It's because QL is free to end users. The server isn't so much for the traditional model of game server (you run server and everyone buys said game) as for clans to customize their servers as they see fit. For example: if you ran a clan that absolutely hated the rocket launcher, you could pay to get a server and turn the rocket launcher off on that server.
Its not that the physics are wonky -- cars really are that slippery in real life. I was lucky enough to take Chevy Lacetti (a pretty common European touring car) out on a road track in PA -- and it is incredibly hard to drive at speed without skidding. Wheels lock up, breaks lock up, and you spin off the track.
If you want great examples of sims, look at the GTR/GT Legends/GTR2/Race/Race 07 series for PC. They all blow even Forza 2 out of the water in terms of realism. When I started on those, it took me a good half hour to even complete a lap without going off.
An aside: Forza has had damage modelling since day 1 (although Forza 2 let chunks of the car come off), while Gran Turismo has long been without damage. Having no damage is killer for a sim, since you can take a hairpin at full speed and just ram another car to slow down and turn, all without any penalty.
This was their intent. However, most sellers didn't want to have any exposure to potential buyers. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering how hostile relations on eBay can get between buyers and sellers.
Little titles like Audiosurf do a far better job of using new hardware to make a new gameplay experience.
Or Mirror's Edge, using the PhysX engine on nVidia cards to provide a much more vibrant and beautiful world to run around in (due to the tattered, bullet-ridden curtains/flags flapping in the wind, or the way that glass windows shatter when shot/jumped through).
That is more what I didn't want to point out-- more hardware just for the sake of graphics that don't impact gameplay. A breaking window is a breaking window. It needs to provide a cathartic satisfaction when it shatters, not do so in the most realistic manner.
Bad example. I expect WoW to have no LAN play since its an MMOG -- its supposed to be online. In fact, I'd be shocked if there was ever a "legal" LAN version of any MMOG.
In one interview, 2K Boston (the developers) said they didn't like their ending and it was more a matter of not enough time than about really putting and ending on it.
What are you talking about? About a month ago I bought a new CPU (Q8400), RAM (8GB of it, to be exact), Mobo, HDD (500GB), and GPU (GeForce 8800GT). Granted, not the best system money can buy, but it can play games like TF2, BioShock, and even Far Cry 2 at high/very high details at 1680x1050. Total price: ~$650-$700. As for games evolving, I don't care so much for the graphics or physics unless they actually have an impact on the gameplay. Little titles like Audiosurf do a far better job of using new hardware to make a new gameplay experience.
I wouldn't trust an OS from a torrent aggregator unless I have some way to check its veracity (i.e.: Ubuntu posts md5's of its ISOs, but you won't find one for an iffy torrent.
This doesn't matter much anyways, since most corporate environments are on a volume license, and most home users will get Win7 preinstalled. It really only matters to geeks like us.
They want it browser based so its stupid simple to set up and play. Think about a site like Kongregate or Newgrounds: the barrier to entry is minimal (just install the latest Flash plugin) and you can play all the games for free + ads. QuakeLive is an attempt to move that model to more "hardcore" games.
This sounds like it might actually work. One of the big focuses in Snow Leopard is on GPGPU, so having a kickass video processor would be more important than ever before.
The workaround for DarkPlaces is to compensate only for old maps. New maps typically are designed with rtlights files in mind, which lets the mapper designate which lights are static and which are dynamic. If you use these features, DP gets a whole lot faster per frame.
Its not that its poorly coded, but rather an oddity that comes from playing maps that aren't designed for real-time lighting.
In the original Quake, the lighting was hardcoded (maps were put through a "light" compile phase that would determine all the shadows and put the shadowmap directly onto the level). Because it was static lighting, the designers put lights all over the place. This gave them nice, even lighting with no performance hit, except that the light phase would take longer.
This worked great in 1996, but since modern games have real-time lighting, jamming a room full of lights doesn't work as well. Since the "light" phase is run on every frame, there's a substantial lag introduced by having the number of lights they used (if you poke around the map source posted by Romero, its well into the hundreds in some levels). By comparison, Doom 3 had far fewer lights per level (typically, >100 lights) and had some serious culling going on so it wouldn't have to render every light every frame (something that the id Tech 1 engine doesn't support).
Moral of the story: a crapload of lights is slow, no matter where you put the lighting calculations.
A patch added multiplayer to the original Deus Ex. The version that's sold on Steam (and as the GOTY edition) has this patch, and if you have an older copy you can just download it. Its worth a look, since its a compressed form of the character development in the full game. Plus there are some pretty good server-side mods.
"running Windows XP under virtualbox is a lot faster than running Windows natively"
WHAT?!?!?!? Are you crazy? By its very definition, running an OS in a VM is slower than running an OS natively, since there is still a host OS that's running the VM app.
You say that the Xbox fiasco is on its way out. If this its true, MS is completely going to gut their investment in gaming. They've already trashed Ensemble (Age of Empires) and ACES (Flight Sim), two storied and successful PC franchises. Some speculation is that the products released were too niche, but there's no reason to gut popular products that continued to improve over time when they're profitable. Combine these cuts with the abomination that is Games for Windows and DirectX 11's focus on video over gaming, and I have to wonder if MS is able to take any more hits against gaming, which for many power users is the main reason to keep a Windows install around.
There is a small speaker, but music doesn't play through it. iPods are designed for you to use them with a pair of headphones are earbuds, and only the use the speaker sparingly (typically as a clicker if there are no headphones attached).
That said, my 1st gen. iPod Touch doesn't have bluetooth or a mic input, so what's the point of it? Or is this limited to 2nd gen. iTouches?
Their "application" just edits the Windows standard configuration and plops a completely useless Flash-based nagware app promoting their "security" suite.
Having to deal with this on my parents' computer pisses me off. Its something their techs should know how to do without software yet don't.
I'm going to go out on a limb, but...
I think the RIAA might be better off if they dropped their "Settlement Center." Rather than hanging the threat of a lawsuit, they should actually file the lawsuit before going to the settlement center. Give everyone their day in court, and a chance to say right off the bat that the case is bull. Let a technically experienced judge rule on this.
This idea could be extended to the whole filtering business, if it were to ever get written into law (*shudder*).
This should clear the hurdle of dirty tricks (the judge should spot those). It doesn't age discriminate.
Also, if someone can stick a hole in this, please do.
PMCE was absolutely awesome. Between that and the update of Space Invaders (SI: Extreme), there's some good proof as to how these classic arcade games should get updated. Flashy graphics that embrace the original sprites, remixed music, and variations on levels.
That was because the AI was a little too good. For example, a pair of drug addicts would seek out all the drugs they could afford, and would then go and knock off a drug dealer. There's a mod that reinstates this AI and stuff like that happens pretty frequently.
Since the AI doesn't have as complex motivations in a combat-focused game like FEAR, I could see better AI being a boon rather than a detriment.
Slashdot Mirror
It's because QL is free to end users. The server isn't so much for the traditional model of game server (you run server and everyone buys said game) as for clans to customize their servers as they see fit. For example: if you ran a clan that absolutely hated the rocket launcher, you could pay to get a server and turn the rocket launcher off on that server.
Its not that the physics are wonky -- cars really are that slippery in real life. I was lucky enough to take Chevy Lacetti (a pretty common European touring car) out on a road track in PA -- and it is incredibly hard to drive at speed without skidding. Wheels lock up, breaks lock up, and you spin off the track. If you want great examples of sims, look at the GTR/GT Legends/GTR2/Race/Race 07 series for PC. They all blow even Forza 2 out of the water in terms of realism. When I started on those, it took me a good half hour to even complete a lap without going off. An aside: Forza has had damage modelling since day 1 (although Forza 2 let chunks of the car come off), while Gran Turismo has long been without damage. Having no damage is killer for a sim, since you can take a hairpin at full speed and just ram another car to slow down and turn, all without any penalty.
This was their intent. However, most sellers didn't want to have any exposure to potential buyers. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise, considering how hostile relations on eBay can get between buyers and sellers.
The government gets taxes based on capital gains (i.e.: your net profit/loss). Stock sales themselves are not considered taxable in the US.
Little titles like Audiosurf do a far better job of using new hardware to make a new gameplay experience.
Or Mirror's Edge, using the PhysX engine on nVidia cards to provide a much more vibrant and beautiful world to run around in (due to the tattered, bullet-ridden curtains/flags flapping in the wind, or the way that glass windows shatter when shot/jumped through).
That is more what I didn't want to point out-- more hardware just for the sake of graphics that don't impact gameplay. A breaking window is a breaking window. It needs to provide a cathartic satisfaction when it shatters, not do so in the most realistic manner.
Bad example. I expect WoW to have no LAN play since its an MMOG -- its supposed to be online. In fact, I'd be shocked if there was ever a "legal" LAN version of any MMOG.
In one interview, 2K Boston (the developers) said they didn't like their ending and it was more a matter of not enough time than about really putting and ending on it.
What are you talking about? About a month ago I bought a new CPU (Q8400), RAM (8GB of it, to be exact), Mobo, HDD (500GB), and GPU (GeForce 8800GT). Granted, not the best system money can buy, but it can play games like TF2, BioShock, and even Far Cry 2 at high/very high details at 1680x1050. Total price: ~$650-$700. As for games evolving, I don't care so much for the graphics or physics unless they actually have an impact on the gameplay. Little titles like Audiosurf do a far better job of using new hardware to make a new gameplay experience.
That got leaked circa 2003, in The Big Half-Life 2 Leak of 2003.
I wouldn't trust an OS from a torrent aggregator unless I have some way to check its veracity (i.e.: Ubuntu posts md5's of its ISOs, but you won't find one for an iffy torrent.
This doesn't matter much anyways, since most corporate environments are on a volume license, and most home users will get Win7 preinstalled. It really only matters to geeks like us.
They want it browser based so its stupid simple to set up and play. Think about a site like Kongregate or Newgrounds: the barrier to entry is minimal (just install the latest Flash plugin) and you can play all the games for free + ads. QuakeLive is an attempt to move that model to more "hardcore" games.
This sounds like it might actually work. One of the big focuses in Snow Leopard is on GPGPU, so having a kickass video processor would be more important than ever before.
The workaround for DarkPlaces is to compensate only for old maps. New maps typically are designed with rtlights files in mind, which lets the mapper designate which lights are static and which are dynamic. If you use these features, DP gets a whole lot faster per frame.
Its not that its poorly coded, but rather an oddity that comes from playing maps that aren't designed for real-time lighting.
In the original Quake, the lighting was hardcoded (maps were put through a "light" compile phase that would determine all the shadows and put the shadowmap directly onto the level). Because it was static lighting, the designers put lights all over the place. This gave them nice, even lighting with no performance hit, except that the light phase would take longer.
This worked great in 1996, but since modern games have real-time lighting, jamming a room full of lights doesn't work as well. Since the "light" phase is run on every frame, there's a substantial lag introduced by having the number of lights they used (if you poke around the map source posted by Romero, its well into the hundreds in some levels). By comparison, Doom 3 had far fewer lights per level (typically, >100 lights) and had some serious culling going on so it wouldn't have to render every light every frame (something that the id Tech 1 engine doesn't support).
Moral of the story: a crapload of lights is slow, no matter where you put the lighting calculations.
DWANGO. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DWANGO
A patch added multiplayer to the original Deus Ex. The version that's sold on Steam (and as the GOTY edition) has this patch, and if you have an older copy you can just download it. Its worth a look, since its a compressed form of the character development in the full game. Plus there are some pretty good server-side mods.
"running Windows XP under virtualbox is a lot faster than running Windows natively"
WHAT?!?!?!? Are you crazy? By its very definition, running an OS in a VM is slower than running an OS natively, since there is still a host OS that's running the VM app.
You say that the Xbox fiasco is on its way out. If this its true, MS is completely going to gut their investment in gaming. They've already trashed Ensemble (Age of Empires) and ACES (Flight Sim), two storied and successful PC franchises. Some speculation is that the products released were too niche, but there's no reason to gut popular products that continued to improve over time when they're profitable. Combine these cuts with the abomination that is Games for Windows and DirectX 11's focus on video over gaming, and I have to wonder if MS is able to take any more hits against gaming, which for many power users is the main reason to keep a Windows install around.
There is a small speaker, but music doesn't play through it. iPods are designed for you to use them with a pair of headphones are earbuds, and only the use the speaker sparingly (typically as a clicker if there are no headphones attached).
That said, my 1st gen. iPod Touch doesn't have bluetooth or a mic input, so what's the point of it? Or is this limited to 2nd gen. iTouches?
In this case, it is a lost sale. The business would have bought the software otherwise.
Their "application" just edits the Windows standard configuration and plops a completely useless Flash-based nagware app promoting their "security" suite. Having to deal with this on my parents' computer pisses me off. Its something their techs should know how to do without software yet don't.
Sony, a RIAA/MPAA member, is the author of SecuROM. For more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Securom
I'm going to go out on a limb, but... I think the RIAA might be better off if they dropped their "Settlement Center." Rather than hanging the threat of a lawsuit, they should actually file the lawsuit before going to the settlement center. Give everyone their day in court, and a chance to say right off the bat that the case is bull. Let a technically experienced judge rule on this. This idea could be extended to the whole filtering business, if it were to ever get written into law (*shudder*). This should clear the hurdle of dirty tricks (the judge should spot those). It doesn't age discriminate. Also, if someone can stick a hole in this, please do.
PMCE was absolutely awesome. Between that and the update of Space Invaders (SI: Extreme), there's some good proof as to how these classic arcade games should get updated. Flashy graphics that embrace the original sprites, remixed music, and variations on levels.
That was because the AI was a little too good. For example, a pair of drug addicts would seek out all the drugs they could afford, and would then go and knock off a drug dealer. There's a mod that reinstates this AI and stuff like that happens pretty frequently. Since the AI doesn't have as complex motivations in a combat-focused game like FEAR, I could see better AI being a boon rather than a detriment.