I thought Marvin resembles a "superdeformed", cutesified Star Wars stormtrooper. (Sirius Cybernetics most likely meant him to look marketable, so IMO that's still better than the all-too-obviously miserable cardboard box ensemble from the TV show.)
With the destruction of Earth conveniently nearby they might as well introduce the Heart of Gold in a dramatic that's-no-moon kinda way, toying with everyone's expectations (not that I expect that to happen).
"H2G2? Isn't that this Star Wars parody?"
Still, better than making it look like an actual running shoe. DNA never meant it that literally, did he? It's just supposed to mean "aerodynamic, wingless and white", right? After all, the Concorde doesn't really look like a solid cloud either (or whatever it was, something like that anyway).
And they'll get it all wrong and proclaim "42" is "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything", stumbling into the exact same trap as Deep Thought's original programmers.
1 (MSN)/5 (Goo), almost all genealogy sites. 133/495 without ""s,but my first name's also the name of a month. MSN doesn't even find me on my website. Weird. It does find other words...
Re:Gotta say
on
Digital Retro
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What I miss is being able to do things all by myself, such as hacking games for infinite lives, modifying the display font, programming sound effects or sprites without any tools beyond the built-in BASIC and built-in machine code monitor.
Ever since the Amiga and even more so on the PC I often feel like it's just not really worth the trouble anymore. On the one hand everything's so much more complex that it's hard to tell just where to start, and on the other hand there is an overabundance of tools available, making most 'harmless' hacks pretty irrelevant.
Sure, there're other and (outwardly) much more impressive-looking things to do 'with relative ease', and these new computers are actually useful without any programming whatsoever, but it's an AWFUL lot harder to feel like you had any kind of understanding of the inner workings of...stuff.
Not that I'd want to replace my PC with a Commodore Plus/4.
Must add, though, that I remember finding some inaccuracies as far as machines I know are concerned. That might just mean there're more. Best treat it like you might one of those graphic design "picture-books" (whatever you'd call them)
That's a beautiful book indeed. Not too informative, and the text itself is somewhat style over substance (dot matrix look and all), but it's nice to have lying around.
Unless I'm thinking of another book. My mom has it, not me. And no, she's not living upstairs from me;)
Or, at least, elegantly unobtrusive. I didn't like any console designs I can remember except for the original VCS which looked rather like a piece of furniture (love the metal switches). On the opposite side of the offensiveness scale there's the XBox. While I've not seen one with my own eyes, it looks like a perfect blend of "macho" and "cheap". And the Gamecube, while not downright ugly, is just not the right shade of tacky. The PS2 is the only console that has both Rez and ICO, right? Damn. Now I almost thought of getting one.
Interesting. I live in Germany and never bought such a filter, nor saw one, nor even knew of them or of "tax impulsing", which must be what you were thinking of. Apparently it's used to monitor the duration of phone calls (for billing). But it's nothing to do with modems per se, nor with the taxation of modems, though it seems it can interfere with data transmission. Hmm.
(And IMO this new fee still amounts to an internet tax, because they act as though everyone with internet access automatically used it to watch their mostly atrocious broadcasts. I wouldn't even know how to do that and I could hardly care less either.)
Great. Like I asked them to put their crap on the web. Like I ever watched their crap on the web. Like it's their web. Like they produce anything that's not crap. I like the internet because it's not TV. It makes it so much easier to not give in and watch TV. Yep, I should really pay for the privilege of being potentially capable to watch TV where I don't want it, and where they could easily restrict access to their GEZ-paying customers. But that'd make sense, can't let that happen now can we.
Most good games are either Z-Code or TADS 2, though Glulx and TADS 3 seem to be gaining ground (both are more powerful, too; Glulx is something like a successor to the somewhat archaic Z-Machine), and Hugo and ADRIFT have produced a few interesting games as well.
As for TADS 2 vs. TADS 3, there're interpreters for Windows, Mac OS and Linux that handle both versions - though I don't know how up to date the non-Windows T3 terps are, as T3 is still being developed.
If you want to get to know modern IF, I suggest you grab a Z-Code and a TADS terp and have a go at a few of wurb.com's five-star games instead of aimlessly wading through nearly 40 comp entries.
All languages have their merits, I suppose. ADRIFT is for non-programmers; it's a point-and-click IF construction kit kinda thing. ALAN is a programming language modeled on natural English (to some extent), likewise targeted at beginners. Et cetera.
It's not just you, I haven't seen any version of that movie for years now, but I do remember wondering about that myself; along with Han stepping on Jabba's "tail" (for, I suppose, similarly recycling-related reasons) it made that particular scene seem extremely cheap (and I don't even care who shot first)
The beauty of internet communication has always been that people could not judge me based on my looks. Not that they'd drive everyone away, but yeah, I'm shy, and I'd rather deal with folks who like what I say than with people who think I'm this or that kinda person because of my face, my outfit, my sex, my gender, my whatever. They're usually wrong anyway..
And now I get the chance to express myself through some prefabbed urban hipster kinda pixel-doll? Woo, hoo. Yawn. How expressive!
What is it with that notion that it's so hard to convey emotions verbally? Sure, it may take a while until you know the other person well enough to get a feeling for the way they write... but if somebody is so unwilling to "listen" (read) that they require so much mouse-clickery that there's really more pretty-noise than signal, then perhaps they don't actually care how you feel.
No, I think this is a toy, not an evolution of anything. Just a way to play a game while also chatting. Fun? Perhaps, but I wouldn't delude myself into thinking it's particularly "useful". It just makes it easier to fake emotions.
I'll get back to this when it goes... uhm... "VR." Having a conversation with another polygonal semistickfigure controlled by how I move my hands, that'd be nice. But you might never know how often you're allowed to hug somebody you've only ever *hug*ged "in text"... heh. We can make things so delightfully complicated.
If I stood on Phobos, would I get the impression that I'm standing on a plane (and I don't mean an airplane, I mean something that could be mistaken for something like Discworld)? That's kinda my personal, unscientific feel-good definition of "planet" (moons being planets orbiting other planets)...
Adventure(TM) ~ Graphically primitive even by the 2600's standards, but as a very early adventure game it was unique.
Asteroids® ~ 7800. Pretty decent. One of the few games that'd let you play together (simultaneously). No vector graphics, though.
Battlezone® ~ 2600. Also lost its "vector" goodness. Impressively moody graphics, though, nice colours. As a game, it's just dreary. Turn in circles and shoot stuff until the stuff shoots you.
Crystal Castles® ~ 2600. That bear's difficult to control to say the least. Still, I enjoyed it. Sorta.
Desert Falcon(TM) ~ 7800. Only know the Atari 800 version, which is a little crummy. The 7800 port looks better. Egypt-themed Zaxxon kinda pseudo-3D diagonally scrolling shooter with power-ups and semi-neat extras like walking and swimming.
Gravitar® ~ 2600. The 2600 doesn't really have the resolution for a smooth Lunar Lander/Thrust kinda game. And the colours are tasteless.
Haunted House(TM) ~ 2600. This was spooky. Very minimalist treasure hunt in a mostly black environment. Wind blowing out your matches, ghosts coming through the walls and all that. I think you had to toggle some of the extra switches (difficulty, maybe even colour/b&w?) to "configure" the game. Hope that's possible on the "Flashback".
Planet Smashers(TM) ~ 7800. Ugh. Not how you'd want to demo your 7800. Needs two-button joystick. "Funky" music at the title screen though.
Solaris(TM) ~ 2600. One of the youngest and visually most impressive 2600 games: you could fly over planets and in space and enemies had their own distinct behaviours, but the "3D" zooming is clunky and movement in space felt "wrong" somehow. I really prefer Imagic's Moonsweeper, which is even prettier and has the smoother gameplay.
Yar's Revenge ~ 2600. Ohwell. Never really understood why it's held in such high esteem but I guess it's gotta be on there too.
...
Hm. Many of these games I wouldn't have played much even back then. Atari's own games just weren't as good as Activision's or Imagic's. And this doesn't even look like a decent anthology of their stuff. Where're Dig Dug, Missile Command, Ms. Pac-Man, Moon Patrol, Defender? All missing due to legal issues? Shame.
If I hadn't already done so, I'd rather just get a 7800 off eBay and track down some of my favourite games (H.E.R.O., Moonsweeper, Pitfall I/II, Montezuma's Revenge, Beamrider, Demon Attack... even 7800 Donkey Kong/DK Jr./Mario Bros, despite the utterly annoying audio). A console with a sub-optimal collection of built-in games, I don't know. That's kinda too retro, no? Just another throwaway toy.
Yes, I've wondered about that. Smoking? Maybe there was a fire and something smelled interesting and people tried to reproduce that, make it 'convenient'. Sex? Hm. Was it really ever necessary to "figure that one out"? All the other animals seem to just know, don't they? Our distant ancestors probably did as well. Once it left the realm of pure instinct, there likely was enough of it going on already to sorta remind them. Besides, human anatomy sort of suggests these parts fit into each other. Bread on the other hand...
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With the destruction of Earth conveniently nearby they might as well introduce the Heart of Gold in a dramatic that's-no-moon kinda way, toying with everyone's expectations (not that I expect that to happen).
"H2G2? Isn't that this Star Wars parody?"
Still, better than making it look like an actual running shoe. DNA never meant it that literally, did he? It's just supposed to mean "aerodynamic, wingless and white", right? After all, the Concorde doesn't really look like a solid cloud either (or whatever it was, something like that anyway).
Oh, so many things to get wrong! :}
And they'll get it all wrong and proclaim "42" is "the meaning of life, the universe, and everything", stumbling into the exact same trap as Deep Thought's original programmers.
1 (MSN)/5 (Goo), almost all genealogy sites. 133/495 without ""s,but my first name's also the name of a month. MSN doesn't even find me on my website. Weird. It does find other words...
Ever since the Amiga and even more so on the PC I often feel like it's just not really worth the trouble anymore. On the one hand everything's so much more complex that it's hard to tell just where to start, and on the other hand there is an overabundance of tools available, making most 'harmless' hacks pretty irrelevant.
Sure, there're other and (outwardly) much more impressive-looking things to do 'with relative ease', and these new computers are actually useful without any programming whatsoever, but it's an AWFUL lot harder to feel like you had any kind of understanding of the inner workings of ...stuff.
Not that I'd want to replace my PC with a Commodore Plus/4.
Must add, though, that I remember finding some inaccuracies as far as machines I know are concerned. That might just mean there're more. Best treat it like you might one of those graphic design "picture-books" (whatever you'd call them)
That's a beautiful book indeed. Not too informative, and the text itself is somewhat style over substance (dot matrix look and all), but it's nice to have lying around. Unless I'm thinking of another book. My mom has it, not me. And no, she's not living upstairs from me ;)
Or, at least, elegantly unobtrusive. I didn't like any console designs I can remember except for the original VCS which looked rather like a piece of furniture (love the metal switches). On the opposite side of the offensiveness scale there's the XBox. While I've not seen one with my own eyes, it looks like a perfect blend of "macho" and "cheap". And the Gamecube, while not downright ugly, is just not the right shade of tacky. The PS2 is the only console that has both Rez and ICO, right? Damn. Now I almost thought of getting one.
maybe
And it's spelled "Go Ogle". *giggle*
VCRs count, too. Doesn't matter if there's no aerial/satellite dish/cable stuff in sight.
Sex-based lumping-together disgusts me. Bah. *deletes rant*
See my post or google for 'tax impulsing'. It's got the word tax in it, it involves line noise, it might require a filter. It's just not a modem tax.
Tax it if it looks like it could conceivably be pushed, pulled, turned, nudged, toppled or, for that matter, if it is subject to entropy.
Interesting. I live in Germany and never bought such a filter, nor saw one, nor even knew of them or of "tax impulsing", which must be what you were thinking of. Apparently it's used to monitor the duration of phone calls (for billing). But it's nothing to do with modems per se, nor with the taxation of modems, though it seems it can interfere with data transmission. Hmm.
(And IMO this new fee still amounts to an internet tax, because they act as though everyone with internet access automatically used it to watch their mostly atrocious broadcasts. I wouldn't even know how to do that and I could hardly care less either.)
Great. Like I asked them to put their crap on the web. Like I ever watched their crap on the web. Like it's their web. Like they produce anything that's not crap. I like the internet because it's not TV. It makes it so much easier to not give in and watch TV. Yep, I should really pay for the privilege of being potentially capable to watch TV where I don't want it, and where they could easily restrict access to their GEZ-paying customers. But that'd make sense, can't let that happen now can we.
As for TADS 2 vs. TADS 3, there're interpreters for Windows, Mac OS and Linux that handle both versions - though I don't know how up to date the non-Windows T3 terps are, as T3 is still being developed.
If you want to get to know modern IF, I suggest you grab a Z-Code and a TADS terp and have a go at a few of wurb.com's five-star games instead of aimlessly wading through nearly 40 comp entries.
All languages have their merits, I suppose. ADRIFT is for non-programmers; it's a point-and-click IF construction kit kinda thing. ALAN is a programming language modeled on natural English (to some extent), likewise targeted at beginners. Et cetera.
>jump left
>step right
>put hands on hips
>bring knees in tight
>thrust pelvis
>do time warp
>again
Shoot Floyd with laser, please. Or don't, because robots are tough. Nothing can hurt robots.
Blah.
It's not just you, I haven't seen any version of that movie for years now, but I do remember wondering about that myself; along with Han stepping on Jabba's "tail" (for, I suppose, similarly recycling-related reasons) it made that particular scene seem extremely cheap (and I don't even care who shot first)
And now I get the chance to express myself through some prefabbed urban hipster kinda pixel-doll? Woo, hoo. Yawn. How expressive!
What is it with that notion that it's so hard to convey emotions verbally? Sure, it may take a while until you know the other person well enough to get a feeling for the way they write... but if somebody is so unwilling to "listen" (read) that they require so much mouse-clickery that there's really more pretty-noise than signal, then perhaps they don't actually care how you feel.
No, I think this is a toy, not an evolution of anything. Just a way to play a game while also chatting. Fun? Perhaps, but I wouldn't delude myself into thinking it's particularly "useful". It just makes it easier to fake emotions.
I'll get back to this when it goes... uhm... "VR." Having a conversation with another polygonal semistickfigure controlled by how I move my hands, that'd be nice. But you might never know how often you're allowed to hug somebody you've only ever *hug*ged "in text"... heh. We can make things so delightfully complicated.
Both this and the Time cover use the same hand twice. How cheap!
If I stood on Phobos, would I get the impression that I'm standing on a plane (and I don't mean an airplane, I mean something that could be mistaken for something like Discworld)? That's kinda my personal, unscientific feel-good definition of "planet" (moons being planets orbiting other planets)...
Asteroids® ~ 7800. Pretty decent. One of the few games that'd let you play together (simultaneously). No vector graphics, though.
Battlezone® ~ 2600. Also lost its "vector" goodness. Impressively moody graphics, though, nice colours. As a game, it's just dreary. Turn in circles and shoot stuff until the stuff shoots you.
Crystal Castles® ~ 2600. That bear's difficult to control to say the least. Still, I enjoyed it. Sorta.
Desert Falcon(TM) ~ 7800. Only know the Atari 800 version, which is a little crummy. The 7800 port looks better. Egypt-themed Zaxxon kinda pseudo-3D diagonally scrolling shooter with power-ups and semi-neat extras like walking and swimming.
Gravitar® ~ 2600. The 2600 doesn't really have the resolution for a smooth Lunar Lander/Thrust kinda game. And the colours are tasteless.
Haunted House(TM) ~ 2600. This was spooky. Very minimalist treasure hunt in a mostly black environment. Wind blowing out your matches, ghosts coming through the walls and all that. I think you had to toggle some of the extra switches (difficulty, maybe even colour/b&w?) to "configure" the game. Hope that's possible on the "Flashback".
Planet Smashers(TM) ~ 7800. Ugh. Not how you'd want to demo your 7800. Needs two-button joystick. "Funky" music at the title screen though.
Solaris(TM) ~ 2600. One of the youngest and visually most impressive 2600 games: you could fly over planets and in space and enemies had their own distinct behaviours, but the "3D" zooming is clunky and movement in space felt "wrong" somehow. I really prefer Imagic's Moonsweeper, which is even prettier and has the smoother gameplay.
Yar's Revenge ~ 2600. Ohwell. Never really understood why it's held in such high esteem but I guess it's gotta be on there too.
Hm. Many of these games I wouldn't have played much even back then. Atari's own games just weren't as good as Activision's or Imagic's. And this doesn't even look like a decent anthology of their stuff. Where're Dig Dug, Missile Command, Ms. Pac-Man, Moon Patrol, Defender? All missing due to legal issues? Shame.
If I hadn't already done so, I'd rather just get a 7800 off eBay and track down some of my favourite games (H.E.R.O., Moonsweeper, Pitfall I/II, Montezuma's Revenge, Beamrider, Demon Attack... even 7800 Donkey Kong/DK Jr./Mario Bros, despite the utterly annoying audio). A console with a sub-optimal collection of built-in games, I don't know. That's kinda too retro, no? Just another throwaway toy.
and something else i think, but i can't remember
No tea, and demolition orders?
Yes, I've wondered about that. Smoking? Maybe there was a fire and something smelled interesting and people tried to reproduce that, make it 'convenient'. Sex? Hm. Was it really ever necessary to "figure that one out"? All the other animals seem to just know, don't they? Our distant ancestors probably did as well. Once it left the realm of pure instinct, there likely was enough of it going on already to sorta remind them. Besides, human anatomy sort of suggests these parts fit into each other. Bread on the other hand ...