"For my money, I personally think that the best "Civ" game ever made was, by leaps and bounds, Alpha Centauri."
It was also the weirdest, nerdiest and buggiest game in the series. Lots of the features were neat but the 'design your own unit' things were god awful looking, even though it was cool to do so. I'd love to see AC updated with modern graphics and real effort put into it, a lot of AC was so campy it was a bit disturbing - i.e. religious people in the far flung future, seriously?
"In other words: they had an "embarrassingly parallel" problem and did the obviously right thing."
Exaclty I'd like to see the poster try to keep adding people to a game project. I've seen so many abortions from the game industry lately it's disturbing.
Did you actually LOOK at what was happening to the bodies and how they were animating? Go reload the level outside the station and take a good look at what the bodies are doing as they float along.
"yes, what fools everyone is, they have no clue what they like at all. don't they know they're supposed to ask you first, and then only like the things that you like?"
You're exactly what I'm talking about - first of all AC1 was a third person acrobatic combat game, i.e. cookie cutter and generic, nothing new except new art - that's what makes people buy the game "omg the art is so awesome and the AC1 assasin looks so badass got to buy this!". You could climb walls and jump on rooftops - you could do similar stuff in prince of persia running along walls, jumping on beams, climbing across roofs, etc. When you play enough games only then can you really understand what I'm talking about, your knee jerk "omg AC1 is s0 awesome!" response, is evidence of the correctness of my statements.
You act like the meta-game of these games is vastly difference when it is 1 to 1 with different coats of paint, AC1 had a lot of problems, 1 being the repetitive mini games, two being the boring travel between places. It wasn't a game an experienced gamer would not have seen before.
You missed my point completely, go play mass effect 1 with the biotic powers, if you do not find the floaty physics of the 'anti gravity" animations of bodies floating around awesome then there is something wrong with you!
Physics is used as a special effect in games, sure games have clipping errors, most do. But these are HARD problems -i.e. they take time and money to develop and would not make for better games, games have limited budgets and they have to decide where to spend that money, people keep forgetting that.
"You are assuming it was because of the improved graphics, and not because of the improved gameplay mechanics and pacing. Polished turds are still turds and great games will always be great."
They will but sadly great gamers like ourselves are in the minority, assassin's creed 1 was like a poor man's prince of persia, but it sold millions. Sadly lots of people have junk gaming tastes, which means many aren't discerning enough to tell the difference between a mediocre game that missed the mark and a good game.
"Not everyone includes "pretty" in their "good game" equation"
No doubt but most people move on if a game has better graphics, otherwise you would still be playing wolf-3d, why did you move to doom? Oh yes, that's right it that darn graphics thing adds atmosphere and awesomeness to games. Why did people move on from super mario 1 for the NES, etc, etc? Not all games that come after are as fun but if you can get the same old fun in a shiny new package people will play it over the original.
Ever played the original Mechwarrior 2 dos games? No textures, all wireframe flat shaded practically, then 3D accelerators happened and every early 3D accelerator had a copy of Mechwarrior 2 with REAL textures that made the game look so damn awesome and took Mechwarrior 2 to a whole new level.
"Flying boxes and wood splinters do not make a better game."
But dead guys laying 180 perpendicular off a cliff makes them awesome? Does no one here remember the good old days of early FPS where if you died on the edge of a ledge your body would lay flat over the edge? Does no one remember the time when you hit dead bodies with shots and they didn't move or flail around? What about mass effect 1 the anti-gravity at the end with the geth/dead bodies floating and flailing around, not cool at all?
All that is physics and yes the do make a better game WHEN they are applied to things that need them and not over-used, especially not using physics as a gimmick.
The great irony is that nothing changed, "professionals" were always biased, Wikileaks had more scoops on important issues then all major newspapers had in decades. "amateurs" = 1, Pro's = 0, the internet has it's drawbacks because anyone can open their mouth but it also means ANYONE WHO KNOWS can open their mouth in response, discussion has added so much to news stories and propaganda and newspapers basically had to add user comments or risk having less of an audience and less investment in their site. It' hilarious that thesE MARKET NEEDS were never catered to by so called private sector, sites run by passionate people were copied and mimicked by the business world.
I think all the teacher hating is BS, FIRE THE STUDENTS, seriously. I'm sure many University professors would like to fire their students (if you're a prof mod me up!):)
Seriously teachers can only do so much if students won't meet them half way and do the work, no amount of excellent teacher's can turn slackers who don't want to do the work into stellar students.
Careful there, this "government is inefficient" mostly has to do with generational changes, the same way our parents couldn't use computers or program VCR's, those that 'didn't grow up' in a generation promoting doing things better often just ends up with government workers making extra work to keep their jobs, there's also the opposite factor - offshoring all government services to third world where corruption is rampant and privacy of control over public information is nonexistent.
Can we just pin inefficiency down to people and their stupidity please? There are LOTS of inefficiencies in the private sector, that is, the REAL private sector not some idealized ideologues version of it.
You either like music or you don't, I REALLY REALLY doubt playing classical music is going to change the opinions of ANYONE. Did elevator music turn anyone off of being a musician? Come on man.
The ugly truth is that the world has too many people to have a western standard of living without conflict and war, most people are not responsible in their breeding habits and there are too many religious, irresponsible and uneducated.
They are probably going to get sued, seriously. This may be grounds for a class action lawsuit through something like the EFF, this is not DRM... this is an invasion of privacy (monitoring your use) for a product YOU paid for. If you paid why should you have to deal with online connection AT ALL? That makes no f'n sense what-so-ever.
They could time shift the pre-recorded data into of delayed movments into a simulation where you could experience it in real time (i.e. post-real time)
This is what raid, mirroring and script backups are for. If you can't write a batch file to copy shit to a USB/Firewire drive, or simply have another cheap blank 2TB disk in the same PC to copy to, you are failing at backup.
Hard drives are so cheap now that you should merely have massive redundancy, also flash USB sticks are good for one time files like documents and smaller stuff you want to keep.
"But that makes good recommendations more important, not less"
I disagree, I think most recommendation systems today are "good enough". Think about the time things are released today, most people today go for new stuff and merely want to keep track of recently released stuff, so it's not so much knowing exactly rather then getting X into the awareness of others and there are lots of avenues besides recommendation engines for this.
I mean lots of interesting things are often times recommended even NOW with current algorithms, I have shit tonne of books I've book marked through recommendations or looking at other peoples public lists, even though I know I can't get to them all.
I still think browsing other peoples lists (aka like delicious or Stumble upon) are also great options.
The real issue is people's finite attention, I notice even with recommendation systems on amazon.com there is no way I could ever read everything they recommended to me and still have a life. It may be neat for movies but even then I'm sure there will be a list of recommended stuff that you simply can't get aroudn to.
I really think someone should add up all the hours required to experience every movie/game released in a year and compare it to the the average persons free time, a lot of stuff is over-produced and it would be good if someone was out there modelling how many products you could possibly want to experience over a yearly period.
The real issue is that the price mechanism can't deal with the complexity of the real world, it's too easy to externalzie and hide other important real world data and costs that price mechanisms of market theoreticians can never take into account.
Efficient markets could work if everybody was god, but people are not 1) equally skilled 2) have equal time to analze information 3) do not have unbiased access to opportunities 4) Human psychology tends to treat those with much money as special or royalty, when most rich people have simply taken advantage of large numbers - they are not necessarily rich because they are better then competing products or better then everyone else for instance, rather lots of complex factors go into "financial success" often times it involves criminal behaviour (i.e. bail out of the banks, the stock market ponzi game, etc)
"Er, but what are we going to do with all the people who just don't "have" the brains? They get a free ride?"
If AI and robots become more cost effective then most of the population then Yes. Eventually capitalism will modify itself or be erased, you can't argue with significant (i.e. over half the nation) unemployment and as a capitalist trying to justify mass murder for one's wealth would get one killed awful fast.
Slashdot Mirror
"For my money, I personally think that the best "Civ" game ever made was, by leaps and bounds, Alpha Centauri."
It was also the weirdest, nerdiest and buggiest game in the series. Lots of the features were neat but the 'design your own unit' things were god awful looking, even though it was cool to do so. I'd love to see AC updated with modern graphics and real effort put into it, a lot of AC was so campy it was a bit disturbing - i.e. religious people in the far flung future, seriously?
"In other words: they had an "embarrassingly parallel" problem and did the obviously right thing."
Exaclty I'd like to see the poster try to keep adding people to a game project. I've seen so many abortions from the game industry lately it's disturbing.
... can make you fat if you do too much of it, moderation and monitoring of what you eat vs the energy you expend is what counts.
You can lose weight in marathon gaming sessions, I know I've lost a few pounds over weekends with huge long games of Civ4 or Galciv 2.
"I thought that was a feature."
Did you actually LOOK at what was happening to the bodies and how they were animating? Go reload the level outside the station and take a good look at what the bodies are doing as they float along.
"yes, what fools everyone is, they have no clue what they like at all. don't they know they're supposed to ask you first, and then only like the things that you like?"
You're exactly what I'm talking about - first of all AC1 was a third person acrobatic combat game, i.e. cookie cutter and generic, nothing new except new art - that's what makes people buy the game "omg the art is so awesome and the AC1 assasin looks so badass got to buy this!". You could climb walls and jump on rooftops - you could do similar stuff in prince of persia running along walls, jumping on beams, climbing across roofs, etc. When you play enough games only then can you really understand what I'm talking about, your knee jerk "omg AC1 is s0 awesome!" response, is evidence of the correctness of my statements.
You act like the meta-game of these games is vastly difference when it is 1 to 1 with different coats of paint, AC1 had a lot of problems, 1 being the repetitive mini games, two being the boring travel between places. It wasn't a game an experienced gamer would not have seen before.
You missed my point completely, go play mass effect 1 with the biotic powers, if you do not find the floaty physics of the 'anti gravity" animations of bodies floating around awesome then there is something wrong with you!
Physics is used as a special effect in games, sure games have clipping errors, most do. But these are HARD problems -i.e. they take time and money to develop and would not make for better games, games have limited budgets and they have to decide where to spend that money, people keep forgetting that.
"You are assuming it was because of the improved graphics, and not because of the improved gameplay mechanics and pacing. Polished turds are still turds and great games will always be great."
They will but sadly great gamers like ourselves are in the minority, assassin's creed 1 was like a poor man's prince of persia, but it sold millions. Sadly lots of people have junk gaming tastes, which means many aren't discerning enough to tell the difference between a mediocre game that missed the mark and a good game.
"Not everyone includes "pretty" in their "good game" equation"
No doubt but most people move on if a game has better graphics, otherwise you would still be playing wolf-3d, why did you move to doom? Oh yes, that's right it that darn graphics thing adds atmosphere and awesomeness to games. Why did people move on from super mario 1 for the NES, etc, etc? Not all games that come after are as fun but if you can get the same old fun in a shiny new package people will play it over the original.
Ever played the original Mechwarrior 2 dos games? No textures, all wireframe flat shaded practically, then 3D accelerators happened and every early 3D accelerator had a copy of Mechwarrior 2 with REAL textures that made the game look so damn awesome and took Mechwarrior 2 to a whole new level.
"Flying boxes and wood splinters do not make a better game."
But dead guys laying 180 perpendicular off a cliff makes them awesome? Does no one here remember the good old days of early FPS where if you died on the edge of a ledge your body would lay flat over the edge? Does no one remember the time when you hit dead bodies with shots and they didn't move or flail around? What about mass effect 1 the anti-gravity at the end with the geth/dead bodies floating and flailing around, not cool at all?
All that is physics and yes the do make a better game WHEN they are applied to things that need them and not over-used, especially not using physics as a gimmick.
The great irony is that nothing changed, "professionals" were always biased, Wikileaks had more scoops on important issues then all major newspapers had in decades. "amateurs" = 1, Pro's = 0, the internet has it's drawbacks because anyone can open their mouth but it also means ANYONE WHO KNOWS can open their mouth in response, discussion has added so much to news stories and propaganda and newspapers basically had to add user comments or risk having less of an audience and less investment in their site. It' hilarious that thesE MARKET NEEDS were never catered to by so called private sector, sites run by passionate people were copied and mimicked by the business world.
See here: http://www.ivorytowerblues.com/
Many teachers are extremely weak knee'd, so much so a prof wrote a book about it
Unfortunately Ars is expecting the MOST TECH SAVVY community to not block ads? Sometimes you have to wonder if they know their audience.
"You seem to misunderstand who the customer is. This is a common mistake in education."
You seem to misunderstand that everything cannot be made fun, a common mistake in the real world.
I think all the teacher hating is BS, FIRE THE STUDENTS, seriously. I'm sure many University professors would like to fire their students (if you're a prof mod me up!) :)
Seriously teachers can only do so much if students won't meet them half way and do the work, no amount of excellent teacher's can turn slackers who don't want to do the work into stellar students.
Careful there, this "government is inefficient" mostly has to do with generational changes, the same way our parents couldn't use computers or program VCR's, those that 'didn't grow up' in a generation promoting doing things better often just ends up with government workers making extra work to keep their jobs, there's also the opposite factor - offshoring all government services to third world where corruption is rampant and privacy of control over public information is nonexistent.
Can we just pin inefficiency down to people and their stupidity please? There are LOTS of inefficiencies in the private sector, that is, the REAL private sector not some idealized ideologues version of it.
You either like music or you don't, I REALLY REALLY doubt playing classical music is going to change the opinions of ANYONE. Did elevator music turn anyone off of being a musician? Come on man.
"a utopia that will never get reached?"
Yep, even in a world "without disease" you'd still have all sorts of natural decay.
The ugly truth is that the world has too many people to have a western standard of living without conflict and war, most people are not responsible in their breeding habits and there are too many religious, irresponsible and uneducated.
They are probably going to get sued, seriously. This may be grounds for a class action lawsuit through something like the EFF, this is not DRM... this is an invasion of privacy (monitoring your use) for a product YOU paid for. If you paid why should you have to deal with online connection AT ALL? That makes no f'n sense what-so-ever.
They could time shift the pre-recorded data into of delayed movments into a simulation where you could experience it in real time (i.e. post-real time)
This is what raid, mirroring and script backups are for. If you can't write a batch file to copy shit to a USB/Firewire drive, or simply have another cheap blank 2TB disk in the same PC to copy to, you are failing at backup.
Hard drives are so cheap now that you should merely have massive redundancy, also flash USB sticks are good for one time files like documents and smaller stuff you want to keep.
"But that makes good recommendations more important, not less"
I disagree, I think most recommendation systems today are "good enough". Think about the time things are released today, most people today go for new stuff and merely want to keep track of recently released stuff, so it's not so much knowing exactly rather then getting X into the awareness of others and there are lots of avenues besides recommendation engines for this.
I mean lots of interesting things are often times recommended even NOW with current algorithms, I have shit tonne of books I've book marked through recommendations or looking at other peoples public lists, even though I know I can't get to them all.
I still think browsing other peoples lists (aka like delicious or Stumble upon) are also great options.
The real issue is people's finite attention, I notice even with recommendation systems on amazon.com there is no way I could ever read everything they recommended to me and still have a life. It may be neat for movies but even then I'm sure there will be a list of recommended stuff that you simply can't get aroudn to.
I really think someone should add up all the hours required to experience every movie/game released in a year and compare it to the the average persons free time, a lot of stuff is over-produced and it would be good if someone was out there modelling how many products you could possibly want to experience over a yearly period.
The real issue is that the price mechanism can't deal with the complexity of the real world, it's too easy to externalzie and hide other important real world data and costs that price mechanisms of market theoreticians can never take into account.
Efficient markets could work if everybody was god, but people are not 1) equally skilled 2) have equal time to analze information 3) do not have unbiased access to opportunities 4) Human psychology tends to treat those with much money as special or royalty, when most rich people have simply taken advantage of large numbers - they are not necessarily rich because they are better then competing products or better then everyone else for instance, rather lots of complex factors go into "financial success" often times it involves criminal behaviour (i.e. bail out of the banks, the stock market ponzi game, etc)
"Er, but what are we going to do with all the people who just don't "have" the brains? They get a free ride?"
If AI and robots become more cost effective then most of the population then Yes. Eventually capitalism will modify itself or be erased, you can't argue with significant (i.e. over half the nation) unemployment and as a capitalist trying to justify mass murder for one's wealth would get one killed awful fast.