Oh please. Like Randi is the bastion of objective, constructive criticism, and logical thinking. He's a pseudo skeptic at best and a closed-minded dishonest irrational rationalists at worst.
> As an agnostic, I have to point out the logical error of asserting that god does not exist. +1 for being logical.
> The only logically sound argument that does not fall victim to the fallacy is to assert ignorance of that which is provably unknowable. > The only rational answers to the "god" question are: > 1) "Unknowable" > 2) "not relevant"
-2 for ignoring the 3rd option and committing a logical fallacy: Just because _you_ don't know God, doesn't mean she is unknowable. As a gnostic/mystic, you don't know God because you don't Know Yourself. At least the agnostics are honest enough to admit they don't know [anything.] The ignorance of the Atheists and Theists is that they don't know anything and pretend to -- AND -- can't understand that God _is_ knowable. They are too busy arguing "yes does exist", "no doesn't exist", instead of BEING god because their definition of God is incomplete.
-- The only "proof" of God you'll ever get [while human] is when you are dead, because experience(s) of God is not proof.
An option Out-Of-The-Box to have Photoshop key bindings / hotkeys.
If your users have to fuck around searching the Net for an alt. build / config just to set the default keys to something they are already familiar with, you're screwed.
> And the photoshop people still don't switch, because it doesn't have their favourite plugin.
No, they don't switch because GIMP is crap. I have a PSD created in 2003 that GIMP still can't render properly...
Wake me up when GIMP supports... - 16-bit/channel - Effect Layers - implements ALL the PS layer blend modes - Layer Groups (nested layers) - fixes it stupid name
> Oh right, no kind of faith. That's kinda what "faith" means.
I'll probably get down-modded for pointing out your ignorance, and I know that faith is the atheist's F word around here, but you are sadly confused that there is only one type of faith. There is a world of difference between blind faith and real faith.
FACT: If you have beliefs, you have faith.
You have faith that your little set of beliefs is "good enough." I presume that over the course of your lifetime you have changed your beliefs as you have learnt to accept higher forms of truth, and learned to let go of falsehoods.
If you don't have faith in your beliefs, then WHY do you have your beliefs in the first place?!
e.g. You have _faith_ that the Scientific process leads us to a better understanding of [how] the universe [works.] I _implore_ you to prove this! If not, you are simply taking the value of Science on faith!
You have _faith_ that the Sun will come up tomorrow. Probability & Statistically speaking the odds are dam near 100%. However, this is faith, not a fact. And just so you grok it: The Wright Brothers had _faith_ that their _airplane_ would fly. They didn't have any proof until AFTER they demonstrated it.
Stop confusing blind faith with real faith.
-- Dark Matter and Dark Energy is the aether of the 20th/21st century.
I would argue those are really the only 2 exceptions to the rule. (All though you can certainly by a used car for only a few thousand.)
If you save up for something, you tend to enjoy it longer. There is extreme satisfaction in reaching (long-term) goals, but general society wants everything now, now, now, regardless of the cost (pardon the pun.)
>> There is certainly room for copy and paste in programming. > No there isn't. > This is probably one of the only hard rules in programming.
At the risk of sounding like an asshole, you're an fucking idiot and/or myopic. Just because _you've_ have never found a need for it, doesn't mean other people have legitimate needs. e.g. I run Ubuntu inside a VM; I need to copy/paste code snippets from our app that works in the host machine to inside the VM, since it we are cross-compiling for an altogether hardware. Due to hardware differences and compiler differences I need to tweak the code for performance for the target machine. Once it is working properly, I copy/paste the code snippets back outside the VM to verify/check performance and it compiles clean.
Would I say copy/paste code is common? No. But just because you almost never use it, doesn't mean, that when you DO need to use, that it isn't handy.
TFA says: Once we removed the contamination, we found that this sample is almost 100 million years younger than we expected," says researcher James Connelly of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation.
Come on/., doesn't anybody verify facts / articles anymore ??
"You do see a lot of hackers using Mac OS X these days and I think that's a little bit unfortunate and probably there are many reasons why they do that, but that's not immediately what you might think of as a super hacker-focused OS."
Gee, you think people get tired of constantly tweaking this and that, fixing broken apps/models, relearning a UI, and just want shit to work as they get older, so they can work on other things? Go figure!
"There's always things when you look back that you wish you would have had a little more time to finish or polish."
Why does an open-source project have a deadline?? The point of open-source is that _you_ as a developer decide when it is ready, not customers/shareholders/marketing dictating your release schedule.
I work on a open source project. If a feature takes a year to do, we take the time to do it right, rather then hack something up that "works now", but needs to be re-written later.
He said it three times... I just listened to this last week, so it was still fresh, and relatively easy to find.:-) Here is a partial transcript. In-Joy!
@42:36 One of the things that we were doing in our production side of things for cranking out our build games to rebuild all the games. @42:44 when we build our virtual textures for the dynamic stuff, it is this process that @42: 49 at one point it just took hours. I rewrote it to be such a way that it used huge amounts of memory mapped files and it got down much much faster @42:59 but it really started swapping on any system that we had. @43:02 So we said "Well let's find out what the actual limitations here are." @43:07 So we took one of our servers and we put 192 gigabytes of ram in it @43:12 And it, so [it] was like $5000. We used to spend more then $5000 on a desktop PC. You know we had $10,000 workstations back in the day. @43:22 But 192 _gigabytes_ of ram. And, I think back, OK 128 _bytes_ of RAM in the Atari 2600; 192 _gigabytes_ of RAM being used to build this. You know, greater then a factor of a billion. Now that is stretching from before my time to a server grade system here. That is 9 order of magnitude.
> PvP was an afterthought for WoW. Blizzard stumbled with it for years, doing massive nerfs, causing players to adapt to "Flavor of the Month" type game play, where you would just work on whatever class suited the system the best.
Does WoW still only have 1 talent configuration that is used for BOTH PvE and PvP or can you setup two talent specs: one geared for PvE and and one for PvP.
Diablo 2 half-ass solved this problem of having certain skills being over-powered / under-powered by changing the damage/effects if the target was a monster or human.
> Name mangling is outside the scope of the C++ standard.
Yeah, lets avoid the problem, by ignoring it. Real helpful ! NOT. And back in the real world, when you need to link multi-language objects you are the mercy of the compiler vendors. Is it really that difficult to communicate with other language implementations and reach a de facto standard or common consensus??
You're a blind man asking for proof of color. Go look up what the word "gnostic" means. While you're there, look up what "a posteriori knowledge" means. And just in case you have trouble grokking the concept, here's an example: If you are a man, you will _never_ understand what it is truely like to give birth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori
The only way to know God is to first "Know Thyself." Anybody who is says else wise, is trying to sell you something.
- Do not force shared data formats for exclusive purposes http://macton.posterous.com/do-not-force-shared-data-formats-for-exclusiv "However, Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) have perpetuated this misguided belief that there is an ideal abstract data form where all transformations are given equal weight*. "
The largest problem is that C++ is over-engineered (designed by committee.) Its like people don't know how to say no. I figure it will be 2040 before C++ removes the ass-backwards compatibility of 'long long', 'short', 'long double', etc. nonsense. How many more years do we have to wait before we get _one_ standard on name mangling??
Corporations/Companies are based on the greed of creating artificial separations of liability in order to maximize profit. Before they were created in 1347, people used "Trusts" to do business for the past few thousand years... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
> The principal of science is that you seek truth through observable, repeatable experiments. That is only _one_ way to seek truth. The ignorance of Scientists is that they believe there is only the _logical_ way to understand truth.
> except for Noah, his sons, and all of their spouses along with two of each animal is ludicrous. Only a spiritual idiot would try to read "Holy Scripture" in a literal fashion. Contradictions and Absurdities were _intentionally_ placed so one couldn't do this.
> Religions claim to "know" things and require absolutely no proof at all other than faith; which is belief without evidence. Every scientists has just as much faith as the religious person. You have faith in the _process_ of Science that it will lead you closer to the truth.
> Does all of this mean God doesn't exist? No. Its just that there is no evidence for me of them existing, FTFY. Just because _you_ haven't found evidence, doesn't mean there is none.
Both Theism, and Atheism are based on total ignorance of God. Only the gnostic/mystic _knows_ God. By definition.
> if something "comes and goes" on a quantum level, faster than the universe can usefully notice,
That's a relatively good explanation but I would change "faster than the universe can usefully notice" to "because the physical universe/reality is digital (Time & Space have been quantized) then something can exists at a higher frequency and not break any physical laws."
Fenyman hinted at this when he said there really is only 1 particle. It is moving so fast that it only spends a fraction of its "lifetime" in the physical universe.
Sure, I've been writing down some of my notes collectively called "Fundamental Properties of Game Design." I've been meaning to get this chapter jotted down for a while so thanks for providing some motivation!
A matter of perspective - "Frame of Reference" in games.
Let's do two little experiments:
1. Quick, sort the weapons based on damage from least damaging to most damaging for this game: - Neutron gun, Plasma gun, Graviton gun, Proton gun, Laser, and Tachyon gun.
2. Again quickly, sort the armor based on defense from least protection to most protection for this game: - Scale, Chain mail, Cloth, Plate, and Leather.
Aside from the scale/chain, most gamers would be able to do the second quite easily; the first one, not so easily. Unless you've played something like Freelancer, or Privateer, you have no clue which type of sci-fi weapon is better. Are we looking just at damage over time, burst damage, efficiency, penetration, some combination, etc.?
Why?
Because you are able to take your real world knowledge and apply it in the game world. You have a "frame of reference" upon which to draw upon to help you decide which one you should use. i.e. Plate is big and heavy -- it provides a lot of protection but also restricts movement the most. Leather has a balance of protecting somewhat while still allowing some movement. Cloth restricts movement the least and it also protects the least. Unless you are a theoretical particle physicist you have NO clue if a Graviton gun is better then the Tachyon gun.
People often confuse "Realism" with a "Frame of Reference." For example they will say "This game isn't "realistic" but what they _really_ mean to say is "I have no frame of reference to draw upon. These items are effectively a foreign language to me. I have no way to translate it into my native understanding."
I always find it funny when people complain about realism in a game. "This (e.g. dragon) isn't realist!". I say, "Oh? You've met a dragon in real life that you know how it behaves, how it acts, how it inter-acts, etc., that you are a bona-fide expert?:-)" The point isn't that dragon's don't inhabit the earth, but that the gamer has had his immersion broken -- either due to false beliefs how he thinks the game _should_ work, or the game designer has failed to convey and/or properly implement _logical consistency_ such as physics, etc.
The classic example is playing a spellcaster and intentionally (or unintentionally) casting a fireball spell at a pine tree. Now aside from the initial explosion at the point of contact, the tree is completely impervious to fire and all know combinations thereof. Yes, we know it is expensive to simulate reality, but dam-it, if you are going to put me into a virtual world AND make it _look_ like the real one, you had better _convey_ WHY your world does not obey the normal Laws of Physics. Color code the dam tree purple or something. If you want to maintain the realistic (flammable) green color, then at least name the tree something 'foreign' like "Densewood" or "Phyrewood" so the player can gauge, "Hmm, guess this tree isn't easily flammable." Yes, frame of reference works against creativity, but that's what makes a good designer -- knowing when to use the familiar, and when to use the new.
One of my biggest pet peeves in game design is a game not providing you with ANY feedback about what you can or can't do. I'm talking about the annoying "invisible walls" that everyone hates. Let's say I'm walking up a hill / mountain and about half-way up I can no longer move up. No matter if I move slow, or crouch, I can't climb this dam mountain. This is a classic case of a designer who doesn't understand "Frame of Reference." Could you at least change the "ground texture" so I can visually SEE that the slope is too great for me to climb? Why are you _unable_ and/or _unwilling_ to simply stick a partially 'prohibited sign' around "out of bounds areas", like L4D does in Versus mode. (
> It's true - graphics aside, the original Team Fortress was head and shoulders better than Team Fortress Classic or TF2. Though the speed and smoothness of gameplay, I guess, is secondary to modern day users.
WTF -- can I have some of what you are smoking please!
The _original_ TF was a mod for Quake 1. I quickly switch to a Mega-TF; the gameplay in Mega TF was MUCH better, the gameplay in TF was crap.
TF2 is a great re-invention, better then the original TF.
The _only_ thing I miss from the original is the hard-core Quake TF Training map -- when you had to gren jump up insane heights, jump over insane teleporters, and wall-jump to get up floors.
> GPS can't change those who don't use it -- and I expect there are a lot more who don't than do. Sounds like something to worry about later, if at all...
I don't use GPS and don't plan to. These days I look at Google Maps on the iPhone, and it is "good enough." There is nothing to worry about because I have basic map skills. i.e. I used to do deliveries in Greater Vancouver to help pay for my university education. I never got lost. I had one of those big honkin map books, _read_ the map book, and planned my to-from route BEFORE I set off. These days people have become so dependent on technology that they can't even manage basic skills of *gasp* reading a map, figuring out where they are, and what direction they need to head to get to their destination.
> Realism is important > Because it gives a referential to your actions, which allows to put them into perspective and make them more meaningful. How many roleplaying games _require_ you to eat every few hours??? They don't because micro-managing your stomach _detracts_ from the core gameplay. Realism is NOT fun, for the most part.
Your mistake is that you are confusing the "Red Herring of Realism" with "Frame of Reference" and "Logical Consistency"
Realism in game design is a _tool_ that helps immerse the player by giving them "What to expect", but it bogs the players down in _details_ that they usually don't want to baby-sit. The eating in role-playing games, is a perfect example.
> You can also better identify with the character you're playing if it's realistic enough. Total Nonsense.
1. You have obviously never played Grand Theft Auto 3 -- your avatar _never_ talks. Ironically, by Rockstar _not_ providing a voice for your character, you are drawn _more_ into identifying with him.
> So it's a very important characteristic to have for a game that involves roleplaying, in one way or another. Like any rule, there is a time and a place for it. You are playing a _game_, not a _simulation_.
e.g. Forcing the player to only be able to hold X items, because of carrying (weight) capacity or backpack volume, is more about forcing the player to make a choice of "What do I keep? What do I throw away?" then about realism.
> hey didn't magically drop out of the sky, they were created for a reason. I have no idea what it is, because the creators didn't tell me, but I think they should, because then I have some idea of what to expect from the game, and what to judge it on.
That is optional & orthogonal to good games. In the same way you don't need to know the Author's Life Story for -Why- he wrote a book/film/painting/song you don't _need_ to know the reasons of the Game Developers to enjoy the art for what it is. Now, knowing the backstory _may_ enhance your experience, but to _demand_ that programmers + designers + artists present the context of why they created the game in the first place is absurd -- Do you really want to listen to 200+ people tell you why they created the game the way they did?? I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting, but just enjoy the dam game, instead of getting hung up on details that don't matter.
We have "genre" labels for a reason -- to be able to quickly sort through the "type" of games, so you can make a quick judgement if that type of game is one you will enjoy.
Slashdot Mirror
I love logic as much as the next guy, but ...
Oh please. Like Randi is the bastion of objective, constructive criticism, and logical thinking. He's a pseudo skeptic at best and a closed-minded dishonest irrational rationalists at worst.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/Page30.htm
> As an agnostic, I have to point out the logical error of asserting that god does not exist.
+1 for being logical.
> The only logically sound argument that does not fall victim to the fallacy is to assert ignorance of that which is provably unknowable.
> The only rational answers to the "god" question are:
> 1) "Unknowable"
> 2) "not relevant"
-2 for ignoring the 3rd option and committing a logical fallacy: Just because _you_ don't know God, doesn't mean she is unknowable. As a gnostic/mystic, you don't know God because you don't Know Yourself. At least the agnostics are honest enough to admit they don't know [anything.] The ignorance of the Atheists and Theists is that they don't know anything and pretend to -- AND -- can't understand that God _is_ knowable. They are too busy arguing "yes does exist", "no doesn't exist", instead of BEING god because their definition of God is incomplete.
--
The only "proof" of God you'll ever get [while human] is when you are dead, because experience(s) of God is not proof.
Forgot the most important option!
An option Out-Of-The-Box to have Photoshop key bindings / hotkeys.
If your users have to fuck around searching the Net for an alt. build / config just to set the default keys to something they are already familiar with, you're screwed.
> And the photoshop people still don't switch, because it doesn't have their favourite plugin.
No, they don't switch because GIMP is crap. I have a PSD created in 2003 that GIMP still can't render properly ...
Wake me up when GIMP supports ...
- 16-bit/channel
- Effect Layers
- implements ALL the PS layer blend modes
- Layer Groups (nested layers)
- fixes it stupid name
> Oh right, no kind of faith. That's kinda what "faith" means.
I'll probably get down-modded for pointing out your ignorance, and I know that faith is the atheist's F word around here, but you are sadly confused that there is only one type of faith. There is a world of difference between blind faith and real faith.
FACT: If you have beliefs, you have faith.
You have faith that your little set of beliefs is "good enough." I presume that over the course of your lifetime you have changed your beliefs as you have learnt to accept higher forms of truth, and learned to let go of falsehoods.
If you don't have faith in your beliefs, then WHY do you have your beliefs in the first place?!
e.g.
You have _faith_ that the Scientific process leads us to a better understanding of [how] the universe [works.] I _implore_ you to prove this! If not, you are simply taking the value of Science on faith!
You have _faith_ that the Sun will come up tomorrow. Probability & Statistically speaking the odds are dam near 100%. However, this is faith, not a fact. And just so you grok it: The Wright Brothers had _faith_ that their _airplane_ would fly. They didn't have any proof until AFTER they demonstrated it.
Stop confusing blind faith with real faith.
--
Dark Matter and Dark Energy is the aether of the 20th/21st century.
Sharing cupcakes?
WTF?
> So nobody should buy cars or live in houses?
I would argue those are really the only 2 exceptions to the rule. (All though you can certainly by a used car for only a few thousand.)
If you save up for something, you tend to enjoy it longer. There is extreme satisfaction in reaching (long-term) goals, but general society wants everything now, now, now, regardless of the cost (pardon the pun.)
>> There is certainly room for copy and paste in programming.
> No there isn't.
> This is probably one of the only hard rules in programming.
At the risk of sounding like an asshole, you're an fucking idiot and/or myopic. Just because _you've_ have never found a need for it, doesn't mean other people have legitimate needs.
e.g.
I run Ubuntu inside a VM; I need to copy/paste code snippets from our app that works in the host machine to inside the VM, since it we are cross-compiling for an altogether hardware. Due to hardware differences and compiler differences I need to tweak the code for performance for the target machine. Once it is working properly, I copy/paste the code snippets back outside the VM to verify/check performance and it compiles clean.
Would I say copy/paste code is common? No. But just because you almost never use it, doesn't mean, that when you DO need to use, that it isn't handy.
TFA says: Once we removed the contamination, we found that this sample is almost 100 million years younger than we expected," says researcher James Connelly of the Centre for Star and Planet Formation.
Come on /., doesn't anybody verify facts / articles anymore ??
"You do see a lot of hackers using Mac OS X these days and I think that's a little bit unfortunate and probably there are many reasons why they do that, but that's not immediately what you might think of as a super hacker-focused OS."
Gee, you think people get tired of constantly tweaking this and that, fixing broken apps/models, relearning a UI, and just want shit to work as they get older, so they can work on other things? Go figure!
"There's always things when you look back that you wish you would have had a little more time to finish or polish."
Why does an open-source project have a deadline?? The point of open-source is that _you_ as a developer decide when it is ready, not customers/shareholders/marketing dictating your release schedule.
I work on a open source project. If a feature takes a year to do, we take the time to do it right, rather then hack something up that "works now", but needs to be re-written later.
What am I missing??
He said it three times... I just listened to this last week, so it was still fresh, and relatively easy to find. :-) Here is a partial transcript. In-Joy!
@42:36 One of the things that we were doing in our production side of things for cranking out our build games to rebuild all the games.
@42:44 when we build our virtual textures for the dynamic stuff, it is this process that
@42: 49 at one point it just took hours. I rewrote it to be such a way that it used huge amounts of memory mapped files and it got down much much faster
@42:59 but it really started swapping on any system that we had.
@43:02 So we said "Well let's find out what the actual limitations here are."
@43:07 So we took one of our servers and we put 192 gigabytes of ram in it
@43:12 And it, so [it] was like $5000. We used to spend more then $5000 on a desktop PC. You know we had $10,000 workstations back in the day.
@43:22 But 192 _gigabytes_ of ram. And, I think back, OK 128 _bytes_ of RAM in the Atari 2600; 192 _gigabytes_ of RAM being used to build this. You know, greater then a factor of a billion. Now that is stretching from before my time to a server grade system here. That is 9 order of magnitude.
> Then you should come to our server! We are pretty much nothing but a server of socializers!
Sounds interesting... Which server?!
> PvP was an afterthought for WoW. Blizzard stumbled with it for years, doing massive nerfs, causing players to adapt to "Flavor of the Month" type game play, where you would just work on whatever class suited the system the best.
Does WoW still only have 1 talent configuration that is used for BOTH PvE and PvP or can you setup two talent specs: one geared for PvE and and one for PvP.
Diablo 2 half-ass solved this problem of having certain skills being over-powered / under-powered by changing the damage/effects if the target was a monster or human.
> Name mangling is outside the scope of the C++ standard.
Yeah, lets avoid the problem, by ignoring it. Real helpful ! NOT. And back in the real world, when you need to link multi-language objects you are the mercy of the compiler vendors. Is it really that difficult to communicate with other language implementations and reach a de facto standard or common consensus??
You're a blind man asking for proof of color. Go look up what the word "gnostic" means. While you're there, look up what "a posteriori knowledge" means. And just in case you have trouble grokking the concept, here's an example: If you are a man, you will _never_ understand what it is truely like to give birth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_priori_and_a_posteriori
The only way to know God is to first "Know Thyself." Anybody who is says else wise, is trying to sell you something.
> C++ is a powerful and pragmatic, but ugly and dangerous language.
Agreed. I love C++ (worked on a professional C++ compiler for a brief stretch), but C++ also sucks.
Mike Acton has documented why C++ continues to sucks.
- Typical C++ Bullshit
http://macton.smugmug.com/gallery/8936708_T6zQX#593426709_ZX4pZ
- Do not force shared data formats for exclusive purposes
http://macton.posterous.com/do-not-force-shared-data-formats-for-exclusiv
"However, Object-Oriented Design (OOD) and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) have perpetuated this misguided belief that there is an ideal abstract data form where all transformations are given equal weight*. "
The largest problem is that C++ is over-engineered (designed by committee.) Its like people don't know how to say no. I figure it will be 2040 before C++ removes the ass-backwards compatibility of 'long long', 'short', 'long double', etc. nonsense. How many more years do we have to wait before we get _one_ standard on name mangling??
Cheers
> They did not mention the most important metric of all. Profit.
Oh please. Try age. Come back to me when any _one_ of those companies has been around for 300+ years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson's_Bay_Company
Corporations/Companies are based on the greed of creating artificial separations of liability in order to maximize profit. Before they were created in 1347, people used "Trusts" to do business for the past few thousand years...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation
> The principal of science is that you seek truth through observable, repeatable experiments.
That is only _one_ way to seek truth. The ignorance of Scientists is that they believe there is only the _logical_ way to understand truth.
> except for Noah, his sons, and all of their spouses along with two of each animal is ludicrous.
Only a spiritual idiot would try to read "Holy Scripture" in a literal fashion. Contradictions and Absurdities were _intentionally_ placed so one couldn't do this.
> Religions claim to "know" things and require absolutely no proof at all other than faith; which is belief without evidence.
Every scientists has just as much faith as the religious person. You have faith in the _process_ of Science that it will lead you closer to the truth.
> Does all of this mean God doesn't exist? No. Its just that there is no evidence for me of them existing,
FTFY. Just because _you_ haven't found evidence, doesn't mean there is none.
Both Theism, and Atheism are based on total ignorance of God. Only the gnostic/mystic _knows_ God. By definition.
> if something "comes and goes" on a quantum level, faster than the universe can usefully notice,
That's a relatively good explanation but I would change "faster than the universe can usefully notice" to "because the physical universe/reality is digital (Time & Space have been quantized) then something can exists at a higher frequency and not break any physical laws."
Fenyman hinted at this when he said there really is only 1 particle. It is moving so fast that it only spends a fraction of its "lifetime" in the physical universe.
Sure, I've been writing down some of my notes collectively called "Fundamental Properties of Game Design." I've been meaning to get this chapter jotted down for a while so thanks for providing some motivation!
A matter of perspective - "Frame of Reference" in games.
Let's do two little experiments:
1. Quick, sort the weapons based on damage from least damaging to most damaging for this game:
- Neutron gun, Plasma gun, Graviton gun, Proton gun, Laser, and Tachyon gun.
2. Again quickly, sort the armor based on defense from least protection to most protection for this game:
- Scale, Chain mail, Cloth, Plate, and Leather.
Aside from the scale/chain, most gamers would be able to do the second quite easily; the first one, not so easily. Unless you've played something like Freelancer, or Privateer, you have no clue which type of sci-fi weapon is better. Are we looking just at damage over time, burst damage, efficiency, penetration, some combination, etc.?
Why?
Because you are able to take your real world knowledge and apply it in the game world. You have a "frame of reference" upon which to draw upon to help you decide which one you should use. i.e. Plate is big and heavy -- it provides a lot of protection but also restricts movement the most. Leather has a balance of protecting somewhat while still allowing some movement. Cloth restricts movement the least and it also protects the least. Unless you are a theoretical particle physicist you have NO clue if a Graviton gun is better then the Tachyon gun.
People often confuse "Realism" with a "Frame of Reference." For example they will say "This game isn't "realistic" but what they _really_ mean to say is "I have no frame of reference to draw upon. These items are effectively a foreign language to me. I have no way to translate it into my native understanding."
I always find it funny when people complain about realism in a game. "This (e.g. dragon) isn't realist!". I say, "Oh? You've met a dragon in real life that you know how it behaves, how it acts, how it inter-acts, etc., that you are a bona-fide expert? :-)" The point isn't that dragon's don't inhabit the earth, but that the gamer has had his immersion broken -- either due to false beliefs how he thinks the game _should_ work, or the game designer has failed to convey and/or properly implement _logical consistency_ such as physics, etc.
The classic example is playing a spellcaster and intentionally (or unintentionally) casting a fireball spell at a pine tree. Now aside from the initial explosion at the point of contact, the tree is completely impervious to fire and all know combinations thereof. Yes, we know it is expensive to simulate reality, but dam-it, if you are going to put me into a virtual world AND make it _look_ like the real one, you had better _convey_ WHY your world does not obey the normal Laws of Physics. Color code the dam tree purple or something. If you want to maintain the realistic (flammable) green color, then at least name the tree something 'foreign' like "Densewood" or "Phyrewood" so the player can gauge, "Hmm, guess this tree isn't easily flammable." Yes, frame of reference works against creativity, but that's what makes a good designer -- knowing when to use the familiar, and when to use the new.
One of my biggest pet peeves in game design is a game not providing you with ANY feedback about what you can or can't do. I'm talking about the annoying "invisible walls" that everyone hates. Let's say I'm walking up a hill / mountain and about half-way up I can no longer move up. No matter if I move slow, or crouch, I can't climb this dam mountain. This is a classic case of a designer who doesn't understand "Frame of Reference." Could you at least change the "ground texture" so I can visually SEE that the slope is too great for me to climb? Why are you _unable_ and/or _unwilling_ to simply stick a partially 'prohibited sign' around "out of bounds areas", like L4D does in Versus mode. (
> It's true - graphics aside, the original Team Fortress was head and shoulders better than Team Fortress Classic or TF2. Though the speed and smoothness of gameplay, I guess, is secondary to modern day users.
WTF -- can I have some of what you are smoking please!
The _original_ TF was a mod for Quake 1. I quickly switch to a Mega-TF; the gameplay in Mega TF was MUCH better, the gameplay in TF was crap.
TF2 is a great re-invention, better then the original TF.
The _only_ thing I miss from the original is the hard-core Quake TF Training map -- when you had to gren jump up insane heights, jump over insane teleporters, and wall-jump to get up floors.
> GPS can't change those who don't use it -- and I expect there are a lot more who don't than do. Sounds like something to worry about later, if at all...
I don't use GPS and don't plan to. These days I look at Google Maps on the iPhone, and it is "good enough." There is nothing to worry about because I have basic map skills.
i.e.
I used to do deliveries in Greater Vancouver to help pay for my university education. I never got lost. I had one of those big honkin map books, _read_ the map book, and planned my to-from route BEFORE I set off. These days people have become so dependent on technology that they can't even manage basic skills of *gasp* reading a map, figuring out where they are, and what direction they need to head to get to their destination.
> Realism is important
> Because it gives a referential to your actions, which allows to put them into perspective and make them more meaningful.
How many roleplaying games _require_ you to eat every few hours??? They don't because micro-managing your stomach _detracts_ from the core gameplay. Realism is NOT fun, for the most part.
Your mistake is that you are confusing the "Red Herring of Realism" with "Frame of Reference" and "Logical Consistency"
Realism in game design is a _tool_ that helps immerse the player by giving them "What to expect", but it bogs the players down in _details_ that they usually don't want to baby-sit. The eating in role-playing games, is a perfect example.
> You can also better identify with the character you're playing if it's realistic enough.
Total Nonsense.
1. You have obviously never played Grand Theft Auto 3 -- your avatar _never_ talks. Ironically, by Rockstar _not_ providing a voice for your character, you are drawn _more_ into identifying with him.
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley
> So it's a very important characteristic to have for a game that involves roleplaying, in one way or another.
Like any rule, there is a time and a place for it. You are playing a _game_, not a _simulation_.
e.g.
Forcing the player to only be able to hold X items, because of carrying (weight) capacity or backpack volume, is more about forcing the player to make a choice of "What do I keep? What do I throw away?" then about realism.
> hey didn't magically drop out of the sky, they were created for a reason. I have no idea what it is, because the creators didn't tell me, but I think they should, because then I have some idea of what to expect from the game, and what to judge it on.
That is optional & orthogonal to good games. In the same way you don't need to know the Author's Life Story for -Why- he wrote a book/film/painting/song you don't _need_ to know the reasons of the Game Developers to enjoy the art for what it is. Now, knowing the backstory _may_ enhance your experience, but to _demand_ that programmers + designers + artists present the context of why they created the game in the first place is absurd -- Do you really want to listen to 200+ people tell you why they created the game the way they did?? I'm not saying it wouldn't be interesting, but just enjoy the dam game, instead of getting hung up on details that don't matter.
We have "genre" labels for a reason -- to be able to quickly sort through the "type" of games, so you can make a quick judgement if that type of game is one you will enjoy.