You're probably thinking of the UK version of The Office. The US version started a few years ago and was on the fourth season when the writer's strike began. It should hopefully resume once the writer's strike is over.
It was his destruction of our military that gave the terrorists an opportunity to strike. You're totally correct. If it weren't for Clinton, we would have had F-16's circling the world trade centers on 9/11/2001. Where is most of our military right now again?
I guess I should turn my head away from the fact that W's administration completely ignored Clinton's admonitions about Bin Laden.
The GP never said that EVE wasn't sophisticated. He just said it had a bunch of issues with lag and the GUI. Which is absolutely true. The UI was clunky, annoying, and would freeze up all the time. Lag has always been an issue in popular systems, and a huge problem in large battles (which is the only fun part about EVE IM0). Just because CCP decided to make a single-shard environment doesn't mean it's a technical achievement. I'm sure Blizzard could easily come up with a server structure similar to EVE and blow them out of the water in a cock measuring contest of how many simultaneous users they can get on one shard. But Blizzard was smart enough to realize that there is no perfect solution to crowd control outside of shards.
His strong and stubborn leadership, while offensive to most, I deep down believe is what this country needed after 9/11. You do realize his strong, stubborn leadership played a huge factor in why 9/11 happened in the first place, right?
Fred Thompson was by far the best candidate in terms of his views on the issues. He still is the only candidate to share his opinions on everything, and he was the only candidate on either side that didn't switch his views just to win votes. He has believed the same things for years. The candidates are changing their views in order to be more in line with the views of the public!? *Gasp*
It such a shame that so many presidential candidates believe in democracy.
The US would never sign that treaty... we'd go from being the #1 superpower, to very last place. We're actually not that bad at soccer these days. We would definitely lose our #1 status. We would end up pretty close with Mexico though, and that's a scary thought.
I agree all of that stuff is well done, but not necessarily innovative on their own. I would say that Portal as a whole is innovative because of the way it brings all of these not-so-innovative things together. Which is same reason why I said Rock Band is innovative in my original post.
Rock Band is innovative in how it brings it all together. Yes pretty much every aspect of it has been done before, but you could say the same for Portal.
It's definitely original. I don't think any other games have gone all out trying to simulate the rock band experience with a full set of instruments.
It's hard to explain, but getting large group of friends together to play Rock Band (and drink) is an experience unlike any other game I played. Maybe because females actually get involved, and that doesn't happen much when we're playing games.
I haven't gotten the chance to play BioShock but I totally agree with you. I think COD4 is the best overall FPS of the year. It's single player experience was just as fun has HL2:E2, and I would go as far to say that COD4 is the best multiplayer FPS since Counter-Strike. Don't get me wrong, I think TF2 is great but COD4 has so much more depth. While I'm not a huge fan for the whole level/unlock system on FPS non-mmo games, I still enjoy the plethora of weapons/upgrades at my disposal. I think it's a great blend of realism and fast-paced, fun gameplay.
I haven't played EVE online in a year or so, but when I did, the economy wasn't perfect by a long shot. EVE had inflation problems as well, and I won't even bother talking about the NPC trade market. And lets not forget about the whole T2 monopoly BoB had.
By the way, WoW has put plenty of money sinks. Most of the epic items were BOP and couldn't be sold. The really nice epic equipment had some pretty nasty repair costs as well. It's great that CCP hired an economist and all, and they seem very proud of that fact. But honestly, I would be surprised if Blizzard doesn't have a group of economists working to keep WoW's economy copasetic.
Eve Online is kind of interesting on paper. But in my opinion, every activity in that game is some of the most boring chores I've ever done in my entire life. There were a few momentary experiences in that game that were pretty fun, but they will have to redo their mission system and horrible UI to bring me back.
I just hope they make more sex scenes, and make them more detailed, vivid, and kinky. I'll show a video of the scenes to Kevin McCollough and Jack Thompson, and tell them that I let my 5 yr old son play the game.
That's a pretty interesting article. I think rasterization will still be around for a while, mainly because there is so much hardware that is supporting it. However, I think if the future beholds much faster CPU's, ray tracing at some point might be able to handle very complex scenes more efficiently. Aliasing is problem, but it will always be a problem when you're are rendering a 3d scene to 2d pixels. With that said, I think we will have to see some more data structures/algorithms that will make ray casting more efficient if we want game developers to take it seriously. I'm guessing there hasn't been huge focus on efficiency on ray casting because the movies studios want quality over efficiency.
I'm assuming you mean casting the rays from the light sources, instead of the camera.
Starting the rays from the light source would be less effective because once you start adding a few more light sources to the scene you are going to have more sets of rays to keep track of then if you were to just cast the rays from the camera. Even worse, you would have to run calculations on rays that would never hit the camera. Either way, you would still have optimize the scene with BSP's or some sort of data structure to avoid unnecessary calculations.
I'm starting to think you are suggesting what they are actually doing now.
1. Lower Drinking Age 2. Lower age of consent (not for personal reasons, I swear!) 3. Legalize marijuana 4. Revoke Jack Thompson's ability to practice law in any state (not sure if this is a presidential power, but I will still try to get in done.) 5. Increase funding for public transportation 6. Increase funding for schools 7. Decrease funding for stupid wars that create more problems then they solve 8. Maximum age for maintaining driver's license 9. Increase economic/environmental regulations on corporations. 10. Other stuff
Obviously, the above list is also probably a good list of reasons why I will never, ever become President of the US.
Yes, very interesting site indeed. It's really interesting (although not surprising) to see they put every single candidate, republican or democratic, except for Gravel and Kucinich, on the right, authoritative quadrant of the plane. It's funny how all the candidates talk about "change", when very few of them actually differ from each other (or Bush from that matter) in their position in the political spectrum. Even Ron Paul is on the authoritative side.
AFAIK, it seems like there still quite a few games that don't even properly support normal widescreen aspect ratios. Furthermore, I would imagine the FOV will have to be pretty damn high (Close to 180), and I think most games see that setting as a cheat/hack. It will probably take while, if at all, for developers to actually feel its worth the time and money to beta test on these monitors. For multiplayer games, developers will have to be faced with a tough decision of giving people with this monitor a huge advantage, or screwing these people by trying to make things fair.
While the thought of a having a near full range of view for gaming is pretty cool, I'm not sure if gamers are going to get what they expect.
You have yet to give a valid point about how or why Starcraft is dead. You just complained how Blizzard patched the ability to use hacks in multiplayer games and bnet. None of the Blizzard patches ever really annoyed me, but that's probably because I don't hack.
Considering Starcraft is a decade old, and I can still hop online and easily find plenty of different games to play, it's amazing that it isn't dead yet. Starcraft is still going strong, and it's one of the most popular games for professional gaming in the world.
Non-interactive, long, drawn out, cinematic cut scenes. Just let me play the fucking game. Some people like cut scenes. They can be fun watch (some people like the mix of interactive and non-interactive entertainment) and they can give games more depth.
Unrealistic release schedules. Welcome to the world of capitalism where companies need to keep consumer confidence high in order to do well in the stock market.
The yearly $60 sports games that feature incremental improvements and roster changes. We should be able to download roster changes by now; keep major changes to the game engine to a release every couple of years. Not going to happen. If a game can guarantee profit, it will be made. Regardless, I think you can download roster updates for many sports games on next-gen systems.
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You're probably thinking of the UK version of The Office. The US version started a few years ago and was on the fourth season when the writer's strike began. It should hopefully resume once the writer's strike is over.
I guess I should turn my head away from the fact that W's administration completely ignored Clinton's admonitions about Bin Laden.
The GP never said that EVE wasn't sophisticated. He just said it had a bunch of issues with lag and the GUI. Which is absolutely true. The UI was clunky, annoying, and would freeze up all the time. Lag has always been an issue in popular systems, and a huge problem in large battles (which is the only fun part about EVE IM0). Just because CCP decided to make a single-shard environment doesn't mean it's a technical achievement. I'm sure Blizzard could easily come up with a server structure similar to EVE and blow them out of the water in a cock measuring contest of how many simultaneous users they can get on one shard. But Blizzard was smart enough to realize that there is no perfect solution to crowd control outside of shards.
It such a shame that so many presidential candidates believe in democracy.
I agree all of that stuff is well done, but not necessarily innovative on their own. I would say that Portal as a whole is innovative because of the way it brings all of these not-so-innovative things together. Which is same reason why I said Rock Band is innovative in my original post.
What is innovative about GlaDOS and a credit song? Are you joking?
Rock Band is innovative in how it brings it all together. Yes pretty much every aspect of it has been done before, but you could say the same for Portal.
It's definitely original. I don't think any other games have gone all out trying to simulate the rock band experience with a full set of instruments.
It's hard to explain, but getting large group of friends together to play Rock Band (and drink) is an experience unlike any other game I played. Maybe because females actually get involved, and that doesn't happen much when we're playing games.
I haven't gotten the chance to play BioShock but I totally agree with you. I think COD4 is the best overall FPS of the year. It's single player experience was just as fun has HL2:E2, and I would go as far to say that COD4 is the best multiplayer FPS since Counter-Strike. Don't get me wrong, I think TF2 is great but COD4 has so much more depth. While I'm not a huge fan for the whole level/unlock system on FPS non-mmo games, I still enjoy the plethora of weapons/upgrades at my disposal. I think it's a great blend of realism and fast-paced, fun gameplay.
I haven't played EVE online in a year or so, but when I did, the economy wasn't perfect by a long shot. EVE had inflation problems as well, and I won't even bother talking about the NPC trade market. And lets not forget about the whole T2 monopoly BoB had.
By the way, WoW has put plenty of money sinks. Most of the epic items were BOP and couldn't be sold. The really nice epic equipment had some pretty nasty repair costs as well. It's great that CCP hired an economist and all, and they seem very proud of that fact. But honestly, I would be surprised if Blizzard doesn't have a group of economists working to keep WoW's economy copasetic.
Eve Online is kind of interesting on paper. But in my opinion, every activity in that game is some of the most boring chores I've ever done in my entire life. There were a few momentary experiences in that game that were pretty fun, but they will have to redo their mission system and horrible UI to bring me back.
According to your bulleted list, most people are smarter than Einstein.
Your perception of intelligence is pretty unintelligent.
I just hope they make more sex scenes, and make them more detailed, vivid, and kinky. I'll show a video of the scenes to Kevin McCollough and Jack Thompson, and tell them that I let my 5 yr old son play the game.
Wow, congratulations! I see you've passed your Intro to Programming class.
Now if only game developers were that smart.
That's a pretty interesting article. I think rasterization will still be around for a while, mainly because there is so much hardware that is supporting it. However, I think if the future beholds much faster CPU's, ray tracing at some point might be able to handle very complex scenes more efficiently. Aliasing is problem, but it will always be a problem when you're are rendering a 3d scene to 2d pixels. With that said, I think we will have to see some more data structures/algorithms that will make ray casting more efficient if we want game developers to take it seriously. I'm guessing there hasn't been huge focus on efficiency on ray casting because the movies studios want quality over efficiency.
I'm assuming you mean casting the rays from the light sources, instead of the camera.
Starting the rays from the light source would be less effective because once you start adding a few more light sources to the scene you are going to have more sets of rays to keep track of then if you were to just cast the rays from the camera. Even worse, you would have to run calculations on rays that would never hit the camera. Either way, you would still have optimize the scene with BSP's or some sort of data structure to avoid unnecessary calculations.
I'm starting to think you are suggesting what they are actually doing now.
Yeah, Daikatana was also my first gaming experience.
1. Lower Drinking Age
2. Lower age of consent (not for personal reasons, I swear!)
3. Legalize marijuana
4. Revoke Jack Thompson's ability to practice law in any state (not sure if this is a presidential power, but I will still try to get in done.)
5. Increase funding for public transportation
6. Increase funding for schools
7. Decrease funding for stupid wars that create more problems then they solve
8. Maximum age for maintaining driver's license
9. Increase economic/environmental regulations on corporations.
10. Other stuff
Obviously, the above list is also probably a good list of reasons why I will never, ever become President of the US.
Yes, very interesting site indeed. It's really interesting (although not surprising) to see they put every single candidate, republican or democratic, except for Gravel and Kucinich, on the right, authoritative quadrant of the plane. It's funny how all the candidates talk about "change", when very few of them actually differ from each other (or Bush from that matter) in their position in the political spectrum. Even Ron Paul is on the authoritative side.
AFAIK, it seems like there still quite a few games that don't even properly support normal widescreen aspect ratios. Furthermore, I would imagine the FOV will have to be pretty damn high (Close to 180), and I think most games see that setting as a cheat/hack. It will probably take while, if at all, for developers to actually feel its worth the time and money to beta test on these monitors. For multiplayer games, developers will have to be faced with a tough decision of giving people with this monitor a huge advantage, or screwing these people by trying to make things fair.
While the thought of a having a near full range of view for gaming is pretty cool, I'm not sure if gamers are going to get what they expect.
You have yet to give a valid point about how or why Starcraft is dead. You just complained how Blizzard patched the ability to use hacks in multiplayer games and bnet. None of the Blizzard patches ever really annoyed me, but that's probably because I don't hack.
Considering Starcraft is a decade old, and I can still hop online and easily find plenty of different games to play, it's amazing that it isn't dead yet. Starcraft is still going strong, and it's one of the most popular games for professional gaming in the world.