I mean... this game spawned its own genre, was the first GUI D&D game [Even Baldur's Gate (#25) owes it homage], is still played at college campuses nationwide... and c'mon,/.'ers, it was even released open source by Guys at Berkley.
So let's hear it for the great-great-great-granddaddy of Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance, and who knows what else.
Hmm... they also advertise a one button Mac-mouse [the "Mus"] shaped like a cursor. It seems that their Mac pride ends there, however, as the Mus's description reads:
"We will possibly make Mus more sophisticated by adding another button and a wheel. "
"In some cases this extra wasted time might be considered 'creative waste'--time that may well have a positive impact on the company's culture, work environment, and even business results"
Yeah, try telling that to my boss. No study will ever reduce the importance of ALT-TAB.
...I'm really not wasting time. I'm waiting for my copper PCB to finish etching... really.
I am a Cleveland, OH native who grew up in the paradise of having a Micro Center right at the foot of my street. It has always been the one computer store I know where they have people trained to help both the customers asking about how to get their new AOL to work right as well as those who are asking about airflow and watercooling concerns for their latest homebuilt.
Back before computer building was "popular", they began offering Build Your Own Box classes and special assistance in obtaining the right parts. Needless to say, they were right on when everyone and their brother started doing it. If they are now doing the same with Linux... well, it's a good sign on the horizon.
A side note: Micro Center stores are wonderful, but rare. Whenever the extended family arrives in town, one of our first activites is to make a pilgramige to Micro Center. Anybody know where I can find a map of their world locations? This could be quite the deciding factor in where I move after grad school.
Apple really needs to have its own Office Suite if they ever plan to actually start stepping on the toes of Microsoft in the new Macintel world.
Yes, Apple is a hardware company, but it's certainly possible that they could choose to slowly expand over the next few years. Redmond probably wouldn't throw too much effort into the next Office For Macintosh if they were fighting against the newest Mac OS for market share.
Aside from the terrible drain that would put on slashdot itself...
There is a huge legal issue involved with mirroring sites. Even if you wait for the author (victim) of the site to give his written consent, you then run into the issues of decreasing the "click value" of the hosting server as far as advertisments are concerned, the posibility that the author was not responsible for all content on the page, etc.
Ask CmdrTaco sometime. He once gave my fellow nerds and I a brief rant on why it's not happening, and I assume not much will change until copyright laws change.
I'm not making these, oddly enough, to be giant, successful blockbusters. I'm making them because I'm telling a story, and I have to tell the story I intended.
Either that's a blatant lie, or Jar Jar is saying something quite telling about Mr. Lucas's sanity.
Also, isn't it peculiar that when you complete a complex or lengthy game you rarely want to replay it, yet short games are often endlessly replayable?
Most of these (good) 40+ hour games are played at least two or three times by the owner, especially those in the RPG genre, which often have multiple approaches and often more than one ending (Knights of the Old Republic, Chrono Trigger, etc.). If you are evaluating a game, then, in terms of how much time you spend on it, you are talking 100-120+ hours for the long game; how often have you found a one-hour game that you would replay 120 times?
On the other hand, there will always be a place in my heart for the endlessly replayable 2-3 hour Master Of Orion II.
The Virtual Boy failed because it was too large to be a handheld yet not "console" enough to take it's place with the television.
The problem with trying to express 3-D with video games is that the utterly ubiqtuous display device of choice is quite 2-D.
It seems their options are:
* 3-D glasses (not necessarily the red-blue type, there are many options nowadays; but would gamers really want to wear them?)
* Head mounted displays (Virtual Boy again?)
* Filter array displays (Average cost upwards of $1000)
Okay, so we've hit Stage 5 of the Permadeath Debate... Just a few more to go, now.
To help advance that: Remember the Super Mario way: You get three deaths before permadeath, you can earn more, or you can circumvent it entirely by holding the A button.
This is simply bringing the XBox in line with the tried and true practices of PC multiplayer. The makers of games from Command and Conquer to CounterStrike: Source release patches to *improve* their multiplayer balance over time.
Even StarCraft, lauded for its balance, has had no less than twelve significant patches since its release.
Though it would be quite nice to see an Age of Empires campaign that accurately represented some period in history, no army in history has ever been as successful as the play is required to be in these games.
I don't think the user would be as appreciative if you were required to lose an average third of the scenarios to keep things historically accurate.
"Objective: Hold off the Spanish assault for three grudging hours until you run out or resources and are ownzed."
... on the other hand, April Fools does give us the opportunity to shrug off all human stupidity, real or contrived.
No such thing exists when a story like this comes up on your average news-day as a result of Stupidity of Humans x E-Bay environment.
>required some technical savvy
To enter in a SSN and a birth date? Give me a break.
Apparently, her savvy extended as far as not turning off her browser's https abilities, too.
The only way to make an electromagnetic wave secure--short of sticking your entire system inside of a Faraday cage--is to make the information it sends secure.
Higher level encryption is the way to go, here; most likely either redundancy, a checksum, or the like.
Slashdot Mirror
--Rogue--
/.'ers, it was even released open source by Guys at Berkley.
I mean... this game spawned its own genre, was the first GUI D&D game [Even Baldur's Gate (#25) owes it homage], is still played at college campuses nationwide... and c'mon,
So let's hear it for the great-great-great-granddaddy of Neverwinter Nights, Pool of Radiance, and who knows what else.
Hmm... they also advertise a one button Mac-mouse [the "Mus"] shaped like a cursor. It seems that their Mac pride ends there, however, as the Mus's description reads:
"We will possibly make Mus more sophisticated by adding another button and a wheel. "
Low blow... Low blow.
"In some cases this extra wasted time might be considered 'creative waste'--time that may well have a positive impact on the company's culture, work environment, and even business results"
...I'm really not wasting time. I'm waiting for my copper PCB to finish etching... really.
Yeah, try telling that to my boss. No study will ever reduce the importance of ALT-TAB.
"Is MicroSoft a basically ethical enterprise?" MindPixel's answer: 0.13
As long as I never again have to hear the line
"Contact! Lots of contact!"
I am a Cleveland, OH native who grew up in the paradise of having a Micro Center right at the foot of my street. It has always been the one computer store I know where they have people trained to help both the customers asking about how to get their new AOL to work right as well as those who are asking about airflow and watercooling concerns for their latest homebuilt.
Back before computer building was "popular", they began offering Build Your Own Box classes and special assistance in obtaining the right parts. Needless to say, they were right on when everyone and their brother started doing it. If they are now doing the same with Linux... well, it's a good sign on the horizon.
A side note: Micro Center stores are wonderful, but rare. Whenever the extended family arrives in town, one of our first activites is to make a pilgramige to Micro Center. Anybody know where I can find a map of their world locations? This could be quite the deciding factor in where I move after grad school.
Apple really needs to have its own Office Suite if they ever plan to actually start stepping on the toes of Microsoft in the new Macintel world.
Yes, Apple is a hardware company, but it's certainly possible that they could choose to slowly expand over the next few years. Redmond probably wouldn't throw too much effort into the next Office For Macintosh if they were fighting against the newest Mac OS for market share.
You mean machines have platic wrap?
Aside from the terrible drain that would put on slashdot itself...
There is a huge legal issue involved with mirroring sites. Even if you wait for the author (victim) of the site to give his written consent, you then run into the issues of decreasing the "click value" of the hosting server as far as advertisments are concerned, the posibility that the author was not responsible for all content on the page, etc.
Ask CmdrTaco sometime. He once gave my fellow nerds and I a brief rant on why it's not happening, and I assume not much will change until copyright laws change.
I'm not making these, oddly enough, to be giant, successful blockbusters. I'm making them because I'm telling a story, and I have to tell the story I intended.
Either that's a blatant lie, or Jar Jar is saying something quite telling about Mr. Lucas's sanity.
Also, isn't it peculiar that when you complete a complex or lengthy game you rarely want to replay it, yet short games are often endlessly replayable?
... and Rogue.
Most of these (good) 40+ hour games are played at least two or three times by the owner, especially those in the RPG genre, which often have multiple approaches and often more than one ending (Knights of the Old Republic, Chrono Trigger, etc.). If you are evaluating a game, then, in terms of how much time you spend on it, you are talking 100-120+ hours for the long game; how often have you found a one-hour game that you would replay 120 times?
On the other hand, there will always be a place in my heart for the endlessly replayable 2-3 hour Master Of Orion II.
Sadly, the big companies and their lawyers are often quite unhappy about these community efforts to 'restore' games that the fans love/loved.
Remeber the cease and desist order to the Chrono Resurrection project?
KOTOR II,
Final Fantasy VII,
In my book, the most unfulfilling endings of all time. Anybody have anything else for the list?
The Virtual Boy failed because it was too large to be a handheld yet not "console" enough to take it's place with the television.
The problem with trying to express 3-D with video games is that the utterly ubiqtuous display device of choice is quite 2-D.
It seems their options are:
* 3-D glasses (not necessarily the red-blue type, there are many options nowadays; but would gamers really want to wear them?)
* Head mounted displays (Virtual Boy again?)
* Filter array displays (Average cost upwards of $1000)
So what'll it be, Nintendo?
Okay, so we've hit Stage 5 of the Permadeath Debate... Just a few more to go, now.
To help advance that:
Remember the Super Mario way: You get three deaths before permadeath, you can earn more, or you can circumvent it entirely by holding the A button.
This is simply bringing the XBox in line with the tried and true practices of PC multiplayer. The makers of games from Command and Conquer to CounterStrike: Source release patches to *improve* their multiplayer balance over time.
Even StarCraft, lauded for its balance, has had no less than twelve significant patches since its release.
Microsoft has been rewriting history for years... why stop now?
Though it would be quite nice to see an Age of Empires campaign that accurately represented some period in history, no army in history has ever been as successful as the play is required to be in these games.
I don't think the user would be as appreciative if you were required to lose an average third of the scenarios to keep things historically accurate.
"Objective: Hold off the Spanish assault for three grudging hours until you run out or resources and are ownzed."
Can you imagine what this would do to Tetris?
This early on a Satruday and it's already down? Shouldn't most of you be sleeping now?
I can't wait until April Fools Day is over...
... on the other hand, April Fools does give us the opportunity to shrug off all human stupidity, real or contrived.
No such thing exists when a story like this comes up on your average news-day as a result of Stupidity of Humans x E-Bay environment.
Ha Ha. ...
*ahem*
[looks for a real science article]
>required some technical savvy To enter in a SSN and a birth date? Give me a break. Apparently, her savvy extended as far as not turning off her browser's https abilities, too.
The only way to make an electromagnetic wave secure--short of sticking your entire system inside of a Faraday cage--is to make the information it sends secure. Higher level encryption is the way to go, here; most likely either redundancy, a checksum, or the like.