What if I don't recognize that right? Who gave you that right?
Are you, NEW? Those rights are enshrined in a variety of copyright legislations and international treaties. Just because you disagree with them doesn't mean that you get free reign to ignore them anymore than the fact that I disagree with the taboo against murder allows me to come over there and kill you with this shiv.
I look at the PSP and all I can think is "Oh god, the scratches!"
I love the clamshell design. I once dropped my GBA SP on the street and it was RUN OVER BY A BUS. Picked it up, popped the game back in and aside from some wicked-awesome battle scars, it works great.
Given their reputation with the PS and PS2 lasers etc., I doubt very much that Sony will ever make hardware that sturdy
Asking Slashdot users whether or not it's easy to download games is kind of like asking engineers whether or not it's easy to build a bridge. Sure they'll tell you it's easy and they'll even throw in a bunch of lingo to help you understand. Most people still don't know how to build a bridge.
Games (especially 0-day warez) are only easy to download if you're in the know. You need to know what site to go to, or a friend with an FTP server or you need to have a very reliable USENET hook up or something along those lines. Otherwise, pirating games online is a nightmare minefield of porn pop ups, links to other sites with more porn pop ups, viruses and mislabelled 600 MB downloads.
The 'consumer' does not find this easy or fun. The 'consumer' probably doesn't even know that they could be trying to do this. People who are downloading complete games illegally are fairly sophisticated users. I would guess that they all know full well that they're doing something illegal. I just think that they don't care.
Well if there's an objection to the awarding of this patent, it certainly isn't that it's obvious. I mean, I've now knows about the invention for at least 10-20 minutes and I *still* don't understand what it's good for.
I would argue that the fact that 2d games can force you into using a certain strategy is a bug, not a feature. Assuming that you're right about this, I would say that the freedom afforded by 3d is a good thing. It empowers the player and lets them be creative.
I would guess that the real reasons that you find 3d games easier for you than 2d games are:
1) If you had played a lot of 2d games before getting to 3d games then you are probably a pretty experienced gamer. When you were just getting started you weren't as skilled as you are now. 3d games are blanced for the average player, who is probably not as good at games as you are.
2) Designers have realized that there are more ways to make a entertaining than just forcing the player to play sequences over and over again until they can make pixel-perfect jumps. With more tools at their disposal, they can make a game amusing instead of frustratingly hard. This broadens the playerbase (you don't have to practice for hours to enjoy a game these days) which gives them more money.
Hypocrisy just means that you think that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than you are currently meeting yourself. Why is that such a bad thing?
The cynical part of me thinks stealth is popular with game developers because they can slow the player down and stretch a 5 hour game to 20+ hours.
The disadvantage for developers is that because you're slowing down and observing things, it's much harder to make a realistic world. I mean if it's live combat, and the AI is shooting at you and not doing much else, that makes sense. But making AI that can believably wander around and do interesting non-immersion-breaking things while the player stares at them for hours - that's hard.
Who has to change names? Gamers that already have the names? Or the newer gamers that have ones similar to the older ones? Some gamers who have had the same nickname for almost 2 years are understandably upset leads me to believe that the gamers who've had their tags for the longer period of time are the ones getting boned.
Or it could mean that MasterChief has had his nickname for almost two years +(20 seconds). Suck it up, m4sterche1f.
I never understood the point of making speed runs through games... When you're trying to run through as fast as you can, aren't you kind of missing the point of actually playing the game?
If you're making speed runs, you've played the game so many times that you already know the way the levels look and the beautiful graphics in intimate detail. For example, the guy with the 1:37 Metroid Prime run says that it took 3 months to reach that point.
Speed run people know the game so well that they can exploit all kinds of insane tricks and glitches and other things about the game to play it in a completely different way than the way that the designers intended.
Personally, I think that's prety cool. Someday I hope to work on a game that's so robust and open-ended that people are able to find crazy tricks that I had no idea existed and fun enough that they're willing to spend months finding and exploiting them.
I think that what the grandparent poster is trying to say is that WoW and CoH don't have stupendously powerful graphics engines, unlike EQ2, but it looks like they're going to make up for it by giving us worlds that are genuinely interesting and stylish. We're talking technical prowess vs. artistic prowess.
The EQ2 screenshots that have been released so far look nice I guess but they're really, really generic looking. Compared to the kind of bland looking underdressed chicks in front of realistic looking castles and stuff of EQ2, the Word of Warcraft screen shots look really interesting and different. City of Heroes, on the other hand, gets a free "looks original" pass because it's not set in a fantasy world.
Item 2 has been shot down because the majority doesn't rule on matters of punctuation. (pronounciation?)
Actually, the majority do rule on matters of pronounciation when it comes to English. The major linguistic project of English (the Oxford English Dictionary) is a descriptive not a prescriptive document. That means that once a significant minority of English users use or pronounce a word in a certain way, it'll get recorded in the dictionary.
All this is just to say that both "jif" and "gif" are acceptable pronounciations of GIF.
On behalf of the rest of the world, I want to let you know that it's awesome and hilarious that you think that the Economist is left-wing (and judging by your comments, far-left).
I don't know about other countries, but in Canada, the Economist is generally viewed as being fiscally right of center but not too far right. That you would view the Economist as being far-left just goes to show how badly calibrated the whole "left-right" scale really is.
Why, I say, looks like time to go out and hunt humans!
Gadzooks, it seems my height prevents me from getting past this bridge-like structure. I wonder how Molly and the children are faring up north?
There we go, a nice blast took care of that pesky obstacle. Truly, there is much to me said of the satisfaction of a good explosion. The Futursists where right when the said "Art and war are the great manifestations of sensuality; lust is their flower."
Still, I can't help but wonder: what's it all for? It seems my life is this endless meaningless loop of slaughter with no beginning and no end. Why am I here? Well, better get on with the killing.
If one of your friends writes "Wash me" on your dirty car, you aren't mad that they touched your car (if you are I'm supprised you have friends), you are mad that they are calling attention to how dirty you let it get.
But if they write "BUY COKE" on my car, I'm mad that they're using my car to hawk their products.
That's a nice idea and all, but they break the immersion factor that they gain every time the character's call me "Gordon". My name's *not* Gordon!
I like the Deus Ex solution to this poblem where they gave you a gender-neutral code name so that you could pretend that your real name was whatever you wanted but the voice actors could still call you something in dialogue. An especially nice touch was that characters you were a personal friend of would call you by your secret 'real' name in private emails.
The reason why console games are so vigourously play tested is because once you make a playable disc or cartridge on a system, there's no such thing as a do over.
Every time there is some discussion that involves the possible patching of games, someone hauls out this old cliche that console games are more properly playtested than PC games. It's not true.
What's true is that consoles are easier to test for than PCs because PCs involve countless configurations of hardware and software whereas every Xbox/PS2/GameCube is pretty much the same. This makes testing easier and it makes finding bugs easier on a console.
Console games are full of bugs, we're just used to playing around them or ignoring them. PC games have more bugs because it's harder to find them and because a lot of them involve the arcane interactions of strange hardware configurations. Properly finding PC bugs requires more time and resources, both of which most publishers aren't willing to give, especially when consoles are a bigger part of the market.
Repeat after me: it's not laziness, it's complexity.
No you're wrong. What happened was that the people making Driv3r tried too hard to make the game more like Vice City and THEY FAILED. So instead of the game just being pure blissful insane driving physics, they keep meking you get out of the car and run around and shoot at people. I don't want to shoot at people! I want to drive a lot!
I rented the game hoping that it would be awesome in the same way that you want it to be but it's just not finished. There are brutal graphic glitches, strange collision detection, abysmal pop-up and they keep making you get out of the stupid car and run around and shoot at people with these awful controls.
I wish, I wish, I wish Driv3r had been about driving. I wish, I wish, I wish that you were right about the reviews.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that it means that you're HavenCo.
What if I don't recognize that right? Who gave you that right?
Are you, NEW? Those rights are enshrined in a variety of copyright legislations and international treaties. Just because you disagree with them doesn't mean that you get free reign to ignore them anymore than the fact that I disagree with the taboo against murder allows me to come over there and kill you with this shiv.
Maybe a better wording would have been "in the history of people nitpicking".
Many of my friends these days are people
Good for you!
I look at the PSP and all I can think is "Oh god, the scratches!"
I love the clamshell design. I once dropped my GBA SP on the street and it was RUN OVER BY A BUS. Picked it up, popped the game back in and aside from some wicked-awesome battle scars, it works great.
Given their reputation with the PS and PS2 lasers etc., I doubt very much that Sony will ever make hardware that sturdy
Asking Slashdot users whether or not it's easy to download games is kind of like asking engineers whether or not it's easy to build a bridge. Sure they'll tell you it's easy and they'll even throw in a bunch of lingo to help you understand. Most people still don't know how to build a bridge.
Games (especially 0-day warez) are only easy to download if you're in the know. You need to know what site to go to, or a friend with an FTP server or you need to have a very reliable USENET hook up or something along those lines. Otherwise, pirating games online is a nightmare minefield of porn pop ups, links to other sites with more porn pop ups, viruses and mislabelled 600 MB downloads.
The 'consumer' does not find this easy or fun. The 'consumer' probably doesn't even know that they could be trying to do this. People who are downloading complete games illegally are fairly sophisticated users. I would guess that they all know full well that they're doing something illegal. I just think that they don't care.
Well if there's an objection to the awarding of this patent, it certainly isn't that it's obvious. I mean, I've now knows about the invention for at least 10-20 minutes and I *still* don't understand what it's good for.
I would argue that the fact that 2d games can force you into using a certain strategy is a bug, not a feature. Assuming that you're right about this, I would say that the freedom afforded by 3d is a good thing. It empowers the player and lets them be creative.
I would guess that the real reasons that you find 3d games easier for you than 2d games are:
1) If you had played a lot of 2d games before getting to 3d games then you are probably a pretty experienced gamer. When you were just getting started you weren't as skilled as you are now. 3d games are blanced for the average player, who is probably not as good at games as you are.
2) Designers have realized that there are more ways to make a entertaining than just forcing the player to play sequences over and over again until they can make pixel-perfect jumps. With more tools at their disposal, they can make a game amusing instead of frustratingly hard. This broadens the playerbase (you don't have to practice for hours to enjoy a game these days) which gives them more money.
Hypocrisy just means that you think that we should hold ourselves to a higher standard than you are currently meeting yourself. Why is that such a bad thing?
The cynical part of me thinks stealth is popular with game developers because they can slow the player down and stretch a 5 hour game to 20+ hours.
The disadvantage for developers is that because you're slowing down and observing things, it's much harder to make a realistic world. I mean if it's live combat, and the AI is shooting at you and not doing much else, that makes sense. But making AI that can believably wander around and do interesting non-immersion-breaking things while the player stares at them for hours - that's hard.
Anyone else feeling like it's kind of unfair that the people who couldn't find a name more creative than kill3r are now getting FREE LOOT?
Who has to change names? Gamers that already have the names? Or the newer gamers that have ones similar to the older ones? Some gamers who have had the same nickname for almost 2 years are understandably upset leads me to believe that the gamers who've had their tags for the longer period of time are the ones getting boned.
Or it could mean that MasterChief has had his nickname for almost two years +(20 seconds). Suck it up, m4sterche1f.
I never understood the point of making speed runs through games... When you're trying to run through as fast as you can, aren't you kind of missing the point of actually playing the game?
If you're making speed runs, you've played the game so many times that you already know the way the levels look and the beautiful graphics in intimate detail. For example, the guy with the 1:37 Metroid Prime run says that it took 3 months to reach that point.
Speed run people know the game so well that they can exploit all kinds of insane tricks and glitches and other things about the game to play it in a completely different way than the way that the designers intended.
Personally, I think that's prety cool. Someday I hope to work on a game that's so robust and open-ended that people are able to find crazy tricks that I had no idea existed and fun enough that they're willing to spend months finding and exploiting them.
I think that what the grandparent poster is trying to say is that WoW and CoH don't have stupendously powerful graphics engines, unlike EQ2, but it looks like they're going to make up for it by giving us worlds that are genuinely interesting and stylish. We're talking technical prowess vs. artistic prowess.
The EQ2 screenshots that have been released so far look nice I guess but they're really, really generic looking. Compared to the kind of bland looking underdressed chicks in front of realistic looking castles and stuff of EQ2, the Word of Warcraft screen shots look really interesting and different. City of Heroes, on the other hand, gets a free "looks original" pass because it's not set in a fantasy world.
It's taught me that wars are won by campers and cheaters. And 'f4gz'.
Item 2 has been shot down because the majority doesn't rule on matters of punctuation. (pronounciation?)
Actually, the majority do rule on matters of pronounciation when it comes to English. The major linguistic project of English (the Oxford English Dictionary) is a descriptive not a prescriptive document. That means that once a significant minority of English users use or pronounce a word in a certain way, it'll get recorded in the dictionary.
All this is just to say that both "jif" and "gif" are acceptable pronounciations of GIF.
On behalf of the rest of the world, I want to let you know that it's awesome and hilarious that you think that the Economist is left-wing (and judging by your comments, far-left).
I don't know about other countries, but in Canada, the Economist is generally viewed as being fiscally right of center but not too far right. That you would view the Economist as being far-left just goes to show how badly calibrated the whole "left-right" scale really is.
Man, that's a hot encryption scheme. You should patent that.
If one of your friends writes "Wash me" on your dirty car, you aren't mad that they touched your car (if you are I'm supprised you have friends), you are mad that they are calling attention to how dirty you let it get.
But if they write "BUY COKE" on my car, I'm mad that they're using my car to hawk their products.
Lucky for you, most girls think that posting anonymous homophobic rants on a news website for nerds is SUPER HOTT (with two 't's).
That's a nice idea and all, but they break the immersion factor that they gain every time the character's call me "Gordon". My name's *not* Gordon!
I like the Deus Ex solution to this poblem where they gave you a gender-neutral code name so that you could pretend that your real name was whatever you wanted but the voice actors could still call you something in dialogue. An especially nice touch was that characters you were a personal friend of would call you by your secret 'real' name in private emails.
The reason why console games are so vigourously play tested is because once you make a playable disc or cartridge on a system, there's no such thing as a do over.
Every time there is some discussion that involves the possible patching of games, someone hauls out this old cliche that console games are more properly playtested than PC games. It's not true.
What's true is that consoles are easier to test for than PCs because PCs involve countless configurations of hardware and software whereas every Xbox/PS2/GameCube is pretty much the same. This makes testing easier and it makes finding bugs easier on a console.
Despite this fact, there are quite a few console games with terrible bugs. Driv3r shipped with terrible pop in and strange flickering graphics; At least three games no longer work if you are using the new big memory card on your GameCube; Tomb Raider, Angel of Darkness was full of problems; So was Enter the Matrix; Knight of the Old Republic had a bunch of known issues; Thief: Deadly Shadows has abrutal AI bug; even SSX Tricky locks up my GameCube from time to time.
Console games are full of bugs, we're just used to playing around them or ignoring them. PC games have more bugs because it's harder to find them and because a lot of them involve the arcane interactions of strange hardware configurations. Properly finding PC bugs requires more time and resources, both of which most publishers aren't willing to give, especially when consoles are a bigger part of the market.
Repeat after me: it's not laziness, it's complexity.
No you're wrong. What happened was that the people making Driv3r tried too hard to make the game more like Vice City and THEY FAILED. So instead of the game just being pure blissful insane driving physics, they keep meking you get out of the car and run around and shoot at people. I don't want to shoot at people! I want to drive a lot!
I rented the game hoping that it would be awesome in the same way that you want it to be but it's just not finished. There are brutal graphic glitches, strange collision detection, abysmal pop-up and they keep making you get out of the stupid car and run around and shoot at people with these awful controls.
I wish, I wish, I wish Driv3r had been about driving. I wish, I wish, I wish that you were right about the reviews.