The arcade market killed itself in about 1997.
They raised prices to play, and they made a game impossible to to play for more then 2 minutes. Quite literally the AI became harder when it realized you were beating it.
Why am I gonna throw 20 dollars down the drain for an hour or so of gaming when I can forgo 2 days and own a game and play it as much as I want?
Ghost N Goblins is the hardest game of all time. Hands down.
Not only did you have to go through the game at its mindknumbing difficulty, to actually beat it you had to go through it TWICE.
I'm still waiting for XPLasersport to sue WindowsXP. The "Photon Experience" somehow became the "Windows Experience". Sue sue sue! Then maybe Photon could come back:)
I think it's silly to spend $200 on a vidcard when you can buy a whole gaming system for the same price.
But if you like PC games, what choice do you have?
A big part of the lure of computer games is the multiplayer aspect. I can get a good game at 3am with other insomnaics. I don't believe you can get the same community through a console game that you can through a computer game. Many leagues and a large part of the "fun" of the game is discussing things on message boards and irc. Also I have the same comradery with my clan, as I did during team sports during high school. You just can't get that from a console because all these outside things (message boards, fan sites, leagues, irc) are just as big as the game itself.
I find the single player and console games boring. AI cannot act like a human and I can no way feel superior to a bunch of computer chips. I'd rather beat up a 12 year old from Iowa and say "I ow3ed j00!!!".
Cheats, yup sucks in mp. On the other hand every online game wether source code was availble or not has had cheats. Live with it or play on lan games and only with friends online.
The inclusion of punkbuster in RTCW, Quake 3, Soldier of Fortune 2, and RavenShield have make cheating virtually impossible. It is possible, but nothing like what Counterstrike or other onlines games are going though. Not even close. I wish CounterStrike would get on the punkbuster bandwagon, it would be hilarious to see all the cheaters get busted.
Wrong, because valve has a list of CD-keys it sent out.
You can break the code easily. Its getting the CD-key though the authorization server that makes it hard.
Just knowing the algorithm doesn't help. It allows you to install the game, but online play is always the problem.
You could just keep trying valid keys till you get a valid "online" one. But the problem is, 1. the flood of bad keys would get you banned 2. math/time- it would take years
Valve teams up with ATI
Valve Software has also stepped up its commitment to ATI's recent video card technology by showcasing its upcoming Half-Life 2 game:
ATI Technologies Inc. today announced that Valve, a leading game developer, has named ATI as the preferred graphics card partner for its upcoming game Half-Life 2. As a part of this agreement with Valve, ATI customers will get the full Half-Life 2 game free1 with the purchase of select RADEON products.
Valve's Half-Life 2 is among the most anticipated games in history and caught the attention of the industry and gamers alike winning Best of Show at this year's E3. It is the first game to make full use of Microsoft's DirectX 9 programming interface by taking advantage of features like high dynamic range lighting, bump mapped characters, soft shadows and improved full scene anti-aliasing. As such, it provides an excellent demonstration of the full capabilities of ATI's DirectX 9 hardware.
Built from the ground up with new shader-intensive games in mind, ATI's DirectX 9 hardware, like the RADEON 9800 XT and RADEON 9600 XT, has proven to be ideal development and gaming platforms for Half-Life 2.
"ATI has been a great partner on the engineering front. Our work with ATI has enabled DirectX 9 functionality that wouldn't have been possible with any other company," said Gabe Newell, Founder and Managing Director, Valve. "ATI's hardware gives our customers the best experience with our software. So we've chosen to extend our relationship to include marketing initiatives that will showcase both Half-Life 2 and RADEON products."
Ancient Anguish is a medievil based mud and has been around since 1991. Its has hardcore coding standards and probably is the best RPG type game I have ever played.
3 Kingdoms is another old mud that is very well coded. While its not up to Ancient Anguish standards it allows more creativity because it has 3 realms. Chaos (pretty much anything goes, Simpsons, Waldo, nonsenseical things), fantasy(you know what RPG's are usually based on) , and science (cyborgs, earth future/present)It has TONS of quests.
She visited me recently and I watched her clear out her email. I don't know how it is possible to get that much spam. She had over 300+ new mails in ONE DAY.
She complains that I never email her. Well, I do, but it bounces back all the time because of her account limit. And even if it did go though, I doubt she would see it in that mass spam.
She wonders why I get angry when she puts my email in those "send this to a friend" boxes of an interesting site.
I bet if you paid Valve enough cash they would say "The Matrox Parhelia is superior in every way to OTHER company cards!!!"
I personally am waiting for the game and drivers to actually be released before I declare either, "OMG OMG ATI roxorz!!!!", "OMG OMG OMG NIVIDA Own3d j00!!!"
I'm not sure what is going to end first, the Israel-Palestinian situtation or the ATI vs NIVIDA arguement.
The fact is both regularly cheat on performance and quality benchmarks, and if you think you can actually say one is better then the other you are a biased fanboy.
It still surges because of people new to the internet. Everytime a new batch learns the forward button in there email program we get another round of things we seen before.
How many more times am I going to have to forward this darn "5 cents donation for every forward for the liver transplant" email and end this flower to people you love!!! email. I think I am destined to see the Hampster Dance at least once a year for the rest of my life as every female in the world forwards it to me.
So if complexity doesn't make a game, is video poker a game? Did they survey senior citizens who go to the casino and play slots? I think that would definitly balance out male/female ratio and age demographic.
Do they include online games like pogo.com? I don't care what you say, something bejeweled and bingo are not true "games". They are, but good luck selling something like bejeweled for 40 bucks a pop. And I doubt they spend.00001 of a percent as much as valve on HL2 or something.
Also, I know from personal experince that the only people who answer surveys are stay at home types and female. When I worked for a survey place it was easily 25 women respondants for every 1 male respondants. And we didn't exclusivly call from 9a to 5p either. We worked till 10p.
Trying to get a Counter Strike player to play Wolfenstein:ET is like trying to show a 3rd grader algebra. Getting a Wolfenstein:ET player to play the original RTCW is like getting an algebra student into a dicussion of quantem theory with Stephen Hawking.
Many Return to Castle Wolfenstein players have been trying to turn on many people to RTCW but no one wants to seem to learn.
They see the 40 second respawn time and want to quit immeditaly. They just can't learn *NOT* to hit the space bar and instantly go into limbo. They don't realize there is a good chance of a medic picking them up. You need to learn the in's and out's.
Wolfenstein:ET is like the beginner class to RTCW. ET is starting to show its problems, experinced RTCW players saw its problems from the start and now they are starting to come out for clan play. Its only a matter of time before it leaks to average public games.
I play with many many gamers here in Grand Rapids, that would do nothing but deathmatch all day. I try explaining to them deathmatch is like masturbation without orgasm. You do a whole lot to get to an end, and at the end its dissapointing. Whoopdie freaking do.
With objective based games, you could be pounding away at a defense for 28 minutes to finally get a dynamite planted, only to have an enemy attempt to diffuse it, them get blown away by a rocket, and his friend comes over to diffuse it sucessfully with less then a hundreth of a second till detonation. It is so much more exciting then just pointing and clicking. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of pointing and clicking, but it is far more important to know WHEN AND WHY to point and click.
With an objective based game, you have to actually think and stratagize as a team. In Counter Strike, a "tactical" shooter, stratagy is as complex as: "everyone follow me". That doesn't work in RTCW. You need to juggle classes, positions, ammo, airstrikes, etc...
Best part of playing ET for me is that since the game is so complex I know it all and people who don't know it all call me a cheater:)
I don't want a screen. I want images implanted into my brain before my lifetime is over. I want the screen to be my vision, an interactive custom 3D reality.
Then I can realize my dream, Brittney Spears backup dancer. And after the show... she leads me by the hand to her dressing room... errrrm
I totally disagree.
The other handhelds failed for one reason.
THE GAMES SUCKED.
Nintendo at that time had a huge monopoly on quality games. Today, Sony has an equal, if not better, quality of games as Nintendo.
Winamp, and... well, who really uses anything else?:D
I used to like Winamp before AOL took it over.
I've had more problems with Winamp 3.0 that it has totally destroyed my whole view on the winamp product.
I found a program called "foobar2000" and I like it as much as I did the old winamp. It lacks all those teenie bopper popular skins, but underneath a very ugly, so simple yet confusing interface, it just sounds better then Winamp.
Slashdot Mirror
The arcade market killed itself in about 1997. They raised prices to play, and they made a game impossible to to play for more then 2 minutes. Quite literally the AI became harder when it realized you were beating it. Why am I gonna throw 20 dollars down the drain for an hour or so of gaming when I can forgo 2 days and own a game and play it as much as I want?
what did they expect when they saw [myg0t]l337ha}{0r0wn3djoo atop the leader board?
Ghost N Goblins is the hardest game of all time. Hands down. Not only did you have to go through the game at its mindknumbing difficulty, to actually beat it you had to go through it TWICE.
I'm still waiting for XPLasersport to sue WindowsXP. The "Photon Experience" somehow became the "Windows Experience". Sue sue sue! Then maybe Photon could come back :)
I sort my porn... now is that bukkake or just peter north? whoa peter!
But if you like PC games, what choice do you have?
A big part of the lure of computer games is the multiplayer aspect. I can get a good game at 3am with other insomnaics. I don't believe you can get the same community through a console game that you can through a computer game. Many leagues and a large part of the "fun" of the game is discussing things on message boards and irc. Also I have the same comradery with my clan, as I did during team sports during high school. You just can't get that from a console because all these outside things (message boards, fan sites, leagues, irc) are just as big as the game itself.
I find the single player and console games boring. AI cannot act like a human and I can no way feel superior to a bunch of computer chips. I'd rather beat up a 12 year old from Iowa and say "I ow3ed j00!!!".
kinda like getting a blueprint of a building with seeing only the girders and electrical system. you get the idea, but it isn't a complete building...
The inclusion of punkbuster in RTCW, Quake 3, Soldier of Fortune 2, and RavenShield have make cheating virtually impossible. It is possible, but nothing like what Counterstrike or other onlines games are going though. Not even close. I wish CounterStrike would get on the punkbuster bandwagon, it would be hilarious to see all the cheaters get busted.
You can break the code easily. Its getting the CD-key though the authorization server that makes it hard.
Just knowing the algorithm doesn't help. It allows you to install the game, but online play is always the problem.
You could just keep trying valid keys till you get a valid "online" one. But the problem is, 1. the flood of bad keys would get you banned 2. math/time- it would take years
few days later the source code is released.
NVIDIA screw job?
Here is the ATI announcement:
Valve teams up with ATI Valve Software has also stepped up its commitment to ATI's recent video card technology by showcasing its upcoming Half-Life 2 game: ATI Technologies Inc. today announced that Valve, a leading game developer, has named ATI as the preferred graphics card partner for its upcoming game Half-Life 2. As a part of this agreement with Valve, ATI customers will get the full Half-Life 2 game free1 with the purchase of select RADEON products. Valve's Half-Life 2 is among the most anticipated games in history and caught the attention of the industry and gamers alike winning Best of Show at this year's E3. It is the first game to make full use of Microsoft's DirectX 9 programming interface by taking advantage of features like high dynamic range lighting, bump mapped characters, soft shadows and improved full scene anti-aliasing. As such, it provides an excellent demonstration of the full capabilities of ATI's DirectX 9 hardware.
Built from the ground up with new shader-intensive games in mind, ATI's DirectX 9 hardware, like the RADEON 9800 XT and RADEON 9600 XT, has proven to be ideal development and gaming platforms for Half-Life 2.
"ATI has been a great partner on the engineering front. Our work with ATI has enabled DirectX 9 functionality that wouldn't have been possible with any other company," said Gabe Newell, Founder and Managing Director, Valve. "ATI's hardware gives our customers the best experience with our software. So we've chosen to extend our relationship to include marketing initiatives that will showcase both Half-Life 2 and RADEON products."
Ancient Anguish and 3 Kingdoms.
Ancient Anguish is a medievil based mud and has been around since 1991. Its has hardcore coding standards and probably is the best RPG type game I have ever played.
3 Kingdoms is another old mud that is very well coded. While its not up to Ancient Anguish standards it allows more creativity because it has 3 realms. Chaos (pretty much anything goes, Simpsons, Waldo, nonsenseical things), fantasy(you know what RPG's are usually based on) , and science (cyborgs, earth future/present)It has TONS of quests.
www.anguish.org
www.3k.org
She visited me recently and I watched her clear out her email. I don't know how it is possible to get that much spam. She had over 300+ new mails in ONE DAY.
She complains that I never email her. Well, I do, but it bounces back all the time because of her account limit. And even if it did go though, I doubt she would see it in that mass spam.
She wonders why I get angry when she puts my email in those "send this to a friend" boxes of an interesting site.
I bet if you paid Valve enough cash they would say "The Matrox Parhelia is superior in every way to OTHER company cards!!!" I personally am waiting for the game and drivers to actually be released before I declare either, "OMG OMG ATI roxorz!!!!", "OMG OMG OMG NIVIDA Own3d j00!!!"
NIVIDA fanboy: blah blah blah nvidia has better support... blah blah blah!!!
I'm not sure what is going to end first, the Israel-Palestinian situtation or the ATI vs NIVIDA arguement.
The fact is both regularly cheat on performance and quality benchmarks, and if you think you can actually say one is better then the other you are a biased fanboy.
Just buy the one on sale, please.
How many more times am I going to have to forward this darn "5 cents donation for every forward for the liver transplant" email and end this flower to people you love!!! email. I think I am destined to see the Hampster Dance at least once a year for the rest of my life as every female in the world forwards it to me.
I wish I could write like that. Cuz that is what I meant too :)
There IS a difference.
Do they include online games like pogo.com? I don't care what you say, something bejeweled and bingo are not true "games". They are, but good luck selling something like bejeweled for 40 bucks a pop. And I doubt they spend .00001 of a percent as much as valve on HL2 or something.
Also, I know from personal experince that the only people who answer surveys are stay at home types and female. When I worked for a survey place it was easily 25 women respondants for every 1 male respondants. And we didn't exclusivly call from 9a to 5p either. We worked till 10p.
not even close
Many Return to Castle Wolfenstein players have been trying to turn on many people to RTCW but no one wants to seem to learn.
They see the 40 second respawn time and want to quit immeditaly. They just can't learn *NOT* to hit the space bar and instantly go into limbo. They don't realize there is a good chance of a medic picking them up. You need to learn the in's and out's.
Wolfenstein:ET is like the beginner class to RTCW. ET is starting to show its problems, experinced RTCW players saw its problems from the start and now they are starting to come out for clan play. Its only a matter of time before it leaks to average public games.
I play with many many gamers here in Grand Rapids, that would do nothing but deathmatch all day. I try explaining to them deathmatch is like masturbation without orgasm. You do a whole lot to get to an end, and at the end its dissapointing. Whoopdie freaking do.
With objective based games, you could be pounding away at a defense for 28 minutes to finally get a dynamite planted, only to have an enemy attempt to diffuse it, them get blown away by a rocket, and his friend comes over to diffuse it sucessfully with less then a hundreth of a second till detonation. It is so much more exciting then just pointing and clicking. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of pointing and clicking, but it is far more important to know WHEN AND WHY to point and click.
With an objective based game, you have to actually think and stratagize as a team. In Counter Strike, a "tactical" shooter, stratagy is as complex as: "everyone follow me". That doesn't work in RTCW. You need to juggle classes, positions, ammo, airstrikes, etc...
Best part of playing ET for me is that since the game is so complex I know it all and people who don't know it all call me a cheater :)
Then I can realize my dream, Brittney Spears backup dancer. And after the show... she leads me by the hand to her dressing room... errrrm
I mean to play Quake 10, yeah, thats it. Quake.
Great! Now I can crash my PDA with 8mb of storage space! Thanks!
I totally disagree. The other handhelds failed for one reason. THE GAMES SUCKED. Nintendo at that time had a huge monopoly on quality games. Today, Sony has an equal, if not better, quality of games as Nintendo.
I used to like Winamp before AOL took it over.
I've had more problems with Winamp 3.0 that it has totally destroyed my whole view on the winamp product.
I found a program called "foobar2000" and I like it as much as I did the old winamp. It lacks all those teenie bopper popular skins, but underneath a very ugly, so simple yet confusing interface, it just sounds better then Winamp.
Depends on your processor, I wouldn't recommend an ATI 9700 if your running a 1ghz computer.