We have had our entire game engine available under an MIT license for 5 years - alot longer than Torque has existed.
Plus we beat torque feature-for-feature for graphical rendering quality and ease-of-use.
The rest of the game industry IS doing similar things - just no one on slashdot seems to be inclined to check anything out outside the familiar box of 'garage games == everything indie'
agreed, this is why the 'hints' are only available on the earlier modes of play. with open-ended games, however i feel that it is very important to provide the player with some way of figuring out what they are supposed to be doing, even if you are leaving the options fairly wide open
i agree completely. deus ex 2 is very similar. the choices are hardly choices...they are so blatant that it's somewhat annoying.
we're trying to portray a similar 'light/dark' portrayal in our project, it's very complicated to get much beyond the cursory decisions thought. takes a very conscious effort in the script writing...
story-based games take incredible amounts of content to create as it is, let alone with potentially thousands of 'grey' choices, all of which must be scripted, animated, have voice-overs recorded for, and integrated into the game (via scripting or however)...
the sheer amount of work involved is daunting with ANY budget;}
the key is having an 'overmind' of sorts that does it's own calculations based on the players' actions.
then if they keep repeating the same actions over and over, you could potentially detect this and trigger appropriate events accordingly.
we're doing this in our upcoming game - if the player stays in a particular level or area too long, the game can provide tips or hints - which come through as communications from other characters
'hey, you lost?' type messages, which, if the player responds affirmative to, the character provides a 'tip' to help them on their way.
if this occurs multiple times, the player recieves more information on how to complete the level or area.
in harder difficulties these tips are less frequent, or non-existent.
similar behavior can be used to affect the player's behavior in many ways.
that's just it though.
if the latest 'big brother' bill doesn't make it through into law, they try to (usually successfully) sneek through the majority of the provisions as some hidden amendment to a 'child protection act' or other bill.
the policitians know this game very well, and the corporate backers behind them know it even better - they will continue to try this and similar things forever.
one step forward, two steps back.
can't believe i just quoted paula abdul...shudder...but it's true.
good quote from the environmental movement (which is plagued by the very same kind of shady legal issues that currently plague the IT/tech industry):
"every victory for the environmental movement is temporary. every loss is permanent."
meaning that these laws, once passed, are very hard to get rid of. luckily we have the net to help spread the word about these types of things.
and yes people WILL give a shit about a net protest if only because it spreads the word about the situation, potentially to people that DO have a say or some kind of influence over the situation.
law-makers and politicians don't just sit in their offices smokin crack all day after all, the net is becoming more and more important to their daily activities....
the military uses the exact same off-the-shelf software and hardware that the rest of the world does - you think they have their own computer chip manufacturing going on? of course not.
you think they don't use the same big oracle databases that everyone else uses?
there was an article posted in the last week about the US navy's newest fanciest warship, the commanders were all drooling about how they can run the ship with 3 people on the bridge compared to 8 on a standard ship - and the article SPECIFICALLY said that the entire ship is run on standard off the shelf software and hardware.
the NSA uses linux because there are no suitable alternatives that are worthwhile securing. windows is flat out too broken for them.
the military is the same. they may have fancy mainframes for some stuff, but they still buy their who-knows-how-many-billion dollar software licenses from the same microsoft we do.
just because you aren't in europe doesn't mean you don't have a voice. many of our users are in europe, several of our lead developers live in europe - if they were suddenly 'unable to contribute' code as a result, it would be potentially disastrous to the project.
EXACTLY my point - IBM wasn't the only one
check the movie 'the Corporation' if you can - they bring this up and have the IBM spokespeople squirming like you wouldn't believe, as they should be.
profitting on the blood and despair of people is a disgusting business practice, one most major corporations seem unable to avoid.
indeed, look at how many huge US corporations willingly sell filtering, monitoring or other software and hardware that makes it too easy to restrict access to information, on the label of it being 'dangerous' or 'not acceptable' content.
Oracle is one of the biggest pushers for this kind of thing, with Mr CEO blatantly throwing his software towards any kind of system that monitors or invades peoples rights it seems...
of course, guess who benefits from all of these monstrous databases that the government et al are setting up - the big database developers, who get to use the 'we didnt know they were using it for evil' argument just like the german soldiers in worldwar two, or the defense industry...
'we didn't know they were gonna bomb children, we just build bombs...'
it's not acceptable, just like it's not acceptable for scientists and researchers to accept government money to develop projects that eventually get hijacked and used for military projects.
microsoft is, in typical fashion, trying to redefine what 'cross-platform' is.
apparently to them there are 2 platforms, the 'windows' platform and the 'console' platform:
[begin quote] In the past we've always been invested, as with DirectX, in making life easier for the developers. But I think the urgency has never been clearer than it is now. Next generation Windows hardware and next generation console hardware have been speculated about. The one thing everybody does know for sure is that it'll be more powerful and significantly more complex. [end quote]
they are truly clueless that there is life beyond redmond.
and i love his examples of what not to do:
[quote]Look at the first generation PS2 games. They were using 40% of the hardware on Day One. We don't want that to be the case.[/quote]
conveniently - it's a playstation quote! what a surprise.
and another choice quote: [quote]
Imagine a world where you take Tim Sweeney's game engine from Epic. It's the most advanced and applicable to your game. And you can stitch in the Havoc physics engine to that real easily. Half my artists use Max and the level designers use Maya and I can tighten that into the work flow and I have a particle system that I want to create on my own and I want to make sure that that snaps in. And, by the way, when I'm tuning the game and doing builds, I want to make sure that it works on Windows and Xbox. That's a lot of custom code.
[/quote]
except he forgets that unreal engine already runs on xbox and windows already - oh and guess what!! it runs on LINUX too - what a novelty
but wouldn't want to mention that - people might realize that the M$ version of cross-platform means any platform with an M$ sticker on it;}
it's a very valid question - everything these days is riddled with spyware/adware, and with the shadiness of these companies well known, there is little that makes me want to install most freeware for this reason.
download.com is full of software that 'claims' to be free, but you go to their download site & it ends up being a spyware ridden POS instead.
this is the stupidest idea i've heard of in a long time - if you have the network infrastructure to try and launch a DDOS attack, then you probably have the ability to survive and/or defend from DDOS attacks without resorting to insanity like this.
Of course, companies in the US will probably love this, it fits well with their governments' 'first strike' foreign policy directives as pushed by Mr Shrub etc
obviously you haven't installed windows from scratch lately - the SECOND it gets connected to the net - before you could ever get the service packs etc installed - you will be infected with virii
happens every time i reinstall windows
either a mac or install mozilla and open office and other alternatives to the standard ms garbage.
if you 'train' them to not use microsoft applications, the chances of them becoming victims is significantly reduced...
you seriously think that there are 500 times the number of people regularly using aspirin as do maryj?
in vancouver alone, i read a report that 75-80% of high school students reported that they regularly smoke it - how many are regularly taking doses of aspirin?
probably not many, unless you believe those moronic tv ads that try to claim that you should take advil or asirin every day 'just because' - what a joke, lets all get hooked on pharmies instead - yeah yeah that's it.
you forget that they allow patents for ridiculous things like the dna structure for 'wheat' and other common food groups.
foods that have existed naturally for thousands of years are being patented and locked away to be sold for a profit.
companies like monsato and other monstrosities are to blame, and the patent office bends over for them regularly.
when life itself becomes patentable, the system is much more broken than it seems at first glance.
It's eerie how well the Stalker team have captured the look and feel of the area - and it looks like more than a couple of those pictures were used as direct concepts for locations in the Stalker game as well.
Very cool - definitely #1 on my 'most looked forward to' game list...
instead of increasing the number of platforms that their products work on, adobe has been reducing it...
premiere no longer works on mac (once considered THE platform for premiere) because of heavy reliance on the windows media format in the latest premiere version (can use wmv as a 'native' format for editing)...
i doubt that adobe will clue into linux, we'll have to rely on hoping that the gimp folks will figure out how to make an interface that is comprehensible and we can get rid of photoshop once and for all
no kidding...every time it creates the directory...every time i delete it afterwards...
my computer is cluttered enough with crap that i don't need programs assuming how i organize things - and provide NO way to change the default behavior...
or you could use one of the many game creation tools out there that let you create entire games without programming if you really want to.
these days it does cut it complaining that you can't make a game because you don't know programming. you just haven't looked hard enough yet;}
no kidding - look at the ridiculous company names of the people that are suing them.
as much as i'd encourage anyone to sue verisign, this is ridiculous. they should be laughed out of court until they can come up with a legitimate business name...
i mean, how do these companies even get registered:
!$6.25 DOMAINS! NETWORK, INC.
! $ ! BID IT WIN IT, INC.
Slashdot Mirror
We have had our entire game engine available under an MIT license for 5 years - alot longer than Torque has existed.
Plus we beat torque feature-for-feature for graphical rendering quality and ease-of-use.
The rest of the game industry IS doing similar things - just no one on slashdot seems to be inclined to check anything out outside the familiar box of 'garage games == everything indie'
agreed, this is why the 'hints' are only available on the earlier modes of play. with open-ended games, however i feel that it is very important to provide the player with some way of figuring out what they are supposed to be doing, even if you are leaving the options fairly wide open
i agree completely. deus ex 2 is very similar. the choices are hardly choices...they are so blatant that it's somewhat annoying.
;}
we're trying to portray a similar 'light/dark' portrayal in our project, it's very complicated to get much beyond the cursory decisions thought. takes a very conscious effort in the script writing...
story-based games take incredible amounts of content to create as it is, let alone with potentially thousands of 'grey' choices, all of which must be scripted, animated, have voice-overs recorded for, and integrated into the game (via scripting or however)...
the sheer amount of work involved is daunting with ANY budget
the key is having an 'overmind' of sorts that does it's own calculations based on the players' actions.
then if they keep repeating the same actions over and over, you could potentially detect this and trigger appropriate events accordingly.
we're doing this in our upcoming game - if the player stays in a particular level or area too long, the game can provide tips or hints - which come through as communications from other characters
'hey, you lost?' type messages, which, if the player responds affirmative to, the character provides a 'tip' to help them on their way.
if this occurs multiple times, the player recieves more information on how to complete the level or area.
in harder difficulties these tips are less frequent, or non-existent.
similar behavior can be used to affect the player's behavior in many ways.
that's just it though. if the latest 'big brother' bill doesn't make it through into law, they try to (usually successfully) sneek through the majority of the provisions as some hidden amendment to a 'child protection act' or other bill. the policitians know this game very well, and the corporate backers behind them know it even better - they will continue to try this and similar things forever. one step forward, two steps back. can't believe i just quoted paula abdul...shudder...but it's true. good quote from the environmental movement (which is plagued by the very same kind of shady legal issues that currently plague the IT/tech industry): "every victory for the environmental movement is temporary. every loss is permanent." meaning that these laws, once passed, are very hard to get rid of. luckily we have the net to help spread the word about these types of things. and yes people WILL give a shit about a net protest if only because it spreads the word about the situation, potentially to people that DO have a say or some kind of influence over the situation. law-makers and politicians don't just sit in their offices smokin crack all day after all, the net is becoming more and more important to their daily activities....
the military uses the exact same off-the-shelf software and hardware that the rest of the world does - you think they have their own computer chip manufacturing going on? of course not.
you think they don't use the same big oracle databases that everyone else uses?
there was an article posted in the last week about the US navy's newest fanciest warship, the commanders were all drooling about how they can run the ship with 3 people on the bridge compared to 8 on a standard ship - and the article SPECIFICALLY said that the entire ship is run on standard off the shelf software and hardware.
the NSA uses linux because there are no suitable alternatives that are worthwhile securing. windows is flat out too broken for them.
the military is the same. they may have fancy mainframes for some stuff, but they still buy their who-knows-how-many-billion dollar software licenses from the same microsoft we do.
we live in canada and we've joined the protest.
just because you aren't in europe doesn't mean you don't have a voice. many of our users are in europe, several of our lead developers live in europe - if they were suddenly 'unable to contribute' code as a result, it would be potentially disastrous to the project.
cheers
mike w
EXACTLY my point - IBM wasn't the only one check the movie 'the Corporation' if you can - they bring this up and have the IBM spokespeople squirming like you wouldn't believe, as they should be. profitting on the blood and despair of people is a disgusting business practice, one most major corporations seem unable to avoid.
indeed, look at how many huge US corporations willingly sell filtering, monitoring or other software and hardware that makes it too easy to restrict access to information, on the label of it being 'dangerous' or 'not acceptable' content.
Oracle is one of the biggest pushers for this kind of thing, with Mr CEO blatantly throwing his software towards any kind of system that monitors or invades peoples rights it seems...
of course, guess who benefits from all of these monstrous databases that the government et al are setting up - the big database developers, who get to use the 'we didnt know they were using it for evil' argument just like the german soldiers in worldwar two, or the defense industry...
'we didn't know they were gonna bomb children, we just build bombs...'
it's not acceptable, just like it's not acceptable for scientists and researchers to accept government money to develop projects that eventually get hijacked and used for military projects.
indeed.
;}
microsoft is, in typical fashion, trying to redefine what 'cross-platform' is.
apparently to them there are 2 platforms, the 'windows' platform and the 'console' platform:
[begin quote]
In the past we've always been invested, as with DirectX, in making life easier for the developers. But I think the urgency has never been clearer than it is now. Next generation Windows hardware and next generation console hardware have been speculated about. The one thing everybody does know for sure is that it'll be more powerful and significantly more complex.
[end quote]
they are truly clueless that there is life beyond redmond.
and i love his examples of what not to do:
[quote]Look at the first generation PS2 games. They were using 40% of the hardware on Day One. We don't want that to be the case.[/quote]
conveniently - it's a playstation quote! what a surprise.
and another choice quote:
[quote]
Imagine a world where you take Tim Sweeney's game engine from Epic. It's the most advanced and applicable to your game. And you can stitch in the Havoc physics engine to that real easily. Half my artists use Max and the level designers use Maya and I can tighten that into the work flow and I have a particle system that I want to create on my own and I want to make sure that that snaps in. And, by the way, when I'm tuning the game and doing builds, I want to make sure that it works on Windows and Xbox. That's a lot of custom code.
[/quote]
except he forgets that unreal engine already runs on xbox and windows already - oh and guess what!! it runs on LINUX too - what a novelty
but wouldn't want to mention that - people might realize that the M$ version of cross-platform means any platform with an M$ sticker on it
ugh...
it's a very valid question - everything these days is riddled with spyware/adware, and with the shadiness of these companies well known, there is little that makes me want to install most freeware for this reason. download.com is full of software that 'claims' to be free, but you go to their download site & it ends up being a spyware ridden POS instead.
how is this news in any shape or form?
the first streaming video was porn, the ONLY reason that streaming media exists is because of the porn industry.
microsoft claims that it's for 'business meetings' but as if.
look at ANY big ISP - the majority of their traffic will be adult oriented.
pretty funny that the response is 'damn stereotypes' which is then followedup by more stereotypes ;}
this is the stupidest idea i've heard of in a long time - if you have the network infrastructure to try and launch a DDOS attack, then you probably have the ability to survive and/or defend from DDOS attacks without resorting to insanity like this. Of course, companies in the US will probably love this, it fits well with their governments' 'first strike' foreign policy directives as pushed by Mr Shrub etc
obviously you haven't installed windows from scratch lately - the SECOND it gets connected to the net - before you could ever get the service packs etc installed - you will be infected with virii happens every time i reinstall windows
either a mac or install mozilla and open office and other alternatives to the standard ms garbage. if you 'train' them to not use microsoft applications, the chances of them becoming victims is significantly reduced...
you seriously think that there are 500 times the number of people regularly using aspirin as do maryj? in vancouver alone, i read a report that 75-80% of high school students reported that they regularly smoke it - how many are regularly taking doses of aspirin? probably not many, unless you believe those moronic tv ads that try to claim that you should take advil or asirin every day 'just because' - what a joke, lets all get hooked on pharmies instead - yeah yeah that's it.
you forget that they allow patents for ridiculous things like the dna structure for 'wheat' and other common food groups. foods that have existed naturally for thousands of years are being patented and locked away to be sold for a profit. companies like monsato and other monstrosities are to blame, and the patent office bends over for them regularly. when life itself becomes patentable, the system is much more broken than it seems at first glance.
It's eerie how well the Stalker team have captured the look and feel of the area - and it looks like more than a couple of those pictures were used as direct concepts for locations in the Stalker game as well.
Very cool - definitely #1 on my 'most looked forward to' game list ...
http://www.stalkerthegame.com
-------------
instead of increasing the number of platforms that their products work on, adobe has been reducing it... premiere no longer works on mac (once considered THE platform for premiere) because of heavy reliance on the windows media format in the latest premiere version (can use wmv as a 'native' format for editing)... i doubt that adobe will clue into linux, we'll have to rely on hoping that the gimp folks will figure out how to make an interface that is comprehensible and we can get rid of photoshop once and for all
no kidding...every time it creates the directory...every time i delete it afterwards... my computer is cluttered enough with crap that i don't need programs assuming how i organize things - and provide NO way to change the default behavior...
the things that they mention pretty much make nasa sound like a disorganized dot-com...
i mean - not having up-to-date schematics of the space station? wtf? and then they wonder when pieces break off and go floating off into space?
yikes...
or you could use one of the many game creation tools out there that let you create entire games without programming if you really want to. these days it does cut it complaining that you can't make a game because you don't know programming. you just haven't looked hard enough yet ;}
or exposing themselves to goodies like this from their 'american friends':
CIA slipped bugs to Soviets
no kidding - look at the ridiculous company names of the people that are suing them.
as much as i'd encourage anyone to sue verisign, this is ridiculous. they should be laughed out of court until they can come up with a legitimate business name...
i mean, how do these companies even get registered:
!$6.25 DOMAINS! NETWORK, INC.
! $ ! BID IT WIN IT, INC.
great company names guys...