In a feat of unbridled stupidity, Valve named their new game engine "Source" causing confusion on a scale unimagined since Microsoft thought "hmm what shall we call our new SQL server product?", and Ford thought: "'Ka' - that's a great name for a car!"
Really, it ranks right up there with their previous gaff "Our games are Powered by Steam". Righto.
Imagine you're playing a game of Tribes CTF. You've got 16 people on your team. 3 guys are genuinely trying to cooperate and get the other team's flag. 8 guys are completely ignoring the flag and are just trying to frag the other team, 1 idiot's running around TKing your guys and killing your own turrets, 2 more guys are arguing over a strategy to get the other flag, even though they're both, obviously barely-literate, mongoloid cock jockeys, the only guy with a vehicle is flying a bomber with no bombadier/gunner, and the last guy's AFK.
ROFL:) That's public CTF (or any teamplay variant really) in a nutshell - brilliant. Especially like the bit about the vehicles: with the fashion these days for FPS/CTF games to have multi-crew vehicles how frustrating is it to spawn, only to see them all leave the base with none on fecking board?!?!:]
How many times have you played RTCW, got to the door and realised no fecker is an engineer? Then no one's on defence - in the flag room, because they're all outside fragging each other in mid-field (at least in 3wave CTF you don't get any bonus points for this). I remember when JKII came out, playing CTF and everyone was in mid-field dueling with those light-up pointy sticks. Meanwhile I'm over the enemy base saying "er.. anyone mind if I take this then? No? Hello? OK thanks..". No frags but hundreds of points...
Oh - and there's always one guy who shouts "Camping lamo" at the one guy who's actually trying to defend something of strategic value.. A bit like saying "hey - you're not running about like a headless chicken at random - you must be cheating!!" And if you *dare* to possibly actually obtain and use a powerup or some other difficult to use, but deadly equipment...
So.. apart from the sewers, the education system, the roads, the system of government, and the voice controlled wheel chair, what have the Ro^H^H^H^H^H^H NASA done for us?
Some of those seem a little dubious btw - I take it nobody's claiming NASA invented any of this stuff? I'm sure NASA had some contribution to make to all of them, but then Daewoo make cars and I'm not sure their contribution is a positive one...
Seriously though, was this the same water purification system that Coca Cola used on their bottled water "Dalsani" ? The water, it turned out was er.. tap water from Peckham. Indeed the whole scam was worthy of Peckham's most famous son, and 3 wheeled van driver. The purification system, which was indeed developed by NASA turned out to be introducing significant quantities of some compound known to cause cancer into the water. So, not only was it tap water, it was poisoned tap water. Makes you wonder what's in their other browner beverages. It's hard to hide shit in a clear liquid:)
I agree. However, the rock solid rental offering is still not there for some of the scenarios, such as the one I wanted - I want to receive all the TV onto a central server, and view it from many locations around the house. And I want it distributed digitally - not some hash of a solution where some ropey analogue video signal is re-transmitted.
Here in the UK, TV (for those that want more than 5 channels) = Sky (or DVB just about). Sky offer a PVR for £159 with no extra subscription charge and this suits most people. It works, is fully integrated with their EPG etc. The problem is that you can't get the data out of the box, so I can't view it anywhere else in the house (unless I physically cart the box to the next room...). There are some mods you can do to some of the boxes such as the one that pluggedin.tv offer which adds broadcast spec SDI outputs to certain Sky+ PVR boxes and coupled with a suitable SDI card for your PC, you can capture, scale and de-interlace the signal. Other than that you need to capture the analogue output from a Sky receiver.
So, I'm definitley with you on the "why struggle when you can buy it in Dixon's" thing, but even so, I've just built a PVR costing 3 times the price of Sky's offering, so I can view the results in other rooms, or burn them onto DVDs and take them elsewhere. I appreciate Sky's reluctance to essentially enable the customer to re-distribute their content, but well - hey - I don't care. *I* don't intend to profit from the recordings, I don't distribute them to people and really, I don't keep them very long anyway. They need to start selling a device that lets you play the media as long as the software/hardware detects a valid subscription smart card, in a reader, somewhere on your local network
So now I can record the digital streams broadcast freely over UHF. I'm just weighing up the best way to record Sky. SDI is expensive, but is currently the only all-digital way I've found.
I'd abandon all this in an instant though, if the satellite company offered a turnkey solution. I like messing with the technology sure, but these days, I don't thave the time - I'd rather it just worked the way I want it to: the only reason I go off and build these things is because they are not available "offically".
At the end of the day though, all this "media centre" "HTPC" stuff is a red herring. A stepping stone if you like. As soon as there's enough bandwidth on tap to most peoples' houses, the content can stay where it belongs - on the sat company's servers, not mine. Same with the music - I don't want to "buy" tracks (or more accuratley perhaps, I don't want the burden of storing them) - just let me listen to them and I'll give you some cash in return. Somebody like Sony or some other global entertainment giant can store all the stuff, handle all the complex royalties to the "suppliers", and pay for the infrastrcuture. I'll just pay a fee each month to watch and listen to the stuff from any device - maybe with some form of subscription card, or other id device. That's the rock-stable service I want.
Then I can turn off the bloody great server in my attic and save on the electricity!
I see no warning light. And the other guy is holding his hands as if he was holding a rifle.
I take your point about the "why", but the fact remains, that red bit looks well dodgy. It's all contained in that rectangle that does look like it's been pasted on. It may be just the angle of the shot. The textures on the red bit looks like they're from Q2DM3 but then again, this *is* supposed be the same place.
It may be boring - but it sure is popular. Personally, I've never seen the attraction of the sniper-fest that is Half Speed Camperstrike. 20 minutes hiding behind a box isn't my idea of online fun. If you do try and walk, it's like your pants are round your ankles - you sort of shuffle. As a long time Quake/2/3/3wave player used to bouncing around the map at great speed performing trick jumps and using rocket propulsion to get around CS looks like a cure for insomnia...
But! - I'm in the minority here - it's the most played online game there is, and if CS source doesn't float your boat - you can always throw bathroom fittings at each other in HL2 DM - it's the antithesis of CS - complete hilarity with no weapon balance at all (yes a filing cabinet is more deadly than the sub-machine gun in HL2 DM. You can spend ages trying to wear a hole in someone's head with bullets, or just chuck a toilet at them - brilliant:))) )
No innovation here
on
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· Score: 3, Insightful
This has to be the most un-imaginative approach to mobile, and unbiquitous computing: take the hardware and OS of desktops and small to midrange servers and make it all smaller. Granted there's a nod to the portability issues with the touch screen and built in wireless technolgoies but this is bolt on stuff from a design point of view.
Of course it's a remarkable acheivement in engineering to cram all that in to such a small and light device, but the design demonstrates a really blinkered approach to the requirements.
Think about what you are liekly to do on the move. The input devices fixed to the machine should reflect tese activities: you can't write seriously on a keyboard like that so why bother with the keyboard at all? Voice recognition can handle serious text input with ease these days leaving only the editing to be done when you get back to base and plug it into it's cradle giving you access to a full size keyboard and mouse.
What is the power hungry and delicate hard disk for? This should be in a datacentre somewhere and presented on the device via an intelligent caching back end that makes it look like the stuff is local.
Why is it running an OS that has it's design roots derived from hardware designed for the server and desktop computer ? Do we really need all that baggage in a portable device?
The PDA approach is a much better place to start. With the addition of the right client software it could communicate with larger systems when placed in it's cradle (using protocols like X or framebuffers like VNC), and using a full size monitor/keyboard/mouse. Storage could be central and the device is then also small enough to function a phone.
Condensing Windows, a desktop OS which in turn has it's philosophy derived from other multi-tasking operating systems for small computers like Unix et al into a small package like that is amazing, but ultimately misses the great opportunities that global networks, wireless connectiivty and a tiered approach can give.
Still - I'm sure it'll find many fans due to the familiarity factor - same as your desktop/laptop but smaller..
..you know you've taken it too far if you start hopping sideways down the office shouting "hut! hut! hut!" and trying to rocket jump up to your car in the multi storey car park...
I'm not sure you disagreed to be honest:) I think HL2 will be a more interesting game, certainly in the single player plot driven part.
I was thinking half way through Doom3 "man is there much more of this?" which is probably not a good sign, but games are sold on their looks to a large extent.
Half Life did look amazing next to it's cartoony contemporary: Quake2 with HL's outdoor/indoor, real world look with strong lighting and realistic textures. I remember it also bored me rigid. The multiplayer was unbalanced and your man moved like his shoe laces were tied together. I still play Q2 (multiplayer) occasionally for the sheer action..
I guess for me, it's all about the multiplayer, where the game technology merely provides the arena. I'd like it to look nice and to be able to move around with some degree of agility. So the eye candy becomes more important than any "story". Doom 3 hasn't really delivered on this yet either - the supplied example maps for MP are all indoor and quite cramped looking. It'll take an experienced mod team to make a good MP game out of it. 3wave don't look interested - I'm guessing they are waiting on Q4. So it looks like the long term appeal of Doom3 rests on the Doom3 Fortress team.
Steam is a great concept, but it's current incarnation is a pile of crap. No one wants to wait for 3Gigs of assets to download, and why bother, when the box has it all in CD/DVD? It can be done - Lucasarts game patcher for Galaxies worked very well (well at least in the beta it did - I never bought the finished product - I just don't have the time or mental stamina required to devote to shooting the endless small furry animals that bite your ankles)
I agree Doom3 SP is not a great game, but then single player plot driven FPS games *are* dull. When you've finished - who exactly have you beaten? There's a very nice looking engine for some serious multiplayer action lurking in there though! Vivendi had better get on with it if they want HL2 to compete for the mod producers attention the way the original did.
Games have a very definite shelf life. I watched the latest Halflife 2 video the other day (the one with yer man on a quad bike of some kind shooting some spiders that looked a bit familiar..) and whilst it still looked like a game I might want to buy, I had just finished Doom 3 and whatever you can say about Doom 3, one thing I don't think you can deny is that it looks damm fine. HL2 just looks pretty ordinary to me now.
It may have a more comprehensive physics engine that lets you interact with objects (You could knock stuff over in Doom3 and the swinging crane was very well done but that was about the limit of your interaction - kicking the office furniture about - although I did manage to get inside a barrel in MP, or at least end up in a barrel...:)) but is anyone that interested when they have bad guys to blow away? Might be more relvant in future games made with the Source engine.
HL2 may also have a more interesting game behind the eye candy and certainly has more varied environemnts then Doom3 (although nobody does Hell like ID:P). The thing is, these advances are rapidly becoming old news - if they don't release soon - this carton of milk is going to start to smell. I'm sure Vivendi don't want it stinking up their refrigerator.
"...The ability to make changes to KnoppMyth after it has already been installed is one quality that it severely lacks...."
er.. did they not figure what this meant on VCs 1-6?:-
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In fact it is *necessary* to login to a Knoppmyth install and type lines starting with "apt-get install...." a lot and make changes in an energetic fashion to get things to work! Like setting any IDE DVD drives and HDD's to use DMA before mplayer will actually play a DVD, If I remember correctly, there are also some libs missing - libcss? or something like that. I also added some "luxuries" like the telnet service, NFS client and ftp server to my protoype box...
"..For example, MCE continues to record even if the program is not open.."
er.. and did they not grasp the concept of MythTV's ability to split the backend (that does the recording, scheduling etc) from the *frontend* - ie the pretty bit you point the remote at. They can even be on seperate machines with several front ends talking to one backend (and probably vice versa but I've never tried this).
Aprt from these strange glaring gaffs a fair old comparison. Strange they chose Myth over MCE in the end though. I love MythTV, but for most punters, it's just not even close to ready yet - it's not exactly hard to install, but to get it working with a high SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor) takes some effort, and some trial and error with hardware purchases. MCE is ready to go.
There are some uses where an Xbox kind of makes sense. I considered using them for media players and they are still cheaper than I could build for (about £100 in the UK). They come in a nice small box that doesn't look too bad under the TV. I would need 3 or 4 units so the unit price was quite important.
In the end I decided the hardware spec was really too low for an all in one solution and the price is too high for a front-end only box. I'm now fiddling with the Hauppauge MVP (IBM PPC box that runs Busybox - a Linux distro) These are even cheaper at £39 + TAX and have built in network and MPEG2 decoders... (the CPU intensive stuff is done on a shared high-powered backend in this model).
For me, this case modkit removes one of the few plus point of the Xbox - it's compact size!
I wouldn't want to do any mainstream computing tasks with an Xbox and I certainly don't want to play the somewhat uninvolving games it runs...
All true; but then I don't think anybody (including the article's authors) expected the average Joe to do this.
Many devices (inlcuding the Tivo) run Linux and at some point, some guys who weren't average and may not have been called Joe, messed around with commands like that to get it working. Then they packed it all up so it all just worked when power was applied.
That's the thing - once it's working and fully debugged, you can distill it down to an ISO. Publish the exact hardware spec and then Joe Average can build his own with minimum fuss (assemble hardware, boot from CD and follow instructions).
It's called development. It's just the same in the Windows and Mac worlds. Mac and Windows software doesn't write itself either - some clever people are fiddling with comamnds and abstract notions that would look just as obscure to you as the Linux stuff you saw to make Windows Media Centre et al. The only real difference, is that in the open source world, these efforts are often there for all to see.
I have to admit that for me, part of the attraction is having some facility which you can't just buy in a shop, and that I only build things I can't buy for a reasonable amount of money, or that don't exist in a Sonyfied form in Dixons.
In this increasingly sanitised and ordered world, I take comfort from the fact that not quite everything I see is meant for the average guy and does not come with a manual. Maybe it's the british male shed mentality given 21st century form !
I've been doing some experiments with Myth over the last few months, and hardware selection is probably the most interesting part. The problem of getting enough power into a machine to decode/encode DivX/Xvid and do it for Tivo/Kiss money.
The first problem that became apparent was that anything with enough power to encode and decode these Mpeg4 streams was going to make way too much noise, which in turn causes a low SAF (Spouse acceptance factor - "There's no way I'm having that in my lounge!"). Other things that affect the SAF include the shape and colour of the case. If it's a old hearing-aid beige e-machines mini tower - forget it...
Anyway, on the CPU power issue I deceided to make use of Myth's ability to split the functions over 2 boxes (the back end and the front end machines). That meant I could just use my twin Xeon Dell 6400 that sits in the attic to do all the hard stuff like transcoding MP4 to MP2, recording shows and so on whilst making a similar noise to a small jet aircraft... The other advantage of this is that you can then display any of your content in any room equipped with a screen, and a Myth front end - store once, use in many locations. That just leaves selection of some hardware for the front end devices.
I costed up standard PC devices, but ideally wanted a fanless (and possibly driveless) machine. I looked at Shuttle barebones systems, those little VIA all in one mobo+CPU things and lots more besides. I also looked at using an Xbox (cost about £110/$200) but the CPU is woefully underpowered for this task, and by the time you've upgraded the RAM, the HDD etc you may as well have bought that Shuttle barebones system.
These devices essentially stream MPeg2 (and some other stuff) from a Windows only server. The beta version of the software can transcode from MPeg4 to mpeg2 before streaming the content to the device across the network.
Now this is actually quite useful straight out of the box, but then, a quick google later, it became apparent that these MediaMVP devices run a Linux distro called "BusyBox" on an IBM PPC chip, and boot the image off of DHCP/TFTP!
Not only that, but there's already a load of work been done, and I downloaded all the bits necesary to make the cross compile environment, and tried out some of the modified BusyBOX installs that people had made. It works! With the additional of a telnet daemon, NFS client, these things become truly useful. You can now telnet to the box and play around to get things going, and then incorporate those chnages into the boot image.
So it wasn't long before I thought this would be ideal to run a Myth front end. Like most ideas that are this obvious - it's already been thought if and the best place to start is here:- http://mythmvp.org/
Unfortunately for me, my test MVP got taken out by an electrical storm that caused a power surge, detroying that and several Linksys WET11's on my network... bummer.
Best of all though - these MVP's are £50 and have hardware Mpeg2 decoders! (~$100) and stream MPEG2 even over 802.11b wireless with no problems, so it won't cost me much to get back up and running again (and hey, I was planning on upgrading my Wifi to 802.11g anyway:P)
Big fat video/PVR server - thin and cheap clients that's the way to go. Of course all of this is just temporary: I mean why do I want to store the shows? Really, I want someone else to host the back end and charge me a subscription to watch and listen to any show/movie/music track that ever existed. But in the meantime, as an intermediary step, I'm looking to at least centralise the content locally.
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forward? ouch!
In a feat of unbridled stupidity, Valve named their new game engine "Source" causing confusion on a scale unimagined since Microsoft thought "hmm what shall we call our new SQL server product?", and Ford thought: "'Ka' - that's a great name for a car!"
Really, it ranks right up there with their previous gaff "Our games are Powered by Steam". Righto.
ROFL
How many times have you played RTCW, got to the door and realised no fecker is an engineer? Then no one's on defence - in the flag room, because they're all outside fragging each other in mid-field (at least in 3wave CTF you don't get any bonus points for this). I remember when JKII came out, playing CTF and everyone was in mid-field dueling with those light-up pointy sticks. Meanwhile I'm over the enemy base saying "er.. anyone mind if I take this then? No? Hello? OK thanks..". No frags but hundreds of points...
Oh - and there's always one guy who shouts "Camping lamo" at the one guy who's actually trying to defend something of strategic value.. A bit like saying "hey - you're not running about like a headless chicken at random - you must be cheating!!" And if you *dare* to possibly actually obtain and use a powerup or some other difficult to use, but deadly equipment...
..it wasn't labelled something like "TrialMinutesLeft" or something was it? :P
So.. apart from the sewers, the education system, the roads, the system of government, and the voice controlled wheel chair, what have the Ro^H^H^H^H^H^H NASA done for us?
:)
Some of those seem a little dubious btw - I take it nobody's claiming NASA invented any of this stuff? I'm sure NASA had some contribution to make to all of them, but then Daewoo make cars and I'm not sure their contribution is a positive one...
Seriously though, was this the same water purification system that Coca Cola used on their bottled water "Dalsani" ? The water, it turned out was er.. tap water from Peckham. Indeed the whole scam was worthy of Peckham's most famous son, and 3 wheeled van driver. The purification system, which was indeed developed by NASA turned out to be introducing significant quantities of some compound known to cause cancer into the water. So, not only was it tap water, it was poisoned tap water. Makes you wonder what's in their other browner beverages. It's hard to hide shit in a clear liquid
I agree. However, the rock solid rental offering is still not there for some of the scenarios, such as the one I wanted - I want to receive all the TV onto a central server, and view it from many locations around the house. And I want it distributed digitally - not some hash of a solution where some ropey analogue video signal is re-transmitted.
Here in the UK, TV (for those that want more than 5 channels) = Sky (or DVB just about). Sky offer a PVR for £159 with no extra subscription charge and this suits most people. It works, is fully integrated with their EPG etc. The problem is that you can't get the data out of the box, so I can't view it anywhere else in the house (unless I physically cart the box to the next room...). There are some mods you can do to some of the boxes such as the one that pluggedin.tv offer which adds broadcast spec SDI outputs to certain Sky+ PVR boxes and coupled with a suitable SDI card for your PC, you can capture, scale and de-interlace the signal. Other than that you need to capture the analogue output from a Sky receiver.
So, I'm definitley with you on the "why struggle when you can buy it in Dixon's" thing, but even so, I've just built a PVR costing 3 times the price of Sky's offering, so I can view the results in other rooms, or burn them onto DVDs and take them elsewhere. I appreciate Sky's reluctance to essentially enable the customer to re-distribute their content, but well - hey - I don't care. *I* don't intend to profit from the recordings, I don't distribute them to people and really, I don't keep them very long anyway. They need to start selling a device that lets you play the media as long as the software/hardware detects a valid subscription smart card, in a reader, somewhere on your local network
So now I can record the digital streams broadcast freely over UHF. I'm just weighing up the best way to record Sky. SDI is expensive, but is currently the only all-digital way I've found.
I'd abandon all this in an instant though, if the satellite company offered a turnkey solution. I like messing with the technology sure, but these days, I don't thave the time - I'd rather it just worked the way I want it to: the only reason I go off and build these things is because they are not available "offically".
At the end of the day though, all this "media centre" "HTPC" stuff is a red herring. A stepping stone if you like. As soon as there's enough bandwidth on tap to most peoples' houses, the content can stay where it belongs - on the sat company's servers, not mine. Same with the music - I don't want to "buy" tracks (or more accuratley perhaps, I don't want the burden of storing them) - just let me listen to them and I'll give you some cash in return. Somebody like Sony or some other global entertainment giant can store all the stuff, handle all the complex royalties to the "suppliers", and pay for the infrastrcuture. I'll just pay a fee each month to watch and listen to the stuff from any device - maybe with some form of subscription card, or other id device. That's the rock-stable service I want.
Then I can turn off the bloody great server in my attic and save on the electricity!
I see no warning light. And the other guy is holding his hands as if he was holding a rifle.
I take your point about the "why", but the fact remains, that red bit looks well dodgy. It's all contained in that rectangle that does look like it's been pasted on. It may be just the angle of the shot. The textures on the red bit looks like they're from Q2DM3 but then again, this *is* supposed be the same place.
I suspect it's more "unfinished" than "faked".
It may be boring - but it sure is popular. Personally, I've never seen the attraction of the sniper-fest that is Half Speed Camperstrike. 20 minutes hiding behind a box isn't my idea of online fun. If you do try and walk, it's like your pants are round your ankles - you sort of shuffle. As a long time Quake/2/3/3wave player used to bouncing around the map at great speed performing trick jumps and using rocket propulsion to get around CS looks like a cure for insomnia...
:))) )
But! - I'm in the minority here - it's the most played online game there is, and if CS source doesn't float your boat - you can always throw bathroom fittings at each other in HL2 DM - it's the antithesis of CS - complete hilarity with no weapon balance at all (yes a filing cabinet is more deadly than the sub-machine gun in HL2 DM. You can spend ages trying to wear a hole in someone's head with bullets, or just chuck a toilet at them - brilliant
Geez, I missed Ocean's 1 to 11?
Yeah and uh.. how many football fields is that anyway?
Dr. Spock (the eminent child psychologist) was in Star Trek? Must have missed that episode..
Or is that Nead for Spead?
Sorry - is that my coat?
This has to be the most un-imaginative approach to mobile, and unbiquitous computing: take the hardware and OS of desktops and small to midrange servers and make it all smaller. Granted there's a nod to the portability issues with the touch screen and built in wireless technolgoies but this is bolt on stuff from a design point of view.
Of course it's a remarkable acheivement in engineering to cram all that in to such a small and light device, but the design demonstrates a really blinkered approach to the requirements.
Think about what you are liekly to do on the move. The input devices fixed to the machine should reflect tese activities: you can't write seriously on a keyboard like that so why bother with the keyboard at all? Voice recognition can handle serious text input with ease these days leaving only the editing to be done when you get back to base and plug it into it's cradle giving you access to a full size keyboard and mouse.
What is the power hungry and delicate hard disk for? This should be in a datacentre somewhere and presented on the device via an intelligent caching back end that makes it look like the stuff is local.
Why is it running an OS that has it's design roots derived from hardware designed for the server and desktop computer ? Do we really need all that baggage in a portable device?
The PDA approach is a much better place to start. With the addition of the right client software it could communicate with larger systems when placed in it's cradle (using protocols like X or framebuffers like VNC), and using a full size monitor/keyboard/mouse. Storage could be central and the device is then also small enough to function a phone.
Condensing Windows, a desktop OS which in turn has it's philosophy derived from other multi-tasking operating systems for small computers like Unix et al into a small package like that is amazing, but ultimately misses the great opportunities that global networks, wireless connectiivty and a tiered approach can give.
Still - I'm sure it'll find many fans due to the familiarity factor - same as your desktop/laptop but smaller..
..you know you've taken it too far if you start hopping sideways down the office shouting "hut! hut! hut!" and trying to rocket jump up to your car in the multi storey car park...
Are we sure the WinXP SE standard for "starter edition"? Maybe this is Microsoft's long promised WindowsXP Secure Edition!
:P
Does it display jpegs?
I'm not sure you disagreed to be honest :) I think HL2 will be a more interesting game, certainly in the single player plot driven part.
I was thinking half way through Doom3 "man is there much more of this?" which is probably not a good sign, but games are sold on their looks to a large extent.
Half Life did look amazing next to it's cartoony contemporary: Quake2 with HL's outdoor/indoor, real world look with strong lighting and realistic textures. I remember it also bored me rigid. The multiplayer was unbalanced and your man moved like his shoe laces were tied together. I still play Q2 (multiplayer) occasionally for the sheer action..
I guess for me, it's all about the multiplayer, where the game technology merely provides the arena. I'd like it to look nice and to be able to move around with some degree of agility. So the eye candy becomes more important than any "story". Doom 3 hasn't really delivered on this yet either - the supplied example maps for MP are all indoor and quite cramped looking. It'll take an experienced mod team to make a good MP game out of it. 3wave don't look interested - I'm guessing they are waiting on Q4. So it looks like the long term appeal of Doom3 rests on the Doom3 Fortress team.
Steam is a great concept, but it's current incarnation is a pile of crap. No one wants to wait for 3Gigs of assets to download, and why bother, when the box has it all in CD/DVD? It can be done - Lucasarts game patcher for Galaxies worked very well (well at least in the beta it did - I never bought the finished product - I just don't have the time or mental stamina required to devote to shooting the endless small furry animals that bite your ankles)
I agree Doom3 SP is not a great game, but then single player plot driven FPS games *are* dull. When you've finished - who exactly have you beaten? There's a very nice looking engine for some serious multiplayer action lurking in there though! Vivendi had better get on with it if they want HL2 to compete for the mod producers attention the way the original did.
Rumours that a titanium sun lounger and a beach towel are among the capsule's payload have been strongly denied... :P
They go off.
:)) but is anyone that interested when they have bad guys to blow away? Might be more relvant in future games made with the Source engine.
:P). The thing is, these advances are rapidly becoming old news - if they don't release soon - this carton of milk is going to start to smell. I'm sure Vivendi don't want it stinking up their refrigerator.
Games have a very definite shelf life. I watched the latest Halflife 2 video the other day (the one with yer man on a quad bike of some kind shooting some spiders that looked a bit familiar..) and whilst it still looked like a game I might want to buy, I had just finished Doom 3 and whatever you can say about Doom 3, one thing I don't think you can deny is that it looks damm fine. HL2 just looks pretty ordinary to me now.
It may have a more comprehensive physics engine that lets you interact with objects (You could knock stuff over in Doom3 and the swinging crane was very well done but that was about the limit of your interaction - kicking the office furniture about - although I did manage to get inside a barrel in MP, or at least end up in a barrel...
HL2 may also have a more interesting game behind the eye candy and certainly has more varied environemnts then Doom3 (although nobody does Hell like ID
er.. pull your arms out of their sockets? Wookies are known to do that, apparentley.
And if you are a Gundark - you should probably run. And put your hands over your ears.
"...The ability to make changes to KnoppMyth after it has already been installed is one quality that it severely lacks. ..."
:-
.."
er.. did they not figure what this meant on VCs 1-6?
Login:
In fact it is *necessary* to login to a Knoppmyth install and type lines starting with "apt-get install...." a lot and make changes in an energetic fashion to get things to work! Like setting any IDE DVD drives and HDD's to use DMA before mplayer will actually play a DVD, If I remember correctly, there are also some libs missing - libcss? or something like that. I also added some "luxuries" like the telnet service, NFS client and ftp server to my protoype box...
"..For example, MCE continues to record even if the program is not open
er.. and did they not grasp the concept of MythTV's ability to split the backend (that does the recording, scheduling etc) from the *frontend* - ie the pretty bit you point the remote at. They can even be on seperate machines with several front ends talking to one backend (and probably vice versa but I've never tried this).
Aprt from these strange glaring gaffs a fair old comparison. Strange they chose Myth over MCE in the end though. I love MythTV, but for most punters, it's just not even close to ready yet - it's not exactly hard to install, but to get it working with a high SAF (Spouse Acceptance Factor) takes some effort, and some trial and error with hardware purchases. MCE is ready to go.
...You don't have to colour in all those friggin models yourself and make the map first :))
There are some uses where an Xbox kind of makes sense. I considered using them for media players and they are still cheaper than I could build for (about £100 in the UK). They come in a nice small box that doesn't look too bad under the TV. I would need 3 or 4 units so the unit price was quite important.
In the end I decided the hardware spec was really too low for an all in one solution and the price is too high for a front-end only box. I'm now fiddling with the Hauppauge MVP (IBM PPC box that runs Busybox - a Linux distro) These are even cheaper at £39 + TAX and have built in network and MPEG2 decoders... (the CPU intensive stuff is done on a shared high-powered backend in this model).
For me, this case modkit removes one of the few plus point of the Xbox - it's compact size!
I wouldn't want to do any mainstream computing tasks with an Xbox and I certainly don't want to play the somewhat uninvolving games it runs...
Make your system totally secure from external attack - chop off the power cord!
Ah hell - Avoid everything... shoot yourself!
All true; but then I don't think anybody (including the article's authors) expected the average Joe to do this.
Many devices (inlcuding the Tivo) run Linux and at some point, some guys who weren't average and may not have been called Joe, messed around with commands like that to get it working. Then they packed it all up so it all just worked when power was applied.
That's the thing - once it's working and fully debugged, you can distill it down to an ISO. Publish the exact hardware spec and then Joe Average can build his own with minimum fuss (assemble hardware, boot from CD and follow instructions).
There's a reasonable attemt at this for MythTV called KnoppMYTH:-
http://www.mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html
It's called development. It's just the same in the Windows and Mac worlds. Mac and Windows software doesn't write itself either - some clever people are fiddling with comamnds and abstract notions that would look just as obscure to you as the Linux stuff you saw to make Windows Media Centre et al. The only real difference, is that in the open source world, these efforts are often there for all to see.
I have to admit that for me, part of the attraction is having some facility which you can't just buy in a shop, and that I only build things I can't buy for a reasonable amount of money, or that don't exist in a Sonyfied form in Dixons.
In this increasingly sanitised and ordered world, I take comfort from the fact that not quite everything I see is meant for the average guy and does not come with a manual. Maybe it's the british male shed mentality given 21st century form !
I've been doing some experiments with Myth over the last few months, and hardware selection is probably the most interesting part. The problem of getting enough power into a machine to decode/encode DivX/Xvid and do it for Tivo/Kiss money.
:P)
The first problem that became apparent was that anything with enough power to encode and decode these Mpeg4 streams was going to make way too much noise, which in turn causes a low SAF (Spouse acceptance factor - "There's no way I'm having that in my lounge!"). Other things that affect the SAF include the shape and colour of the case. If it's a old hearing-aid beige e-machines mini tower - forget it...
Anyway, on the CPU power issue I deceided to make use of Myth's ability to split the functions over 2 boxes (the back end and the front end machines). That meant I could just use my twin Xeon Dell 6400 that sits in the attic to do all the hard stuff like transcoding MP4 to MP2, recording shows and so on whilst making a similar noise to a small jet aircraft... The other advantage of this is that you can then display any of your content in any room equipped with a screen, and a Myth front end - store once, use in many locations. That just leaves selection of some hardware for the front end devices.
I costed up standard PC devices, but ideally wanted a fanless (and possibly driveless) machine. I looked at Shuttle barebones systems, those little VIA all in one mobo+CPU things and lots more besides. I also looked at using an Xbox (cost about £110/$200) but the CPU is woefully underpowered for this task, and by the time you've upgraded the RAM, the HDD etc you may as well have bought that Shuttle barebones system.
Then I found this:-
http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/products/data_media mvp.html
These devices essentially stream MPeg2 (and some other stuff) from a Windows only server. The beta version of the software can transcode from MPeg4 to mpeg2 before streaming the content to the device across the network.
Now this is actually quite useful straight out of the box, but then, a quick google later, it became apparent that these MediaMVP devices run a Linux distro called "BusyBox" on an IBM PPC chip, and boot the image off of DHCP/TFTP!
Not only that, but there's already a load of work been done, and I downloaded all the bits necesary to make the cross compile environment, and tried out some of the modified BusyBOX installs that people had made. It works! With the additional of a telnet daemon, NFS client, these things become truly useful. You can now telnet to the box and play around to get things going, and then incorporate those chnages into the boot image.
So it wasn't long before I thought this would be ideal to run a Myth front end. Like most ideas that are this obvious - it's already been thought if and the best place to start is here:-
http://mythmvp.org/
Unfortunately for me, my test MVP got taken out by an electrical storm that caused a power surge, detroying that and several Linksys WET11's on my network... bummer.
Best of all though - these MVP's are £50 and have hardware Mpeg2 decoders! (~$100) and stream MPEG2 even over 802.11b wireless with no problems, so it won't cost me much to get back up and running again (and hey, I was planning on upgrading my Wifi to 802.11g anyway
Big fat video/PVR server - thin and cheap clients that's the way to go. Of course all of this is just temporary: I mean why do I want to store the shows? Really, I want someone else to host the back end and charge me a subscription to watch and listen to any show/movie/music track that ever existed. But in the meantime, as an intermediary step, I'm looking to at least centralise the content locally.
Other useful links for this project:-