I sense a little hostility...
on
Team Ninja In-Depth
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
From TFA:
1UP: Like Soul Calibur palette swaps?
TI: Bringing up Soul Calibur suggests that Namco likes to do that sort of thing, but let's not broach that today, because we don't want to waste our time on that kind of petty stuff. I think the technique of recycling characters and changing the names and keeping everything else the same just to add meaningless volume is the worst thing you can do, I hate it. I don't have time to talk about something so despicable when we have so much other stuff to talk about.
While the highlighting was my addition, this really drives home a point. I design graphics engines for shader-related hardware (read: game consoles), and still I was not aware of the absolute animosity that existed between the game designers. These are some very srong words from a very respected developer towards another very respected game designer. Are there rivalries like this amongst American developers, or is this part of the demographics that I have yet to understand? Can anyone comment on the American market?
I'm 21, a Mechanical Engineering major and Comp Sci major. I know how things work, and I love to play with them. Where do I belong in the Technology/Age heirarchy?
He neither conceived the idea of a robot nor built any.
False. From UTexas RRR (and many of the "forward" parts of his books):
The word 'robotics' was first used in Runaround, a short story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov (born Jan. 2, 1920, died Apr. 6, 1992). I, Robot, a collection of several of these stories, was published in 1950.
...
In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly (left), and their associates at the Moore school of Electrical Engineering of University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high - speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator)
Courtesy http://www.softlord.com/comp/
He was a visionary, seeing events that would come about nearly half a century later. Computers were in their infancy; nothing more than a novelty that would barely fir into a room, much less a human-sized head... Building one was quite out of the question.
While this may seem superficial, I think this design may be a step backward for NASA in terms of both design and public image. This seems to be nearly identical to the design we used to land on the moon almost 40 years ago. With all the designs being submitted by Lockheed Martin and Boeing for next-generation spaceflight, it makes me wonder why they chose the same route for technology they used before.
In addition, the space shuttle had the wow-factor for the public: it was a step right direction on the long road to Star Wars/Star Trek technology. I hope the public doesn't look at this design and begin to lose interest in the space program, if only because it looks like 40-year-old technology.
I believe that this will put more responsibility on parents.
Now hear me out here. I do not belive this law will do much good, as some stores will inevitably ignore the new reguluations, game development companies will still produce violent/sex-filled games and parents will surely buy these games for their kids... nothing will change in that respect.
What will change is the fact that when the next Little Deranged Johnny does go on his shooting spree claiming to have been influenced by videogames, who can overprotective parents, lawmakers and lawyers alike lay the blame on?
The stores that sell these products are not to blame if they follow the new regulations
The companies that make these games cannot be blamed, as there is legislation now in place that protects them. How often do gun companies get successfully sued for children accidentally shooting each other? How often do alcohol companies get sued because someone drank their beer and killed someone driving drunk?
The kids cannot be blamed because by law they are minors and don't know the difference between fantasy and reality (mind you this is from the point of view from the Overprotective Parents Association - OPA - not my personal view)
How did Little Deranged Johnny get his hands on such a twisted, evil, dispicable piece of software? The parents! The only way that he legally got the software would be through his parents who bought it for him or from a friend's parents who allowed him to use it.
I fear though that the wrath of the OPA will be turned elsewhere instead of on the parents where it belongs... "How could it be possible that the parents are to blame when he could have just as easily pirated it off of the internet? Regulate the internet now! Crack down harder on piracy!"
1024*1024 texture * 4 bytes per pixel (1 per channel = 32 bit) * 4964 textures / 1048576 (bytes in a megabyte) = 19856 megabytes = 19.390625 GB of data.
19.3 GB won't fit on a Dual-Layer DVD. What does this mean?
1. Less than half the textures are going to make it in-game
2. Not all the textures in that photo (and thus the game) are 1024x1024
3. Compression
While 2 is probably what the devs are going to choose, I certainly hope that they don't use 3. Most compression schemes like JPEG are lossy compression, which means that when the texture is "blown" back up to it's 1024^2 resolution, it won't look nearly as good as those pictures make it out to be. In motion this won't cause a problem, but on closer inspection it could look almost as blocky as current-gen games.
...one of the attractive things about Revolution is that it is a low-cost development platform.
Mind you, low-cost development does not directly translate into low-cost end products. What better way to increase profit margins than to lower development costs and maintain price levels?
Nintendo knows that development is becoming more expensive and that many companies are feeling the effect of that. I'd be shocked if Nintendo raised prices.
While it may be true that development costs of games are skyrocketing with the increase in production values with games, it still makes sense to keep the prices fixed where they are at the very least. Decreasing the price of games would translate into a decreased income per game sold for developers. Sure they may sell 20% more games, but that would mean that the price would have to be 20% less in order to meet the break-even point. Note too that the big production and distribution companies would have to bank on the fact that every game would sell significantly more copies which, although a nice idea, is not necessarily reality.
I've owned the JBMM20 and the AV300 - the great-grandfather and grandfather of the AV700 - and I have to say that they're amazing pieces of technology. They run embedded firmware on the DSC25 that is compatible with linux so you can run Linux on it if you really want. The video playback on the AV300 is stunning, even at 352x240 resolution: you can read subtitles clear as day. It has decent quality sound (much better if you get a nicer pair of headphones like the Seinnheiser HD280 Pro), a bright lcd screen and 3-4 hours of video playback on the "Low Brightness" option which ironically is quite bright still. Oh yeah... and it plays DiVX
For anyone that's interested, don't even think about getting the bigger harddrive model. Both old and new models use standard 3.5" laptop harddrives, which means you can buy one off of PriceWatch and slap it in there. Just format it with a FAT boot sector first and you're good to go.
... that I'm going to be spending $10 more per game for significantly less playtime and replay value? Next console games are supposed to be $60 and Nintendo is expecting everyone to pay more for less gametime?
Keep living the pipe dream, Nintendo. Your hardware days are numbered.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
1UP: Like Soul Calibur palette swaps?
TI: Bringing up Soul Calibur suggests that Namco likes to do that sort of thing, but let's not broach that today, because we don't want to waste our time on that kind of petty stuff. I think the technique of recycling characters and changing the names and keeping everything else the same just to add meaningless volume is the worst thing you can do, I hate it. I don't have time to talk about something so despicable when we have so much other stuff to talk about.
While the highlighting was my addition, this really drives home a point. I design graphics engines for shader-related hardware (read: game consoles), and still I was not aware of the absolute animosity that existed between the game designers. These are some very srong words from a very respected developer towards another very respected game designer. Are there rivalries like this amongst American developers, or is this part of the demographics that I have yet to understand? Can anyone comment on the American market?
I'm 21, a Mechanical Engineering major and Comp Sci major. I know how things work, and I love to play with them. Where do I belong in the Technology/Age heirarchy?
He neither conceived the idea of a robot nor built any.
...
False. From UTexas RRR (and many of the "forward" parts of his books):
The word 'robotics' was first used in Runaround, a short story published in 1942, by Isaac Asimov (born Jan. 2, 1920, died Apr. 6, 1992). I, Robot, a collection of several of these stories, was published in 1950.
In 1942, John P. Eckert, John W. Mauchly (left), and their associates at the Moore school of Electrical Engineering of University of Pennsylvania decided to build a high - speed electronic computer to do the job. This machine became known as ENIAC (Electrical Numerical Integrator And Calculator)
Courtesy http://www.softlord.com/comp/
He was a visionary, seeing events that would come about nearly half a century later. Computers were in their infancy; nothing more than a novelty that would barely fir into a room, much less a human-sized head... Building one was quite out of the question.
While this may seem superficial, I think this design may be a step backward for NASA in terms of both design and public image. This seems to be nearly identical to the design we used to land on the moon almost 40 years ago. With all the designs being submitted by Lockheed Martin and Boeing for next-generation spaceflight, it makes me wonder why they chose the same route for technology they used before.
In addition, the space shuttle had the wow-factor for the public: it was a step right direction on the long road to Star Wars/Star Trek technology. I hope the public doesn't look at this design and begin to lose interest in the space program, if only because it looks like 40-year-old technology.
I believe that this will put more responsibility on parents.
Now hear me out here. I do not belive this law will do much good, as some stores will inevitably ignore the new reguluations, game development companies will still produce violent/sex-filled games and parents will surely buy these games for their kids... nothing will change in that respect.
What will change is the fact that when the next Little Deranged Johnny does go on his shooting spree claiming to have been influenced by videogames, who can overprotective parents, lawmakers and lawyers alike lay the blame on?
- The stores that sell these products are not to blame if they follow the new regulations
- The companies that make these games cannot be blamed, as there is legislation now in place that protects them. How often do gun companies get successfully sued for children accidentally shooting each other? How often do alcohol companies get sued because someone drank their beer and killed someone driving drunk?
- The kids cannot be blamed because by law they are minors and don't know the difference between fantasy and reality (mind you this is from the point of view from the Overprotective Parents Association - OPA - not my personal view)
How did Little Deranged Johnny get his hands on such a twisted, evil, dispicable piece of software? The parents! The only way that he legally got the software would be through his parents who bought it for him or from a friend's parents who allowed him to use it.I fear though that the wrath of the OPA will be turned elsewhere instead of on the parents where it belongs... "How could it be possible that the parents are to blame when he could have just as easily pirated it off of the internet? Regulate the internet now! Crack down harder on piracy!"
Let's do some math, shall we?
1024*1024 texture * 4 bytes per pixel (1 per channel = 32 bit) * 4964 textures / 1048576 (bytes in a megabyte) = 19856 megabytes = 19.390625 GB of data.
19.3 GB won't fit on a Dual-Layer DVD. What does this mean?
1. Less than half the textures are going to make it in-game
2. Not all the textures in that photo (and thus the game) are 1024x1024
3. Compression
While 2 is probably what the devs are going to choose, I certainly hope that they don't use 3. Most compression schemes like JPEG are lossy compression, which means that when the texture is "blown" back up to it's 1024^2 resolution, it won't look nearly as good as those pictures make it out to be. In motion this won't cause a problem, but on closer inspection it could look almost as blocky as current-gen games.
Macintrino has a nice ring to it, no?
...one of the attractive things about Revolution is that it is a low-cost development platform.
Mind you, low-cost development does not directly translate into low-cost end products. What better way to increase profit margins than to lower development costs and maintain price levels?
Nintendo knows that development is becoming more expensive and that many companies are feeling the effect of that. I'd be shocked if Nintendo raised prices.
While it may be true that development costs of games are skyrocketing with the increase in production values with games, it still makes sense to keep the prices fixed where they are at the very least. Decreasing the price of games would translate into a decreased income per game sold for developers. Sure they may sell 20% more games, but that would mean that the price would have to be 20% less in order to meet the break-even point. Note too that the big production and distribution companies would have to bank on the fact that every game would sell significantly more copies which, although a nice idea, is not necessarily reality.
I've owned the JBMM20 and the AV300 - the great-grandfather and grandfather of the AV700 - and I have to say that they're amazing pieces of technology. They run embedded firmware on the DSC25 that is compatible with linux so you can run Linux on it if you really want. The video playback on the AV300 is stunning, even at 352x240 resolution: you can read subtitles clear as day. It has decent quality sound (much better if you get a nicer pair of headphones like the Seinnheiser HD280 Pro), a bright lcd screen and 3-4 hours of video playback on the "Low Brightness" option which ironically is quite bright still. Oh yeah... and it plays DiVX
For anyone that's interested, don't even think about getting the bigger harddrive model. Both old and new models use standard 3.5" laptop harddrives, which means you can buy one off of PriceWatch and slap it in there. Just format it with a FAT boot sector first and you're good to go.
... that I'm going to be spending $10 more per game for significantly less playtime and replay value? Next console games are supposed to be $60 and Nintendo is expecting everyone to pay more for less gametime?
Keep living the pipe dream, Nintendo. Your hardware days are numbered.