I very much agree on your points on "open-ended gameplay". It is IMO a highly hyped term for something that works very well for some types of games, but kills others.
Open-ended-ness makes strong storytelling hard - mind you that I don't consider any of my favorite games SS1, SS2 or DX1 open-ended.
I see DX:IW much as a failed attempt to implement this idea with a storyline. For me, the "open" structure of the story made it seem weak - I didn't really relate to any of the characters and what they stood for. Having to choose between "two evils" just seems too much like real life. Having to fight evil agains great odds is interesting - being hero for a day is something rather out of the ordinary.
Many people criticized DX1 for forcing you to shift sides - I think it helped the storyline more than most people realized. The change itself was a great story-twist, but the opposite would have made the rest of the game rather boring. If you were never forced to change sides you wouldn't have the clear definition of friends and foes.
It is however remarkable how much Doom3 looks like SS2 - story aside of course.
The creepy mood, logs, emails, sci-fi setting just constantly reminded me of SS2 - but it also made me wonder if a SS2-like game would be interesting today. I have a hard time defining what made Doom3 a rather bland experience. The story is of course not as wellcrafted as SS2, and not a tenth as good as SS1.
SS1 was really groundbreaking for me. It was the first game that incorporated an intense story with a high degree of freedom, and sense for detail, that I've only seen in Deus Ex 1 since. It's very hard to put the finger on what these games did so well - and in both instances the followups have been much less interesting to me than the original - though SS2 to a much lesser degree.
I hope they will focus more on the story than "open-ended design". This is what made DX:IW horrible to me - not having a straight storyline. The story should IMO not be open-ended, since it makes the story loose focus, and it makes it impossible to make the player immerse in the story. We need good and evil. We need to have our options restricted. Otherwise the game cannot tell a strong story. DX:IW proves just that IMO.
Terry Brosius' phenomenal charactarization of SHODAN.
Agree! It should still be possible - at least she is still in the gaming industry. I saw her in the credits for "Thief: Deadly Shadows".
Also found her wrap-sheet.
My personal opinion was that the evil SHODAN was used for far too little in SS2. I would rather have had the roles of SHODAN and the many reversed, so you were fighting SHODAN most of the time and not the other way around.
And he almost decided to kill it off. According to Carmack, the "godawful interface" for OpenGL pBuffers/Render to Texture, made him be "the closest ever to switching over to D3D".
If you are interested in listening to an hour of video-graphics supergeeky stuff, download the one hour video of his keynote from Quakecon 2004. It contains an hour of tech-talk from John C. about the doom3 engine, and what he's working on now.
Does that mean that any game made with the Doom 3 engine will be OpenGL?
Yes. Most probably they will.
As a historical note, Halflife added D3D support at some stage, even though it was based on Quake1/2, which was also OpenGL (and Glide & Software) based. That being said, it was probably a lot easier to add at the time than with current engines, which implement a lot more features.
A bit OT, but there is IMO a quite interesting quote from the article:
OS/2 2.0 didn't take over the world - unfortunately. But it certainly showed what a 386-based PC could do with an operating system not designed for a machine two or three generations older.
If you mean Soundstorm....they got rid of it for the Nforce3. They'll bring it back for the Nforce4.
Which (unfortunately) is still an uncorfirmed rumor.
There seem to be conflicting messages. The Inquirer has had two articles ([1], [2]) where they claim there will be a "SoundStorm 2" / SP-10 onboard.
However it has not been corfirmed by nVidia. In fact a "guy" from nVidia has said:"There may be some truth in there, but none of it has anything to do with audio. Makes me wonder how old this guy's data is.". [source].
I'm not trying to dimish the problem. ANY assult is a problem. However statistics and definisions make the issue hard to understand. I take your example - and even though it doesn't have much to do with the news-item I think it nicely shows the problems in doing statistics.
What you said:
Is that why: "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of sixteen"
The reference you quote, lists the definition of abuse, as:
sexual touching and fondling
exposing children to adult sexual activity, including pornographic movies and photographs
having children pose, undress or perform in a sexual fashion on film or in person
"peeping" into bathrooms or bedrooms to spy on a child
rape or attempted rape
...and continues: (My highlights) "Of course, this list goes on. Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, threatening, or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse occurs when an older or more knowledgeable child or an adult uses a child for sexual pleasure.
The problems with statistics like this is definition of the sexual abuse. There is a huge difference in the listed items (rape vs. "peeping into bedrooms") - especially to the child. I personally don't consider peeping into the bedroom of my child a sexual offence, but rather that I care about my child.
In the "offender"-part, there is also a big difference if it is an adult, or an equally aged child that does it. Childen below 15 ARE interested in sexual affairs, and often explore these things with their friends - primarily verbally or through imagery. Stating that this is sexual abuse is IMO problematic.
So getting an overview over the amount of offences isn't easy, as it is very hard to get good information about it. I think the information provided in the article, as well as your reference is bad statistics, because the definitions are way too broad to be of any use.
Statistics like this are basicly useless. Any major telecompany could throw up a filter, and blow out their numbers to promote themselves as the big saint in defeating child pornography.
Putting up filters are just a smokescreen. If people want child pornography they WILL be able to find it - through closed communities, IRC, doing tunneling, p2p, etc.
I don't believe for a second that even half of the blocked accesses were illegal material. Even though media is blowing the child pornography thing up , there is (thank god) a very small minority of people actually into this stuff. So my guess is that BT is probably just annoying a big amount of legitimate customers.
...Boobs!
- They seem to be rather obvious to show off high polycount and advanced shading techniques. Furthermore they are also a good place to show off your great dynamic-body-physics-engine(TM).
... insert more good reasons to show boobs in tech demos here...
World of Warcraft, has just reached the live Beta stage, for those select players lucky enough to be picked.
My luck must be running out. I just remember the days, when I was lucky enough to be picked to spot bugs in Beta software.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to copy the link to a new window!
(non-IE users: Beware - the site doesn't have the correct MIME-type set, so you might a bunch of binary garbage displayed as ascii)
I very much agree on your points on "open-ended gameplay". It is IMO a highly hyped term for something that works very well for some types of games, but kills others.
Open-ended-ness makes strong storytelling hard - mind you that I don't consider any of my favorite games SS1, SS2 or DX1 open-ended.
I see DX:IW much as a failed attempt to implement this idea with a storyline. For me, the "open" structure of the story made it seem weak - I didn't really relate to any of the characters and what they stood for. Having to choose between "two evils" just seems too much like real life. Having to fight evil agains great odds is interesting - being hero for a day is something rather out of the ordinary.
Many people criticized DX1 for forcing you to shift sides - I think it helped the storyline more than most people realized. The change itself was a great story-twist, but the opposite would have made the rest of the game rather boring. If you were never forced to change sides you wouldn't have the clear definition of friends and foes.
It is however remarkable how much Doom3 looks like SS2 - story aside of course.
The creepy mood, logs, emails, sci-fi setting just constantly reminded me of SS2 - but it also made me wonder if a SS2-like game would be interesting today.
I have a hard time defining what made Doom3 a rather bland experience. The story is of course not as wellcrafted as SS2, and not a tenth as good as SS1.
SS1 was really groundbreaking for me. It was the first game that incorporated an intense story with a high degree of freedom, and sense for detail, that I've only seen in Deus Ex 1 since. It's very hard to put the finger on what these games did so well - and in both instances the followups have been much less interesting to me than the original - though SS2 to a much lesser degree.
I hope they will focus more on the story than "open-ended design". This is what made DX:IW horrible to me - not having a straight storyline. The story should IMO not be open-ended, since it makes the story loose focus, and it makes it impossible to make the player immerse in the story. We need good and evil. We need to have our options restricted. Otherwise the game cannot tell a strong story. DX:IW proves just that IMO.
Also found her wrap-sheet.
My personal opinion was that the evil SHODAN was used for far too little in SS2. I would rather have had the roles of SHODAN and the many reversed, so you were fighting SHODAN most of the time and not the other way around.
Wow! That'll be the first time I've seen the price being listed as a pros on Macs!
But unfortunately a Mac is no choice for me, as I'll need a PC for playing Duke Nuke'm Forever, soon!
And he almost decided to kill it off. According to Carmack, the "godawful interface" for OpenGL pBuffers/Render to Texture, made him be "the closest ever to switching over to D3D".
If you are interested in listening to an hour of video-graphics supergeeky stuff, download the one hour video of his keynote from Quakecon 2004.
It contains an hour of tech-talk from John C. about the doom3 engine, and what he's working on now.
As a historical note, Halflife added D3D support at some stage, even though it was based on Quake1/2, which was also OpenGL (and Glide & Software) based.
That being said, it was probably a lot easier to add at the time than with current engines, which implement a lot more features.
A bit OT, but there is IMO a quite interesting quote from the article:
could parent be modded "Funny".
If you mean Soundstorm....they got rid of it for the Nforce3. They'll bring it back for the Nforce4.
Which (unfortunately) is still an uncorfirmed rumor.
There seem to be conflicting messages. The Inquirer has had two articles ([1], [2]) where they claim there will be a "SoundStorm 2" / SP-10 onboard.
However it has not been corfirmed by nVidia. In fact a "guy" from nVidia has said:"There may be some truth in there, but none of it has anything to do with audio. Makes me wonder how old this guy's data is.". [source].
Worse you could get a twisted person like me the makes you randomly masturbate for three days.
Hey! Stay out of my brain!
Last time someone did that it took several days to clean up - and I spend a fortune on toilet paper!
What you said: Is that why: "one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of sixteen"
The reference you quote, lists the definition of abuse, as:
...and continues: (My highlights) "Of course, this list goes on. Sexual abuse involves forcing, tricking, threatening, or pressuring a child into sexual awareness or activity. Sexual abuse occurs when an older or more knowledgeable child or an adult uses a child for sexual pleasure.
The problems with statistics like this is definition of the sexual abuse. There is a huge difference in the listed items (rape vs. "peeping into bedrooms") - especially to the child. I personally don't consider peeping into the bedroom of my child a sexual offence, but rather that I care about my child.
In the "offender"-part, there is also a big difference if it is an adult, or an equally aged child that does it. Childen below 15 ARE interested in sexual affairs, and often explore these things with their friends - primarily verbally or through imagery. Stating that this is sexual abuse is IMO problematic.
So getting an overview over the amount of offences isn't easy, as it is very hard to get good information about it. I think the information provided in the article, as well as your reference is bad statistics, because the definitions are way too broad to be of any use.
Statistics like this are basicly useless. Any major telecompany could throw up a filter, and blow out their numbers to promote themselves as the big saint in defeating child pornography.
Putting up filters are just a smokescreen. If people want child pornography they WILL be able to find it - through closed communities, IRC, doing tunneling, p2p, etc.
I don't believe for a second that even half of the blocked accesses were illegal material. Even though media is blowing the child pornography thing up , there is (thank god) a very small minority of people actually into this stuff. So my guess is that BT is probably just annoying a big amount of legitimate customers.
Damn 24x7x365 availability... they'll be trying to page me out even after I'm dead.
I'm tired of explaining people why '24x7x365' just DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!
...Boobs! - They seem to be rather obvious to show off high polycount and advanced shading techniques. Furthermore they are also a good place to show off your great dynamic-body-physics-engine(TM).
... insert more good reasons to show boobs in tech demos here...
Christopher who?
World of Warcraft, has just reached the live Beta stage, for those select players lucky enough to be picked. My luck must be running out. I just remember the days, when I was lucky enough to be picked to spot bugs in Beta software.