I've got an X800 XT (a Pro modded to XT with a BIOS flash) and I've clocked it to 540/571.
I can run in Ultra mode in 1280x1024 with 2xAA and 16xAF and it's perfectly playable. I get 58.9FPS on timedemo 1 with those settings.
I think part of the secret is my FSB is at 265 because I've overclocked my P4 to 3.74Ghz, the extra memory bandwidth prevents any of the sudden jerking Ultra mode might give on stock systems. I'd expect an Athlon 64 939 to be even better with the onboard controller.
Walmart is all over the UK, they bought out Asda but didn't change the name so people didn't notice them suddenly springing up all across the country (like Starbucks is currently doing).
Quite sneaky of them really, except they haven't given us the super cheap deals like they did in the US yet, it seems they're quite content to continue charging us a fortune.
It's a Hurricane Pack not a Hurricane Patch, like offering extra levels for Splinter Cell this pack offers NG players new moves, costumes, enemies and weapons.
That said I refuse to subscribe to Live as I don't really like online play, so the only way I'll get to enjoy this is on a cover CD.:(
Davros creator of the Daleks recently attempted to model the galactic stock market, he discovered a formula that worked, and his plan was to release the formula to everyone thus causing the stock market to collapse (for his own evil ends of course!).
Bizarrely someone has ripped the English voice work out of the X-Box version and somehow hacked it into the DC version of Shenmue II, I've seen it floating around on Suprnova but there weren't any sources so I couldn't give it a test drive.
I personally would have liked a version of Shenmue I with the Japanese voices and English subtitles but as far as I know that doesn't exist.
This is correct, luckily the current GBA is able to emulate a classic GameBoy perfectly in software (not using the GBA's hardware chip), so I would expect the extra horse power of the DS would easily allow for GBC emulation in software too.
The only limitation to playing GB and GB Colour games on the DS would be having some sort of re-writable media like the flash cards available for the GBA.
Very interesting, especially comments like "the purchaser of the PAL game is told in clear language that it is not designed to be played on a non-PAL machine. There is no support for the suggestion of licence or authorisation. Once again the copy protection system adopted by Sony is designed to prevent just such use of a non-PAL game on a PAL console.", which implies that the law views even import gaming as illegal. What a sad day...
I agree, I don't see how giving development to Crystal Dynamics will change the fact that Eidos are the ones who forced Core to release Angel of Darkness before it was finished. Surely they'll do the same thing to Crystal Dynamics and we'll end up with another unfinished product.
The trouble with Eidos is their only decent franchise is Tomb Raider and they only make money when there's a new sequel on the shelves, as evidenced by the big hit their shares took when AoD was first delayed.
It's a shame Core weren't given the freedom that developers like Nintendo, Valve or id have, they can afford to set deadlines of "when it's done" and get away with it (and create fantastic games too).
I wouldn't have wanted to be one of the poor developers at Core when Eidos were insisting on their unrealistic deadlines.
I find Adaware does an good job, but "SpyBot Search & Destroy" is an excellent companion to it, together they seem to get just about everything.
Scalability has little to do with language
on
On PHP and Scaling
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Having developed systems in Java and PHP I think it's wrong to try discussing how well either of them scales without considering the main factors that affect the scalability of projects, namely:
- The skill of the developers implementing the system - The foresight of the original plan/architecture design - Understanding of where bottlenecks/growth problems will occur
Any project that doesn't plan the scalability in from day one will likely struggle to fix the problem when scalability does become an issue.
IMHO scalability is a design and architectural problem, the language used (within reason) makes no difference- it's the quality and structure of the design itself which will make or break the system.
The Cybermen were always my favourite recurring baddies so I'd be very glad to see them back.
It's the way they remove your eyes, skin and limbs and stick you in one of their silver suits, with a computer controlling your body so you have no way of escaping the continual agony that made them so scary to me as a child.
Plus they will crush a limb or pull an arm out of its socket if you don't do what they tell you. At least with the Daleks it's usually over after they yell "Exterminate!" at you.
Admittedly some of this description has come from the novels, they couldn't get away with all that on Saturday afternoons.:)
I think MS is missing a big selling point not offering backwards compatibility. I think if they really went for it and offered a backwards compatibility that improved old games i.e. increased the resolution and frame rate of the games (perhaps adding the AA and higher AF too), it would really be a big selling point.
Imagine a hi-res Halo 2 or Chronicles of Riddick at 60fps. It would be a big selling point for me anyway!:)
But since MS won't/can't licence nVidia's shaders I guess this backwards compatibility thing a moot point.
One warning about this, I tried it and it takes about 3 weeks to arrive (in the UK at least). Also it was dated February so it wasn't totally up to date with fixes, although it probably had enough to prevent blaster et al from hitting.
The easiest solution apparently is just to turn the Windows XP "firewall" on and it should block blaster until you've had time to get all those updates down from Windows Update. Cheap routers with built in firewalls can do the job too but naturally that costs some cash.
I think it's about equivalent to a Dreamcast's VMU in power. It was a small, low cost gaming device for the kiddies, so it doesn't really have a lot of umpf or the screen res to run those type of games.
Re:my thoughts
on
OQO Examined
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I think it's also being aimed at evil international terrorists who want to release chemical weapons. Well the terrorist in the lastest season of 24 had one anyway, he even used it to escape from Jack Bauer!
Did he really know the market he was aiming for? Was it wise to release a game so hard that only very skillful players could beat it? Is that a good market to aim for?
Ninja Gaiden received lots of hype, all of the gaming press were hyping it for months, it got great reviews, and it became something of a best seller. This usually means more than just hardcore gamers will buy the game. And if you read the forums of various gaming sites the overwhelming opinion seems to be that the game was too hard.
Surely an easy mode could have been included to satisfy the more casual gamer? What would have been the harm in that? I suspect in Japan (where the X-Box hasn't sold so well) most X-Box owners are hardcore gamers and Itagaki got that market right, but that's certainly not the same market as the US and Europe. How many who bought the first NG for the X-Box will buy the sequel if they think it will be as hard as the first? Very few I would imagine, and at the end of the day Itagaki should be thinking about this if he wants this to be a franchise that people will keep buying.
Personally I wouldn't have had a problem with the difficulty if I had lots of time on my hands. But now that I've left university and have to work, the time I have available to devote to games is quite limited. Sometimes 30 minutes is all I get and that isn't much to make any progress in NG, and if I die at the end of those 30 minutes I'm often right back to where I started!
Many games players have grown up, and I think mostly the market has realised this. Not everyone can devote hours on end to play games like we did when we were kids anymore. It's true that you can't please all the people all of the time but I think Itagaki should give consideration to players who cannot devote the hours needed to master his game but still want the chance to enjoy it.
Good find. The Chihiro is also listed as having a 200Mhz XChip GeForce 3 on System16.com but the XBox's XChip is 250Mhz.
System16.com also lists a "Cirrus Logic Stream Processor" on the Chihiro. I don't think the XBox has this, and since Outrun2's graphics have to be streamed from the disc they will probably have to use the unified RAM to store the music. Streaming music from the hard drive might be an option unless that would affect how much could be streamed from the DVD.
After saying: "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"
Bruno went on to elaborate: "I mean, seriously, if we'd bothered to fix all the bugs, sort out the half finished textures and play tested the damn thing we couldn't have released the game until after people had seen Matrix Revolutions. Who'd buy want to buy the game after seeing that train wreck?"
Unfortunately Bonnell was unable to continue as he was late for a session swimming in his money pit.
Is it just me or is the gaming industry so cynical now that they don't even care to hide the fact that they want to churn out badly made movie tie-ins AND not get penalised for doing a bad job? Maybe I'm just old fashioned with my desire to play good games...
For those questioning Bruno's maths, in the UK most new games should be 40 GBP, which is roughly $72 and probably accounts for the discrepency.
Yeah surfing on lava isn't quite how I imagined the final showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, How about the initial showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, then?
I thought about putting the first showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan but then I thought I'd get corrected by someone saying that the fight in A New Hope was between Ben and Darth Vader.;)
Yeah surfing on lava isn't quite how I imagined the final showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, I was hoping for something akin to The Phantom Menace's Maul/Obi-Wan battle which was an excellent display of talent and choreography. I suspect this surfing on lava thing will mean Anakin and Obi-Wan are CG I throughout most of the scene.:(
Unless this guy had been repeatedly asked and warned to remove any infringing material this seems like a massive overreaction to me.
That said, if he was taking screen grabs from IGN's "Insider" section (or some other subscription site) and posting them for all to see I can understand why legal action might have been taken.
As I understand it most game sites these days pay for the privilege of having the first screen shots of big-name games e.g. the first shots of the redesigned Resident Evil 4. Any site that doesn't shell out for the media doesn't get their exclusive.
It's a bit off-topic but if this is the case it just goes to show how the links between review sites and big publishers these days isn't necessarily conducive to impartiality.
I could be cheeky and say an even better question is why MS didn't turn the firewall on by default, but the real reason people don't turn the firewall on is because they don't know what it is or where it is.
Ignorance is the biggest problem facing securing Windows today, and while many could point to XP SP2 to resolve the problem of the default insecurities of XP, how many users will know to download it... or be able to stay online long enough to finish the download!;)
And SP2 is only a solution for XP, how many millions of 95, 98, ME and 2000 boxes are out there that can still be infected with Trojans because they don't get a shiny new default-on firewall and NX support?
I did have this exact same situation occur to a friend recently, I recommended he turn the firewall on, unfortunately it took him about 10 minutes to find the option, by which time he was infected! He was not best pleased when I told he'd have to reinstall again!
What about the radio frequency that the president's body guards would be using to communicate with each other? I doubt they'd block that so there's a handy frequency to use right there.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got an X800 XT (a Pro modded to XT with a BIOS flash) and I've clocked it to 540/571.
I can run in Ultra mode in 1280x1024 with 2xAA and 16xAF and it's perfectly playable. I get 58.9FPS on timedemo 1 with those settings.
I think part of the secret is my FSB is at 265 because I've overclocked my P4 to 3.74Ghz, the extra memory bandwidth prevents any of the sudden jerking Ultra mode might give on stock systems. I'd expect an Athlon 64 939 to be even better with the onboard controller.
Walmart is all over the UK, they bought out Asda but didn't change the name so people didn't notice them suddenly springing up all across the country (like Starbucks is currently doing).
Quite sneaky of them really, except they haven't given us the super cheap deals like they did in the US yet, it seems they're quite content to continue charging us a fortune.
It's a Hurricane Pack not a Hurricane Patch, like offering extra levels for Splinter Cell this pack offers NG players new moves, costumes, enemies and weapons.
:(
That said I refuse to subscribe to Live as I don't really like online play, so the only way I'll get to enjoy this is on a cover CD.
Davros creator of the Daleks recently attempted to model the galactic stock market, he discovered a formula that worked, and his plan was to release the formula to everyone thus causing the stock market to collapse (for his own evil ends of course!).
Presumably Mandelbrot works for the Daleks...
Bizarrely someone has ripped the English voice work out of the X-Box version and somehow hacked it into the DC version of Shenmue II, I've seen it floating around on Suprnova but there weren't any sources so I couldn't give it a test drive.
I personally would have liked a version of Shenmue I with the Japanese voices and English subtitles but as far as I know that doesn't exist.
This is correct, luckily the current GBA is able to emulate a classic GameBoy perfectly in software (not using the GBA's hardware chip), so I would expect the extra horse power of the DS would easily allow for GBC emulation in software too.
The only limitation to playing GB and GB Colour games on the DS would be having some sort of re-writable media like the flash cards available for the GBA.
Thanks to Wi-Fi I can now read Slashdot from the comfort of my toilet.
Very interesting, especially comments like "the purchaser of the PAL game is told in clear language that it is not designed to be played on a non-PAL machine. There is no support for the suggestion of licence or authorisation. Once again the copy protection system adopted by Sony is designed to prevent just such use of a non-PAL game on a PAL console.", which implies that the law views even import gaming as illegal. What a sad day...
I agree, I don't see how giving development to Crystal Dynamics will change the fact that Eidos are the ones who forced Core to release Angel of Darkness before it was finished. Surely they'll do the same thing to Crystal Dynamics and we'll end up with another unfinished product.
The trouble with Eidos is their only decent franchise is Tomb Raider and they only make money when there's a new sequel on the shelves, as evidenced by the big hit their shares took when AoD was first delayed.
It's a shame Core weren't given the freedom that developers like Nintendo, Valve or id have, they can afford to set deadlines of "when it's done" and get away with it (and create fantastic games too).
I wouldn't have wanted to be one of the poor developers at Core when Eidos were insisting on their unrealistic deadlines.
Are you sure Duke3D was a modified Doom 2 engine? I thought they specially developed their own and trumpeted is as a Doom-beater.
I remember the rumours that LucasArts had pulled the Doom engine apart to develop Dark Forces.
I find Adaware does an good job, but "SpyBot Search & Destroy" is an excellent companion to it, together they seem to get just about everything.
Having developed systems in Java and PHP I think it's wrong to try discussing how well either of them scales without considering the main factors that affect the scalability of projects, namely:
- The skill of the developers implementing the system
- The foresight of the original plan/architecture design
- Understanding of where bottlenecks/growth problems will occur
Any project that doesn't plan the scalability in from day one will likely struggle to fix the problem when scalability does become an issue.
IMHO scalability is a design and architectural problem, the language used (within reason) makes no difference- it's the quality and structure of the design itself which will make or break the system.
The Cybermen were always my favourite recurring baddies so I'd be very glad to see them back.
:)
It's the way they remove your eyes, skin and limbs and stick you in one of their silver suits, with a computer controlling your body so you have no way of escaping the continual agony that made them so scary to me as a child.
Plus they will crush a limb or pull an arm out of its socket if you don't do what they tell you. At least with the Daleks it's usually over after they yell "Exterminate!" at you.
Admittedly some of this description has come from the novels, they couldn't get away with all that on Saturday afternoons.
I think MS is missing a big selling point not offering backwards compatibility. I think if they really went for it and offered a backwards compatibility that improved old games i.e. increased the resolution and frame rate of the games (perhaps adding the AA and higher AF too), it would really be a big selling point.
:)
Imagine a hi-res Halo 2 or Chronicles of Riddick at 60fps. It would be a big selling point for me anyway!
But since MS won't/can't licence nVidia's shaders I guess this backwards compatibility thing a moot point.
One warning about this, I tried it and it takes about 3 weeks to arrive (in the UK at least). Also it was dated February so it wasn't totally up to date with fixes, although it probably had enough to prevent blaster et al from hitting.
The easiest solution apparently is just to turn the Windows XP "firewall" on and it should block blaster until you've had time to get all those updates down from Windows Update. Cheap routers with built in firewalls can do the job too but naturally that costs some cash.
I think it's about equivalent to a Dreamcast's VMU in power. It was a small, low cost gaming device for the kiddies, so it doesn't really have a lot of umpf or the screen res to run those type of games.
I think it's also being aimed at evil international terrorists who want to release chemical weapons. Well the terrorist in the lastest season of 24 had one anyway, he even used it to escape from Jack Bauer!
Did he really know the market he was aiming for? Was it wise to release a game so hard that only very skillful players could beat it? Is that a good market to aim for?
Ninja Gaiden received lots of hype, all of the gaming press were hyping it for months, it got great reviews, and it became something of a best seller. This usually means more than just hardcore gamers will buy the game. And if you read the forums of various gaming sites the overwhelming opinion seems to be that the game was too hard.
Surely an easy mode could have been included to satisfy the more casual gamer? What would have been the harm in that? I suspect in Japan (where the X-Box hasn't sold so well) most X-Box owners are hardcore gamers and Itagaki got that market right, but that's certainly not the same market as the US and Europe. How many who bought the first NG for the X-Box will buy the sequel if they think it will be as hard as the first? Very few I would imagine, and at the end of the day Itagaki should be thinking about this if he wants this to be a franchise that people will keep buying.
Personally I wouldn't have had a problem with the difficulty if I had lots of time on my hands. But now that I've left university and have to work, the time I have available to devote to games is quite limited. Sometimes 30 minutes is all I get and that isn't much to make any progress in NG, and if I die at the end of those 30 minutes I'm often right back to where I started!
Many games players have grown up, and I think mostly the market has realised this. Not everyone can devote hours on end to play games like we did when we were kids anymore. It's true that you can't please all the people all of the time but I think Itagaki should give consideration to players who cannot devote the hours needed to master his game but still want the chance to enjoy it.
Good find. The Chihiro is also listed as having a 200Mhz XChip GeForce 3 on System16.com but the XBox's XChip is 250Mhz.
System16.com also lists a "Cirrus Logic Stream Processor" on the Chihiro. I don't think the XBox has this, and since Outrun2's graphics have to be streamed from the disc they will probably have to use the unified RAM to store the music. Streaming music from the hard drive might be an option unless that would affect how much could be streamed from the DVD.
After saying: "We sold four million copies. That's $250 million worldwide... and Warner Bros. would penalize us because we didn't achieve 70%? Are they joking?"
Bruno went on to elaborate: "I mean, seriously, if we'd bothered to fix all the bugs, sort out the half finished textures and play tested the damn thing we couldn't have released the game until after people had seen Matrix Revolutions. Who'd buy want to buy the game after seeing that train wreck?"
Unfortunately Bonnell was unable to continue as he was late for a session swimming in his money pit.
Is it just me or is the gaming industry so cynical now that they don't even care to hide the fact that they want to churn out badly made movie tie-ins AND not get penalised for doing a bad job? Maybe I'm just old fashioned with my desire to play good games...
For those questioning Bruno's maths, in the UK most new games should be 40 GBP, which is roughly $72 and probably accounts for the discrepency.
Yeah surfing on lava isn't quite how I imagined the final showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, How about the initial showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, then? I thought about putting the first showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan but then I thought I'd get corrected by someone saying that the fight in A New Hope was between Ben and Darth Vader. ;)
Yeah surfing on lava isn't quite how I imagined the final showdown between Anakin and Obi-Wan, I was hoping for something akin to The Phantom Menace's Maul/Obi-Wan battle which was an excellent display of talent and choreography. I suspect this surfing on lava thing will mean Anakin and Obi-Wan are CG I throughout most of the scene. :(
Unless this guy had been repeatedly asked and warned to remove any infringing material this seems like a massive overreaction to me.
That said, if he was taking screen grabs from IGN's "Insider" section (or some other subscription site) and posting them for all to see I can understand why legal action might have been taken.
As I understand it most game sites these days pay for the privilege of having the first screen shots of big-name games e.g. the first shots of the redesigned Resident Evil 4. Any site that doesn't shell out for the media doesn't get their exclusive.
It's a bit off-topic but if this is the case it just goes to show how the links between review sites and big publishers these days isn't necessarily conducive to impartiality.
I could be cheeky and say an even better question is why MS didn't turn the firewall on by default, but the real reason people don't turn the firewall on is because they don't know what it is or where it is.
;)
Ignorance is the biggest problem facing securing Windows today, and while many could point to XP SP2 to resolve the problem of the default insecurities of XP, how many users will know to download it... or be able to stay online long enough to finish the download!
And SP2 is only a solution for XP, how many millions of 95, 98, ME and 2000 boxes are out there that can still be infected with Trojans because they don't get a shiny new default-on firewall and NX support?
I did have this exact same situation occur to a friend recently, I recommended he turn the firewall on, unfortunately it took him about 10 minutes to find the option, by which time he was infected! He was not best pleased when I told he'd have to reinstall again!
What about the radio frequency that the president's body guards would be using to communicate with each other? I doubt they'd block that so there's a handy frequency to use right there.