I actually have aSystem Shock 2 sound scheme going on my machine, I replace pretty much all the sounds for any app. Start-up? "I am Shodan." Shutdown? "That...h-h-h-h-hacker destroyed my primary data loop." Girlfriend signs on AIM? Xerxes says "Hostile AI detected."
The best thing about it is that it scares the shit out of everybody.
Downside is that it still scares the shit out of me, too.
Not that your opinion ever mattered--nor did mine, or anybody else's. It's a movie. It's entertainment. It was a tremendous achievement that deserved some kind of recognition. No right thinking person can disagree with that.
But who takes these award shows seriously, really? I mean, I watched to be entertained. It's a bit like watching gladitorial games, for me. But even for the winners, now--do you think an intelligent person who wins an award is going to see it as proof that they're the best? Maybe, but everybody else would know that's ridiculous. Do you think somebody who doesn't win is going to really be all that upset about it, once they get past the initial disappointment? Maybe, but we'd call that immature.
It's a stupid awards show, and not even the most honest and unbiased of stupid awards shows. The nice thing about it is that quality work can be recognized. The terrible thing is that it always also passed over completely.
Yeah, I know I'm not telling anybody a damn thing they don't already know...:-P
FFV was a great game, as were all of the Nintendo-era Final Fantasy games, but I don't think it can really be placed on the same level as 3/6. Hell, not much can, IMO.
The one-PC-game thing is really too bad. I have a friend who was surprised when I told him I didn't pick Torment, but when I reminded him about the countless games of StarCraft we used to play, he felt obliged to change his vote.
It'll work out in the end, though. I'm sure we'll see a great list of contenders.
You're way too angry, and assuming far too much. I'm 18, and I played plenty of oldies when they were new, young as I was. XWing and TIE Fighter both hold dear places in my heart. For a few months I played Civ2 constantly. And I got started on a nice NES, playing Zelda and SMB.
Still, I have Final Fantasy 7 on my list of nominations, because nothing else ever drew me in that much. I love that game, and I say that having played nearly all of the great RPGs of all styles...from NetHack, to Wasteland, to Daggerfall, to Fallout, to KotOR. And I've alos played nearly all the decently popular console RPG's released in the US.
And despite my great love for TIE FIghter and Civ2, neither were games I was considering for my single PC nomination. First I had Half-Life on there, then I thought, oh, silly me, and changed it to StarCraft, the game which gave me a dozen times as much enjoyable play time as anything else ever did.
I don't disagree with all your game choices, I do have the original Zelda on there. But you know what? I think it was surpassed by Ocarina of Time in pure gameplay.
You have a serious arrogance problem. You think that your favorite games should be everybody's favorites. Well, you know what? They aren't. I have only a few less years than you, and I'm sure I've been just as avid a gamer. But, hey, maybe my advantage is that instead of worrying about how bad games have gotten and how superior I am to everybody else, I can still play like I could almost 15 years ago, and just let myself have fun.
The same bracket system that put Chrono Trigger up against FF7 and Deus Ex up against System Shock 2 in GameSpy's first round? Yeah.
With GameFAQs' Character Battles, I thought that that usually wasn't too bad. The real contenders tended to do battle later on. Hell, I was hoping for a final showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth in that last one. Would have been awesome. And that, the filling out of the brackets for prizes, is really what makes the GameFAQs one fun.
Yeah okay, I freaked out. I dunno. Caffeine. Makes me edgy.
I don't think it's exactly "hard asses up there with check points," I've actually only seen one check point, ever, in my entire life. And they just waved me through, at that.
But really, the general attitude of the public is much harsher. As a recent high-school grad, I could tell you all about the anti-drunk driving stuff they throw at you, and really it's not all fake. They don't lie, I never heard a single statistic from any of those people. They just tell stories. That's right -- I'm not sure what it's like down there, but up here your average primary school student hears detailed accounts from friends and family of at least two or three people killed in drunk driving accidents. Plus, I know of four seperate drunk-driving accidents that killed recent grads of my high school just last year. Maybe around here people drink more at a time -- I could very easily believe that, and it would explain the differences in attitudes really well. Though it could just be worse roads or drivers, I think the first is far more likely. I mean, I know people who just don't bring their cars to bars in the first place, because they always get too smashed to even count the cab driver's money...
So all that having been said, I stand by my original point. But I don't really freak out about it quite that much. After all, in a drunk driving accident, the sober driver is more likely to be injured that the impaired one -- you endanger others more than yourself.
If you are able to drive...then, I think by definition, you are not impared. So, nothing illegal.
Oh. My. God. Are you completely insane?
As it is, "because it's illegal" is stopping plenty of people from driving drunk. If you ask me, probably more people that aren't doing it for safety reasons. Note that your way is no different than having them consider the safety reasons, since thier problem only comes about if they have an accident.
Every drunk driver is a opportunity for death and destruction. KInda of like reckless firearm discharge, really -- you probably won't hit anybody just firing in random directions, but does that make it okay to do? After all, there's no victim.
Or if somebody tries to kill somebody and fails? Hey, they guy's not skilled enough to kill somebody anyway, obviously, so no problem.
The important thing about a crime is whether it creates potential victims, and puts others in harms way. It matters little if you actually have an accident if you're recklessly increasing the chance of an accident.
God, I don't know anybody that's been injured in a drunk-driving incident, I exceed the speed limit (and possible the realistic safe speed) all the time. But you're just insane.
About the D-Pad, I can't say I completely disagree, but I have to ask, what's a better idea? I know that not having a solution doesn't make the problem insignificant, but that doesn't seem to bother some people who love the dual shock even with the awkward stick location, but hate the GameCube controller because of the awkward pad location.
Personally I find that I can reach the pad just fine, even for extended use, but I do understand how it could be a problem for some hands.
Mmm...the start/select buttons usually do not need to be hit suddenly in games. And while I see what you're saying, there isn't much room for two analog sticks *unless* you stick them there.
You've apparently never lived with people who like to turn off the damned TV during a game of Zone of Enders 2. Fuckers.
Uh...ontopic, right. Well, view GameCube. Two analog. Easy to hit start button. Allows your hands to rest in the most comfortable position for the most common control configuration. And don't complain about the C-stick being awkward to use. It is, sure, if it's a main component of a game, but it's perfect for what it's there to do -- camera control.
Well, what's to like about a game if you just can't do a part of it?What's the point if you never get past the first level? I don't cheat often at all, and I probably do it more to get around bugs than for any other reason. But if a game would be fun, except for one stupid part that I can't get through, I will cheat my way through it and get the most I can from the game.
In fact, the reason I never beat Torment was because I got totally stuck at one spot. Nothing I could do. Hell, that game even gives you an infinite number of lives, and I was still stuck. Bah.
Also, for the parent if she sees this, those Platinums are frigging ridiculous. The frustration involved defies expression.
GameFAQs is doing a game battle this spring. Currently taking nominations. Of course, in the end, I think CJay will just use the data to make his own selections. And it'll still be better than GameSpy.
It's not always a sign of a bad game. I've never finished some of the games I LOVE, because, well, I stop for a while. That happens. Then I forget about it, play other games, and then I just don't want to finish the old game because I'm not into it anymore.
My favorite type of game is RPG -- console-style, D&D-style, any kind is good for me. The only three I've ever beaten are Fallout, Chrono Trigger and KotOR, and both because I almost just played straight through from beginning to end and had no distractions. I helped my girlfriend with the final battle in one of the Avernum games, but that doesn't count. I've never even finished a Final Fantasy, though I came very close in FF7. I stopped in the middle of Planescape: Torment and never came back. Same for both Icewind Dales, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Morrowind. That's all I can remember at the moment, but there are certainly many more. These, though, are not bad games. In fact, I think most of them are fantastic games.
Maybe it's as much a sign of a horrible gamer as of a bad game.
Even the cube is having some trouble in the 3rd party game, yeah Nintendo's first party stuff is great, and yeah most of the "port to everything" titles lag pretty far behind exclusive content in terms of quality, but when you are not the big dog on the block, every game that doesn't get ported to your system is going to gain money for the other guy.
Of course, Nintendo takes nearly every bit of profit from those first-party titles, whereas the money you spend to buy a 3rd-party game ends up split who-knows-how-many ways. Those first-party sales are how they always manage to at least stay competitive when it comes to it. Yes, including in the console market. How can I say that? Well, user base doesn't mean a damn thing, except for how it relates to the all important profit.
I'm getting the impression that there are a lot of really POOR programmers out who have no idea how to make a program run fast and use C or C++ as a crutch.
Okay, I can't possibly say you're wrong, but you seem pretty angry about it.
The truth is, there is a real performance difference. I say this after watching some very simple, no-GUI programs translated straight from C++ to Java code. No extras added, bare minimum amount of work. We're not talking benchmark-quality testing here, but it is practical testing. Runtime could vary up to 50% in some of the cases. To me, once the simple program turns complex, that 50% matters.
See, I started on C, and used it for a long time. I got a fairly nice feel for speed of operations over the course of years. And then I started using Java, for the simplest of things, and it really annoyed me. A tiny delay where I've optimized something as much as I can, a tiny delay in the loading of the program, these things bother me because I'm used to something faster.
But sure, there are plenty of bad coders. Of course. People who are ignorant, careless, and lazy. But hey, even those people can write stuff that runs at a decent clip in C. That's because, though Java is touted as an 'easy' language (and in many ways it truly is) in some ways it's much more complex. It does stuff you don't tell it to do. It's often doing lots of work you don't need it to do. A person making high-quality apps needs to learn what that work is if they're going to make a program run efficiently--and it's still just about never going to be as fast as a C program written with the same level of care and tweaking.
All that being said, I do like Java. I love a lot of its features and for many apps it would be my language of choice. But once it reaches a certain level of complexity, I'd rather save the CPU cycles and go with something better. And that's rather a shame, as I love Java architectually as well...but as soon as that design really gets put to use on a large project, the costs outweigh the benefits, IMO.
Erm, angular seperation is useless unless you know it based on the place that you're looking from, really. What good does it do to know how far apart two stars appear to be looking from the center of the universe?
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I actually have aSystem Shock 2 sound scheme going on my machine, I replace pretty much all the sounds for any app. Start-up? "I am Shodan." Shutdown? "That...h-h-h-h-hacker destroyed my primary data loop." Girlfriend signs on AIM? Xerxes says "Hostile AI detected."
The best thing about it is that it scares the shit out of everybody.
Downside is that it still scares the shit out of me, too.
Not that your opinion ever mattered--nor did mine, or anybody else's. It's a movie. It's entertainment. It was a tremendous achievement that deserved some kind of recognition. No right thinking person can disagree with that.
:-P
But who takes these award shows seriously, really? I mean, I watched to be entertained. It's a bit like watching gladitorial games, for me. But even for the winners, now--do you think an intelligent person who wins an award is going to see it as proof that they're the best? Maybe, but everybody else would know that's ridiculous. Do you think somebody who doesn't win is going to really be all that upset about it, once they get past the initial disappointment? Maybe, but we'd call that immature.
It's a stupid awards show, and not even the most honest and unbiased of stupid awards shows. The nice thing about it is that quality work can be recognized. The terrible thing is that it always also passed over completely.
Yeah, I know I'm not telling anybody a damn thing they don't already know...
FFV was a great game, as were all of the Nintendo-era Final Fantasy games, but I don't think it can really be placed on the same level as 3/6. Hell, not much can, IMO.
The one-PC-game thing is really too bad. I have a friend who was surprised when I told him I didn't pick Torment, but when I reminded him about the countless games of StarCraft we used to play, he felt obliged to change his vote.
It'll work out in the end, though. I'm sure we'll see a great list of contenders.
You're way too angry, and assuming far too much. I'm 18, and I played plenty of oldies when they were new, young as I was. XWing and TIE Fighter both hold dear places in my heart. For a few months I played Civ2 constantly. And I got started on a nice NES, playing Zelda and SMB.
Still, I have Final Fantasy 7 on my list of nominations, because nothing else ever drew me in that much. I love that game, and I say that having played nearly all of the great RPGs of all styles...from NetHack, to Wasteland, to Daggerfall, to Fallout, to KotOR. And I've alos played nearly all the decently popular console RPG's released in the US.
And despite my great love for TIE FIghter and Civ2, neither were games I was considering for my single PC nomination. First I had Half-Life on there, then I thought, oh, silly me, and changed it to StarCraft, the game which gave me a dozen times as much enjoyable play time as anything else ever did.
I don't disagree with all your game choices, I do have the original Zelda on there. But you know what? I think it was surpassed by Ocarina of Time in pure gameplay.
You have a serious arrogance problem. You think that your favorite games should be everybody's favorites. Well, you know what? They aren't. I have only a few less years than you, and I'm sure I've been just as avid a gamer. But, hey, maybe my advantage is that instead of worrying about how bad games have gotten and how superior I am to everybody else, I can still play like I could almost 15 years ago, and just let myself have fun.
Um...Half-Life?
Actually, if you ask me, that last MK game was the best thing they've done in a while.
Now they can screw it up again...
The same bracket system that put Chrono Trigger up against FF7 and Deus Ex up against System Shock 2 in GameSpy's first round? Yeah.
With GameFAQs' Character Battles, I thought that that usually wasn't too bad. The real contenders tended to do battle later on. Hell, I was hoping for a final showdown between Cloud and Sephiroth in that last one. Would have been awesome. And that, the filling out of the brackets for prizes, is really what makes the GameFAQs one fun.
Yeah okay, I freaked out. I dunno. Caffeine. Makes me edgy.
I don't think it's exactly "hard asses up there with check points," I've actually only seen one check point, ever, in my entire life. And they just waved me through, at that.
But really, the general attitude of the public is much harsher. As a recent high-school grad, I could tell you all about the anti-drunk driving stuff they throw at you, and really it's not all fake. They don't lie, I never heard a single statistic from any of those people. They just tell stories. That's right -- I'm not sure what it's like down there, but up here your average primary school student hears detailed accounts from friends and family of at least two or three people killed in drunk driving accidents. Plus, I know of four seperate drunk-driving accidents that killed recent grads of my high school just last year. Maybe around here people drink more at a time -- I could very easily believe that, and it would explain the differences in attitudes really well. Though it could just be worse roads or drivers, I think the first is far more likely. I mean, I know people who just don't bring their cars to bars in the first place, because they always get too smashed to even count the cab driver's money...
So all that having been said, I stand by my original point. But I don't really freak out about it quite that much. After all, in a drunk driving accident, the sober driver is more likely to be injured that the impaired one -- you endanger others more than yourself.
Just download a keygen! ;)
Not for me. I just need to know to make fun of the kid when he/she gets back.
"HAD A FUN NIGHT, DIDJYA? DID YOU HAVE SEX!?!?"
If you are able to drive...then, I think by definition, you are not impared. So, nothing illegal.
Oh. My. God. Are you completely insane?
As it is, "because it's illegal" is stopping plenty of people from driving drunk. If you ask me, probably more people that aren't doing it for safety reasons. Note that your way is no different than having them consider the safety reasons, since thier problem only comes about if they have an accident.
Every drunk driver is a opportunity for death and destruction. KInda of like reckless firearm discharge, really -- you probably won't hit anybody just firing in random directions, but does that make it okay to do? After all, there's no victim.
Or if somebody tries to kill somebody and fails? Hey, they guy's not skilled enough to kill somebody anyway, obviously, so no problem.
The important thing about a crime is whether it creates potential victims, and puts others in harms way. It matters little if you actually have an accident if you're recklessly increasing the chance of an accident.
God, I don't know anybody that's been injured in a drunk-driving incident, I exceed the speed limit (and possible the realistic safe speed) all the time. But you're just insane.
Running somebody over with an SCV is cooler.
"I told 'em I was claustrophobic, I gotta get outta here!"
About the D-Pad, I can't say I completely disagree, but I have to ask, what's a better idea? I know that not having a solution doesn't make the problem insignificant, but that doesn't seem to bother some people who love the dual shock even with the awkward stick location, but hate the GameCube controller because of the awkward pad location.
Personally I find that I can reach the pad just fine, even for extended use, but I do understand how it could be a problem for some hands.
Mmm...the start/select buttons usually do not need to be hit suddenly in games. And while I see what you're saying, there isn't much room for two analog sticks *unless* you stick them there.
You've apparently never lived with people who like to turn off the damned TV during a game of Zone of Enders 2. Fuckers.
Uh...ontopic, right. Well, view GameCube. Two analog. Easy to hit start button. Allows your hands to rest in the most comfortable position for the most common control configuration. And don't complain about the C-stick being awkward to use. It is, sure, if it's a main component of a game, but it's perfect for what it's there to do -- camera control.
Well, what's to like about a game if you just can't do a part of it?What's the point if you never get past the first level? I don't cheat often at all, and I probably do it more to get around bugs than for any other reason. But if a game would be fun, except for one stupid part that I can't get through, I will cheat my way through it and get the most I can from the game.
In fact, the reason I never beat Torment was because I got totally stuck at one spot. Nothing I could do. Hell, that game even gives you an infinite number of lives, and I was still stuck. Bah.
Also, for the parent if she sees this, those Platinums are frigging ridiculous. The frustration involved defies expression.
GameFAQs is doing a game battle this spring. Currently taking nominations. Of course, in the end, I think CJay will just use the data to make his own selections. And it'll still be better than GameSpy.
Plus...filling out brackets! With prizes!
It's not always a sign of a bad game. I've never finished some of the games I LOVE, because, well, I stop for a while. That happens. Then I forget about it, play other games, and then I just don't want to finish the old game because I'm not into it anymore.
My favorite type of game is RPG -- console-style, D&D-style, any kind is good for me. The only three I've ever beaten are Fallout, Chrono Trigger and KotOR, and both because I almost just played straight through from beginning to end and had no distractions. I helped my girlfriend with the final battle in one of the Avernum games, but that doesn't count. I've never even finished a Final Fantasy, though I came very close in FF7. I stopped in the middle of Planescape: Torment and never came back. Same for both Icewind Dales, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Morrowind. That's all I can remember at the moment, but there are certainly many more. These, though, are not bad games. In fact, I think most of them are fantastic games.
Maybe it's as much a sign of a horrible gamer as of a bad game.
Full agreement on the argument about kids' stuff getting broken.
I mean, I can't tell you how many times I dropped my much-younger sister's GBA, and thanks to it's durability, she'll never know!
Oh, all hail the Tetris Classic: The only game I could ever play head-to-head with my mother.
So great. Soooo great.
What? GB games lag behind PS1 games in quality? How can you--
Oh, wait, you mean graphics? Well, shit, I thought you meant fun!
Even the cube is having some trouble in the 3rd party game, yeah Nintendo's first party stuff is great, and yeah most of the "port to everything" titles lag pretty far behind exclusive content in terms of quality, but when you are not the big dog on the block, every game that doesn't get ported to your system is going to gain money for the other guy.
Of course, Nintendo takes nearly every bit of profit from those first-party titles, whereas the money you spend to buy a 3rd-party game ends up split who-knows-how-many ways. Those first-party sales are how they always manage to at least stay competitive when it comes to it. Yes, including in the console market. How can I say that? Well, user base doesn't mean a damn thing, except for how it relates to the all important profit.
I'm getting the impression that there are a lot of really POOR programmers out who have no idea how to make a program run fast and use C or C++ as a crutch.
Okay, I can't possibly say you're wrong, but you seem pretty angry about it.
The truth is, there is a real performance difference. I say this after watching some very simple, no-GUI programs translated straight from C++ to Java code. No extras added, bare minimum amount of work. We're not talking benchmark-quality testing here, but it is practical testing. Runtime could vary up to 50% in some of the cases. To me, once the simple program turns complex, that 50% matters.
See, I started on C, and used it for a long time. I got a fairly nice feel for speed of operations over the course of years. And then I started using Java, for the simplest of things, and it really annoyed me. A tiny delay where I've optimized something as much as I can, a tiny delay in the loading of the program, these things bother me because I'm used to something faster.
But sure, there are plenty of bad coders. Of course. People who are ignorant, careless, and lazy. But hey, even those people can write stuff that runs at a decent clip in C. That's because, though Java is touted as an 'easy' language (and in many ways it truly is) in some ways it's much more complex. It does stuff you don't tell it to do. It's often doing lots of work you don't need it to do. A person making high-quality apps needs to learn what that work is if they're going to make a program run efficiently--and it's still just about never going to be as fast as a C program written with the same level of care and tweaking.
All that being said, I do like Java. I love a lot of its features and for many apps it would be my language of choice. But once it reaches a certain level of complexity, I'd rather save the CPU cycles and go with something better. And that's rather a shame, as I love Java architectually as well...but as soon as that design really gets put to use on a large project, the costs outweigh the benefits, IMO.
Why the hell did they bundle it with a joystick?
Erm, angular seperation is useless unless you know it based on the place that you're looking from, really. What good does it do to know how far apart two stars appear to be looking from the center of the universe?