The emulation scene was starting then: it was a time when people were already fond of their older machines and software and began wondering if current machines would be able to run emulated versions just ok. And they did, at least the more basic stuff: emulators for NES, Commodore 64 and Infocom's z-machine were popping here and there. I was on the internet since the 1994 and saw these developments with great passion.:)
Amazing. 1996 was when commercial web was beginning instead of just personal and community driven "homepages". I also remember first getting in contact with the GNU project when downloading a GCC-powered compiler for Windows in 1996. Would only switch to Linux in 2001, though...
Metroid prime 3 had quite a few puzzles and that's an FPS (although some who drink too much nintendo koolaid inist it's it's own "FPA" genre.)
Not anywhere near the old 2D Metroid games, which excelled at the type of puzzles integrated into the level layouts, which were puzzles themselves waiting to be unlocked. Super Metroid shined at this, as Castlevania: SotN did.
True, many old dungeon crawlers had stupid maze-breaking passing for puzzles or stupid guess-the-verb ones and many subsequent point-n-click adventures had insane inventory-based puzzles. The best, however -- like, say, Infocom's Trinity -- are filled with just the right balance of story and fair, logic puzzles.
Brainygamer is a cool site and has covered a lot in the past days, from Bloom Blox failure so far, to Portal and MGS4.
"I generally feel like sandboxy games are unhealthy because they promote even more disconnection and unempathetic thinking."
I'd gladly pay a small fortune to have been the one to say that wonderful line. Congratulations! I wholeheartdly agree.
All this no-goals, open-endedness just means putting savages in a world where they can play god. And they do it the old bestial gods way. It really doesn't matter putting enough detail and whatever when people enter the game just to shoot everything and behave like a crack addict on diet.
ah, yes, back in the early 80s there was this frontend which made it possible to add object-oriented programming to a C program and compile it back to pure C. What was its name? Ah, it was C with Classes, by some bearded guy with a funky name.
I fear japanese youth has been idioticized by all the bogus videogaming scene in the past few decades. While old pictures of japanese showed serious, hard-working people, today we look at casual hipsters with colored hair, anime-inspired clothes and seemingly no goals towards life other than getting to the next level in some virtual world...
end users don't really use notepad: they use Word for everything, from recipes, to glueing photos and links to send via email in a single document. And programmers should know better to try better tools, even Windows-only like Notepad++ or TextPad...
I really don't think notepad is that popular. And it is not about simplicity, but about simplism. It's simple to do the trivial and very hard and timeconsuming to do any real work.
I'm sure there will be lots of people in developing countries eager to get their hands on one of these and exchange it for food.
All of these stories centering on Microsoft or Intel seem not to realize that. Microsoft software comes for free in developing countries: people don't have money to buy legal copies so they either grab pirated or don't use computers at all. So that'd be a non-issue for Microsoft except that what they don't really want is an uncontrolled spread of Linux among youngsters. of course, long time partner Intel agrees...
"They put a bunch of R&D into C# and its standard libraries, and then released it as an open specification."
if you call R&D stealing from lessons learned from toying with their licensed JVM and later hiring most of the Borland Delphi guys, I'll dig it...
"Having a C# implementation in Linux, with a decent C# widget toolkit, is a good way to invite developers into the open source world."
no, it's a good way to maintain them in the same sheep mentality. Developing under Linux is a good way to learn new technologies and paradigms, entering in contact with non-mainstream mumbo-jumbo. Python, Ruby, Perl, Common Lisp, OCaml, Scheme, Haskell are all proper and better alternatives than low-level C coding...
"Going from [Visual Studio + C# + Windows.Forms] to [MonoDevelop + C# + GTK#] is a lot less daunting than to [emacs + C + GTK], etc."
Not wonderfully hyperrealistic crisp graphics, not involving storylines, not good music, not brain masturbation, just simple, humble, addictive fun! I'll give you all my dollars and social life for just a bit more of fun!
Slashdot Mirror
The emulation scene was starting then: it was a time when people were already fond of their older machines and software and began wondering if current machines would be able to run emulated versions just ok. And they did, at least the more basic stuff: emulators for NES, Commodore 64 and Infocom's z-machine were popping here and there. I was on the internet since the 1994 and saw these developments with great passion. :)
Here are some of those sites still around:
http://www.zophar.net/
http://www.ifarchive.org/
http://www.eidolons-inn.net/
Amazing. 1996 was when commercial web was beginning instead of just personal and community driven "homepages". I also remember first getting in contact with the GNU project when downloading a GCC-powered compiler for Windows in 1996. Would only switch to Linux in 2001, though...
What about people from Betelgeuse? :P
"Typography is the single most powerful and versatile design tool in existence."
Oh, please! Fonts are just a way to get a message across. If the message is good, I don't mind it coming from hand-drawn child lettering...
Metroid prime 3 had quite a few puzzles and that's an FPS (although some who drink too much nintendo koolaid inist it's it's own "FPA" genre.)
Not anywhere near the old 2D Metroid games, which excelled at the type of puzzles integrated into the level layouts, which were puzzles themselves waiting to be unlocked. Super Metroid shined at this, as Castlevania: SotN did.
True, many old dungeon crawlers had stupid maze-breaking passing for puzzles or stupid guess-the-verb ones and many subsequent point-n-click adventures had insane inventory-based puzzles. The best, however -- like, say, Infocom's Trinity -- are filled with just the right balance of story and fair, logic puzzles.
Brainygamer is a cool site and has covered a lot in the past days, from Bloom Blox failure so far, to Portal and MGS4.
A Plurality, then? :P
http://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife/index.html
Wonderful online scifi book. The author, Simon Funk, copes with many such questions with incredible imagination and vivid narration.
And I thought the GTA series was bad enough.
"I generally feel like sandboxy games are unhealthy because they promote even more disconnection and unempathetic thinking."
I'd gladly pay a small fortune to have been the one to say that wonderful line. Congratulations! I wholeheartdly agree.
All this no-goals, open-endedness just means putting savages in a world where they can play god. And they do it the old bestial gods way. It really doesn't matter putting enough detail and whatever when people enter the game just to shoot everything and behave like a crack addict on diet.
http://parchment.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/parchment.html?story=http://parchment.toolness.com/if-archive/games/competition95/weather.z5.js
A change in the weather, by Andrew Plotkin.
Should run on IE7, FF2+, Safari and Opera.
Interactive-fiction games are absolutely delicious.
Where I've seen this before? hmmm...
ah, yes, back in the early 80s there was this frontend which made it possible to add object-oriented programming to a C program and compile it back to pure C. What was its name? Ah, it was C with Classes, by some bearded guy with a funky name.
comin full circle...
Some day we'll find ready-made mattresses somewhere...
But no, never had any need to boot Windows ever again.
too bad I was serious...
I fear japanese youth has been idioticized by all the bogus videogaming scene in the past few decades. While old pictures of japanese showed serious, hard-working people, today we look at casual hipsters with colored hair, anime-inspired clothes and seemingly no goals towards life other than getting to the next level in some virtual world...
I pity them.
I see you don't know Neuromancer.
BTW, I enjoyed the burly brawl very much.
My gf likes my wii too... ;)
Seems like the XBox 360 is rapidly approaching Sega Genesis convoluted last days, full of failed add-ons that nobody cared...
Frankly, just gimme a standalone bluray player...
Congrats, man! That was very good!
Just coming in: seemingly, the gigantic filaments were just strains of hair attached to the telescope lenses...
end users don't really use notepad: they use Word for everything, from recipes, to glueing photos and links to send via email in a single document. And programmers should know better to try better tools, even Windows-only like Notepad++ or TextPad...
I really don't think notepad is that popular. And it is not about simplicity, but about simplism. It's simple to do the trivial and very hard and timeconsuming to do any real work.
I'm sure there will be lots of people in developing countries eager to get their hands on one of these and exchange it for food.
All of these stories centering on Microsoft or Intel seem not to realize that. Microsoft software comes for free in developing countries: people don't have money to buy legal copies so they either grab pirated or don't use computers at all. So that'd be a non-issue for Microsoft except that what they don't really want is an uncontrolled spread of Linux among youngsters. of course, long time partner Intel agrees...
"who's the bigger music fan: The person with a $10000 stereo, and $500 of music, or the person with a $500 stereo, and $10000 of music?"
real music fans play the music by themselves.
"They put a bunch of R&D into C# and its standard libraries, and then released it as an open specification."
:)
if you call R&D stealing from lessons learned from toying with their licensed JVM and later hiring most of the Borland Delphi guys, I'll dig it...
"Having a C# implementation in Linux, with a decent C# widget toolkit, is a good way to invite developers into the open source world."
no, it's a good way to maintain them in the same sheep mentality. Developing under Linux is a good way to learn new technologies and paradigms, entering in contact with non-mainstream mumbo-jumbo. Python, Ruby, Perl, Common Lisp, OCaml, Scheme, Haskell are all proper and better alternatives than low-level C coding...
"Going from [Visual Studio + C# + Windows.Forms] to [MonoDevelop + C# + GTK#] is a lot less daunting than to [emacs + C + GTK], etc."
what about to vim+python+pygtk?
welcome Flash, Silverlight and whatever f*cktard newfangled proprietary tech is spreading in the web to make ads money...
gimme more fun!
Not wonderfully hyperrealistic crisp graphics, not involving storylines, not good music, not brain masturbation, just simple, humble, addictive fun! I'll give you all my dollars and social life for just a bit more of fun!
FUN!! that's all you need...