The problem is: DirectX 10 is tremendously well designed,
How would you know this? DX10 will not be released until next year! Did you get this from the Microsoft marketing machine? They are always great on promises...
And don't forget Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis. It is incredibly funny to make Indy say, in a real-good imitation Harrison Ford voice: "That item belongs in a museum!" And his dry wit comes over really well.
And how about Grim Fandango? Everytime Glottis enters the scene, I start gniffling. And I was laughing my head of when the solution to the puzzle of the booby-trapped car with all the domino stones struck me (hint: it was about Glottis, two barrels of beer, and some stuff to freeze liquids with).
Many of BioWare's games are chockful of comedy. Just play the Baldur's Gate's games. Not only are there pretty funny characters (Minsc and Edwin, for instance), but many comedic situations as well, especially in conversations of which there are novels full.
When the first Leisure Larry game was published, I was working as a programmer for a software house. The game was awesome, especially because it had EGA graphics. But the funniest thing about the game happened just after we got it, when we had a big opening of our new office and all our biggest clients were there. One of the most nerdy of my colleagues used the game to demonstrate the awesome powers of modern PCs to our clients, who were all huddling around his PC while he was explaining to them: "...so there is this hooker, see, who I want to fuck, but first I must get a condom..." No idea if this influenced future business.
five films where I strongly believe that the original is worth owning
And then you mention only three, but anyway, I think The Frighteners should also be counted here. Seeing what Jackson had done with the Director's Cut of the LotR movies, I was jumping when I saw a director's cut of "The Frighteners". But he fucked up here. The original is a terribly well-paced movie that goes from interesting moment to interesting moment. In the new cut, the pacing seems to be gone. All the small additions just slow it down too much. Perhaps OK if you have not seen the original, but for me...
I have to agree with you. I clicked on the link, looked at the first page, and thought, "Where the hell is the article? I see only advertisements!" So I went back to slashdot. This page is a great demonstration of the fact that, yes, it IS possible to have too many advertisements. At least, if your base interest is bringing the public some information, and not having another million-dollar-homepage.
Because deep down inside, there is a hope that Atari will release the source code.
Well, you can forget about that. The source code is not owned by Atari, but by BioWare. And BioWare is guarding its source code very closely. People have been working to get BioWare to release the source code for the Infinity Engine, which is finished for BioWare for over four years now. The Infinity Engine is old, stale, and trashed, but it will not be released. As someone who has worked with (against) the BioWare lawyers, I know they simply are not going to do that. They have their reasons, trade secrets are one thing, the fact that the code is a big pile of spaghetti another. It is their good right, of course, and with NWN they have given the amateur developers a fantastic tool. But the source code you will not get.
It does kinda makes sense. They want more exciting things to be avaliable for NWN2 only, I imagine.
Since most likely NWN1 and NWN2 modules will not be compatible (the whole area construction things is completely different), and since many potential premium modules were on the verge of being released, it makes NO sense at all. They are throwing a lot of good work away, and are alienating the mod builders who they depend on for making new mods for NWN2.
But I agree with TFA that NWN has been one of the best supported games out there. I have seen about 25 patches released, most of them not only bugfixes, but also with new content. That is pretty sweet.
And it is good to know that I can now stick with version 1.67 and do not need to go out looking for new NoCD patches every few months (yes, I own the game - 4 copies of it actually - I just want to play it without the CD in the drive).
As a scientist, I can tell you that scientists do not get paid to work on such problems. They get paid for their serious work, on which the average scientist spends over 60 hours per week. Since they get paid for only 40 (and usually not much at that), I'd say they have earned the right to joke around now and again.
This idea will never work, at least not for emails, and I tell you why. For a server, there is no fundamental difference between an email, a webpage, a file being sent, or whatever data goes through it. It is just data. True, there is a protocol attached to it, but when email gets taxed, people will make sure that email gets sent looking like a file. Sender and receiver need to know this, but if it is beneficial to a large enough group of people, this will become standard. Furthermore, how does the EU think they can tax my gmail? I mean, I send it from a server based in the US, and I receive my messages at the same server. How is the EU going to tax me for that? Are they going to ask Google for records? They'll get laughed away.
ut they did set the natural price of a browser at 0, then complained when someone else matched their price.
Wrong. Yes, Netscape gave their browser away for free to end-users, but they fully expected to be able to make a profit in the long run by selling enhanced versions to companies, offering services, and probably some advertising business. But they did not complain when Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer for free. They complained when Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows. And in the process "enhanced" HTML by adding lots of Microsoft-only-extensions. And then lied to the judge that it was completely integrated in Windows.
It wasn't Microsoft that dominated Word Perfect in the word processor game, it was Word Perfect that couldn't get out a generation of products and forced their users to switch to Word (yeah Word Perfect for Windows WAS that bad)
Yes, Word Perfect for Windows sucked. It was dead slow. But do you know the reason? The reason was that when developing WP for Windows, the programmers had no access to a large number of hidden functions within the Windows API. Functions that would have meant a huge speed increase. Microsoft did not document those functions, and explained this by stating that these would be removed in future versions. When it was discovered that Word for Windows actually used these undocumented functions, people realized that Microsoft had been lying all along (what else is new), and simply did not document these functions to put their competitors at a disadvantage. Of course, by that time Word Perfect was wiped out.
Borland (Anyone remember the Turbo compilers - but they couldn't write an optimizer to save their life)
I am still very grateful to Borland: without them, we would only have a choice between a powerless language that is easy to use (Visual Basic) or a powerful language that is hell to use (Visual C). Borland proved that it is possible to create a powerful language that is a joy to use (Delphi), which many developers recognized and switched to. Microsoft was forced to improve their own products. Of course, then they killed off Borland. And how? By systematically and purposefully buying out most of Borland's top personnel in a very short time. I do not blame those ex-Borland employees for defecting to Microsoft: they got offered ludicrous salaries and bonuses, which Borland simply could not match. But make no mistake about Microsoft's ultimate purpose here: to grind Borland in the dust. Getting a few good employees in the process was incidental.
And about Borland optimizers: maybe they weren't top notch, but you could turn them on safely. With the Microsoft compilers, you would not dare to turn on the optimizer because your executable simply would not represent your code anymore.
In TFA this issue is discussed: most people are not entertained by games they have already played, or even games LIKE they have already played. Constant innovation is needed, and the innovation in the graphics area is at an end. That is one of the reasons why the author predicts the crash.
Personally, I still like to drag out my C64 every few years, but I admit thatr is mainly nostalghia.
The problem with the way scientists are depicted in movies is that they are Hollywood stereotypes. They know little or nothing about what science really is. An exception is Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) in Contact. I cannot think of any other movies that depict scientists as people who love science - real science, not the glamorous or nefarious hobby that it is for Hollywood.
Oh, I am sure that when travelling the galaxy in Spore, you will encounter multiple instances of the Planet of the Hot Nymphomaniacs. If only real space were like that, humans would have conquered the galaxy by now.
There are basically two different kinds of AI: opponent AI and neutral AI. Opponent AI decides on fighting moves, neutral AI decides on everyday behaviour. Both are hard, but in a different way.
Opponent AI is hard because the AI is matched against the rational skills of a human player, who wants an opponent that does not cheat and that is of about the same level as he is, but that still poses a challenge. Well, that is nigh impossible to create because humans are inventive and game AI is not. It is not that it cannot be inventive, but if you augment game AI with inventiveness (i.e., learning skills), there is a huge risk that the AI will learn stupid behaviour. Game developers and publishers do not want to run this risk. Besides that, effective machine learning usually takes far too many learning trials to work in a game. And finally, learning AI severely increases the length of the testing process, which is already considered far too long. All in all, it will be a while before we see opponent AI that learns. Incidentally, machine learning techniques might be used to design good opponent AI offline, and I know a few game developers are looking into this.
Neutral AI is hard because we basically expect the imitation of human behaviour, or, we want AI that can beat the Turing test, at least within the confines of a game. Oblivion's Radiant AI is hailed as a great step in that direction, but when you play Oblivion you find it is still a long way off from what we want to see. For instance, in Oblivion NPCs have schedules - they get up, have breakfast, go to their shop, go to the tavern at night, etc. That is all nice, but what are NPCs doing when they are at home? They are staring at a wall. What are they doing when they are in a tavern? They are lifting a jug to their mouth, completely synchronised with the other tavern visitors. What are they doing when they are with their spouse at home? They greet them politely, make a remark about mud crabs they saw, say goodbye, and stare in another direction, until they repeat the same process a minute later. It is absolutely ridiculous - even more so because there has been made an attempt to make them more realistic. The funny thing is that almost two decades ago we already had NPCs with a schedule. Look at Ultima V. NPCs get up, have breakfast, go to work, stroll around town, go to the tavern, etc. And the net result was far more realistic than Oblivion provides. Why is that? Because game worlds were much simpler then. It was easy to create NPCs that behave realistically within the confines of that particular game world. The only thing they did not well was having a conversation - but, guess what, the conversation system of Ultima V is even more advanced than that of Oblivion. At least you can provide your own subjects of discussion. What we need to learn from this all is that the complexity of the game world determines how realistic NPCs can be with the current state of the art. And since game world complexity increases all the time, game developers need to be innovating all the time only to keep the level of the AI at the same quality as last year. And frankly, they are losing that battle.
Yes, academic AI provides solutions for some of the problems faced by game developers. Most of the game deveopers are not interested in academic AI, for several reasons. But a few of them are. My guess is that these will be the ones that bring us the next generation of game AI. And hopefully they'll become pretty rich in the process.
that got me into a bit of trouble in the university's copmuter lab
Did you already get a patent for that? Seems like a great idea. I mean, you're speeding, cop stops you, but before he opens his mouth you activate your copmuter and drive off! I'd buy one.
Did anyone notice that the European version of the game is rated "16+"? That is pretty high for a game. And I know it is not because of the possibility of a nude patch, but because of the explicit violence. I know of only one game that was rated "18+" (I assume there are more), and that was "Bloodlines". And I totally agree that the violence in that game was really over the top, and almost not functional for the story. "16+" sounds right to me for Oblivion.
Slashdot Mirror
How would you know this? DX10 will not be released until next year! Did you get this from the Microsoft marketing machine? They are always great on promises...
Because Microsoft pays them if they'll release the game DX10 exclusive.
And how about Grim Fandango? Everytime Glottis enters the scene, I start gniffling. And I was laughing my head of when the solution to the puzzle of the booby-trapped car with all the domino stones struck me (hint: it was about Glottis, two barrels of beer, and some stuff to freeze liquids with).
Many of BioWare's games are chockful of comedy. Just play the Baldur's Gate's games. Not only are there pretty funny characters (Minsc and Edwin, for instance), but many comedic situations as well, especially in conversations of which there are novels full.
When the first Leisure Larry game was published, I was working as a programmer for a software house. The game was awesome, especially because it had EGA graphics. But the funniest thing about the game happened just after we got it, when we had a big opening of our new office and all our biggest clients were there. One of the most nerdy of my colleagues used the game to demonstrate the awesome powers of modern PCs to our clients, who were all huddling around his PC while he was explaining to them: "...so there is this hooker, see, who I want to fuck, but first I must get a condom..." No idea if this influenced future business.
And then you mention only three, but anyway, I think The Frighteners should also be counted here. Seeing what Jackson had done with the Director's Cut of the LotR movies, I was jumping when I saw a director's cut of "The Frighteners". But he fucked up here. The original is a terribly well-paced movie that goes from interesting moment to interesting moment. In the new cut, the pacing seems to be gone. All the small additions just slow it down too much. Perhaps OK if you have not seen the original, but for me...
A chick flick aimed at cardiologists.
I have to agree with you. I clicked on the link, looked at the first page, and thought, "Where the hell is the article? I see only advertisements!" So I went back to slashdot. This page is a great demonstration of the fact that, yes, it IS possible to have too many advertisements. At least, if your base interest is bringing the public some information, and not having another million-dollar-homepage.
Well, you can forget about that. The source code is not owned by Atari, but by BioWare. And BioWare is guarding its source code very closely. People have been working to get BioWare to release the source code for the Infinity Engine, which is finished for BioWare for over four years now. The Infinity Engine is old, stale, and trashed, but it will not be released. As someone who has worked with (against) the BioWare lawyers, I know they simply are not going to do that. They have their reasons, trade secrets are one thing, the fact that the code is a big pile of spaghetti another. It is their good right, of course, and with NWN they have given the amateur developers a fantastic tool. But the source code you will not get.
Since most likely NWN1 and NWN2 modules will not be compatible (the whole area construction things is completely different), and since many potential premium modules were on the verge of being released, it makes NO sense at all. They are throwing a lot of good work away, and are alienating the mod builders who they depend on for making new mods for NWN2.
But I agree with TFA that NWN has been one of the best supported games out there. I have seen about 25 patches released, most of them not only bugfixes, but also with new content. That is pretty sweet.
And it is good to know that I can now stick with version 1.67 and do not need to go out looking for new NoCD patches every few months (yes, I own the game - 4 copies of it actually - I just want to play it without the CD in the drive).
And the publicity doesn't hurt either.
It was a joke debate.
This idea will never work, at least not for emails, and I tell you why. For a server, there is no fundamental difference between an email, a webpage, a file being sent, or whatever data goes through it. It is just data. True, there is a protocol attached to it, but when email gets taxed, people will make sure that email gets sent looking like a file. Sender and receiver need to know this, but if it is beneficial to a large enough group of people, this will become standard. Furthermore, how does the EU think they can tax my gmail? I mean, I send it from a server based in the US, and I receive my messages at the same server. How is the EU going to tax me for that? Are they going to ask Google for records? They'll get laughed away.
Wrong. Yes, Netscape gave their browser away for free to end-users, but they fully expected to be able to make a profit in the long run by selling enhanced versions to companies, offering services, and probably some advertising business. But they did not complain when Microsoft gave away Internet Explorer for free. They complained when Microsoft bundled Internet Explorer with Windows. And in the process "enhanced" HTML by adding lots of Microsoft-only-extensions. And then lied to the judge that it was completely integrated in Windows.
It wasn't Microsoft that dominated Word Perfect in the word processor game, it was Word Perfect that couldn't get out a generation of products and forced their users to switch to Word (yeah Word Perfect for Windows WAS that bad)
Yes, Word Perfect for Windows sucked. It was dead slow. But do you know the reason? The reason was that when developing WP for Windows, the programmers had no access to a large number of hidden functions within the Windows API. Functions that would have meant a huge speed increase. Microsoft did not document those functions, and explained this by stating that these would be removed in future versions. When it was discovered that Word for Windows actually used these undocumented functions, people realized that Microsoft had been lying all along (what else is new), and simply did not document these functions to put their competitors at a disadvantage. Of course, by that time Word Perfect was wiped out.
Borland (Anyone remember the Turbo compilers - but they couldn't write an optimizer to save their life)
I am still very grateful to Borland: without them, we would only have a choice between a powerless language that is easy to use (Visual Basic) or a powerful language that is hell to use (Visual C). Borland proved that it is possible to create a powerful language that is a joy to use (Delphi), which many developers recognized and switched to. Microsoft was forced to improve their own products. Of course, then they killed off Borland. And how? By systematically and purposefully buying out most of Borland's top personnel in a very short time. I do not blame those ex-Borland employees for defecting to Microsoft: they got offered ludicrous salaries and bonuses, which Borland simply could not match. But make no mistake about Microsoft's ultimate purpose here: to grind Borland in the dust. Getting a few good employees in the process was incidental.
And about Borland optimizers: maybe they weren't top notch, but you could turn them on safely. With the Microsoft compilers, you would not dare to turn on the optimizer because your executable simply would not represent your code anymore.
Dammit, mine too.
Personally, I still like to drag out my C64 every few years, but I admit thatr is mainly nostalghia.
Sure, and I have no problems with that. I love movies. It is just that, when I saw Contact, I thought: "For once..."
The problem with the way scientists are depicted in movies is that they are Hollywood stereotypes. They know little or nothing about what science really is. An exception is Dr. Ellie Arroway (Jodie Foster) in Contact. I cannot think of any other movies that depict scientists as people who love science - real science, not the glamorous or nefarious hobby that it is for Hollywood.
Actually, it does. Spore shows that evolution does not work without intervention by a higher being. And that higher being is the player in Spore.
Why would there be an uproar from them? Basically it simulates a universe that is constructed as they think it actually is.
That depends on who you are. I expect it will be fun for me.
Oh, I am sure that when travelling the galaxy in Spore, you will encounter multiple instances of the Planet of the Hot Nymphomaniacs. If only real space were like that, humans would have conquered the galaxy by now.
Opponent AI is hard because the AI is matched against the rational skills of a human player, who wants an opponent that does not cheat and that is of about the same level as he is, but that still poses a challenge. Well, that is nigh impossible to create because humans are inventive and game AI is not. It is not that it cannot be inventive, but if you augment game AI with inventiveness (i.e., learning skills), there is a huge risk that the AI will learn stupid behaviour. Game developers and publishers do not want to run this risk. Besides that, effective machine learning usually takes far too many learning trials to work in a game. And finally, learning AI severely increases the length of the testing process, which is already considered far too long. All in all, it will be a while before we see opponent AI that learns. Incidentally, machine learning techniques might be used to design good opponent AI offline, and I know a few game developers are looking into this.
Neutral AI is hard because we basically expect the imitation of human behaviour, or, we want AI that can beat the Turing test, at least within the confines of a game. Oblivion's Radiant AI is hailed as a great step in that direction, but when you play Oblivion you find it is still a long way off from what we want to see. For instance, in Oblivion NPCs have schedules - they get up, have breakfast, go to their shop, go to the tavern at night, etc. That is all nice, but what are NPCs doing when they are at home? They are staring at a wall. What are they doing when they are in a tavern? They are lifting a jug to their mouth, completely synchronised with the other tavern visitors. What are they doing when they are with their spouse at home? They greet them politely, make a remark about mud crabs they saw, say goodbye, and stare in another direction, until they repeat the same process a minute later. It is absolutely ridiculous - even more so because there has been made an attempt to make them more realistic. The funny thing is that almost two decades ago we already had NPCs with a schedule. Look at Ultima V. NPCs get up, have breakfast, go to work, stroll around town, go to the tavern, etc. And the net result was far more realistic than Oblivion provides. Why is that? Because game worlds were much simpler then. It was easy to create NPCs that behave realistically within the confines of that particular game world. The only thing they did not well was having a conversation - but, guess what, the conversation system of Ultima V is even more advanced than that of Oblivion. At least you can provide your own subjects of discussion. What we need to learn from this all is that the complexity of the game world determines how realistic NPCs can be with the current state of the art. And since game world complexity increases all the time, game developers need to be innovating all the time only to keep the level of the AI at the same quality as last year. And frankly, they are losing that battle.
Yes, academic AI provides solutions for some of the problems faced by game developers. Most of the game deveopers are not interested in academic AI, for several reasons. But a few of them are. My guess is that these will be the ones that bring us the next generation of game AI. And hopefully they'll become pretty rich in the process.
Did you already get a patent for that? Seems like a great idea. I mean, you're speeding, cop stops you, but before he opens his mouth you activate your copmuter and drive off! I'd buy one.
Did anyone notice that the European version of the game is rated "16+"? That is pretty high for a game. And I know it is not because of the possibility of a nude patch, but because of the explicit violence. I know of only one game that was rated "18+" (I assume there are more), and that was "Bloodlines". And I totally agree that the violence in that game was really over the top, and almost not functional for the story. "16+" sounds right to me for Oblivion.