The 5 paragraph essay is the cookie-cutter bottom line least common denominator for education these days.
I would estimate 90% of the essays given in the US educational system today are 5-paragraph essays.>br?
Essentially, the 5 paragraph essay is a mold consisting of an introduction, 3 body paragraphs each focusing on one supporting fact, and a conclusion, and the teachers give students the ingredients in the form of a topic (definitely something that won't require too much thinking),and a style, The students generally mix these ingredients in their heads for about 30 seconds, vomit them into the 5 paragraph mold, and are graded on how aggressively the spell and grammar checked the paper.
Caffeine withdrawls suck
I hear a lot of people talk about how horrible caffeine withdraw is, but I've never had a problem with this.
There are days where I can drink 2 or 3 pots of coffee, though generally I drink about a pot a day, and I make my coffee strong. I'll also suplement coffee with soda occasionally.
The thing is, if I don't drink coffee or soda all day, I don't honestly feel much different than if I have. If I happen to find a good deal on bottled water (tap water around here sucks), then I'll pick that up and drink nothing but water for a week or so, since that is my favorite beverage, though I refuse to pay $3 a bottle. I drink coffee because I do enjoy the taste (black of course, if your adding cream and sugar then just drink milk;), or soda if I want something sweet. I really don't find that the caffeine makes makes me more awake or alert either.
While it may be true that the degree is generally rather easy to get, I don't think that it would necessarily be indicitive of the persons skill in the subject. I'm currently working on a bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems (yes, pretty uch a bullshit degree), however I often find myself aiding a couple of my friends who are working on getting their doctorates in Computer Science.
That's actually a good point, I had just assumed that they played in different realms, but after asking a friend who plays it, apparently they are mixed but depending on when you play you will run into more of one or the other. Too bad I don't have a PS2 or run windows, this might be a good way to practice my japanese.
no, actually I find that gentoo suits my server needs better than any other distro (other than maybe debian), because it's highly customizable and blazingly fast, updates are easy, and it's stable.
Suse on the other hand is nice for just getting a desktop system up and running without having to worry about the details. For a server I want the most bang for the buck and absolute control, gentoo is great for this. For a desktop I just want something to work, and suse fills my needs there.
Score +5
Insitful 70%
Funny 30%
In all seriousness, although the article had a humerous slant, it was true in all the important ways. Redhat really fumbled with the whole fedora thing, and I think this is opening up the way for other distrobutions
I have since migrated to other distrobutions and realize how much I was missting (gentoo level 1 install on the servers, SuSE on the desktop).
...how to I write "www.goat.cx" or "www.tubgirl.com" in this new format, and will it work printed on a tshirt? That'll keep people from collecting any proper evidence against me with those pesky camera phones.
Although I normally dislike sports games, I've always been a huge fan of the THPS series, and I think it apitomizes what a game should aspire to difficulty wise. A new player, or player who hasn't played in a while, can play through and progress without realizing that they are getting better. At the same time, the levels earlier levles have more difficult challeneges to take one, all the way up to challeneges that seem sick and twisted untill the player suddenly realizes that they have aquired the skills to take on that challenge.
I think this is one of the keys to properly setting a difficult curve, you have to taunt the players with challenges that seem impossible, but at the same time, give paths of lesser resistance so that players can follow the curve at their own pace.
This is a throwback to many of the earlier side scroller games on the 8 and 16 bit systems. Many of these games offered multiple paths of varying difficulty and new things for more skilled players to find.
Another Genre that has the potential to get this right, and some games succeed where others fail, is the RPG genre, where the developers can keep the main quest easy enough to be playable by novice or intermediate players, while still offering sidequests to give better players more of a challenge.
I started learning C++ about 7 years ago (I say started because it seems like no matter how long one has been programming C++ there are always new things to learn), and I started with Java about a year and a half ago.
One thing that seems apparent to me is that it is much more inherently difficult to go from a higher level language like Java to a lower level language like C++, because starting with Java the programmer becoms accustomed to not having to think about things which become major problems in a C++ program.
As others have mentioned, the lack of a standardiezed API for C++ beyond the STL can make things seem like a major PITA going from Java to C++, just think about what it would be like trying to go from Swing to the Microsoft API or GTK+ (though Qt is REALLY nice, if you are a java programming learning C++ and want to learn a GUI API start with this first).
It seems to me that this is more comcast covering their arse, and while I think it's shitty that they should have to, I can understand why they would have to do this.
I am a Comcast customer, and while I would love to have an alternative, I can't get DSL (would have to replace the wiring in the house to get it), I can't, so I stick with comcast. While I do not download movies or music off the net (I have nothing morally against it, just that there is very little out there worth watching or listening to, and for the few movies I do want to see it's easier to just go rent the DVD than to spend a week trying to find a good copy that is what it claims to be and is hosted on a decent connection), but from my experience they seem to be pretty reasonable about stuff if you actually call and explain to them why you need or were doing $foo.
I run a web and ftp server from my home, then send me a letter about it once, I called and explained to them why I was running the server, and they said "ok, no problem" and never complained again. I was also working on a fully rendered 3D movie for awhile and was sending transfering several GB a day with my collaborators, they never shut my service off, but again sent me a letter, I called and explained what I was doing, and again they said no problem, and even offered to give me a discount on a higher bandwidth account since I had been a customer since they started offering the service around here.
And I said all that to say thing, I think a lot of people like to complain about comcast, but from my experience with them, while they do try to keep abuse down on their network, they are not unreasonable and will work with their customers if you have a valid resason for doing whater it is that you are doing, and it's hard to blame them for the movie industry abusing a bad law.
We used to play this game all the time in my Highschool CS classes (normally we could play after we finished our work, and fridays were dedicated just to playing, we ran a server in the school which was neat). This game can be a LOT of fun to play at a LAN party.
I just wish that the level editor was a bit more powerful and/or easier to use, and a linux version would be nice (though it does run ok under wine)
This just reminds me of a NES game a friend of mine picked up at a garage sale for a nickle a couple of years ago called "Exodus: Journey to the promised land"
Essentially, the player played as moses leading the jews out of egypt as in Exodus, but what was really funny is that you walked around as this moses character and shot and killed the egyptians with the "word of god" wich was just this W that you shot out.
The game itself was actually quite terrible, but it was so bad that we all have a good laugh popping it in every once in a while.
Of course i'm suprised that they are going to think about having anything to do with pen and paper games, which is so closely related to D&D, because as everyone knows "Dungeons and Dragons, Satans game..." (if you don't know what i'm talking about check out Dungeons and Dragons, an 8 bit re-enactment)
I'm not really sure how nintendo's license contracts go, but could they really do anything to prevent other companies from releasing their SNES games onto something like this?
I really think that once one company takes the plunge, other companies will follow because I think this could make good money. I also do not think that this would really conflict with nintendo's GBA ports too heavily, because while there is an overlap, the best games to play on the road might not always be the same games one would want to play at home.
Of course I could be slightly bias because I love RPGs but I hate playing RPGs on a handheld system.
The text is often too small for one, and also if I'm going to be playing at home I would much rather be playing on the comsole/computer (of course I guess that is what the GBA player for GC is for, I really need to pick one of these up, anyone had any good/bad experiences with them?)
these things are nice and all, good when you are yearning for a bit of nostalgia from these few games, but I think companies are still overlooking the killing that could be made by selling roms.
I for one think that the first company to offer an iTMS-esque rom download center could make a killing.
Imagine selling a SNES controller with an emulator built into it. You get the urge to play chrono trigger or Super Mario All Stars you just download the game for a buck or two, upload it to the controller, hook it up to your tv or computer via usb and start playing.
The fact that they are making a profit off of these things, and the sheer number of sites dedicated to (s)nes, genesis, atari, etc emulator shows that there is a market for this.
I'm not the type to think that a game being old automatically makes it a good game, but there are a lot of timeless games out there that are still fun, and a lot harder to play now that functioning hardware is not as readily available.
Just yesterday I was thinking about how usefull a language like this would be. Java doesn't run too slowly anymore for most applications, but at times it is just impossible to justify it's slowness compared to a natively compiled language. GCJ seems like a good idea in theory, but doesn't seem to really be going anywhere.
Being able to use pointers if need be is also something really nice about this language that I have found that i really long for in Java at times (not so often to actually use, but oh how much easier it would be to explain the way some things work if pointer wasn't a dirty word in java).
I have not really looked at C# much, but it seems to be freed of many of the complaints about Java (lack of pointers for example), but still has the problem of being a bytecode compiled language running in a VM, and adds the problem of being owned by the company that everyone loves to hate (or at least not trust). AFAIK C# also is not C compatible.
I think these facts leave at least a niche for D, and if it's well done it could soon become one of the DeFacto languages of the future. It seems like development has been going on for quite a while on this, I'm honestly suprised that i've never run across it before, since I have been, mostly out of curiosity, looking for just this. I'm not sure how it will pan out, but I am definitly going to give this new language a shot.
I think Capcom set the bar miles higher than it had been before with their remake of Resident Evil for gamecube.
The thing is, I don't think this had nearly as much to do with the graphical and audio improvements as one would think, nor the added secrets or changed puzzles.
The difference between the RE remake and a number of other remakes is the feeling of "This is how it was intended to be the first time".
Although a movie and not a game, I am going to contrast this with the recent Dawn of the Dead remake because it is fresh in my memory.
The original Resident Evil was an early PS game, and suffered from lack of horsepower when it was released, and still managed to convey the atmosphere of sheer terror. When the remake was done for the gamecube, Capcom took this core idea of terror and re-invented it on the new technology.
They took things they had learned from the sequals to Resident Evil (and the bigger budget) and used those to enhance the game.
What Capcom did was to take the seed idea and build a new game around it.
In the new Dawn of the Dead, instead of a feeling of "this is how it was intended to be the first time", one simply gets the feeling "this is exactly what I'm proud of Romero for NOT making".
Instead of taking a core idea, a few elements of sheer terror and building a new game/movie around those elements, the director chose to take the most obvious elements and wrap them around a completely different set of core ideas.
In Movies, Games, hell even software revisions, this is the primary difference between a good remake and a shit remake.
A good remake will put a new UI (for lack of a better term) over an existing Kernel (again for a lack of a better term), whereas a shit remake attempts to transfer the old UI onto a new Kernel.
Another good analogy would be, a good remake is putting a tie-dye candy shell on M&Ms, a bad remake is putting M&M shells around peices of catfood.
Unfortunately the latter is much more common due to the idea that "this time around we can do it better" without giving thought to the fact that by changing things at the heart of a game, for every bad thing thats fixed by new experiences, a good thing is potentially lost because the original developers "didn't know $foo was a bad idea when they implimented it and it turned out to be awesome" but the new developers "know better".
I certainly agree that for its time, and for a long time afteward, Super Mario Bros. was the best executed game of it's genre, however being a good game is not the same as being a revolutionary game.
The fact is that there were sidescrollers before Mario Bros. and Mario Bros. did not add any revolutionary features to the genre, the only thing it did was take existing ideas and refine them to make one hell of a good game.
In general, revolutionary games are not the games we remember, because they tend to suck. It takes the developers a few tries with a given formula to figgure out how to best apply it.
There are of course exceptions, but in general we tend to remember Best of Breed, not First Of Breed.
The article was about games that were revolutionary, games who did something first and effected the rest of the genre.
None of the games in the mario allstars packages really did this. It was not untill Super Mario 64 that the Mario series introduced a concept that was revolutionary.
Ah thanks for the link, I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called.
Maybe you or someone else happens to know... Was Doki Doki Panic a Japan-Only release, or was it skinned as SMB2 just for the US?
In other words, did the eurpoeans get this game under the name Doki Doki or SMB2?
As much as I love the mario games, I'm not really sure that the deserve to be mentioned.
Super Mario Bros and The Lost Levels (Super Mario 2 in Japan) were fine games, but AFAIK did nothing all that revolutionary.
Mario 2 (US) was not originally a mario game, but was a different game in japan that was reskinned with mario characters and sold outside of japan as Mario 2 because they thought the lost levels would be too hard.
The game which became Mario 2 in the US (I can't remember the name of it, anyone else know?) was certainly revolutionary, although it wasn't untill Klona and Klona2 that I saw another game use a similar formula.
Mario 3 was, in my opinion, the best 2D mario game ever, though it was deffinitely more evolutionary than revolutionary. The overworld that it introduced was a first for mario games, but had been done before in a number of games (Bionic Commando sticks out in my mind), and the 357 or however-many powerups were nice, but just taking the concept farther than the series had taken it before. Even the idea of selectiong powerups before entering a stage and the semi-linnear level design (choices between going to stage 3 or 4 for example) had been done in previous games.
In fact, the first mario game that I can think of that had any real huge and lasting effect on the rest of the industry was the first forey into the world of 3D with Mario 64, which I think is one of the best games ever made.
I don't think anyone would argue that the NES/SNES mario games were fun, but their fun came from good level design, and very refined play, though they were never more than evoultionary.
...of jobs, it was the worst of jobs
When I was 17 I got a job at a local pizza place, they highered me to bus tables, do dishes, basically bitch work.
One day the boss heard me talking about programming with a friend of mine during my break. Figguring that I knew about that "computer shit", I was promptly put to work in that capacity.
At the time I had some basic knowledge in C++, Linux, electronics, but I was far from an expert.
The boss decided that it would be nice to have some automated software to handle inventory, employee timesheets, calculate taxes, etc. She also wanted to be able to access this from home, print out reports, generate scheduals etc.
They decided instead of highering someone who was actually qualified they would have me do it, since they were only playing me $5.15 an hour.
It seemed like a good thing at the time, no having to be on my feet all the time, no doing dishes, and it would be fun. Plus I might get a raise
It ended up being a nightmare.
Along with writing software, they had me servicing the pinball machines and the managers had me working on their personal computers as well.
A lot of the time too they would schedual me for say 4 hours a day to work and then give me unreasonable scheduals so I would be working 10 hours a day, no overtime.
I wanted to quit but of course my dad wouldn't let me, said it showed poor work eithic. So for over a year I was writing software, repairing pinball machines, doing work on managers machines, setting them up a website, anything they could think of and only making about $100 a week.
ok, this is off topic, but just to point something out.
Crossdressing != Transexual
Crossdressing is engaged in by both heterosexuals and homosexuals and is generally done as a means of gaining sexual satisfaction.
A Transexual/Transgendered person is a person with what is known as gender identity disorder (GID) or gender disphoria. In this case there is no sexual pleasure derived from the act of "crossdressing". GID is a documented condition where the brain tends to develop more similar to that of the opposite sex of the person. While the cause is currently unknown, many belive that it is caused by an improper amount of hormones delivered to the fetus at a critical stage of development. (for Male to Female transexuals this generally means that the brain was not given a proper testosterone bath during the second trimester, while for Female to Male transexuals the fetus was given too much testosterone).
Try searching Amazon.com for used college text books. Some of the intro level class textbooks for non CS majors might be usefull. Of course a lot of this depends on what exactly she wants to learn (ie. more advanced use of word, does she want to learn how to make a website, etc).
Another good idea is to teach her how to use to web to learn more about topics. If her google-fu is strong then the rest will follow.
There are also a number of newgroups and mailing lists that are available for people who don't know a lot about computers but are interesting in learning various topics, she if she might be interested in taking those routes as well.
The most important thing though is to teach her to teach herself. If you don't then none of these things will work, spend some time teaching her more advanced concepts that will server as a usefull base for what she specifically desires to learn, then leave the rest up to her. In the end this way she will have a better understanding and you will avoid having to spend all of your spare time teaching her.
The only really good love-story esque games are for PS2, because everyone knows that they are so much easier thanks to it's Emotion Engine
On a serious note, I think the reason love stories are avoided in games is that they are HARD to do well. Look at romance movies, for ever one really touching romance or romantic comedy there are 15 or 20 (and I'm being generous here) reels of crap that come out. Combine this with the fact that games are still largely targeted at the insecure socially inept teenage male stereotype, probably the least likely group to enjoy a love story in the first place, and you have to have a VERY good game to sell a love story.
That said many games are able to use emotion quite well. I still to this day cry in FF7 when arith dies, I still feel anxious and scared when I play any of the Silent Hill games, and there is still the sence of heroic duty that comes over me while playign Zelda.
Slashdot Mirror
The 5 paragraph essay is the cookie-cutter bottom line least common denominator for education these days.
I would estimate 90% of the essays given in the US educational system today are 5-paragraph essays.>br? Essentially, the 5 paragraph essay is a mold consisting of an introduction, 3 body paragraphs each focusing on one supporting fact, and a conclusion, and the teachers give students the ingredients in the form of a topic (definitely something that won't require too much thinking),and a style, The students generally mix these ingredients in their heads for about 30 seconds, vomit them into the 5 paragraph mold, and are graded on how aggressively the spell and grammar checked the paper.
Caffeine withdrawls suck ;), or soda if I want something sweet. I really don't find that the caffeine makes makes me more awake or alert either.
I hear a lot of people talk about how horrible caffeine withdraw is, but I've never had a problem with this.
There are days where I can drink 2 or 3 pots of coffee, though generally I drink about a pot a day, and I make my coffee strong. I'll also suplement coffee with soda occasionally.
The thing is, if I don't drink coffee or soda all day, I don't honestly feel much different than if I have. If I happen to find a good deal on bottled water (tap water around here sucks), then I'll pick that up and drink nothing but water for a week or so, since that is my favorite beverage, though I refuse to pay $3 a bottle. I drink coffee because I do enjoy the taste (black of course, if your adding cream and sugar then just drink milk
While it may be true that the degree is generally rather easy to get, I don't think that it would necessarily be indicitive of the persons skill in the subject. I'm currently working on a bachelors degree in Computer Information Systems (yes, pretty uch a bullshit degree), however I often find myself aiding a couple of my friends who are working on getting their doctorates in Computer Science.
That's actually a good point, I had just assumed that they played in different realms, but after asking a friend who plays it, apparently they are mixed but depending on when you play you will run into more of one or the other. Too bad I don't have a PS2 or run windows, this might be a good way to practice my japanese.
no, actually I find that gentoo suits my server needs better than any other distro (other than maybe debian), because it's highly customizable and blazingly fast, updates are easy, and it's stable.
Suse on the other hand is nice for just getting a desktop system up and running without having to worry about the details. For a server I want the most bang for the buck and absolute control, gentoo is great for this. For a desktop I just want something to work, and suse fills my needs there.
Score +5
Insitful 70%
Funny 30%
In all seriousness, although the article had a humerous slant, it was true in all the important ways. Redhat really fumbled with the whole fedora thing, and I think this is opening up the way for other distrobutions
I have since migrated to other distrobutions and realize how much I was missting (gentoo level 1 install on the servers, SuSE on the desktop).
...how to I write "www.goat.cx" or "www.tubgirl.com" in this new format, and will it work printed on a tshirt? That'll keep people from collecting any proper evidence against me with those pesky camera phones.
Although I normally dislike sports games, I've always been a huge fan of the THPS series, and I think it apitomizes what a game should aspire to difficulty wise. A new player, or player who hasn't played in a while, can play through and progress without realizing that they are getting better. At the same time, the levels earlier levles have more difficult challeneges to take one, all the way up to challeneges that seem sick and twisted untill the player suddenly realizes that they have aquired the skills to take on that challenge.
I think this is one of the keys to properly setting a difficult curve, you have to taunt the players with challenges that seem impossible, but at the same time, give paths of lesser resistance so that players can follow the curve at their own pace.
This is a throwback to many of the earlier side scroller games on the 8 and 16 bit systems. Many of these games offered multiple paths of varying difficulty and new things for more skilled players to find.
Another Genre that has the potential to get this right, and some games succeed where others fail, is the RPG genre, where the developers can keep the main quest easy enough to be playable by novice or intermediate players, while still offering sidequests to give better players more of a challenge.
I started learning C++ about 7 years ago (I say started because it seems like no matter how long one has been programming C++ there are always new things to learn), and I started with Java about a year and a half ago.
One thing that seems apparent to me is that it is much more inherently difficult to go from a higher level language like Java to a lower level language like C++, because starting with Java the programmer becoms accustomed to not having to think about things which become major problems in a C++ program.
As others have mentioned, the lack of a standardiezed API for C++ beyond the STL can make things seem like a major PITA going from Java to C++, just think about what it would be like trying to go from Swing to the Microsoft API or GTK+ (though Qt is REALLY nice, if you are a java programming learning C++ and want to learn a GUI API start with this first).
It seems to me that this is more comcast covering their arse, and while I think it's shitty that they should have to, I can understand why they would have to do this.
I am a Comcast customer, and while I would love to have an alternative, I can't get DSL (would have to replace the wiring in the house to get it), I can't, so I stick with comcast. While I do not download movies or music off the net (I have nothing morally against it, just that there is very little out there worth watching or listening to, and for the few movies I do want to see it's easier to just go rent the DVD than to spend a week trying to find a good copy that is what it claims to be and is hosted on a decent connection), but from my experience they seem to be pretty reasonable about stuff if you actually call and explain to them why you need or were doing $foo.
I run a web and ftp server from my home, then send me a letter about it once, I called and explained to them why I was running the server, and they said "ok, no problem" and never complained again. I was also working on a fully rendered 3D movie for awhile and was sending transfering several GB a day with my collaborators, they never shut my service off, but again sent me a letter, I called and explained what I was doing, and again they said no problem, and even offered to give me a discount on a higher bandwidth account since I had been a customer since they started offering the service around here.
And I said all that to say thing, I think a lot of people like to complain about comcast, but from my experience with them, while they do try to keep abuse down on their network, they are not unreasonable and will work with their customers if you have a valid resason for doing whater it is that you are doing, and it's hard to blame them for the movie industry abusing a bad law.
There is a linux version of the level editor? I've looked but only found a version for windows. Care to post a link?
We used to play this game all the time in my Highschool CS classes (normally we could play after we finished our work, and fridays were dedicated just to playing, we ran a server in the school which was neat). This game can be a LOT of fun to play at a LAN party.
I just wish that the level editor was a bit more powerful and/or easier to use, and a linux version would be nice (though it does run ok under wine)
This just reminds me of a NES game a friend of mine picked up at a garage sale for a nickle a couple of years ago called "Exodus: Journey to the promised land"
Essentially, the player played as moses leading the jews out of egypt as in Exodus, but what was really funny is that you walked around as this moses character and shot and killed the egyptians with the "word of god" wich was just this W that you shot out.
The game itself was actually quite terrible, but it was so bad that we all have a good laugh popping it in every once in a while.
Of course i'm suprised that they are going to think about having anything to do with pen and paper games, which is so closely related to D&D, because as everyone knows "Dungeons and Dragons, Satans game..." (if you don't know what i'm talking about check out Dungeons and Dragons, an 8 bit re-enactment)
I'm not really sure how nintendo's license contracts go, but could they really do anything to prevent other companies from releasing their SNES games onto something like this?
I really think that once one company takes the plunge, other companies will follow because I think this could make good money. I also do not think that this would really conflict with nintendo's GBA ports too heavily, because while there is an overlap, the best games to play on the road might not always be the same games one would want to play at home.
Of course I could be slightly bias because I love RPGs but I hate playing RPGs on a handheld system. The text is often too small for one, and also if I'm going to be playing at home I would much rather be playing on the comsole/computer (of course I guess that is what the GBA player for GC is for, I really need to pick one of these up, anyone had any good/bad experiences with them?)
these things are nice and all, good when you are yearning for a bit of nostalgia from these few games, but I think companies are still overlooking the killing that could be made by selling roms.
I for one think that the first company to offer an iTMS-esque rom download center could make a killing.
Imagine selling a SNES controller with an emulator built into it. You get the urge to play chrono trigger or Super Mario All Stars you just download the game for a buck or two, upload it to the controller, hook it up to your tv or computer via usb and start playing.
The fact that they are making a profit off of these things, and the sheer number of sites dedicated to (s)nes, genesis, atari, etc emulator shows that there is a market for this.
I'm not the type to think that a game being old automatically makes it a good game, but there are a lot of timeless games out there that are still fun, and a lot harder to play now that functioning hardware is not as readily available.
Just yesterday I was thinking about how usefull a language like this would be. Java doesn't run too slowly anymore for most applications, but at times it is just impossible to justify it's slowness compared to a natively compiled language. GCJ seems like a good idea in theory, but doesn't seem to really be going anywhere.
Being able to use pointers if need be is also something really nice about this language that I have found that i really long for in Java at times (not so often to actually use, but oh how much easier it would be to explain the way some things work if pointer wasn't a dirty word in java).
I have not really looked at C# much, but it seems to be freed of many of the complaints about Java (lack of pointers for example), but still has the problem of being a bytecode compiled language running in a VM, and adds the problem of being owned by the company that everyone loves to hate (or at least not trust). AFAIK C# also is not C compatible.
I think these facts leave at least a niche for D, and if it's well done it could soon become one of the DeFacto languages of the future. It seems like development has been going on for quite a while on this, I'm honestly suprised that i've never run across it before, since I have been, mostly out of curiosity, looking for just this. I'm not sure how it will pan out, but I am definitly going to give this new language a shot.
I have no idea why everyone wants to make this more complicated than it is.
I think Capcom set the bar miles higher than it had been before with their remake of Resident Evil for gamecube.
The thing is, I don't think this had nearly as much to do with the graphical and audio improvements as one would think, nor the added secrets or changed puzzles.
The difference between the RE remake and a number of other remakes is the feeling of "This is how it was intended to be the first time".
Although a movie and not a game, I am going to contrast this with the recent Dawn of the Dead remake because it is fresh in my memory.
The original Resident Evil was an early PS game, and suffered from lack of horsepower when it was released, and still managed to convey the atmosphere of sheer terror. When the remake was done for the gamecube, Capcom took this core idea of terror and re-invented it on the new technology.
They took things they had learned from the sequals to Resident Evil (and the bigger budget) and used those to enhance the game.
What Capcom did was to take the seed idea and build a new game around it.
In the new Dawn of the Dead, instead of a feeling of "this is how it was intended to be the first time", one simply gets the feeling "this is exactly what I'm proud of Romero for NOT making".
Instead of taking a core idea, a few elements of sheer terror and building a new game/movie around those elements, the director chose to take the most obvious elements and wrap them around a completely different set of core ideas.
In Movies, Games, hell even software revisions, this is the primary difference between a good remake and a shit remake.
A good remake will put a new UI (for lack of a better term) over an existing Kernel (again for a lack of a better term), whereas a shit remake attempts to transfer the old UI onto a new Kernel.
Another good analogy would be, a good remake is putting a tie-dye candy shell on M&Ms, a bad remake is putting M&M shells around peices of catfood.
Unfortunately the latter is much more common due to the idea that "this time around we can do it better" without giving thought to the fact that by changing things at the heart of a game, for every bad thing thats fixed by new experiences, a good thing is potentially lost because the original developers "didn't know $foo was a bad idea when they implimented it and it turned out to be awesome" but the new developers "know better".
I certainly agree that for its time, and for a long time afteward, Super Mario Bros. was the best executed game of it's genre, however being a good game is not the same as being a revolutionary game.
The fact is that there were sidescrollers before Mario Bros. and Mario Bros. did not add any revolutionary features to the genre, the only thing it did was take existing ideas and refine them to make one hell of a good game.
In general, revolutionary games are not the games we remember, because they tend to suck. It takes the developers a few tries with a given formula to figgure out how to best apply it.
There are of course exceptions, but in general we tend to remember Best of Breed, not First Of Breed.
The article was about games that were revolutionary, games who did something first and effected the rest of the genre.
None of the games in the mario allstars packages really did this. It was not untill Super Mario 64 that the Mario series introduced a concept that was revolutionary.
Ah thanks for the link, I couldn't for the life of me remember what it was called.
Maybe you or someone else happens to know... Was Doki Doki Panic a Japan-Only release, or was it skinned as SMB2 just for the US?
In other words, did the eurpoeans get this game under the name Doki Doki or SMB2?
As much as I love the mario games, I'm not really sure that the deserve to be mentioned.
Super Mario Bros and The Lost Levels (Super Mario 2 in Japan) were fine games, but AFAIK did nothing all that revolutionary.
Mario 2 (US) was not originally a mario game, but was a different game in japan that was reskinned with mario characters and sold outside of japan as Mario 2 because they thought the lost levels would be too hard.
The game which became Mario 2 in the US (I can't remember the name of it, anyone else know?) was certainly revolutionary, although it wasn't untill Klona and Klona2 that I saw another game use a similar formula.
Mario 3 was, in my opinion, the best 2D mario game ever, though it was deffinitely more evolutionary than revolutionary. The overworld that it introduced was a first for mario games, but had been done before in a number of games (Bionic Commando sticks out in my mind), and the 357 or however-many powerups were nice, but just taking the concept farther than the series had taken it before. Even the idea of selectiong powerups before entering a stage and the semi-linnear level design (choices between going to stage 3 or 4 for example) had been done in previous games.
In fact, the first mario game that I can think of that had any real huge and lasting effect on the rest of the industry was the first forey into the world of 3D with Mario 64, which I think is one of the best games ever made.
I don't think anyone would argue that the NES/SNES mario games were fun, but their fun came from good level design, and very refined play, though they were never more than evoultionary.
...of jobs, it was the worst of jobs
When I was 17 I got a job at a local pizza place, they highered me to bus tables, do dishes, basically bitch work.
One day the boss heard me talking about programming with a friend of mine during my break. Figguring that I knew about that "computer shit", I was promptly put to work in that capacity.
At the time I had some basic knowledge in C++, Linux, electronics, but I was far from an expert.
The boss decided that it would be nice to have some automated software to handle inventory, employee timesheets, calculate taxes, etc. She also wanted to be able to access this from home, print out reports, generate scheduals etc.
They decided instead of highering someone who was actually qualified they would have me do it, since they were only playing me $5.15 an hour.
It seemed like a good thing at the time, no having to be on my feet all the time, no doing dishes, and it would be fun. Plus I might get a raise
It ended up being a nightmare.
Along with writing software, they had me servicing the pinball machines and the managers had me working on their personal computers as well.
A lot of the time too they would schedual me for say 4 hours a day to work and then give me unreasonable scheduals so I would be working 10 hours a day, no overtime.
I wanted to quit but of course my dad wouldn't let me, said it showed poor work eithic. So for over a year I was writing software, repairing pinball machines, doing work on managers machines, setting them up a website, anything they could think of and only making about $100 a week.
ok, this is off topic, but just to point something out.
Crossdressing != Transexual
Crossdressing is engaged in by both heterosexuals and homosexuals and is generally done as a means of gaining sexual satisfaction.
A Transexual/Transgendered person is a person with what is known as gender identity disorder (GID) or gender disphoria. In this case there is no sexual pleasure derived from the act of "crossdressing". GID is a documented condition where the brain tends to develop more similar to that of the opposite sex of the person. While the cause is currently unknown, many belive that it is caused by an improper amount of hormones delivered to the fetus at a critical stage of development. (for Male to Female transexuals this generally means that the brain was not given a proper testosterone bath during the second trimester, while for Female to Male transexuals the fetus was given too much testosterone).
Try searching Amazon.com for used college text books. Some of the intro level class textbooks for non CS majors might be usefull. Of course a lot of this depends on what exactly she wants to learn (ie. more advanced use of word, does she want to learn how to make a website, etc).
Another good idea is to teach her how to use to web to learn more about topics. If her google-fu is strong then the rest will follow.
There are also a number of newgroups and mailing lists that are available for people who don't know a lot about computers but are interesting in learning various topics, she if she might be interested in taking those routes as well.
The most important thing though is to teach her to teach herself. If you don't then none of these things will work, spend some time teaching her more advanced concepts that will server as a usefull base for what she specifically desires to learn, then leave the rest up to her. In the end this way she will have a better understanding and you will avoid having to spend all of your spare time teaching her.
The only really good love-story esque games are for PS2, because everyone knows that they are so much easier thanks to it's Emotion Engine
On a serious note, I think the reason love stories are avoided in games is that they are HARD to do well. Look at romance movies, for ever one really touching romance or romantic comedy there are 15 or 20 (and I'm being generous here) reels of crap that come out. Combine this with the fact that games are still largely targeted at the insecure socially inept teenage male stereotype, probably the least likely group to enjoy a love story in the first place, and you have to have a VERY good game to sell a love story.
That said many games are able to use emotion quite well. I still to this day cry in FF7 when arith dies, I still feel anxious and scared when I play any of the Silent Hill games, and there is still the sence of heroic duty that comes over me while playign Zelda.