Releasing the PSP nine fucking months after Japan takes the biscuit. If I had the money I would've bought a US or Japanese PSP by now. (I may not have any money for the UK launch either unfortionatley...). When Nintnedo launches hardware in Europe faster than you[1], you should realise that you're being too bloody slow.
Sometimes living in the UK really sucks...
[1] But still months after everywhere else, although they do release games at about the same time as everywhere else now, instead of months (or in Animal Crossing's case, years) later. Sometimes we even get games first. But that's probably more down to the GameCube tanking in Europe, and imports taking sales for handheld games.
I'm not sure if there's any point to this rant.:-)
Only about eight hours after the first reply to say this, and two and a half since my last reply moaning about people who reply without checking to see if other people have already said the same thing.;-)
And why can't you see Gordon's legs? Halo 2 does it on an Xbox... (Although HL2 includes far more "platforming" than Halo 2, and coding legs that work right for those bits would be far harder I guess)
I would like to conratulate Inoshiro and you for being the third and fourth people to correct me on that error, especially with your dilligence of correcting me several hours after the first two people to correct me (I'm guessing the first two was just a case of two people replying at the same time). I know I screwed up, but if one person has already pointed out the mistake, you don't really need to correct it again. Or in other words: check the other replys first, dummy.
Ahh, I thought it was needed, seeing as you usually use 's to indicate possession... Bloody English, too many stupid contradictions, plus it never was my strong point really. At least I don't usually get Their / There / They're mixed up anymore.:-)
If anyone is interested, this is how the manual puts it (yes, I actually have the game):
Space Piracy
The year is 2101 A.D. The Milky Way Federation, the galaxy's governing body, has made public its (sic) plans to construct stategic defense bases in eight different locations. The purpose of the bases is protection against intergalactic crime. The Federation's prime concern is a band of space piractes led by Cats, the flamboyant cosmic freebooter who is secretly plotting his biggest performance...
Two years later, the bases were completed and operational. Despite the new defense network, tragedy struck. Ten Strike Force attack craft docked aboard the Federation 1011 Star Cruiser were destroyed by a bomb that had been planted aboard the mother ship!
Shortly after the explosion, the ship's operator recieved an odd signal. The Captain ordered the viewer turned on, and who should appear but Cats himself!
"Nice to see you all. I've taken control of each and every one of your bases. Today will go down in history as the day the Milky Way Federation was destroyed by one man - me! Ha ha ha ha..."
One attack craft remained undamaged. The Captain, without hesitation, ordered the ZIG-01 "Zero Wing" into battle. You must fly the attack ship to each friendly base and drive Cats' forces out. The fate of an entire galazy rests on your shoulders!
The only things I can note about this is that Cats is "flamboyant", make of that what you will, and that this seems to imply your ship is the only one working, yet the intro seems to imply at least three Zigs are working.
Later the Getting Started bit of the manual suggests "Follow the story screens to get a better feel for the task you're about to take on." I kinda feel that advice may leave someone far more confused than if they just read the story bit of the manual really.
And no, I will not transcribe the other seven language versions that are in the manual.
I believe that Xbox 360 dev kits are supposedly PowerMac G5s running some custom version of Windows. (Although they may've been replaced with final hardware by now). So there are Macs that are runnning Windows, but unless you're a game dev you'll never see them.
I think the width of an analouge TV signal is debatable, it all depends on how you sample it. I think 704 is about right for analouge signals, but digital TV formats use 720 because it's a nice round number computer-wise. I'd guess modern consoles use 720 for their highest res modes.
Some of the horizontal lines will be chopped off as well, 480 (or 576) is the maximum number of visible lines, some of them will be overscanned as well.
----
Digressing into a tangental rant of nonsense.
I personally don't mind low res stuff, running games through RGB SCART on a good TV is great. They're low res, but they still look fine, becuase they're running at the right resolution for the display. I prefer things like the style and artistry of graphics really, not how uber high the res is. My PC's LCD display has a 1280x1024 resolution though, and stuff running below that looks a bit horrible because of the scaling (including my Dreamcast, alas...).
But high res support would be nice, although living in the UK, I haven't really seen much HDTV stuff to say how good / bad it is.
I think Nintendo seem to be in a slight pattern of always being slightly in the previous generation with their consoles. The N64 use cartridges, the GameCube's complete lack of online stuff (well, barring Phantasy Star Online), and now lowdef when everyone else is doing highdef stuff (hopefully they'll at least have VGA (yay Dreamcast!) or some form of progressive output). The Big N is great at designing hardware with the absolute minimum power needed to compete though, it's their great skill, but it can also be an annoying failing.
Sorry is this is unreadable garbage. Not had much sleep, plus I'm not very good at writing anyway.
Audio copies of all episodes only exist becuase people recorded them off TV (if you check the credits of the audio releases, there's usually a Special Thanks mention for the people who originally recorded the episodes).
But the film copies that were recovered are all legitimate prints made by BBC Enterprises for export to forign TV stations. AFAIK most missing returned black and white episodes were returned from TV stations that had bought Doctor Who in the 60s. A few were returned by film collectors, having presumably been "borrowed" from the BBC or other TV stations.
There are a few clips of episodes recorded by pointing 8MM cameras at a TV, but they're rather low quality, and only go for a couple of seconds usually.
Sadly the Hall Of Fame doesn't appear to be a dynamic page (at least for the most posts page), we'll have to wait for the lunatics in charge of this asylum to update it. Either that, or the page'll only update itself once this discussion gets archived, and no more posts can be made (which is more likley I guess).
But we should keep on going! Only 250ish posts to get to #9!
I don't really care what's inside my Mac. I just wish I had a working one. Damn iBook going and dropping dead on me.
Yes, I'm mostly posting to try and get the post count above the 2,700-odd needed to get into the hall of fame. Although I doubt anyone will be reading (or moderating) comments at the end of 2,500 others.
I'm in the UK, and I don't. It's now only availible in specialist game shops (always the smallest section out of the three consoles), and big music / video / games shops like HMV and Virgin Megastores (again, with the smallest section). Dixons don't carry it anymore, my local ASDA stopped selling the games the day the DS came out, Woolworths stopped around Christmas. Argos does still have it, but with a pitiful selection of games that hasn't changed since the last catalouge. The GameCube is slowly disapearing from the UK market. Xbox has definatley won the battle for the runner up spot.
Then again, they have a monopoly over the handheld market here, seeing as Sony haven't yet seen fit to grace us with the PSP.
UK TV runs at 25fps, 50fields/s, US TV runs at 30FPS / 60fields / s (I think you can have 24fps HDTV as well, not sure if it's converted to 30fps before display however.
People can tell the difference between field and frame based motion (think film / video differences). I'd guess the BBC weather is running as frame motion, so appears jerky compared to video (the person overlaid over the top). You wouldn't notice it as much if they weren't flying around all the time...
The less information bit is probably about the disapearance of things like Wind (although that turns up a bit, looks stupid, why they need constantly moving arrows everywhere when static ones would do better), pressure charts, and fronts. The actual map itself does tell more data, even if it looks crap, but people would like to see things like the Atlantic pressure chart.
I'd presume the BBC and / or the UK Met Office will have paid for the weather data they use for international forecasts. It's up to them if the forecasts they produce from the data is made availible for free, in the BBC's case it will be free becuase they're a public service broadcaster.
They were perfectly in perspective, but you do kinda piss off people by making their area smaller than other areas on the projection (you can say whatever about perspective, but in real terms the north was smaller than the south on screen), especially in Scotland.
I'm sure they do understand perspective. It's just that you can kinda piss people off by choosing a perspective that makes the south of England far larger than the North, and Scotland in particular, for no good reason.
Our Xboxes are made in China as well (at least mine is) but do you mention it? I hate it when people forget that games are sold in places other than North America and Japan and East Asia. FFS the UK is the 3rd biggest games market in the world!
* UNEXPLODES *
Sorry for the rant, just feel like a nice rant every now and again, and being a gamer in Europe gives you lots to rant about. I know where European Xboxes are made actually has nothing to do with the converstation as well...
Well, mostly becuase it kills off a main character from the movies the game is based on. It does happen in spin-off media though, occasionally they'll bump off a major character.
But frankly, after the two awful sequels, I'm not sure if anyone cares. I'm frankly forgetting the two sequels ever existed. I also have no interest in a game based on one fairly fun movie, and two crap ones.
As far as I know every disc based console has some sort of UI. Usually they have a memory card file manager, a CD player, and usually some basic settings like language, system clock and mono / stero sound so you don't have to set them in every game. If you have a disc in already, they all boot the game automatically, and starting the game from the UI is either simple, or automatic.
The Xbox also has network settings, but they're only there for enviroments that don't use DHCP, or need a specific MAC address. Overall the various settings on consoles are far simpler than any PC, you usually set them once, and forget about them.
The 360 does seem to have a fairly complex UI though, I guess it's mostly to push the online aspects of the system, Microsoft want to push it. Although quite a bit of the UI seems to be a redesign and expansion of the existing functions in the Xbox 1's system, except slightly better organised, and putting a bigger emphesis on the online features. I guess it's mostly because Microsoft really want to push the online features. It is a contrast to the usually spartan UIs of consoles though, but I'd guess the Nintendo Revolution may have a similar UI from what Nintendo have said about it's console's online features.
Slashdot Mirror
Releasing the PSP nine fucking months after Japan takes the biscuit. If I had the money I would've bought a US or Japanese PSP by now. (I may not have any money for the UK launch either unfortionatley...). When Nintnedo launches hardware in Europe faster than you[1], you should realise that you're being too bloody slow.
:-)
Sometimes living in the UK really sucks...
[1] But still months after everywhere else, although they do release games at about the same time as everywhere else now, instead of months (or in Animal Crossing's case, years) later. Sometimes we even get games first. But that's probably more down to the GameCube tanking in Europe, and imports taking sales for handheld games.
I'm not sure if there's any point to this rant.
Only about eight hours after the first reply to say this, and two and a half since my last reply moaning about people who reply without checking to see if other people have already said the same thing. ;-)
Bugger, I can't do anything right at the moment! :-)
And why can't you see Gordon's legs? Halo 2 does it on an Xbox... (Although HL2 includes far more "platforming" than Halo 2, and coding legs that work right for those bits would be far harder I guess)
I would like to conratulate Inoshiro and you for being the third and fourth people to correct me on that error, especially with your dilligence of correcting me several hours after the first two people to correct me (I'm guessing the first two was just a case of two people replying at the same time). I know I screwed up, but if one person has already pointed out the mistake, you don't really need to correct it again. Or in other words: check the other replys first, dummy.
Ahh, I thought it was needed, seeing as you usually use 's to indicate possession... Bloody English, too many stupid contradictions, plus it never was my strong point really. At least I don't usually get Their / There / They're mixed up anymore. :-)
If anyone is interested, this is how the manual puts it (yes, I actually have the game):
Space Piracy
The year is 2101 A.D. The Milky Way Federation, the galaxy's governing body, has made public its (sic) plans to construct stategic defense bases in eight different locations. The purpose of the bases is protection against intergalactic crime. The Federation's prime concern is a band of space piractes led by Cats, the flamboyant cosmic freebooter who is secretly plotting his biggest performance...
Two years later, the bases were completed and operational. Despite the new defense network, tragedy struck. Ten Strike Force attack craft docked aboard the Federation 1011 Star Cruiser were destroyed by a bomb that had been planted aboard the mother ship!
Shortly after the explosion, the ship's operator recieved an odd signal. The Captain ordered the viewer turned on, and who should appear but Cats himself!
"Nice to see you all. I've taken control of each and every one of your bases. Today will go down in history as the day the Milky Way Federation was destroyed by one man - me! Ha ha ha ha..."
One attack craft remained undamaged. The Captain, without hesitation, ordered the ZIG-01 "Zero Wing" into battle. You must fly the attack ship to each friendly base and drive Cats' forces out. The fate of an entire galazy rests on your shoulders!
The only things I can note about this is that Cats is "flamboyant", make of that what you will, and that this seems to imply your ship is the only one working, yet the intro seems to imply at least three Zigs are working.
Later the Getting Started bit of the manual suggests "Follow the story screens to get a better feel for the task you're about to take on." I kinda feel that advice may leave someone far more confused than if they just read the story bit of the manual really.
And no, I will not transcribe the other seven language versions that are in the manual.
I believe that Xbox 360 dev kits are supposedly PowerMac G5s running some custom version of Windows. (Although they may've been replaced with final hardware by now). So there are Macs that are runnning Windows, but unless you're a game dev you'll never see them.
I think the width of an analouge TV signal is debatable, it all depends on how you sample it. I think 704 is about right for analouge signals, but digital TV formats use 720 because it's a nice round number computer-wise. I'd guess modern consoles use 720 for their highest res modes.
Some of the horizontal lines will be chopped off as well, 480 (or 576) is the maximum number of visible lines, some of them will be overscanned as well.
----
Digressing into a tangental rant of nonsense.
I personally don't mind low res stuff, running games through RGB SCART on a good TV is great. They're low res, but they still look fine, becuase they're running at the right resolution for the display. I prefer things like the style and artistry of graphics really, not how uber high the res is. My PC's LCD display has a 1280x1024 resolution though, and stuff running below that looks a bit horrible because of the scaling (including my Dreamcast, alas...).
But high res support would be nice, although living in the UK, I haven't really seen much HDTV stuff to say how good / bad it is.
I think Nintendo seem to be in a slight pattern of always being slightly in the previous generation with their consoles. The N64 use cartridges, the GameCube's complete lack of online stuff (well, barring Phantasy Star Online), and now lowdef when everyone else is doing highdef stuff (hopefully they'll at least have VGA (yay Dreamcast!) or some form of progressive output). The Big N is great at designing hardware with the absolute minimum power needed to compete though, it's their great skill, but it can also be an annoying failing.
Sorry is this is unreadable garbage. Not had much sleep, plus I'm not very good at writing anyway.
Audio copies of all episodes only exist becuase people recorded them off TV (if you check the credits of the audio releases, there's usually a Special Thanks mention for the people who originally recorded the episodes).
But the film copies that were recovered are all legitimate prints made by BBC Enterprises for export to forign TV stations. AFAIK most missing returned black and white episodes were returned from TV stations that had bought Doctor Who in the 60s. A few were returned by film collectors, having presumably been "borrowed" from the BBC or other TV stations.
There are a few clips of episodes recorded by pointing 8MM cameras at a TV, but they're rather low quality, and only go for a couple of seconds usually.
They'll probably have to organise a suitable "donation" to go with the nomination as well. That's how most halls of fame seem to work. ;-)
Sadly the Hall Of Fame doesn't appear to be a dynamic page (at least for the most posts page), we'll have to wait for the lunatics in charge of this asylum to update it. Either that, or the page'll only update itself once this discussion gets archived, and no more posts can be made (which is more likley I guess).
But we should keep on going! Only 250ish posts to get to #9!
I don't see what that has to do with my comment...
I don't really care what's inside my Mac. I just wish I had a working one. Damn iBook going and dropping dead on me.
Yes, I'm mostly posting to try and get the post count above the 2,700-odd needed to get into the hall of fame. Although I doubt anyone will be reading (or moderating) comments at the end of 2,500 others.
I see Gamecube in every shop I goto.
I'm in the UK, and I don't. It's now only availible in specialist game shops (always the smallest section out of the three consoles), and big music / video / games shops like HMV and Virgin Megastores (again, with the smallest section). Dixons don't carry it anymore, my local ASDA stopped selling the games the day the DS came out, Woolworths stopped around Christmas. Argos does still have it, but with a pitiful selection of games that hasn't changed since the last catalouge. The GameCube is slowly disapearing from the UK market. Xbox has definatley won the battle for the runner up spot.
Then again, they have a monopoly over the handheld market here, seeing as Sony haven't yet seen fit to grace us with the PSP.
What if the person doesn't have internet access?
UK TV runs at 25fps, 50fields/s, US TV runs at 30FPS / 60fields / s (I think you can have 24fps HDTV as well, not sure if it's converted to 30fps before display however.
People can tell the difference between field and frame based motion (think film / video differences). I'd guess the BBC weather is running as frame motion, so appears jerky compared to video (the person overlaid over the top). You wouldn't notice it as much if they weren't flying around all the time...
The less information bit is probably about the disapearance of things like Wind (although that turns up a bit, looks stupid, why they need constantly moving arrows everywhere when static ones would do better), pressure charts, and fronts. The actual map itself does tell more data, even if it looks crap, but people would like to see things like the Atlantic pressure chart.
I'd presume the BBC and / or the UK Met Office will have paid for the weather data they use for international forecasts. It's up to them if the forecasts they produce from the data is made availible for free, in the BBC's case it will be free becuase they're a public service broadcaster.
They were perfectly in perspective, but you do kinda piss off people by making their area smaller than other areas on the projection (you can say whatever about perspective, but in real terms the north was smaller than the south on screen), especially in Scotland.
I'm sure they do understand perspective. It's just that you can kinda piss people off by choosing a perspective that makes the south of England far larger than the North, and Scotland in particular, for no good reason.
Why does everyone forget Europe!
* EXPLODES *
Our Xboxes are made in China as well (at least mine is) but do you mention it? I hate it when people forget that games are sold in places other than North America and Japan and East Asia. FFS the UK is the 3rd biggest games market in the world!
* UNEXPLODES *
Sorry for the rant, just feel like a nice rant every now and again, and being a gamer in Europe gives you lots to rant about. I know where European Xboxes are made actually has nothing to do with the converstation as well...
Well, mostly becuase it kills off a main character from the movies the game is based on. It does happen in spin-off media though, occasionally they'll bump off a major character.
But frankly, after the two awful sequels, I'm not sure if anyone cares. I'm frankly forgetting the two sequels ever existed. I also have no interest in a game based on one fairly fun movie, and two crap ones.
Steam still has DOD:S as "Comming Soon" section, but I don't have Half-Life 2 in any form.
Perhaps they're refering to a retail version of the HL1 mod, like they did for Counter-Strike?
As far as I know every disc based console has some sort of UI. Usually they have a memory card file manager, a CD player, and usually some basic settings like language, system clock and mono / stero sound so you don't have to set them in every game. If you have a disc in already, they all boot the game automatically, and starting the game from the UI is either simple, or automatic.
The Xbox also has network settings, but they're only there for enviroments that don't use DHCP, or need a specific MAC address. Overall the various settings on consoles are far simpler than any PC, you usually set them once, and forget about them.
The 360 does seem to have a fairly complex UI though, I guess it's mostly to push the online aspects of the system, Microsoft want to push it. Although quite a bit of the UI seems to be a redesign and expansion of the existing functions in the Xbox 1's system, except slightly better organised, and putting a bigger emphesis on the online features. I guess it's mostly because Microsoft really want to push the online features. It is a contrast to the usually spartan UIs of consoles though, but I'd guess the Nintendo Revolution may have a similar UI from what Nintendo have said about it's console's online features.