Personally, I think vehicles will be the next fad in FPS games. Meaning, all the latest releases will have them, but they won't improve gameplay significantly. They seem especially problematic in ground-based FPS games. Usually you can kill people by merely running over them or even just brushing them.
Several games have actually suffered from the inclusion of vehicles, such as Tribes 2. The vehicles ended up detracting from the gameplay and turning what could have been an exciting game into one where you often had to wait to get on a vehicle to get around. If I wanted to rely on other people to give me a ride somewhere I need to be I'd put myself back in high school.
Done right they can be fun, but they should be very careful that the vehicles add something unique to gameplay and don't become essential. The second they become decently powerful they become essential to survival, and then it becomes no fun when you have to board a vehicle to get somewhere.
I do agree that the current crop of FPS games is mostly very lacking in the gameplay area, but I don't see vehicles improving the picture much. Tribes 1 provides enough challenge for me to keep playing it to this day.
Or even more obvious cheats, such as in Frozen Throne on hard mode the computer has infinite resources while you have to keep going from mine to mine and risking your throat in the process.
I'll take STL containers over anyone's home-brewed containers any day.
Do your containers work with the functional include file? Do they support forward and reverse iteration? Do they even support iterators? Probably not. STL has consistant semantics. If you're the type of person that doesn't want to learn anything new then you don't have to use them.
Enough uninformed comments already. Most STL code bloat can be controlled pretty easily. What you do is make a wrapper over an STL class. For example if you're using std::vector you'd make a Vector class:
template<typename T> class Vector { public: //ctors as necessary Vector();
T get(size_t i) {
return static_cast<T>(vec[i]); }
You may wish to provide the exact functionality of the container you're wrapping, or you may wish to change the semantics. It's up to you.
It is kinda ugly for what it does but it works. Only one instantiation of std::vector is made, it is void*. Putting the member function definitions in the header file ensures they will be inlined if necessary.
(I wonder how many slashdot readers it would take to whip up a first rate textbook for C programming)
Probably quite a few, you're forgetting the priceless FAQ entry entitled "Have you considered rewriting Slashdot in C?"
I know several people working directly on it and have been offered a chance to work on it (both set up and afterwards). I think I will take them up on the offer just to see it in action.
How could you forget what made them big? "PlanetMoron.com, your only source for the latest developments on morons!"
A whole network of corporate gaming fan sites (doesn't take a genius to figure out how absurd that is) loaded with little more than small bits and pieces of actual content, with the same layout just in different colors.
With regard to any game most GSI sites are little more than replacements for the publisher's corporate web page, and instead have the news posted by some thirteen year-old kid who can't spell properly and wants some Internet fame.
COM was designed to erode the differences between programming languages on the Win32 platform. Obviously this isn't easy or elegant. Most painful is probably querying for interfaces using the awful ID strings, and marshaling all your parameters.
In addition, I don't see how equalizing the languages is a good thing. If I develop an extensible application, I would *not* want users writing plugins using VB.
With that in mind.NET can be seen as COM 2.0, because all the languages compile to a common format, and are really just a choice of your favorite grammar.
Read the article for once people instead of knee-jerk reacting to an analogy.
Carmack merely wants to improve the method by which rockets are constructed. He says he starts small and builds his way up, rather than constructing the rocket and control system and then working for six months to work out the problems.
This is a well-known software development technique, and I don't see why it wouldn't be generalizable to other fields. If anything it should inspire more confidence in the creator at least.
Just because it isn't Linux, doesn't mean its evil
on
Big Company on Campus
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
Enough with the "OMG M$ SUX" replies.
Here at VT I was under the impression students started out learning C++ on the Visual Studio compiler because the IDE is easy, the compiler is good enough to learn on, debugging is great (something that royally sucks on Linux) and they don't have to install another operating system. As much as people want to point me to open source tools, you cannot beat MS's developer tools. All of the OSS ones simply try to emulate VS as close as possible.
In addition, students don't want to switch operating systems just to take a class, especially if they're not sure its for them. And they shouldn't have to change operating systems.
OS will be in Linux mostly, even though the concepts they teach in it are in Windows. Future classes may or may not be in Windows...network architecture (undergrad) was Linux for most of the semester, whereas computer graphics was on Windows.
Yes, you have to be comfortable with both; most students somehow manage to be open-minded about the whole thing but I realize that thats a big no-no at Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but is driving around in a vehicle all day your idea of fun?
Personally, I think vehicles will be the next fad in FPS games. Meaning, all the latest releases will have them, but they won't improve gameplay significantly. They seem especially problematic in ground-based FPS games. Usually you can kill people by merely running over them or even just brushing them.
Several games have actually suffered from the inclusion of vehicles, such as Tribes 2. The vehicles ended up detracting from the gameplay and turning what could have been an exciting game into one where you often had to wait to get on a vehicle to get around. If I wanted to rely on other people to give me a ride somewhere I need to be I'd put myself back in high school.
Done right they can be fun, but they should be very careful that the vehicles add something unique to gameplay and don't become essential. The second they become decently powerful they become essential to survival, and then it becomes no fun when you have to board a vehicle to get somewhere.
I do agree that the current crop of FPS games is mostly very lacking in the gameplay area, but I don't see vehicles improving the picture much. Tribes 1 provides enough challenge for me to keep playing it to this day.
Last thing we need is more people talking like the original poster. Which I'm afraid the XBox port will bring.
Or even more obvious cheats, such as in Frozen Throne on hard mode the computer has infinite resources while you have to keep going from mine to mine and risking your throat in the process.
I'll take STL containers over anyone's home-brewed containers any day. Do your containers work with the functional include file? Do they support forward and reverse iteration? Do they even support iterators? Probably not. STL has consistant semantics. If you're the type of person that doesn't want to learn anything new then you don't have to use them.
News to me. The Effective C++ books are somewhat dated, but I hadn't heard of compilers being able to do this.
It'd be interesting to hear what you'd use, given that you fail to grasp that a template has nothing to do with OOP.
It is kinda ugly for what it does but it works. Only one instantiation of std::vector is made, it is void*. Putting the member function definitions in the header file ensures they will be inlined if necessary.
I think Scott Meyers came up with this tip first.
(I wonder how many slashdot readers it would take to whip up a first rate textbook for C programming) Probably quite a few, you're forgetting the priceless FAQ entry entitled "Have you considered rewriting Slashdot in C?"
I know several people working directly on it and have been offered a chance to work on it (both set up and afterwards). I think I will take them up on the offer just to see it in action.
How could you forget what made them big? "PlanetMoron.com, your only source for the latest developments on morons!" A whole network of corporate gaming fan sites (doesn't take a genius to figure out how absurd that is) loaded with little more than small bits and pieces of actual content, with the same layout just in different colors. With regard to any game most GSI sites are little more than replacements for the publisher's corporate web page, and instead have the news posted by some thirteen year-old kid who can't spell properly and wants some Internet fame.
For Freedom?
You are completely missing the point, average users DON'T CARE about the political implications of an operating system!
Nor should they.
COM was designed to erode the differences between programming languages on the Win32 platform. Obviously this isn't easy or elegant. Most painful is probably querying for interfaces using the awful ID strings, and marshaling all your parameters. In addition, I don't see how equalizing the languages is a good thing. If I develop an extensible application, I would *not* want users writing plugins using VB. With that in mind .NET can be seen as COM 2.0, because all the languages compile to a common format, and are really just a choice of your favorite grammar.
Read the article for once people instead of knee-jerk reacting to an analogy.
Carmack merely wants to improve the method by which rockets are constructed. He says he starts small and builds his way up, rather than constructing the rocket and control system and then working for six months to work out the problems.
This is a well-known software development technique, and I don't see why it wouldn't be generalizable to other fields. If anything it should inspire more confidence in the creator at least.
Enough with the "OMG M$ SUX" replies. Here at VT I was under the impression students started out learning C++ on the Visual Studio compiler because the IDE is easy, the compiler is good enough to learn on, debugging is great (something that royally sucks on Linux) and they don't have to install another operating system. As much as people want to point me to open source tools, you cannot beat MS's developer tools. All of the OSS ones simply try to emulate VS as close as possible. In addition, students don't want to switch operating systems just to take a class, especially if they're not sure its for them. And they shouldn't have to change operating systems.
OS will be in Linux mostly, even though the concepts they teach in it are in Windows. Future classes may or may not be in Windows...network architecture (undergrad) was Linux for most of the semester, whereas computer graphics was on Windows. Yes, you have to be comfortable with both; most students somehow manage to be open-minded about the whole thing but I realize that thats a big no-no at Slashdot.