The better way? Make it happen outside the PERCEIVED area of control of the player. You and her go on different patrols. You hear her patrol being ambushed and change course to intercept. As you come closer you hear more messages until you are close and the patrol is wiped out. Far less frustating I think, a really good script writer could improve it of course.
That is a somewhat better way, but still lacks. It is still scripted, and the player can not do anything about it.
Although I have not played it, I know that in Fire Emblem, a turn-based strategy game by Nintendo, the characters who die in a battle are gone for good, so the story develops differently (I suspect that it is not VERY different, but I have not played it).
I think that is the right way of doing things. If the player does something, react to it. Even if you have it narrowed down to something like the death/life of some characters, it is still better than selecting one from two paths possible.
I guess that Snowcrash is popular because, to computer geeks, looks a lot more probable than neuromancer.
The problem is that Gibson doesn't know what he is talking about. Neuromancer could perfectly be classified as fantasy. The world of snowcrash looks at least factible.
Neuromancer still is a good read, and Gibson can write a correct ending. Stephenson just stops typing when he is tired, sends the papers to his editor, and calls it a book.
No. Whoever group/person who programs XF86/Apache OWNS it. This is not so clear, as those are big projects that have been maintained by lots of people, but the point is, the code is THEIRS.
If they decide to distribute its code under GPL, under BSD licenses, or to distribute it in binary form, they still own the code. They already distributed it under GPL before, so they cannot recall that code back home, but they still can do whatever they want with their code.
When I started to play Street Fighter Zero 2, there was a Fighting Game Master (in fact, a group of them) who kicked my ass, and the ass of all my friends.
I played when he was not around, and eventually (I mean a year here) was able to drive him and his group out of sfz2 (but towards other machines, kof97/98 and tekken mainly).
For some time, I basically dominated the sfz2 machine (with the character that gives me my username), until I had not the time to keep playing. I was, for a time, the FGM...
This sound like some dark story of power and corruption, but also sounds like some behaviour from chimps, gorillas, or some other animal:(
Javier, since you got macs for your whole family, YOU need the market share now. As their market share decreases, their price would go UP, and you can end with expensive computers to maintain, with no applications to run, and which cannot comunicate easily with others computers.
Gamespy is one of the sites that has given more coverage to the N-Gage. They have a link in their main page, together with the links of PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, GBA and PC. They have had editorials, promotions, etc.
So i guess they are giving the system a deserved good-bye.
However I can understand them. The N-gage market is a small but atractive one. Idiots WITH money! you can't loose trying to sell something to that.
It's tough isn't it? I remember when I was about 13 I started to get bored with my matchbox cars and racetrack. It used to be so much fun putting piles of books under the track so the cars would do little jumps, or seeing how big you could make the loop without the cars just falling onto their backs like little turtles.
So that is what those "books" are all about! Oh, to think of all the time I wasted reading them!
I think that the PSO Loader is the crappiest solution of all to make piracy in this console generation.
Nintendo has done an excellent job at stopping piracy with their discs. They read outside->inside, which also increases load speeds, and have this code in the microDVDs which are hard to reproduce. Maybe there is even another barrier that hasn't been reached yet.
I agree with the Slashdotters who say that Nintendo went with the small discs because its parent company is an optical disc manufacturer. This is the only reasoning that makes any real sense to me
That theory doesn't explain all the facts.
Nintendo went to great lengths to combat piracy, and that it is the only theory that explains all the facts, that makes the most sense. The cost in data capacity is almost inexistant. God, the miniDVD has a capacity of 1.5 Gigabytes! It is not enough to hold FFX, which has full speech dialogue, but that it is. Square didn't make FFX for the GC simply due to its smaller market share.Square hasn't had problems before to split games in several disks.
IIRC, the only game in the GC that has needed multiple discs is Tales of Symphony. Most games don't need lots of FMV/speech to be great.
The videogame industry won't care, mainly because they don't have a way to make those over 40 women to buy a PS2/GC/Xbox to have them play "scrabble Xtreme" or whatever.
Nintendo has been trying to expand the market, with Animal Crossing and the Mario Party games which, while not geared towards women, are appealing to everybody. The Sims are big in this also.
But that it is. Since there is a big supply of online games that aim to this segment,W>40 (Yahoo, etc), there is no way EA can milk some big bucks from them.
"Anyway, you missed the only obvious reason Nintendo would have for making discs that size--copy protection. Which I personally think is a pretty weak reason."
It is a strong reason. The Dreamcast got its final blow from piracy. The playstations suffer a lot from that too.
Or maybe you want to copy the GC games? and the disc size/format is annoying you? Why exactly do you think it is a weak reason?
That is one of their big reasons for using that. They've made that clear. Gee whiz, you get a bunch of other benefits out of it too. You seem to be painting the picture that Nintendo doesn't think these things through. If that's the case, why is the system so small, and why does it have a handle to make it easier to carry around? Try doing that with a machine with a 5" disc. Even the Dreamcast, as compact as it is, is akward to move from room to room compared to the GC.
I have carried my GC around to my friends houses, and it is pretty easy to put a GC, four controllers and a lot of games in a bag. Try that with a Xbox! You may need something like this.
I would say the biggest weakness the GC had is that it can't play DVDs
But nowadays, everyone has a DVD player, so I don't think it hurts it anymore.
Well, with the GameCube, they are still operating with a proprietary format. It still cost more to publish games on those mini-discs than if they had chosen a standard DVD drive. The next machine from the big N had better have some sort of standard storage medium, or third parties are going to remain reluctant to develop for it.
You mean, something like a standard DVD-R, so everyone can pirate the games, like the playstation with CDs? Do you think that a few extra cents on each disc outweights the millions of pirated games that would exist now if the Cube used a standard format?
When the next generation of consoles arrive, DVD burners will be commonplace, so the companies better have some good copy-protection system running. Nintendo already has one.
However, I am worried by the fact that Nintendo plans to have backwards compatibility with the GC. This means that the same miniDVDs will be able to run on the N5, so if someones finds a way to burn miniDVDs by then, all would be lost.
I'd dare to say that the things that scares some developers, is that the people with a Cube, buy mostly Nintendo games, so most thirds parties have a strong competitor in this console (one that not only has a good name, but one that has earned this names churning out excellent games).
Since Fire Emblem came out of Japan, I have wondered why Nintendo has limited these games to the gba only. God knows that a Gamecube version of FB would help it's lacking RPG department. It would take a lot of budget, but at leats it would sell great in Japan, enough to justify it traslation/marketing/distribution in America/Europe.
Microsoft is aiming to sell the Xbox2 to the masses, to have a market share of 60% or more (just as Nintendo or Sony are aiming). So, if they have to drop backwards compatibility to do this, they will leave their 10% of market share without BC.
Nintendo has announced that the N5 will be BC with the Gamecube, but Nintendo would adopt the same position of Microsoft if this would increase by $50 dollars the N5 price. Do note that Nintendo is using a gamecube-like architecture for their N5.
I am not usually a Microsoft fan, but this is a good move. The Xbox2 will be too diferent to the Xbox to have any BC beyond the demo level. The people affected by it will be so little, and the advantages can be huge.
Microsoft probably realiased that by using a general-purpose processor. As many people has said in slashdot, this is not the best thing to do, because the Pentium is designed to be not only a good gaming machine, but also a good desktop, webserver, etc.
So Microsoft wants a more gaming-centric machine, to make the dollars invested in an Xbox2 to deliver more in the gaming area. AMD can only make processor 'like' the Pentium, so I don't think Microsoft will be interested.
In the other hand, since the Xbox is actually the last in the console war, backwards compatibility isn't a big issue. Yes, this may make angry their actual customers, but Microsoft is aiming to the masses.
I can perfectly remember a NES/SMB3 bundle. I guess that if you count SMB1, Solitaire should be the absolute winner.
I don't know where did you get this numbers, but most people agree that either SMB1 or SMB3 is the top seller in history. Who has a link to some reliable source, in which total sales are showed.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I know, flash memory isn't cheap either. Well, maybe the price in 2005 will drop.
I guess that they want to get rid of that so hackeable hard drive. And, in one move, of those pesky linux geeks.
Hey you! yes, you the guy with the penguin shirt! shoo! shoo!:
How do you tell the USPTO?
There is some e-mail direction, you must send a snail-mail, have to go in person, to present some prior art and fight this patent?
Rule 0. If you are programming in C, or similar, start counting from zero.
mmm, eslachdoter maybe?
Santiago is Chile!!!
He is sued by the people who makes the eyeglasses today?
The better way? Make it happen outside the PERCEIVED area of control of the player. You and her go on different patrols. You hear her patrol being ambushed and change course to intercept. As you come closer you hear more messages until you are close and the patrol is wiped out. Far less frustating I think, a really good script writer could improve it of course.
That is a somewhat better way, but still lacks. It is still scripted, and the player can not do anything about it.
Although I have not played it, I know that in Fire Emblem, a turn-based strategy game by Nintendo, the characters who die in a battle are gone for good, so the story develops differently (I suspect that it is not VERY different, but I have not played it).
I think that is the right way of doing things. If the player does something, react to it. Even if you have it narrowed down to something like the death/life of some characters, it is still better than selecting one from two paths possible.
I guess that Snowcrash is popular because, to computer geeks, looks a lot more probable than neuromancer.
The problem is that Gibson doesn't know what he is talking about. Neuromancer could perfectly be classified as fantasy. The world of snowcrash looks at least factible.
Neuromancer still is a good read, and Gibson can write a correct ending. Stephenson just stops typing when he is tired, sends the papers to his editor, and calls it a book.
No. Whoever group/person who programs XF86/Apache OWNS it. This is not so clear, as those are big projects that have been maintained by lots of people, but the point is, the code is THEIRS.
If they decide to distribute its code under GPL, under BSD licenses, or to distribute it in binary form, they still own the code. They already distributed it under GPL before, so they cannot recall that code back home, but they still can do whatever they want with their code.
When I started to play Street Fighter Zero 2, there was a Fighting Game Master (in fact, a group of them) who kicked my ass, and the ass of all my friends.
:(
I played when he was not around, and eventually (I mean a year here) was able to drive him and his group out of sfz2 (but towards other machines, kof97/98 and tekken mainly).
For some time, I basically dominated the sfz2 machine (with the character that gives me my username), until I had not the time to keep playing. I was, for a time, the FGM...
This sound like some dark story of power and corruption, but also sounds like some behaviour from chimps, gorillas, or some other animal
Javier, since you got macs for your whole family, YOU need the market share now. As their market share decreases, their price would go UP, and you can end with expensive computers to maintain, with no applications to run, and which cannot comunicate easily with others computers.
In fact, Salvor Hardin was the one who said "Violence is the last refuse of the incompetent".
If you are playing the incredible High Powered Neo-Geo system you are a real Hot-Dog.
Woa! a Hot-Dog. Just imagine!
Gamespy is one of the sites that has given more coverage to the N-Gage. They have a link in their main page, together with the links of PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, GBA and PC. They have had editorials, promotions, etc.
So i guess they are giving the system a deserved good-bye.
However I can understand them. The N-gage market is a small but atractive one. Idiots WITH money! you can't loose trying to sell something to that.
It's tough isn't it? I remember when I was about 13 I started to get bored with my matchbox cars and racetrack. It used to be so much fun putting piles of books under the track so the cars would do little jumps, or seeing how big you could make the loop without the cars just falling onto their backs like little turtles.
So that is what those "books" are all about! Oh, to think of all the time I wasted reading them!
I think that the PSO Loader is the crappiest solution of all to make piracy in this console generation.
Nintendo has done an excellent job at stopping piracy with their discs. They read outside->inside, which also increases load speeds, and have this code in the microDVDs which are hard to reproduce. Maybe there is even another barrier that hasn't been reached yet.
I agree with the Slashdotters who say that Nintendo went with the small discs because its parent company is an optical disc manufacturer. This is the only reasoning that makes any real sense to me
That theory doesn't explain all the facts.
Nintendo went to great lengths to combat piracy, and that it is the only theory that explains all the facts, that makes the most sense. The cost in data capacity is almost inexistant. God, the miniDVD has a capacity of 1.5 Gigabytes! It is not enough to hold FFX, which has full speech dialogue, but that it is. Square didn't make FFX for the GC simply due to its smaller market share.Square hasn't had problems before to split games in several disks.
IIRC, the only game in the GC that has needed multiple discs is Tales of Symphony. Most games don't need lots of FMV/speech to be great.
The videogame industry won't care, mainly because they don't have a way to make those over 40 women to buy a PS2/GC/Xbox to have them play "scrabble Xtreme" or whatever.
Nintendo has been trying to expand the market, with Animal Crossing and the Mario Party games which, while not geared towards women, are appealing to everybody. The Sims are big in this also.
But that it is. Since there is a big supply of online games that aim to this segment,W>40 (Yahoo, etc), there is no way EA can milk some big bucks from them.
"Anyway, you missed the only obvious reason Nintendo would have for making discs that size--copy protection. Which I personally think is a pretty weak reason."
It is a strong reason. The Dreamcast got its final blow from piracy. The playstations suffer a lot from that too.
Or maybe you want to copy the GC games? and the disc size/format is annoying you? Why exactly do you think it is a weak reason?
That is one of their big reasons for using that. They've made that clear. Gee whiz, you get a bunch of other benefits out of it too. You seem to be painting the picture that Nintendo doesn't think these things through. If that's the case, why is the system so small, and why does it have a handle to make it easier to carry around? Try doing that with a machine with a 5" disc. Even the Dreamcast, as compact as it is, is akward to move from room to room compared to the GC.
I have carried my GC around to my friends houses, and it is pretty easy to put a GC, four controllers and a lot of games in a bag. Try that with a Xbox! You may need something like this.
I would say the biggest weakness the GC had is that it can't play DVDs
But nowadays, everyone has a DVD player, so I don't think it hurts it anymore.
Well, with the GameCube, they are still operating with a proprietary format. It still cost more to publish games on those mini-discs than if they had chosen a standard DVD drive. The next machine from the big N had better have some sort of standard storage medium, or third parties are going to remain reluctant to develop for it.
You mean, something like a standard DVD-R, so everyone can pirate the games, like the playstation with CDs? Do you think that a few extra cents on each disc outweights the millions of pirated games that would exist now if the Cube used a standard format?
When the next generation of consoles arrive, DVD burners will be commonplace, so the companies better have some good copy-protection system running. Nintendo already has one.
However, I am worried by the fact that Nintendo plans to have backwards compatibility with the GC. This means that the same miniDVDs will be able to run on the N5, so if someones finds a way to burn miniDVDs by then, all would be lost.
I'd dare to say that the things that scares some developers, is that the people with a Cube, buy mostly Nintendo games, so most thirds parties have a strong competitor in this console (one that not only has a good name, but one that has earned this names churning out excellent games).
Since Fire Emblem came out of Japan, I have wondered why Nintendo has limited these games to the gba only. God knows that a Gamecube version of FB would help it's lacking RPG department. It would take a lot of budget, but at leats it would sell great in Japan, enough to justify it traslation/marketing/distribution in America/Europe.
Oh well. Nintendo moves in mysterious ways.
Microsoft is aiming to sell the Xbox2 to the masses, to have a market share of 60% or more (just as Nintendo or Sony are aiming). So, if they have to drop backwards compatibility to do this, they will leave their 10% of market share without BC.
Nintendo has announced that the N5 will be BC with the Gamecube, but Nintendo would adopt the same position of Microsoft if this would increase by $50 dollars the N5 price. Do note that Nintendo is using a gamecube-like architecture for their N5.
I am not usually a Microsoft fan, but this is a good move. The Xbox2 will be too diferent to the Xbox to have any BC beyond the demo level. The people affected by it will be so little, and the advantages can be huge.
Microsoft probably realiased that by using a general-purpose processor. As many people has said in slashdot, this is not the best thing to do, because the Pentium is designed to be not only a good gaming machine, but also a good desktop, webserver, etc.
So Microsoft wants a more gaming-centric machine, to make the dollars invested in an Xbox2 to deliver more in the gaming area. AMD can only make processor 'like' the Pentium, so I don't think Microsoft will be interested.
In the other hand, since the Xbox is actually the last in the console war, backwards compatibility isn't a big issue. Yes, this may make angry their actual customers, but Microsoft is aiming to the masses.
When I was a kid, I didn't watched the "educative" infantile programs.
I watched "Cosmos", of Carl Sagan fame.
Cosmos rocked. Everything else sucks
Oh, so it was you?
In other news, if you buy an Xbox, you are supporting Microsoft, a Monopoly. No matter if you are going to run Linux.
Xbox. Just say No!
I can perfectly remember a NES/SMB3 bundle. I guess that if you count SMB1, Solitaire should be the absolute winner.
I don't know where did you get this numbers, but most people agree that either SMB1 or SMB3 is the top seller in history. Who has a link to some reliable source, in which total sales are showed.
I guess that Solitaire for Windows is the only game that outsells Nintendo' Super Mario Bros. 3!
It is so unfair! SMB3 is a MUCH better game!