metroid is the game where you have jump boots and can become a sticky ball.
No, Metroid is about exploring a sprawling, hostile environment by gaining new power-ups to reach once-inaccessible areas. It's about discovering new secrets and shortcuts. It's about atmosphere and good gameplay.
If Retro Studios can stick to that in 3d, I'll play it. Hell, if they can stick to that in 1d, I'll play it.
So the Sony model is actually going to be far more expensive per month in order to get access to the same number of games as the Microsoft model.
Sure, if you're going to be playing multiple on-line for-pay games per month. For the most part, though, I don't see myself ever getting hooked on 2 "Everquests" simultaneously (or 1 Everquest, for that matter), so I don't think it's going to be that big of an issue.
Plus, I think it's BS that I'm paying MS to play someone else's game. I like having a little more control over where my dollars go.
Of course, I don't even own (or plan to own) an XBox, so take this with a grain of salt.
An XBox sale is a sale Sony or Nintendo won't make
Possibly. More likely is that most XBox sales are to someone who also owns a PS2 (and/or a Gamecube), and sees something on the XBox that makes the system worth buying.
Let you import your own music to your driving game
Oh boy! Now I get to do all the work to make my game's soundtrack! Now the game developers have a convenient excuse for not including decent music with the game! Oh boy!
The other 2 'features' are pretty much buzz-words and are either useless for games (DD5.1) or useless for 99% of gamers (HDTV modes).
Nintendo releases like 80 or 90% cartoony or kid-targetted games, and maybe a handful of "violent" or "mature" games, and people try to use that handful of games to insist that the primary market of the Gamecube isn't kids.
No, it's not. It's targeted at people who enjoy fun games.
Please, for the love of god just accept it.
Please, for the love of god, just accept that the games you play don't make you any more grown up or (for the really pathetic) masculine.
IANAL, and dispensing legal advice when you're not can get you busted.
This doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but the statement made me think: What if someone asks for legal advice, and you advise them to see a lawyer? Sorta a catch 22...?
Much of the basic window management features (drawing the title bar, grabbing it w/ the mouse and dragging it around) are actually built into a windows app through the development libraries.
This is incorrect. Windows common controls are contained in DLLs, which are *wrapped* by MFC. You don't need MFC or any other library to use the common controls -- and you don't have to write any code to duplicate them yourself. The reason it *looks* like they're built in through libraries is because the class libraries so completely encapsulate the controls, and allow you to override behavior of the controls.
Which is why when an application hangs in Windows you can't even grab its title bar to move it out of the damn way...
bzzt, wrong again. This'll only happen when the thread containing the message loop hangs. It's because the application has ceased passing the events back to the control library so that they can decide what to do. It's all part of event-driven programming -- heard of it?
And, for that reason, the N64 is the king of party video game machines. Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Party 1/2/3, The New Tetris, and tons of other games that people can just pick up and play and have fun.
Of course, if you have no friends IRL to play them with, then a PC with its anonymous, faceless human opponents is probably better for you.
I'd rather have 480p than the improved resolution of 1080i, because interlacing introduces artifacts that negate the resolution gain. That's my reason.
You don't have much wait left -- only about 4 days.
I and a bunch of my friends from work are going to bring my GC into one of the multimedia presentation rooms at work to play RE late at night. Should be a blast.
That is *YOUR* Opinion. Personally, My opinion is that Halo, Project Gotham, Max Payne, Munch's Odysee, Simpsons Road Rage, Rallisport Challenge and DOA3 have all been EXCELLENT games.
Hmm... 3 driving games (1 a port), 2 first person shooters (1 a port), 1 (boring) platformer, and a button-mashing fighter. (I liked DOA 2 -- it was fun. But it was also completely mindless and needed little skill. DOA3 is more of the same.)
I think you need to broaden your tastes if you think that those are all EXCELLENT games.
DD 5.1
Again, a non-feature for video games and real-time audio in general.
1080
You forgot the 'i'. I'll take 480p over 1080i any day.
I'd just like to point out that DD 5.1 is nearly useless for in-game sound effects, because of the terrible latency between the time that the receiver gets the data, and the time the receiver sends the output to the speakers. Note: The latency occurs between the receiver and speakers, not between the console and speakers. It's just built into the decoder, and no amount of clever programming or hardware engineering on the console side can remove it.
Naturally, it *can* be overcome by writing clunky code that tries to predict when sound effects will be played, but how can you predict when someone is going to press a button? Oops, your gunfire sound just played half a second late...
All the consoles can (and should) support DPLII, since it's got: zero latency, zero compression, *nearly* complete frequency range, and backwards compatibility with DPL and stereo receivers.
Dolby Digital is great for movies, but sucks for real-time audio.
Plus, most require that you play it as Administrator, which kills the whole reason for preferring a NT-based kernel over 98's anyway.
No, it doesn't, because that's not the reason to switch to NT. I ran '98 from the time it came out 'til 2k came out, and the reason I switched was stability. I very rarely have to reboot 2k, (by contrast, I was rebooting '98 about once a day -- partially due to a bug in Winamp at the time) and I've yet to find a game that it won't play. And I could care less about 'protecting' myself from administrator priviliges.
Seriously, though -- if you primarily use Windows for gaming, 2k is still worth a look, especially if you're not dual-booting linux. I've been using it for 2 years now, and I'd *never* consider switching back.
How much has all this disk corruption cost consumers? My estimate? At least ten billion dollars.
Really? When I run my numbers, I come up with a trillion zillion dollars. Could you post your source?
For the record, my numbers were generated by randomly choosing 2 large-ish-sounding words, one of which is nonsense.
Or consider macro viruses? People used to ask, "can I get a virus through e-mail?" And we used to be able to tell them "no", unless they chose to open an executable attachment. E-mail macro viruses, Word macro viruses, are only possible due to really stupid design decisions on the part of Microsoft. How costly has that been?
The reason that macro viruses have almost exclusively affected Windows users is that they aren't educated enough to realize that they're being scammed. A user could easily fire up pine, save a.pl to disk, and sudo it if that's what the mail told them to do. The thing is, most people using pine that could sudo something are knowledgeable enough to *not* do it.
I have a ton of respect for John Carmack, but I don't particularly enjoy any of his games. The only thing that gets me excited about id software anymore is "wow -- this is pretty. Imagine what *other* developers will be able to do with this!"
And even still -- id is a team. Same as the (probably also dedicated) teams that built The Sims and Pokemon.
Also -- Pokemon is a "yellow sqwishy thing"? You've obviously never even played it, and don't know anything about it. "Some people don't like Pokemon" because they really don't like it, and others because they don't know what it is.
A kid can tell you what they really like because they don't have to worry about what other people will think about it.
I respect Shigeru Miyamoto a lot. However he is developing the games for a certain demographic.
Yeah. That demographic is called "people." The demographic you seem to belong to is a subset "people" called "people who are too insecure to try a game that might make them look less manly."
Once again, I will pull out the Penny Arcade link that summarizes this so well.
Slashdot Mirror
Had Mario, Link, and Samus been in the initial wave of titles for the GC I think it probably would have sold even more units than it did.
:)
Well, Nintendo has sold very nearly every Gamecube made. I don't think they could sell many more than that, regardless of the titles out for it.
--Jeremy
yes, but then it isn't metroid...
metroid is the game where you have jump boots and can become a sticky ball.
No, Metroid is about exploring a sprawling, hostile environment by gaining new power-ups to reach once-inaccessible areas. It's about discovering new secrets and shortcuts. It's about atmosphere and good gameplay.
If Retro Studios can stick to that in 3d, I'll play it. Hell, if they can stick to that in 1d, I'll play it.
--Jeremy
I hope a GBA Zelda is in the works
You'll find Miyamoto demonstrating one here. It's multiplayer, even.
--Jeremy
So the Sony model is actually going to be far more expensive per month in order to get access to the same number of games as the Microsoft model.
Sure, if you're going to be playing multiple on-line for-pay games per month. For the most part, though, I don't see myself ever getting hooked on 2 "Everquests" simultaneously (or 1 Everquest, for that matter), so I don't think it's going to be that big of an issue.
Plus, I think it's BS that I'm paying MS to play someone else's game. I like having a little more control over where my dollars go.
Of course, I don't even own (or plan to own) an XBox, so take this with a grain of salt.
--Jeremy
But the commerce guys have driven the construction of cathedrals, roads, libraries and schools...
I prefer to think that they've built the strip malls, porn shops, and phone survey firms that we all so enjoy.
--Jeremy
An XBox sale is a sale Sony or Nintendo won't make
Possibly. More likely is that most XBox sales are to someone who also owns a PS2 (and/or a Gamecube), and sees something on the XBox that makes the system worth buying.
--Jeremy
Let you import your own music to your driving game
Oh boy! Now I get to do all the work to make my game's soundtrack! Now the game developers have a convenient excuse for not including decent music with the game! Oh boy!
The other 2 'features' are pretty much buzz-words and are either useless for games (DD5.1) or useless for 99% of gamers (HDTV modes).
--Jeremy
I personally found the gameplay of super smash brothers rediculously repetitive and boring.. I was bored with the game after about 5 minutes.
Man, if you thought SSB:Melee's gameplay was "rediculously repetitive and boring", could you please list a game that *doesn't* meet that criteria?
And if by rediculously repetitive you mean "press button, have character respond," what are you doing playing video games?
--Jeremy
Nintendo releases like 80 or 90% cartoony or kid-targetted games, and maybe a handful of "violent" or "mature" games, and people try to use that handful of games to insist that the primary market of the Gamecube isn't kids.
No, it's not. It's targeted at people who enjoy fun games.
Please, for the love of god just accept it.
Please, for the love of god, just accept that the games you play don't make you any more grown up or (for the really pathetic) masculine.
--Jeremy
IANAL, and dispensing legal advice when you're not can get you busted.
This doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but the statement made me think: What if someone asks for legal advice, and you advise them to see a lawyer? Sorta a catch 22...?
--Jeremy
If those APIs were documented
Ever heard of MSDN?
Look up the IWebBrowser2 control, and all related controls, and then complain about a lack of API documentation.
It's these APIs that people are coding against, and they are documented well enough that someone could easily write a replacement module for them.
Or is there some other API to which you're referring?
--Jeremy
Much of the basic window management features (drawing the title bar, grabbing it w/ the mouse and dragging it around) are actually built into a windows app through the development libraries.
This is incorrect. Windows common controls are contained in DLLs, which are *wrapped* by MFC. You don't need MFC or any other library to use the common controls -- and you don't have to write any code to duplicate them yourself. The reason it *looks* like they're built in through libraries is because the class libraries so completely encapsulate the controls, and allow you to override behavior of the controls.
Which is why when an application hangs in Windows you can't even grab its title bar to move it out of the damn way...
bzzt, wrong again. This'll only happen when the thread containing the message loop hangs. It's because the application has ceased passing the events back to the control library so that they can decide what to do. It's all part of event-driven programming -- heard of it?
-Jeremy
Hell, make an inferior product, but get it into the pop-culture lexicon, and it will be gobbled up.
You just described the success of the PlayStation and PlayStation 2.
--Jeremy
Sorry, nothing beats multiplayer games.
And, for that reason, the N64 is the king of party video game machines. Goldeneye, Mario Kart 64, Super Smash Brothers, Mario Party 1/2/3, The New Tetris, and tons of other games that people can just pick up and play and have fun.
Of course, if you have no friends IRL to play them with, then a PC with its anonymous, faceless human opponents is probably better for you.
--Jeremy
I'd rather have 480p than the improved resolution of 1080i, because interlacing introduces artifacts that negate the resolution gain. That's my reason.
--Jeremy
You don't have much wait left -- only about 4 days.
I and a bunch of my friends from work are going to bring my GC into one of the multimedia presentation rooms at work to play RE late at night. Should be a blast.
--Jeremy
That is *YOUR* Opinion. Personally, My opinion is that Halo, Project Gotham, Max Payne, Munch's Odysee, Simpsons Road Rage, Rallisport Challenge and DOA3 have all been EXCELLENT games.
... 3 driving games (1 a port), 2 first person shooters (1 a port), 1 (boring) platformer, and a button-mashing fighter. (I liked DOA 2 -- it was fun. But it was also completely mindless and needed little skill. DOA3 is more of the same.)
Hmm
I think you need to broaden your tastes if you think that those are all EXCELLENT games.
DD 5.1
Again, a non-feature for video games and real-time audio in general.
1080
You forgot the 'i'. I'll take 480p over 1080i any day.
--Jeremy
And very good Dolby Digital 5.1 sound.
...
I'd just like to point out that DD 5.1 is nearly useless for in-game sound effects, because of the terrible latency between the time that the receiver gets the data, and the time the receiver sends the output to the speakers. Note: The latency occurs between the receiver and speakers, not between the console and speakers. It's just built into the decoder, and no amount of clever programming or hardware engineering on the console side can remove it.
Naturally, it *can* be overcome by writing clunky code that tries to predict when sound effects will be played, but how can you predict when someone is going to press a button? Oops, your gunfire sound just played half a second late
All the consoles can (and should) support DPLII, since it's got: zero latency, zero compression, *nearly* complete frequency range, and backwards compatibility with DPL and stereo receivers.
Dolby Digital is great for movies, but sucks for real-time audio.
--Jeremy
they [Nintendo] have the fewest resources of the big three.
Nintendo has enough liquid cash assets to operate quite happily for years to come, even on zero income.
Having Pokemon on your side is quite helpful.
--Jeremy
This whole thing is pretty much a non-issue, and is a bunch of media hype about Microsoft being a failure for not being the #1 console.
Well, the release of the XBox was pretty much nothing but media hype, so I guess it evens out.
Halo isn't worth $350.
--Jeremy
Plus, most require that you play it as Administrator, which kills the whole reason for preferring a NT-based kernel over 98's anyway.
No, it doesn't, because that's not the reason to switch to NT. I ran '98 from the time it came out 'til 2k came out, and the reason I switched was stability. I very rarely have to reboot 2k, (by contrast, I was rebooting '98 about once a day -- partially due to a bug in Winamp at the time) and I've yet to find a game that it won't play. And I could care less about 'protecting' myself from administrator priviliges.
Seriously, though -- if you primarily use Windows for gaming, 2k is still worth a look, especially if you're not dual-booting linux. I've been using it for 2 years now, and I'd *never* consider switching back.
--Jeremy
How much has all this disk corruption cost consumers? My estimate? At least ten billion dollars.
.pl to disk, and sudo it if that's what the mail told them to do. The thing is, most people using pine that could sudo something are knowledgeable enough to *not* do it.
Really? When I run my numbers, I come up with a trillion zillion dollars. Could you post your source?
For the record, my numbers were generated by randomly choosing 2 large-ish-sounding words, one of which is nonsense.
Or consider macro viruses? People used to ask, "can I get a virus through e-mail?" And we used to be able to tell them "no", unless they chose to open an executable attachment. E-mail macro viruses, Word macro viruses, are only possible due to really stupid design decisions on the part of Microsoft. How costly has that been?
The reason that macro viruses have almost exclusively affected Windows users is that they aren't educated enough to realize that they're being scammed. A user could easily fire up pine, save a
--Jeremy
For "either twice as fast or twice as hard," you'd only need a 33-bit architecture.
For both, you need 34-bit.
"1 bit is to 2 bits" is not the same as "32 bits is to 64 bits."
Using a better analogy, we get a system that crashes 2^32 times as hard/fast, in any combination of the two.
And, for the record, No: I'm not dumb enough to think that a 64-bit processor will be 2^32 times as fast as a 32-bit one.
--Jeremy
I have a ton of respect for John Carmack, but I don't particularly enjoy any of his games. The only thing that gets me excited about id software anymore is "wow -- this is pretty. Imagine what *other* developers will be able to do with this!"
And even still -- id is a team. Same as the (probably also dedicated) teams that built The Sims and Pokemon.
Also -- Pokemon is a "yellow sqwishy thing"? You've obviously never even played it, and don't know anything about it. "Some people don't like Pokemon" because they really don't like it, and others because they don't know what it is.
A kid can tell you what they really like because they don't have to worry about what other people will think about it.
--Jeremy
I respect Shigeru Miyamoto a lot. However he is developing the games for a certain demographic.
Yeah. That demographic is called "people." The demographic you seem to belong to is a subset "people" called "people who are too insecure to try a game that might make them look less manly."
Once again, I will pull out the Penny Arcade link that summarizes this so well.
--Jeremy