Combat in Asheron's Call 2 consisted of making 2 turrets, then going afk for the next hour. I got 2 max level characters in under a month then quit. Turbine spent no effort on an effective combat system for AC2 as if you fought with anything besides walls and turrets, you just got killed since armor didn't work. The only other effective hunting group besides turrets and walls was mass archers. Mass archers means everyone shoots at the monster, and the unfortunate guy to be attacked just constantly runs away. Picture marine micro in Starcraft where one zealot charges in, you move the one marine away while the rest fire.
Even though Asheron's Call 2 was a failure, I do like Turbine. I'm looking forward to D&D online.
"That's 20.2 percent of its total revenue, 24.1 percent more than it spent the year before on R&D"
At first I read that as EA spent negative 3.9 percent the year before on R&D.
Yah, I think Congress really tries to do its best for homeland security, and not knowing what is feasably possible, they try everything, and chalk wasted dollars up to "research", since they learned what is feasable and what is not.
I'm sure its very lucrative to get one of thse government jobs to install technology or research dynamite smelling bacteria. I'm curious how surveillance is going to work. At first thought it doesn't seem like it is somehow going to be able to detect and prevent terrorists? I bet it will cut down on the number of people who jump over the subway tool booths.
Its tricky making a story based MMOG work. First your story and missions have to be fun to create a player base. Secondly, you need to have a development team that can create stories and missions faster than the players can run them out.
Basically if you have 1 million subscribers or more, you have the chance to start running with the expensive development process. Its going to happen in one of these MMOGS one of these days... And the competition will have trouble ever catching up. This is a prediction I had since the beginning of MMOGS, but no MMOG has ever been so addicting to draw millions of subscribers in for a few decades... yet.
In Destruction Derby, a game for PS1 that was pretty popular, the best way to rack up points was to T-bone someone in the front or back of their car and the announcer screams,"Threeeeee six teeeee.". You normally didn't have much time to veer your car into the proper angle while you were going fill speed, so the decision was one of opprotunity. You see the stimuli, then you immediately react. Well I played the game for 6 or 8 hours straight and was driving home. Anyway someone was backing out of their driveway and the first thing that went through my head was,"If I tag him right on his bumper, he'll do a 360! Wait I'm driving for real."
1)Put GPS in some cars.
2)Track GPS on roads, and network all connections, so the computer can determine 'average road speed' by the last car to drive that road.
3)Have the computer determine bottle in the trip you are taking in case it has a faster route for you to go. If it has a faster route for you, it will tell you.
It would be very simple to actually get to work, as we have all the technology already: GPS and Mapping Software.
In Starcraft there were several legitamate starting moves.
Rush and lose economy.
Build Big economy and moderate tier 1 army before teching/expanding.
Build Big economy and tech with smallest possible defense.
Build Big economy and expand with smallest possible defense.
Build big economy and totally mass tier 1 army.
In Starcraft, any of these moves were legitamate and had their plusses and negatives.
In BroodWar, tier 2 units dominated tier 1 units... So even if someone massed tier 1 units, and created a defensive perimeter around your base, you could break it with tier 2 units. Basically BroodWar eliminated the whole early game. Where there were many more options and depth, there was nothing. Just like in some games, everyone plays the super powerful character because it does everything the gimpy character does, only better... It was just generally useless to create tier 1 units except for rush defense.
It really bummed me out because I was about the only person on Battlenet that did the SCV+ marine rush:)
I still played BroodWar, but it seemed like a waste. When the opening game was something of variety in Starcraft, in BroodWar it was just more time to wait... Like the game starts at mid game instead of the beginning of the game... Most of the newbs and intermediates like BroodWar because they didn't understand the start game to begin with, and they like to use the later game units.
But if Blizzard really wanted to solve early rushes, they could have put in NOOB DEFENDERS that could be built at your COmmand Center instead of SCV. So you sacrifice economy, but build a powerful defender. It'd totally give noobs a fighting chance. No expert would ever want to sacrifice some economy for some early game defence. It'd have to have a long build time and cost 2x the SCV.
End game all depended on the map and the races involved. If you want to know the most sure fire lock of an end game, its Protoss on islands. You merely expand like plague across the map, dropping 2-3 high templar and a few photon cannons. Armies big enough to take out the photon cannons die to templar, armies not big enough to take out photon cannons die to photon cannons.
Most wins involve securing as much resources while pinning your enemy out of mobility so they can't get to other resource points or attack yours. Because of this, the most powerful powerup in the game is Zerg Overlisk Movement/Carry. With your whole army in a drop ship, you can send assaults on your enemy's main so they can never move their units too far away. Few people knew how to abuse this one because so many people liked muta/ling.
You're right to say that some units were good if not much was going on, but less useful when more units where around. I never used mass queens because it took so long to get up to the point of broodling. Queens
I was world caliber for 99, but I couldn't do much when map hacks came into play. If they'd redo Starcraft, with proper match making + no hacks, I bet it'd fly again. Its still flying in Korea where they can play in person and make sure people don't hack.
Re:Speaking as a Starcraft expert
on
Games As The New Pub
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Respect in Starcraft is playing a solid game, instead of pulling gambits. A gambit can be something such as sacrficing economy in order to rush early, or fast expanding in hopes your opponent can't stop it. When you sacrifice economy to rush, you're hoping that your opponent isn't paying attention and doesn't has enough defense to stop it. When you fast expand, then you're hoping your opponent doesn't spot you, and if he does, that he doesn't stop it.
If you respect your opponent, you won't try cheesy strategies that can be easily beaten. They're both dead end strategies that have no hope of winning if they're stopped. If your early rush is beaten, then your opponent has economy or tech on you, and you lose. If your fast expand is destroyed, then your enemy typically has a larger army and tech on you to finish you off.
When you respect your opponent, you don't try a punk strategy: you play within the limits of what is possible. If you disrespect your opponent, you're banking on the idea that he doesn't have the basic skills to deal with common tactics. Some people don't mean to actually disrepect you, they simply are one trick ponies who don't know any other strategies. I don't mind when people disrepected me as I'd play within the limits and win almost every time.
Speaking as a Starcraft expert
on
Games As The New Pub
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Koreans were the easiest opponent in Starcraft when I played. Today they're probably pretty good. The reason Koreans were the easiest opponent was that they all hung out in gaming pubs. In gaming pubs, you exchange information on what is the best strategy, but seldom does original thought originate from them. You would always fight zergling/muta rushes that were so predictable that it was simple to counter them. Now many people died to this zergling/muta rush because the Korean players had it down to a science. They played a lot, and they really got their strategy down efficient, and that was their downfall when I or any other pro played them.
Now you could play someone of another nationality who doesn't have a gaming pub, and you'd have no idea of what to expect because people that don't hang out in gaming pubs tend to wing it and develop their own strategy. Typically people who don't hang out in gaming pubs used strategies that were original but not refined. I can only remember a handful of people in the world that had original strategies that were completely refined.
Thats about it for my post, I'll just conclude with some memories of Starcraft:) Starcraft(not Broodwar), had a balance that was unique. If a pro squared off against a non-pro, the game would be over far before the third tiered units came onto the field. If a pro squared off against another pro, and there was no mutual respect involved, the one who made the first mistake lost well before tier 3. If a pro squared off against another pro, and one side respected the other, it'd win, unless it made a mistake(The superior economy + defense beats any attack). Finally if both pros squared off against each other, and both gave mutual respect, then the game could really become a tier 3 nightmare. It was very rare for 2 pros meet each other. It was even more rare for 2 pros to meet each other and show respect for each other.
The difference in hardware nowadays is very slim. Back when you went from atari2600 to nintendo 8 bit, the gap of what is possible was monumental. Now a faster system merely means you can add a few extra monsters or pictures on the wall. I think its very likely that today's consoles can last well into the next generation consoles' life. As long as next generation consoles are backwards compatible with the previous console, then manufacturers will still find profits making games for the old system. In fact if the next generation systems are going to be as expensive as rumored to be 350-600$ pricetag, then many people won't adopt the new system. If 70% of users have an old system and 30% of users have the new system, then it could be cost effective to release for the old system, and make another version of the game with better graphics for the new system. If you're going to release on PC, you're going to have to have different optimizations anyway, so optimizing for different consoles isn't that costly. The more we edge further into the future, the more that is possible will happen. The other side of the coin is that as more stuff is possible, there is less undiscovered stuff possible.
He could have coded a backdoor into Ultima Online, and milked out hundreds of thousands of dollars of online gold. Just like Bill Gates has Skynet programmed on all windows boxes in case his plan for world domination ever gets out.
If we were to form a utopian planet from what we have on earth, what life organisms would we take there? And skip the jokes of not taking humans.
On one hand we could create a very controlled and disease free ecosystem. On the other hand, we could just try everything and see what starts to grow there. I think it'd be impossible to prevent many bacterias from entering the ecosystem because they'd come borne on humans.
I'm suprised people aren't excited about this as I am. Solar panels never took off because the energy they produced didn't cover costs. This is more efficient and cheaper. They'll make money off their solar farms, then reinvest the money to create more solar farms, which allows them to reinvest even more money on even more solar farms. Its a cyclical process where somepeople are going to end up being in the top 100 richest people in the world. I'm so excited that I applied to their company and I'm trying to prototype out my own sterling engines. I figure that even if I can't be employed by them, nothing will stop me from running my own buisness.
Many of those things said are exactly correct, but they're also incredibly basic pieces of information.
For example: His notion that macros will happen, so the solution is to not make any boring parts... I came up with this when I was the first person to create the drain health macro in Asheron's Call. Before me, there were no effective macros in Asheron's Call. But I made the drain health macro mainly to prove the point that the game should be not so easy that its tedious, and even had discussions with the devs. They chose to allow macroing for a year and a half, but never fixed parts of their game. I do have a soft spot for Turbine though, Asheron's Call was quality, Asheron's Call 2 was just an abuse fest, now I am waiting for DDO...
Which brings me to my 2nd point. DDO will be an action oriented MMOG. Most MMOGS of the future will be action. Why? Because of the lessons learned from the macroing. A simple game is not fun. If you make it complex and highly dependent on whats going on VS clicking the same button over and over... Then you get a fun game. The future looks very bright for MMOGS. It will probably take 15-30 years before seriously awesome MMOGs come out where you'll want to play for a lifetime. But the nice thing is, until the ultimate MMOGS come out, we'll have some MMOGS that have some good points that will tide us over.
Its interesting that you say about them selling electricity back to the power company during the day. I was considering that or a dynamic system where part of the battery would be used during the night, and recharged during the day. If you stop to think about the algorithm for how much of the battery should be used during the night, it would be quite complex. It could be as easy as: Use 50% of the battery... To as complex as something that uplinks to the weather forecast, and downloads the data for the area to calculate the projected recharge that will happen in the next day...
Not to mention they'll normally be located in the desert. We need to use our deserts for something, now we can stack em full of steel and get free electricity. The money gained from the electricity can go right back into building more and more powerplants to span across most of the Earth's deserts.
It could be a HUGE thing. If you want to get in now, send your resume to: humanresources@stirlingenergy.com
This is the sort of stuff I read Slashdot for. I'm so freaking excited right now. A few days in the past few years I've really sat down and thought about Solar Energy. I thought of ways to make solar powered distillation of pure water by creating heat differentials. I also considered macro heat differential potential of using black tires thrown away into the desert, and harnessing wind. I also thought that if a house has its own batteries, it could last through blackouts, and with solar powers, offset some of the power costs of the house. You could even take battery arrays from your car, and switch them with your house one, so your car gets new power immediately, and the old power pack starts charging. I went through many ideas, but for some reason I never thought Sterling. Now I have a ton to think about. I can't wait to get my hands on some Sterling Engines, and use magnifying glasses and mirrors to harness sunlight. I want to sit down and do the math to figure out what the most optimal configuration you need to have sunlight heat up a material. I want to figure out what the best material to heat up is, and I want to figure out what size and make of sterling engine is best to sit on it. Once you figure out the best way to run a sterling engine, all you need to do is mass produce it and sit it in the desert somewhere for loads of money. To me, this stuff is very exciting, its like an engineering breakthrough.
Yah I used to work at UPS too. I had the 95 degree working conditions loading trucks, but that wasn't as bad as when I got my $1 an hour raise to sort packages, elbow to elbow with assholes. They'd be crude, and even body check you occassionally. But you're only working for 4 hours a night anyway... My true stories of bad work come from minimum wage labor at Sony for 12 hours straight, where its like 100 degrees, and you're wearing a chemical suit, and doing non stop movement around razor sharp metal that you have to handle, meinwhile the pressurized piping around you may break which fired out sulfuric acid on occassion. But I can't bitch, theres people with far worse jobs out there.
Anyway I remember doing UPS when I was going to CMU... And if you think its awful to be loaded under massive coursework, and dead sociallife at CMU, imagine commuting 2 hours to go to a suckass job. I'm so glad I graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a scientific computing degree. It'd be nice to have a job, but some jobs are better off not done...
That being said, I actually liked lifting boxes into a trailer. It reminded me of a mix between going to the gym and tetris. Suckers pay to go to the gym, when you can get paid to lift boxes. Of course, when you're loading trucks, theres no chance for a hot chick to wander past. But I guess thats the price you gotta pay if you want to work most anywhere.
How can you fit Deuce Bigalow ads into a game about dominating a planet?
I'm not sure, but Sony is making a pretty good bid at dominating Earth, while you're trying to dominate a fake planet.
We've had 2 player Ping Pong since the 70s, what if we expanded the board, and had thousands of players. Simply imagine a polygon with X sides, where X is the number of players. And throw in maybe X/2 balls in play too. You only see your part of the screen, but can knock balls around to everyone else playing... It was a funny idea of mine a few years back... That was a child of the 'everyone shares' networking desktop, where you could drag your mouse cursor onto other people's desktops in the same room as you, and drag their files directly off their screen.
Slashdot Mirror
Combat in Asheron's Call 2 consisted of making 2 turrets, then going afk for the next hour. I got 2 max level characters in under a month then quit. Turbine spent no effort on an effective combat system for AC2 as if you fought with anything besides walls and turrets, you just got killed since armor didn't work. The only other effective hunting group besides turrets and walls was mass archers. Mass archers means everyone shoots at the monster, and the unfortunate guy to be attacked just constantly runs away. Picture marine micro in Starcraft where one zealot charges in, you move the one marine away while the rest fire.
Even though Asheron's Call 2 was a failure, I do like Turbine. I'm looking forward to D&D online.
"That's 20.2 percent of its total revenue, 24.1 percent more than it spent the year before on R&D" At first I read that as EA spent negative 3.9 percent the year before on R&D.
The moment my government tries to prevent me from gaming more than three hours is the moment I start guerilla warfare.
Yah, I think Congress really tries to do its best for homeland security, and not knowing what is feasably possible, they try everything, and chalk wasted dollars up to "research", since they learned what is feasable and what is not.
I'm sure its very lucrative to get one of thse government jobs to install technology or research dynamite smelling bacteria. I'm curious how surveillance is going to work. At first thought it doesn't seem like it is somehow going to be able to detect and prevent terrorists? I bet it will cut down on the number of people who jump over the subway tool booths.
Ok, lets allow people to file patents on stuff that already exist then extort money from the true innovator.
Its tricky making a story based MMOG work. First your story and missions have to be fun to create a player base. Secondly, you need to have a development team that can create stories and missions faster than the players can run them out. Basically if you have 1 million subscribers or more, you have the chance to start running with the expensive development process. Its going to happen in one of these MMOGS one of these days... And the competition will have trouble ever catching up. This is a prediction I had since the beginning of MMOGS, but no MMOG has ever been so addicting to draw millions of subscribers in for a few decades... yet.
In Destruction Derby, a game for PS1 that was pretty popular, the best way to rack up points was to T-bone someone in the front or back of their car and the announcer screams,"Threeeeee six teeeee.". You normally didn't have much time to veer your car into the proper angle while you were going fill speed, so the decision was one of opprotunity. You see the stimuli, then you immediately react. Well I played the game for 6 or 8 hours straight and was driving home. Anyway someone was backing out of their driveway and the first thing that went through my head was,"If I tag him right on his bumper, he'll do a 360! Wait I'm driving for real."
Want to start in the industry as a game tester? I just created a network for this: betaguild.com
They're using fibre optic cable and have slown down light so much the web page is not perceptable for 100 years on standard webbrowsers.
1)Put GPS in some cars.
2)Track GPS on roads, and network all connections, so the computer can determine 'average road speed' by the last car to drive that road.
3)Have the computer determine bottle in the trip you are taking in case it has a faster route for you to go. If it has a faster route for you, it will tell you.
It would be very simple to actually get to work, as we have all the technology already: GPS and Mapping Software.
In Starcraft there were several legitamate starting moves.
:)
Rush and lose economy.
Build Big economy and moderate tier 1 army before teching/expanding.
Build Big economy and tech with smallest possible defense.
Build Big economy and expand with smallest possible defense.
Build big economy and totally mass tier 1 army.
In Starcraft, any of these moves were legitamate and had their plusses and negatives.
In BroodWar, tier 2 units dominated tier 1 units... So even if someone massed tier 1 units, and created a defensive perimeter around your base, you could break it with tier 2 units. Basically BroodWar eliminated the whole early game. Where there were many more options and depth, there was nothing. Just like in some games, everyone plays the super powerful character because it does everything the gimpy character does, only better... It was just generally useless to create tier 1 units except for rush defense.
It really bummed me out because I was about the only person on Battlenet that did the SCV+ marine rush
I still played BroodWar, but it seemed like a waste. When the opening game was something of variety in Starcraft, in BroodWar it was just more time to wait... Like the game starts at mid game instead of the beginning of the game... Most of the newbs and intermediates like BroodWar because they didn't understand the start game to begin with, and they like to use the later game units.
But if Blizzard really wanted to solve early rushes, they could have put in NOOB DEFENDERS that could be built at your COmmand Center instead of SCV. So you sacrifice economy, but build a powerful defender. It'd totally give noobs a fighting chance. No expert would ever want to sacrifice some economy for some early game defence. It'd have to have a long build time and cost 2x the SCV.
End game all depended on the map and the races involved. If you want to know the most sure fire lock of an end game, its Protoss on islands. You merely expand like plague across the map, dropping 2-3 high templar and a few photon cannons. Armies big enough to take out the photon cannons die to templar, armies not big enough to take out photon cannons die to photon cannons.
Most wins involve securing as much resources while pinning your enemy out of mobility so they can't get to other resource points or attack yours. Because of this, the most powerful powerup in the game is Zerg Overlisk Movement/Carry. With your whole army in a drop ship, you can send assaults on your enemy's main so they can never move their units too far away. Few people knew how to abuse this one because so many people liked muta/ling.
You're right to say that some units were good if not much was going on, but less useful when more units where around. I never used mass queens because it took so long to get up to the point of broodling. Queens
I was world caliber for 99, but I couldn't do much when map hacks came into play. If they'd redo Starcraft, with proper match making + no hacks, I bet it'd fly again. Its still flying in Korea where they can play in person and make sure people don't hack.
Respect in Starcraft is playing a solid game, instead of pulling gambits. A gambit can be something such as sacrficing economy in order to rush early, or fast expanding in hopes your opponent can't stop it. When you sacrifice economy to rush, you're hoping that your opponent isn't paying attention and doesn't has enough defense to stop it. When you fast expand, then you're hoping your opponent doesn't spot you, and if he does, that he doesn't stop it.
If you respect your opponent, you won't try cheesy strategies that can be easily beaten. They're both dead end strategies that have no hope of winning if they're stopped. If your early rush is beaten, then your opponent has economy or tech on you, and you lose. If your fast expand is destroyed, then your enemy typically has a larger army and tech on you to finish you off.
When you respect your opponent, you don't try a punk strategy: you play within the limits of what is possible. If you disrespect your opponent, you're banking on the idea that he doesn't have the basic skills to deal with common tactics. Some people don't mean to actually disrepect you, they simply are one trick ponies who don't know any other strategies. I don't mind when people disrepected me as I'd play within the limits and win almost every time.
Koreans were the easiest opponent in Starcraft when I played. Today they're probably pretty good. The reason Koreans were the easiest opponent was that they all hung out in gaming pubs. In gaming pubs, you exchange information on what is the best strategy, but seldom does original thought originate from them. You would always fight zergling/muta rushes that were so predictable that it was simple to counter them. Now many people died to this zergling/muta rush because the Korean players had it down to a science. They played a lot, and they really got their strategy down efficient, and that was their downfall when I or any other pro played them.
:) Starcraft(not Broodwar), had a balance that was unique. If a pro squared off against a non-pro, the game would be over far before the third tiered units came onto the field. If a pro squared off against another pro, and there was no mutual respect involved, the one who made the first mistake lost well before tier 3. If a pro squared off against another pro, and one side respected the other, it'd win, unless it made a mistake(The superior economy + defense beats any attack). Finally if both pros squared off against each other, and both gave mutual respect, then the game could really become a tier 3 nightmare. It was very rare for 2 pros meet each other. It was even more rare for 2 pros to meet each other and show respect for each other.
Now you could play someone of another nationality who doesn't have a gaming pub, and you'd have no idea of what to expect because people that don't hang out in gaming pubs tend to wing it and develop their own strategy. Typically people who don't hang out in gaming pubs used strategies that were original but not refined. I can only remember a handful of people in the world that had original strategies that were completely refined.
Thats about it for my post, I'll just conclude with some memories of Starcraft
The difference in hardware nowadays is very slim. Back when you went from atari2600 to nintendo 8 bit, the gap of what is possible was monumental. Now a faster system merely means you can add a few extra monsters or pictures on the wall. I think its very likely that today's consoles can last well into the next generation consoles' life. As long as next generation consoles are backwards compatible with the previous console, then manufacturers will still find profits making games for the old system. In fact if the next generation systems are going to be as expensive as rumored to be 350-600$ pricetag, then many people won't adopt the new system. If 70% of users have an old system and 30% of users have the new system, then it could be cost effective to release for the old system, and make another version of the game with better graphics for the new system. If you're going to release on PC, you're going to have to have different optimizations anyway, so optimizing for different consoles isn't that costly. The more we edge further into the future, the more that is possible will happen. The other side of the coin is that as more stuff is possible, there is less undiscovered stuff possible.
He could have coded a backdoor into Ultima Online, and milked out hundreds of thousands of dollars of online gold. Just like Bill Gates has Skynet programmed on all windows boxes in case his plan for world domination ever gets out.
grass would grow here
If we were to form a utopian planet from what we have on earth, what life organisms would we take there? And skip the jokes of not taking humans.
On one hand we could create a very controlled and disease free ecosystem. On the other hand, we could just try everything and see what starts to grow there. I think it'd be impossible to prevent many bacterias from entering the ecosystem because they'd come borne on humans.
Electricity will be next to free within the next 10-30 years: Technological breakthrough article just a few days ago.
I'm suprised people aren't excited about this as I am. Solar panels never took off because the energy they produced didn't cover costs. This is more efficient and cheaper. They'll make money off their solar farms, then reinvest the money to create more solar farms, which allows them to reinvest even more money on even more solar farms. Its a cyclical process where somepeople are going to end up being in the top 100 richest people in the world. I'm so excited that I applied to their company and I'm trying to prototype out my own sterling engines. I figure that even if I can't be employed by them, nothing will stop me from running my own buisness.
Many of those things said are exactly correct, but they're also incredibly basic pieces of information.
For example: His notion that macros will happen, so the solution is to not make any boring parts... I came up with this when I was the first person to create the drain health macro in Asheron's Call. Before me, there were no effective macros in Asheron's Call. But I made the drain health macro mainly to prove the point that the game should be not so easy that its tedious, and even had discussions with the devs. They chose to allow macroing for a year and a half, but never fixed parts of their game. I do have a soft spot for Turbine though, Asheron's Call was quality, Asheron's Call 2 was just an abuse fest, now I am waiting for DDO...
Which brings me to my 2nd point. DDO will be an action oriented MMOG. Most MMOGS of the future will be action. Why? Because of the lessons learned from the macroing. A simple game is not fun. If you make it complex and highly dependent on whats going on VS clicking the same button over and over... Then you get a fun game. The future looks very bright for MMOGS. It will probably take 15-30 years before seriously awesome MMOGs come out where you'll want to play for a lifetime. But the nice thing is, until the ultimate MMOGS come out, we'll have some MMOGS that have some good points that will tide us over.
Its interesting that you say about them selling electricity back to the power company during the day. I was considering that or a dynamic system where part of the battery would be used during the night, and recharged during the day. If you stop to think about the algorithm for how much of the battery should be used during the night, it would be quite complex. It could be as easy as: Use 50% of the battery... To as complex as something that uplinks to the weather forecast, and downloads the data for the area to calculate the projected recharge that will happen in the next day...
Not to mention they'll normally be located in the desert. We need to use our deserts for something, now we can stack em full of steel and get free electricity. The money gained from the electricity can go right back into building more and more powerplants to span across most of the Earth's deserts.
It could be a HUGE thing. If you want to get in now, send your resume to: humanresources@stirlingenergy.com
I sent mine in!
This is the sort of stuff I read Slashdot for. I'm so freaking excited right now. A few days in the past few years I've really sat down and thought about Solar Energy. I thought of ways to make solar powered distillation of pure water by creating heat differentials. I also considered macro heat differential potential of using black tires thrown away into the desert, and harnessing wind. I also thought that if a house has its own batteries, it could last through blackouts, and with solar powers, offset some of the power costs of the house. You could even take battery arrays from your car, and switch them with your house one, so your car gets new power immediately, and the old power pack starts charging. I went through many ideas, but for some reason I never thought Sterling. Now I have a ton to think about. I can't wait to get my hands on some Sterling Engines, and use magnifying glasses and mirrors to harness sunlight. I want to sit down and do the math to figure out what the most optimal configuration you need to have sunlight heat up a material. I want to figure out what the best material to heat up is, and I want to figure out what size and make of sterling engine is best to sit on it. Once you figure out the best way to run a sterling engine, all you need to do is mass produce it and sit it in the desert somewhere for loads of money. To me, this stuff is very exciting, its like an engineering breakthrough.
Yah I used to work at UPS too. I had the 95 degree working conditions loading trucks, but that wasn't as bad as when I got my $1 an hour raise to sort packages, elbow to elbow with assholes. They'd be crude, and even body check you occassionally. But you're only working for 4 hours a night anyway... My true stories of bad work come from minimum wage labor at Sony for 12 hours straight, where its like 100 degrees, and you're wearing a chemical suit, and doing non stop movement around razor sharp metal that you have to handle, meinwhile the pressurized piping around you may break which fired out sulfuric acid on occassion. But I can't bitch, theres people with far worse jobs out there.
Anyway I remember doing UPS when I was going to CMU... And if you think its awful to be loaded under massive coursework, and dead sociallife at CMU, imagine commuting 2 hours to go to a suckass job. I'm so glad I graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a scientific computing degree. It'd be nice to have a job, but some jobs are better off not done...
That being said, I actually liked lifting boxes into a trailer. It reminded me of a mix between going to the gym and tetris. Suckers pay to go to the gym, when you can get paid to lift boxes. Of course, when you're loading trucks, theres no chance for a hot chick to wander past. But I guess thats the price you gotta pay if you want to work most anywhere.
How can you fit Deuce Bigalow ads into a game about dominating a planet? I'm not sure, but Sony is making a pretty good bid at dominating Earth, while you're trying to dominate a fake planet.
We've had 2 player Ping Pong since the 70s, what if we expanded the board, and had thousands of players. Simply imagine a polygon with X sides, where X is the number of players. And throw in maybe X/2 balls in play too. You only see your part of the screen, but can knock balls around to everyone else playing... It was a funny idea of mine a few years back... That was a child of the 'everyone shares' networking desktop, where you could drag your mouse cursor onto other people's desktops in the same room as you, and drag their files directly off their screen.