OK, so some moron is annoying you for no apparent reason. Your new to online gaming, right? I'm joshing, but the point stands. I remember (get out the violin for this 'back in the day' recollection) playing online games years ago (ok, 6) and having idiots annoy me for no reason that I could fathom. At least now you can put these guys in the religion box. I use to go stupid (or more so) trying to understand why ppl would spend hours online with the pure reason of making things annoying/difficult. You can put cheats in this box/category too.
This is very true. When Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun was being hyped in the lead up to its release, Westwood were talking about how the AI was 'intelligent' would 'adjust its tactics' and how pathfinding was fixed. It all ended up being just that, hype. Although the Unit pathfinding was vastly improved. While we're on the subjet, lets bow our heads in a minutes silence in respect for the demise of beloved Westwood, recently consumed by the 'beast' aka EA.
I'm pretty sure most music from the 80's was destroyed by UN Security Council Order in 1993, with the words "For the sake of world peace and the advancement of culture and civilised society, this menace must be destroyed." The only countries to defy the edict were Germany, India and Bhutan.
Oh, man! I just used up my mod points not half an hour ago. See here for my previous ramble on the issue of people pining for the old days.
I do agree that many publishers are scared sh*tless of publishing something new, but I also think that the game buying public are also to blame for buying the mass volumes of gunk that are on offer. Also, not all sequels are just rehashes to cash in. GTA3:Vice City is one that was pretty innovative. Half-Life 2/Doom 3 (how often do those two get lumped together?) are a little evolutionary, but have some new tricky stuff, Rise of Nations is evolutionary of Civilisation, but is now an innovative RTS. I mean...
heck I've just reread your post. Oh, Games for the USA. Yeah, I think I've got that covered. (Sorry if I sound 'snippy', I spent the morning dealing with idiots masquerading as intelligent important people in charge of expensive projects)
My.sig is particularly pertinent in this instant. Actually what is really sad is that I can name 40+ US states on a good day, and the average American can't even get the general continent right./soapbox
I work for one of the state governments in Australia and nearly everything we do is in Lotus Notes, databases and all. Which, as far as I understand, runs nicely on Linux. So, get that and Star Office of similar to replace MS Office, and 90% of computers could be changed over. The only problem would be the NT design machines, the programs for these are fairly specialised for our line of work (Road/Bridge/Transport systems design, construct and maintainance). But I digress, the MS apps are fairly second run of importance compared to Lotus Notes. (man, we use notes for *everything*) Also, do you think 'Sally Secretary' (or Sam Secretary, sexist pig! (j/k)) is not use to bizarre errors in MS programs? Blue screens of death etc.? Heck, even my beloved notes crashes occasionally when I try to do too much. I think you underestimate people.
*strike that, I just had to show a manager how to write a formula that will multiply one cell by another in excel. WTF! How can you explain the most simple of things?* *cries into crap instant coffee*
This is not really a true reflection of the Australian political system (Westminister system). The place where the Democrats have real power is in the Federal Senate, where they have enough power to start investigations, instigate inquiries etc. Although after the GST fiasco, "Keep the Bastards Honest" took a bit of a shellacking. They are a nice little check in the Westminister system, especially with how Labor (the party in opposition, like the Democrats in the US and Conservatives in UK) are laying down like beaten dogs at the moment. Also, in conjuncton with the Labor party, they can veto government policies.
(Amusingly, your nick' is Sad Loser and your.sig says you go for the magpies)
Also, did you ever read the so-called sequel to Do Androids Dream of ELectric Sheep? Written by another author 'in the spirit of PKD'. Its a travesty of literature justice.
Westwood made an excellent game based on 'Blade Runner'. It didn't follow the storyline too well, which made it more interesting. It was a point and click and explore kind of adventure game similar in gameplay to 'Grim Fandango'. But, it was damn hard, and I couldn't finish it. There some very cool parts of it.
Good Lord!
I'll try to be as normal as possible without being too caustic. At the moment the estimated world population is 6351506980 Is there any way that you think that a single continent could support 6.3bil people? Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks... It boggles the mind that anyone could consider this. *bah* Must get back to work. However, whatever.
Yeah, its due here in Australia just before the return of Christ, just after everlasting peace is declared in the Middle East. On the (albeit small) bright side, at least I have more time to save for a decent comp., and maybe a lot of the problems discussed will be thrashed out by then (crosses fingers). Man, I've been using Lotus so much I just tried to press 'Shift-Esc' to save and exit. *sigh*
Very amusing. Now I'm going to be going nuts at work all day trying to work out where on earth I've heard that before. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?
On another note, and this follows on from a story the other day (or month) I commented on, I can never understand people wanting to play these games. The most common reason stated is 'gameplay', with people complaining about lack of gameplay in today games.
*sigh* I won't repeat what I said (much more) just click on what I wrote last time... if it at all matters. The 'gameplay' is so monotonous and boring... must work (also monotonous and boring).
If you read the article, it sounds more like an advertisement for x-box than anything else. (italics article, bold for emphasis)
The Air Force chose Xbox over other game systems because of its online gaming network, Quinn said. "It's really the premier gaming system" for playing online, he said.
for example, someone located in the Azores could race a virtual motorcycle against an....
I mean, give us a break! Personally, I love my x-box... but this is more an ad than news. Why do we want to know this?
Re:My letter to the publishing paper.
on
Science Faction
·
· Score: 1
Ok, I'll bite, mainly because I'm from Oz, and regularly read The Age.
Tawdry reporting? Total Ignorance? Bah. If you are going to convey the message that a lot of the technology used today was predicted previously by science fiction, which medium are you going to use? The one with a minute (by comparison) number of afficiondoes (who have read PK Dick, Asimov, Verne, Niven etc. (names chosen at random, mind)), or that with a large of people who are going to recognise the examples. Pandering to the masses, maybe, but Tawdry and Ignorant?
Also, there are few if any movies in any genre that have original ideas. Books are a wonderful medium that is woefully unused by the 'plebs', but movies create a format (often misused, of course) that makes wonderful works of sci-fi accessible to many who would never read a book.
Red Rag at a Bull....
on
Pac-Man Reloaded
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Is what posting one of these articles is like.
Now we'll get all these 'back in my day' 'when I was a kid' 'games aren't what they use to be' comments which are as valid as "when politicians were honest back in my day".
Really, you can get fun, simple games with fantastic graphics that are modern releases. The biggest problem is usually that they are 'pigeon holed' into the 'kids games' categories (See Animal Crossing, Mario Party 1-4, most GC/nintendo games of late.... etc.) and the games that we see (I assume all ppl here are 16+) are marketed at us (FPS/Shooters, RPG's, RTS's etc.) And the argument that in the 80's games were of higher quality is so laughable I really hope that no gamer believes it. I also think you could say that in the 80's and early 90's game publishers/designers (not neccesarily the same) saw the market as being at the extreme 15 yrs old, with the majority being 8-13 (...?) Now there are finally some mature games coming out for older ppl who aren't into 'simple kiddie games' or Leisure Suit Larry like GTA in 3D, shooters with a mature storyline (Thank-you HL1&2/Doom3) Personally I get easily bored by 'puzzle' games. A game where I have to think my way out of a situation (Jedi Knight II, many Command & Conquer games, AoE2/AoK, Starcraft), to make quick decisions on the go that have consequences (Halo, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell). I'll stop here, I have to get back to work. Looking back through this streaming flow of consciousness, theres holes in my arguments, but thats what slashdots about;)
Personally, I think its because todays computers are fast enough for most office applications required, however up until even a few years ago in the sub-500MHz speed range computers would struggle with many day to day tasks (especially as the majority of computer used MS... and still do) My old PII-266 would struggle running more than one decent app at a time and squeal at four. Now I can listen to music, surf the net, have a document/email I'm playing with etc. with no drop in performance. I'll try to make myself clearer. So my theory is that the majority of computer uses are only just beginning to get computers that are fast enought that upgrading would give no discernable difference... therefore no need for upgrade therefore slump. (therefore bargain computer for gamers!). Also, while gamers never have fast enough machines, and do drive development, they are in reality only a small section of the market. Oh, the name SmurfButcher = Funny +3 in my book.
I guess having 'Coon' in Carcoon was considered racist? In Australia we have "Coon Cheese" (Named after a white guy whos surname was Coon early last century) that some Aborigines tried to get changed.
Don't know of any freebies myself, I have little enough time as it is without playing MMOG. However, it is unlikey that you could establish a decent MMOG without monthly/annual/similar fees. The main problem is that Bandwidth and Servers aren't free and that alternative means of paying to run something (advertising, pop-ups etc.) are incredibly unpopular. Even good ol' slashdot has had to resort to some alt-funding from subscriptions.
These type of games seem to have dissapeared in recent years, and is it because the big download pages....
I've noticed it too, one reason I think is that my main source of demos/shareware to try for many years was various computer game magazines. These 'zines would have 1 or 2 CD's packed with heaps of demos to try and play with. There would be quite often 20 or so on each CD. However, as demo sizes have ultimately increased by large amounts from ~30MB to at least ~100MB less demos are released with each magazine, so that only 'mainstream' demos are released and smaller companies squeezed out. Also bandwidth. Not many folk have broadband or better, most have 56k modems or no connection. So its difficult to get a demo/shareware for most people, hence they don't try something random and different hence small publishers die.
When you get 'gooey' ashphalt, it means that there is too much tar or bitumen or 'the black gooey stuff' when the road was constructed. Quite often its because some fool in the govt dept decided to throw a reseal (bitumen then stone) on a dead road to make it last a bit longer. I'm from Australia, and we rarely have that problem on well made roads, even in the middle of summer.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, so some moron is annoying you for no apparent reason. Your new to online gaming, right? I'm joshing, but the point stands. I remember (get out the violin for this 'back in the day' recollection) playing online games years ago (ok, 6) and having idiots annoy me for no reason that I could fathom. At least now you can put these guys in the religion box. I use to go stupid (or more so) trying to understand why ppl would spend hours online with the pure reason of making things annoying/difficult.
/rant
You can put cheats in this box/category too.
This is very true. When Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun was being hyped in the lead up to its release, Westwood were talking about how the AI was 'intelligent' would 'adjust its tactics' and how pathfinding was fixed. It all ended up being just that, hype. Although the Unit pathfinding was vastly improved. While we're on the subjet, lets bow our heads in a minutes silence in respect for the demise of beloved Westwood, recently consumed by the 'beast' aka EA.
Nothing personal, but isn't this sentence redundant?
:)
But that is just my opinion, and I'm in no position to know.
That is the essence of slashdot!
Anyway, I'm going to go back to yelling at contractors.
I'm pretty sure most music from the 80's was destroyed by UN Security Council Order in 1993, with the words "For the sake of world peace and the advancement of culture and civilised society, this menace must be destroyed."
The only countries to defy the edict were Germany, India and Bhutan.
(I'm in a weird mood, leave me alone)
Allah Akbar?
So now the Mon Calamari is the Muslim god? Intriguing.
(Like I'm the *only* Star Wars buff who thought it)
Could cause some theological concerns when your 'god' is served up at the local seafood restaurant.
or they have contracted out the distribution side of things. But then thats what their companies about. (And no excuse, btw)
Oh, man! I just used up my mod points not half an hour ago. See here for my previous ramble on the issue of people pining for the old days.
I do agree that many publishers are scared sh*tless of publishing something new, but I also think that the game buying public are also to blame for buying the mass volumes of gunk that are on offer. Also, not all sequels are just rehashes to cash in. GTA3:Vice City is one that was pretty innovative. Half-Life 2/Doom 3 (how often do those two get lumped together?) are a little evolutionary, but have some new tricky stuff, Rise of Nations is evolutionary of Civilisation, but is now an innovative RTS. I mean...
heck I've just reread your post. Oh, Games for the USA. Yeah, I think I've got that covered.
(Sorry if I sound 'snippy', I spent the morning dealing with idiots masquerading as intelligent important people in charge of expensive projects)
Australia is NOT in Europe
.sig is particularly pertinent in this instant. Actually what is really sad is that I can name 40+ US states on a good day, and the average American can't even get the general continent right. /soapbox
*sigh*
My
I work for one of the state governments in Australia and nearly everything we do is in Lotus Notes, databases and all. Which, as far as I understand, runs nicely on Linux. So, get that and Star Office of similar to replace MS Office, and 90% of computers could be changed over. The only problem would be the NT design machines, the programs for these are fairly specialised for our line of work (Road/Bridge/Transport systems design, construct and maintainance).
But I digress, the MS apps are fairly second run of importance compared to Lotus Notes. (man, we use notes for *everything*) Also, do you think 'Sally Secretary' (or Sam Secretary, sexist pig! (j/k)) is not use to bizarre errors in MS programs? Blue screens of death etc.? Heck, even my beloved notes crashes occasionally when I try to do too much. I think you underestimate people.
*strike that, I just had to show a manager how to write a formula that will multiply one cell by another in excel. WTF! How can you explain the most simple of things?*
*cries into crap instant coffee*
This is not really a true reflection of the Australian political system (Westminister system). The place where the Democrats have real power is in the Federal Senate, where they have enough power to start investigations, instigate inquiries etc. Although after the GST fiasco, "Keep the Bastards Honest" took a bit of a shellacking. They are a nice little check in the Westminister system, especially with how Labor (the party in opposition, like the Democrats in the US and Conservatives in UK) are laying down like beaten dogs at the moment. Also, in conjuncton with the Labor party, they can veto government policies.
.sig says you go for the magpies)
(Amusingly, your nick' is Sad Loser and your
I did say I didn't finish it :).
Also, did you ever read the so-called sequel to Do Androids Dream of ELectric Sheep? Written by another author 'in the spirit of PKD'. Its a travesty of literature justice.
It was published by Virgin Interactive, before Westwood was bought by EA, and then Destroyed by EA (The Ba$tard$) /rant
Westwood made an excellent game based on 'Blade Runner'. It didn't follow the storyline too well, which made it more interesting. It was a point and click and explore kind of adventure game similar in gameplay to 'Grim Fandango'. But, it was damn hard, and I couldn't finish it. There some very cool parts of it.
Don't forget, this is assuming everyone is nuts enough to WANT to live in California.
Good Lord!
I'll try to be as normal as possible without being too caustic. At the moment the estimated world population is 6351506980 Is there any way that you think that a single continent could support 6.3bil people? Food, Water, Waste disposal, electricity, transportation networks... It boggles the mind that anyone could consider this. *bah* Must get back to work. However, whatever.
Yeah, its due here in Australia just before the return of Christ, just after everlasting peace is declared in the Middle East. On the (albeit small) bright side, at least I have more time to save for a decent comp., and maybe a lot of the problems discussed will be thrashed out by then (crosses fingers). Man, I've been using Lotus so much I just tried to press 'Shift-Esc' to save and exit.
*sigh*
Very amusing. Now I'm going to be going nuts at work all day trying to work out where on earth I've heard that before. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?
On another note, and this follows on from a story the other day (or month) I commented on, I can never understand people wanting to play these games. The most common reason stated is 'gameplay', with people complaining about lack of gameplay in today games.
*sigh* I won't repeat what I said (much more) just click on what I wrote last time... if it at all matters. The 'gameplay' is so monotonous and boring... must work (also monotonous and boring).
If you read the article, it sounds more like an advertisement for x-box than anything else. (italics article, bold for emphasis)
The Air Force chose Xbox over other game systems because of its online gaming network, Quinn said.
"It's really the premier gaming system" for playing online, he said.
for example, someone located in the Azores could race a virtual motorcycle against an....
I mean, give us a break! Personally, I love my x-box... but this is more an ad than news. Why do we want to know this?
Ok, I'll bite, mainly because I'm from Oz, and regularly read The Age.
Tawdry reporting? Total Ignorance? Bah. If you are going to convey the message that a lot of the technology used today was predicted previously by science fiction, which medium are you going to use? The one with a minute (by comparison) number of afficiondoes (who have read PK Dick, Asimov, Verne, Niven etc. (names chosen at random, mind)), or that with a large of people who are going to recognise the examples. Pandering to the masses, maybe, but Tawdry and Ignorant?
Also, there are few if any movies in any genre that have original ideas. Books are a wonderful medium that is woefully unused by the 'plebs', but movies create a format (often misused, of course) that makes wonderful works of sci-fi accessible to many who would never read a book.
Is what posting one of these articles is like.
;)
Now we'll get all these 'back in my day' 'when I was a kid' 'games aren't what they use to be' comments which are as valid as "when politicians were honest back in my day".
Really, you can get fun, simple games with fantastic graphics that are modern releases. The biggest problem is usually that they are 'pigeon holed' into the 'kids games' categories (See Animal Crossing, Mario Party 1-4, most GC/nintendo games of late.... etc.) and the games that we see (I assume all ppl here are 16+) are marketed at us (FPS/Shooters, RPG's, RTS's etc.) And the argument that in the 80's games were of higher quality is so laughable I really hope that no gamer believes it. I also think you could say that in the 80's and early 90's game publishers/designers (not neccesarily the same) saw the market as being at the extreme 15 yrs old, with the majority being 8-13 (...?) Now there are finally some mature games coming out for older ppl who aren't into 'simple kiddie games' or Leisure Suit Larry like GTA in 3D, shooters with a mature storyline (Thank-you HL1&2/Doom3) Personally I get easily bored by 'puzzle' games. A game where I have to think my way out of a situation (Jedi Knight II, many Command & Conquer games, AoE2/AoK, Starcraft), to make quick decisions on the go that have consequences (Halo, Rainbow Six, Splinter Cell). I'll stop here, I have to get back to work. Looking back through this streaming flow of consciousness, theres holes in my arguments, but thats what slashdots about
Personally, I think its because todays computers are fast enough for most office applications required, however up until even a few years ago in the sub-500MHz speed range computers would struggle with many day to day tasks (especially as the majority of computer used MS... and still do) My old PII-266 would struggle running more than one decent app at a time and squeal at four. Now I can listen to music, surf the net, have a document/email I'm playing with etc. with no drop in performance. I'll try to make myself clearer.
So my theory is that the majority of computer uses are only just beginning to get computers that are fast enought that upgrading would give no discernable difference... therefore no need for upgrade therefore slump. (therefore bargain computer for gamers!). Also, while gamers never have fast enough machines, and do drive development, they are in reality only a small section of the market.
Oh, the name SmurfButcher = Funny +3 in my book.
I guess having 'Coon' in Carcoon was considered racist? In Australia we have "Coon Cheese" (Named after a white guy whos surname was Coon early last century) that some Aborigines tried to get changed.
Don't know of any freebies myself, I have little enough time as it is without playing MMOG. However, it is unlikey that you could establish a decent MMOG without monthly/annual/similar fees. The main problem is that Bandwidth and Servers aren't free and that alternative means of paying to run something (advertising, pop-ups etc.) are incredibly unpopular. Even good ol' slashdot has had to resort to some alt-funding from subscriptions.
These type of games seem to have dissapeared in recent years, and is it because the big download pages....
I've noticed it too, one reason I think is that my main source of demos/shareware to try for many years was various computer game magazines. These 'zines would have 1 or 2 CD's packed with heaps of demos to try and play with. There would be quite often 20 or so on each CD. However, as demo sizes have ultimately increased by large amounts from ~30MB to at least ~100MB less demos are released with each magazine, so that only 'mainstream' demos are released and smaller companies squeezed out. Also bandwidth. Not many folk have broadband or better, most have 56k modems or no connection. So its difficult to get a demo/shareware for most people, hence they don't try something random and different hence small publishers die.
When you get 'gooey' ashphalt, it means that there is too much tar or bitumen or 'the black gooey stuff' when the road was constructed. Quite often its because some fool in the govt dept decided to throw a reseal (bitumen then stone) on a dead road to make it last a bit longer. I'm from Australia, and we rarely have that problem on well made roads, even in the middle of summer.