Have you ever noticed that "award-winning" children's books almost ALWAYS suck?
Well, allow me to retort!
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett.
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
The Witches, Roald Dahl
And that's just what happens to be on my bookshelf. If I were to think harder I could think of many, many, many more titles that were award-winning and didn't suck.
What on earth the alpha is used for I have no idea...
Then listen up -- it's like this! Take a piece of graph paper and draw a sloped line on it. You'll notice that the line goes through some of the squares just a little bit and some of them a lot. Now take a marker and color in every square that the line goes through "a lot" -- you'll notice that what was supposed to be a pretty line ends up looking more like a staircase when you leave out those squares. But if you color them in it looks blocky too. You'll see this happen with sloped lines, circles, and anything else that doesn't snap perfectly to your grid. This effect is called "aliasing" and the strategies for dealing with it are called "anti-aliasing".
One of the most interesting ways of coping with anti-aliasing is to turn a pixel on just enough to reflect how much of that ideal line is passing through it. Like maybe you could encode the brightness along with the color you're drawing...
And if you extend that just a little bit further you can call it "transparency" instead of "brightness" - which is handy if you were to draw two sloped lines that intersect....
It also allows for some cool looking eye candy too.:)
I guess you've never heard of PS2 or Xbox, have you? Seems like that's a much bigger market than arcade machines. It isn't 1984, you know.
Sir, please reflect: I was illustrating some cases where assembly is used, quite heavily: uprights and handhelds. Why that should equate to me not knowing about modern consoles is beyond me.
...I'd rather spend an extra $10 per arcade machine on hardware...
Check it out - that pretty much is not an option! Your ROM is going into a cabinet that already exists, you don't get to spec a new cabinet for every title. Later on your ROM will be pulled out of that cabinet, and someone's going to stick a new one in. Same goes when you ship a cart for the portable of your choice.
These days, programmer time is much, much more expensive than hardware.
Oh. I see! You're going to pay to have the arcade uprights upgraded to your insanely bloated spec out of pocket? You're the man who's going to go out and solder new procs into every gameboy currently in the user's hands? Wait, no, I've got it! You didn't happen to read my post! Yes, that's it!
Even C is a bit too low-level for many things. Many types of games (such as MMORPGs)
The fuck?!? The last time you saw a MMORPG running on an arcade cabinet was... When? On the gameboy of your choice? Grab yourself a clue, dude...
A good argument, except for one fact: "game code" does not always equate to "games for a PC with all-you-can-eat memory/disk/clock cycles/...."
Look at titles for portables, the smaller handhelds (e.g. a gameboy), a great many of the uprights in the arcade...
The fact is that a lot of code is still being written for devices/systems where your app will be seriously starved for resources. This is where "game code still uses alot[sic] of assembly". And you can bet that even though the bulk of the codebase may be in C that someone has taken the time to disassemble it and make sure the compiler is doing the right thing -- and then re-writing portions in assembly or reworking the code to make the compiler perform better on it.
*snork* That was extra special funny. I fell for it until I read the signoff.
A D&D related baitbaitbaitbaitpunchline story: we were playing with a MERP inspired critical damage setup and I attacked something (damned if I can remember what) and the exchange went like this:
me: I swing my sword! (roll a natural 20)
DM: You swing with all your might...
me: (another 20)
DM:...and align the blade perfectly...
me: (another 20)
DM:...through a crease in the armor...
me: (another 20)
DM:...and between two vertebrae...
me: (a one- critical fumble)
DM: And slice your own head off.
We revised our critical damage rules for the next game.
True, but you're forgetting that the rule that the even numbered trek movies are good and the odd ones suck takes precedence over the rule that any "II" movie sucks.
I now use ^[ as the escape key so I don't have to leave homerow to hit escape.
Wow. You are a traditionalist beyond what I thought was possible in this day and age. You've no idea (or perhaps you do........ ) how many telnet sessions I have interrupted with ^[ or ^]....
I salute you, sir, ma'am, or other!
Worlds grow old and suns grow cold And death we never can doubt. Time's cold wind, wailing down the past, Reminds us that all flesh is grass And history's lamps blow out.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when. Time won't drive us down to dust again. Cycles turn while the far stars burn, And people and planets age. Life's crown passes to younger lands, Time brushes dust of hope from his hands And turns another page.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when. Time won't drive us down to dust again. But we who feel the weight of the wheel When winter falls over our world Can hope for tomorrow and raise our eyes To a silver moon in the opened skies And a single flag unfurled.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when. Time won't drive us down to dust again. We know well what Life can tell: If you would not perish, then grow. And today our fragile flesh and steel Have laid our hands on a vaster wheel With all of the stars to know
That the Eagle has landed; tell your children when. Time won't drive us down to dust again. From all who tried out of history's tide, Salute for the team that won. And the old Earth smiles at her children's reach, The wave that carried us up the beach To reach for the shining sun.
For the Eagle has landed; tell your children when. Time won't drive us down to dust again.
It's good practice, and future-proofind against the day when his network might get an internet link of some sort (think: time to download and deploy patches and updates on his intranet servers).
Slashdot Mirror
We're all sick fucks.
Well, allow me to retort!
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, Terry Pratchett.
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton
A Wrinkle in Time, Madeleine L'Engle
The Witches, Roald Dahl
And that's just what happens to be on my bookshelf. If I were to think harder I could think of many, many, many more titles that were award-winning and didn't suck.
But Bridge sucked ass.
Then listen up -- it's like this! Take a piece of graph paper and draw a sloped line on it. You'll notice that the line goes through some of the squares just a little bit and some of them a lot. Now take a marker and color in every square that the line goes through "a lot" -- you'll notice that what was supposed to be a pretty line ends up looking more like a staircase when you leave out those squares. But if you color them in it looks blocky too. You'll see this happen with sloped lines, circles, and anything else that doesn't snap perfectly to your grid. This effect is called "aliasing" and the strategies for dealing with it are called "anti-aliasing".
One of the most interesting ways of coping with anti-aliasing is to turn a pixel on just enough to reflect how much of that ideal line is passing through it. Like maybe you could encode the brightness along with the color you're drawing...
And if you extend that just a little bit further you can call it "transparency" instead of "brightness" - which is handy if you were to draw two sloped lines that intersect....
It also allows for some cool looking eye candy too. :)
But then uncl bob wouldn't have any reason to post!
Sir, please reflect: I was illustrating some cases where assembly is used, quite heavily: uprights and handhelds. Why that should equate to me not knowing about modern consoles is beyond me.
Check it out - that pretty much is not an option! Your ROM is going into a cabinet that already exists, you don't get to spec a new cabinet for every title. Later on your ROM will be pulled out of that cabinet, and someone's going to stick a new one in. Same goes when you ship a cart for the portable of your choice.
Peace out!
Oh. I see! You're going to pay to have the arcade uprights upgraded to your insanely bloated spec out of pocket? You're the man who's going to go out and solder new procs into every gameboy currently in the user's hands? Wait, no, I've got it! You didn't happen to read my post! Yes, that's it!
Even C is a bit too low-level for many things. Many types of games (such as MMORPGs)
The fuck?!? The last time you saw a MMORPG running on an arcade cabinet was... When? On the gameboy of your choice? Grab yourself a clue, dude...
Look at titles for portables, the smaller handhelds (e.g. a gameboy), a great many of the uprights in the arcade...
The fact is that a lot of code is still being written for devices/systems where your app will be seriously starved for resources. This is where "game code still uses alot[sic] of assembly". And you can bet that even though the bulk of the codebase may be in C that someone has taken the time to disassemble it and make sure the compiler is doing the right thing -- and then re-writing portions in assembly or reworking the code to make the compiler perform better on it.
A D&D related baitbaitbaitbaitpunchline story: we were playing with a MERP inspired critical damage setup and I attacked something (damned if I can remember what) and the exchange went like this:
me: I swing my sword! (roll a natural 20)
DM: You swing with all your might...
me: (another 20)
DM: ...and align the blade perfectly...
me: (another 20)
DM: ...through a crease in the armor...
me: (another 20)
DM: ...and between two vertebrae...
me: (a one- critical fumble)
DM: And slice your own head off.
We revised our critical damage rules for the next game.
McDonald's is counting _burgers_ not people. They had better be unique.
True, but you're forgetting that the rule that the even numbered trek movies are good and the odd ones suck takes precedence over the rule that any "II" movie sucks.
I'll use flat files and grep like god intended.
Wow. You are a traditionalist beyond what I thought was possible in this day and age. You've no idea (or perhaps you do........ ) how many telnet sessions I have interrupted with ^[ or ^].... I salute you, sir, ma'am, or other!
"The Almighty tells me he can get me out of this mess, but he's pretty sure you're fucked."
Consider binding capslock as an extra escape key, then even after an i or a you can move back to cursor control without taking your hands off homerow.
Hope Eyrie
Worlds grow old and suns grow cold
And death we never can doubt.
Time's cold wind, wailing down the past,
Reminds us that all flesh is grass
And history's lamps blow out.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
Cycles turn while the far stars burn,
And people and planets age.
Life's crown passes to younger lands,
Time brushes dust of hope from his hands
And turns another page.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
But we who feel the weight of the wheel
When winter falls over our world
Can hope for tomorrow and raise our eyes
To a silver moon in the opened skies
And a single flag unfurled.
But the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
We know well what Life can tell:
If you would not perish, then grow.
And today our fragile flesh and steel
Have laid our hands on a vaster wheel
With all of the stars to know
That the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
From all who tried out of history's tide,
Salute for the team that won.
And the old Earth smiles at her children's reach,
The wave that carried us up the beach
To reach for the shining sun.
For the Eagle has landed; tell your children when.
Time won't drive us down to dust again.
(c) 1975 Leslie Fish
No. That's a children's climbing toy at one of the parks in the area of service.
One: I never said anything about a huge step forward. This isn't. This is the same old thing done again.
Two: This isn't a trend towards full wireless North America. This is a bunch of big hotspots with wired back-channel.
Can someone fill in the blank? I mean mad props to the engineers on the project, but... ?
Next bug will be on the search capabilities of their bugbase.
Thanks AC. Your reminder reminded me and when I got home I filled out a bug.
W2K, latest and greatest drivers and all updates Firefox .9
Remind me to hit bugzilla later.
It's good practice, and future-proofind against the day when his network might get an internet link of some sort (think: time to download and deploy patches and updates on his intranet servers).
Wow, but the art wasn't as good back then...
Good thing the jokes were funnier, eh?
UP is for when a hunks of ice fall off the polar cap and raises sea level by 20 meters overnight.
This is great. Now I don't need to worry about being run over by a speeding glacier next time the ice age comes around.