I'm not even going for the "Funny" moderation. It's in fact, my canonical example of why I don't want realistic games.
Because a "realistic" war consists of far more sitting in a trench in the rain than in fighting. You occasionally get one bloody big bloodbath, like Kursk in WW2, but then it's preceded by months of preparing for it. The first war in Iraq was preceded by... a year of hauling troops to Saudi Arabia.
And even when you see action, it won't be like in Medal Of Honor.
E.g., most casualties in WW2 weren't made by infantry, but by crew weapons. Probably at the top of the list being artillery. Stalin said once that "Artillery is the god of war." The USSR produced unholy amounts of artillery during WW2, and, well, it worked well enough for them.
So a realistic WW2 FPS would probably involve you standing near a big gun, loading and pulling the string when the lieutenant says so. You don't even see where it lands. Occasionally someone calls the officers and says you're shooting too far or too near. Correct, shoot some more.
Occasionally you get bombarded by the enemy aviation. Occasionally by your own aviation. Occasionally by the enemy artillery.
But mostly you just wait for when it's time to pull the string. Interspersed with intervals of hours standing guard in the rain, and intervals of digging a bloody big hole for the gun.
E.g., most city fights were not won by circle-strafing around the door, but by grenades. You charge up the stairs, and if you're lucky, you throw your grenade first. (Actually, if you were _really_ lucky, you had one BFG like the Sturmtiger to level the house with a big bomb.) If you're unlucky, the guys upstairs threw a grenade at you first. If both are unlucky, well, you fill in the blanks.
But even then, again, mostly you wait.
So, well, I guess I can see a use in teaching soldiers that lesson, even via a MMORPG:P
Hmm... almost tempted to give it another try, actually. Dunno if it's worth driving across half the country to get my old N64 from my old parents, though.
Oh, I think I wasn't even in the fairy village. I quit around the point where I had to jump around using flowers as a propeller. I found that sooo bloody retarded (for my taste)...
What can I say? I hate jumping around in 3D. Now I do understand that some people actually like it. E.g., my parents sure seemed to like Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64, so that N64 wasn't a total waste of my money. More power to them. Me, I'll take a game which doesn't even have a jump key at all, if I have a chance.
Actually, I'm not even argue with you there. I do not play FPS and RTS either, and definitely not multi-player. For exactly the reasons you write.
I've had a somewhat less than one year period where shooting newbies in a FPS seemed like fun. I've even played some CS back then, enough to understand your point anyway, though I found Unreal Tournament slightly more entertaining.
Now I never was some first league player, but I did find enough people to slaughter. God knows the average on-line player aims worse than Star Wars stormtroopers. I also was the second best CS player in the company... which admittedly mostly just says that almost everyone else was a newbie. And yet I've quit playing those games, and felt better for it.
Why? Precisely for the reasons you write there. There is no point. It's repetitive. There are only so many newbies one can shoot before it gets old. There are only so many times I can play the same map before it gets old.
I've watched one CS player once spend _hours_ jumping up and down in front of a vent, to shoot anyone coming through there. _Hours_ FFS. And he did that every day. Just the thought of doing that kind of a mechanical repetitive thing is repulsive to me.
"I honestly do not think you do, as your dislike for MMORPGs is evident in your post, and therefore, I can assume that you do not even play one."
You'd be surprised. For starters, when I mentioned being level 450+ on one MUD, I actually meant it. Now _that_ took years:)
It's also what made me realize how pointless that treadmill was.
I've also tried, in no particular order, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online (now that was one buggy POS), Mimesis Online, and City Of Heroes. I really wanted to like one. Turned out that, while they did have good graphics, they were actually _worse_ games than the MUD I was already bored of.
So, trust me, when I slam the genre, it's not just some preconceptions talking. I tried to like it. I tried hard. I invariably just ended up bored out of my skull.
Yes, verily, in any other game the level is irrelevant outside the game. E.g., being level 20 in KOTOR can't even be compared in any form or shape to being level 450 on some MUD I've played before, and both are irrelevant outside both.
But the thing is: we usually _don't_ play those other games for the level. If the only achievement I had in KOTOR or Fable was the level, I would have found them bloody boring and pointless too.
The level is just a prop, not a goal. A game which turns it into a goal, and indeed the _only_ goal, has missed the whole point.
At the end of the day you're again and again just beating rats with a stick. Even if you were to focus only on levelling up and getting a bigger stick to beat rats with... what does it solve?
1. Congrats, you levelled up, you're allowed a bigger stick and... you get bigger rats to beat with it. In fact, you _have_ to go for bigger rats to have any chance to level up again.
What's the difference? You're still doing the same thing, and it still didn't get any easier.
What was the point of that exercise? Did it at least bring you another piece of the story or anything? Well, no, because there was no story to start with. Did you make any real difference in that world? Well, no, because all those rats must respawn for the next in line.
2. Ok, let's talk about the social interaction part. So you levelled up. Does anyone really give a damn? Did it make you the hero every newbie dreams of?
Well, no. Chances are you can't even team up with newbies any more, or not without one of you getting no xp whatsoever. Chances are you don't even want to go in the newbie towns any more, because then it's too long a walk back to the areas where you get xp.
And the higher you get, the less people your level are there to group with. People give up. You could find 20 newbies idling or looking for a group in the newbie area at any time. Now you're level 40 and there are maybe 10 people your level on the whole server. Now instead of picking a couple of newbies and diving into the next dungeon, you get to spend a few hours just assembling the group.
So the point of all those mind-numbing hours of clicking on some variant of "attack rat" solved... what? All that work was to actually _restrict_ your social interaction?
The ancient egyptians, just like the later arabs, were not big on writing vowels.
So is it "Ra" or "Re"? How do you know? We still talk about the pharaohs Rameses, for example. "Ra meses" means literally "born of Ra". I haven't heard anyone calling him "Remeses".
Or was it "Aten", "Aton" or "Atun"? And therefore was the pharaoh enforcing that religion "Akhen-Aten", "Akhen-Atun" or "Akhen-Aton"? For each of the three, I've seen at least one respectable historian writing it that way.
And that was a pretty damn important religion: it was the first attempt at enforcing a monotheism. And it could be argued that it's where the Jews and Moses got their monotheism idea from. In which case our Bible, the crusades, etc, can all be traced back to that Egyptian religion.
Or was it "Amun" or "Amen"? Hence was it "Tut-Ankh-Amun" or "Tut-Ankh-Amen"? ("Living Image of Amun/Amen")
Yes I have half-played some games, and I have even thrown games away after half an hour. Some games are just not fun, or get you stuck on a not-so-fun level at some point. (And yes, I won't point and laugh, I _hated_ both N64 Zeldas too. I quit Ocarina Of Time after 15 minutes.)
It still doesn't say basically "long games are bad", which is the flawed premise of that article. In reality, some games can be long and very good, yet others can be short and awful.
And yes, the grandparent post is right: once you have saved games, the whole premise of that article becomes flawed. Because the premise was basically "waah, but what if I have to do something later, and this game is too long to fit in? I can't commit that much time to a game." _That_ is the flawed premise.
And with saved games that's a straw-man. I've been known, for example, to squeeze in 15-30 minutes of some game before I go to work. I've never had to think "naah, I only have half an hour, so I'll play solitaire" yet.
No, of course it doesn't strengthen the commitment, but it makes it possible. Just because a game took me 70 hours to finish (e.g., "Persona 2: Eternal Punishment") or a whole month to finish (e.g., "The Elder Scrolls: Arena"), it doesn't mean it had to be in one go, without pause, without sleep, without doing anything else.
Or let's take your argument about half-played games. Would it have been that much better if the game had only the first mission? Yay, you've stolen the first car (or whatever you do in GTA), the game is over. How many times would you have replayed that?
By contrast, I can think of games which were long and had a story, but were complex enough and fun enough to be worth playing again. E.g., Fallout 2. E.g., KOTOR.
Now I could see the author's post if he picked on the distinction between abstract games (like Solitaire, Pac Man or Tetris) vs story-driven games. Anything story-driven is inherently less replayable: you already know the story. Same as with a movie, really: you can watch a good movie again, but noone sane can see the same movie 200 times.
But arguing that it's length that makes a game replayable or not -- or even playable the first time for that matter -- it's such a bogus straw man, it's not even funny.
You are of course right about ties for Christmas and, technically, about ownership. I'm obviously just horrible at explaining what I mean.
What I meant is more about wrapping it up in a pretense of being a "community". That, no siree, bob, I'm not exploiting you, we're just one one big happy community, and we're all just giving to the common good. Except that in practice, let's say I then take what you thought you gave to the _community_ and use it for _myself_. E.g., sell it.
I think a "community" is a two way street. I might for example help you move, but I'll expect that you too would sometime be willing to return the favour if I ever really need it. The moment it becomes a relationship in which one only takes and another only gives, it's no longer a "community".
I'm no longer a GPL zealot, I'm not saying it's some supreme embodiment of "freedom of speech", and I'm not saying everyone must use it or anything... but I will use it as an example of what "community" means. Because IMHO that's what's it about: you can have my code for free, but I'll expect that you too give any any changes back as free code. That's what a "community" is all about. (Once you wrap it up in enough legalese to be a bullet-proof contract.)
Pretending it's some "community" when it's just an organized way to uni-laterally reap the benefits of someone else's work, is... lame. It's a scam. A con.
It is, of course, theirs once I donated it. I'm not suing over ownership or anything. I've been scammed fair and square. But it will still leave me with a bitter taste.
"What are you complaining about? A MUD admin decided to keep others from spying on your code without your permission? A MUD admin decided to prevent you from peeking at solutions to every quest and from learning the wc of every weapon, the ac of every armour, the location of every magic item?"
1. I _am_ complaining about "sharing" and "community" being a one-way street, in which you only take and never give. No, that's not what "community" means.
And here's another hint: if I really wanted my code to be a jealously guarded secret, I wouldn't have given it to you either. Maybe the whole idea there was _sharing_, not the equivalent of donating code to Microsoft. (Nothing against them, but they can just write their own code.) So spare me the bullshit about your selflessly guarding my work from spies and thieves.
2. I _am_ complaining about being treated like a thief in exchange for my work.
Now I'm _not_ expecting a statue for donating my work. I'm _not_ even asking for a plaque saying "This area coded by Moralin", which is already customary courtesy on most DIKUs. (Hint: same as the credits in a movie. If you've taken someone's work, it's at least _polite_ to acknowledge it, and not pretend you've single-handedly made it all yourself.)
But at least FFS don't act like I'm some parasite on your precious MUD. I'm just expecting some minimal dignity, not a "me = king, you = worthless unwashed thief" asshole attitude. Even if you're going to only take, at least, you know, don't be a PHB.
Try getting over the obnoxious self-centredness that it's all _yours_, and everyone, even those working there, are just some pesky thieves on your private property. You go actually code all the few tens to hundred thousand rooms on a MUD, and _then_ you can act like it's all yours.
Because otherwise, in reality _you_ are the leech on the work of others. Without idiots like me doing the actual work, your precious MUD would be _nothing_. It would be a dump with 10 generic areas downloaded from somewhere else.
Get over the ego trip already, and realize that some of us don't give a damn about peeking at your precious quest solutions. There are a billion ways to get the full quest list, and all those locations, _without_ the effort of working for a pompous self-centred PHB. Try "www.google.com" for a start, if someone actually wanted your quest list. You might be surprised.
Some of us, surprise, were there to actually contribute something, and not just as some undercover thief you just haven't caught yet.
"If you are a talented coder, exactly what files are you going to need to see? You should have access to the base libraries already. If you do not know how to do something, ask a more experienced coder to help you or spend time actually reading the documentation."
No, even the base libraries were hidden behind some ridiculous bureaucracy. In fact, asking about those, now _that_ was a way to get someone paranoid.
But you're telling me... what? That if I'm a talented coder, I should just know all your calls and handlers that are documented nowhere? Read the documentation that... doesn't even exist, except for a couple of vague and outdated bits?
Again, I'm _not_ expecting to be put on a pedestal or anything. But FFS, don't make my life hard when I'm just trying to help. And show some respect to a fellow human being, instead of acting like everyone is a no-good thief looking to rob your royal treasury.
"If the MUD doesn't have a clear policy on code ownership or you disagree with it, then leave."
Well, I'm not going to argue about that. I was known to argue myself to _not_ reinvent joins in Java, when Oracle or DB2 already do it better.
And, yeah, I've worked in (far smaller) places before where the DBA was a part of the team, and sat about 10m from the team I was in. It really helped the project.
I'm just saying that if someone started directly for a large bureaucratic corporation, they probably never experienced that. They only experienced the "clowns in the admin department" fuck-up. It's a pity, but as you've said, it's very common.
Well, I'm not saying it's more or less troublesome. I'm just saying that IMHO the problem is that someone takes _your_ donated content (whether it be code, news submissions, whatever) and makes it _their_ property. It leaves a bitter taste. Whether it's for money, or for someone's "my MUD is bigger than yours" ego, or like UO back then did trying to turn voluntary helpers into unpaid corporate workers with quotas and deadlines, is IMHO a secondary fact to the fact that they're taking something donated and then acting like it's their property.
Yes, a good DBA and/or Database Developper is a very valuable addition to any team.
The problem is that in a lot of corporations (e.g., the one I work for), they -- and all other admins -- have been taken and put in a different building. And more importantly they don't actually have to cooperate with any team.
Their job's goal is no longer the same as the developpers: to get a program done by a deadline. They've been turned into a bureaucracy whose only job is to see that the servers run. No more.
That's an _awful_ job description, because it directly makes the developpers their enemy. I'm not even talking "slippery slope", but direct cause-effect. Instead of being "the other half of the team that will make this program work", developpers just become "those assholes who crash our servers."
It's not hard to get from that point of view to pathologic cases like the admin that limited our productive servers to 3 connections per server. He kept his own servers running perfectly (which is his job description) at the expense of making the company's productive programs grind to a halt (hey, it's not in his job description to care about those.)
That's the problem with that kind of internal organization. As one BOFH-wannabe once said "The source of the problems on my network are the users. Would you prefer that I cut your access? Then there wouldn't be any problems any more." Another one threw a hissy fit that we dared ask that he does his job, during work hours. Yeah, how dare we bother him by asking if he could please reboot the test server he's managing.
That's the underlying problem. Instead of providing a service _to_ the users, a whole caste has been created whose job is to serve the computer, and the users are just those pesky assholes disturbing his majesty the computer. That's a very unproductive situation to create.
Worse yet, a bunch of companies invented the devastating practice of internal invoices. The admins in one department won't even go to the toilet unless they can send an bill to another department for it.
They won't even talk to each other (e.g., the WebSphere admin telling the DBA and the Unix admin that he needs a Solaris patch and a newer version of Oracle for the "transactionBranchesLooselyCoupled" setting.) No, you have to personally talk to all three of them, because otherwise they can't send three bills for it.
And predictably, they'll do _nothing_ more than the bare minimum that was requested and billed. E.g., you have to tell the DBA explicitly to set this and that, to this and that value, because she won't do that on her own. Which basically means you already need to have all the knowledge of a DBA, and she is just acting as a proxy over the phone... and sending you a bill for it.
Basically if you're not that kind of a DBA, you have my respect. All I'm saying is that when you read about "teams of clowns" or about people who'd rather invent their own storage than deal with a DBA... well, they're not necessarily avoiding _your_ kind, but the kind of clown I've described above.
I remember briefly being a coder on a MUD. The owner was a very loud mouthed advocate of OSS and GPL, and I figured that, hey, it's just as good a project as any to take part in. And I actually wanted to give something back to the community.
In hindsight, I should have been suspicious of anyone who plays the GPL champion but doesn't actually have CVS access or released any code in years. But, still, I figured it must at least be a community among those donating the content, if not open to the world at large.
It turned out that behind the scene it wasn't even vaguely near being either OSS or a "community", or was just becoming something else. The "waah, others are copying our content" paranoia had struck big time, after someone had discovered a few of their rooms on another MUD. Think a Stalin officer purges class paranoia to find which spy is giving content away to others. You were treated like a thief until proven innocent... and there was no way to be proven innocent.
The real ridiculous part is that room descriptions and such were stuff that you didn't even have to be a coder or a builder/wizard/whatever-you-call-it to see. Any player could just bloody well turn on logging in their MUD client and have the descriptions for whole areas. But try telling that to the owners.
I suddenly needed to go through a ridiculous bureaucracy just to get the files I needed to do my work.
Worse yet, others needed to go through that bureaucracy to see _my_ code. They actually didn't even bother any more. I couldn't shake the feeling that it's like donating code to Microsoft, just for the sake of being locked by someone in a vault and called _their_ property.
I left and never looked back.
Though I suppose the damage had been done. Around that point is where "OSS" and "GPL" stopped being magic words for me. Was a bit of a rude awakening at the reality that some people will pay all the lip service in the world, but only because they like having a free ("as in beer") OS on their server. Ask for access to _their_ code, though, or in this case to code that they just took from others anyway, and it's suddenly "Noo, you can't take my preciouss."
Well, that _is_ a good point, but it just raises others:
1. how do you balance that?
E.g., how do you make a game like Jade empire accessible to both the guy/gal who never threw a punch in his/her whole life _and_ to the one who's a brown belt? Enemies which would slaughter one without taking a hit, won't even touch the other.
Or how do you balance stuff that depends on time? In a normal game you have the character's speed. On the other hand, if you go by someone's RL speed, you have to deal with a continuum from people who can _sprint_ for a mile to people who reach for the inhaler after 10 ft.
2. How _do_ you go about character development, then?
E.g., how fast _can_ you learn martial arts to finish, say, Jade Empire? I have a hunch you won't become a black belt in 40 hours. So what do you propose to do? That someone provides enough content in a RPG to last you for 10 years? Seems a bit unlikely to happen.
3. Exercise is ok, but for how long?
_Noone_ spends 12 hours a day running on a treadmill.
Or how about people who actually aren't _able_ to do some stuff. They should be completely excluded from playing games?
E.g., I have a damaged knee from trying to be way too flashy in a basketball game in high school. (I was a total nerd, but not the completely sedentary kind.) In time I seem to also have developped a proble, starting around the age of 30, in that my heels gradually develop physical _pain_ if I stand or walk for like 2 hours or more. Are you saying I should get surgery just to enjoy a game? I sure hope not.
"You need to learn some physics as well. There is a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Yes, you are correct, the power level is not what determines the difference, but that doesn't mean that *all* photons can cause ionization. There is something called the photoelectric effect. Below a certain frequency threshold (depends on the material somewhat, but is all in the visible or higher) a photon does not have enough energy to ionize material."
Very insightful, except that's what I've been explicitly saying in my message as well.
To quote from my own message, I did write "If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition." You may notice me calling it an either-or condition, or that there's an "if" there. You may also want to read the next paragraph, which basically repeats the whole either-or concept. I also explicitly say there that a photon, or any quantity of them, might _not_ be able to cause a transition.
You know, no offense meant, since you do seem to know your physics, but... criticizing someone's message works somewhat better if you actually bother reading what's written there:)
"Below a certain frequency threshold (depends on the material somewhat, but is all in the visible or higher) a photon does not have enough energy to ionize material. Therefore, microwave photons are not going to ionize anything at 1 milli-watt or 100 watts. The primary way that microwave radiation is thought to cause damage is by localized heating, and therefore the intensity of the radiation does matter. Would you rather keep your hand in warm water for 1 minute or boiling water for 5 seconds?"
That's again very good and insightful, but it's not what doublebackslash (702979) wrote in the message I was answering too. He was at least making it sound like a given power level turns it from non-ionizing into ionizing. Or in his own words, "It's more like pushing a car up a hill, either your strong enough, or not."
Heating something up is _not_ quite the thing you'd describe as that kind of either-or thing. Since the final temperature is merely the point where you lose temperature as fast as you're gaining it. There is a continuum of states you can get by varying power, not an abrupt either-or case.
"Yes, if you microwave the crap out of a mouse, it will be damaged. No, that doesn't mean that the same damage will happen at a lower intensity over a longer period of time."
As you undoubtedly know, since you seem to know physics, that localized heating isn't really as much from the microwaves as from induction. That's the real effect. That induced current is what ultimately gets transformed into heat.
Now think of the brains. It works based on electricity. Your brains is _based_ on converting chemicals into electricity and viceversa. (At a synapse, for example.) Also that rather small chemical imbalances can cause a variety of problems, including schizophrenia and a few others.
Do we know for _sure_ that the currents induced there aren't enough to cause anything else than heat? It seems to me like there's _plenty_ of stuff that can go wrong there electrically, even when you're not at the point where you thermally kill a mouse by microwaving it.
We've even had posts in this thread from people who lived near such a pole and had interference in the electronics in their household appliances. Do we know for _sure_ that the brains, which also works with electricity, won't be affected at all?
It seems to me that no, we don't. Which is why such experiments are a necessity. Yes, there will be some bad ones, but then that doesn't mean they _all_ can be flippantly lumped together under "fake science."
"What you are forgetting is that in this day and age, more information is being recorded and stored each day than ever before. In a hundred years, I would expect for us to at least have some sort of storage media that is unaffected by time."
Point well taken, but the summary said _thousands_ of years. In which case, sorry, nope.
Don't forget that a lot of information before had been engraved on metal, carved on wood (which is why runes look the way they look: they were designed for carving into wood), or inscribed on clay tablets and baked. And it still got lost.
Do you think someone's backups on CD will be more durable than that?
Also while we do record more data, also more data is lost every day.
A clay tablet is still readable in a hundred years if you still know the alphabet. Whereas nowadays can you tell me where can I buy an 8" disk drive for my PC, to read my old CP/M diskettes? Is there even a filesystem driver for any OS that can still read CP/M disks?
And after less than 2000 years time we needed a Rosetta Stone and some big pictograms to re-discover how to read the ancient Egyptian pictograms. Now think that we had just found a shiny plastic disk. Even if we figured out how to read it, you're left with a string of numbers that say _nothing_ about the actual text. Which combination of bits is Anubis-looking-left?
So I wouldn't expect that much data to survive us.
Plus there's a lot to be said about noise-to-signal ratio. Even if all the information did survive, after 1000 years we'd have a mountain of blogs, Counter-Strike clan pages, flamewars, etc. Trying to even search for anything through this data is like looking for the proverbial needle, only this time in a whole mountain of hay.
Do you really think anyone will look through that data for a nerd party? Or they'll be more interested in our wars?
"Wow, a blowhard who likes the look of his own paragraphs. Next time focus on putting some actual content in there instead of rehashing other people's points, and poorly, at that."
Ah, lemme guess. You're the kind of retard who can't read more than a paragraph, right? (Which one of our clients are you, then?)
Now if you did actually read more than one paragraph, you'd had found that the whole numbered part was _not_ common with the post I was answering to. (Or, for that matter, any of the posts I had read in this thread.)
But alas, being the poor illiterate retard that you are, reading all that would have overloaded your tiny little brain.
Don't give up hope, though. I'm sure that eventually you too can learn to read more than one paragraph. Keep trying and eventually you might even be able to read _two_ paragraphs. Who knows, after many years of training, you might even be able to work your way through a whole message.
I was gonna post more or less the same myself, so reading your post made my day.
Basically, yes, while cute 3D graphics are cool to look at, it's gameplay and (where applicable) a good story that really get suspension of disbelief going. Even for the best looking games nowadays (Doom 3, HL2, whatever), if gameplay sucked, suspension of disbelief would go right out the window.
Which makes the whole VR gizmos not really needed.
I would add, though, that VR also brings other problems to the table:
1. Controls. The mouse and keyboard (or gamepad, if the game is suited for that) are tried and tested and work so well, that you can just forget that you're using them. We've had decades (and thousands of "Nintendo sucks vs Sony blows" flame wars centred on controls) to refine controls to something easy and effective to use. Plus, by now you already know how to use them, so you don't go through the whole learning curve again.
Pointing around with a glove or other untried gimmics are not only unneeded then, they can actually hurt suspension of disbelief. Especially because of the next points:
2. Comfort.
Sitting down in a comfortable chair and using a mouse and keyboard, or a gamepad, is comfortable. You can do 12 hour gaming sessions if, like me, you don't have a life, and have little if any discomfort problems.
By contrast, the whole VR hype reminds me of the touch-screen hype. Humans just aren't built to spend the whole day with a hand pointing forward. Even if the glove was a thin cotton glove weighing (next to nothing), pointing with your arm forwards all day long will result not just in fatigue, but actual _pain_.
It gets even worse for other games. If anyone thinks that swinging a sword in a VR game is something they can do for hours, they haven't actually swung a sword in their life. Even throwing a punch at the air in a martial arts game (including martial-arts themed RPGs, like Shenmue or Jade Empire) is _tiresome_ if you do it for hours. And as someone who had some army training, I'll just say it would _suck_ to have to lug a rifle around all day long to play a game.
3. Sensory expectations. Completely fooling some senses is a much more risky proposition than just getting the brain to pay them no attention.
If you were really immersed visuall in, say, a flight sim, your brain would expect _all_ senses to fit the same picture. If you take a tight curve, it expects the body to feel G forces. If it doesn't, a little bit of suspension of disbelief goes out, and a little bit of nausea kicks in.
If you were playing a fight sim, you'd expect that when you throw a punch, you feel it connect. If it feels like it's going through a ghost, again, some suspension of disbelief goes out, some nausea comes in. (And worse yet, you can damage your joints badly if your brains says you don't have to brake that punch going at thin air.)
4. IC vs OOC. Or how it's throwing the whole concept of "_escaping_ reality" out the window.
Relying on the character's physical values or knowledge _outside_ the game is meta-gaming. It can not only seriously damage suspension of disbelief, it can also seriously limit the market for the game. For starters, you're limited to those who can actually do that IRL.
E.g., if in a fighting game you actually had to be able to kick or block that fast and accurate, congrats, you've demanded that the player be an accomplish student of martial arts to play the game. E.g., if you have to actually slash with a broadsword and block with a shield, well, it would probably be fun for some of us nuts, but no fun for everyone else.
Worse yet, it severely limits what you _can_ do in a game, by tying you down to what you can do IRL. E.g., most of Nintendo's games wouldn't even be possible to have in VR, because _noone_ can run and jump for hours. Jumping is a _very_ tiresome operation for humans. We're not made to bunny-hop all day long.
Plus, being tied down to what you can physically do IRL, thr
Let's just say that if you are _the_ black sheep of the village, not to mention the one that lowered their house value by maybe $1000 with that tower... you better have _very_ thick skin. Because it'll make life as a nerd in high school seem pleasant and respectful by comparison.
Anyone thinking that large numbers of people can act like sheep, haven't seen what _small_ numbers of people can do. Your social acceptance or becoming the public enemy can depend on conforming to the local "fashions" in every step you make, every breath you take.
If it's fashionable to hate Mr John Doe for _anything_ whatsoever, people _will_ do it, just to conform to the "community".
E.g., if it's because Mr John Doe built a big mast, and supposedly shaved a couple of cents of someone's property value in the process, even those who _haven't_ lost anything in the process will turn against Mr John Doe. Heck, even people who _gained_ something in the process will do it, just to be on the fashionable and socially acceptable side of the debate.
Here's some free clue, lemming: any kind of electromagnetic radiation is made of photons. Yes, exactly what goes for visible light, goes for any other wavelength.
There is no such bullshit threshold where above X watt it's ionizing, under X watt it's not ionizing. If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition.
Pumping more watts, i.e., more of those photons per second, doesn't change that. There is no such thing as needing 100 photons to cause a transition. Either _one_ causes it, or any amount doesn't.
I.e., if something happens at 100W, it happens just as well at 1 milli-Watt or even 1 micro-Watt. You just have more or less of those ionized atoms, depending on the power. That's all.
I.e., those tests _are_ fair, and they're done by people who actually understand what's happening there.
"False science makes me angry."
Well, then do us all a favour and stop spouting bullshit about stuff you don't have any clue about. Actually read a physics book instead of making your own pseudo-science bullshit.
And no, just because you're the latest nerd in a CS university does _not_ make you an expert in everything on Earth. For starters, as you just proved, it doesn't mean jack squat about knowing any physics.
Everyone acts like a thousand years is the equivalent of "yesterday". The very concept that in thousands of years everyone will even know about one particular nerd party, is at best a joke.
You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.
A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?
Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.
Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.
Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.
That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)
Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.
So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?
Again, I'm not criticizing MS for making that decision. However, I _am_ complaining about the market situation where everyone needs MS's (or anyone else's) royal seal of approval.
There was a time, ages ago, where you could survive very well with your own OS/BASIC-ROM/whatever. E.g., when Sir Clive Sinclaire came with his ideas like making a computer with an ULA (basically a pre-decessor of the integrated north-bridge) and a micro-casette instead of a disk-drive, he could jolly well do just that. He didn't need MS to decide if he's allowed to make a computer with micro-cassette, or "nope, we won't support it, so noone will buy it."
Let me quote my own finishing paragraph from the message you answer to: "Will that mean the end of gaming? Dunno, probably not. But it will certainly _need_ a very abrupt change of focus to something else than "look, we have higher res textures this time""
So I already wasn't saying that the world is going to end. IMHO it won't. We can aggree there very quickly.
But _something_ will have to change.
I can, however, also see why some people will predict doom and destruction. The game industry _did_ already crash once, in the days of Atari.
And in a way, it crashed precisely because of a graphics problem. Atari (and everyone else) basically ran out of _new_ ideas what to do on that limited resolution screen. So at one point they started basically repeating themselves. They sold clones of their own Pac-Man for example, where only the name and the colour of the pills was different.
And the games market crashed and burned, because the people didn't buy those. It was the problem I've hinted at: why buy the new one, if you already have Pac-Man?
Ever since, the industry avoided this problem by having the answer "yeah, but the new version has better graphics!" And it worked to sell people nearly verbatim copies of last year's game, only this time with more polygons.
Which prompts the question, at least for doomsayers like Dvorak: well, what will happen when that doesn't work any more? Will the same happen all over again, like in the Atari times? He says "yes, it will".
Personally I'm more inclined to say "no, it won't". But, eh, I can see where he's coming from too.
" I believe Intel had their try, it was called Itanium. Surely you've heard of it.... no? Not surprising."
No offense, but the Itanium isn't that unknown. _Everyone_ has heard of the "Itanic", if they have anything to do with computers. Your other points are well taken, but just saying it's anything but unknown:)
Still, you know, the same "why support two different code-bases?" argument you make, can be done for anything else. E.g.,
- Windows and Linux (why bother maintaining code for both, right?)
- IE, Opera and Firefox (why bother supporting anything else than IE, right?)
- PC, Macs, Sun, etc (why bother with more than an Intel PC?)
- Intel and AMD (why bother optimizing a game for both SSE and 3DNow? Seein' as you mention both.)
- MS Office, Open Office, etc (let's keep everything in MS Office format, since everyone can read it, right?)
Etc.
Personally I would prefer a bit more variety, and a bit more trying new stuff. So I'm _not_ actually advocating any of the above. But maybe that's just me.
"If in fact Microsoft did tell Intel it would not support another 64bit implementation, it would be a just decision considering Intel's arrogance with their first attempt. Microsoft lost alot of money on Itanium and I would imagine their relations with Intel are strained from it."
That is very true and insightful, no doubt. And of course, MS is allowed to do its own decisions there.
What I would personally prefer, though, is a situation MS (or any other company) isn't in such a dominating position that everyone else needs MS's approval for their new product. It shouldn't be _one_ company/minister-of-state-planning/whatever who can single handedly approve or veto a new product.
Dunno, IMHO that's not how human progress happened so far.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not even going for the "Funny" moderation. It's in fact, my canonical example of why I don't want realistic games.
:P
Because a "realistic" war consists of far more sitting in a trench in the rain than in fighting. You occasionally get one bloody big bloodbath, like Kursk in WW2, but then it's preceded by months of preparing for it. The first war in Iraq was preceded by... a year of hauling troops to Saudi Arabia.
And even when you see action, it won't be like in Medal Of Honor.
E.g., most casualties in WW2 weren't made by infantry, but by crew weapons. Probably at the top of the list being artillery. Stalin said once that "Artillery is the god of war." The USSR produced unholy amounts of artillery during WW2, and, well, it worked well enough for them.
So a realistic WW2 FPS would probably involve you standing near a big gun, loading and pulling the string when the lieutenant says so. You don't even see where it lands. Occasionally someone calls the officers and says you're shooting too far or too near. Correct, shoot some more.
Occasionally you get bombarded by the enemy aviation. Occasionally by your own aviation. Occasionally by the enemy artillery.
But mostly you just wait for when it's time to pull the string. Interspersed with intervals of hours standing guard in the rain, and intervals of digging a bloody big hole for the gun.
E.g., most city fights were not won by circle-strafing around the door, but by grenades. You charge up the stairs, and if you're lucky, you throw your grenade first. (Actually, if you were _really_ lucky, you had one BFG like the Sturmtiger to level the house with a big bomb.) If you're unlucky, the guys upstairs threw a grenade at you first. If both are unlucky, well, you fill in the blanks.
But even then, again, mostly you wait.
So, well, I guess I can see a use in teaching soldiers that lesson, even via a MMORPG
Hmm... almost tempted to give it another try, actually. Dunno if it's worth driving across half the country to get my old N64 from my old parents, though.
Hmm, could be. It's been years ago and a couple hundred games ago, and, well, my memory isn't THAT good :) Thanks for the correction.
Oh, I think I wasn't even in the fairy village. I quit around the point where I had to jump around using flowers as a propeller. I found that sooo bloody retarded (for my taste)...
What can I say? I hate jumping around in 3D. Now I do understand that some people actually like it. E.g., my parents sure seemed to like Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64, so that N64 wasn't a total waste of my money. More power to them. Me, I'll take a game which doesn't even have a jump key at all, if I have a chance.
Actually, I'm not even argue with you there. I do not play FPS and RTS either, and definitely not multi-player. For exactly the reasons you write.
:)
I've had a somewhat less than one year period where shooting newbies in a FPS seemed like fun. I've even played some CS back then, enough to understand your point anyway, though I found Unreal Tournament slightly more entertaining.
Now I never was some first league player, but I did find enough people to slaughter. God knows the average on-line player aims worse than Star Wars stormtroopers. I also was the second best CS player in the company... which admittedly mostly just says that almost everyone else was a newbie. And yet I've quit playing those games, and felt better for it.
Why? Precisely for the reasons you write there. There is no point. It's repetitive. There are only so many newbies one can shoot before it gets old. There are only so many times I can play the same map before it gets old.
I've watched one CS player once spend _hours_ jumping up and down in front of a vent, to shoot anyone coming through there. _Hours_ FFS. And he did that every day. Just the thought of doing that kind of a mechanical repetitive thing is repulsive to me.
"I honestly do not think you do, as your dislike for MMORPGs is evident in your post, and therefore, I can assume that you do not even play one."
You'd be surprised. For starters, when I mentioned being level 450+ on one MUD, I actually meant it. Now _that_ took years
It's also what made me realize how pointless that treadmill was.
I've also tried, in no particular order, Ultima Online, Asheron's Call, Anarchy Online (now that was one buggy POS), Mimesis Online, and City Of Heroes. I really wanted to like one. Turned out that, while they did have good graphics, they were actually _worse_ games than the MUD I was already bored of.
So, trust me, when I slam the genre, it's not just some preconceptions talking. I tried to like it. I tried hard. I invariably just ended up bored out of my skull.
Yes, verily, in any other game the level is irrelevant outside the game. E.g., being level 20 in KOTOR can't even be compared in any form or shape to being level 450 on some MUD I've played before, and both are irrelevant outside both.
But the thing is: we usually _don't_ play those other games for the level. If the only achievement I had in KOTOR or Fable was the level, I would have found them bloody boring and pointless too.
The level is just a prop, not a goal. A game which turns it into a goal, and indeed the _only_ goal, has missed the whole point.
At the end of the day you're again and again just beating rats with a stick. Even if you were to focus only on levelling up and getting a bigger stick to beat rats with... what does it solve?
1. Congrats, you levelled up, you're allowed a bigger stick and... you get bigger rats to beat with it. In fact, you _have_ to go for bigger rats to have any chance to level up again.
What's the difference? You're still doing the same thing, and it still didn't get any easier.
What was the point of that exercise? Did it at least bring you another piece of the story or anything? Well, no, because there was no story to start with. Did you make any real difference in that world? Well, no, because all those rats must respawn for the next in line.
2. Ok, let's talk about the social interaction part. So you levelled up. Does anyone really give a damn? Did it make you the hero every newbie dreams of?
Well, no. Chances are you can't even team up with newbies any more, or not without one of you getting no xp whatsoever. Chances are you don't even want to go in the newbie towns any more, because then it's too long a walk back to the areas where you get xp.
And the higher you get, the less people your level are there to group with. People give up. You could find 20 newbies idling or looking for a group in the newbie area at any time. Now you're level 40 and there are maybe 10 people your level on the whole server. Now instead of picking a couple of newbies and diving into the next dungeon, you get to spend a few hours just assembling the group.
So the point of all those mind-numbing hours of clicking on some variant of "attack rat" solved... what? All that work was to actually _restrict_ your social interaction?
"Perhaps you meant "ratro"?
The ancient egyptians, just like the later arabs, were not big on writing vowels.
So is it "Ra" or "Re"? How do you know? We still talk about the pharaohs Rameses, for example. "Ra meses" means literally "born of Ra". I haven't heard anyone calling him "Remeses".
Or was it "Aten", "Aton" or "Atun"? And therefore was the pharaoh enforcing that religion "Akhen-Aten", "Akhen-Atun" or "Akhen-Aton"? For each of the three, I've seen at least one respectable historian writing it that way.
And that was a pretty damn important religion: it was the first attempt at enforcing a monotheism. And it could be argued that it's where the Jews and Moses got their monotheism idea from. In which case our Bible, the crusades, etc, can all be traced back to that Egyptian religion.
Or was it "Amun" or "Amen"? Hence was it "Tut-Ankh-Amun" or "Tut-Ankh-Amen"? ("Living Image of Amun/Amen")
Yes I have half-played some games, and I have even thrown games away after half an hour. Some games are just not fun, or get you stuck on a not-so-fun level at some point. (And yes, I won't point and laugh, I _hated_ both N64 Zeldas too. I quit Ocarina Of Time after 15 minutes.)
It still doesn't say basically "long games are bad", which is the flawed premise of that article. In reality, some games can be long and very good, yet others can be short and awful.
And yes, the grandparent post is right: once you have saved games, the whole premise of that article becomes flawed. Because the premise was basically "waah, but what if I have to do something later, and this game is too long to fit in? I can't commit that much time to a game." _That_ is the flawed premise.
And with saved games that's a straw-man. I've been known, for example, to squeeze in 15-30 minutes of some game before I go to work. I've never had to think "naah, I only have half an hour, so I'll play solitaire" yet.
No, of course it doesn't strengthen the commitment, but it makes it possible. Just because a game took me 70 hours to finish (e.g., "Persona 2: Eternal Punishment") or a whole month to finish (e.g., "The Elder Scrolls: Arena"), it doesn't mean it had to be in one go, without pause, without sleep, without doing anything else.
Or let's take your argument about half-played games. Would it have been that much better if the game had only the first mission? Yay, you've stolen the first car (or whatever you do in GTA), the game is over. How many times would you have replayed that?
By contrast, I can think of games which were long and had a story, but were complex enough and fun enough to be worth playing again. E.g., Fallout 2. E.g., KOTOR.
Now I could see the author's post if he picked on the distinction between abstract games (like Solitaire, Pac Man or Tetris) vs story-driven games. Anything story-driven is inherently less replayable: you already know the story. Same as with a movie, really: you can watch a good movie again, but noone sane can see the same movie 200 times.
But arguing that it's length that makes a game replayable or not -- or even playable the first time for that matter -- it's such a bogus straw man, it's not even funny.
You are of course right about ties for Christmas and, technically, about ownership. I'm obviously just horrible at explaining what I mean.
What I meant is more about wrapping it up in a pretense of being a "community". That, no siree, bob, I'm not exploiting you, we're just one one big happy community, and we're all just giving to the common good. Except that in practice, let's say I then take what you thought you gave to the _community_ and use it for _myself_. E.g., sell it.
I think a "community" is a two way street. I might for example help you move, but I'll expect that you too would sometime be willing to return the favour if I ever really need it. The moment it becomes a relationship in which one only takes and another only gives, it's no longer a "community".
I'm no longer a GPL zealot, I'm not saying it's some supreme embodiment of "freedom of speech", and I'm not saying everyone must use it or anything... but I will use it as an example of what "community" means. Because IMHO that's what's it about: you can have my code for free, but I'll expect that you too give any any changes back as free code. That's what a "community" is all about. (Once you wrap it up in enough legalese to be a bullet-proof contract.)
Pretending it's some "community" when it's just an organized way to uni-laterally reap the benefits of someone else's work, is... lame. It's a scam. A con.
It is, of course, theirs once I donated it. I'm not suing over ownership or anything. I've been scammed fair and square. But it will still leave me with a bitter taste.
"What are you complaining about? A MUD admin decided to keep others from spying on your code without your permission? A MUD admin decided to prevent you from peeking at solutions to every quest and from learning the wc of every weapon, the ac of every armour, the location of every magic item?"
1. I _am_ complaining about "sharing" and "community" being a one-way street, in which you only take and never give. No, that's not what "community" means.
And here's another hint: if I really wanted my code to be a jealously guarded secret, I wouldn't have given it to you either. Maybe the whole idea there was _sharing_, not the equivalent of donating code to Microsoft. (Nothing against them, but they can just write their own code.) So spare me the bullshit about your selflessly guarding my work from spies and thieves.
2. I _am_ complaining about being treated like a thief in exchange for my work.
Now I'm _not_ expecting a statue for donating my work. I'm _not_ even asking for a plaque saying "This area coded by Moralin", which is already customary courtesy on most DIKUs. (Hint: same as the credits in a movie. If you've taken someone's work, it's at least _polite_ to acknowledge it, and not pretend you've single-handedly made it all yourself.)
But at least FFS don't act like I'm some parasite on your precious MUD. I'm just expecting some minimal dignity, not a "me = king, you = worthless unwashed thief" asshole attitude. Even if you're going to only take, at least, you know, don't be a PHB.
Try getting over the obnoxious self-centredness that it's all _yours_, and everyone, even those working there, are just some pesky thieves on your private property. You go actually code all the few tens to hundred thousand rooms on a MUD, and _then_ you can act like it's all yours.
Because otherwise, in reality _you_ are the leech on the work of others. Without idiots like me doing the actual work, your precious MUD would be _nothing_. It would be a dump with 10 generic areas downloaded from somewhere else.
Get over the ego trip already, and realize that some of us don't give a damn about peeking at your precious quest solutions. There are a billion ways to get the full quest list, and all those locations, _without_ the effort of working for a pompous self-centred PHB. Try "www.google.com" for a start, if someone actually wanted your quest list. You might be surprised.
Some of us, surprise, were there to actually contribute something, and not just as some undercover thief you just haven't caught yet.
"If you are a talented coder, exactly what files are you going to need to see? You should have access to the base libraries already. If you do not know how to do something, ask a more experienced coder to help you or spend time actually reading the documentation."
No, even the base libraries were hidden behind some ridiculous bureaucracy. In fact, asking about those, now _that_ was a way to get someone paranoid.
But you're telling me... what? That if I'm a talented coder, I should just know all your calls and handlers that are documented nowhere? Read the documentation that... doesn't even exist, except for a couple of vague and outdated bits?
Again, I'm _not_ expecting to be put on a pedestal or anything. But FFS, don't make my life hard when I'm just trying to help. And show some respect to a fellow human being, instead of acting like everyone is a no-good thief looking to rob your royal treasury.
"If the MUD doesn't have a clear policy on code ownership or you disagree with it, then leave."
Which, as I was saying, I did.
Well, I'm not going to argue about that. I was known to argue myself to _not_ reinvent joins in Java, when Oracle or DB2 already do it better.
And, yeah, I've worked in (far smaller) places before where the DBA was a part of the team, and sat about 10m from the team I was in. It really helped the project.
I'm just saying that if someone started directly for a large bureaucratic corporation, they probably never experienced that. They only experienced the "clowns in the admin department" fuck-up. It's a pity, but as you've said, it's very common.
Well, I'm not saying it's more or less troublesome. I'm just saying that IMHO the problem is that someone takes _your_ donated content (whether it be code, news submissions, whatever) and makes it _their_ property. It leaves a bitter taste. Whether it's for money, or for someone's "my MUD is bigger than yours" ego, or like UO back then did trying to turn voluntary helpers into unpaid corporate workers with quotas and deadlines, is IMHO a secondary fact to the fact that they're taking something donated and then acting like it's their property.
All of it just IMHO.
Yes, a good DBA and/or Database Developper is a very valuable addition to any team.
The problem is that in a lot of corporations (e.g., the one I work for), they -- and all other admins -- have been taken and put in a different building. And more importantly they don't actually have to cooperate with any team.
Their job's goal is no longer the same as the developpers: to get a program done by a deadline. They've been turned into a bureaucracy whose only job is to see that the servers run. No more.
That's an _awful_ job description, because it directly makes the developpers their enemy. I'm not even talking "slippery slope", but direct cause-effect. Instead of being "the other half of the team that will make this program work", developpers just become "those assholes who crash our servers."
It's not hard to get from that point of view to pathologic cases like the admin that limited our productive servers to 3 connections per server. He kept his own servers running perfectly (which is his job description) at the expense of making the company's productive programs grind to a halt (hey, it's not in his job description to care about those.)
That's the problem with that kind of internal organization. As one BOFH-wannabe once said "The source of the problems on my network are the users. Would you prefer that I cut your access? Then there wouldn't be any problems any more." Another one threw a hissy fit that we dared ask that he does his job, during work hours. Yeah, how dare we bother him by asking if he could please reboot the test server he's managing.
That's the underlying problem. Instead of providing a service _to_ the users, a whole caste has been created whose job is to serve the computer, and the users are just those pesky assholes disturbing his majesty the computer. That's a very unproductive situation to create.
Worse yet, a bunch of companies invented the devastating practice of internal invoices. The admins in one department won't even go to the toilet unless they can send an bill to another department for it.
They won't even talk to each other (e.g., the WebSphere admin telling the DBA and the Unix admin that he needs a Solaris patch and a newer version of Oracle for the "transactionBranchesLooselyCoupled" setting.) No, you have to personally talk to all three of them, because otherwise they can't send three bills for it.
And predictably, they'll do _nothing_ more than the bare minimum that was requested and billed. E.g., you have to tell the DBA explicitly to set this and that, to this and that value, because she won't do that on her own. Which basically means you already need to have all the knowledge of a DBA, and she is just acting as a proxy over the phone... and sending you a bill for it.
Basically if you're not that kind of a DBA, you have my respect. All I'm saying is that when you read about "teams of clowns" or about people who'd rather invent their own storage than deal with a DBA... well, they're not necessarily avoiding _your_ kind, but the kind of clown I've described above.
I remember briefly being a coder on a MUD. The owner was a very loud mouthed advocate of OSS and GPL, and I figured that, hey, it's just as good a project as any to take part in. And I actually wanted to give something back to the community.
In hindsight, I should have been suspicious of anyone who plays the GPL champion but doesn't actually have CVS access or released any code in years. But, still, I figured it must at least be a community among those donating the content, if not open to the world at large.
It turned out that behind the scene it wasn't even vaguely near being either OSS or a "community", or was just becoming something else. The "waah, others are copying our content" paranoia had struck big time, after someone had discovered a few of their rooms on another MUD. Think a Stalin officer purges class paranoia to find which spy is giving content away to others. You were treated like a thief until proven innocent... and there was no way to be proven innocent.
The real ridiculous part is that room descriptions and such were stuff that you didn't even have to be a coder or a builder/wizard/whatever-you-call-it to see. Any player could just bloody well turn on logging in their MUD client and have the descriptions for whole areas. But try telling that to the owners.
I suddenly needed to go through a ridiculous bureaucracy just to get the files I needed to do my work.
Worse yet, others needed to go through that bureaucracy to see _my_ code. They actually didn't even bother any more. I couldn't shake the feeling that it's like donating code to Microsoft, just for the sake of being locked by someone in a vault and called _their_ property.
I left and never looked back.
Though I suppose the damage had been done. Around that point is where "OSS" and "GPL" stopped being magic words for me. Was a bit of a rude awakening at the reality that some people will pay all the lip service in the world, but only because they like having a free ("as in beer") OS on their server. Ask for access to _their_ code, though, or in this case to code that they just took from others anyway, and it's suddenly "Noo, you can't take my preciouss."
Well, that _is_ a good point, but it just raises others:
1. how do you balance that?
E.g., how do you make a game like Jade empire accessible to both the guy/gal who never threw a punch in his/her whole life _and_ to the one who's a brown belt? Enemies which would slaughter one without taking a hit, won't even touch the other.
Or how do you balance stuff that depends on time? In a normal game you have the character's speed. On the other hand, if you go by someone's RL speed, you have to deal with a continuum from people who can _sprint_ for a mile to people who reach for the inhaler after 10 ft.
2. How _do_ you go about character development, then?
E.g., how fast _can_ you learn martial arts to finish, say, Jade Empire? I have a hunch you won't become a black belt in 40 hours. So what do you propose to do? That someone provides enough content in a RPG to last you for 10 years? Seems a bit unlikely to happen.
3. Exercise is ok, but for how long?
_Noone_ spends 12 hours a day running on a treadmill.
Or how about people who actually aren't _able_ to do some stuff. They should be completely excluded from playing games?
E.g., I have a damaged knee from trying to be way too flashy in a basketball game in high school. (I was a total nerd, but not the completely sedentary kind.) In time I seem to also have developped a proble, starting around the age of 30, in that my heels gradually develop physical _pain_ if I stand or walk for like 2 hours or more. Are you saying I should get surgery just to enjoy a game? I sure hope not.
"You need to learn some physics as well. There is a difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation. Yes, you are correct, the power level is not what determines the difference, but that doesn't mean that *all* photons can cause ionization. There is something called the photoelectric effect. Below a certain frequency threshold (depends on the material somewhat, but is all in the visible or higher) a photon does not have enough energy to ionize material."
:)
Very insightful, except that's what I've been explicitly saying in my message as well.
To quote from my own message, I did write "If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition." You may notice me calling it an either-or condition, or that there's an "if" there. You may also want to read the next paragraph, which basically repeats the whole either-or concept. I also explicitly say there that a photon, or any quantity of them, might _not_ be able to cause a transition.
You know, no offense meant, since you do seem to know your physics, but... criticizing someone's message works somewhat better if you actually bother reading what's written there
"Below a certain frequency threshold (depends on the material somewhat, but is all in the visible or higher) a photon does not have enough energy to ionize material. Therefore, microwave photons are not going to ionize anything at 1 milli-watt or 100 watts. The primary way that microwave radiation is thought to cause damage is by localized heating, and therefore the intensity of the radiation does matter. Would you rather keep your hand in warm water for 1 minute or boiling water for 5 seconds?"
That's again very good and insightful, but it's not what doublebackslash (702979) wrote in the message I was answering too. He was at least making it sound like a given power level turns it from non-ionizing into ionizing. Or in his own words, "It's more like pushing a car up a hill, either your strong enough, or not."
Heating something up is _not_ quite the thing you'd describe as that kind of either-or thing. Since the final temperature is merely the point where you lose temperature as fast as you're gaining it. There is a continuum of states you can get by varying power, not an abrupt either-or case.
"Yes, if you microwave the crap out of a mouse, it will be damaged. No, that doesn't mean that the same damage will happen at a lower intensity over a longer period of time."
As you undoubtedly know, since you seem to know physics, that localized heating isn't really as much from the microwaves as from induction. That's the real effect. That induced current is what ultimately gets transformed into heat.
Now think of the brains. It works based on electricity. Your brains is _based_ on converting chemicals into electricity and viceversa. (At a synapse, for example.) Also that rather small chemical imbalances can cause a variety of problems, including schizophrenia and a few others.
Do we know for _sure_ that the currents induced there aren't enough to cause anything else than heat? It seems to me like there's _plenty_ of stuff that can go wrong there electrically, even when you're not at the point where you thermally kill a mouse by microwaving it.
We've even had posts in this thread from people who lived near such a pole and had interference in the electronics in their household appliances. Do we know for _sure_ that the brains, which also works with electricity, won't be affected at all?
It seems to me that no, we don't. Which is why such experiments are a necessity. Yes, there will be some bad ones, but then that doesn't mean they _all_ can be flippantly lumped together under "fake science."
That's all I'm saying.
"What you are forgetting is that in this day and age, more information is being recorded and stored each day than ever before.
In a hundred years, I would expect for us to at least have some sort of storage media that is unaffected by time."
Point well taken, but the summary said _thousands_ of years. In which case, sorry, nope.
Don't forget that a lot of information before had been engraved on metal, carved on wood (which is why runes look the way they look: they were designed for carving into wood), or inscribed on clay tablets and baked. And it still got lost.
Do you think someone's backups on CD will be more durable than that?
Also while we do record more data, also more data is lost every day.
A clay tablet is still readable in a hundred years if you still know the alphabet. Whereas nowadays can you tell me where can I buy an 8" disk drive for my PC, to read my old CP/M diskettes? Is there even a filesystem driver for any OS that can still read CP/M disks?
And after less than 2000 years time we needed a Rosetta Stone and some big pictograms to re-discover how to read the ancient Egyptian pictograms. Now think that we had just found a shiny plastic disk. Even if we figured out how to read it, you're left with a string of numbers that say _nothing_ about the actual text. Which combination of bits is Anubis-looking-left?
So I wouldn't expect that much data to survive us.
Plus there's a lot to be said about noise-to-signal ratio. Even if all the information did survive, after 1000 years we'd have a mountain of blogs, Counter-Strike clan pages, flamewars, etc. Trying to even search for anything through this data is like looking for the proverbial needle, only this time in a whole mountain of hay.
Do you really think anyone will look through that data for a nerd party? Or they'll be more interested in our wars?
"Wow, a blowhard who likes the look of his own paragraphs. Next time focus on putting some actual content in there instead of rehashing other people's points, and poorly, at that."
Ah, lemme guess. You're the kind of retard who can't read more than a paragraph, right? (Which one of our clients are you, then?)
Now if you did actually read more than one paragraph, you'd had found that the whole numbered part was _not_ common with the post I was answering to. (Or, for that matter, any of the posts I had read in this thread.)
But alas, being the poor illiterate retard that you are, reading all that would have overloaded your tiny little brain.
Don't give up hope, though. I'm sure that eventually you too can learn to read more than one paragraph. Keep trying and eventually you might even be able to read _two_ paragraphs. Who knows, after many years of training, you might even be able to work your way through a whole message.
Now isn't that a nice ideal to put your hopes in?
I was gonna post more or less the same myself, so reading your post made my day.
Basically, yes, while cute 3D graphics are cool to look at, it's gameplay and (where applicable) a good story that really get suspension of disbelief going. Even for the best looking games nowadays (Doom 3, HL2, whatever), if gameplay sucked, suspension of disbelief would go right out the window.
Which makes the whole VR gizmos not really needed.
I would add, though, that VR also brings other problems to the table:
1. Controls. The mouse and keyboard (or gamepad, if the game is suited for that) are tried and tested and work so well, that you can just forget that you're using them. We've had decades (and thousands of "Nintendo sucks vs Sony blows" flame wars centred on controls) to refine controls to something easy and effective to use. Plus, by now you already know how to use them, so you don't go through the whole learning curve again.
Pointing around with a glove or other untried gimmics are not only unneeded then, they can actually hurt suspension of disbelief. Especially because of the next points:
2. Comfort.
Sitting down in a comfortable chair and using a mouse and keyboard, or a gamepad, is comfortable. You can do 12 hour gaming sessions if, like me, you don't have a life, and have little if any discomfort problems.
By contrast, the whole VR hype reminds me of the touch-screen hype. Humans just aren't built to spend the whole day with a hand pointing forward. Even if the glove was a thin cotton glove weighing (next to nothing), pointing with your arm forwards all day long will result not just in fatigue, but actual _pain_.
It gets even worse for other games. If anyone thinks that swinging a sword in a VR game is something they can do for hours, they haven't actually swung a sword in their life. Even throwing a punch at the air in a martial arts game (including martial-arts themed RPGs, like Shenmue or Jade Empire) is _tiresome_ if you do it for hours. And as someone who had some army training, I'll just say it would _suck_ to have to lug a rifle around all day long to play a game.
3. Sensory expectations. Completely fooling some senses is a much more risky proposition than just getting the brain to pay them no attention.
If you were really immersed visuall in, say, a flight sim, your brain would expect _all_ senses to fit the same picture. If you take a tight curve, it expects the body to feel G forces. If it doesn't, a little bit of suspension of disbelief goes out, and a little bit of nausea kicks in.
If you were playing a fight sim, you'd expect that when you throw a punch, you feel it connect. If it feels like it's going through a ghost, again, some suspension of disbelief goes out, some nausea comes in. (And worse yet, you can damage your joints badly if your brains says you don't have to brake that punch going at thin air.)
4. IC vs OOC. Or how it's throwing the whole concept of "_escaping_ reality" out the window.
Relying on the character's physical values or knowledge _outside_ the game is meta-gaming. It can not only seriously damage suspension of disbelief, it can also seriously limit the market for the game. For starters, you're limited to those who can actually do that IRL.
E.g., if in a fighting game you actually had to be able to kick or block that fast and accurate, congrats, you've demanded that the player be an accomplish student of martial arts to play the game. E.g., if you have to actually slash with a broadsword and block with a shield, well, it would probably be fun for some of us nuts, but no fun for everyone else.
Worse yet, it severely limits what you _can_ do in a game, by tying you down to what you can do IRL. E.g., most of Nintendo's games wouldn't even be possible to have in VR, because _noone_ can run and jump for hours. Jumping is a _very_ tiresome operation for humans. We're not made to bunny-hop all day long.
Plus, being tied down to what you can physically do IRL, thr
Let's just say that if you are _the_ black sheep of the village, not to mention the one that lowered their house value by maybe $1000 with that tower... you better have _very_ thick skin. Because it'll make life as a nerd in high school seem pleasant and respectful by comparison.
Anyone thinking that large numbers of people can act like sheep, haven't seen what _small_ numbers of people can do. Your social acceptance or becoming the public enemy can depend on conforming to the local "fashions" in every step you make, every breath you take.
If it's fashionable to hate Mr John Doe for _anything_ whatsoever, people _will_ do it, just to conform to the "community".
E.g., if it's because Mr John Doe built a big mast, and supposedly shaved a couple of cents of someone's property value in the process, even those who _haven't_ lost anything in the process will turn against Mr John Doe. Heck, even people who _gained_ something in the process will do it, just to be on the fashionable and socially acceptable side of the debate.
Here's some free clue, lemming: any kind of electromagnetic radiation is made of photons. Yes, exactly what goes for visible light, goes for any other wavelength.
There is no such bullshit threshold where above X watt it's ionizing, under X watt it's not ionizing. If a single photon can cause a transition in an atom or mollecule, it will. That's the only either-or condition.
Pumping more watts, i.e., more of those photons per second, doesn't change that. There is no such thing as needing 100 photons to cause a transition. Either _one_ causes it, or any amount doesn't.
I.e., if something happens at 100W, it happens just as well at 1 milli-Watt or even 1 micro-Watt. You just have more or less of those ionized atoms, depending on the power. That's all.
I.e., those tests _are_ fair, and they're done by people who actually understand what's happening there.
"False science makes me angry."
Well, then do us all a favour and stop spouting bullshit about stuff you don't have any clue about. Actually read a physics book instead of making your own pseudo-science bullshit.
And no, just because you're the latest nerd in a CS university does _not_ make you an expert in everything on Earth. For starters, as you just proved, it doesn't mean jack squat about knowing any physics.
Everyone acts like a thousand years is the equivalent of "yesterday". The very concept that in thousands of years everyone will even know about one particular nerd party, is at best a joke.
You know how long a thousand years is? Columbus discovering America is _half_ that time ago.
A thousand years ago, the Vikings were still getting converted to Christianity. Do you know where the big parties have been at this time? If I told you that Bjarni Hrolfsson and Erik Karlsson (made up viking names) had this fabulous party 1000 years ago, would you even know when and where to go?
Heck, would you have even heard about it? History tends to recall more like royal events and wars from that long ago. We know roughly when and where the saxon earl Harold Goodwinson fought the Vikings and we know where he later lost to William of Normandie. But do you know exactly where some vikings or normans from back then had a party? I don't think so.
Roughly a thousand years ago, we had the first crusade. We remember that because it's a bloody big war... went awfully wrong, with a bloody huge PR, but even then a lot of details are missing.
Roughly a thousand years ago, temperatures peaked _higher_ than they are today. In fact so high that Greenland thawed and was green enough to be called that. The Vikings could farm it.
That's a bloody huge event even on history scale, but even the vast majority the global-warming scare gang doesn't know about it. (E.g., that it happened without driving SUVs. Or that no, all that molten ice did _not_ kill all fish life, and did _not_ reverse the gulf stream either.)
Roughly a thousand years ago, Leif Eriksson decided to sail west from Greenland, to check out Bjarni Herjolfsson's story that he's seen land there. And he discovered America. That's a bloody huge event, and even about that we have little more than a saga and some ruins that sorta look like a Viking village. And even that's _one_ of the landfalls that Leif made.
So what makes anyone think that a nerd party would go into every history book for millenia?
Again, I'm not criticizing MS for making that decision. However, I _am_ complaining about the market situation where everyone needs MS's (or anyone else's) royal seal of approval.
There was a time, ages ago, where you could survive very well with your own OS/BASIC-ROM/whatever. E.g., when Sir Clive Sinclaire came with his ideas like making a computer with an ULA (basically a pre-decessor of the integrated north-bridge) and a micro-casette instead of a disk-drive, he could jolly well do just that. He didn't need MS to decide if he's allowed to make a computer with micro-cassette, or "nope, we won't support it, so noone will buy it."
That's all I'm saying.
Let me quote my own finishing paragraph from the message you answer to: "Will that mean the end of gaming? Dunno, probably not. But it will certainly _need_ a very abrupt change of focus to something else than "look, we have higher res textures this time""
So I already wasn't saying that the world is going to end. IMHO it won't. We can aggree there very quickly.
But _something_ will have to change.
I can, however, also see why some people will predict doom and destruction. The game industry _did_ already crash once, in the days of Atari.
And in a way, it crashed precisely because of a graphics problem. Atari (and everyone else) basically ran out of _new_ ideas what to do on that limited resolution screen. So at one point they started basically repeating themselves. They sold clones of their own Pac-Man for example, where only the name and the colour of the pills was different.
And the games market crashed and burned, because the people didn't buy those. It was the problem I've hinted at: why buy the new one, if you already have Pac-Man?
Ever since, the industry avoided this problem by having the answer "yeah, but the new version has better graphics!" And it worked to sell people nearly verbatim copies of last year's game, only this time with more polygons.
Which prompts the question, at least for doomsayers like Dvorak: well, what will happen when that doesn't work any more? Will the same happen all over again, like in the Atari times? He says "yes, it will".
Personally I'm more inclined to say "no, it won't". But, eh, I can see where he's coming from too.
" I believe Intel had their try, it was called Itanium. Surely you've heard of it.... no? Not surprising."
:)
No offense, but the Itanium isn't that unknown. _Everyone_ has heard of the "Itanic", if they have anything to do with computers. Your other points are well taken, but just saying it's anything but unknown
Still, you know, the same "why support two different code-bases?" argument you make, can be done for anything else. E.g.,
- Windows and Linux (why bother maintaining code for both, right?)
- IE, Opera and Firefox (why bother supporting anything else than IE, right?)
- PC, Macs, Sun, etc (why bother with more than an Intel PC?)
- Intel and AMD (why bother optimizing a game for both SSE and 3DNow? Seein' as you mention both.)
- MS Office, Open Office, etc (let's keep everything in MS Office format, since everyone can read it, right?)
Etc.
Personally I would prefer a bit more variety, and a bit more trying new stuff. So I'm _not_ actually advocating any of the above. But maybe that's just me.
"If in fact Microsoft did tell Intel it would not support another 64bit implementation, it would be a just decision considering Intel's arrogance with their first attempt. Microsoft lost alot of money on Itanium and I would imagine their relations with Intel are strained from it."
That is very true and insightful, no doubt. And of course, MS is allowed to do its own decisions there.
What I would personally prefer, though, is a situation MS (or any other company) isn't in such a dominating position that everyone else needs MS's approval for their new product. It shouldn't be _one_ company/minister-of-state-planning/whatever who can single handedly approve or veto a new product.
Dunno, IMHO that's not how human progress happened so far.