Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
I live in a suburb of Toronto and we have our municipal elections tomorrow. I voted early on Saturday and I noticed my vote got counted on a Diebold machine. All previous elections we wrote an "X" in a circle and they were hand-counted - this time it was electronically counted.
I asked the elections official how did they know my vote was counted. Her response was, (as she pointed to a small LCD display), "this counter here says how many votes this machine processed." I asked her how does she know it was counted *CORRECTLY* she made the mistake of saying "we're pretty sure it's correct."
At this point I demanded to know how "pretty sure" she was. Her defense was "there's a paper trail incase of an error" - a fairly valid defense. I proceeded to point to two electronic Diebold machines, the 6" thick ones with an LCD screen, and asked her "what about those?" She told me in a very matter of fact way that there's a paper trail for those too.
I asked her where the printer was, and if she ever actually say a printer. It was at this point that she no longer wanted to talk to me and kinda laughed me off as some sort of conspiracy wackjob.
The fact that we used these machines after their utter failure in larger US elections pissed me off, but the fact that they FAILED in CANADA, just one province over (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/1 324237&from=rss) really pissed me off.
I wanted to argue with her further but had no hard references memorized, essentially making my argument invalid. I did a bit of research from the usual sources (http://www.blackboxvoting.org), but I was really hoping to see this documentary before the elections tomorrow.
I encourage all Canadians voting in municipal elections tomorrow to make your feelings about e-voting (especially on Diebold machines) known to the organizers, and write your MPs and MPPs to tell them that e-voting is not acceptable.
It's not an issue of people liking your ideas or not, it's an issue of you insulting other people's work to boost your own ideas that people don't like.
He rambles on about how modern games are just copies of old games, and that everything being done in game design today is irrelevant.
No one in the game industry respects him anymore. He's alienated himself from the entire industry by going a different direction and insulting those not on his path.
I have no problem with him persuing interactive storytelling, but I have a big problem with him calling all games that aren't interactive stories worthless, or "irrelevant."
He did a great thing by creating the GDC, but got kicked out when he started to redefine games as limited to "interactive stories."
I thought it was going to be terrible; possibly even the next Plan 9 from Outter Space. Everything I've heard about it has been positive though, so I'm seeing it tonight.
I think that Snakes will do relatively well in the long run since so many people are enjoying it now.
well, for starters, Half Life was made on the quake 1 engine, not quake 2... and I've worked with quake 1 and half life 1 engines, also the Unreal engine. I think id's kinda out of it now when it comes to mods, the battle seems to be between Epic and Valve.
Unreal mods are coded in Unreal Script, Valve's are done in straight C++. Both release most of their tools, and both sets of tools are fantastic. Hammer vs Unreal Ed is an ongoing debate, so I'll say they're equal. Unreal works with Maya out of the box, Valve uses XSI (with Max/Maya exporters), so Valve wins here in terms of what it can create out of the box. The code (script vs C++ is open to debate). The quality of the engines are also open to debate.
Mod quality is open to debate, RO is very good, as is DOD/CS. Basically, both engines are fantastic, which should you use? well, Epic seems to release a new UT every year, and Valve sticks with the same version for many years, that could be one deciding factor. HL2 will probably sell more than a given UT, that could be another factor.
It seems the biggest factor in choosing an engine is what's going to get your mod the most exposure, and what gives you the best chance of supporting yourself on your mod, Valve wins, and they win because of Steam.
No, they become a distributor. A publisher will fund a game, and take most of it's profits, and have a large say in the creative process.. ie: "Here's $5 million, go make a game".... "change this"... "change this".... "what's taking so long? release it now"
After the game's released, the developer usually sees around $7/copy of the final price, the publisher eats the rest up.
In this definition, VALVe is NOT a publisher, they don't fund anything, nor do they have any creative say, (with the possibility of limiting what shows up on Steam). They also have no obligation to success, it didn't cost them a penny, so they don't really care how well your mod does.
Steam's importance is much deeper than you think. For starters, CS is the most popular online game in history, now, available on steam, and only steam. This means that Steam is now the delivery method of the most popular online game.
HL2 will probably pan out to be one of the most popular PC games in history, again, Steam is there.
if HL1 taught us anything, HL2 will probably be the most modded engine in history, again, Steam.
Source should have the ability for full TC mods (like CS, DOD, etc) to be created, and sold via Steam.
This means a small studio can use an engine that will do mostly what they want it to (Source), for no cost, and write a game for substantially less money than before, and deliver their mod (game) to millions of people (Steam).
Steam also has a payment system, so for maybe $5, they can sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their mod, giving small percentage to VALVe, cutting out the publisher, and allowing a small developer to earn money making games.
Yes, technology like this may have existed before, but Steam is in the mainstream, and it seems to be in the right place at the right time. I think Steam + Source will have a MAJOR impact on the gaming world.
I hesitate to promote this game because a friend of mine did write it, and there may be some bias, but I think if you like these games, you'd enjoy it. Check out Gate 88 if you like that kinda thing. It's one of the best games I've played in a while.
watered down original version? it was 10x better. yeah, fft had a story, and what not, but the gameplay was much better suited to handheld. seeing la pucelle tactics or dynasty tactics minus the story would be better on a gba/psp/ds/ngage/whatever than the ps2 versions imo.
ports aren't all bad I suspose, a katamari demacy port or ikaruga on the big screen would be nice.. but it won't happen, we'll get shitty football games and more gta games..
the games..
That's all that really matters. Have you looked at the lineup for the two systems on ebgames?
Nintendo's games are, for the most part, hand-hend games. The GBA's best titles (Advance Wars, FFT:A), would not work as home console games. They were designed specifically to be 'pick up and play', and put down for an hour, then play again.
The PSP seems to have mostly ports of PS2 games. This won't work, but I suspect most people will ignore this fact, and be turned on by the sexy graphics of the PSP, and the PSP will do well, with shitty games, because most people are too stupid to base their opinion on anything that matters anyway.
"You'll have to know a little FAP and MAD to understand it. There are even a few programs in AED-0, an Algol variant."
Great, I'll go search the museum for some books on FAP and MAD, then I'll write an Emulator for a system that's documents probably don't exist anymore, then I'll write a compiler, then install this OS..
This should have been released 20 years ago, worthless news.
I remember a few years back, American McGee was invited to check out the new Doom 3 engine, and he had great things to say about the lighting. (this was only a few months after Quake 3 shipped).
It wouldn't surprise me if he's the licencee, in fact, since he worked at id, and used q3a engine for Alice, it would surprise me if he WASN'T the licencee.
Doesn't the govenator own some Google stock? I remember reading somewhere that he was an early investor... I'm sure he'll swing something to protect his investment.. he is a Rebuplican after all!:)
All Renderman...
Final Fantasy used Pixar's Renderman to create those special effects. Most movies use Pixar's Renderman.
Now I haven't been able to get to this article, so I'm going to guess here, but I assume, since Dreamworks does NOT use Pixar's Renderman, they have developed, or are using some other program that conforms to the Renderman Spec.
If all programs conform to the shading language spec of Renderman, we can assume that it won't matter what program is rendering the movie, because they all conform to a specification.
What makes Renderman so interesting, is that it IS an open spec, and anyone can write shaders for it, or a program to execute those shaders. This is coming down to modern commerical hardware now. The pixel and vertex shaders that we're seeing in games now are written in either HLSL (DirectX), Cg (Nvidia), or ASM, (soon to be GLSlang). These high level languages all used Renderman as a reference, when their design was considered. This means that pretty soon, we can expect that game graphics engines will be written to a spec much like Renderman, meaning that game designers will not need a technical team at all, and the engines will be much more generalized than they are today.
Agreed... I wrote a 150k line 'application' for a company's inventory and job control... after a month into the project, I had to scrap the whole project and start again. I ended up using 'module' functions to query databases, another set of 'modules' to format the data as xml, and another set to process the xml data with xslt using sablotron.
The three internal-tiers worked remarkably well, and made changing the application extremely easy. To make changes even easier, all insert functions were selects to postgres stored procs written in pl/pgsql, and all selects were done to views, both of which could be very easily changed without affecting the underlying data structure (or the underlying data structure could be changed without affecting the program).
I see necessity for some patents... Medical is a big one... back after the original Anthrax scare, the Bush government wanted to create a generic version of Sipro (sp?). Bayer spend hundreds of millions researching and creating it, and they patented it. This is a perfect example of patents, without patents in medical, nothing would get done.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice spelling error "Offcial" on the front page. Pro move ApacheCon!
"When the Moors Ruled in Europe" I think you mean "Moops"
Ten movies streaming across that, that Internet, and what happens to your own personal Internet? I just the other day got... an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday, I got it yesterday. Why? [...] They want to deliver vast amounts of information over the Internet. And again, the Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes. And if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.
I live in a suburb of Toronto and we have our municipal elections tomorrow. I voted early on Saturday and I noticed my vote got counted on a Diebold machine. All previous elections we wrote an "X" in a circle and they were hand-counted - this time it was electronically counted.
1 324237&from=rss) really pissed me off.
I asked the elections official how did they know my vote was counted. Her response was, (as she pointed to a small LCD display), "this counter here says how many votes this machine processed." I asked her how does she know it was counted *CORRECTLY* she made the mistake of saying "we're pretty sure it's correct."
At this point I demanded to know how "pretty sure" she was. Her defense was "there's a paper trail incase of an error" - a fairly valid defense. I proceeded to point to two electronic Diebold machines, the 6" thick ones with an LCD screen, and asked her "what about those?" She told me in a very matter of fact way that there's a paper trail for those too.
I asked her where the printer was, and if she ever actually say a printer. It was at this point that she no longer wanted to talk to me and kinda laughed me off as some sort of conspiracy wackjob.
The fact that we used these machines after their utter failure in larger US elections pissed me off, but the fact that they FAILED in CANADA, just one province over (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/25/
I wanted to argue with her further but had no hard references memorized, essentially making my argument invalid. I did a bit of research from the usual sources (http://www.blackboxvoting.org), but I was really hoping to see this documentary before the elections tomorrow.
I encourage all Canadians voting in municipal elections tomorrow to make your feelings about e-voting (especially on Diebold machines) known to the organizers, and write your MPs and MPPs to tell them that e-voting is not acceptable.
Owners of $300 device not as loyal as owners of $2000 device! AHHHHHHHHHHH
Also, I clearly don't mean "everybody" in the literal sense. It was a play on Chris Rock's tv show.
It's not an issue of people liking your ideas or not, it's an issue of you insulting other people's work to boost your own ideas that people don't like.
He rambles on about how modern games are just copies of old games, and that everything being done in game design today is irrelevant. No one in the game industry respects him anymore. He's alienated himself from the entire industry by going a different direction and insulting those not on his path. I have no problem with him persuing interactive storytelling, but I have a big problem with him calling all games that aren't interactive stories worthless, or "irrelevant." He did a great thing by creating the GDC, but got kicked out when he started to redefine games as limited to "interactive stories."
I thought it was going to be terrible; possibly even the next Plan 9 from Outter Space. Everything I've heard about it has been positive though, so I'm seeing it tonight. I think that Snakes will do relatively well in the long run since so many people are enjoying it now.
hmm.. well, I'm going to say whatever I want, whenever I want and if I get arreseted, at least now I know I am breaking the law =)
I'm a human and I live in a free country, (Canada). I'm qualified to talk about whatever the hell I want to.
well, for starters, Half Life was made on the quake 1 engine, not quake 2... and I've worked with quake 1 and half life 1 engines, also the Unreal engine. I think id's kinda out of it now when it comes to mods, the battle seems to be between Epic and Valve.
Unreal mods are coded in Unreal Script, Valve's are done in straight C++. Both release most of their tools, and both sets of tools are fantastic. Hammer vs Unreal Ed is an ongoing debate, so I'll say they're equal. Unreal works with Maya out of the box, Valve uses XSI (with Max/Maya exporters), so Valve wins here in terms of what it can create out of the box. The code (script vs C++ is open to debate). The quality of the engines are also open to debate.
Mod quality is open to debate, RO is very good, as is DOD/CS. Basically, both engines are fantastic, which should you use? well, Epic seems to release a new UT every year, and Valve sticks with the same version for many years, that could be one deciding factor. HL2 will probably sell more than a given UT, that could be another factor.
It seems the biggest factor in choosing an engine is what's going to get your mod the most exposure, and what gives you the best chance of supporting yourself on your mod, Valve wins, and they win because of Steam.
No, they become a distributor. A publisher will fund a game, and take most of it's profits, and have a large say in the creative process..
ie: "Here's $5 million, go make a game".... "change this"... "change this".... "what's taking so long? release it now"
After the game's released, the developer usually sees around $7/copy of the final price, the publisher eats the rest up.
In this definition, VALVe is NOT a publisher, they don't fund anything, nor do they have any creative say, (with the possibility of limiting what shows up on Steam). They also have no obligation to success, it didn't cost them a penny, so they don't really care how well your mod does.
Steam's importance is much deeper than you think. For starters, CS is the most popular online game in history, now, available on steam, and only steam. This means that Steam is now the delivery method of the most popular online game. HL2 will probably pan out to be one of the most popular PC games in history, again, Steam is there. if HL1 taught us anything, HL2 will probably be the most modded engine in history, again, Steam. Source should have the ability for full TC mods (like CS, DOD, etc) to be created, and sold via Steam. This means a small studio can use an engine that will do mostly what they want it to (Source), for no cost, and write a game for substantially less money than before, and deliver their mod (game) to millions of people (Steam). Steam also has a payment system, so for maybe $5, they can sell hundreds of thousands of copies of their mod, giving small percentage to VALVe, cutting out the publisher, and allowing a small developer to earn money making games. Yes, technology like this may have existed before, but Steam is in the mainstream, and it seems to be in the right place at the right time. I think Steam + Source will have a MAJOR impact on the gaming world.
Ha, Gradius rules...
I hesitate to promote this game because a friend of mine did write it, and there may be some bias, but I think if you like these games, you'd enjoy it. Check out Gate 88 if you like that kinda thing. It's one of the best games I've played in a while.
watered down original version? it was 10x better. yeah, fft had a story, and what not, but the gameplay was much better suited to handheld. seeing la pucelle tactics or dynasty tactics minus the story would be better on a gba/psp/ds/ngage/whatever than the ps2 versions imo.
ports aren't all bad I suspose, a katamari demacy port or ikaruga on the big screen would be nice.. but it won't happen, we'll get shitty football games and more gta games..
the games..
That's all that really matters. Have you looked at the lineup for the two systems on ebgames?
Nintendo's games are, for the most part, hand-hend games. The GBA's best titles (Advance Wars, FFT:A), would not work as home console games. They were designed specifically to be 'pick up and play', and put down for an hour, then play again.
The PSP seems to have mostly ports of PS2 games. This won't work, but I suspect most people will ignore this fact, and be turned on by the sexy graphics of the PSP, and the PSP will do well, with shitty games, because most people are too stupid to base their opinion on anything that matters anyway.
"You'll have to know a little FAP and MAD to understand it. There are even a few programs in AED-0, an Algol variant."
Great, I'll go search the museum for some books on FAP and MAD, then I'll write an Emulator for a system that's documents probably don't exist anymore, then I'll write a compiler, then install this OS..
This should have been released 20 years ago, worthless news.
I remember a few years back, American McGee was invited to check out the new Doom 3 engine, and he had great things to say about the lighting. (this was only a few months after Quake 3 shipped). It wouldn't surprise me if he's the licencee, in fact, since he worked at id, and used q3a engine for Alice, it would surprise me if he WASN'T the licencee.
Doesn't the govenator own some Google stock? I remember reading somewhere that he was an early investor... I'm sure he'll swing something to protect his investment.. he is a Rebuplican after all! :)
All Renderman...
Final Fantasy used Pixar's Renderman to create those special effects. Most movies use Pixar's Renderman.
Now I haven't been able to get to this article, so I'm going to guess here, but I assume, since Dreamworks does NOT use Pixar's Renderman, they have developed, or are using some other program that conforms to the Renderman Spec.
If all programs conform to the shading language spec of Renderman, we can assume that it won't matter what program is rendering the movie, because they all conform to a specification.
What makes Renderman so interesting, is that it IS an open spec, and anyone can write shaders for it, or a program to execute those shaders. This is coming down to modern commerical hardware now. The pixel and vertex shaders that we're seeing in games now are written in either HLSL (DirectX), Cg (Nvidia), or ASM, (soon to be GLSlang). These high level languages all used Renderman as a reference, when their design was considered. This means that pretty soon, we can expect that game graphics engines will be written to a spec much like Renderman, meaning that game designers will not need a technical team at all, and the engines will be much more generalized than they are today.
Good point... if they just consider CPU count, then google would probably blow away the top 3 combined.
Agreed... I wrote a 150k line 'application' for a company's inventory and job control... after a month into the project, I had to scrap the whole project and start again. I ended up using 'module' functions to query databases, another set of 'modules' to format the data as xml, and another set to process the xml data with xslt using sablotron. The three internal-tiers worked remarkably well, and made changing the application extremely easy. To make changes even easier, all insert functions were selects to postgres stored procs written in pl/pgsql, and all selects were done to views, both of which could be very easily changed without affecting the underlying data structure (or the underlying data structure could be changed without affecting the program).
I see necessity for some patents... Medical is a big one... back after the original Anthrax scare, the Bush government wanted to create a generic version of Sipro (sp?). Bayer spend hundreds of millions researching and creating it, and they patented it. This is a perfect example of patents, without patents in medical, nothing would get done.
maybe it doesn't work becuase your resume looks like this.