X3 removed the disk check with one of the last patches a year or more ago and I'm pretty sure that Gothic 3 removed the disk check with the last 1.52 community patch.
There's a flaw here. With a winner stays on format the winner gets worn down over time making it statistically unlikely that the last man standing will actually be the strongest competitor when the contest started, just the strongest left when the contest finished.
I think a traditional MMO structure would be a waste of money (which, as I understand it, NASA isn't normally accused of compared to most other government agencies.) Perhaps a co-operative physics based game on something like the PS3 Home or 360 Live networks would be better vfm. A Little Big Planet for scientists, if you will.
"Can you copyright a square grid and some coloured boxes?"
Yes. Lots of designs are trademarked. A famous example is Coke's "dynamic ribbon device." You can't put it on your own brand of cola.
I was watching Bernard Bear this morning ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9jTVqQvNE ) and I'm sad to say the first thing I thought when I saw the distinctive logo on the tin of cola he got out of the RG Cola vending machine was that he was going to get slapped down by a lawyer. Turns out he didn't though. (It's 3 minutes long, just watch it. Oh, I promise no rickroll)
A Swarm Of Angels has been a frustrating experience for me. I was initially very interested with it but it became apparent that there is a creative team in place who make the decisions and then these decisions are put to the vote. So you're voting on which of the creative teams visions you go for. I don't think there is any significant material input into the creative project by the swarm.
Shares are being sold in the movie project but there is no chance to participate in profits, in the event that any profits are made. So while the project is on-going some people are being paid for their input and work (fair enough) while those "investing" have no hope of a return on investment over and above whatever entertainment they get from the forums and the opportunity to vote on what colour the poster will be (check it out if you don't believe me but last time I looked you needed to join to view the forums). To me this looks like an ideal investment plan for a potential film-maker - you get your money, you don't have to pay any of it back and individual investors are too small to have any control over you.
There was an initial flurry of activity on the forums then a bit of a gap in official communications while people on the forums talked a load of bull about scripts. Then we heard that a tentative initial script outline was going to be debuted at an upcoming convention, without any creative input from the swarm. At that point I realized it was smoke and mirrors and haven't been back since. If it's turned into some democratic creative Utopia since then my apologies to them.
Now I appreciate that a ship needs a captain and any project like this needs a creative vision but the implied promise was that that vision would be shaped by the members but I don't feel that was the case.
Oh, did it sell badly then? I gave up on the PC "Special Edition" after about 10-12 hours. Maybe that was too soon but I thought the combat was horrible in it and the story, though obviously only the early part I saw, was a total cliche.
The thing with the combat was there were, from memory, three schools of combat each best used against a particular foe. Actually specializing in a single style would have made the game unplayable for your main character so you had to level up all three schools more or less equally. So in a typical case of sleight of hand what looks like a free choice at face value turns out to only be an opportunity to gimp your character.
I've played so many RPGs of all shapes and sizes by now that I'm virtually ignoring dialogue because it's usually a bundle of trite nonsense. Give me a Planescape: Torment or a Fallout any day. At some point RPG designers decided you better make sure that it's impossible to screw up the decision tree by making the "wrong" choice so you get all these bland quest arcs that continually branch out and dovetail back in so it looks like you're making a decision in what is really a linear path. Recent exceptions to this being The Witcher, obviously.
Look hard enough and you use the bible to justify virtually anything.
Re:I think I speak for everyone ...
on
Deus Ex 3 Announced
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I'd rather play through a good story with a small choice at the end then having a choice in every level, only for it to make no difference at all in the end...
You might want to try The Witcher. FWIW I had no problem with DX2 but I played it before DX1 so I wasn't influenced by nostalgia. DX1 was epic mind you, while DX2 was just decent.
Remember, these are typical Walmart customers here. So pretty much anybody. Well, probably not millionaires but most of them are incapable of doing anything for themselves so you don't want to give one of them a linux PC. But millionaires aside I think the demographics for Walmart shoppers, computer users and even linux users and windows users are pretty much identical. People.
I make things. Those things are software constructs, sure, but I'm bringing something into existence that wasn't there before! There's something wrong when a programmer is trying to say he's inherently better than a meth dealer or prostitute.
I hope Jack got the copy of Bioshock back before his kid was exposed to it. You know how impressionable teenagers are - a few hours of playing, and Jack Jr. might have been inspired to craft complex literary-political allegories that investigate the nature of humanity. With some of the most violent cutscenes I've ever seen in a game. Oh, and you may not fully understand the words "complex" and "allegory". Good game, but I wouldn't want a kid (say, under 12?) to play it.
No.... it's not an RPG. It's an alien doll house by the guy who popularised Sim Dollshouse. The fun in Spore comes from sticking arms and eyeballs on your virtual pet. The games are simplified fare which will be torn apart by those mythical hardcore gamers. I think some people have been reading too much into the videos, which are usually 50% focused on the design screen and 50% showing the actual game, except the design screen IS the game. Just you wait, the Spore backlash will make Black And White look like GOTY material.
ie the Steam approach to music publishing. Remove your reliance upon a publisher by becoming a publisher yourself. Then publish other people. Can you see where this might become a problem?
If this thing got down to the $300 level, I'd likely buy one.
The N800 is $240 dollars at Bestbuy.com or 150 quid at Play.com in the UK. The question for me is do I bite at that price or wait for the N820 to come out in 8 months time and drive the N810 price down to those levels. (I don't really want the GPS so the N800 is probably more attractive to me right now anyway. So many shiny things so few shiny pennies...)
Unless the versions are equal in terms of quality I will consider refusing to pay the fee in full. A bit of civil disobedience might be in order.
You'll consider it and then just pay your license, having realised that your position is untenable. If I was the BBC I'd ask Apple if they want to partner on an equivalent DRM-infested system and if they don't then what else are they meant to do over and above the Flash-based system? Next I'd just double-check that the existing iPlayer can't be made to work under Wine and if it can't ask the Linux community to come up with a DRM-infested system of their own for the BBC to use. If they can't then it's the Flash iPlayer for them too.
Finally I'll turn to my trusty four tuner GBPVR box and watch whatever BBC content I want, whenever I want for as long as I want without worrying about whatever DRM crap-du-jour they're trying to foist on me. A Freeview stick costs about 15 quid so if you're that keen to watch BBC material on your PC why not invest in one of those instead.
A concern in China is that in a generation or two there won't be enough working adults paying for an aged population. Whereas now there's something like up to 10 people working for every retired person then there will be only 3 workers.
Falcon
In theory the one child per couple policy in China has been going on long enough that those children are marrying and each of those couples will be expected to look after 4 parents in later life. Worse still the couple's single child will marry and have 4 parents and 8 grandparents to worry about eventually.
I'm also still using W2k on my desktop. In fact the last time I talked to our Sage support provider they were actively telling us not to upgrade to Vista.
The way the outline is worded it suggests the companies that have "upgraded" to Vista have an actual upgrade policy in place, or is it just that any hardware they're currently buying has Vista installed as default.
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X3 removed the disk check with one of the last patches a year or more ago and I'm pretty sure that Gothic 3 removed the disk check with the last 1.52 community patch.
There's a flaw here. With a winner stays on format the winner gets worn down over time making it statistically unlikely that the last man standing will actually be the strongest competitor when the contest started, just the strongest left when the contest finished.
According to Cringely ( http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20071228_003726.html ) that would be a good thing since if they quit there's no severance package.
while watching that video?
I think a traditional MMO structure would be a waste of money (which, as I understand it, NASA isn't normally accused of compared to most other government agencies.) Perhaps a co-operative physics based game on something like the PS3 Home or 360 Live networks would be better vfm. A Little Big Planet for scientists, if you will.
Yes. Lots of designs are trademarked. A famous example is Coke's "dynamic ribbon device." You can't put it on your own brand of cola.
I was watching Bernard Bear this morning ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ9jTVqQvNE ) and I'm sad to say the first thing I thought when I saw the distinctive logo on the tin of cola he got out of the RG Cola vending machine was that he was going to get slapped down by a lawyer. Turns out he didn't though. (It's 3 minutes long, just watch it. Oh, I promise no rickroll)
Shares are being sold in the movie project but there is no chance to participate in profits, in the event that any profits are made. So while the project is on-going some people are being paid for their input and work (fair enough) while those "investing" have no hope of a return on investment over and above whatever entertainment they get from the forums and the opportunity to vote on what colour the poster will be (check it out if you don't believe me but last time I looked you needed to join to view the forums). To me this looks like an ideal investment plan for a potential film-maker - you get your money, you don't have to pay any of it back and individual investors are too small to have any control over you.
There was an initial flurry of activity on the forums then a bit of a gap in official communications while people on the forums talked a load of bull about scripts. Then we heard that a tentative initial script outline was going to be debuted at an upcoming convention, without any creative input from the swarm. At that point I realized it was smoke and mirrors and haven't been back since. If it's turned into some democratic creative Utopia since then my apologies to them.
Now I appreciate that a ship needs a captain and any project like this needs a creative vision but the implied promise was that that vision would be shaped by the members but I don't feel that was the case.
Virtually there with the Eee PC anyway.
The thing with the combat was there were, from memory, three schools of combat each best used against a particular foe. Actually specializing in a single style would have made the game unplayable for your main character so you had to level up all three schools more or less equally. So in a typical case of sleight of hand what looks like a free choice at face value turns out to only be an opportunity to gimp your character.
I've played so many RPGs of all shapes and sizes by now that I'm virtually ignoring dialogue because it's usually a bundle of trite nonsense. Give me a Planescape: Torment or a Fallout any day. At some point RPG designers decided you better make sure that it's impossible to screw up the decision tree by making the "wrong" choice so you get all these bland quest arcs that continually branch out and dovetail back in so it looks like you're making a decision in what is really a linear path. Recent exceptions to this being The Witcher, obviously.
It was designed by an intellectual carrot...
The HR dept told them to stop for H&S reasons.
Look hard enough and you use the bible to justify virtually anything.
You might want to try The Witcher. FWIW I had no problem with DX2 but I played it before DX1 so I wasn't influenced by nostalgia. DX1 was epic mind you, while DX2 was just decent.
Anyone know if using Opendns DNS servers helps at all to prevent infection? Longshot I know.
There's something wrong when a programmer is trying to say he's inherently better than a meth dealer or prostitute.
With some of the most violent cutscenes I've ever seen in a game. Oh, and you may not fully understand the words "complex" and "allegory". Good game, but I wouldn't want a kid (say, under 12?) to play it.
No.... it's not an RPG. It's an alien doll house by the guy who popularised Sim Dollshouse. The fun in Spore comes from sticking arms and eyeballs on your virtual pet. The games are simplified fare which will be torn apart by those mythical hardcore gamers. I think some people have been reading too much into the videos, which are usually 50% focused on the design screen and 50% showing the actual game, except the design screen IS the game. Just you wait, the Spore backlash will make Black And White look like GOTY material.
ie the Steam approach to music publishing. Remove your reliance upon a publisher by becoming a publisher yourself. Then publish other people. Can you see where this might become a problem?
The N800 is $240 dollars at Bestbuy.com or 150 quid at Play.com in the UK. The question for me is do I bite at that price or wait for the N820 to come out in 8 months time and drive the N810 price down to those levels. (I don't really want the GPS so the N800 is probably more attractive to me right now anyway. So many shiny things so few shiny pennies...)
You'll consider it and then just pay your license, having realised that your position is untenable. If I was the BBC I'd ask Apple if they want to partner on an equivalent DRM-infested system and if they don't then what else are they meant to do over and above the Flash-based system? Next I'd just double-check that the existing iPlayer can't be made to work under Wine and if it can't ask the Linux community to come up with a DRM-infested system of their own for the BBC to use. If they can't then it's the Flash iPlayer for them too.
Finally I'll turn to my trusty four tuner GBPVR box and watch whatever BBC content I want, whenever I want for as long as I want without worrying about whatever DRM crap-du-jour they're trying to foist on me. A Freeview stick costs about 15 quid so if you're that keen to watch BBC material on your PC why not invest in one of those instead.
Which gives us the datacenters-on-a-big-pallet concept.
In theory the one child per couple policy in China has been going on long enough that those children are marrying and each of those couples will be expected to look after 4 parents in later life. Worse still the couple's single child will marry and have 4 parents and 8 grandparents to worry about eventually.
The way the outline is worded it suggests the companies that have "upgraded" to Vista have an actual upgrade policy in place, or is it just that any hardware they're currently buying has Vista installed as default.