Just some random thoughts here: my sister is "type I" diabetic, ie the kind you get a child (total failure of the pancreas), not the kind that fat people get.
My girlfriend is a "type II" diabetic, as is her mother, and calling it "the kind fat people get" is very short-sighted. Type II is genetic, just as type I is, and while larger people are under a higher risk for getting it, it's certainly not the case that all fat people get type II (or even all type II people are fat). Think a little before you say something like that, please.
Oh, and i forgot to mention, the DOS version still runs really sweet under Windows. For some lucky people (i'm one of them:-) you can actually get sound too. Which is a big bonus, because the music is written by The Fat Man, and as we all know he's a game music legend. (Translation: it rocks ass.)
The original Master of Orion is available as "abandonware" (old warez) from various sites. With a cursory search i found the Mac version at Abandonware France ("telecharger" then "cliquez ici") and the DOS version at Classic-Trash.
I have to admit i haven't played MOO2, only the original, but it looks like they're really going for some serious science here. Stuff like removing species that are overly humanoid and adding species that are completely alien ("life, Jim, but not as we know it")... They're adding the concepts of "established space lanes", similar to the way we used to navigate the oceans during the early ages of exploration and trade. This will make intercepting invasion fleets a lot more practical and interesting. Essentially they're taking the concepts of MOO and making them more realistic, allowing very, very fine-grained control over everything that happens in your empire while still letting newbies come in and have a reasonable game with everything on the default setting...
I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. Is there still room for a turn-based strategy game in this day and age? Are people going to be amazed by the (attempted) realism or just bored by it? Is it going to be too complex? I think it's a really brave move... These fan-driven game developments are really something special (see the new online multiplayer One Must Fall for another example). Whether people get into it or not, i think it's definitely going to be something very unique.
I've long wanted to write an "old sound chips emulator" in software, because they did some really wacky stuff back in the 8-bit and even early 16- and 32-bit days of computers that they just don't have any more. The SID in the C64 was actually an analog synthesizer on a chip. The Yamaha thingy in the Amstrad CPC (and possibly ZX Spectrum) was completely crazy... it only had square waves with no filters or anything... but the DCA envelopes could loop, so you could create different timbres by having very fast looped envelopes "chopping up" the original square wave. Definitely something unique that we haven't seen recently. Even the old OPL chips on the AdLib and early SB series were interesting - just 2-operator FM synths i believe, but while they sucked for emulating real instruments they could make great bubbly bass sounds if they were programmed right.
I would really like to see an esay-to-use BOX that just emulated these synths... Or even used them! A SID-station but with 10 different old chips that you could switch between. That would rock my socks.
Snob is right. (IDM is shit.) But "troll" is more appropriate, especially considering this DVD isn't about music per se but about demos, which is the whole package. And most demo music is in a unique style of its own, quite different to techno (in spite of it being electronic).
I always found demo music fascinating... It sounds a bit like the musicians are trying to recreate Joe Satriani or similar instrumental metal/rock artists from the 80s in an electronic fashion. I always wonder what the inspirations are for these musicians... and i wonder what they do after they leave the scene... game music stopped being written in that style as soon as CD-ROMs came out.
Most of the demos i downloaded from BBSes back in the day were 64k intros, and before that on the 8-bits they were even tinier things usually attached to cracked games... And i seem to recall they were always on an endless loop. How can you make a DVD or DivX of demos without "fading out" after X repeats? How many repeats?
I remember listening to the music on one demo on my 8-bit Amstrad years ago... The Equalizer demo i remember it was called. Just the same three (!) songs repeating over and over playing three simple square-waves coming out of that old Yamaha chip... Ahh those were the days.
I'm only a new inductee to the world of Farscape; in fact i just forced myself to start watching after the last few months of "save Farscape" posts on Slashdot. I figured it might be another Babylon 5 or Blake's 7 - where it looks like some gay BBC show at first but then it turns out to actually be good. Of course it seems i was right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) and it is. Good, that is. In spite of the Fraggles. And the BBC reject actors. Almost as good as the Fraggles itself, in fact. I recommend it to any sci-fi fan.
One thing i don't understand, though, is this charming fan commentary:
The John and Erin(sp?) romance is kinda getting stale anyway. I just want to scream "Fuck already David and Mattie!"
Dude. Didn't they tell you in school the only social interaction guys are supposed to get excited about is in WWE? And real life, of course (but only if she's teh sexxxy). Sci-fi relationships are for geeks. Oh, wait a second...
You know i was just going to say the funniest FPS i ever played (in multiplayer mode too) was Rise of the Triad and then i realized it was by the same guys. Duke3D didn't really "click" with me, though, but everyone who knows me knows i'm a humorless bastard. I kill guards in Half-Life for a pistol clip:->
Am i missing something here? Am i the only one who wasn't all that excited about Duke Nukem 3D? Yeah it wasn't a BAD game per se, but i don't recall it ever being a Doom-killer or even a Quake-killer. Was it really cool in multiplayer mode or something? I only played it in singleplayer. To me it didn't seem to have the fun factor that the original platformers did.
Why is everyone so desperate for Duke Nukem Forever? I can understand nail-biting for Doom 3 and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, but the previous incarnations of those games were hugely popular. Duke Nukem 3D - as far as i remember - wasn't at all.
This speaks volumes for guys like Carmack who not only design great games, but do so in a timely manner PLUS do it from scratch.
I guess you weren't around when we were all waiting for Quake to come out... and before that Doom... (Repeat ten (thousand) times after me: "it'll be out when it's done".) Anyone for a quick game of Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris?
Too true, and this is precisely the problem. Too many chemicals out there can be used to make drugs and bombs, and that makes the government Very Unhappy.
I loved chemistry in high school and regret i never followed it up. Actually the real life of a chemical engineer is probably equally boring as that of a computer programmer, but hey i can fantasize. Can't you just see the dinner party conversation? "Crank... um um um um yeah crank yeah crank don't got nothin on my hydropsychotic pseudomethephedrineactose-sulfate-2,4,5... that's like like 245 bpm heart rate and and and "
What would be real nice is fonts under Java under Linux that don't suck. I see this as still being a Very Big Problem. You can run the IBM or Sun JDK, JBuilder, Red Hat 8.0, whatever, but key fonts seem to be missing or substituted with some really dodgy alternatives. It's still too hard to develop cross-platform Swing or AWT apps with at least a semi-consistent GUI.
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My girlfriend is a "type II" diabetic, as is her mother, and calling it "the kind fat people get" is very short-sighted. Type II is genetic, just as type I is, and while larger people are under a higher risk for getting it, it's certainly not the case that all fat people get type II (or even all type II people are fat). Think a little before you say something like that, please.
(Sorry for the AC dupe - forgot to log in.)
Oh, and i forgot to mention, the DOS version still runs really sweet under Windows. For some lucky people (i'm one of them :-) you can actually get sound too. Which is a big bonus, because the music is written by The Fat Man, and as we all know he's a game music legend. (Translation: it rocks ass.)
The original Master of Orion is available as "abandonware" (old warez) from various sites. With a cursory search i found the Mac version at Abandonware France ("telecharger" then "cliquez ici") and the DOS version at Classic-Trash.
I have to admit i haven't played MOO2, only the original, but it looks like they're really going for some serious science here. Stuff like removing species that are overly humanoid and adding species that are completely alien ("life, Jim, but not as we know it")... They're adding the concepts of "established space lanes", similar to the way we used to navigate the oceans during the early ages of exploration and trade. This will make intercepting invasion fleets a lot more practical and interesting. Essentially they're taking the concepts of MOO and making them more realistic, allowing very, very fine-grained control over everything that happens in your empire while still letting newbies come in and have a reasonable game with everything on the default setting...
I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like. Is there still room for a turn-based strategy game in this day and age? Are people going to be amazed by the (attempted) realism or just bored by it? Is it going to be too complex? I think it's a really brave move... These fan-driven game developments are really something special (see the new online multiplayer One Must Fall for another example). Whether people get into it or not, i think it's definitely going to be something very unique.
I've long wanted to write an "old sound chips emulator" in software, because they did some really wacky stuff back in the 8-bit and even early 16- and 32-bit days of computers that they just don't have any more. The SID in the C64 was actually an analog synthesizer on a chip. The Yamaha thingy in the Amstrad CPC (and possibly ZX Spectrum) was completely crazy... it only had square waves with no filters or anything... but the DCA envelopes could loop, so you could create different timbres by having very fast looped envelopes "chopping up" the original square wave. Definitely something unique that we haven't seen recently. Even the old OPL chips on the AdLib and early SB series were interesting - just 2-operator FM synths i believe, but while they sucked for emulating real instruments they could make great bubbly bass sounds if they were programmed right.
I would really like to see an esay-to-use BOX that just emulated these synths... Or even used them! A SID-station but with 10 different old chips that you could switch between. That would rock my socks.
Damn straight ehehehhee right on :-)
Snob is right. (IDM is shit.) But "troll" is more appropriate, especially considering this DVD isn't about music per se but about demos, which is the whole package. And most demo music is in a unique style of its own, quite different to techno (in spite of it being electronic).
I always found demo music fascinating... It sounds a bit like the musicians are trying to recreate Joe Satriani or similar instrumental metal/rock artists from the 80s in an electronic fashion. I always wonder what the inspirations are for these musicians... and i wonder what they do after they leave the scene... game music stopped being written in that style as soon as CD-ROMs came out.
Most of the demos i downloaded from BBSes back in the day were 64k intros, and before that on the 8-bits they were even tinier things usually attached to cracked games... And i seem to recall they were always on an endless loop. How can you make a DVD or DivX of demos without "fading out" after X repeats? How many repeats?
I remember listening to the music on one demo on my 8-bit Amstrad years ago... The Equalizer demo i remember it was called. Just the same three (!) songs repeating over and over playing three simple square-waves coming out of that old Yamaha chip... Ahh those were the days.
I'm only a new inductee to the world of Farscape; in fact i just forced myself to start watching after the last few months of "save Farscape" posts on Slashdot. I figured it might be another Babylon 5 or Blake's 7 - where it looks like some gay BBC show at first but then it turns out to actually be good. Of course it seems i was right (or wrong, depending on how you look at it) and it is. Good, that is. In spite of the Fraggles. And the BBC reject actors. Almost as good as the Fraggles itself, in fact. I recommend it to any sci-fi fan.
One thing i don't understand, though, is this charming fan commentary:
Dude. Didn't they tell you in school the only social interaction guys are supposed to get excited about is in WWE? And real life, of course (but only if she's teh sexxxy). Sci-fi relationships are for geeks. Oh, wait a second...
Mmmm... Tasha Yarr... errr
You know i was just going to say the funniest FPS i ever played (in multiplayer mode too) was Rise of the Triad and then i realized it was by the same guys. Duke3D didn't really "click" with me, though, but everyone who knows me knows i'm a humorless bastard. I kill guards in Half-Life for a pistol clip :->
Am i missing something here? Am i the only one who wasn't all that excited about Duke Nukem 3D? Yeah it wasn't a BAD game per se, but i don't recall it ever being a Doom-killer or even a Quake-killer. Was it really cool in multiplayer mode or something? I only played it in singleplayer. To me it didn't seem to have the fun factor that the original platformers did.
Why is everyone so desperate for Duke Nukem Forever? I can understand nail-biting for Doom 3 and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, but the previous incarnations of those games were hugely popular. Duke Nukem 3D - as far as i remember - wasn't at all.
I guess you weren't around when we were all waiting for Quake to come out... and before that Doom... (Repeat ten (thousand) times after me: "it'll be out when it's done".) Anyone for a quick game of Smashing Pumpkins Into Small Piles Of Putrid Debris?
Coming up in version 2.0:
/\ \(.*\)@\(.*\)\ /
CAPTCHA: Hello. I am CAPTCHA. How can i help you?
SPAMMER:
C: Please go on.
S: I would like your email address.
C: Can you elaborate on that?
S: I'm planning to spam you.
C: Does it please you to believe I am planning to spam i?
S: What the fuck?
C: Does that question interest you?
S: ARGH!
C: Please go on.
Well it amused me at least :-)
I can see it now. Our soldier, covered in camo, lying in a sniping position, ready to off Osama... thinks of his wife for a second...
...
1) Mood pc starts flashing bright red.
2)
3) Game over man!
Not geeky enough.
l dS eperators\n");}
main(){printf("REALGeeksDon'tNeedUnnecessaryFie
Too true, and this is precisely the problem. Too many chemicals out there can be used to make drugs and bombs, and that makes the government Very Unhappy.
I loved chemistry in high school and regret i never followed it up. Actually the real life of a chemical engineer is probably equally boring as that of a computer programmer, but hey i can fantasize. Can't you just see the dinner party conversation? "Crank... um um um um yeah crank yeah crank don't got nothin on my hydropsychotic pseudomethephedrineactose-sulfate-2,4,5... that's like like 245 bpm heart rate and and and "
What would be real nice is fonts under Java under Linux that don't suck. I see this as still being a Very Big Problem. You can run the IBM or Sun JDK, JBuilder, Red Hat 8.0, whatever, but key fonts seem to be missing or substituted with some really dodgy alternatives. It's still too hard to develop cross-platform Swing or AWT apps with at least a semi-consistent GUI.