>> In many ways a far more varied and accesible game than DooM and Q1 ever were.
Yet it pales in comparison to the likes of System Shock or Marathon.
Still, GoldenEye was a fairly good game, except it was all but ruined by badly flawed technological execution. 15 frames per second doesn't cut it, and the N64 fuzzy haze was terrible.
>> Any game that isn't available on more than one platform immediately at release is just a sign of shitty programmers.
WRONG. It is a sign of management not considering a cross-platform release to be a priority. I don't know what you think goes on in development, but programmers aren't the ones that dictate how and where the game is released.
So they release the game, and now a programmer asks management, "hey, can we port this to Linux/Mac/BeOS?". Management says, "there's not enough market for it - we won't pay you to do it. We need you working on maintaining the main release." Guess what? The programmer's been working two years straight, has plenty of unpaid overtime to his name, and really doesn't feel like working for free some more!
The programmers are the wrong people to be blaming. If management doesn't see a market for it, they won't allocate resources for it. Programmers have families to feed (sometimes - at the very least, they feed themselves and pay bills), and might actually want to take a vacation or something.
>> When iTunes and other services popped up "copyright infringement" (as they candidly call it) didn't stop or slow down
1) A lot of people ARE using iTMS
2) iTMS still costs too much. 99 cents per song still comes out to $10-13 per album, only this time with no physical format. That's ridiculous. But I praise Apple fully because it's a start.
Traditionally, the game world doesn't distinguish much between "strategy" and "tactics" (and it gets confused further, as people now associate "tactics" with games like Final Fantasy Tactics).
TA is not only the best RTS game perhaps ever, but its style of gameplay hasn't even been attempted again.
Everyone churns out simple rock-paper-scissors RTS games a la StarCraft (not that there's anything wrong with those - they can be great fun - but they're much simpler and smaller). Nobody has had the balls to even take a stab at TA's epic scope, open-ended nature, and complex play mechanics.
Those of us that played TA a bunch back in the day were often wow'd by some of the strange and off-the-wall strategies we would see. Thanks to the Commander unit, "home base" was wherever you wanted it to be. Wanna go set up somewhere else? Leave. You leave the buildings behind, but can very quickly set up camp elsewhere.
TA also had a VERY unique gameplay feature, in that after a certain period of time, all sides in the game would have enough firepower to level a small planet. The game then ceased to be an arms race, and turned into a cat-and-mouse game of finding a way to get one's firepower around the other's and put it to use. The typical RTS strategy of pounding away on the outskirts and eventually trying to break through enemy lines was often ineffective, or would at least take hours to complete.
Maybe you try and build nukes, but your opponent may be building missile defense (probably is). But does he have complete coverage of his base? Maybe you can hit the outskirts. Or maybe you can build more missiles than he builds anti-nukes, and overrun his missile defenses. But that takes a lot of resources, and becomes a high-stakes guessing game. Maybe you'll fly a plane out to a nearby island and build a plasma cannon that can shell his base. But that's a lot of resources too, especially if you try to defend it. Maybe you leave it undefended. Make those first few shots count. How's your intel? Got radar coverage of his base? Fly some scout planes in to get visual targets to go along with those radar blips, but you may need to send 10 of them in just to have 1 make it deep enough into his base to locate that fusion reactor that will EXPLODE if you hit it. Try a strategic bombing run on the power plant? Your bombers will get shredded by those cheap-to-build missile towers. Maybe pound away at them with gunships? Dude, figure out what you're doing already. And HEY, he's attacking you too!
so why not just scale it up using the Xserves rather than losing money on an investment that is so young???
"Losing" money? Surely you jest.
Those G5s still hold pretty much all of their original value, and perhaps even more if they're marketed as "part of the VT supercomputer cluster".
Oh no no no, they're not "losing" a damn thing. Not only could they recoup every penny if they want to (maybe they'll use those G5s as workstations all over campus instead), but they obviously have a nice relationship with Apple that certainly takes good care of them.
This is exactly why my homepage contains a "wantlist" of mine - which has grown to a huge comprehensive list from small DVDs ($10-15) to a full-size replica of the Stanley Cup (doesn't exist, except maybe custom-made).
My girlfriend, parents, friends, and relatives never have to wonder what to get me, and I keep the list large so that I never have any clue what's coming. Sometimes, people get me gifts that aren't on my list, but have a feeling that I would like it based on my list (and knowing me).
My girl knows I'm into video games, but a glance at the list shows that I'm really wanting Ninja Gaiden as soon as it releases.
Newbie. Everyone knows bezier curves and bump mapping are the best ways to turn a guy on. Just as important, of corse, is the "bounce algorithm" - don't forget to debug yours!
Bump mapping is for sissies. My girl's normal mapped
For those that might have missed it, nerd nation on tech tv had a special today on how india is training for many of the outsourced jobs they are now getting. One of the things i found interesting is how they are training people on american culture as well as tech skills so that they can better interact with americans on the phone. I highly recommend checking for reruns on this for anyone who is interested tech tv article here
I wondered why I was asked about Garth Brooks last time I called Dell....
1. Go to class
2. Get syllabus
3. Turn on PowerBook, hop on school's wireless network
4. Order class's textbook from Amazon.com sellers while teacher discusses syllabus
5. Repeat 3-4 times
Saved a ton of money this semester. Many of my CS books are sold at half price (new) from Amazon sellers.
Unlike what most people seem to be saying, I have had a number of professors here at Fresno State encourage us to use places like Amazon, and a few have even suggested specific sites for buying discounted books (one CS professor told us about www.bookpool.com).
Some other professors have made heavy use of our library's E-Reserves, where they can photocopy pages out of their own books, and we can log onto the library's website and see the pages in PDF format.
Also, Fresno State has the deal with O'Reilly, where us students can read many O'Reilly books online for free, through a login process in the school's website.
Interestingly enough, virtually all of this has come from my CS professors. Very few of my other professors ever made discount purchase suggestions or used the E-Reserves.
To quote an article, "He attended a performing-arts high school in New York, where he worshipped at the altar of playwrights Edward Albee and Harold Pinter and Public Enemy and De La Soul."
I agree that the "stick a rapper in every movie" trend is getting old - imagine if that were popular during the '80s hair metal days. But Mos Def doesn't qualify. No punishing him just because his music career fared better than Nimoy's.
Would like to see a similar "moron clensing" of Battlefield 1942.
I think more games need a simple, easy-to-use "teammates vote moron out" feature like SOCOM 2 on PS2. On some online PC shooter games, I've seen such features, but often they require some typed command at the console that most people never learn.
Damn, you posted almost everything I was going to.
The Nomad was a wonderful machine. Mine is sitting on my desk right now.
I did not experience any screen blurriness either. And I don't think size was the big deal. But the fact that it could drain 6 AA batteries in 2 hours was a HUGE problem.
My father always got a ton of free AA batteries, so it wasn't a matter of cost for me, but simply having to interrupt game sessions (I didn't often play it 2+ hours straight, but usually I would start it for the 3rd time on the same batteries and get about 10 minutes of play out of it), and having to carry around a small army of batteries.
I should have gotten the rechargable battery pack, but really, even that would be of limited help. 'Cuz then, you gotta wait for the damn thing to recharge!
Marketing wasn't great for it either, I guess. I always knew about it, but everyone I talk to seems shocked it existed.
What's funny is that people were impressed with the thing as little as a couple years ago, like it was this new toy. As far as portables go, it definitely was ahead of its time. Even the GBA doesn't really beat it in the visuals department by all that much - certainly a bit. The true backlit screen of the Nomad beats the not-quite-as-even-or-as-radiant frontlit GBA SP screen, though.
but because they have no mechnasisms in place out of the box where a user can recieve e-mail with an executable file which can be activated with a single click
There's more to it than that. UNIX-based systems (Linux and Mac OS X included) don't give random components or programs unfettered access to the whole damn system. No wonderful ActiveX virus subway system.
If you're not superstitious or spooked by that sort of stuff, it's a great way to get a cheap house.
Not to mention the Coolest House Evar.
Charge goths and New Age geeks to hold seances there every Thursday night. Pretty soon, the already-cheap house will pay itself off!
Built-in excuse to keep away unwanted guests! "No, mother of my wife, I don't think you should stay, because our house reeks of death."
Great for scaring children and keeping them out of the flower beds! "Yes Billy, the owner of the house before the Johnsons really did die in there".
The possibilities are endless. There need to be real estate websites with these sort of listings! Heck, when the next Dot-Com era comes, I'll start one!
Slashdot Mirror
Yet it pales in comparison to the likes of System Shock or Marathon.
Still, GoldenEye was a fairly good game, except it was all but ruined by badly flawed technological execution. 15 frames per second doesn't cut it, and the N64 fuzzy haze was terrible.
I am now emulating a mod of "+1: Emu-Funny"
WRONG. It is a sign of management not considering a cross-platform release to be a priority. I don't know what you think goes on in development, but programmers aren't the ones that dictate how and where the game is released.
So they release the game, and now a programmer asks management, "hey, can we port this to Linux/Mac/BeOS?". Management says, "there's not enough market for it - we won't pay you to do it. We need you working on maintaining the main release." Guess what? The programmer's been working two years straight, has plenty of unpaid overtime to his name, and really doesn't feel like working for free some more!
The programmers are the wrong people to be blaming. If management doesn't see a market for it, they won't allocate resources for it. Programmers have families to feed (sometimes - at the very least, they feed themselves and pay bills), and might actually want to take a vacation or something.
1) A lot of people ARE using iTMS
2) iTMS still costs too much. 99 cents per song still comes out to $10-13 per album, only this time with no physical format. That's ridiculous. But I praise Apple fully because it's a start.
Traditionally, the game world doesn't distinguish much between "strategy" and "tactics" (and it gets confused further, as people now associate "tactics" with games like Final Fantasy Tactics).
Everyone churns out simple rock-paper-scissors RTS games a la StarCraft (not that there's anything wrong with those - they can be great fun - but they're much simpler and smaller). Nobody has had the balls to even take a stab at TA's epic scope, open-ended nature, and complex play mechanics.
Those of us that played TA a bunch back in the day were often wow'd by some of the strange and off-the-wall strategies we would see. Thanks to the Commander unit, "home base" was wherever you wanted it to be. Wanna go set up somewhere else? Leave. You leave the buildings behind, but can very quickly set up camp elsewhere.
TA also had a VERY unique gameplay feature, in that after a certain period of time, all sides in the game would have enough firepower to level a small planet. The game then ceased to be an arms race, and turned into a cat-and-mouse game of finding a way to get one's firepower around the other's and put it to use. The typical RTS strategy of pounding away on the outskirts and eventually trying to break through enemy lines was often ineffective, or would at least take hours to complete.
Maybe you try and build nukes, but your opponent may be building missile defense (probably is). But does he have complete coverage of his base? Maybe you can hit the outskirts. Or maybe you can build more missiles than he builds anti-nukes, and overrun his missile defenses. But that takes a lot of resources, and becomes a high-stakes guessing game. Maybe you'll fly a plane out to a nearby island and build a plasma cannon that can shell his base. But that's a lot of resources too, especially if you try to defend it. Maybe you leave it undefended. Make those first few shots count. How's your intel? Got radar coverage of his base? Fly some scout planes in to get visual targets to go along with those radar blips, but you may need to send 10 of them in just to have 1 make it deep enough into his base to locate that fusion reactor that will EXPLODE if you hit it. Try a strategic bombing run on the power plant? Your bombers will get shredded by those cheap-to-build missile towers. Maybe pound away at them with gunships? Dude, figure out what you're doing already. And HEY, he's attacking you too!
No other RTS game comes even close.
That's because Chris Taylor had long already left the company.
Make no mistake - TA *IS* Chris Taylor's game, just as DOOM is Carmack's or Grim Fandango is Schaefer's.
"Losing" money? Surely you jest.
Those G5s still hold pretty much all of their original value, and perhaps even more if they're marketed as "part of the VT supercomputer cluster".
Oh no no no, they're not "losing" a damn thing. Not only could they recoup every penny if they want to (maybe they'll use those G5s as workstations all over campus instead), but they obviously have a nice relationship with Apple that certainly takes good care of them.
My girlfriend, parents, friends, and relatives never have to wonder what to get me, and I keep the list large so that I never have any clue what's coming. Sometimes, people get me gifts that aren't on my list, but have a feeling that I would like it based on my list (and knowing me).
My girl knows I'm into video games, but a glance at the list shows that I'm really wanting Ninja Gaiden as soon as it releases.
Bump mapping is for sissies. My girl's normal mapped
The day Microsoft has half the kind of security track record as OpenBSD, they'll be cut some slack.
OpenBSD had earned a little slack. MS still has a long way to go in system security/stability before they deserve the same treatment.
I wondered why I was asked about Garth Brooks last time I called Dell....
If Indian music videos are any indication, there is little to fear.
Like the PANTHERS are rated all that high in the game??
1. Go to class
2. Get syllabus
3. Turn on PowerBook, hop on school's wireless network
4. Order class's textbook from Amazon.com sellers while teacher discusses syllabus
5. Repeat 3-4 times
Saved a ton of money this semester. Many of my CS books are sold at half price (new) from Amazon sellers.
Unlike what most people seem to be saying, I have had a number of professors here at Fresno State encourage us to use places like Amazon, and a few have even suggested specific sites for buying discounted books (one CS professor told us about www.bookpool.com).
Some other professors have made heavy use of our library's E-Reserves, where they can photocopy pages out of their own books, and we can log onto the library's website and see the pages in PDF format.
Also, Fresno State has the deal with O'Reilly, where us students can read many O'Reilly books online for free, through a login process in the school's website.
Interestingly enough, virtually all of this has come from my CS professors. Very few of my other professors ever made discount purchase suggestions or used the E-Reserves.
Yeah. As we see, he was on TV long before he ever released an album.
To quote an article, "He attended a performing-arts high school in New York, where he worshipped at the altar of playwrights Edward Albee and Harold Pinter and Public Enemy and De La Soul."
I agree that the "stick a rapper in every movie" trend is getting old - imagine if that were popular during the '80s hair metal days. But Mos Def doesn't qualify. No punishing him just because his music career fared better than Nimoy's.
What was it that drew everyone to Hitchhiker's? Or did some people gain interest just from all of the different forms?
I think more games need a simple, easy-to-use "teammates vote moron out" feature like SOCOM 2 on PS2. On some online PC shooter games, I've seen such features, but often they require some typed command at the console that most people never learn.
The Nomad was a wonderful machine. Mine is sitting on my desk right now.
I did not experience any screen blurriness either. And I don't think size was the big deal. But the fact that it could drain 6 AA batteries in 2 hours was a HUGE problem.
My father always got a ton of free AA batteries, so it wasn't a matter of cost for me, but simply having to interrupt game sessions (I didn't often play it 2+ hours straight, but usually I would start it for the 3rd time on the same batteries and get about 10 minutes of play out of it), and having to carry around a small army of batteries.
I should have gotten the rechargable battery pack, but really, even that would be of limited help. 'Cuz then, you gotta wait for the damn thing to recharge!
Marketing wasn't great for it either, I guess. I always knew about it, but everyone I talk to seems shocked it existed.
What's funny is that people were impressed with the thing as little as a couple years ago, like it was this new toy. As far as portables go, it definitely was ahead of its time. Even the GBA doesn't really beat it in the visuals department by all that much - certainly a bit. The true backlit screen of the Nomad beats the not-quite-as-even-or-as-radiant frontlit GBA SP screen, though.
There's more to it than that. UNIX-based systems (Linux and Mac OS X included) don't give random components or programs unfettered access to the whole damn system. No wonderful ActiveX virus subway system.
No more Erykahs, Jesycas, Kaytlinnes, Arryns, or any of that crap!
Your child is not a bad heavy metal band! Stop giving them "Wyld Stalyns" names!
Not to mention the Coolest House Evar.
Charge goths and New Age geeks to hold seances there every Thursday night. Pretty soon, the already-cheap house will pay itself off!
Built-in excuse to keep away unwanted guests! "No, mother of my wife, I don't think you should stay, because our house reeks of death."
Great for scaring children and keeping them out of the flower beds! "Yes Billy, the owner of the house before the Johnsons really did die in there".
The possibilities are endless. There need to be real estate websites with these sort of listings! Heck, when the next Dot-Com era comes, I'll start one!