> When a texture is far away, and the onscreen size of the poly being textured is smaller than the size of the texture itself, then a moire-ing effect is seen on the texture, presumably as the renderer has to decide which texel (of several) to use to represent a single pixel.
That's what trilinear filtering was invented = a bilinear filter between 2 textures.
> The main element in any calculation of this kind is "time",
Correct, because that is what money is: something that denotes "compressed time"
> that the person is both sitting at their desk doing "regular" work, AND cleaning up the virus.
If I have to spend time cleaning up the virus, be it downloading the latest virus definations, or running a system wide virus check, then the *TIME* I am NOT working on producing something, *IS* the cost.
Viruses cost people time - time that they could be working on something else, like "real work", not maintence.
You have a point - the virus checking should be scheduled late at nite. But everyone turns there computers off when they leave for home, since it makes a noticable difference in the companies electric bill.
If anyone has read the story how Unreal was made, they would see the why OSS doesn't work well for game development. (They were scattered all across the country, before they were moved together in Canada)
There are a few things standing in the way of OSS games before they will match the quality (art/content/code) of commerical games:
o) You need programmers, artists, designers, managers in face to face communication. Virtual whiteboards, remote mouse control are ad hoc solutions. You need to literally be able to point specificaly what needs to be changed in the game.
o) Money. How many OSS games have cinematics? Granted you don't cinematics to have a game, but this leads me into my next point.
o) Time. It takes 2 years of a TEAM of people, working day in, day out, to produce a game. OSS is done "after hours" when people come home. At that rate, it would take the same number of people YEARS to have the same quality ! Artists spend weeks 9-5 working on just ONE model/texture. How is an OSS artist going to support himself for that month? (See point above)
o) Dedication/Boredom. Games are, for the most part, one-time play throughs. Compare that to something to an OS, editor, daemon, etc, that gets used over and over again. Ask any QA department after a game is "gold" (shipped to the public.) They never want to see the game again. It takes a LOT of dedication to "finish" making game.
Remeber, the subject is "doesn't work well". I disagree with the assertion that games under OSS will *never* rival the commerical offerings, but I do agree that OSS games will be far and few that even come close to commercial quality.
Sure we have games like FreeCiv, RPGs, but any games like Grim Fandago, or Monkey Island ?
OSS for *SOME* games sort of works, but for the majority, unfortunaly OSS just isn't a viable solution.
*shrugs*
But what do I know, I'm just a 3D game developer...
--
Tired of RTS and Sim games? How about a new genre!
Re:NVIDIA sucks BADLY - We NEED BeOS support!
on
Ask NVIDIA Interview
·
· Score: 1
I agree, but calling someone "dickheads!" isn't probably the way to get better BeOS support.
You do realize "Sims" don't have a "winning condition" programmed into the game - that doesn't make them "less" of a game.
Q. How do you "win" at Simcity?
A. Whenever you accomplish whatever goals *you* set for yourself within the confines of the rules of the game.
And on that note, I would argue, that, yes, you *can* win in MMPRPGs (It's Massive MultiPlayers Role Playing Games). You have a character template (skills, each character will have) and you max your base stats (str, dex, int, etc) and those skills. That character is "finished."
You take your character to level 75 in EQ. They are "maxed"
Or you take your Diablo 2 char to Level 100. That character is "finished."
That is "winning."
> I could think of a couple good ways to measure Ultima Online
You missed:
o) Most money
o) Most rares
o) Most kills
o) Least deaths
Yeah, the idiots at M$ forgot to set "HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Command Process \ CompletionChar" to a non-zero value (perferably 9, which is tab)
> , just like *nix.
Except the Windows version sucks rocks. Hit tab, so a directory is brought up. Now hit Enter. It doesn't change into directory without a "change dir" command.
I already use 4NT, which has filename-completion-cycling. And it auto-appends a backslash on any directory.
e.g.
Every time I press tab, it completes the filename, cycling forward in the appropiate matches. Shift-Tab does it in reverse.
Page-Up and Page-Down show a history.
The BEST feature is Ctrl-Page-Up and Ctrl-Page-Down show a history of directories! (Does BASH have this?)
4NT blows the Windows shell right out of the water.
*Why* can't I select files in the gui, and have a shell "smart enough" to know what I selected!?
Or,
*Why* can't I select files in the shell, i.e. select *.txt *.doc, and have those files selected in the gui explorer!?
Here is how I have a partial compromise on my Win2K boxes:
I press Windows-E to bring up the explorer, with drives on the left pane, current contents of the selected folder on the right pane. I can right-click on a folder/directoy, and I get a menu choice "4NT Prompt Here" A shell opens up with it already in the selected directory.
If I navigate around in the shell, changing directories, I have a command called "explore", (which I usually make an alias called "x") that brings up the 2 pane explorer view, with the current directory allready selected!
It is REAL handy being able to go back and forth between the shell and the gui explorer.
Here is how you can do this under Windows...
Regedit:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Prompt\
(Default)&Prompt there
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Prompt\command REG_SZ: 4NT/k *cdd %1
explorer/e,%_cwd
4NT has the special commands "cdd" for change drive & directory, and %_cwd for "current working directory", since the default cmd.exe that ships with Windows is, uhm, under-powered;-)
> It seems that there are many (but by no means all) Linux users who would rather keep this OS to themselves than to work on making it easier to use and superior to Windows.
Exactly. I don't have time to spend 3 days reading incomplete man pages, and HOWTO's that are 200 pages long. THAT is why Windows is "successfull" (popular)... not because of it's technical merits (Win9X is crap... NT 4/5 is half decent, when it's not leaking memory:)... but because for the most part, the learning curve isn't as steep as Linux.
If I'm setting up a firewall, then, yes, I'll take the extra time to secure my system. But for day to day apps, like coding, spreadsheets, fonts, word processing, I want something that works *now*.
I give Linux another 5 years before it reaches "critical mass" of popularity and starts giving Win2K a good run for the desktop.
If only BeOS would open source there OS...
> Thats why I'm glad to see projects like Eazel working to make it more userfriendly.
I agree. The SOONER Linux gets userfriendly, the sooner "normal users" can ditch the crap called win 9X/ME and move onto Win2K or Linux (or even Mac OS X)
--
Mod me down. I don't care. I already hit 50 karma. Big freakin Whoop-de-doo.
A ton of poory documented code written by amateurs with little, or non-existant documentation. (Dam, that sounds alot like our game code too;-) By the time i have reverse engineered what the hell the code is doing, I would be better off re-writing from scratch. I don't have time to do that.
I don't care if this gets modd'd down as flaimbait. OSS is NOT perfect. I just think it is the lesser of the 2 evils: proprietary-buggy-closed-vendor-lockin-software, or open-nonreadable-source-bugs-get-fixed-software.
*sigh*
*neither are the best answer*
I have heard some of *BSDs's code has been written really well. Has anyone found that to be true?
I agree. I also don't buy the argument "that unix is 20 years old, so it's crap"
e.g. Take your pencil. It's simple, intuitative, old, and it does the job.;-)
BUT...
All those thing are "MUCH" simpler then thousands of lines of code, all interacting with one another. There is a "simplicity" to a light bulb, or "wheel", that the complexity of modern software can't even come close to.
Unix isn't perfect (*no* OS is, since they are designed with different goals in mind - avoiding the "Jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome.)
I believe the orginal comment is in reference to "In the past 20 years of computing history, there are better architecture designs, and better implementations - sometimes an OS should be "shelved" and redone from scratch with them:
multithreading, protected memory, pre-emptive multitasking, virtual memory, etc, which is all "old" and "proven." (Didn't the *nix's pioneer a lot of this?;-)
One area that *nix still has problems with, is with user security. How many systems have been compromised, because root ran some program, that was a trojan? Eros has some good essays, one a really slick security design called capability.
BeOS has a *really* NICE design. Is it perfect? We all know the answer for that: "No, but use the right tool for the right job. Yada yada yada."
*BSD, mmmm nice, clean, fast code, perfect for a router/web server. Windows, mmmm, latest games.
DX8 breaks the DirectDraw and Direct3DSurface split paradigm. Considering, that the DX8 SDK, just got released, does anyknow know what version of DDraw, and D3D this supports? (Pet peeve: WHY must M$ yank off the old DX SDK's?!)
The Good:
More games can be played under Linux. That's good.
Aside. You know what's funny... is now Linux is doing the same that M$ does... embracing.:-) (The difference of course, is not extendeding in propriertary ways, like Microsoft.)
The Bad:
Hopefully this won't fuel the fire for game developers to just develop for D3D, if they don't even have to recompile to run the game under Linux.
(I'm still a little upset ot my fellow game developers for not using OpenGL. Hmm, one API, different platform, potential for more sales. But, NOOO, we must use Direct3D, and be locked into Windows. Granted its 99% of the games market, but if no-one develops games for other OS's, they can't buy games for those other OS's.)
The Ugly:
It sucks that we need "hacks" like this, to play the more popular games under something not Windows.
> I wonder who owns the rights to cloning the famous, or even the anonymous?
How can someone justify "owning the rights" to clone another person?
Clone yourself. Fine. It is YOUR body. (Allthough you can't legeally sell parts, as disgusting as it is. Go figure. If you can clone yourself, would it now become "ethically accepted" to sell your [spare] body parts? )
But you do NOT own someone's else body - alive or dead. If you do, it's called slavery.
Sure, I would love to see a clone of Einstien (we have his brain in a jar someplace, right?), but we are cheaping human life the instant "property rights" extend to humans - clones or not.
Slashdot Mirror
> When a texture is far away, and the onscreen size of the poly being textured is smaller than the size of the texture itself, then a moire-ing effect is seen on the texture, presumably as the renderer has to decide which texel (of several) to use to represent a single pixel.
That's what trilinear filtering was invented = a bilinear filter between 2 textures.
> The main element in any calculation of this kind is "time",
Correct, because that is what money is: something that denotes "compressed time"
> that the person is both sitting at their desk doing "regular" work, AND cleaning up the virus.
If I have to spend time cleaning up the virus, be it downloading the latest virus definations, or running a system wide virus check, then the *TIME* I am NOT working on producing something, *IS* the cost.
Viruses cost people time - time that they could be working on something else, like "real work", not maintence.
You have a point - the virus checking should be scheduled late at nite. But everyone turns there computers off when they leave for home, since it makes a noticable difference in the companies electric bill.
Cheers
Majesty - a new twist on the old RTS & Sim genre.
If anyone has read the story how Unreal was made, they would see the why OSS doesn't work well for game development. (They were scattered all across the country, before they were moved together in Canada)
There are a few things standing in the way of OSS games before they will match the quality (art/content/code) of commerical games:
o) You need programmers, artists, designers, managers in face to face communication. Virtual whiteboards, remote mouse control are ad hoc solutions. You need to literally be able to point specificaly what needs to be changed in the game.
o) Money. How many OSS games have cinematics? Granted you don't cinematics to have a game, but this leads me into my next point.
o) Time. It takes 2 years of a TEAM of people, working day in, day out, to produce a game. OSS is done "after hours" when people come home. At that rate, it would take the same number of people YEARS to have the same quality ! Artists spend weeks 9-5 working on just ONE model/texture. How is an OSS artist going to support himself for that month? (See point above)
o) Dedication/Boredom. Games are, for the most part, one-time play throughs. Compare that to something to an OS, editor, daemon, etc, that gets used over and over again. Ask any QA department after a game is "gold" (shipped to the public.) They never want to see the game again. It takes a LOT of dedication to "finish" making game.
Remeber, the subject is "doesn't work well". I disagree with the assertion that games under OSS will *never* rival the commerical offerings, but I do agree that OSS games will be far and few that even come close to commercial quality.
Sure we have games like FreeCiv, RPGs, but any games like Grim Fandago, or Monkey Island ?
OSS for *SOME* games sort of works, but for the majority, unfortunaly OSS just isn't a viable solution.
*shrugs*
But what do I know, I'm just a 3D game developer...
--
Tired of RTS and Sim games? How about a new genre!
I agree, but calling someone "dickheads!" isn't probably the way to get better BeOS support.
A polite petition would probably work better.
*shrugs*
> ending (you can't "win").
You do realize "Sims" don't have a "winning condition" programmed into the game - that doesn't make them "less" of a game.
Q. How do you "win" at Simcity?
A. Whenever you accomplish whatever goals *you* set for yourself within the confines of the rules of the game.
And on that note, I would argue, that, yes, you *can* win in MMPRPGs (It's Massive MultiPlayers Role Playing Games). You have a character template (skills, each character will have) and you max your base stats (str, dex, int, etc) and those skills. That character is "finished."
You take your character to level 75 in EQ. They are "maxed"
Or you take your Diablo 2 char to Level 100. That character is "finished."
That is "winning."
> I could think of a couple good ways to measure Ultima Online
You missed:
o) Most money
o) Most rares
o) Most kills
o) Least deaths
etc.
Cheers
> the #1 feature preventing Linux from going mainstream: DirectX support.
As, a game developer, I agree. Allthough Loki did a good start with SDL.
> Windows NT/2000 command line has tab-completion
Yeah, the idiots at M$ forgot to set "HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Command Process \ CompletionChar" to a non-zero value (perferably 9, which is tab)
> , just like *nix.
Except the Windows version sucks rocks. Hit tab, so a directory is brought up. Now hit Enter. It doesn't change into directory without a "change dir" command.
I already use 4NT, which has filename-completion-cycling. And it auto-appends a backslash on any directory.
e.g.
Every time I press tab, it completes the filename, cycling forward in the appropiate matches. Shift-Tab does it in reverse.
Page-Up and Page-Down show a history.
The BEST feature is Ctrl-Page-Up and Ctrl-Page-Down show a history of directories! (Does BASH have this?)
4NT blows the Windows shell right out of the water.
Cheers
... is a *TIGHTER* integration
d
/k *cdd %1
/e,%_cwd
;-)
*Why* can't I select files in the gui, and have a shell "smart enough" to know what I selected!?
Or,
*Why* can't I select files in the shell, i.e. select *.txt *.doc, and have those files selected in the gui explorer!?
Here is how I have a partial compromise on my Win2K boxes:
I press Windows-E to bring up the explorer, with drives on the left pane, current contents of the selected folder on the right pane. I can right-click on a folder/directoy, and I get a menu choice "4NT Prompt Here" A shell opens up with it already in the selected directory.
If I navigate around in the shell, changing directories, I have a command called "explore", (which I usually make an alias called "x") that brings up the 2 pane explorer view, with the current directory allready selected!
It is REAL handy being able to go back and forth between the shell and the gui explorer.
Here is how you can do this under Windows...
Regedit:
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Prompt\
(Default)&Prompt there
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\Prompt\comman
REG_SZ: 4NT
explorer
4NT has the special commands "cdd" for change drive & directory, and %_cwd for "current working directory", since the default cmd.exe that ships with Windows is, uhm, under-powered
> It seems that there are many (but by no means all) Linux users who would rather keep this OS to themselves than to work on making it easier to use and superior to Windows.
... not because of it's technical merits (Win9X is crap ... NT 4/5 is half decent, when it's not leaking memory :) ... but because for the most part, the learning curve isn't as steep as Linux.
...
Exactly. I don't have time to spend 3 days reading incomplete man pages, and HOWTO's that are 200 pages long. THAT is why Windows is "successfull" (popular)
If I'm setting up a firewall, then, yes, I'll take the extra time to secure my system. But for day to day apps, like coding, spreadsheets, fonts, word processing, I want something that works *now*.
I give Linux another 5 years before it reaches "critical mass" of popularity and starts giving Win2K a good run for the desktop.
If only BeOS would open source there OS
> Thats why I'm glad to see projects like Eazel working to make it more userfriendly.
I agree. The SOONER Linux gets userfriendly, the sooner "normal users" can ditch the crap called win 9X/ME and move onto Win2K or Linux (or even Mac OS X)
--
Mod me down. I don't care. I already hit 50 karma. Big freakin Whoop-de-doo.
A ton of poory documented code written by amateurs with little, or non-existant documentation. (Dam, that sounds alot like our game code too ;-) By the time i have reverse engineered what the hell the code is doing, I would be better off re-writing from scratch. I don't have time to do that.
I don't care if this gets modd'd down as flaimbait. OSS is NOT perfect. I just think it is the lesser of the 2 evils: proprietary-buggy-closed-vendor-lockin-software, or open-nonreadable-source-bugs-get-fixed-software.
*sigh*
*neither are the best answer*
I have heard some of *BSDs's code has been written really well. Has anyone found that to be true?
What's wrong with "osi" by the way?
Origin Systems, Inc., is the company that produces Ultima Online
You can't renamed pets that contain the words "osi" in them.
;-) (PROBABLY not the imagry you want to connotate, but it would of worked)
I was trying to rename something "Rosie" and it wasn't taking it.
>since I couldn't have my "hotmail_sucks_ass" username.
Why didn't you just pick "hotmale_sucks_ass@hotmail.com" ?
Ack, forgot to specify which OS. ;-(
Win2K, Dual Cel 366 o/c 550, Abit BP6, board, DX7, SB Live - sound craps out.
I guess I should yank one cpu, and see if that fixes the problem.
I agree. I also don't buy the argument "that unix is 20 years old, so it's crap"
;-)
...
;-)
e.g. Take your pencil. It's simple, intuitative, old, and it does the job.
BUT
All those thing are "MUCH" simpler then thousands of lines of code, all interacting with one another. There is a "simplicity" to a light bulb, or "wheel", that the complexity of modern software can't even come close to.
Unix isn't perfect (*no* OS is, since they are designed with different goals in mind - avoiding the "Jack of all trades, master of none" syndrome.)
I believe the orginal comment is in reference to "In the past 20 years of computing history, there are better architecture designs, and better implementations - sometimes an OS should be "shelved" and redone from scratch with them:
multithreading, protected memory, pre-emptive multitasking, virtual memory, etc, which is all "old" and "proven." (Didn't the *nix's pioneer a lot of this?
One area that *nix still has problems with, is with user security. How many systems have been compromised, because root ran some program, that was a trojan? Eros has some good essays, one a really slick security design called capability.
BeOS has a *really* NICE design. Is it perfect? We all know the answer for that: "No, but use the right tool for the right job. Yada yada yada."
*BSD, mmmm nice, clean, fast code, perfect for a router/web server. Windows, mmmm, latest games.
Nice counter-argument, BTW.
Cheers
[No Text]
There was even a fansite dedicated to the Abit BP6
;-)
That mobo sure was sweet. And back in Nov/1999 the Celerons 366 were only $35 !! (Which could quite easily be o/c to 550
One of my favorite uses for the dual celerons, was to start up a quake server on one cpu, and a quake client on the 2nd cpu.
Too bad the stupid SB Live driver's don't work under SMP mode.
> Indrema console. I don't know how well they'll do at getting actual games made for their platform,
Well, giving away the SDK for free is a good start.
They still have to "approve" your game though.
Most developers are doing PS2 (since they have PSX experience) or XBox (due to it being very similiar to PC's)
Also check out Tony Hawks Pro Skater 1 & 2, along with Shenmue.
> There really isn't much value in free," said Miller, ;-)
Ah, so IE doesn't have much value either?
> "And the recent security problems with Linux,
*cough ILOVEYOU cough*
BOTH Windows, and Linux have security problems.
DX8 breaks the DirectDraw and Direct3DSurface split paradigm. Considering, that the DX8 SDK, just got released, does anyknow know what version of DDraw, and D3D this supports? (Pet peeve: WHY must M$ yank off the old DX SDK's?!)
... is now Linux is doing the same that M$ does ... embracing. :-) (The difference of course, is not extendeding in propriertary ways, like Microsoft.)
The Good:
More games can be played under Linux. That's good.
Aside. You know what's funny
The Bad:
Hopefully this won't fuel the fire for game developers to just develop for D3D, if they don't even have to recompile to run the game under Linux.
(I'm still a little upset ot my fellow game developers for not using OpenGL. Hmm, one API, different platform, potential for more sales. But, NOOO, we must use Direct3D, and be locked into Windows. Granted its 99% of the games market, but if no-one develops games for other OS's, they can't buy games for those other OS's.)
The Ugly:
It sucks that we need "hacks" like this, to play the more popular games under something not Windows.
Still a cool util.
--
> I wonder who owns the rights to cloning the famous, or even the anonymous?
How can someone justify "owning the rights" to clone another person?
Clone yourself. Fine. It is YOUR body. (Allthough you can't legeally sell parts, as disgusting as it is. Go figure. If you can clone yourself, would it now become "ethically accepted" to sell your [spare] body parts? )
But you do NOT own someone's else body - alive or dead. If you do, it's called slavery.
Sure, I would love to see a clone of Einstien (we have his brain in a jar someplace, right?), but we are cheaping human life the instant "property rights" extend to humans - clones or not.
--
> People claim it is possible to program safely in C, however, incidents like this prove them wrong.
Granted, C makes it harder, but it is not impossible to write good code in C.
C++ makes it much easier, with classes, and code re-use.
--
..and you can't prove he doesn't.
;-)
If you could one way or the other, then faith would be called "fact" or a "falsehood"
Existance claims are a waste of time. (Ironically, I'm spending time replying to one
--