Indeed! Lighting has always been their biggest drawback. Their static lighting, even using lightmaps, is a FAR cry away from Dynamic Global Illumination.
Another thing the Eucliedian guys don't get is is that polygons are "good enough." Photorealism is a red herring of computer games. All the photorealism doesn't make a game FUN, only the potential to NOT break immersion. When game design breaks immersion the easiest all the photorealism in the world won't save it -- ironically, it makes it worst! What do you mean I can't climb that fence?
Cool tech of course with their compression for voxel data, but until they have real time dynamic lighting and global illumination... *yawn*.
> I often hear Blizzard criticized for not being original enough
That is definitely one criticism -- they just copy other people's gameplay and polish the art. They _used_ to have fun execution. Diablo 3 was a complete clusterfuck of bland and boring itemization
The other is the disrespect for player's time, and the constantly dumbing down and half-baked game play mechanics in all their latest games.
I can understand the "floaty" feel. If you want a more "tangible" world I would suggest game:
* Terraria
Yes, it is 2D but the gameplay smeggin rocks! The mechanics are ton of fun once you get over the initial dying. A progression of exploration, items, and challenging boss monsters.
You can play single player or multiplayer.
If you need help, I can suggest reddit.com/r/Terraria
Blizzard was know for polish, polish, polish. But with the fiasco over Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and the continued "dumbing down" of WoW they only care about 1 thing now: Profits.
I.e. The government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year - for total spending of $7 Million PER MINUTE and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money!?!?
Spending money to kill other people is NOT the solution to balance the budget.
> You can define whatever you want when you don't have to hold yourself to any standard of proof.
You do realize there two types of proof, right?
* Intellectual * Experiential
e.g. I know I AM a drummer because I CAN play the drums. I do, therefore I know.
Your fallacy is assuming proof of God is intellectual -- s/he is Experiential.
> No one says the energy of the physical universe has always existed.
Either:
a) it Has not always existed -- which violates the Laws of Thermodynamics that energy can't be created / destroyed, OR b) Has always existed -- which requires the same amount of faith that an Eternal God has always existed,
*Everyone* has Faith. If you didn't have faith in your beliefs then why do you have them in the first place??
> Watch Lawrence Krauss's lecture on how the universe came from nothing with mathematical proofs
So basically,
0 + "bullshit hand-waving" = 1
Do you even _understand_ the concept of _nothing_ ?? As in, no thing.
And he pulled all the various Laws of Physics out of his ass too?? Photons magically decided that their speed was exactly 299,792,458 m/s too, right?
> Physicists make hypotheses about how it could have happened and then predictions based on those hypotheses.
Prediction is only _half_ of proper science. Proper Science involves a hypothesis PLUS a repeatable experiment to test the prediction.
e.g. I burn 2x H2 + O2 --> 2x H2O, This happens 100% of the time. Not, oh, it only does it 99% of the time, or 1% of the time we get something different, But as in 100% deterministic.
The Scientific Method always about compares the Actual result with the Expected result. Without a repeatable experiment there is no expected resulted that behaves in the _exact_ same fashion as the actual result. Wikipedia points out the exact same problem with List of unsolved problems in Physics:
Some of the major unsolved problems in physics are theoretical, meaning that existing theories seem incapable of explaining a certain observed phenomenon or experimental result. The others are experimental, meaning that there is a difficulty in creating an experiment to test a proposed theory or investigate a phenomenon in greater detail.
* Simulating the behavior of the universe at time = 0 is not proper science as the model as _implicit_ assumptions. * Predicting how the creation of the observable universe happened has no repeatable experiment for verification; * Thought experiments (sic.) are not proper science as they don't teach you anything new. There is no "actual" to compare against.
> Sometimes you have to look past what your dogma tells you the world must be
As a mystic I no longer have dogma; I have knowledge via experience. Debating wither the Source / Eternal / God exists doesn't change the fact that s/he does.
-- "Religion follows the false Profits instead of teaching people how to become the true Prophet."
> you've got way more explaining to do on how god came from nothing as a fully formed
Why do you assume _your_ definition?? That is not the _standard_ definition of God:
God, much like "Now", is eternal. God has _always_ existed -- the exact same argument you are using for energy of the physical universe.
> The origin of the universe is well within the purview of science,
There are zero experiments one can repeat to demonstrate how the universe began. Without the ability to repeat an experiments you have at best, Philosophy, not Science. Or are you completely cluess how the Scientific Method works?
Programmers become 9-to-5'ers because of cynicism and pessimism. Why do your best effort when your project is just cancelled in one year because management doesn't understand "what business solution it provides" ??
Companies constantly fail to learn that it not only important to motivate people, it is extremely important to NOT de-motivate people.
There are 2 really insightful comments from last year which perfectly explain why older programmers become cynical:
"> What he's saying is that Apple has an actual functional internal milestone systems Exactly. Look, Apple designers have to come up with just as many bad ideas ad the Philips designers, but at Apple, they get killed of early. At Philips, they spend resources pulling those bad ideas along until they're almost ready to ship, and then decide which will die. It means most of the development cycle is a farce, and if the engineers/designers know there's a 90% chance that the thing they're working on will never be manufactured, it means you're not going to get their best, most serious effort.
If you find managers who can actually identify the best ideas when they're in an unfinished, formative state, then you can focus a lot more of your 'make this the best possible widget' energy on the good ideas and waste less time putting round corners on internet-connected razor blades."
and
"The big difference between Philips and Apple isn't whether projects are killed earlier or later.
The difference is how the projects come to be and reach these milestones.
Philips uses a "technology platform" system, or at least did during the time Tony was there. I don't know what they use now. That means someone in a technology division at the company develops a technology. Then they develop some platforms that use the technology. They then produce reference platforms or designs that use the technology. Then they take those reference designs around the company and try to find a product group in the company that wishes to ship a product like that.
The problem with this is that it is pushing a rope. You frequently will make up products that show off a technology but that few people would want to use let alone buy. This system was commonplace with companies at the time. You can still see this system if you look at something like dealextreme or meritline. You will see many companies (barely more than entrepreneurs in these cases) who make products simply because the technology lends itself to them, regardless of whether anyone would want to use it.
The big difference in how Apple did it, and still does it, is that Apple identifies a product people would want to use and doesn't currently exist or at least doesn't broadly exist in an easily usable form. Then Apple goes out and buys, develops or partners with a company to develop technologies that make that product work or work better. The company then evaluates the product before shipping it, deciding if the product is really something people would use. Rarely does the company have a change of heart about the basic product, but sometimes products get killed because the result doesn't really work in a way the customer would like it. For example, if a product doesn't work smoothly, it may be delayed until faster processors come along. The G5 MacBook Pro was fully developed and then killed because (among some other issues) the battery life was so short no one would f
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed! Lighting has always been their biggest drawback. Their static lighting, even using lightmaps, is a FAR cry away from Dynamic Global Illumination.
I'm much more impressed with Unreal Engine 4's realtime global illumination and and architecture real-time
Another thing the Eucliedian guys don't get is is that polygons are "good enough." Photorealism is a red herring of computer games. All the photorealism doesn't make a game FUN, only the potential to NOT break immersion. When game design breaks immersion the easiest all the photorealism in the world won't save it -- ironically, it makes it worst! What do you mean I can't climb that fence?
Cool tech of course with their compression for voxel data, but until they have real time dynamic lighting and global illumination ... *yawn*.
/Oblg.
Tony Albrecht's excellent Pitfalls of object orientated programing presentation.
> WoW's real game always only really starts at level cap.
So basically all the fun a person has while leveling doesn't count ??
That's crap and a total cop-out.
WoW has turned into one major grind-fest. Grind for gear while the next patch nullifies and obsoletes it. B_O_R_I_N_G.
According to Vivendi, (the original) World of Warcraft took 4.5 years to develop and cost $63,000,000 (63M).
I'm assuming Titan had similar production values.
Other people are estimating the same cost.
> How often does a new genre of gaming get created?
Pretty often in the 80's since the established genres were still being created! Today, not so much. Everything is cross genre these days.
id invented the First Person Shooter with Wolfenstein 3D (though purists might argue it was earlier
Doom settled the deal though: Doom Clone vs FPS
Colossal Cave Adventure was the first text adventure, but Infocom (with Zork) refined it.
> I often hear Blizzard criticized for not being original enough
That is definitely one criticism -- they just copy other people's gameplay and polish the art. They _used_ to have fun execution. Diablo 3 was a complete clusterfuck of bland and boring itemization
The other is the disrespect for player's time, and the constantly dumbing down and half-baked game play mechanics in all their latest games.
I can understand the "floaty" feel. If you want a more "tangible" world I would suggest game:
* Terraria
Yes, it is 2D but the gameplay smeggin rocks! The mechanics are ton of fun once you get over the initial dying. A progression of exploration, items, and challenging boss monsters.
You can play single player or multiplayer.
If you need help, I can suggest reddit.com/r/Terraria
I left shortly after the first expansion. I briefly checked out the Panda expansion and left again. You summed it up perfectly!
With the removal of lockpicking, and dumbing down poisons they really nerfed the whole feel of Rogues, etc.
Yeah, I would 100% concur with that analysis.
Blizzard was know for polish, polish, polish. But with the fiasco over Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, and the continued "dumbing down" of WoW they only care about 1 thing now: Profits.
Exactly. We don't have a collection problem, we have an outradeous spending problem.
Federal Budget Death & Taxes:
2004
2007
2008
2009
2011
2012
I.e. The government collect more tax dollars from the people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion dollars more than it has per year - for total spending of $7 Million PER MINUTE and complain that it doesn't have nearly enough money!?!?
Spending money to kill other people is NOT the solution to balance the budget.
> So...as an American can we borrow a few of your ideas?
What do you mean? American already did ...
* First Electric Light Bulb
* Basketball
* Heart Pacemaker
* JAVA
* Garbage Bags
* Radio Broadcast
* Portable Walkie Talkie
* Insulin Process
* Newspaper
* Kerosene
* Wondebra
* Odometer
References:
* http://www.dealathons.com/blog...
* http://mentalfloss.com/article...
> You can define whatever you want when you don't have to hold yourself to any standard of proof.
You do realize there two types of proof, right?
* Intellectual
* Experiential
e.g. I know I AM a drummer because I CAN play the drums. I do, therefore I know.
Your fallacy is assuming proof of God is intellectual -- s/he is Experiential.
> No one says the energy of the physical universe has always existed.
Either:
a) it Has not always existed -- which violates the Laws of Thermodynamics that energy can't be created / destroyed, OR
b) Has always existed -- which requires the same amount of faith that an Eternal God has always existed,
*Everyone* has Faith. If you didn't have faith in your beliefs then why do you have them in the first place??
> Watch Lawrence Krauss's lecture on how the universe came from nothing with mathematical proofs
So basically,
0 + "bullshit hand-waving" = 1
Do you even _understand_ the concept of _nothing_ ?? As in, no thing.
And he pulled all the various Laws of Physics out of his ass too?? Photons magically decided that their speed was exactly 299,792,458 m/s too, right?
> Physicists make hypotheses about how it could have happened and then predictions based on those hypotheses.
Prediction is only _half_ of proper science. Proper Science involves a hypothesis PLUS a repeatable experiment to test the prediction.
e.g. I burn 2x H2 + O2 --> 2x H2O, This happens 100% of the time. Not, oh, it only does it 99% of the time, or 1% of the time we get something different, But as in 100% deterministic.
The Scientific Method always about compares the Actual result with the Expected result. Without a repeatable experiment there is no expected resulted that behaves in the _exact_ same fashion as the actual result. Wikipedia points out the exact same problem with List of unsolved problems in Physics:
* Simulating the behavior of the universe at time = 0 is not proper science as the model as _implicit_ assumptions.
* Predicting how the creation of the observable universe happened has no repeatable experiment for verification;
* Thought experiments (sic.) are not proper science as they don't teach you anything new. There is no "actual" to compare against.
> Sometimes you have to look past what your dogma tells you the world must be
As a mystic I no longer have dogma; I have knowledge via experience. Debating wither the Source / Eternal / God exists doesn't change the fact that s/he does.
--
" Religion follows the false Profits instead of teaching people how to become the true Prophet. "
/Oblg. "What it is like to own an Apple product" comic ... http://theoatmeal.com/comics/a...
That's the problem with fish stories -- they smell and get bigger every time they are told. :-)
Can we get this in perspective please?
How many phones does Samsung and Google sell every time there is a new Android phone?
> you've got way more explaining to do on how god came from nothing as a fully formed
Why do you assume _your_ definition?? That is not the _standard_ definition of God:
God, much like "Now", is eternal. God has _always_ existed -- the exact same argument you are using for energy of the physical universe.
> The origin of the universe is well within the purview of science,
There are zero experiments one can repeat to demonstrate how the universe began. Without the ability to repeat an experiments you have at best, Philosophy, not Science. Or are you completely cluess how the Scientific Method works?
Thanks for the reminder that Big Bang Theory starts tonight !
> By which definition?
As we all know Energy can not be created nor destroyed yet Science tells us "magically" the universe came into existence from _nothing_.
Religion says the Source / Eternal / God has _always_ existed. Ergo, God is the ultimate source / cause of _everything_.
Second, Science by definition is amoral. Ergo, it is incomplete. A absolutely wonderful system but it has its limits to what it can (and can't know.)
Reminds me of that old joke/cliche:
"In theory there isn't any difference between Theory and Practice.
In practice, there is."
* Science = Theory
* Engineering = Application
When _you_ start paying for _my_ internet access THEN we'll talk.
Otherwise Fuck Off with your entitlement attitude.
nVidia is like intel, you pay for performance.
Very, very happy with GTX Titan and 780Ti for low noise and performance.
Someone needs to mod this up.
And also figure out how to hack the driver to increase the limit back up to 6.
Indeed.
The Life Cycle of the Internet.
"Those who fail to learn the lessons of the past are condemned to repeat them."
Indeed.
My hosts file (across my Windows, Linux, and OSX) machines have been using the excellent MSVP hosts (http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm) for years.
Plus, it speeds up internet browsing instead of having the browser ping 10+ different domains.
I bet the marketing team would have a hay day:
"Music -- you would die for."
Too bad they can't promise good taste.
> I think I am starting to see the effects of complacency. In my current job, I have a development manager
Why do you think the Peter Principle and Dilbert Principle got coined? :-)
Programmers become 9-to-5'ers because of cynicism and pessimism. Why do your best effort when your project is just cancelled in one year because management doesn't understand "what business solution it provides" ??
Companies constantly fail to learn that it not only important to motivate people, it is extremely important to NOT de-motivate people.
There are 2 really insightful comments from last year which perfectly explain why older programmers become cynical:
http://apple.slashdot.org/stor...
and