Sure, developers aren't writing to bare hardware anymore, but they are using different features of OpenGL or DirectX depending on the card in use.
Look at recent benchmarks. ATI cards win some tests while NVidia cards win others. If you're doing anything advanced, you'll have to take into account the card you're running on or it'll end up with terrible performance.
What is to stop anybody from taking the sources offshore for Mozilla?
Well, it could happen, but not soon. The Mozilla Foundation is having enough trouble splitting from AOL at the moment. I doubt they'd try moving to another country any time soon. A Mozilla fork based in another country could very well happen though.
How about more people developing for Konqueror offshore?
Probably will happen. I simply said that it currently has a significant base of US contributors.
Is it not a bit narrow minded discarding Opera like that? Could it not be that people all of the sudden jump and download Opera?
I didn't discard Opera. People could suddenly download Opera in mass, but it's rather unlikely. Opera's UI is very much a love it or hate it thing, and currently not that many people are going for it.
All of these are not beyond the realm of possibilities.
Never said they were. I just said in the short term there would be problems.
Given z's placement, it's rarely used for anything important, it almost seems like an after-thought.
It was an afterthought. Nintendo only added it because developers kept insisting on it. Developers actually wanted 2 more buttons, but they only were able to convince Nintendo to add 1.
If you dig around in IGN's archives, you'll see a mockup of the Cube controller they created several months before Nintendo officially showed it off. They made it from descriptions developers gave them. It's almost exactly like the final one, except the B button is shaped like the X and Y buttons, and there is no Z button.
If anything, the GameCube analag sticks are too responsive. Too many deaths in Monkey Ball due to that...
If the left stick is misplaced, then I guess the main control on every controller made from at least the NES days is badly designed.
The lack of a "hat" on the C stick can be good or bad. If the C stick was used as a main control, such as in a dual-analog control FPS, then I could see it being bad. But in most games it's just a camera control, or serves some other purpose where you're just going to hit it quick but need accuracy. It works very well in those situations.
The button layout is great for a lot of games but terrible for a few. It's perfect for the types of games Nintendo makes. But it's not very good for fighting games. Or for 2D games. But the D-Pad is much more to blame for that than anything else. My biggest complaint about the button layout is they really should have had one for button.
Oh, it's easy to talk badly about the NES Advantage. They broke very easily. I was given one for Christmas when I was young, barely used it, and it just suddenly stopped working. Took it for repair; cost $25. I remember the repairman said it was pretty common to have to fix them. Worked for a few more months then stopped working again. Never bothered to get it fixed again. Wonder what it would cost nowadays...
It doesn't reduce download size. It reduces page size. Do you want to maintain a webpage with 500k of Flash embedded in it? I wouldn't. But if I could shift that Flash code into a seperate frame, which contained nothing else, it would be trivial to manage. Whether that would be a valid workaround or not would probably depend on the exact wording of patent.
"How shives a git?" Seriously this patent only affects American users as the patent is only registered in the US. My take is screw the Americans, and let the rest of world use plugins as normal.
Well, IE is developed in the US. The Mozilla Foundation is in the US. Safari is developed in the US. Konqueror gets significant development in the US (at the very least, due to Apple's contributions, if not others). That pretty much leaves Opera as the only significant browser that's in the clear. In the end, you're probably going to have to deal with the results of this lawsuit.
I suspect that 9.2 will be 100% free as well. In such an event, "spyware" is simply *NOT* possible on the distro.
Sure it is. For example, they could make their software update tool send your Mozilla history file when it checks for updates. Or they could just modify Mozilla to send them information. Like how the search feature in Netscape goes thru Netscape's servers before going to your configured search engine.
You've got 3 cds worth of compiled code. How long will it take you to go through their code and verify that they didn't include spyware somewhere.
Or even worse, how do you know that the binaries that gave you *really* were made with the source they claim it is? They could be giving you a version of Mozilla that includes spyware, but have removed the spyware from the source they distribute. Yes, that would violate the GPL, but hey, if they don't get caught it's all good right?
That said, I'm currently using Mandrake 9.1 and don't think that they would do anything like I just mentioned. Just saying that it's possible.
Story can definately hurt a game. Although it doesn't have to be the case, most games with involved stories are much more linear because of it.
Linearity kills replay value. The older Zelda and Metroid games were great because although there was a certain order you were expected to do things in the first time through, you weren't held to that order very tightly. In Zelda 1, it's sometimes easier to do things in different orders. For example, Level 7 is much easier than Level 6, so beating Level 7 first means you can be stronger when you do Level 6. Wind Waker's heavy story eliminated those options, leaving most people with no desire to play the game a second time.
In all the Metroid games, after you beat the game once it will become obvious that there are better paths to take to get upgrades sooner and/or get 100% more efficently. Metroid Fusion had to eliminate most of that due to the heavy story.
Re:The issue wasn't the domain name...
on
Beatles Bite Apple
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· Score: 1
The case was based entirely on the prior agreement the two organizations signed in '94. The wildlife fund would've lost if the case was based on trademark law.
That's rather similar to the World Wrestling Federation vs the World Wildlife Fund over the initials WWF.
There's no way to mistake those two, but when the Wildlife Fund first complained, the wrestling federation signed an agreement that they wouldn't use the initials internationally. Then the web came along and they registered wwf.com. After a long court battle, the Wildlife Fund won because of the prior agreement.
In the Apple vs Apple case, there's much more room for confusion. Just on trademark law alone Apple Computer would probably lose. But if they did sign an agreement say they'd stay out of the music business, then they don't have a chance. Most likely result though is they'll either settle for cash, or spin off iTunes into a seperate division that doesn't use the Apple name.
When Nintendo first showed the mini-discs, they said right away that one of the reasons for them was the possibility of using them in a future GameBoy.
The problem is some of the antivirus filters will mail you back to inform you that your message was infected, and will also include the full original message, including the attachment. So, the virus is being further distributed by bad antivirus software.
F-Zero X on the N64 had a cup called the X cup, which consisted of randomly generated races. Unfortunately, most of the races were really bland. One time though I was playing multiplayer, with 1 other person and 2 computers racing. Shortly past the start was an almost 90 degree turn. The road wasn't level either, which made it harder to realize how bad the turn was. The two computer cars went flying off immediately. My friend and I just barely managed to stay on the course. That one race was a lot of fun, but otherwise the random courses don't offer much challenge. The only thing that makes them hard is you'll get random patches of track without any railing on the side, making it easy to fall off the course.
I originally thought that Zelda was simply recompiled, but now I don't think so.
There are N64 roms of Ocarina of Time: Master Quest floating around. The rumor is that the ROM was ripped off the Bonus Disc that came with Wind Waker.
I think the easy way to test it would be to download the ROM and try it in an emulator. The action buttons at the top of the screen are colored to match the colors of the corresponding controller buttons. The bonus disc version had the colors changed to match the GameCube button colors. So the colors in the ROM should answer where it came from.
It's been a while, so I don't remember details too well.
I think the consensus on Metroid was that most people don't know about Metroid, due to the last one being during the SNES days. I don't remember anyone saying anything bad about the game.
For Wind Waker, I think the graphics turned people off initially. But if you did get people to play the game, they usually changed their mind about it. The game being too easy came up too. I know one guy who only owned an Xbox was under the impression that most GameCube games are really easy. The people who did have the game complained it was too easy. I know several of my friends watched people play it, and considered getting a Cube for it, but decided against it because the game was too easy.
One question: Shouldn't the Zelda disc also include A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, and Oracle of Seasons/Ages?
A Link to the Past just got released for GBA, so that's why that isn't included. The Oracle games are still available, although in limited supply. I don't know why Link's Awakening wasn't included.
Actually, scratch that reasoning. There's a much simplier reason.
Animal Crossing included a pretty good NES emulator - capable of emulating Zelda 1, and probably Zelda 2.
Ocarina of Time on the GameCube was simply emulated, so they've already got an N64 emulator there. As Majora's Mask was based on the Ocarina of Time code, it probably required little to no work on the N64 emulator to get it to run.
The only work involved in creating this disc is the menu system to pick what game you want to play, plus any little localization details they want to do (i.e. they modified Ocarina of Time so that the colors of the buttons at the top of the screen matched the GameCube controller's colors). Creating the manual and cover artwork is probably the only significant expense involved.
Why can't Nintendo do this for Mario. Throw Mario 1, 2, 3, Wolrd and 64 on one disc and I'd buy that for $24.99
Because they've been very successful at selling those games individually for the GBA at $35 each. Granted, they can't do that for Mario 64, but hey, maybe the next GameCube Mario game will bundle Mario 64 for free.
Over the summer, I did a marketing research survery about video games for Nintendo. Although the woman running it wasn't allowed to say who the survery was for, when we asked, she did say "It's probably for who you think it's for."
Most of the survey was spent establishing perceptions of the 3 major consoles. Another major part was breaking into groups, and deciding what each of the 3 companies would need to do to win the next round.
The last part is where it became obvious the survey was for Nintendo. We had all mentioned how we all liked old Nintendo games, and that was one of the biggest things Nintendo had going for them (the group was all people in their early 20's). The woman asked if bundling a "Nostalagia Pack" which contained several old games would make us more likely to buy the system. Everyone agreed it would.
Finally, we were asked why Metroid Prime didn't sell big, and then why Zelda didn't sell big.
Took about an hour and a half, and I got $50 out of it. It's the second time I did one of these surveys for Nintendo. The first time was when the SNES was fairly new, and Nintendo Power was about to start their merchandice catalog. The survey was about how we liked different merchandice, and we got a free game for doing it.
Ignore Gord. A large part of his reasoning that the GameCube will bomb is because he claims Nintendo intentionally designed the system to be less powerful than the PlayStation 2. If you spend 5 minutes playing a GameCube exclusive game, you'll release the GameCube is significantly more powerful.
He was constantly misinterpreting Nintendo's statements. The above issue came from "Rather than try to go for the best possible performance, we tried to make an easy to develop system with above standard power." Translation - better than PS2 technology, but not going crazy to outdo Microsoft.
He also compared Nintendo's polygon count, which they stated was a very conservative minimum to be attainable with a full game engine running to Sony's numbers for the theoretical maximum the system could do.
The inovative point about Metroid Prime is that they succesfully translated a 2D game in to the 3d world mantaining it's roots!
That's not innovative. It's something that's not easy to accomplish, and rarely happens, but that doesn't mean it's innovative. Innovative would be if they went in a new direction with the series.
The fact that it couldn't play DVDs, and the other two consoles could, definitely kept me from seriously considering it.
cost of GameCube + DVD Player = cost of PS2/Xbox
The PS2 DVD player blows. My roommate had a PS2, and we'd often try using it to play DVDs. But half the time I'd end up taking the disc out and putting it in my computer due to the PS2 having trouble. It just doesn't like certain scenes. You pretty much have to buy the DVD remote for the PS2 as using the controller to play a DVD is completely unintuitive.
I know I'd much rather have a GameCube + DVD player combo. About the same cost as a PS2, but better DVD playback. Haven't heard anything about the Xbox's DVD playback quality, but I doubt it tops a dedicated player.
And it was mentioned in a previous article that most guys don't want to be caught playing something like Mario Golf or Mario Party
Look around at a college some time. The Nintendo multiplayer games are really popular.
The game developing companies Nintendo has lost are the companies that would release a buggy port of a 2nd rate game with a low framerate on the GameCube 6+ months after it came out on the other systems, and then wonder why it didn't sell.
Metroid Prime is by far my favorite 3D game - I've already played through it 4 times. But it's not very innovative. It's just like Super Metroid, only more linear, but from a different camera angle. Sure, there were some innovative bits, like the scan visor, but as a whole, the game was just a slightly weaker Super Metroid.
Probably the best thing they did was the control scheme. The last few bosses would've been near impossible with a dual-analog control scheme. You need quick access to all your abilities at all times during those later fights, including the ability to quickly change weapons.
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Sure, developers aren't writing to bare hardware anymore, but they are using different features of OpenGL or DirectX depending on the card in use.
Look at recent benchmarks. ATI cards win some tests while NVidia cards win others. If you're doing anything advanced, you'll have to take into account the card you're running on or it'll end up with terrible performance.
You do realize that those mini-discs are totally unrelated to the discs the GameCube uses, right?
What is to stop anybody from taking the sources offshore for Mozilla?
Well, it could happen, but not soon. The Mozilla Foundation is having enough trouble splitting from AOL at the moment. I doubt they'd try moving to another country any time soon. A Mozilla fork based in another country could very well happen though.
How about more people developing for Konqueror offshore?
Probably will happen. I simply said that it currently has a significant base of US contributors.
Is it not a bit narrow minded discarding Opera like that? Could it not be that people all of the sudden jump and download Opera?
I didn't discard Opera. People could suddenly download Opera in mass, but it's rather unlikely. Opera's UI is very much a love it or hate it thing, and currently not that many people are going for it.
All of these are not beyond the realm of possibilities.
Never said they were. I just said in the short term there would be problems.
Given z's placement, it's rarely used for anything important, it almost seems like an after-thought.
It was an afterthought. Nintendo only added it because developers kept insisting on it. Developers actually wanted 2 more buttons, but they only were able to convince Nintendo to add 1.
If you dig around in IGN's archives, you'll see a mockup of the Cube controller they created several months before Nintendo officially showed it off. They made it from descriptions developers gave them. It's almost exactly like the final one, except the B button is shaped like the X and Y buttons, and there is no Z button.
If anything, the GameCube analag sticks are too responsive. Too many deaths in Monkey Ball due to that...
If the left stick is misplaced, then I guess the main control on every controller made from at least the NES days is badly designed.
The lack of a "hat" on the C stick can be good or bad. If the C stick was used as a main control, such as in a dual-analog control FPS, then I could see it being bad. But in most games it's just a camera control, or serves some other purpose where you're just going to hit it quick but need accuracy. It works very well in those situations.
The button layout is great for a lot of games but terrible for a few. It's perfect for the types of games Nintendo makes. But it's not very good for fighting games. Or for 2D games. But the D-Pad is much more to blame for that than anything else. My biggest complaint about the button layout is they really should have had one for button.
Oh, it's easy to talk badly about the NES Advantage. They broke very easily. I was given one for Christmas when I was young, barely used it, and it just suddenly stopped working. Took it for repair; cost $25. I remember the repairman said it was pretty common to have to fix them. Worked for a few more months then stopped working again. Never bothered to get it fixed again. Wonder what it would cost nowadays...
It doesn't reduce download size. It reduces page size. Do you want to maintain a webpage with 500k of Flash embedded in it? I wouldn't. But if I could shift that Flash code into a seperate frame, which contained nothing else, it would be trivial to manage. Whether that would be a valid workaround or not would probably depend on the exact wording of patent.
"How shives a git?" Seriously this patent only affects American users as the patent is only registered in the US. My take is screw the Americans, and let the rest of world use plugins as normal.
Well, IE is developed in the US. The Mozilla Foundation is in the US. Safari is developed in the US. Konqueror gets significant development in the US (at the very least, due to Apple's contributions, if not others). That pretty much leaves Opera as the only significant browser that's in the clear. In the end, you're probably going to have to deal with the results of this lawsuit.
I suspect that 9.2 will be 100% free as well. In such an event, "spyware" is simply *NOT* possible on the distro.
Sure it is. For example, they could make their software update tool send your Mozilla history file when it checks for updates. Or they could just modify Mozilla to send them information. Like how the search feature in Netscape goes thru Netscape's servers before going to your configured search engine.
You've got 3 cds worth of compiled code. How long will it take you to go through their code and verify that they didn't include spyware somewhere.
Or even worse, how do you know that the binaries that gave you *really* were made with the source they claim it is? They could be giving you a version of Mozilla that includes spyware, but have removed the spyware from the source they distribute. Yes, that would violate the GPL, but hey, if they don't get caught it's all good right?
That said, I'm currently using Mandrake 9.1 and don't think that they would do anything like I just mentioned. Just saying that it's possible.
Story can definately hurt a game. Although it doesn't have to be the case, most games with involved stories are much more linear because of it.
Linearity kills replay value. The older Zelda and Metroid games were great because although there was a certain order you were expected to do things in the first time through, you weren't held to that order very tightly. In Zelda 1, it's sometimes easier to do things in different orders. For example, Level 7 is much easier than Level 6, so beating Level 7 first means you can be stronger when you do Level 6. Wind Waker's heavy story eliminated those options, leaving most people with no desire to play the game a second time.
In all the Metroid games, after you beat the game once it will become obvious that there are better paths to take to get upgrades sooner and/or get 100% more efficently. Metroid Fusion had to eliminate most of that due to the heavy story.
The case was based entirely on the prior agreement the two organizations signed in '94. The wildlife fund would've lost if the case was based on trademark law.
That's rather similar to the World Wrestling Federation vs the World Wildlife Fund over the initials WWF.
There's no way to mistake those two, but when the Wildlife Fund first complained, the wrestling federation signed an agreement that they wouldn't use the initials internationally. Then the web came along and they registered wwf.com. After a long court battle, the Wildlife Fund won because of the prior agreement.
In the Apple vs Apple case, there's much more room for confusion. Just on trademark law alone Apple Computer would probably lose. But if they did sign an agreement say they'd stay out of the music business, then they don't have a chance. Most likely result though is they'll either settle for cash, or spin off iTunes into a seperate division that doesn't use the Apple name.
When Nintendo first showed the mini-discs, they said right away that one of the reasons for them was the possibility of using them in a future GameBoy.
The problem is some of the antivirus filters will mail you back to inform you that your message was infected, and will also include the full original message, including the attachment. So, the virus is being further distributed by bad antivirus software.
F-Zero X on the N64 had a cup called the X cup, which consisted of randomly generated races. Unfortunately, most of the races were really bland. One time though I was playing multiplayer, with 1 other person and 2 computers racing. Shortly past the start was an almost 90 degree turn. The road wasn't level either, which made it harder to realize how bad the turn was. The two computer cars went flying off immediately. My friend and I just barely managed to stay on the course. That one race was a lot of fun, but otherwise the random courses don't offer much challenge. The only thing that makes them hard is you'll get random patches of track without any railing on the side, making it easy to fall off the course.
I originally thought that Zelda was simply recompiled, but now I don't think so.
There are N64 roms of Ocarina of Time: Master Quest floating around. The rumor is that the ROM was ripped off the Bonus Disc that came with Wind Waker.
I think the easy way to test it would be to download the ROM and try it in an emulator. The action buttons at the top of the screen are colored to match the colors of the corresponding controller buttons. The bonus disc version had the colors changed to match the GameCube button colors. So the colors in the ROM should answer where it came from.
It's been a while, so I don't remember details too well.
I think the consensus on Metroid was that most people don't know about Metroid, due to the last one being during the SNES days. I don't remember anyone saying anything bad about the game.
For Wind Waker, I think the graphics turned people off initially. But if you did get people to play the game, they usually changed their mind about it. The game being too easy came up too. I know one guy who only owned an Xbox was under the impression that most GameCube games are really easy. The people who did have the game complained it was too easy. I know several of my friends watched people play it, and considered getting a Cube for it, but decided against it because the game was too easy.
One question: Shouldn't the Zelda disc also include A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, and Oracle of Seasons/Ages?
A Link to the Past just got released for GBA, so that's why that isn't included. The Oracle games are still available, although in limited supply. I don't know why Link's Awakening wasn't included.
Actually, scratch that reasoning. There's a much simplier reason.
Animal Crossing included a pretty good NES emulator - capable of emulating Zelda 1, and probably Zelda 2.
Ocarina of Time on the GameCube was simply emulated, so they've already got an N64 emulator there. As Majora's Mask was based on the Ocarina of Time code, it probably required little to no work on the N64 emulator to get it to run.
The only work involved in creating this disc is the menu system to pick what game you want to play, plus any little localization details they want to do (i.e. they modified Ocarina of Time so that the colors of the buttons at the top of the screen matched the GameCube controller's colors). Creating the manual and cover artwork is probably the only significant expense involved.
Why can't Nintendo do this for Mario. Throw Mario 1, 2, 3, Wolrd and 64 on one disc and I'd buy that for $24.99
Because they've been very successful at selling those games individually for the GBA at $35 each. Granted, they can't do that for Mario 64, but hey, maybe the next GameCube Mario game will bundle Mario 64 for free.
Isn't it the general console business model to sell hardware at a loss then recoup profits on software sales?
Only if you're Sega or Microsoft.
Over the summer, I did a marketing research survery about video games for Nintendo. Although the woman running it wasn't allowed to say who the survery was for, when we asked, she did say "It's probably for who you think it's for."
Most of the survey was spent establishing perceptions of the 3 major consoles. Another major part was breaking into groups, and deciding what each of the 3 companies would need to do to win the next round.
The last part is where it became obvious the survey was for Nintendo. We had all mentioned how we all liked old Nintendo games, and that was one of the biggest things Nintendo had going for them (the group was all people in their early 20's). The woman asked if bundling a "Nostalagia Pack" which contained several old games would make us more likely to buy the system. Everyone agreed it would.
Finally, we were asked why Metroid Prime didn't sell big, and then why Zelda didn't sell big.
Took about an hour and a half, and I got $50 out of it. It's the second time I did one of these surveys for Nintendo. The first time was when the SNES was fairly new, and Nintendo Power was about to start their merchandice catalog. The survey was about how we liked different merchandice, and we got a free game for doing it.
Ignore Gord. A large part of his reasoning that the GameCube will bomb is because he claims Nintendo intentionally designed the system to be less powerful than the PlayStation 2. If you spend 5 minutes playing a GameCube exclusive game, you'll release the GameCube is significantly more powerful.
He was constantly misinterpreting Nintendo's statements. The above issue came from "Rather than try to go for the best possible performance, we tried to make an easy to develop system with above standard power." Translation - better than PS2 technology, but not going crazy to outdo Microsoft.
He also compared Nintendo's polygon count, which they stated was a very conservative minimum to be attainable with a full game engine running to Sony's numbers for the theoretical maximum the system could do.
The inovative point about Metroid Prime is that they succesfully translated a 2D game in to the 3d world mantaining it's roots!
That's not innovative. It's something that's not easy to accomplish, and rarely happens, but that doesn't mean it's innovative. Innovative would be if they went in a new direction with the series.
The fact that it couldn't play DVDs, and the other two consoles could, definitely kept me from seriously considering it.
cost of GameCube + DVD Player = cost of PS2/Xbox
The PS2 DVD player blows. My roommate had a PS2, and we'd often try using it to play DVDs. But half the time I'd end up taking the disc out and putting it in my computer due to the PS2 having trouble. It just doesn't like certain scenes. You pretty much have to buy the DVD remote for the PS2 as using the controller to play a DVD is completely unintuitive.
I know I'd much rather have a GameCube + DVD player combo. About the same cost as a PS2, but better DVD playback. Haven't heard anything about the Xbox's DVD playback quality, but I doubt it tops a dedicated player.
And it was mentioned in a previous article that most guys don't want to be caught playing something like Mario Golf or Mario Party
Look around at a college some time. The Nintendo multiplayer games are really popular.
The game developing companies Nintendo has lost are the companies that would release a buggy port of a 2nd rate game with a low framerate on the GameCube 6+ months after it came out on the other systems, and then wonder why it didn't sell.
Metroid Prime is by far my favorite 3D game - I've already played through it 4 times. But it's not very innovative. It's just like Super Metroid, only more linear, but from a different camera angle. Sure, there were some innovative bits, like the scan visor, but as a whole, the game was just a slightly weaker Super Metroid.
Probably the best thing they did was the control scheme. The last few bosses would've been near impossible with a dual-analog control scheme. You need quick access to all your abilities at all times during those later fights, including the ability to quickly change weapons.