Druids are good to have around. We've had 6 or 7 shammies in a 20-man and at most 2 druids, if any. A couple people now have druid alts coming up, myself included. We recently recruited a druid who insisted on/ginvites for his warrior and rogue buddies. We might not have taken some random warrior or rogue, but for a druid ? We took 'em gladly.
Druids are, like shammies, a jack of all trades class. Much more than shammies, they are dependent on gear and spec to succeed in their chosen path. A shammie can cast heals while Earthshock is on cooldown, but a druid in her healing gear can't pick up a Core Hound if the MT goes down. A druid realy has to pick a path and stick to it, or be prepared to respec often and carry an extra set of gear.
We, incidentally, are The Steel Pack on Bonechewer. Come get some. I'm Khalgrim.
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
on
Blizzcon Writeup
·
· Score: 1
And that probably wasn't actually the wallet inspector either. Poor guy.
Re:Blizz should've taken a page from id's book
on
Blizzcon Writeup
·
· Score: 1
Yup, and from all accounts it was packed even at $120 a head. That's just selecting out the hardest-of-the-hardcore fans. And, if anyone wants to go to give the devs shit about something, they have to want to do it badly enough to pay $120 for the privilege of being thrown out of a Q & A session.
Back in the very early 90s I worked in software retail for a large chain, now defunct. At my shop we provided a useful amount of after-sale tech support (we had a LOT of repeat business). For a few games, the install.bat (or w/e) file was broken, usually typos in the disk labels it'd ask for. One publisher shipped a game were the installer asked for the same disk 3 times, a cut-and-paste job left unfinished. Viruses were not unheard of in those days as well, that's died out of late. Imagine the shame of shipping a broken *installer*. Well, just ask the Linux UT guys I guess:-)
I Saw the Rock (is the the suppsoed to be capitalised ? Only if it's the band I guess) on The Daily Show. Hilarious interview, the guy actually does have comic talent (good on SNL too). He brought out a prop BFG, let Jon Stewart play with it and made tons of raucnhy jokes with and about Jon. A few of monsters from the game were mentioned as being in or out of the movie. He definitely said there were "nods" to the game's fans in some scenes. I'd say they're trying to reach out to the gaming audience, but aren't claiming to have based the movie strictly on the game continuity. I guess you'll recognize some stuff if you've played through the game.
The big point is this: the game is about a tough guy with big guns shooting monsters in the dark. So is the movie. It won't be as good as Aliens, but that's a tough one to match. It might not be as good as the first Mortal Kombat (from the FA, and an easier target) but if it doesn't suck or even has some cool stuff in it, it'd be worth a matinee if you like that kind of thing.
The author is quite up front about when he's using assumptions and anecdotes (most of the time) and when he's citing facts (here and there). What may be throwing you, is that this is written from a good model of a research paper, even though it isn't nearly as factual as just most papers written like this.
What this is, is one person's opinion, very well presented. It may be anectdotal and commen-sense assumptions, but you can follow the flow of discussion almost too well:-) It is a bit much for the content, but it works and I applaud the author for taking the effort involved in this exercise in rigorous writing.
The Mac is said to have a stranglehold on media because professional media shops have historically been Mac based. Not so much in audio, but the visual arts have always had relatively poor Windows penetration.
And 80% of the market for MP3 players does kind of give Apple on selling downloadable music if they keep the DRM tightly held.
And, I think, 100% of the market share on downloadable television episodes. They're certainly the dominant player in online music sales right now.
The gain for the Mac-on-Intel in terms of usable software is in software that's tied to Intel's hardware. If there's a tie to Win32, then there's no advantage. But any application that depends on highly optimized SSE2-based libraries will never run on a G5 - GUIs are cake compared to engineering libraries. Any developer looking to switch from Win32 to Avalon will be considering portable toolkits as some of their options - you don't commit to that much money and effort without numbers from more than one option in the presentation. A new portable interface plus libraries that now run on the Mac make a Mac version much more likely for many specialist apps like CAD and modelling.
People will certainly be running Win32 CAD apps long after every other segment has switched away because it's the app, not the platform that companies buy. If Windows disappeared tomorrow, Apple's sales would increase tenfold overnight as they become the only platform capable of running a real MS Office - the very slick 2004 version for OS X.
It's been a long week, but my point here is that where the processor-specific code is more important than the API-specific code a Mac port can be profitable. With developers looking at a whole new API to target, some may choose to increase sales 10-20% by deveoping with a Mac port in mind.
And then there's the phenomenon of walking around watching for snipers after a long FPS session. I get this a lot. It's kinda surreal, but if Al Queda ever gets its act together it might come in handy.
One key point about the new iMacs: they're shipping with the Mighty Mouse standard.
Apple has just announced a computer with a multi-button mouse standard. That's a big move and everyone is being kinda quiet about it, certainly I'm not seeing anyone blogging about it yet.
I'm a little cheesed, I'm in the process of deploying 8 iMacs, but they're Tuesday's models. I hope Front Row and Photobooth show up on the website or Software Update soon. To make up for it I'll have to come up with a compelling business reason for me to have personal use of a 60 GB 5G Pod.
Actually looking at the screenshots reveals a fact that completely fails to surprise me. To wit, the screenshots suck. And these are the pictures for a "buy me" page. This is their attempt to sell the game. Crappy modelling, poor texturing, mediocre lighting and more composition. Check out the one with the rocket, it's particularly suckalicious.
Based solely on the screenshots I'm predicting an average review score of less than 5.0, dismal sales, and massive warezing as people try to see if it really is that bad without having to spend money.
This is gonna suck. It has the potential to outsuck a Derek Smart remake of Daikatana.
Here's a key point: who's writing the game ? Huh ? They haven't said a thing about gameplay or story since 1997. It's gonna be a Duke Nukem game, so we have a pretty good idea what to expect, but I'm very worried (there's ominous potential for minigames). Silence on this point is a bad omen.
IGN gets pwned in the face, this guy can actually write. "Gossamer, gamine, and gaunt, the Ico experience expanded the notion of what you could expect from a videogame." It's a little purple, but the alliterative phrase is delightful.
Yeah, I have hopes for IV. If it keeps the same kind of Go-like strategy that III had with Culture and Resources, then I'm for it. Otherwise, I'll stick with III when I wanted to get buzzed and veg out to a game.
No, there's a $50 buy-in for a reason. Their server capacity is maxed out right now, and they just keep adding server to spread the player base out. The last thing they want to do is to let people try it out on a whim. Furthermore, someone who's paid $50 already is more likely to keep up a subscription than someone doing a 14-day free trial; some executive's bonus is based on the conversion rate - and they're in the money. The $50 up front is a nice bit of cashflow to buy servers for the new folks; but their real money is in subscriptions. But to keep the infrastructure under control they can control the influx of new players by controlling the supply of boxes (Blizzard actually did have to do this shortly after the launch went supercritical).
And for those playing Horde: think of how much worse Barrens chat would be with the 14-day kiddies running loose.
Those are available, amongst other places, from Apple's online store. Well, 2004 is - 98 is looooong since dead and would only run in Classic mode anyway. 2004 is a pretty nice office suite.
Office 98 = Office 97 for Mac OS 9 Office 2004 = Office XP for Mac OS X
the comparisons are in feature sets and document formats, I don't believe there's much code in common.
Actually yes, the game itself is darn good. The developers are really into the Warhammer 40,000 universe and it shows. It's more of a squad-based action game than an RTS; it is an RTS but it's got a different take on resources and bases. It feels much more like a tactical game where you build your base than an RTS,
Google up the demo.
Oh, and I didn't get any sound. No video either. Hmmm. But I'll give 'em credit for size of the screenshots, I hate checking out a game's site and getting small images.
The important number from the first link is "Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. In addition, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs."
One fifth of all software dollars are spent on Mac software. I'd like to see that report on every software publishing CEO's desk. Mac users are by definition willing to spend top dollar for (what they perceive to be) a superior product. This is defintiely good news.
But not WMA, Ogg, FLAC, WAV, etc., if you care about any of those...
And your minidisk player does ? If you try to transfer a WAV to an iPod, ti will complain. But iTunes will also make an MP3 out of it with a right-click. And there are Mac and Windows extensions to enable Ogg support. Apparently the Windows project on Sourceforge is moribund.
I've never understood why the people in this community are so willing to accept Apple's extremely proprietary architecture
Oh come on, iTunes is perfectly happy to index your existing music folders and not touch a file. Or you can let it manage one. If you stop using it, all your rips have nice, clean ID3 tags and your library is a structured folder full of whatever format you rip in. iTunes 4.9 will rip in MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, AAC and WAV; all at a wide-variety of settings. That's four wide-open formats (minus the patent issue with MP3s). And it puts them into well named. It'll even play those MP3s from the leading DRM-friendly online music store.
Once you've ripped in your favorite format you can then burn audio CDs, data CDs (backups, unlimited burns) and MP3 discs that many, many players will handle.
WTF about that architecture is "extremely proprietary" ? I see you have deep philosophical issues with the iTunes Store. I respect that. But if you factor out the objectionable parts, and there are legitimate objections, they have produced a system with very little lockdown built in.
Yes, a successful DRM scheme is something to be concerned about. But a) it isn't mandatory, b) isn't so bad, and c) has an escape route (with a moderate quality loss) by burning audio CDs. Store music CDs plays fine on anything that doesn't reveal flaws in real CDs so it's a real escape. And I consider it to be a fair discount over new CDs given the quality and DRM issues.
As for "sell or give away" for Store tracks, you can burn those to audio CDs and give 'em away. Last I checked it was... seven (?) burns for a playlist ? You could also create an account to do nothing else than buy some music and then sell the account later. You'll also need to provide a copy of the.m4p files - which iTunes will cheerfully burn to a DVD for you.
Just don't use Apple's store. iPods are fundamentally disc drives and their library can be written to by programs other than iTunes. iTunes itself, as discussed, has no lock-in and reads and writes a variery of formats. The biggest problem with having the store available is that it's so damned convenient to drop $0.99 on a song that gets stuck in your head.
Ok, and the Windows version is annoying. Most Windows software is. And I have no idea if it will talk to your minidisc burner, maybe mounting a virtual ISO and then burning that will work for you. The Windows version uses a lot of the Quicktime API and not Win32 so much and so might not see the minidisc as a generic device for burning.
Lastly, do post a link to the "best legal alternative site that doesn't insist on onerous DRM". What's their catalog like ? Publicize the heck out of it (word of mouth is the best advertising) and give the market a chance to work. Link me up baby.
Slashdot Mirror
Druids are good to have around. We've had 6 or 7 shammies in a 20-man and at most 2 druids, if any. A couple people now have druid alts coming up, myself included. We recently recruited a druid who insisted on /ginvites for his warrior and rogue buddies. We might not have taken some random warrior or rogue, but for a druid ? We took 'em gladly.
Druids are, like shammies, a jack of all trades class. Much more than shammies, they are dependent on gear and spec to succeed in their chosen path. A shammie can cast heals while Earthshock is on cooldown, but a druid in her healing gear can't pick up a Core Hound if the MT goes down. A druid realy has to pick a path and stick to it, or be prepared to respec often and carry an extra set of gear.
We, incidentally, are The Steel Pack on Bonechewer. Come get some. I'm Khalgrim.
And that probably wasn't actually the wallet inspector either. Poor guy.
Yup, and from all accounts it was packed even at $120 a head. That's just selecting out the hardest-of-the-hardcore fans. And, if anyone wants to go to give the devs shit about something, they have to want to do it badly enough to pay $120 for the privilege of being thrown out of a Q & A session.
You kids don't know how good you have it today...
:-)
Ahem. Excuse me.
Back in the very early 90s I worked in software retail for a large chain, now defunct. At my shop we provided a useful amount of after-sale tech support (we had a LOT of repeat business). For a few games, the install.bat (or w/e) file was broken, usually typos in the disk labels it'd ask for. One publisher shipped a game were the installer asked for the same disk 3 times, a cut-and-paste job left unfinished. Viruses were not unheard of in those days as well, that's died out of late. Imagine the shame of shipping a broken *installer*. Well, just ask the Linux UT guys I guess
+2, That's My Bush
I Saw the Rock (is the the suppsoed to be capitalised ? Only if it's the band I guess) on The Daily Show. Hilarious interview, the guy actually does have comic talent (good on SNL too). He brought out a prop BFG, let Jon Stewart play with it and made tons of raucnhy jokes with and about Jon. A few of monsters from the game were mentioned as being in or out of the movie. He definitely said there were "nods" to the game's fans in some scenes. I'd say they're trying to reach out to the gaming audience, but aren't claiming to have based the movie strictly on the game continuity. I guess you'll recognize some stuff if you've played through the game.
The big point is this: the game is about a tough guy with big guns shooting monsters in the dark. So is the movie. It won't be as good as Aliens, but that's a tough one to match. It might not be as good as the first Mortal Kombat (from the FA, and an easier target) but if it doesn't suck or even has some cool stuff in it, it'd be worth a matinee if you like that kind of thing.
The author is quite up front about when he's using assumptions and anecdotes (most of the time) and when he's citing facts (here and there). What may be throwing you, is that this is written from a good model of a research paper, even though it isn't nearly as factual as just most papers written like this.
:-) It is a bit much for the content, but it works and I applaud the author for taking the effort involved in this exercise in rigorous writing.
What this is, is one person's opinion, very well presented. It may be anectdotal and commen-sense assumptions, but you can follow the flow of discussion almost too well
The Mac is said to have a stranglehold on media because professional media shops have historically been Mac based. Not so much in audio, but the visual arts have always had relatively poor Windows penetration.
And 80% of the market for MP3 players does kind of give Apple on selling downloadable music if they keep the DRM tightly held.
And, I think, 100% of the market share on downloadable television episodes. They're certainly the dominant player in online music sales right now.
The gain for the Mac-on-Intel in terms of usable software is in software that's tied to Intel's hardware. If there's a tie to Win32, then there's no advantage. But any application that depends on highly optimized SSE2-based libraries will never run on a G5 - GUIs are cake compared to engineering libraries. Any developer looking to switch from Win32 to Avalon will be considering portable toolkits as some of their options - you don't commit to that much money and effort without numbers from more than one option in the presentation. A new portable interface plus libraries that now run on the Mac make a Mac version much more likely for many specialist apps like CAD and modelling.
People will certainly be running Win32 CAD apps long after every other segment has switched away because it's the app, not the platform that companies buy. If Windows disappeared tomorrow, Apple's sales would increase tenfold overnight as they become the only platform capable of running a real MS Office - the very slick 2004 version for OS X.
It's been a long week, but my point here is that where the processor-specific code is more important than the API-specific code a Mac port can be profitable. With developers looking at a whole new API to target, some may choose to increase sales 10-20% by deveoping with a Mac port in mind.
And then there's the phenomenon of walking around watching for snipers after a long FPS session. I get this a lot. It's kinda surreal, but if Al Queda ever gets its act together it might come in handy.
One key point about the new iMacs: they're shipping with the Mighty Mouse standard.
Apple has just announced a computer with a multi-button mouse standard. That's a big move and everyone is being kinda quiet about it, certainly I'm not seeing anyone blogging about it yet.
I'm a little cheesed, I'm in the process of deploying 8 iMacs, but they're Tuesday's models. I hope Front Row and Photobooth show up on the website or Software Update soon. To make up for it I'll have to come up with a compelling business reason for me to have personal use of a 60 GB 5G Pod.
Oh, so because YOU don't see the value, everybody else should, what? Throw their iPods into the ocean?
No, they should throw them into this box right here. Thank you. Next ?
Not really, no. The trick is getting your dog to call.
Actually looking at the screenshots reveals a fact that completely fails to surprise me. To wit, the screenshots suck. And these are the pictures for a "buy me" page. This is their attempt to sell the game. Crappy modelling, poor texturing, mediocre lighting and more composition. Check out the one with the rocket, it's particularly suckalicious.
Based solely on the screenshots I'm predicting an average review score of less than 5.0, dismal sales, and massive warezing as people try to see if it really is that bad without having to spend money.
This is gonna suck. It has the potential to outsuck a Derek Smart remake of Daikatana.
Here's a key point: who's writing the game ? Huh ? They haven't said a thing about gameplay or story since 1997. It's gonna be a Duke Nukem game, so we have a pretty good idea what to expect, but I'm very worried (there's ominous potential for minigames). Silence on this point is a bad omen.
Let's see....
Half-Life for the Mac.
You go to hell Sierra, you go to Hell and you die.
IGN gets pwned in the face, this guy can actually write. "Gossamer, gamine, and gaunt, the Ico experience expanded the notion of what you could expect from a videogame." It's a little purple, but the alliterative phrase is delightful.
Yeah, I have hopes for IV. If it keeps the same kind of Go-like strategy that III had with Culture and Resources, then I'm for it. Otherwise, I'll stick with III when I wanted to get buzzed and veg out to a game.
Ok, we need a +1: Pwned moderation.
Good idea too.
No, there's a $50 buy-in for a reason. Their server capacity is maxed out right now, and they just keep adding server to spread the player base out. The last thing they want to do is to let people try it out on a whim. Furthermore, someone who's paid $50 already is more likely to keep up a subscription than someone doing a 14-day free trial; some executive's bonus is based on the conversion rate - and they're in the money. The $50 up front is a nice bit of cashflow to buy servers for the new folks; but their real money is in subscriptions. But to keep the infrastructure under control they can control the influx of new players by controlling the supply of boxes (Blizzard actually did have to do this shortly after the launch went supercritical).
And for those playing Horde: think of how much worse Barrens chat would be with the 14-day kiddies running loose.
Those are available, amongst other places, from Apple's online store. Well, 2004 is - 98 is looooong since dead and would only run in Classic mode anyway. 2004 is a pretty nice office suite.
Office 98 = Office 97 for Mac OS 9
Office 2004 = Office XP for Mac OS X
the comparisons are in feature sets and document formats, I don't believe there's much code in common.
and when Vista was released I would probably have changed to XP
That's some pretty subtle moderating.
Actually yes, the game itself is darn good. The developers are really into the Warhammer 40,000 universe and it shows. It's more of a squad-based action game than an RTS; it is an RTS but it's got a different take on resources and bases. It feels much more like a tactical game where you build your base than an RTS,
Google up the demo.
Oh, and I didn't get any sound. No video either. Hmmm. But I'll give 'em credit for size of the screenshots, I hate checking out a game's site and getting small images.
The important number from the first link is "Macintosh software comprises over 18% of all software sold, according to the Software and Information Industry Association. In addition, the Software Publishers Association (SPA) estimates that 16 percent of computer users are on Macs."
One fifth of all software dollars are spent on Mac software. I'd like to see that report on every software publishing CEO's desk. Mac users are by definition willing to spend top dollar for (what they perceive to be) a superior product. This is defintiely good news.
No. Better to put the money through the retail channel. The developer may get less per sale, but it's a net gain in the long run.
heh
<embed entity = "rimshot">
But not WMA, Ogg, FLAC, WAV, etc., if you care about any of those...
.m4p files - which iTunes will cheerfully burn to a DVD for you.
And your minidisk player does ? If you try to transfer a WAV to an iPod, ti will complain. But iTunes will also make an MP3 out of it with a right-click. And there are Mac and Windows extensions to enable Ogg support. Apparently the Windows project on Sourceforge is moribund.
I've never understood why the people in this community are so willing to accept Apple's extremely proprietary architecture
Oh come on, iTunes is perfectly happy to index your existing music folders and not touch a file. Or you can let it manage one. If you stop using it, all your rips have nice, clean ID3 tags and your library is a structured folder full of whatever format you rip in. iTunes 4.9 will rip in MP3, AIFF, Apple Lossless, AAC and WAV; all at a wide-variety of settings. That's four wide-open formats (minus the patent issue with MP3s). And it puts them into well named. It'll even play those MP3s from the leading DRM-friendly online music store.
Once you've ripped in your favorite format you can then burn audio CDs, data CDs (backups, unlimited burns) and MP3 discs that many, many players will handle.
WTF about that architecture is "extremely proprietary" ? I see you have deep philosophical issues with the iTunes Store. I respect that. But if you factor out the objectionable parts, and there are legitimate objections, they have produced a system with very little lockdown built in.
Yes, a successful DRM scheme is something to be concerned about. But a) it isn't mandatory, b) isn't so bad, and c) has an escape route (with a moderate quality loss) by burning audio CDs. Store music CDs plays fine on anything that doesn't reveal flaws in real CDs so it's a real escape. And I consider it to be a fair discount over new CDs given the quality and DRM issues.
As for "sell or give away" for Store tracks, you can burn those to audio CDs and give 'em away. Last I checked it was... seven (?) burns for a playlist ? You could also create an account to do nothing else than buy some music and then sell the account later. You'll also need to provide a copy of the
Just don't use Apple's store. iPods are fundamentally disc drives and their library can be written to by programs other than iTunes. iTunes itself, as discussed, has no lock-in and reads and writes a variery of formats. The biggest problem with having the store available is that it's so damned convenient to drop $0.99 on a song that gets stuck in your head.
Ok, and the Windows version is annoying. Most Windows software is. And I have no idea if it will talk to your minidisc burner, maybe mounting a virtual ISO and then burning that will work for you. The Windows version uses a lot of the Quicktime API and not Win32 so much and so might not see the minidisc as a generic device for burning.
Lastly, do post a link to the "best legal alternative site that doesn't insist on onerous DRM". What's their catalog like ? Publicize the heck out of it (word of mouth is the best advertising) and give the market a chance to work. Link me up baby.