Before any solution can be enacted, IE needs to be separated from the Windows internals.
Then the problem of choice can be addressed with a package manager similar to Synaptic that comes with each Windows installation. As part of the install process the user would be asked to select which programs from each category to be installed. However, this complicates the installation process, and the average user won't care about the choice, or understand the differences. So there should also be an option check by default that says "Let Microsoft choose for me."
The only problem left to solve is determining who controls the repositories.
I thought I lost all respect for and interest in MLB during their strike about 10 years ago.
It seems I was wrong. With story, I've gained interest, at the cost of what ever small amount of respect for the league that was hiding srespect deep within.
With that quote about people who write history, write it in their favour, popping into my mind. I can't help but wonder if the MLB is successful in this endeavor, will some one be able to have his record altered to ensure entry to the hall of fame. Or past World Series winners could be revised. Maybe the Cubs didn't lose a world series in 1945.
Developing a Love/Hate Relationship w/ Fire Emblem
on
Games That Travel Well
·
· Score: 1
What else are road trips for but discovering what you love/hate most about the people you travel with.
You can't go wrong with either of the Fire Emblem games. The added bonus is the games save every action as soom as it's decided. Meaning that you can power off whenever necessary and not lose any data. Which works great for those city bus rides to and from work. The downside to this even the consequences of your actions remain. Ever turned off a game in frustration when a main hero dies, ending your quest? With these games. Only the twist this time happens when you turn on the GBA later to see that you've still got a mission in progress. Forgetting that there's a mission in progress. You instinctively resume your mission only to see that hero get cruelly cut down and fade into the game over screen before you even get a chance to act.
Despite the amazing time sink that is Fire Emblem, somehow I found myself playing classic Zelda on my 5 hour bus ride last night. I picked it up on a whim months ago, but haven't actually seriously sat down to play it. It seems that I managed to remember where all the important things were in the first quest, and about half of the 2nd.
Ah, the fruits of a wasted youth.
At 23:13:56 EST, I received the following message over Google Talk from the JabberID, gmail.com:
"The broken link has been fixed. Thanks for being our first users!"
Maybe this will open the door to other live action giant robot movies?
I don't know about you, but I would be thrilled to see a Megas XLR movie. If the Transformers movie is a hit, there will be others in the same vein, and eventually a parody. Which will star Leslie Neilson assuming he's still alive. There's a chance it may be just as good as a Megas movie, because that's pretty much all an episode of Megas XLR is a parody of Transformers, videogames, anime and random other bits of pop culture. It's enjoy able stuff though.
But then there'd be no cassettes. I doubt any of today's children would even know what a cassette was. If you're guess is correct, its more likely that he'll be a monstrous Intel based G5. And the iPods will be the tapes. I wouldn't be surprised if he turns into a giant Gameboy, or PSP (which is more likely because it does function as an MP3 player). But it's got to be something that still takes cartridges, or at least not take optical media, like a mini-disc player. Now that I think about it... I have the feeling he'll be an based MP3 player that supports one of the many memory card formats. I don't know if any exist however. If this is the case, how much are you willing to wager that the memory cards have the format printed on them?
Wow this just turns into a marketing machine. Is it just me or could you see Soundwave action figures, that transform into useable mp3 players, I almost want one.
I find around the office Outlook is the perfect tool, if only for its ability to add appointments to other's calendars. I don't know if there are other programs that did this.
At home and for personal matters, I can't guarantee I'll be at my computer for a timer to go off. Instead, I prefer the wall calandar, either the 1 month view or the 4 month variety that are essentially flexible whiteboards with the weeks/etc permanently engraved. I find it more pervasive this way. At a glance I can get an idea of what I have to do, for myself in the next little while.
As some one else said, for personal use it's just using the technology for technology's sake, or something along those lines. Just because it can be done, doesn't necessarily mean it's the better way.
I have been a fan of the FF series since its inception. Yes there have been a number of great titles in the series. But what I've noticed as a steady trend, with IX being the only exception (I Haven't played X-2 or XI so I can't speak about those). Is that ever since the fifth game, all of your characters are essentially the same. Sure, they may use different weapons, but they all get the same abilities with the exception of their limit/special. In VI it didn't bother me that much, because this idea was new, and the characters did had their own personalities and skills to make them more adept at different things, for example Cyan's magic was considerably weaker than Terra's. Once you hit VII, the materia system closed the gap between characters, and your party choice boiled down to limit breaks/personal prefernce. VIII was more of the same. In IX we saw a return to the designated roles, which definitely made things more interesting. X did try to give each character a use, but their uses were negated if you managed to work the sphere grid.
A side note has to be mentioned for FFT, while most of your party were generic, and for the most part every body had access to the same skills. Why this approach succeeds where the rest have failed, is that A) They're not trying to hide the fact that nearly everybody is the same, B) There were limits in place as to how they were used, and most of the game required a varied team. FFTA tried to eliminate this problem, but in a critical design flaw they dropped the timed aspect of the original FFT. Which is large part of what made the game so deep.
Final Fantasy may not be dead, but if it continues as is, it might as well be. S-E should take a look at other franchises/well received games. FF I[V|X], Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Earthbound, Wild Arms were all great games because each of your characters didn't come from the same cookie cutter, sure some of them were cliches and stereotypes, but therein lies the difference.
In regards to plot, which what really sets these games apart from each other. I've stopped expecting much from an RPG plot any more, having played most of them most of the plot twists don't come as a surprise. That doesn't mean that a game is any less enjoyable nor does it mean I require an absurdly convoluted plot that makes even less sense on the 4th playthrough to enjoy a game. Something coherent will do, even if it is simple.
To recap (and insert a few recently thought of points), for there to be another successful FF game IMO it will need:
- A hero that is completely unlike anything we've had before.
- A party in which every member is unique beyond sprite, useable weapons a special attack, and is unable to acquire the entire skillset of another no matter how many hours are put into the game.
OR
A generic party that does not attempt to be unique, and a skill system set up in such a way that no body can know AND have all skills useable at any time.
- A plot that doesn't rely on something like "We all grew up together but none of us remember" to try and add another level of nothing to nothing.
- More exclusive choices, this is one thing that the Pokemon series got right. Sure gamers like to get everything there is to get, but when one choice affects your party for the rest of the game, things become more interesting (see Star Oceans 2 and 3)
I've ranted enough. I'm hungry.
When I first read the question, I assumed this was unlikely to happen. For a reason that I didn't see explicitly mentioned yet. While most of the discussion at post time is focused on the cost/tech support. What isn't brought up is that every open source program distributed may negate the future sale of another software package. After looking into what actually comes on the OpenCD, I'm starting to feel like this may be a moot point. There are only two packages that are able make a dent in the sales of commercial software.
- Open Office
- The Gimp
Everything else seems to be either a toy or a replacement for many non-commercial suites.
Many computers come preinstalled with MS Office, and apart from Commercial users, I can't think of anybody I know who uses Photoshop and paid for it. These aren't the only alternatives for these two packages, but they do seem to be the biggest sellers for what they do.
The majority of threads on this topic, have been about tech support. One of the wonderful things I have found about (F|OS)S is that forums and google can solve nearly every problem you have. Because odds are, somebody's already had that problem. It's very unlikely that any combination of open source products will break internet connectivity.
Some programs make it easy, for example: every install of Firefox, comes with bookmarks to the support forums.
It can't be difficult to include a quick reference card of URLs for respective support forums which ever set of software you're sending out.
Well it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But I have the feeling this will be difficult to enforce, with the exception of cases involving untrusting spouses.
It's like outlawing rain. Or declaring war on Algebra. It looks good on paper, but seems entirely unfeasible.
It may be better to hold it on school grounds if it's an event for a school club.
But, have you considered renting out a local internet cafe? Depending on the turnout, you may be better off at one of these places. Many of them offer gaming services. Some are set up specifically for gaming. Although it means you have to spend a little, there's a good chance that you can get a deal on the hourly rate if you bring a number of people. Most of these places will usually have the latest games, and the security and networking issues will have already been worked out.
There are a number of other pros and cons, but I'm too damned tired to list them for you. Besides from what I remember of highschool, there's some minor research projects. Figuring the logistics of this plan shouldn't be over your head.
Like many other posters, I was utterly appalled when I heard Prime would be a FPS. It didn't turn out to be, but it was very close. After seeing the reviews, I was prompted to play it. Once I reached Flaagra, I became a convert. As think was officially added into the standard FPS formula of point & shoot.
The one thing I found missing, however, was the game still felt too linear to me, for something labelled Metroid. I noticed Fusion had the same problem. The key powerups must be found in a set order.
In my opinion, the most alluring part of any of the previos Metroid games was the ability to do things in pretty much any order (assuming you had the skill to do so). As long as you started with the morphball, bombs, and a pack of missles and finished with Mother Brain/Metroid Queen. I think Nintendo was picking up on fon feedback when making Zero Mission. Sequence breaking was back in, as well as the addition of alternate goals (eg: finish with less than 15% of the pickups). And it was only through sequence breaking that one could achieve the goal of 100% of pickups in under 2 hours play time.
Any how I'm starting to go off topic here.
My point is that although Prime was the First Metroid game to allow one to change the difficulty rating, this does not offer the same replayability as sequence breaking which is what made the open concept of (Super) Metroid so interesting.
In short, had Metroid Prime 2 been a repackaging of Metroid Prime with the same weapons, bosses, etc. and the only new component being sequence breaking, I would be pleased.
It's only a mater of time until we get a case mod based on this kind of rig.
Looking at my computer's glowing inards is getting old. But if I could rig an EAS to the Mobo and write a controller that would randomly draw new patterns. That would be cool.
In-game ads have been around for at least 15 years.
I'm sure many of the readers here remember seeing Pizza hut signs and logos in the Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles Arcade/NES game.
But out of all the adverts I've seen within games most have been background noise. From the banners lining a stadium in something like Madden to popular music being sneaked in.
Other times they're blatent and obvious, like many of Namco's shameless plugs in their games. Most notably the e-mails your character may recieve in Xenosaga about Soul Calibur II.
As mentioned in another post (referring to Jet Set Radio) the ad's are chosen to match the content of the game. Sometimes this happens more for the sake of realism, take the Gran Turismo series as an example. One may look at it as if it's nothing more than an interactive car commercial. Another may see it as a very realistic racing game.
The type of advertising mentioned by the article goes back to the days of radio and television. When coprorations would produce radio and television shows so that they could advertise their products nearly exclusively. For one reason or another this practice was pretty much phased out in television.Although it's unlikely that we'll see something like "Jolt Cola presents Slashdot the game" in which text would blur as your caffiene levels dropped while sifting through the trolls, flamebait and longwinded posts to earn your mod points. Don't act so surpised when you see Laura Croft driving a jeep as an interlude to the jump-jiggle-shoot that's made Tomb Raider so popular.
Lets face it. Comercial entities may not be paying for the production of the whole game/tv show/radio programme anymore. Yet this doesn't mean they don't offer some funds for development in exchage for some product face time.
I think it would be interesting to take a look at the impact a game's genre has on its price drop. I'd assume that sports titles would drop much sooner and by a larger fraction, than a RPG.
Slashdot Mirror
Before any solution can be enacted, IE needs to be separated from the Windows internals. Then the problem of choice can be addressed with a package manager similar to Synaptic that comes with each Windows installation. As part of the install process the user would be asked to select which programs from each category to be installed. However, this complicates the installation process, and the average user won't care about the choice, or understand the differences. So there should also be an option check by default that says "Let Microsoft choose for me." The only problem left to solve is determining who controls the repositories.
Eagerly awaiting the Motorola Snake and all the jokes that come with it.
Forget you.
I want to see how the various superheroes fare.
Batman in particular.
I thought I lost all respect for and interest in MLB during their strike about 10 years ago.
It seems I was wrong. With story, I've gained interest, at the cost of what ever small amount of respect for the league that was hiding srespect deep within.
With that quote about people who write history, write it in their favour, popping into my mind. I can't help but wonder if the MLB is successful in this endeavor, will some one be able to have his record altered to ensure entry to the hall of fame. Or past World Series winners could be revised. Maybe the Cubs didn't lose a world series in 1945.
What else are road trips for but discovering what you love/hate most about the people you travel with. You can't go wrong with either of the Fire Emblem games. The added bonus is the games save every action as soom as it's decided. Meaning that you can power off whenever necessary and not lose any data. Which works great for those city bus rides to and from work. The downside to this even the consequences of your actions remain. Ever turned off a game in frustration when a main hero dies, ending your quest? With these games. Only the twist this time happens when you turn on the GBA later to see that you've still got a mission in progress. Forgetting that there's a mission in progress. You instinctively resume your mission only to see that hero get cruelly cut down and fade into the game over screen before you even get a chance to act. Despite the amazing time sink that is Fire Emblem, somehow I found myself playing classic Zelda on my 5 hour bus ride last night. I picked it up on a whim months ago, but haven't actually seriously sat down to play it. It seems that I managed to remember where all the important things were in the first quest, and about half of the 2nd. Ah, the fruits of a wasted youth.
At 23:13:56 EST, I received the following message over Google Talk from the JabberID, gmail.com: "The broken link has been fixed. Thanks for being our first users!"
Bring a sixpack of the open source beer featured on ./ a day or two ago.
Maybe this will open the door to other live action giant robot movies?
I don't know about you, but I would be thrilled to see a Megas XLR movie. If the Transformers movie is a hit, there will be others in the same vein, and eventually a parody. Which will star Leslie Neilson assuming he's still alive. There's a chance it may be just as good as a Megas movie, because that's pretty much all an episode of Megas XLR is a parody of Transformers, videogames, anime and random other bits of pop culture. It's enjoy able stuff though.
Maybe he's aiming for multiple Razzies?
"Lord of the Rings 0"
I'd've expected that to be Lord of the Rings -1.
Honestly? Who starts counting at 1?
But then there'd be no cassettes. I doubt any of today's children would even know what a cassette was. If you're guess is correct, its more likely that he'll be a monstrous Intel based G5. And the iPods will be the tapes. I wouldn't be surprised if he turns into a giant Gameboy, or PSP (which is more likely because it does function as an MP3 player). But it's got to be something that still takes cartridges, or at least not take optical media, like a mini-disc player. Now that I think about it... I have the feeling he'll be an based MP3 player that supports one of the many memory card formats. I don't know if any exist however. If this is the case, how much are you willing to wager that the memory cards have the format printed on them? Wow this just turns into a marketing machine. Is it just me or could you see Soundwave action figures, that transform into useable mp3 players, I almost want one.
Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14% of people know that. --Homer Simpson Simpsons episode 1F09 (Homer the Vigilante)
I find around the office Outlook is the perfect tool, if only for its ability to add appointments to other's calendars. I don't know if there are other programs that did this. At home and for personal matters, I can't guarantee I'll be at my computer for a timer to go off. Instead, I prefer the wall calandar, either the 1 month view or the 4 month variety that are essentially flexible whiteboards with the weeks/etc permanently engraved. I find it more pervasive this way. At a glance I can get an idea of what I have to do, for myself in the next little while. As some one else said, for personal use it's just using the technology for technology's sake, or something along those lines. Just because it can be done, doesn't necessarily mean it's the better way.
I have been a fan of the FF series since its inception. Yes there have been a number of great titles in the series. But what I've noticed as a steady trend, with IX being the only exception (I Haven't played X-2 or XI so I can't speak about those). Is that ever since the fifth game, all of your characters are essentially the same. Sure, they may use different weapons, but they all get the same abilities with the exception of their limit/special. In VI it didn't bother me that much, because this idea was new, and the characters did had their own personalities and skills to make them more adept at different things, for example Cyan's magic was considerably weaker than Terra's. Once you hit VII, the materia system closed the gap between characters, and your party choice boiled down to limit breaks/personal prefernce. VIII was more of the same. In IX we saw a return to the designated roles, which definitely made things more interesting. X did try to give each character a use, but their uses were negated if you managed to work the sphere grid. A side note has to be mentioned for FFT, while most of your party were generic, and for the most part every body had access to the same skills. Why this approach succeeds where the rest have failed, is that A) They're not trying to hide the fact that nearly everybody is the same, B) There were limits in place as to how they were used, and most of the game required a varied team. FFTA tried to eliminate this problem, but in a critical design flaw they dropped the timed aspect of the original FFT. Which is large part of what made the game so deep. Final Fantasy may not be dead, but if it continues as is, it might as well be. S-E should take a look at other franchises/well received games. FF I[V|X], Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, Earthbound, Wild Arms were all great games because each of your characters didn't come from the same cookie cutter, sure some of them were cliches and stereotypes, but therein lies the difference. In regards to plot, which what really sets these games apart from each other. I've stopped expecting much from an RPG plot any more, having played most of them most of the plot twists don't come as a surprise. That doesn't mean that a game is any less enjoyable nor does it mean I require an absurdly convoluted plot that makes even less sense on the 4th playthrough to enjoy a game. Something coherent will do, even if it is simple. To recap (and insert a few recently thought of points), for there to be another successful FF game IMO it will need: - A hero that is completely unlike anything we've had before. - A party in which every member is unique beyond sprite, useable weapons a special attack, and is unable to acquire the entire skillset of another no matter how many hours are put into the game.
OR
A generic party that does not attempt to be unique, and a skill system set up in such a way that no body can know AND have all skills useable at any time. - A plot that doesn't rely on something like "We all grew up together but none of us remember" to try and add another level of nothing to nothing. - More exclusive choices, this is one thing that the Pokemon series got right. Sure gamers like to get everything there is to get, but when one choice affects your party for the rest of the game, things become more interesting (see Star Oceans 2 and 3) I've ranted enough. I'm hungry.
When I first read the question, I assumed this was unlikely to happen. For a reason that I didn't see explicitly mentioned yet. While most of the discussion at post time is focused on the cost/tech support. What isn't brought up is that every open source program distributed may negate the future sale of another software package. After looking into what actually comes on the OpenCD, I'm starting to feel like this may be a moot point. There are only two packages that are able make a dent in the sales of commercial software. - Open Office - The Gimp Everything else seems to be either a toy or a replacement for many non-commercial suites. Many computers come preinstalled with MS Office, and apart from Commercial users, I can't think of anybody I know who uses Photoshop and paid for it. These aren't the only alternatives for these two packages, but they do seem to be the biggest sellers for what they do. The majority of threads on this topic, have been about tech support. One of the wonderful things I have found about (F|OS)S is that forums and google can solve nearly every problem you have. Because odds are, somebody's already had that problem. It's very unlikely that any combination of open source products will break internet connectivity. Some programs make it easy, for example: every install of Firefox, comes with bookmarks to the support forums. It can't be difficult to include a quick reference card of URLs for respective support forums which ever set of software you're sending out.
Well it probably seemed like a good idea at the time. But I have the feeling this will be difficult to enforce, with the exception of cases involving untrusting spouses. It's like outlawing rain. Or declaring war on Algebra. It looks good on paper, but seems entirely unfeasible.
Original post says these draings are out of SNES Mario, Yet those are definately 8 bit sprites.
/me raises his hand. Looks around and counts. 7. 7 people who haven't played Halo 2, Ah-ha-ha-ha *Lightning strikes in background*
It may be better to hold it on school grounds if it's an event for a school club. But, have you considered renting out a local internet cafe? Depending on the turnout, you may be better off at one of these places. Many of them offer gaming services. Some are set up specifically for gaming. Although it means you have to spend a little, there's a good chance that you can get a deal on the hourly rate if you bring a number of people. Most of these places will usually have the latest games, and the security and networking issues will have already been worked out. There are a number of other pros and cons, but I'm too damned tired to list them for you. Besides from what I remember of highschool, there's some minor research projects. Figuring the logistics of this plan shouldn't be over your head.
Like many other posters, I was utterly appalled when I heard Prime would be a FPS. It didn't turn out to be, but it was very close. After seeing the reviews, I was prompted to play it. Once I reached Flaagra, I became a convert. As think was officially added into the standard FPS formula of point & shoot. The one thing I found missing, however, was the game still felt too linear to me, for something labelled Metroid. I noticed Fusion had the same problem. The key powerups must be found in a set order. In my opinion, the most alluring part of any of the previos Metroid games was the ability to do things in pretty much any order (assuming you had the skill to do so). As long as you started with the morphball, bombs, and a pack of missles and finished with Mother Brain/Metroid Queen. I think Nintendo was picking up on fon feedback when making Zero Mission. Sequence breaking was back in, as well as the addition of alternate goals (eg: finish with less than 15% of the pickups). And it was only through sequence breaking that one could achieve the goal of 100% of pickups in under 2 hours play time. Any how I'm starting to go off topic here. My point is that although Prime was the First Metroid game to allow one to change the difficulty rating, this does not offer the same replayability as sequence breaking which is what made the open concept of (Super) Metroid so interesting. In short, had Metroid Prime 2 been a repackaging of Metroid Prime with the same weapons, bosses, etc. and the only new component being sequence breaking, I would be pleased.
Considering this foxtrot strip ran in thousands of newspapers on the day that this story was slashdotted.
My two cents worth boils down to the next two words: Scorched Earth.
It's only a mater of time until we get a case mod based on this kind of rig. Looking at my computer's glowing inards is getting old. But if I could rig an EAS to the Mobo and write a controller that would randomly draw new patterns. That would be cool.
In-game ads have been around for at least 15 years. I'm sure many of the readers here remember seeing Pizza hut signs and logos in the Teenage Muntant Ninja Turtles Arcade/NES game. But out of all the adverts I've seen within games most have been background noise. From the banners lining a stadium in something like Madden to popular music being sneaked in. Other times they're blatent and obvious, like many of Namco's shameless plugs in their games. Most notably the e-mails your character may recieve in Xenosaga about Soul Calibur II. As mentioned in another post (referring to Jet Set Radio) the ad's are chosen to match the content of the game. Sometimes this happens more for the sake of realism, take the Gran Turismo series as an example. One may look at it as if it's nothing more than an interactive car commercial. Another may see it as a very realistic racing game. The type of advertising mentioned by the article goes back to the days of radio and television. When coprorations would produce radio and television shows so that they could advertise their products nearly exclusively. For one reason or another this practice was pretty much phased out in television.Although it's unlikely that we'll see something like "Jolt Cola presents Slashdot the game" in which text would blur as your caffiene levels dropped while sifting through the trolls, flamebait and longwinded posts to earn your mod points. Don't act so surpised when you see Laura Croft driving a jeep as an interlude to the jump-jiggle-shoot that's made Tomb Raider so popular. Lets face it. Comercial entities may not be paying for the production of the whole game/tv show/radio programme anymore. Yet this doesn't mean they don't offer some funds for development in exchage for some product face time.
I think it would be interesting to take a look at the impact a game's genre has on its price drop. I'd assume that sports titles would drop much sooner and by a larger fraction, than a RPG.