It shouldn't be too surprising considering who writes the DirectX "standard."
That's really funny. That was my attitude before I actually started using D3D to develop commercial AAA games. And then I realized that if I waited around for standardization of all of the extensions in Open/GL that I would never release a product. Did you know that multitexturing in Open/GL isn't officially part of the standard? That's a technique that virtually *every* 3-D game released today (and even release 2-3 years ago) uses.
Sure, I'd prefer that Open/GL keep up with the times, but I'm not willing to use extensions (and have to write the same code for each different vendor) when I can do the same thing in D3D once.
Microsoft is not always evil; in this case, they're legitimately kicking their competetitor's ass.
Main Entry: piracy Pronunciation: 'pI-r&-sE Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -cies Etymology: Medieval Latin piratia, from Late Greek peirateia, from Greek peiratEs pirate Date: 1537 1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery 2 : robbery on the high seas 3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
I believe the relevant definition is #3. Were you authorized to use the material? Did you write the production company and ask them permission if you could download their movie instead of going to the theater?
Then it is piracy. If you want to share with your neighbor, go see the movie and write a review.
did an interview (get a salon day pass) a while ago with the author. Very interesting, and gave some snifty insight into the book. (And the fact that she never fixed the bug that the book was roughly based upon.)
1) My calendar runs out at Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038. Does that mean the world is going to end then? 2) I believe Penn and Teller discussed just how many end of the world predictions have occurred since the beginning of time on their show Bullsh*t (which, if you have showtime, you should definitely watch). Its ridiculous how many of these predictions there actually are. Here's a brief clip (RealPlayer req'd, sorry).
I would mod this down, but I'd rather argue (so much more fun!;-) ). As someone who has worked on a very large game (team of >50, sold 500K copies so far), someone who works at a small studio now (20 people), and someone who develops at home on the side, (whew) I can say that size and clout has little to do with how much attention video card manufacturers are willing to give you. All that really matters is that they see an interesting prospect, and a way for their card to look "better."
IAAVGP (I am a video game programmer). I'd like to disect your argument, if I may.
First, the issue of never buying a game. While that may save you some money, it is the reason why most games are crappy and require 12 bagillion patches. If we don't make any money on our products, we will not continue to make them. I make video games because I want to. But, if I cannot make enough to eat and live, I will find other employment. So keep stealing from us, and we'll keep turning out crap. You vote with your dollars. If you like a game, go and buy it. Why do you think that EA has negotiated so many AAA licenses? Because they sell to Joe Idiot (of which there are many), but not the hardcore gamer (of which there are few) that most of us want to make games for.
Then there is the issue of games costing too much. I believe this is false to both the developer and the consumer. Let us consider the consumer. Do you go to the movie theater to watch movies? Even if you are a student, the price per hour of that movie is approximately $3. I would therefore suggest that if a game costing $50 gives you 25 hours of enjoyment, then it is a better value than the movie (at $2/hr). Then there is the developer. A moderate budget is $2.0M total (over two years). That means that in order to make our money back, we have to sell at LEAST 50,000 copies (box costs are not included, and run typically 10-15 dollars per). A title that sells 200,000 units is considered to be exceptionally well sold. Making profit on titles is what gives us a chance to try new and different things for the future.
Yay. Someone finally said it: If the purpose of the benchmark is to provide an objective, apples-to-apples comparison
This is bullsh*t.
There is no such thing as an apples-to-apples comparison between 3-D vendors, because they have different features and different capabilities. As an analogy, give me an apples-to-apples comparison between a Dali painting and a Van Gogh.
From the article:
This in turn means that many game benchmarks run differently on different hardware, or in other words submit a differing workload on different hardware.
I could't have said it better myself. Games (the primary purpose of spending $500 on a video card, rather than $60) are going to perform differently for every card, often because of per-game optimizations. Those sorts of optimizations aren't cheats, but usually ways that the manufacturer can take advantage of information that isn't available to the developer.
I can tell you you're doing something wrong as a developer if you're actually *buying* the cards you work on.
I've been in industry for a little over a year (a 3-D programmer) and even before I started working on games to pay my bills, I would regularly get hardware from ATI to work on (for free). nVidia was a little less forthcoming with theirs, although I've heard that they sing a different tune nowadays.
Not to be a dick (too late), but being logically obvious and having scientific evidence are two completely different things.
Logically, I conclude that we must not be alone in the universe. It's too big, there are too many planets, and frankly I'm not that conceited. OTOH, there is no scientific evidence that says there are other intelligent beings in the universe, so the populace at large can continue to ignore them.
I would disagree. If a product name that is copyrighted enters American vernacular, the copyright becomes invalidated. I'm not making this up.
Consider the case of Xerox, they have all but lost the term xerox (oh no! I'm going to be sued!) to the general language of men. Check it out here.
As the article points out, the goal of advertising is to get people to purchase your product. And one of the best ways to do so is through brand recognition. But outstanding success in this area (such as the case with Xerox) will cause one to lose their trademark. (Like aspirin.)
You beat me to it. (By a few hours). The "Spaghetti picture" linked from the short version of the article is an example of BAD OO Design, not a reason why OOP is bad itself.
And relationships in the "Real World(tm)" don't necessarily hold in OOD, either. For instance, in mathematics, a square is a kind of rectangle. However, in OOD, a square that was a rectangle would cause endless headaches and unnecessary complication.
Similarly, an Ostrich is a Bird, but in OOD, an strich that is a Bird is "a bad thing."
I'm all for Open standards, and I have all of my music encoded as ogg on my machine, but I have to say that I'm disappointed with the sound quality of it.
You can debate it all you like, but I've found that Ogg produces some sound artifacts that MP3 doesn't, that are more irritating to my big ol' ears.
This actually happened to a friend of mine.. He was building a house for his car, as he wanted a MP3 player (this was about 4 years ago).
He decided it would be really cool if he made the case entirely see-through (as many of these cases are.) So he completes the case, and goes home one evening. We had a storm that night. He comes back the next day, and as he's about to pick up the case, a huge (think RA2 Tesla trooper huge) arc goes across his motherboard. IT TURNED THE MOTHERBOARD BLACK.
Needless to say, he decided not to attempt building another clear case.
I don't understand why/. doesn't just sell out all the way and become pay only. I mean (no offense) but eventually that's going to be the choice that it has anyway: make money or close down.
I'd say rather than slowly alienating your potential customers, just get rid of the lot who are unwilling to pay for it immediately, and then grow the base who are willing to pay.
Based on the hit count, even if 90% of/.ers where unwilling to pay for the service, the 10% left would be at least 30K or so people. At say, $10/mo, that's 300K/mo, or 2.6M/yr, which would *more* than cover the costs of the reduced amount of bandwidth that the smaller subscriber base uses.
Internet advertising works in only a *VERY* limited way, and to be honest, I don't believe most users (and certainly most users here) ever pay attention to the ads. Eventially advertisers will dry up on the net.
We desperately want our files off of the CD because it takes TOOOOOOO LOOOOOOOOOONG to load from CD. Hell, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd store my entire game in RAM so it'd be blazing fast.
Slashdot Mirror
That's really funny. That was my attitude before I actually started using D3D to develop commercial AAA games. And then I realized that if I waited around for standardization of all of the extensions in Open/GL that I would never release a product. Did you know that multitexturing in Open/GL isn't officially part of the standard? That's a technique that virtually *every* 3-D game released today (and even release 2-3 years ago) uses.
Sure, I'd prefer that Open/GL keep up with the times, but I'm not willing to use extensions (and have to write the same code for each different vendor) when I can do the same thing in D3D once.
Microsoft is not always evil; in this case, they're legitimately kicking their competetitor's ass.
Oh you dissolve them? I just urinate in the trashcan. I figure if someone wants them badly enough, more power to 'em. :-}
From m-w.com (Fair use):
Main Entry: piracy
Pronunciation: 'pI-r&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Medieval Latin piratia, from Late Greek peirateia, from Greek peiratEs pirate
Date: 1537
1 : an act of robbery on the high seas; also : an act resembling such robbery
2 : robbery on the high seas
3 : the unauthorized use of another's production, invention, or conception especially in infringement of a copyright
I believe the relevant definition is #3. Were you authorized to use the material? Did you write the production company and ask them permission if you could download their movie instead of going to the theater?
Then it is piracy. If you want to share with your neighbor, go see the movie and write a review.
did an interview (get a salon day pass) a while ago with the author. Very interesting, and gave some snifty insight into the book. (And the fact that she never fixed the bug that the book was roughly based upon.)
Good thing I'm just a leech.
Two things:
1) My calendar runs out at Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038. Does that mean the world is going to end then?
2) I believe Penn and Teller discussed just how many end of the world predictions have occurred since the beginning of time on their show Bullsh*t (which, if you have showtime, you should definitely watch). Its ridiculous how many of these predictions there actually are. Here's a brief clip (RealPlayer req'd, sorry).
I would mod this down, but I'd rather argue (so much more fun! ;-) ). As someone who has worked on a very large game (team of >50, sold 500K copies so far), someone who works at a small studio now (20 people), and someone who develops at home on the side, (whew) I can say that size and clout has little to do with how much attention video card manufacturers are willing to give you. All that really matters is that they see an interesting prospect, and a way for their card to look "better."
It never^H^H^H^H^Hnever was.
You vote with your dollars.
IAAVGP (I am a video game programmer).
I'd like to disect your argument, if I may.
First, the issue of never buying a game. While that may save you some money, it is the reason why most games are crappy and require 12 bagillion patches. If we don't make any money on our products, we will not continue to make them. I make video games because I want to. But, if I cannot make enough to eat and live, I will find other employment. So keep stealing from us, and we'll keep turning out crap. You vote with your dollars. If you like a game, go and buy it. Why do you think that EA has negotiated so many AAA licenses? Because they sell to Joe Idiot (of which there are many), but not the hardcore gamer (of which there are few) that most of us want to make games for.
Then there is the issue of games costing too much. I believe this is false to both the developer and the consumer. Let us consider the consumer. Do you go to the movie theater to watch movies? Even if you are a student, the price per hour of that movie is approximately $3. I would therefore suggest that if a game costing $50 gives you 25 hours of enjoyment, then it is a better value than the movie (at $2/hr). Then there is the developer. A moderate budget is $2.0M total (over two years). That means that in order to make our money back, we have to sell at LEAST 50,000 copies (box costs are not included, and run typically 10-15 dollars per). A title that sells 200,000 units is considered to be exceptionally well sold. Making profit on titles is what gives us a chance to try new and different things for the future.
This is bullsh*t.
There is no such thing as an apples-to-apples comparison between 3-D vendors, because they have different features and different capabilities. As an analogy, give me an apples-to-apples comparison between a Dali painting and a Van Gogh.
From the article:
I could't have said it better myself. Games (the primary purpose of spending $500 on a video card, rather than $60) are going to perform differently for every card, often because of per-game optimizations. Those sorts of optimizations aren't cheats, but usually ways that the manufacturer can take advantage of information that isn't available to the developer.
I can tell you you're doing something wrong as a developer if you're actually *buying* the cards you work on.
I've been in industry for a little over a year (a 3-D programmer) and even before I started working on games to pay my bills, I would regularly get hardware from ATI to work on (for free). nVidia was a little less forthcoming with theirs, although I've heard that they sing a different tune nowadays.
Not to be a dick (too late), but being logically obvious and having scientific evidence are two completely different things.
Logically, I conclude that we must not be alone in the universe. It's too big, there are too many planets, and frankly I'm not that conceited. OTOH, there is no scientific evidence that says there are other intelligent beings in the universe, so the populace at large can continue to ignore them.
Actually, you missed the main problem with California's energy:
The state is filled with hippy Californians.
I lived there for a year, and I thought I was going to kill myself.
You *might* disbelieve the article because it comes from news.com.com, but I personally find them to be the highest caliber of news organization.
Right up there with the LA Times, The National Enquirer, and the Weekly World News.
I would disagree. If a product name that is copyrighted enters American vernacular, the copyright becomes invalidated. I'm not making this up.
Consider the case of Xerox, they have all but lost the term xerox (oh no! I'm going to be sued!) to the general language of men. Check it out here.
As the article points out, the goal of advertising is to get people to purchase your product. And one of the best ways to do so is through brand recognition. But outstanding success in this area (such as the case with Xerox) will cause one to lose their trademark. (Like aspirin.)
Why is it that when Lucas re-edits movies and adds scenes to them, we consider it evil, but when its LoTR its okay?
And before you think I'm just whining, consider the amount of bandwidth spent discussing this specific evil.
You beat me to it. (By a few hours). The "Spaghetti picture" linked from the short version of the article is an example of BAD OO Design, not a reason why OOP is bad itself.
And relationships in the "Real World(tm)" don't necessarily hold in OOD, either. For instance, in mathematics, a square is a kind of rectangle. However, in OOD, a square that was a rectangle would cause endless headaches and unnecessary complication.
Similarly, an Ostrich is a Bird, but in OOD, an strich that is a Bird is "a bad thing."
...Won't stop me from buying it.
I'm all for Open standards, and I have all of my music encoded as ogg on my machine, but I have to say that I'm disappointed with the sound quality of it.
You can debate it all you like, but I've found that Ogg produces some sound artifacts that MP3 doesn't, that are more irritating to my big ol' ears.
Now that's the way to get more developers to release products for linux. Make fun of those that do.
This actually happened to a friend of mine.. He was building a house for his car, as he wanted a MP3 player (this was about 4 years ago).
He decided it would be really cool if he made the case entirely see-through (as many of these cases are.) So he completes the case, and goes home one evening. We had a storm that night. He comes back the next day, and as he's about to pick up the case, a huge (think RA2 Tesla trooper huge) arc goes across his motherboard. IT TURNED THE MOTHERBOARD BLACK.
Needless to say, he decided not to attempt building another clear case.
...Because everytime it occurs, geeks everywhere complain about the new way, and how good it was in the ol' days.
(Remember Arpanet and Gopher? I remember when we used to complain about the world wide web, and how it was going to ruin the internet.)
Flash popups anyone? That's innovation for ya.
I don't understand why /. doesn't just sell out all the way and become pay only. I mean (no offense) but eventually that's going to be the choice that it has anyway: make money or close down.
/.ers where unwilling to pay for the service, the 10% left would be at least 30K or so people. At say, $10/mo, that's 300K/mo, or 2.6M/yr, which would *more* than cover the costs of the reduced amount of bandwidth that the smaller subscriber base uses.
I'd say rather than slowly alienating your potential customers, just get rid of the lot who are unwilling to pay for it immediately, and then grow the base who are willing to pay.
Based on the hit count, even if 90% of
Internet advertising works in only a *VERY* limited way, and to be honest, I don't believe most users (and certainly most users here) ever pay attention to the ads. Eventially advertisers will dry up on the net.
Wow. I wish the best of luck to Rockstar, but going from one title to two to eleven is a recipe for disaster.
That's probably one of the main reasons that a lot of studios become one hit wonders.
Ahh well, as I said, best of luck to them. I hope they prove me wrong.
I can point out a big problem with this.
We desperately want our files off of the CD because it takes TOOOOOOO LOOOOOOOOOONG to load from CD. Hell, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd store my entire game in RAM so it'd be blazing fast.