Having Actually played Halo: Combat Evolved
on
Halo 2 Reviews
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· Score: 4, Interesting
A few have asked why Halo was as acclaimed as it was.
Halo was not only in a good spot for exposure, being the only polished FPS on the Xbox, but filled expectations well. I was originally unimpressed by the screenshots and even a few minutes of deathmatching at a friend's house. But I kept reading of the the awards it received, long after the inital reviews. Almost always, the write-ups would mention the exhilartion of playing on the highest difficulty, single player. So I borrowed the game from the same friend.
And my eyes were opened. Not only was what appeared to be yet another FPS suddenly exciting, but during the tense, chalenging moments, I was attuned to the subtlties of sound effects and level layouts. The AI was superb, feinting and flanking as well as some of the best online FPS clans (marksmanship not as good). When you are paying attention to every detail to survie and progress, you learn the levels very well, and the feeling is almost more "Survival Horror" than some Doom-style adventure.
The game has been compared, derivatively, to GoldenEye/PD, UT series, and Quake series. I've played all of those, some on multiple formats. These are pillar games, but Halo stands alongside them. Unfortunately, untile you devote a few hours on Legendary, it's really difficult to understand why.
Now it appears that Halo 2 isn't up to snuff, but every series I mentioned has it's better and worse titles. Im not surprised here, but I am still looking forward getting the game alone at 12:01am's single player fun and the following Halo2 party, where i imagine both seasoned and noobs will have fun drinking eating and shooting the crap outa stuff! And it should smell better and have lest tantrums than LAN parties Ive attended...
Thanks to sombody reposting the article, I am afford the fun of tearing it apart in a public place. Please save yourself the time and skip this post, if you haven't read the article. I am just going to question a few points in the first half, and invite others to create their own criticism...
And I am also skipping some economic points that the author was, IMHO, correct on.
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies...
All games do that. That's why, as the richness of games has improved, there are tutorials in Single player and other non-mmo games.Unfortunately, without a "mod scene", traditional games eventually use up the supply of newbies around. But on launch day, everybody is a newbie to a given game. Additionally, this really contradict the issues in point two (below)
....Newbies would love these virtual worlds, but they're not going to play them.
Maybe the author means "settings", and not virtual worlds.
Why not? Because they're all text. Newbies don't do text.
Apparently, niether do "oldbies". It is not as if newbies play graphical games, regardless of quality, and seasoned players switch to text adventuring, du to the wide variety of quality text games out there. Text games are simply of limited appeal to the players. The most hardcore game players I know all spend most of their time in graphically-rich games, although a few spend a little time (and virtually no money) on text gaming.
...Newbies come to virtual worlds with a set of preconceptions acquired from other virtual worlds...
So, a newbie to a virtual world has more preconsived notions than another, more experienced player? This article is getting ridiculous...
or, failing that, from other computer games or, failing that, from gut instinct.
Or, failing that, brain-lasers run by space clowns , or failing that somewhere else...
In any work of fiction, the target audience has a preconcieved notion or two when experienceing/interacting. And anything that bucks against that will cause some friction. In compelling, or carefully designed work, that may be forgiven by the critically thinking, and overlooked by by less expectation-based audiences (read: younger). Think about it, there needs to be a clear establishment of fantasy in any work that revolves around it. The "Putt-Putt" games overcome this handicap by targeting 4 year olds, who just like talking cars enough to not care. Silent Hill overcomes this with characterization and careful timing. Quake III overcomes this by offering wild eye-candy a heavily-brushed stylization. All three are dealing with offering something fictional, and the fact that the users know it isnt real. I fail to see how a newbie would differe from any other level of player in this.
They will not consider virtual worlds that confront these expectations if there are others around that don't.
Bull. I have explained the premise of "D" to two players simultaneously, both of who were familiar with platform-sty games exclusively. One was interested, one wasn't.
Put another way, if a virtual world has a feature that offends newbies, the developers will have to remove that feature or they won't get any newbies.
Almost wrong, bit not completely...some mmo-games offer different features, or more specifically, more demanding and divers features for experienced players, allowing newvies to get what they want without ruining the game for seasoned players.
This is irrespective of what the oldbies think: they may adore a feature, but if newbies don't like it then (under point #1) eventually there won't be anyone left to adore it.
And in his brillian formula the author has forgotten a vital thing: it is cheaper to keep an existing player than it is to advertise and attract a new player. Also important, disgruntled "oldbies" will poison the reputation of a gam
Wow, I was fed up with the article before I even got to the second half of the headline; the part that says "once again". That's the part before the summary, which is before the detailed posting, which is before TFA. I pity the poor moderators that feel compelled to read far enough in every topic to get to this post, since this is about the 10,000th front-page article of the year on this eternally inane topic.
Perhaps there should just be a "Lin vs. Win" section, so I can look at the icons and save my self the 1/2 a second of reading and go directly to rolling my eyes like a teenager. Hey, it could use the ol' 'Rocky IV' logo (with a penguin and squares on the gloves).
I guess I'm saying, if even the submitter finds this topic so ridicously trite they must mock it in the headline itself, why did he/she post it, and why did it get approved? Is there really no other news for Nerds? Is there nothing else that Matters?
Seriuously, I'd rather hear about vi vs. emacs, at least that debate is nebulous (to me and many, and some new insight might be gleaned from opinions. Bye, bye, karma?
Make it work, i'll buy it. It would be one of those games that sounds insanely entertaining, and has a slightly legitimate use, since it would develop one's attention.
While your at it, make it more of a 3d rpg format, where one walks from table to table and ladies bring drinks. I'd love a card game that felt like a casino instead of a menu of games.
Pizzaman, your email is obfuscated, as it should be. Nevertheless, I have to buzz you:
We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. -Hillary Clinton
Your sig: Is that an actual quote of Hillary Clinton? Can you provide a source? Hopefully, this would settle several long and tiring debates about helmet laws, socialized medicine, the future first female president, and democracy between my wife and I. I apologize to those who find this off-topic, but I find this potential quote to be Stuff that Matters(TM).
I was drunk when I logged on, but I am sobering quickly.:(
Ford claims this is the first US Hybrid. Kudos for making a hybrid that looks lie a "real car".
General Motors already had a hybrid truck available in the 2004 fleet division, and is releasing it in the public this year, as well. Or you can get a used 2004, but they are rare. Interestingly, the V8 Silverado uses it's motor and battery for idling and coasting, never to propel, so it works out as a trade off between the "fuller" hybrids, with about a 16% milage boost.
I preferred 9.b. better: The capacity of a system or machine to operate
Any social system that is most successful in obtaining power will then apply said power to create an environment that continues to facilitate power. An excellent machine is one that is self sustaining.
Individuals are complex enough systems to create multiple, conflicting goals (striving for security/being free-spirited, making a living/maintaining self-respect) and no human is more powerful then all other humans combined, even in short term situations.
Economies and Governments are both simpler systems than a human body/psyche/whatever. The goals of each are less conflicted (profit, dictate application of power) and in the current American system, these two things seem to compliment each other well. (sarcasm)At least western business and political machinery has been refined to the point where it is so effective that the masses are no longer afraid of starving, being slaves, or executed for complaining. Everything is beneath thier notice(/sarcasm).
Remember, even under your Greek "ability to act or perform effectively" most powerful things will need to apply their effectiveness to outside elements to maintain OR increase power. In fact to perform, any object must apply foarde on an outside object: a wrench's torque over a nut, a lender's power over my credit rating, a martyr's pleat over human emotion, or a business's financial benefit over a lawmaker. Force can be more than kinetic or violent.
Odd that 'harmonizing' is always in one direction - for some reason, no one ever wants to decrease IP regulation to harmonize with some other country.
Because restrictive IP laws create concentration of wealth, which is power. Power leads to the ability to coerce others. And nobody grows powerful by using their existing wealth to create an envirinment that is free-er.
So is "the community" behind this? It appears to be the key step to the Linux Desktop. Accessability, and application dev-times would both benefit.
The last I recall on/., people seemed unenthusiastic. Perhaps the X-compatability needs to be developed in parallel? Or has so much work gone in to KDE/Gnome that intertia is in their favor? Or is there a OSS office-politics/personality-clashes type issue going on? I suspect the problem is that many people can imagine the usefulness of this.
True Dat. I was over-simplifying, and particularly referring to raster-image scaling as an out-of-the-box OS GUI feature. The unexploited features in the NT 5 engine are interesting.
The most interesting part of MS's graphics model is that it is supposedly a 100% new engine, yet it maintains compatability with existing applications. And they clame that it will degrade gracefully to older hardware, as well. I am inclined to believe it will do a pretty good job of that, since of all the things I hate about windows, it's backwards compatability is relatively excellent. I've played games and used dos and Win 3.11 applications under 200 and XP that I really never expected to just "click and go".
It is time for the "Z" Windowing system standard. A fully SVG compliant, and "X" compliant vector based (but bitmap friendly, via texture mapping) system. Who's down?
I'm not sure that it is called Y-Windows. A quick scan of the Y.windows site seems to show that it is an accelerated bitmap desktop windowing system. That would make it rival Longhorn's functionality. Were Cairo actually progressing somewhere, it would be closer to what I am describing, although I am not sure what Cairo's vision of full implementation would look like.
Remember, scalable bitmaps and alpha blending are already fully available on Mac (natively) and Win (with add-ons).
Where this to come about, then GNU/Linux would be ahead. And not only that, but ahead in an area that Microsoft definitely wants to go in.
If there were more people aware of what usability this would create for the end-user, and how much simpler it would be to design graphic interfaces for the coders, I think people would jump on board. And there are sooo many talented OS developers, so it doesn't seem impossible that GNU/Linux could leapfrog MS in a field that they are only matched (beaten?) by Apple's interface. All it takes is a rallying of the people.
It would be nice to see some of the Linux GUI developers implement a fully vector-based scalable windowing system. This would put linux one visual step ahead of MS, as they are half-way there with the Longhorn GDI replacement.
An intelligent GUI would be settable to any virtual resilution, with elements that are fully scalable, from icons to "system" fonts. This is an inevitable feature on the desktop, and I wonder if any proposals are in the works.
You thought that, but actually, the point of sport is ritualized competition. Take baseball, curling, bacci or marksmanship. All established and legitimate sports to many people. Yes, in sports, as opposed to games, you do see people get up and move around, and often there are rules to quicken the tempo of events. I'd say that Segway polo, while competely vile and pathetic, is as much a sport as the above. So is speed chess, since it will quicken your pulse far more than lawn bowling.
But you were thinking of athletics. That's the physical activity/competetion thing.
I would love to see a final artical on/. about hacked segways. Hell, somebody might make something actually cool out of one. Imagine foot-controlled model with no handle!
Better still, the Oarange County Chopper model, chromed, with wire rimes, and a top speed of 50 mph.
wouldn't be cinema, but dance clubs? Some of a sound installation engineer's biggest woes are developing a consistent sound on the dance floor, an adequate change in volume when moving away from the floor to other areas, and being eternally forced into mono.
Couldn't this give the sonic experience of a much quieter club for those who want it, by building a sweet spot that was the floor only, and yet filled that floor completely, while creating an intense non-mono ride?
The other poster replying to you actually answered nothing in their pseudo-liberal wank-talk. Sorry, try this:
The problem isn that it's Indians, and not Americans, that are clicking on the link. The concept of fraud comes from employees specifically paid to click on specific advertisements, with no intention of purchasing anything. The original intention of both Google and the advertisers was to attract legitimate potential business transactions. Not to create an industry that skews statistics without purchasing anything.
I believe that Indians and other non-US countries were mentioned only to explain how this could become a profitable niche at all. Do you comprehend now?
Hey, It's your karma, but I am amazed by the opinions that are mistaken for truths by their owners.
So here's my own musing and karma risk
Street Culture...
Brings to mind asian-descended mallrats looking for expensive toys to tack on to their hondas. Carlos Santana (not black) making Rob Thomas (also not black) cooler. Playing Loud Ludacris and Eminem. Luda is black, but Eminem? Although at first glance he is a whitey doing "black" music, He certainly has is own sound, also influenced by classic anglo poetic meter (and few black gentlemen bleach their hair).
And then there are other groups that influence street, as well. Orange County Choppers/West Coast Choppers. A bunch of older white people doing what they do well, with a fuck-you if ya don't like it attitude. Very "street". Goths/Punks/Metalers. A token group thrown in any "street" video game, usually portrayed by one character. In real life, a mix of anglo and eastern europan-americans, with a few blacks and asians, which are not usually the sub-cultural leaders. Has led to the plethora of piercings, dyed hair and tattos in street culture. Hispanics. Aside from Santana, has a very real and non-black street credibility. They "own" the lowrider scene, cruising, and such. Not marketed by Hollywood/ video games well yet. Still street.
Yes, there are many blacks developing the "Urban" culture. But they aren't the only ones that loathe suburbia. In fact, people from all ethnicities and walks of life find the droll, smugly racist, overly rightous attitudes of the portly and pasty crackers from small towns and suburb tracts simply disgusting. I'm white. I still like bass, flamboyance and machismo. And no, I don't wish I was black.
However, the most unrealistic issues in most commercial-class equipment is
Pulse timing.Not only does an overly-long pulse duration let players cheesily "hose" the arena, but it kills batteries faster. A shorter pulse creates a more technical and responsive game.This may be done in harware with a rheostat, or require some sort of chip flash to adjust.
Retaliation time. the time after receiving shot that one can still fire; this should be only long enough to allow a shot if the trigger was in mid pull when hit. Will require some tweaking to perfect. Any longer destroys the already meager consequences of a hit. Also requires some major chip-foolery. These 2 changes will make a more robust game by far.
Sync. If there are odd delays between trigger-pull, beam and sound, you will have as much fun as a novice palm user with graffiti has.
Shiny housings, poor sensors. It is incredibly frustrating to see a legitimate hit get ignored, especially since most equipment exposes the firer on trigger pull. Often there are not enough sensors to really detect a beam's strike from angles where the users percieve a sensor to be. Equipment that has a shell over the sensors also causes problems.
MaterialsGet as many sensors as your group can stand to wear, and if possible make sure that center-of-mass hits are longer than limbs. Last of all, make your own gun shells. Nobody seems to make a solid, balanced off-the-shelf gun.
I have run hundreds of laser tag events for novices and competitiion class players, designed and tested competition game formats, and competed in the Zone Internationals.
And to all the paintball loving smartasses, didn't you read the question? If paintball is a "more realistic mod" to a Laser Tag setup, is live ammo an "even more realistic" solution? Tryit, and let us Taggers know how that works out. Or just realize that good laser tag is simply a different experience, and not one you experienced at Qzar one time.
been computing for all of your life, with your brain.
I was referring to the physical operation of a computer, through software. And I'd like to think I wasn't a cold, calculating automaton until at least the end of puberty; at least my child-brain thoughts and actions were not well analyzed at a concious level.
Fitt's law only says that if one has to to reach a large target nearby, it will be faster and easier than a small target far away. He generated the math to back up what would be and obvious fundamental to anyone who has ever aimed at anything with a gun or bow. Unfortunately, I am seeing many misapplications of this premise on the web, where people feel that the math validates proximity (and linear ony, at that) as the only guidline to a task's interface.
This misapplication reminds me of the office menuing systems. Somebody got the bright idea that smaller menus would be good, and so they implemented the current expando-system. Unfortunately, many users despise this, when it could have been executed much more pleasantly...Why didn't all items apear by default, and then slow disappear after lack of use, instead of being backwords? This would have appeared to many users as an apparent speed up of the interface, as it "learned" what a user actually wanted. This could have been easily combined with a graguated shrinking or lightening of unused options to inform a novice that items were going away. Alas, since it isn't like this, it feels like word is mangled to it's power users.
Interestingly, I do usually perform a task one way. One way for each place I start the task from or seek to end at. I close a document window when I plan on opening another in the same app. I just close hte app and let the automated save dialog come up when I am done with a file and it's application. Imagine if that was not an option in any program. The greater task-in-time is probably the most over looked feature in any web or software interface, on it's initial release. After public release and feedback, designers almost always develop task interface methodology that works in temporally logical groupings, as they learn what people do in what order. Unfortunately, I've seen little on this on the web.
Excellent post. It's at +5 already, but I was tickled to see somebody define the huge and valuable user-group that Linux has yet to seduce. And what it's weakness is in doing that. I'm "me too-ing", but I think this point is worth a little overstatement.
I can't wait to see a distro that is engineered to appeal to the sophisticated, non-coding types. A distro that includes a complete set of integrated options to configure things to my tastes; I've been computing for 20 damn years, I might have an idea of what I'd like! And I almost always choose the app that has 5 ways to accompolish the task, because that's the program I will get the most improvement from continuing to use.
The PDA has been foiled by the popularity of using networked data. Considering "competition" is squeezing the Clie out of the US Market, that doesn't sound like the demise of a product, just of one of it's most expensive brands.
The PC is a pandemic product because there is at least one thing it can do to help most anybody. The PDA, so far, is not like that.
PDA's have always been only popular in specialized markets. Executives, geeks, specialized business app users, etc. The "killer app" has never existed, although people have speculated on "agent" software. Combine this function with always online connectivity, invisible open-standard syncing, and throw in enough features that one will appeal to *anybody* and the PDA will rise like it never has before.
Slashdot Mirror
Halo was not only in a good spot for exposure, being the only polished FPS on the Xbox, but filled expectations well. I was originally unimpressed by the screenshots and even a few minutes of deathmatching at a friend's house. But I kept reading of the the awards it received, long after the inital reviews. Almost always, the write-ups would mention the exhilartion of playing on the highest difficulty, single player. So I borrowed the game from the same friend.
And my eyes were opened. Not only was what appeared to be yet another FPS suddenly exciting, but during the tense, chalenging moments, I was attuned to the subtlties of sound effects and level layouts. The AI was superb, feinting and flanking as well as some of the best online FPS clans (marksmanship not as good). When you are paying attention to every detail to survie and progress, you learn the levels very well, and the feeling is almost more "Survival Horror" than some Doom-style adventure.
The game has been compared, derivatively, to GoldenEye/PD, UT series, and Quake series. I've played all of those, some on multiple formats. These are pillar games, but Halo stands alongside them. Unfortunately, untile you devote a few hours on Legendary, it's really difficult to understand why.
Now it appears that Halo 2 isn't up to snuff, but every series I mentioned has it's better and worse titles. Im not surprised here, but I am still looking forward getting the game alone at 12:01am's single player fun and the following Halo2 party, where i imagine both seasoned and noobs will have fun drinking eating and shooting the crap outa stuff! And it should smell better and have lest tantrums than LAN parties Ive attended...
And I am also skipping some economic points that the author was, IMHO, correct on.
Point #1: Virtual worlds live or die by their ability to attract newbies...
All games do that. That's why, as the richness of games has improved, there are tutorials in Single player and other non-mmo games.Unfortunately, without a "mod scene", traditional games eventually use up the supply of newbies around. But on launch day, everybody is a newbie to a given game. Additionally, this really contradict the issues in point two (below)
Maybe the author means "settings", and not virtual worlds.
Why not? Because they're all text. Newbies don't do text.
Apparently, niether do "oldbies". It is not as if newbies play graphical games, regardless of quality, and seasoned players switch to text adventuring, du to the wide variety of quality text games out there. Text games are simply of limited appeal to the players. The most hardcore game players I know all spend most of their time in graphically-rich games, although a few spend a little time (and virtually no money) on text gaming.
So, a newbie to a virtual world has more preconsived notions than another, more experienced player? This article is getting ridiculous...
or, failing that, from other computer games or, failing that, from gut instinct.
Or, failing that, brain-lasers run by space clowns , or failing that somewhere else...
In any work of fiction, the target audience has a preconcieved notion or two when experienceing/interacting. And anything that bucks against that will cause some friction. In compelling, or carefully designed work, that may be forgiven by the critically thinking, and overlooked by by less expectation-based audiences (read: younger). Think about it, there needs to be a clear establishment of fantasy in any work that revolves around it. The "Putt-Putt" games overcome this handicap by targeting 4 year olds, who just like talking cars enough to not care. Silent Hill overcomes this with characterization and careful timing. Quake III overcomes this by offering wild eye-candy a heavily-brushed stylization. All three are dealing with offering something fictional, and the fact that the users know it isnt real. I fail to see how a newbie would differe from any other level of player in this.
They will not consider virtual worlds that confront these expectations if there are others around that don't.
Bull. I have explained the premise of "D" to two players simultaneously, both of who were familiar with platform-sty games exclusively. One was interested, one wasn't.
Put another way, if a virtual world has a feature that offends newbies, the developers will have to remove that feature or they won't get any newbies.
Almost wrong, bit not completely...some mmo-games offer different features, or more specifically, more demanding and divers features for experienced players, allowing newvies to get what they want without ruining the game for seasoned players.
This is irrespective of what the oldbies think: they may adore a feature, but if newbies don't like it then (under point #1) eventually there won't be anyone left to adore it.
And in his brillian formula the author has forgotten a vital thing: it is cheaper to keep an existing player than it is to advertise and attract a new player. Also important, disgruntled "oldbies" will poison the reputation of a gam
Perhaps there should just be a "Lin vs. Win" section, so I can look at the icons and save my self the 1/2 a second of reading and go directly to rolling my eyes like a teenager. Hey, it could use the ol' 'Rocky IV' logo (with a penguin and squares on the gloves). I guess I'm saying, if even the submitter finds this topic so ridicously trite they must mock it in the headline itself, why did he/she post it, and why did it get approved? Is there really no other news for Nerds? Is there nothing else that Matters?
Seriuously, I'd rather hear about vi vs. emacs, at least that debate is nebulous (to me and many, and some new insight might be gleaned from opinions. Bye, bye, karma?
Make it work, i'll buy it. It would be one of those games that sounds insanely entertaining, and has a slightly legitimate use, since it would develop one's attention. While your at it, make it more of a 3d rpg format, where one walks from table to table and ladies bring drinks. I'd love a card game that felt like a casino instead of a menu of games.
We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. -Hillary Clinton
Your sig: Is that an actual quote of Hillary Clinton? Can you provide a source? Hopefully, this would settle several long and tiring debates about helmet laws, socialized medicine, the future first female president, and democracy between my wife and I. I apologize to those who find this off-topic, but I find this potential quote to be Stuff that Matters(TM).
I was drunk when I logged on, but I am sobering quickly. :(
General Motors already had a hybrid truck available in the 2004 fleet division, and is releasing it in the public this year, as well. Or you can get a used 2004, but they are rare. Interestingly, the V8 Silverado uses it's motor and battery for idling and coasting, never to propel, so it works out as a trade off between the "fuller" hybrids, with about a 16% milage boost.
Isn't that our airwaves use to broadcast television?
By the time this is working, all the children (potential astronauts) will be immunized against opiates, and unable to hibernate.
Any social system that is most successful in obtaining power will then apply said power to create an environment that continues to facilitate power. An excellent machine is one that is self sustaining.
Individuals are complex enough systems to create multiple, conflicting goals (striving for security/being free-spirited, making a living/maintaining self-respect) and no human is more powerful then all other humans combined, even in short term situations.
Economies and Governments are both simpler systems than a human body/psyche/whatever. The goals of each are less conflicted (profit, dictate application of power) and in the current American system, these two things seem to compliment each other well. (sarcasm)At least western business and political machinery has been refined to the point where it is so effective that the masses are no longer afraid of starving, being slaves, or executed for complaining. Everything is beneath thier notice(/sarcasm).
Remember, even under your Greek "ability to act or perform effectively" most powerful things will need to apply their effectiveness to outside elements to maintain OR increase power. In fact to perform, any object must apply foarde on an outside object: a wrench's torque over a nut, a lender's power over my credit rating, a martyr's pleat over human emotion, or a business's financial benefit over a lawmaker. Force can be more than kinetic or violent.
Because restrictive IP laws create concentration of wealth, which is power. Power leads to the ability to coerce others. And nobody grows powerful by using their existing wealth to create an envirinment that is free-er.
The last I recall on /., people seemed unenthusiastic. Perhaps the X-compatability needs to be developed in parallel? Or has so much work gone in to KDE/Gnome that intertia is in their favor? Or is there a OSS office-politics/personality-clashes type issue going on? I suspect the problem is that many people can imagine the usefulness of this.
True Dat. I was over-simplifying, and particularly referring to raster-image scaling as an out-of-the-box OS GUI feature. The unexploited features in the NT 5 engine are interesting.
It is time for the "Z" Windowing system standard. A fully SVG compliant, and "X" compliant vector based (but bitmap friendly, via texture mapping) system. Who's down?
Remember, scalable bitmaps and alpha blending are already fully available on Mac (natively) and Win (with add-ons).
If there were more people aware of what usability this would create for the end-user, and how much simpler it would be to design graphic interfaces for the coders, I think people would jump on board. And there are sooo many talented OS developers, so it doesn't seem impossible that GNU/Linux could leapfrog MS in a field that they are only matched (beaten?) by Apple's interface. All it takes is a rallying of the people.
An intelligent GUI would be settable to any virtual resilution, with elements that are fully scalable, from icons to "system" fonts. This is an inevitable feature on the desktop, and I wonder if any proposals are in the works.
But you were thinking of athletics. That's the physical activity/competetion thing.
I would love to see a final artical on /. about hacked segways. Hell, somebody might make something actually cool out of one. Imagine foot-controlled model with no handle!
Better still, the Oarange County Chopper model, chromed, with wire rimes, and a top speed of 50 mph.
My sleep. More than once.
Couldn't this give the sonic experience of a much quieter club for those who want it, by building a sweet spot that was the floor only, and yet filled that floor completely, while creating an intense non-mono ride?
The problem isn that it's Indians, and not Americans, that are clicking on the link. The concept of fraud comes from employees specifically paid to click on specific advertisements, with no intention of purchasing anything. The original intention of both Google and the advertisers was to attract legitimate potential business transactions. Not to create an industry that skews statistics without purchasing anything.
I believe that Indians and other non-US countries were mentioned only to explain how this could become a profitable niche at all. Do you comprehend now?
So here's my own musing and karma risk
Street Culture...
Brings to mind asian-descended mallrats looking for expensive toys to tack on to their hondas. Carlos Santana (not black) making Rob Thomas (also not black) cooler. Playing Loud Ludacris and Eminem. Luda is black, but Eminem? Although at first glance he is a whitey doing "black" music, He certainly has is own sound, also influenced by classic anglo poetic meter (and few black gentlemen bleach their hair).
And then there are other groups that influence street, as well. Orange County Choppers/West Coast Choppers. A bunch of older white people doing what they do well, with a fuck-you if ya don't like it attitude. Very "street". Goths/Punks/Metalers. A token group thrown in any "street" video game, usually portrayed by one character. In real life, a mix of anglo and eastern europan-americans, with a few blacks and asians, which are not usually the sub-cultural leaders. Has led to the plethora of piercings, dyed hair and tattos in street culture. Hispanics. Aside from Santana, has a very real and non-black street credibility. They "own" the lowrider scene, cruising, and such. Not marketed by Hollywood/ video games well yet. Still street.
Yes, there are many blacks developing the "Urban" culture. But they aren't the only ones that loathe suburbia. In fact, people from all ethnicities and walks of life find the droll, smugly racist, overly rightous attitudes of the portly and pasty crackers from small towns and suburb tracts simply disgusting. I'm white. I still like bass, flamboyance and machismo. And no, I don't wish I was black.
Pulse timing.Not only does an overly-long pulse duration let players cheesily "hose" the arena, but it kills batteries faster. A shorter pulse creates a more technical and responsive game.This may be done in harware with a rheostat, or require some sort of chip flash to adjust.
Retaliation time. the time after receiving shot that one can still fire; this should be only long enough to allow a shot if the trigger was in mid pull when hit. Will require some tweaking to perfect. Any longer destroys the already meager consequences of a hit. Also requires some major chip-foolery. These 2 changes will make a more robust game by far.
Sync. If there are odd delays between trigger-pull, beam and sound, you will have as much fun as a novice palm user with graffiti has.
Shiny housings, poor sensors. It is incredibly frustrating to see a legitimate hit get ignored, especially since most equipment exposes the firer on trigger pull. Often there are not enough sensors to really detect a beam's strike from angles where the users percieve a sensor to be. Equipment that has a shell over the sensors also causes problems.
MaterialsGet as many sensors as your group can stand to wear, and if possible make sure that center-of-mass hits are longer than limbs. Last of all, make your own gun shells. Nobody seems to make a solid, balanced off-the-shelf gun.
I have run hundreds of laser tag events for novices and competitiion class players, designed and tested competition game formats, and competed in the Zone Internationals.
And to all the paintball loving smartasses, didn't you read the question? If paintball is a "more realistic mod" to a Laser Tag setup, is live ammo an "even more realistic" solution? Tryit, and let us Taggers know how that works out. Or just realize that good laser tag is simply a different experience, and not one you experienced at Qzar one time.
I was referring to the physical operation of a computer, through software. And I'd like to think I wasn't a cold, calculating automaton until at least the end of puberty; at least my child-brain thoughts and actions were not well analyzed at a concious level.
Fitt's law only says that if one has to to reach a large target nearby, it will be faster and easier than a small target far away. He generated the math to back up what would be and obvious fundamental to anyone who has ever aimed at anything with a gun or bow. Unfortunately, I am seeing many misapplications of this premise on the web, where people feel that the math validates proximity (and linear ony, at that) as the only guidline to a task's interface.
This misapplication reminds me of the office menuing systems. Somebody got the bright idea that smaller menus would be good, and so they implemented the current expando-system. Unfortunately, many users despise this, when it could have been executed much more pleasantly...Why didn't all items apear by default, and then slow disappear after lack of use, instead of being backwords? This would have appeared to many users as an apparent speed up of the interface, as it "learned" what a user actually wanted. This could have been easily combined with a graguated shrinking or lightening of unused options to inform a novice that items were going away. Alas, since it isn't like this, it feels like word is mangled to it's power users.
Interestingly, I do usually perform a task one way. One way for each place I start the task from or seek to end at. I close a document window when I plan on opening another in the same app. I just close hte app and let the automated save dialog come up when I am done with a file and it's application. Imagine if that was not an option in any program. The greater task-in-time is probably the most over looked feature in any web or software interface, on it's initial release. After public release and feedback, designers almost always develop task interface methodology that works in temporally logical groupings, as they learn what people do in what order. Unfortunately, I've seen little on this on the web.
I can't wait to see a distro that is engineered to appeal to the sophisticated, non-coding types. A distro that includes a complete set of integrated options to configure things to my tastes; I've been computing for 20 damn years, I might have an idea of what I'd like! And I almost always choose the app that has 5 ways to accompolish the task, because that's the program I will get the most improvement from continuing to use.
The PC is a pandemic product because there is at least one thing it can do to help most anybody. The PDA, so far, is not like that.
PDA's have always been only popular in specialized markets. Executives, geeks, specialized business app users, etc. The "killer app" has never existed, although people have speculated on "agent" software. Combine this function with always online connectivity, invisible open-standard syncing, and throw in enough features that one will appeal to *anybody* and the PDA will rise like it never has before.