Macs play a lot of "Spontaneously Reset" now too, which is a shame, because I really miss the pile of cryptic System 7/8 errors that had to be looked up in a manual that didn't even come with the computer.
Er, the Mars Matrix hitbox is fairly large, and I'm fairly certain it gets larger with the ship as it upgrades. Its certinaly larger than the hitbox of Ikaruga, for instance. And while the ship can deflect shots (which is a slowly recharging power) there are no bombs (as in Giga Wing, etc). Its a hard game, and there are no cheap ways out of things (like bombs). And seeing the bullets may make me hope they don't hit me, but it doesn't change the fact that they do. Still a great game though, and a shame Capcom doesn't do anything cool like that anymore.
Yea, Live is terrible. I actually turned off voice communication in the Live dashboard, which made it slightly tolerable. I would say its the cesspool of the online gaming world, but then again, most of it seems to be a cesspool lately.
You can crash the Xbox with the first Hunter: The Reckoning by playing two player, and activating a permanent rune simultaeneously. This is bugged, and results in the rune being infinite. Find an accuracy rune, do this to it, and run the accuracy stat bar on your character way off the screen, then go shoot a zombie. Locks the thing solid, with jammed looping audio and everything (no BSOD though, sadly, that would've been even equally entertaining).
What cost of letting them into the market? Sega's hardware is gone, Sony is amazingly bad (but still has a few good game developers), and Nintendo has become almost irrelevant outside of the portable market. There needs to be a major competitor to Sony, and since Sega is dead, MS is it. Granted, I also support them since they are the only American console manufacturer right now, and since they are starting to open up Live Arcade to smaller independent developers.
When you say that you want to boycott them, what is the wonderful existing market that boycotting them saves?
I like it, but it needs some sort of markers or organization system for a) marking how many turns a patent has been held for and b) indicating which sales are attributed to which invention.
Would inventions actually be tied to static board squares (like properties in Monopoly) or would the board squares only indicate a draw from a specific pile? Also, would it be possible for more than one player to claim a patent on the same invention, and would there be a dispute method for that? Perhaps that could be the condition to sue for "patent infringement"... player A has a patent, player B tries to patent it, and gets it (via the "Patent Pending" wheel), then player A and B have to sue to see who keeps it.
Also, is there any means for more money to enter the system, or is the economy limited to players*$100,000? How exactly does the game end? If only 1 patent was allowed per invention, it could end when all patents become public domain (and be scored on final money), or it could end when all but 1 player is bankrupt (like monopoly).
Out of curiosity, why did phones (particularly the in-house cordless variety) ever move from MHz to GHz? Was it just marketing, or is there a technical reason?
What is the obsession with tabbed browsing? You can't switch between in-browser tabs with the same alt-tab sequence used to get to other programs, and you can't have two tabs open side by side... so what's the big deal? Personally, I think its a pretty stupid idea, and having a separate entity for each window is much better. (and just to prove that I'm insane...) This is also something I really like about GIMP that Photoshop doesn't do. I don't have to worry about finding something in Photoshop's half-assed window manager because it already exists in the system window manager.
Their first (and only, for quite a bit) decent game that I can remember from MS is Hellbender, the sequel to Terminal Velocity. It was quite good for the time, had better environments and objectives than TV, and had some decent weather effects. Wasn't too supportive of the primitive 3D acceleration at the time, but was alright on software render. Good game, really.
Eh, they'd have to bill it on uptime or (better/worse idea) charge per document saved. If they left it at "every use" people would just never close the apps unless they had to reboot. With Win2K or XP, that wouldn't get them more than say, $10-$15 a year, which wouldn't be too attractive. Of course, they could just make Vista all nice and crashy like the old 9x series, then it might be a valid business model. (though even assuming the 9x-style system locks 4 times a day, that's still only $365 a year, half the cost of Office Professional at retail, but with potential for several years of pain)
I've often noticed on my laptop (which only has 512 MB RAM) that when I exit a full screen game I've been playing for a bit, XP practically has to start up again, and it takes a bit for everything to come back on-line. My desktop (1.5 GB RAM, but slower processor) doesn't do this. So I think perhaps you're right about the null-CPU state.
The SAV problem is a problem I've seen with version 10 in general, on XP. It has a new feature called "Tamper Protection" that stops its own install from completing on reboot.
On XP, you don't need to wipe your machine. Granted, the Vista beta seems to have "fixed" itself into a non-fixable state... this is what I've done to get SAV10 working on XP SP2:
Reboot in "last known good configuration", uninstall it, then do a clean reboot. Install it, cancel the liveupdate and reboot it wants to do, open the SAV console, and look in the "configure" menu for the tamper protection settings. Turn it off. Then reboot.
You can try turning it on again later if you want, after the install completes, but I haven't tried.
Slashdot Mirror
Damned!
Macs play a lot of "Spontaneously Reset" now too, which is a shame, because I really miss the pile of cryptic System 7/8 errors that had to be looked up in a manual that didn't even come with the computer.
Er, the Mars Matrix hitbox is fairly large, and I'm fairly certain it gets larger with the ship as it upgrades. Its certinaly larger than the hitbox of Ikaruga, for instance. And while the ship can deflect shots (which is a slowly recharging power) there are no bombs (as in Giga Wing, etc). Its a hard game, and there are no cheap ways out of things (like bombs). And seeing the bullets may make me hope they don't hit me, but it doesn't change the fact that they do. Still a great game though, and a shame Capcom doesn't do anything cool like that anymore.
Is something wrong here? I see no commentary for most of the recent articles.
Dude, I bought my 89 7 years ago for $110... how can they go up in price?
Dude, that can't be true... look at the Japanese vertical shooters (go play Mars Matrix).
Yea, Live is terrible. I actually turned off voice communication in the Live dashboard, which made it slightly tolerable. I would say its the cesspool of the online gaming world, but then again, most of it seems to be a cesspool lately.
You can crash the Xbox with the first Hunter: The Reckoning by playing two player, and activating a permanent rune simultaeneously. This is bugged, and results in the rune being infinite. Find an accuracy rune, do this to it, and run the accuracy stat bar on your character way off the screen, then go shoot a zombie. Locks the thing solid, with jammed looping audio and everything (no BSOD though, sadly, that would've been even equally entertaining).
I am anticipating Alien Shooter 2... though that's not even a console game, so I guess it doesn't count.
you forgot
2025 U.S. loses its tenuous grip on sanity as reading citizens' thoughts drives it raving mad
Dude, if you can "play" DOS you can play Tyrian, and mobile Tyrian might just be enough to make the PSP cool.
What cost of letting them into the market? Sega's hardware is gone, Sony is amazingly bad (but still has a few good game developers), and Nintendo has become almost irrelevant outside of the portable market. There needs to be a major competitor to Sony, and since Sega is dead, MS is it. Granted, I also support them since they are the only American console manufacturer right now, and since they are starting to open up Live Arcade to smaller independent developers.
When you say that you want to boycott them, what is the wonderful existing market that boycotting them saves?
I like it, but it needs some sort of markers or organization system for a) marking how many turns a patent has been held for and b) indicating which sales are attributed to which invention.
Would inventions actually be tied to static board squares (like properties in Monopoly) or would the board squares only indicate a draw from a specific pile? Also, would it be possible for more than one player to claim a patent on the same invention, and would there be a dispute method for that? Perhaps that could be the condition to sue for "patent infringement"... player A has a patent, player B tries to patent it, and gets it (via the "Patent Pending" wheel), then player A and B have to sue to see who keeps it.
Also, is there any means for more money to enter the system, or is the economy limited to players*$100,000? How exactly does the game end? If only 1 patent was allowed per invention, it could end when all patents become public domain (and be scored on final money), or it could end when all but 1 player is bankrupt (like monopoly).
But Humpty Dumpty pushed first!
Out of curiosity, why did phones (particularly the in-house cordless variety) ever move from MHz to GHz? Was it just marketing, or is there a technical reason?
I think there was some U2 in the DOOM soundtrack too.
What is the obsession with tabbed browsing? You can't switch between in-browser tabs with the same alt-tab sequence used to get to other programs, and you can't have two tabs open side by side... so what's the big deal? Personally, I think its a pretty stupid idea, and having a separate entity for each window is much better. (and just to prove that I'm insane...) This is also something I really like about GIMP that Photoshop doesn't do. I don't have to worry about finding something in Photoshop's half-assed window manager because it already exists in the system window manager.
Quote of the day!
I remember one from the late 80s (89?) that had to be used on a mirror, and came with one roughly the size of a mousepad.
Finally, a mountain I can climb!
Their first (and only, for quite a bit) decent game that I can remember from MS is Hellbender, the sequel to Terminal Velocity. It was quite good for the time, had better environments and objectives than TV, and had some decent weather effects. Wasn't too supportive of the primitive 3D acceleration at the time, but was alright on software render. Good game, really.
Your religious community has calendaring information sensitive enough that you worry about someone "compromising" it online? Wow.
Eh, they'd have to bill it on uptime or (better/worse idea) charge per document saved. If they left it at "every use" people would just never close the apps unless they had to reboot. With Win2K or XP, that wouldn't get them more than say, $10-$15 a year, which wouldn't be too attractive. Of course, they could just make Vista all nice and crashy like the old 9x series, then it might be a valid business model. (though even assuming the 9x-style system locks 4 times a day, that's still only $365 a year, half the cost of Office Professional at retail, but with potential for several years of pain)
I've often noticed on my laptop (which only has 512 MB RAM) that when I exit a full screen game I've been playing for a bit, XP practically has to start up again, and it takes a bit for everything to come back on-line. My desktop (1.5 GB RAM, but slower processor) doesn't do this. So I think perhaps you're right about the null-CPU state.
The SAV problem is a problem I've seen with version 10 in general, on XP. It has a new feature called "Tamper Protection" that stops its own install from completing on reboot.
On XP, you don't need to wipe your machine. Granted, the Vista beta seems to have "fixed" itself into a non-fixable state... this is what I've done to get SAV10 working on XP SP2:
Reboot in "last known good configuration", uninstall it, then do a clean reboot. Install it, cancel the liveupdate and reboot it wants to do, open the SAV console, and look in the "configure" menu for the tamper protection settings. Turn it off. Then reboot.
You can try turning it on again later if you want, after the install completes, but I haven't tried.