But see the end of Shadow of the Colossus for a great way of using this phenomenon for creating a strong emotional bind between the player and the character... I won't spoil it, if you've played it you'll know what I'm talking about -- it's pure genius.
A couple of weeks ago, I bought Psychonauts for the PS2,
conviced by NoobToob, and
the fact that it's written by Tim Schäfer (man, did I love
Day
of the Tentacle) that it's going to be a great game with
clever humour. So I started it up with great anticipation, and
was soon disappointed. While it delivered on the humour front,
as a game, it was a pain in the ass to play, due to unbearable
loading times and frequent framedrops and slowdowns.
Now, what does this have to do with our subject? Well, it got me
thinking about how I nearly always finish movies or books I
start. No matter how boring and
pompous, sitting through a movie is never really
tedious. There are lots of movies where shitty execution covers
an otherwise solid concept, and I'm sure everyone's read books
that are poorly written yet have messages that are definitely
worth absorbing.
But if it's a game, and even one that shows so much promise for
its writing as does the first couple of levels in Psychonauts,
if I have to waste 20-30 seconds each time I go from one place
to another looking at a boring "loading..." screen, sooner
rather than later I'm going to say "fuck that shit" and just not
care what witty humour awaits in the next room.
And this is not the same as whining about superficial stuff like
graphics. Take Shadow of the
Colossus, for instance. After I've finished this truly
marvelous game, I've read on a lot of sites how horrible its
graphics and textures are by today's standards. But when I was
playing it, I was so overwhelmed by the experience, as opposed
to the sensation, that even at this point I still can't look at
screenshots and not be awed.
OK so I didn't exactly cry in ICO, but at one point I got worried that maybe the NPC might be in serious trouble. I think that qualifies.
Anyone interested in arts and games shoud definitely check out ICO: the gameplay is fun in itself (it's basically the precursor for the new Prince of Persia game, where the puzzle is in the 3D architecture itself), but its artistic qualities make it the "poem of computer games".
Yes, but -- if you're older than, say, 12, you've probably already had the thoughts that Waking Life presents. If the same movie with the same technique was made, but in a deep, thought-provoking manner, it could have been a very good movie.
I watch a lot of movies, including obscure ones. Of course I avoid mainstream Hollywood movies that I know I'm not going to like, but I still think it's interesting that the two worst movies I've ever seen don't come from Hollywood. And the two movies mentioned are:... drumroll...
Pola X and Waking Life.
The funny thing about Waking Life is, I can imagine stupid Americans thinking how deep it is:)
So I went to the demo site at http://testing.tc.iupui.edu/fipsedemo/ and c&p'd an essay generated by the Postmodernism Generator and guess what -- it got a nearly perfect score!
Overall: 100 3.2384
Content: 100 3.0584
Creativity: 99.973 2.9973
Style: 100 3.4543
Mechanics: 100 3.6429
Organization: 100 3.4075
You don't need CrossOver -- you can use the stand-alone QuickTime player with WINE. The only thing needed is modifying ~/.wine/config to look like the one distributed with CrossOver. This way you can continue to use the 100% free WINE.
I don't know what C++ wrapper you were looking at, but GTK-- (and its respective libgnomeui wrapper, GNOME--) offer extensive C++ bindigs that go to great length to give you a "clean C++ feel".
Here's a link to the home page.
As for the canvas, I myself have used the C++ interface to the GNOEM canvas so I am pretty sure they exist and are usable (in fact, they are better than the C API since they are completely type-safe).
Actually, the L/D chirality is only defined as `chiral like the L (or D) glycerin-aldehyd', and two D molecules don't neccesarily rotate polarized light in the same direction (in fact, your definition is a sure way to get fired from your biochemistry exam:)
This gives a whole new meaning to the expression "Just my 2 cents"...
Just curious: How large is the DB?
on
Moderation Ideas
·
· Score: 1
All these weird and complicated (but, I have to add, pretty good and well tought-out) rules and systems seem to rely on a large database of past events, like who moderated what and the like. I'm just curious how big the whole DB is now, how fast it grows (I assume the growth speed accelerates as more and more moderation aspects depend on history -> more info is needed to be stored), and how long the information gets stored. I mean, if I were to comment on "GNOME 0.1 released" or something like that, were I also able to moderate it (and other messages in the thread) just as I can moderate posts made today?
Just curious: How large is the DB?
on
Moderation Ideas
·
· Score: 0
All these weird and complicated (but, I have to add, pretty good and well tought-out) rules and systems seem to rely on a large database of past events, like who moderated what and the like. I'm just curious how big the whole DB is now, how fast it grows (I assume the growth speed accelerates as more and more moderation aspects depend on history, more info is needed to be stored), and how long the information gets stored. I mean, if I were to comment on "GNOME 0.1 released" or something like that, were I also able to moderate it (and other messages in the thread) just as I can moderate posts made today?
Just curious: How large is the DB?
on
Moderation Ideas
·
· Score: 0
All these weird and complicated (but, I have to add, pretty good and well tought-out) rules and systems seem to rely on a large database of past events, like who moderated what and the like. I'm just curious how big the whole DB is now, how fast it grows (I assume the growth speed accelerates as more and more moderation aspects depend on history -> more info is needed to be stored), and how long the information gets stored. I mean, if I were to comment on "GNOME 0.1 released" or something like that, were I also able to moderate it (and other messages in the thread) just as I can moderate posts made today?
ooooooo like some other unnamed Internet news source commonly referred to only as a combination of two ASCII characters (namely, 0x2f 0x2e). Good thing I'm not an addict myself, I only reload the front page every 10 minutes...
What you describe are IF (Interactive Fiction) games, and a big bunch of those use the Infocom ZipCode-format, which is a virtual machine that runs byte-coded games, and is therefore of course platform independent (can you say Java made in the 80's?). There are plenty of ZipCode interpreters for Unixen, the two most widely used are Frotz and XZip (sorry, no URLs this time, but there are nice Debian packages for both of them, look around at your local Debian mirror). A huge archive of IF games can be found at the GMD IF archive (look for the files called.z{number}).
(This comment is based on M5, I'm d/ling M6 right now)
I don't get it... The renderer engine is fast as hell and works great (at least that's my experience) but the GTK-based front end is buggy (lots of warnings and criticals) and slooooow. I've written some programs in GTK-- (BTW, if Mozilla is C++, why doesn't it use GTK-- instead of GTK+?) and I have no idea why they found it so difficult to make the front-end bug-free.
I just can't figure out how Creative plans to stay current with the kernel. I mean they'll have to distribute the binary verison for all the architectures times all the kernel versions (including -acX and -preX versions) times 2 (SMP and single CPU). Will they provide that much flavours?
For example I can't try this because I'm running 2.2.6 (I have 2.2.7 compiled but am just lazy to reboot:) on an SMP box. Any ideas what I should do?
I fail to see why there can't be a warranty on software... I mean if you let your horde of trained mammals loose, I'm sure one can _prove_, using elementary mathematics, whether a given program is bug-free or not. Of course as the codebase gets bigger and bigger, this requires more of an effort, but that's what QA is for, isn't it?
So how come the software companies can have no warranty at all, and noone's complaining???
Heck, even I could sell you WinExtra++ 53.953 for only $500. What? You got an empty floppy disk? Sorry, read my disclaimer and non-warranty fine print...
Slashdot Mirror
But see the end of Shadow of the Colossus for a great way of using this phenomenon for creating a strong emotional bind between the player and the character... I won't spoil it, if you've played it you'll know what I'm talking about -- it's pure genius.
(As posted to my blog)
A couple of weeks ago, I bought Psychonauts for the PS2, conviced by NoobToob, and the fact that it's written by Tim Schäfer (man, did I love Day of the Tentacle) that it's going to be a great game with clever humour. So I started it up with great anticipation, and was soon disappointed. While it delivered on the humour front, as a game, it was a pain in the ass to play, due to unbearable loading times and frequent framedrops and slowdowns.
Now, what does this have to do with our subject? Well, it got me thinking about how I nearly always finish movies or books I start. No matter how boring and pompous, sitting through a movie is never really tedious. There are lots of movies where shitty execution covers an otherwise solid concept, and I'm sure everyone's read books that are poorly written yet have messages that are definitely worth absorbing.
But if it's a game, and even one that shows so much promise for its writing as does the first couple of levels in Psychonauts, if I have to waste 20-30 seconds each time I go from one place to another looking at a boring "loading..." screen, sooner rather than later I'm going to say "fuck that shit" and just not care what witty humour awaits in the next room.
And this is not the same as whining about superficial stuff like graphics. Take Shadow of the Colossus, for instance. After I've finished this truly marvelous game, I've read on a lot of sites how horrible its graphics and textures are by today's standards. But when I was playing it, I was so overwhelmed by the experience, as opposed to the sensation, that even at this point I still can't look at screenshots and not be awed.
Except the idea was stolen from Cube
No shit.
FYI, I'm experiencing similar problems in dcgui-qt's directory selector in Debian, maybe the QT library in Debian is just FUBAR ATM.
OK so I didn't exactly cry in ICO, but at one point I got worried that maybe the NPC might be in serious trouble. I think that qualifies.
Anyone interested in arts and games shoud definitely check out ICO: the gameplay is fun in itself (it's basically the precursor for the new Prince of Persia game, where the puzzle is in the 3D architecture itself), but its artistic qualities make it the "poem of computer games".
Yes, but -- if you're older than, say, 12, you've probably already had the thoughts that Waking Life presents. If the same movie with the same technique was made, but in a deep, thought-provoking manner, it could have been a very good movie.
I watch a lot of movies, including obscure ones. Of course I avoid mainstream Hollywood movies that I know I'm not going to like, but I still think it's interesting that the two worst movies I've ever seen don't come from Hollywood. And the two movies mentioned are: ... drumroll...
Pola X and Waking Life.
The funny thing about Waking Life is, I can imagine stupid Americans thinking how deep it is :)
... as you can see in this article :)
So I went to the demo site at http://testing.tc.iupui.edu/fipsedemo/ and c&p'd an essay generated by the Postmodernism Generator and guess what -- it got a nearly perfect score!
Overall: 100 3.2384
Content: 100 3.0584
Creativity: 99.973 2.9973
Style: 100 3.4543
Mechanics: 100 3.6429
Organization: 100 3.4075
You don't need CrossOver -- you can use the stand-alone QuickTime player with WINE. The only thing needed is modifying ~/.wine/config to look like the one distributed with CrossOver. This way you can continue to use the 100% free WINE.
I don't know what C++ wrapper you were looking at, but GTK-- (and its respective libgnomeui wrapper, GNOME--) offer extensive C++ bindigs that go to great length to give you a "clean C++ feel". Here's a link to the home page. As for the canvas, I myself have used the C++ interface to the GNOEM canvas so I am pretty sure they exist and are usable (in fact, they are better than the C API since they are completely type-safe).
Actually, the L/D chirality is only defined as `chiral like the L (or D) glycerin-aldehyd', and two D molecules don't neccesarily rotate polarized light in the same direction (in fact, your definition is a sure way to get fired from your biochemistry exam:)
label.set(selected->description);
title.set(selected->name);
description.set(selected->title);
This gives a whole new meaning to the expression "Just my 2 cents"...
All these weird and complicated (but, I have to add, pretty good and well tought-out) rules and systems seem to rely on a large database of past events, like who moderated what and the like. I'm just curious how big the whole DB is now, how fast it grows (I assume the growth speed accelerates as more and more moderation aspects depend on history -> more info is needed to be stored), and how long the information gets stored. I mean, if I were to comment on "GNOME 0.1 released" or something like that, were I also able to moderate it (and other messages in the thread) just as I can moderate posts made today?
All these weird and complicated (but, I have to add, pretty good and well tought-out) rules and systems seem to rely on a large database of past events, like who moderated what and the like. I'm just curious how big the whole DB is now, how fast it grows (I assume the growth speed accelerates as more and more moderation aspects depend on history, more info is needed to be stored), and how long the information gets stored. I mean, if I were to comment on "GNOME 0.1 released" or something like that, were I also able to moderate it (and other messages in the thread) just as I can moderate posts made today?
All these weird and complicated (but, I have to add, pretty good and well tought-out) rules and systems seem to rely on a large database of past events, like who moderated what and the like. I'm just curious how big the whole DB is now, how fast it grows (I assume the growth speed accelerates as more and more moderation aspects depend on history -> more info is needed to be stored), and how long the information gets stored. I mean, if I were to comment on "GNOME 0.1 released" or something like that, were I also able to moderate it (and other messages in the thread) just as I can moderate posts made today?
ooooooo like some other unnamed Internet news source commonly referred to only as a combination of two ASCII characters (namely, 0x2f 0x2e). Good thing I'm not an addict myself, I only reload the front page every 10 minutes...
A good place to hang around if you're into IF are rec.arts.int-fiction and rec.games.int-fiction.
STD disclaimer: yes, my English is crap. But surely you can make something out of it...
Not that this is a good excuse for it being so buggy, let me add...
(This comment is based on M5, I'm d/ling M6 right now)
I don't get it... The renderer engine is fast as hell and works great (at least that's my experience) but the GTK-based front end is buggy (lots of warnings and criticals) and slooooow. I've written some programs in GTK-- (BTW, if Mozilla is C++, why doesn't it use GTK-- instead of GTK+?) and I have no idea why they found it so difficult to make the front-end bug-free.
I just can't figure out how Creative plans to stay current with the kernel. I mean they'll have to distribute the binary verison for all the architectures times all the kernel versions (including -acX and -preX versions) times 2 (SMP and single CPU). Will they provide that much flavours?
For example I can't try this because I'm running 2.2.6 (I have 2.2.7 compiled but am just lazy to reboot:) on an SMP box. Any ideas what I should do?
I fail to see why there can't be a warranty on software...
I mean if you let your horde of trained mammals loose, I'm sure one can _prove_, using elementary mathematics, whether a given program is bug-free or not.
Of course as the codebase gets bigger and bigger, this requires more of an effort, but that's what QA is for, isn't it?
So how come the software companies can have no warranty at all, and noone's complaining???
Heck, even I could sell you WinExtra++ 53.953 for only $500. What? You got an empty floppy disk? Sorry, read my disclaimer and non-warranty fine print...
Does that also mean we won't see the next episode of my all-time favourite games, Quest for Glory and Gabriel Knight?
Or is it in the other way and they will ONLY make these from now on? I certainly hope so...