There might be a little less piracy in Australia if they weren't trying to charge $90-$110 for each game. Our dollar is nearly neck and neck with the American dollar (and hasn't been far off for many years), and yet the impression I get is that games are only $50 in the US. This leaves the Internet for buying games, but as I recently discovered, credit cards charge an entirely relative fee for purchases in different currencies (because it's not like it's a simple, automated millisecond calculation that many websites perform as a free service).
And then there was that bullshit Activision pulled on Steam with COD4, artificially adjusting the price depending on your country. They claimed it was so that stores wouldn't get screwed over, but as I pointed out, it's not exactly like the exchange rate suddenly doubled the night after they shipped out their 99 cent DVDs.
I like to buy games that I find good, but frankly it's almost like they're trying to prevent it.
So broadband is (theoretically) unlimited in the US? I don't think there's a single case of that here in Australia. There's generally always a download (and upload in the case of Telstra) limit, and if you exceed that, you either get charged per MB or your connection is shaped to about 64Kbps for the rest of the month. Proabably why I didn't quite understand the whole net neutrality thing for a while there.
I still don't understand why people think HL2's graphics are/were amazing. Has anyone even played Far Cry, FEAR, COD2 etc? HL2's textures are painfully low res. You need a 1GB FakeFactory mod to bring most of them anywhere near acceptable. There is the occasional nice pixel shader, say in a glass door, but lighting is pretty pitiful, with pretty mild bumpmapping. The torch does not blend well with any of the weak looking shadows. The added HDR comes across as way too heavy handed and tacked on. And despite all this, loading times are pretty formidable. Far Cry came out about a year before it, and had beautiful textures, wide open spaces, amazing lighting, and great loading times (especially when reloading).
I know they say HL2 was designed to be able to run on low end computers, but is it honestly that hard to add an extra "very high" graphics setting to the game?
Not until it runs on my current hardware and plays a *decent* selection of games. You can't understate the significance of gaming in OS selection. "Bigger than Hollywood" ring any bells?
The USA is hardly the land of puppy dog tails and whatever-that-phrase-is, but still, when you consider what happened in Tiananmen Square simply from the country's own citizens wanting democracy, there's a wee bit of contrast to America where, if Slashdot is anything to go by, people are kinda touchy (to put it lightly) about any hint of their rights being denied to them whatsoever. And if the media and popular culture is anything to go by, every American is armed to the teeth with high powered rifles to defend said rights:p
Still, from an outsider's point of view, Dubya does cast some doubt over the effectiveness of the Democratic system.
4 seconds? Pfft, sounds like web users need a good dose of humility, courtesy of my 2.5Kb/s dial-up shared over 3 computers! I reckon I might start a web server as well, waddya say?
It added insult to injury to find out that our neighbours were on a ADSL-enabled exchange, while we're on the outermost rim of ours. With the state's water supply between it and us, of course. So technically it was good news when it was announced that they were going to set up wireless broadband instead of small-ranged ADSL for us. It's just that time goes by, and that's all that's happened...
Wow, and all we had to do to secure this fabulous Free Trade Agreement was send a bunch of our people to die in some foreign desert! Bargain at twice the price!
I was pretty creeped out by C&C back when I was a little kid. The movie where the camera slowly moves through the ghost town and finally stops at the cemetery where tiberium is growing from people's graves was bloody freaky. I had nightmares at one point about tiberium growing out of my skin. Then of course they had it actually happen to people in Tiberian Sun.
Man, this project would be too easy. You'd be able to just repeat the same pages several times over each chapter until the characters move onto a different terrain type.
XP a factor for a long, long time still? I thought Microsoft had some sort of support/redundancy cycle that very much prevented such a thing, especially if maintaining security is a concern to the customer, and XP has been around for a few years now.
Hell, my mum is and always has been a heavy Red Alert gamer. Prior to Westwood selling up she played online all the time. The other day I stumbled across an old spreadsheet where she'd been collecting player stats.
Actually, I was just looking through the compressed files on my C&C cds the other day and found a folder called "Zounds", or something like that. Basically it's a guy impersonating a whole bunch of sound effects from the game. He's pretty good too:p
Yeah, it's fairly overrated. There wasn't a single enemy to defeat by problem solving, really. Handheld weaponry always seemed to do the trick, and one of Half-life's big claims to fame was that it broke this tradition in the first place. And maybe it was just my computer somehow, but graphically, it struck me that a lot of its textures were rather low. Sure, it speeds up the frame rate, but surely that's why you add another setting in the graphics options for people with cards that can handle it?
At any rate, I do find the facial simulation in HL2 to be really awesome. I'd love to do a mod that can be played out like a movie, so realistically.
Oh, there's no denying physics are entertaining. The things you mention were fun, but relatively speaking they are fairly minor or simplistic, and I also often found it easier just to shoot the baddies.
In HL1, you could waste all your ammo and eventually kill a gargantuan, but firing up some generators and then running to a pair of giant tesla coils with the gargantuan right on your heels, and then frying it to kingdom come entertains me slightly more. Same goes for using the tactical map to take one out with an airstrike.
With the tentacle beast it was more about learning the hard way that you couldn't kill it by normal means and then eventually taking it out in a fiery and spectactular manner. Sure, once you've done it you can look back and say: "Hmm, all I did was push a couple of buttons", but it was still different and fun.
I just think HL2 could have used a little more imagination. I mean, look at striders. They're on long, tall, thin legs. That instantly conjures highly entertaining possibilities. But instead, you just shoot them with rocket launchers. I quite honestly believe its not asking too much for a little extra creativity. They did it before with much more limited technology.
But on another note, I'm also a graphics freak, and don't hesitate to make a game crawl to a couple of frames per sec to enjoy the latest and greatest effects:D So I can't wait for this coast thing.
A significant problem with HL2 is that it pretty much avoided what made HL1 so fresh. There doesn't seem to be a single enemy in HL2 that can't be, and isn't meant to be, destroyed by your basic hand-held weapons. I would have loved another tentacle beast or gargantuan scenario but HL2 was really sparse and simplistic with its puzzles.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they just outsourced.
There might be a little less piracy in Australia if they weren't trying to charge $90-$110 for each game. Our dollar is nearly neck and neck with the American dollar (and hasn't been far off for many years), and yet the impression I get is that games are only $50 in the US. This leaves the Internet for buying games, but as I recently discovered, credit cards charge an entirely relative fee for purchases in different currencies (because it's not like it's a simple, automated millisecond calculation that many websites perform as a free service). And then there was that bullshit Activision pulled on Steam with COD4, artificially adjusting the price depending on your country. They claimed it was so that stores wouldn't get screwed over, but as I pointed out, it's not exactly like the exchange rate suddenly doubled the night after they shipped out their 99 cent DVDs. I like to buy games that I find good, but frankly it's almost like they're trying to prevent it.
And yet, what's the bet that Microsoft will still find some pressing need to make Internet Explorer a critically integrated part of MinWin?
I'm not sure they can effectively censor something most of us don't really have access to yet...
So broadband is (theoretically) unlimited in the US? I don't think there's a single case of that here in Australia. There's generally always a download (and upload in the case of Telstra) limit, and if you exceed that, you either get charged per MB or your connection is shaped to about 64Kbps for the rest of the month. Proabably why I didn't quite understand the whole net neutrality thing for a while there.
I still don't understand why people think HL2's graphics are/were amazing. Has anyone even played Far Cry, FEAR, COD2 etc? HL2's textures are painfully low res. You need a 1GB FakeFactory mod to bring most of them anywhere near acceptable. There is the occasional nice pixel shader, say in a glass door, but lighting is pretty pitiful, with pretty mild bumpmapping. The torch does not blend well with any of the weak looking shadows. The added HDR comes across as way too heavy handed and tacked on. And despite all this, loading times are pretty formidable. Far Cry came out about a year before it, and had beautiful textures, wide open spaces, amazing lighting, and great loading times (especially when reloading).
I know they say HL2 was designed to be able to run on low end computers, but is it honestly that hard to add an extra "very high" graphics setting to the game?
Of course. But we just like to let them pretend they're their own country. Keeps the plebs happy.
Bugga
Not until it runs on my current hardware and plays a *decent* selection of games. You can't understate the significance of gaming in OS selection. "Bigger than Hollywood" ring any bells?
Honestly, I don't care how they do it, as long as they give me my long-promised Shattered Steel 2.
The USA is hardly the land of puppy dog tails and whatever-that-phrase-is, but still, when you consider what happened in Tiananmen Square simply from the country's own citizens wanting democracy, there's a wee bit of contrast to America where, if Slashdot is anything to go by, people are kinda touchy (to put it lightly) about any hint of their rights being denied to them whatsoever. And if the media and popular culture is anything to go by, every American is armed to the teeth with high powered rifles to defend said rights :p
Still, from an outsider's point of view, Dubya does cast some doubt over the effectiveness of the Democratic system.
4 seconds? Pfft, sounds like web users need a good dose of humility, courtesy of my 2.5Kb/s dial-up shared over 3 computers! I reckon I might start a web server as well, waddya say?
It added insult to injury to find out that our neighbours were on a ADSL-enabled exchange, while we're on the outermost rim of ours. With the state's water supply between it and us, of course. So technically it was good news when it was announced that they were going to set up wireless broadband instead of small-ranged ADSL for us. It's just that time goes by, and that's all that's happened...
Wow, and all we had to do to secure this fabulous Free Trade Agreement was send a bunch of our people to die in some foreign desert! Bargain at twice the price!
I was pretty creeped out by C&C back when I was a little kid. The movie where the camera slowly moves through the ghost town and finally stops at the cemetery where tiberium is growing from people's graves was bloody freaky. I had nightmares at one point about tiberium growing out of my skin. Then of course they had it actually happen to people in Tiberian Sun.
So did "New Duff Lite" and how long did that last?
Man, this project would be too easy. You'd be able to just repeat the same pages several times over each chapter until the characters move onto a different terrain type.
My god! ARM was the the future AMD!? It's all so clear now!
XP a factor for a long, long time still? I thought Microsoft had some sort of support/redundancy cycle that very much prevented such a thing, especially if maintaining security is a concern to the customer, and XP has been around for a few years now.
Hell, my mum is and always has been a heavy Red Alert gamer. Prior to Westwood selling up she played online all the time. The other day I stumbled across an old spreadsheet where she'd been collecting player stats.
Actually, I was just looking through the compressed files on my C&C cds the other day and found a folder called "Zounds", or something like that. Basically it's a guy impersonating a whole bunch of sound effects from the game. He's pretty good too :p
Command and Conquer + Dinosaurs.
Sometimes you've just gotta ask how life could get any sweeter.
Yeah, it's fairly overrated. There wasn't a single enemy to defeat by problem solving, really. Handheld weaponry always seemed to do the trick, and one of Half-life's big claims to fame was that it broke this tradition in the first place. And maybe it was just my computer somehow, but graphically, it struck me that a lot of its textures were rather low. Sure, it speeds up the frame rate, but surely that's why you add another setting in the graphics options for people with cards that can handle it?
At any rate, I do find the facial simulation in HL2 to be really awesome. I'd love to do a mod that can be played out like a movie, so realistically.
Oh, there's no denying physics are entertaining. The things you mention were fun, but relatively speaking they are fairly minor or simplistic, and I also often found it easier just to shoot the baddies.
:D So I can't wait for this coast thing.
In HL1, you could waste all your ammo and eventually kill a gargantuan, but firing up some generators and then running to a pair of giant tesla coils with the gargantuan right on your heels, and then frying it to kingdom come entertains me slightly more. Same goes for using the tactical map to take one out with an airstrike.
With the tentacle beast it was more about learning the hard way that you couldn't kill it by normal means and then eventually taking it out in a fiery and spectactular manner. Sure, once you've done it you can look back and say: "Hmm, all I did was push a couple of buttons", but it was still different and fun.
I just think HL2 could have used a little more imagination. I mean, look at striders. They're on long, tall, thin legs. That instantly conjures highly entertaining possibilities. But instead, you just shoot them with rocket launchers. I quite honestly believe its not asking too much for a little extra creativity. They did it before with much more limited technology.
But on another note, I'm also a graphics freak, and don't hesitate to make a game crawl to a couple of frames per sec to enjoy the latest and greatest effects
A significant problem with HL2 is that it pretty much avoided what made HL1 so fresh. There doesn't seem to be a single enemy in HL2 that can't be, and isn't meant to be, destroyed by your basic hand-held weapons. I would have loved another tentacle beast or gargantuan scenario but HL2 was really sparse and simplistic with its puzzles.
Here's hoping for Aftermath to rectify this.