Word has a separate redo button, much like Mozilla has a separate forward button. To have undo undo something, with the next undo REDOING something, is a completely broken interface.
Broken interfaces ruin any enjoyment I get from computing.
We have lots of network adators for PS2 and GameCube units. Every gaming store in town (Saskatoon) gets about 10 or 15 a week for the PS2, and a smaller number for the GameCube. Demand is exactly satisfied. It's fairly similar everywhere, since Electronics Boutique has a very good distribution network here.
"Another point I read recently is that without the broadband/56k adaptors readily available for the gamecube as yet,"
Why do people believe these myths? I work in a video game store, and I also look around at a lot of stores. PS2 network adapters (Sony official and 3rd party) arrive and sell fairly regularly, as do Nintendo ones. We don't have any shortage at all. There are plenty on shelves on stores in my city.
Ok, let's examine this statement of opinion: "The article repeatedly suggests that crash data would be used to enhance safety, without ever specifying how that is supposed to occur."
If I am a person who drives a car nicely all the time, and I drive defensively to avoid accidents, I shouldn't have any -- right? If I am a crazy person who drives without regard to others, I won't.
So if I am a good person and I drive defensively, but someone hits me and it's easy to say 50/50, this little black box says that it's not my fault because I braked and swerved like I should've. The other person shows excessive speed and other issues. This would certainly cause people who are irresponsible drivers to be held accountable for their actions more often.
If you go further along these lines, we could also get more detailed crash statistics. We could find out how dangerous a crash at 60 kph vs. 50 kph is. More detailed information about how crashes can be made less dangerous is also good.
Together we have the twins of more knowledge, and encouraged better driving habits. How is this bad? Road ways are a commons, paid for by everyone's tax dollars. When the government sets a speed limit, it's the people it's speaking for in setting that speed. To say that it's bad that you might be prosecuted for speeding is like saying it's bad that a drunken driver is held responsible for killing me in an accident. Are you sure about that, Michael? If you have problems with people finding out you broke the law, don't break the law.
There is only ONE online game on the GameCube. Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 and 2. Tom seems to think this is two games, and he also seems to think there are other games available for the GameCube which have some sort of online support.
Not true at all. Right now the only thing you can do with the modem and BBA for the GameCube is play PSO Eps 1&2. "Very little software is available for the Nintendo 56K/Broadband adapter offering other than the Phantasy Star Online I & II, which are the premier titles [sic]" would be better worded as "Nintendo does not have an online strategy, as emphasized by the fact that the only online title is a port of the Dreamcast's MRPG PSO by Sega itself."
There is no guarantee your online games will work unless they are 100% decentralized. Any sort of wordstats, etc, doesn't exist. Or if it does, it might have its plug pulled because no one is paying for it (and companies sure don't pay for things for the heck of it).
A lot of Dreamcast online games were never pay for play. Now I can't use very many of them for anything (except PSO, because PSO v2 is pay for play and floats it along with PSO Eps 1&2 for GC). Shenmue's passport disc (which had world stats) stopped working March 2002. When will your PS2 online games stop working?
was because the poster probably games on his/her PC. For less than the cost of keeping that one PC up to date, that person could have every console on the market. I haven't upgraded my computers in a year. In the mean time, I own every console on the market (and several more older systems), have respectable collections of games and peripherals, and have a more varied experience in terms of types of games.
The PC platform's great -- provided you like only strategy games or FPS games.
"A good game deserves to win over a worse one, no question about that."
True, but Tony Hawk doesn't deserve to win 8 awards (2 per console it's released on). If it's the best game that is also multiplatform, give it a separate category, or only award it the award on the platform it's best on (the Xbox, naturally).
I know consoles cost money. But unless you really, really want to play Vice City, you won't buy one. If you won't buy one, there's no use complaining about it -- is there? You merely waste electrons and time.
Why was this moderated up?
on
Games of the Year
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I'd much rather see an award go to a well polished, well designed, well tested game that works like a champ on one platform, than look at a game which is ok-looking, fairly well designed, and somewhat tested on all platforms.
Working with one set platform has a way of allowing designers to be more expressive. I mean, if it's a problem for you, go buy that console. You obviously really don't want to play those games if you haven't bought the consoles that will play those games. And a PS2, Xbox, and GameCube all together still costs less than a Radeon 9700 and new mobo/Athlon CPU to run UT2K3.
It's 2002. Out of the box, Quake 2 and even Quake World will just work with your computer as long as you have drivers for your card from your card provider. Why? Because OpenGL is so standardized, that you can keep running your games years later. What else offers this security? Only consoles. I can still play Metal Gear on my NES as easily as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on my PS2.
What happens when I try to run a DOS VGA game? A DOS CGA game? A DX 1 game? Not much...
Microsoft says they've tried to keep things compatible, but I've yet to see Windows DX games which work after multiple DX major version upgrades (3-5+) without some patching. Just another reason to console game:)
Pushed back again. Star Control 2 required a 486 DX 4 100. Need I say more about the wait between versions?
The funniest part is that the strategy guide for it shipping to EBs across Canada and the US. Then they pushed back the release date a month again. I expect they'll be recalled soon, even though they're the closest that anyone can get to actually playing the game.
"OR one that validates user input (removing the slow interaction between server and client just to confirm they actually typed something useful into the text box) ".. if you think that's acceptable. You still have to validate it on the server side. The only thing client-side JS validation should be used for is accelerating reporting of problems to the user. You still have to validate everything on the server side. To do less is insecure.
If you played the betas, you did get a really neat looking BFG effect. The thing is, iD only changed how the effect looked, but not how it behaved.
This lead to some really FUN BFG antics. People started calling me a BFG bitch because I knew how to use it:) Essentially, the BFG always had the effect of 2-stage firing. The first was the "zzzzZZZ.. whump-whump" which was shown as a big ball coming out. When the big ball hit the wall and went "zchooo," that's when the secondary fire (shown in betas as streamers from the mouth of the BFG) would act.
So to quickly get a kill on someone you knew was below you, you'd fire, drop down in the second or so you had, and point the muzzle at their avatar. "AAAaaaahhh..." they'd die, cursing you for how every you managed to pull that BFG shot off:) All you had to remember was that when the ball thingy hit, you had to have your targets in your view. If you did, they'd be hit by the (now invisible) streamers your gun put out.
I learned this mainly from the BFG FAQ and experience.
"Nintendo really wants to grab more of an older age group, they should try making games that might appeal to people who really haven't been playing video games their entire lives like we have"
I don't see that as a problem at all. Everyone in the past 30 years has grown up with video games in their lives. Why should Nintendo have to bother with the small percentage that has eschwed them? I'm happy with the way their plans are going.
It's the notion that tastes must change in such a set way, so suddenly. I don't agree with a statement that says that I have to stop enjoying Mario games. I don't agree with a statement like "GameCube is a kiddy console" -- I was playing RE0 again last night on it. RE0 and Metroid Prime are the two most enjoyable games I have for it (and they consistently win out against my other consoles [I have all of them* with a respectable library for each] for my game time).
There are plenty of games I love which, as you pointed out, I may not have appreciated as much 15 years ago. Shenmue, for example (I own Shenmue, Shenmue 2 eu import, and Shenmue 2x), or Ico (another game I happen to have at my house).
Recently I was actually talking with a person who was looking to buy some games for their children, and I thought about a few games I really enjoyed now (like Splinter Cell, and Sons' of Liberty), and I was wondering if I would've had the patience for that kind of game as a child (probably, since I played so many RPGs;)). You're right in that children won't always enjoy adult things, but I don't think that the adult enjoyment games are a separate set from childrens games; I think that the range of games you enjoy grows larger (admittedly, you do stop enjoying ABC/123 Sesame Street, but I never enjoyed that when I was young;)).
* When I say I have all of them, I mean I have a lot:) NES, SMS, TG16, SNES, PSX, N64, Dreamcast (2), PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GBA.
The original poster was trying to imply that any game with bright, primary colours, or any game with Mario, had to be a kids game. That such games were only of enjoyment to kids. Ludicrous!
I still enjoy video games a lot. Granted, I don't have nearly as much patience for jumping puzzles as I used to (which could also be linked to the greater numbers of games I own;)), but I still enjoy Mario Party 4, Super Monkey Ball, Smash Bros, etc. Games marked as "kiddy" by some. I play the crap out of them until my controllers don't work anymore. Is there something wrong with me? Not at all. I also enjoyed Monsters, Inc -- another "cute" movie which happenened to have depth, and a great execution.
Even though I'm an adult, I still find the same things fun.
It's not like I suddenly stopped finding Metroid fun. Metroid will always be fun. To actually say something that implies you stop enjoying certain things once you get past a set age, well.... I call bullshit.
" For that reason people choose a server that is closest to them physically, so they can enjoy a good connection"
I'm "close" to my local university, but the university is about 26 hops away. That's because we're on two separate networks, and it has to go all the way out to a NOC somewhere that has inter-network traffic passed through.
For what the LUG needs, 10 minutes of a Wiki setup is way better than 20-40 minutes on a Perl/Apache/MySQL/Scoop setup which requires more maintenance.
I'm a Dvorak guy. I tend to remember "modes" for how I'm typing (such as, I always try and type "slashdot.org" in qwerty mode, because all my Dvorak machines have bookmarks for it).
But that didn't affect the layout I used for games. What did affect the layout I used for games was that UT wouldn't accept ' , . as keys. Quake handled this fine by always not caring about the raw input, but no UT-based engine I have found yet has support for non-letter keys as input keys. Very frustrating.
At the Saskatoon Linux Users' Group, we use the WikiWeb. Wiki allows all members to annotate and update the pages, rather than requiring a central authority to filter all changes in. A plus is that everyone can contribute equally.
Also, it supports versioning, so it's handy for many other group oriented activities that involve planning.
Slashdot Mirror
Word has a separate redo button, much like Mozilla has a separate forward button. To have undo undo something, with the next undo REDOING something, is a completely broken interface.
Broken interfaces ruin any enjoyment I get from computing.
We have lots of network adators for PS2 and GameCube units. Every gaming store in town (Saskatoon) gets about 10 or 15 a week for the PS2, and a smaller number for the GameCube. Demand is exactly satisfied. It's fairly similar everywhere, since Electronics Boutique has a very good distribution network here.
"Another point I read recently is that without the broadband/56k adaptors readily available for the gamecube as yet,"
Why do people believe these myths? I work in a video game store, and I also look around at a lot of stores. PS2 network adapters (Sony official and 3rd party) arrive and sell fairly regularly, as do Nintendo ones. We don't have any shortage at all. There are plenty on shelves on stores in my city.
Ok, let's examine this statement of opinion:
"The article repeatedly suggests that crash data would be used to enhance safety, without ever specifying how that is supposed to occur."
If I am a person who drives a car nicely all the time, and I drive defensively to avoid accidents, I shouldn't have any -- right? If I am a crazy person who drives without regard to others, I won't.
So if I am a good person and I drive defensively, but someone hits me and it's easy to say 50/50, this little black box says that it's not my fault because I braked and swerved like I should've. The other person shows excessive speed and other issues. This would certainly cause people who are irresponsible drivers to be held accountable for their actions more often.
If you go further along these lines, we could also get more detailed crash statistics. We could find out how dangerous a crash at 60 kph vs. 50 kph is. More detailed information about how crashes can be made less dangerous is also good.
Together we have the twins of more knowledge, and encouraged better driving habits. How is this bad? Road ways are a commons, paid for by everyone's tax dollars. When the government sets a speed limit, it's the people it's speaking for in setting that speed. To say that it's bad that you might be prosecuted for speeding is like saying it's bad that a drunken driver is held responsible for killing me in an accident. Are you sure about that, Michael? If you have problems with people finding out you broke the law, don't break the law.
is for online play.
There is only ONE online game on the GameCube. Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1 and 2. Tom seems to think this is two games, and he also seems to think there are other games available for the GameCube which have some sort of online support.
Not true at all. Right now the only thing you can do with the modem and BBA for the GameCube is play PSO Eps 1&2. "Very little software is available for the Nintendo 56K/Broadband adapter offering other than the Phantasy Star Online I & II, which are the premier titles [sic] " would be better worded as "Nintendo does not have an online strategy, as emphasized by the fact that the only online title is a port of the Dreamcast's MRPG PSO by Sega itself."
There is no guarantee your online games will work unless they are 100% decentralized. Any sort of wordstats, etc, doesn't exist. Or if it does, it might have its plug pulled because no one is paying for it (and companies sure don't pay for things for the heck of it).
A lot of Dreamcast online games were never pay for play. Now I can't use very many of them for anything (except PSO, because PSO v2 is pay for play and floats it along with PSO Eps 1&2 for GC). Shenmue's passport disc (which had world stats) stopped working March 2002. When will your PS2 online games stop working?
"- saved a lot of time and made chatting in-game possible without a headset."
:p
Yeah, because when I'm doing a 5-trick combo in THPS4, I sure have time to put down the controller and blast out a message on my USB keyboard.
was because the poster probably games on his/her PC. For less than the cost of keeping that one PC up to date, that person could have every console on the market. I haven't upgraded my computers in a year. In the mean time, I own every console on the market (and several more older systems), have respectable collections of games and peripherals, and have a more varied experience in terms of types of games.
The PC platform's great -- provided you like only strategy games or FPS games.
"A good game deserves to win over a worse one, no question about that."
True, but Tony Hawk doesn't deserve to win 8 awards (2 per console it's released on). If it's the best game that is also multiplatform, give it a separate category, or only award it the award on the platform it's best on (the Xbox, naturally).
I know consoles cost money. But unless you really, really want to play Vice City, you won't buy one. If you won't buy one, there's no use complaining about it -- is there? You merely waste electrons and time.
I'd much rather see an award go to a well polished, well designed, well tested game that works like a champ on one platform, than look at a game which is ok-looking, fairly well designed, and somewhat tested on all platforms.
Working with one set platform has a way of allowing designers to be more expressive. I mean, if it's a problem for you, go buy that console. You obviously really don't want to play those games if you haven't bought the consoles that will play those games. And a PS2, Xbox, and GameCube all together still costs less than a Radeon 9700 and new mobo/Athlon CPU to run UT2K3.
It's 2002. Out of the box, Quake 2 and even Quake World will just work with your computer as long as you have drivers for your card from your card provider. Why? Because OpenGL is so standardized, that you can keep running your games years later. What else offers this security? Only consoles. I can still play Metal Gear on my NES as easily as Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty on my PS2.
:)
What happens when I try to run a DOS VGA game? A DOS CGA game? A DX 1 game? Not much...
Microsoft says they've tried to keep things compatible, but I've yet to see Windows DX games which work after multiple DX major version upgrades (3-5+) without some patching. Just another reason to console game
Not Star Control 3 :)
Pushed back again. Star Control 2 required a 486 DX 4 100. Need I say more about the wait between versions?
The funniest part is that the strategy guide for it shipping to EBs across Canada and the US. Then they pushed back the release date a month again. I expect they'll be recalled soon, even though they're the closest that anyone can get to actually playing the game.
"OR one that validates user input (removing the slow interaction between server and client just to confirm they actually typed something useful into the text box) " .. if you think that's acceptable. You still have to validate it on the server side. The only thing client-side JS validation should be used for is accelerating reporting of problems to the user. You still have to validate everything on the server side. To do less is insecure.
"You forgot to mention s*x! "
...
How the hell do sox kill you? And don't try and say by their smell
If you played the betas, you did get a really neat looking BFG effect. The thing is, iD only changed how the effect looked, but not how it behaved.
:) Essentially, the BFG always had the effect of 2-stage firing. The first was the "zzzzZZZ.. whump-whump" which was shown as a big ball coming out. When the big ball hit the wall and went "zchooo," that's when the secondary fire (shown in betas as streamers from the mouth of the BFG) would act.
:) All you had to remember was that when the ball thingy hit, you had to have your targets in your view. If you did, they'd be hit by the (now invisible) streamers your gun put out.
This lead to some really FUN BFG antics. People started calling me a BFG bitch because I knew how to use it
So to quickly get a kill on someone you knew was below you, you'd fire, drop down in the second or so you had, and point the muzzle at their avatar. "AAAaaaahhh..." they'd die, cursing you for how every you managed to pull that BFG shot off
I learned this mainly from the BFG FAQ and experience.
If I give little Johnny 80$, he might go buy Vice City. If I give little Johnny 80$ at CD Hut, little Johnny can get 80$ of CDs -- no Vice City.
"Nintendo really wants to grab more of an older age group, they should try making games that might appeal to people who really haven't been playing video games their entire lives like we have"
I don't see that as a problem at all. Everyone in the past 30 years has grown up with video games in their lives. Why should Nintendo have to bother with the small percentage that has eschwed them? I'm happy with the way their plans are going.
It's the notion that tastes must change in such a set way, so suddenly. I don't agree with a statement that says that I have to stop enjoying Mario games. I don't agree with a statement like "GameCube is a kiddy console" -- I was playing RE0 again last night on it. RE0 and Metroid Prime are the two most enjoyable games I have for it (and they consistently win out against my other consoles [I have all of them* with a respectable library for each] for my game time).
;)). You're right in that children won't always enjoy adult things, but I don't think that the adult enjoyment games are a separate set from childrens games; I think that the range of games you enjoy grows larger (admittedly, you do stop enjoying ABC/123 Sesame Street, but I never enjoyed that when I was young ;)).
:) NES, SMS, TG16, SNES, PSX, N64, Dreamcast (2), PS2, Xbox, GameCube, GBA.
There are plenty of games I love which, as you pointed out, I may not have appreciated as much 15 years ago. Shenmue, for example (I own Shenmue, Shenmue 2 eu import, and Shenmue 2x), or Ico (another game I happen to have at my house).
Recently I was actually talking with a person who was looking to buy some games for their children, and I thought about a few games I really enjoyed now (like Splinter Cell, and Sons' of Liberty), and I was wondering if I would've had the patience for that kind of game as a child (probably, since I played so many RPGs
* When I say I have all of them, I mean I have a lot
The original poster was trying to imply that any game with bright, primary colours, or any game with Mario, had to be a kids game. That such games were only of enjoyment to kids. Ludicrous!
;)), but I still enjoy Mario Party 4, Super Monkey Ball, Smash Bros, etc. Games marked as "kiddy" by some. I play the crap out of them until my controllers don't work anymore. Is there something wrong with me? Not at all. I also enjoyed Monsters, Inc -- another "cute" movie which happenened to have depth, and a great execution.
I still enjoy video games a lot. Granted, I don't have nearly as much patience for jumping puzzles as I used to (which could also be linked to the greater numbers of games I own
Even though I'm an adult, I still find the same things fun.
It's not like I suddenly stopped finding Metroid fun. Metroid will always be fun. To actually say something that implies you stop enjoying certain things once you get past a set age, well.... I call bullshit.
" For that reason people choose a server that is closest to them physically, so they can enjoy a good connection"
;)
I'm "close" to my local university, but the university is about 26 hops away. That's because we're on two separate networks, and it has to go all the way out to a NOC somewhere that has inter-network traffic passed through.
Perhaps you mean logically closest
I know, I help run Kuro5hin :)
For what the LUG needs, 10 minutes of a Wiki setup is way better than 20-40 minutes on a Perl/Apache/MySQL/Scoop setup which requires more maintenance.
I'm a Dvorak guy. I tend to remember "modes" for how I'm typing (such as, I always try and type "slashdot.org" in qwerty mode, because all my Dvorak machines have bookmarks for it).
But that didn't affect the layout I used for games. What did affect the layout I used for games was that UT wouldn't accept ' , . as keys. Quake handled this fine by always not caring about the raw input, but no UT-based engine I have found yet has support for non-letter keys as input keys. Very frustrating.
At the Saskatoon Linux Users' Group, we use the WikiWeb. Wiki allows all members to annotate and update the pages, rather than requiring a central authority to filter all changes in. A plus is that everyone can contribute equally.
Also, it supports versioning, so it's handy for many other group oriented activities that involve planning.