, except the 3D part (Direct3D, or hwatever they call it nowadays), which, he said, should be replaced with OpenGL.
And, have you tried to program something using OpenGL. It IS a kludgey hack, the classical MS API, big, ugly, and hard to use. (yes, you are right, OpenGL only does video...for an open source gaming API, try SDL. maybe not as powerful as DirectX, but MUCH more usable)
That makes me think of BAD (as in very evil) user interfaces at museums, some stores, etc. I have no problem with normal controls in videogames. They are quick and are precise. A touchscreen is slow and er...unprecise.
That would suck.
It would be stupid for them to not have enough GCs to meet demand. This makes me remember when PS2 was launched, and there were not enough units in America to meer demand.
Since Nintendo, at some point stopped the manufacturing of GC, they must have keeped all this time a low hardware stock (at least GCs...GBA's stock must be huge). That hit them now.
Oh well, Nintendo moves in misterious ways.
Sure, that's good... until they outsource those jobs, too. What we should watch out for is that companies don't start a race towards the bottom, where everyone is fighting for scraps and the jobs go to the lowest bidder.
Well, you know that Microsoft maybe evil, a monopoly, and a lot of other things, but it is not stupid. they are not going to send their knowledge/knowhow out to India.
What!? they already did it...oh well, it is just tech support, but it is a start. Forget everything I said.
Is in fact very simple. Business should outsource whatever doesn't add value to them. Storage, burocracy, etc.
Since on IT, the people actually developing the software ADD value to the business, because the better the developers, the better (well...ideally) should be the final product/service, outsourcing them is, well stupid.
Companies just want to look better on profits for the next quarter.
I guess that the right balance is that basic SERVICES should get at least one open source implementation, regardless the existance of a propietary solution. I mean Operative Systems, DB, web servers, file systems, maybe some media players, browsers, implementation of standards (compilers), etc.
This fosters the IT business, by making it inexpensive to start one (no licenses fees).
Other software, like more specialized things, anything that will have just one user (that may be some other business) will never get an open source version, due to the nature of the business.
But what about all the inbetweens programs? where do you draw the line?
After reading Watchmen and Crisis of the Infinte Earths, I found a proposal for a new crossover, sort of ragnarok of superheroes. Some people guess that Kingdom Come was inspired by this proposal, which was not accepted (but it is still copyright of DC.
House of Steel...you can't get cooler than that.
The GCN control is almost perfect. The only complain I have is the odd positioned Z button. It would be perfect if the Z were UNDER the shoulder, and not where it is. It fits my hand in an awesome way (granted, hand size cause that YMMV) and the c-stick is placed incredible well for camera control.
:)
The PS2 controller is good also. I find that the buttons placed like the snes buttons are harder to press than the more intuitive GCN buttons. And the four triggers aren't confortable like they are placed. R2 and L2 should be positioned in a way for you to press them with your middle finger.
The NES pad was the least ergonomic control ever. It was plain bad. Nostalgia doesn't change that fact... Unless your are masochist, of course
Two words for you: Sony Fanboy.
And a GBA IS better than a Turbo Express/Lynx. Much better procesor, graphics, sounds, and battery life. Yeah, it is still mainly 2D (it can do some 3d, look at Doom and Sonic Battle), but, everybody knows that 3D alone can't make a good game.
That never hurted the PS2 sales... A DVD player and marketing sold that console. Good games on launch? nah