This is why hardware sells, and why the article is 50% off the mark:
1. The article is old news/looking at eye candy. Trees are a good point, but some games already do it for scaling into the distance. Simple enough to re-use this code for scaling with performance. Cloth etc are just eye candy. Be interesting to see cloth as a gameplay feature, but the biggest use these days is in the flags of Capture the Flag game mode. Heck, Unreal Tourney did that years ago on my humble 300MHz MMX.
2. Implement that super cloth sim, and then you need a Prescot to run it! Good news - more hardware sales.
3. Multiple sets of models is fine for EA, as they can have a serious art budget - but need to buy lots of Maya platforms - more hardware sales - to make that artwork on. It's impractical for most second tier software houses. They stick with the one or two tiers of target platform, as that's all they can AFFORD! The article does not help them, and the first tier developers know most of what is in it already.
Now don't want to just bitch and moan, so constructive suggestions. One look at Doom 3 and I'm writing a check for a faster machine. It's the character skinning and lighting that sells me on the hardware. That Alien like monster in one of the preview screenshots gave me the creeps. I think the article is a good idea, with one good example (trees) and other poor examples. If he'd given a ref to scalable character skinning techniques I'd appreciate it more.
What is the range of these things? Could an enemy country mount a space based Denial of Service attack on American auto traffic?? Could put all those Internet based attacks in the shade.
Off topic but relevant to Slashdot in general. Earlier today I submitted a story about a speed record attempt over North America this afternoon that people could go out and look at. It came out around 1pm that a coast-to-coast supersonic passenger jet - one of the final Concorde flights - was just about to start. I posted to Slashdot, and it still isn't up. The flight has now landed. Given all the excitement the plane has generated recently - see:
Mystery Fireball a Concorde Contrail?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/1 6/1320233&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160
it could have been serious for slashdotters in Canada and possibly northern US States incl Washington State to check out possible sonic booms and contrails/fireball appearance overhead, knowing there was a world speed record attempt on. Also, see the flast flight of a supersonic passenger plane over North America for who knows how long. How many times do you get to see that as it happens with your own eyes?
The story had not made it to any news outlets I'm aware of yet. It only came to light through various plane aficionados keeping in touch with what North America air traffic control and airlines are planning. It went out on JFK air traffic control at 1pm, and hence became public knowledge. This would have been a Slashdot Internet scoop.
So - question - if you know of something major about to happen, and want to alert slashdotters who are obviously interested given prior threads - how do you let everyone on Slashdot know about it while it is still happening? How do you get it through the submissions process before the story is dead? What about the next time something seriously interesteing is about to happen?
Update - just posted on Seattle Museum of Flight website
Page updated 4:00 p.m. PST, November 5, 2003
http://www.museumofflight.org/visit/concorde.html
Concorde has landed and set a new World's Record for New York to Seattle.
Be a good artist, and know your audience
on
Myst Online Trailer
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· Score: 1
Made games for some time - for Console, PC & Mac. Macs are gaming machines, but the tastes of some (many?) users are different.
It's hard to port a PC shooter to a console, but can be done with some adaptation. In the same way, moving PC games to Mac, and - much rarer - vice versa involve tradeoffs.
What you said about users is true, but describes professionals. There are a ton of iMac users doing usual PC things like email, letters, chat, photo albums etc. These people buy a large proportion of the games sold. However, if you are Mom & Pop or Granny and Granpa you usually don't play shooters, but you might play adventure games. Platforms have audiences. Imagine GTA on a N64!
Old figures (2000?) but I think at the time that Mac had 5% market share, only1-3% of big name shooter titles sales were to mac. Adventure games were more like 5-10%.
Should say something about the various Mac adventure games. Biggest deal is it spawned a boatload of them - Manhole, Journeyman Project, Myst, Labyrinth, Nightfall... to name a few. Know some involved in this genre, and they did it mainly because the Mac suited them + tools were available. Hypercard and Director were on the Mac first.
As the tools became x-plat, the PC base far out-numbered the macs, and 3D PC tools/engines far outshone Mac equivalents, there was a natural evolution to the PC. Now I'm waiting for Linux to spawn new genres.
Slashdot Mirror
This is why hardware sells, and why the article is 50% off the mark:
1. The article is old news/looking at eye candy. Trees are a good point, but some games already do it for scaling into the distance. Simple enough to re-use this code for scaling with performance. Cloth etc are just eye candy. Be interesting to see cloth as a gameplay feature, but the biggest use these days is in the flags of Capture the Flag game mode. Heck, Unreal Tourney did that years ago on my humble 300MHz MMX.
2. Implement that super cloth sim, and then you need a Prescot to run it! Good news - more hardware sales.
3. Multiple sets of models is fine for EA, as they can have a serious art budget - but need to buy lots of Maya platforms - more hardware sales - to make that artwork on. It's impractical for most second tier software houses. They stick with the one or two tiers of target platform, as that's all they can AFFORD! The article does not help them, and the first tier developers know most of what is in it already.
Now don't want to just bitch and moan, so constructive suggestions. One look at Doom 3 and I'm writing a check for a faster machine. It's the character skinning and lighting that sells me on the hardware. That Alien like monster in one of the preview screenshots gave me the creeps. I think the article is a good idea, with one good example (trees) and other poor examples. If he'd given a ref to scalable character skinning techniques I'd appreciate it more.
What is the range of these things? Could an enemy country mount a space based Denial of Service attack on American auto traffic?? Could put all those Internet based attacks in the shade.
When everyone has this, the one who clicks fastest gets through!
And I have to get through before the other guy switches the lights back!!
Imagine gangs of trolls mass switching the lights to get through cities quickly!!
Or permanently blockading districts by having the lights out of it permanently on red!!
Off topic but relevant to Slashdot in general. Earlier today I submitted a story about a speed record attempt over North America this afternoon that people could go out and look at. It came out around 1pm that a coast-to-coast supersonic passenger jet - one of the final Concorde flights - was just about to start. I posted to Slashdot, and it still isn't up. The flight has now landed. Given all the excitement the plane has generated recently - see:
1 6/1320233&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160
Mystery Fireball a Concorde Contrail?
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/
it could have been serious for slashdotters in Canada and possibly northern US States incl Washington State to check out possible sonic booms and contrails/fireball appearance overhead, knowing there was a world speed record attempt on. Also, see the flast flight of a supersonic passenger plane over North America for who knows how long. How many times do you get to see that as it happens with your own eyes?
The story had not made it to any news outlets I'm aware of yet. It only came to light through various plane aficionados keeping in touch with what North America air traffic control and airlines are planning. It went out on JFK air traffic control at 1pm, and hence became public knowledge. This would have been a Slashdot Internet scoop.
So - question - if you know of something major about to happen, and want to alert slashdotters who are obviously interested given prior threads - how do you let everyone on Slashdot know about it while it is still happening? How do you get it through the submissions process before the story is dead? What about the next time something seriously interesteing is about to happen?
Update - just posted on Seattle Museum of Flight website
Page updated 4:00 p.m. PST, November 5, 2003
http://www.museumofflight.org/visit/concorde.html
Concorde has landed and set a new World's Record for New York to Seattle.
Made games for some time - for Console, PC & Mac. Macs are gaming machines, but the tastes of some (many?) users are different.
It's hard to port a PC shooter to a console, but can be done with some adaptation. In the same way, moving PC games to Mac, and - much rarer - vice versa involve tradeoffs.
What you said about users is true, but describes professionals. There are a ton of iMac users doing usual PC things like email, letters, chat, photo albums etc. These people buy a large proportion of the games sold. However, if you are Mom & Pop or Granny and Granpa you usually don't play shooters, but you might play adventure games. Platforms have audiences. Imagine GTA on a N64!
Old figures (2000?) but I think at the time that Mac had 5% market share, only1-3% of big name shooter titles sales were to mac. Adventure games were more like 5-10%.
Should say something about the various Mac adventure games. Biggest deal is it spawned a boatload of them - Manhole, Journeyman Project, Myst, Labyrinth, Nightfall... to name a few. Know some involved in this genre, and they did it mainly because the Mac suited them + tools were available. Hypercard and Director were on the Mac first.
As the tools became x-plat, the PC base far out-numbered the macs, and 3D PC tools/engines far outshone Mac equivalents, there was a natural evolution to the PC. Now I'm waiting for Linux to spawn new genres.