I grabbed this for my iPhone recently. The size may be excessive, but they're using some very high quality art assets, and have a variety of levels (I'm not sure how many).
I've always been extremely skeptical about first person games being playable on the iPhone, but I think id totally nailed this one. It works well not because they found a good way for you to control your movement and view, but because they took movement out of the equation. The "on rails" style like the old arcade shooters with the plastic guns may be antiquated on other platforms, but it works great on the iPhone as a quick and fun, but also very high quality, game. The controls felt almost immediately natural and I was able to focus on learning to better avoid injury and manage my ammo. The graphics are also fantastic, better than I expected, even after trying out Epic Citadel earlier.
For anyone wondering how this relates to the Rage game for PC that's still on the way, this is basically a mini-game. You are a contestant who is sent in to a location full of mutants with the task of clearing it out and surviving. (Think FPS Madworld on rails, complete with an announcer.) Along the way your character passes by ammo, health, and money pick-ups, and some you have to be quite fast to grab. Each level also has 50 bulls-eye targets scattered everywhere that you can shoot for bonus points, though even on Easy it's difficult to hit them all. There are even some cinematics (which appear to be rendered in real-time despite their high quality - it's hard to tell though, might be pre-rendered) featuring the grotesque man in charge of this show, who also provides a running commentary on your skills. Completing levels unlocks new ones, though all the levels I've seen so far are very similar in color palette so this doesn't feel like a big deal.
It's actually quite a fun little game, despite being a little disappointed that there aren't really any story elements in it. But well worth it for anyone who at least occasionally plays games on their iPhone or just wants to see the surprising potential in high-end iPhone games.
These aren't just PvP mounts. The new epic (level 60) mounts have these graphics, and the PvP mounts are black colored version of the epic mounts. This seems good to me, since then you can still have the same badass kind of mount, but in a unique type. Also, the PvP mounts are 90g instead of 1000g.
This GimpShop looks awesome, but it requires GTK+. So how do I go about installing GTK+ on a Windows machine? (people say Windows is simple, but I find many more headaches in Windows than Linux)
In visiting this page I've found a copy of GTK+ which should supposedly work, but how do I install it? It seems this line is the current latest and most appropriate:
glib-2.4.7.zip. Runtime of GLib 2.4.7. Requires libiconv and gettext-runtime.
There's a program for Windows called Actual Title Buttons which was on version 2.5 as of October 2003, and appears to have been around since 2002. Here's the site for it.
I got the N64+PSX adapter, and it works great. This is the first time I've ever owned any PlayStation system (I've been enjoying my GameCube too thoroughly for 12+ games to care about a PS2 ^_^ But I finally got one so I'd have an extra DVD player and be able to play DDR), so I never really noticed, but the controller is perfect for SNES games. It's got the perfect layout and shape, and even has an extra L and R button which I set to the fast-forward button. Very slick. Unfortunately I don't have the right N64 controllers to work with the adapter (for some reason only certain colors work - Nintendo seems to be so piracy-paranoid that they make all their controllers work differently), but I'm looking forward to getting a new one for my N64 games, since a PS2 controller would work, but not very well.
The game Shattered Galaxy has fantastic cooperation. Although I suppose it should, it's a team game by design. It's an MMORTS (the first ever, despite what the makers of Belerium or whatever it's called think [an MMORTS which isn't even out yet]) where the opposing sides (every player is in one of the factions - at the moment each planet has three factions) engage in a battle somewhere on the world map. Each part of the world map is divided in to provinces, and the provinces where the battle starts becomes the battle field (which brings out a lot of worldmap-scale strategy elements). Each faction is allowed up to 16 people in (there's also a balancing system so that if one team is all very low level people they can let more people in to keep the battles balanced), and they battle not to kill each other, but for control of Points of Contention (called POCs for short). These are captured by standing on them for a certain amount of time (from 30 seconds to a minute depending on how many are on the map - 1 POC on a map means it's at least a minute, so the map isn't too easy), during which of course the enemy will focus all their attention on destroy the people on that POC. So then you have people who need defensive units to try to focus fire on a POC (for instance with heavy artillery or carpet bombing which is otherwise difficult to make effective use of, but is excellent for POC defense), people who try to focus on toughness to withstand the beating necessary to capture the POCs, people to specifically attack the defenders, and people to defend those defenders, and then you have a huge amount of teamwork already. Then there's also considerations over timing strategy (each battle has a limit of around 16 minutes from when it begins, and there's usually a final push at the end, but some strategies play on that expectance and do things differently), where your units enter the battle (there's specific points where any units can enter a map, and which units can enter where is effected by who owns which provinces on the worldmap), and of course general cooperation to have an effective combination of units at the end of the battle when the sparks fly, while trying to match the enemy's strategies. That alone brings out a ton of strategy and cooperation, but then they also have regiments (SG's version of Guilds or Clans) which let people cooperate in larger numbers.
Regiments also have something around them which isn't in other MMOs I've played: politics. Sure, there's a little bit of politics in some others, but here I mean there's tons of politics. Each faction is headed by an Overlord is elected by the populace (every paying character over level 6 has 1 vote [and yes, you can play the game without paying, you just don't get as many options as paying players]), and that Overlord has sole control over the faction's council. The council can have up to 13 members, and each member is a regiment leader. This keeps regiments as something special, unlike all the MMORPGs where there's a million guilds, an some only with a few people who want their own chat channel. The council members also get special powers, like 20% bonus HP, the ability to punish abusive players (punished players get stuck in the capital), and the ability to shout (send a message to everyone in the entire faction, rather than the usual options of a personal message, talking out loud [everyone in the current province can hear], or talking over regiment chat). So they can become quite important for faction-wide announcements, or sometimes faction-wide coordination (which is always fun). Since the Overlord and Council Members have these powers and are so important the elections are a very big deal. You see all the politics you see in real life too. Like promises of taking certain actions, putting certain people on council or taking them off (some people run for OL based largely on publicly promising to disband a particular regiment which is disliked by others), and things get very interesting. And once someone is an
I will now procede to ignore everything everyone just said about MUDs I should check out, out of fear that I could entirely cease to have any outside life.
This generation of consoles is already waining, and the GC definately did not die. Nintendo released some of the best games on any console, and did them exclusively, and continued to make money. They may not be the powerhouse they once were, but they're still making some fantastic games (overall I decided that Metroid Prime was the best gaming experience I've ever had), and are unveiling some new hardware soon, and definately still look to be around for a while. I for one plan to continue buying every console with a Nintendo logo on it for as long as I can. B)
> Maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of the end of this mess.
While I certainly hope so, I wouldn't trust it. Rather I think we should remain warry. One possibility is that this was always in the plan. Another is that they may just be trying to get the Linux community off their back, seeing how much the community has been probing every aspect of the case debunking everything they can get their hands on. I personally will be hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
A fantastic site for this stuff, and very highly thought of in the Tolkien language community (yes, it exists, stop laughing.:P Language is a profession taken more seriously in Europe you know) is Ardalambion. Here the author has compiled a ton of info on all of Tolkien's many languages (even ones that are not related to the world of Middle-earth), and even a course to learning the Elvish language Quenya! Very cool stuff.:) Also, I have a handy quick-and-dirty reference guide to Tolkien at my site here: http://jerek.deciv.com/tolkien.htm.
Indeed, if you wrote english in this it would be like trying to write English with, say, Arabic letters. With some substitutions and alterations (Elvish uses different consonants and vowels than English does obviously) it's possible, although it's still English, and wouldn't even be using the alphabet technically properly, since you'd have to change things to get it to work. Tolkien devised his own method for writing English in the Tengwar (as well as with the Cirth - Dwarvish Runes), and that's what people follow (the great majority of the time) whe writing English with the Tengwar, but it still is written differently than real Quenya or Sindarin (the two most well known and developed Elvish languages).
>Elvish has all the structure of a real language (loosely based on Finnish, I seem to remember).
Actually it wasn't based on Finnish at all, but rather inspired by it. It has it's own structure, just like any other language. Quenya was (in some ways) meant to capture the beauty that Tolkien saw in the Finnish language. In the early versions of Quenya he did use some loanwords from Finnish, but those were of course all replaced. Also there are many fundamental differences besides simple words (since it is, of course, it's own language). The modern (or "completed" if you prefer, although he never actually finished them) version have no connections with any real languages. If you get to really know the internal linguistic history of Tolkien's languages you can see how their world was meant to connect to ours (hint: in the LotR movies the Rohirrim speak a real language).
For some great info on the relationship between the Elvish languages and real world languages (primarily Finnish), check out this great article: http://www.sci.fi/~alboin/finn_que.htm
Since the movie is written by the creator of Dude, Where's My Car? and its forthcoming sequel called, uhm, Seriously Dude, Where's My Car?, hilarity is 'bound' to ensue
Slashdot Mirror
I grabbed this for my iPhone recently. The size may be excessive, but they're using some very high quality art assets, and have a variety of levels (I'm not sure how many).
I've always been extremely skeptical about first person games being playable on the iPhone, but I think id totally nailed this one. It works well not because they found a good way for you to control your movement and view, but because they took movement out of the equation. The "on rails" style like the old arcade shooters with the plastic guns may be antiquated on other platforms, but it works great on the iPhone as a quick and fun, but also very high quality, game. The controls felt almost immediately natural and I was able to focus on learning to better avoid injury and manage my ammo. The graphics are also fantastic, better than I expected, even after trying out Epic Citadel earlier.
For anyone wondering how this relates to the Rage game for PC that's still on the way, this is basically a mini-game. You are a contestant who is sent in to a location full of mutants with the task of clearing it out and surviving. (Think FPS Madworld on rails, complete with an announcer.) Along the way your character passes by ammo, health, and money pick-ups, and some you have to be quite fast to grab. Each level also has 50 bulls-eye targets scattered everywhere that you can shoot for bonus points, though even on Easy it's difficult to hit them all. There are even some cinematics (which appear to be rendered in real-time despite their high quality - it's hard to tell though, might be pre-rendered) featuring the grotesque man in charge of this show, who also provides a running commentary on your skills. Completing levels unlocks new ones, though all the levels I've seen so far are very similar in color palette so this doesn't feel like a big deal.
It's actually quite a fun little game, despite being a little disappointed that there aren't really any story elements in it. But well worth it for anyone who at least occasionally plays games on their iPhone or just wants to see the surprising potential in high-end iPhone games.
"a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4695495. stm">News Corp announced on Monday that
Whoopsies, giant typo.
Wait, so did they just say DoD:Source is out? The lack of DoD:Source is the only reason I haven't installed my collector's edition of HL2 yet...
These aren't just PvP mounts. The new epic (level 60) mounts have these graphics, and the PvP mounts are black colored version of the epic mounts. This seems good to me, since then you can still have the same badass kind of mount, but in a unique type. Also, the PvP mounts are 90g instead of 1000g.
PvP Honor ranks and corresponding rewards listed here.
:(
Official images of PvP armor sets Wow, sexy.
Official images of the new mounts
Official listing of PvP weapons No pics though.
This GimpShop looks awesome, but it requires GTK+. So how do I go about installing GTK+ on a Windows machine? (people say Windows is simple, but I find many more headaches in Windows than Linux)
In visiting this page I've found a copy of GTK+ which should supposedly work, but how do I install it? It seems this line is the current latest and most appropriate:
glib-2.4.7.zip. Runtime of GLib 2.4.7. Requires libiconv and gettext-runtime.
Now that's a sexy desktop. I think I may be switching from Blackbox now.
There's a program for Windows called Actual Title Buttons which was on version 2.5 as of October 2003, and appears to have been around since 2002. Here's the site for it.
I prefer Decivilization. :P
Might as well spend an extra $49 then and get it new with a GBA Player. But if you're really strangling for cash $50 would be a good deal.
I got the N64+PSX adapter, and it works great. This is the first time I've ever owned any PlayStation system (I've been enjoying my GameCube too thoroughly for 12+ games to care about a PS2 ^_^ But I finally got one so I'd have an extra DVD player and be able to play DDR), so I never really noticed, but the controller is perfect for SNES games. It's got the perfect layout and shape, and even has an extra L and R button which I set to the fast-forward button. Very slick. Unfortunately I don't have the right N64 controllers to work with the adapter (for some reason only certain colors work - Nintendo seems to be so piracy-paranoid that they make all their controllers work differently), but I'm looking forward to getting a new one for my N64 games, since a PS2 controller would work, but not very well.
*fingers crossed* Please-oh-please-oh-please-oh-please-oh-please-oh- please-oh-please-oh-please-oh-please-oh-please...
Maybe if game developers could dream up a genre other than fantasy, problems like this would be averted...
Blatant plug for Shattered Galaxy
The game Shattered Galaxy has fantastic cooperation. Although I suppose it should, it's a team game by design. It's an MMORTS (the first ever, despite what the makers of Belerium or whatever it's called think [an MMORTS which isn't even out yet]) where the opposing sides (every player is in one of the factions - at the moment each planet has three factions) engage in a battle somewhere on the world map. Each part of the world map is divided in to provinces, and the provinces where the battle starts becomes the battle field (which brings out a lot of worldmap-scale strategy elements). Each faction is allowed up to 16 people in (there's also a balancing system so that if one team is all very low level people they can let more people in to keep the battles balanced), and they battle not to kill each other, but for control of Points of Contention (called POCs for short). These are captured by standing on them for a certain amount of time (from 30 seconds to a minute depending on how many are on the map - 1 POC on a map means it's at least a minute, so the map isn't too easy), during which of course the enemy will focus all their attention on destroy the people on that POC. So then you have people who need defensive units to try to focus fire on a POC (for instance with heavy artillery or carpet bombing which is otherwise difficult to make effective use of, but is excellent for POC defense), people who try to focus on toughness to withstand the beating necessary to capture the POCs, people to specifically attack the defenders, and people to defend those defenders, and then you have a huge amount of teamwork already. Then there's also considerations over timing strategy (each battle has a limit of around 16 minutes from when it begins, and there's usually a final push at the end, but some strategies play on that expectance and do things differently), where your units enter the battle (there's specific points where any units can enter a map, and which units can enter where is effected by who owns which provinces on the worldmap), and of course general cooperation to have an effective combination of units at the end of the battle when the sparks fly, while trying to match the enemy's strategies. That alone brings out a ton of strategy and cooperation, but then they also have regiments (SG's version of Guilds or Clans) which let people cooperate in larger numbers.
Regiments also have something around them which isn't in other MMOs I've played: politics. Sure, there's a little bit of politics in some others, but here I mean there's tons of politics. Each faction is headed by an Overlord is elected by the populace (every paying character over level 6 has 1 vote [and yes, you can play the game without paying, you just don't get as many options as paying players]), and that Overlord has sole control over the faction's council. The council can have up to 13 members, and each member is a regiment leader. This keeps regiments as something special, unlike all the MMORPGs where there's a million guilds, an some only with a few people who want their own chat channel. The council members also get special powers, like 20% bonus HP, the ability to punish abusive players (punished players get stuck in the capital), and the ability to shout (send a message to everyone in the entire faction, rather than the usual options of a personal message, talking out loud [everyone in the current province can hear], or talking over regiment chat). So they can become quite important for faction-wide announcements, or sometimes faction-wide coordination (which is always fun). Since the Overlord and Council Members have these powers and are so important the elections are a very big deal. You see all the politics you see in real life too. Like promises of taking certain actions, putting certain people on council or taking them off (some people run for OL based largely on publicly promising to disband a particular regiment which is disliked by others), and things get very interesting. And once someone is an
Everyone please take note of (and sign) the petition for Fallout 3.
I will now procede to ignore everything everyone just said about MUDs I should check out, out of fear that I could entirely cease to have any outside life.
;)
P.S.: Check out Avatar.
This generation of consoles is already waining, and the GC definately did not die. Nintendo released some of the best games on any console, and did them exclusively, and continued to make money. They may not be the powerhouse they once were, but they're still making some fantastic games (overall I decided that Metroid Prime was the best gaming experience I've ever had), and are unveiling some new hardware soon, and definately still look to be around for a while. I for one plan to continue buying every console with a Nintendo logo on it for as long as I can. B)
> Maybe, just maybe, this is the beginning of the end of this mess. While I certainly hope so, I wouldn't trust it. Rather I think we should remain warry. One possibility is that this was always in the plan. Another is that they may just be trying to get the Linux community off their back, seeing how much the community has been probing every aspect of the case debunking everything they can get their hands on. I personally will be hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst.
A fantastic site for this stuff, and very highly thought of in the Tolkien language community (yes, it exists, stop laughing. :P Language is a profession taken more seriously in Europe you know) is Ardalambion. Here the author has compiled a ton of info on all of Tolkien's many languages (even ones that are not related to the world of Middle-earth), and even a course to learning the Elvish language Quenya! Very cool stuff. :) Also, I have a handy quick-and-dirty reference guide to Tolkien at my site here: http://jerek.deciv.com/tolkien.htm.
:)
Enjoy, all ye pursuers of Elvish.
>A substitution code is not a language!
Indeed, if you wrote english in this it would be like trying to write English with, say, Arabic letters. With some substitutions and alterations (Elvish uses different consonants and vowels than English does obviously) it's possible, although it's still English, and wouldn't even be using the alphabet technically properly, since you'd have to change things to get it to work. Tolkien devised his own method for writing English in the Tengwar (as well as with the Cirth - Dwarvish Runes), and that's what people follow (the great majority of the time) whe writing English with the Tengwar, but it still is written differently than real Quenya or Sindarin (the two most well known and developed Elvish languages).
>Elvish has all the structure of a real language (loosely based on Finnish, I seem to remember).
Actually it wasn't based on Finnish at all, but rather inspired by it. It has it's own structure, just like any other language. Quenya was (in some ways) meant to capture the beauty that Tolkien saw in the Finnish language. In the early versions of Quenya he did use some loanwords from Finnish, but those were of course all replaced. Also there are many fundamental differences besides simple words (since it is, of course, it's own language). The modern (or "completed" if you prefer, although he never actually finished them) version have no connections with any real languages. If you get to really know the internal linguistic history of Tolkien's languages you can see how their world was meant to connect to ours (hint: in the LotR movies the Rohirrim speak a real language).
For some great info on the relationship between the Elvish languages and real world languages (primarily Finnish), check out this great article: http://www.sci.fi/~alboin/finn_que.htm
Yes, I'm a big fat nerd. I even have my own page on Tolkien: http://jerek.deciv.com/tolkien.htm
That odd wet noise you hear is the sound of Linux users around the world wetting their pants with joy.
...potentially bringing artists a great deal of money if their songs are featured on million-selling games.
Whoops, typo. Here's the fix:
...potentially bringing the RIAA a great deal of money if their songs are featured on million-selling games.
What will happen to that old favorite saying "dumb as a brick"? I think we'll have to revise this (for some people) to "dumber than a brick."
Since the movie is written by the creator of Dude, Where's My Car? and its forthcoming sequel called, uhm, Seriously Dude, Where's My Car?, hilarity is 'bound' to ensue
Dude, where's my money back?