Seriously, I have quite a control-freakery-micro-manager to contend with at work and this rule helps me out tons. If you try explaining something wonderful you CAN do he's not interested, if you explain something wonderful you're ALREADY doing, then he tends to get with it:)
Actually, if he has shitty hearing and it sounds "vastly better" then that suggests to me that someone with good hearing would experience an order of magnitude more "better", think about it in terms of resolution.
Rectangular devices with a touch screen and no keyboard of approximately similar dimensions existed AT LEAST A DECADE BEFORE THE iPHONE - nice of you to keep spreading the lie that Apple invented the form factor. Quite frankly, I think sticking a GSM chip in one was a dead obvious evolution, not a revolution.
nooooo, less buttons! One input per digit, excluding the "start"/"system" button(s) . Am I the only person who finds mouse+keyboard too complicated?
depending on the game, obviously, but in a first-person game why would you ever need more than:
1: Stick - move (click to toggle walk/run) 2: Stick - look (click to toggle zoom) 3: up (jumping,climbing,swimming = terrain sensitive) 4: down (ducking,crawling,climing, you get the idea)
5: melee attack (again, context: if you run then jump then it does a flying kick, if you're stationary and crouched it punches them in the nuts)
6: weapon 1/primary 7: weapon 2/secondary
8: weapon select (single button could be toggle, hold to pickup like halo, some other device such as wheel could be menu-like with click to pickup/drop)
9: use (press button,talk to person, pick stuff up. I remember quake doing away with this, why else would you be stood there staring at a lever? why do you need to "use" a door to open it?)
As an avid PC gamer for a decade who in the past 4+ years has defected to consoles I consistently like games with less buttons. If I need 83 buttons on my mouse plus all 100 buttons on my keyboard to play a game I'm not interested (which yes, means I'm not interested in flight sims).
For example, have an "up" button and a "down" button. DON'T have jump,climb,duck,rappel,lie-on-ground,swim-up,swim-down and shimmy-up-drainpipe buttons.
I remember spending many years playing and coding half life mods and seeing that sort of thing a lot. One mod had lie-on-ground and crouch as separate buttons (in my mod you just pressed "down" again when crouched, and double-tapping "down" when stood up worked plenty fast enough. Another that springs to mind is TFC where the Demoman had to have a seperate set-a-detpack button instead of it just being a type of grenade.
I'd prefer the TV to actually be the wall so that I can watch any content at any size (full wall, or little box) or have a bunch of different stuff up, e.g. different angles on a motor race, with a timing/scoring grid too and a circuit map with trackers on. And a weather report of the same area. And Twitter.
Or watch IMAX films on it full-wall, but normal TV a sensible size.
And because it's electric paper style there'd be no black bars. And where there isn't a screen up it can show wallpaper that's actually wallpaper! Or framed family photos.
Then you can embed a clever array of cameras and have screens up that are actually mirrors. Or Skype your entire lounge with your parents, so they can watch the kids playing on the floor in front of them from the other side of the planet.
Part of what went wrong with Vista (part) was that they were aiming up the CPU/RAM upgrade curve, and no one upgraded because their computers were already Good Enough to do everything they wanted to do. I can still see the speed differences on the same (decent!) hardware between XP and Win 7... Granted Win 7 has a proper Administrator/Sandbox layer so I expect some slowdown but not that much.
So yeah, enough praising MS for this move, they're 7 years late with it.
Actually trademark laws require them to defend their trademarks or risk it being watered down (see what I did there)... However the law doesn't require you to act like an asshole in the process. Anyone remember the Second Life / First Life "Proceed and Permit" letter? same thing.
And yet when I try to tell people how good the Portal games are they say "But there's no one to shoot, sooo booringgg"
Also, Mirror's Edge. I've played through it a couple of times (Where's the Sequel already!?!?!) without shooting any cops. Just seems wrong and out of character.Though on the other hand I think there should have been less fighting and more tomb raider in that game.
In the UK we queue for everything automatically, (tho like sibling poster describes, it's probably drilled into us) EXCEPT when there's alcohol involved, then queuing goes out the window and it's everyone for themselves.
That's a cultural thing right there,how is a foreigner supposed to know the queue-for-everything-but-beer rule? What if their culture has a queue-only-for-bagles rule?
Culture indeed, us Northern European/White folk are more reserved and tend to err on the side of being non confrontational and/or apologising when things weren't even their fault (especially us english). Arabs and Africans tend to be direct and to the point, which isn't to say they're Aggressive, quite frankly I prefer it, the western Passive-Aggressive society in which I've been raised is in my opinion illogical (captain).
So yeah, when a bunch of Arabs start yelling at you and you're used to the White approach of the manager having a word with you off to the side you're going to get a culture shock.
RTFA - one thing that I like the sound of is playing rally games, where you're sliding sideways.. with this you get to look out the side window to see your direction of travel much more natural than staring at the trees going past the front
Unless each monitor was rendered independently by the engine from the same origin but a different camera angle, linked to the angle of the monitor. That way you could stick one on the ceiling if you wanted
I go to a lot of gigs, and am involved in putting on gigs, and radio shows. I use facebook to follow bands, find out what's happening, prod the manager of the local gig-pub and also track events.
Love it or hate it facebook seamlessly integrates all of the above in a way that the traditional wider "this is my web page" internet never has. Microformats are pushing close to that but the drummer in a band doesn't know shit about HTML or microformats, they just want to shove some pictures of the gig on "the internet" and post an event for next saturday and invite a bunch of people who they know will spread the words to their mates.
Sometimes, admittedly, I do post pictures of food on it.
Actually this does raise the wider issue of privacy, imagine having a bunch of friends and/or family over to watch a sporting even and the ad break is tailored to you, imagine all the personal products that might be shown, with everyone present in the full knowledge that these are targetted ads...
Slashdot Mirror
Nice, we should do a Release build of that one.
Seriously, I have quite a control-freakery-micro-manager to contend with at work and this rule helps me out tons. If you try explaining something wonderful you CAN do he's not interested, if you explain something wonderful you're ALREADY doing, then he tends to get with it :)
I'm vegan, a bacon shortage isn't a problem for me. Wait. Why are you all looking at me like that? Stop ominously sharpening that knife!
Let me check-out that rule, refine it and check-in a new version:
"It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"
Actually, if he has shitty hearing and it sounds "vastly better" then that suggests to me that someone with good hearing would experience an order of magnitude more "better", think about it in terms of resolution.
If you saw the battle scars on my phone and laptop then you'd know that I need one of these. And I'm 36.
"Too Many People."
Personally I had a vasectomy once I'd had two children - that's one each to replace me and my partner. Me fathering any more would be irresponsible.
sod Steampunk. Convert one of these! http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumblarge_585/129856993126hzYk.jpg
Rectangular devices with a touch screen and no keyboard of approximately similar dimensions existed AT LEAST A DECADE BEFORE THE iPHONE - nice of you to keep spreading the lie that Apple invented the form factor. Quite frankly, I think sticking a GSM chip in one was a dead obvious evolution, not a revolution.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalmPilot
Also here's a device similar to that one with a colour screen running a web browser. 4 years before the iPhone
http://the-gadgeteer.com/2001/11/02/compaq_ipaq_3835_3850_pocket_pc_review/
Yours,
A. Psion Fanatic
how do you move if you've got no money? carry your house?
nooooo, less buttons! One input per digit, excluding the "start"/"system" button(s) . Am I the only person who finds mouse+keyboard too complicated?
depending on the game, obviously, but in a first-person game why would you ever need more than:
1: Stick - move (click to toggle walk/run)
2: Stick - look (click to toggle zoom)
3: up (jumping,climbing,swimming = terrain sensitive)
4: down (ducking,crawling,climing, you get the idea)
5: melee attack (again, context: if you run then jump then it does a flying kick, if you're stationary and crouched it punches them in the nuts)
6: weapon 1/primary
7: weapon 2/secondary
8: weapon select (single button could be toggle, hold to pickup like halo, some other device such as wheel could be menu-like with click to pickup/drop)
9: use (press button,talk to person, pick stuff up. I remember quake doing away with this, why else would you be stood there staring at a lever? why do you need to "use" a door to open it?)
10: yell abuse
As an avid PC gamer for a decade who in the past 4+ years has defected to consoles I consistently like games with less buttons. If I need 83 buttons on my mouse plus all 100 buttons on my keyboard to play a game I'm not interested (which yes, means I'm not interested in flight sims).
For example, have an "up" button and a "down" button. DON'T have jump,climb,duck,rappel,lie-on-ground,swim-up,swim-down and shimmy-up-drainpipe buttons.
I remember spending many years playing and coding half life mods and seeing that sort of thing a lot. One mod had lie-on-ground and crouch as separate buttons (in my mod you just pressed "down" again when crouched, and double-tapping "down" when stood up worked plenty fast enough. Another that springs to mind is TFC where the Demoman had to have a seperate set-a-detpack button instead of it just being a type of grenade.
I'd prefer the TV to actually be the wall so that I can watch any content at any size (full wall, or little box) or have a bunch of different stuff up, e.g. different angles on a motor race, with a timing/scoring grid too and a circuit map with trackers on. And a weather report of the same area. And Twitter.
Or watch IMAX films on it full-wall, but normal TV a sensible size.
And because it's electric paper style there'd be no black bars. And where there isn't a screen up it can show wallpaper that's actually wallpaper! Or framed family photos.
Then you can embed a clever array of cameras and have screens up that are actually mirrors. Or Skype your entire lounge with your parents, so they can watch the kids playing on the floor in front of them from the other side of the planet.
I want all of that NOW DAMMIT!
How about this technique? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oG5vsPJ5Tos&t=1m20s
Part of what went wrong with Vista (part) was that they were aiming up the CPU/RAM upgrade curve, and no one upgraded because their computers were already Good Enough to do everything they wanted to do. I can still see the speed differences on the same (decent!) hardware between XP and Win 7 ... Granted Win 7 has a proper Administrator/Sandbox layer so I expect some slowdown but not that much.
So yeah, enough praising MS for this move, they're 7 years late with it.
Actually trademark laws require them to defend their trademarks or risk it being watered down (see what I did there)... However the law doesn't require you to act like an asshole in the process. Anyone remember the Second Life / First Life "Proceed and Permit" letter? same thing.
And yet when I try to tell people how good the Portal games are they say "But there's no one to shoot, sooo booringgg"
Also, Mirror's Edge. I've played through it a couple of times (Where's the Sequel already!?!?!) without shooting any cops. Just seems wrong and out of character.Though on the other hand I think there should have been less fighting and more tomb raider in that game.
Maybe I'm just too neurological
In the UK we queue for everything automatically, (tho like sibling poster describes, it's probably drilled into us) EXCEPT when there's alcohol involved, then queuing goes out the window and it's everyone for themselves.
That's a cultural thing right there,how is a foreigner supposed to know the queue-for-everything-but-beer rule? What if their culture has a queue-only-for-bagles rule?
Now who's the asshole?
Culture indeed, us Northern European/White folk are more reserved and tend to err on the side of being non confrontational and/or apologising when things weren't even their fault (especially us english). Arabs and Africans tend to be direct and to the point, which isn't to say they're Aggressive, quite frankly I prefer it, the western Passive-Aggressive society in which I've been raised is in my opinion illogical (captain).
So yeah, when a bunch of Arabs start yelling at you and you're used to the White approach of the manager having a word with you off to the side you're going to get a culture shock.
And the downside is?
RTFA - one thing that I like the sound of is playing rally games, where you're sliding sideways .. with this you get to look out the side window to see your direction of travel much more natural than staring at the trees going past the front
Unless each monitor was rendered independently by the engine from the same origin but a different camera angle, linked to the angle of the monitor. That way you could stick one on the ceiling if you wanted
The special effect of the universe is likely a practical effect... google it
I go to a lot of gigs, and am involved in putting on gigs, and radio shows. I use facebook to follow bands, find out what's happening, prod the manager of the local gig-pub and also track events.
Love it or hate it facebook seamlessly integrates all of the above in a way that the traditional wider "this is my web page" internet never has. Microformats are pushing close to that but the drummer in a band doesn't know shit about HTML or microformats, they just want to shove some pictures of the gig on "the internet" and post an event for next saturday and invite a bunch of people who they know will spread the words to their mates.
Sometimes, admittedly, I do post pictures of food on it.
Actually this does raise the wider issue of privacy, imagine having a bunch of friends and/or family over to watch a sporting even and the ad break is tailored to you, imagine all the personal products that might be shown, with everyone present in the full knowledge that these are targetted ads...
Because it's not ours?