Isn't it amazing? A few weeks ago I mentioned an obscure location in a post, and someone asked me where that was. They were sitting there, with a computer, online, functioning browser, asking me where some city was.
Does anyone remember the games of time gone by where your closest "checkpoint" or save was... the begining of the level... and if you switched off in a rage, you had to start all over again?
Yes. But was that good game design, or just the fact that consoles had no storage media? The "cehckpoint" was the beginning of the *game* in most cases. Beating a game required marathon sessions that only little kids have the time for. Can you imagine playing the first Zelda without the storage memory they built into the cartridge?
The PC games I played at the time, mainly RPGs and adventures, allowed frequent saving.
Do you also remember going straight back to that game the day after... simply because it was good?
Unfortunately, I now have a career and somewhat of a life. I consider it a personal insult by a developer if I cannot save anywhere at any time. I even advocate a "hibernate" function in the next generation of consoles where any game can be stopped and stored in it's current state at any time. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to come work as my personal assistant (for free) so I have more gaming time.
Recent story based, character heavy games like Bioshock and Mafia 2 have only disappointed me with their 1 dimensional design and tired, overused storyline
As much as I liked Bioshock, I have to laugh when people tout it as some sort of grand political statement on objectivism or something. Seriously, take *any* political system in any environment, and hand everyone in it godlike powers, and I'm willing to wager they all wind up in the same devastated state.
With all the success of open world games, it's been baffling to me that the FF series hasn't gone back in that direction. Well, outside the MMO ones. I always had a vision of an Elder Scrolls type sandbox where you go into ATB style battles when encountering enemies.
tying women up and putting them on the train tracks
I did that simply because it's such an old western trope. When the achievement popped up I just about died laughing. Ranks up there with Bioshock's "Irony" achievement.
That's what turns me away from a lot of these call of modern duty warfare type games. I rented one (can't even tell you which one), and it was short linear section, and then I was tossed somewhere else in the world, and I wasn't even the same character. To be honest, it struck me as being like a Wii party game. Shoot up this base! Now rappel out of this helicopter. Now a stealth segment. Now you're shooting in a tunnel! You're on a boat! And so on.
I'm not the sort who projects myself into a game, but I like to have *a* character that I use and build up, be it RPG style XP or just finding better weapons and armor. Skill trees of some sort are always welcome.
Compare this to something like Bioshock where there was always something new to see and do
Bioshock Inifinite has recently reached a level of anticipation for me equal to Skyrim and ME3.
Short of armed insurrection, I got nothin'. I gave up years ago. Sorry. Just munching the popcorn as civilization goes out with not a bang but a whimper, and putting together a good Mad Max outfit.
The dimension I dwell in is called, with unintentional irony, 'Hope'.
Hope, huh? So you live in Equestria? Cool. (hoof bump)
But like reducing sentences for criminals, politicians fear the pointy-finger of blame from the media if anything happened on their watch after the DHS was scaled down.
No they don't- they're sociopaths. They don't give a gnat's fart about anything but themselves. Things like the DHS gives them the power to mess with people's lives. They *love* that shit.
It would be up to the populace to stand up and say "It's a risk we'll take."
Bah ha ha ha! Yeah, that'll happen! Seriously, what dimension did you just slide in from?
In Saints Row 2 I could rip a parking meter out of the ground and beat people to death with it. Does that count?
How about Mass Effect - Minecraft?
Shepard: Let's take down those geth! Garrus: Hold on. I need to rip blocks out of the ground and build us some cover. Grunt: Krogan destroy walls, not build them! The tank told me so. Shepard: (facepalm)
I kind of like the those pizza flavored ones that hit my area recently. I guess I'd better nail a list to a convenience store door somewhere or something.
Yeesh, I looked at the LED bulbs at Lowe's last week. The most common ones were equivalent to a 40W incandescent. And the price! I don't recall even the early CFLs hitting those levels. If they are least had multiple color settings in one bulb I'd consider a couple trial bulbs.
the amount of mercury the nearest coal plant subjects me to is quite insignificant, while if I break a CFL in my house the exposure will be quite a lot higher, and that is the difference and the issue.
It's 5 mg. Just don't lick the glass shards. I don;t even get the radiation analogy. Are you comparing a broken CFL to a nuclear core meltdown? o.O
As some other folks said, maybe it's the quality of your local power provider.
It's simple corruption. You think the contractors and support companies that built the school were strangers to the politicians in charge? This goes on every day everywhere in California.
With the guards and other state employees, the chief union thugs go around and threaten every candidate to support union demands without question, or the union campaign money will go to their opponent. The trick is they do this in the primaries and target the whatever Party controls a particular district thanks to gerrymandering.
And the news media sits there quietly and reports on the Royal Visit or whatever retarded Hollywood skank is having a drinking problem. Occasionally you get an eruption like what happened in the city of Bell, but that's rare.
A well funded, young, hungry, crack team of Woodward and Bernstein investigative types could probably put most of the state and local governments into prison within a few years.
Yeah, there's a number of limited conversion tools, but we can't take all their libraries of legacy code, throw it in something, turn a crack, and have clean, synthesizeable VHDL come out.
But i recommend elite software guys to stay away.
Unfortunately, that's our potential customer base. Xilinx has actually done a lot of market research on this, and those guys was their sometimes decades of libraries to be used as is. It's a pretty big challenge. For our internal customers, though, we can just write VHDL blocks for what they want, and start building new libraries.
Slashdot Mirror
That's what they say about us. :)
Isn't it amazing? A few weeks ago I mentioned an obscure location in a post, and someone asked me where that was. They were sitting there, with a computer, online, functioning browser, asking me where some city was.
3. Saints Row option. Gather up homies and deliver a rocket launcher parade to the police station.
Try voting the bastards out. It's hard, but a lot less bloody.
It's impossible when there's no one running for office except bastards.
lest people take us all for nutters
Dude, that ship sailed long ago.
The realist in me: they're all shitheads on all sides. Maybe they'll all destroy one another.
There's no one left to root for. Not really.
and it saddens me that we have entire generations of dumb motherfuckers who can't come up with any new insults.
I know. Them there motherfuckers need to be more creative.
Does anyone remember the games of time gone by where your closest "checkpoint" or save was... the begining of the level... and if you switched off in a rage, you had to start all over again?
Yes. But was that good game design, or just the fact that consoles had no storage media? The "cehckpoint" was the beginning of the *game* in most cases. Beating a game required marathon sessions that only little kids have the time for. Can you imagine playing the first Zelda without the storage memory they built into the cartridge?
The PC games I played at the time, mainly RPGs and adventures, allowed frequent saving.
Do you also remember going straight back to that game the day after... simply because it was good?
Unfortunately, I now have a career and somewhat of a life. I consider it a personal insult by a developer if I cannot save anywhere at any time. I even advocate a "hibernate" function in the next generation of consoles where any game can be stopped and stored in it's current state at any time. Anyone who disagrees is welcome to come work as my personal assistant (for free) so I have more gaming time.
Recent story based, character heavy games like Bioshock and Mafia 2 have only disappointed me with their 1 dimensional design and tired, overused storyline
As much as I liked Bioshock, I have to laugh when people tout it as some sort of grand political statement on objectivism or something. Seriously, take *any* political system in any environment, and hand everyone in it godlike powers, and I'm willing to wager they all wind up in the same devastated state.
With all the success of open world games, it's been baffling to me that the FF series hasn't gone back in that direction. Well, outside the MMO ones. I always had a vision of an Elder Scrolls type sandbox where you go into ATB style battles when encountering enemies.
tying women up and putting them on the train tracks
I did that simply because it's such an old western trope. When the achievement popped up I just about died laughing. Ranks up there with Bioshock's "Irony" achievement.
That's what turns me away from a lot of these call of modern duty warfare type games. I rented one (can't even tell you which one), and it was short linear section, and then I was tossed somewhere else in the world, and I wasn't even the same character. To be honest, it struck me as being like a Wii party game. Shoot up this base! Now rappel out of this helicopter. Now a stealth segment. Now you're shooting in a tunnel! You're on a boat! And so on.
I'm not the sort who projects myself into a game, but I like to have *a* character that I use and build up, be it RPG style XP or just finding better weapons and armor. Skill trees of some sort are always welcome.
Compare this to something like Bioshock where there was always something new to see and do
Bioshock Inifinite has recently reached a level of anticipation for me equal to Skyrim and ME3.
Would love to hear other suggestions.
Short of armed insurrection, I got nothin'. I gave up years ago. Sorry. Just munching the popcorn as civilization goes out with not a bang but a whimper, and putting together a good Mad Max outfit.
The dimension I dwell in is called, with unintentional irony, 'Hope'.
Hope, huh? So you live in Equestria? Cool. (hoof bump)
Ssssh! Don't give away his surprise!
Guess they're already trying to dumb inventory.
How? More religious and political books? (Yeah, I know, same thing).
So this is where I am compelled to insert my rant...
They have pills for that.
breeding is a natural human instinct
So is staying alive. Come try and end my life, and I'll demonstrate the concept.
But like reducing sentences for criminals, politicians fear the pointy-finger of blame from the media if anything happened on their watch after the DHS was scaled down.
No they don't- they're sociopaths. They don't give a gnat's fart about anything but themselves. Things like the DHS gives them the power to mess with people's lives. They *love* that shit.
It would be up to the populace to stand up and say "It's a risk we'll take."
Bah ha ha ha! Yeah, that'll happen! Seriously, what dimension did you just slide in from?
Ponyo
In Saints Row 2 I could rip a parking meter out of the ground and beat people to death with it. Does that count?
How about Mass Effect - Minecraft?
Shepard: Let's take down those geth!
Garrus: Hold on. I need to rip blocks out of the ground and build us some cover.
Grunt: Krogan destroy walls, not build them! The tank told me so.
Shepard: (facepalm)
What about anti-fanboyism, where someone's irrational hate for a product they attack the product and demonize it's users at every opportunity?
I kind of like the those pizza flavored ones that hit my area recently. I guess I'd better nail a list to a convenience store door somewhere or something.
Yeesh, I looked at the LED bulbs at Lowe's last week. The most common ones were equivalent to a 40W incandescent. And the price! I don't recall even the early CFLs hitting those levels. If they are least had multiple color settings in one bulb I'd consider a couple trial bulbs.
the amount of mercury the nearest coal plant subjects me to is quite insignificant, while if I break a CFL in my house the exposure will be quite a lot higher, and that is the difference and the issue.
It's 5 mg. Just don't lick the glass shards. I don;t even get the radiation analogy. Are you comparing a broken CFL to a nuclear core meltdown? o.O
As some other folks said, maybe it's the quality of your local power provider.
California now spends more on keeping people in prison than it does on education.
California spending from 2010-2011 budget act:
K-12 + Higher Education: $48 billion
Corrections & Rehabilitation: $9 billion
Honestly, does anybody look *anything* up any more?
It's simple corruption. You think the contractors and support companies that built the school were strangers to the politicians in charge? This goes on every day everywhere in California.
With the guards and other state employees, the chief union thugs go around and threaten every candidate to support union demands without question, or the union campaign money will go to their opponent. The trick is they do this in the primaries and target the whatever Party controls a particular district thanks to gerrymandering.
And the news media sits there quietly and reports on the Royal Visit or whatever retarded Hollywood skank is having a drinking problem. Occasionally you get an eruption like what happened in the city of Bell, but that's rare.
A well funded, young, hungry, crack team of Woodward and Bernstein investigative types could probably put most of the state and local governments into prison within a few years.
Yeah, there's a number of limited conversion tools, but we can't take all their libraries of legacy code, throw it in something, turn a crack, and have clean, synthesizeable VHDL come out.
But i recommend elite software guys to stay away.
Unfortunately, that's our potential customer base. Xilinx has actually done a lot of market research on this, and those guys was their sometimes decades of libraries to be used as is. It's a pretty big challenge. For our internal customers, though, we can just write VHDL blocks for what they want, and start building new libraries.