heh, I think he replied to the right person, and disagrees with your statement;)
A computer (say, for instance, every computer I've ever built for my home, except for one I built from the spare parts) can be built specifically to play games. It may be capable of performing other functions, and may even be used for performing other functions, but the purpose of the computer itself is to play games. Just because I can do word processing on it doesn't mean it's less of a game machine than my PS2, XBox, GameCube, and DreamCast (in fact, I have far more games for my PC than for these 4 systems combined).
On the other hand, the PS2 is mainly intended for playing games in all cases, but also plays DVDs and CDs as primary functions. With the addition of a couple minor pieces of hardware (and some software installed on the hard drive that is one of those pieces of hardware) the PS2 becomes a computer with all of those other functions.
With a PC I have to add a good graphics card for it to be a gaming machine (and that graphics card can cost more than any current console). With a PS2 I have to add a hard drive (which really isn't much, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone could get a stripped down Linux or *BSD install that didn't require the hard drive). The XBox IS a Windows-based PC, with a stripped down version of Windows that only performs a minor subset of functions (WMA conversion of CD audio (and storage/playback of WMA files), plays licensed games, plays DVDs with the right hardware). A minor change to allow it to run unlicensed software allows it to run a full-blown OS just like any PC that you could buy with similar specs at the time the XBox came out (which actually would've been a low-end processor, high-end video card, and minimal amount of RAM).
With the XBox based on an x86 processor and the Cube based on PPC architecture, the distinction is really getting to be pointless. It's not a matter of what the hardware is any more, it's a matter of what you do with it, and, as the article stated, the distinction is no longer going to matter next year (at least in the EU).
LucasArts' sound quality has been top-notch in every game that I've played. I've even had people come from other rooms of the house thinking I was watching one of the Star Wars movies while playing some of their games.
That being said, the games themselves are hit and miss, though compared to many they have a fairly good record, imo.
Check the prices of the games on the list in the article. IIRC, the games don't cost any more than any others, though they may require more sales to break even (or they may have cut into the budget elsewhere).
THX-certified PC speakers generally run a bit high, but not higher than equivalent speakers in most cases (though some people may not notice or care and would be better off with cheaper speakers).
As for home AV equipment, it's much more likely that THX certification is of less use there, as there has been quality equipment available longer than the THX certification process has existed in that segment. In the PC world, it's something that's helping to drive quality upwards, or recognize the increases in quality that have come in the past decade. In home equipment, it's something people get to try to sell more equipment and justify a higher cost. Most of the truly high-end equipment already costs more and doesn't need the certification to generate sales or gain recognition (nor do they usually need high sales volume to make money).
Unless they also hand out pamphlets on how to arrange your room according to THX standards, you'll get, at best, average sounding audio.
THX certified speakers usually come with a small pamphlet instructing on the best placement of the speakers.
They could probably tell you how to design a room, too, but unless you spend a huge amount of money, they're not going to come out and certify your room.
On the other hand, as everyone else pretty much already said, if everything from the sound source (the game or movie for example) to the hardware is THX-certified, it's up to you to get your room to sound good. At least you know the source and the equipment are capable of producing good sound.
All of that being said, I know I can get better equipment that isn't THX certified, but I have to know a bit more about the equipment to find that out in the first place. It's just a way to make it easier for the mid-to-high end of the consumer lines, and some certification on game audio can only help with general awareness.
how about 'active move to a newer game from us' stance?
Unfortunately, that doesn't work so well, since not everyone interested in StarCraft or Diablo 2 is interested in WarCraft 3 (and they also banned WarCraft 3 players).
If they had a StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, and WarCraft 4, then I could see that theory meshing with this announcement.
Not to mention that the Nintendo and Sony consoles usually get introduced into the Japanese market quite some time before the US market. If Nintendo's looking at a 2005 release for their next console, the announcements will probably hit next year as far as the Japanese and US releases go, and developers should start seeing development kits by the end of this year or early next year (at least the top developers and 2nd party developers).
The big part to me is the trade-in value, or I'll sell off the old system with the games I no longer want for a good chunk of cash that goes towards the new system.
Other than that, if the older system dies (like, say the PS2 seems to do for quite a lot of people, in many cases due to a plastic gear being turned (and eventually worn) by a metal gear), it's nice to be able to still buy hardware that runs the games (though right now PSOne hardware is still around, how about a year after the PS3 comes out?). I still have my Genesis and it still works, but how much longer can I say that? My NES stopped working a very long time ago, and I eventually got rid of all of the cartridges just because I couldn't play them.
Valve made some statements that the 256MB cards would be made use of by HL2 (it would detect the video RAM and increase texture resolution or pack more textures into video RAM for faster use), but I think for the most part you'll be ok for a while with 128MB.
hmm I hadn't noticed that, and I picked up an Audigy 2 a few months ago because I thought I was having problems with my sound card. I still haven't gotten any of the software that came with it (the drivers and utilities) to work properly under XP.
That being said, I think the problem that I thought was with the sound card was actually with the Klipsch speakers, either due to power requirements (the power in the apartment doesn't seem to work quite right, but since IANAE(lectrical)E(ngineer), I don't know quite what it is. I do know that the Klipsch speakers sounded really good when they worked;) Maybe not the absolute best PC speakers around, but certainly very good.
I think that's a problem, but not a massive one. The THX logo should, in theory, be a control for the quality of the audio, though not it's appropriateness. As long as people understand that, it should be fine.
At the same time, I'm wondering when THX will step up to the plate and start certifying sound cards and drivers. They're doing the game, and PC speakers, but none of that does much good if the sound cards add noise or barely work at all because of a combination of bad drivers and cheap hardware (and I say this especially because the most popular brand of aftermarket/non-OEM sound cards is far from ideal for producing good sound).
Both of us facing each other unloading clip after clip into the box to kill each other yet noone will get hit or die because the developers were lazy?
Projectiles penetrating through items aren't difficult to implement in most game engines, and since the physics engine has defined parameters for objects (such as wood or metal objects), it wouldn't be hard at all to implement penetration based on the object type (ie it would penetrate a wooden box but not a metal box).
In other words, it's unlikely that it has anything to do with developers being lazy, but rather with a choice in the design of the game to maintain the typical game/movie/comic style of being able to hide behind just about anything and not get killed.
Bullet penetration is a design choice just as one-shot kills are, especially as game engines get complex enough to let bullets pass through objects without having to regenerate them on the opposite side of an object (which is what was typically done in the past, such as in Counterstrike), although that's fairly easy to do in most game engines, too. It's at least as much of a gimmick as bullet time is, especially given that it's probably an item listed on the box of many of the games that implement it.
I believe one of the interviews I read also stated that as they experimented with the physics system players responded better to somewhat less realistic values for the variables built into the system. In other words, the more exaggerated physics model was probably intentional, as players saw it as more realistic than the realistic values (probably comes from most people getting their ideas of what happens to people and objects when they get shot from movies and cartoons rather than actually going out and shooting people or getting shot themselves).
In other words, people want things to happen the way they do in movies, which usually involves pully systems and exaggerated acting, rather than the way they do in real-life. The game developers would love for everything to be as realistic as possible, but in the end they still have to please the people that might be deciding whether or not to buy their game.
I'm not trying to say that the physics engine is capable of completely realistic physics, merely that it's probably capable of more realistic physics than you're likely to see in the videos of Half-Life.
Not only do they have too many gaming stories, it's usually about something academic or relatively insignificant. An obscure theory, or in this case, a single feature.
Considering that the Games section here averages less than 6 stories a day, it's hard to see your point, unless the other sections you don't ignore are putting out far less. As for obscure theories, well, as far as I'm concerned that's what most of Slashdot deals with in the first place. Just because the games section deals with game theory rather than rocket science or some such theory doesn't make it any less interesting to those few that can understand and discuss it.
As for the 'single feature', the article is 2 pages long and discusses 'Bullet Time 2.0' in one paragraph near the end of the 2nd page. It also discusses the physics engine, which is the same one many other games have licensed, and the story line. In fact, if I were to pick 2 things this article spent the most time discussing besides the story, it'd be the lighting effects and the things allowed by the physics engine, and related design choices (such as the decision not to allow bullets to penetrate wooden crates, though they will spin the crates according to force).
But no, instead of commenting on the article, we get a handful of people that feel the need to comment on the fact that Slashdot has a games section with a half-decent output, which most people visiting Slashdot won't even see because most of the (relatively few) stories don't show up in the default preferences for the main page.
The changing standards that you mention may not affect the Xbox as much as they have PC gaming in the past. This is due to the fact that you *must* have a broadband connection in order to get onto Live in the first place.
I agree to some level with this, but it still doesn't address that it's vastly over-simplifying the whole process. Sure, it makes it easier for people to jump in quickly, but it also makes it harder to make informed decisions on the matter.
As for the 'changing standards', have you seen what happens to cable internet access as adoption grows? Have you seen how slowly DSL coverage has been expanding in the last several years?
To say the least, the standards don't change. In fact, nothing changes, except the number of subscribers, which increases. As cable gets more subscribers, they rarely increase the infrastructure. The idea was that they would spend a huge amount of money up-front (partially subsidized more than likely), and when someone subscribes they'd roll out the RJ-6, a modem, and an ethernet card (now they just use USB modems for subscribers without ethernet cards), and sit back and collect the cash. Unfortunately, they didn't build for the system to remain at it's original performance levels, and won't upgrade to meet demand. Their service is certainly still better than dial-up for web browsing and downloads, but for gaming (one of the driving forces of early adoption of broadband) it's becoming less useful simply because loss is increasing (and most games only really need 5-10kb/sec and low loss).
DSL, on the other hand, incorporates new standards constantly to increase their range. My parents' house came within range for DSL not because a new CO was built, but because DSL standards came along that increased the range by about 10 miles (and about 15 miles before that over 2 or 3 changes). Are the phone companies out there putting up new cables that can handle higher transmission rates? Not in most areas. They're simply increasing the amount of data going over existing lines, decreasing quality on phones lines, and using more compression. At the same time, the average internet POP site has enough bandwidth going through it to handle every person in the US picking up a phone and calling someone at the exact same time, 40x over, on low-priority lines (they usually have about 4x as much bandwidth on the higher-priority lines, generally used for businesses). People are leasing T-1 lines and OC-3 lines for businesses while the phone companies were installing numerous OC-48s and OC-192s 5 years ago. Not to mention that each site in which a phone company installed these racks usually housed at least one other phone company that was installing the same equipment in the same building, or in a building nearby.
OK, I've had my slightly OT internet access rant for the day.
Production isn't the problem, though, it's distribution. Additionally, things like wind power require areas where people don't care if you put up a bunch of windmills, which the east coast of the US is currently finding out can be problematic.
Personally, once I buy a house, I'm just going to put solar shingles on the roof and buy a hell of a lot of batteries to store up for the hurricanes that are bound to block a bit of sunlight and knock a few of the shingles off. I was lucky when Isabelle hit in that I only went without power for 3 days. There are still a lot of people without power, and it could be a while before everyone's back up. Of course, then I'll be producing more electricity (though we don't need more production), but, more importantly, it will be produced at my house rather than being brought into my house over power lines (with one company controlling all of the power in the state).
But then the question is, do the dots, numbers, whatever ranking system, take this into account? I've had games show up as good in Battle.net that played horribly. Ping doesn't tell you everything, but at least it tells you something, and once someone's saturated their bandwidth or overloaded their server, latency will be higher in-game.
In a similar sense, Half-Life measures latency as a mix of these values. Many people complain that the latency value shown in-game isn't the same as the ping they get in some server browsers, but the simple fact is that Valve was trying to display a number that more accurately represented the game. The problem I have is not so much that they're trying to calculate other variables, it's that they're using a very small fixed scale to represent something that is generally large and variable in nature. In other words, representing a 3 digit number in the range 1 through 5, with 0 decimal places for accuracy. A green light a few years ago could be a yellow light today, and a red light in a couple more years.
Considering that they sell LCD screens and cigarette lighter adapters for the GameCube, I'd have to say it would only be a challenge if you built both of those parts yourself.
Optionally, I guess you could try to power it on D cells or a rechargable battery pack.
The Cube certainly doesn't fit in your pocket, but then neither does the PS1 LCD screen he put on that GBA.
It is the same with online games. Why not have some sort of tiered league? You could give people the ability to kick off someone who obviously belongs in a different league.
Most popular online games do have leagues, and most of them are tiered by difficulty (or, eventually, difficulty seperates them even when they're not tiered). Unfortunately, those are leagues, and even the people that lose every week are probably better than a lot of the people that are just looking for a game where they can play people of equal skill and have fun.
Servers tend to seperate along these lines the same way the basketball courts where you live probably did. People go and play, they find out it's a little rough for them or not enough of a challenge, and they go somewhere else. I played on one TFC server for the first 3 months or so that I played that game, and there were, occasionally, a handful of people (one at a time, usually) that would just own the server, they obviously didn't belong, yet they'd come back every once in a while. Eventually, I got to the point where I felt I didn't belong (because even the guys that obviously didn't belong were not much of a challenge sometimes), and I looked for another server. That 'another server' ended up belonging to the clan who's tag I still use, and I got my ass handed to me, constantly, for weeks. To me, it was more fun that way, having already learned the game, I learned more from them. People simply wouldn't come back to the server unless they wanted to see if they measured up, and the clan's name was good enough that people came looking for a challenge and knowing that abusive people would be removed. It was a rough place to play for people that weren't extremely skilled, but it was also full of polite people, most of the time, who didn't care about showing off their 1337 sk1llz so much as having a good time and maybe a bit of a challenge (that being said, for months there were always people gunning for the clan, just to prove themselves).
In short, find a server that caters to your skill level, and the way you like to play. I don't object to the idea of developers trying to build in some sort of enforcement measure for this, or something that'll at least help people find the right level for them, but the reality is that these games are out there if you look for them. If you do incorporate some sort of ranking system to accomplish this, though, link it to the CDKey used, otherwise people will simply abuse it (of course, they could always buy another CDKey, but if that's how they choose to do it, it's more money to the developers). I always prefer player choice over code-enforcement, though.
I usually put friendly fire off. It stops the idiots. I don't think most of them do it even on purpose they just don't seem able to realise what type of game they are in.
After a while, I stopped playing games without friendly fire simply because people thought it was acceptable to spam so much crap in one area that everyone has to pass through just to get a few cheap kills. Essentially, in TF-style games especially, it leads to being stripped of all your armor and having to play in a really poor game rather than the situation with friendly fire on: dealing with a handful of idiots while everyone else is at least paying some attention to their fire. The handful of idiots can be dealt with either by good, helpful players or by administration. Both, unfortunately, are in short supply, but a good game is well worth it most of the time.
All of that being said, over time I played public games less often, and eventually almost completely stopped playing them. Equally irritating is when you're questioned for enforcing the rules on a server when you have been given admin authority on a server. It's amazing what activities people will try to defend once they've been kicked and/or banned from a server, even coming into a clan IRC channel to complain about being kicked.
Well, that's good to know, maybe I'll pick it up when I have some spare cash;)
As far as Disgaea goes, I also have FF:Tactics Advance and Dynasty Tactics 2 to vie for my time. Plus, like I said, I've been on a C&C:G:ZH (umm yeah, gotta love acronyms) kick for a couple days, and since I just figured out the specialized generals thing last nite, I think I've got some time to burn on it yet. That and Amplitude, and I still haven't quite unlocked everything on Wario Ware, and Animal Crossing still gives me a reason to play now and then... In other words, too many games, not enough time, but I still love the time sinks.
Yeah, because Services for Unix is composed entirely of 'strings'.
umm right.
All of the GPL'd software that's in SFU has source available for download as well, but I suppose that since most of that source (if not all of it) can be shown not to be derived from SCO, then MS doesn't need the license, right? Then again, there's always the closed-source portion of SFU, some portion of which is original code...
You are in a minority. How did you learn that X ms is an acceptable ping time for different games? By playing them a few times.
I agree that I'm in a minority. That is why I asked if it was a setting somewhere. Default to that system, allow players to see actual ping times if they wish. The ping times are obviously there somewhere, unless they're using some other arbitrary method to determine the 1 through 5 scores.
How did I learn what was acceptable ping for different games? Simple. There was no other method for determining it except to learn at the time that I started playing games online. People didn't use colour codes or 1 through 5 to rank things, they gave you pings, or you used the ping command in your console (or in DOS). It's blatantly obvious that turn-based games aren't going to depend on pings. It's also somewhat obvious (though less-so than with turn-based) that certain games and game types, such as RTS games and Diablo, are less dependant on ping than others, such as FPS games.
Something else of note, what is acceptable has changed over time. When I started playing Quake, anyone under 400ms ping was an LPB, whereas today people on 56K are regularly bitching about 200ms pings. I couldn't even snipe in TF after getting a cable modem because of the difference between a 400ms ping and a sub-100ms ping (leading shots is quite different for a 300ms difference in pings). The 1 through 5 scale could need serious adjustment over time, especially considering the difference I'm talking about is only over the last 7 years or so (though the average console's life seems to be about half that today).
No, because the gamer would be too busy outside playing Boktai until the sun goes down -- at which point they would swap to Disgaea:)
The person arguing about stuff on Slashdot clearly doesn't have enough games;)
Or spends most of their time indoors at work during the day and has to sit waiting for a compile or a bug-check or some other obscure computerized task that takes far too long and allows them to post on slashdot while they wait;)
Seriously, I don't even own a copy of Boktai because the sun's not up most of the time I can get outside for anything more than lunch or a smoke. I haven't started Disgaea yet because I'm in one of my 'quick game' cycles, playing skirmishes on the C&C:Generals expansion.
To me, the difference comes in cycles. I have cycles where I want to sit down and play a game that's going to take me 20-60 hours (of playing) to complete. In other cycles, I want to play a game that might take me 10-90 minutes to complete, or to get a reasonable amount of the game completed in. I sat down and played straight through Max Payne in about 8 hours (taking short breaks), knowing full well that it was a short game. I enjoyed it, but would've spread it out a great deal more if I hadn't known it was that short (and been disappointed when it ended in that time frame).
Something else of note is that I tend to stock up on games that I know (or think) will be good. During the fairly regular time periods in which very few games are released (every summer, for example), I go back and play games that I either never finished or never even started playing (I usually fire them up when I bring them home to make sure they spin and have no obvious problems right at the start, but don't always play all of them).
I'm probably going to invite jeers for saying this, but it bears repeating because it's fundamental: If you're having fun, it shouldn't matter if the video game is 10 hours or 100 hours. Unless the flavor goes out of the game in less than 10 hours of play (which would cause me to call it a bad game with length of play probably being at the bottom of a list of shortcomings), you're probably getting your money's worth as compared to going to movies or buying DVDs.
It does take some repeating, sometimes, but at the same time different people have different expectations for their money. I go to movies for the experience, and often think it's over-priced, but when a movie is truly good, it's worth it to see it on the big screen (and I truly couldn't tell you how much it would be worth to me beyond what it costs now, because I haven't hit a threshold recently, primarily because ticket prices, though high, are reasonable in this area, especially since they're $2-3 lower than where I lived a couple years ago). I buy DVDs knowing how long they are, and knowing that I don't watch movies over and over again, I just like to have them when I want to watch them (occasionally as it may be). I also tend to have a very definite threshold for all but the best movies on DVD. I rarely pay $20 for a DVD, and much more rarely pay more than that. I do have a very high tendency to buy TV series on DVD, if I like them. They may cost quite a bit (as much as $100/season sometimes), but I save time by not having to catch them on TV and watch commercials, and I can watch them when I wish (plus there's a good amount of length to a 22-episode season, especially in the 1-hour shows and/or HBO series, which have no commercials to begin with).
I expect a certain amount of length out of the things I buy. If I spend $50, I don't expect to play the game for a couple hours and then toss it aside. I spent $20 on Max Payne, knowing it's length from reviews, and it was worth that. I knew that each section of the.hack games was about 20 hours in the primary story line (sometimes shorter), but I still put out the money because of the ability to spend more time on the game (through the keyword system) and the Liminality anime series (though that is also somewhat short), and I enjoy the games, even if they aren't 40+ hours (hell, I spent $60 on the NES version of FF1 and that game only took about 20-30 hours unless you really soaked up time levelling).
It's all relative. Some people will spend hundreds of hours on Ikaruga, some will be insane twitch-monkeys that beat it the first time through. Still others will get put off by the difficulty and drop it after a couple hours. I got my ass kicked on Amplitude's normal difficulty after cruising through the easy difficulty, but I'm blaming that on an ear infection at the moment;)
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heh, I think he replied to the right person, and disagrees with your statement ;)
A computer (say, for instance, every computer I've ever built for my home, except for one I built from the spare parts) can be built specifically to play games. It may be capable of performing other functions, and may even be used for performing other functions, but the purpose of the computer itself is to play games. Just because I can do word processing on it doesn't mean it's less of a game machine than my PS2, XBox, GameCube, and DreamCast (in fact, I have far more games for my PC than for these 4 systems combined).
On the other hand, the PS2 is mainly intended for playing games in all cases, but also plays DVDs and CDs as primary functions. With the addition of a couple minor pieces of hardware (and some software installed on the hard drive that is one of those pieces of hardware) the PS2 becomes a computer with all of those other functions.
With a PC I have to add a good graphics card for it to be a gaming machine (and that graphics card can cost more than any current console). With a PS2 I have to add a hard drive (which really isn't much, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone could get a stripped down Linux or *BSD install that didn't require the hard drive). The XBox IS a Windows-based PC, with a stripped down version of Windows that only performs a minor subset of functions (WMA conversion of CD audio (and storage/playback of WMA files), plays licensed games, plays DVDs with the right hardware). A minor change to allow it to run unlicensed software allows it to run a full-blown OS just like any PC that you could buy with similar specs at the time the XBox came out (which actually would've been a low-end processor, high-end video card, and minimal amount of RAM).
With the XBox based on an x86 processor and the Cube based on PPC architecture, the distinction is really getting to be pointless. It's not a matter of what the hardware is any more, it's a matter of what you do with it, and, as the article stated, the distinction is no longer going to matter next year (at least in the EU).
Is LucasArts's other stuff crappy quality?
LucasArts' sound quality has been top-notch in every game that I've played. I've even had people come from other rooms of the house thinking I was watching one of the Star Wars movies while playing some of their games.
That being said, the games themselves are hit and miss, though compared to many they have a fairly good record, imo.
Check the prices of the games on the list in the article. IIRC, the games don't cost any more than any others, though they may require more sales to break even (or they may have cut into the budget elsewhere).
THX-certified PC speakers generally run a bit high, but not higher than equivalent speakers in most cases (though some people may not notice or care and would be better off with cheaper speakers).
As for home AV equipment, it's much more likely that THX certification is of less use there, as there has been quality equipment available longer than the THX certification process has existed in that segment. In the PC world, it's something that's helping to drive quality upwards, or recognize the increases in quality that have come in the past decade. In home equipment, it's something people get to try to sell more equipment and justify a higher cost. Most of the truly high-end equipment already costs more and doesn't need the certification to generate sales or gain recognition (nor do they usually need high sales volume to make money).
Unless they also hand out pamphlets on how to arrange your room according to THX standards, you'll get, at best, average sounding audio.
THX certified speakers usually come with a small pamphlet instructing on the best placement of the speakers.
They could probably tell you how to design a room, too, but unless you spend a huge amount of money, they're not going to come out and certify your room.
On the other hand, as everyone else pretty much already said, if everything from the sound source (the game or movie for example) to the hardware is THX-certified, it's up to you to get your room to sound good. At least you know the source and the equipment are capable of producing good sound.
All of that being said, I know I can get better equipment that isn't THX certified, but I have to know a bit more about the equipment to find that out in the first place. It's just a way to make it easier for the mid-to-high end of the consumer lines, and some certification on game audio can only help with general awareness.
how about 'active move to a newer game from us' stance?
Unfortunately, that doesn't work so well, since not everyone interested in StarCraft or Diablo 2 is interested in WarCraft 3 (and they also banned WarCraft 3 players).
If they had a StarCraft 2, Diablo 3, and WarCraft 4, then I could see that theory meshing with this announcement.
Not to mention that the Nintendo and Sony consoles usually get introduced into the Japanese market quite some time before the US market. If Nintendo's looking at a 2005 release for their next console, the announcements will probably hit next year as far as the Japanese and US releases go, and developers should start seeing development kits by the end of this year or early next year (at least the top developers and 2nd party developers).
The big part to me is the trade-in value, or I'll sell off the old system with the games I no longer want for a good chunk of cash that goes towards the new system.
Other than that, if the older system dies (like, say the PS2 seems to do for quite a lot of people, in many cases due to a plastic gear being turned (and eventually worn) by a metal gear), it's nice to be able to still buy hardware that runs the games (though right now PSOne hardware is still around, how about a year after the PS3 comes out?). I still have my Genesis and it still works, but how much longer can I say that? My NES stopped working a very long time ago, and I eventually got rid of all of the cartridges just because I couldn't play them.
Valve made some statements that the 256MB cards would be made use of by HL2 (it would detect the video RAM and increase texture resolution or pack more textures into video RAM for faster use), but I think for the most part you'll be ok for a while with 128MB.
hmm I hadn't noticed that, and I picked up an Audigy 2 a few months ago because I thought I was having problems with my sound card. I still haven't gotten any of the software that came with it (the drivers and utilities) to work properly under XP.
;) Maybe not the absolute best PC speakers around, but certainly very good.
That being said, I think the problem that I thought was with the sound card was actually with the Klipsch speakers, either due to power requirements (the power in the apartment doesn't seem to work quite right, but since IANAE(lectrical)E(ngineer), I don't know quite what it is. I do know that the Klipsch speakers sounded really good when they worked
I think that's a problem, but not a massive one. The THX logo should, in theory, be a control for the quality of the audio, though not it's appropriateness. As long as people understand that, it should be fine.
At the same time, I'm wondering when THX will step up to the plate and start certifying sound cards and drivers. They're doing the game, and PC speakers, but none of that does much good if the sound cards add noise or barely work at all because of a combination of bad drivers and cheap hardware (and I say this especially because the most popular brand of aftermarket/non-OEM sound cards is far from ideal for producing good sound).
Both of us facing each other unloading clip after clip into the box to kill each other yet noone will get hit or die because the developers were lazy?
Projectiles penetrating through items aren't difficult to implement in most game engines, and since the physics engine has defined parameters for objects (such as wood or metal objects), it wouldn't be hard at all to implement penetration based on the object type (ie it would penetrate a wooden box but not a metal box).
In other words, it's unlikely that it has anything to do with developers being lazy, but rather with a choice in the design of the game to maintain the typical game/movie/comic style of being able to hide behind just about anything and not get killed.
Bullet penetration is a design choice just as one-shot kills are, especially as game engines get complex enough to let bullets pass through objects without having to regenerate them on the opposite side of an object (which is what was typically done in the past, such as in Counterstrike), although that's fairly easy to do in most game engines, too. It's at least as much of a gimmick as bullet time is, especially given that it's probably an item listed on the box of many of the games that implement it.
I believe one of the interviews I read also stated that as they experimented with the physics system players responded better to somewhat less realistic values for the variables built into the system. In other words, the more exaggerated physics model was probably intentional, as players saw it as more realistic than the realistic values (probably comes from most people getting their ideas of what happens to people and objects when they get shot from movies and cartoons rather than actually going out and shooting people or getting shot themselves).
In other words, people want things to happen the way they do in movies, which usually involves pully systems and exaggerated acting, rather than the way they do in real-life. The game developers would love for everything to be as realistic as possible, but in the end they still have to please the people that might be deciding whether or not to buy their game.
I'm not trying to say that the physics engine is capable of completely realistic physics, merely that it's probably capable of more realistic physics than you're likely to see in the videos of Half-Life.
Not only do they have too many gaming stories, it's usually about something academic or relatively insignificant. An obscure theory, or in this case, a single feature.
Considering that the Games section here averages less than 6 stories a day, it's hard to see your point, unless the other sections you don't ignore are putting out far less. As for obscure theories, well, as far as I'm concerned that's what most of Slashdot deals with in the first place. Just because the games section deals with game theory rather than rocket science or some such theory doesn't make it any less interesting to those few that can understand and discuss it.
As for the 'single feature', the article is 2 pages long and discusses 'Bullet Time 2.0' in one paragraph near the end of the 2nd page. It also discusses the physics engine, which is the same one many other games have licensed, and the story line. In fact, if I were to pick 2 things this article spent the most time discussing besides the story, it'd be the lighting effects and the things allowed by the physics engine, and related design choices (such as the decision not to allow bullets to penetrate wooden crates, though they will spin the crates according to force).
But no, instead of commenting on the article, we get a handful of people that feel the need to comment on the fact that Slashdot has a games section with a half-decent output, which most people visiting Slashdot won't even see because most of the (relatively few) stories don't show up in the default preferences for the main page.
The changing standards that you mention may not affect the Xbox as much as they have PC gaming in the past. This is due to the fact that you *must* have a broadband connection in order to get onto Live in the first place.
I agree to some level with this, but it still doesn't address that it's vastly over-simplifying the whole process. Sure, it makes it easier for people to jump in quickly, but it also makes it harder to make informed decisions on the matter.
As for the 'changing standards', have you seen what happens to cable internet access as adoption grows? Have you seen how slowly DSL coverage has been expanding in the last several years?
To say the least, the standards don't change. In fact, nothing changes, except the number of subscribers, which increases. As cable gets more subscribers, they rarely increase the infrastructure. The idea was that they would spend a huge amount of money up-front (partially subsidized more than likely), and when someone subscribes they'd roll out the RJ-6, a modem, and an ethernet card (now they just use USB modems for subscribers without ethernet cards), and sit back and collect the cash. Unfortunately, they didn't build for the system to remain at it's original performance levels, and won't upgrade to meet demand. Their service is certainly still better than dial-up for web browsing and downloads, but for gaming (one of the driving forces of early adoption of broadband) it's becoming less useful simply because loss is increasing (and most games only really need 5-10kb/sec and low loss).
DSL, on the other hand, incorporates new standards constantly to increase their range. My parents' house came within range for DSL not because a new CO was built, but because DSL standards came along that increased the range by about 10 miles (and about 15 miles before that over 2 or 3 changes). Are the phone companies out there putting up new cables that can handle higher transmission rates? Not in most areas. They're simply increasing the amount of data going over existing lines, decreasing quality on phones lines, and using more compression. At the same time, the average internet POP site has enough bandwidth going through it to handle every person in the US picking up a phone and calling someone at the exact same time, 40x over, on low-priority lines (they usually have about 4x as much bandwidth on the higher-priority lines, generally used for businesses). People are leasing T-1 lines and OC-3 lines for businesses while the phone companies were installing numerous OC-48s and OC-192s 5 years ago. Not to mention that each site in which a phone company installed these racks usually housed at least one other phone company that was installing the same equipment in the same building, or in a building nearby.
OK, I've had my slightly OT internet access rant for the day.
Production isn't the problem, though, it's distribution. Additionally, things like wind power require areas where people don't care if you put up a bunch of windmills, which the east coast of the US is currently finding out can be problematic.
Personally, once I buy a house, I'm just going to put solar shingles on the roof and buy a hell of a lot of batteries to store up for the hurricanes that are bound to block a bit of sunlight and knock a few of the shingles off. I was lucky when Isabelle hit in that I only went without power for 3 days. There are still a lot of people without power, and it could be a while before everyone's back up. Of course, then I'll be producing more electricity (though we don't need more production), but, more importantly, it will be produced at my house rather than being brought into my house over power lines (with one company controlling all of the power in the state).
But then the question is, do the dots, numbers, whatever ranking system, take this into account? I've had games show up as good in Battle.net that played horribly. Ping doesn't tell you everything, but at least it tells you something, and once someone's saturated their bandwidth or overloaded their server, latency will be higher in-game.
In a similar sense, Half-Life measures latency as a mix of these values. Many people complain that the latency value shown in-game isn't the same as the ping they get in some server browsers, but the simple fact is that Valve was trying to display a number that more accurately represented the game. The problem I have is not so much that they're trying to calculate other variables, it's that they're using a very small fixed scale to represent something that is generally large and variable in nature. In other words, representing a 3 digit number in the range 1 through 5, with 0 decimal places for accuracy. A green light a few years ago could be a yellow light today, and a red light in a couple more years.
I guess that's why I feel the way I do, since the first one I played was FF1 on the NES.
Considering that they sell LCD screens and cigarette lighter adapters for the GameCube, I'd have to say it would only be a challenge if you built both of those parts yourself.
Optionally, I guess you could try to power it on D cells or a rechargable battery pack.
The Cube certainly doesn't fit in your pocket, but then neither does the PS1 LCD screen he put on that GBA.
It is the same with online games. Why not have some sort of tiered league? You could give people the ability to kick off someone who obviously belongs in a different league.
Most popular online games do have leagues, and most of them are tiered by difficulty (or, eventually, difficulty seperates them even when they're not tiered). Unfortunately, those are leagues, and even the people that lose every week are probably better than a lot of the people that are just looking for a game where they can play people of equal skill and have fun.
Servers tend to seperate along these lines the same way the basketball courts where you live probably did. People go and play, they find out it's a little rough for them or not enough of a challenge, and they go somewhere else. I played on one TFC server for the first 3 months or so that I played that game, and there were, occasionally, a handful of people (one at a time, usually) that would just own the server, they obviously didn't belong, yet they'd come back every once in a while. Eventually, I got to the point where I felt I didn't belong (because even the guys that obviously didn't belong were not much of a challenge sometimes), and I looked for another server. That 'another server' ended up belonging to the clan who's tag I still use, and I got my ass handed to me, constantly, for weeks. To me, it was more fun that way, having already learned the game, I learned more from them. People simply wouldn't come back to the server unless they wanted to see if they measured up, and the clan's name was good enough that people came looking for a challenge and knowing that abusive people would be removed. It was a rough place to play for people that weren't extremely skilled, but it was also full of polite people, most of the time, who didn't care about showing off their 1337 sk1llz so much as having a good time and maybe a bit of a challenge (that being said, for months there were always people gunning for the clan, just to prove themselves).
In short, find a server that caters to your skill level, and the way you like to play. I don't object to the idea of developers trying to build in some sort of enforcement measure for this, or something that'll at least help people find the right level for them, but the reality is that these games are out there if you look for them. If you do incorporate some sort of ranking system to accomplish this, though, link it to the CDKey used, otherwise people will simply abuse it (of course, they could always buy another CDKey, but if that's how they choose to do it, it's more money to the developers). I always prefer player choice over code-enforcement, though.
I usually put friendly fire off. It stops the idiots. I don't think most of them do it even on purpose they just don't seem able to realise what type of game they are in.
After a while, I stopped playing games without friendly fire simply because people thought it was acceptable to spam so much crap in one area that everyone has to pass through just to get a few cheap kills. Essentially, in TF-style games especially, it leads to being stripped of all your armor and having to play in a really poor game rather than the situation with friendly fire on: dealing with a handful of idiots while everyone else is at least paying some attention to their fire. The handful of idiots can be dealt with either by good, helpful players or by administration. Both, unfortunately, are in short supply, but a good game is well worth it most of the time.
All of that being said, over time I played public games less often, and eventually almost completely stopped playing them. Equally irritating is when you're questioned for enforcing the rules on a server when you have been given admin authority on a server. It's amazing what activities people will try to defend once they've been kicked and/or banned from a server, even coming into a clan IRC channel to complain about being kicked.
Well, that's good to know, maybe I'll pick it up when I have some spare cash ;)
As far as Disgaea goes, I also have FF:Tactics Advance and Dynasty Tactics 2 to vie for my time. Plus, like I said, I've been on a C&C:G:ZH (umm yeah, gotta love acronyms) kick for a couple days, and since I just figured out the specialized generals thing last nite, I think I've got some time to burn on it yet. That and Amplitude, and I still haven't quite unlocked everything on Wario Ware, and Animal Crossing still gives me a reason to play now and then... In other words, too many games, not enough time, but I still love the time sinks.
Yeah, because Services for Unix is composed entirely of 'strings'.
umm right.
All of the GPL'd software that's in SFU has source available for download as well, but I suppose that since most of that source (if not all of it) can be shown not to be derived from SCO, then MS doesn't need the license, right? Then again, there's always the closed-source portion of SFU, some portion of which is original code...
You are in a minority. How did you learn that X ms is an acceptable ping time for different games? By playing them a few times.
I agree that I'm in a minority. That is why I asked if it was a setting somewhere. Default to that system, allow players to see actual ping times if they wish. The ping times are obviously there somewhere, unless they're using some other arbitrary method to determine the 1 through 5 scores.
How did I learn what was acceptable ping for different games? Simple. There was no other method for determining it except to learn at the time that I started playing games online. People didn't use colour codes or 1 through 5 to rank things, they gave you pings, or you used the ping command in your console (or in DOS). It's blatantly obvious that turn-based games aren't going to depend on pings. It's also somewhat obvious (though less-so than with turn-based) that certain games and game types, such as RTS games and Diablo, are less dependant on ping than others, such as FPS games.
Something else of note, what is acceptable has changed over time. When I started playing Quake, anyone under 400ms ping was an LPB, whereas today people on 56K are regularly bitching about 200ms pings. I couldn't even snipe in TF after getting a cable modem because of the difference between a 400ms ping and a sub-100ms ping (leading shots is quite different for a 300ms difference in pings). The 1 through 5 scale could need serious adjustment over time, especially considering the difference I'm talking about is only over the last 7 years or so (though the average console's life seems to be about half that today).
No, because the gamer would be too busy outside playing Boktai until the sun goes down -- at which point they would swap to Disgaea :)
;)
;)
The person arguing about stuff on Slashdot clearly doesn't have enough games
Or spends most of their time indoors at work during the day and has to sit waiting for a compile or a bug-check or some other obscure computerized task that takes far too long and allows them to post on slashdot while they wait
Seriously, I don't even own a copy of Boktai because the sun's not up most of the time I can get outside for anything more than lunch or a smoke. I haven't started Disgaea yet because I'm in one of my 'quick game' cycles, playing skirmishes on the C&C:Generals expansion.
To me, the difference comes in cycles. I have cycles where I want to sit down and play a game that's going to take me 20-60 hours (of playing) to complete. In other cycles, I want to play a game that might take me 10-90 minutes to complete, or to get a reasonable amount of the game completed in. I sat down and played straight through Max Payne in about 8 hours (taking short breaks), knowing full well that it was a short game. I enjoyed it, but would've spread it out a great deal more if I hadn't known it was that short (and been disappointed when it ended in that time frame).
.hack games was about 20 hours in the primary story line (sometimes shorter), but I still put out the money because of the ability to spend more time on the game (through the keyword system) and the Liminality anime series (though that is also somewhat short), and I enjoy the games, even if they aren't 40+ hours (hell, I spent $60 on the NES version of FF1 and that game only took about 20-30 hours unless you really soaked up time levelling).
;)
Something else of note is that I tend to stock up on games that I know (or think) will be good. During the fairly regular time periods in which very few games are released (every summer, for example), I go back and play games that I either never finished or never even started playing (I usually fire them up when I bring them home to make sure they spin and have no obvious problems right at the start, but don't always play all of them).
I'm probably going to invite jeers for saying this, but it bears repeating because it's fundamental: If you're having fun, it shouldn't matter if the video game is 10 hours or 100 hours. Unless the flavor goes out of the game in less than 10 hours of play (which would cause me to call it a bad game with length of play probably being at the bottom of a list of shortcomings), you're probably getting your money's worth as compared to going to movies or buying DVDs.
It does take some repeating, sometimes, but at the same time different people have different expectations for their money. I go to movies for the experience, and often think it's over-priced, but when a movie is truly good, it's worth it to see it on the big screen (and I truly couldn't tell you how much it would be worth to me beyond what it costs now, because I haven't hit a threshold recently, primarily because ticket prices, though high, are reasonable in this area, especially since they're $2-3 lower than where I lived a couple years ago). I buy DVDs knowing how long they are, and knowing that I don't watch movies over and over again, I just like to have them when I want to watch them (occasionally as it may be). I also tend to have a very definite threshold for all but the best movies on DVD. I rarely pay $20 for a DVD, and much more rarely pay more than that. I do have a very high tendency to buy TV series on DVD, if I like them. They may cost quite a bit (as much as $100/season sometimes), but I save time by not having to catch them on TV and watch commercials, and I can watch them when I wish (plus there's a good amount of length to a 22-episode season, especially in the 1-hour shows and/or HBO series, which have no commercials to begin with).
I expect a certain amount of length out of the things I buy. If I spend $50, I don't expect to play the game for a couple hours and then toss it aside. I spent $20 on Max Payne, knowing it's length from reviews, and it was worth that. I knew that each section of the
It's all relative. Some people will spend hundreds of hours on Ikaruga, some will be insane twitch-monkeys that beat it the first time through. Still others will get put off by the difficulty and drop it after a couple hours. I got my ass kicked on Amplitude's normal difficulty after cruising through the easy difficulty, but I'm blaming that on an ear infection at the moment