I actually agree with you, although I'd say EA is in an entirely separate class. Just look at Madden this year, no live aware friends list while playing single player, minor changes, pretty much the same announcing from Big John. Its all rehash, but since its the only football game in town they get to cash in big time.
Sorry for getting off topic a bit.. What got to me about Halo were some of the matchmaking changes. We'd hear "yeah we're gonna put in 2v2" and it'd take months to actually see it show up. Then we'd get that and they'd throw in the banshee on BR only Assention into Tean Slayer. So we'd hear "It'll be fixed in the next playlist update" Month+ later, finally fixed. Then there was the long period it took them to actually get any of the glitches fixed. Couldn't they have just released a patch for half of them when they saw how long it was going to take?
I would have just liked to have seen them more attentive with the playlists, balance issues, and bug fixes. I'd say go ahead and nerf guns to see if it fixes anything, after playing sniper & sword team slayer I'm convinced they don't actually playtest this stuff extensively why not just take more chances and use us to test stuff out.
What always bugged me was that the game had so much potential to be something special. Its like a delicious hamburger with mushrooms, cheese, onions, the works, but the bun is stale or some moron cooked the burger medium well instead of medium rare. You still eat the burger and it is good but your mouth is left wondering what it could have tasted like had the cheff payed more attention to it...
I know what you mean about the shotgun. There are good days and bad days, but it feels like I usually have bad days. It doesn't help that the damage it deals is somwhat random from what I understand, ie. at point blank range it doesn't always kill in one shot.
And if it makes you feel any better some of us in the states have the same problems with using the shotgun or sword.
But wasn't the whole "multiple xbox packages" thing supposed to have been settled back at E3/Mtv press event. I remember back then thinking there might be a version for $100 extra with a hdd and some media features, then the unit gets shown on MTV and the entire rumor disappears... until now.
I think this is just some analyst recycling an old rumor right before the actual announcement of a date/price point when interest in the subject is highest.
Bungie's forums are like an ecosystem. They know that they are going to get a bunch of crap post by 8 year olds all asking how much you love bungie or which map is the best or how cheaters suck and we should all reply to the post to convince bungie to ban one guy that cheated in the game they just played.
Yeah, that would suck if that was all you saw. So they didn't add a search function so you those pointless posts would be intermingled with relevent questions that have been asked and answered 142 times already.
Its got its faults, and the increased traffic definitely causes some stability problems but they really didn't have a choice.
You can play the game any way you want to. You just can't cheat while playing on bungie's service. Seems fair to me.
If you went to play a game of pickup b-ball at the gym and proceeded to take the ball and run around screaming "my ball baby!! my ball!!" and not actually playing the game, do you think you'd be alowed to continue to play there even if you payed to get in? I doubt it, you'd be harming the experience that other people payed for too!
Now, you can go home and play with a basketball anyway you want. But as soon as you enter a public arena that you don't control you have to learn to play well with others.
Well, I play Halo 2 from time to time and you end up playing with some 7 year olds and most can't get the concept that singing jungle bells in june and throwing a grenade at your team mate because he took "your" sniper rifle aren't good things to do.
So excuse me if I doubt that they can solder a mod chip in an xbox without breaking it and hack GTA.
Yeah, when all those celebrities were sitting down playing Perfect Dark, that was totally prerendered! Hell that Xbox that they were showing everyone was prerendered. They called ILM in to work some star wars magic and stick it in there.
I ended up back over at CC since Target had sold all their copies of Lumines though.
Ah, Lumines selling out.. Now THAT should have been the news for the PSP launch weekend. Its the only game everyone talks about and I had to go to 4 stores before I found a copy. Never expected a puzzle game to get this kind of reaction.
Definitely worth the effort to track down though:)
What do the contents of a CD have to do with the length of time from GM to shipping? In the end its all 'data' anyway, whether you'd consider it part of the executable or part of the collection of graphical/audio assets used by the program.
I guarantee the first company that tries this will lose big and releasing DLC is just going to make it worse. Look at it this way, if a company wants to sell dlc it needs a potential customer base, and to do that is needs to sell the game. The more copies of the game sold the more potential customers there are.
What paid DLC is great for is giving developers an incentive to expand a relatively successful game after its release. I'll agree that a developer that charges for content is walking a fine line but done in the right way it can work.
Just remember, its your money and its your decision to spend it. No one can make you spend $200 on a game.
Finally, it isn't about ability to memorize. It is about USABILITY
Yes!
and comfort, particularly when doing repetative tasks.
...snip...
Why? Because the laptop owner might be a CAD user, a Blender user, a Linux user, or someone else who needs that third button,
NO:(
You almost had it poweruser, but you forgot to think about people that aren't powerusers. Lots of folks do need to use 3 buttons, users of Maya for example (or Blender if you prefer... ) but those individuals aren't the majority of computer users. The majority of users don't think about context menus of scroll wheels. And lets face it how many of us pack a light bag, go to the park or coffee shop & do a little CAD work?
You're right, using two hands to ctrl+click is a pain. Thats why having only one button on a mouse bundled with every system forces developers have to think about people that only use one button. Have you ever tried to step someone through using a function that requires a right clicked context menu? It doesn't always work! (Big Point) Some people with more than one mouse button still only use the left button.
So, until Maya overtakes the greeting card creator as the most used program by little old ladies, I'll stick to my guns that you should buy yourself a scroll wheel mouse & Apple should only offer a one button mouse.
Some of us are lucky enough to not even need an IR blaster. My cable box just happens to have that nice serial port on the back to handle communication.
But you bought the laptop knowing that it came with windows. It was part of your decision when you bought your Dell. You could have gone with a laptop with linux pre-installed but YOU made the DECISION to buy a Dell.
I'm not saying that was wrong but I really don't have any sympathy for those that knowingly buy a product with something extra and hope to get a refund. Its like me going into the GAP and saying "well.... I'm really not going to use this 6th pocket... how bout I cut it off, give it back to you, and you knock $5 off the price?", I'll try it someday but I don't think its going to fly...
yeah, I've ran into problems with iTunes not wanting to add the v1 ID3 tags on the file. v1 has a more limited character count than v2.x so I can understand why there might be some hesitance to use both but for my Kenwood mp3/cd I needed the v1 tags and didn't want to cut the name short in iTunes.
They can both exist at the same time. From what I understand v1 comes at the beginning of the file and v2.x comes at the end.
I used Mp3 Rage to mass add v1 tags. Works awesome, probably can help fixing up your other tag problems too. Probably something similar for Windows if thats what you have.
I've found that a lot of windows cd ripping stuff just ignored id3 tags all together and just named the files descriptively. And since winamp works some pretty nice voodoo on the filename to guess the info it can go unnoticed pretty easily.
I will say that Black and White was kinda disappointing but you have to say that you can understand how the game could be pretty interesting for the first couple days. I know I thought it was totally awesome when my giant monkey picked up the rock I wanted him to carry around to build muscles and just chucked it into the water cause he was pissed.
Moments like those faded though and you were kinda left with a game with a cool interface and nifty pet but not much to do with it, the game itself never really caught me. I think I say this was a waist of potential but definitely doesn't make it the worst game ever, or even in the same catagory.
I just think saying a bad game is bad is just too easy:p Its more fun to call an over hyped game junk and walk that fine line between insiteful and flame bait.
Sony is making the assumtion that the games industry has really changed, more money and wider audience. Both of these are pretty much true but the older segment doesn't buy gameboys. I've got an advance but I think only 2 of my friends do and one never plays it. But almost all of my friends have a ps2 or an xbox. Sony's thinking that the reason why no-one in the 18-34 range has a gameboy is because none of the games interest them or the gameboy/nintendo is too kiddy for them.
But what if there was a little ps2 they could carry around with portable versions of their favorite games? Its kinda like "Field of Dreams" but instead of a baseball diamond its a tiny ps2 and instead of gathering dead baseball players Sony is gathering high profile developers.
Now the question is do people 18-34 even want to do portable gaming. Personally I'm pretty satisfied at having my Gameboy Advance (aside from wish I'd waited 2 months so I could have gotten the SP:p ) and I think most guys just don't care about gaming on the go, whether the games look like they're for kids or not.
Even so this may very well usher in a new era of expensive portables but NOT at the expense of the Gameboy. Nintendo knows no parent is gonna hand over a $300 unit to their 8 year old, thats why they'll continue to make a cheap and durable unit that can be replace for well under $100 if it is broken.
Oh and BTW... after the PSX thing in Japan.. can you blame them for over pricing this?:p
This is exactly why we need to keep our right to bare arms. What would this world would be like if we weren't able to shoot our home appliances.... speaking of which I think I've got a slug with my toaster's name on it.
Anyway, there were a few good games that were ce based. The biggest reason was network compatibility, ce could use the modem before sega's libs. So Sega Rally, Chu Chu, Armada and most other network able games were CE based.
Yeah it was slow, yeah it kinda sucked but it sure didn't make Chu Chu Rocket any less fun.
I was actually reminded of this benefit the last time someone said Dreamcast was Win CE based:p
When I first started using iTunes I was skeptical -- but really -- after a few weeks
...a few WEEKS.. good lord I swear it must have been the second day, I was sitting there ripping my cds and looking through the options when I noticed the "add track number before file name"
Well I've got a car mp3 player and the files get burned in alphabetical order and so they play in alphabetical order. So I think to my self, sweet thats pretty cool... but what about those cds I already ripped... maybe I'll just redo those.
Then I clicked the option and proceeded to shit my pants as itunes actual renamed every file I had already imported. The single greatest moment of my life. Well.. not quite but it was definitely up there as far as computer use goes.
Anyways, you folks new to itunes will figure it out soon enough but just so you don't totally drop a load like I did, this program is awesome. Let it manage your stuff and don't give it a second thought.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually agree with you, although I'd say EA is in an entirely separate class. Just look at Madden this year, no live aware friends list while playing single player, minor changes, pretty much the same announcing from Big John. Its all rehash, but since its the only football game in town they get to cash in big time.
Sorry for getting off topic a bit.. What got to me about Halo were some of the matchmaking changes. We'd hear "yeah we're gonna put in 2v2" and it'd take months to actually see it show up. Then we'd get that and they'd throw in the banshee on BR only Assention into Tean Slayer. So we'd hear "It'll be fixed in the next playlist update" Month+ later, finally fixed. Then there was the long period it took them to actually get any of the glitches fixed. Couldn't they have just released a patch for half of them when they saw how long it was going to take?
I would have just liked to have seen them more attentive with the playlists, balance issues, and bug fixes. I'd say go ahead and nerf guns to see if it fixes anything, after playing sniper & sword team slayer I'm convinced they don't actually playtest this stuff extensively why not just take more chances and use us to test stuff out.
What always bugged me was that the game had so much potential to be something special. Its like a delicious hamburger with mushrooms, cheese, onions, the works, but the bun is stale or some moron cooked the burger medium well instead of medium rare. You still eat the burger and it is good but your mouth is left wondering what it could have tasted like had the cheff payed more attention to it...
I know what you mean about the shotgun. There are good days and bad days, but it feels like I usually have bad days. It doesn't help that the damage it deals is somwhat random from what I understand, ie. at point blank range it doesn't always kill in one shot.
And if it makes you feel any better some of us in the states have the same problems with using the shotgun or sword.
Don't they say that the definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome?
:p
Well, it looks like he tried something new. Apparently small, attractive, inexpensive hardware doesn't sell... so he went with the opposite
I see nothing wrong with that approach.
But wasn't the whole "multiple xbox packages" thing supposed to have been settled back at E3/Mtv press event. I remember back then thinking there might be a version for $100 extra with a hdd and some media features, then the unit gets shown on MTV and the entire rumor disappears... until now.
I think this is just some analyst recycling an old rumor right before the actual announcement of a date/price point when interest in the subject is highest.
Bungie's forums are like an ecosystem. They know that they are going to get a bunch of crap post by 8 year olds all asking how much you love bungie or which map is the best or how cheaters suck and we should all reply to the post to convince bungie to ban one guy that cheated in the game they just played.
Yeah, that would suck if that was all you saw. So they didn't add a search function so you those pointless posts would be intermingled with relevent questions that have been asked and answered 142 times already.
Its got its faults, and the increased traffic definitely causes some stability problems but they really didn't have a choice.
You can play the game any way you want to. You just can't cheat while playing on bungie's service. Seems fair to me.
If you went to play a game of pickup b-ball at the gym and proceeded to take the ball and run around screaming "my ball baby!! my ball!!" and not actually playing the game, do you think you'd be alowed to continue to play there even if you payed to get in? I doubt it, you'd be harming the experience that other people payed for too!
Now, you can go home and play with a basketball anyway you want. But as soon as you enter a public arena that you don't control you have to learn to play well with others.
Well, I play Halo 2 from time to time and you end up playing with some 7 year olds and most can't get the concept that singing jungle bells in june and throwing a grenade at your team mate because he took "your" sniper rifle aren't good things to do.
So excuse me if I doubt that they can solder a mod chip in an xbox without breaking it and hack GTA.
Yeah, when all those celebrities were sitting down playing Perfect Dark, that was totally prerendered! Hell that Xbox that they were showing everyone was prerendered. They called ILM in to work some star wars magic and stick it in there.
Sounds delicious. At least I know my stomach will be happy even if my computer isn't.
So, you mean if I backup all my iTMS music files to a dvd they sound worse when I try to play them back??
Ah, Lumines selling out.. Now THAT should have been the news for the PSP launch weekend. Its the only game everyone talks about and I had to go to 4 stores before I found a copy. Never expected a puzzle game to get this kind of reaction.
Definitely worth the effort to track down though
What do the contents of a CD have to do with the length of time from GM to shipping? In the end its all 'data' anyway, whether you'd consider it part of the executable or part of the collection of graphical/audio assets used by the program.
An incomplete game at $50 isn't going to sell.
I guarantee the first company that tries this will lose big and releasing DLC is just going to make it worse. Look at it this way, if a company wants to sell dlc it needs a potential customer base, and to do that is needs to sell the game. The more copies of the game sold the more potential customers there are.
What paid DLC is great for is giving developers an incentive to expand a relatively successful game after its release. I'll agree that a developer that charges for content is walking a fine line but done in the right way it can work.
Just remember, its your money and its your decision to spend it. No one can make you spend $200 on a game.
You almost had it poweruser, but you forgot to think about people that aren't powerusers. Lots of folks do need to use 3 buttons, users of Maya for example (or Blender if you prefer... ) but those individuals aren't the majority of computer users. The majority of users don't think about context menus of scroll wheels. And lets face it how many of us pack a light bag, go to the park or coffee shop & do a little CAD work?
You're right, using two hands to ctrl+click is a pain. Thats why having only one button on a mouse bundled with every system forces developers have to think about people that only use one button. Have you ever tried to step someone through using a function that requires a right clicked context menu? It doesn't always work! (Big Point) Some people with more than one mouse button still only use the left button.
So, until Maya overtakes the greeting card creator as the most used program by little old ladies, I'll stick to my guns that you should buy yourself a scroll wheel mouse & Apple should only offer a one button mouse.
Some of us are lucky enough to not even need an IR blaster. My cable box just happens to have that nice serial port on the back to handle communication.
But you bought the laptop knowing that it came with windows. It was part of your decision when you bought your Dell. You could have gone with a laptop with linux pre-installed but YOU made the DECISION to buy a Dell.
I'm not saying that was wrong but I really don't have any sympathy for those that knowingly buy a product with something extra and hope to get a refund. Its like me going into the GAP and saying "well.... I'm really not going to use this 6th pocket... how bout I cut it off, give it back to you, and you knock $5 off the price?", I'll try it someday but I don't think its going to fly...
You can't eat your cake and have it too!!
yeah, I've ran into problems with iTunes not wanting to add the v1 ID3 tags on the file. v1 has a more limited character count than v2.x so I can understand why there might be some hesitance to use both but for my Kenwood mp3/cd I needed the v1 tags and didn't want to cut the name short in iTunes.
They can both exist at the same time. From what I understand v1 comes at the beginning of the file and v2.x comes at the end.
I used Mp3 Rage to mass add v1 tags. Works awesome, probably can help fixing up your other tag problems too. Probably something similar for Windows if thats what you have.
I've found that a lot of windows cd ripping stuff just ignored id3 tags all together and just named the files descriptively. And since winamp works some pretty nice voodoo on the filename to guess the info it can go unnoticed pretty easily.
I will say that Black and White was kinda disappointing but you have to say that you can understand how the game could be pretty interesting for the first couple days. I know I thought it was totally awesome when my giant monkey picked up the rock I wanted him to carry around to build muscles and just chucked it into the water cause he was pissed.
:p Its more fun to call an over hyped game junk and walk that fine line between insiteful and flame bait.
Moments like those faded though and you were kinda left with a game with a cool interface and nifty pet but not much to do with it, the game itself never really caught me. I think I say this was a waist of potential but definitely doesn't make it the worst game ever, or even in the same catagory.
I just think saying a bad game is bad is just too easy
Sony is making the assumtion that the games industry has really changed, more money and wider audience. Both of these are pretty much true but the older segment doesn't buy gameboys. I've got an advance but I think only 2 of my friends do and one never plays it. But almost all of my friends have a ps2 or an xbox. Sony's thinking that the reason why no-one in the 18-34 range has a gameboy is because none of the games interest them or the gameboy/nintendo is too kiddy for them.
:p ) and I think most guys just don't care about gaming on the go, whether the games look like they're for kids or not.
.. can you blame them for over pricing this? :p
But what if there was a little ps2 they could carry around with portable versions of their favorite games? Its kinda like "Field of Dreams" but instead of a baseball diamond its a tiny ps2 and instead of gathering dead baseball players Sony is gathering high profile developers.
Now the question is do people 18-34 even want to do portable gaming. Personally I'm pretty satisfied at having my Gameboy Advance (aside from wish I'd waited 2 months so I could have gotten the SP
Even so this may very well usher in a new era of expensive portables but NOT at the expense of the Gameboy. Nintendo knows no parent is gonna hand over a $300 unit to their 8 year old, thats why they'll continue to make a cheap and durable unit that can be replace for well under $100 if it is broken.
Oh and BTW... after the PSX thing in Japan
Ever compare the 20 gig to the 40 gig? now that is a small difference, but its really noticable...
:p
I'd bet this is a bigger/more noticable difference. And if the new powerbooks have taught me anything its that anodized aluminum is awesome
This is exactly why we need to keep our right to bare arms. What would this world would be like if we weren't able to shoot our home appliances.... speaking of which I think I've got a slug with my toaster's name on it.
Maybe..
Anyway, there were a few good games that were ce based. The biggest reason was network compatibility, ce could use the modem before sega's libs. So Sega Rally, Chu Chu, Armada and most other network able games were CE based.
:p
Yeah it was slow, yeah it kinda sucked but it sure didn't make Chu Chu Rocket any less fun.
I was actually reminded of this benefit the last time someone said Dreamcast was Win CE based
Well I've got a car mp3 player and the files get burned in alphabetical order and so they play in alphabetical order. So I think to my self, sweet thats pretty cool... but what about those cds I already ripped... maybe I'll just redo those.
Then I clicked the option and proceeded to shit my pants as itunes actual renamed every file I had already imported. The single greatest moment of my life. Well.. not quite but it was definitely up there as far as computer use goes.
Anyways, you folks new to itunes will figure it out soon enough but just so you don't totally drop a load like I did, this program is awesome. Let it manage your stuff and don't give it a second thought.
ahh, makes more sense. But I do think that a REAL combustion test would be a lot of fun to conduct.