There's still one thing music can't yet do in video games: change styles in synchronization with the player's actions. Sure, music comes at important points, but it starts or stops then. You still can't have a dynamic score.
Lucasarts has been using iMuse for a long time in their games.
Through a special Duke Web site modeled on the Apple iTunes site, students also can download faculty-provided course content, including language lessons, music, recorded lectures and audio books.
..but it doesn't help if the clients don't support either vanilla RSS syndication tags (ttl, skipDays, skipHours) or the tags defined by the optional syndication module (updatePeriod, updateFrequency, updateBase).
But even if every client obeyed these and used and respected appropiate HTTP headers (If-Modified-Since, Last-Modified, Expires), it would only make the request flood more synchronized. On the other hand, if the RSS generator randomized the syndication settings, it could distribute the load better and even premptively shift load off the peak times.
with the last boss... and 2 seconds into the last god boss, I die... what fun is that?
Try staying at the center of the screen. The whirlpools at the top and the bottom spew out enemy ships. If you aren't at the horizontal center of the screen, you will eventually get hit.
Let me know if you can't figure out what to do next.:)
R-Type Final, like all R-Type games, requires both reflexes and tactics. The first levels are usually easy enough to complete without practice, but the later levels are a different matter altogether. The game would throw so many enemies (and bullets) at you that you need to plan your movements and weapon usage very carefully.
Sometimes you need to have the right weapon for the job. Sometimes a well-placed Wave Cannon shot is all you need. Sometimes you just need to be in the right place in the right time. Sometimes the correct usage of the Force device is the key. Sometimes you need to dodge like crazy. Sometimes survival requires all of the above.
IMHO, the appeal of the R-Type series has never been in the endings (R-Type Final has three of them), but in the feeling that you get when you finally manage to survive a part of the game which seemed impossible before.
Yes, R-Type Final is difficult, but it is also one of those games where adjusting the difficulty level makes a real difference. On the easiest (Baby) level, not only do you start with the Force device, but you also get to keep your weapons if you die. Also, all enemies are much slower and weaker. If you increase the difficulty level to Bydo or to R-Typer, all enemies are faster and tougher, and even the smallest enemies pose a problem due to the huge number of bullets they spew out. Completing the game on R-Typer without infinite continues will require superhuman reflexes, though.
most of the events which gave the original its 'wow' were scripted events.
True, but Half-Life does also have team-based AI for some monsters (most notably the marines, the black ops and and the alien dogs). For example, the level designer could designate one of the monsters as a leader and the others would follow its lead. If the player killed the leader first, the rest would disperse and stop fighting as effectively.
Also, the monsters could use the terrain for their advantage, if the level designer put "hint" entities at corners, doorways, bunkers, around obstacles and such. For example, the marines do take cover behind obstacles and try to draw the player into a crossfire.
The most "intelligent" monsters of Half-Life are the female black ops with stealth gear. They did require a lot of hint entities to fight effectively, but could lure the player into an ambush by using one of them as bait while the others circled around the player.
Better yet, is there an encrypted, routed "internet" I can plug into at will when I'm online, just to obfuscate my traffic a bit? Or is that what Freenet is about?
Freenet itself can't obfuscate your normal traffic. Freenet is more about uncensorable anonymous publishing and smart caching.
Peek-a-Booty is supposed to be an anonymizing proxy network for Web traffic. Peek-a-Booty uses SSL to communicate between nodes, so it shouldn't stand out from normal traffic too much. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any new releases lately. The latest version is dated June 14th 2002. It's one of those great ideas that nobody bothered to implement properly..
Yes. There's six confiration file options to adjust bandwidth usage:
bandwidthLimit
averageBandwidthLimit
These two control the combined input/output bandwidth usage. bandwidthLimit is the absolute limit, and averageBandwidthLimit sets the average (duh) allowed bandwidth usage, averaged over a week.
Freenet already has this feature. Large files are split into 256KB chunks and they can optionally be encoded with extra redundancy using FEC, so one does not have to download all chunks of the file to get the complete file.
Check out Freenet.
Although it does have a kind of central server to keep a list of public Freenet nodes, it can work without it, because nodes will announce themselves to the network when they join.
Freenet currently uses its own protocol to connect to other nodes, but one of the hidden strengths of Freenet is that one can write plugins to transfer data using different methods, for example via encrypted messages posted thru anonymous remailers or even CPIP:)
A word of caution: Freenet is under heavy development, and the network performance is.. scetchy at best.
If we manage to engineer flesh-and-blood creatures superior to ourselves, humanity could be in deep shit.
Lifeforms don't have to be complex in order to be dangerous. In fact, the greatest risks to human life through the ages have been the simplest lifeforms, like bacteria and virii.
Likewise, a self-replicating nanobot could be more dangerous to all life than any killer robot. It would just consume natural resources at an exponential rate, and if not stopped quickly, would devour the entire planet.
It doesn't take human emotions or "true" thought to tell a bunch of robotic tanks to roll over D.C.
No, but it doesn't stop those tanks from driving into an ambush over and over again. Even the dumbest humans tend to learn from their mistakes, machines do not.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. From the original article:
..but it doesn't help if the clients don't support either vanilla RSS syndication tags (ttl, skipDays, skipHours) or the tags defined by the optional syndication module (updatePeriod, updateFrequency, updateBase).
But even if every client obeyed these and used and respected appropiate HTTP headers (If-Modified-Since, Last-Modified, Expires), it would only make the request flood more synchronized. On the other hand, if the RSS generator randomized the syndication settings, it could distribute the load better and even premptively shift load off the peak times.
Both gestures and pie menus are available as add-ons.
Try staying at the center of the screen. The whirlpools at the top and the bottom spew out enemy ships. If you aren't at the horizontal center of the screen, you will eventually get hit.
Let me know if you can't figure out what to do next. :)
R-Type Final, like all R-Type games, requires both reflexes and tactics. The first levels are usually easy enough to complete without practice, but the later levels are a different matter altogether. The game would throw so many enemies (and bullets) at you that you need to plan your movements and weapon usage very carefully.
Sometimes you need to have the right weapon for the job. Sometimes a well-placed Wave Cannon shot is all you need. Sometimes you just need to be in the right place in the right time. Sometimes the correct usage of the Force device is the key. Sometimes you need to dodge like crazy. Sometimes survival requires all of the above.
IMHO, the appeal of the R-Type series has never been in the endings (R-Type Final has three of them), but in the feeling that you get when you finally manage to survive a part of the game which seemed impossible before.
Yes, R-Type Final is difficult, but it is also one of those games where adjusting the difficulty level makes a real difference. On the easiest (Baby) level, not only do you start with the Force device, but you also get to keep your weapons if you die. Also, all enemies are much slower and weaker. If you increase the difficulty level to Bydo or to R-Typer, all enemies are faster and tougher, and even the smallest enemies pose a problem due to the huge number of bullets they spew out. Completing the game on R-Typer without infinite continues will require superhuman reflexes, though.
True, but Half-Life does also have team-based AI for some monsters (most notably the marines, the black ops and and the alien dogs). For example, the level designer could designate one of the monsters as a leader and the others would follow its lead. If the player killed the leader first, the rest would disperse and stop fighting as effectively.
Also, the monsters could use the terrain for their advantage, if the level designer put "hint" entities at corners, doorways, bunkers, around obstacles and such. For example, the marines do take cover behind obstacles and try to draw the player into a crossfire.
The most "intelligent" monsters of Half-Life are the female black ops with stealth gear. They did require a lot of hint entities to fight effectively, but could lure the player into an ambush by using one of them as bait while the others circled around the player.
Freenet itself can't obfuscate your normal traffic. Freenet is more about uncensorable anonymous publishing and smart caching.
Peek-a-Booty is supposed to be an anonymizing proxy network for Web traffic. Peek-a-Booty uses SSL to communicate between nodes, so it shouldn't stand out from normal traffic too much. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any new releases lately. The latest version is dated June 14th 2002. It's one of those great ideas that nobody bothered to implement properly..
Bitzi does exactly what you describe. Several Gnutella clients have built-in support for it.
Yes. There's six confiration file options to adjust bandwidth usage:
bandwidthLimit
averageBandwidthLimit
These two control the combined input/output bandwidth usage. bandwidthLimit is the absolute limit, and averageBandwidthLimit sets the average (duh) allowed bandwidth usage, averaged over a week.
inputBandwidthLimit
inputAverageBandwidthLimit
outputBandwidthLimit
outputAverageBandwidthLimit
These four should be self-explanatory.
So, for a 10GB monthly limit, the average bandwidth limit should be about 4438 bytes/sec.
try mainport.allowedHosts. FProxy and nodeinfo servlets are obsolete, mainport replaces both of them.
Freenet already has this feature. Large files are split into 256KB chunks and they can optionally be encoded with extra redundancy using FEC, so one does not have to download all chunks of the file to get the complete file.
Check out Freenet. Although it does have a kind of central server to keep a list of public Freenet nodes, it can work without it, because nodes will announce themselves to the network when they join.
Freenet currently uses its own protocol to connect to other nodes, but one of the hidden strengths of Freenet is that one can write plugins to transfer data using different methods, for example via encrypted messages posted thru anonymous remailers or even CPIP :)
A word of caution: Freenet is under heavy development, and the network performance is.. scetchy at best.
Likewise, a self-replicating nanobot could be more dangerous to all life than any killer robot. It would just consume natural resources at an exponential rate, and if not stopped quickly, would devour the entire planet.