Writing a webservice or application shell for the game is the same as writing a complete second interface for the game, which I do not have time to do or properly support at this point. (It's a one-man show, and that only in my spare time on the weekends.)
Sure, in theory, eventually the AJAX that's being used could be translated to a more standardized webservice, but the difference is between having something for the hobbyists to play with now vs. hoping for something to play with in a year or more when I'm able to devote time to standardizing that better.
Writing an application that parses out the webservice bits correctly, prevents users from doing illegal things (which *are* trapped on the server side, but still - client-side input validation is a nice perk), loads in the visual resources and displays them correctly, etc. takes more time than the hobbyists can afford, when all they want/need to do is wrap the game and add tiny bits of functionality over time as they think them up.
As an aside, the environment they're used to programming in is VB.Net, which is why a drop-in ActiveX webview control is what's desired. Like I said, though - strictly hobbyist programmers.
I agree with the idea that ActiveX should be kept off websites, though. My game is all AJAX/DHTML for the client side (PHP/MySQL on the backend, for the curious). Woot!
In my specific case, I run a webgame that other hobbyist programmers are looking to design a front-end for (which, in turn, will get detected by Xfire for tracking hours and such). What's more, they're looking to extend the functionality of what I'm providing. Think of a MUD front-end, and you'll have the general idea.
The hobbyist programmers lack the time or knowledge to write a custom app around this from scratch, and interfacing directly with the (ever changing) webside implementation is too burdensome. Having a simple web container that they can drop in to a quick application, and manipulate to get information out of the DOM is exactly what they need to meet these goals, so there's no reason *not* to do it this way.
There are other applications, too, many of which may be just as unexpected. Do try not to be so quick to dismiss the need for this sort of thing.
This is only tangentially related to the Qt 4.4 release, but it seems to me that, when combined with ActiveQT, this theoretically provides the first ActiveX wrapper around WebKit. This sort of thing would enable hobbyist C# or VB users to quickly get web-driven applications up and running.
As I understand it, at current ActiveQT is only available under the paid licenses, which makes it difficult to create a F/OSS Windows application that uses such a control (which I happen to want to do).
Are there any ActiveX wrappers to WebKit out there (whether using Qt or not) that are suitable for use in F/OSS projects, or - failing that - any other drop-in ways to get a standards compliant browser pane up and running?
You know, they're called "Soap Operas" for a reason. It's because the early dramas were funded primarily by detergent manufacturers in some of the earliest - and most effective - product placement programs.
This is a very, very old idea that seems to make the rounds every so often. No doubt, this will get tiresome after a couple decades, and the next generation will have this "radical" new idea to encapsulate the advertisements in separate spots rather than integrating them into the programs, and everyone will scoff at what a ludicrous suggestion that is. I mean, won't people just turn off the radio? Er, TV? Er, webpage?
Relatedly, Mark Morris from Introversion recently participated in a free-form Q&A chat over at Xfire, along with a couple of other Indie games people of varying noteriety. He's got some interesting comments about Introversion's rise in there.
You can read the transcript from the Q&A over at Xfire's site. This was part of a two-day event talking about the state of independant development, with the more structured debate (which, alas, Introversion was unable to attend) transcript available here. Jenova Chen (of fl0w fame), Amanda Fitch (Aveyond, etc.), and Josiah Pisciotta (Gish, etc.) were all notable participants; not to say the others weren't notable, too, of course.;)
Definitely worth looking at if you're into the indie gaming scene at all.
Every time I see one of these lists, I can't help but take a moment to mention the project I'm working on in my spare time, PseudoQuest. It's a humorous casual RPG, written entirely by just me in PHP/MySQL/JavaScript/AJAX (well, as much as anything can be "written" in AJAX;) ). Free to play, supported by players buying in-game clothing and other non-game-related stuff. Still in open Beta, so please excuse the mess.
Also, this article is well-timed, since Xfire is putting on a series of chats with a handful of people from the indie game community next week. On the 24th is a freestyle chat to ask the guests anything, and the 25th is a structured debate about the future of indie gaming. More details can be found on the Xfire website. Guests include Jay Barnson of Rampant Games, Jenova Chen of Fl0w fame, Josiah Pisciotta who helped create Gish, several other big names in the indie scene, as well as yours truly (clearly the odd man out... heh).
Oh, sure, it's a bit of shameless self-promotion, but I encourage anyone who enjoys turn-based pseudo-RPGs like LORD or KoL to check it out. It's a free casual RPG I'm writing in my spare time, at least in part as an exercise in stretching what's possible to do with PHP and AJAX. So... maybe not a "flash game" per se, but fits the general theme of casual games one can play over their lunch.;)
My favorite line from the article has to be this one: "The new mileage estimates mean it will take longer to recoup that extra cost in money saved on gas."
...as though magically everyone's car suddenly starts eating up more gasoline just because the EPA changed their ratings system. It suggests to me that they should just revise their estimates upwards, so that everyone can save that money they'd be spending on gas. If we made it high enough, we could eliminate our dependance on foreign oil! Clearly, the EPA is in it with big oil to keep the little man down. Jerks.
The article is full of lines like this. For example, they have some random guy quoted in an email as saying that he didn't trust the Prius ratings and that a Corolla got just as good of mileage. They have a table listing various MPG ratings from the EPA, so one might think that including the Corolla to corroborate this random guy's story would be a good idea. Not this author, though. I mean, that aside from picking some random guy from the internet to use as a key quote to support the idea that the EPA guidelines aren't precisely commensurate with people's actual results.
All that said, I suppose I'm just expecting too much from Wired.;)
Just be sure to attach my nick, and I'm fine with it! Feel free to correct the minor typo at the end in the quote, too.;) (Some people neglect to post anonymously at 4am, others miss an 'a' in 'reasonably')
Scattered throughout the world is an invisible compound called "pixie dust". It permeates the air, and is the primary component of the "magic smoke" that computers are made of. Because computers are naturally attuned to this pixie dust, they tend to work better whenever there are larger concentrations of it around.
Now, most normal people have a regular bathing and hygeine schedule. All this showering and teeth-brushing washes off whatever trace amounts of pixie dust they've accumulated throughout the day. Computer geeks, on the other hand, have no time for such fivolities as "showering". There's code to be written, dammit!
As a result, the pixie dust in the air naturally builds up on and around computer geeks. Whenever the intrepid geek gets near a computer, some of that dust shakes off, thereby increasing the local density of the stuff in the air. Picture Pigpen from Peanuts, only he's exuding a cloud of invisible dust that makes computers work better instead of mobile filth. Other properties of the filth cloud are probably unaffected in many cases, though.
This reasoning also explains why it is that computers will continue to work for a while after the geek has declared the computer working and left - it takes time for the air to circulate all that extra pixie dust away, so the computers have a while to be positively influenced by it. After a sufficient amount of time, though, it wears off and the computer goes back to its insufficient ambient levels, and thereby stops working again.
See? It's all perfectly reasonbly explained. Science!
It can't be the only song to crack the top 40 - there had to have been 39 others there already! And besides, you didn't give a link to the song, so how can I download it?
Er, no wait. That's not right at all. I'll tell you what - I'll just grab a spare hyphen from my giant bag of them here, and you're free to use it wherever you like in the headline that makes it mean what you intended.
A fine, upstanding gentleman: Dearest, skilled lady... wouldst thou join me in mine bedchambers for some chaste frolicking? Skilled lady: Alas! No, I must not! For thou art neither truly updstanding, nor the gentleman thou claim'st to be. Now, leav'st me be posthaste!
This just makes me think of David Sedaris' essay "Six to Eight Black Men", where he comments (briefly) on this phenomenon in Michigan. The essay can be read here, but really it's better listened to (Episode 201, Act 2) - for whatever reason, his writing is always experienced better when read by him.
It seems a reasonable investment, when you think of it. They're targeting the highly desirable "ISS astronaut" market, and everyone knows how much fried chicken those guys eat. They're insatiable!
The tried-and-true little yellow foam jobbies are great if you only need them once, and your budget is around $0.03. However, if you're going to be wearing them for longer, or if you are the sort of person that goes to a lot of concerts or clubs, there are better solutions.
One set that I highly, highly recommend are made by Etymotic Research, specifically their ER*20 High Fidelity Earplugs. They're comfortable, and sound isn't "muffled" by them. That is, going out to a club or a concert, the music sounds as good as it would without the plugs, only it's more comfortable. From experience, I can say that wearing them is literally like just turning down the volume on the world. Two people wearing these can even carry on a normal conversation in a noisy environment, provided they speak up sufficiently; I'd always found that the little yellow jobbies destroyed the sound enough to make conversations difficult at best.
Other earplugs more suited to long-term wear exist from a variety of manufacturers, and some quick google searching can help you find those. It's one of those things that, before I was introduced to these earplugs by an audiologist friend of mine, I would never have suspected existed out there.
My theory is that there is an increased amount of public discourse possible now, due to social and technological changes, and that rates of these traits have been more or less the same throughout history (though the expression of the behaviours may have been suppressed somewhat in especially repressed areas/timeframes). The fact that people are more aware of something now and also discuss it more now does not automatically mean that it's more prevalent than it was in the past.
The same also applies for people who say "There's just so much more war and trouble in the world now than there used to be!", who somehow gloss over everything before they came of age (whenever that time period may have been). They weren't aware of the tremendous amount of strife going on in the world prior to gaining an understanding of it, and the media certainly wasn't up to snuff for the earlier part of their lives for the older segment of the population that feels this way.
Of course, I've drifted off topic now a bit. I'll bring it back on track in closing by indicating that I feel it much more likely that increased obesity rates are causing a decrease in the amount of free testosterone in the body (as indicated by other posts in this thread) than to think of some elaborate ill-defined system wherein the population as a whole is reacting to the environmental stress of overpopulation. Not that the latter doesn't occur - increased aggression in response to overpopulation is well documented in rats, for example - but more that I don't think we're anywhere near the levels of environmental stress required to trigger such a change, if such a change were even a possible outcome of that. The population simply isn't dense enough, nor resources scarce enough for that population to effect such a change. If it ever gets to the point that the majority of Americans are fighting it out in the streets for food, I'd be more willing to accept your theory as relevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Time.
Writing a webservice or application shell for the game is the same as writing a complete second interface for the game, which I do not have time to do or properly support at this point. (It's a one-man show, and that only in my spare time on the weekends.)
Sure, in theory, eventually the AJAX that's being used could be translated to a more standardized webservice, but the difference is between having something for the hobbyists to play with now vs. hoping for something to play with in a year or more when I'm able to devote time to standardizing that better.
Writing an application that parses out the webservice bits correctly, prevents users from doing illegal things (which *are* trapped on the server side, but still - client-side input validation is a nice perk), loads in the visual resources and displays them correctly, etc. takes more time than the hobbyists can afford, when all they want/need to do is wrap the game and add tiny bits of functionality over time as they think them up.
As an aside, the environment they're used to programming in is VB.Net, which is why a drop-in ActiveX webview control is what's desired. Like I said, though - strictly hobbyist programmers.
I agree with the idea that ActiveX should be kept off websites, though. My game is all AJAX/DHTML for the client side (PHP/MySQL on the backend, for the curious). Woot!
As it turns out, there are valid cases for this.
In my specific case, I run a webgame that other hobbyist programmers are looking to design a front-end for (which, in turn, will get detected by Xfire for tracking hours and such). What's more, they're looking to extend the functionality of what I'm providing. Think of a MUD front-end, and you'll have the general idea.
The hobbyist programmers lack the time or knowledge to write a custom app around this from scratch, and interfacing directly with the (ever changing) webside implementation is too burdensome. Having a simple web container that they can drop in to a quick application, and manipulate to get information out of the DOM is exactly what they need to meet these goals, so there's no reason *not* to do it this way.
There are other applications, too, many of which may be just as unexpected. Do try not to be so quick to dismiss the need for this sort of thing.
This is only tangentially related to the Qt 4.4 release, but it seems to me that, when combined with ActiveQT, this theoretically provides the first ActiveX wrapper around WebKit. This sort of thing would enable hobbyist C# or VB users to quickly get web-driven applications up and running.
As I understand it, at current ActiveQT is only available under the paid licenses, which makes it difficult to create a F/OSS Windows application that uses such a control (which I happen to want to do).
Are there any ActiveX wrappers to WebKit out there (whether using Qt or not) that are suitable for use in F/OSS projects, or - failing that - any other drop-in ways to get a standards compliant browser pane up and running?
You know, they're called "Soap Operas" for a reason. It's because the early dramas were funded primarily by detergent manufacturers in some of the earliest - and most effective - product placement programs.
This is a very, very old idea that seems to make the rounds every so often. No doubt, this will get tiresome after a couple decades, and the next generation will have this "radical" new idea to encapsulate the advertisements in separate spots rather than integrating them into the programs, and everyone will scoff at what a ludicrous suggestion that is. I mean, won't people just turn off the radio? Er, TV? Er, webpage?
I can hear it already:
;) )
Yo está apesadumbrado, podría usted descargar el Internet sobre esto?
And for once, it'll actually make sense!
(If the translation sucks, blame babelfish.
The human brain really is a fascinating thing, and capable of really amazing feats, if you think about it.
Obg. Emo Philips:
"I used to think that the brain was the most interesting part of the body. But, then I thought 'look who's telling you that.'"
Relatedly, Mark Morris from Introversion recently participated in a free-form Q&A chat over at Xfire, along with a couple of other Indie games people of varying noteriety. He's got some interesting comments about Introversion's rise in there.
;)
You can read the transcript from the Q&A over at Xfire's site. This was part of a two-day event talking about the state of independant development, with the more structured debate (which, alas, Introversion was unable to attend) transcript available here. Jenova Chen (of fl0w fame), Amanda Fitch (Aveyond, etc.), and Josiah Pisciotta (Gish, etc.) were all notable participants; not to say the others weren't notable, too, of course.
Definitely worth looking at if you're into the indie gaming scene at all.
Every time I see one of these lists, I can't help but take a moment to mention the project I'm working on in my spare time, PseudoQuest. It's a humorous casual RPG, written entirely by just me in PHP/MySQL/JavaScript/AJAX (well, as much as anything can be "written" in AJAX ;) ). Free to play, supported by players buying in-game clothing and other non-game-related stuff. Still in open Beta, so please excuse the mess.
Also, this article is well-timed, since Xfire is putting on a series of chats with a handful of people from the indie game community next week. On the 24th is a freestyle chat to ask the guests anything, and the 25th is a structured debate about the future of indie gaming. More details can be found on the Xfire website. Guests include Jay Barnson of Rampant Games, Jenova Chen of Fl0w fame, Josiah Pisciotta who helped create Gish, several other big names in the indie scene, as well as yours truly (clearly the odd man out... heh).
Easy. I'd crush those puny earthling senators and representatives beneath my mighty iron fist! GWARHARHARHAR!
Oh, sure, it's a bit of shameless self-promotion, but I encourage anyone who enjoys turn-based pseudo-RPGs like LORD or KoL to check it out. It's a free casual RPG I'm writing in my spare time, at least in part as an exercise in stretching what's possible to do with PHP and AJAX. So... maybe not a "flash game" per se, but fits the general theme of casual games one can play over their lunch. ;)
Now go kill some slimes! http://www.pseudoquest.com/
The Doritos are a lie.
My favorite line from the article has to be this one:
...as though magically everyone's car suddenly starts eating up more gasoline just because the EPA changed their ratings system. It suggests to me that they should just revise their estimates upwards, so that everyone can save that money they'd be spending on gas. If we made it high enough, we could eliminate our dependance on foreign oil! Clearly, the EPA is in it with big oil to keep the little man down. Jerks.
;)
"The new mileage estimates mean it will take longer to recoup that extra cost in money saved on gas."
The article is full of lines like this. For example, they have some random guy quoted in an email as saying that he didn't trust the Prius ratings and that a Corolla got just as good of mileage. They have a table listing various MPG ratings from the EPA, so one might think that including the Corolla to corroborate this random guy's story would be a good idea. Not this author, though. I mean, that aside from picking some random guy from the internet to use as a key quote to support the idea that the EPA guidelines aren't precisely commensurate with people's actual results.
All that said, I suppose I'm just expecting too much from Wired.
o/~ Nobody doesn't like molten boron! o/~
I'm just not sure why it was posted, as it's also not new - it was invented over 50 years ago.
/. for ya.
That's
There's an easy acronym for that one, too; just remember "GGNPCLSCPPPELIIFMJRC". Simple!
Just be sure to attach my nick, and I'm fine with it! Feel free to correct the minor typo at the end in the quote, too. ;) (Some people neglect to post anonymously at 4am, others miss an 'a' in 'reasonably')
No, see there's nothing magical about it.
Scattered throughout the world is an invisible compound called "pixie dust". It permeates the air, and is the primary component of the "magic smoke" that computers are made of. Because computers are naturally attuned to this pixie dust, they tend to work better whenever there are larger concentrations of it around.
Now, most normal people have a regular bathing and hygeine schedule. All this showering and teeth-brushing washes off whatever trace amounts of pixie dust they've accumulated throughout the day. Computer geeks, on the other hand, have no time for such fivolities as "showering". There's code to be written, dammit!
As a result, the pixie dust in the air naturally builds up on and around computer geeks. Whenever the intrepid geek gets near a computer, some of that dust shakes off, thereby increasing the local density of the stuff in the air. Picture Pigpen from Peanuts, only he's exuding a cloud of invisible dust that makes computers work better instead of mobile filth. Other properties of the filth cloud are probably unaffected in many cases, though.
This reasoning also explains why it is that computers will continue to work for a while after the geek has declared the computer working and left - it takes time for the air to circulate all that extra pixie dust away, so the computers have a while to be positively influenced by it. After a sufficient amount of time, though, it wears off and the computer goes back to its insufficient ambient levels, and thereby stops working again.
See? It's all perfectly reasonbly explained. Science!
Uunartoq Qeqertoq - Finally! Something to do with all those Q's and U's in Scrabble!
Download Only Song to Crack the Top 40
It can't be the only song to crack the top 40 - there had to have been 39 others there already! And besides, you didn't give a link to the song, so how can I download it?
Er, no wait. That's not right at all. I'll tell you what - I'll just grab a spare hyphen from my giant bag of them here, and you're free to use it wherever you like in the headline that makes it mean what you intended.
A translation for the weak of leet:
A fine, upstanding gentleman: Dearest, skilled lady... wouldst thou join me in mine bedchambers for some chaste frolicking?
Skilled lady: Alas! No, I must not! For thou art neither truly updstanding, nor the gentleman thou claim'st to be. Now, leav'st me be posthaste!
This just makes me think of David Sedaris' essay "Six to Eight Black Men", where he comments (briefly) on this phenomenon in Michigan. The essay can be read here, but really it's better listened to (Episode 201, Act 2) - for whatever reason, his writing is always experienced better when read by him.
It seems a reasonable investment, when you think of it. They're targeting the highly desirable "ISS astronaut" market, and everyone knows how much fried chicken those guys eat. They're insatiable!
Xfire (being an MTVN property now) has a bunch of events set up for this, too:
http://www.xfire.com/cms/xf_gamersweek06/
The tried-and-true little yellow foam jobbies are great if you only need them once, and your budget is around $0.03. However, if you're going to be wearing them for longer, or if you are the sort of person that goes to a lot of concerts or clubs, there are better solutions.
One set that I highly, highly recommend are made by Etymotic Research, specifically their ER*20 High Fidelity Earplugs. They're comfortable, and sound isn't "muffled" by them. That is, going out to a club or a concert, the music sounds as good as it would without the plugs, only it's more comfortable. From experience, I can say that wearing them is literally like just turning down the volume on the world. Two people wearing these can even carry on a normal conversation in a noisy environment, provided they speak up sufficiently; I'd always found that the little yellow jobbies destroyed the sound enough to make conversations difficult at best.
Other earplugs more suited to long-term wear exist from a variety of manufacturers, and some quick google searching can help you find those. It's one of those things that, before I was introduced to these earplugs by an audiologist friend of mine, I would never have suspected existed out there.
My theory is that there is an increased amount of public discourse possible now, due to social and technological changes, and that rates of these traits have been more or less the same throughout history (though the expression of the behaviours may have been suppressed somewhat in especially repressed areas/timeframes). The fact that people are more aware of something now and also discuss it more now does not automatically mean that it's more prevalent than it was in the past.
The same also applies for people who say "There's just so much more war and trouble in the world now than there used to be!", who somehow gloss over everything before they came of age (whenever that time period may have been). They weren't aware of the tremendous amount of strife going on in the world prior to gaining an understanding of it, and the media certainly wasn't up to snuff for the earlier part of their lives for the older segment of the population that feels this way.
Of course, I've drifted off topic now a bit. I'll bring it back on track in closing by indicating that I feel it much more likely that increased obesity rates are causing a decrease in the amount of free testosterone in the body (as indicated by other posts in this thread) than to think of some elaborate ill-defined system wherein the population as a whole is reacting to the environmental stress of overpopulation. Not that the latter doesn't occur - increased aggression in response to overpopulation is well documented in rats, for example - but more that I don't think we're anywhere near the levels of environmental stress required to trigger such a change, if such a change were even a possible outcome of that. The population simply isn't dense enough, nor resources scarce enough for that population to effect such a change. If it ever gets to the point that the majority of Americans are fighting it out in the streets for food, I'd be more willing to accept your theory as relevant.