Like many other gamers I'll be keeping a very close eye on this studio given how great Diablo II was.
Unfortunately, past experience has shown that great games are frequently 1-off flukes. When I first played Lemmings I thought a great new era of gaming had arrived... Now I couldn't even tell you what the guy who wrote it is doing currently.
Anyone know any details about Starfall yet ? (Apart from the fact it has a really weak name which is hard to Google for !)
Apologies if I implied critcism of his work, that wasn't the intention.
My point is simply that in the field of optimisation, all your gains come from succeeding where the last guy failed. This 30% improvement in performance is not the difference between Goto's approach and his nearest competitor, it is the difference between his work and the previous solution used on that particular machine.
It's the statistic I'm criticising - it simply isn't very meaningful.
(I used to do research into hardware optimisation. Improvements of more than about 5% in any field to which smart people devote a lot of thought always make me suspicious !)
when computer scientists at the University at Buffalo added Goto BLAS to their Pentium-based supercomputer, the calculating power of the system jumped from 1.5 trillion to 2 trillion mathematical operations per second
Which is certainly good, but to me says more about the previous implementation than it does about Goto's work.
By the time you're 25 your pre-frontal cortex should be developed enough to spot which girls would be good options... And further to note that a very high proportion of the A-list girls have been hitched for years and that you're looking at a scary level of contention for the remaining few.
By the time you're 35 your pre-frontal cortex should be developed enough to realise your earlier mistake.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people pick a partner seemingly at random and are then surprised when they're not all that compatible.
Or is it just that the only selection criterion is "Must answer 'Yes' to 'Will you go on a date with me?'"?
From the article:
"To quote Greg Costikyan from an argument he was having with a game publisher at a conference reception a few years ago, a developer should retain the rights to a game "because they fucking should, that's why."
This kind of laziness in a debate risks completely discrediting the entire concept.
The default position from which this debate begins is: Developers are competing with each other to attract millions of dollars in advances from a publisher. If one developer wants to retain rights and another is willing to surrender them, the publisher may well prefer the latter bid.
You may not like that argument, but speaking in short sentences containing F-words does not cause it to magically vanish. (And I speak as a supporter of Greg Costikyan's ideas about the industry.)
Branding might be the reason for battle transitions, but it definitely isn't this which stops FF being compared to things....because FF does get compared to things constantly. The series is the benchmark against which PS2 RPGs are judged. Many of the individual games in the series are flawed in various ways, but still nothing else really comes close. Love it or hate it, FF almost defines a genre of its own.
Good arguments, thanks (mod parent up !).
I suppose what's needed is a way to ensure that this kind of mechanic doesn't interfere with a newbie's positive experience of the game. But then, the same could be said of a great many games.
If spawn camping is "interesting gameplay" I really don't want to see dull gameplay.
I'd be interested to hear someone defend this as anything other than weak game design.
So, as I said, I choose the XBox exactly because I prefer games outside the JRPG mode.
The way you put that is revealing to me. The implication of your statement is that the presence of such games - even if you never purchased one - would weaken the console for you. Presumably this is because you perceive that only a fixed number of strong titles are released for any console and therefore each game in a genre you don't play is bad ?
I don't know if this was really true of the XBox or not, but if so it was a weakness indeed.
Very restrained of you to word it like that. Y'know what ? Looks like I was completely wrong.
Good that the Escapist takes that much trouble. Must admit to being a little disappointed that the style of image is exactly the way all the sad, dysfunctional male gamers think of girls looking.
Ah well, if she wants to be a few hundred people's desktop wallpaper I suppose that's one way to do it.
It's very obviously a model.
Not that the writer couldn't look like that, but:
1) I very much doubt she'd choose to appear posed and dressed that way.
2) The Escapist isn't the kind of magazine to run a photo shoot for that sort of article. They're expensive and logistically tricky for a small, free 'zine to use.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah - sequel to Nethack ! ;-)
But seriously - when was the last time you played Diablo I ?
Like many other gamers I'll be keeping a very close eye on this studio given how great Diablo II was.
Unfortunately, past experience has shown that great games are frequently 1-off flukes. When I first played Lemmings I thought a great new era of gaming had arrived... Now I couldn't even tell you what the guy who wrote it is doing currently.
Anyone know any details about Starfall yet ? (Apart from the fact it has a really weak name which is hard to Google for !)
Apologies if I implied critcism of his work, that wasn't the intention.
My point is simply that in the field of optimisation, all your gains come from succeeding where the last guy failed. This 30% improvement in performance is not the difference between Goto's approach and his nearest competitor, it is the difference between his work and the previous solution used on that particular machine.
It's the statistic I'm criticising - it simply isn't very meaningful.
(I used to do research into hardware optimisation. Improvements of more than about 5% in any field to which smart people devote a lot of thought always make me suspicious !)
when computer scientists at the University at Buffalo added Goto BLAS to their Pentium-based supercomputer, the calculating power of the system jumped from 1.5 trillion to 2 trillion mathematical operations per second
Which is certainly good, but to me says more about the previous implementation than it does about Goto's work.
By the time you're 25 your pre-frontal cortex should be developed enough to spot which girls would be good options... And further to note that a very high proportion of the A-list girls have been hitched for years and that you're looking at a scary level of contention for the remaining few.
By the time you're 35 your pre-frontal cortex should be developed enough to realise your earlier mistake.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people pick a partner seemingly at random and are then surprised when they're not all that compatible. Or is it just that the only selection criterion is "Must answer 'Yes' to 'Will you go on a date with me?'"?
From the article: "To quote Greg Costikyan from an argument he was having with a game publisher at a conference reception a few years ago, a developer should retain the rights to a game "because they fucking should, that's why." This kind of laziness in a debate risks completely discrediting the entire concept. The default position from which this debate begins is: Developers are competing with each other to attract millions of dollars in advances from a publisher. If one developer wants to retain rights and another is willing to surrender them, the publisher may well prefer the latter bid. You may not like that argument, but speaking in short sentences containing F-words does not cause it to magically vanish. (And I speak as a supporter of Greg Costikyan's ideas about the industry.)
...that's just its mouse!
Branding might be the reason for battle transitions, but it definitely isn't this which stops FF being compared to things. ...because FF does get compared to things constantly. The series is the benchmark against which PS2 RPGs are judged. Many of the individual games in the series are flawed in various ways, but still nothing else really comes close. Love it or hate it, FF almost defines a genre of its own.
Good arguments, thanks (mod parent up !). I suppose what's needed is a way to ensure that this kind of mechanic doesn't interfere with a newbie's positive experience of the game. But then, the same could be said of a great many games.
If spawn camping is "interesting gameplay" I really don't want to see dull gameplay. I'd be interested to hear someone defend this as anything other than weak game design.
So, as I said, I choose the XBox exactly because I prefer games outside the JRPG mode.
The way you put that is revealing to me. The implication of your statement is that the presence of such games - even if you never purchased one - would weaken the console for you. Presumably this is because you perceive that only a fixed number of strong titles are released for any console and therefore each game in a genre you don't play is bad ? I don't know if this was really true of the XBox or not, but if so it was a weakness indeed.
Very restrained of you to word it like that. Y'know what ? Looks like I was completely wrong. Good that the Escapist takes that much trouble. Must admit to being a little disappointed that the style of image is exactly the way all the sad, dysfunctional male gamers think of girls looking. Ah well, if she wants to be a few hundred people's desktop wallpaper I suppose that's one way to do it.
It's very obviously a model. Not that the writer couldn't look like that, but: 1) I very much doubt she'd choose to appear posed and dressed that way. 2) The Escapist isn't the kind of magazine to run a photo shoot for that sort of article. They're expensive and logistically tricky for a small, free 'zine to use.