Parents get upset because their ten year old son sees a nipple during the superbowl.
Those same parents the next day don't arrive home until several hours after their son has returned from school. What's been keeping him company? Grand Theft Auto 3 or WWF Pro Wrestling.
Abandonded Places is another site that does this sort of thing. The author goes through old eastern european buildings primarily and photographs them, mostly in black and white.
I played in the beta, so my experiences might be a little different than others'. My major gripes probably still exist though, since they are basic parts of the game:
When I buy a game where I hop into a spacecraft, I expect to be able to use my joystick. Major gripe number one, was that not only did it have one of the silliest flight models I've ever flown, it did not even support joysticks to create that ammount of realism.
It was simply point-and-click everquest in space. There was nothing new. And as someone else mentioned, VERY little incentive to interact with other people. I could not "connect" with the game, get into it, actually enjoy playing it. And it wasn't because of bugs - it was because of basic gameplay elements.
Last night on Netdevil'sJumpgate, a pseudo-physics based space-sim, we noticed a small influx of new players. We didn't ask them, but we think it has partially to do with this.
For you EnB'ers who are on the lookout for another space-sim, Jumpgate has a (free!) trial download, with 10 days free. It's also one of the cheapest MMPOGs on the market, at 9.95/mo.
It has a robust (while not quite realistic - even in space your ship has drag. It makes it easier to fly. Otherwise docking would be a nightmare. What I don't like about the model is that ships have hardcapped "top speeds".. but I can ignore that for the most part.) flight model. Flying a cargo tow with several hundered units of Iridium is MUCH different than, say, flying a medium fighter with no cargo. Bring your joystick for this game, kiddies.
PvP is a main aspect of the game, with guild warfare and pirate tools. If you don't like PvP, but still like combat, there are always the purple space creature menace, Flux, to eliminate. The other aspect is the realistic economy - from miners comes raw materials, which stations refine into processed materials, which combine into products like missiles and engines.
Artifact hunting is another thing to do, but I haven't looked much into it.
Granted, the graphics are slightly out of date - but it's not about the graphics... It's about the gameplay! If you're close-minded and simply want another point and click MMPOG, don't try this game. If all you've played are point-and-click MMPOGs in the past, take it for a spin. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised.
Disclaimer: I do not work for NetDevil, nor do I have any affiliation with them other than being a paying customer.
I think a better idea for death in a MMPORPG should be quite different:
Instead of creating, for example, a single character.. you create a Family, with a surname. The point would be to increase your Family's fame. Each character you create has the same surname, and owns a holding. Perhaps you begin with a hovel, and can make your way up to a wizard's tower or a keep. People will say, "Oh, that's owned by the Higraf family," not "Oh, that's owned by rEdK1ller."
Certain things, like wealth would be transferrable to other characters on the account, through the holding. This is all to prevent people from leaving the game entirely when their character dies, because death should be permanent. A character should take no more than a week of -casual- playing to become 'awesome' in the sense of 'average.' There should be a bell-curve in terms of character power and the number of characters, whereas now there is an ever rising curve, with the most players being at a very high level. Because of permanent death, it is possible to have less characters at a high power level than at an average power level.
One option, if a player does not want their character to die, is to 'immortalize' said character: they turn into an npc, and either inhabit the player's home, or wander off. If they're at a high enough power level when they retire, they could put a unique power item into the queue to be used with a quest: "Senchal's Wand of Might," where Senchal was an actual player that people interacted with.
In this way you accomplish the following things: -A bell curve of player power levels, which leads to a more interesting game environment. -It means something when someone dies. -People are less apt to quit when their character dies, because although they have lost the time gaining skills and abilities with said character, they have gained capital and worth for their family.
Another interesting thing would be, when your character dies, you have the option of bringing them to life as part of an Undead horde, waging war on the realm of the living. Your character is enhanced, and cannot gain abilities, and when they die again they die for good, but you can go out with a bang.
The Neuros is a 20GB mp3/ogg player with open source software, linux software, etc. It retails for about 200 bucks, and has one of the best battery return policies I've ever seen. I've had mine for about 2 months and am extremely happy with it... especially its built-in FM transmitter.
about 44 percent of the country's Internet users have created content for others to enjoy online.
Somehow I doubt that a majority of people would enjoy the 'content' that a majority of these folks have created. A more fitting sentence would be, "... have created content for others to reaffirm the sad state of humanity with." But then again.. I'm jaded, and I'm submitting content.. go figure.:p
It's different because, while Debian components work on a package level, he's talking about a modular level.
That is, a collection of packages that work together thematically. For example; a simple productivity module which includes mozilla firefox, evolution, and openoffice. Or a multimedia module which includes xmms, mplayer, and a smattering of DVD players. Or a server module, which includes apache, samba, et al.
It's like turning the course focus on a manual microscope instead of the fine focus. You get more faster, but it's not as accurate to your specific needs.
While EA isn't good... they aren't the worst, either. I really think that title belongs to Interplay. Agreed that EA having such a large share of the market with (primarily) horrible games is bad, but Interplay's tried and true method of shutting down highly anticipated titles and firing their developers before the holidays is downright satanic.
Which is why you make the binary available, but not your content.
This is like apache making their binaries available, but not the content of their website. The key to making a decent wide-spread binary for a MUD is to allow most of the in-game systems to be changed via -scripts- - so you can change a DnD style MUD to a, for example, GURPs, style MUD.. without changing the actual binary, just some entries in a text file (probably a few equations in a script, too) somewhere.
The point would be to have a stable core engine, with the game systems (combat, advancement) user defined. Distribute it with a sample game system that shows how robust the scripting is, along with a stable server engine, and you've got a pretty good candidate for a GPL'd MUD.
Actually, Nausicaa is definitely not a schoolgirl. There aren't any schools of that type in that world. It's a Studio Ghibli film (directed and created by the same folks who made Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away (which won best animated picture last year), and countless other films).
Even if you're just into giant robots, it has robots too:) Ones that rain down death and destruction, actually. If you don't want to go grab it, if you have any respect for a good story and good animation to go along with it, I'd recommend at least renting it.
Nervous system degredation does not necessarily come from lack of synaptic strength, however. At least one is caused by the degradation of the fatty myelin sheething around the axon.
The emotion engine isn't the graphics engine of the PS2 - though it can be used to augment the graphics engine of the PS2. It's a major overlook that a lot of people make, and is outlined better here.
Actually, no, I don't even own a playstation 2 (I sometimes use my kid brother's, though). I prefer gaming on the computer.
However, I have special interest in the Playstation 2, seeing as I'm in the High Performance Computing department of my school - I've been doing specific research on playstation 2s, their floating point performance, and scalability of clusters. From what I've found, though, the playstation2-linux project hasn't really gotten a lot of utilities completely ported over to take advantage of the vector units. Everything able to be compiled as MIPS, works on it.. but won't use the special hardware.
No, the emotion engine (made up of vector units and central processing unit) is seperate from the graphics synthesizer, which has a memory bandwidth of 48 gigabytes/sec. The Geforce3 (similar to the graphics chip in the xbox) has approximately 7.36 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
The problems, of course, are that the emotion engine and graphics synthesizer require a PhD in mathematics and computer science to be able to code for them, so their potential has barely been reached - even by Sony's own programmers.
Both systems were more powerful than PlayStation 2.
This statement amuses me. The Xbox is built on an 800mhz celeron processor. The Gamecube utilizes a powerpc based processor. The only reason graphics on the playstation 2 look sub-par, is because it only has 4mb of video memory. The actual cpu, video processing units, and sound processing units are much more powerful than either the Gamecube or xbox. One vector unit of the PS2's emotion engine, for example, can perform Just over a GFLOP. This is immensely better than the X-box (my dual pentium3 800mhz machine cannot even perform a GFLOP), though I'm not sure about the gamecube - I assume it probably doesn't do as well, either. Of course, this performance is only utilizing one of the vector units - there are two. 2GFLOPS (even though they proportedly are capable of 6.2) is nothing to be ashamed of.
As was said before, the actual logic units of the playstation2 are well beyond both the xbox and the gamecube - the simple fact is, that the video memory does not hold nearly as many pretty textures, and cannot do anti-aliasing very well (mainly because of the lack of memory). If they had utilized something like 64mb or 128mb of memory, the system would have smoked either one of the other systems. The major problem with the emotion engine in floating point calculations, is that it only performs at 32-bit precision, not 64-bit. Of course, neither do the numerous pentium3 (And 4) based beowulf clusters out there.
Slashdot Mirror
Parents get upset because their ten year old son sees a nipple during the superbowl. Those same parents the next day don't arrive home until several hours after their son has returned from school. What's been keeping him company? Grand Theft Auto 3 or WWF Pro Wrestling.
Abandonded Places is another site that does this sort of thing. The author goes through old eastern european buildings primarily and photographs them, mostly in black and white.
They can be eerily beautiful.
New dells also have 3 year drop warrenty. That is. You drop it, it breaks, they replace it.
This was moderated as funny, but I think it has quite some truth to it.
Instead of the darwinism of virii killing the internet, I think it will merely keep stupid users off of it.
Except, of course, that you can't PVP in EnB.
At all.
I played in the beta, so my experiences might be a little different than others'. My major gripes probably still exist though, since they are basic parts of the game:
When I buy a game where I hop into a spacecraft, I expect to be able to use my joystick. Major gripe number one, was that not only did it have one of the silliest flight models I've ever flown, it did not even support joysticks to create that ammount of realism.
It was simply point-and-click everquest in space. There was nothing new. And as someone else mentioned, VERY little incentive to interact with other people. I could not "connect" with the game, get into it, actually enjoy playing it. And it wasn't because of bugs - it was because of basic gameplay elements.
Last night on Netdevil's Jumpgate, a pseudo-physics based space-sim, we noticed a small influx of new players. We didn't ask them, but we think it has partially to do with this.
.. but I can ignore that for the most part.) flight model. Flying a cargo tow with several hundered units of Iridium is MUCH different than, say, flying a medium fighter with no cargo. Bring your joystick for this game, kiddies.
For you EnB'ers who are on the lookout for another space-sim, Jumpgate has a (free!) trial download, with 10 days free. It's also one of the cheapest MMPOGs on the market, at 9.95/mo.
It has a robust (while not quite realistic - even in space your ship has drag. It makes it easier to fly. Otherwise docking would be a nightmare. What I don't like about the model is that ships have hardcapped "top speeds"
PvP is a main aspect of the game, with guild warfare and pirate tools. If you don't like PvP, but still like combat, there are always the purple space creature menace, Flux, to eliminate. The other aspect is the realistic economy - from miners comes raw materials, which stations refine into processed materials, which combine into products like missiles and engines.
Artifact hunting is another thing to do, but I haven't looked much into it.
Granted, the graphics are slightly out of date - but it's not about the graphics... It's about the gameplay! If you're close-minded and simply want another point and click MMPOG, don't try this game. If all you've played are point-and-click MMPOGs in the past, take it for a spin. I think you'll be pleasantly suprised.
Disclaimer: I do not work for NetDevil, nor do I have any affiliation with them other than being a paying customer.
A quick search on google leads you to Missile Bases, a site that has missile silos for sale.
There are people who like to rennovate these old Silos into homes which are earthquake-proof, nuke-proof, and pretty much everything else-proof.
I think a better idea for death in a MMPORPG should be quite different:
Instead of creating, for example, a single character.. you create a Family, with a surname. The point would be to increase your Family's fame. Each character you create has the same surname, and owns a holding. Perhaps you begin with a hovel, and can make your way up to a wizard's tower or a keep. People will say, "Oh, that's owned by the Higraf family," not "Oh, that's owned by rEdK1ller."
Certain things, like wealth would be transferrable to other characters on the account, through the holding. This is all to prevent people from leaving the game entirely when their character dies, because death should be permanent. A character should take no more than a week of -casual- playing to become 'awesome' in the sense of 'average.' There should be a bell-curve in terms of character power and the number of characters, whereas now there is an ever rising curve, with the most players being at a very high level. Because of permanent death, it is possible to have less characters at a high power level than at an average power level.
One option, if a player does not want their character to die, is to 'immortalize' said character: they turn into an npc, and either inhabit the player's home, or wander off. If they're at a high enough power level when they retire, they could put a unique power item into the queue to be used with a quest: "Senchal's Wand of Might," where Senchal was an actual player that people interacted with.
In this way you accomplish the following things:
-A bell curve of player power levels, which leads to a more interesting game environment.
-It means something when someone dies.
-People are less apt to quit when their character dies, because although they have lost the time gaining skills and abilities with said character, they have gained capital and worth for their family.
Another interesting thing would be, when your character dies, you have the option of bringing them to life as part of an Undead horde, waging war on the realm of the living. Your character is enhanced, and cannot gain abilities, and when they die again they die for good, but you can go out with a bang.
The Neuros is a 20GB mp3/ogg player with open source software, linux software, etc. It retails for about 200 bucks, and has one of the best battery return policies I've ever seen. I've had mine for about 2 months and am extremely happy with it... especially its built-in FM transmitter.
It's different because, while Debian components work on a package level, he's talking about a modular level.
That is, a collection of packages that work together thematically. For example; a simple productivity module which includes mozilla firefox, evolution, and openoffice. Or a multimedia module which includes xmms, mplayer, and a smattering of DVD players. Or a server module, which includes apache, samba, et al.
It's like turning the course focus on a manual microscope instead of the fine focus. You get more faster, but it's not as accurate to your specific needs.
Blaster worm. As far as I know, the patch to fix the exploit the Blaster worm used was not patched until after the Blaster worm was released.
Since when did Microsoft hire the Iraqi Information Minister?
While EA isn't good... they aren't the worst, either. I really think that title belongs to Interplay. Agreed that EA having such a large share of the market with (primarily) horrible games is bad, but Interplay's tried and true method of shutting down highly anticipated titles and firing their developers before the holidays is downright satanic.
Which is why you make the binary available, but not your content.
This is like apache making their binaries available, but not the content of their website. The key to making a decent wide-spread binary for a MUD is to allow most of the in-game systems to be changed via -scripts- - so you can change a DnD style MUD to a, for example, GURPs, style MUD.. without changing the actual binary, just some entries in a text file (probably a few equations in a script, too) somewhere.
The point would be to have a stable core engine, with the game systems (combat, advancement) user defined. Distribute it with a sample game system that shows how robust the scripting is, along with a stable server engine, and you've got a pretty good candidate for a GPL'd MUD.
Cause, as we all know, large grills (Especially on robots) make them more durable.
Actually, Nausicaa is definitely not a schoolgirl. There aren't any schools of that type in that world. It's a Studio Ghibli film (directed and created by the same folks who made Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away (which won best animated picture last year), and countless other films).
:) Ones that rain down death and destruction, actually. If you don't want to go grab it, if you have any respect for a good story and good animation to go along with it, I'd recommend at least renting it.
Even if you're just into giant robots, it has robots too
That's what intense physical training is about
Nervous system degredation does not necessarily come from lack of synaptic strength, however. At least one is caused by the degradation of the fatty myelin sheething around the axon.
The emotion engine isn't the graphics engine of the PS2 - though it can be used to augment the graphics engine of the PS2. It's a major overlook that a lot of people make, and is outlined better here.
Actually, no, I don't even own a playstation 2 (I sometimes use my kid brother's, though). I prefer gaming on the computer.
However, I have special interest in the Playstation 2, seeing as I'm in the High Performance Computing department of my school - I've been doing specific research on playstation 2s, their floating point performance, and scalability of clusters. From what I've found, though, the playstation2-linux project hasn't really gotten a lot of utilities completely ported over to take advantage of the vector units. Everything able to be compiled as MIPS, works on it.. but won't use the special hardware.
No, the emotion engine (made up of vector units and central processing unit) is seperate from the graphics synthesizer, which has a memory bandwidth of 48 gigabytes/sec. The Geforce3 (similar to the graphics chip in the xbox) has approximately 7.36 GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Unlike what was said in another post, the PS2 -does- do trilinear filtering - Along with "Texture Mapping, Bump Mapping, Fogging, Alpha Blending, Bi-...Linear Filtering, MIPMAP, Anti-aliasing, and Multi-pass Rendering".
The problems, of course, are that the emotion engine and graphics synthesizer require a PhD in mathematics and computer science to be able to code for them, so their potential has barely been reached - even by Sony's own programmers.
As was said before, the actual logic units of the playstation2 are well beyond both the xbox and the gamecube - the simple fact is, that the video memory does not hold nearly as many pretty textures, and cannot do anti-aliasing very well (mainly because of the lack of memory). If they had utilized something like 64mb or 128mb of memory, the system would have smoked either one of the other systems. The major problem with the emotion engine in floating point calculations, is that it only performs at 32-bit precision, not 64-bit. Of course, neither do the numerous pentium3 (And 4) based beowulf clusters out there.
I do believe the criminal act they're using is extortion - they're allowing people to pay them protection money, in return for not being sued.