This doesn't compete with Inform, TADS, or any of the narrative languages, at least in a meaningful way. As best I can tell, this approach doesn't even allow for a traditional guided narrative at all.
You have an initial setup (there's your bit of narrative). You have Stages, Verbs, Actors with Inclinations (personality), and Roles (which are sets of reactions).
You, the player, and the Actors can all perform Verbs. Performing a Verb on an Actor causes a reaction, defined by a Role assigned to the Actor. Actors semi-autonomously react, within their Roles, by performing Verbs on you and the other Actors. The Verbs they pick are constrained by the Role, and weighted by the Actor's Inclinations. Actors also choose to wander between Stages according to Inclinations, which increases or decreases the possibility that two actors meet. The important bit is that all of this is cyclic. If I do something to Actor A, Actor A may react by doing something to Actor B, who in turn reacts...etc. Or Actor B may just have -witnessed- what I did to Actor A, and then goes off and gossips to Actor C, who...etc.
So, basically, any story is emergent. You define Actors, Stages, Verbs, Inclinations, and Roles, so as to guide the Storyworld towards a particular type of theme, but from there, you (the architect) don't have very granular control. I suppose you could program an Actor as the MoverAndShaker, whose agenda (through some pretty absolute Inclinations and Roles) is basically to wander through the Storyworld and provoke people in the direction you want.
In any case, note that this type of storytelling can be very successful. Facade works much this way.
It's a really interesting setup. In its current form, I'm not sure how successful it be for game-authoring, if only because the game interface seems to be Actors' talking heads plus a diagrammed language. It's pretty obscure for any sort of casual player. But as a core technology and an authoring system, I think there are terrific possibilities for this. I'd be especially interested in a hybrid between this and traditional guided narrative.
I can't remember if he used a toy whistle or did it himself. John "Captain Crunch" Draper is mildly famous for having discovered in the 70s that a whistle included in a box of CC cereal gave off a 2600Hz tone. This tone was a signaling tone on the AT&T lines, and let you gain operator access. There was also a phone phreak legend back in the day (I'm not sure of the truth of it) about a blind kid with perfect pitch who could whistle the necessary tones.
Don't get me wrong--The Core is a huge abortion of a film, scientifically speaking, but that particular part was kind of a cool nod to the past. Of course, everything's digitally switched now, so it was kind of a pointless one.:)
Re:Not all AAs are created equal
on
USB Batteries
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I suspect this has more to do with labelling than actual capacity. Rechargeables have been putting out a 1.2v for years now. They are around 1.25V just after charge, and it's possible they were claimed as such by some manufacturer or the other. I've never seen a 1.5V NiCad or NiMH.
Anyway, alkalines are only 1.5V out of the box. When they're "dead", they're at around 0.6V, and it's a fairly linear decline over time. In fact, electronics made to run on alkalines are generally fine down to around 0.9V or so, since the decline is expected.
NiMHs and NiCads are ~1.2V after a charge, and stay there until just before they die, when they nosedive. This is why cameras recommend non-alkaline batteries--the flash actually requires that the voltage is somewhere around the maximum; alkaline batteries drop voltage so quickly that the flash only works a relatively small number of times.
Well, and therein lies the problem. Rich people go to shows, out to dinner, etc. Poor people stay in and bump uglies--after all, it's free. You're just perpetuating poverty here!
Well, my last plane trip, I "won" twice in a row, going and coming. And that was on a round-trip ticket. My last name is English/German, and I'm as white as white can be. But I also had no checked luggage (it was a short trip) and had a bunch of piercings at the time, including a facial one. Assuming the ticketing agent has any amount of discretion, I figure I set off her freak/nerd alarm.
By the by, things get interesting when your nipple piercings set off the metal-detecting wand. Apparently, it's unacceptable to lift your shirt in the airport terminal, so I ended up getting felt up by a 75yo TSA guy. This was -not- the highlight of my trip.
The thing is that upsell policies usually aren't -intended- as "sell them everything, whether they need it or not." The intention generally starts out as "suggest everything to them, in case they might need it. find reasons that they need it that they don't know about," etc. The problem is that very impressionable people take every suggestion as gold, and buy lots of unnecessary crap. As much as I dislike telemarketers, it's difficult to fully blame the salesperson for a customer using no discretion whatsoever.
I wonder if the trend towards consumer naivete is universal when one gets elderly. I'd say most of our generation is pretty consumer-savvy. Will we continue to be so when we get old? Or will a combination of loneliness and senility end up making us into "yes dears" as well?
The difference is that parody has to specifically make fun of the original, whereas satire uses portions of the original to make fun of something else. "Smells Like Nirvana" is plainly parody. Most of the rest of his stuff's borderline. I'd argue that "Jurassic Park" primarily makes fun of the titular movie, rather than "Macarthur Park."
It's for more than courtesy that he gets permission, I think.
Are you serious? If he can get a better return on his investment than the loans cost, and didn't misrepresent his financial situation, then that's just good business. It's similar to financing a car at a very low interest rate so you can invest your cash at a high interest rate. It just makes sense, so long as you watch what the heck you're doing and don't spend the payoff money out from under yourself.
Careful; resting your wrist on the desk may come back and haunt you in a few years.:/
I use an MX518, and use one of those oval gel wrist pads with it. the butt of my palm rests on the pad (not my wrist!) and I mouse mostly with my fingers, with some side-to-side on my wrist for big movements. With the 1600DPI resolution, this is completely viable, and I love it. My wrists usually don't hurt anymore, which is a big change from the past.
You know, I'm honestly not sure. I don't see it listed on CompUSA or Fry's/Outpost. Amusingly, Walmart lists Workstation v5.0, but it's Out of Stock.:)
Slashdot Mirror
This doesn't compete with Inform, TADS, or any of the narrative languages, at least in a meaningful way. As best I can tell, this approach doesn't even allow for a traditional guided narrative at all.
You have an initial setup (there's your bit of narrative). You have Stages, Verbs, Actors with Inclinations (personality), and Roles (which are sets of reactions).
You, the player, and the Actors can all perform Verbs. Performing a Verb on an Actor causes a reaction, defined by a Role assigned to the Actor. Actors semi-autonomously react, within their Roles, by performing Verbs on you and the other Actors. The Verbs they pick are constrained by the Role, and weighted by the Actor's Inclinations. Actors also choose to wander between Stages according to Inclinations, which increases or decreases the possibility that two actors meet. The important bit is that all of this is cyclic. If I do something to Actor A, Actor A may react by doing something to Actor B, who in turn reacts...etc. Or Actor B may just have -witnessed- what I did to Actor A, and then goes off and gossips to Actor C, who...etc.
So, basically, any story is emergent. You define Actors, Stages, Verbs, Inclinations, and Roles, so as to guide the Storyworld towards a particular type of theme, but from there, you (the architect) don't have very granular control. I suppose you could program an Actor as the MoverAndShaker, whose agenda (through some pretty absolute Inclinations and Roles) is basically to wander through the Storyworld and provoke people in the direction you want.
In any case, note that this type of storytelling can be very successful. Facade works much this way.
It's a really interesting setup. In its current form, I'm not sure how successful it be for game-authoring, if only because the game interface seems to be Actors' talking heads plus a diagrammed language. It's pretty obscure for any sort of casual player. But as a core technology and an authoring system, I think there are terrific possibilities for this. I'd be especially interested in a hybrid between this and traditional guided narrative.
Just so long as it's only one-way.
"I was doing fine, until it started playing some Crash Worship."
I can't remember if he used a toy whistle or did it himself. John "Captain Crunch" Draper is mildly famous for having discovered in the 70s that a whistle included in a box of CC cereal gave off a 2600Hz tone. This tone was a signaling tone on the AT&T lines, and let you gain operator access. There was also a phone phreak legend back in the day (I'm not sure of the truth of it) about a blind kid with perfect pitch who could whistle the necessary tones.
:)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
Don't get me wrong--The Core is a huge abortion of a film, scientifically speaking, but that particular part was kind of a cool nod to the past. Of course, everything's digitally switched now, so it was kind of a pointless one.
I suspect this has more to do with labelling than actual capacity. Rechargeables have been putting out a 1.2v for years now. They are around 1.25V just after charge, and it's possible they were claimed as such by some manufacturer or the other. I've never seen a 1.5V NiCad or NiMH.
Anyway, alkalines are only 1.5V out of the box. When they're "dead", they're at around 0.6V, and it's a fairly linear decline over time. In fact, electronics made to run on alkalines are generally fine down to around 0.9V or so, since the decline is expected.
NiMHs and NiCads are ~1.2V after a charge, and stay there until just before they die, when they nosedive. This is why cameras recommend non-alkaline batteries--the flash actually requires that the voltage is somewhere around the maximum; alkaline batteries drop voltage so quickly that the flash only works a relatively small number of times.
"genetic pool"
Well, and therein lies the problem. Rich people go to shows, out to dinner, etc. Poor people stay in and bump uglies--after all, it's free. You're just perpetuating poverty here!
You kidding? Have you -seen- the ears on our President?
Vista is going to support cross-platform play with Live Anywhere.
t ory=9369
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?s
Well, my last plane trip, I "won" twice in a row, going and coming. And that was on a round-trip ticket. My last name is English/German, and I'm as white as white can be. But I also had no checked luggage (it was a short trip) and had a bunch of piercings at the time, including a facial one. Assuming the ticketing agent has any amount of discretion, I figure I set off her freak/nerd alarm.
By the by, things get interesting when your nipple piercings set off the metal-detecting wand. Apparently, it's unacceptable to lift your shirt in the airport terminal, so I ended up getting felt up by a 75yo TSA guy. This was -not- the highlight of my trip.
The thing is that upsell policies usually aren't -intended- as "sell them everything, whether they need it or not." The intention generally starts out as "suggest everything to them, in case they might need it. find reasons that they need it that they don't know about," etc. The problem is that very impressionable people take every suggestion as gold, and buy lots of unnecessary crap. As much as I dislike telemarketers, it's difficult to fully blame the salesperson for a customer using no discretion whatsoever.
I wonder if the trend towards consumer naivete is universal when one gets elderly. I'd say most of our generation is pretty consumer-savvy. Will we continue to be so when we get old? Or will a combination of loneliness and senility end up making us into "yes dears" as well?
Moreover, while Weird Al (and his fans) always calls his stuff parody, it's arguably satire, and not protected.
. html
http://grove.ufl.edu/~techlaw/vol9/issue1/collado
The difference is that parody has to specifically make fun of the original, whereas satire uses portions of the original to make fun of something else. "Smells Like Nirvana" is plainly parody. Most of the rest of his stuff's borderline. I'd argue that "Jurassic Park" primarily makes fun of the titular movie, rather than "Macarthur Park."
It's for more than courtesy that he gets permission, I think.
...they're just assholes.
...and their supervisory panel, iCANN.
Ah, yes. The mods.
Are you serious? If he can get a better return on his investment than the loans cost, and didn't misrepresent his financial situation, then that's just good business. It's similar to financing a car at a very low interest rate so you can invest your cash at a high interest rate. It just makes sense, so long as you watch what the heck you're doing and don't spend the payoff money out from under yourself.
http://www.bladeengine.com/BladeEngine/whatis.php
Basically, it's a Choose Your Own Adventure, done electronically.
you don't have to get drunk to have sex.
That depends entirely on who he's having sex with.
so the real question would be 'Is the review worth the money being spent on it?'.
Usually when I wonder this, it's referring to PC Magazine.
No, the -last- thing you want to hear is "Ohhhh, a near miss!"
Careful; resting your wrist on the desk may come back and haunt you in a few years. :/
I use an MX518, and use one of those oval gel wrist pads with it. the butt of my palm rests on the pad (not my wrist!) and I mouse mostly with my fingers, with some side-to-side on my wrist for big movements. With the 1600DPI resolution, this is completely viable, and I love it. My wrists usually don't hurt anymore, which is a big change from the past.
Yeah, nigh unplayable in the arcades.
It got released for PC eventually. Also, there were two PC sequels in the 90s, Kingdom: The Far Reaches and Shadoan.
You know, I'm honestly not sure. I don't see it listed on CompUSA or Fry's/Outpost. Amusingly, Walmart lists Workstation v5.0, but it's Out of Stock. :)
You can buy directly from VMware at VMware Workstation in the VMware Store (including a downloadable get-it-now version). Also, there's a reseller search engine. Running it for my immediate area didn't turn up any big-name stores.
Bleagh. Should've previewed. Of course, I meant Ubuntu (Multiverse) in #1.
ObDisc: I work for VMware, but I don't speak for them in any way, shape, or form. This is a highly unofficial reply.
.deb plans, but the Player is packaged for Debian (Multiverse).
1) Couldn't get an answer for any
2) No plans that I know of. I believe the Apple EULA for OS X requires it to be installed on Mac hardware.
3) That would be the purpose of VMware Player. You might also check out VMware Server, which is more versatile.
4) The latter, Windows hosted on Linux.
I'm guessing it'd be way popular among the Burning Man crowd.