Let me use any god-damn controller I want! If I want to use a Magic-Orb from 1996, then let me do it! If I want to use a steering wheel to play Quake, then that's my choice, NOT YOURS!
If it identifies as a mouse, sure. But you can't really expect every game developer to support every crappy, badly supported peripheral ever devised, can you?
Don't make your game in OpenGL: ATI cards suck for GL!
Disagree completely here. OpenGL is the open standard, soo please do support it! That goes for ATI too.
Make it possible to disable an Antivirus scanner, or simply prevent scans from taking place when your game is running. How hard can it be???
How is this the game developer's problem? Contact your virusscanner maker. Your complaint aren't very useful if you make them to the wrong people.
I can guarantee 99% of the people who claim they "buy the game" do not.
no you can't, because you don't know 99% of the people who claim they "buy the game". Speak for yourself, please.
Seriously, do you really think sites like GCW et al exist because people have huge personal issues with DRM (that are apparently circumvented by theft) or because demos don't exist? Be realistic. Don't hide behind false reasons.
Are you saying that nobody has ever had any problems due to DRM? I have on several occasions downloaded no-cd cracks just to get around those unnecessary, annoying, and occasionally broken CD checks. No-cd cracks are quite popular, even when they don't include an entire copy of the game. Many people don't mind paying for a good game, but they do mind paying for a game that makes a special effort to annoy them.
I'll be perfectly honest, since it seems people don't want to be. I'll buy games that I know I'm going to enjoy--I own all the HL2 expansions, TF2, etc., because I enjoyed their successors and had a reasonable expectation that their sequels would be equally good. It wasn't a risk I was taking--it was a sure thing. And even though most of the people posting here won't admit to it, I have the feeling that its that uncertainty--whether or not one will enjoy a $50 game--that makes people more willing to pirate than to take a monetary risk.
Isn't that exactly what a lot of people are saying? That they don't want to pay $50 for a game that they might not enjoy, or that might not work properly, or that might annoy them with its DRM?
Trying before you buy reduces that risk.
Not to mention one of the same excuses I used to hide behind--regardless of whether or not I'm going to pirate the game, if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, is the company really losing money on me?
Not everyone has a credit card to whip out (in Europe, a mere 16% apply for a credit card, the others quite happily use their bank accounts). Some people got burnt by PayPal.
Make it easy to pay.
The problem is: credit cards are exactly what makes it easy (though not necessarily safe) to pay online. The only reason I've got a credit card at all, is to make online payments. I got it for that explicit purpose, and as far as I can remember, that's the only thing I've ever used it for.
I wish someone would make something better. In fact, there are better solutions, but they're all national, not international.
Get a working non-creditcard-based international payment system out the door, and I will happily but Indy Games.
I don't think Indy developers are likely to have much influence over international payment systems.
when people are paid to put out certain things in their packages or just when money is generally involved the money is what is important. Not so much for the safety of a customers computer. A cracker has no motivation to screw with people's stuff. At least thats what I think.
Some use it to distribute trojans or viruses. Not all, mind you, but when using for cracks from unknown pirates, it pays to have your virus scanner completely up to date.
Because Demo's are great indication of how games will perform when you purchase the full version.
I cant count the number of times I have tried a demo, then later bought the game to find promised features missing, performance on my computer vastly reduced and game play crippled by bugs that were no present in the demo.
The best demos are the ones that are exactly the same program as the full version, and where you get the additional content by buying an activation code. Because it's the same game, you know the full version won't introduce bugs or reduce performance. And it's easy.
Maybe in some parts of Europe but not for most of us. I'm British. France is our historic enemy.
As far as I know, France and the UK have been allies for well over a century now. (And Russia was allied to France in WW1.)
If I were Dutch then maybe Spain? And so on.
That's getting really historic. We've had much more recent wars with England, France and Germany. And Belgium, even! Looks like we don't get along well with any of our neighbours.
Why should all of us be outraged at goings on in the Russian Empire?
The outrage is because it's outside the Russian empire.
I, for example, consider that the Ossetia mess will do useful damage to Russia and might wake up a few Europeans to the reality that the Russian is still their historic enemy.
Only in recent history. Before WW1, Russia had often been allied with several western European countries (although often with the intention of beating up some other European country).
Why should anybody give an ineffectual organisation more power?
To make it less ineffectual?
What has the UN done since its inception to curb the tide of illegal and immoral wars?
Not a lot, but then again, it has little power to do so.
I agree completely that the UN isn't working the way it should be, but your arguments don't sound very logical. The problem is with the decision making process, the veto power of a handful of members, and the lack of power to actually do something once a decision has finally been made.
It is, as the Georgian president has put it, an act of war.
Definitely, and it's completely at odds with arguments Russia had been making about the former-Yugoslavia situation, particularly the independence of Kosovo. They don't want provinces seceding from their mother country because that would legitimise Chechnya's attempts at independence, yet now they interfere when Georgia tries to stop a province from declaring its independence.
Ofcourse South Ossetia wants to join Russia, and Georgia has supported Chechnya (in words at least), so clearly different standards are in order here. On the other hand, I think Saakashvili overplayed his hand quite a bit, and was a fool for antagonising Russia. With a big and autocratic neighbour like that, an uncomfortable friendship works much better than outright hostility.
The roles should be switched, perhaps -- at least Lucas should stop writing because, from his own admission, he really really stinks at writing dialogue.
With Indiana Jones (or any movie with Harrison Ford) that's not a problem, because he'll just improvise something better.
But he's an OK director, he has an eye for imagery.
He is only okay when it comes to special effects. As soon as an actor appears on screen, it turns to crap. Look at how he managed to turn each and every one of the extremely talented all-star cast of the Star Wars prequels into wooden robots. Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, each and every one of them is a brilliant actor with lots of great roles to their name (well, Natalie Portman is still young, but she'll get there), but all of them managed to give the absolute worst performance of their career in Lucas' films. That's a pretty good sign that he's not really a very good director at all.
Although ofcourse no other Indiana Jones could ever compare to Harrison Ford.
And how many people said no James Bond could ever compare to Sean Connery?
A lot, so such a franchise could work equally well for Indy. And eventually we did get a few James Bonds that, while no Sean Connery clones, were perfectly fine James Bonds in their own right.
That's what Lucas should do is cast relatively unknowns (i.e. not big stars) and do a James Bond thing - as everyone else has suggested. Ford wasn't a big star when he was cast as Indy.
Originally he wanted Tom Selleck (Magnum PI) for the role. I'm glad they ended up with Harrison Ford.
I believe that was the idea when Clive Cussler's Sahara was adapted to the big screen.
As I understand it there was a desire to turn Dirk Pitt into a brand new big screen hero, as a combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones, hence the tag line,
"Dirk Pitt. Adventure has a new name"
I've never heard of any of these.
However, the film was a box office bomb and nothing else came of it.
To do the James Bond thing he would have had to have kept making films, not leave it this long between movies.
Exactly. That was the missed opportunity, IMO. But I admit I didn't realise this until I heard the new movie played in the '50s with commies instead of nazis.
They were a product of a different age anyway, time was the a new James Bond film was a cause for national celebration. Now if one is released its just another action flick, people simply don't care as much.
Nowadays it's a new Star Wars that's cause for national celebration, it seems. The new Indy got quite a lot of press too.
The only reason studios are interested in getting a James Bond type thing going is the potential product placement revenue such a popular series would generate.
If it's such a popular series, wouldn't they be interested in it anyway? The product placement is just a nice bonus.
I don't know about others, but I would love to see new series of Young Indiana Jones which used to be aired in '92 and later. Many people rates it very low, but for me it was very educating serie and was the only thing I used to watch in a TV when I was young.
I've missed most of it, but the few bits I saw were good. I'd love to see more of Young Indy. And if it works out, he could eventually grow up to be Big Indy.
But wasn't that River Phoenix? Because he's not young anymore, and also dead. Or was he only Young Indy in The Last Crusade?
With the exception of the mine cart chase and the rope bridge fight, Short Round was the only good thing about Temple of Doom.
You're kidding me, rgiht? Temple of Doom had the two worst sidekicks ever. Even apart from the mine cart chanse and the rope bridge fight, the movie has its moments, but those were mostly the ones without Short Round in it.
I particularly really like the opening scene a lot.
Lucas 'scoffed at the possibility of passing the famed fedora from Ford to Shia LaBeouf,' instead stating, 'if [Harrison Ford] wasn't in it, you'd have to call it "Mutt Williams and the search for Elvis."'
I think Lucas missed an opportunity to turn Indiana Jones into a James Bond-like franchise. Some months ago I read that it was originally sold as "James Bond with nazis and ancient treasures", and I think it would have been a great idea to keep it perpetually in a pre-WW2 setting with nazis and zeppelins, and replace the main actor if he gets too old.
Although ofcourse no other Indiana Jones could ever compare to Harrison Ford.
As is mentioned in the body, essentially it plays a shitload of random moves out to some cutoff point and tries to determine which moves contribute to a winning end state more often than the other ones.
Basically, the only thing the stupid algorithm knows about Go is the simple rules and how to score the board. It knows nothing of strategy, tactics, strong shapes, living shapes, dead shapes, etc.
I don't think it plays truly random moves. It probably still has a big database with classic shapes, and has some vague idea which moves are more likely to be good, but because of the Monte Carlo method, it can try a lot more of those potentially good moves.
In your average go position, there are probably about 10 good-looking moves (a lot more at the start, less towards the end). Over a 200-move game, that's still a ridiculous amount of computation.
Triple-ko is the only realistic situation I know of where different rule sets diverge. Under traditional Japanese rules, I believe a rematch is in order, but under super-ko rules, you're not allowed to capture a ko if that would repeat the position on the board. So you have to keep track of that, which is a pain, although technically super-ko is the more elegant rule set.
If my memory serves, an amateur 7-dan (7D) is one below a professional 1-dan (1P), essentially making 7d the "professional 1kyu" if it existed.
Amateur and professional dans aren't that easy to compare. For one thing, each country has its own amateur dan-grading comittee (and 5d from some countries may be stronger than 6d from other countries), while only Japan, China and Korea have a professional competition.
And I've heard professionals generally play a single game in 2 days instead of 2 hours, so it's a very different game.
It's comparing apples and oranges, but I've heard some Dutch 7d amateurs are able to beat 3d Japanese professionals. (But Dutch amateurs are very strong for their grades. Which is frustrating for Japanese amateurs who get beaten in their national sport by players with a lower grade.)
A 5-dan amateur move would hardly impress an 8P player.
If it's a computer (or a young kid or a newbie player) a 5d amateur would definitely impress an 8p player.
30th kyu, 29th kyu.... 2nd kyu, 1st kyu, 1st dan, 2nd dan,..., 8th dan, 9th dan, 10th dan.
It stops at 10th dan, which is the highest.
Not quite. Amateur dans usually stop around 6 or 7. Professionals go from 1-dan to 9-dan. Only God (the perfect go-player, obviously) is assumed to be 10-dan.
Yes. Computers have always been rubbish at Go. This one amazed everyone by being quite reasonable.
Reasonable? It's amazingly good. Until recently, I always told everybody that I, a weak 7-kyu amateur, could beat the best go-program in the world. That's clearly not true anymore.
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Let me use any god-damn controller I want! If I want to use a Magic-Orb from 1996, then let me do it! If I want to use a steering wheel to play Quake, then that's my choice, NOT YOURS!
If it identifies as a mouse, sure. But you can't really expect every game developer to support every crappy, badly supported peripheral ever devised, can you?
Don't make your game in OpenGL: ATI cards suck for GL!
Disagree completely here. OpenGL is the open standard, soo please do support it! That goes for ATI too.
Make it possible to disable an Antivirus scanner, or simply prevent scans from taking place when your game is running. How hard can it be???
How is this the game developer's problem? Contact your virusscanner maker. Your complaint aren't very useful if you make them to the wrong people.
I can guarantee 99% of the people who claim they "buy the game" do not.
no you can't, because you don't know 99% of the people who claim they "buy the game". Speak for yourself, please.
Seriously, do you really think sites like GCW et al exist because people have huge personal issues with DRM (that are apparently circumvented by theft) or because demos don't exist? Be realistic. Don't hide behind false reasons.
Are you saying that nobody has ever had any problems due to DRM? I have on several occasions downloaded no-cd cracks just to get around those unnecessary, annoying, and occasionally broken CD checks. No-cd cracks are quite popular, even when they don't include an entire copy of the game. Many people don't mind paying for a good game, but they do mind paying for a game that makes a special effort to annoy them.
I'll be perfectly honest, since it seems people don't want to be. I'll buy games that I know I'm going to enjoy--I own all the HL2 expansions, TF2, etc., because I enjoyed their successors and had a reasonable expectation that their sequels would be equally good. It wasn't a risk I was taking--it was a sure thing. And even though most of the people posting here won't admit to it, I have the feeling that its that uncertainty--whether or not one will enjoy a $50 game--that makes people more willing to pirate than to take a monetary risk.
Isn't that exactly what a lot of people are saying? That they don't want to pay $50 for a game that they might not enjoy, or that might not work properly, or that might annoy them with its DRM?
Trying before you buy reduces that risk.
Not to mention one of the same excuses I used to hide behind--regardless of whether or not I'm going to pirate the game, if I wasn't going to buy it anyway, is the company really losing money on me?
Not everyone has a credit card to whip out (in Europe, a mere 16% apply for a credit card, the others quite happily use their bank accounts). Some people got burnt by PayPal.
Make it easy to pay.
The problem is: credit cards are exactly what makes it easy (though not necessarily safe) to pay online. The only reason I've got a credit card at all, is to make online payments. I got it for that explicit purpose, and as far as I can remember, that's the only thing I've ever used it for.
I wish someone would make something better. In fact, there are better solutions, but they're all national, not international.
Get a working non-creditcard-based international payment system out the door, and I will happily but Indy Games.
I don't think Indy developers are likely to have much influence over international payment systems.
when people are paid to put out certain things in their packages or just when money is generally involved the money is what is important. Not so much for the safety of a customers computer. A cracker has no motivation to screw with people's stuff. At least thats what I think.
Some use it to distribute trojans or viruses. Not all, mind you, but when using for cracks from unknown pirates, it pays to have your virus scanner completely up to date.
Because Demo's are great indication of how games will perform when you purchase the full version.
I cant count the number of times I have tried a demo, then later bought the game to find promised features missing, performance on my computer vastly reduced and game play crippled by bugs that were no present in the demo.
The best demos are the ones that are exactly the same program as the full version, and where you get the additional content by buying an activation code. Because it's the same game, you know the full version won't introduce bugs or reduce performance. And it's easy.
Maybe in some parts of Europe but not for most of us. I'm British. France is our historic enemy.
As far as I know, France and the UK have been allies for well over a century now. (And Russia was allied to France in WW1.)
If I were Dutch then maybe Spain? And so on.
That's getting really historic. We've had much more recent wars with England, France and Germany. And Belgium, even! Looks like we don't get along well with any of our neighbours.
Why should all of us be outraged at goings on in the Russian Empire?
The outrage is because it's outside the Russian empire.
I, for example, consider that the Ossetia mess will do useful damage to Russia and might wake up a few Europeans to the reality that the Russian is still their historic enemy.
Only in recent history. Before WW1, Russia had often been allied with several western European countries (although often with the intention of beating up some other European country).
Why should anybody give an ineffectual organisation more power?
To make it less ineffectual?
What has the UN done since its inception to curb the tide of illegal and immoral wars?
Not a lot, but then again, it has little power to do so.
I agree completely that the UN isn't working the way it should be, but your arguments don't sound very logical. The problem is with the decision making process, the veto power of a handful of members, and the lack of power to actually do something once a decision has finally been made.
It is, as the Georgian president has put it, an act of war.
Definitely, and it's completely at odds with arguments Russia had been making about the former-Yugoslavia situation, particularly the independence of Kosovo. They don't want provinces seceding from their mother country because that would legitimise Chechnya's attempts at independence, yet now they interfere when Georgia tries to stop a province from declaring its independence.
Ofcourse South Ossetia wants to join Russia, and Georgia has supported Chechnya (in words at least), so clearly different standards are in order here. On the other hand, I think Saakashvili overplayed his hand quite a bit, and was a fool for antagonising Russia. With a big and autocratic neighbour like that, an uncomfortable friendship works much better than outright hostility.
The roles should be switched, perhaps -- at least Lucas should stop writing because, from his own admission, he really really stinks at writing dialogue.
With Indiana Jones (or any movie with Harrison Ford) that's not a problem, because he'll just improvise something better.
But he's an OK director, he has an eye for imagery.
He is only okay when it comes to special effects. As soon as an actor appears on screen, it turns to crap. Look at how he managed to turn each and every one of the extremely talented all-star cast of the Star Wars prequels into wooden robots. Ewan
McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman, Samuel L. Jackson, each and every one of them is a brilliant actor with lots of great roles to their name (well, Natalie Portman is still young, but she'll get there), but all of them managed to give the absolute worst performance of their career in Lucas' films. That's a pretty good sign that he's not really a very good director at all.
Mal was too moody and unpredictable.
Nathan can do more characters than just Mal. I'm inclined to agree with the GP that Nathan Fillion might be able to do a very good Indy.
Although ofcourse no other Indiana Jones could ever compare to Harrison Ford.
And how many people said no James Bond could ever compare to Sean Connery?
A lot, so such a franchise could work equally well for Indy. And eventually we did get a few James Bonds that, while no Sean Connery clones, were perfectly fine James Bonds in their own right.
That's what Lucas should do is cast relatively unknowns (i.e. not big stars) and do a James Bond thing - as everyone else has suggested. Ford wasn't a big star when he was cast as Indy.
Originally he wanted Tom Selleck (Magnum PI) for the role. I'm glad they ended up with Harrison Ford.
I believe that was the idea when Clive Cussler's Sahara was adapted to the big screen.
As I understand it there was a desire to turn Dirk Pitt into a brand new big screen hero, as a combination of James Bond and Indiana Jones, hence the tag line,
"Dirk Pitt. Adventure has a new name"
I've never heard of any of these.
However, the film was a box office bomb and nothing else came of it.
That explains it then. Was it any good at all?
To do the James Bond thing he would have had to have kept making films, not leave it this long between movies.
Exactly. That was the missed opportunity, IMO. But I admit I didn't realise this until I heard the new movie played in the '50s with commies instead of nazis.
They were a product of a different age anyway, time was the a new James Bond film was a cause for national celebration. Now if one is released its just another action flick, people simply don't care as much.
Nowadays it's a new Star Wars that's cause for national celebration, it seems. The new Indy got quite a lot of press too.
The only reason studios are interested in getting a James Bond type thing going is the potential product placement revenue such a popular series would generate.
If it's such a popular series, wouldn't they be interested in it anyway? The product placement is just a nice bonus.
I don't know about others, but I would love to see new series of Young Indiana Jones which used to be aired in '92 and later.
Many people rates it very low, but for me it was very educating serie and was the only thing I used to watch in a TV when I was young.
I've missed most of it, but the few bits I saw were good. I'd love to see more of Young Indy. And if it works out, he could eventually grow up to be Big Indy.
But wasn't that River Phoenix? Because he's not young anymore, and also dead. Or was he only Young Indy in The Last Crusade?
With the exception of the mine cart chase and the rope bridge fight, Short Round was the only good thing about Temple of Doom.
You're kidding me, rgiht? Temple of Doom had the two worst sidekicks ever. Even apart from the mine cart chanse and the rope bridge fight, the movie has its moments, but those were mostly the ones without Short Round in it.
I particularly really like the opening scene a lot.
I enjoyed the first one and temple of doom was ok.
Please tell me you've seen The Last Crusade. That's possibly the best of the bunch, certainly rivaling Raiders.
Lucas 'scoffed at the possibility of passing the famed fedora from Ford to Shia LaBeouf,' instead stating, 'if [Harrison Ford] wasn't in it, you'd have to call it "Mutt Williams and the search for Elvis."'
I think Lucas missed an opportunity to turn Indiana Jones into a James Bond-like franchise. Some months ago I read that it was originally sold as "James Bond with nazis and ancient treasures", and I think it would have been a great idea to keep it perpetually in a pre-WW2 setting with nazis and zeppelins, and replace the main actor if he gets too old.
Although ofcourse no other Indiana Jones could ever compare to Harrison Ford.
From what I've heard of Ryanair, you wouldn't want to fly it anyway.
Not even when they offer Beds & Blowjobs?
As is mentioned in the body, essentially it plays a shitload of random moves out to some cutoff point and tries to determine which moves contribute to a winning end state more often than the other ones.
Basically, the only thing the stupid algorithm knows about Go is the simple rules and how to score the board. It knows nothing of strategy, tactics, strong shapes, living shapes, dead shapes, etc.
I don't think it plays truly random moves. It probably still has a big database with classic shapes, and has some vague idea which moves are more likely to be good, but because of the Monte Carlo method, it can try a lot more of those potentially good moves.
In your average go position, there are probably about 10 good-looking moves (a lot more at the start, less towards the end). Over a 200-move game, that's still a ridiculous amount of computation.
You need 3 Ko before it gets "messy".
Triple-ko is the only realistic situation I know of where different rule sets diverge. Under traditional Japanese rules, I believe a rematch is in order, but under super-ko rules, you're not allowed to capture a ko if that would repeat the position on the board. So you have to keep track of that, which is a pain, although technically super-ko is the more elegant rule set.
If my memory serves, an amateur 7-dan (7D) is one below a professional 1-dan (1P), essentially making 7d the "professional 1kyu" if it existed.
Amateur and professional dans aren't that easy to compare. For one thing, each country has its own amateur dan-grading comittee (and 5d from some countries may be stronger than 6d from other countries), while only Japan, China and Korea have a professional competition.
And I've heard professionals generally play a single game in 2 days instead of 2 hours, so it's a very different game.
It's comparing apples and oranges, but I've heard some Dutch 7d amateurs are able to beat 3d Japanese professionals. (But Dutch amateurs are very strong for their grades. Which is frustrating for Japanese amateurs who get beaten in their national sport by players with a lower grade.)
A 5-dan amateur move would hardly impress an 8P player.
If it's a computer (or a young kid or a newbie player) a 5d amateur would definitely impress an 8p player.
Rankings:
30th kyu, 29th kyu .... 2nd kyu, 1st kyu, 1st dan, 2nd dan, ..., 8th dan, 9th dan, 10th dan.
It stops at 10th dan, which is the highest.
Not quite. Amateur dans usually stop around 6 or 7. Professionals go from 1-dan to 9-dan. Only God (the perfect go-player, obviously) is assumed to be 10-dan.
Yes. Computers have always been rubbish at Go. This one amazed everyone by being quite reasonable.
Reasonable? It's amazingly good. Until recently, I always told everybody that I, a weak 7-kyu amateur, could beat the best go-program in the world. That's clearly not true anymore.