" I hate it when these tight-assed lawyers are making ridiculous claims about Rockstar without even playing the game!"
Wanna know what bugs me? I've been gaming since the early 90's. I've played the heck out of every 'bad game' out there. Mortal Kombat, GTA, Quake, Doom, you name it. According to all the Kile's Moms out there, I should be totally desensitized to violence. Wrong. 9-11 shocked me. Rotten.com shocks me. Somebody on Slashdot once related a story about how his wife knew somebody who was killed by lightning. I was saddened by that story.
They have a very long uphill battle before them if they wish to convince me that a game would make somebody do something like that.
"How would an image project on to a rotating screen work? I just can't see it happaning, it would have to be spinning pretty fast. My poor monitor..."
What you do is mount a screen on a spinning doohickey. As the screen rotates, different images flash on the screen. Make the pixels flash at the right time, and the speck of light will appear to float in space. Use enough dots, and you can make an image.
I've actually seen this work at the 01 Siggraph show. It's not the greatest display ever (think vector graphics like in really old video games), but it's a start I suppose. Ever go to Sharper Image and see the clock that uses spinning LEDs? It's sort of like that.
"Whats with the current trend of/.ers that are spewing randomly that every piece of news here sucks?"
I imagine it's to raise their ambient IQ.
A couple of years ago, the big fad was to shout "This isn't news!" every time a story went by. "A cure for cancer has been discovered!""This is NOT news!! Diseases are cured all the time!" I think it started when Slashdot really did post a 'not news!' item, somebody got modded up for pointing it out, and blammo. Instant karma goldmine.
One day I saw an opportunity to poke fun at it when a story ran to the tune of "Some company is releasing a 55x CD ROM!" And, thinking I was a real smart-ass, I replied with "This is not news! You can do the same thing with a 4x CD-ROM if you just wait a little longer!" (+5, Informative.)
" If you think it's worth it, use it and don't bitch. If you think it's not worth it, use a different product and don't bitch. You make the choice, you get the pros and cons."
One should not express demand? Right. There's no competition going on here. Because of that, it's not a case of "use another product and quitcherbitchen". It's a case of "this is what you can get, tough shit." If people are not getting what they want, they have every right to complain. Sooner or later, somebody will come along and realize there's demand to fill. If they don't, then it's just accepted and blammo, no innovation.
Sorry bud, short of piracy, complaining's all we got.
"PS. I'm sure a lot of you will disagree, but at least I can claim to be a content creator myself..."
I'm a content creator myself, and my feeling is that it isn't good business to take away what makes your product interesting. If my customers want to rip the movie I'm working on so they can watch in on their laptop, why would I expect my sales to go up if I deny them that?
"So, did anyone else want to cry at seeing that Nintendo has finally taken the most wonderful game series ever created by Humankind (ie, Metroid), and made it into a multiplayer death-match-style FPS?"
"Indeed, indeed. The PSP, according to analysts (who have apparently heard, in turn, from game developers), is apparently only managing a battery-life of around 90 minutes or so ( http://www.n-philes.com/index.php?Id=346 ). @_@"
I hate to spoil the fun, but n-philes is a Nintendo fan site. I've never really visited there until now, but I wouldn't trust it for reliable PSP info.
"Very little in the gaming world requires you to actually *watch* two screens"
Bullshit. Plenty of console games would benefit dramatically from dual screens. Zelda comes to mind. You have to pause in order to equip yourself with whatever weapons you want to use. In the same vein, so does Final Fantasy. Now you can have that screen up + have a much better interface for changing things around. Panoramic views are not the only thing you can achieve with multiple screens. Since the bottom one is a touch screen, it's actually very intuitive. Don't believe me? Go look at an ATM or a telephone. Display up top, interface right below. Not a biggie, and not unimportant.
"This looks like a future Virtual Boy, truth be told. "
No it doesn't. How can you compare the VB to a system that's an enhanced GBA?
"Instead, add a simple IR eye tracking monacle that would do the job of the touch pad..."
That is less Virtual Boy'ish than a tried and true stylus interface that has single handedly made PDAs a common item?
"If Nintendo had any sense, they would market the DS as a PDA that has the additional bonus of playing high resolution 3D games, which, most PDA/Smart Phone manufacturers have yet to claim."
What kind of sense would that be? Why would they leave the portable market with a device that plays their current lineup of games to a market they have no business being in where they wouldn't sell that many games? Sorry for the run-on sentence, but that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. I suppose you've never heard of the CD-I?
"The buttons on the right are arranged in a cross for that very purpose- in Metroid the buttons and the d-pad both do the same thing."
Heh. As much as everybody here hates the Virtual Boy, it had a D-Pad on both sides of the controller. Sadly, that particular innovation never took off. Well.. I guess it kinda did on the N64 controller...
I'm curious, do left-handed people have trouble playing on modern consoles? Is it something you get used to? Is it just the stylus that's a problem?
"If they could fit the first five Zelda games onto one catridge, that would be a start. Perhaps even upgrading the graphics of Zelda I and II, but leave the game the same."
Fascinating. I've now seen both flames and praise for Nintendo's ports of their classic games modded up.
Question: Do you prefer to play some games on the PC over a console because of the mouse interface? Think about it.
" Ok. Out of you, how many have lost their stylus at one time or another? All of you?"
No, I haven't. And I've had several PDA devices over the years. Even if I had lost one, calm down man, they're just a hunk of plastic. It's not like Wacom tablets where you MUST have the stylus to use it. Even in the event of a lost tablet, BFD, go buy a cheapy Palm stylus. (As if Nintendo isn't going to make replacement stylus's available.)
"But please, lay off the crack in the R&D department, huh? R.O.B.? The Power Glove and Power Pad? Virtua Boy? And now... DS."
Crack in the R&D department? You mean like the analog sticks on the N64 controllers? How about the shoulder buttons on the SNES pad? No? How about the Rumble Pak? 4 controller ports on the front? The original Game Boy? Give Nintendo some credit, you owe several 'revolutions' in gaming (note: don't confuse revolution with invention.) to Nintendo. If that's not enough, go watch the Dogs demo. If even that isn't enough, consider that the DS is a GBA compatible + 3D processing + twice the screen real-estate with wireless features.
You have to try REAL hard not to see what this thing brings to the table.
"The touch screen opens so many new avenues of gaming, I cannot wait to see what dev's cook up for it. check out the puppy demo for example http://gba.n64europe.com/specials/nintendogsflash. htm"
"yes it does open new avenues of gaming, but since DS is the only one with dual screen like this, how many game producer/publisher/developers would invest into developing a game only for DS? I'm not sure the $$ figures needed to develop games for DS but it wont be small.."
Oh I dunno about that. The bigger bite is that these games run about $30, just like with the GBA. That's a huge bite out of potential profits. That's probably why a lot of portable games out there don't enjoy the same level of depth that home consoles do. (Of course, I'm skipping over the obvious technical hurdles.)
I know it sounds like I drove your point even farther, but think about this: Simple games do well on portable systems. Tetris... Wario Ware?... Now the DS has a few new gadgets to broaden the horizons of what can be done in a simple game. So yes, I agree with you, we may not see that many games published on both the DS and the PSP. However, there is a real strong chance that we'll still see a good number of games. Maybe I'm being too much of a optimistic Nintendo fan boy, but hey, how could this system not stir up the imagination? Nintendo alone will publish good titles that'll insure enough people wanna buy these things. The more that make their way out there, the more titles we'll see. Exciting times!
"All the Post did was repeat rumor and speculation on the internet. Not surprisingly, it's a Kerry spin attempt in pudge's view."
I know, this is not the most insightful thing I could say, but I really hate election years. Last night I watched something on TV about Afghanistan's elections. They mentioned having like 16 candidates to choose from. Instead of using TV (well there aren't many TVs from what I gather, but I am rather ignorant of Afghani culture) the elders etc promote the candidate. It was depicted as being somewhat primitive copmared to the elections in the USA, but man, I ached for that type of thing here. Although I imagine they're immune to all the half truths flying around from all sides.
"Uh, you may have loved it, but this is often cited as the exact reason the DC failed."
Too bad that isn't what made it fail. What made it fail was that Sega didn't have enough money to put out enough machines to make enough profit on the games that would eventually come down. The people who were saavy enough to download and rip games were unlikely to be high enough in number to cause Sega to pull back.
"b) Laptop manufacturers don't like users messing with the hardware. Your laptop most likely has a cover underneath that you can remove by unscrewing a standard screw, and the hard disk is most likely inside it (that's the case with my Compaq Presario). However, it might happen that you have to use some special hexagonal key to reach the hard disk, as is the case on my wife's Sony laptop."
Worse. Some manufacturers (Toshiba, for example...) like to use a variety of different screws. Somebody a day or two ago mentioned using an ice cube tray to store various sized screws from his iBook. Thought I'd pass that advice along.
Ah, while I'm on the topic, I hope your laptop has an optical drive. (Yeah yeah, I didn't RTFA) I'm really happy with my Tablet PC, but I'm spooked at the concept of reinstalling the OS on it.
Slashdot Mirror
"The person throwing them is still an asshole, but if you're not going to duck, you're an idiot."
A criminal's sentence is not inversely related to the IQ of his or her victim.
".in all seriousness, what happens if the AI system malfunctions?"
Then the system will report that the damage report machine has been damaged.
"If we could allowocate all the money going to embryonic stem cells to adult stem cells"
That's unpossible!
"Then why did you post it?"
Why not?
" I hate it when these tight-assed lawyers are making ridiculous claims about Rockstar without even playing the game!"
Wanna know what bugs me? I've been gaming since the early 90's. I've played the heck out of every 'bad game' out there. Mortal Kombat, GTA, Quake, Doom, you name it. According to all the Kile's Moms out there, I should be totally desensitized to violence. Wrong. 9-11 shocked me. Rotten.com shocks me. Somebody on Slashdot once related a story about how his wife knew somebody who was killed by lightning. I was saddened by that story.
They have a very long uphill battle before them if they wish to convince me that a game would make somebody do something like that.
"How would an image project on to a rotating screen work? I just can't see it happaning, it would have to be spinning pretty fast. My poor monitor..."
What you do is mount a screen on a spinning doohickey. As the screen rotates, different images flash on the screen. Make the pixels flash at the right time, and the speck of light will appear to float in space. Use enough dots, and you can make an image.
I've actually seen this work at the 01 Siggraph show. It's not the greatest display ever (think vector graphics like in really old video games), but it's a start I suppose. Ever go to Sharper Image and see the clock that uses spinning LEDs? It's sort of like that.
"Whats with the current trend of /.ers that are spewing randomly that every piece of news here sucks?"
I imagine it's to raise their ambient IQ.
A couple of years ago, the big fad was to shout "This isn't news!" every time a story went by. "A cure for cancer has been discovered!" "This is NOT news!! Diseases are cured all the time!" I think it started when Slashdot really did post a 'not news!' item, somebody got modded up for pointing it out, and blammo. Instant karma goldmine.
One day I saw an opportunity to poke fun at it when a story ran to the tune of "Some company is releasing a 55x CD ROM!" And, thinking I was a real smart-ass, I replied with "This is not news! You can do the same thing with a 4x CD-ROM if you just wait a little longer!" (+5, Informative.)
"Sorry to say this, but your creations are, quite frankly, shit."
You haven't seen shit.
"Guess what my ass is a provider of?"
I'm impressed you can type so legibly with your own butt.
" If you think it's worth it, use it and don't bitch. If you think it's not worth it, use a different product and don't bitch. You make the choice, you get the pros and cons."
One should not express demand? Right. There's no competition going on here. Because of that, it's not a case of "use another product and quitcherbitchen". It's a case of "this is what you can get, tough shit." If people are not getting what they want, they have every right to complain. Sooner or later, somebody will come along and realize there's demand to fill. If they don't, then it's just accepted and blammo, no innovation.
Sorry bud, short of piracy, complaining's all we got.
"PS. I'm sure a lot of you will disagree, but at least I can claim to be a content creator myself..."
I'm a content creator myself, and my feeling is that it isn't good business to take away what makes your product interesting. If my customers want to rip the movie I'm working on so they can watch in on their laptop, why would I expect my sales to go up if I deny them that?
"We shall all rejoice!"
YEah!!! Only one technology to crack!
"PSP:
R4000 CPU @ ~133MHz
32M RAM
480 x 272, widescreen TFT
USB 2.0
802.11b
IrDA"
"$350 for for a portable system anchored to an outlet, priceless."
"So, did anyone else want to cry at seeing that Nintendo has finally taken the most wonderful game series ever created by Humankind (ie, Metroid), and made it into a multiplayer death-match-style FPS?"
And that's a bad thing because....?
"Indeed, indeed. The PSP, according to analysts (who have apparently heard, in turn, from game developers), is apparently only managing a battery-life of around 90 minutes or so ( http://www.n-philes.com/index.php?Id=346 ). @_@"
I hate to spoil the fun, but n-philes is a Nintendo fan site. I've never really visited there until now, but I wouldn't trust it for reliable PSP info.
"Very little in the gaming world requires you to actually *watch* two screens"
Bullshit. Plenty of console games would benefit dramatically from dual screens. Zelda comes to mind. You have to pause in order to equip yourself with whatever weapons you want to use. In the same vein, so does Final Fantasy. Now you can have that screen up + have a much better interface for changing things around. Panoramic views are not the only thing you can achieve with multiple screens. Since the bottom one is a touch screen, it's actually very intuitive. Don't believe me? Go look at an ATM or a telephone. Display up top, interface right below. Not a biggie, and not unimportant.
"This looks like a future Virtual Boy, truth be told. "
No it doesn't. How can you compare the VB to a system that's an enhanced GBA?
"Instead, add a simple IR eye tracking monacle that would do the job of the touch pad..."
That is less Virtual Boy'ish than a tried and true stylus interface that has single handedly made PDAs a common item?
"If Nintendo had any sense, they would market the DS as a PDA that has the additional bonus of playing high resolution 3D games, which, most PDA/Smart Phone manufacturers have yet to claim."
What kind of sense would that be? Why would they leave the portable market with a device that plays their current lineup of games to a market they have no business being in where they wouldn't sell that many games? Sorry for the run-on sentence, but that's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. I suppose you've never heard of the CD-I?
"The buttons on the right are arranged in a cross for that very purpose- in Metroid the buttons and the d-pad both do the same thing."
Heh. As much as everybody here hates the Virtual Boy, it had a D-Pad on both sides of the controller. Sadly, that particular innovation never took off. Well.. I guess it kinda did on the N64 controller...
I'm curious, do left-handed people have trouble playing on modern consoles? Is it something you get used to? Is it just the stylus that's a problem?
"If they could fit the first five Zelda games onto one catridge, that would be a start. Perhaps even upgrading the graphics of Zelda I and II, but leave the game the same."
Fascinating. I've now seen both flames and praise for Nintendo's ports of their classic games modded up.
"Is it just me, or is this thing really useless?"
Question: Do you prefer to play some games on the PC over a console because of the mouse interface? Think about it.
" Ok. Out of you, how many have lost their stylus at one time or another? All of you?"
No, I haven't. And I've had several PDA devices over the years. Even if I had lost one, calm down man, they're just a hunk of plastic. It's not like Wacom tablets where you MUST have the stylus to use it. Even in the event of a lost tablet, BFD, go buy a cheapy Palm stylus. (As if Nintendo isn't going to make replacement stylus's available.)
"But please, lay off the crack in the R&D department, huh? R.O.B.? The Power Glove and Power Pad? Virtua Boy? And now... DS."
Crack in the R&D department? You mean like the analog sticks on the N64 controllers? How about the shoulder buttons on the SNES pad? No? How about the Rumble Pak? 4 controller ports on the front? The original Game Boy? Give Nintendo some credit, you owe several 'revolutions' in gaming (note: don't confuse revolution with invention.) to Nintendo. If that's not enough, go watch the Dogs demo. If even that isn't enough, consider that the DS is a GBA compatible + 3D processing + twice the screen real-estate with wireless features.
You have to try REAL hard not to see what this thing brings to the table.
"The touch screen opens so many new avenues of gaming, I cannot wait to see what dev's cook up for it. check out the puppy demo for example http://gba.n64europe.com/specials/nintendogsflash. htm"
Son of a bitch!! (no pun intended!)
Kinda makes ya forget about the PSP, duddn't it?
"yes it does open new avenues of gaming, but since DS is the only one with dual screen like this, how many game producer/publisher/developers would invest into developing a game only for DS? I'm not sure the $$ figures needed to develop games for DS but it wont be small.."
Oh I dunno about that. The bigger bite is that these games run about $30, just like with the GBA. That's a huge bite out of potential profits. That's probably why a lot of portable games out there don't enjoy the same level of depth that home consoles do. (Of course, I'm skipping over the obvious technical hurdles.)
I know it sounds like I drove your point even farther, but think about this: Simple games do well on portable systems. Tetris... Wario Ware?... Now the DS has a few new gadgets to broaden the horizons of what can be done in a simple game. So yes, I agree with you, we may not see that many games published on both the DS and the PSP. However, there is a real strong chance that we'll still see a good number of games. Maybe I'm being too much of a optimistic Nintendo fan boy, but hey, how could this system not stir up the imagination? Nintendo alone will publish good titles that'll insure enough people wanna buy these things. The more that make their way out there, the more titles we'll see. Exciting times!
"Why would this load of crap from Drudge surprise anyone, and why would anyone pay attention to it?"
It gives the Republicans ammo to fire back with.
"All the Post did was repeat rumor and speculation on the internet. Not surprisingly, it's a Kerry spin attempt in pudge's view."
I know, this is not the most insightful thing I could say, but I really hate election years. Last night I watched something on TV about Afghanistan's elections. They mentioned having like 16 candidates to choose from. Instead of using TV (well there aren't many TVs from what I gather, but I am rather ignorant of Afghani culture) the elders etc promote the candidate. It was depicted as being somewhat primitive copmared to the elections in the USA, but man, I ached for that type of thing here. Although I imagine they're immune to all the half truths flying around from all sides.
"Uh, you may have loved it, but this is often cited as the exact reason the DC failed."
Too bad that isn't what made it fail. What made it fail was that Sega didn't have enough money to put out enough machines to make enough profit on the games that would eventually come down. The people who were saavy enough to download and rip games were unlikely to be high enough in number to cause Sega to pull back.
"b) Laptop manufacturers don't like users messing with the hardware. Your laptop most likely has a cover underneath that you can remove by unscrewing a standard screw, and the hard disk is most likely inside it (that's the case with my Compaq Presario). However, it might happen that you have to use some special hexagonal key to reach the hard disk, as is the case on my wife's Sony laptop."
Worse. Some manufacturers (Toshiba, for example...) like to use a variety of different screws. Somebody a day or two ago mentioned using an ice cube tray to store various sized screws from his iBook. Thought I'd pass that advice along.
Ah, while I'm on the topic, I hope your laptop has an optical drive. (Yeah yeah, I didn't RTFA) I'm really happy with my Tablet PC, but I'm spooked at the concept of reinstalling the OS on it.