### Or a concise Python script that opens up a text file of URLs, and extracts the files listed in the URLs:
Beside the obvious 'wget -i' (most tools have a build in 'read stuff from file' option), I would use Ruby for such things, at least when they get a little bit more complex and sanity is at risk when the whole shell-escaping drives you mad:
If you want it solid, you'd better insert some -print0 -0 in there, else it will barf at the first encounter of filename with some 'funny' characters such as a newline:
The most interesting thing however is when you want to do more with a filename, so that you can't get away with a single xargs line, then you can use (the -r -d $'\0' makes it save against 'funny' characters again, $'' is worth a lookup in the bash manual as well, can come in very handy at times):
find . -name "*.cpp" -print0 | while read -r -d $'\0' filename;
do
echo "$filename";
done
The GP2X is nice for what it does, but it almost completly lacks non-homebrew application/games and those homebrew stuff around are often emulators which require illegal ROMs, which makes the GPX2 rather useless to those who search for original, legal and non-emulated content.
For what it does the GP2X is still great, but for most people a GBA, PSP or DS is still the better choice.
Do you expect that to stay the same for the next 5+ years? You know, you only need to let the Wiimote slip once to kill your expensive Plasma. If your strap survived the first three weeks, thats all good and fine, but 250 more weeks still to go.
The strap is there to prevent Wiimote accidents from doing harm to the environment, just because you havn't yet witnessed one of those accidents doesn't really prove anything.
That might have something to do with the fact the Wii gives developers the chance to innovate and explore other ideas instead of creating another FPS iteration.
Sorry, but what the heck has 'chance to innovate' to do with FarCry Vengance (Wii) being by far the worst version of the game and Red Steel being a failure for most part as well? Innovation is the thing that should make better, not an excuse to release buggy and ugly games, so far however thats what most non-party games on the Wii are.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with party games, but so far the Wii seems to be limited to them and provides, beside Zelda, little to none benefit for normal story driven singleplayer games.
No, just "Gamecube Wii XBox1" at least judging from the currently released games, if the Wii will ever get a game that uses the hardware as good as "Resident Evil 4" did use the Gamecube we have to wait and see.
Yep, XNA is definitively more useful when developing a game from scratch, on the other side PS3 Linux has the advantage that it doesn't require an expensive subscription to use and that one isn't restricted to C#, so porting whatever application you want over to the PS3 is going to be a hell of a lot easier then doing the same thing XBox360. So while getting SuperTux run on PS3 is a matter of minutes, the XBox360 would require a full rewrite. It would of course also be interesting how fast a software renderer on Cell could become, that thing is after all not that much different from a GPU, but for developing 3D stuff from scratch it is of course a lot harder then XNA.
Why can't Wii games have depth, intensity, or opportunities for customization
Because the Wii is on its best way to turn into a third-party junkyard, just like the NintendoDS (look at TombRaider, Burnout, NfS:MW, etc. to see what I mean). RedSteel(6.5/10) and FarCry(4/10) on the Wii show pretty good how much faith the developers have into the Wii as a gamer-console: very little. Now one might argue that its just Ubisoft doing some quick cash on the launch and that might be even right, but other developers haven't even tried to get anything ready for the Wii and I haven't heard any interesting game announces from third parties for the future either.
Nintendo might of course still provide some deep and interesting games on the Wii and the new controller definitvly has a lot of potential, but to using that potential it takes third-parties, many of them, so far I however see none that are trying to push a big game onto the Wii, instead its all mini- and party-game kind of stuff, which is of course all good and fine, but not when you look for a deep, intensive gaming experience.
The XBox360's superiority in graphics and computing power has nothing to do with HD-TV, its far away from the Wii in SD-TV just as well. What is holding back the XBox360 so far is that a lot of games are still build for multiple platforms. If you see Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the XBox360 it won't look that much different then on a PS2 or Wii, the gameplay is all the same on every console and the much better bump mapping, resolution and light effects on the XBox360 won't change that.
With the real NextGen titles like Assassins Creed, Deand Rising, BioShock and friends things are however changing, those games look much better then current gen and also feature gameplay elements that the current generation couldn't do, crowds, physics and stuff as seen in those games won't work unless you have some spare cycles left and on XBox360 you have plenty of those, while the Wii already seems to struggle, many reviews put its graphics between Gamecube and XBox1, no game so far features anti-aliasing and other issues.
Now the new controller on the Wii is nice, but so far it doesn't seem like a magic-item to solve anything, almost all multi-platform games (Madden 07 being the only exception so far) scored higher on the other consoles and the best game on the Wii so far is Zelda, which would have worked with a classic controller just fine. If the developers will find out how to put the controller to better use in the future we will have to wait and see, but given some of the rubbish third partys produce sometimes for the DS (TombRaider, NFS:MF, Burnout,...) I have some serious doubt. There are of course other issues such as the lack of a second analog stick for camera controls that might provide quite a few problems as well.
I have no doubt that the Wii will find its niche (party games) and will make Nintendo money, but will it hold up against XBox360 and PS3 for the next five or more years? I don't think so, the differences between Wii and the rest today are only the beginning, the gap will get larger and larger in the coming years.
There is a NEW Worms, a NEW 2D Lemmings, a NEW 2D Sonic.
Lemmings on the PS2 isn't new, they reworked the graphics a bit, added some more levels, but for most part its the exact same game as Lemmings 1. Worms and Sonic aren't exactly the most innovative titles either, given that they had frequent releases for a decade or so and still look basically the same.
The handhelds really don't have much 2D left either, sure you have Yoshi there, Mario and Castlevania, but again, all just sequels, remakes or whatever. Completly new and good 2D titles are *very* rare these days, the 2D stuff that is there are simply sequels, remakes and stuff, but nothing new.
1,3) Its $100/year not $100/month 2) People aren't going to write the next Halo3 in C#, for those hobby developers for which this is meant C# is by far more then fast enough. Beside, those people who are only able to learn one language are screwed anyway sooner or later, anybody with half a brain should be able to make a jump from C# to Java or to C++ in a few weeks.
### What the heck is a "friend" code? Is it simply a game password?
The 'friend code' is not a password, its more like a ICQ number. Without having exchanged friends code via other means first you can neither contact nor play together with your friends online on the Wii. Without friends code the system is down to random match making only, no chat, no lobby, no mail, nada.
You've gotta support this thing, otherwise it might not make it.
Would that be so bad? I like a lot of what the Wii brings to the table, but I would much prefer a console that isn't a generation behind when it comes to rendering power. Motion sensing alone is nice, but motion sensing combined with next-gen graphics would be so much better, especially since computing power isn't limited to graphics, better physic engines would definitely be something that would benefit a motion sensing controller a lot.
Nintendo has said themselves, they're not competing on pushing polygons, and they're a GAME company first. period.
Games are created with polygons. If technology wouldn't be important at all we would still be playing NES games, but we aren't, and development on technology hasn't just magically with the Gamecube stopped Just because Nintendo admitted that the Wii can't do next-gen graphics, doesn't turn it into a good thing.
It all wouldn't be a real problem if the Wii's lack of technological progress would show up in its price (say $200 and two controllers included), but it doesn't. At $250 the Wii is the most expensive console in Nintendo history (all other were at $200), yet its also the one who is almost a whole generation behind. Wii and XBox360 are far to close together in terms of price to just ignore the lack of computing power in the Wii.
I'm suprised people are still blah blahing about how the 360 and the PS3's price are accceptable when the Wii is clearly demolishing both of them.
The problem with the Wii is that it is last-generation technology. Its basically a renamed and repacked Gamecube with a few more Mhz then its predecessor and a new controller added, for that the price is *HIGH*. Gamecubes are currently at 100EUR including a game.
XBox360 Premium on the other side can be found in bundles these days for 400EUR, including a game (50EUR), 1 year XBoxLive (50EUR) and 50EUR rebate, which puts the XBox360 Premium(!) at 250EUR and unlike the Wii, the XBox360 is full of shiny new technology.
So from a pure hardware point of view the Wii is very expensive, while the XBox360 is actually cheap, which console will deliver more fun is of course a different question, but there price is really not much away anymore, especially if you consider the expensive Wii controllers.
but the strength of wikipedia is that the gamers actions are out in the open, you can see their edits.
Sadly that is not always true. Deletes of pages are totally invisible for the casual user, you can dig deep down into one of the log files to see that there once was a page, but you can't see the page or most of the discussion of why it was deleted in the first place. Not a big deal for important topics, but a very annoying thing with less important onces, since quite often useful articles get deleted for basically no reason and the lack of visibility and access to the previous page makes quite hard to recover from those unwanted deletions.
Absolutely agree, session length is very important. Another thing that I have found extremely important is the amount of in-game knowledge a game requires. With Resident Evil 4 for example you have a game that can be played for very short sessions and also one that has a map which shows you always where to go, that way you have a hard time to ever get lost. So its very casual gamer friendly, you can play it whenever you find time and you have a very good chance to make it through the whole game sooner or later without too much problems. Zelda:WW on the other side is quite the opposite, while it gives you some very obvious hints now and then on what to do, sometimes so damn obvious that it ruins all the fun of exploring, the game does not come with any kind of quest log what so ever and markings on the map are limited to a few events. This means that if you can't remember the hints the game gave you a few gameplay hours ago, which might easily translate into weeks of real world time for a casual gamer, you are basically toast. Its virtually impossible to pick up the game in mid game unless you remember or have written down all the stuff the game expects you to know, if you don't you are damned to travel around for hours and hours around in the game in the hope to sometimes stumble upon that 'where to go next' hint again. If you play the game in a few lengthy settings thats no big deal, but if you play the game over some weeks in 20mins settings its close to being completly unplayable, respawning enemies and no in-dungeon save points help even more to force you to do long sessions.
Speaking about overall game length itself, I don't consider it that important by itself. What I do consider important is that the game itself is self-containing and complete. I don't mind if a game is short when the story is fully told at the end, what I however do mind is when a game basically cuts of the story right in the middle and thus forces you to buy the second part, which might never get released to begin with, in case you want to know how it will end (Half Life 2, I am looking at you...). Give me 10 hours of good entertainment and I am happy, much happier then with 10 hours of good entertainment with 20 hours of boring tedious tasks tackled on.
Just for the record, one of my favorite games of all times is Another World/Out of this World and that one can be easily finished in half an hour when you know what to do. Its definitely one of the shorter games around, but the half an hour it gives you on each replay is a damn good one.
I havn't looked at the big consoles, but I recently did a little statistic of the NintendoDS and the PSP based on the review scores from Metacritic, you can find the resulting graph here. Some additional information, the average score is 65% for NintendoDS and 70% PSP. NintendoDS has 163 games available while the PSP has 195 games.
Short summary: The PSP has more games and better gamse, yet still loses on the market against the NintendoDS, most likly due to far to much PS2 recycling on the PSP.
The problem with Falcon's Eye and virtually every other NetHack GUI is that they basically only replace the ASCII characters with graphical tiles, they neither change the interface nor gameplay, which however would be needed to have a good looking and well playable graphical client. The result is that the graphic clients still look ugly (no animation, no smooth scrolling, walls don't differ from unexplored terrain,...) nor play well (gtk dialogs are not what you want to use to navigate nethack, mouse interface is there, but basically unplayable so you need keyboard,...).
I would love to see a nethack version/fork that adds real current day graphics and interfaces, while staying true to the core of the original game, but so far none of the GUI additions come even close to that, they don't even try.
Before one could reuse sourcecode on a global scale I think we first need to switch to a more advanced programming language, probally one not even invented yet. Today a hell of a lot of code does nothing useful, its just there to duct tape together different APIs or to make the compiler happy, while doing nothing by itself. And this isn't just a small portion of the code, but often a very large one, like half of the application or even more. Before that 'useless code' isn't reduced drastically I don't think reuse on a larger scale can work, since it would simply end in even more wrappering and duct taping.
Wondering how all this controller mess works out in practice. Nintendo wanted to make things simpler with the Wii, but as it looks now you have to have three controllers to get the best out of all the games that the Wii offers. The Wiimote works only with Wii and NES games, Classic Controller with NES, SNES and N64, but not with Gamecube games, Gamecube controller works with NES, SNES, N64 and Gamecube games, but its flimsy dpad makes it hardly the controller of choice for NES and SNES.
Slashdot Mirror
### Or a concise Python script that opens up a text file of URLs, and extracts the files listed in the URLs:
Beside the obvious 'wget -i' (most tools have a build in 'read stuff from file' option), I would use Ruby for such things, at least when they get a little bit more complex and sanity is at risk when the whole shell-escaping drives you mad:
File.new(file).readlines.each{|url| system("wget", url.chop) }
or if one wants to go with a single wget process:
system("wget", *File.new(file).readlines.map{|url| url.chop})
If you want it solid, you'd better insert some -print0 -0 in there, else it will barf at the first encounter of filename with some 'funny' characters such as a newline:
find . -name "*.cpp" -print0 | xargs -0 grep someFn
The most interesting thing however is when you want to do more with a filename, so that you can't get away with a single xargs line, then you can use (the -r -d $'\0' makes it save against 'funny' characters again, $'' is worth a lookup in the bash manual as well, can come in very handy at times):
find . -name "*.cpp" -print0 | while read -r -d $'\0' filename;
do
echo "$filename";
done
Using the direct link works: http://www.ilm.com/theshow/pirates.swf
The GP2X is nice for what it does, but it almost completly lacks non-homebrew application/games and those homebrew stuff around are often emulators which require illegal ROMs, which makes the GPX2 rather useless to those who search for original, legal and non-emulated content.
For what it does the GP2X is still great, but for most people a GBA, PSP or DS is still the better choice.
Do you expect that to stay the same for the next 5+ years? You know, you only need to let the Wiimote slip once to kill your expensive Plasma. If your strap survived the first three weeks, thats all good and fine, but 250 more weeks still to go.
The strap is there to prevent Wiimote accidents from doing harm to the environment, just because you havn't yet witnessed one of those accidents doesn't really prove anything.
Sorry, but what the heck has 'chance to innovate' to do with FarCry Vengance (Wii) being by far the worst version of the game and Red Steel being a failure for most part as well? Innovation is the thing that should make better, not an excuse to release buggy and ugly games, so far however thats what most non-party games on the Wii are.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with party games, but so far the Wii seems to be limited to them and provides, beside Zelda, little to none benefit for normal story driven singleplayer games.
No, just "Gamecube Wii XBox1" at least judging from the currently released games, if the Wii will ever get a game that uses the hardware as good as "Resident Evil 4" did use the Gamecube we have to wait and see.
Yep, XNA is definitively more useful when developing a game from scratch, on the other side PS3 Linux has the advantage that it doesn't require an expensive subscription to use and that one isn't restricted to C#, so porting whatever application you want over to the PS3 is going to be a hell of a lot easier then doing the same thing XBox360. So while getting SuperTux run on PS3 is a matter of minutes, the XBox360 would require a full rewrite. It would of course also be interesting how fast a software renderer on Cell could become, that thing is after all not that much different from a GPU, but for developing 3D stuff from scratch it is of course a lot harder then XNA.
### Nintendo (over the past 18 months) has completely turned around and is amazingly successful by practically every measure.
& name2=GBA&type=2
Hm, comparing charts that way makes the NintendoDS actually look more like a failure, then a success, Wii is still a little to young to judge:
http://www.vgcharts.org/usaconscomps.php?name1=DS
Because the Wii is on its best way to turn into a third-party junkyard, just like the NintendoDS (look at TombRaider, Burnout, NfS:MW, etc. to see what I mean). RedSteel(6.5/10) and FarCry(4/10) on the Wii show pretty good how much faith the developers have into the Wii as a gamer-console: very little. Now one might argue that its just Ubisoft doing some quick cash on the launch and that might be even right, but other developers haven't even tried to get anything ready for the Wii and I haven't heard any interesting game announces from third parties for the future either.
Nintendo might of course still provide some deep and interesting games on the Wii and the new controller definitvly has a lot of potential, but to using that potential it takes third-parties, many of them, so far I however see none that are trying to push a big game onto the Wii, instead its all mini- and party-game kind of stuff, which is of course all good and fine, but not when you look for a deep, intensive gaming experience.
The XBox360's superiority in graphics and computing power has nothing to do with HD-TV, its far away from the Wii in SD-TV just as well. What is holding back the XBox360 so far is that a lot of games are still build for multiple platforms. If you see Marvel Ultimate Alliance on the XBox360 it won't look that much different then on a PS2 or Wii, the gameplay is all the same on every console and the much better bump mapping, resolution and light effects on the XBox360 won't change that.
...) I have some serious doubt. There are of course other issues such as the lack of a second analog stick for camera controls that might provide quite a few problems as well.
With the real NextGen titles like Assassins Creed, Deand Rising, BioShock and friends things are however changing, those games look much better then current gen and also feature gameplay elements that the current generation couldn't do, crowds, physics and stuff as seen in those games won't work unless you have some spare cycles left and on XBox360 you have plenty of those, while the Wii already seems to struggle, many reviews put its graphics between Gamecube and XBox1, no game so far features anti-aliasing and other issues.
Now the new controller on the Wii is nice, but so far it doesn't seem like a magic-item to solve anything, almost all multi-platform games (Madden 07 being the only exception so far) scored higher on the other consoles and the best game on the Wii so far is Zelda, which would have worked with a classic controller just fine. If the developers will find out how to put the controller to better use in the future we will have to wait and see, but given some of the rubbish third partys produce sometimes for the DS (TombRaider, NFS:MF, Burnout,
I have no doubt that the Wii will find its niche (party games) and will make Nintendo money, but will it hold up against XBox360 and PS3 for the next five or more years? I don't think so, the differences between Wii and the rest today are only the beginning, the gap will get larger and larger in the coming years.
Lemmings on the PS2 isn't new, they reworked the graphics a bit, added some more levels, but for most part its the exact same game as Lemmings 1. Worms and Sonic aren't exactly the most innovative titles either, given that they had frequent releases for a decade or so and still look basically the same.
The handhelds really don't have much 2D left either, sure you have Yoshi there, Mario and Castlevania, but again, all just sequels, remakes or whatever. Completly new and good 2D titles are *very* rare these days, the 2D stuff that is there are simply sequels, remakes and stuff, but nothing new.
1,3) Its $100/year not $100/month
2) People aren't going to write the next Halo3 in C#, for those hobby developers for which this is meant C# is by far more then fast enough. Beside, those people who are only able to learn one language are screwed anyway sooner or later, anybody with half a brain should be able to make a jump from C# to Java or to C++ in a few weeks.
Xbox360 Premium (250EUR) + XBoxLive (50EUR) + rebate (50EUR) + Game(50EUR) = 400EUR
Its a 400EUR bundle that comes with all the above extras.
Already done it seems, see http://wiisave.com/news/.
### What the heck is a "friend" code? Is it simply a game password?
The 'friend code' is not a password, its more like a ICQ number. Without having exchanged friends code via other means first you can neither contact nor play together with your friends online on the Wii. Without friends code the system is down to random match making only, no chat, no lobby, no mail, nada.
Would that be so bad? I like a lot of what the Wii brings to the table, but I would much prefer a console that isn't a generation behind when it comes to rendering power. Motion sensing alone is nice, but motion sensing combined with next-gen graphics would be so much better, especially since computing power isn't limited to graphics, better physic engines would definitely be something that would benefit a motion sensing controller a lot.
Games are created with polygons. If technology wouldn't be important at all we would still be playing NES games, but we aren't, and development on technology hasn't just magically with the Gamecube stopped Just because Nintendo admitted that the Wii can't do next-gen graphics, doesn't turn it into a good thing.
It all wouldn't be a real problem if the Wii's lack of technological progress would show up in its price (say $200 and two controllers included), but it doesn't. At $250 the Wii is the most expensive console in Nintendo history (all other were at $200), yet its also the one who is almost a whole generation behind. Wii and XBox360 are far to close together in terms of price to just ignore the lack of computing power in the Wii.
The problem with the Wii is that it is last-generation technology. Its basically a renamed and repacked Gamecube with a few more Mhz then its predecessor and a new controller added, for that the price is *HIGH*. Gamecubes are currently at 100EUR including a game.
XBox360 Premium on the other side can be found in bundles these days for 400EUR, including a game (50EUR), 1 year XBoxLive (50EUR) and 50EUR rebate, which puts the XBox360 Premium(!) at 250EUR and unlike the Wii, the XBox360 is full of shiny new technology.
So from a pure hardware point of view the Wii is very expensive, while the XBox360 is actually cheap, which console will deliver more fun is of course a different question, but there price is really not much away anymore, especially if you consider the expensive Wii controllers.
Sadly that is not always true. Deletes of pages are totally invisible for the casual user, you can dig deep down into one of the log files to see that there once was a page, but you can't see the page or most of the discussion of why it was deleted in the first place. Not a big deal for important topics, but a very annoying thing with less important onces, since quite often useful articles get deleted for basically no reason and the lack of visibility and access to the previous page makes quite hard to recover from those unwanted deletions.
Absolutely agree, session length is very important. Another thing that I have found extremely important is the amount of in-game knowledge a game requires. With Resident Evil 4 for example you have a game that can be played for very short sessions and also one that has a map which shows you always where to go, that way you have a hard time to ever get lost. So its very casual gamer friendly, you can play it whenever you find time and you have a very good chance to make it through the whole game sooner or later without too much problems. Zelda:WW on the other side is quite the opposite, while it gives you some very obvious hints now and then on what to do, sometimes so damn obvious that it ruins all the fun of exploring, the game does not come with any kind of quest log what so ever and markings on the map are limited to a few events. This means that if you can't remember the hints the game gave you a few gameplay hours ago, which might easily translate into weeks of real world time for a casual gamer, you are basically toast. Its virtually impossible to pick up the game in mid game unless you remember or have written down all the stuff the game expects you to know, if you don't you are damned to travel around for hours and hours around in the game in the hope to sometimes stumble upon that 'where to go next' hint again. If you play the game in a few lengthy settings thats no big deal, but if you play the game over some weeks in 20mins settings its close to being completly unplayable, respawning enemies and no in-dungeon save points help even more to force you to do long sessions.
Speaking about overall game length itself, I don't consider it that important by itself. What I do consider important is that the game itself is self-containing and complete. I don't mind if a game is short when the story is fully told at the end, what I however do mind is when a game basically cuts of the story right in the middle and thus forces you to buy the second part, which might never get released to begin with, in case you want to know how it will end (Half Life 2, I am looking at you...). Give me 10 hours of good entertainment and I am happy, much happier then with 10 hours of good entertainment with 20 hours of boring tedious tasks tackled on.
Just for the record, one of my favorite games of all times is Another World/Out of this World and that one can be easily finished in half an hour when you know what to do. Its definitely one of the shorter games around, but the half an hour it gives you on each replay is a damn good one.
I havn't looked at the big consoles, but I recently did a little statistic of the NintendoDS and the PSP based on the review scores from Metacritic, you can find the resulting graph here. Some additional information, the average score is 65% for NintendoDS and 70% PSP. NintendoDS has 163 games available while the PSP has 195 games.
Short summary: The PSP has more games and better gamse, yet still loses on the market against the NintendoDS, most likly due to far to much PS2 recycling on the PSP.
The problem with Falcon's Eye and virtually every other NetHack GUI is that they basically only replace the ASCII characters with graphical tiles, they neither change the interface nor gameplay, which however would be needed to have a good looking and well playable graphical client. The result is that the graphic clients still look ugly (no animation, no smooth scrolling, walls don't differ from unexplored terrain, ...) nor play well (gtk dialogs are not what you want to use to navigate nethack, mouse interface is there, but basically unplayable so you need keyboard, ...).
I would love to see a nethack version/fork that adds real current day graphics and interfaces, while staying true to the core of the original game, but so far none of the GUI additions come even close to that, they don't even try.
Before one could reuse sourcecode on a global scale I think we first need to switch to a more advanced programming language, probally one not even invented yet. Today a hell of a lot of code does nothing useful, its just there to duct tape together different APIs or to make the compiler happy, while doing nothing by itself. And this isn't just a small portion of the code, but often a very large one, like half of the application or even more. Before that 'useless code' isn't reduced drastically I don't think reuse on a larger scale can work, since it would simply end in even more wrappering and duct taping.
Wondering how all this controller mess works out in practice. Nintendo wanted to make things simpler with the Wii, but as it looks now you have to have three controllers to get the best out of all the games that the Wii offers. The Wiimote works only with Wii and NES games, Classic Controller with NES, SNES and N64, but not with Gamecube games, Gamecube controller works with NES, SNES, N64 and Gamecube games, but its flimsy dpad makes it hardly the controller of choice for NES and SNES.