Game companies: We gamers are patient. We'll wait the two or three years it takes to bring together a good title! Making a good RTS doesn't happen in eight months!
Yes, you'd think so... but I did a brief stint working on an RTS title at a Very Large Game Company, and lemme tell ya, that just ain't the way the industry works, at least as far as I can tell.
Once the powers-that-be decide on a shipping date for a game, and start advance promotion, and make commitments to major retailers that it'll be on their shelves on a given date.... it's pretty much gonna ship in that timeframe, or heads roll.
It's really a shame, because, inevitably, quality suffers (though apparently the market doesn't really care, as long as the game has really cool explosions). Think about it, how many PC games have you bought lately that had a half-dozen patches in the first month or two, and *still* felt like they were rushed to market way too early?
Perhaps if the industry would stop its habit of hyping a game 8-12 months in advance of its anticipated ship date (which are generally pure fantasy in the first place, from my experience), they wouldn't end up in this sort of situation... but somehow that seems unlikely. Alas.
So what's the drawback? I feel that it risks glorifying war.
You don't need to look ahead to see a game doing that. Look at C&C Generals, out right now, which rather blatantly glorifies war... against Middle-Eastern terrorists, no less.
Unless this is a job that you Really Want (or Really Need, for that matter), tell 'em to stick it. Times are tough for job-finding, but at the end of the day, it's just a job, and not worth sacrificing your principles over.
Whether or not such a credit check is deemed "necessary" for a Director-level job is not really relevant, in my opinion: if it's personal information that you don't want to give, don't give it, and if they don't like it, tough.
I wouldn't work for a company that wanted to a credit check, drug test, etc. on me, simply on principle.
Re:guilty about killing "true AI badguys"?
on
Infinite Games?
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· Score: 1
because of how it sort of encourages killing lots of innocent virtual people
Not as far as I can tell. I've been playing it obsessively for a couple of weeks now, and while it certainly allows you to be reprehensible in this manner, I haven't yet encountered any missions that actually encourage it. If anything, it tends to discourage it, since that's a good way to get the police chasing you.
I mean that in a good way, though; it's just that, as far as I'm concerned, games have win/lose conditions, or at least measures-of-success. The Sims, while vastly entertaining for many, is pretty much just a computer-enhanced dollhouse.
Yes. YES. YES!!!!!
I don't understand the obsession with skinnable-ness with all media-player authors. It's just another app; make it look like one.
Re:Efficiency of base 2 arithmetic
on
Hacker's Delight
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· Score: 1
Yep, that's what the book points out (that e is the most efficient base).
However, he goes on to analyze the difference in efficiency between base 2 and bases 3 and e, and concludes that base 2 is more costly only by a factor of 1.062. (Yes, I have the book open in front of me as I type:-)
It's a nice book... most of the information only of practical use to people doing serious code tweaking, but of interest to anyone who codes.
Oh God yes! I upgraded to Q2003 (Mac) in order to download my credit card transactions directly from my bank, as promised on the package. What the package didn't say was that very few banks (including mine) support downloading to the Mac version, only the Windows version. (My bank didn't point this out on their web site, either. Only by calling THEIR tech support did I eventually find this out.)
But wait, the plot thickens... the weird part is that this isn't some wacky thing that would be hard to do in a cross-platform way; both Mac and Windows versions apparently just download transaction info in ".QFX" format, which is apparently some Quicken-specific, vaguely XML-like text file format, that they have somehow, deliberately, made platform-senstivie.
This baffled and dumbfounded me... for one, I can't imagine why they would want to. (It's not like parsing a text file is hard to make cross-platform...)
I don't suppose anyone out there knows the format of this file, so I can manually edit mine to be Mac-compliant?:-)
Yeah, but 1GB is woefully inadequate for my needs... I've been spoiled by my 20GB Neo, which allows me to carry around my entire CD collection at once. Downgrading to anything less would be awful:-)
On that note, though, if someone made a 20GB (or more) add-on HD for a PocketPC-style device, I'd be all over it... anyone know if anyone makes such a thing? Seems like it would be possible to add a "docking sleeve" sort of thing for a notebook-style 2.5" drive that would maybe double to thickness of an ipaq/palm-sized device.
(Yeah, battery life would suck, but that's a nonissue for me, as I rarely listen to MP3s under battery power. It's the "easily-carried" factor, not the "listen on the go" factor, that makes it for me.)
20GB of storage, with no SDMI at all (at least, not on mine); plus, it connects like a plain old USB hard drive, so you can copy any stuff you want to and from it, not just MP3s. Better yet, the hard drive is easily swapped, and doing so doesn't void the warranty. Only drawback is that early models have been slightly flakey (mine had to go back for repairs), but they *seem* to be ironing out those issues.
Now if only they'd make one with a Firewire connection, like the iPod...
(Note to iPod fans: I love all the specs except for hard drive size; 20GB is my *minimum* acceptable size for a portable player.)
Subaru has also marketed a car with a CVT (the Justy), and BMW and Audi are now releasing cars with CVTs (the new Mini and new A4/A6, respectively).
It's actually a cool technology that was first invented for motorscooters (IIRC), but hasn't been used in cars mainly 'cuz its been hard to make one that's practical to produce for high-powered engines.
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Yes, you'd think so... but I did a brief stint working on an RTS title at a Very Large Game Company, and lemme tell ya, that just ain't the way the industry works, at least as far as I can tell.
Once the powers-that-be decide on a shipping date for a game, and start advance promotion, and make commitments to major retailers that it'll be on their shelves on a given date.... it's pretty much gonna ship in that timeframe, or heads roll.
It's really a shame, because, inevitably, quality suffers (though apparently the market doesn't really care, as long as the game has really cool explosions). Think about it, how many PC games have you bought lately that had a half-dozen patches in the first month or two, and *still* felt like they were rushed to market way too early?
Perhaps if the industry would stop its habit of hyping a game 8-12 months in advance of its anticipated ship date (which are generally pure fantasy in the first place, from my experience), they wouldn't end up in this sort of situation... but somehow that seems unlikely. Alas.
You don't need to look ahead to see a game doing that. Look at C&C Generals, out right now, which rather blatantly glorifies war... against Middle-Eastern terrorists, no less.
Yeah, but it's also your privilege to tell 'em where they can stick it.
Employment should be based on one's ability to do the job, period.
Perhaps if the job involves writing software for credit-checking agencies, then yeah, I could see the relevance, but otherwise...
I wouldn't work for a company that required drug screening tests, either.
Unless this is a job that you Really Want (or Really Need, for that matter), tell 'em to stick it. Times are tough for job-finding, but at the end of the day, it's just a job, and not worth sacrificing your principles over.
Whether or not such a credit check is deemed "necessary" for a Director-level job is not really relevant, in my opinion: if it's personal information that you don't want to give, don't give it, and if they don't like it, tough.
I wouldn't work for a company that wanted to a credit check, drug test, etc. on me, simply on principle.
Not as far as I can tell. I've been playing it obsessively for a couple of weeks now, and while it certainly allows you to be reprehensible in this manner, I haven't yet encountered any missions that actually encourage it. If anything, it tends to discourage it, since that's a good way to get the police chasing you.
The Sims isn't a game (IMHO); it's a toy.
I mean that in a good way, though; it's just that, as far as I'm concerned, games have win/lose conditions, or at least measures-of-success. The Sims, while vastly entertaining for many, is pretty much just a computer-enhanced dollhouse.
Yes. YES. YES!!!!! I don't understand the obsession with skinnable-ness with all media-player authors. It's just another app; make it look like one.
Yep, that's what the book points out (that e is the most efficient base). However, he goes on to analyze the difference in efficiency between base 2 and bases 3 and e, and concludes that base 2 is more costly only by a factor of 1.062. (Yes, I have the book open in front of me as I type :-)
It's a nice book... most of the information only of practical use to people doing serious code tweaking, but of interest to anyone who codes.
Oh God yes! I upgraded to Q2003 (Mac) in order to download my credit card transactions directly from my bank, as promised on the package. What the package didn't say was that very few banks (including mine) support downloading to the Mac version, only the Windows version. (My bank didn't point this out on their web site, either. Only by calling THEIR tech support did I eventually find this out.)
:-)
But wait, the plot thickens... the weird part is that this isn't some wacky thing that would be hard to do in a cross-platform way; both Mac and Windows versions apparently just download transaction info in ".QFX" format, which is apparently some Quicken-specific, vaguely XML-like text file format, that they have somehow, deliberately, made platform-senstivie.
This baffled and dumbfounded me... for one, I can't imagine why they would want to. (It's not like parsing a text file is hard to make cross-platform...)
I don't suppose anyone out there knows the format of this file, so I can manually edit mine to be Mac-compliant?
Yeah, but 1GB is woefully inadequate for my needs... I've been spoiled by my 20GB Neo, which allows me to carry around my entire CD collection at once. Downgrading to anything less would be awful :-)
On that note, though, if someone made a 20GB (or more) add-on HD for a PocketPC-style device, I'd be all over it... anyone know if anyone makes such a thing? Seems like it would be possible to add a "docking sleeve" sort of thing for a notebook-style 2.5" drive that would maybe double to thickness of an ipaq/palm-sized device.
(Yeah, battery life would suck, but that's a nonissue for me, as I rarely listen to MP3s under battery power. It's the "easily-carried" factor, not the "listen on the go" factor, that makes it for me.)
Check out the Neo Jukebox from IOMagic:
http://www.iomagic.com/products/neo-index.htm
20GB of storage, with no SDMI at all (at least, not on mine); plus, it connects like a plain old USB hard drive, so you can copy any stuff you want to and from it, not just MP3s. Better yet, the hard drive is easily swapped, and doing so doesn't void the warranty. Only drawback is that early models have been slightly flakey (mine had to go back for repairs), but they *seem* to be ironing out those issues.
Now if only they'd make one with a Firewire connection, like the iPod...
(Note to iPod fans: I love all the specs except for hard drive size; 20GB is my *minimum* acceptable size for a portable player.)
Subaru has also marketed a car with a CVT (the Justy), and BMW and Audi are now releasing cars with CVTs (the new Mini and new A4/A6, respectively). It's actually a cool technology that was first invented for motorscooters (IIRC), but hasn't been used in cars mainly 'cuz its been hard to make one that's practical to produce for high-powered engines.