It's notable because now thousands of geeks are going to flock to the theater to see whether or not they can tell which bits were done in 1946 and which were done on Maya in 2003.
Seriously, though, the fact that an unfinished project using 20th century technology was completed almost 60 years later using 21st century technology, and supposedly it's going to look completely seamless-- I'd call that remarkable.
(On a related note, is it just me, or does the phrase "20th century technology" still not evoke the feeling of "whoa, that's old" as it should?)
when this happens, what about all your data? how is your data formateed? will they send you your data back to you in some comma delimited format? who knows?
If you use the Blogger tool to update a non-blogspot site-- such as, say, a personal site on a registered domain-- the text of the blog, formatted exactly as it appears on your page, is stored on your server. Within blogspot, I dunno, but if you decide that all the advertising you want to do for Blogger is a little icon on an otherwise ad-free page, then you still have a copy of all your data. I would assume that that includes the fact that you have all the rights to it, but IANAL and nor do I really care-- for the most part, there's usually nothing on a blog that's worth copyrighting anyway.
One of the main reasons I use Blogger on my site is because it makes it easy to alert visitors to the latest things I've put up. Rather than hack away at HTML and PHP, which I do enough of already, I just pop open a BlogThis! and go. The automation and ease of use are what I really like (and it has sort of tempted me to blather on like an idiot about random crap, but what's a blog for if not that?).
Now they're removing the barriers between the paid service, which I did not subscribe to, and the free service. They say they're doing this because Google owns them, and there's no reason to have people pay them. Aside from the fact that that sounds completely nuts, I wonder what's going to change. Other folks here have mentioned text ads-- well, I don't want that. So far my site is ad-free, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.
Alternately, what if BlogThis! goes away-- or worse, requires you to view an ad before it'll open? This seems like the more likely scenario, because in this case the targeted audience isn't the people reading the blogs (think about it, how many hits does Aunt Mabel's Church Society blog really get?) but rather the people writing the blogs. Fill out a survey when you sign up and you too can blog for the low low cost of nothing plus time to read the same advertisement for scotch tape that you've read on every other site!
Of course, none of that is confirmed yet. But it'll happen, I bet.
(and no, this is not a thinly-veiled attempt to get people to visit my site)
Who knows maybe the cute goodness of Nintendo will bring a little more family fun into the home instead of bloody frag/crash/shoot fests.
All things considered this probably means that you'll be seeing less FPS and heavy-bandwidth games on the GameCube (or whatever future console Nintendo decides to add online capability to). If Nintendo is recommending the use of AOL-- which is primarily a dial-up service-- this makes it easy for most players to get online, but it also lowers the expected average bandwidth. Thus, you'll see more Animal Crossings than Unreals on the Cube, simply because those types of games require less bandwidth (AIM + encrypted "item trade" messages = online Animal Crossing).
Now, who wants to take a stab at how long it takes Nintendo to come out with a boot disc for the Game Boy Player that allows online link play....?
When I worked as an intern for my university's IT department, one of the last tasks they had me do one year was to haul a room full of old Pentium 1 machines, monitors, et al across the street to the cafeteria, where an industrial trash compactor was waiting to receive them. I was assigned this task alongside one of the first-year interns. We loaded our carts up with the machines and happily heaved machine upon machine into the beast. We were especially impressed with the various popping noises and flashes of light coming from within the compactor.
That's not the funny part.
Watching us do all of this was a fairly brain-dead janitor. As we were performing hard drive dumps (literally), this guy was rooting around in the carts and extracting the absolute scuzziest stuff he could find. Mice with missing balls, keyboards that were missing rows, that sort of thing. Periodically he would stop us and ask if this would work with his computer at home, and not tell us what kind of computer he had ("it's a old one").
That's still not the funny part.
The funny part is that, while we were listening to the wailing and gnashing of drives, he took us aside confidentially and said, "yuh know, we threw uh cat in thur once. Man, did at thang screeeeem..."
We immediately went to our boss and related the story. We didn't have to haul anymore garbage back to the cafeteria that day.
Most tactical games have challenges set by the method you describe (party level plus x), for the random battles. The storyline battles in the PSX FF Tactics were at fixed levels, and I don't think that that would change for the game that's coming out on Tuesday.
The Japanese version of FFTA includes some "laws" (battlefield restrictions) that were removed from the U.S. version simply because they wouldn't have made sense in English (ie all skills which started with a certain katakana were banned). IIRC only one other law was removed for difficulty. However, for me, tactical games are always damn hard anyway (it took me 16 months to finally finish Tactics Ogre: KOL), so I'm not going to complain about difficulty.
Granted, I have noticed that games are either getting easier or shorter or both, which does leave me feeling kinda cheated in either scenario. However, like you said, gaming for twenty years can and will do that. From Ms. Pac-Man to Mario Sunshine is a hell of a lot of ground to cover, with varying degrees of difficulty. (And don't even try to tell me that Mario Sunshine was too easy-- those $^@#ing block-world stages irritated the hell out of me the first fifty times.) Do I wish games were harder? In some cases, yeah. Do I think some games, like the original Final Fantasy, were too hard and might benefit from an "easy mode"? Again, in some cases, absolutely. Do I admire people who take the initiative and create challenge in their games by trying ridiculous things (such as the no-materia, all-initial-weapon completion of Final Fantasy VII)? Without a doubt. Just because the superweapon is coded into the game doesn't mean you have to use it.
Though I think Greg Dean said it best... "If it were Nintendo hard I would have shot myself by now."
I've been downloading contents from peer to peer networks since the advent of scour.net, and have had no gross misrepresentations of content such as you imply happen.
A coworker of mine spent an entire week on Kazaa, on dial-up, downloading what he thought was a warez'd copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It turned out to be some other game. Maybe the example differs in degrees, but it's still basically the same thing.
Not that I'm saying the RIAA is right to launch FUD attacks on P2P, but the point is somewhat valid-- you don't really know what you're getting.
"...we all talked together as a group, and we decided that the best thing to do was to not include GBA support and instead make the game as best as it can be."
Hell yeah. To be honest, I don't really buy into the whole "Nintendo is evil because they make me buy a GBA for FF:CC" crap-- I mean, I already have all the stuff, and I bought the link cable for Animal Crossing anyway. But to see a developer say "well, yeah, that's gimmicky, so we're not going to do it"-- that kinda hurts the overall image of GBA support. I have no doubt in my mind that GBA support works-- just not for all games. What could they really do with Twin Snakes GBA support that would enhance the gameplay? Radar? No, because the PSX version had it on-screen and it's very dangerous to take your eyes off the screen during a firefight. Inventory? The shoulder-button configuration was the most streamlined inventory I've ever used, and I wouldn't want that to change. Additionally, if you do have GBA support, you have to reduce the complexity of the controls, and with a game as intricate as MGS that's simply not possible.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I hate IGN's interview style-- "Can't you tell us something you explicitly said you can't tell us? Come on! Pleeeeeze?"
Don't always count on the advertised price being what you'll pay for the actual book. I recently picked up the 3.5 versions of the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook for just under $20 each; and I was surprised to find the Forgotten Realms 3rd edition setting book at EB for $20 (after pre-ordering FFTA, I had $9 credit left over, so I snagged it for $11-- bear in mind YMMV). Plus other outlets like Amazon et al may have discounts; or if you frequent a local hobby store (which, luckily, there is in my area) you could probably talk the clerk into a set of books at a reduced cost.
"I don't think (that), when the companies developed this generation of consoles, they were prepared for it to be so short."
Of course they weren't. The people who developed the big three believed, as do I, that the generation would last just as long as the previous ones: 5-7 years. And by rights, they should-- there's no real reason to produce a new console machine for 2004-2005, primarily because the advances in the technology are not significant enough to warrant a whole new system purchase. Incremental upgrades and piece-meal improvements are fine for PC gaming, where consumers have less of a monetary risk ($175 for a video card upgrade vs. $300 for an entirely new system, plus the $50 game in either case). If PS3 were to come out next year with only a new video chipset and maybe two or three minor improvements-- which is what it looks like is going to happen-- I won't buy it, I doubt the majority of gamers would buy it, and Sony's console business would spiral down the toilet. The manufacturers need to learn a lesson from Sega and the Dreamcast, specifically-- the first man in rarely winds up being the one who survives 'till the end.
Rifts is good-- but the massive amounts of arcane and complex rules turned me off after a while. d20 Modern's Urban Arcana is a pretty good take on the magic/technology thing as an alternative.
"...there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass." What's to be done?
Simple. Create social repercussions for being a jackass. Slashdot, strange as it may seem, is the ideal prototype for a message board, with a few modifications. Moderation by the users, but meta-moderation by the developers; a tangible penalty for low karma (ie restricted posting or eventual IP banning) and tangible rewards for good karma (seeing "news stories" or artwork or something ahead of time); and moderators/metamoderators with a clear and unambiguous set of guidelines by which one should moderate.
That's being nice. Being evil: the lower your karma goes, the more often your email address is signed up for gay animal porn spam. Trolls are "randomly selected" as winners to receive an exclusive "beta test" of the game, which turns out to be a warez'd copy of Daikatana with a photocopied picture of the game's logo as a CD sleeve... and somehow an anti-piracy group "happens" to come by a day later with a search warrant. Anyone who posts the latest form troll du jour (just read the last few stories at -1 for an example of what I mean) is immediately given a vicious sack beating and denied food and water until Duke Nukem Forever is released.
I would prefer to see the "nice" version implemented, but eh. Do what you gotta do.
I'm all for new pen & paper RPGs, but why Street Fighter? I mean, yeah, it's one of the most popular video games out there, but when I think of the words "Capcom" and "RPG" I immediately think of "Breath of Fire". I just want to know why Street Fighter et al were picked above an existing and semi-popular RPG series to be made into an... RPG.
Why not just set up a BBS/forum? Plenty of free ones exist (phpBB, phorum being the two most popular), and a little moderation and regulation (i.e. one forum has offers, one side has requests), you could easily have an alternative to the campus bookstore.
De beers? Innit them whut you drink when yer watchin de football and de hockey?
Re:*The* Robert Morris
on
MIT Roofnet
·
· Score: 1
Why are 18 year old kids going to jail for meddling with Blaster, but a MIT professor can create a worm and nothing happens?
How many times had you logged on to the Internet in 1988? 15 years ago bringing the Internet to its knees was primarily academia's problem. Three weeks ago even causing a 1% reduction in Internet traffic costs many good people unholy amounts of money, for which they will likely be upset.
Slashdot Mirror
I personally find it more creepy that people would be trying for goatse.cx .
"Fucking duh!"
-- (from the 2002 Live album)
Would you rather let your child play with a stuffed Mickey Mouse, or a stuffed Clippy?
It's notable because now thousands of geeks are going to flock to the theater to see whether or not they can tell which bits were done in 1946 and which were done on Maya in 2003.
Seriously, though, the fact that an unfinished project using 20th century technology was completed almost 60 years later using 21st century technology, and supposedly it's going to look completely seamless-- I'd call that remarkable.
(On a related note, is it just me, or does the phrase "20th century technology" still not evoke the feeling of "whoa, that's old" as it should?)
when this happens, what about all your data? how is your data formateed? will they send you your data back to you in some comma delimited format? who knows?
If you use the Blogger tool to update a non-blogspot site-- such as, say, a personal site on a registered domain-- the text of the blog, formatted exactly as it appears on your page, is stored on your server. Within blogspot, I dunno, but if you decide that all the advertising you want to do for Blogger is a little icon on an otherwise ad-free page, then you still have a copy of all your data. I would assume that that includes the fact that you have all the rights to it, but IANAL and nor do I really care-- for the most part, there's usually nothing on a blog that's worth copyrighting anyway.
Even if you don't pay for everything, paying for something, even semi-randomly, helps keep the wheels of the net turning.
I would kill for moderator points right now.
One of the main reasons I use Blogger on my site is because it makes it easy to alert visitors to the latest things I've put up. Rather than hack away at HTML and PHP, which I do enough of already, I just pop open a BlogThis! and go. The automation and ease of use are what I really like (and it has sort of tempted me to blather on like an idiot about random crap, but what's a blog for if not that?).
Now they're removing the barriers between the paid service, which I did not subscribe to, and the free service. They say they're doing this because Google owns them, and there's no reason to have people pay them. Aside from the fact that that sounds completely nuts, I wonder what's going to change. Other folks here have mentioned text ads-- well, I don't want that. So far my site is ad-free, and I'd prefer to keep it that way.
Alternately, what if BlogThis! goes away-- or worse, requires you to view an ad before it'll open? This seems like the more likely scenario, because in this case the targeted audience isn't the people reading the blogs (think about it, how many hits does Aunt Mabel's Church Society blog really get?) but rather the people writing the blogs. Fill out a survey when you sign up and you too can blog for the low low cost of nothing plus time to read the same advertisement for scotch tape that you've read on every other site!
Of course, none of that is confirmed yet. But it'll happen, I bet.
(and no, this is not a thinly-veiled attempt to get people to visit my site)
Who knows maybe the cute goodness of Nintendo will bring a little more family fun into the home instead of bloody frag/crash/shoot fests.
All things considered this probably means that you'll be seeing less FPS and heavy-bandwidth games on the GameCube (or whatever future console Nintendo decides to add online capability to). If Nintendo is recommending the use of AOL-- which is primarily a dial-up service-- this makes it easy for most players to get online, but it also lowers the expected average bandwidth. Thus, you'll see more Animal Crossings than Unreals on the Cube, simply because those types of games require less bandwidth (AIM + encrypted "item trade" messages = online Animal Crossing).
Now, who wants to take a stab at how long it takes Nintendo to come out with a boot disc for the Game Boy Player that allows online link play....?
First, there was "digital crack"-- Everquest.
Then there were games that only crackheads would like-- Daikatana.
Now, the circle is complete-- a series of games that have been developed clearly while under the influence of crack-- Wario Ware.
All hail crack!
In the original Final Fantasy, Chaos (the final boss) could heal himself fully, at will.
Even in Easy Mode (PSX remake) this pissed me off to no end.
You forgot the worst sin of all.
666) Having a very easy puzzle in a dungeon, but jacking up the encounter rate to just shy of "KILL ME NOW AND END THE TORMENT" for that room alone.
When I worked as an intern for my university's IT department, one of the last tasks they had me do one year was to haul a room full of old Pentium 1 machines, monitors, et al across the street to the cafeteria, where an industrial trash compactor was waiting to receive them. I was assigned this task alongside one of the first-year interns. We loaded our carts up with the machines and happily heaved machine upon machine into the beast. We were especially impressed with the various popping noises and flashes of light coming from within the compactor.
That's not the funny part.
Watching us do all of this was a fairly brain-dead janitor. As we were performing hard drive dumps (literally), this guy was rooting around in the carts and extracting the absolute scuzziest stuff he could find. Mice with missing balls, keyboards that were missing rows, that sort of thing. Periodically he would stop us and ask if this would work with his computer at home, and not tell us what kind of computer he had ("it's a old one").
That's still not the funny part.
The funny part is that, while we were listening to the wailing and gnashing of drives, he took us aside confidentially and said, "yuh know, we threw uh cat in thur once. Man, did at thang screeeeem..."
We immediately went to our boss and related the story. We didn't have to haul anymore garbage back to the cafeteria that day.
Most tactical games have challenges set by the method you describe (party level plus x), for the random battles. The storyline battles in the PSX FF Tactics were at fixed levels, and I don't think that that would change for the game that's coming out on Tuesday.
The Japanese version of FFTA includes some "laws" (battlefield restrictions) that were removed from the U.S. version simply because they wouldn't have made sense in English (ie all skills which started with a certain katakana were banned). IIRC only one other law was removed for difficulty. However, for me, tactical games are always damn hard anyway (it took me 16 months to finally finish Tactics Ogre: KOL), so I'm not going to complain about difficulty.
Granted, I have noticed that games are either getting easier or shorter or both, which does leave me feeling kinda cheated in either scenario. However, like you said, gaming for twenty years can and will do that. From Ms. Pac-Man to Mario Sunshine is a hell of a lot of ground to cover, with varying degrees of difficulty. (And don't even try to tell me that Mario Sunshine was too easy-- those $^@#ing block-world stages irritated the hell out of me the first fifty times.) Do I wish games were harder? In some cases, yeah. Do I think some games, like the original Final Fantasy, were too hard and might benefit from an "easy mode"? Again, in some cases, absolutely. Do I admire people who take the initiative and create challenge in their games by trying ridiculous things (such as the no-materia, all-initial-weapon completion of Final Fantasy VII)? Without a doubt. Just because the superweapon is coded into the game doesn't mean you have to use it.
Though I think Greg Dean said it best... "If it were Nintendo hard I would have shot myself by now."
I've been downloading contents from peer to peer networks since the advent of scour.net, and have had no gross misrepresentations of content such as you imply happen.
A coworker of mine spent an entire week on Kazaa, on dial-up, downloading what he thought was a warez'd copy of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. It turned out to be some other game. Maybe the example differs in degrees, but it's still basically the same thing.
Not that I'm saying the RIAA is right to launch FUD attacks on P2P, but the point is somewhat valid-- you don't really know what you're getting.
"...we all talked together as a group, and we decided that the best thing to do was to not include GBA support and instead make the game as best as it can be."
Hell yeah. To be honest, I don't really buy into the whole "Nintendo is evil because they make me buy a GBA for FF:CC" crap-- I mean, I already have all the stuff, and I bought the link cable for Animal Crossing anyway. But to see a developer say "well, yeah, that's gimmicky, so we're not going to do it"-- that kinda hurts the overall image of GBA support. I have no doubt in my mind that GBA support works-- just not for all games. What could they really do with Twin Snakes GBA support that would enhance the gameplay? Radar? No, because the PSX version had it on-screen and it's very dangerous to take your eyes off the screen during a firefight. Inventory? The shoulder-button configuration was the most streamlined inventory I've ever used, and I wouldn't want that to change. Additionally, if you do have GBA support, you have to reduce the complexity of the controls, and with a game as intricate as MGS that's simply not possible.
Oh, and for what it's worth, I hate IGN's interview style-- "Can't you tell us something you explicitly said you can't tell us? Come on! Pleeeeeze?"
Don't always count on the advertised price being what you'll pay for the actual book. I recently picked up the 3.5 versions of the Monster Manual and Player's Handbook for just under $20 each; and I was surprised to find the Forgotten Realms 3rd edition setting book at EB for $20 (after pre-ordering FFTA, I had $9 credit left over, so I snagged it for $11-- bear in mind YMMV). Plus other outlets like Amazon et al may have discounts; or if you frequent a local hobby store (which, luckily, there is in my area) you could probably talk the clerk into a set of books at a reduced cost.
"I don't think (that), when the companies developed this generation of consoles, they were prepared for it to be so short."
Of course they weren't. The people who developed the big three believed, as do I, that the generation would last just as long as the previous ones: 5-7 years. And by rights, they should-- there's no real reason to produce a new console machine for 2004-2005, primarily because the advances in the technology are not significant enough to warrant a whole new system purchase. Incremental upgrades and piece-meal improvements are fine for PC gaming, where consumers have less of a monetary risk ($175 for a video card upgrade vs. $300 for an entirely new system, plus the $50 game in either case). If PS3 were to come out next year with only a new video chipset and maybe two or three minor improvements-- which is what it looks like is going to happen-- I won't buy it, I doubt the majority of gamers would buy it, and Sony's console business would spiral down the toilet. The manufacturers need to learn a lesson from Sega and the Dreamcast, specifically-- the first man in rarely winds up being the one who survives 'till the end.
Rifts is good-- but the massive amounts of arcane and complex rules turned me off after a while. d20 Modern's Urban Arcana is a pretty good take on the magic/technology thing as an alternative.
There is no "local" record store around here.
(fishes around in his wallet, finds a receipt-- dated yesterday-- for one recent CD, priced $18.99, from FYE in Western New York state)
Yes.
"...there are no social repercussions for acting like a jackass." What's to be done?
Simple. Create social repercussions for being a jackass. Slashdot, strange as it may seem, is the ideal prototype for a message board, with a few modifications. Moderation by the users, but meta-moderation by the developers; a tangible penalty for low karma (ie restricted posting or eventual IP banning) and tangible rewards for good karma (seeing "news stories" or artwork or something ahead of time); and moderators/metamoderators with a clear and unambiguous set of guidelines by which one should moderate.
That's being nice. Being evil: the lower your karma goes, the more often your email address is signed up for gay animal porn spam. Trolls are "randomly selected" as winners to receive an exclusive "beta test" of the game, which turns out to be a warez'd copy of Daikatana with a photocopied picture of the game's logo as a CD sleeve... and somehow an anti-piracy group "happens" to come by a day later with a search warrant. Anyone who posts the latest form troll du jour (just read the last few stories at -1 for an example of what I mean) is immediately given a vicious sack beating and denied food and water until Duke Nukem Forever is released.
I would prefer to see the "nice" version implemented, but eh. Do what you gotta do.
I'm all for new pen & paper RPGs, but why Street Fighter? I mean, yeah, it's one of the most popular video games out there, but when I think of the words "Capcom" and "RPG" I immediately think of "Breath of Fire". I just want to know why Street Fighter et al were picked above an existing and semi-popular RPG series to be made into an... RPG.
Why not just set up a BBS/forum? Plenty of free ones exist (phpBB, phorum being the two most popular), and a little moderation and regulation (i.e. one forum has offers, one side has requests), you could easily have an alternative to the campus bookstore.
De beers? Innit them whut you drink when yer watchin de football and de hockey?
Why are 18 year old kids going to jail for meddling with Blaster, but a MIT professor can create a worm and nothing happens?
How many times had you logged on to the Internet in 1988? 15 years ago bringing the Internet to its knees was primarily academia's problem. Three weeks ago even causing a 1% reduction in Internet traffic costs many good people unholy amounts of money, for which they will likely be upset.