I have a huge collection of PSFs/SPCs and OC Remixes that I listen to while coding. It's not distracting as you say, and at times it can really give me a boost of inspiration.
Ah hell, who am I kidding? It's just good stuff to listen to, even if you are just trolling Slashdot. =)
Obviously not talking about Japanese Games...
on
Game with God
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· Score: 5, Informative
In Japan, religion is often portrayed quite heavily in games. Japan in general has a more liberal relationship with religion than the western world, and works of fiction aren't really lynched for not showing the church in a good light.
If you want some GOOD examples of religion in games, try Xenogears, Grandia, or Tales of Symphonia. All quite good games that deal with religion quite heavily. In the case of Xenogears, it was almost not released in North America, as the church would consider it to be almost blasphemous.
For a North American game dealing slightly more than average with religion... try Eternal Darkness. The game features a bit of the inquisition, and the main characters are using magick based a lot upon the pagan practices and rituals. I would guess that the church would be none too happy about this one either.
That was the title on teh list that interested me the most, considering that less than a week ago, Square-Enix said that they were taking a "wait and see" approach on the PSP, and not actively making games yet.
If you are a Square fanboy, you might want to try the DS next door over, as Square-Enix itself has admitted to making 3 games for it.
I sympathize with that, I really do. But I am still a student, and I am just working an internship as a web programmer right now.
The thing about my job though, is that other than being asked to use the common libraries and stylesheets, I am free to do whatever I like with the code. I have a great deal of fun with it, and I don't often follow the general policies and practices that the other programmers on my team follow. I AM given that creative control over my code, and I really like that aspect of it.
The thing about my job that I really dislike about it is the nature of it... I am honestly not that interested in most of the languages used, and I am not overly fond of web programming in general. But as it is STILL programming, and I am getting to see my work being used throughout the company, it's given me a lot of job satisfaction.
My work at home is more of the sort that I would like to do at work in the future, and it mainly involves a whole lot of low level C++ programming for gaming usage. If a game programmer makes less than a web programmer, and doesn't involve a lot of the niceties that a web programmer has... then I am happy.
Besides, my basic personality type is that of a servant. I don't have much desire to lead, or to manage. I just like to have a clearly defined goal in mind, and make that vision a reality. Of course, I do have my opinions on the vision, but really, what it comes down to is that I like to just do the actual practical work.
As a Canadian, I have to say that I'm not here for the money. Yeah, it's a little disturbing that I get paid much less than an American does, but it doesn't bother me THAT much. What really matters to me is that I get paid to do something that I enjoy. And I happen to really enjoy the practice of programming. I will go to where I can get the job I will enjoy the most, regardless of pay, so long as I have enough to take care of myself.
I completely forgot about Xenosaga earlier. But I actually hated most of the voice acting in the game, as I found it dry and fairly conspicuous for the most part.
The real exception in the game for me was Kosmos. I REALLY liked her acting.
David Hayter - Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid)
George Byrd - Grey Fox (Metal Gear Solid)
Rob Paulsen - Grey Fox (Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes)
Jennifer Hale - Naomi (Metal Gear Solid), Alex (Eternal Darkness)
Guy Cihi - James (Silent Hill 2)
Chris Seavor - Most of the voices in Conker's BFD
But one person really and truly stands out among them all. Jennifer Hale. If you haven't played a game with her in it yet, you are SERIOUSLY missing out. RUN, don't walk to the store, and rent/buy/steal the game.
Well, when I moderate, I tend to try to mod up the things that I think others should see. If someone is trying to explain the moon is made of swiss cheese, I would mod them down for being wrong (over-rated), and leave it at that, because it adds no value to the discussion. Likewise, if someone tries to explain that IE is a better platform to develop on than Mozilla because it ignores or implements the W3C recommendations improperly, I will mod them down, as I have practical experience in the matter.
I agree that on some matters right/wrong is blurred, and I have modded up two opposing views on such a subject before. And I agree that I would have done the wrong thing here. But in the light that I originally saw the post, it wouldn't have been... in this case I think it's a subjective thing more than anything what to mod the post.
Sorry, I misread the attitude of your post. I thought the attitude of your post was that IE just adds lots of its own stuff to the mix, and if everyone used some of the special IE stuff, that it would be much easier. The example with the table borders just especially seemed to me like you were trying to say that IE did things better... My apologies.
My favorite IE problems though are the position:fixed thing, the burn through of dropdown boxes, and the simple fact that block elements cannot be centered with pure CSS.
But on the flip side of your argument there where most people use IE... I am seeing a huge shift to Mozilla in the last month or so. If one in ten of your clients couldn't see your page properly in Mozilla, I think that would be a serious issue.
Quite honestly, the only thing that I really have a lot of trouble doing in Mozilla that I can do easily in IE is modal dialog windows. There are some situations that just seem to call for them, and it's a fair bit of code to do the job in Mozilla. (although, I have started to use floating divs more frequently for that kind of work, as I have started to use my own custom dropdown boxes as a web control in.NET, which work a lot better than the standard IE dropdown box, so there is no burn-through in IE, and no need for code to hide the bloody dropdowns anymore).
I want you to make a div that stays put on the page where you put it, and doesn't jump up and down on a page like a jumping bean when you scroll. It's easy enough in Opera/Mozilla, where the fixed position is supported. But IE doesn't recognize that attribute, so it sets the position to static. How then are you going to do it?
This problem took me almost 2 days of work to get working in IE. I had to create a toolbar for the top of a page that would scroll. I eventually found a few CSS hacks to do it, and it works great, although it does crash IE if combined with some other scripts, so it's not perfect.
My point is that while you have demonstrated one specific case where IE makes development a little easier, I think on the whole, the W3C methods just make life much easier than some de facto standard that Microsoft thought up on the spur of the moment. I code to standards because I prefer to write code that isn't bound to one specific version of one particular browser.
And if you check the specs of borders according to the W3C recommendation, you will find that Mozilla is behaving appropriately in the case of the table border. IE is in error. (However, the problem might go away in IE if you use aren't in quirks mode. (ie. use a correct doctype))
Once again, I regret posting in this discussion, as I would have loved to mod you down for being blatantly wrong.
If I hadn't already replied to this discussion, I would mod you up for that. I am a web developer who develops for an IE only intranet, so I have learned to hate the browser more than... well, much of anything. It's easy for me to forget that the browser DOES do some things right.
But I maintain that is very old by this point, and is not wearing its age very well. Security problems such as these indicate to me that Microsoft should really just sit down with their code at some point soon and fix what's wrong. IE at the core does have the potential to be a good browser, in that I agree with you, but in its present state, I just think that it's nowhere even close to being good, let alone the best.
Well, we know for sure at this point that ActiveX works. And the code for creating popups is working quite nicely. Of course, there is the odd time that when autoinstalling some ActiveX controls to autospawn more popups, and creating some more popups at the same time, it can go into an infinite loop and crash, but on the whole, it works quite nicely. =)
I see Mozilla really taking off in the last month or so. Zeitgeist only goes up to May, so I am very curious what it's going to look like next time it updates.;-)
Yeah, I passed for most of them, as I am not too willing to cough up $20 for a 20 year old game... but I did pick up Super Mario Bros. =)
The thing is that the Famicom turned 20 in Japan, so they released a Famicom styled GBA, and a few classic games to go with it. American gamers were upset that they weren't getting it, so they did the same thing over here, even though the NES isn't quite 20 years old yet. I picked up a Classic NES GBA SP the day that they came out, and I don't regret it. It's just one of those cases where nostalgia really kicks in. I mean, this is a tribute to some of the best days of our childhood.
Well, I am sort of used to game console numbers being stated in sell-through rates. I think that this is a carry over from the NES days, where Nintendo offered to buy back any unsold NES merchandise (as a result of the collapse of the American console industry). I have no idea if this practice is still in place though (and I doubt it is)
I dunno, I just have problems believing 70 million consoles sold to the consumers. I have no hard numbers to back me up at the moment (I'm at work), but I very much doubt that there are more than 50 million PS2s sold through...
I think I'll try to look it up when I get home and see what I can find.
Just from one website catering to web developers of course, but here's some stats. It shows general trends at the very least. There was also a poll about it on gamefaqs.com a while ago, and about 20% of people claimed to be using Mozilla, or a variant of it.
Nintendo is alive and well. They are keeping the specs of the Revolution close to their heart for the time being. (although there are rumors to the effect of a dual processor G5, or something like that... but I personally think those are bogus). Reports of Nintendo's death were greatly exaggerated.
Nintendo seems to have something up their sleeve though. They are talking about it like they were before they announced the DS. I am expecting something very strange that will have people going WTF.
I am also curious how the next Gameboy is going to factor into this. It seems to me that the DS is the perfect complement to a console, connectivity-wise but I am sure Nintendo will try to leverage the Gameboy more... Not sure how that will pan out.
For Nintendo console news, check out these sites:
www.planetgamecube.com
www.gcadvanced.com
www.gametabs.com
Don't they mean 70 million PS2 units SHIPPED, and not sold?
In other news, Nintendo describes Sony's marketting division as a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes.
Yeah. Up here in Canada, we have some really nice beaver. We have more beaver than we know what do with. They get into our homes, our places of business... And we have to chase them out.
So when you're chasing beaver, nothing refreshes you better than a nice cold Molson Canadian.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, I've written to Nintendo a number of times, and I have NEVER gotten a canned response.
I have a huge collection of PSFs/SPCs and OC Remixes that I listen to while coding. It's not distracting as you say, and at times it can really give me a boost of inspiration.
Ah hell, who am I kidding? It's just good stuff to listen to, even if you are just trolling Slashdot. =)
In Japan, religion is often portrayed quite heavily in games. Japan in general has a more liberal relationship with religion than the western world, and works of fiction aren't really lynched for not showing the church in a good light.
If you want some GOOD examples of religion in games, try Xenogears, Grandia, or Tales of Symphonia. All quite good games that deal with religion quite heavily. In the case of Xenogears, it was almost not released in North America, as the church would consider it to be almost blasphemous.
For a North American game dealing slightly more than average with religion... try Eternal Darkness. The game features a bit of the inquisition, and the main characters are using magick based a lot upon the pagan practices and rituals. I would guess that the church would be none too happy about this one either.
That was the title on teh list that interested me the most, considering that less than a week ago, Square-Enix said that they were taking a "wait and see" approach on the PSP, and not actively making games yet.
If you are a Square fanboy, you might want to try the DS next door over, as Square-Enix itself has admitted to making 3 games for it.
I sympathize with that, I really do. But I am still a student, and I am just working an internship as a web programmer right now.
The thing about my job though, is that other than being asked to use the common libraries and stylesheets, I am free to do whatever I like with the code. I have a great deal of fun with it, and I don't often follow the general policies and practices that the other programmers on my team follow. I AM given that creative control over my code, and I really like that aspect of it.
The thing about my job that I really dislike about it is the nature of it... I am honestly not that interested in most of the languages used, and I am not overly fond of web programming in general. But as it is STILL programming, and I am getting to see my work being used throughout the company, it's given me a lot of job satisfaction.
My work at home is more of the sort that I would like to do at work in the future, and it mainly involves a whole lot of low level C++ programming for gaming usage. If a game programmer makes less than a web programmer, and doesn't involve a lot of the niceties that a web programmer has... then I am happy.
Besides, my basic personality type is that of a servant. I don't have much desire to lead, or to manage. I just like to have a clearly defined goal in mind, and make that vision a reality. Of course, I do have my opinions on the vision, but really, what it comes down to is that I like to just do the actual practical work.
As a Canadian, I have to say that I'm not here for the money. Yeah, it's a little disturbing that I get paid much less than an American does, but it doesn't bother me THAT much. What really matters to me is that I get paid to do something that I enjoy. And I happen to really enjoy the practice of programming. I will go to where I can get the job I will enjoy the most, regardless of pay, so long as I have enough to take care of myself.
I count 3 in your post. Your guaranty is wrong. HAH!
I completely forgot about Xenosaga earlier. But I actually hated most of the voice acting in the game, as I found it dry and fairly conspicuous for the most part.
The real exception in the game for me was Kosmos. I REALLY liked her acting.
David Hayter - Solid Snake (Metal Gear Solid)
George Byrd - Grey Fox (Metal Gear Solid)
Rob Paulsen - Grey Fox (Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes)
Jennifer Hale - Naomi (Metal Gear Solid), Alex (Eternal Darkness)
Guy Cihi - James (Silent Hill 2)
Chris Seavor - Most of the voices in Conker's BFD
But one person really and truly stands out among them all. Jennifer Hale . If you haven't played a game with her in it yet, you are SERIOUSLY missing out. RUN, don't walk to the store, and rent/buy/steal the game.
Well, when I moderate, I tend to try to mod up the things that I think others should see. If someone is trying to explain the moon is made of swiss cheese, I would mod them down for being wrong (over-rated), and leave it at that, because it adds no value to the discussion. Likewise, if someone tries to explain that IE is a better platform to develop on than Mozilla because it ignores or implements the W3C recommendations improperly, I will mod them down, as I have practical experience in the matter.
I agree that on some matters right/wrong is blurred, and I have modded up two opposing views on such a subject before. And I agree that I would have done the wrong thing here. But in the light that I originally saw the post, it wouldn't have been... in this case I think it's a subjective thing more than anything what to mod the post.
Sorry, I misread the attitude of your post. I thought the attitude of your post was that IE just adds lots of its own stuff to the mix, and if everyone used some of the special IE stuff, that it would be much easier. The example with the table borders just especially seemed to me like you were trying to say that IE did things better... My apologies.
.NET, which work a lot better than the standard IE dropdown box, so there is no burn-through in IE, and no need for code to hide the bloody dropdowns anymore).
My favorite IE problems though are the position:fixed thing, the burn through of dropdown boxes, and the simple fact that block elements cannot be centered with pure CSS.
But on the flip side of your argument there where most people use IE... I am seeing a huge shift to Mozilla in the last month or so. If one in ten of your clients couldn't see your page properly in Mozilla, I think that would be a serious issue.
Quite honestly, the only thing that I really have a lot of trouble doing in Mozilla that I can do easily in IE is modal dialog windows. There are some situations that just seem to call for them, and it's a fair bit of code to do the job in Mozilla. (although, I have started to use floating divs more frequently for that kind of work, as I have started to use my own custom dropdown boxes as a web control in
Anyways, sorry. I misread the tone of your post.
Here's a task for you.
Style property "position:fixed;"
I want you to make a div that stays put on the page where you put it, and doesn't jump up and down on a page like a jumping bean when you scroll. It's easy enough in Opera/Mozilla, where the fixed position is supported. But IE doesn't recognize that attribute, so it sets the position to static. How then are you going to do it?
This problem took me almost 2 days of work to get working in IE. I had to create a toolbar for the top of a page that would scroll. I eventually found a few CSS hacks to do it, and it works great, although it does crash IE if combined with some other scripts, so it's not perfect.
My point is that while you have demonstrated one specific case where IE makes development a little easier, I think on the whole, the W3C methods just make life much easier than some de facto standard that Microsoft thought up on the spur of the moment. I code to standards because I prefer to write code that isn't bound to one specific version of one particular browser.
And if you check the specs of borders according to the W3C recommendation, you will find that Mozilla is behaving appropriately in the case of the table border. IE is in error. (However, the problem might go away in IE if you use aren't in quirks mode. (ie. use a correct doctype))
Once again, I regret posting in this discussion, as I would have loved to mod you down for being blatantly wrong.
If I hadn't already replied to this discussion, I would mod you up for that. I am a web developer who develops for an IE only intranet, so I have learned to hate the browser more than... well, much of anything. It's easy for me to forget that the browser DOES do some things right.
But I maintain that is very old by this point, and is not wearing its age very well. Security problems such as these indicate to me that Microsoft should really just sit down with their code at some point soon and fix what's wrong. IE at the core does have the potential to be a good browser, in that I agree with you, but in its present state, I just think that it's nowhere even close to being good, let alone the best.
Well, we know for sure at this point that ActiveX works. And the code for creating popups is working quite nicely. Of course, there is the odd time that when autoinstalling some ActiveX controls to autospawn more popups, and creating some more popups at the same time, it can go into an infinite loop and crash, but on the whole, it works quite nicely. =)
oh come on mods, how is this not modded off topic?
I see Mozilla really taking off in the last month or so. Zeitgeist only goes up to May, so I am very curious what it's going to look like next time it updates. ;-)
But what would happen to the bounced back shot if there was a mirror attached to it as well? ;-)
Is it SO hard to use Plain Text Links?
Yeah, I passed for most of them, as I am not too willing to cough up $20 for a 20 year old game... but I did pick up Super Mario Bros. =)
The thing is that the Famicom turned 20 in Japan, so they released a Famicom styled GBA, and a few classic games to go with it. American gamers were upset that they weren't getting it, so they did the same thing over here, even though the NES isn't quite 20 years old yet. I picked up a Classic NES GBA SP the day that they came out, and I don't regret it. It's just one of those cases where nostalgia really kicks in. I mean, this is a tribute to some of the best days of our childhood.
Well, I am sort of used to game console numbers being stated in sell-through rates. I think that this is a carry over from the NES days, where Nintendo offered to buy back any unsold NES merchandise (as a result of the collapse of the American console industry). I have no idea if this practice is still in place though (and I doubt it is)
I dunno, I just have problems believing 70 million consoles sold to the consumers. I have no hard numbers to back me up at the moment (I'm at work), but I very much doubt that there are more than 50 million PS2s sold through...
I think I'll try to look it up when I get home and see what I can find.
Just from one website catering to web developers of course, but here's some stats. It shows general trends at the very least. There was also a poll about it on gamefaqs.com a while ago, and about 20% of people claimed to be using Mozilla, or a variant of it.
Nintendo is alive and well. They are keeping the specs of the Revolution close to their heart for the time being. (although there are rumors to the effect of a dual processor G5, or something like that... but I personally think those are bogus). Reports of Nintendo's death were greatly exaggerated.
Nintendo seems to have something up their sleeve though. They are talking about it like they were before they announced the DS. I am expecting something very strange that will have people going WTF.
I am also curious how the next Gameboy is going to factor into this. It seems to me that the DS is the perfect complement to a console, connectivity-wise but I am sure Nintendo will try to leverage the Gameboy more... Not sure how that will pan out.
For Nintendo console news, check out these sites:
www.planetgamecube.com
www.gcadvanced.com
www.gametabs.com
Don't they mean 70 million PS2 units SHIPPED, and not sold?
In other news, Nintendo describes Sony's marketting division as a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first against the wall when the Revolution comes.
(sorry, had to.)
Thanks man. I haven't seen those in a while. =)
But a happy long weekend to you too. (even though I have to work on Friday...)
I wish I had a copy of the video to go with it. ;-) I'll see if I can find a copy of it when I get home, and throw it on the web for ya. =)
Yeah. Up here in Canada, we have some really nice beaver. We have more beaver than we know what do with. They get into our homes, our places of business... And we have to chase them out.
So when you're chasing beaver, nothing refreshes you better than a nice cold Molson Canadian.