...and people into their early to mid-30s. these are the people that have sustained the gaming industry since its infancy. not the teens nor even new freshmen in college. the same people that have fed billions of dollars into the game industry have grown up. most of us at the LEAST have full time jobs, many of us commuting and also having to be more active so that we dont gain 50 pounds. a lot or most i would think are married with maybe some little ones of their own and couple that with family time + work + getting sleep and staying healthy things have changed...when we were in college or as a youth we could drink a coke or eat a bowl of ice cream in between pac man rounds or fix some nachos after each level of tomb raider was finished after you tried that jump for the 30th time and finally made it. then we could wake up at 10 am, skip breakfast, a shower and clean clothes just so that we could start another level before leaving late for that 11 am computer science class, then come back after that and play some more. nope, we all now have grown up, and the gaming industry needs to keep its fan/player base...or it will lose out in the end.
i am a part of 2 teams that are still writing drivers for 3dfx so please dont give up on them just yet. the newest drivers support up to 8.0 and beta for 9.0. they also allows emulated T&L for playing some of the latest games at a decent FPS and some nice DVD movies with all the special effects. for instance, on my 3dfx Voodoo 3 i can play warcraft 3, UT 2003 and UT 2004, Need FOr speed HP2 and Underground(and of course the older NFS titles) and many more games! you can go to http://www.3dfx.com and click on the voodoo files link to get the updates and/or drivers for the current 3dfx card that you have or would like to buy. Unfortunately i think all the new drivers are compatible with WIN9x, 2k and XP..sorry linux 3dfx fans. anyway the cards are still alive so if you would like to help with GLide drivers or openGL drivers for the cards then please snoop around and ask how you can help.:) oh yes and to respond to one person, a lot of 3dfx fans did stay with NVidia b/c most of the 3dfx engineers went to NV. so youve got a lot of die-hard NV/ex-3dfx fans out there... including me:)
so like i said b4 in the post up..more worms would arise if linux had more systems out there. right now for most virus writers it isnt worth their time. with more linux systems coming onto the business side of things(i.e. database, servers in general etc etc) more detail to security will have to be maintained to ensure the safety of the systems you are running.
well my main point was is that these problems we are facing would be more even if the number of PC's running windows and linux were closer to 50/50. yeah you can log in as root but then someone will come up with a hack, just like everything else..someway someone would write something.
yes this is the 2nd edition if you will up on top of the OGL Game PRogramming book that i just described above in my previous post. it is good indeed but leaves a lot of junk that the other book had out to put in information and code for the extension associated with OGL 1.5(2.0).
no virus writer/hacker is going to spend all of its time to maybe interrupt 5% of the market share. in all fairness if the tables were turned and M$ had only 5% and linux had 90% of the users out there you can bet we'd be seeing virues/trojans/worms and hacks coming from all over the place, and we'd be talking about that instead of windows. think about if we really want linux to b/c the main O/S. in the end we are inviting more hackers to spend more time writing stuff for linux as well as windows. not so sure if that is good for the community..
i would recommend some books to search for on amazon..
opengl Game Programming -- yeah a lot of it is windows but you get some practical, first hand code to get u started , even comes with some mostly written classes and some good examples on the accompanying CD.
opengl red book - very good using mostly glut so its good on windows or linux.
opengl shading language - i think this is the right title.
there is also Linux Game Programming but i dunno how old it is. opengl as a forefront requires a lot of (or at least) basic trig and calculus but most of these books go over this in pretty good detail such as matrix math, vectors etc etc.
wonder why this article says nothing about OpenGL 1.5?? OGL 1.4 isnt outdated but OGL 1.5(which will be OGL 2.0) that incorportaing programmable shaders, etc etc that is going to be the revolution in gaming and the computer graphics industry as a whole.
are you kidding?? most WinXP machines nowadays come with at LEAST 512MB, with a lot coming with 1 GB nowadays. man i've got 2 GB on mine, only the LOW LOW end machines have 256 MB on them. my video card has that much memory..
--just unplugged the modem, wait 60 seconds and voila! now my normal connection speed is between 2.7 and 3.0 Mbps all the time and i frequently get a transfer rate of the same amount. i would say on average my transfer rate is around 600 or 700 kbps but like i said i have actually gotten 3.0- mbps download speeds -- of course this all depends on what the site's own cap is. if a site only allows you to get 100 kbps then thats all you are getting. I am also in a college town, so there are HUBS set up everywhere. IT is true -- if you dont want cable with them then you will pay something like $65 - $70 for cable internet, if you want cable then its $42.95 per month..even if you get the $6 cable package which is basically all the local channels. 2 - 13(by luck channel 13 here is ESPN):)
can you get this in WINXP? i never have gotten it nor have i ever locked up. on my old win98 machine i can remember getting the blue screen a few times, mainly because i was programming and i would make a boo-boo programming with linked lists. its all it how much you take care of your system. back to the subject briefly of why windows is preferred is b/c its much easier for the average user but at the same time these same users dont know how to protect their machine. even as "simple" as the windows OS might seem, the user still have to get a nice firewall with virus protection, put more than a measly 128 MB Ram on it and keep ur temp files empty and just the every-so-often maintenence to keep it in shape. Most users dont even think of this. firewall? whats that? they just check their mail, chat and browse the web for the most part. this is just begging for the blue screen.
maybe these things dont matter much in other countries.. i could be wrong though. the gaming industry boasted 17 Billion dollars(how many gamers(PC's?) is this?) this past year and will continue to grow. if linux could somehow get game makers to write for linux then that would be a huge step to the desktop environment. the next step would be to make sure when you buy the game, you pop it in, a window comes up and you click INSTALL and what folder and it installs it and the user doesnt have to do anything more. no downloaded drivers, updating kernels or anything else. but this goes true for software, multimedia and broadband compatibility as dial-up starts to finally diminish.(what other countries have broadband?) i am tech savvy, but i like linux and yes it is powerful. most users are not like us. when they go to wally world to buy a game(even if they arent a gamer) or software, or new memory or a neew video card or whatever, they want to come home, put the hardware or software in and they have to do little,if nothing to get it all installed.
those 3 things are what is killing the open source community.. pure and simple. i want to be able to put in Halo, Neverwinter nights, and 50 other video games in the CD-ROM and it starts or either i hit install and it installs. same thing with Maya, any Adobe product, or anything other software package i want to run. thats all the work that i want to do or should have to do. when i want to watch a movie, i want to pop the DVD in and for the movie to start. no ifs, ands or buts..i dont want to look for drivers, libraries etc etc. i like linux and windows, but lets face it, all this i say is true. The slashdot community is a small SMALL percentage of most of the computer users out there. So what if they get the blue screen every once in a while and so what if the machine locks up every so often. You know what most users do? they reboot and 2 minutes later they are back on and everything works. In short, most users would rather reboot then spending 30mins+ looking for libraries, drivers, etc etc and figuring out how to install them, pre-compile them and all that crap. Oh yeah and cant forget the broadband spectrum...with the rise of broadband more prevalant, Windows again shines. when you plug in your ethernet card in your laptop, or set up a router at home(or set up a LAN) you want the card to recognize the network, you want the other computers to be online, no downloading, installing, compiling.. no no, you want it to work and work then and THIS my friends is what most computer users' attitudes are. like it or not, this is fact.
Slashdot Mirror
...and people into their early to mid-30s. these are the people that have sustained the gaming industry since its infancy. not the teens nor even new freshmen in college. the same people that have fed billions of dollars into the game industry have grown up. most of us at the LEAST have full time jobs, many of us commuting and also having to be more active so that we dont gain 50 pounds. a lot or most i would think are married with maybe some little ones of their own and couple that with family time + work + getting sleep and staying healthy things have changed...when we were in college or as a youth we could drink a coke or eat a bowl of ice cream in between pac man rounds or fix some nachos after each level of tomb raider was finished after you tried that jump for the 30th time and finally made it. then we could wake up at 10 am, skip breakfast, a shower and clean clothes just so that we could start another level before leaving late for that 11 am computer science class, then come back after that and play some more. nope, we all now have grown up, and the gaming industry needs to keep its fan/player base...or it will lose out in the end.
i am a part of 2 teams that are still writing drivers for 3dfx so please dont give up on them just yet. the newest drivers support up to 8.0 and beta for 9.0. they also allows emulated T&L for playing some of the latest games at a decent FPS and some nice DVD movies with all the special effects. for instance, on my 3dfx Voodoo 3 i can play warcraft 3, UT 2003 and UT 2004, Need FOr speed HP2 and Underground(and of course the older NFS titles) and many more games! you can go to http://www.3dfx.com and click on the voodoo files link to get the updates and/or drivers for the current 3dfx card that you have or would like to buy. Unfortunately i think all the new drivers are compatible with WIN9x, 2k and XP..sorry linux 3dfx fans. anyway the cards are still alive so if you would like to help with GLide drivers or openGL drivers for the cards then please snoop around and ask how you can help. :) oh yes and to respond to one person, a lot of 3dfx fans did stay with NVidia b/c most of the 3dfx engineers went to NV. so youve got a lot of die-hard NV/ex-3dfx fans out there... including me :)
so like i said b4 in the post up..more worms would arise if linux had more systems out there. right now for most virus writers it isnt worth their time. with more linux systems coming onto the business side of things(i.e. database, servers in general etc etc) more detail to security will have to be maintained to ensure the safety of the systems you are running.
well my main point was is that these problems we are facing would be more even if the number of PC's running windows and linux were closer to 50/50. yeah you can log in as root but then someone will come up with a hack, just like everything else..someway someone would write something.
yes this is the 2nd edition if you will up on top of the OGL Game PRogramming book that i just described above in my previous post. it is good indeed but leaves a lot of junk that the other book had out to put in information and code for the extension associated with OGL 1.5(2.0).
no virus writer/hacker is going to spend all of its time to maybe interrupt 5% of the market share. in all fairness if the tables were turned and M$ had only 5% and linux had 90% of the users out there you can bet we'd be seeing virues/trojans/worms and hacks coming from all over the place, and we'd be talking about that instead of windows. think about if we really want linux to b/c the main O/S. in the end we are inviting more hackers to spend more time writing stuff for linux as well as windows. not so sure if that is good for the community..
i would recommend some books to search for on amazon.. opengl Game Programming -- yeah a lot of it is windows but you get some practical, first hand code to get u started , even comes with some mostly written classes and some good examples on the accompanying CD. opengl red book - very good using mostly glut so its good on windows or linux. opengl shading language - i think this is the right title. there is also Linux Game Programming but i dunno how old it is. opengl as a forefront requires a lot of (or at least) basic trig and calculus but most of these books go over this in pretty good detail such as matrix math, vectors etc etc. wonder why this article says nothing about OpenGL 1.5?? OGL 1.4 isnt outdated but OGL 1.5(which will be OGL 2.0) that incorportaing programmable shaders, etc etc that is going to be the revolution in gaming and the computer graphics industry as a whole.
are you kidding?? most WinXP machines nowadays come with at LEAST 512MB, with a lot coming with 1 GB nowadays. man i've got 2 GB on mine, only the LOW LOW end machines have 256 MB on them. my video card has that much memory..
--just unplugged the modem, wait 60 seconds and voila! now my normal connection speed is between 2.7 and 3.0 Mbps all the time and i frequently get a transfer rate of the same amount. i would say on average my transfer rate is around 600 or 700 kbps but like i said i have actually gotten 3.0- mbps download speeds -- of course this all depends on what the site's own cap is. if a site only allows you to get 100 kbps then thats all you are getting. I am also in a college town, so there are HUBS set up everywhere. IT is true -- if you dont want cable with them then you will pay something like $65 - $70 for cable internet, if you want cable then its $42.95 per month..even if you get the $6 cable package which is basically all the local channels. 2 - 13(by luck channel 13 here is ESPN) :)
can you get this in WINXP? i never have gotten it nor have i ever locked up. on my old win98 machine i can remember getting the blue screen a few times, mainly because i was programming and i would make a boo-boo programming with linked lists. its all it how much you take care of your system. back to the subject briefly of why windows is preferred is b/c its much easier for the average user but at the same time these same users dont know how to protect their machine. even as "simple" as the windows OS might seem, the user still have to get a nice firewall with virus protection, put more than a measly 128 MB Ram on it and keep ur temp files empty and just the every-so-often maintenence to keep it in shape. Most users dont even think of this. firewall? whats that? they just check their mail, chat and browse the web for the most part. this is just begging for the blue screen.
maybe these things dont matter much in other countries.. i could be wrong though. the gaming industry boasted 17 Billion dollars(how many gamers(PC's?) is this?) this past year and will continue to grow. if linux could somehow get game makers to write for linux then that would be a huge step to the desktop environment. the next step would be to make sure when you buy the game, you pop it in, a window comes up and you click INSTALL and what folder and it installs it and the user doesnt have to do anything more. no downloaded drivers, updating kernels or anything else. but this goes true for software, multimedia and broadband compatibility as dial-up starts to finally diminish.(what other countries have broadband?) i am tech savvy, but i like linux and yes it is powerful. most users are not like us. when they go to wally world to buy a game(even if they arent a gamer) or software, or new memory or a neew video card or whatever, they want to come home, put the hardware or software in and they have to do little,if nothing to get it all installed.
those 3 things are what is killing the open source community.. pure and simple. i want to be able to put in Halo, Neverwinter nights, and 50 other video games in the CD-ROM and it starts or either i hit install and it installs. same thing with Maya, any Adobe product, or anything other software package i want to run. thats all the work that i want to do or should have to do. when i want to watch a movie, i want to pop the DVD in and for the movie to start. no ifs, ands or buts..i dont want to look for drivers, libraries etc etc. i like linux and windows, but lets face it, all this i say is true. The slashdot community is a small SMALL percentage of most of the computer users out there. So what if they get the blue screen every once in a while and so what if the machine locks up every so often. You know what most users do? they reboot and 2 minutes later they are back on and everything works. In short, most users would rather reboot then spending 30mins+ looking for libraries, drivers, etc etc and figuring out how to install them, pre-compile them and all that crap. Oh yeah and cant forget the broadband spectrum...with the rise of broadband more prevalant, Windows again shines. when you plug in your ethernet card in your laptop, or set up a router at home(or set up a LAN) you want the card to recognize the network, you want the other computers to be online, no downloading, installing, compiling.. no no, you want it to work and work then and THIS my friends is what most computer users' attitudes are. like it or not, this is fact.