There are a few Descent and Descent 2 source ports out there. They mostly focus on getting the game working natively in modern OSes, but they have some new graphical features too.
I never understood why 6-degrees-of-freedom games faded from popularity. I loved the sensation of "I don't need to know what's ceiling or floor, I just need to know where the enemies are."
So yeah, I don't necessarily want a Descent or Descent 2 remake, but a whole new 6DOF game in the spirit of those. An indoor/outdoor one like Descent 3, nice combination of tight indoor battles and outdoor dogfighting.
Back in 97/98 (i think) there were at least a couple of 64-player servers in the UK running the large 64-player maps. They were fine, connection-wise. I think they mostly ran the remix maps that were comprised of parts of the official id maps cut and pasted together into huge single maps. IIRC, one of them may have run the 16-player map titan2.bsp from time to time as well (it was pretty big).
The biggest problem with huge maps like that was if the server was quiet you could go several minutes without seeing another player.:P
On the other hand, when the server was full it was utter madness.:D
I'm not missing the point. That's exactly what I was saying.
The question Kokuyo asked was "Do you have under 10ms when gaming directly from your rig?"
Kokuyo was saying 10ms was an unrealistic expectation of latency on a gaming rig. I was pointing out that it wasn't.
I fully agree that with the overheads incurred by encoding the video and audio, sending it to the player's system and syncing it with the control packets it will be pretty unplayable.
Network latency in online gaming didn't even come into it. The example used was Mass Effect 2, a single player game.
Secondly, the framerate in that ME2 video is shockingly bad, and gives no indication of how laggy the controls are (I'm guessing: very).
I'm still not convinced this can be more than vaporware until the latency can be brought to 10ms or less, which isn't going to happen with any regularity on the Internet we have.
They might never add it to Windows itself, but it was an optional component of Office 2007 and it's built into Office 2010 (although that information is very well hidden on the Microsoft site... maybe that was part of the deal with Adobe.)
My guess is if Adobe played hardball, Microsoft would start heavily promoting the XPS format as an alternative to PDF, so Adobe backed down.
I did some really quick and inaccurate tests in Windows 7 x64 on a pretty low-end workstation with OO.o 3.2.1 installed:
I restarted my machine and loaded Word 2007, it started in about 4 seconds.
I then loaded OpenOffice.org Writer (Quickstarter disabled) which took about 8 seconds to start.
I then enabled OO.o Quickstarter and rebooted. With Quickstarter enabled, OO.o Writer took about 3 seconds to start.
Subsequent loads of either app take less than a second.
Basically, Quickstarter levels the playing field between the two, but neither are particularly bad. Even with Quickstarter disabled, 8 seconds isn't too much to ask for a word processor to start for the first time in a session.
I did notice that starting the apps from the OO.o Quickstarter itself is actually marginally faster than using a desktop shortcut or Start Menu shortcut. No idea why that would be.
On a flight from Amsterdam to Dallas recently, I had to remove my shoes, my belt, remove my laptop from my bag, and had the option of a full body scan or a "pat-down". I saw other people opting for the pat-down and chose the body scan; at least it's quick. Let them stare at my flabby form if they want to. It wrongly detected metal in my left pocket, which made them ask "Do you have anything in that pocket?". I said "No." and they let me pass.
On arriving in DFW all non-US citizens had to have their passports and visas (or visa waivers) checked, their fingerprints scanned and their faces photographed.
Add that to the general discomfort of a 9 hour trans-Atlantic flight in Economy class and you have real a recipe for fun.
First of all, anyone with any experience of Bethesda's games will know that they are:
1. Huge.
2. Incredibly complex.
3. Buggy as hell on release, probably as a result of 1. and 2.
All this doesn't really matter though, because they're also generally:
4. Really, really good.
I bought Fallout: New Vegas on release day and I've put about 30-40 hours into it so far. I'm level 25 or something and I haven't set foot on The Strip yet.
I love the game, as I loved Fallout 3 and Oblivion and Morrowind and Daggerfall before them.
The bugs I've encountered I'd place in the category of "minor irritations" rather than "game-breaking issues". Perhaps I'm lucky or I'm just used to Bethesda's release quality, but even with the slowdowns, the occasional CTDs and some quest logic weirdness, I still think it's probably the best game I've played this year... if not, it's definitely in my top 3.
Would I prefer it without the bugs? Sure. But I'm confident they'll get there, or at least most of the way there, and the community will do the rest... so my second playthrough will probably be even smoother.
Even in its release condition, I don't regret paying full price for this game.
Check the Bethsoft forums for a fix for the slowdown issue. It involves dumping a DirectX9 dll in your game directory.
I was skeptical about the fix, and about running a random dll from the internet, but it really works.
In busy areas I went from 30fps in Medium settings to 60fps in Ultra settings.
The only side-effect I found was in alt-tabbing out of the game, the audio no longer continues playing, but rather it loops as if the game has stalled. I have no idea what happens if you alt-tab out for an extended period - perhaps the game crashes hard - but I was able to alt-tab out and in for short periods with no problems. There was some very minor audio skipping introduced as well, but you'd be hard pressed to notice it.
For me, this was a small price to pay for the massive performance increase. This makes me suspect that the slowdown issue is due to some horrible DX10/11 "optimization" of background tasks or something, or maybe a change in the way the engine's subsystems are threaded.
It's not because the hardware resembles a PC, it's because Android and ChromeOS supposedly contain features described by patents that Microsoft own.
If the patents are valid, Microsoft are completely within their rights to defend them. Their reasons for doing so might be anti-competitive and malicious, but unfortunately that's rather irrelevant.
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but I just took an old 128MB SD card I had lying around and snapped it in half with my fingers, and I am no superman.
Are people really getting that hot and bothered about a little joke on a game vendor's website?
This didn't harm anyone. It was, at most, a mild inconvenience to users (of which I am one), but it was made clear from the beginning that people would be able to access their games again today. Even if you couldn't, if you have a local copy you can simply install it again. I imagine eventually people would start sharing the installers with others who didn't have them saved locally. Compare that to Steam or Impulse or any of the other DRM-laden game download services where that simply couldn't happen due to DRM.
I don't have any problem with this marketing stunt. As they said in the video, the whole industry has a stick up its ass these days.. perhaps some gamers need to relax a bit.
Don't get Two Worlds. I bought it from GOG about a month ago and I wish I hadn't. Clunky Oblivion clone with very little to recommend it. Just play Oblivion.
The same people who are prepared to open up password protected zipfiles in Windows and execute the contents will be chomping at the bit to chmod +x an email attachment so they can see the dancing bunnies.
omg.... DANCING BUNNIEZ?!?!?!?!
SUM1 EMAIL ME THE BUNNIEZ RITE NAO PLZKTHXBAI
***clicks the attachment so hard and fast the mouse catches fire***
I work in an independent school in the UK, and we use biometric (fingerprint) identification for our "Cashless Catering" service, as do many other schools around the country.
Some parents had some privacy concerns, but they were mitigated by the fact that the fingerprints are stored in the DB as hashes, so the fingerprint image can't be extracted from the database, and we're an independent school, so there's no connection to local government etc. The DB records get deleted when the kids leave school.
The system does track what each student buys, but so far it hasn't been monitored to encourage healthy eating, just for accounting purposes. Even if it was used that way, I doubt most people would mind. It's hard to argue against good nutrition, and if you're eating in the school cafeteria, your eating habits are public knowledge anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
There are a few Descent and Descent 2 source ports out there. They mostly focus on getting the game working natively in modern OSes, but they have some new graphical features too.
I never understood why 6-degrees-of-freedom games faded from popularity. I loved the sensation of "I don't need to know what's ceiling or floor, I just need to know where the enemies are."
So yeah, I don't necessarily want a Descent or Descent 2 remake, but a whole new 6DOF game in the spirit of those. An indoor/outdoor one like Descent 3, nice combination of tight indoor battles and outdoor dogfighting.
Well, I can dream...
Back in 97/98 (i think) there were at least a couple of 64-player servers in the UK running the large 64-player maps. They were fine, connection-wise. I think they mostly ran the remix maps that were comprised of parts of the official id maps cut and pasted together into huge single maps. IIRC, one of them may have run the 16-player map titan2.bsp from time to time as well (it was pretty big).
The biggest problem with huge maps like that was if the server was quiet you could go several minutes without seeing another player. :P
On the other hand, when the server was full it was utter madness. :D
Nice work. Even with my glasses on I could barely read the example in TFS while I could read yours no problem at all.
Having said that, the sub-pixel rendering in the example above looks all wrong on this monitor.
I'm not missing the point. That's exactly what I was saying.
The question Kokuyo asked was "Do you have under 10ms when gaming directly from your rig?"
Kokuyo was saying 10ms was an unrealistic expectation of latency on a gaming rig. I was pointing out that it wasn't.
I fully agree that with the overheads incurred by encoding the video and audio, sending it to the player's system and syncing it with the control packets it will be pretty unplayable.
Network latency in online gaming didn't even come into it. The example used was Mass Effect 2, a single player game.
Monitor response time: 5ms.
Lag introduced by USB control:
So... yeah?
First of all, since links are conspicuously missing from TFS:
http://www.dperry.com/archives/news/dp_blog/gaikai_open_bet/
Secondly, the framerate in that ME2 video is shockingly bad, and gives no indication of how laggy the controls are (I'm guessing: very).
I'm still not convinced this can be more than vaporware until the latency can be brought to 10ms or less, which isn't going to happen with any regularity on the Internet we have.
They might never add it to Windows itself, but it was an optional component of Office 2007 and it's built into Office 2010 (although that information is very well hidden on the Microsoft site... maybe that was part of the deal with Adobe.)
My guess is if Adobe played hardball, Microsoft would start heavily promoting the XPS format as an alternative to PDF, so Adobe backed down.
I did some really quick and inaccurate tests in Windows 7 x64 on a pretty low-end workstation with OO.o 3.2.1 installed:
I restarted my machine and loaded Word 2007, it started in about 4 seconds.
I then loaded OpenOffice.org Writer (Quickstarter disabled) which took about 8 seconds to start.
I then enabled OO.o Quickstarter and rebooted. With Quickstarter enabled, OO.o Writer took about 3 seconds to start.
Subsequent loads of either app take less than a second.
Basically, Quickstarter levels the playing field between the two, but neither are particularly bad. Even with Quickstarter disabled, 8 seconds isn't too much to ask for a word processor to start for the first time in a session.
I did notice that starting the apps from the OO.o Quickstarter itself is actually marginally faster than using a desktop shortcut or Start Menu shortcut. No idea why that would be.
On a flight from Amsterdam to Dallas recently, I had to remove my shoes, my belt, remove my laptop from my bag, and had the option of a full body scan or a "pat-down". I saw other people opting for the pat-down and chose the body scan; at least it's quick. Let them stare at my flabby form if they want to. It wrongly detected metal in my left pocket, which made them ask "Do you have anything in that pocket?". I said "No." and they let me pass.
On arriving in DFW all non-US citizens had to have their passports and visas (or visa waivers) checked, their fingerprints scanned and their faces photographed.
Add that to the general discomfort of a 9 hour trans-Atlantic flight in Economy class and you have real a recipe for fun.
First of all, anyone with any experience of Bethesda's games will know that they are:
1. Huge.
2. Incredibly complex.
3. Buggy as hell on release, probably as a result of 1. and 2.
All this doesn't really matter though, because they're also generally:
4. Really, really good.
I bought Fallout: New Vegas on release day and I've put about 30-40 hours into it so far. I'm level 25 or something and I haven't set foot on The Strip yet.
I love the game, as I loved Fallout 3 and Oblivion and Morrowind and Daggerfall before them.
The bugs I've encountered I'd place in the category of "minor irritations" rather than "game-breaking issues". Perhaps I'm lucky or I'm just used to Bethesda's release quality, but even with the slowdowns, the occasional CTDs and some quest logic weirdness, I still think it's probably the best game I've played this year... if not, it's definitely in my top 3.
Would I prefer it without the bugs? Sure. But I'm confident they'll get there, or at least most of the way there, and the community will do the rest... so my second playthrough will probably be even smoother.
Even in its release condition, I don't regret paying full price for this game.
Check the Bethsoft forums for a fix for the slowdown issue. It involves dumping a DirectX9 dll in your game directory.
I was skeptical about the fix, and about running a random dll from the internet, but it really works.
In busy areas I went from 30fps in Medium settings to 60fps in Ultra settings.
The only side-effect I found was in alt-tabbing out of the game, the audio no longer continues playing, but rather it loops as if the game has stalled. I have no idea what happens if you alt-tab out for an extended period - perhaps the game crashes hard - but I was able to alt-tab out and in for short periods with no problems. There was some very minor audio skipping introduced as well, but you'd be hard pressed to notice it.
For me, this was a small price to pay for the massive performance increase. This makes me suspect that the slowdown issue is due to some horrible DX10/11 "optimization" of background tasks or something, or maybe a change in the way the engine's subsystems are threaded.
Either way, it's well worth a try.
It's not because the hardware resembles a PC, it's because Android and ChromeOS supposedly contain features described by patents that Microsoft own.
If the patents are valid, Microsoft are completely within their rights to defend them. Their reasons for doing so might be anti-competitive and malicious, but unfortunately that's rather irrelevant.
He said gamer, not grandmother.
I'm not sure if you're joking or not, but I just took an old 128MB SD card I had lying around and snapped it in half with my fingers, and I am no superman.
Robust? Not exactly.
I bet you're actually thinking of SiS, since MSI never designed any chipsets themselves and are purely manufacturers.
I really don't get this.
Are people really getting that hot and bothered about a little joke on a game vendor's website?
This didn't harm anyone. It was, at most, a mild inconvenience to users (of which I am one), but it was made clear from the beginning that people would be able to access their games again today. Even if you couldn't, if you have a local copy you can simply install it again. I imagine eventually people would start sharing the installers with others who didn't have them saved locally. Compare that to Steam or Impulse or any of the other DRM-laden game download services where that simply couldn't happen due to DRM.
I don't have any problem with this marketing stunt. As they said in the video, the whole industry has a stick up its ass these days.. perhaps some gamers need to relax a bit.
Don't get Two Worlds. I bought it from GOG about a month ago and I wish I hadn't. Clunky Oblivion clone with very little to recommend it. Just play Oblivion.
If you want a more faithful Quake experience, but one that loads limit-breaking maps etc, you probably want Quakespasm.
http://quakespasm.sourceforge.net/
It's based on FitzQuake and available for Linux, Windows and MacOS.
Try Ramen instead. It's not quite as satisfying, but it's cheap.
Fun Fact: The Eiffel Tower weighs about as much as 1,888,200 full-grown cats!
Hey! I resemble that remark!
Me too, although it involves your nearest friendly Druid/Wizard. ;)
You just described absolutely everybody I live and/or work with, you insensitive clod.
The same people who are prepared to open up password protected zipfiles in Windows and execute the contents will be chomping at the bit to chmod +x an email attachment so they can see the dancing bunnies.
omg.... DANCING BUNNIEZ?!?!?!?!
SUM1 EMAIL ME THE BUNNIEZ RITE NAO PLZKTHXBAI
***clicks the attachment so hard and fast the mouse catches fire***
I work in an independent school in the UK, and we use biometric (fingerprint) identification for our "Cashless Catering" service, as do many other schools around the country.
Some parents had some privacy concerns, but they were mitigated by the fact that the fingerprints are stored in the DB as hashes, so the fingerprint image can't be extracted from the database, and we're an independent school, so there's no connection to local government etc. The DB records get deleted when the kids leave school.
The system does track what each student buys, but so far it hasn't been monitored to encourage healthy eating, just for accounting purposes. Even if it was used that way, I doubt most people would mind. It's hard to argue against good nutrition, and if you're eating in the school cafeteria, your eating habits are public knowledge anyway.
Needless to say, I don't see the big deal here.