### Damn near every female game character is some archetypal short,...
The problem isn't just that the female characters aren't realistic, the problem is that the games aren't. The male characters in games aren't any less stylized then the female ones and same can be said about basically every element of the plot or game in general. As long as games don't even try to tell a story, you don't have to be surprised that its all guys with big fat guns and girls with barely enough cloth to cover them up.
But I doubt that this will happen anytime soon, we had the adventure genre with all its storytelling goodness around for quite some years, it died out for most part and hasn't really come back to shape again. Storytelling simply doesn't sell enough games to make it attractive for publishers and unless those realize that there are gaming markets beside the big blockbuster titles this won't change.
For a tiny few games that might be the case, but for the majority I think a quick-save option is an absolute must-have. The reason for this is very simple: having to replay the same shit over and over again is just plain annoying and frustrating. I have ditched dozens of games exactly because of that, not because they were to hard, but because the lack of a free save game system forced me to replay the *easy* parts over and over and over again. Its not fun or challenging, it annoys and just plain stupid.
I agree that a quick-save system can take the challenge out of a 8bit or 16bit classic almost completly, so it might not be the optimal solution there, however, those games are long gone. Todays games are no longer and hour long and don't require memorizing a level layout and enemy patterns in endless repetition. Today you have the 10-20h games which even if you quick-save your way through the whole game have still enough challenge and length left. Today a quick-save simply removes the needless frustration and brings back the fun into the game. If a boss fight is to hard, you simply save more often and concentrate on the hard part of the fights.
All that said, I think there is room for other save options, when the checkpoints, as in Halo, are close enough together there is not much need for a quick save system and when the levels are short enough like say Mario64DS you don't need one either, especially when you can put the system in stand-by whenever you wish. But a save system like Metroid Prime where you often run around for 30min without a way to save is just completly brain-dead and frustrating. Metroid Prime 3 introduced a few checkpoints, which reduce the frustration, but since they aren't saved to flash, don't help you when you have to stop gaming after 20min, the Wii actually having a stand-by mode, but without a way to use it in-game of course also annoys.
In the end its really very simple: I have never in my life ditched a game because it featured quick-save, but I have done so with many games because they didn't. And while at it, quick-save also provides a way to explore a game in-depth, try crazy stuff and just do whatever you want without risking the last hour of play.
### I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo.
That might very well be, but that really isn't a problem. The goal here isn't to make the best game ever, but to make a game, to demonstrate that the toolchain is usable and to improve it where needed, so that you or somebody else can use it to maybe one day make the best game ever with it.
Blender got a lot of improvements over the course of Elephants Dream and I bet it will be the same with this game.
### I'm honestly not trying to troll here, but it's probably a hell of a lot easier to do those "visionary" and innovative games in a non-free context.
When you are Will Wright himself maybe, if you are anybody else you will likely never get a penny from a publisher. Getting anything remotely or visionary done these days is extremely hard, no matter how you approach it.
That said, doing it Open Source wouldn't be any easier, since especially with Open Source games it is near impossible to assemble when doing something original. When you do a clone of some old classic, you can always point at that and say "Hey, thats what we want to do, come join", if you want to do something original you can point nowhere and even if you have design document, finding people that share that vision gets very hard and troublesome, since nobody really knows where the game will end up and if it will even be fun.
I think this really is just a matter of generation change. Sure, today we will feel discomfort with sticking something to our brain, but what will the next generation think of it or the generation after that? At the beginning it will of course only be the freaks that do it, but over time things might get safer and cheaper and more and more common place. Sooner or later the freaks are those who don't do it, not the other way around.
### I don't know personally a single person who has opted for more invasive cosmetic surgery.
Neither do I, but that seems to be in large part an issue of lack of money and possible benefit. If a job requires it, things can look quite different very quickly.
And also lets not forget those peoples with disabilities, if you already lost your arm, eye or leg, there is a lot of benefit replacing the already missing piece with an enhanced implant.
The change will for sure not happen over night, but the moment you can build those implants there will be people willing to implement them.
### While I agree that ubiquitous HUD is not an unlikely thing, I personally doubt implantation would be the path. If you can implant it, I would wager a more popular and equally effective method would be contact lens display or glasses.
People already fix their eyes by laser today so that they don't have to wear glasses anymore. So I doubt that glasses will be very popular by 2108 when there is an easy way to do an implant instead. By then however I am not so sure if a HUD will even be needed. What about a direct-to-brain interface? Human brain seem to be pretty adoptable, so what happens when you take a child and stick another sensory input to its brain? Will its brain learn to handle it? Be able to access the Internet or whatever directly without making a trip through the eyeball?
Overall I think implants will play a major role in human 'evolution', we are at a point where we can replace quite a few parts in the body. We are not yet past the point where they can perform better then the original, but we aren't far away either. And since many people don't seem to have a problem with useless implants (see breast-implants, tattoos, piercings, etc.) I bet they will become quite popular, when they don't only enhance the look, but also function for something. This isn't even a 2108 thing, I wouldn't be supprised seeing it in the next 10 or 20 years.
### Tony Hawk has been quoted as being interested in using it for one of his skateboarding games.
That sounds like a twisted ankle waiting to happen. Unlike a dance mat the balance board isn't flat, but actually quite high and also quite small, so you really don't want to jump around on that thing or you might very easily misstep. I am also not quite sure if it would be robust enough for that kind of use. From the looks and the name of it, it seems to be designed for exactly one thing: detect balance. None of Nintendos demos involved any kind of jumping or so, just standing there and wiggling a little to the left or right.
### Online multiplayer is not crippled, it's just not being pursued as avidly as the 360/PS3.
Yeah, thats what we call crippled.
### Why would you need play-from-SD or USB storage?
Because a ton of people have exhausted the build in 512MB storage (VC games are huge) and also because there simply isn't a good reason why not. When you already support SD, why make it a second class citizen and not allow the same things you allow for build-in storage?
### As for proper calibration...are you trying to play while laying on the floor?
The point of a lightgun is that you don't have a target reticle, you aim where you want to shoot. Theoretically the Wii could do that, but for that you would need proper calibration (and for even more accuracy a second sensorbar), not just "below TV/above TV" settings. Why even release a Wii Zapper when it can't function as a lightgun?
### A firmware update and 2 new peripherals(the goggles and stationary wiimote) are all you'd really need.
No, what you need is Nintendo willing to do something beside dumbed down casual gaming. All the theoretical cool things that you could do with the Wii means nothing as long as Nintendo can't even get trivial core issues fixed (crippeled online multiplayer, lack of support for play-from-SD, lack for USB storage, lack of proper Wiimote calibration for lightgun shooters, etc.). At this point in time I have exactly zero hope to see something like this from Nintendo.
Just because somebody does cool stuff with a Wiimote on a *PC* doesn't mean you will *ever* see something like this on the Wii. Remember this is homebrew stuff, not 'cool new games' that Nintendo will be releasing next year. The issue isn't that you couldn't have fun with the Wii, but that Nintendo really doesn't release much interesting stuff.
### Vetting software before release to make sure it's clean has to be done for both open and closed source software.
The difference is that they get paid for doing it for closed source software, they don't get paid for releasing old stuff as open source. Its really quite simple, if there is no benefit for them, why have the risk of a release?
### However, it's aged a lot since then and other entries in the genre have surpassed it.
I haven't seen a single game that came even close to Mario64. Other games might have had more gimmicks, more length, more items and whatever, but the jumping mechanics in Mario64, which I consider one of the most important aspect of jump'n run, a are still *by far* the best I have ever seen in a a 3D jump'n run. Jack & Dexter or Ratchet & Clank are total crap in comparison, like most other games they resort to the lame double-jump, which just isn't fun. Its a hack to allow the user to correct their incorrect jumps in midair. Mario64 is one of the very few games that can do without and is extremely fun because of exactly that. Mario64 is fun, because running around with Mario is fun, thanks to the plethora of base moves. In all other games, except MarioSunshine and Mario64, just running around is a total bore. And the only game I know that comes close to the whole playground aspect of Mario64 is Katamari Damacy, but then that isn't even a jump'n run and approaches the 'problem' from a very different angle.
### Galaxy gives you a pretty good angle almost all of the time,
It can only do that because the game is extremely linear and so the camera angles can be mostly predefined. So it really doesn't fix any of Mario64 problems, it dodges them by simplified level design. The Galaxy camera still as some extremely annoying problems, the camera while swimmming is aweful and when flying with a red star is completly unusable (navigating a plane is hard enough, navigating while its upside down is completly impossible and the result purely random). And I also don't get why you can adjust it sometimes with C but not with the Dpad or why the First-Person-View is almost always not available. Its true that the camera in Galaxy gives you a better default angle most of the time, but it still annoyed me a hell of a lot more then in Mario64.
### As for Super Mario Galaxy, try playing Super Mario 64 again and compare.
I have and Mario64 is vastly *superior* in almost every aspect. MarioGalaxy is really more a Mario64-light then a "true" sequel. In MarioGalaxy you have much less moves (dive, bellyflop, etc. are gone), a camera that is almost never controllable, totally linear levels and simply uninteresting gameplay. The only thing that MarioGalaxy has going for it is pretty good art direction, its wonderful to look at, but pretty uninteresting to play in, since almost every level feels the same, run forward, jump across holes, get star, end, repeat. The levels sure look nicely varied, but its all the same linear stuff. There is no exploring, no puzzling, nada. Only SuperMarioBros1 has a similar level of linearity, but that was back in 1984 where back-scrolling was not easy to do, today there really is no excuse.
The joy of Mario64 was that it was a virtual playground, you don't even need a real level to have fun with the game, because you have so many moves to play around with, chain together and combine. None of that is left in Galaxy, not only do you simply lack the moves, you also lack the playgrounds, if everything goes one way its just not fun to explore.
Now, don't get me wrong. MarioGalaxy isn't a bad game and it certainly was more fun then Sunshine, due to much the much less stupid level design (i.e. you actually have jumping and running, instead of Sunshines weirdo puzzle/mission/run-in-circles-forever-mix). But most of what made Mario64 so brilliant was simply removed in Galaxy.
### If it were better to use 2 pointers, we'd all be using two mouses right now.
I suggest you go and watch the demo video, it really gives some extremely simple and powerful example uses of multitouch and also makes it clear why that wouldn't be possible with a indirect pointing device such as a mouse. Look especially at the rotation and zooming and you will understand that there is no need to search for an object for both fingers.
### It seems to me humans are much more efficient at moving one hand at a time.
That is only true when the motion of both hands are completly independent of each other. Human brain is doing quite fine with using both hands at once for a single task (trying typing with a single hand or opening a bottle with just a single hand).
### I think the usefulness of multi-touch displays is limited.
Go and watch this demo video, now with a Wiimote you are limited to four points so many stuff seen there won't work, but all that cool zooming and rotation is still possible.
### If you don't beleive me then check out this stack of Wii's which is more than any Best Buy has received all year.
Wii shortages are local problems, not global ones. From what I have heard there are quite a few places that have plenty of Wiis, so its no suprise that somebody buys them and resells them.
### Yes, the current web doesn't USE HTML very well.
I think the problem is that you can't use it well. Neither HTML nor the webbrowsers are really prepared to render a page differently. Sure, they might be able to do some small adjustments, but something simple has hiding a navigation bar is already pretty much impossible for the average user.
### It's not infinitely resizable,
Yep, thats part of the point. You can make stuff that works, but it only will work for a specific range of font sizes, since after that the webpage layout will just fall apart. Try setting a really big font and almost all pages with a little bit layout will completly fall apart.
### When you add a tag you're tied to a specific DPI?
That should have been 'img tag'. Images are a huge part in todays web, but they are the very thing that makes webpages extremely DPI depended. The blame here might however not be so much HTML itself, but the browser, even Mozilla can't properly smooth scale images, so all images displayed at a non-native resolution look like garbage. So instead of doing "1em" everybody gives exact pixel measurements to make the pages look good, instead of having them scalable.
### The best ebooks are in HTML format.
When it comes to books CHM is *far* superior to plain HTML. Since CHM adds all that what HTML lacks, searchable index, TOC and all that stuff. The joy of a CHM is that its not just a plain page, but a whole book. With HTML you can only represent a single page, if you want to have a second page, you have to include all the navigation into the document itself, which I consider horrible messy and which is the reason why basically everybody generates his HTML automatically instead of writing the content directly in HTML.
Frames where kind of a great idea and allowed to keep navigation and content seperate, but the implementation was sadly to problematic to be usable.
Re:The current situation is awful.
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HTML V5 and XHTML V2
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· Score: 2, Interesting
### Pretty much the opposite of WYSIWYG actually.
That might be the theory, but it simply is not true in reality. HTML is pretty much a WYSIWYG format with additional support for different font sizes and page width. The second you add a tag you are tied to a specific display DPI, the second you add a navigation bar, you no longer have a document that can adjust to different output devices easily. I mean just look at the web today, nobody is using HTML for writing documents. If people want to write a book, they use TeX, if people want to do something else, they stuff their content into a DB and render it to HTML when the user requests it. If the user wants to have a printable version, they rerender the DB content. Ever seen a manual being downloadable as 'single page HTML' vs. 'multipage HTML'? This is only needed because HTML isn't flexible enough to handle both styles of viewing with a single document. A flexible format would allow you to render the document in multiple different ways, but HTML doesn't allow that. You have to change the HTML code to change the rendering result in a significant way.
Not all of this is of course to blame on HTML itself, the browser takes it share of blame to for not offering additional ways to render the HTML. But HTML by design is really closely tied to its output device and I doubt that will ever change.
### It wouldn't work very well at all if Wikipedia aimed to contain all knowledge and anyone could write about anything.
If you allow more articles in, you get more writers and as long as they take care of their articles the whole thing scales. Wikipedia should encourage writers to participate, not drive them away by destroying their work.
### Why do people keep blaming this on the administrators?
Because they are the people deleting the articles against the wills of the users. Arguments in discussions are regularly ignored, voting isn't democratic and some people just seem to love to destroy other peoples work. Last not least there is of course the technical problem that article deletions aren't undoable by users, so a user can't even see that an article was deleted or the Talk pages, which makes it impossible to understand why a page was deleted.
To make it short: a vandal annoys, an admin destroys.
### The information has to be maintained. Vandalism and other unconstructive revisions have to be located and removed.
Removing vandalism seems to work quite fine right now. The bigger problem these days are the admins that delete other peoples work because they don't consider it relevant enough for Wikipedia, thus not only removing knowledge from Wikipedia that other might be interested in, but also pissing of those people that spend their good time writing the articles, who after such an incident might never want to spend their time on Wikipedia again. This is especially a huge problem in the German Wikipedia, where its near impossible to do anything new without having an admin trying to delete it (The Simposons Episode List is a famous example of an article that got deleted).
To make things short: There really is little point in deciding what should or shouldn't get into Wikipedia beforehand and then go on deletion rampage when something doesn't fit the predefined scheme, the way it should work is that content that is corrected and maintained stays and stuff that is abandoned, incorrect and never corrected gets removed. The only measure for what goes into Wikipedia and what doesn't should be if people want to work with it. If people want to write proofs, what good reason is there to stop them from contributing?
I would like to see some numbers on that. The majority of larger applications I know comes as Installer, Applications folder are mostly just for smaller stuff.
### Metroid gets around this through good level design.
Its not just level design, Metroid also automatically looks down a bit while you jump, which helps orientation and in addition it has very 'sticky' edges, so even if you miss a jump by a bit, you still make it to the other side safely, because you 'stick' to the edge and can make it up.
All that said, even with all this I still consider jumps in FPSs to be pretty annoying, not only are they harder, because you can see less, they are also simply less fun, because you need a body to do the real fun jumps (i.e. screw attack, Mario-like triple jump, ledge-grabs, etc.). Breakdown seems to be one of the view FPS that actually allows a lot or more advanced jumps, but even there it makes you for most part just motion-sick instead of being as much fun as third person.
### Bioware usually does that kind of stuff with conversations
I haven't played Mass Effect, but I did play KOTOR and Jade Empire and the dialog system in Mass Effect looks quite a bit different. For one thing KOTOR and Jade Empire are awfully black&white, you can do good thing and bad things, but basically never anything in the gray area, which makes all the dialogs feel very forced and unrealistic. Also your hero never talks in either game, other then indirectly through your dialog choices, which isn't exactly a good thing for cinematic feel. From what I have heard Mass Effect has far more gray-area choices and your choices are topic/thought based, instead of being exactly what comes out of your heroes mouth, also your hero talks in the game, making the dialog feel much more alive.
All that said, its still nothing really new. It might be new for Bioware game, but realtime dialog was already done in Fahrenheit/IndigoProphecy some years ago (in general one of the innovativest games I have played in a long while), Dreamfall also had something similar, but without the realtime component. And looking back at older adventures one will also find quite a few that aren't based on strict dialog trees.
### but usually just with a single spherical world, not several you can jump between.
Psychonauts had tons of individual gravity and some MegaMan games had inverse gravity in some areas. But I haven't played SMG, so I can't really comment on it.
Overall innovation these days seems to be more a thing of "hasn't been done that often", "hasn't been done in a while", instead of a "has never been done before". But then with 30+ years of gaming, that is to be expected. Still a little sad that most games just copy last years block buster instead of copying a bit more creatively from other games in video game history.
### the resultant motions on-screen are always jerky and mechanical. Robotic
Kind of like real soldiers, so I don't consider that a loss. Almost all FPS are utterly ridiculous in modeling a human being. They model a cylinder with a bit of wobble and a gun, thats it. No legs or stuff that actually matters a lot in actual movement. What WASD+mouse has going for it is that it doesn't have restrictions, you can turn as fast as you want, you are not limited by the game, only by your mouse skills. Which might be interesting for eSports, but for immersion I find it quite awful, since well, reality simply doesn't work that way and even SuperMario doesn't allow you to turn around on the stop, yet most FPS do.
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### Damn near every female game character is some archetypal short, ...
The problem isn't just that the female characters aren't realistic, the problem is that the games aren't. The male characters in games aren't any less stylized then the female ones and same can be said about basically every element of the plot or game in general. As long as games don't even try to tell a story, you don't have to be surprised that its all guys with big fat guns and girls with barely enough cloth to cover them up.
But I doubt that this will happen anytime soon, we had the adventure genre with all its storytelling goodness around for quite some years, it died out for most part and hasn't really come back to shape again. Storytelling simply doesn't sell enough games to make it attractive for publishers and unless those realize that there are gaming markets beside the big blockbuster titles this won't change.
For a tiny few games that might be the case, but for the majority I think a quick-save option is an absolute must-have. The reason for this is very simple: having to replay the same shit over and over again is just plain annoying and frustrating. I have ditched dozens of games exactly because of that, not because they were to hard, but because the lack of a free save game system forced me to replay the *easy* parts over and over and over again. Its not fun or challenging, it annoys and just plain stupid.
I agree that a quick-save system can take the challenge out of a 8bit or 16bit classic almost completly, so it might not be the optimal solution there, however, those games are long gone. Todays games are no longer and hour long and don't require memorizing a level layout and enemy patterns in endless repetition. Today you have the 10-20h games which even if you quick-save your way through the whole game have still enough challenge and length left. Today a quick-save simply removes the needless frustration and brings back the fun into the game. If a boss fight is to hard, you simply save more often and concentrate on the hard part of the fights.
All that said, I think there is room for other save options, when the checkpoints, as in Halo, are close enough together there is not much need for a quick save system and when the levels are short enough like say Mario64DS you don't need one either, especially when you can put the system in stand-by whenever you wish. But a save system like Metroid Prime where you often run around for 30min without a way to save is just completly brain-dead and frustrating. Metroid Prime 3 introduced a few checkpoints, which reduce the frustration, but since they aren't saved to flash, don't help you when you have to stop gaming after 20min, the Wii actually having a stand-by mode, but without a way to use it in-game of course also annoys.
In the end its really very simple: I have never in my life ditched a game because it featured quick-save, but I have done so with many games because they didn't. And while at it, quick-save also provides a way to explore a game in-depth, try crazy stuff and just do whatever you want without risking the last hour of play.
### I don't see this becoming a "game" so much as it'll be a technology demo.
That might very well be, but that really isn't a problem. The goal here isn't to make the best game ever, but to make a game, to demonstrate that the toolchain is usable and to improve it where needed, so that you or somebody else can use it to maybe one day make the best game ever with it.
Blender got a lot of improvements over the course of Elephants Dream and I bet it will be the same with this game.
### I'm honestly not trying to troll here, but it's probably a hell of a lot easier to do those "visionary" and innovative games in a non-free context.
When you are Will Wright himself maybe, if you are anybody else you will likely never get a penny from a publisher. Getting anything remotely or visionary done these days is extremely hard, no matter how you approach it.
That said, doing it Open Source wouldn't be any easier, since especially with Open Source games it is near impossible to assemble when doing something original. When you do a clone of some old classic, you can always point at that and say "Hey, thats what we want to do, come join", if you want to do something original you can point nowhere and even if you have design document, finding people that share that vision gets very hard and troublesome, since nobody really knows where the game will end up and if it will even be fun.
I think this really is just a matter of generation change. Sure, today we will feel discomfort with sticking something to our brain, but what will the next generation think of it or the generation after that? At the beginning it will of course only be the freaks that do it, but over time things might get safer and cheaper and more and more common place. Sooner or later the freaks are those who don't do it, not the other way around.
### I don't know personally a single person who has opted for more invasive cosmetic surgery.
Neither do I, but that seems to be in large part an issue of lack of money and possible benefit. If a job requires it, things can look quite different very quickly.
And also lets not forget those peoples with disabilities, if you already lost your arm, eye or leg, there is a lot of benefit replacing the already missing piece with an enhanced implant.
The change will for sure not happen over night, but the moment you can build those implants there will be people willing to implement them.
### While I agree that ubiquitous HUD is not an unlikely thing, I personally doubt implantation would be the path. If you can implant it, I would wager a more popular and equally effective method would be contact lens display or glasses.
People already fix their eyes by laser today so that they don't have to wear glasses anymore. So I doubt that glasses will be very popular by 2108 when there is an easy way to do an implant instead. By then however I am not so sure if a HUD will even be needed. What about a direct-to-brain interface? Human brain seem to be pretty adoptable, so what happens when you take a child and stick another sensory input to its brain? Will its brain learn to handle it? Be able to access the Internet or whatever directly without making a trip through the eyeball?
Overall I think implants will play a major role in human 'evolution', we are at a point where we can replace quite a few parts in the body. We are not yet past the point where they can perform better then the original, but we aren't far away either. And since many people don't seem to have a problem with useless implants (see breast-implants, tattoos, piercings, etc.) I bet they will become quite popular, when they don't only enhance the look, but also function for something. This isn't even a 2108 thing, I wouldn't be supprised seeing it in the next 10 or 20 years.
### Tony Hawk has been quoted as being interested in using it for one of his skateboarding games.
That sounds like a twisted ankle waiting to happen. Unlike a dance mat the balance board isn't flat, but actually quite high and also quite small, so you really don't want to jump around on that thing or you might very easily misstep. I am also not quite sure if it would be robust enough for that kind of use. From the looks and the name of it, it seems to be designed for exactly one thing: detect balance. None of Nintendos demos involved any kind of jumping or so, just standing there and wiggling a little to the left or right.
### Online multiplayer is not crippled, it's just not being pursued as avidly as the 360/PS3.
Yeah, thats what we call crippled.
### Why would you need play-from-SD or USB storage?
Because a ton of people have exhausted the build in 512MB storage (VC games are huge) and also because there simply isn't a good reason why not. When you already support SD, why make it a second class citizen and not allow the same things you allow for build-in storage?
### As for proper calibration...are you trying to play while laying on the floor?
The point of a lightgun is that you don't have a target reticle, you aim where you want to shoot. Theoretically the Wii could do that, but for that you would need proper calibration (and for even more accuracy a second sensorbar), not just "below TV/above TV" settings. Why even release a Wii Zapper when it can't function as a lightgun?
### A firmware update and 2 new peripherals(the goggles and stationary wiimote) are all you'd really need.
No, what you need is Nintendo willing to do something beside dumbed down casual gaming. All the theoretical cool things that you could do with the Wii means nothing as long as Nintendo can't even get trivial core issues fixed (crippeled online multiplayer, lack of support for play-from-SD, lack for USB storage, lack of proper Wiimote calibration for lightgun shooters, etc.). At this point in time I have exactly zero hope to see something like this from Nintendo.
### Why the Wii isn't for "serious" gamers?
Just because somebody does cool stuff with a Wiimote on a *PC* doesn't mean you will *ever* see something like this on the Wii. Remember this is homebrew stuff, not 'cool new games' that Nintendo will be releasing next year. The issue isn't that you couldn't have fun with the Wii, but that Nintendo really doesn't release much interesting stuff.
### Vetting software before release to make sure it's clean has to be done for both open and closed source software.
The difference is that they get paid for doing it for closed source software, they don't get paid for releasing old stuff as open source. Its really quite simple, if there is no benefit for them, why have the risk of a release?
### However, it's aged a lot since then and other entries in the genre have surpassed it.
I haven't seen a single game that came even close to Mario64. Other games might have had more gimmicks, more length, more items and whatever, but the jumping mechanics in Mario64, which I consider one of the most important aspect of jump'n run, a are still *by far* the best I have ever seen in a a 3D jump'n run. Jack & Dexter or Ratchet & Clank are total crap in comparison, like most other games they resort to the lame double-jump, which just isn't fun. Its a hack to allow the user to correct their incorrect jumps in midair. Mario64 is one of the very few games that can do without and is extremely fun because of exactly that. Mario64 is fun, because running around with Mario is fun, thanks to the plethora of base moves. In all other games, except MarioSunshine and Mario64, just running around is a total bore. And the only game I know that comes close to the whole playground aspect of Mario64 is Katamari Damacy, but then that isn't even a jump'n run and approaches the 'problem' from a very different angle.
### Galaxy gives you a pretty good angle almost all of the time,
It can only do that because the game is extremely linear and so the camera angles can be mostly predefined. So it really doesn't fix any of Mario64 problems, it dodges them by simplified level design. The Galaxy camera still as some extremely annoying problems, the camera while swimmming is aweful and when flying with a red star is completly unusable (navigating a plane is hard enough, navigating while its upside down is completly impossible and the result purely random). And I also don't get why you can adjust it sometimes with C but not with the Dpad or why the First-Person-View is almost always not available. Its true that the camera in Galaxy gives you a better default angle most of the time, but it still annoyed me a hell of a lot more then in Mario64.
### As for Super Mario Galaxy, try playing Super Mario 64 again and compare.
I have and Mario64 is vastly *superior* in almost every aspect. MarioGalaxy is really more a Mario64-light then a "true" sequel. In MarioGalaxy you have much less moves (dive, bellyflop, etc. are gone), a camera that is almost never controllable, totally linear levels and simply uninteresting gameplay. The only thing that MarioGalaxy has going for it is pretty good art direction, its wonderful to look at, but pretty uninteresting to play in, since almost every level feels the same, run forward, jump across holes, get star, end, repeat. The levels sure look nicely varied, but its all the same linear stuff. There is no exploring, no puzzling, nada. Only SuperMarioBros1 has a similar level of linearity, but that was back in 1984 where back-scrolling was not easy to do, today there really is no excuse.
The joy of Mario64 was that it was a virtual playground, you don't even need a real level to have fun with the game, because you have so many moves to play around with, chain together and combine. None of that is left in Galaxy, not only do you simply lack the moves, you also lack the playgrounds, if everything goes one way its just not fun to explore.
Now, don't get me wrong. MarioGalaxy isn't a bad game and it certainly was more fun then Sunshine, due to much the much less stupid level design (i.e. you actually have jumping and running, instead of Sunshines weirdo puzzle/mission/run-in-circles-forever-mix). But most of what made Mario64 so brilliant was simply removed in Galaxy.
### If it were better to use 2 pointers, we'd all be using two mouses right now.
I suggest you go and watch the demo video, it really gives some extremely simple and powerful example uses of multitouch and also makes it clear why that wouldn't be possible with a indirect pointing device such as a mouse. Look especially at the rotation and zooming and you will understand that there is no need to search for an object for both fingers.
### It seems to me humans are much more efficient at moving one hand at a time.
That is only true when the motion of both hands are completly independent of each other. Human brain is doing quite fine with using both hands at once for a single task (trying typing with a single hand or opening a bottle with just a single hand).
### I think the usefulness of multi-touch displays is limited.
Go and watch this demo video, now with a Wiimote you are limited to four points so many stuff seen there won't work, but all that cool zooming and rotation is still possible.
### If you don't beleive me then check out this stack of Wii's which is more than any Best Buy has received all year.
Wii shortages are local problems, not global ones. From what I have heard there are quite a few places that have plenty of Wiis, so its no suprise that somebody buys them and resells them.
### Yes, the current web doesn't USE HTML very well.
I think the problem is that you can't use it well. Neither HTML nor the webbrowsers are really prepared to render a page differently. Sure, they might be able to do some small adjustments, but something simple has hiding a navigation bar is already pretty much impossible for the average user.
### It's not infinitely resizable,
Yep, thats part of the point. You can make stuff that works, but it only will work for a specific range of font sizes, since after that the webpage layout will just fall apart. Try setting a really big font and almost all pages with a little bit layout will completly fall apart.
### When you add a tag you're tied to a specific DPI?
That should have been 'img tag'. Images are a huge part in todays web, but they are the very thing that makes webpages extremely DPI depended. The blame here might however not be so much HTML itself, but the browser, even Mozilla can't properly smooth scale images, so all images displayed at a non-native resolution look like garbage. So instead of doing "1em" everybody gives exact pixel measurements to make the pages look good, instead of having them scalable.
### The best ebooks are in HTML format.
When it comes to books CHM is *far* superior to plain HTML. Since CHM adds all that what HTML lacks, searchable index, TOC and all that stuff. The joy of a CHM is that its not just a plain page, but a whole book. With HTML you can only represent a single page, if you want to have a second page, you have to include all the navigation into the document itself, which I consider horrible messy and which is the reason why basically everybody generates his HTML automatically instead of writing the content directly in HTML.
Frames where kind of a great idea and allowed to keep navigation and content seperate, but the implementation was sadly to problematic to be usable.
### Pretty much the opposite of WYSIWYG actually.
That might be the theory, but it simply is not true in reality. HTML is pretty much a WYSIWYG format with additional support for different font sizes and page width. The second you add a tag you are tied to a specific display DPI, the second you add a navigation bar, you no longer have a document that can adjust to different output devices easily. I mean just look at the web today, nobody is using HTML for writing documents. If people want to write a book, they use TeX, if people want to do something else, they stuff their content into a DB and render it to HTML when the user requests it. If the user wants to have a printable version, they rerender the DB content. Ever seen a manual being downloadable as 'single page HTML' vs. 'multipage HTML'? This is only needed because HTML isn't flexible enough to handle both styles of viewing with a single document. A flexible format would allow you to render the document in multiple different ways, but HTML doesn't allow that. You have to change the HTML code to change the rendering result in a significant way.
Not all of this is of course to blame on HTML itself, the browser takes it share of blame to for not offering additional ways to render the HTML. But HTML by design is really closely tied to its output device and I doubt that will ever change.
### It wouldn't work very well at all if Wikipedia aimed to contain all knowledge and anyone could write about anything.
If you allow more articles in, you get more writers and as long as they take care of their articles the whole thing scales. Wikipedia should encourage writers to participate, not drive them away by destroying their work.
### Why do people keep blaming this on the administrators?
Because they are the people deleting the articles against the wills of the users. Arguments in discussions are regularly ignored, voting isn't democratic and some people just seem to love to destroy other peoples work. Last not least there is of course the technical problem that article deletions aren't undoable by users, so a user can't even see that an article was deleted or the Talk pages, which makes it impossible to understand why a page was deleted.
To make it short: a vandal annoys, an admin destroys.
### The information has to be maintained. Vandalism and other unconstructive revisions have to be located and removed.
Removing vandalism seems to work quite fine right now. The bigger problem these days are the admins that delete other peoples work because they don't consider it relevant enough for Wikipedia, thus not only removing knowledge from Wikipedia that other might be interested in, but also pissing of those people that spend their good time writing the articles, who after such an incident might never want to spend their time on Wikipedia again. This is especially a huge problem in the German Wikipedia, where its near impossible to do anything new without having an admin trying to delete it (The Simposons Episode List is a famous example of an article that got deleted).
To make things short: There really is little point in deciding what should or shouldn't get into Wikipedia beforehand and then go on deletion rampage when something doesn't fit the predefined scheme, the way it should work is that content that is corrected and maintained stays and stuff that is abandoned, incorrect and never corrected gets removed. The only measure for what goes into Wikipedia and what doesn't should be if people want to work with it. If people want to write proofs, what good reason is there to stop them from contributing?
I would like to see some numbers on that. The majority of larger applications I know comes as Installer, Applications folder are mostly just for smaller stuff.
### Metroid gets around this through good level design.
Its not just level design, Metroid also automatically looks down a bit while you jump, which helps orientation and in addition it has very 'sticky' edges, so even if you miss a jump by a bit, you still make it to the other side safely, because you 'stick' to the edge and can make it up.
All that said, even with all this I still consider jumps in FPSs to be pretty annoying, not only are they harder, because you can see less, they are also simply less fun, because you need a body to do the real fun jumps (i.e. screw attack, Mario-like triple jump, ledge-grabs, etc.). Breakdown seems to be one of the view FPS that actually allows a lot or more advanced jumps, but even there it makes you for most part just motion-sick instead of being as much fun as third person.
### Bioware usually does that kind of stuff with conversations
I haven't played Mass Effect, but I did play KOTOR and Jade Empire and the dialog system in Mass Effect looks quite a bit different. For one thing KOTOR and Jade Empire are awfully black&white, you can do good thing and bad things, but basically never anything in the gray area, which makes all the dialogs feel very forced and unrealistic. Also your hero never talks in either game, other then indirectly through your dialog choices, which isn't exactly a good thing for cinematic feel. From what I have heard Mass Effect has far more gray-area choices and your choices are topic/thought based, instead of being exactly what comes out of your heroes mouth, also your hero talks in the game, making the dialog feel much more alive.
All that said, its still nothing really new. It might be new for Bioware game, but realtime dialog was already done in Fahrenheit/IndigoProphecy some years ago (in general one of the innovativest games I have played in a long while), Dreamfall also had something similar, but without the realtime component. And looking back at older adventures one will also find quite a few that aren't based on strict dialog trees.
### but usually just with a single spherical world, not several you can jump between.
Psychonauts had tons of individual gravity and some MegaMan games had inverse gravity in some areas. But I haven't played SMG, so I can't really comment on it.
Overall innovation these days seems to be more a thing of "hasn't been done that often", "hasn't been done in a while", instead of a "has never been done before". But then with 30+ years of gaming, that is to be expected. Still a little sad that most games just copy last years block buster instead of copying a bit more creatively from other games in video game history.
### the resultant motions on-screen are always jerky and mechanical. Robotic
Kind of like real soldiers, so I don't consider that a loss. Almost all FPS are utterly ridiculous in modeling a human being. They model a cylinder with a bit of wobble and a gun, thats it. No legs or stuff that actually matters a lot in actual movement. What WASD+mouse has going for it is that it doesn't have restrictions, you can turn as fast as you want, you are not limited by the game, only by your mouse skills. Which might be interesting for eSports, but for immersion I find it quite awful, since well, reality simply doesn't work that way and even SuperMario doesn't allow you to turn around on the stop, yet most FPS do.