With City of Heroes/City of Villains you can just make a copy of your friend's installation and dump it on your machine when you get home. Easily fits on a DVD, and there's nothing that requires an actual installer (no registry munging, etc.).
A couple of people have laughed at me for using PuTTY to ssh to localhost on my XP boxes, but it's significantly less painful than using the craptastic console window.
I'm running the sshd from Cygwin as a Service with all the usual goodies, but you could use this for cmd.exe if you wanted (although why you'd want to, I can't imagine).
Except, of course, that they've got Mac OS X and Linux versions of the Silverlight client. Hmm, according to the System Requirements, the Linux version seems to have vanished, and PowerPC support on OS X is for the not-that-useful Silverlight 1.0...
The next question is, of course, whether Mono can run the ASP.NET side of the Silverlight app or not.
I dunno if I agree with that. I'm doing a multiplatform game in my spare (ha!) time, and I've been thinking about charging maybe $5 more for the Windows version than the OS X version. Out of spite, and also for the extra pain/effort required to support Windows.
I've got no funds, and I'm targetting Mac OS X and Windows initially, and maybe XBLA/WiiWare later. The first step is choosing a multiplatform framework (I'm using Playfirst's Playground SDK) or even a cross-platform library to develop your own framework (like SDL, OpenGL and OpenAL as appropriate).
Limiting yourself to one platform limits your potential customers. If you start with multiplatform at the beginning of development, it doesn't take much more time/effort (look how Blizzard works, they ship Mac and Windows binaries on the same disc).
There are other advantages to working multiplatform, too. Different compilers flag different errors and warnings, reducing your post-release support costs (for code bugs, at least). Different platform behaviours and expectations will point out UI and game play issues earlier. You've always got at least one current-ish backup of your code/assets on your "other" platform.;-)
But, for the love of gaming, if you're not going to work multiplatform, don't make it impossible for third-party porting houses to do the work for you. And I'm not talking about your code here, I'm talking about wanting piles of cash up-front to "let" the third parties do the porting for you, or simply ignoring them.
I guess I'm some sort of freak, but I only buy DRM-free music from iTunes.
I also only buy music from places like eMusic, Magnatune, etc. who offer DRM-free files.
I don't want to rent music (until they take their servers down), I don't want to worry about where/when/why/etc. I can listen to it. You know, like with tapes or CDs... put file in player, listen to music.
Two year dev cycle? Clearly you've never heard of Duke Nukem' Forever or Too Human...
If devs ignored the Wii for a year, they've only had a year of design and development. The design bit might hit certain devs hard, since the Wii's controls can be pretty different... games with motion controls tacked on are crap and word spreads about that sort of thing.
That said, I'm planning on picking up a "Pro" 360 at some point this year. There are just too many good games for it, and I'm sick of screwing around with my PC. We still play a bit on the PS2, but its use has gone down drastically since we got the Wii.
It has an attractive GUI that follows usable user-interface guidelines. Also, you can easily buy and install third-party binary software (although you can do that on other commercial UNIXes, of course, and probably the BSDs).;-)
Same deal here... searched for "don't fear the reaper cover" and "city of heroes widget" on the Google/Cuil comparison. Google's results were relevant, Cuil's weren't.
Reminded me of doing Alta Vista searches and trying to filter the results into what I actually wanted.
That's one of the many awesome things about Magnatune (not associated, etc, just a happy customer); you can download WAV or FLAC in addition to the lossy formats they've got. Very flexible, and there are some excellent artists on there.
Maybe I've just got bad luck and/or strange taste, but all of the PC games I've been interested in over the last ~2 years have had zero-day patches, driver issues, etc. Some days it seems that half of the articles on VE3D (for example) are huge patches for high-profile games that fix game-breaking bugs.
The industry as a whole doesn't seem to care about quality. They're dumping beta-level software on the market, and if it sells enough or there's a big enough PR flap, they'll release some patches. This is creeping into the console market too, especially on the PS3 and XBox360, and that's a huge shame.
Like I said in another reply, this didn't used to bother me. I had more spare time and didn't mind blowing some of it keeping things patched or whatever. These days, when it's time for gaming, I've got maybe an hour, and I want to just get to it. I also don't want my game to crash or do anything stupid in-game that keeps me from progressing or whatever (unless, of course, it's my fault... reload, try again).
Actually, I'm just sick of all the annoyances. I used to have a lot more free time and it didn't bother me, but now that my free time is at a premium, I just want things to work.
If I was at home and/or using my home PC all the time it wouldn't be a big deal, because I could install OS and driver updates whenever I had a chance, instead of at the start of my (short) gaming sessions.
I don't think patching is bad, it's just that when it's time to play a game, it's time to play a game, not time to screw around with my machine, reboot it a few times, etc.
And yeah, FPS and RTS games on consoles are terrible compared to on the PC, but I'm mostly interested in role-playing games and whatnot. And I can't imagine trying to play an MMO on a console...
Games on Windows are generally filled with intrusive DRM, which may or may not work on your system, which may or may not install low-level drivers (which may or may not have bugs causing system instability or slowdowns), which may or may not phone home when you want to play them, etc.
Not to mention the weekly OS patches, frequent driver updates which may or may not break existing games in favour of new games, frequent game patches often available before the game is actually released...
Except for City of Heroes/City of Villains, I haven't played a game on Windows in ages, and I intend to keep it that way. I'm sick of wasting so much time just to get to the point where I can play a game.
Aren't there free high-quality versions of Helvetica, Times and Courier available already?
The Liberation fonts might make it possible to read things, but they're certainly not going to make it possible to make good looking documents or web pages. Unless, of course, the Windows versions are just extra ugly to punish me for having to use XP at work...
At this point, even your grandma knows what an iPod is. It's a brand that has been advertised for years, and "everyone" owns one. If I'm talking to non-techies about MP3 players, I have to call them "iPods" so they know what I'm talking about.
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With City of Heroes/City of Villains you can just make a copy of your friend's installation and dump it on your machine when you get home. Easily fits on a DVD, and there's nothing that requires an actual installer (no registry munging, etc.).
A couple of people have laughed at me for using PuTTY to ssh to localhost on my XP boxes, but it's significantly less painful than using the craptastic console window.
I'm running the sshd from Cygwin as a Service with all the usual goodies, but you could use this for cmd.exe if you wanted (although why you'd want to, I can't imagine).
I'm still using Visual SourceSafe for a few projects. Not by choice, obviously. Sure it's newer than RCS, but MS wouldn't even use it in-house...
Except, of course, that they've got Mac OS X and Linux versions of the Silverlight client. Hmm, according to the System Requirements, the Linux version seems to have vanished, and PowerPC support on OS X is for the not-that-useful Silverlight 1.0...
The next question is, of course, whether Mono can run the ASP.NET side of the Silverlight app or not.
I dunno if I agree with that. I'm doing a multiplatform game in my spare (ha!) time, and I've been thinking about charging maybe $5 more for the Windows version than the OS X version. Out of spite, and also for the extra pain/effort required to support Windows.
No, I'm not going to try shipping a Linux version.
I've got no funds, and I'm targetting Mac OS X and Windows initially, and maybe XBLA/WiiWare later. The first step is choosing a multiplatform framework (I'm using Playfirst's Playground SDK) or even a cross-platform library to develop your own framework (like SDL, OpenGL and OpenAL as appropriate).
Limiting yourself to one platform limits your potential customers. If you start with multiplatform at the beginning of development, it doesn't take much more time/effort (look how Blizzard works, they ship Mac and Windows binaries on the same disc).
There are other advantages to working multiplatform, too. Different compilers flag different errors and warnings, reducing your post-release support costs (for code bugs, at least). Different platform behaviours and expectations will point out UI and game play issues earlier. You've always got at least one current-ish backup of your code/assets on your "other" platform. ;-)
But, for the love of gaming, if you're not going to work multiplatform, don't make it impossible for third-party porting houses to do the work for you. And I'm not talking about your code here, I'm talking about wanting piles of cash up-front to "let" the third parties do the porting for you, or simply ignoring them.
I guess I'm some sort of freak, but I only buy DRM-free music from iTunes.
I also only buy music from places like eMusic, Magnatune, etc. who offer DRM-free files.
I don't want to rent music (until they take their servers down), I don't want to worry about where/when/why/etc. I can listen to it. You know, like with tapes or CDs... put file in player, listen to music.
Because the tourism industry doesn't "donate" enough to campaigns, employ enough lobbyists, etc.
Two year dev cycle? Clearly you've never heard of Duke Nukem' Forever or Too Human...
If devs ignored the Wii for a year, they've only had a year of design and development. The design bit might hit certain devs hard, since the Wii's controls can be pretty different... games with motion controls tacked on are crap and word spreads about that sort of thing.
That said, I'm planning on picking up a "Pro" 360 at some point this year. There are just too many good games for it, and I'm sick of screwing around with my PC. We still play a bit on the PS2, but its use has gone down drastically since we got the Wii.
Get to work, Blender runs on Linux. You can probably get the penguin model out of TuxRacer or something.
It has an attractive GUI that follows usable user-interface guidelines. Also, you can easily buy and install third-party binary software (although you can do that on other commercial UNIXes, of course, and probably the BSDs). ;-)
As much as politicians love to talk about "democracy", the United States isn't one. It's a constitutional republic.
Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the current administration has been ignoring your constitution without repercussions for eight years now.
Whoops, looks like it's the secret No Fly list for me, d'oh!
Same deal here... searched for "don't fear the reaper cover" and "city of heroes widget" on the Google/Cuil comparison. Google's results were relevant, Cuil's weren't.
Reminded me of doing Alta Vista searches and trying to filter the results into what I actually wanted.
That's one of the many awesome things about Magnatune (not associated, etc, just a happy customer); you can download WAV or FLAC in addition to the lossy formats they've got. Very flexible, and there are some excellent artists on there.
I only buy DRM-free music. Luckily, there are various sources, including:
I guess the rest of the world will be using a torrent or something to see this.
Maybe I've just got bad luck and/or strange taste, but all of the PC games I've been interested in over the last ~2 years have had zero-day patches, driver issues, etc. Some days it seems that half of the articles on VE3D (for example) are huge patches for high-profile games that fix game-breaking bugs.
The industry as a whole doesn't seem to care about quality. They're dumping beta-level software on the market, and if it sells enough or there's a big enough PR flap, they'll release some patches. This is creeping into the console market too, especially on the PS3 and XBox360, and that's a huge shame.
Like I said in another reply, this didn't used to bother me. I had more spare time and didn't mind blowing some of it keeping things patched or whatever. These days, when it's time for gaming, I've got maybe an hour, and I want to just get to it. I also don't want my game to crash or do anything stupid in-game that keeps me from progressing or whatever (unless, of course, it's my fault... reload, try again).
Actually, I'm just sick of all the annoyances. I used to have a lot more free time and it didn't bother me, but now that my free time is at a premium, I just want things to work.
If I was at home and/or using my home PC all the time it wouldn't be a big deal, because I could install OS and driver updates whenever I had a chance, instead of at the start of my (short) gaming sessions.
I don't think patching is bad, it's just that when it's time to play a game, it's time to play a game, not time to screw around with my machine, reboot it a few times, etc.
And yeah, FPS and RTS games on consoles are terrible compared to on the PC, but I'm mostly interested in role-playing games and whatnot. And I can't imagine trying to play an MMO on a console...
Well, the last one I tried to play was BioShock, hardly a "fringe" game.
0-day patches, special driver versions AND intrusive DRM all in one package!
Unfortunately, it's horrible for that, too.
Games on Windows are generally filled with intrusive DRM, which may or may not work on your system, which may or may not install low-level drivers (which may or may not have bugs causing system instability or slowdowns), which may or may not phone home when you want to play them, etc.
Not to mention the weekly OS patches, frequent driver updates which may or may not break existing games in favour of new games, frequent game patches often available before the game is actually released...
Except for City of Heroes/City of Villains, I haven't played a game on Windows in ages, and I intend to keep it that way. I'm sick of wasting so much time just to get to the point where I can play a game.
My Wii, DS, and PS2 get a lot of use though.
No James "Kibo" Parry in there? WTF. Did he retire or something?
Yeah, I'm old.
Curling's a winter sport, dude. Come back in two years.
When's women's beach volleyball on?
Wow, those are some ugly fonts.
Aren't there free high-quality versions of Helvetica, Times and Courier available already?
The Liberation fonts might make it possible to read things, but they're certainly not going to make it possible to make good looking documents or web pages. Unless, of course, the Windows versions are just extra ugly to punish me for having to use XP at work...
At this point, even your grandma knows what an iPod is. It's a brand that has been advertised for years, and "everyone" owns one. If I'm talking to non-techies about MP3 players, I have to call them "iPods" so they know what I'm talking about.