In a a game UI usuability can, and does dictate what is actually possible and ifa feature makes it into a game.
For example, if you wanted to have a series of special dodges (bad example) in a FPS, but you had to do soemthing obsure, or use distant keys, to do it, then it would probably get taken out before release. Gamer UI's do fit their problem very well, because the problem can change to let it.
It's like coming up with a cool graphical file manager, that doesn't allow moving files because you'd need another mouse button
Granted, he is well known and respected, but I wonder how many non-coders and non-gameheads know of him.
I would guess that more people have heard of Quake and Doom than have heard of John Carmack, whereas a superstar is better known than some of his work.
First off, I work in the industry, so I'm not just sombody bemoaning the old days.
Lack of superstars
Any mark except a publisher leads to an expectation of Genre. Molyneux leads to god game, Meier leads to resource management. Most film directors manage not to get hemmed in like this.
Ordinary programmers who work in the industry, personally I want my name on the box, but I'm not too interested in being a superstar.
18 month production cycles lead to a fluid base of people working on the game making picking a single person difficult.
System's like Valve's Cabal are basically design by committe, a sin in most areas, but here it resulted in a hell of a game (Half-life).
Todays games rely on a lot of organisational work. They are more like other large media projects
Sequels Juxtaposed with the above, we had a rant about sequels.
Sequels are just making the game characters stars.
This isn't always bad. Crash Team Racing is an example.
This kind of shit regularly pops up. Always negative and just ranting about how bad it all is. Sure its not always fun, but its just a matter of remembering what your building and how cool its going to be.
I know when someone I work with works like a bastard to get their work done, I respect them more than any star.
I remember in the wired article about him, it said he had afternoons where he would take in kids and try to pass on the kind of attitudes and skills your talking about. I wonder how he deals with it if he has a really shitty session, and essentially just spends a day being frustrated.
I think your logical approach works in 99% of cases, but isn't it occasionally important to feel, whether that's good or bad? Reminds us were human. Adds flavour to life.
If sega are running the central hub you can bet that they want a setup where you'll have to dial/get IP to sega so they can verify your disc/ check for the latest modchip type whatnot.
The libraries they give developers may be biased towards this kind of thing which could break any amount of clever tinkering, but then I'll suppose we'll reverse engineer the whole kaboodle.
What surprises me is that there not a 3rd party web browser / modem kit for PSX's there not incredibly powerful, but it could work.
By clever use of z buffer read and writes it may be possible to do some CSG effects in hardware already.
The problem I see with CSG is features like racetracks and landscapes. They don't really suit a CSG representation. Another thing to remember is all the other doohikeys that have to deal with your geometry representatione (e.g physics and AI).
The move to polygons has seen the death of many kewl little tricks that existed when people could just plot pixels. More stuff may dissapear id on-card geometry acceleration takes off. CSG would admittedly be interesting for this sort of thing, but a card whose hardware acceleration was based on CSG would make many operations that are simple today a bit of a bitch.
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In a a game UI usuability can, and does dictate what is actually possible and ifa feature makes it into a game.
For example, if you wanted to have a series of special dodges (bad example) in a FPS, but you had to do soemthing obsure, or use distant keys, to do it, then it would probably get taken out before release. Gamer UI's do fit their problem very well, because the problem can change to let it.
It's like coming up with a cool graphical file manager, that doesn't allow moving files because you'd need another mouse button
Do old people lose appreciation for colour and get better at picking out minor variations in tone?
PS2 Card looks much the same as the old one just 8MB instead of 1
so it should be possible. Not sure waht the driver situ. would be though
Maybe part of the problem is that net based advertising targets the desired audience more precisely.
Granted, he is well known and respected, but I wonder how many non-coders and non-gameheads know of him.
I would guess that more people have heard of Quake and Doom than have heard of John Carmack, whereas a superstar is better known than some of his work.
Lack of superstars
Any mark except a publisher leads to an expectation of Genre. Molyneux leads to god game, Meier leads to resource management. Most film directors manage not to get hemmed in like this.
Ordinary programmers who work in the industry, personally I want my name on the box, but I'm not too interested in being a superstar.
18 month production cycles lead to a fluid base of people working on the game making picking a single person difficult.
System's like Valve's Cabal are basically design by committe, a sin in most areas, but here it resulted in a hell of a game (Half-life).
Todays games rely on a lot of organisational work. They are more like other large media projects
Sequels
Juxtaposed with the above, we had a rant about sequels.
Sequels are just making the game characters stars.
This isn't always bad. Crash Team Racing is an example.
This kind of shit regularly pops up. Always negative and just ranting about how bad it all is. Sure its not always fun, but its just a matter of remembering what your building and how cool its going to be.
I know when someone I work with works like a bastard to get their work done, I respect them more than any star.
Anyway, back to it...
Use a distributed.net or SETI@home style client to crack the files, or do an exhaustive host search?
I suppose the problem is copies of the software and/or the lists...
Perhaps library's could install it?
I remember in the wired article about him, it said he had afternoons where he would take in kids and try to pass on the kind of attitudes and skills your talking about. I wonder how he deals with it if he has a really shitty session, and essentially just spends a day being frustrated.
I think your logical approach works in 99% of cases, but isn't it occasionally important to feel, whether that's good or bad? Reminds us were human. Adds flavour to life.
Then again, maybe I just need a beer ;p
I want to know how he manages this bit, a true skill.
I think that parametric represenations map better to polygons than to CSG.
Vertical split wipeout 3. Many Playstation games have modes for 16:9 aspect ratios. Very nice!
The libraries they give developers may be biased towards this kind of thing which could break any amount of clever tinkering, but then I'll suppose we'll reverse engineer the whole kaboodle.
What surprises me is that there not a 3rd party web browser / modem kit for PSX's there not incredibly powerful, but it could work.
The problem I see with CSG is features like racetracks and landscapes. They don't really suit a CSG representation. Another thing to remember is all the other doohikeys that have to deal with your geometry representatione (e.g physics and AI).
The move to polygons has seen the death of many kewl little tricks that existed when people could just plot pixels. More stuff may dissapear id on-card geometry acceleration takes off. CSG would admittedly be interesting for this sort of thing, but a card whose hardware acceleration was based on CSG would make many operations that are simple today a bit of a bitch.