I have nothing against the attempts of WoTC to try and milk some more cash out of their license for the Star Wars franchise, it's a great franchise and people really like it. I don't think there are many people in the world who don't know what a Jedi is.
The problem is, the really horrible quality of WoTC miniatures. I'd advise anyone who likes nice things to stay right away from this. The WoTC D&D miniatures that came out were some of the worst I've ever seen. Cheap plastic, every minature in the pack is bent out of shape, they only used four colours, and the paint looks like it was fingerpainted onto each miniature by a four year old kid in some third world country. (I may not be far from the truth, either!).
Story driven games will never be as big or as popular as they have been on the PC. Consoles seem to be purely for "twitch" reflex games.
Console gamers want a different experience. They want FPS run and gun, they want to do it with an auto-aim function (because they like to use those simple gamepads instead of the flexibility of the mouse/keyboard interface). Console gamers become upset when they don't have unlimited ammo.
The perfect example of this is DX2. Universal ammo! The designers probably assumed that console gamers wouldn't understand that certain weapons need to use different kinds of bullets. A bullet is a bullet, right? Console gaming is bringing about, to a large extent, the end of intelligent, story or plot driven gaming, which we only enjoyed for a brief moment, after Half Life and it's kin, but before the PS/2 began the end.
I for one welcome our new console gamer overlords, and will be having my cognitive parts of my brain lobotomised and replaced with more twitch reflexes.
Ahh, or perhaps the Steve Jackson game, Illuminati! Now that was fun. I'll use the Clone Arrangers with the assistance of the Orbital Mind Control Lasers and Goldfish Fanciers to try and take over the Semiconscious Liberation Army!
There have been a lot of attempts to implement boardgames as PC games, Monopoly is a big example, but they have been very unsuccessful.
Some online card games are popular, and Wizards of the Coast have been desperate to get Magic played online (and still reap huge profits by not even having to print cards anymore).
Personally I'll stick to GTA (which, if ever made into a boardgame, would suck), and maybe a game of 500 or bridge or poker in the flesh world.
If you read Unfinished Tales, The Istari are Maiar, sent by the Valar to assist the free races of Middle Earth in defeating the last vestiges of Morgoth's will (ie, Sauron). Five of the Valar each chose one of their servants to represent them, for their own reasons of course.
Tolkien suggests that of these Maiar, the two most powerful are Gandalf and Saruman, although he notes that Gandalf, whilst being more powerful, was less interested in getting involved with Middle Earth, while Saruman was more "curious" and quicker to action.
This brings an interesting insight to Gandalf's "death" and ressurection at the hands of the Valar, in being sent back to Middle Earth, he changes to the "white" colour after Sarumans fall to "many colours", usurping Sarumans role as leader of the Istari, but also gaining great motivation to interact with the fate of Men and Elves.
Melkor/Morgoth was told by Iluvatar that all of his disharmony would only make the overall harmony of the Valar all the greater, which is what we see at the end of the story.
Now that there's an (almost) jedi, I think most of the jealous wannabe-jedi bounty hunters will kill off our good little initiate to see if a) she stays dead and b) she really does become a glowy ghostie.
I assume this is a low res version of CounterStrike, without the fine aiming control of a mouse? Or does it have an auto-aim feature?
I wonder which patch level of CS it will be running from. I found it amusing in the older versions that many "professional" players liked to use a sniper rifle and walk around crouched, and jump up and down in the air to shoot. Just like real life!
None of the questions in Reloaded are answered. Exposition of the entire plot is not always the purpose of a movie. More so when the movie is a work of complete fiction/fantasy. Sure, if it's a murder mystery, I want to know who the murderer is. If it's a fantasy story, I don't want to be told in childlike language how dragon aerodynamics works or how bertie botts beans can taste so different all the time.
What the hell happened to the people of the Matrix? It's like the movies don't even care. Maybe... just maybe... you might have to accept that the Matrix didn't have the happy ending we were all hoping for. I recommend that if you don't like this kind of ending in a movie, the Disney company has some titles you could enjoy. Although conventional, happy endings are not required for a film to be considered complete.
No humanity in the characters and dialogue. It's an action film. All that aside, it's also the third film in a trilogy, and if you watch most trilogies in this genre, often the characters are pitted against more serious odds, and in order to create a darker tone for the film, the directors will suppress many of the fart jokes and other "joy and humour" aspects you seem to be looking for. Try a different genre.
Nobody is freed, Trinity and Neo die Please refer to my earlier comments about the Disney company. If you want to speak about para-religious overtones in the film, didn't you notice Neo being raised from the dead in the very first movie? There's your post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic overtones right there.
I enjoyed the third film much more than the second. The dialog was, although grittier, much more credible than the second film. The movie tied off the trilogy well enough, in my opinion, leaving plenty of room for more computer games and cross merchandising, anime, or whatever WB wants to get out of the franchise. I can live with that outcome.
The Japanese have a very different market to sell for. They like smaller things that are more gadgety, which is why mobile phones and small game consoles are popular, where bulky PC's aren't seen as being as cool as they are in the West.
They also like different kinds of games, the Final Fantasy series is much bigger there than here. Games like Quake and Doom and multiplayer games are much more popular in the west. Multiplayer is a big driver for PC games that the consoles are only just waking up to (They're in "me too!" mode now.)
"but does your PC read Mac stuff? No, it doesn't. And my Mac is proprietary?"
Yes... the PC can't read Mac stuff because the Mac stuff is... proprietary... that's a direct example of what proprietary is.
And unless you're doing something like, oh, dude, you're buying a Dell, a fully featured PC will be cheaper, because you can tailor it to include only high quality parts where you think they're needed. Not because Steve or whoever is running Apple nowadays tells you to. That's like Bill Gates telling you what brand of monitor to buy.
That blurb is exactly right. When I saw this new "Lord of the Rings" movie I knew right away it was a complete ripoff of Dungeon Seige. It's a wonder that the developers haven't sued Peter Jackson yet.
In all seriousness, has there been a decent movie-from-computer game film yet? Does Resident Evil count? Final Fantasy perhaps?
The opposite is also interesting, are there any decent game-from-movie adaptations? I can't think of any. The matrix game was woeful.
This patch does change a whole bunch of stuff! We're going to see negative XP rates for very high level players, and the Horadric cube recipes are all very messed up now. Lots of recipes have been made more expensive, like converting potions now requires a gem.
I'm going to stick with 1.09x for as long as I can. Until Diablo 3 comes out. I heard a rumour from my uncle's cousins dog that it was being made.
Most Australian state governments have very strong policies when it comes to tendering for services to "buy local". Of course, individual requirements for applications can specify certain dependencies, like use of Suns true Java.
Unfortunately, the tendency to buy local diminishes the input from a lot of the bigger IT groups.
We have a similar problem in Australia, with the exception that our combined audio and visual standards are unique in the world! Combine that with a relatively low population and there's nobody in the manufacturing world who wants to bother making HDTV's for us. Consequently, the prices for HDTV's are exhorbitant and they're not coming down any time soon. You guys have it lucky! (although we still have better beer).
Curious, because a link will in theory only cause a flow of traffic between the client browser and the evil third party actually providing the (potentially) copywrite infringing MP3 file. None of that should go through our own plucky little website that the EFA is looking after.
So the question is, is ARIA trying to say that linking is illegal? Or are they saying that linking with intent to breach copywrite law is illegal? How illegal is facilitation?
This reminds me of the whole DeCSS mess where that kid got busted for "facilitating" DVD copywrite infringement/DMCA violation.
Yes, Amazon had a great scam going where they would offer higher prices to customers with cookies from Amazon in their browser.
I imagine that Amazon is figuring that repeat customers are naturally displaying more loyalty and therefore will be less swayed by pricing considerations.
It's a shame for Amazon that they got caught, it would have made a great revenue padder.
Graphics standards aren't hurting PC gaming. The two big standards we have are OpenGL (yay) and DirectX. Both reasonably open, certainly open enough to allow development. See how many PC games there are?
What's doing the real damage is console gaming. So many games are "released" for PC's that are just mangled console games with terrible quality models, textures, and interfaces.
The latest technologies in graphics adapters should be giving us the best games ever in the history of PC gaming, but instead, never have there been so many poor quality, average games released for PC's, all sourced from kludgy blocky consoles.
Of course the most amusing part is that Microsoft is to blame for this whole mess. nVidia were a long way down the development path for their "DX9" parts when ATI, in bed with Bill at the time, rejiggered the specifications so that DX9 fit their development model instead of nVidia's.
Just like what nVidia did by developing DX8 for the Xbox. DX10 is going to be purely ATI optimised because of ATI's involvement with Xbox 2.
Of course this is great for when you're at home, you can have all the viruses you want!
In a corporate environment, there'd be managed patching and maintenance of SOE, server and messaging infrastructure, and a lockdown on the desktops.
For what corporate reason are you mailing/downloading an executable file? If you're a developer, then it may be understandable, but I was under the impression that developers are best left isolated from the production environment, because administrators can proliferate viruses far better than a locked down user, any day.
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I have nothing against the attempts of WoTC to try and milk some more cash out of their license for the Star Wars franchise, it's a great franchise and people really like it. I don't think there are many people in the world who don't know what a Jedi is.
The problem is, the really horrible quality of WoTC miniatures. I'd advise anyone who likes nice things to stay right away from this. The WoTC D&D miniatures that came out were some of the worst I've ever seen. Cheap plastic, every minature in the pack is bent out of shape, they only used four colours, and the paint looks like it was fingerpainted onto each miniature by a four year old kid in some third world country. (I may not be far from the truth, either!).
Story driven games will never be as big or as popular as they have been on the PC. Consoles seem to be purely for "twitch" reflex games.
Console gamers want a different experience. They want FPS run and gun, they want to do it with an auto-aim function (because they like to use those simple gamepads instead of the flexibility of the mouse/keyboard interface). Console gamers become upset when they don't have unlimited ammo.
The perfect example of this is DX2. Universal ammo! The designers probably assumed that console gamers wouldn't understand that certain weapons need to use different kinds of bullets. A bullet is a bullet, right?
Console gaming is bringing about, to a large extent, the end of intelligent, story or plot driven gaming, which we only enjoyed for a brief moment, after Half Life and it's kin, but before the PS/2 began the end.
I for one welcome our new console gamer overlords, and will be having my cognitive parts of my brain lobotomised and replaced with more twitch reflexes.
Smaug would kick King Kong's monkey butt any time.
Ahh, or perhaps the Steve Jackson game, Illuminati! Now that was fun. I'll use the Clone Arrangers with the assistance of the Orbital Mind Control Lasers and Goldfish Fanciers to try and take over the Semiconscious Liberation Army!
Do people still play boardgames?
There have been a lot of attempts to implement boardgames as PC games, Monopoly is a big example, but they have been very unsuccessful.
Some online card games are popular, and Wizards of the Coast have been desperate to get Magic played online (and still reap huge profits by not even having to print cards anymore).
Personally I'll stick to GTA (which, if ever made into a boardgame, would suck), and maybe a game of 500 or bridge or poker in the flesh world.
If you read Unfinished Tales, The Istari are Maiar, sent by the Valar to assist the free races of Middle Earth in defeating the last vestiges of Morgoth's will (ie, Sauron). Five of the Valar each chose one of their servants to represent them, for their own reasons of course.
Tolkien suggests that of these Maiar, the two most powerful are Gandalf and Saruman, although he notes that Gandalf, whilst being more powerful, was less interested in getting involved with Middle Earth, while Saruman was more "curious" and quicker to action.
This brings an interesting insight to Gandalf's "death" and ressurection at the hands of the Valar, in being sent back to Middle Earth, he changes to the "white" colour after Sarumans fall to "many colours", usurping Sarumans role as leader of the Istari, but also gaining great motivation to interact with the fate of Men and Elves.
Melkor/Morgoth was told by Iluvatar that all of his disharmony would only make the overall harmony of the Valar all the greater, which is what we see at the end of the story.
Now that there's an (almost) jedi, I think most of the jealous wannabe-jedi bounty hunters will kill off our good little initiate to see if a) she stays dead and b) she really does become a glowy ghostie.
All that effort just to become a lab rat!
I assume this is a low res version of CounterStrike, without the fine aiming control of a mouse? Or does it have an auto-aim feature?
I wonder which patch level of CS it will be running from. I found it amusing in the older versions that many "professional" players liked to use a sniper rifle and walk around crouched, and jump up and down in the air to shoot. Just like real life!
Here we go.
None of the questions in Reloaded are answered. Exposition of the entire plot is not always the purpose of a movie. More so when the movie is a work of complete fiction/fantasy. Sure, if it's a murder mystery, I want to know who the murderer is. If it's a fantasy story, I don't want to be told in childlike language how dragon aerodynamics works or how bertie botts beans can taste so different all the time.
What the hell happened to the people of the Matrix? It's like the movies don't even care.
Maybe... just maybe... you might have to accept that the Matrix didn't have the happy ending we were all hoping for. I recommend that if you don't like this kind of ending in a movie, the Disney company has some titles you could enjoy. Although conventional, happy endings are not required for a film to be considered complete.
No humanity in the characters and dialogue.
It's an action film. All that aside, it's also the third film in a trilogy, and if you watch most trilogies in this genre, often the characters are pitted against more serious odds, and in order to create a darker tone for the film, the directors will suppress many of the fart jokes and other "joy and humour" aspects you seem to be looking for. Try a different genre.
Nobody is freed, Trinity and Neo die
Please refer to my earlier comments about the Disney company. If you want to speak about para-religious overtones in the film, didn't you notice Neo being raised from the dead in the very first movie? There's your post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic overtones right there.
I enjoyed the third film much more than the second. The dialog was, although grittier, much more credible than the second film. The movie tied off the trilogy well enough, in my opinion, leaving plenty of room for more computer games and cross merchandising, anime, or whatever WB wants to get out of the franchise. I can live with that outcome.
The Japanese have a very different market to sell for. They like smaller things that are more gadgety, which is why mobile phones and small game consoles are popular, where bulky PC's aren't seen as being as cool as they are in the West.
They also like different kinds of games, the Final Fantasy series is much bigger there than here. Games like Quake and Doom and multiplayer games are much more popular in the west. Multiplayer is a big driver for PC games that the consoles are only just waking up to (They're in "me too!" mode now.)
Will we still be able to get support for Star Office? What about our Solaris gear and ultrasparcs?
"but does your PC read Mac stuff? No, it doesn't. And my Mac is proprietary?"
Yes... the PC can't read Mac stuff because the Mac stuff is... proprietary... that's a direct example of what proprietary is.
And unless you're doing something like, oh, dude, you're buying a Dell, a fully featured PC will be cheaper, because you can tailor it to include only high quality parts where you think they're needed. Not because Steve or whoever is running Apple nowadays tells you to. That's like Bill Gates telling you what brand of monitor to buy.
That blurb is exactly right. When I saw this new "Lord of the Rings" movie I knew right away it was a complete ripoff of Dungeon Seige. It's a wonder that the developers haven't sued Peter Jackson yet.
In all seriousness, has there been a decent movie-from-computer game film yet? Does Resident Evil count? Final Fantasy perhaps?
The opposite is also interesting, are there any decent game-from-movie adaptations? I can't think of any. The matrix game was woeful.
I thought those tigers were full (of Seigfried and Roy)
This patch does change a whole bunch of stuff! We're going to see negative XP rates for very high level players, and the Horadric cube recipes are all very messed up now. Lots of recipes have been made more expensive, like converting potions now requires a gem.
I'm going to stick with 1.09x for as long as I can. Until Diablo 3 comes out. I heard a rumour from my uncle's cousins dog that it was being made.
Good news for the open source pundits.
Most Australian state governments have very strong policies when it comes to tendering for services to "buy local". Of course, individual requirements for applications can specify certain dependencies, like use of Suns true Java.
Unfortunately, the tendency to buy local diminishes the input from a lot of the bigger IT groups.
Were the shields up or down on the model? That would affect wind resistance. Did it have a warp bubble?
It always bugged me that Scotty knew how to type. Where would he know how to type? They didn't have keyboards in the future! Madness.
We have a similar problem in Australia, with the exception that our combined audio and visual standards are unique in the world! Combine that with a relatively low population and there's nobody in the manufacturing world who wants to bother making HDTV's for us. Consequently, the prices for HDTV's are exhorbitant and they're not coming down any time soon. You guys have it lucky! (although we still have better beer).
Curious, because a link will in theory only cause a flow of traffic between the client browser and the evil third party actually providing the (potentially) copywrite infringing MP3 file. None of that should go through our own plucky little website that the EFA is looking after.
So the question is, is ARIA trying to say that linking is illegal? Or are they saying that linking with intent to breach copywrite law is illegal? How illegal is facilitation?
This reminds me of the whole DeCSS mess where that kid got busted for "facilitating" DVD copywrite infringement/DMCA violation.
Yes, Amazon had a great scam going where they would offer higher prices to customers with cookies from Amazon in their browser.
I imagine that Amazon is figuring that repeat customers are naturally displaying more loyalty and therefore will be less swayed by pricing considerations.
It's a shame for Amazon that they got caught, it would have made a great revenue padder.
Graphics standards aren't hurting PC gaming. The two big standards we have are OpenGL (yay) and DirectX. Both reasonably open, certainly open enough to allow development. See how many PC games there are?
What's doing the real damage is console gaming. So many games are "released" for PC's that are just mangled console games with terrible quality models, textures, and interfaces.
The latest technologies in graphics adapters should be giving us the best games ever in the history of PC gaming, but instead, never have there been so many poor quality, average games released for PC's, all sourced from kludgy blocky consoles.
Of course the most amusing part is that Microsoft is to blame for this whole mess. nVidia were a long way down the development path for their "DX9" parts when ATI, in bed with Bill at the time, rejiggered the specifications so that DX9 fit their development model instead of nVidia's.
Just like what nVidia did by developing DX8 for the Xbox. DX10 is going to be purely ATI optimised because of ATI's involvement with Xbox 2.
Of course this is great for when you're at home, you can have all the viruses you want!
In a corporate environment, there'd be managed patching and maintenance of SOE, server and messaging infrastructure, and a lockdown on the desktops.
For what corporate reason are you mailing/downloading an executable file? If you're a developer, then it may be understandable, but I was under the impression that developers are best left isolated from the production environment, because administrators can proliferate viruses far better than a locked down user, any day.
But.... Chewbacca doesn't live on Endor, he lives with Han Solo on the Millenium Falcon.