Yes, this changed very very quickly after they put in the honour system because it turned out to be such an absurd grind that people simply couldn't keep it up for months just to wear a few items. But if they couldn't wear the items (some people sell their old stuff right away) they had trouble playing the rest of the game.
Now you only need the rank to buy items, but once you have them you can use them forever. This is why most rank 14 people just stop pvping completely and start doing raids and such (to get rings or other items).
Most of them comes from the Resident Evil games.
Gun shops (also featured in countless other games plus movies) are perfect to raid because they inevitably contain tons of shotgun shells and whatnot.
Windows should be avoided because every game *inevitably* contains at least one scene where something comes crashing through them unto the unsuspecting persons in the hallway/room.
The young medic is a reference for Rebecka Chambers (sp?) in Resident Evil 0. You have two characters, and can move items between them.
But the implications would be this:
People who handle their guns with care, and don't go around killing people, will no longer be allowed to keep them.
People who do not handle their guns with care, and could care less about the law, will still have their guns. These people are the dangerous ones.
If you have a quest system as involving as that, I don't think it would be hard to add some similar systems to make things even more interesting.
Large castles like that could attract various NPC 'events', like camps of bandits who attack visitors. The castle masters could, upon getting information about current happenings, offer quests involving scouting (to map out enemy movements), sneak attacks, mounting defenses and such.
Similarily, you could have quests inside the castle where the local smithy is looking for rare materials.
The problem is that it would be rather involving, and require people to spend quite a lot of time getting up to date because things would change often.
Suikoden I, II and III had a similar setup, but with two L buttons (accept and cancel/run), select (open menue) and the digital pad for I+II, and analog stick for III.
Works like a wonder, since Suikoden is the type of game where you don't have to look at the screen constantly.
So, essentially, it's not the actual *games* that are art, but pieces of it. The soundtrack, for example, can often be enjoyed as art in itself. Similarily with graphics. The graphics of Ico is amazing at some points.
However, it is VERY unusual that someone says that the actual gameplay of a game is art. I'd say that Rez actually tries to fit in there, because the gameplay is so closely tied to the sound and visuals. Rez is rather unusual, though.
When they come up with titles (actual game, btw) like this for themselves, we don't really need to do that;
Super Street Fighter II X Grand Master Challenge for Matching Service
Something which most people seem to miss, is this important fact:
There are 11 chapters because there are 11 writers!
If you don't like the author of the first chapter, don't let that prevent you from reading what the others say. The 'quality' of the articles varies greatly.
If nothing else, read chapter 7 by Jane Pinckard. I found that one to be relatively different than the rest, and actually easily readable.
I can't say when that 'started', but it's not new by any means.
It's very width-spread in arcades. Most games has a demonstration screen/animation that explains what the buttons does. Even if there are only three of them.
Of course, it shouldn't go too far. I'm personally in favour of a selectable tutorial/intro whatnot, since for 99% of the games I play, I get the hang of it within the first minute anyway.
However, if you are concentrating on the 'mandatory and non-skippable' part, I would say it started to become frequent enough for me to notice sometime around mid 90s. As far as I know, Half-Life was the 'spark' within FPS games.
I put it in the same category as intros that keeps autostarting even if you've played the game before.
"Since we're listing all possible situations, each route has a probability of 1/9. Agreed?"
No, no! Not at all. Some of those are actually impossible to actually occur. If you pick door 1, Monty can't show you door 1. Hence, it has a possibility of 0/9, or just 0.
Each route does NOT have equal probability. Take a dice with 6 sides, and roll it. Lets say you look at two cases.
You roll a 6. You roll anything else.
Obviously, the second case is more likely to occur . Can you now agree that different cases can have different probabilities?
If you have 100 doors, and one is correct, this would mean that the 'keep' door 99 times out of 100 is an incorrect one? While you have only two choises, the choises themselves aren't balanced.
You can agree with the following things, right?
You can chose one door out of three. This choise is pure chance. Okay?
The chance, at this point, to chose the correct door is 1/3. Okay?
The chance, at this point, to chose one of the two incorrect doors is 2/3. Okay?
If you picked an incorrect door at step one, and switch at step two, you MUST have the winning door, no matter what. Okay?
I think the problem here is that most people see the second step as purely random. It would be if you used a dice or coin or something to decide if you should switch or not. It would all even out after a bit.
The thing is that at this step, you are taking advantage of the previous knowledge. It might help you to think of the second step as just a switch. The whole point is to chose the same option every time, and not do it randomly.
To start with, you have a 1 in 3 chance to pick the correct door, and a 2 in 3 chance to pick any of the two incorrect doors.
If you always keep
If you pick the correct door, and keep it, you will win. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 1, and keep it, you will lose. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 2, and keep it, you will lose. This is also a 33% chance.
So 33% chance to win, and 66% chance to lose.
If you always switch
You pick the correct door, and switch. You lose. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 1, and switch, you win. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 2, and switch, you win. This is a 33% chance.
This gives a 66% chance to win, and 33% to lose. Clearly better.
The important thing is that you initially have a larger chance to pick the wrong door. All that the second choise does is allow you to switch the odds.
"As the size of the wire goes up so does the resistance,"
I'm not sure what you mean by size here.
Longer wires certainly increases resistance. It's counted at ohm/meter (or ohm/feet or whatever you want).
However, if you make the cable thicker, the opposite is true. If you use twice the metal, you get half the resistance, basically.
But it would still be true. You can use (or consume) the electricity to drive chemical processes, or heat up water, or whatever, and store energy in other forms that way. But that rule goes for 'pure' electricity.
The unmodified quote comes from Simpsons, in an episode where Homer goes on a space shuttle, and manages to smash the ant-farm (which the astronauts would be studying in space). Kent (the reporter) then broadcasts from the ground:
"Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to
remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."
Variants of this has actually been tried out, with varying results. Note that you have to be *really* careful at what you are actually selling. I can give some examples and reasons why they are good/bad. The general feeling I've got after years of playing and talking about this is that a lot of consumers despite it because it goes against the reasons they play games in the first place. You generally don't want games to be influenced by RL, because, well, they are games.
Project Entropia Real money could be converted to game money and back. Upsides: System made to prevent/lessen cheating. Game money was more important. Downsides: Bugs hit MUCH harder. Could be very costly. General feeling that the devs made the game steal your money.
Tibia Normally free to play, but you can pay for permium account upgrades. With this, you got access to more spells, areas and such. Upsides: You still had to work for the items, which mostly removed the unfairness. Downsides: Still sepparation between haves and havenots.
Achaea Normally free to play, but you could purchase 'credits' for real money. Credits could be used to train skills, get really good weapons, houses and similar. They could also be sold to other players. Upsides: Havenots could spend ingame time to get things to trade for credits. Downsides: Made some people overly powerful quickly.
Yet, for some reason, insurance is quite common in all other fields. If you are thinking of statistical probabilities when figuring if it's worth it, you've totally lost the point.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, this changed very very quickly after they put in the honour system because it turned out to be such an absurd grind that people simply couldn't keep it up for months just to wear a few items. But if they couldn't wear the items (some people sell their old stuff right away) they had trouble playing the rest of the game. Now you only need the rank to buy items, but once you have them you can use them forever. This is why most rank 14 people just stop pvping completely and start doing raids and such (to get rings or other items).
1 - No mentions of bluetooth. It has a BLUE light, maybe you missread.
2 - It has no internal power source, instead of uses the mobile's battery, hence the need for a physical connection.
Yes, they have for some reason totally avoided including the N64 game and the three (!) Gameboy games.
They give points based on how well the card deals with those problems. Higher is better.
Most of them comes from the Resident Evil games. Gun shops (also featured in countless other games plus movies) are perfect to raid because they inevitably contain tons of shotgun shells and whatnot. Windows should be avoided because every game *inevitably* contains at least one scene where something comes crashing through them unto the unsuspecting persons in the hallway/room. The young medic is a reference for Rebecka Chambers (sp?) in Resident Evil 0. You have two characters, and can move items between them.
But the implications would be this: People who handle their guns with care, and don't go around killing people, will no longer be allowed to keep them. People who do not handle their guns with care, and could care less about the law, will still have their guns. These people are the dangerous ones.
If you have a quest system as involving as that, I don't think it would be hard to add some similar systems to make things even more interesting. Large castles like that could attract various NPC 'events', like camps of bandits who attack visitors. The castle masters could, upon getting information about current happenings, offer quests involving scouting (to map out enemy movements), sneak attacks, mounting defenses and such. Similarily, you could have quests inside the castle where the local smithy is looking for rare materials. The problem is that it would be rather involving, and require people to spend quite a lot of time getting up to date because things would change often.
Suikoden I, II and III had a similar setup, but with two L buttons (accept and cancel/run), select (open menue) and the digital pad for I+II, and analog stick for III. Works like a wonder, since Suikoden is the type of game where you don't have to look at the screen constantly.
So, essentially, it's not the actual *games* that are art, but pieces of it. The soundtrack, for example, can often be enjoyed as art in itself. Similarily with graphics. The graphics of Ico is amazing at some points. However, it is VERY unusual that someone says that the actual gameplay of a game is art. I'd say that Rez actually tries to fit in there, because the gameplay is so closely tied to the sound and visuals. Rez is rather unusual, though.
When they come up with titles (actual game, btw) like this for themselves, we don't really need to do that; Super Street Fighter II X Grand Master Challenge for Matching Service
You love Square games and you *don't* have a SNES? Shame on you!
Something which most people seem to miss, is this important fact:
There are 11 chapters because there are 11 writers!
If you don't like the author of the first chapter, don't let that prevent you from reading what the others say. The 'quality' of the articles varies greatly.
If nothing else, read chapter 7 by Jane Pinckard. I found that one to be relatively different than the rest, and actually easily readable.
"Write about a game set in the 80s as though you were writing it from the 80s. Do this without being trite, and you're on the track."
You know, I'd REALLY like to read his review on Sim Ant.
I can't say when that 'started', but it's not new by any means.
It's very width-spread in arcades. Most games has a demonstration screen/animation that explains what the buttons does. Even if there are only three of them.
Of course, it shouldn't go too far. I'm personally in favour of a selectable tutorial/intro whatnot, since for 99% of the games I play, I get the hang of it within the first minute anyway.
However, if you are concentrating on the 'mandatory and non-skippable' part, I would say it started to become frequent enough for me to notice sometime around mid 90s. As far as I know, Half-Life was the 'spark' within FPS games.
I put it in the same category as intros that keeps autostarting even if you've played the game before.
"Since we're listing all possible situations, each route has a probability of 1/9. Agreed?"
No, no! Not at all. Some of those are actually impossible to actually occur. If you pick door 1, Monty can't show you door 1. Hence, it has a possibility of 0/9, or just 0.
Each route does NOT have equal probability. Take a dice with 6 sides, and roll it. Lets say you look at two cases.
You roll a 6.
You roll anything else.
Obviously, the second case is more likely to occur . Can you now agree that different cases can have different probabilities?
If you have 100 doors, and one is correct, this would mean that the 'keep' door 99 times out of 100 is an incorrect one? While you have only two choises, the choises themselves aren't balanced.
You can agree with the following things, right? You can chose one door out of three. This choise is pure chance. Okay? The chance, at this point, to chose the correct door is 1/3. Okay? The chance, at this point, to chose one of the two incorrect doors is 2/3. Okay? If you picked an incorrect door at step one, and switch at step two, you MUST have the winning door, no matter what. Okay? I think the problem here is that most people see the second step as purely random. It would be if you used a dice or coin or something to decide if you should switch or not. It would all even out after a bit. The thing is that at this step, you are taking advantage of the previous knowledge. It might help you to think of the second step as just a switch. The whole point is to chose the same option every time, and not do it randomly.
To start with, you have a 1 in 3 chance to pick the correct door, and a 2 in 3 chance to pick any of the two incorrect doors.
If you always keep
If you pick the correct door, and keep it, you will win. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 1, and keep it, you will lose. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 2, and keep it, you will lose. This is also a 33% chance.
So 33% chance to win, and 66% chance to lose.
If you always switch
You pick the correct door, and switch. You lose. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 1, and switch, you win. This is a 33% chance.
If you pick incorrect door 2, and switch, you win. This is a 33% chance.
This gives a 66% chance to win, and 33% to lose. Clearly better.
The important thing is that you initially have a larger chance to pick the wrong door. All that the second choise does is allow you to switch the odds.
Hey, Ikaruga should be played on the Dreamcast! Blasphemy! Fun as hell, though. A bit short, but really frantic.
"As the size of the wire goes up so does the resistance," I'm not sure what you mean by size here. Longer wires certainly increases resistance. It's counted at ohm/meter (or ohm/feet or whatever you want). However, if you make the cable thicker, the opposite is true. If you use twice the metal, you get half the resistance, basically.
But it would still be true. You can use (or consume) the electricity to drive chemical processes, or heat up water, or whatever, and store energy in other forms that way. But that rule goes for 'pure' electricity.
The unmodified quote comes from Simpsons, in an episode where Homer goes on a space shuttle, and manages to smash the ant-farm (which the astronauts would be studying in space). Kent (the reporter) then broadcasts from the ground: "Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves."
Variants of this has actually been tried out, with varying results. Note that you have to be *really* careful at what you are actually selling. I can give some examples and reasons why they are good/bad. The general feeling I've got after years of playing and talking about this is that a lot of consumers despite it because it goes against the reasons they play games in the first place. You generally don't want games to be influenced by RL, because, well, they are games.
Project Entropia
Real money could be converted to game money and back. Upsides: System made to prevent/lessen cheating. Game money was more important. Downsides: Bugs hit MUCH harder. Could be very costly. General feeling that the devs made the game steal your money.
Tibia
Normally free to play, but you can pay for permium account upgrades. With this, you got access to more spells, areas and such. Upsides: You still had to work for the items, which mostly removed the unfairness. Downsides: Still sepparation between haves and havenots.
Achaea
Normally free to play, but you could purchase 'credits' for real money. Credits could be used to train skills, get really good weapons, houses and similar. They could also be sold to other players. Upsides: Havenots could spend ingame time to get things to trade for credits. Downsides: Made some people overly powerful quickly.
Yet, for some reason, insurance is quite common in all other fields. If you are thinking of statistical probabilities when figuring if it's worth it, you've totally lost the point.
You know, the sad part is that most of the people living NOW hasn't played the game, even if they use the 'joke'.