The demo is very mediocre. It feels like a fan project that was given some time at a major studio. Which I guess is kind of what it is. The production values are uneven, the graphics are uneven, and the pacing is odd. The flow of the environments in the demo were not up to modern standards. The AI is rudimentary at best, the animations look all funky.
Unless a lot has changed since this demo was put together, I imagine the game will be a very bland, linear FPS with small, barren environments and stale gameplay.
The problem is that the elderly stopped learning new things for too long so the tools atrophied. A young person with a brand new smart phone would come in with a clear head and immediately start mentally mapping out functionality and figuring out, maybe not even at a concious level, all the underlying metaphors. They quickly intuit the best way to tap the screen. They figure out how to back out of things and start pressing buttons to see what everything does.
Being old doesnt prevent you from doing any of this. I've seen plenty of old people who never lost that spark to explore and learn who have no trouble with this stuff. Maybe they're not as sharp and it takes a bit longer to learn, but they get it. I don't think we should be dumbing things down for people who don't try to help themselves.
The experience I wrote about happened this past Friday, when I bought the game through Steam. We played version 1.3.6.1 and encountered no fewer than 5 game halting bugs (had to restart area/restart server) and one game breaking bug where we could no longer progress.
I don't know what to say other than it's still very much broken.
I bought Magicka and while it's incredibly fun, it's also completely broken. Singleplayer is buggy as hell and multiplayer straight up doesn't work. I tried playing online with a few friends and it was an absolute blast but after a while, events stopped triggering, we'd get stuck in cutscenes, if anyone had network connectivity issues we'd have to start the level over again entirely... you can't rejoin a game in progress. After 4 hours of the first two levels over and over, we gave up. We got to a point where we'd finish a certain battle and then nothing would let us continue. We tried ten times or so restarting the server, restarting the game, reinstalling the game, nothing.
It's so painful because underneath it's one of the coolest games I've played in a really long time. But as much goodwill as that gets from me, it's not enough to overcome the fact that I purchased a game that essentially doesn't work. And not in a hardware, oh my PC setup is weird, thing. It runs beautifully. Graphics are glitch-free, frame rate is high, everything is great on that side of things. This is the sort of problem where actual game logic is broken and there's no way for me to troubleshoot my way around it.
If the developer is going to start planning a sequel before fixing this game, than consider me a customer lost. I very strongly suggest all of you avoid their products as well.
While the Greek and Latin sections were frightening, the math section looked comfortingly familiar. Noticed a partial fractions question, a bunch of moderate geometric proofs. It's nice to see problems that look basically identical to something I'd have seen on a test just a few years ago.
I couldn't understand some of the questions that weren't questions though! They didn't end with question marks and didn't ask anything in particular.
"To circumscribe a circle about a given triangle."
Uh... alright. So, like, define the center point and radius in terms of (x_1,y_1),(x_2,y_2),(x_3,y_3) or what?
Hey, finally a person who understands the real reason behind Apple's popularity! I don't understand why people on Slashdot skip over your much more obvious explanation and go right for "people buy Apple because it's a 'cool' brand even though the specs suck" That has never made much sense
1.) Apple is not trendy. Companies trying to be trendy throw designer patterns on their products or team up with a celebrity. They end up cycling said trendy product off the market in 6 months as people move on. Apple makes classic minimalist designs that don't look out of date for many, many years. They're the Brooks Brother's of technology design. White plastic, glass, aluminum, clean lines. Their last "trendy" product was the CRT iMac with the giant plastic bubble that came in a million different colors and patterns. Discontinued 2001. If Apple was a trendy brand, people would have moved on from them 20 times over by now. Instead their popularity continues to grow year over year.
2.) Their specs don't actually suck. As farnsworth pointed out, their individual specifications are sometimes lacking but the sum of the parts is always cohesive and satisfying. This is only true for Macs since the Intel switch in 2005, though. (Prior to that were some dark times for the specifications on their computer line.)
The DS Lite would get between 8 and 10 hours of battery life. It was pretty great. Roughly half is a pretty big step down comparatively, even if it's still decent, especially considering the unit's size, power, and capability.
Go to another country and they will find someone who can speak English with relative ease. English is spoken globally and unlike the US, most people in other developed countries (and undeveloped countries!) speak more than one language.
Users who run into paywalls are going to pretty quickly add these sites to the filters, since the results are technically useless even if the content locked away is high-quality. This does not bode well for sites like Experts-Exchange or America's Test Kitchen.
No one knows or cares what processor is in their phone as long as the interface is smooth. And iOS 4 is smooth as silk on that seven month old single core processor.
For games, all that really matters is how well developers are targeting your platform. I'd say they're doing a pretty good job of targeting the iPhone 4.
The drumming skills are not too bad. The keyboard skills on Rockband 3 aren't so bad either. It's hard to screw up when the controller is an actual keyboard and the gems coming at you are the actual piano roll for the song that's playing. And the game teaches you scales, proper form, etc. Not sure about the new "pro guitar" thing, as I've not seen the controller or anything.
They confuse me! I played the mario where the bullets didn't blink and you couldn't jump on the piranha plants because they are biting upwards with their sharp teeth!
Also, how does Nintendo feel about this? Seems like they wouldn't be thrilled about some low-quality proof-of-concept java game using their sprites and sounds.
You're doing that thing where you get argumentative about phones and demand some sort of explanation why I like the iPhone when it's so clearly inferior.
I could come up with reasons, pretty damn good reasons, but that's not the fucking point. The point is that I'm tired of doing so. I'm tired of defending my purchase and, to be frank, I don't even care that much. This whole thing that you're doing right here is irritating as hell and far worse than any passing mentions that anyone here will make to liking things about the iPhone.
Apple is both right and wrong here. They're right in that the bar display has been misleading from the start. They're wrong in saying that was some accident. Of course they know about it. More bars makes your phone look good and to hell with giving the user a sane metric for phone reception.
They're right to say that the bare antenna in not a design flaw. They're wrong to conclude that this means it is not a problem. The only proper way out of this is free bumpers and dielectric coating over the antenna on future models. I know Apple likes to charge $30 for their $0.30 loop of rubber bumper case but this time, they could really be in trouble, so they need to suck it up and do what's right.
And if I see one single comment pimping the Android in this story, I'll have all you Android fans know that you have become what you hate. Why can't someone use a product they like for any reason at all? Is that not allowed anymore, or do we all have to care about the same things you care about and use the same phone that you use?
That would be a nice argument if any of it had been true. You jailbreak once and from then on use a special tool to apply future updates. The jailbreak community usually has the tool updated within a day or two of each major release. Updates from Apple are released at the rate of two or three per year, are not mandatory, and have never broken compatibility with iTunes, at least not since the 3G when I got mine.
The better apps, like MyWi and Winterboard will NEVER be Apple official no matter how popular they are, so it absolutely is worth it.
Oh man, they are going to sell so many copies... of this DRM technology to other companies.
I mean, no one will want the games anymore, but if they market this DRM to delusional companies disproportionately outraged over piracy, they could make a fortune.
Slashdot Mirror
The demo is very mediocre. It feels like a fan project that was given some time at a major studio. Which I guess is kind of what it is. The production values are uneven, the graphics are uneven, and the pacing is odd. The flow of the environments in the demo were not up to modern standards. The AI is rudimentary at best, the animations look all funky.
Unless a lot has changed since this demo was put together, I imagine the game will be a very bland, linear FPS with small, barren environments and stale gameplay.
The problem is that the elderly stopped learning new things for too long so the tools atrophied. A young person with a brand new smart phone would come in with a clear head and immediately start mentally mapping out functionality and figuring out, maybe not even at a concious level, all the underlying metaphors. They quickly intuit the best way to tap the screen. They figure out how to back out of things and start pressing buttons to see what everything does.
Being old doesnt prevent you from doing any of this. I've seen plenty of old people who never lost that spark to explore and learn who have no trouble with this stuff. Maybe they're not as sharp and it takes a bit longer to learn, but they get it. I don't think we should be dumbing things down for people who don't try to help themselves.
The experience I wrote about happened this past Friday, when I bought the game through Steam. We played version 1.3.6.1 and encountered no fewer than 5 game halting bugs (had to restart area/restart server) and one game breaking bug where we could no longer progress.
I don't know what to say other than it's still very much broken.
I bought Magicka and while it's incredibly fun, it's also completely broken. Singleplayer is buggy as hell and multiplayer straight up doesn't work. I tried playing online with a few friends and it was an absolute blast but after a while, events stopped triggering, we'd get stuck in cutscenes, if anyone had network connectivity issues we'd have to start the level over again entirely... you can't rejoin a game in progress. After 4 hours of the first two levels over and over, we gave up. We got to a point where we'd finish a certain battle and then nothing would let us continue. We tried ten times or so restarting the server, restarting the game, reinstalling the game, nothing.
It's so painful because underneath it's one of the coolest games I've played in a really long time. But as much goodwill as that gets from me, it's not enough to overcome the fact that I purchased a game that essentially doesn't work. And not in a hardware, oh my PC setup is weird, thing. It runs beautifully. Graphics are glitch-free, frame rate is high, everything is great on that side of things. This is the sort of problem where actual game logic is broken and there's no way for me to troubleshoot my way around it.
If the developer is going to start planning a sequel before fixing this game, than consider me a customer lost. I very strongly suggest all of you avoid their products as well.
Just like most statistics!
Yes, I'm sure you only scored a paltry 156 because the test was so easy that you got bored.
Ugh, the indignity of taking something designed for normals.
While the Greek and Latin sections were frightening, the math section looked comfortingly familiar. Noticed a partial fractions question, a bunch of moderate geometric proofs. It's nice to see problems that look basically identical to something I'd have seen on a test just a few years ago.
I couldn't understand some of the questions that weren't questions though! They didn't end with question marks and didn't ask anything in particular.
"To circumscribe a circle about a given triangle."
Uh... alright. So, like, define the center point and radius in terms of (x_1,y_1),(x_2,y_2),(x_3,y_3) or what?
Sometimes I read a post and stop after one sentence too.
"You name one drug including Tylenol and cough syrup and you can find a black market for it."
Hey, finally a person who understands the real reason behind Apple's popularity! I don't understand why people on Slashdot skip over your much more obvious explanation and go right for "people buy Apple because it's a 'cool' brand even though the specs suck" That has never made much sense
1.) Apple is not trendy. Companies trying to be trendy throw designer patterns on their products or team up with a celebrity. They end up cycling said trendy product off the market in 6 months as people move on. Apple makes classic minimalist designs that don't look out of date for many, many years. They're the Brooks Brother's of technology design. White plastic, glass, aluminum, clean lines. Their last "trendy" product was the CRT iMac with the giant plastic bubble that came in a million different colors and patterns. Discontinued 2001. If Apple was a trendy brand, people would have moved on from them 20 times over by now. Instead their popularity continues to grow year over year.
2.) Their specs don't actually suck. As farnsworth pointed out, their individual specifications are sometimes lacking but the sum of the parts is always cohesive and satisfying. This is only true for Macs since the Intel switch in 2005, though. (Prior to that were some dark times for the specifications on their computer line.)
The DS Lite would get between 8 and 10 hours of battery life. It was pretty great. Roughly half is a pretty big step down comparatively, even if it's still decent, especially considering the unit's size, power, and capability.
Go to another country and they will find someone who can speak English with relative ease. English is spoken globally and unlike the US, most people in other developed countries (and undeveloped countries!) speak more than one language.
Users who run into paywalls are going to pretty quickly add these sites to the filters, since the results are technically useless even if the content locked away is high-quality. This does not bode well for sites like Experts-Exchange or America's Test Kitchen.
No one knows or cares what processor is in their phone as long as the interface is smooth. And iOS 4 is smooth as silk on that seven month old single core processor.
For games, all that really matters is how well developers are targeting your platform. I'd say they're doing a pretty good job of targeting the iPhone 4.
The demo video makes it look unresponsive and crappy. I fear its performance under less ideal circumstances.
Considering the current state of scientific journalism, that is basically all I need to conclude the system does exist.
The drumming skills are not too bad. The keyboard skills on Rockband 3 aren't so bad either. It's hard to screw up when the controller is an actual keyboard and the gems coming at you are the actual piano roll for the song that's playing. And the game teaches you scales, proper form, etc. Not sure about the new "pro guitar" thing, as I've not seen the controller or anything.
He is promising iPads because they are popular and people want them. Moreover, they know what one is.
And Apple doesn't control enterprise stuff, which is likely what a hospital would use.
They confuse me! I played the mario where the bullets didn't blink and you couldn't jump on the piranha plants because they are biting upwards with their sharp teeth!
Also, how does Nintendo feel about this? Seems like they wouldn't be thrilled about some low-quality proof-of-concept java game using their sprites and sounds.
You're doing that thing where you get argumentative about phones and demand some sort of explanation why I like the iPhone when it's so clearly inferior.
I could come up with reasons, pretty damn good reasons, but that's not the fucking point. The point is that I'm tired of doing so. I'm tired of defending my purchase and, to be frank, I don't even care that much. This whole thing that you're doing right here is irritating as hell and far worse than any passing mentions that anyone here will make to liking things about the iPhone.
You sure know how to put together a convincing argument. It sure is annoying how people advocate the iPhone all over Android articles... oh wait.
I do like how smug you're getting while describing how smug you think Apple users are though. It's charming.
Apple is both right and wrong here. They're right in that the bar display has been misleading from the start. They're wrong in saying that was some accident. Of course they know about it. More bars makes your phone look good and to hell with giving the user a sane metric for phone reception.
They're right to say that the bare antenna in not a design flaw. They're wrong to conclude that this means it is not a problem. The only proper way out of this is free bumpers and dielectric coating over the antenna on future models. I know Apple likes to charge $30 for their $0.30 loop of rubber bumper case but this time, they could really be in trouble, so they need to suck it up and do what's right.
And if I see one single comment pimping the Android in this story, I'll have all you Android fans know that you have become what you hate. Why can't someone use a product they like for any reason at all? Is that not allowed anymore, or do we all have to care about the same things you care about and use the same phone that you use?
Throw it away and don't feel bad about it. New Jersey isn't even at 10% capacity yet.
That would be a nice argument if any of it had been true. You jailbreak once and from then on use a special tool to apply future updates. The jailbreak community usually has the tool updated within a day or two of each major release. Updates from Apple are released at the rate of two or three per year, are not mandatory, and have never broken compatibility with iTunes, at least not since the 3G when I got mine.
The better apps, like MyWi and Winterboard will NEVER be Apple official no matter how popular they are, so it absolutely is worth it.
The "app store" concept might help a lot in this regard.
Oh man, they are going to sell so many copies... of this DRM technology to other companies.
I mean, no one will want the games anymore, but if they market this DRM to delusional companies disproportionately outraged over piracy, they could make a fortune.