There's no experience on the PC like getting some friends around and playing pro evo, guitar hero, etc. That's a social experience, and you want to do it on your biggest screen, with the largest speakers, and with lots of room for people to sit comfortably.
There are also experiences you can't replicate on consoles, but I clearly don't need to convince you of that. I'm just saying that you shouldn't write off either.
PS. the way you describe a gamepad makes it sound like it's somehow more strange than driving your character around with a typewriter.
This issue isn't whether a scene is pre-rendered or not. Non-interactive scenes are just as non-interactive if they are rendered realtime. They may be more easily integrated with dynamic content, but they are still cinematic. The issue is whether to take away the users control and force feed them the story, or to attempt to tell the story around them, while they are in control.
Paying for the time you play is the fairest solution I can think of to allow people with multiple consoles to take advantage of online services. It's the fairest solution because it doesn't use casual players to subsidise the hardcore, which is basically what happens with xbox live. Hopefully in the end there will be options for timed billing and unlimited packages similar to what is offered in the mobile phone market.
I pretty much only play on live with people I know (yes, from real life). I live a long way from most of my friends and family, so it's a nice way to do something with them that we would do in the same room given the chance. Halo 2 does a great job with it's matchmaking system of letting you play with friends (on the same team), but mixing in random players as well. I hope more games take up that paradigm.
Should they raise the price of the games in order to pay for the service? Passing the costs on to people who can't, or aren't interested in, playing online? Might be ok for online centric games, like the battlefield series (not that it even has much infrastructure), but I can't see it working in the console space.
...you probably don't consider driving a rewarding experience. You aren't alone, I imagine the majority of people consider their vehicle a utility which simply gets them from A to B. On the other hand, I don't think the many people consider a game console to be a utility which simply consumes spare time in a safe and cost effective manner.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me, but how are cookies a privacy issue? The cookie gives the site access to information which it created in the first place, not any of your personal data. Anything it stores in a cookie could just as well be stored on the server. Cookies provide a slightly better way to tie data to a user than by ip address, but even then it's not really reliable identification.
It's hard to take seriously a sob story involving stock options and Hummers. Anyone who makes a few bucks and decides that the first thing they need is a military vehicle for the commute to work can go fuck themselves.
Well, not for the property thing, I can live without that.
I would kill for a multipass C++ compiler that lets me write classes like C#/Java. With cross module optimisation (LTCG in visual c++), it pretty much needs to do multiple passes anyway, so they might as well have the option.
This would be a major change, so at the same time, I would suggest a tidying of the language to get rid of any syntax hacks (ahem, pure virtual = 0), and anything that's simply for legacy support. I guess you'd end up with a quite different language, which is fine, so why not have profiles like with XHTML (strict, etc), to ease migration?
There are loads of languages I'd like to try, which are going for a lot of the same goals, but they always have a dealbreaker. D looks ok, but then I can't live with forced garbage collection, and there aren't going to be compilers for PS2, Xbox, etc. Therefore I would say that any solution would have to have the possibility of being compiled to current C or C++, like C++ was in the old days.
Nintendo's WFC is going to be the most interesting online service. Halo + Live is great but at $6 a month you have to play a lot to make it worthwhile.
Compared to other forms of entertainment, you certainly don't have to play a lot to make that $6 worthwhile. You might feel that you deserve free online play, and it might even make economic sense, but at the end of the day, people will find $6 to be a bargain even if they play only a few hours per month.
You're right that there is unsigned content on the disc (presumably), but that troll who started this thread said:
it now shows that there is a way to load and boot non signed dvds which will enable custom code and eventually softmodding
It doesn't show anything of the sort. It shows that demos are not likely to require a media check, so you can freely copy and run them. It's no different than the system update CD they officially released without a media check.
Any code on the disc is digitally signed, it just doesn't care what type of media it's loaded from. Hell, Microsoft already released a burnable disc image that updates the bios firmware and system software. If they trust their security system enough to do that, then burnable game demos are probably going to be common. Why bother media protecting a demo anyway? They might as well let people copy it.
The only sliver of hope is that there is some flaw in the signed software which is exploitable by changes to the unsigned data. It's not impossible, but I have a feeling that it's going to be a lot harder than finding flaws in the PSP software, because of W^X pages, hypervisor, etc.
Whether you like it or not, there's a huge information based economy, it's not going anywhere, and it will be protected.
It doesn't matter how you deside to value information, because in the real world those 77 games are worth on the the order of thousands of dollars, and that's for one transaction. The scale of these guys' crimes is pretty large, and they should be punished accordingly.
Go look it up? How about you just provide some proof.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of.Net and DirectX, but I'm pretty sure the only part of DirectX which runs managed is the.Net wrapper 'DirectX for Managed Code'. I've made lots of unmanaged DX9 applications which run fine without the.Net runtime.
I'm almost certain the power glove was ultrasonic, not IR. It could track a huge number of degrees of freedom, and I've even seen people hook it up to a PC and use it as a full data glove (albeit not a highly precise one).
Interesting idea, but I don't think that would work particularly well. You'd have problems with low light, and certain environments (big white walls, etc). You could probably detect twisting pretty well (rotating around the length of the controller, but on the other axes it would be hard to separate linear and angular movement.
Full six degrees of freedom at wide movement range and full 360 degrees rotation range.
I've read as much as I could find about the controller, but I've never found anything that explicitly states these facts, so I'm a little worried it might not have full 6dof absolute positioning.
In the pictures of the device, it appears to have a window on the top of it, very similar to the LED window on most remote controls. At first I assumed it was just to allow the thing to act as a universal remote, or at least turn on your tv; however, there is one picture out there which has that window labelled as having something to do with positioning. Any sort of line-of-sight based positioning is probably a bad sign, or at least a reality check for those who are expecting miracles.
Do you, or anyone, have any technical information on how the positioning will actually work?
I've worked on 3rd party titles that have done this, through Sony at least. Our QA is set up to mirror the certification system at Sony/MS, so they will only sign off on the game for submission when they are very sure it will pass. There is also a pre-certification process which gives you a good idea of what certification issues you might have.
Some might, but I don't see it happening for any of our products. We target consoles first (PS2/Xbox), and usually Windows as well, but so few of our sales come from the Windows version that it wouldn't even be worth doing if we didn't have the technology in place to make porting easy. Wine/Cedega/etc would be a fraction of that already small market, so it definitely wouldn't be worth it, at least not for the console-centric sort of games we make.
Slashdot Mirror
They are also missing out on the joys of rewinding cassette tapes, dialing rotary phones, and hand cranking their car.
There's no experience on the PC like getting some friends around and playing pro evo, guitar hero, etc. That's a social experience, and you want to do it on your biggest screen, with the largest speakers, and with lots of room for people to sit comfortably.
There are also experiences you can't replicate on consoles, but I clearly don't need to convince you of that. I'm just saying that you shouldn't write off either.
PS. the way you describe a gamepad makes it sound like it's somehow more strange than driving your character around with a typewriter.
Is that what you were trying to say?
This issue isn't whether a scene is pre-rendered or not. Non-interactive scenes are just as non-interactive if they are rendered realtime. They may be more easily integrated with dynamic content, but they are still cinematic. The issue is whether to take away the users control and force feed them the story, or to attempt to tell the story around them, while they are in control.
Paying for the time you play is the fairest solution I can think of to allow people with multiple consoles to take advantage of online services. It's the fairest solution because it doesn't use casual players to subsidise the hardcore, which is basically what happens with xbox live. Hopefully in the end there will be options for timed billing and unlimited packages similar to what is offered in the mobile phone market.
I pretty much only play on live with people I know (yes, from real life). I live a long way from most of my friends and family, so it's a nice way to do something with them that we would do in the same room given the chance. Halo 2 does a great job with it's matchmaking system of letting you play with friends (on the same team), but mixing in random players as well. I hope more games take up that paradigm.
Should they raise the price of the games in order to pay for the service? Passing the costs on to people who can't, or aren't interested in, playing online? Might be ok for online centric games, like the battlefield series (not that it even has much infrastructure), but I can't see it working in the console space.
...you probably don't consider driving a rewarding experience. You aren't alone, I imagine the majority of people consider their vehicle a utility which simply gets them from A to B. On the other hand, I don't think the many people consider a game console to be a utility which simply consumes spare time in a safe and cost effective manner.
How many of those comics would be happy if you decided to host add-free versions of their content?
Perhaps someone can enlighten me, but how are cookies a privacy issue? The cookie gives the site access to information which it created in the first place, not any of your personal data. Anything it stores in a cookie could just as well be stored on the server. Cookies provide a slightly better way to tie data to a user than by ip address, but even then it's not really reliable identification.
It's hard to take seriously a sob story involving stock options and Hummers. Anyone who makes a few bucks and decides that the first thing they need is a military vehicle for the commute to work can go fuck themselves.
Well, not for the property thing, I can live without that.
I would kill for a multipass C++ compiler that lets me write classes like C#/Java. With cross module optimisation (LTCG in visual c++), it pretty much needs to do multiple passes anyway, so they might as well have the option.
This would be a major change, so at the same time, I would suggest a tidying of the language to get rid of any syntax hacks (ahem, pure virtual = 0), and anything that's simply for legacy support. I guess you'd end up with a quite different language, which is fine, so why not have profiles like with XHTML (strict, etc), to ease migration?
There are loads of languages I'd like to try, which are going for a lot of the same goals, but they always have a dealbreaker. D looks ok, but then I can't live with forced garbage collection, and there aren't going to be compilers for PS2, Xbox, etc. Therefore I would say that any solution would have to have the possibility of being compiled to current C or C++, like C++ was in the old days.
Nintendo's WFC is going to be the most interesting online service. Halo + Live is great but at $6 a month you have to play a lot to make it worthwhile.
Compared to other forms of entertainment, you certainly don't have to play a lot to make that $6 worthwhile. You might feel that you deserve free online play, and it might even make economic sense, but at the end of the day, people will find $6 to be a bargain even if they play only a few hours per month.
You're right that there is unsigned content on the disc (presumably), but that troll who started this thread said:
it now shows that there is a way to load and boot non signed dvds which will enable custom code and eventually softmodding
It doesn't show anything of the sort. It shows that demos are not likely to require a media check, so you can freely copy and run them. It's no different than the system update CD they officially released without a media check.
Well said.
Your lack of comprehension of the subject matter, I assume.
Any code on the disc is digitally signed, it just doesn't care what type of media it's loaded from. Hell, Microsoft already released a burnable disc image that updates the bios firmware and system software. If they trust their security system enough to do that, then burnable game demos are probably going to be common. Why bother media protecting a demo anyway? They might as well let people copy it.
The only sliver of hope is that there is some flaw in the signed software which is exploitable by changes to the unsigned data. It's not impossible, but I have a feeling that it's going to be a lot harder than finding flaws in the PSP software, because of W^X pages, hypervisor, etc.
Whether you like it or not, there's a huge information based economy, it's not going anywhere, and it will be protected.
It doesn't matter how you deside to value information, because in the real world those 77 games are worth on the the order of thousands of dollars, and that's for one transaction. The scale of these guys' crimes is pretty large, and they should be punished accordingly.
Go look it up? How about you just provide some proof.
.Net and DirectX, but I'm pretty sure the only part of DirectX which runs managed is the .Net wrapper 'DirectX for Managed Code'. I've made lots of unmanaged DX9 applications which run fine without the .Net runtime.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan of
I'm almost certain the power glove was ultrasonic, not IR. It could track a huge number of degrees of freedom, and I've even seen people hook it up to a PC and use it as a full data glove (albeit not a highly precise one).
Interesting idea, but I don't think that would work particularly well. You'd have problems with low light, and certain environments (big white walls, etc). You could probably detect twisting pretty well (rotating around the length of the controller, but on the other axes it would be hard to separate linear and angular movement.
Full six degrees of freedom at wide movement range and full 360 degrees rotation range.
I've read as much as I could find about the controller, but I've never found anything that explicitly states these facts, so I'm a little worried it might not have full 6dof absolute positioning.
In the pictures of the device, it appears to have a window on the top of it, very similar to the LED window on most remote controls. At first I assumed it was just to allow the thing to act as a universal remote, or at least turn on your tv; however, there is one picture out there which has that window labelled as having something to do with positioning. Any sort of line-of-sight based positioning is probably a bad sign, or at least a reality check for those who are expecting miracles.
Do you, or anyone, have any technical information on how the positioning will actually work?
I've worked on 3rd party titles that have done this, through Sony at least. Our QA is set up to mirror the certification system at Sony/MS, so they will only sign off on the game for submission when they are very sure it will pass. There is also a pre-certification process which gives you a good idea of what certification issues you might have.
Some might, but I don't see it happening for any of our products. We target consoles first (PS2/Xbox), and usually Windows as well, but so few of our sales come from the Windows version that it wouldn't even be worth doing if we didn't have the technology in place to make porting easy. Wine/Cedega/etc would be a fraction of that already small market, so it definitely wouldn't be worth it, at least not for the console-centric sort of games we make.
Either it's free or not. How is a non-free Linux derivative going to do in the market, and how are Linux users going to deal with that?