hahahaha, you're discrediting the new Zelda because it isn't as "realistic" as the cell shaded Wind Waker? Sorry to burst your bubble, but cartoons aren't realistic
No they're not. Perhaps I didn't make my post clear enough, so I'll just let Miyamoto make it for me. This is a good post, and here's from another article: "We actually think that as you play this game and look at the world around you, it's going to seem very realistic despite the graphics style. By using the term "realistic," I mean the qualities of the world itself. I don't mean to deny the value of the more photorealistic graphics, but the more realistic graphics get the more unrealistic things such as bumping into a wall or getting hurt might be. If not expressed properly, it will seem out of place. This time we've tried to have very realistic expression. We want to have a game where everything in the world feels like it is in its place. We think that when you play, you will see Link do something and not react in a way that's not realistic. From the point of view, The Wind Waker is very realistic in terms of expression and the whole oneness of the world."
And again, you're being superficial about your definition of maturity. Maturity has absolutely nothing to do with whether there are 20,000 polygons in a scene or 10,000. I would suggest that very few modern games have approached the moral complexity (and therefore maturity) of older PC adventure games like, for example, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or, on the console side, Snatcher. Both had graphics that were simplistic, and perhaps even cartoony. Yet, they exceed any modern game on their level of maturity.
I know you said that you played Wind Waker, but I'm shocked that you think that the the main character was void of emotion. His eyes followed things of focus. When he was about to get hit, his eyes grew wide, when he pushed a crate you could tell it was physically difficult for him. When his sister was taken away from him, you could tell that it affected him. In fact, as I recall, the camera focused almost entirely on the character because the designers knew we could tell what was happening by the character's facial expressions. Brilliant. I just watched all of the Wind Waker trailers on gametrailers.com, even the ones that came out as comparably early as this new Zelda trailer for the new game, and in each "Link" exhibits far more emotion than this new one.
I am not suggesting that this new Zelda will just absolutely blow. Quite the opposite. I fully trust Nintendo to do well with it. But it's playing to crowd, sadly. It's people like yourself, people who orgasm over pixels and resolutions and light sourcing and textures, that are partially responsible for driving video games into this technological morass while the higher ground is a more "mature" (if you will) use of graphics, and ultimately visuals. I suppose the definition of maturity is as subjective as the definition of artistic. However, maturity has no relation to graphical prowress at all. It has everything to do with visual presentation. If better graphics allow a game to do that, then great. But the trailer here is generic and bland. It has great graphics, but it lacks visuals, an architecture to build focus around. It's Nintendo getting into the graphical pissing contest. They sidestepped that entirely with Wind Waker, and I thought Nintendo had the balls to keep going with it. Apparently the video game market has Nintendo by their balls, from the looks of this video.
You would, no doubt, scoff at REZ, and yet REZ is unquestionably one of the most mature games out. The same can be said of ICO, which came out early in the PS2 lifecycle, and too early to be filled with polygons and light source shading. Graphics are not maturity, and it's superficial to think they are. Cartoons are not immaturity, and if you think otherwise go into your local comic book store, or
Geez. Judging by your aggressive response and excessive use of acronyms, curse words, and big numbers, you'd think that I'd insulted your genitalia. I had no such intention. Instead, I think it's important to note that graphics don't matter to many people outside of the PC hardcore community.
Take for example, my wife. Definitely an easycore. She dabbles with Mario Kart, played Animal Crossing, and went on a Sims spurt for two months. She saw me playing the demo of Splinter Cell Pandora's Tommorow on my PC (2.4xp, gf4 4200). I went out and bought the game for Xbox (multiplayer) and she commented that it looked better on the Xbox. She's wrong, at least graphically, and so I'm inclined to agree with you on that level. However, I can't deny that it does play smoother on the Xbox. When old Sam Fischer's little spy body nearly gets blown off the train in the demo level as multiple light sources pass by my 2400 XP chugs. This didn't happen on the Xbox, because the designers knew that it wouldn't. They had the Xbox in their office that I have here. I can't say that for my PC, which is one of thousands of unique combinations of hardware. This is certainly more true when the Xbox debuted. You're right, of course, the Xbox is starting to show it's age. But only barely, and only to those that are spending $300-600 every six months to upgrade their PCs.
Does Far Cry look better than anything on the Xbox? Well sure, of course it does. It's cutting edge technology. Will Doom III on the PC be shinier, more reflective, have more shadows, more polygons, more lens flares, and a higher FPS than the Xbox version? Of course. But so as to avoid getting into a graphical pissing contest with you, which it seems you want, I'll focus back on the Phantom. If a game even looks a little worse on the Xbox (and that's all we're really talking about here to people not like you who include the 3dmark rundown in their startup group) why should they pay $200 for a machine that does nothing, or $30 a month for a machine that looks barely better than a $150 or less console? Your "kicking the shit" amounts to a barely noticable difference in graphical quality to the very audience Infinium is going after. This avid fascination with numbers and acronyms and FPS that you so adroitly exhibit is indiginous only to the hardcore, and those are the exact people Infinium is completely shunning (HardOCP, for a prime example). Perhaps quite mistakingly, as you've aptly demonstrated. Infinium may do well to go after the hardcore group, but it would mean alienating a slew of potential investors who probably do not care for our kind.
As a sidelight from the main discussion of the Phantom, I hope you realize UL that I'm not trying to make fun of you, or make light of performance based gaming. I think it's great, and if I had the money to do it I'd be right in there chugging out resolution statistics and downloading the beta of DirectX. However, I suggest that you be more open to the idea that merely because something runs at 320x240 on a TV screen doesn't mean it looks worse. Indeed, I have yet to see a PC game rival the graphical tour de forces that are ICO, or REZ, or Wind Waker, or Panzeer Dragoon Orta. Even Far Cry doesn't look much better than Dead or Alive 3's graphics. We can justify that with smaller environments and a lower resolution, but that doesn't really matter to the "mainstream."
And as far "keep up shit with today's gaming experiences on the PCs," I'll concede graphics to you, although I've proved it doesn't matter with regards to the Phantom. Experience though? That is an altogether different and much more subjective animal, and a statement you'd have a hard time defending to anyone who plays games on both console and PC. I might have agreed with you 5-10 years ago, but no longer.
this time using a more mature visual look, rather than a cel-shaded one.
I've watched the new Zelda video about three times, and I firmly believe that Wind Waker looks more "realistic" than this new Zelda. What I mean is this: watch the trailer for Wind Waker and if you didn't know any better you'd swear it's an animated feature. There is little difference in Wind Waker's presentation, if any at all, and a well drawn cartoon. Watch the new Zelda trailer, the "realistic" Zelda, and there's little realism. You can tell, immediately, even from a screenshot that this is a video game. Sure, the graphics are fantastic. But the bar to which you're holding it too, reality, is much higher than that of the animated Wind Waker. Miyamato is well aware of this, and cited this in defense of Wind Waker. I am curious what he thinks of this new design.
What's more is that the graphics in the new Zelda are not stylized. They're generic, to be frank. It's a guy in green riding on a horse out of a generic look fantasy castle. This is a scene that could've dropped straight out of the ass of LOTR, with its trolls and army of orcs with clubs, massing on poorly textured hills. In fact, until you see Link up close, this may very well have come from any number of E3 firstlook videos. Even the vaporware Fable has more style than this Zelda.
I suppose this is closer in style, perhaps, to Ocarina of time. But technology was what limited Ocarina, and Nintendo bravely sidestepped that ever present technological limitation with Wind Waker by animating it. This is a step in the wrong direction for the Zelda franchise. Will it sell more? Sure. Is it more creative? Based on this trailer, no.
Mark my words: this Link will have collision detection problems. You'll spin the camera and see the inside of something else. Because this new world is trying to look realistic, when something happens that defies realism, a box falling awkwardly, or enemies disappearing, or whatever number of usual video game annoyances, it will break the spell. We're used to it because it's video games. But that rarely happened in Wind Waker, and that's part of what made it so great. When enemies disappeared in Wind Waker, for example, it was acceptable and perhaps even more dramatic that they disappeared in a puff of dark evil smoke. Why? Because it was not a "real" world, the animation style created a sense of surreality. I may be too harsh on an early video here, but I see not even a sliver of the emotion in "realistic" Link that I saw in Wind Waker's "Link." The graphics are unquestionably impressive. However, this new Zelda has no character, no style, no color, and no artistic focus to it.
And I take offense to the original poster claiming that this is more "mature." It isn't. Animation does not equal immaturity and (perceived) realism does not equal maturity. In fact, Wind Waker was one of the most emotionally jarring and touching games I've played in a long, long time, and I would argue was far more "mature" than GTA3 and its derivatives. The ability to connect through the television screen and the beyond the controller, to transcend the game on an emotional level, demonstrates far more maturity than better graphics. Shame on you for thinking otherwise.
Perhaps a more interesting question is why aren't they targeting hardcore gamers
Great question. I think it has to do with target audience. Infinium has exhibited far more interest in investors than they have the gaming community (c.f. HardOCP). And investors like the idea of the casual gamer more, at least now, because it's a broader market. Mainstream sounds much nicer than the nerdy fat guy who buys a game a week and has no life. That's not how it is, but that's often how it's perceived (c.f. Most gaming advertisements, which are not designed by the devs but by outside companies).
Of course, gaming is one of the few industries that has yet to realize the potential of the repeat gamer, the "hardcore." Tobacco companies have no problem with this, but neither does the DVD/cinema industry, the list goes on. The ones in control of gaming, however, seem to disdain the people that give them the most money.
The service looks to be geared towards a wider demographic rather than the hard core gamer
Naturally, Infinium has been hyping their pursuit of the easycore (anti-hardcore) because that's supposedly where the money is, or at least according to possible investors. So, just how easycore is the Phantom in comparison to other consoles?
* Requires broadband. Hmm, well, broadband is certainly more proliferated than ever, but in regards to gaming it's still considered an element of the hardcore. I think it's safe to say that Xbox Live is doing well for an online service, but according to most publishers online gameplay is still cutting edge, and therefore hardcore. So, broadband alienates a lot of users. What's more: how many easycore people have a cat5 hookup in their living room? Is the Phantom going to support wireless? Do you see how more involved this is becoming?
* Keyboard and mouse control. I think it's fairly safe to say that the easycore far prefer a controller to a mouse and keyboard. And yet the latest renderings have no controller at all. If a user of the phantom is willing to use a mouse and keyboard to play FPS games, why not play it on their PC? Again, this is not catering to the easycore, the mouse and keyboard is definitively hardcore.
* Price. $30 a month? So, the easycore are already paying $30-50 for broadband. Probably $30-90 for cable/satellite, which I mention because it's an entertainment expense. So why would any easycore person pay $30 just to own the phantom and play freeware games? The Phantom subscription fee does not include the games, which themselves will be $40-50. Xbox Live is what, $60 for 12 months? $30 a month is a hardcore price, perhaps even more so because you really don't get anything for it. Even just paying the $200 means you get a machine that people have not coded specifically for. In other words, a game coded specifically for the Xbox, if done well, looks better than a game coded for a PC of the Phantom's specs for obvious reasons. So, why the Phantom again?
I could go on, but I have better things to do than talk about the Phantom. Feel free to add.
The linguistics used by Infinium that seem to cuddle up to the casual gamer are a farce. There's no centralized design here to that end. Gamecubes are for the casual gamer more than any other console, and there is nothing in here that is Apple or Nintendo-esque. The Phantom is just that, a constantly morphing mismatch of ideas piecemealed together from different people and different gaming idealogies, if you can even call them gaming idealogies. Practically, the Phantom is, judging by their choice of words and marketing, little more than an attempt to raise investor monies. It is not a gaming machine but a perceived cash cow for Infinium.
Good question, which I'll answer with another question: how, and why, did the media consider Dean a shoe-in until the voting started? This is not the first time the media have made mistakes like this, but I think that the net had a very significant part in hyping up Dean well beyond what he would have been without the net.
Secondly, funding. Dean raised a large amount of money in a short amount of time, and judging from the poor voting that followed, from a relatively small amount of people. How? I would suggest the web. Is this something that has proliferated to the two canidates? Probably not, but for obvious reasons. Bush doesn't really need the web, and I would suggest that Kerry's campaign is too unorganized and lacks the focus to achieve anything close to the financial activity Dean achieved. It will really be the next campaign when we see the effects of Dean's campaign on a presidential race.
So, did Dean's net integration work? I guess not, considering he's almost all but forgotten. But I think that he was at least a precursor for the way campaigns are run.
Since the Starr Report, and perhaps before that the Oklahoma City Bombings, the internet has become one of the most important vehicles of communication in politics. 9-11 distributed information faster, more personally, and with far less repetition than the news channels. Howard Dean's campaign, while unsuccesful, nevertheless demonstrated the importance of a web presence for an aspiring politician, something that Kerry and Bush seem to have all but neglected.
This scandel again demonstrates the increasing proliferation of the net and its significance in modern politics. What we're seeing here is like TV was to the Kennedy-Nixon debates or the Army McCarthy Hearings. This is another phase in the coming of age of the net as a viable medium at least as significant as print and TV, the "old media." And this coming of age will only continue, perhaps until The Next Big Thing in 50 years. These incidents, the Starr Report to the Iraqi Prison Pictures, should serve as a warning to any politician that would overlook the power of the net as a communicative tool. Those who embrace the web, like Kennedy with the TV camera, will flourish. Those who do not, will like Nixon regret they didn't.
What I'd like to know are the identities of the companies who said to the Make a Wish Foundation that "this venture was nearly impossible without taking several years and literally millions of dollars." Correspondingly, I think they'd receive at least one nasty consumer letter from myself, and I think from others as well. Apparently, the companies the foundation asked either haven't seen any of the indie games that have come out in the last few years, or just blatantly lied to the foundation to avoid making a committment. I'm inclined to think the latter over the former. Heartless bastards. Could someone tell me why I keep giving them money?
On the other hand, kudos to Lucasarts, who while evil for canning Sam and Max 2, like Vader obviously still have some good in them somewhere.
Of course these record labels want iTunes to charge $1.25 per song. They have their own online music stores; iTunes is the enemy, not the vanguard savior of online music distribution (according to the labels).
. . . we'll be looking at Gollum and these CGI special effects like we do now with stop motion from Clash of the Titans and Sinbad. Nostalgically cool, but obviously and completely unrealistic. I guess if anything, Sinbad and Clash of the Titans shows us that Hollywood's fascination with technology is not a new one. CGI is little different from stop motion in terms of realism, and it will only look real until your 7 year old kid, who is a baby now, watches LOTR and keeps commenting how fake it look. Then you'll look at it, and wonder why you never noticed it before.
I really like the trend in indie gaming twoards non-photorealism.
Indie movies are the same, to some degree. There's no way they can compete with the special effects of Spider-Man 2, or something along those lines. So they make up for it with experimental presentation, inexpensive ways to communicate the same thing special effects could. I think the same thing is happening in games. It's way too expensive to pay 40 guys just to texture everything. So, what do you do? You make great games that don't need textures.
It'll only be a matter of time, I think, before the major publishers perk up and start to realize that these indie games are setting the trend, not them.
If you've paid attention to the teasers, trailers, and demo movies . ..
You're right, I haven't orgasmed over every little screenshot that's come out. I watched a trailer a few months ago, and I don't remember seeing much about a storyline, just swinging lights, nice mirrors, and bumpmapped zombies. On a space station.
you might have found something similar to the following text in the readme file
So, if the storyline is upgraded for Doom III does that mean we'll have to look in an XML file to read it?
DOOM 3 . . is not a sequel to DOOM II. Instead, it's a retelling of the original. "What if DOOM were made today, with today's technology and with everything learned about gaming in the past decade?"
I'm not sure why everyone's spoiling their pants over this one. Ok, I do. Gamers go wacky over screenshots and pixels. But we're not only living in a post-DirectX9 world here, we're living in a post Half Life, post Halo, post Call to Duty, post Deus Ex etc FPS world. What I mean is that we're living in a gaming world where games tell stories. Sure, they're not always great (Far Cry comes immediately to mind). But sometimes they are (Deus Ex 1, or the FPS-esque Max Payne). Doom, redone in today's gaming environment, would not only be pretty but not be Doom anymore because it would actually have a legitimate story. As far as I can tell, there is none in Doom III (zombies on a space station sums it up). This isn't surprising, as Carmack has often evangelized that games are as much about story as pornography is.
Doom III is a tech demo to sell the engine off to more competant storytellers. There's a whole other audience besides gamers that no one has really mentioned, and that's the developing community. Doom III is as much about licensing the new engine out, if not more so, than making a fun game to play.
To the PC fanboys who have been whining about the Xbox version, you need to realize that you're not the only one Carmack is making this game for. It's not just developers for the PC, which are becoming rarer and rarer. It's developers for consoles, which are quickly becoming much more numerous. I would venture to say that Microsoft probably did not pay much, if anything at all, to get Doom III on the XBox. It's doubtful they could replicate a reasonable facsimile on the PS2, and (sadly) why bother on the GC? Rather, if iD and Vicarious can port the D3 engine over to the Xbox, it opens far more doors in this market than the PC version does. So why the exclusive co-op? Because I think that although iD might be afraid to say it out loud for fear of alienating their PC fanboys, there is more money to be had both on the consumer and especially on the developer side with the consoles (represented by the xbox in this case).
*Of course, it could be duly noted that Doom III may be instrumental in turning the tables in the cycle and perhaps making the PC more prominent than it has been with this generation of consoles. That, though, is only temporary (a year at best) if the next generation of consoles starts to come out 2005.
sell any ps2 games + ps2 exclusive games to Japan = sell more ps2 consoles
Where, exactly, does one of the most profitable exclusive in the history of video gaming fall into your formula? You know, that little license called GTA, which Sony paid an "unspecified sum" for (read: a gazillion dollars). Or, should I say "$ony?" Oh yeah, that other one too, the one in which $ony very nearly bought out another company to get the exclusive...um, gee what is it, oh yes, Final Fantasy. That's it.
Please, retreat, MS (sorry, "M$") troll, back to main.slashdot.org.
I can't link to a specific article, but I remember very clearly that early on in Microsoft's strategy with the Xbox, perhaps even before they released it, J. Allard said that exclusivity on games for the Xbox meant hardware exclusivity. I recall thinking when I read this that this was extremely brilliant of Microsoft. You can pay someone to be exclusive, but when the money stops flowing there's no reason for them not to port it. On other hand, if it's that much more difficult logistically (and therefore financially) to port, why would publishers bother?
Allard was specifically referring to the hard drive, which I think we'd all agree has gone quite underutilized. Full Spectrum though is an excellent example though of how this strategy played out with Xbox Live. The US Army merely gave the developers of Full Spectrum a list of requirements. It had to be on console, it had to be able to be multiplayer, and it had to have realistic "trainable" AI. The Xbox is a no brainer here, particularly since when they developed FS Sony Online and barely transpired. I suppose one could speculate that the Army had a geographical preference ("Made" in America).
The other games listed are exclusive probably because of the hardware requirements or the ease in developing for the Xbox in relation to the PC. Not surprisingly, games using PC engines (like Splinter Cell, which uses the Unreal engine) have also been exclusive or at least came out well before a PS2 and Gamecube version. Another unsurprising characteristic that Xbox exclusives have shared is that they've almost all been western developers. The exception to this are the early Xbox Sega titles, which was probably just Sega pissed off at Sony. Tecmo/Team Ninja has been Xbox exclusive, but I think it's obvious that someone has a lot of extra money in their pockets for that deal
Which makes you wonder why the guys who developed these strategies in the inception of the Xbox have almost all been fired and replaced. I wonder what that bodes for Xbox2. If hardware is the key for Microsoft exclusives, then is giving Sony an extra year to buffer their system specs as the Xbox1 did really that smart?
This stuff is so outlandish I'm inclined to believe there's a javascript random rumor generator floating around the web that kicks in for the month preceding E3. It almost always begins with some kind of information from a Japanese developer or, in this case, a "Chinese BBS." It's the classic beginning to an urban legend. It's Asian, so it holds an air of reputability. At the same time, fewer people can just start researching this like we collectively did with the "Infinium Urban Legend." They have a picture, and in a community that orgasms a Doom III screenshot every three months, visuals are everything. Plus, people can comment on it and sound like they know what the hell they're talking about, as if they themselves worked on the machine.
Just to get this out the way so we don't take up anymore of Slashdot's not-so-precious bandwidth: Microsoft will announce that the Xbox2 will be released this year, will have a clock speed of 16ghz, and will be supported by ATI, IBM, and McDonald's. It will both have a hard drive, and not have a hard drive. Not only that, but they will be releasing Halo 1.5 within weeks following E3, and Halo 2 will be pushed back to the Xbox 2. Also, Microsoft will buying at least three major developers, not the least of which are Bioware, Valve, Blizzard, and Sega. And Nintendo. And maybe Sony. And probably Microsoft, if they're feeling particularly moody. These are all true, because a Thai website (Http://www.thaixxxmassage.com) posted it a few days ago after Bill Gates stopped by. Actually, it was Bill Gates' gardner. Or at least his friend. Relative of. The friend. Who lives in Thailand.
Boy, I sure hope this year's is better. I had a big booth for my game, "Win the Wicked," (selling for $49.99) and last year some weird Jewish guy with a whip came through the hall yelling and overturning tables everywhere. Something about his father's temple. WTF? Guy was on speed or something. Probably cost the developers at the conference a thousands of dollars each. The damage he caused to my equipment was why I had to push back the game a few months. Who did he think he was anyway, stopping me from selling my Christian games? This is America, a Christian country!
I hear they got an injunction against him this year though. For all the trouble he caused me, he could be rotting in a grave for all I care.
You can definitely see the progression of evil there in Anakin: the silver metallic optical lens, the ominous anti-Kenobi look, the Sith-like pinstriped dark silk material and proto-Imperial Regiment tie that could only have come at the cost of thousands of Jedi....kudos to the costume designers, they've really managed to capture the essence of evil in this new suit.
Ooohhh, you have to wait to see the new Darth Vader suit? Then what is that Yahoo picture in the story? Oh. It's George Lucas.
What old DOS games did you play that were easy?
on
Is DOS Gaming Dead?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
are there any other ways to get old DOS titles running easily?
Were they ever easy to run? I remember having multiple floppies for multiple autoexec.bat and config.sys configurations. Wing Commander; good god, was that a pain to deal with. I remember spending at least a good hour trying to get the right about of base memory to run X-Wing.
I think people forget just how much windows 95 changed gaming. The better the games, it seemed, the harder it was to get those suckers to run. The problem wasn't even having enough hardware to run it (although that was part of it). Most of the problem came from needing base memory to load mouse and sound drivers, but then the game always requiring some minimum amount of memory to run. I can't tell you how many times I saw something along the lines of:
"This program needs 514K free to run. You have 512K free." If I had a special button on my keyboard that automatically entered memcheck/c, I would have shaved at least a half a year off my life.
My "improved" analogy to include the crypto element would be the situation where someone threw a locked safe containing cash into my backyard. In my worldview - which I fully accept you may not share - it would be perfectly reasonable to crack the lock on that safe and take the cash.
What about your neighbor's wireless connection that he encrypts? Do they violate your physical space as well? Does he have to ask your permission before he sets it up? What about the cell phone conversations that float through your backyard? True, like DirecTV, the legality is still unclear on these specific issues, but is it ethical to listen in on cell phone conversations, or "borrow" internet bandwidth from your neighbor's encrypted wireless network, or worse, view the information he sends between him and his ISP?
Chip architect. If you have a good enough electron microscope, a wafer fab, and plenty of patience to write down where all those millions of transistors go, feel free
If I don't want to pay the cable company, they refuse to send signal to my house.
So how does that analogy fit for the cell phone carrier waves that float through your house? What about CB radio waves? Riddle me this Batman: is it ethical for you to hack a neighbor's fully encrypted 802.11g wireless signal? I mean, it's floating through your house right? What about a cellphone signal that is going to his phone? Hell, it's in the air. Those signals are "invading" your house. Doesn't that piss you off? That your neighbor would have the nerve to set up an encrypted wireless signal that might float over into your yard? The nerve of him. And all cellphone carriers! Have they no decency?
They don't provide the signal "for free." No more than your neighbor provides wireless internet "for free." Even if it's in the air, and legal to intercept, there is still ethical and inethical. The legality of intercepting your neighbor's 802.11g signal is debatable, as is intercepting DirecTV signal not meant for you. However, while perhaps not illegal, it is unarguable that decrypting your neighbor's wireless signal is wrong. The same is also true of DirecTV.
I'm not saying their goon tactics for pirates are not dubious, or that they are justified in their coercion of potential pirates. But if that's the justificaion you're using to pirate the signal, pirating the signal of DirecTV accomplishes nothing except enabling you to watch WWE Cage Match XXXXIXI. If you truly believe DirecTV should not be around as a company, then what you should be doing is paying the cable company for television, or dish network.
And let's be honest here. Someone at Comcast is orgasming in his seat here as he (or she) reads over the Slashdot posts here. It must really float their boat to think that somehow they've managed to polarize public opinion against their competitor. So while you might think you're shafting it the man when you pirate DirecTV, the inevitable result is that you're hurting DirecTV, which is a competitor to another company. You're killing competition by pirating DirecTV.
And if you think the cable company is any better, I had a vist a month or two ago from a Brighthouse company representative (a new cable company here in town) who knocked on my door, accused me of stealing cable. I told him I was with DirecTV, and that the cable-coaxials were unconnected in the attic. He swore up and down that if I didn't stop pirating cable TV, he'd be able to fine me hundrds of dollars. I laughed and shut the door in his face, because I knew I was taking something for free that should have been paid for. Unlike, apparently, most of you.
I expect you to pay me $100 for receiving this sentence in your retina.
Oh geez. What a lame analogy. A correct one would have been an ecrypted sentence that said, "YOU CAN ONLY READ THIS BY PAYING $100 FOR A BROWSER PLUGIN TO READ THIS SENTENCE."
What people do to directv, with your analogy, would be to download the plugin off of kazaa for free, and then using it to decrypt your sentence. If had developed that sentence, and that sentence contained something of value to me, and you meant to be compensated, yes, yo should be paid $100. If didn't want to read it, the right thing to have done is just not read it, instead of downloading the plugin for free from kazaa.
Directv IS floating around in midair, but it is not like, "Whoops I accidently installed this dish on my roof. Oh dear, I must have set it to exactly the right azimuth and height. Oh oh! Look at this, my friend dropped of a dish receiver with -gasp- a decryption card that works that he must have dropped in here inadvertantly! Silly me! I seem to have fallen on the couch, I guess I have no choice to just have to sit here and watch tv I didn't pay for!!" Your sentence analogy has no bearing on DirecTV at all, and that's exactly the kind of illogical justification that directv pirates use to excuse their unethical behavior. By the way, what is your occupation, and if so, may I also accidently steal the results of your work?
I know I'm generalizing the slashdot community here, but I find it quite amusing that when someone posts something about how they freely download MP3s or games, a dozen anonymous cowards respond with some attempt at "You're stealing my job" or "You're a thief." The pro-piracy comments are often modded as trolls.
And yet, here, the highest modded comments on DirecTV stories are generally those that include some kind of variation of, "They're putting the airwaves in my backyard, I just happen to be catching them in my satellite dish!" Or, "It's not technically illegal to just capture it from the airwaves!" I think it's safe to say, this being slashdot, that some of these people are software engineers or the like. I wonder if these software engineers feel the same way about people in foreign countries who break no laws in their own countries but still pirate software.
Just because you can do something, even if it is not illegal, doesn't mean you should. I know this is unpopular to say, but you're still receiving something that the producers intended to receive compensation for. They are doing something, even if that is just retransmitting. Whereas FM radio and local stations do not expect compensation, DirecTV does, so the analogy that it's "in the air" doesn't really make sense ethically. If you think it's too much to pay for, patronize someone else or don't watch the TV. Just because DirecTV is a big company, or it's easy to take advantage of a service they're providing, doesn't mean it's right. Saying they're a big company and citing their scrupulous tactics is merely a justification, an excuse. It doesn't make stealing right. It might be cool to show off to your friends, it might even be legal, but receiving something you didn't pay for when the party providing the service fully expects compensation is stealing. I know DirecTV does some very questionable things, but like for like doesn't accomplish anything. Patronizing a competitor who does not utilize those tactics is ultimately far more effective than merely stealing service.
From Erik of oldmanmurray (may it RIP):
"People who don't watch TV love to mention it and never fail to pair that statement with the fact that they read books too. But as long as they're patting themselves on the back for simply not doing something, it seems to me that there are lots of worse things you could be taking credit for not doing. For instance, next time someone decides to lord over you the fact that he doesn't watch TV, go ahead and tell him "Good for you!" Then while everyone around you is reflecting on his massive intellect, up the awful-things-you-don't-do ante by mentioning that you don't rape people and then add that you watch lots of television instead. Not only does that make you a better person - after all what kind of psychotic jerkoff wastes his time not watching TV when he could be busy not commiting violent sex crimes? - but it gives you sort of an air of barely suppressed operatic rage, which makes you more like Batman."
Yep, when I first started playing SC2 I thought that they completely ripped off Starflight and its sequel, but SC2 was just so good that you couldn't help but love it.
When the guys at Toys for Bob started their sourceforge remake of SC2, I emailed them and asked them about the connection. They responded that starflight was inspiration for SC2, and that the lead designer for SF (Greg Johnson, also of Toejam and Earl fame) and Paul of Toys for Bob had been good friends for a while. Greg Johnson did some voice acting on the 3DO version of SC2, so there's obvioulsy a connection.
The humor in the Starflight series is also similar, if much more subdued and not as overt. Still, if you enjoyed SC2 and are willing to endure some pixelation and the hassle of getting it to run in DosBox or something, the starflight series is still quite a playable game. Great plot too.
Slashdot Mirror
hahahaha, you're discrediting the new Zelda because it isn't as "realistic" as the cell shaded Wind Waker? Sorry to burst your bubble, but cartoons aren't realistic
No they're not. Perhaps I didn't make my post clear enough, so I'll just let Miyamoto make it for me. This is a good post, and here's from another article:
"We actually think that as you play this game and look at the world around you, it's going to seem very realistic despite the graphics style. By using the term "realistic," I mean the qualities of the world itself. I don't mean to deny the value of the more photorealistic graphics, but the more realistic graphics get the more unrealistic things such as bumping into a wall or getting hurt might be. If not expressed properly, it will seem out of place. This time we've tried to have very realistic expression. We want to have a game where everything in the world feels like it is in its place. We think that when you play, you will see Link do something and not react in a way that's not realistic. From the point of view, The Wind Waker is very realistic in terms of expression and the whole oneness of the world."
And again, you're being superficial about your definition of maturity. Maturity has absolutely nothing to do with whether there are 20,000 polygons in a scene or 10,000. I would suggest that very few modern games have approached the moral complexity (and therefore maturity) of older PC adventure games like, for example, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream or, on the console side, Snatcher. Both had graphics that were simplistic, and perhaps even cartoony. Yet, they exceed any modern game on their level of maturity.
I know you said that you played Wind Waker, but I'm shocked that you think that the the main character was void of emotion. His eyes followed things of focus. When he was about to get hit, his eyes grew wide, when he pushed a crate you could tell it was physically difficult for him. When his sister was taken away from him, you could tell that it affected him. In fact, as I recall, the camera focused almost entirely on the character because the designers knew we could tell what was happening by the character's facial expressions. Brilliant. I just watched all of the Wind Waker trailers on gametrailers.com, even the ones that came out as comparably early as this new Zelda trailer for the new game, and in each "Link" exhibits far more emotion than this new one.
I am not suggesting that this new Zelda will just absolutely blow. Quite the opposite. I fully trust Nintendo to do well with it. But it's playing to crowd, sadly. It's people like yourself, people who orgasm over pixels and resolutions and light sourcing and textures, that are partially responsible for driving video games into this technological morass while the higher ground is a more "mature" (if you will) use of graphics, and ultimately visuals. I suppose the definition of maturity is as subjective as the definition of artistic. However, maturity has no relation to graphical prowress at all. It has everything to do with visual presentation. If better graphics allow a game to do that, then great. But the trailer here is generic and bland. It has great graphics, but it lacks visuals, an architecture to build focus around. It's Nintendo getting into the graphical pissing contest. They sidestepped that entirely with Wind Waker, and I thought Nintendo had the balls to keep going with it. Apparently the video game market has Nintendo by their balls, from the looks of this video.
You would, no doubt, scoff at REZ, and yet REZ is unquestionably one of the most mature games out. The same can be said of ICO, which came out early in the PS2 lifecycle, and too early to be filled with polygons and light source shading. Graphics are not maturity, and it's superficial to think they are. Cartoons are not immaturity, and if you think otherwise go into your local comic book store, or
Geez. Judging by your aggressive response and excessive use of acronyms, curse words, and big numbers, you'd think that I'd insulted your genitalia. I had no such intention. Instead, I think it's important to note that graphics don't matter to many people outside of the PC hardcore community.
Take for example, my wife. Definitely an easycore. She dabbles with Mario Kart, played Animal Crossing, and went on a Sims spurt for two months. She saw me playing the demo of Splinter Cell Pandora's Tommorow on my PC (2.4xp, gf4 4200). I went out and bought the game for Xbox (multiplayer) and she commented that it looked better on the Xbox. She's wrong, at least graphically, and so I'm inclined to agree with you on that level. However, I can't deny that it does play smoother on the Xbox. When old Sam Fischer's little spy body nearly gets blown off the train in the demo level as multiple light sources pass by my 2400 XP chugs. This didn't happen on the Xbox, because the designers knew that it wouldn't. They had the Xbox in their office that I have here. I can't say that for my PC, which is one of thousands of unique combinations of hardware. This is certainly more true when the Xbox debuted. You're right, of course, the Xbox is starting to show it's age. But only barely, and only to those that are spending $300-600 every six months to upgrade their PCs.
Does Far Cry look better than anything on the Xbox? Well sure, of course it does. It's cutting edge technology. Will Doom III on the PC be shinier, more reflective, have more shadows, more polygons, more lens flares, and a higher FPS than the Xbox version? Of course. But so as to avoid getting into a graphical pissing contest with you, which it seems you want, I'll focus back on the Phantom. If a game even looks a little worse on the Xbox (and that's all we're really talking about here to people not like you who include the 3dmark rundown in their startup group) why should they pay $200 for a machine that does nothing, or $30 a month for a machine that looks barely better than a $150 or less console? Your "kicking the shit" amounts to a barely noticable difference in graphical quality to the very audience Infinium is going after. This avid fascination with numbers and acronyms and FPS that you so adroitly exhibit is indiginous only to the hardcore, and those are the exact people Infinium is completely shunning (HardOCP, for a prime example). Perhaps quite mistakingly, as you've aptly demonstrated. Infinium may do well to go after the hardcore group, but it would mean alienating a slew of potential investors who probably do not care for our kind.
As a sidelight from the main discussion of the Phantom, I hope you realize UL that I'm not trying to make fun of you, or make light of performance based gaming. I think it's great, and if I had the money to do it I'd be right in there chugging out resolution statistics and downloading the beta of DirectX. However, I suggest that you be more open to the idea that merely because something runs at 320x240 on a TV screen doesn't mean it looks worse. Indeed, I have yet to see a PC game rival the graphical tour de forces that are ICO, or REZ, or Wind Waker, or Panzeer Dragoon Orta. Even Far Cry doesn't look much better than Dead or Alive 3's graphics. We can justify that with smaller environments and a lower resolution, but that doesn't really matter to the "mainstream."
And as far "keep up shit with today's gaming experiences on the PCs," I'll concede graphics to you, although I've proved it doesn't matter with regards to the Phantom. Experience though? That is an altogether different and much more subjective animal, and a statement you'd have a hard time defending to anyone who plays games on both console and PC. I might have agreed with you 5-10 years ago, but no longer.
this time using a more mature visual look, rather than a cel-shaded one.
I've watched the new Zelda video about three times, and I firmly believe that Wind Waker looks more "realistic" than this new Zelda. What I mean is this: watch the trailer for Wind Waker and if you didn't know any better you'd swear it's an animated feature. There is little difference in Wind Waker's presentation, if any at all, and a well drawn cartoon. Watch the new Zelda trailer, the "realistic" Zelda, and there's little realism. You can tell, immediately, even from a screenshot that this is a video game. Sure, the graphics are fantastic. But the bar to which you're holding it too, reality, is much higher than that of the animated Wind Waker. Miyamato is well aware of this, and cited this in defense of Wind Waker. I am curious what he thinks of this new design.
What's more is that the graphics in the new Zelda are not stylized. They're generic, to be frank. It's a guy in green riding on a horse out of a generic look fantasy castle. This is a scene that could've dropped straight out of the ass of LOTR, with its trolls and army of orcs with clubs, massing on poorly textured hills. In fact, until you see Link up close, this may very well have come from any number of E3 firstlook videos. Even the vaporware Fable has more style than this Zelda.
I suppose this is closer in style, perhaps, to Ocarina of time. But technology was what limited Ocarina, and Nintendo bravely sidestepped that ever present technological limitation with Wind Waker by animating it. This is a step in the wrong direction for the Zelda franchise. Will it sell more? Sure. Is it more creative? Based on this trailer, no.
Mark my words: this Link will have collision detection problems. You'll spin the camera and see the inside of something else. Because this new world is trying to look realistic, when something happens that defies realism, a box falling awkwardly, or enemies disappearing, or whatever number of usual video game annoyances, it will break the spell. We're used to it because it's video games. But that rarely happened in Wind Waker, and that's part of what made it so great. When enemies disappeared in Wind Waker, for example, it was acceptable and perhaps even more dramatic that they disappeared in a puff of dark evil smoke. Why? Because it was not a "real" world, the animation style created a sense of surreality. I may be too harsh on an early video here, but I see not even a sliver of the emotion in "realistic" Link that I saw in Wind Waker's "Link." The graphics are unquestionably impressive. However, this new Zelda has no character, no style, no color, and no artistic focus to it.
And I take offense to the original poster claiming that this is more "mature." It isn't. Animation does not equal immaturity and (perceived) realism does not equal maturity. In fact, Wind Waker was one of the most emotionally jarring and touching games I've played in a long, long time, and I would argue was far more "mature" than GTA3 and its derivatives. The ability to connect through the television screen and the beyond the controller, to transcend the game on an emotional level, demonstrates far more maturity than better graphics. Shame on you for thinking otherwise.
Perhaps a more interesting question is why aren't they targeting hardcore gamers
Great question. I think it has to do with target audience. Infinium has exhibited far more interest in investors than they have the gaming community (c.f. HardOCP). And investors like the idea of the casual gamer more, at least now, because it's a broader market. Mainstream sounds much nicer than the nerdy fat guy who buys a game a week and has no life. That's not how it is, but that's often how it's perceived (c.f. Most gaming advertisements, which are not designed by the devs but by outside companies).
Of course, gaming is one of the few industries that has yet to realize the potential of the repeat gamer, the "hardcore." Tobacco companies have no problem with this, but neither does the DVD/cinema industry, the list goes on. The ones in control of gaming, however, seem to disdain the people that give them the most money.
The service looks to be geared towards a wider demographic rather than the hard core gamer
Naturally, Infinium has been hyping their pursuit of the easycore (anti-hardcore) because that's supposedly where the money is, or at least according to possible investors. So, just how easycore is the Phantom in comparison to other consoles?
* Requires broadband. Hmm, well, broadband is certainly more proliferated than ever, but in regards to gaming it's still considered an element of the hardcore. I think it's safe to say that Xbox Live is doing well for an online service, but according to most publishers online gameplay is still cutting edge, and therefore hardcore. So, broadband alienates a lot of users. What's more: how many easycore people have a cat5 hookup in their living room? Is the Phantom going to support wireless? Do you see how more involved this is becoming?
* Keyboard and mouse control. I think it's fairly safe to say that the easycore far prefer a controller to a mouse and keyboard. And yet the latest renderings have no controller at all. If a user of the phantom is willing to use a mouse and keyboard to play FPS games, why not play it on their PC? Again, this is not catering to the easycore, the mouse and keyboard is definitively hardcore.
* Price. $30 a month? So, the easycore are already paying $30-50 for broadband. Probably $30-90 for cable/satellite, which I mention because it's an entertainment expense. So why would any easycore person pay $30 just to own the phantom and play freeware games? The Phantom subscription fee does not include the games, which themselves will be $40-50. Xbox Live is what, $60 for 12 months? $30 a month is a hardcore price, perhaps even more so because you really don't get anything for it. Even just paying the $200 means you get a machine that people have not coded specifically for. In other words, a game coded specifically for the Xbox, if done well, looks better than a game coded for a PC of the Phantom's specs for obvious reasons. So, why the Phantom again?
I could go on, but I have better things to do than talk about the Phantom. Feel free to add.
The linguistics used by Infinium that seem to cuddle up to the casual gamer are a farce. There's no centralized design here to that end. Gamecubes are for the casual gamer more than any other console, and there is nothing in here that is Apple or Nintendo-esque. The Phantom is just that, a constantly morphing mismatch of ideas piecemealed together from different people and different gaming idealogies, if you can even call them gaming idealogies. Practically, the Phantom is, judging by their choice of words and marketing, little more than an attempt to raise investor monies. It is not a gaming machine but a perceived cash cow for Infinium.
Good question, which I'll answer with another question: how, and why, did the media consider Dean a shoe-in until the voting started? This is not the first time the media have made mistakes like this, but I think that the net had a very significant part in hyping up Dean well beyond what he would have been without the net.
Secondly, funding. Dean raised a large amount of money in a short amount of time, and judging from the poor voting that followed, from a relatively small amount of people. How? I would suggest the web. Is this something that has proliferated to the two canidates? Probably not, but for obvious reasons. Bush doesn't really need the web, and I would suggest that Kerry's campaign is too unorganized and lacks the focus to achieve anything close to the financial activity Dean achieved. It will really be the next campaign when we see the effects of Dean's campaign on a presidential race.
So, did Dean's net integration work? I guess not, considering he's almost all but forgotten. But I think that he was at least a precursor for the way campaigns are run.
Since the Starr Report, and perhaps before that the Oklahoma City Bombings, the internet has become one of the most important vehicles of communication in politics. 9-11 distributed information faster, more personally, and with far less repetition than the news channels. Howard Dean's campaign, while unsuccesful, nevertheless demonstrated the importance of a web presence for an aspiring politician, something that Kerry and Bush seem to have all but neglected.
This scandel again demonstrates the increasing proliferation of the net and its significance in modern politics. What we're seeing here is like TV was to the Kennedy-Nixon debates or the Army McCarthy Hearings. This is another phase in the coming of age of the net as a viable medium at least as significant as print and TV, the "old media." And this coming of age will only continue, perhaps until The Next Big Thing in 50 years. These incidents, the Starr Report to the Iraqi Prison Pictures, should serve as a warning to any politician that would overlook the power of the net as a communicative tool. Those who embrace the web, like Kennedy with the TV camera, will flourish. Those who do not, will like Nixon regret they didn't.
What I'd like to know are the identities of the companies who said to the Make a Wish Foundation that "this venture was nearly impossible without taking several years and literally millions of dollars." Correspondingly, I think they'd receive at least one nasty consumer letter from myself, and I think from others as well. Apparently, the companies the foundation asked either haven't seen any of the indie games that have come out in the last few years, or just blatantly lied to the foundation to avoid making a committment. I'm inclined to think the latter over the former. Heartless bastards. Could someone tell me why I keep giving them money?
On the other hand, kudos to Lucasarts, who while evil for canning Sam and Max 2, like Vader obviously still have some good in them somewhere.
Of course these record labels want iTunes to charge $1.25 per song. They have their own online music stores; iTunes is the enemy, not the vanguard savior of online music distribution (according to the labels).
. . . we'll be looking at Gollum and these CGI special effects like we do now with stop motion from Clash of the Titans and Sinbad. Nostalgically cool, but obviously and completely unrealistic. I guess if anything, Sinbad and Clash of the Titans shows us that Hollywood's fascination with technology is not a new one. CGI is little different from stop motion in terms of realism, and it will only look real until your 7 year old kid, who is a baby now, watches LOTR and keeps commenting how fake it look. Then you'll look at it, and wonder why you never noticed it before.
I really like the trend in indie gaming twoards non-photorealism.
Indie movies are the same, to some degree. There's no way they can compete with the special effects of Spider-Man 2, or something along those lines. So they make up for it with experimental presentation, inexpensive ways to communicate the same thing special effects could. I think the same thing is happening in games. It's way too expensive to pay 40 guys just to texture everything. So, what do you do? You make great games that don't need textures.
It'll only be a matter of time, I think, before the major publishers perk up and start to realize that these indie games are setting the trend, not them.
If you've paid attention to the teasers, trailers, and demo movies . . .
You're right, I haven't orgasmed over every little screenshot that's come out. I watched a trailer a few months ago, and I don't remember seeing much about a storyline, just swinging lights, nice mirrors, and bumpmapped zombies. On a space station.
you might have found something similar to the following text in the readme file
So, if the storyline is upgraded for Doom III does that mean we'll have to look in an XML file to read it?
DOOM 3 . . is not a sequel to DOOM II. Instead, it's a retelling of the original. "What if DOOM were made today, with today's technology and with everything learned about gaming in the past decade?"
I'm not sure why everyone's spoiling their pants over this one. Ok, I do. Gamers go wacky over screenshots and pixels. But we're not only living in a post-DirectX9 world here, we're living in a post Half Life, post Halo, post Call to Duty, post Deus Ex etc FPS world. What I mean is that we're living in a gaming world where games tell stories. Sure, they're not always great (Far Cry comes immediately to mind). But sometimes they are (Deus Ex 1, or the FPS-esque Max Payne). Doom, redone in today's gaming environment, would not only be pretty but not be Doom anymore because it would actually have a legitimate story. As far as I can tell, there is none in Doom III (zombies on a space station sums it up). This isn't surprising, as Carmack has often evangelized that games are as much about story as pornography is.
Doom III is a tech demo to sell the engine off to more competant storytellers. There's a whole other audience besides gamers that no one has really mentioned, and that's the developing community. Doom III is as much about licensing the new engine out, if not more so, than making a fun game to play.
To the PC fanboys who have been whining about the Xbox version, you need to realize that you're not the only one Carmack is making this game for. It's not just developers for the PC, which are becoming rarer and rarer. It's developers for consoles, which are quickly becoming much more numerous. I would venture to say that Microsoft probably did not pay much, if anything at all, to get Doom III on the XBox. It's doubtful they could replicate a reasonable facsimile on the PS2, and (sadly) why bother on the GC? Rather, if iD and Vicarious can port the D3 engine over to the Xbox, it opens far more doors in this market than the PC version does. So why the exclusive co-op? Because I think that although iD might be afraid to say it out loud for fear of alienating their PC fanboys, there is more money to be had both on the consumer and especially on the developer side with the consoles (represented by the xbox in this case).
*Of course, it could be duly noted that Doom III may be instrumental in turning the tables in the cycle and perhaps making the PC more prominent than it has been with this generation of consoles. That, though, is only temporary (a year at best) if the next generation of consoles starts to come out 2005.
sell any ps2 games + ps2 exclusive games to Japan = sell more ps2 consoles
Where, exactly, does one of the most profitable exclusive in the history of video gaming fall into your formula? You know, that little license called GTA, which Sony paid an "unspecified sum" for (read: a gazillion dollars). Or, should I say "$ony?" Oh yeah, that other one too, the one in which $ony very nearly bought out another company to get the exclusive...um, gee what is it, oh yes, Final Fantasy. That's it.
Please, retreat, MS (sorry, "M$") troll, back to main.slashdot.org.
I can't link to a specific article, but I remember very clearly that early on in Microsoft's strategy with the Xbox, perhaps even before they released it, J. Allard said that exclusivity on games for the Xbox meant hardware exclusivity. I recall thinking when I read this that this was extremely brilliant of Microsoft. You can pay someone to be exclusive, but when the money stops flowing there's no reason for them not to port it. On other hand, if it's that much more difficult logistically (and therefore financially) to port, why would publishers bother?
Allard was specifically referring to the hard drive, which I think we'd all agree has gone quite underutilized. Full Spectrum though is an excellent example though of how this strategy played out with Xbox Live. The US Army merely gave the developers of Full Spectrum a list of requirements. It had to be on console, it had to be able to be multiplayer, and it had to have realistic "trainable" AI. The Xbox is a no brainer here, particularly since when they developed FS Sony Online and barely transpired. I suppose one could speculate that the Army had a geographical preference ("Made" in America).
The other games listed are exclusive probably because of the hardware requirements or the ease in developing for the Xbox in relation to the PC. Not surprisingly, games using PC engines (like Splinter Cell, which uses the Unreal engine) have also been exclusive or at least came out well before a PS2 and Gamecube version. Another unsurprising characteristic that Xbox exclusives have shared is that they've almost all been western developers. The exception to this are the early Xbox Sega titles, which was probably just Sega pissed off at Sony. Tecmo/Team Ninja has been Xbox exclusive, but I think it's obvious that someone has a lot of extra money in their pockets for that deal
Which makes you wonder why the guys who developed these strategies in the inception of the Xbox have almost all been fired and replaced. I wonder what that bodes for Xbox2. If hardware is the key for Microsoft exclusives, then is giving Sony an extra year to buffer their system specs as the Xbox1 did really that smart?
This stuff is so outlandish I'm inclined to believe there's a javascript random rumor generator floating around the web that kicks in for the month preceding E3. It almost always begins with some kind of information from a Japanese developer or, in this case, a "Chinese BBS." It's the classic beginning to an urban legend. It's Asian, so it holds an air of reputability. At the same time, fewer people can just start researching this like we collectively did with the "Infinium Urban Legend." They have a picture, and in a community that orgasms a Doom III screenshot every three months, visuals are everything. Plus, people can comment on it and sound like they know what the hell they're talking about, as if they themselves worked on the machine.
Just to get this out the way so we don't take up anymore of Slashdot's not-so-precious bandwidth: Microsoft will announce that the Xbox2 will be released this year, will have a clock speed of 16ghz, and will be supported by ATI, IBM, and McDonald's. It will both have a hard drive, and not have a hard drive. Not only that, but they will be releasing Halo 1.5 within weeks following E3, and Halo 2 will be pushed back to the Xbox 2. Also, Microsoft will buying at least three major developers, not the least of which are Bioware, Valve, Blizzard, and Sega. And Nintendo. And maybe Sony. And probably Microsoft, if they're feeling particularly moody. These are all true, because a Thai website (Http://www.thaixxxmassage.com) posted it a few days ago after Bill Gates stopped by. Actually, it was Bill Gates' gardner. Or at least his friend. Relative of. The friend. Who lives in Thailand.
Boy, I sure hope this year's is better. I had a big booth for my game, "Win the Wicked," (selling for $49.99) and last year some weird Jewish guy with a whip came through the hall yelling and overturning tables everywhere. Something about his father's temple. WTF? Guy was on speed or something. Probably cost the developers at the conference a thousands of dollars each. The damage he caused to my equipment was why I had to push back the game a few months. Who did he think he was anyway, stopping me from selling my Christian games? This is America, a Christian country!
I hear they got an injunction against him this year though. For all the trouble he caused me, he could be rotting in a grave for all I care.
You can definitely see the progression of evil there in Anakin: the silver metallic optical lens, the ominous anti-Kenobi look, the Sith-like pinstriped dark silk material and proto-Imperial Regiment tie that could only have come at the cost of thousands of Jedi....kudos to the costume designers, they've really managed to capture the essence of evil in this new suit.
Ooohhh, you have to wait to see the new Darth Vader suit? Then what is that Yahoo picture in the story? Oh. It's George Lucas.
are there any other ways to get old DOS titles running easily?
/c, I would have shaved at least a half a year off my life.
Were they ever easy to run? I remember having multiple floppies for multiple autoexec.bat and config.sys configurations. Wing Commander; good god, was that a pain to deal with. I remember spending at least a good hour trying to get the right about of base memory to run X-Wing.
I think people forget just how much windows 95 changed gaming. The better the games, it seemed, the harder it was to get those suckers to run. The problem wasn't even having enough hardware to run it (although that was part of it). Most of the problem came from needing base memory to load mouse and sound drivers, but then the game always requiring some minimum amount of memory to run. I can't tell you how many times I saw something along the lines of:
"This program needs 514K free to run. You have 512K free."
If I had a special button on my keyboard that automatically entered memcheck
My "improved" analogy to include the crypto element would be the situation where someone threw a locked safe containing cash into my backyard. In my worldview - which I fully accept you may not share - it would be perfectly reasonable to crack the lock on that safe and take the cash.
What about your neighbor's wireless connection that he encrypts? Do they violate your physical space as well? Does he have to ask your permission before he sets it up? What about the cell phone conversations that float through your backyard? True, like DirecTV, the legality is still unclear on these specific issues, but is it ethical to listen in on cell phone conversations, or "borrow" internet bandwidth from your neighbor's encrypted wireless network, or worse, view the information he sends between him and his ISP?
Chip architect. If you have a good enough electron microscope, a wafer fab, and plenty of patience to write down where all those millions of transistors go, feel free
Done, and done. =)
If I don't want to pay the cable company, they refuse to send signal to my house.
So how does that analogy fit for the cell phone carrier waves that float through your house? What about CB radio waves? Riddle me this Batman: is it ethical for you to hack a neighbor's fully encrypted 802.11g wireless signal? I mean, it's floating through your house right? What about a cellphone signal that is going to his phone? Hell, it's in the air. Those signals are "invading" your house. Doesn't that piss you off? That your neighbor would have the nerve to set up an encrypted wireless signal that might float over into your yard? The nerve of him. And all cellphone carriers! Have they no decency?
They don't provide the signal "for free." No more than your neighbor provides wireless internet "for free." Even if it's in the air, and legal to intercept, there is still ethical and inethical. The legality of intercepting your neighbor's 802.11g signal is debatable, as is intercepting DirecTV signal not meant for you. However, while perhaps not illegal, it is unarguable that decrypting your neighbor's wireless signal is wrong. The same is also true of DirecTV.
I'm not saying their goon tactics for pirates are not dubious, or that they are justified in their coercion of potential pirates. But if that's the justificaion you're using to pirate the signal, pirating the signal of DirecTV accomplishes nothing except enabling you to watch WWE Cage Match XXXXIXI. If you truly believe DirecTV should not be around as a company, then what you should be doing is paying the cable company for television, or dish network.
And let's be honest here. Someone at Comcast is orgasming in his seat here as he (or she) reads over the Slashdot posts here. It must really float their boat to think that somehow they've managed to polarize public opinion against their competitor. So while you might think you're shafting it the man when you pirate DirecTV, the inevitable result is that you're hurting DirecTV, which is a competitor to another company. You're killing competition by pirating DirecTV.
And if you think the cable company is any better, I had a vist a month or two ago from a Brighthouse company representative (a new cable company here in town) who knocked on my door, accused me of stealing cable. I told him I was with DirecTV, and that the cable-coaxials were unconnected in the attic. He swore up and down that if I didn't stop pirating cable TV, he'd be able to fine me hundrds of dollars. I laughed and shut the door in his face, because I knew I was taking something for free that should have been paid for. Unlike, apparently, most of you.
I expect you to pay me $100 for receiving this sentence in your retina.
Oh geez. What a lame analogy. A correct one would have been an ecrypted sentence that said, "YOU CAN ONLY READ THIS BY PAYING $100 FOR A BROWSER PLUGIN TO READ THIS SENTENCE."
What people do to directv, with your analogy, would be to download the plugin off of kazaa for free, and then using it to decrypt your sentence. If had developed that sentence, and that sentence contained something of value to me, and you meant to be compensated, yes, yo should be paid $100. If didn't want to read it, the right thing to have done is just not read it, instead of downloading the plugin for free from kazaa.
Directv IS floating around in midair, but it is not like, "Whoops I accidently installed this dish on my roof. Oh dear, I must have set it to exactly the right azimuth and height. Oh oh! Look at this, my friend dropped of a dish receiver with -gasp- a decryption card that works that he must have dropped in here inadvertantly! Silly me! I seem to have fallen on the couch, I guess I have no choice to just have to sit here and watch tv I didn't pay for!!" Your sentence analogy has no bearing on DirecTV at all, and that's exactly the kind of illogical justification that directv pirates use to excuse their unethical behavior. By the way, what is your occupation, and if so, may I also accidently steal the results of your work?
I know I'm generalizing the slashdot community here, but I find it quite amusing that when someone posts something about how they freely download MP3s or games, a dozen anonymous cowards respond with some attempt at "You're stealing my job" or "You're a thief." The pro-piracy comments are often modded as trolls.
And yet, here, the highest modded comments on DirecTV stories are generally those that include some kind of variation of, "They're putting the airwaves in my backyard, I just happen to be catching them in my satellite dish!" Or, "It's not technically illegal to just capture it from the airwaves!" I think it's safe to say, this being slashdot, that some of these people are software engineers or the like. I wonder if these software engineers feel the same way about people in foreign countries who break no laws in their own countries but still pirate software.
Just because you can do something, even if it is not illegal, doesn't mean you should. I know this is unpopular to say, but you're still receiving something that the producers intended to receive compensation for. They are doing something, even if that is just retransmitting. Whereas FM radio and local stations do not expect compensation, DirecTV does, so the analogy that it's "in the air" doesn't really make sense ethically. If you think it's too much to pay for, patronize someone else or don't watch the TV. Just because DirecTV is a big company, or it's easy to take advantage of a service they're providing, doesn't mean it's right. Saying they're a big company and citing their scrupulous tactics is merely a justification, an excuse. It doesn't make stealing right. It might be cool to show off to your friends, it might even be legal, but receiving something you didn't pay for when the party providing the service fully expects compensation is stealing. I know DirecTV does some very questionable things, but like for like doesn't accomplish anything. Patronizing a competitor who does not utilize those tactics is ultimately far more effective than merely stealing service.
From Erik of oldmanmurray (may it RIP):
"People who don't watch TV love to mention it and never fail to pair that statement with the fact that they read books too. But as long as they're patting themselves on the back for simply not doing something, it seems to me that there are lots of worse things you could be taking credit for not doing. For instance, next time someone decides to lord over you the fact that he doesn't watch TV, go ahead and tell him "Good for you!" Then while everyone around you is reflecting on his massive intellect, up the awful-things-you-don't-do ante by mentioning that you don't rape people and then add that you watch lots of television instead. Not only does that make you a better person - after all what kind of psychotic jerkoff wastes his time not watching TV when he could be busy not commiting violent sex crimes? - but it gives you sort of an air of barely suppressed operatic rage, which makes you more like Batman."
linkified.
Yep, when I first started playing SC2 I thought that they completely ripped off Starflight and its sequel, but SC2 was just so good that you couldn't help but love it.
When the guys at Toys for Bob started their sourceforge remake of SC2, I emailed them and asked them about the connection. They responded that starflight was inspiration for SC2, and that the lead designer for SF (Greg Johnson, also of Toejam and Earl fame) and Paul of Toys for Bob had been good friends for a while. Greg Johnson did some voice acting on the 3DO version of SC2, so there's obvioulsy a connection.
The humor in the Starflight series is also similar, if much more subdued and not as overt. Still, if you enjoyed SC2 and are willing to endure some pixelation and the hassle of getting it to run in DosBox or something, the starflight series is still quite a playable game. Great plot too.
this fan site and Underdogs should get you started.