I liked Oblivion, but for my money Morrowind was a much better game. Oblivion is more deserving of the 1 step forward 2 steps back award.
Oblivion made some questionable refinements to the gameplay.
The value in the series is a sense of experiencing 'my own story with my own character'. The level scaling, radar-like quest marks, and easy fast travel, robbed me of suspension of disbelief. Level scaling bakes in a degree of 'sameness' across the entire world, because everywhere you go the world reacts based off your current abilities. The quest radar makes the 'beaten path' too apparant. I never had a sense of going off the main quest in Morrowind. Going fown side quests and simple random exploration is is eactly what I did, but I never thought of it that way. For me whatever I was doing was the main quest. I had a massive sense of 'going off the main quest' in Oblivion. REALIZING I wasn't on the main quest in Oblivion is a big failure. It cheapened the (I'm sure very expensive to produce) experience of the side quests and rich environment. I always had an overriding sense of how shallow the 'current' side path was rather than the main quest. (Even if it wasn't true... the sense of shallowness was inescapble, due to the massive cues back to the main path.) It was like the game was constantly suggesting... why not go back to this main quest path... that's what you should be doing.
I fully understand why Bestheda put in level scaling, radar-like quest markers, and fast travel. I just think that while it made it more palatible for a wider audience, it did so at the dire expense of the core value in the game.
// warning... weak spoiler//
To give a concrete example: when I bought the ghost house from the guy in Anvil, I decide to follow him (this is very slow process... and of little obvious value) but I did it and knew precisely where he went. However what could have been an awesome experience was ruined by 3 things: 1. The mainline quest jumped into my gameplay as we passed Kvaatch... I actually lost track of him (meaning I failed to follow the guy). I went and completed the mainline quest up to kvatch and restarted the manor quest so I could follow the guy. I finally did follow him to his desination. Later when I went back to Anvil and started down the manor quest I need to talk to the guy again. Unfortunately I wasted time going to where I knew he was. 2. The quest wouldn't advance until I had completed the events that told me the information I already knew. 3. The cool experience of having followed the guy, and known something difficult to discover was not just completely wasted... it was turned around and made me feel like a moron for going to that length. Following the quest parameters would have taken a couple of minutes max. The extended enjoyable gameplay I had done by 'following my own story' was turned into a punishment for not following the optimized quest path. What had been a truly fun experience in the game was retroactively ruined. Not since the Matix sequels was retroactive damage so complete.
What is the legal rational for requiring that Microsoft keep it's defense a secret? To protect the innocence of the EU? Is there a reason to worry that people will think the EU is guilty of being sovereign?
Had you read the article you might have seen that Morrowind was only 900 Meg - one of the smallest (size on disk) Xbox games released. Elder Scrolls doesn't use FMV, it uses the game engine just like any next gen title should.
Some might have missed the wording "by the end of the current business year"... which is June 30, 2006. They are talking about that many units in 5 1/2 months, not 11 1/2.
Also, it is just slightly less than a million worldwide: 600K in the US, 300K in Europe, and at least 6 in Japan.
This post and it's parent are insightful and informative only if you call rationalizing breaking the law informative. There are lot's of controversial and interesting subjects about intellectual property and changing technology. Copying video games (to a hard drive) and selling the result is not one of them. It's just illegal. No amount of semantic word play drivel can change that. It might be worthwhile to recognize that the same copyright law that protects the author's of those video games is what allows GPL and LGPL, and every other open source license. It is not ok to ignore the license just because you don't agree with it.
It is trivial to do trivial things in any language. It is not trivial to do engineering in any language. "the 2nd coming", apparently believes syntax and libraries are the only differences between languages. That is wrong.
Many people mistakenly believe Java and C# are practically the same. Unless you are talking Scheme vs Lisp few have as similar syntax. Yet there are many differences, and the implications of those differences for engineering in each language is much larger. Java and C# are the same if you are not doing engineering in them... but they are meant to be production languages so the seemingly trivial differences loom much larger.
Will a day of learning syntax help you understand the difference in how generics are implemented in Java 1.5 vs C# 2.0? Do you think the difference won't matter in how you should use generics in the language?
Learning a production language at university is a distraction, because you are trying to _learn_ useful long term principles. You are not trying to _apply_ them to a production system. Eventually will need to do that in a job, and the path from junior to senior engineer is the time to do that learning.
Don't take a class at school about C#, or Java, or C++. Learn it yourself, by making and maintaining a long term hobby project. Just don't underestimate how deep is the problem space around learning to be effective in a language.
The problem with University education is not the lack of learning production tools. A University is not a trade school. The problem is the lack of perspective given to students about what will be important if their goal is to be a software engineer. You don't need to learn at school all the details that come with experience. However, it is a disservice that most students leave school with the wrong idea about what their future path of learning needs to be.
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I fully understand why Bestheda put in level scaling, radar-like quest markers, and fast travel. I just think that while it made it more palatible for a wider audience, it did so at the dire expense of the core value in the game.
To give a concrete example: when I bought the ghost house from the guy in Anvil, I decide to follow him (this is very slow process ... and of little obvious value) but I did it and knew precisely where he went. However what could have been an awesome experience was ruined by 3 things: 1. The mainline quest jumped into my gameplay as we passed Kvaatch ... I actually lost track of him (meaning I failed to follow the guy). I went and completed the mainline quest up to kvatch and restarted the manor quest so I could follow the guy. I finally did follow him to his desination. Later when I went back to Anvil and started down the manor quest I need to talk to the guy again. Unfortunately I wasted time going to where I knew he was. 2. The quest wouldn't advance until I had completed the events that told me the information I already knew. 3. The cool experience of having followed the guy, and known something difficult to discover was not just completely wasted ... it was turned around and made me feel like a moron for going to that length. Following the quest parameters would have taken a couple of minutes max. The extended enjoyable gameplay I had done by 'following my own story' was turned into a punishment for not following the optimized quest path. What had been a truly fun experience in the game was retroactively ruined. Not since the Matix sequels was retroactive damage so complete.
What is the legal rational for requiring that Microsoft keep it's defense a secret? To protect the innocence of the EU? Is there a reason to worry that people will think the EU is guilty of being sovereign?
Had you read the article you might have seen that Morrowind was only 900 Meg - one of the smallest (size on disk) Xbox games released. Elder Scrolls doesn't use FMV, it uses the game engine just like any next gen title should.
Some might have missed the wording "by the end of the current business year" ... which is June 30, 2006. They are talking about that many units in 5 1/2 months, not 11 1/2.
Also, it is just slightly less than a million worldwide: 600K in the US, 300K in Europe, and at least 6 in Japan.
This post and it's parent are insightful and informative only if you call rationalizing breaking the law informative. There are lot's of controversial and interesting subjects about intellectual property and changing technology. Copying video games (to a hard drive) and selling the result is not one of them. It's just illegal. No amount of semantic word play drivel can change that. It might be worthwhile to recognize that the same copyright law that protects the author's of those video games is what allows GPL and LGPL, and every other open source license. It is not ok to ignore the license just because you don't agree with it.
Yes this is under consideration for the C++ stadard.
9 /16/469213.aspx
// Type of 'i' is inferred from the assignment
Matt Pietrek mentions the addition for C++, from Herb Sutter's talk:
http://blogs.msdn.com/matt_pietrek/archive/2005/0
C++ syntax (from Matt's blog):
before:
foo::iterator i = myList.begin();
after:
auto i = myList.begin();
It is trivial to do trivial things in any language. It is not trivial to do engineering in any language. "the 2nd coming", apparently believes syntax and libraries are the only differences between languages. That is wrong.
... but they are meant to be production languages so the seemingly trivial differences loom much larger.
Many people mistakenly believe Java and C# are practically the same. Unless you are talking Scheme vs Lisp few have as similar syntax. Yet there are many differences, and the implications of those differences for engineering in each language is much larger. Java and C# are the same if you are not doing engineering in them
Will a day of learning syntax help you understand the difference in how generics are implemented in Java 1.5 vs C# 2.0? Do you think the difference won't matter in how you should use generics in the language?
Learning a production language at university is a distraction, because you are trying to _learn_ useful long term principles. You are not trying to _apply_ them to a production system. Eventually will need to do that in a job, and the path from junior to senior engineer is the time to do that learning.
Don't take a class at school about C#, or Java, or C++. Learn it yourself, by making and maintaining a long term hobby project. Just don't underestimate how deep is the problem space around learning to be effective in a language.
The problem with University education is not the lack of learning production tools. A University is not a trade school. The problem is the lack of perspective given to students about what will be important if their goal is to be a software engineer. You don't need to learn at school all the details that come with experience. However, it is a disservice that most students leave school with the wrong idea about what their future path of learning needs to be.