No, but Valve bought CS. They have continued to develop CS. That gives them the right to do whatever they want to do with it. It may've been developed by community people originally, but it's Valve's now.
Personally I think there licensing system generally isn't very good, they seem to really like the idea that you lease your software, something that I really don't like personally. But if that's what they want to do, they can do it. Not that I'm going to buy it myself...
You could try Opera, it runs alright on slower machines, at least it's a bit more lightweight than Internet Explorer and Mozilla. But you really need a nice, fast Pentium, say 90MHz, to get the best out of the internet.;-)
My Dad's P75 has a Turbo LED, which is BIOS controlled. He actually used to have to turn it of to use an EPROM programmer that didn't like Turbo mode...
It's NumLock that's the really stupid one. Especially computers that start up with it off (at one point Windows 2000 liked to reset the NumLock status to Off every time I started up - Arghhh!), I just expect it always to be on (like Macs), as a numerical pad is more useful than replicating the set of keys immediately to the left. It's a relic from really old PC keyboards, and only really useful nowadays on notebooks, where it serves a slightly different purpose.
Although i don't use the number pad that much, but it annoys when I find I've been typing stupid arrow keys instead of numbers. I should note I also use Macs, which don't have NumLock at all, so that might be part of my problem.;-)
Now, can someone explain what Scroll Lock actually does?:-)
Sega-AM2 Sonic Team (UGA merged into them) Sega Wow (Wow Entertainment and Overworks) Smilebit Hitmaker (and Sega Rosso) Amusment Vision Digital Rex (new, headed by Yu Suzuki, now they'll probably never actually release any games) Wavemaster (music studio)
This version was created about a year ago, when Sega had a reorganisation.
Panzer Dragoon Orta was by Smilebit, but the first three were created by Team Andromeda, which was broken up after the end of the Saturn, but AFAIK Smilebit is mostly ex-Andromeda staff.
It's far better than Mac OS X 10.1, which didn't have that. I really hated the way AppleWorks defaulted the stupid American paper sizes, having to change them for every new document gets annoying after a while. Seeing as the default paper size was added after Office was released, Word might not have been updated to get the correct paper size from the OS. Just a guess...
Frankly, I never quite got the hang of the stupid Imperial / English measurement system. I know 12" is 1', which is about 30cm, and a Yard is about 90cm. Other than that, they're all weird. I seem to remember doing something about it in Middle school Maths, but frankly, I think most British people wouldn't have a clue what most of the Imperial measurements (or indeed the 240d to GBP1 money system, where that's the only bit I can remember).
All five parts of the trilogy, complete and unabridged, read by the author. 25 CDs, yours for GBP140 (around $250), by BBC Word for Word. Not sure about US availability (although Amazon will ship it abroad, AFAIK), or if any abridged versions exist, those are the only ones I've seen. They are availible in seperate volumes for each book though.
You can also get a complete version of the original Radio series[1] (the collectors edition), or as two volumes (Primary and Secondary Phases, split between the two radio series) released by the BBC Radio Collection.
[1] Remember, it can first.
Re:Stock up on untainted books now
on
H2G2 Film Website
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· Score: 1
Harry Potter (When did you read Sorcerer's Stone)
Never. I read the Philosophers Stone.;)
But I did read that quite some time before the movies came out (around the time the second book came out IIRC.) I'm marginally too old to be part of the first real Harry Potter generation, but some of the people who can truthfully claim to have been part of it are in 6th Form (16-18) by now.
I guess some versions were made into an omnibus edition / TV movie for export (and possibly home video). Same happened with Doctor Who. The DVD version is episodic. And it's not a miniseries. It's a series. We Brits don't generally have big series.;-)
A cue ball hits the earth if you don't heed the buttons warning. The DON'T PANIC appears with the title, and then the real site loads.
I though PC DOS forked from MS DOS at some point, after IBM and Microsoft's falling out. Although it is compatible (and also Y2K fixed and stuff that MS DOS doesn't do), but it isn't the same darn thing, at least not anymore.
BTW, The game's called Radient Silvergun, not Silver Radient Gun. Personally I have a switched Saturn, and would get it, but it happens to generally cost a large amount of money. (Bloody leet-ultra-rare stuff, I want Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force 3 as well, but I'd need to win the lottery).
What, like SEGA GaGa. Although it's a management sim not an RPG. Released at about the same time SEGA dropped out of the console making business as well.
Seeing as he's one of the interviewees in the article, I'd guess he lived.:-)
A longer quote, putting the other one into contex is:
Sometime in May the decision was made to streamline, cutting out at least 1/3rd of the team, leaving most of the development chores to Chris Senn. Taking the job very seriously, and determined to get the game out on time, he moved a cot into his office and worked alternating 16 to 18-hour shifts. He toiled nonstop like this from June through August implementing the changes necessary...
...
Disaster struck in August when Senn's body, worn out from the nonstop work, couldn't take it anymore.
"I took on far more than was healthy... and after 2 years I became extremely ill... a nurse told me he thought I had 6 months to live, actually. I lost 25 pounds, was sick all the time, had cramps... and still went in to work... all due to too much stress," says Senn.
However, from the sounds of it, if he'd kept on going, he could've ended up dead, or in hospital. No amount of coffee and pizza would keep a coder going after two months of 18 hour days.
Most Saturn games ended up using spites somewhere, the machine was much more of a 2D beast than a 3D one (the polygons on the Saturn were actually distorted sprites anyway.) As we can't actually see a finished game we can't tell how good Sega Technical Institute were at integrating them into the game. I could've worked alright, but we'll never know.
I don't know about the demographics, but there is quite a lot of post-teen games in Europe.
Video games are rated by the industry organisation PEGI (www.pegi.info) which last year replaced a number of other ratings systems across Europe, such as the ELSPA one used in the UK (and probably other countries.) The ratings are 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+ and 18+, which are displayed on the front of the boxes, with additional content icons (Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'roll[1] etc.) displayed with the rating on the back. These ratings are advisory. The previous ELSPA system was similar, expect without the content advisories, and different ages.
In the UK the Video Recordings Act and associated laws make most video games exempt from classification by the BBFC (www.bbfc.org.uk, see FAQs), but some are. These ratings are legally enforceable, shops selling the games to people under the age rating are breaking the law. Games with BBFC ratings I can think of are Grand Theft Auto games (all 18), Quake, Doom and Doom 2 (15) and Manhunter (18.)
Yep, there's an 18+ PEGI rating (the voluntary game ratings system used in Europe, replacing the ELSPA ones in the UK.) However individual countries laws can go overrule this, such as the UK's Video Recordings Act (and associated laws), and Germany's laws, where they really don't like gore and so on. They might only want to prepare one PAL version of the game (rather than a rest-of-Europe and a German version), so bow to the German censorship requirements across Europe, or they just want a lower rating for sales reasons.
Manhunt was release in Europe, or at least in the UK. It doesn't have the PEGI voluntary ratings, it has a BBFC 18 certificate, which means that retailers would break the law if sell it to people under 18, the same as an 18 rated DVD (the Video Recordings Act 1984 and all that funk.) I don't know about other countries, as most games nowadays have UK specific packaging, so the UK BBFC rating is the only one on the box IIRC.
AFAIK it was developed by Rockstar North, the same people as Grand Theft Auto (originally DMA Design, who also created the first Lemmings), who are based in Scotland. GTA games are also BBFC 18 rated.
I think every player has to use a GBA as a controller, like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Presumably, like all good Nintendo fanboys, you and all your friends already own them, and the requisite Gamecube->Gameboy cable.
Having played the Gameboy Advance version[1] I'd say it's quite a fun game, rather action orientated compared to traditional Zelda, but its the sort of game that depends on you being able to get enough people (of the right quality) together to play. I gather the Gamecube is longer than the over-in-an-evening GBA version, which is nice. The GBA version was very fun, with a nice competition element of who can get the most rupees. At least with the Gamecube version you don't have to all own copies of the game, you just need one, but all the people playing have to be able to own / buy / steal / borrow a Gameboy to join in.
The fact Nintendo seem to have cut a section of the game out because they can't be bothered to translate it sucks, it can't cost that much to record a new set of voices for a game (just use Sega's patented technique, and grab a few people off the street and stick them in front of a microphone.)
[1] And fighting the complete stupidness that European and US cartridges won't play together (you get connection error messages), but luckily I was able to get my money back on the US cart I'd picked up second hand and get a nice new EU one like a nice, non-import using Nintendo patron. (Remeber kids! Importing video games supports terrorism!)
I wouldn't describe a game that needs DirectX 9 and a GeForce 4Ti-level or above graphics card to run "simple." it's using all the latest technologies. I'm not a Linux user, so I don't know how good WineX is at DirectX stuff, but I find it doubtful it'd have prefect emulation[1] of the current release of DirectX, especially for a game that is obviously using a lot of the latest techniques.
I mean, the authors say they're using similar techniques to Doom 3...
I will try it on my (Windows) PC later, but I doubt my Athlon 1500+ and GeForce 4Ti will have much luck with this game either, I doubt it'll have the horsepower. But it seems impressive to me.
[1] I'm not sure if this is the right term for what Wine does, if it isn't I apologies for my n00biness.
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Valve did not make CS
No, but Valve bought CS. They have continued to develop CS. That gives them the right to do whatever they want to do with it. It may've been developed by community people originally, but it's Valve's now.
Personally I think there licensing system generally isn't very good, they seem to really like the idea that you lease your software, something that I really don't like personally. But if that's what they want to do, they can do it. Not that I'm going to buy it myself...
Plus suing people is rarely good PR.
You could try Opera, it runs alright on slower machines, at least it's a bit more lightweight than Internet Explorer and Mozilla. But you really need a nice, fast Pentium, say 90MHz, to get the best out of the internet. ;-)
My Dad's P75 has a Turbo LED, which is BIOS controlled. He actually used to have to turn it of to use an EPROM programmer that didn't like Turbo mode...
Nope, here it's one more year for England / Scotland / Wales, or two years in Northern Ireland. /me hums Rule Britannia. ;-)
It's NumLock that's the really stupid one. Especially computers that start up with it off (at one point Windows 2000 liked to reset the NumLock status to Off every time I started up - Arghhh!), I just expect it always to be on (like Macs), as a numerical pad is more useful than replicating the set of keys immediately to the left. It's a relic from really old PC keyboards, and only really useful nowadays on notebooks, where it serves a slightly different purpose.
;-)
:-)
Although i don't use the number pad that much, but it annoys when I find I've been typing stupid arrow keys instead of numbers. I should note I also use Macs, which don't have NumLock at all, so that might be part of my problem.
Now, can someone explain what Scroll Lock actually does?
AFAIK the Sega divisions at the moment are:
Sega-AM2
Sonic Team (UGA merged into them)
Sega Wow (Wow Entertainment and Overworks)
Smilebit
Hitmaker (and Sega Rosso)
Amusment Vision
Digital Rex (new, headed by Yu Suzuki, now they'll probably never actually release any games)
Wavemaster (music studio)
This version was created about a year ago, when Sega had a reorganisation.
Panzer Dragoon Orta was by Smilebit, but the first three were created by Team Andromeda, which was broken up after the end of the Saturn, but AFAIK Smilebit is mostly ex-Andromeda staff.
Rez also got a release on Dreamcast in Europe. So did Shenmue II.
Europe does have video games y'know.
It's far better than Mac OS X 10.1, which didn't have that. I really hated the way AppleWorks defaulted the stupid American paper sizes, having to change them for every new document gets annoying after a while. Seeing as the default paper size was added after Office was released, Word might not have been updated to get the correct paper size from the OS. Just a guess...
Frankly, I never quite got the hang of the stupid Imperial / English measurement system. I know 12" is 1', which is about 30cm, and a Yard is about 90cm. Other than that, they're all weird. I seem to remember doing something about it in Middle school Maths, but frankly, I think most British people wouldn't have a clue what most of the Imperial measurements (or indeed the 240d to GBP1 money system, where that's the only bit I can remember).
Beer shall forever be in pints though.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/075407571 0/ref=br_lf_b_13/026-6297324-1090865
All five parts of the trilogy, complete and unabridged, read by the author. 25 CDs, yours for GBP140 (around $250), by BBC Word for Word. Not sure about US availability (although Amazon will ship it abroad, AFAIK), or if any abridged versions exist, those are the only ones I've seen. They are availible in seperate volumes for each book though.
You can also get a complete version of the original Radio series[1] (the collectors edition), or as two volumes (Primary and Secondary Phases, split between the two radio series) released by the BBC Radio Collection.
[1] Remember, it can first.
Harry Potter (When did you read Sorcerer's Stone)
Never. I read the Philosophers Stone. ;)
But I did read that quite some time before the movies came out (around the time the second book came out IIRC.) I'm marginally too old to be part of the first real Harry Potter generation, but some of the people who can truthfully claim to have been part of it are in 6th Form (16-18) by now.
AFAIK think the new radio series have been made, but are in rights hell, probably related to the new movie.
I guess some versions were made into an omnibus edition / TV movie for export (and possibly home video). Same happened with Doctor Who. The DVD version is episodic. And it's not a miniseries. It's a series. We Brits don't generally have big series. ;-)
A cue ball hits the earth if you don't heed the buttons warning. The DON'T PANIC appears with the title, and then the real site loads.
I though PC DOS forked from MS DOS at some point, after IBM and Microsoft's falling out. Although it is compatible (and also Y2K fixed and stuff that MS DOS doesn't do), but it isn't the same darn thing, at least not anymore.
BTW, The game's called Radient Silvergun, not Silver Radient Gun. Personally I have a switched Saturn, and would get it, but it happens to generally cost a large amount of money. (Bloody leet-ultra-rare stuff, I want Panzer Dragoon Saga and Shining Force 3 as well, but I'd need to win the lottery).
What, like SEGA GaGa. Although it's a management sim not an RPG. Released at about the same time SEGA dropped out of the console making business as well.
If someone would just port EDLIN to it I'd be happy. :)
But surely this is the ultimate open source program.
Seeing as he's one of the interviewees in the article, I'd guess he lived. :-)
A longer quote, putting the other one into contex is:
Sometime in May the decision was made to streamline, cutting out at least 1/3rd of the team, leaving most of the development chores to Chris Senn. Taking the job very seriously, and determined to get the game out on time, he moved a cot into his office and worked alternating 16 to 18-hour shifts. He toiled nonstop like this from June through August implementing the changes necessary...
...
Disaster struck in August when Senn's body, worn out from the nonstop work, couldn't take it anymore.
"I took on far more than was healthy... and after 2 years I became extremely ill... a nurse told me he thought I had 6 months to live, actually. I lost 25 pounds, was sick all the time, had cramps... and still went in to work... all due to too much stress," says Senn.
However, from the sounds of it, if he'd kept on going, he could've ended up dead, or in hospital. No amount of coffee and pizza would keep a coder going after two months of 18 hour days.
Most Saturn games ended up using spites somewhere, the machine was much more of a 2D beast than a 3D one (the polygons on the Saturn were actually distorted sprites anyway.) As we can't actually see a finished game we can't tell how good Sega Technical Institute were at integrating them into the game. I could've worked alright, but we'll never know.
I don't know about the demographics, but there is quite a lot of post-teen games in Europe.
Video games are rated by the industry organisation PEGI (www.pegi.info) which last year replaced a number of other ratings systems across Europe, such as the ELSPA one used in the UK (and probably other countries.) The ratings are 3+, 7+, 12+, 16+ and 18+, which are displayed on the front of the boxes, with additional content icons (Sex, Drugs, Rock'n'roll[1] etc.) displayed with the rating on the back. These ratings are advisory. The previous ELSPA system was similar, expect without the content advisories, and different ages.
In the UK the Video Recordings Act and associated laws make most video games exempt from classification by the BBFC (www.bbfc.org.uk, see FAQs), but some are. These ratings are legally enforceable, shops selling the games to people under the age rating are breaking the law. Games with BBFC ratings I can think of are Grand Theft Auto games (all 18), Quake, Doom and Doom 2 (15) and Manhunter (18.)
[1] Only kidding.
Yep, there's an 18+ PEGI rating (the voluntary game ratings system used in Europe, replacing the ELSPA ones in the UK.) However individual countries laws can go overrule this, such as the UK's Video Recordings Act (and associated laws), and Germany's laws, where they really don't like gore and so on. They might only want to prepare one PAL version of the game (rather than a rest-of-Europe and a German version), so bow to the German censorship requirements across Europe, or they just want a lower rating for sales reasons.
Manhunt was release in Europe, or at least in the UK. It doesn't have the PEGI voluntary ratings, it has a BBFC 18 certificate, which means that retailers would break the law if sell it to people under 18, the same as an 18 rated DVD (the Video Recordings Act 1984 and all that funk.) I don't know about other countries, as most games nowadays have UK specific packaging, so the UK BBFC rating is the only one on the box IIRC.
AFAIK it was developed by Rockstar North, the same people as Grand Theft Auto (originally DMA Design, who also created the first Lemmings), who are based in Scotland. GTA games are also BBFC 18 rated.
Nintendo is a Japanese company, although they do have an American subsidiary.
I think every player has to use a GBA as a controller, like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Presumably, like all good Nintendo fanboys, you and all your friends already own them, and the requisite Gamecube->Gameboy cable.
Having played the Gameboy Advance version[1] I'd say it's quite a fun game, rather action orientated compared to traditional Zelda, but its the sort of game that depends on you being able to get enough people (of the right quality) together to play. I gather the Gamecube is longer than the over-in-an-evening GBA version, which is nice. The GBA version was very fun, with a nice competition element of who can get the most rupees. At least with the Gamecube version you don't have to all own copies of the game, you just need one, but all the people playing have to be able to own / buy / steal / borrow a Gameboy to join in.
The fact Nintendo seem to have cut a section of the game out because they can't be bothered to translate it sucks, it can't cost that much to record a new set of voices for a game (just use Sega's patented technique, and grab a few people off the street and stick them in front of a microphone.)
[1] And fighting the complete stupidness that European and US cartridges won't play together (you get connection error messages), but luckily I was able to get my money back on the US cart I'd picked up second hand and get a nice new EU one like a nice, non-import using Nintendo patron. (Remeber kids! Importing video games supports terrorism!)
I wouldn't describe a game that needs DirectX 9 and a GeForce 4Ti-level or above graphics card to run "simple." it's using all the latest technologies. I'm not a Linux user, so I don't know how good WineX is at DirectX stuff, but I find it doubtful it'd have prefect emulation[1] of the current release of DirectX, especially for a game that is obviously using a lot of the latest techniques.
I mean, the authors say they're using similar techniques to Doom 3...
I will try it on my (Windows) PC later, but I doubt my Athlon 1500+ and GeForce 4Ti will have much luck with this game either, I doubt it'll have the horsepower. But it seems impressive to me.
[1] I'm not sure if this is the right term for what Wine does, if it isn't I apologies for my n00biness.