> Ah, so you're claiming that, as in my example, you purchase a copy of a printed book, and it should be ILLEGAL to loan it out to a friend or family member to allow them to read it?
Hell no! Copyright is an archaic hold-over. Scrap all of it. Its only a matter of time...
> BTW, in my experience, authors who are more interested in getting paid instead of getting more people to read their work, are rather poor authors.
NO, _the_ point is, that if I loan my friend my favorite Sci-Fi books, the original author/publisher _STILL_ didn't get paid for someone else enjoying the work. Whether it was loaned, or copied, MAKES NO DIFFERENCE -- the end result IS THE SAME.
Making artificial laws over these different _causes_ when the end _result_ is the same is asinine.
I've replied to one of your other posts... but I'll say this:
As a game dev, it makes me smile to finally see someone else "get it" about the core issues of MMOs.
Please keep posting, so other people can be made aware of the issues, and maybe collectively gamers & game designers can start to work towards a solution.
> I've often wondered if permanent death, if it could somehow be worked fairly into an MMO, might be the cure for this game design challenge.
Unfortunately, no. It's been tried in the past.
1. Dieing to lag (or other "Real Life" interruptions") is NOT fun, and players won't put up with it. 2. It messes up PvP.
A better way would be take a 2-tier approach. You start as hard-core (with only 1 life), if you die, you character is resurrected as soft-core. Of course, the hard-core players would be visually noticable, and have better (more unique) gear to provide incentive to not die.
The core problems of MMOs are not being addressed as the solutions are a) too risky b) game designers just don't "get it" what players want c) players don't "get it" and keep falling for the red herring of "realism"
Fundamentally, I think the core issue can never be resolved, as MMOs are based on a faulty assumption. But that's a topic for another day...
> I see you're falling into the trench of "I have it figured out for $medium, therefore copyright is moot." Unfortunately, not everything falls under those banners.
And I see that you forgetting that copyright was only formally _recently_ invented in the 17th century, by _publishers_. OMG! How did the world ever survive until that point!?:-)
The quality and distribution of art is not dependent on copyright, and in fact the reverse is true in that copyright is used a tool to restrict supply in the hopes that it will generate profit. In a digital world, this fallacy and assumption is no longer valid. The value of a thing is no limited by supply, but by the "perceived" value -- the same way money is in the phase of being phased out, as people realize it never had any "real" value to begin with, it was only the illusion of being "buying" into it, that gave it value.
The fact that the majority of textbooks are copyrighted, shows that the world clearly values greed over the greater good and lasting value of educating people.
Anytime art is created, you can classify artists into one of two camps (or both):
1) Those that do it because they enjoy it, or 2) Those that do it for the money
The time is coming in the near future (within 100 years) when money will be a thing of the past due to people's basic's needs of food, shelter and energy are provided for, and then the true artists will be the only ones left. There is nothing wrong with sharing what you derive enjoyment from -- and anyone who tries to tell you different seriously needs to have their motivation and biases checked at how they are trying to profit. Thankfully they are the dinosaurs in the new world that is coming.
For the time being, copyright is a necessary evil, until people spiritually mature to realize that ownership is a myth. Greed, Control, Ownership and Money are all based on the belief of fear. There is another belief that is stronger. And there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it.
Insinuating the internet audience is rude is an insult to the intelligence of everyone. Maybe you like to stereotype, but not everyone does.
-- Unless you have been dead, you _know_ nothing about Life
How about fixing the issues of the past game first...
- The ability to actually pay $1/month to keep my characters "alive" - Guild channels (that are password protected) - Fix the horrendous lag of b.net (h/c is completely unplayable due to lag spikes) - Give he ability for the _host_ of the game to actually KICK griefers. - A better loot system (like wow) instead of grubby-fingers that encourages selfish behavior. - And the ability to actually make all rune-words and uber-tristim in single-player. - Make druids not suck - nerfing xp didn't stop all the baal bot runs to hit level 90+. Un-nerf the xp at level 95+.
> * NEVER, EVER, update the GUI from a secondary thread unless you really know what you're doing (hint: You don't know). Gui programming doesn't mix up well with multithread programming.
You've never used BeOS have you...
Have one thread for processing AND UI (like Windows) sucks. It makes apps unresponsive.
Street Fighter while an fun game, died because the gameplay didn't evolve due to the zen of fighting (timing) like Soul Caliber, Tekken, Virtual Fighter, which also had smooth 60fps and 3d graphics.
I also think people got sick of the all variations of SF2. Hyper. Turbo. Enough already!
It depends on the type of game. For FPS, yeah, write to the bleeding edge, because like you say, it will be mid-range by the time your gam comes out. For everything else, all the way down to casual gaming, it's actually better to use the "lowest" common denominator approach to have your game run on as many current low-end cards as possible (i.e. laptop chipsets) to maximize sales & minimize frustration.
This is actually why console development simplifies the problem, you know exactly how hard you can push the engine in 2 years because the hardware is fixed.
The average development time is 18 - 24 months for a full team. Only a few crazy developers end up in 2+ years.
> I often assign a score of 50 to anything less than a 50.
Yeah, let's lie to the students and pretend that they are doing better then they reallly are. Way to go for intellectual honesty.
> The concept of having a 70-point spread for failing students, and a 30-point spread for passing students (on a scale of 100) is fundamentally flawed.
As opposed to the old standard "50%"?? They both are completely _arbitrary_. What "percentage" is "good enough"? 60? 75? 80? that determines "mastery" ??
> Either you have subject mastery, or you don't.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard.
Grading doesn't account for _variety_ in problem difficulty.
You could design a test with all extremely easy answers, have everyone get 100%, and still not know jack about the subject. Likewise with extremely difficult problems have everyone fail, and yet they are more then capable of understanding the subject.
If the grade is viewed as a probability of given X random questions with varying difficulty, a student should be able to get Y questions correct.
When I was in school I helped a fellow classmate who stuggled to even pass math. The next exam he got over 80%. If students aren't getting good grades it is either: a) they are mentally unable to b) they don't give a fuck c) the teacher sucks
Any type of pass/fail or numerical system doesn't describe the other underlying factors in how well a student _could_ do versus how well they are _currently_ doing.
Actually there was a transition inbetween 320x200 @ 256 and VESA 640x480 @ 256. i.e. Don't forget that Doom used ModeX - Abrash's hack of Mode 13 to get a paged 320x240.
Slashdot Mirror
What is this astrop0rn? 2rings1ice? :-)
Everyone has a Nitro (DS dev kit) so they can play the current game we are working on anytime.
Gaming on the XBox, and PC Gaming (i.e. Call of Duty) is usually reserved for lunch, or after 6pm)
As long as you get the work done, gaming is a non-issue -- its only when things get out of balance is there a problem.
> Ah, so you're claiming that, as in my example, you purchase a copy of a printed book, and it should be ILLEGAL to loan it out to a friend or family member to allow them to read it?
Hell no! Copyright is an archaic hold-over. Scrap all of it. Its only a matter of time...
> BTW, in my experience, authors who are more interested in getting paid instead of getting more people to read their work, are rather poor authors.
Unfortunately, all too true.
NO, _the_ point is, that if I loan my friend my favorite Sci-Fi books, the original author/publisher _STILL_ didn't get paid for someone else enjoying the work. Whether it was loaned, or copied, MAKES NO DIFFERENCE -- the end result IS THE SAME.
Making artificial laws over these different _causes_ when the end _result_ is the same is asinine.
Yup agree! CTF, Thunder Walker, Team Fortress, and Mega-Team Fortress, were all great mods for Quake.
I've replied to one of your other posts... but I'll say this:
As a game dev, it makes me smile to finally see someone else "get it" about the core issues of MMOs.
Please keep posting, so other people can be made aware of the issues, and maybe collectively gamers & game designers can start to work towards a solution.
Thank-you
> I've often wondered if permanent death, if it could somehow be worked fairly into an MMO, might be the cure for this game design challenge.
Unfortunately, no. It's been tried in the past.
1. Dieing to lag (or other "Real Life" interruptions") is NOT fun, and players won't put up with it.
2. It messes up PvP.
A better way would be take a 2-tier approach. You start as hard-core (with only 1 life), if you die, you character is resurrected as soft-core. Of course, the hard-core players would be visually noticable, and have better (more unique) gear to provide incentive to not die.
The core problems of MMOs are not being addressed as the solutions are
a) too risky
b) game designers just don't "get it" what players want
c) players don't "get it" and keep falling for the red herring of "realism"
Fundamentally, I think the core issue can never be resolved, as MMOs are based on a faulty assumption. But that's a topic for another day...
> I see you're falling into the trench of "I have it figured out for $medium, therefore copyright is moot." Unfortunately, not everything falls under those banners.
And I see that you forgetting that copyright was only formally _recently_ invented in the 17th century, by _publishers_. OMG! How did the world ever survive until that point!? :-)
The quality and distribution of art is not dependent on copyright, and in fact the reverse is true in that copyright is used a tool to restrict supply in the hopes that it will generate profit. In a digital world, this fallacy and assumption is no longer valid. The value of a thing is no limited by supply, but by the "perceived" value -- the same way money is in the phase of being phased out, as people realize it never had any "real" value to begin with, it was only the illusion of being "buying" into it, that gave it value.
The fact that the majority of textbooks are copyrighted, shows that the world clearly values greed over the greater good and lasting value of educating people.
Anytime art is created, you can classify artists into one of two camps (or both):
1) Those that do it because they enjoy it, or
2) Those that do it for the money
The time is coming in the near future (within 100 years) when money will be a thing of the past due to people's basic's needs of food, shelter and energy are provided for, and then the true artists will be the only ones left. There is nothing wrong with sharing what you derive enjoyment from -- and anyone who tries to tell you different seriously needs to have their motivation and biases checked at how they are trying to profit. Thankfully they are the dinosaurs in the new world that is coming.
For the time being, copyright is a necessary evil, until people spiritually mature to realize that ownership is a myth. Greed, Control, Ownership and Money are all based on the belief of fear. There is another belief that is stronger. And there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to stop it.
Insinuating the internet audience is rude is an insult to the intelligence of everyone. Maybe you like to stereotype, but not everyone does.
--
Unless you have been dead, you _know_ nothing about Life
How much does the equivalent Windows version of iLife and all the extras included cost?
Let me know when I can play Wow, Civ IV or Diablo 2 on a console...
It's not about NEW games, its about _existing_ games that will NEVER be ported to consoles.
Blizzard,
How about fixing the issues of the past game first...
- The ability to actually pay $1/month to keep my characters "alive"
- Guild channels (that are password protected)
- Fix the horrendous lag of b.net (h/c is completely unplayable due to lag spikes)
- Give he ability for the _host_ of the game to actually KICK griefers.
- A better loot system (like wow) instead of grubby-fingers that encourages selfish behavior.
- And the ability to actually make all rune-words and uber-tristim in single-player.
- Make druids not suck
- nerfing xp didn't stop all the baal bot runs to hit level 90+. Un-nerf the xp at level 95+.
D3 is offering nothing new.
> Windows NT 3.1 (which was actually 1.0, but Microsoft called it 3.1 for marketing reasons)*
Not it wasn't -- it was called 3.1 because of licensing issues.
> * NEVER, EVER, update the GUI from a secondary thread unless you really know what you're doing (hint: You don't know). Gui programming doesn't mix up well with multithread programming.
You've never used BeOS have you ...
Have one thread for processing AND UI (like Windows) sucks. It makes apps unresponsive.
All I want to know is where's the INSert key on mac keyboards?
Us coders sometimes *gasp* toggle between insert & over-write for code and/or cmd line editing....
What are these guys smoking?
Street Fighter while an fun game, died because the gameplay didn't evolve due to the zen of fighting (timing) like Soul Caliber, Tekken, Virtual Fighter, which also had smooth 60fps and 3d graphics.
I also think people got sick of the all variations of SF2. Hyper. Turbo. Enough already!
It depends on the type of game. For FPS, yeah, write to the bleeding edge, because like you say, it will be mid-range by the time your gam comes out. For everything else, all the way down to casual gaming, it's actually better to use the "lowest" common denominator approach to have your game run on as many current low-end cards as possible (i.e. laptop chipsets) to maximize sales & minimize frustration.
This is actually why console development simplifies the problem, you know exactly how hard you can push the engine in 2 years because the hardware is fixed.
The average development time is 18 - 24 months for a full team. Only a few crazy developers end up in 2+ years.
I'm glad that someone else isn't afraid to say software _sucks_ if the interface is _crap_.
Us geeks should _always_ remember that without a user using your software, the software is pointless.
Nope, different guy. The other one did the Gas Powered Games.
I worked (briefly) with this one. He is a good game designer.
> since nothing can travel faster than light (and c is finite)
Both of those are assumptions. If they were true, there wouldn't be a logical explaination for tachyons.
Part of the problem is that we are confined to observing this dimension. In other dimensions things DO move faster then light.
Furthermore, the speed of gravity is much greater then c.
> I often assign a score of 50 to anything less than a 50.
Yeah, let's lie to the students and pretend that they are doing better then they reallly are. Way to go for intellectual honesty.
> The concept of having a 70-point spread for failing students, and a 30-point spread for passing students (on a scale of 100) is fundamentally flawed.
As opposed to the old standard "50%"?? They both are completely _arbitrary_. What "percentage" is "good enough"? 60? 75? 80? that determines "mastery" ??
> Either you have subject mastery, or you don't.
That's the stupidest thing I've heard.
Grading doesn't account for _variety_ in problem difficulty.
You could design a test with all extremely easy answers, have everyone get 100%, and still not know jack about the subject. Likewise with extremely difficult problems have everyone fail, and yet they are more then capable of understanding the subject.
If the grade is viewed as a probability of given X random questions with varying difficulty, a student should be able to get Y questions correct.
When I was in school I helped a fellow classmate who stuggled to even pass math. The next exam he got over 80%. If students aren't getting good grades it is either:
a) they are mentally unable to
b) they don't give a fuck
c) the teacher sucks
Any type of pass/fail or numerical system doesn't describe the other underlying factors in how well a student _could_ do versus how well they are _currently_ doing.
LG has a HD/Blu Ray combo drive for $160 at Frys.
Yup, and don't forget comp.emulators.apple2 is great too.
Actually there was a transition inbetween 320x200 @ 256 and VESA 640x480 @ 256.
i.e. Don't forget that Doom used ModeX - Abrash's hack of Mode 13 to get a paged 320x240.
Nice summary, btw.
Having worked on PS2 and Wii renderers...
PS2 - custom VU1 code that stuffs the GS registers
Wii - Nintendo's GX library (very OpenGL-like)
--
You don't _know_ a subject, until you _do_ it.
Your fallacy is assuming "ownership", and "money" are even necessary. In an advanced society they are not needed.
--
Unless you have been dead, you _know_ nothing about life