While the Star Control series was (is) great, my pick for best space game (and probably one of the most influencial) is Starflight by Binary Systems.
It had great music (as far as 1986 PCs were concerned) a deep plotline, and a HUGE universe. It had worm holes, mining missions, new races, randomly generated weather environment, a crazy AI system, doomsday plot and time limit (you could continue to play even after the game was "unbeatable" due to the destruction of your "home" solar system).
Ship upgrades, weapons, had to pick your crew of different alien races (which had different strengths and weaknesses and affinities/dislikes for other races). I could rant about this game for a long time, it changed my life (I played it when I was six, when it came out, my grandfather was nuts about it and marveled at their fractal world generation and "3d" rendering when you landed on a planet).
Starflight is probably the best space game ever, you can find VGA fan-made ports of it around, you need to slow your frequency way down if playing on modern hardware.
A fan-made updated version Starflight III is in the works, with slow progress. Drop a line if you remember this game, they would (probably) love to get some support. I think they are taking applications for help (no, I am not affiliated/contributing).
I still have the original box (its like a three fold record (vinyl) album) with the galaxy map (which I traced so I could draw worm holes and hostile territories without hurting the original). The game also had a cool code wheel copy protection thing that was a hoot. The team from Binary Systems is awesome, browse around for some pictures from the box, wild stuff. They were truely dedicated to this game.
I can hear the theme music in my head now...da da da da da da da da daaa daaa daaaaaaa da da da da da da da daanaaaaaah!
Who the hell wants "grittier titles geared twoards mature players"? We want games that are *fun*.
True dat! Especially on a portable game system. If I cant pick it up and game for 10 minutes while I ride the bus or wait in line, it aint worth it. Granted, there are a few times where you could get in a good portable session (flights are the only thing that comes to mind, maybe long train rides or carpool commutes), but most of the time its "filler" time that I spend with the portable system (if not reading ebooks). Why sit and play a game on a tiny (relative) screen if there is a console with large monitor around?
Obviously I am not the target market (should be, working nerd professional with DI), but I do not get the draw of portable games that are not playable in "small" sessions.
give me an epic experience on a console, or pc; give me quick and fun with the portable!
So you think the interview is stupid. OK, so are many things; stupid is subjective.
Think its irrelevant to/. stuff? OK, I don't; opinions differ. Lots of geeks I know dig Adult Swim (more than non geeks), this guy works with AS on two shows.
who the fuck are you, i dont care. (jimmy crack corn...)Hooray for civility! Are you American? why shoud one care about anything?
Jumpinjegooglefat! Bunch of angry nerds!
(really, why so many angry nerds? better yet, why the stupid posts? why the stupid questions - this one is pretty lame and stupid!)
As with most security, the system is broken because it relies to the poorly paid employee giving a hoot.
I sign my credit card with a large "ASK FOR ID" printed in big black letters. About half of the people that flip the card over ask for my ID, which comes down to a generous 1:50 actually asking for my ID.
Sometimes I give them a hard time "you should ask, you should care, blah blah" - most of the time I do not, as I remember how much I cared having a 10 hr no break shift running an entire gas station at 17 years of age. (I ended up not caring at all, it sucked. Americans are pretty selfish and rude to people in the service industry - maybe this is true in other cultures)
When anyone checks my credit card and actually asks for my ID, I sincerely thank them and let them know that I appreciate their concern and wish that more people would do the same.
Do something you enjoy, anything you enjoy. Play music, draw, hike, anything but "work" (if you happen to land one of those magic jobs where the work is your fun, continue to do that and consider going to school part time - it is a rare thing). Of course there is the "well, I need money for when I return to school" dilemma- take out more loans, build some credit debt do whatever it takes to enjoy life and your limited time
After college, it is likely that one will work [struggle] until [near] death (college it self is hard work, and in some ways more difficult than "real" work, but is generally more desirable in retrospect) so avoid it at all costs while under the broad umbrella of college. Do what you want, it is your life.
blast away, I for one welcome no overlords. (heh, think i'll change my sig)
I do not understand why an auto manufacturer (or any manufacturer) does not crush the competition by releasing a "green" "peoples wagon". Make it "green", safe, cheap, and efficient and the first manufacturer to do this would clean house! (is good, fast, and cheap impossible?)
Its the lighting. CG will always be "made" or broken by lighting and particle effects, deservedly so. Like the blues, they are easy to learn hard to master; in cinema, it is the difference between "oh, thats some pretty CG" and emersion in a fantastic world.
The first (the new) episodes have such poor and unnatural lighting that the brain rejects it, sure the models are pretty (personally I do not like them, they do not seem to be properly engineered, more fluff than [fictional] functional machinery - what the crap was with those flying cars? Lame psuedo-studebakers with corny newyorker humanoids? ), but have they eliminated all dust and dirt in the advanced past? Are all surfaces polished and machined to liquid smoothness? Crap, you would need welding goggles on a sunny day!
Their chroma-key effects and lighting were the worst (that I can remember) I have ever seen on a big budget film. Did any of the effects engineers choreograph the real lighting of the chroma screen with the "fake" lighting of the CG? Obviously not! I am not saying that it is easy, but with the substantial budget they could have done much better. Take T2, chromed out liquid metal kill bot - ok for mirror like reflections and perfect smoothness. Where is the atmosphere in SW1 and SW2? (really, its perfect visibility everywhere, nevermind the metaphorical atmosphere).
LOTR - good CG, good lighting; Toy Story, good CG, good lighting (it fit with the "world"); T2 - fitting CG; The Abyss - same as T2; The Matrix - not pefect, but much better chromakey and similar budget.
Blah blah blah, it should have been better lit and modeled if you are going to rely on shine and beauty instead of substantial content.
Why does everyone insist on making every boneheaded decision by a government department the fault of george bush himself?
Because if The President wanted more science, there would be more science. Remember the space race? The President wanted to flex a bit for Russia and put science on a "fast-track" - and_we_touched_the_moon - rather quickly at that.(if you belive that sort of thing). And that was what, almost half a century ago?
Really, if The President wants science and technology for science, that is where (more) resources will be allocated; if The Commander in Chief wants more war and technology for war, there will be (more) war and technology for war.
It is not that The President has to have his nose in every pie, but that the pies he is sniffing get the appropriate funding.
[lame_pot _shot]We all know what kind of pies the current U.S. President likes to sniff, and it is not sweet sweet science pie.[/lame_pot_shot]
once again Linux seems to get the short end. Im was (and am) really pleased that iD was supporting Linux, but it seems that once again Linux is the afterthought. Stereo sound for Doom 3? It was fine for the original quake, throw on some stereo headphones and get scared stiff; stereo sound does not cut it with this game. No 64bit build? cut off Linux's nuts a bit more, why dont you?
time will tell, and maybe these things will come, but most of the time these things loose steam as the team loses motivation and counts $$$.
Isnt it easier to develop for Linux, and port to windows? This way everything works in Linux, and if it works in Linux it cant be that hard to tie into windows? Easier said than done, sure, but easier than porting from windows to Linux.
I hope they take time to polish the Linux release and do not half ass it.
if you like linux, and would like more hardware support (hey, games [largely] drive consumer hardware), buy linux build of doom 3.
even if you dont play games, buy this game to support linux, if other companies see some remarkable sales for a linux title, then they are more likely to want to spend time developing for linux.
money talks. (i think that buying this game will make more of an industy impact, but support your local distro too! free for you costs someone somewhere something)
Perhaps everything does not have to. we have technology to do great and wonderful and terrible things. i just wonder if all of this technology needs to be made with such deadly components.
yes, im sure lead and mercury is cheap, and poly-whatsits-bromide is the perfect solution for whatever, but since we are so great and smart, why not make things with slightly less toxic things, im sure there are other materials that will "work just as well (almost but good enough for the children, think of the children)"
i just dont understand, after a theory is proven, and initial designs are up and prototypes are running (using whatever materials and methods are necessary - its ok to use deadly things in science, since its not public) there is not much effort to refine the design and make it safe and efficient. dont get me wrong- i understand some of the downfalls of capitalism, but i dont understand it from the perspective of the individual - why is the public person not pissed that their cars suck, and their tvs are poisonous,and blah blah. and why is the individual scientist ok with putting these toxins out into public relm - general lazyness? greed? all of the above?
yah, but everything does, profit drives their sales down. they are still making an ass load of money and are complainging about it. worse than computer geeks i tell you.
i made the decision not to support the american music industry a while ago, and chose to support legal music trading like http://www.furthurnet.com (all the bands agree to it, its all live, modern "Dead tape trading" except with a ton of bands). this satisfied me for a while, but i needed some music that was not part of furthur. such was my problem, didnt want to pay and support the industry, didnt want to steal (even though the artists already have all the money they would get from a disc).
so i found a good local used music shop, yah it sounds lame, but i only buy discs of top quality, they have been buffed, contain all orig packing and books. this is an all win situation (but not free, but not thieving) you support local business, you get your music, you get the orig promo package, you are assured quality, you get a "punch card" (at least i do in burlington, every 10 i get one free), you are recycling - the discs are already in circulation, and best of all you are completely boneing the riaa - no additional profit (some other sucker paid full) and no legal case against you.
since i found this great shop, i dont thing ive bought a new disc of any type (but for another copy of tribes and NWN). i feel better, my wallet feels better (a bit lighter), my cause feels better. hey, is $3 a disc that much? $7-8 if its "new"? the only thing lost is the sense of being robbin hood saving the damsel of music spirit from the clutches of evilcorp.inc; well i guess i still am...(stealing is fun though, wrong, but fun)
wouldnt it be better to donate cycles to something like folding@home, parkinsons and alzheimers disease protein research?
i dont mean to belittle seti, i think its a wonderful project, and maybe this arguement falls deaf on geek ears (aliens vs disease- woh, war of the worlds:) but id like to see more terran problems solved, no?
ps i donate all my unused cycles to folding (over genome project, i personally feel that we're going to screw something up with the whole genetic genome geewiz junk)
no no no, i got a 32oz big gulp coffee cup, but as we all learned again a few days ago, DD == E, sheesh . actually im not even sure of estes sells those missiles any more. friggin things were outta sight. dynomite!
i did a report on divx/xvid a few years ago, here is the gist of it:
DiVX;-) was first "project mayo" (codename) - mayo because its difficult to make, and pretty much hit or miss - divx was first a hacked mpeg-4 codec (m$.asp actually - really ment for streaming high quality video over broadband, hacked to work offline and "standalone"), and contained "hot" code. so divx 3.11, the version that really first took off, was illegal. the codec really exploded with the file sharing boom namely morpheus and kazaa. next release , they got rid of the stolen code, and all was good, the codec had even better quality and many of the audio syncing problems had been taken care of. by this point i had ~150 gb of video at ~300 hrs.
then, with the next release (5.x), and even more popularity, divx went commercial, and at first, i was upset, but they were pretty good about it, they had 3 versions, the one with no ads, but "play only", one with adware + encoding, and then the full $30USD one that let you do everything without ads. i thought, well these guys deserve some money for all the work that went into this great codec.
with version 5, divx and project mayo split (actually it was somewhere inbetween 4.x-5.x) and divx.com was born to handle distribution and all that other good commercail stuff, projectmayo.com went opensource, and became the sandbox for many projects based on divx (3vix, opendivx, etc) also, the Playa, the favored player of the project and built by the team continued to be developed here. .
xvid was one of the spinoffs from projectmayo, and has become my favorite codec since i started using it. it seems to have the best "feel" to it, and is really really really good for animated films (to be fair, divx and the rest are really really good at animated films too, most codecs do, easy lines for the encoder to pick up and even out between frames). there are two main developers for xvid (its open so there are different builds) kopei, and nic. they both have their pros and cons, but you would be hard pressed to find them "in real life."
most of this info can be gathered from the mentioned sites, with a little digging. if im wrong about any of this, meh. its pretty right on, though. some great resources for these codecs are the forementioned www.doom9.org is really one of the best collections of encoding how-tos and other doodads. should be required reading for any video DIY noobs. another great resource is www.divx-digest.com you can get all kinds of codecs and players there, try em all, its the best way to learn (divx-digest is a sister site to www.digital-digest.com) like i said, i really dig xvid, and divx's commercial ventures are really starting to pan out (featured in a couple of computer games/video games (lord of the rings pc maybe?), hopefully soon will be built in to dvd players- think 2+ movies in hi-res on one dvd!). please please please dont use wmv. i cant play wmv, as many non M$ people cant, and they take more cpu to decode (looks pretty and is easy though).
before divx was known as divx, there was another company that released a project by the same name, where you would rent this cd/dvd disc thing and buy it to unlock it and watch it whenever you wanted, neat idea, poor execution, i only knew one persone that used it. they came in these little cardboard jewel cases. (before dvd players were all over, you had to get one that could play this divx )
batteries not included, bad grammar and spelling included. see side label for details
Slashdot Mirror
While the Star Control series was (is) great, my pick for best space game (and probably one of the most influencial) is Starflight by Binary Systems.
It had great music (as far as 1986 PCs were concerned) a deep plotline, and a HUGE universe. It had worm holes, mining missions, new races, randomly generated weather environment, a crazy AI system, doomsday plot and time limit (you could continue to play even after the game was "unbeatable" due to the destruction of your "home" solar system).
Ship upgrades, weapons, had to pick your crew of different alien races (which had different strengths and weaknesses and affinities/dislikes for other races). I could rant about this game for a long time, it changed my life (I played it when I was six, when it came out, my grandfather was nuts about it and marveled at their fractal world generation and "3d" rendering when you landed on a planet).
Starflight is probably the best space game ever, you can find VGA fan-made ports of it around, you need to slow your frequency way down if playing on modern hardware.
A fan-made updated version Starflight III is in the works, with slow progress. Drop a line if you remember this game, they would (probably) love to get some support. I think they are taking applications for help (no, I am not affiliated/contributing).
I still have the original box (its like a three fold record (vinyl) album) with the galaxy map (which I traced so I could draw worm holes and hostile territories without hurting the original). The game also had a cool code wheel copy protection thing that was a hoot. The team from Binary Systems is awesome, browse around for some pictures from the box, wild stuff. They were truely dedicated to this game.
I can hear the theme music in my head now...da da da da da da da da daaa daaa daaaaaaa da da da da da da da daanaaaaaah!
Who the hell wants "grittier titles geared twoards mature players"? We want games that are *fun*.
True dat! Especially on a portable game system. If I cant pick it up and game for 10 minutes while I ride the bus or wait in line, it aint worth it. Granted, there are a few times where you could get in a good portable session (flights are the only thing that comes to mind, maybe long train rides or carpool commutes), but most of the time its "filler" time that I spend with the portable system (if not reading ebooks). Why sit and play a game on a tiny (relative) screen if there is a console with large monitor around?
Obviously I am not the target market (should be, working nerd professional with DI), but I do not get the draw of portable games that are not playable in "small" sessions.
give me an epic experience on a console, or pc; give me quick and fun with the portable!
[queue booing and hissing]
So you think the interview is stupid. OK, so are many things; stupid is subjective.
/. stuff? OK, I don't; opinions differ. Lots of geeks I know dig Adult Swim (more than non geeks), this guy works with AS on two shows.
Think its irrelevant to
who the fuck are you, i dont care. (jimmy crack corn...)Hooray for civility! Are you American? why shoud one care about anything?
Jumpinjegooglefat! Bunch of angry nerds!
(really, why so many angry nerds? better yet, why the stupid posts? why the stupid questions - this one is pretty lame and stupid!)
As with most security, the system is broken because it relies to the poorly paid employee giving a hoot.
I sign my credit card with a large "ASK FOR ID" printed in big black letters. About half of the people that flip the card over ask for my ID, which comes down to a generous 1:50 actually asking for my ID.
Sometimes I give them a hard time "you should ask, you should care, blah blah" - most of the time I do not, as I remember how much I cared having a 10 hr no break shift running an entire gas station at 17 years of age. (I ended up not caring at all, it sucked. Americans are pretty selfish and rude to people in the service industry - maybe this is true in other cultures)
When anyone checks my credit card and actually asks for my ID, I sincerely thank them and let them know that I appreciate their concern and wish that more people would do the same.
Do not work.
Do something you enjoy, anything you enjoy. Play music, draw, hike, anything but "work" (if you happen to land one of those magic jobs where the work is your fun, continue to do that and consider going to school part time - it is a rare thing). Of course there is the "well, I need money for when I return to school" dilemma- take out more loans, build some credit debt do whatever it takes to enjoy life and your limited time
After college, it is likely that one will work [struggle] until [near] death (college it self is hard work, and in some ways more difficult than "real" work, but is generally more desirable in retrospect) so avoid it at all costs while under the broad umbrella of college. Do what you want, it is your life.
blast away, I for one welcome no overlords. (heh, think i'll change my sig)
OPEC? Stockholders? Earth?
I do not understand why an auto manufacturer (or any manufacturer) does not crush the competition by releasing a "green" "peoples wagon". Make it "green", safe, cheap, and efficient and the first manufacturer to do this would clean house! (is good, fast, and cheap impossible?)
Not that I think they would drown as quickly as some critics were suggesting, but a deal like this is quite a PFD!
(personal flotation device,a.k.a "life-preserver" for the nautically challenged)
Its the lighting. CG will always be "made" or broken by lighting and particle effects, deservedly so. Like the blues, they are easy to learn hard to master; in cinema, it is the difference between "oh, thats some pretty CG" and emersion in a fantastic world.
The first (the new) episodes have such poor and unnatural lighting that the brain rejects it, sure the models are pretty (personally I do not like them, they do not seem to be properly engineered, more fluff than [fictional] functional machinery - what the crap was with those flying cars? Lame psuedo-studebakers with corny newyorker humanoids? ), but have they eliminated all dust and dirt in the advanced past? Are all surfaces polished and machined to liquid smoothness? Crap, you would need welding goggles on a sunny day!
Their chroma-key effects and lighting were the worst (that I can remember) I have ever seen on a big budget film. Did any of the effects engineers choreograph the real lighting of the chroma screen with the "fake" lighting of the CG? Obviously not! I am not saying that it is easy, but with the substantial budget they could have done much better. Take T2, chromed out liquid metal kill bot - ok for mirror like reflections and perfect smoothness. Where is the atmosphere in SW1 and SW2? (really, its perfect visibility everywhere, nevermind the metaphorical atmosphere).
LOTR - good CG, good lighting; Toy Story, good CG, good lighting (it fit with the "world"); T2 - fitting CG; The Abyss - same as T2; The Matrix - not pefect, but much better chromakey and similar budget.
Blah blah blah, it should have been better lit and modeled if you are going to rely on shine and beauty instead of substantial content.
Why does everyone insist on making every boneheaded decision by a government department the fault of george bush himself?
Because if The President wanted more science, there would be more science. Remember the space race? The President wanted to flex a bit for Russia and put science on a "fast-track" - and_we_touched_the_moon - rather quickly at that.(if you belive that sort of thing). And that was what, almost half a century ago?
Really, if The President wants science and technology for science, that is where (more) resources will be allocated; if The Commander in Chief wants more war and technology for war, there will be (more) war and technology for war.
It is not that The President has to have his nose in every pie, but that the pies he is sniffing get the appropriate funding.
[lame_pot _shot]We all know what kind of pies the current U.S. President likes to sniff, and it is not sweet sweet science pie.[/lame_pot_shot]
once again Linux seems to get the short end. Im was (and am) really pleased that iD was supporting Linux, but it seems that once again Linux is the afterthought. Stereo sound for Doom 3? It was fine for the original quake, throw on some stereo headphones and get scared stiff; stereo sound does not cut it with this game. No 64bit build? cut off Linux's nuts a bit more, why dont you?
time will tell, and maybe these things will come, but most of the time these things loose steam as the team loses motivation and counts $$$.
Isnt it easier to develop for Linux, and port to windows? This way everything works in Linux, and if it works in Linux it cant be that hard to tie into windows? Easier said than done, sure, but easier than porting from windows to Linux.
I hope they take time to polish the Linux release and do not half ass it.
if you like linux, and would like more hardware support (hey, games [largely] drive consumer hardware), buy linux build of doom 3.
even if you dont play games, buy this game to support linux, if other companies see some remarkable sales for a linux title, then they are more likely to want to spend time developing for linux.
money talks. (i think that buying this game will make more of an industy impact, but support your local distro too! free for you costs someone somewhere something)
haha, get it?
a good chuckle. heh.
come on, thats great poli-humor.
ahh, hmm.
nm, ive had too many donuts today, giddy hypoglycemia or something.
yup.
thats a bunch of crap. greedy paranoid bastards.
kinda sounds like a wussy version of tesla's death ray. and he had that close to 100 years ago. (i believe he did it anyway).
yes, im sure lead and mercury is cheap, and poly-whatsits-bromide is the perfect solution for whatever, but since we are so great and smart, why not make things with slightly less toxic things, im sure there are other materials that will "work just as well (almost but good enough for the children, think of the children)"
i just dont understand, after a theory is proven, and initial designs are up and prototypes are running (using whatever materials and methods are necessary - its ok to use deadly things in science, since its not public) there is not much effort to refine the design and make it safe and efficient. dont get me wrong- i understand some of the downfalls of capitalism, but i dont understand it from the perspective of the individual - why is the public person not pissed that their cars suck, and their tvs are poisonous,and blah blah. and why is the individual scientist ok with putting these toxins out into public relm - general lazyness? greed? all of the above?
why not get the same end with nicer means?
[end hippie rant]haha, you dont like audacity?
thats a ginormungus number of black holes to have mistakenly quantified.
yah, but everything does, profit drives their sales down. they are still making an ass load of money and are complainging about it. worse than computer geeks i tell you.
isnt overpopulation a problem isnt overpopulation a problem isnt overpopulation a problem
i made the decision not to support the american music industry a while ago, and chose to support legal music trading like http://www.furthurnet.com (all the bands agree to it, its all live, modern "Dead tape trading" except with a ton of bands). this satisfied me for a while, but i needed some music that was not part of furthur. such was my problem, didnt want to pay and support the industry, didnt want to steal (even though the artists already have all the money they would get from a disc).
so i found a good local used music shop, yah it sounds lame, but i only buy discs of top quality, they have been buffed, contain all orig packing and books. this is an all win situation (but not free, but not thieving) you support local business, you get your music, you get the orig promo package, you are assured quality, you get a "punch card" (at least i do in burlington, every 10 i get one free), you are recycling - the discs are already in circulation, and best of all you are completely boneing the riaa - no additional profit (some other sucker paid full) and no legal case against you.
since i found this great shop, i dont thing ive bought a new disc of any type (but for another copy of tribes and NWN). i feel better, my wallet feels better (a bit lighter), my cause feels better. hey, is $3 a disc that much? $7-8 if its "new"? the only thing lost is the sense of being robbin hood saving the damsel of music spirit from the clutches of evilcorp.inc; well i guess i still am...(stealing is fun though, wrong, but fun)
I'm...the voice...of Priceline!
wouldnt it be better to donate cycles to something like folding@home, parkinsons and alzheimers disease protein research?
i dont mean to belittle seti, i think its a wonderful project, and maybe this arguement falls deaf on geek ears (aliens vs disease- woh, war of the worlds:) but id like to see more terran problems solved, no?
ps i donate all my unused cycles to folding (over genome project, i personally feel that we're going to screw something up with the whole genetic genome geewiz junk)
no no no, i got a 32oz big gulp coffee cup, but as we all learned again a few days ago, DD == E, sheesh . actually im not even sure of estes sells those missiles any more. friggin things were outta sight. dynomite!
a far cry from the DD rockets i used to get mischievous with when i was a kid...mmmmm...double deee...
DiVX ;-) was first "project mayo" (codename) - mayo because its difficult to make, and pretty much hit or miss - divx was first a hacked mpeg-4 codec (m$ .asp actually - really ment for streaming high quality video over broadband, hacked to work offline and "standalone"), and contained "hot" code. so divx 3.11, the version that really first took off, was illegal. the codec really exploded with the file sharing boom namely morpheus and kazaa. next release , they got rid of the stolen code, and all was good, the codec had even better quality and many of the audio syncing problems had been taken care of. by this point i had ~150 gb of video at ~300 hrs.
then, with the next release (5.x), and even more popularity, divx went commercial, and at first, i was upset, but they were pretty good about it, they had 3 versions, the one with no ads, but "play only", one with adware + encoding, and then the full $30USD one that let you do everything without ads. i thought, well these guys deserve some money for all the work that went into this great codec.
with version 5, divx and project mayo split (actually it was somewhere inbetween 4.x-5.x) and divx.com was born to handle distribution and all that other good commercail stuff, projectmayo.com went opensource, and became the sandbox for many projects based on divx (3vix, opendivx, etc) also, the Playa, the favored player of the project and built by the team continued to be developed here. .xvid was one of the spinoffs from projectmayo, and has become my favorite codec since i started using it. it seems to have the best "feel" to it, and is really really really good for animated films (to be fair, divx and the rest are really really good at animated films too, most codecs do, easy lines for the encoder to pick up and even out between frames). there are two main developers for xvid (its open so there are different builds) kopei, and nic. they both have their pros and cons, but you would be hard pressed to find them "in real life."
most of this info can be gathered from the mentioned sites, with a little digging. if im wrong about any of this, meh. its pretty right on, though. some great resources for these codecs are the forementioned www.doom9.org is really one of the best collections of encoding how-tos and other doodads. should be required reading for any video DIY noobs. another great resource is www.divx-digest.com you can get all kinds of codecs and players there, try em all, its the best way to learn (divx-digest is a sister site to www.digital-digest.com) like i said, i really dig xvid, and divx's commercial ventures are really starting to pan out (featured in a couple of computer games/video games (lord of the rings pc maybe?), hopefully soon will be built in to dvd players- think 2+ movies in hi-res on one dvd!). please please please dont use wmv. i cant play wmv, as many non M$ people cant, and they take more cpu to decode (looks pretty and is easy though).
before divx was known as divx, there was another company that released a project by the same name, where you would rent this cd/dvd disc thing and buy it to unlock it and watch it whenever you wanted, neat idea, poor execution, i only knew one persone that used it. they came in these little cardboard jewel cases. (before dvd players were all over, you had to get one that could play this divx )
batteries not included, bad grammar and spelling included. see side label for details