Correct, Valve hasn't invested in the months of developer/hours to port Half-Life to Linux... nobody there is as dedicated to Open Source as, for example, Carmack. All you can get for Linux is the Half-Life multiplayer server.
Linux is in a bind right now as far as games go - Why port your spiffy game when 3D drivers are still a mess in Linux (Glide excepted), and why write drivers for Linux when there are 100 times as many Windoze users? The only stick you can beat NVidia and Valve with is an idealogical one, and that isn't too painful.
Am I the only one that thinks that Q3A has flopped?:)
I mean, when it came out I was led to believe that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread... but when I played it, the gameplay was exactly the same as Q2. Lower-brain-stem-only, pro-ADD fragging.
It seems that Counter-Strike and Q3A are on different sides of the fence. On the one side is a game that rewards tactics and teamplay, and actually makes you wait for a few minutes now and then, and on the other side is a game that rewards quick reflexes and good frame rates, respawning you so quickly that it's often a better strategy to run madly into battle, slaughter and be slaughtered, and respawn instantly to do it again.
Wolfenstein, Doom, Marathon, Quake I, Half-Life Single-Player and Counter-Strike should be the defining classics of FPS. They each combined success (as defined by how many people played the game) with creating something different and original (as Q2 and Q3 have not). I'm going to draw some flame for that one.
I just hope that some of these Q3 Mods have more thought put into substance, and less into eye-candy. Carmack and the boys have given them an absolutely amazing graphics engine with stellar netcode. Now someone actually has to make an interesting game out of it. Whatever happened to Quake Soccer? That had potential!
Isn't that one of the funniest quotes to come out of a media mogul's mouthpiece in awhile? Wouldn't it be great if corporations had no incentive to create pop-pap boy-toy 'music'?
I wonder if the guy who said that actually believes it. Somehow, young garage musicians will say "Fuck it mates, let's go into chartered accountancy, there's more money there."
Now, while I see lots of mentions of Quake III (understandably) and Unreal Tournament in the postings here, I hardly see anybody plugging for Counter-Strike on Half-life! According to Gamespy, Counter-Strike alone has 10,100 players right now, more than all Q3A (3,000), Unreal Tourney (2,200), Starsiege (1,600), and Q2 (1,400) game types combined!
It's the anti-Quake. Instead of cartoony lightning-fast action, where you can get gibbed and respawn milliseconds later to avenge your death, CS has (quasi)-realistic gameplay where if you get shot in the face, you're dead. Helmet or not. And when you get shot, you have to wait for the entire round to end, which could take four or five minutes. They're very different styles of play, and they've both got their merits. However, to insert my bias, I'm of the opinion that CS represents a landmark in FPS shooters, not for technical accomplishment (Though they've done some good shit with the Quake 2 engine) but for sheer gameplay (and as a bonus, realism). This is the first super-popular FPS game that requires patience and strategy.
Are these 10,000 Counter-strike players all non-geeks? Why is it that Rocket Arena for Quake gets a news notice and no mention of Counter-Strike is ever made?
OK, I take that back, I know that I can turn off the Quake topic if I want, and I know that Slashdot can't cover every last piddling thing. But fer chrissakes, give the CS boys some credit! I hope Sierra is, 'cause Half-life is almost two years old and it's still the most popular game on the market by a landslide, even against the granddaddy of all FPS, Q3A!
Thanks to this article, we now have a topic for Anime. It was originally posted under "TV". Of course, you didn't think that the poster and the (three/four) moderators who got it up to 5 are all stupid, did you?
Okay, you're right, I pulled the Dodge Durango stat from a comment a friend made. It's bullshit. I'm aware of the whole frontal surface area/rolling resistance component of automobile drag.
However, fuel efficiency does have something to do with the Durango having a large displacement, long travel engine. When comparing two cars, one with a high-displacement engine and one with high RPMs, the car with the large displacement engine will have a fuel economy hit from square one because it's lugging around the enormous engine block! So there.;) I shouldn't have talked out of my ass earlier.
My original post was pointing out that Honda's engineering has improved since the 1973 CVCC car. The fact that they can build a normally aspirated production car that makes 240 horses from 2 litres of displacement seems to me to be an engineering feat.
In my mind, any carmaker can make a powerful engine. Just make it bigger! There's no replacement for displacement. It takes engineering and manufacturing skill to get power-to-weight. And that's admirable, just as a compact bit of code that replaces bloated cruft is admirable.
>If you don't like it, don't play it and shut the fuck up. In case you haven't noticed, and this goes to all you stupid retards who post here, nobody gives a flying fuck about your opinion.
In all honesty, it seems painfully obvious that you do.
Hee hee...
Though I shouldn't have used 'retarded' in my post. "Silly" would be more like it.
The story interrupted half-way down for a link to "Microsoft Profits top Wall Street Forecasts"
Not once does the article suggest that the most comprehensive fix is not using Outlook... But wait, how are users supposed to switch email clients when Outlook 4, Outlook Express 4, Outlook 5, and Outlook Express 5 all use different proprietary binary formats?
USSR labs... Did they pick up that name around 1991 by any chance?
Just as with any news source, there's going to be bias. It's just that most news sources don't have such obvious and entertaining bias as MSNBC.
"We don't need privacy, we have nothing to hide! Why do you want privacy, are you a pedophile or something?"
So you like the idea of coming home to a message on your answering machine that reads, "Hi, I'm from Happy Bear Pharmaceuticals, your doctor's office told us that you're HIV-positive, and we would like to extend to you a free trial offer of our new 'Margarita' drug cocktail!" Doesn't that strike you as something that maybe - just maybe - should be your choice to disclose?
One theorem I read about tried to explain dark matter with a similar concept:
"Dark Matter" is of course the name given to some substance that has mass, but neither absorbs nor reflects light. According to many calculations, the visible universe should weigh much more than what we can account for with telescopes.
This theory stated that "Dark Matter" may be a manifestation of mass sitting outside of our three (four?)-dimensional universe, undetectable to all of our instrumentation. The idea is that the gravitron is the only subatomic particle that's capable of jumping through dimensions, and therefore makes its presence felt even though we can't find any mass to associate with it.
Replace Mulder with a two-bit hack actor from The Outer Limits or Psi Factor or one of the other spinoff shows that the X-Files has now begun to resemble. For the first four seasons, the X-files was amazing. Then they ran out of ideas. Now it reads like a daytime soap opera...
Bruce Campbell has a lot going for him though. His acting style easily matches the eloquence that the X-Files scripts have long been known for.
I never thought I'd be ranting like one of those "My TRS-80 was the best computer ever" types. Oh well.
Or ICQ clients which reappear on the top at a new message coming in
I hope you're not referring to Mirabilis ICQ, it's got UI options galore to suit everyone's taste. I knows how to shut the hell up and mind its own business if you click a few widgets. Too bad it's *7 megs*.
Ford and GMC have, however, managed to produce engines which actually HAVE power and torque without having to go that high.
Yes, they've produced some of the most fuel-inefficient vehicles on the market today. The Dodge Durango is the 2nd worst gas guzzler that's legal to own in Canada.
Dude, you're totally missing my point in the first paragraph.
>new turbine/steam power plants can get only about 70% efficiency
A jet engine, which is a kind of turbine would need to put out about 100lb of thrust to maintain freeway cruising speeds in the average car.
I never said anything about rocket cars. Leave those to the hobbyists on the Salt Flats. Turbine/steam power plants achieve high efficiency by running a huge turbine on natural gas, then using the resulting (waste) heat to boil water into steam for more turbine action. Waste heat from that operation is often piped to manufacturing plants next door. This allows for great efficiency of power generation.
Gas turbine cars have (apparently) proven to be very efficient, using a small turbine running at 13,000 RPM to generate electricity for electric motors, not for thrust. They're rather dangerous though. A string of 20 buzzsaws aimed at your shins...
As for where my statistics come from
Links, man, links! You'd be much more convincing if you didn't write a novelette and instead linked to supporting evidence (I should too). Stats I'm not convinced of :
Auto efficency 70%? I say 20%.
Power grid loss 50%? I have no clue.
Battery charging chemical efficiency 50%?
Prove those and your case is made.
And, [fuel cells are] clean. Running on hydrogen, the only emissions would be water vapor. Off gasoline, there'd be a little more
Running off hydrogen, there'd have to be more power plants, mass electrolysis, and a distribution system for a compressed flammable gas. Running off gasoline, there'd be the same amount of CO2 released as in a conventional gas engine now, you can't change the chemistry. What you get is better efficiency and no SOx or NOx gases, which are the source of smog. So yes, it's a good thing, but the hydrogen PR bit is just that. PR.
It wouldn't be all that bad. For example, at noon hour, every last soul in San Fransisco turns on their air conditioners, and transformers spark. But, one could recharge one's car anytime during the night, during off-peak hours, spreading out the power usage.
Slashdot Mirror
It's "hear, hear", by the way.
Linux is in a bind right now as far as games go - Why port your spiffy game when 3D drivers are still a mess in Linux (Glide excepted), and why write drivers for Linux when there are 100 times as many Windoze users? The only stick you can beat NVidia and Valve with is an idealogical one, and that isn't too painful.
Rosebud!
I mean, when it came out I was led to believe that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread... but when I played it, the gameplay was exactly the same as Q2. Lower-brain-stem-only, pro-ADD fragging.
It seems that Counter-Strike and Q3A are on different sides of the fence. On the one side is a game that rewards tactics and teamplay, and actually makes you wait for a few minutes now and then, and on the other side is a game that rewards quick reflexes and good frame rates, respawning you so quickly that it's often a better strategy to run madly into battle, slaughter and be slaughtered, and respawn instantly to do it again.
Wolfenstein, Doom, Marathon, Quake I, Half-Life Single-Player and Counter-Strike should be the defining classics of FPS. They each combined success (as defined by how many people played the game) with creating something different and original (as Q2 and Q3 have not). I'm going to draw some flame for that one.
I just hope that some of these Q3 Mods have more thought put into substance, and less into eye-candy. Carmack and the boys have given them an absolutely amazing graphics engine with stellar netcode. Now someone actually has to make an interesting game out of it. Whatever happened to Quake Soccer? That had potential!
I wonder if the guy who said that actually believes it. Somehow, young garage musicians will say "Fuck it mates, let's go into chartered accountancy, there's more money there."
It's the anti-Quake. Instead of cartoony lightning-fast action, where you can get gibbed and respawn milliseconds later to avenge your death, CS has (quasi)-realistic gameplay where if you get shot in the face, you're dead. Helmet or not. And when you get shot, you have to wait for the entire round to end, which could take four or five minutes. They're very different styles of play, and they've both got their merits. However, to insert my bias, I'm of the opinion that CS represents a landmark in FPS shooters, not for technical accomplishment (Though they've done some good shit with the Quake 2 engine) but for sheer gameplay (and as a bonus, realism). This is the first super-popular FPS game that requires patience and strategy.
Are these 10,000 Counter-strike players all non-geeks? Why is it that Rocket Arena for Quake gets a news notice and no mention of Counter-Strike is ever made?
OK, I take that back, I know that I can turn off the Quake topic if I want, and I know that Slashdot can't cover every last piddling thing. But fer chrissakes, give the CS boys some credit! I hope Sierra is, 'cause Half-life is almost two years old and it's still the most popular game on the market by a landslide, even against the granddaddy of all FPS, Q3A!
(shamelessly stolen from the Simpsons)
Unfortunatley for 3Dfx, they're going to have to rush their development cycle! It's already been done.
Thanks to this article, we now have a topic for Anime. It was originally posted under "TV". Of course, you didn't think that the poster and the (three/four) moderators who got it up to 5 are all stupid, did you?
Finally, a post where my sig is relevant!
However, fuel efficiency does have something to do with the Durango having a large displacement, long travel engine. When comparing two cars, one with a high-displacement engine and one with high RPMs, the car with the large displacement engine will have a fuel economy hit from square one because it's lugging around the enormous engine block! So there. ;) I shouldn't have talked out of my ass earlier.
My original post was pointing out that Honda's engineering has improved since the 1973 CVCC car. The fact that they can build a normally aspirated production car that makes 240 horses from 2 litres of displacement seems to me to be an engineering feat.
In my mind, any carmaker can make a powerful engine. Just make it bigger! There's no replacement for displacement. It takes engineering and manufacturing skill to get power-to-weight. And that's admirable, just as a compact bit of code that replaces bloated cruft is admirable.
>If you don't like it, don't play it and shut the fuck up. In case you haven't noticed, and this goes to all you stupid retards who post here, nobody gives a flying fuck about your opinion.
In all honesty, it seems painfully obvious that you do.
Hee hee...
Though I shouldn't have used 'retarded' in my post. "Silly" would be more like it.
Just as with any news source, there's going to be bias. It's just that most news sources don't have such obvious and entertaining bias as MSNBC.
"We don't need privacy, we have nothing to hide! Why do you want privacy, are you a pedophile or something?"
So you like the idea of coming home to a message on your answering machine that reads, "Hi, I'm from Happy Bear Pharmaceuticals, your doctor's office told us that you're HIV-positive, and we would like to extend to you a free trial offer of our new 'Margarita' drug cocktail!" Doesn't that strike you as something that maybe - just maybe - should be your choice to disclose?
"Dark Matter" is of course the name given to some substance that has mass, but neither absorbs nor reflects light. According to many calculations, the visible universe should weigh much more than what we can account for with telescopes.
This theory stated that "Dark Matter" may be a manifestation of mass sitting outside of our three (four?)-dimensional universe, undetectable to all of our instrumentation. The idea is that the gravitron is the only subatomic particle that's capable of jumping through dimensions, and therefore makes its presence felt even though we can't find any mass to associate with it.
All this is way beyond me.
Strangely enough, all the thong-clad women (and masked men) looked exactly the same except for the color of their leotard...
I never understood Mortal Kombat.
Or is British Columbia the only place in North America being overrun by retarded reality-based Japanese videogames?
Cancer man, please!
Soon we'll get the Cyrix Angst Engine and the 3DFx Delusion Engine and we can get Marvin the Paranoid Android working swell.
Bruce Campbell has a lot going for him though. His acting style easily matches the eloquence that the X-Files scripts have long been known for.
I never thought I'd be ranting like one of those "My TRS-80 was the best computer ever" types. Oh well.
Or ICQ clients which reappear on the top at a new message coming in
I hope you're not referring to Mirabilis ICQ, it's got UI options galore to suit everyone's taste. I knows how to shut the hell up and mind its own business if you click a few widgets. Too bad it's *7 megs*.
Ford and GMC have, however, managed to produce engines which actually HAVE power and torque without having to go that high.
Yes, they've produced some of the most fuel-inefficient vehicles on the market today. The Dodge Durango is the 2nd worst gas guzzler that's legal to own in Canada.
>new turbine/steam power plants can get only about 70% efficiency
A jet engine, which is a kind of turbine would need to put out about 100lb of thrust to maintain freeway cruising speeds in the average car.
I never said anything about rocket cars. Leave those to the hobbyists on the Salt Flats. Turbine/steam power plants achieve high efficiency by running a huge turbine on natural gas, then using the resulting (waste) heat to boil water into steam for more turbine action. Waste heat from that operation is often piped to manufacturing plants next door. This allows for great efficiency of power generation.
Gas turbine cars have (apparently) proven to be very efficient, using a small turbine running at 13,000 RPM to generate electricity for electric motors, not for thrust. They're rather dangerous though. A string of 20 buzzsaws aimed at your shins...
As for where my statistics come from
Links, man, links! You'd be much more convincing if you didn't write a novelette and instead linked to supporting evidence (I should too). Stats I'm not convinced of :
Prove those and your case is made.
And, [fuel cells are] clean. Running on hydrogen, the only emissions would be water vapor. Off gasoline, there'd be a little more
Running off hydrogen, there'd have to be more power plants, mass electrolysis, and a distribution system for a compressed flammable gas. Running off gasoline, there'd be the same amount of CO2 released as in a conventional gas engine now, you can't change the chemistry. What you get is better efficiency and no SOx or NOx gases, which are the source of smog. So yes, it's a good thing, but the hydrogen PR bit is just that. PR.
It wouldn't be all that bad. For example, at noon hour, every last soul in San Fransisco turns on their air conditioners, and transformers spark. But, one could recharge one's car anytime during the night, during off-peak hours, spreading out the power usage.
Matches my trailertrash wife too...