I've got nothing against convergence, if it doesn't cost me. Given a choice between a console with a DVD player and an equally powerful console without one at the same price, I'd obviously take the one with - unless games came into the equation at at all, but who'd be dumb enough to care about them?
On the other hand, if the one with a DVD player was even another fiver, I'd probably go for the one without. I already have a DVD player, and sure I have to swap it with the console, but you can get multi-way adapter things for that. Although thinking about it, I'd be able to trade in the DVD player for more than a fiver, so the one with would end up being cheaper. Sure it would be missing some features, but fooey. I can live without them.
Of course, what it actually included also makes a difference. I don't want an MP3 player, so the inclusion of one wouldn't affect which console I buy anyway.
Recently, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or possibly Tomb Raider 2. I also saw the first two Pokemon movies, but I enjoyed them at the time, so I dunno if they count. I don't usually watch movies if I think they're going to suck (TR2 was an exception, my friend invited me), which means that I haven't seen Van Helsing, but if I had, that would replace LEG. Charlies Angels is in a similar situation, but I doubt it sucks quite so much.
But I'm not a fan of the early Sonic games. Maybe you don't get the same experience from playing the Mega Collection disk on your 'Cube, but I played each for about ten minutes before getting bored. It's just so repetitive. Run to the right, don't get hurt. That doesn't apply to Sonic 3D, but I don't like that either. The same goes for the early Mario games as well. Super Mario World is often thought to be a simply amazing game, but after a few days with the ROM I got bored.
It's like that with any 'mindless' game. I don't know why I can't them for long. Maybe I just don't feel like I'm progressing. Maybe I just suck too much and am too lazy to keep playing until I improve. I dunno. There's no doubt they're good games - but they just aren't my style. Everybody else seems to love them, I hate 'em.
Eject the disk drive via command prompt (it can proably be done with DOS, but I don't know how)
ls instead of dir - my keyboard will last that much longer
Change file permissions (once when I was on a Windoze server I was writing a Perl script to update the main page. I couldn't write, so I contacted customer support. In the end, I had to backup everything, let them wipe it all from the server and re-upload just to let me write files via Perl)
Increases my geekiness quotient
If I don't like something, I'll be able to fix/bypass it somehow
It's insulting term is crappier - Linsux just sounds dumb, Windoze doesn't
Firefox on Linux has alt-enter in URL bar to open in a new tab
It's a case of territoriality. The got the story, they want it. They figure that since a lot of other sites with the story will link to theirs, if they stop that from happening, they'll have the story to themselves. Or at least they'll have the original, and presumably best/most reliable/trustworthy/informative/whatever. Therefore, people will stop reading the competition and come to them, the source of all power tee emm.
It's still dumb, but what else can we expect from the human psyche?
Melkor as Sauron Ungoliant as Shelob Huan as Shadowfax Beren and Luthien as Aragorn and Arwen Saruman, Gandalf, Elrond and various others as themselves Generic Balrog as the Balrog Feanor as Gollum with Finarfin as Smeagol, or Fingolfin as the two
It's still a console, and it's still going to be competing against Xbox 2 and PS3. In the same way that the DS, while a different sort of handheld, is still a handheld, and will compete against the PSP.
To quote the most commonly used line in the X-Men comics, "People fear and hate what they do not understand." Sending out novel hardware will not help Nintendo attain the mainstream crowd. Maybe, maybe not. There are people who will resist the change, certainly, but others, the ones who Nintendo is referring to when they say people are getting bored of just having better hardware specs, will buy it -because- of the change. It may alienate some gamers, but it may also invite others.
Most people understand better graphics, which is one reason why mainstream gamers like the Xbox. Most people understand cool-looking hardware, which is one reason I think PSP will be more successful than DS. Bah, DS looks so much cooler than PSP. See above. There will be some people who won't like it because it's less powerful (I have a friend who'll probably fall into that category - he also thinks that the Phantom will be good, and that the PS3 will make the Gamecube's graphics look like crap - and he's a bit of an opinion-Nazi, so I can't point out what he's failing to grasp), but others will buy it for other reasons. That's the crowd Nintendo is catering to, not those who think that Wind Waker sucks purely because of the graphics.
Most people need a book to understand the intricacies of connectivity, what GCN/GBA accessories they need to fully enjoy a Nintendo game, and what Revolution will have to offer (Yes, I'm projecting). I don't have an Xbox, and wouldn't have Live if I did, but I can't see it being less complicated than "The shiny part plugs in the hole at the top". And besides, it's hardly going to be any more complicated than the average game, and most people don't complain about reading manuals.
Nintendo will have a difficult time marketing a "different" console unless the concept around it is so brilliantly simple that it's universally appealing. Somehow, I doubt that's what it'll come up with. They've done it several times before, I have faith that they can do it again.
As different as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2 will be, they are essentially systems that are trying to do the same things. For next-gen systems, publishers will have to worry about releasing games for two consoles that are better, bigger, and faster, as well as one console (being released by a company whose last two consoles weren't breakaway hits) that's trying to be different. Guess which one will be dropped? So they won't get so many games that are on the PS2 and Xbox. What they will get is games that won't be on the PS2 or Xbox - it might well end up with more exclusives than the others. And we don't even know how different it's going to be, there's nothing to say that it's going to be completely different and impossible to port to.
While funky hardware will allow for some funky creations, it also limits them since the hardware will be too dissimilar from anything out there. It's the un-funky hardware that poses limitations on funky software. It may work vice versa as well, or it may not.
Console manufacturers always say that it's all about the content. If this is true then it's puzzling to see Nintendo making hardware that's so different from its competitors. Because it allows for better content. Quality over quantity. I think the true innovation will be in software. There hasn't been much of it going around lately, mostly all we're getting is constant rehashes of the same sorts of games. People just can't seem to think up anything new - it's certainly not impossible to have a two-screen single player game on the regular consoles (although the screens are too square, really), but until the DS was announced, nobody seemed to think about it.
And Nintendo seems determined to limit creators, rather t
There's nothing wrong with hours of gameplay. Keep it, but put down how long you'll keep playing for instead of how long it'll take you to complete - I think some people already do. With some games this is the same: Metroid Prime took me 20 hours to complete, then I stopped playing it for ages. James Bond: Everything or Nothing got boring long before I completed it though, and Soul Calibur II keeps me for two or three days at a stretch (and has accomplished this twice so far), then I move onto something else. Super Smash Bros. Melee on the other hand you can play for ages after you've finished, because it doesn't die. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is the same.
Replay value is the most important factor. A five hour game that you can play twenty times straight off without getting bored is better, IMO, than a 100 hour game. You get the same amount of playtime from each, but you're more likely to go back to the short one.
My school has some. We hardly ever (read: don't, unless we're cool) get to use them (I did because I was taking part in a national maths final thingie and needed to research cyclic quadrilaterals), but they're cool nonetheless. Only problem is, I couldn't work out how to access Firefox from them. And the keyboards were way too small, with mis-proportioned keys.
Yeah, it's hard, but I've managed to do it, if not for thirty seconds. I find that it helps to stop during an ellipse - think 3... 2.... 1...... and just let that pause hang there.
Re:This is a person who knows how to have a good t
on
Black Hat
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· Score: 1, Insightful
On the other hand it'd be pretty comfortable for using a software like Maya or 3dsmax Two words: scroll wheel. It doesn't give quite so much accuracy as a 3d mouse, but its basic use is the same - it adds another dimension in which we can move, and it has the added advantage of being able to own one without violating the warranty on their regular mouse.
Re:uh,, Black and White anyone?
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Game with God
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· Score: 2, Informative
So, if you percieve lies as an insult to your intelligence and morality, you presumably think that only stupid, immoral people believe said lies, and are calling most of the world's population stupid and immoral. Bearing in mind that Archimedes believed in Zeus and suchlike (I think), Sir Isaac Newton was Christian, Gandhi was Hindu and Hitler was (again, not to sure about this) Atheist, I find myself drawing no conclusion other than that you are arrogant and immoral.
That's already happened to me, and I was that kid - or one of them. One of the other ones just came up to me in the library one day and told me they ('they' being the school) had installed Frefox. After downloading Web Developer for it, we were kicked out and started singing 'We've got Firefox' for the next ten minutes.
Anywhoo, even though I've told most of my class about the advantages of it (including the way some things that were disabled in IE haven't been in Firefox, like viewing local directories and downloading things), most of them still use IE. I have very little idea why, but it might be because of things like Java not being installed for it and the lack of a copy image function, for which we have to highlight said image. I know there's extensions to rectify both of them, but I can't install into the application directory, so everybody who wants them has to do their own install onto their own userspace which has only 50 megs storage. So far I've converted maybe three people. Other people have probably had more luck, but I doubt that more than 50 people use it.
I'm hoping that the installation of Firefox indicates that the school wants people to start using it, and are going to do something to increase public awareness, but I doubt it, mainly because they haven't got it installed on all the computers - and on some I think it was uninstalled, although I'm not sure why.
It's very hard to incorporate a story into a randomly generated world. Some games are built on story, such as most of the FFs. Others - FFCC, for instance - aren't, and wouldn't suffer much, if at all, from randomisation, but many people like games to have a good story, and would be alienated if all games were made wholly random.
So you'd need a generator that can handle certain conditions. For instance, a typical Zelda game, if it were to have randomised dungeons, would need to have the dungeon item, map, compass, boss key and boss room. You'd need to be able to get the item without items you don't yet have, but with the item you obtained last dungeon. The boss key would be inaccessible without the dungeon item. No room would be wholly inaccesible or pointless. There should be a shortcut to the boss from the dungeon entrance. A certain number of heart pieces or suchlike would be in the dungeon. The difficulty should remain basically the same.
There's another problem: memory. You can't randomly generate a dungeon every time you enter, it would break the continuity. So you'd need to store the dungeon on the memory card, and depending on the complexity that could be big.
And of course, don't randomise everything. Keep the world map the same and only randomise dungeons. Dungeons are the challenge, and should remain challenging every time. The world map is there simply to give you access to the dungeons.
That works for RPGs/Action-Adventures. FPS's would be a whole different matter. When do you randomise, and what? You could randomise the whole game when it starts and keep it like that all the way through, or every time you start a level make it different. You could keep the map the same and just change the location/quantity/quality of boxes, powerups and/or enemies. Which would be better depends on what makes the game fun. Metroid Prime, for instance, would really suffer if the world was different every time you starrted a new game, because the world is the game. Changing which enemies you fight each time you enter a room, however, would (IMO) make it more fun - to a certain extent. Obviously no war wasps in the Phendrana Drifts or anything along those lines. Jedi Outcast, on the other hand, is made what is is by your Jedi Powers and lightsaber duels, and randomising each level wouldn't be too bad.
When you address a letter, the name you put on it (I'd assume; never tested but it seems the intuitive way for it to work) makes no difference at all to where it goes. It's there merely for the convenience of the people living in the house. You could just write the house number, street name, city and zip/postal code and it would arrive - possibly less, I have very little knowledge of the way these things work. In that way, the name you put on it works like the subject of an email - it's there simply so that anybody looking through can tell who it's for without reading it. Some people share accounts, in which case you put the name in the subject line, and if you mis-spell it they should be able to work out who it's for.
If you mis-spell a street name in an address, it might still arrive or it might not, depending on whether the intended address was clear enough. However, that's done by humans, who are (for the most part) infinitely smarter than computers - and if you get the number wrong, it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting to the right place, because both of them, in all probability, will exist. If the postman knows where Ms. Eileen Dover lives, he might figure out that it was meant for her and not her neigbour, but again, that's human reasoning.
Sorry if these have been suggested before, I'm hardly going to read through almost 500 posts to check.
1. Check Javascript onloads so that they run when enough of the page is loaded. For instance, the URIid extension runs onload, which means that site-specific styles are applied only when the page is fully loaded, causing lag if you have a big page with lots of images. Since the only thing it modifies is the attributes of the body tag, get it to run as soon as the body tag has been opened, but before any of its content gets loaded. As a second-best, loading the entirety of the relevant tag would be cool as well, if a bit useless in this case. Also, I'm not sure if this already happens, but firing onload before downloading images would speed things up.
2. If you frequently visit certain sites in a particular order when you start the browser (like me; I visit various forums, then I read Dilbert and Agnes, then check my livejournal, then come to/., then another forum and then GameFAQs) make a button that starts you on your quest, and then when you click it again you go to the next page. Alternatively, just allow that functionality to be created manually. Being able to recognise where to go next would be very useful - when I'm on a forum I'll usually want to go to the next one from the last topic that I read, so being able to recognise that I'm at the same place even though it's a different page name would be a godsend.
the Xbox is now positioned as the hardcore gamers console of choice As theseGameFAQspolls prove beyond All Reasonable Doubt(tm).
So not only is their logic flawed in that pre-release scepticism makes a console good (look at the N-Gage), and not only would they be in trouble even were their logic flawless (much skepticism = 'console of choice'; comparitively no skepticism = comparitively no sales), they're also basing this logic on seemingly incorrect data.
I'm in the middle. I don't play simple games for long because they get repetitive, but I don't like the big open-ended ones where you can do whatever the hel you want because I don't get a sense of quest. Sure, I'm improving my skills, but I like the story progressing and me being in the middle of it. Even games with relatively little actual story, like Metroid Prime, since new paths open and it's clear where I have to go next, it feels like the story is pregressing, even if it's not there. Just training up a character for ages isn't particularly fun to me, but nor are twitchy games where one mistake means I have to start over again. I like a sense of pregression more than anthing else in a game.
You wake during P-M times in the spectrum of doom AKA UV. Could be better, but I don't care. It executes fine, unless you happen to be using an English parser.
The dpad is too small This is true; but the d-pad isn't used much.
lip at the top of the shoulder buttons prevent holding both the shoulder and Z at the same time Holding R1 and R2 on the PS2 is just as uncomfortable. The difference (for me, at any rate) is that on the PS2 the buttons are lower down or something, I think, so that you default to R/L 1 instead of 2, making 2 much hardr to hit than Z is.
there shouldve been a Z equivalent on the left side Any particular reason? Many third-party controllers use that space for other things.
if you havent gotten used to the 4 circular buttons by now go back to the nes Why, when I can use the Gamecube controller instead?
the c stick is just bad Good, good... reasoning? It's not intended to be used like the control stick, you're supposed to tap it, not hold it.
my small fingers get pinched in the middle a lot Umm? Middle of what, exactly?
the start button is too far from either side for small hands Probably, but it's no worse than on the Xbox, which -really- isn't good for small hands, or PS2, where you need to glance down to find it.
only things they got right were the one analog stick (not the c stick), and the b button And the way it melds to the shape of the hands, and the A button, and the X and Y buttons, and the way the L and R buttons are semi-analogue...:)
Nintendo has very few games with long loading times - or at any rate good tricks to hide said loading times. Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, SSBM, Mario Sunshine, the list goes on. Prime loaded each room separately, and the loading was covered up in the opening - this can be seen when you shoot a door to a large room and it takes a few seconds to open. Wind Waker just gives you a black screen for half a second, it's barely noticeable if you aren't looking out for it. Melee simply didn't take long, and SMS didn't have any that I noticed, although I presume they load the levels seoarately as you enter them.
Of course, there's also the disk size, although (CMIIW) I wouldn't expect that makes much difference.
Slashdot Mirror
I've got nothing against convergence, if it doesn't cost me. Given a choice between a console with a DVD player and an equally powerful console without one at the same price, I'd obviously take the one with - unless games came into the equation at at all, but who'd be dumb enough to care about them?
On the other hand, if the one with a DVD player was even another fiver, I'd probably go for the one without. I already have a DVD player, and sure I have to swap it with the console, but you can get multi-way adapter things for that. Although thinking about it, I'd be able to trade in the DVD player for more than a fiver, so the one with would end up being cheaper. Sure it would be missing some features, but fooey. I can live without them.
Of course, what it actually included also makes a difference. I don't want an MP3 player, so the inclusion of one wouldn't affect which console I buy anyway.
Recently, the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Or possibly Tomb Raider 2. I also saw the first two Pokemon movies, but I enjoyed them at the time, so I dunno if they count. I don't usually watch movies if I think they're going to suck (TR2 was an exception, my friend invited me), which means that I haven't seen Van Helsing, but if I had, that would replace LEG. Charlies Angels is in a similar situation, but I doubt it sucks quite so much.
But I'm not a fan of the early Sonic games. Maybe you don't get the same experience from playing the Mega Collection disk on your 'Cube, but I played each for about ten minutes before getting bored. It's just so repetitive. Run to the right, don't get hurt. That doesn't apply to Sonic 3D, but I don't like that either. The same goes for the early Mario games as well. Super Mario World is often thought to be a simply amazing game, but after a few days with the ROM I got bored.
It's like that with any 'mindless' game. I don't know why I can't them for long. Maybe I just don't feel like I'm progressing. Maybe I just suck too much and am too lazy to keep playing until I improve. I dunno. There's no doubt they're good games - but they just aren't my style. Everybody else seems to love them, I hate 'em.
(My ancestors' occupations would have been my first clue, personally)
How does doing it through a hole in the wall prevent conception?
I think I might vaguely understand.
It's a case of territoriality. The got the story, they want it. They figure that since a lot of other sites with the story will link to theirs, if they stop that from happening, they'll have the story to themselves. Or at least they'll have the original, and presumably best/most reliable/trustworthy/informative/whatever. Therefore, people will stop reading the competition and come to them, the source of all power tee emm.
It's still dumb, but what else can we expect from the human psyche?
#include <standard-disclaimer.h>
Those rapists being themselves.
Melkor as Sauron
Ungoliant as Shelob
Huan as Shadowfax
Beren and Luthien as Aragorn and Arwen
Saruman, Gandalf, Elrond and various others as themselves
Generic Balrog as the Balrog
Feanor as Gollum with Finarfin as Smeagol, or Fingolfin as the two
I'm running out of Silmarillion characters here.
It's still a console, and it's still going to be competing against Xbox 2 and PS3. In the same way that the DS, while a different sort of handheld, is still a handheld, and will compete against the PSP.
To quote the most commonly used line in the X-Men comics, "People fear and hate what they do not understand." Sending out novel hardware will not help Nintendo attain the mainstream crowd.
Maybe, maybe not. There are people who will resist the change, certainly, but others, the ones who Nintendo is referring to when they say people are getting bored of just having better hardware specs, will buy it -because- of the change. It may alienate some gamers, but it may also invite others.
Most people understand better graphics, which is one reason why mainstream gamers like the Xbox. Most people understand cool-looking hardware, which is one reason I think PSP will be more successful than DS.
Bah, DS looks so much cooler than PSP.
See above. There will be some people who won't like it because it's less powerful (I have a friend who'll probably fall into that category - he also thinks that the Phantom will be good, and that the PS3 will make the Gamecube's graphics look like crap - and he's a bit of an opinion-Nazi, so I can't point out what he's failing to grasp), but others will buy it for other reasons. That's the crowd Nintendo is catering to, not those who think that Wind Waker sucks purely because of the graphics.
Most people need a book to understand the intricacies of connectivity, what GCN/GBA accessories they need to fully enjoy a Nintendo game, and what Revolution will have to offer (Yes, I'm projecting).
I don't have an Xbox, and wouldn't have Live if I did, but I can't see it being less complicated than "The shiny part plugs in the hole at the top". And besides, it's hardly going to be any more complicated than the average game, and most people don't complain about reading manuals.
Nintendo will have a difficult time marketing a "different" console unless the concept around it is so brilliantly simple that it's universally appealing. Somehow, I doubt that's what it'll come up with.
They've done it several times before, I have faith that they can do it again.
As different as PlayStation 3 and Xbox 2 will be, they are essentially systems that are trying to do the same things. For next-gen systems, publishers will have to worry about releasing games for two consoles that are better, bigger, and faster, as well as one console (being released by a company whose last two consoles weren't breakaway hits) that's trying to be different. Guess which one will be dropped?
So they won't get so many games that are on the PS2 and Xbox. What they will get is games that won't be on the PS2 or Xbox - it might well end up with more exclusives than the others. And we don't even know how different it's going to be, there's nothing to say that it's going to be completely different and impossible to port to.
While funky hardware will allow for some funky creations, it also limits them since the hardware will be too dissimilar from anything out there.
It's the un-funky hardware that poses limitations on funky software. It may work vice versa as well, or it may not.
Console manufacturers always say that it's all about the content. If this is true then it's puzzling to see Nintendo making hardware that's so different from its competitors.
Because it allows for better content. Quality over quantity.
I think the true innovation will be in software.
There hasn't been much of it going around lately, mostly all we're getting is constant rehashes of the same sorts of games. People just can't seem to think up anything new - it's certainly not impossible to have a two-screen single player game on the regular consoles (although the screens are too square, really), but until the DS was announced, nobody seemed to think about it.
And Nintendo seems determined to limit creators, rather t
There's nothing wrong with hours of gameplay. Keep it, but put down how long you'll keep playing for instead of how long it'll take you to complete - I think some people already do. With some games this is the same: Metroid Prime took me 20 hours to complete, then I stopped playing it for ages. James Bond: Everything or Nothing got boring long before I completed it though, and Soul Calibur II keeps me for two or three days at a stretch (and has accomplished this twice so far), then I move onto something else. Super Smash Bros. Melee on the other hand you can play for ages after you've finished, because it doesn't die. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is the same.
Replay value is the most important factor. A five hour game that you can play twenty times straight off without getting bored is better, IMO, than a 100 hour game. You get the same amount of playtime from each, but you're more likely to go back to the short one.
My school has some. We hardly ever (read: don't, unless we're cool) get to use them (I did because I was taking part in a national maths final thingie and needed to research cyclic quadrilaterals), but they're cool nonetheless. Only problem is, I couldn't work out how to access Firefox from them. And the keyboards were way too small, with mis-proportioned keys.
Yeah, it's hard, but I've managed to do it, if not for thirty seconds. I find that it helps to stop during an ellipse - think 3... 2.... 1...... and just let that pause hang there.
(I think that's what this book is about)
On the other hand it'd be pretty comfortable for using a software like Maya or 3dsmax
Two words: scroll wheel. It doesn't give quite so much accuracy as a 3d mouse, but its basic use is the same - it adds another dimension in which we can move, and it has the added advantage of being able to own one without violating the warranty on their regular mouse.
So, if you percieve lies as an insult to your intelligence and morality, you presumably think that only stupid, immoral people believe said lies, and are calling most of the world's population stupid and immoral. Bearing in mind that Archimedes believed in Zeus and suchlike (I think), Sir Isaac Newton was Christian, Gandhi was Hindu and Hitler was (again, not to sure about this) Atheist, I find myself drawing no conclusion other than that you are arrogant and immoral.
That's already happened to me, and I was that kid - or one of them. One of the other ones just came up to me in the library one day and told me they ('they' being the school) had installed Frefox. After downloading Web Developer for it, we were kicked out and started singing 'We've got Firefox' for the next ten minutes.
Anywhoo, even though I've told most of my class about the advantages of it (including the way some things that were disabled in IE haven't been in Firefox, like viewing local directories and downloading things), most of them still use IE. I have very little idea why, but it might be because of things like Java not being installed for it and the lack of a copy image function, for which we have to highlight said image. I know there's extensions to rectify both of them, but I can't install into the application directory, so everybody who wants them has to do their own install onto their own userspace which has only 50 megs storage. So far I've converted maybe three people. Other people have probably had more luck, but I doubt that more than 50 people use it.
I'm hoping that the installation of Firefox indicates that the school wants people to start using it, and are going to do something to increase public awareness, but I doubt it, mainly because they haven't got it installed on all the computers - and on some I think it was uninstalled, although I'm not sure why.
It's very hard to incorporate a story into a randomly generated world. Some games are built on story, such as most of the FFs. Others - FFCC, for instance - aren't, and wouldn't suffer much, if at all, from randomisation, but many people like games to have a good story, and would be alienated if all games were made wholly random.
So you'd need a generator that can handle certain conditions. For instance, a typical Zelda game, if it were to have randomised dungeons, would need to have the dungeon item, map, compass, boss key and boss room. You'd need to be able to get the item without items you don't yet have, but with the item you obtained last dungeon. The boss key would be inaccessible without the dungeon item. No room would be wholly inaccesible or pointless. There should be a shortcut to the boss from the dungeon entrance. A certain number of heart pieces or suchlike would be in the dungeon. The difficulty should remain basically the same.
There's another problem: memory. You can't randomly generate a dungeon every time you enter, it would break the continuity. So you'd need to store the dungeon on the memory card, and depending on the complexity that could be big.
And of course, don't randomise everything. Keep the world map the same and only randomise dungeons. Dungeons are the challenge, and should remain challenging every time. The world map is there simply to give you access to the dungeons.
That works for RPGs/Action-Adventures. FPS's would be a whole different matter. When do you randomise, and what? You could randomise the whole game when it starts and keep it like that all the way through, or every time you start a level make it different. You could keep the map the same and just change the location/quantity/quality of boxes, powerups and/or enemies. Which would be better depends on what makes the game fun. Metroid Prime, for instance, would really suffer if the world was different every time you starrted a new game, because the world is the game. Changing which enemies you fight each time you enter a room, however, would (IMO) make it more fun - to a certain extent. Obviously no war wasps in the Phendrana Drifts or anything along those lines. Jedi Outcast, on the other hand, is made what is is by your Jedi Powers and lightsaber duels, and randomising each level wouldn't be too bad.
When you address a letter, the name you put on it (I'd assume; never tested but it seems the intuitive way for it to work) makes no difference at all to where it goes. It's there merely for the convenience of the people living in the house. You could just write the house number, street name, city and zip/postal code and it would arrive - possibly less, I have very little knowledge of the way these things work. In that way, the name you put on it works like the subject of an email - it's there simply so that anybody looking through can tell who it's for without reading it. Some people share accounts, in which case you put the name in the subject line, and if you mis-spell it they should be able to work out who it's for.
If you mis-spell a street name in an address, it might still arrive or it might not, depending on whether the intended address was clear enough. However, that's done by humans, who are (for the most part) infinitely smarter than computers - and if you get the number wrong, it doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting to the right place, because both of them, in all probability, will exist. If the postman knows where Ms. Eileen Dover lives, he might figure out that it was meant for her and not her neigbour, but again, that's human reasoning.
Sorry if these have been suggested before, I'm hardly going to read through almost 500 posts to check.
/., then another forum and then GameFAQs) make a button that starts you on your quest, and then when you click it again you go to the next page. Alternatively, just allow that functionality to be created manually. Being able to recognise where to go next would be very useful - when I'm on a forum I'll usually want to go to the next one from the last topic that I read, so being able to recognise that I'm at the same place even though it's a different page name would be a godsend.
1. Check Javascript onloads so that they run when enough of the page is loaded. For instance, the URIid extension runs onload, which means that site-specific styles are applied only when the page is fully loaded, causing lag if you have a big page with lots of images. Since the only thing it modifies is the attributes of the body tag, get it to run as soon as the body tag has been opened, but before any of its content gets loaded. As a second-best, loading the entirety of the relevant tag would be cool as well, if a bit useless in this case. Also, I'm not sure if this already happens, but firing onload before downloading images would speed things up.
2. If you frequently visit certain sites in a particular order when you start the browser (like me; I visit various forums, then I read Dilbert and Agnes, then check my livejournal, then come to
the Xbox is now positioned as the hardcore gamers console of choice
As these GameFAQs polls prove beyond All Reasonable Doubt(tm).
So not only is their logic flawed in that pre-release scepticism makes a console good (look at the N-Gage), and not only would they be in trouble even were their logic flawless (much skepticism = 'console of choice'; comparitively no skepticism = comparitively no sales), they're also basing this logic on seemingly incorrect data.
They made some good choices in the PR department.
I'm in the middle. I don't play simple games for long because they get repetitive, but I don't like the big open-ended ones where you can do whatever the hel you want because I don't get a sense of quest. Sure, I'm improving my skills, but I like the story progressing and me being in the middle of it. Even games with relatively little actual story, like Metroid Prime, since new paths open and it's clear where I have to go next, it feels like the story is pregressing, even if it's not there. Just training up a character for ages isn't particularly fun to me, but nor are twitchy games where one mistake means I have to start over again. I like a sense of pregression more than anthing else in a game.
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You wake during P-M times in the spectrum of doom AKA UV. Could be better, but I don't care. It executes fine, unless you happen to be using an English parser.
The dpad is too small
:)
This is true; but the d-pad isn't used much.
lip at the top of the shoulder buttons prevent holding both the shoulder and Z at the same time
Holding R1 and R2 on the PS2 is just as uncomfortable. The difference (for me, at any rate) is that on the PS2 the buttons are lower down or something, I think, so that you default to R/L 1 instead of 2, making 2 much hardr to hit than Z is.
there shouldve been a Z equivalent on the left side
Any particular reason? Many third-party controllers use that space for other things.
if you havent gotten used to the 4 circular buttons by now go back to the nes
Why, when I can use the Gamecube controller instead?
the c stick is just bad
Good, good... reasoning? It's not intended to be used like the control stick, you're supposed to tap it, not hold it.
my small fingers get pinched in the middle a lot
Umm? Middle of what, exactly?
the start button is too far from either side for small hands
Probably, but it's no worse than on the Xbox, which -really- isn't good for small hands, or PS2, where you need to glance down to find it.
only things they got right were the one analog stick (not the c stick), and the b button
And the way it melds to the shape of the hands, and the A button, and the X and Y buttons, and the way the L and R buttons are semi-analogue...
Nintendo has very few games with long loading times - or at any rate good tricks to hide said loading times. Metroid Prime, Wind Waker, SSBM, Mario Sunshine, the list goes on. Prime loaded each room separately, and the loading was covered up in the opening - this can be seen when you shoot a door to a large room and it takes a few seconds to open. Wind Waker just gives you a black screen for half a second, it's barely noticeable if you aren't looking out for it. Melee simply didn't take long, and SMS didn't have any that I noticed, although I presume they load the levels seoarately as you enter them.
Of course, there's also the disk size, although (CMIIW) I wouldn't expect that makes much difference.