I think you don't realize that they have different employees doing different jobs already. The engine coders aren't going to be doing any map design in the near future, or vice versa.
As for people who REFUSE to buy off of Steam, I agree.
In some cases though, you'll be able to find games on sale in retail stores before the price drops in the Steam store. For example, about 2 weeks after Episode 1 came out, Circuit City had a sale, and you could buy Ep1 for $10, when it was still $20 on Steam. I pre-ordered my copy on Steam (so it was ~$17 for me), but I could certainly see myself going for that if I'd decided to wait on buying the game till I'd read some reviews.
Other than that, the only explanation that makes sense to me is people who like to put their games on a bookshelf for the world to see. Personally, I prefer people to see "C in a Nutshell" and my first-edition "Black Hawk Down".;) As for my electronic ego, my filelist on my school's Direct Connect hub is sufficient for me. Alas, to each his own.:)
Bunny-hopping doesn't give you extra speed in TFC, it just makes you harder to hit. In HL2, it DOES make you go faster, but you have to time it just right (I was on the team for Half-life 2 Done Quick).
However, in CS, they purposely made it so that jumping slows you down, to make it so that bunny-hopping no longer was effective at keeping your speed up.
First off, the $50 package is for HL2, HL2:Ep1, HL2:Ep2, Portal, and TF2. If you only want the latter three, then you will be able to buy those separately over Steam.
Second, with Valve's dev cycles, it would take them 5 years to make another "full" game. So making a new episode every 18 months is fast for them.
Third, if you're unsure of the plotline, you have several options, including a replay of the game (sounds like you own it), or a viewing of the many videos online where people show their run-throughs.
If you would like a glimpse at how long it truly takes to make a game, start up the Hammer Editor and make a few maps. Look at the guy who makes the MINVERVA series (look up, he posted a few comment on this page). It's taken him literally years to make three maps, and he doesn't even have to make new textures; Valve already did that for him! Despite this, his maps are (IMO) extremely well-designed, and fun to play. Granted, he does mapping in his spare time, not as a job, but you have to understand that map design is very time-consuming, even without having to go through and design new models and textures from scratch.
I'm not the fastest mapper, but I am fairly experienced. Despite this, it takes me probably 10 minutes to make a simple box with lights and a spawn point; it takes me a couple hours to make a simple map like a clone of fy_iceworld; it took several weeks to make a deathmatch map that I handed in to Valve's HL2DM map design contest, and it still wasn't finished when I hit the deadline. Go through some tutorials, design some maps, and you'll see what I mean.
At this rate of development it would take them 6 years just to make 1 complete game.
Well, that's basically what happened to HL2 after they finished HL1... I sure wouldn't want to wait another 5-6 years to play HL3, I'd rather have an episode every 18 months.
Supposedly, you'll be able to buy the "Black Box" games through Steam as a single package, and the Orange Box just the only way those games are coming out in retail. The Orange Box will include three Steam codes: one for HL2, one for Ep1, one for TF2/Portal/Ep2.
According to Valve's hardware survey (check a couple days ago on/., I'm too lazy to look for it), AGP users still make up roughly half the population of Steam gamers. PCI-e just barely took 50% this year, and it was dead even in November. Not only that, Newegg still stocks plenty of them, including $30 FX5200s, which are perfectly fine for most games.
There's also a difference between servers and workstations. If you work in a standard company, then all of the workstations will be pre-built by HP, Dell, etc. The servers may or may not be home-built, depending on the needs of the company, the IT Dept/Sysadmins/etc will likely build their machines if they are allowed to. (some companies restrict this behavior because they want uniformity across their fleet)
Meh, my setup works just fine for me, and I mostly play Source games. I have a P4 3.2, 1GB RAM, and a 6600GT (and I run games at full res on my 1440x900 monitor). It's lasted me several years. Because of this, a new computer is a want, but not a need. If I can run HL2:Ep2 with all the auto-detected features at full res with a decent framerate, I will. Otherwise, I'll turn down the settings.
Some people think they need to run games at 100fps with 8xAA, 8xAF, and they're willing to spend the cash to do it. I'm not.
I never actually played the game, that's just what I thought I remembered based on the ads. The most recent console to come out that I own is still my SNES.:-D
I agree with your first statement in spirit, but not in wording. Certain rights are inalienable, and belong to men regardless of what a government says. However, freedoms are taken away all the time, since people are not willing to do the work necessary to hold on to them. You don't have to look hard to find examples.
To answer your question, it's because they are the cornerstone rights that make up the foundation for a free society. The founding fathers wrote the rest of the Constitution as well, but I could care less about most of the document. As I said, those parts detail the how, not the why. Hell, if you want to take out some of the "enumerated powers" of Congress, I'd be more than happy to let you. Commerce Clause, anyone?;)
The portions of the Constitution that deal with how the government is to be run are debatable, IMO. If you want to change the manner in which Senators are elected, that's fine by me (17th Amendment).
However, if you honestly want to change the Bill of Rights, I will fight you to the death. Those are the portions that secure individuals our freedom. I would not even think of letting you change the Third Amendment, let alone the Second. The only way in which the Bill of Rights could be improved would be to give freedom, not take it away.
Not just because of invasion. One of the main purposes of a militia is to keep the government in check. That whole "Enemies, foreign and domestic" thing.
As a free society, a side benefit of having arms is using them for other purposes, including self defense, sustenance (hunting, and I think hunting without taking the meat is extremely wasteful), and any other purpose that does not infringe on the rights of other law-abiding citizens.
Umm... hmm... it seems that I thought he was replying to a different comment than he actually was. I thought that the site in question was http://www.martianfrontier.com/, which is the website listed a few comments above under someone's name. I think the comment made by the AC was probably hidden at the time I replied.
I think it sometimes had issues in the past when it could connect to the network at large, but couldn't connect to the auth servers, but I think that was fixed after the big debacle that happened when Seattle sank into the Pacific a few months back.
1. Plug your machine in, start Steam, update all the games. 2. Log out, unplug the connection, start in offline mode. 3. Start the games to make sure they'll run in offline mode. 4. Turn the machine off, and move it to your room (or whereever). 5. Play.:)
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I think you don't realize that they have different employees doing different jobs already. The engine coders aren't going to be doing any map design in the near future, or vice versa.
As for people who REFUSE to buy off of Steam, I agree.
;) As for my electronic ego, my filelist on my school's Direct Connect hub is sufficient for me. Alas, to each his own. :)
In some cases though, you'll be able to find games on sale in retail stores before the price drops in the Steam store. For example, about 2 weeks after Episode 1 came out, Circuit City had a sale, and you could buy Ep1 for $10, when it was still $20 on Steam. I pre-ordered my copy on Steam (so it was ~$17 for me), but I could certainly see myself going for that if I'd decided to wait on buying the game till I'd read some reviews.
Other than that, the only explanation that makes sense to me is people who like to put their games on a bookshelf for the world to see. Personally, I prefer people to see "C in a Nutshell" and my first-edition "Black Hawk Down".
As opposed to having five years between sequels?
Bunny-hopping doesn't give you extra speed in TFC, it just makes you harder to hit. In HL2, it DOES make you go faster, but you have to time it just right (I was on the team for Half-life 2 Done Quick).
However, in CS, they purposely made it so that jumping slows you down, to make it so that bunny-hopping no longer was effective at keeping your speed up.
You realize that HL:Source is Half-life 1 ported to the Source engine, right? Not a new game? ;)
First off, the $50 package is for HL2, HL2:Ep1, HL2:Ep2, Portal, and TF2. If you only want the latter three, then you will be able to buy those separately over Steam.
Second, with Valve's dev cycles, it would take them 5 years to make another "full" game. So making a new episode every 18 months is fast for them.
Third, if you're unsure of the plotline, you have several options, including a replay of the game (sounds like you own it), or a viewing of the many videos online where people show their run-throughs.
If you would like a glimpse at how long it truly takes to make a game, start up the Hammer Editor and make a few maps. Look at the guy who makes the MINVERVA series (look up, he posted a few comment on this page). It's taken him literally years to make three maps, and he doesn't even have to make new textures; Valve already did that for him! Despite this, his maps are (IMO) extremely well-designed, and fun to play. Granted, he does mapping in his spare time, not as a job, but you have to understand that map design is very time-consuming, even without having to go through and design new models and textures from scratch.
I'm not the fastest mapper, but I am fairly experienced. Despite this, it takes me probably 10 minutes to make a simple box with lights and a spawn point; it takes me a couple hours to make a simple map like a clone of fy_iceworld; it took several weeks to make a deathmatch map that I handed in to Valve's HL2DM map design contest, and it still wasn't finished when I hit the deadline. Go through some tutorials, design some maps, and you'll see what I mean.
At this rate of development it would take them 6 years just to make 1 complete game.
Well, that's basically what happened to HL2 after they finished HL1... I sure wouldn't want to wait another 5-6 years to play HL3, I'd rather have an episode every 18 months.
Supposedly, you'll be able to buy the "Black Box" games through Steam as a single package, and the Orange Box just the only way those games are coming out in retail. The Orange Box will include three Steam codes: one for HL2, one for Ep1, one for TF2/Portal/Ep2.
According to Valve's hardware survey (check a couple days ago on /., I'm too lazy to look for it), AGP users still make up roughly half the population of Steam gamers. PCI-e just barely took 50% this year, and it was dead even in November. Not only that, Newegg still stocks plenty of them, including $30 FX5200s, which are perfectly fine for most games.
There's also a difference between servers and workstations. If you work in a standard company, then all of the workstations will be pre-built by HP, Dell, etc. The servers may or may not be home-built, depending on the needs of the company, the IT Dept/Sysadmins/etc will likely build their machines if they are allowed to. (some companies restrict this behavior because they want uniformity across their fleet)
Meh, my setup works just fine for me, and I mostly play Source games. I have a P4 3.2, 1GB RAM, and a 6600GT (and I run games at full res on my 1440x900 monitor). It's lasted me several years. Because of this, a new computer is a want, but not a need. If I can run HL2:Ep2 with all the auto-detected features at full res with a decent framerate, I will. Otherwise, I'll turn down the settings.
Some people think they need to run games at 100fps with 8xAA, 8xAF, and they're willing to spend the cash to do it. I'm not.
For me (using Gentoo, with a recent version of Wine), running Steam in Wine caused it to show up as Win2K.
I stand corrected. ;)
:-D
I never actually played the game, that's just what I thought I remembered based on the ads. The most recent console to come out that I own is still my SNES.
Wasn't that a Playstation title?
I agree with your first statement in spirit, but not in wording. Certain rights are inalienable, and belong to men regardless of what a government says. However, freedoms are taken away all the time, since people are not willing to do the work necessary to hold on to them. You don't have to look hard to find examples.
;)
To answer your question, it's because they are the cornerstone rights that make up the foundation for a free society. The founding fathers wrote the rest of the Constitution as well, but I could care less about most of the document. As I said, those parts detail the how, not the why. Hell, if you want to take out some of the "enumerated powers" of Congress, I'd be more than happy to let you. Commerce Clause, anyone?
The portions of the Constitution that deal with how the government is to be run are debatable, IMO. If you want to change the manner in which Senators are elected, that's fine by me (17th Amendment).
However, if you honestly want to change the Bill of Rights, I will fight you to the death. Those are the portions that secure individuals our freedom. I would not even think of letting you change the Third Amendment, let alone the Second. The only way in which the Bill of Rights could be improved would be to give freedom, not take it away.
Not just because of invasion. One of the main purposes of a militia is to keep the government in check. That whole "Enemies, foreign and domestic" thing.
As a free society, a side benefit of having arms is using them for other purposes, including self defense, sustenance (hunting, and I think hunting without taking the meat is extremely wasteful), and any other purpose that does not infringe on the rights of other law-abiding citizens.
Umm... hmm... it seems that I thought he was replying to a different comment than he actually was. I thought that the site in question was http://www.martianfrontier.com/, which is the website listed a few comments above under someone's name. I think the comment made by the AC was probably hidden at the time I replied.
Whoops.
Eh... looks like a link-farming site right now. Nothing special.
All the more reason to put make sure nobody else is snooping on you before you install your backdoor program!
No idea on the implementation, they just said you'll still see improvements.
;)
Besides, even running at DX8 or DX9, an 8600GT will still yield a better framerate than a 7600GT.
I think it sometimes had issues in the past when it could connect to the network at large, but couldn't connect to the auth servers, but I think that was fixed after the big debacle that happened when Seattle sank into the Pacific a few months back.
Try HL2 out sometime, I really like it.
I haven't had an issue lately either... they revamped the system a few months ago.
What issues have you had?
The only thing I can recommend in this case:
:)
1. Plug your machine in, start Steam, update all the games.
2. Log out, unplug the connection, start in offline mode.
3. Start the games to make sure they'll run in offline mode.
4. Turn the machine off, and move it to your room (or whereever).
5. Play.
Not only that, you can turn off the Steam News thing... it's in the Settings window.