I wonder how they managed to combine HDR and Anti-Aliasing. I remember reading an interview with some engine programmer, either someone from Epic or CryTek who stated that HDR and AA would be incompatible on current graphics cards due to lacking memory bandwidth and size. He said it would need at least about 2 GByte graphics RAM to be possible by estimation or AA being restricted to a software in-engine solution.
Can somebody shed some light on that?
Pretty much what was done by IBM to Microsoft later, when one IBM team created specifications of MS-DOS and handed those over to another team that created the compatible DR-DOS based on those specifications without having been involved in the reverse engineering (or even having used MS-DOS at all, don't remember exactly).
From the link on TheInq:
For all those who have blamed this debacle on us, we'd point casually towards the people we sourced.
What the fuck? This quote shows everything one needs to know about TheInq's 'journalism'.
Well, then this is obviously not about you. Not all people are afflicted, probably not even a majority. Nonetheless there are still some aspects to MMORPGs that can make them addictive, more than TV and books. And this was about the 'hardcore' players. Some can handle it, some not.
Lots of people drink alcohol. Only a few get addicted. It is still considered a drug.
1. Try running for 15 hours or playing football for 15 hours.
Besides, most people, even the runners among them, are not likely to be impressed when I show them the abused soles of my running shoes.
These are enjoyable processes but they don't yield results the way games do. No shiny armor, no sword of pwnage, no boots of asskicking.
2. and 4. happen on a different scale. You could consider one the microscale and the other the macroscale. While both are similar in their psychological drive, they happen on different levels. The one is having fun to be out with the pack running and hunting, which was probably favored by natural selection, and the other is having a support long(er)-term support group and peers. One aspect to identity is being a social construct, which means you need peers and a frame of reference to find yourself. If no real life people are around, people might fall back onto online communities for that.
As for 3.: In real life not all people are willing to go along with your story and there is no shared suspension of disbelief. Chances are you'll get a swift reality check.
And you can't suddenly be a handsome, 2m tall, muscled Barabrian in real life. Nor can you be a busty female hotbod with an elfin face.
And online communication is easier to control and a lot more forgiving. You don't have to respond all the time. You can/ignore people and don't generally have to deal with people you don't want to deal with. Or can easily cop out if things get difficult after a promising start.
Things can get awkward very easily in real life communication and if you don't have the experience, aptitude or attitude to deal with it you probably avoid anything that could be potentially difficult.
I think there is a general profile to MMORPG players. It's just that the numbers have been underestimated and I think it reveals how subjectively difficult life for many people is. And I suspect that it shows how fundamentally afraid people are.
There is an interesting documentary called Avatars Offline which mainly deals with Everquest but applies to all MMORPGs, where they let developers, gamers and psychologists talk about the games and it's quite interesting. Chances are that if you've been interested in MMORPGs and are still wondering about trying one you don't want to anymore after watching this.
I know, basically every enjoyable activity (with a slight twist of mind even every non-enjoyable one) can be addictive.
But there are some modificators to apply for MMORPGS:
1. The +1 Syndrome (aka carrot-on-a-stick)
There is always an desirable item, either in game or social terms, about to be gained by you if you just invest 'a couple of minutes'. Over and over again. And the hunters and gatherers in us love accumulating anything of value, perceived or real.
2. Teamwork
There was a story once, I think even on Slashdot, about the brain and some glands releasing neurotransmitters similar in structure to cocaine, which can be quite physically addictive. Hence the cooperative PvE game is so popular and the lovely term 'Evercrack' isn't too far off.
3. Freedom of aesthetics and personality
The distraction from personal deficits and choice of visual appeal and, within limits, personality. Only few of us are really self-confident in all aspects or ignorant or arrogant enough to not care about our deficits. Online worlds are a welcome escape. And the more immersive they are, the better the escape they provide.
4. Community
People having a hard time communicating and bonding in RL can take advatage of 3. and built some kind of bond online, which as substitutes for a difficult and/or flawed real life can become subjectively important to the playing person, driving them to spend even more time online.
There are other factors playing into it, but I think these are among the most important ones.
I think Unreal Engine 3 is already on its way to become the de-facto standard as next-gen game engine. A lot of projects announced their use of UE3, and from what I could gather it's very competitvely priced, mainly based on share of the sales, and comes with surprisingly good support from Epic allowing even developers just a bit above the absolute indie level to utilize it.
While indeed the increased performance and data processing capabilities of the next-gen consoles demands more and better art and content judging by expectations, leveraging middleware like UE3 or Renderware takes a lot of stress of the devs, allowing them to be very near to the cutting edge technology-wise allowing more ressources to be spent on design and content.
Additionally, to make use of the increased processing power without increasing costs and needed time too much I expect procedural content to experience a quite significant rise in popularity. UE3 even supposedly contains tools for static and dynamic procedural content creation, which while leveling the content quality a bit allows for more content which benefits teams without all the manpower they'd need.
And procedural content tools have a lot of research and development yet to be done to improve their quality, but it will happen. I think game development will be more about giving all the content a context and designing an experience again.
Oh, well, whatever happens, I think it's going to be interesting.
Yup, just go ahead and charge them for curiousity and doing something perfectly natural.
Make sure to slap the hungry monkey's wrist that sees a stick next to an ant hill. Does wonders for intellectual development on a macro- and microscale.
Disgaea: almost definitely for a more mature (read patient) crowd. The story is there, but the focus is now on the battles themselves. The thinking person will definitely triumph over the button-masher here.
Disgaea? The person with more time at his hand will definitely triumph over any thinking person here.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think so if I recall the gameplay of Wolfenstein and Doom correctly.
Only if they hit the lawyers.
Promising allegory.
I've read the article so I've read that bit about 4 different tries and approaches, but I'd still be interested in a definite answer.
x _interview/3.html was what I was referring to. I made mistake though: It's not an engine coder talking there, but David Kirk, Chief Scientist of nVidia. I'm very intrigued who's right now.
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2005/07/11/nvidia_rs
I wonder how they managed to combine HDR and Anti-Aliasing. I remember reading an interview with some engine programmer, either someone from Epic or CryTek who stated that HDR and AA would be incompatible on current graphics cards due to lacking memory bandwidth and size. He said it would need at least about 2 GByte graphics RAM to be possible by estimation or AA being restricted to a software in-engine solution. Can somebody shed some light on that?
Pretty much what was done by IBM to Microsoft later, when one IBM team created specifications of MS-DOS and handed those over to another team that created the compatible DR-DOS based on those specifications without having been involved in the reverse engineering (or even having used MS-DOS at all, don't remember exactly).
From the link on TheInq: For all those who have blamed this debacle on us, we'd point casually towards the people we sourced. What the fuck? This quote shows everything one needs to know about TheInq's 'journalism'.
Lots of people drink alcohol. Only a few get addicted. It is still considered a drug.
Besides, most people, even the runners among them, are not likely to be impressed when I show them the abused soles of my running shoes. These are enjoyable processes but they don't yield results the way games do. No shiny armor, no sword of pwnage, no boots of asskicking.
2. and 4. happen on a different scale. You could consider one the microscale and the other the macroscale. While both are similar in their psychological drive, they happen on different levels. The one is having fun to be out with the pack running and hunting, which was probably favored by natural selection, and the other is having a support long(er)-term support group and peers. One aspect to identity is being a social construct, which means you need peers and a frame of reference to find yourself. If no real life people are around, people might fall back onto online communities for that.
As for 3.: In real life not all people are willing to go along with your story and there is no shared suspension of disbelief. Chances are you'll get a swift reality check. And you can't suddenly be a handsome, 2m tall, muscled Barabrian in real life. Nor can you be a busty female hotbod with an elfin face. /ignore people and don't generally have to deal with people you don't want to deal with. Or can easily cop out if things get difficult after a promising start.
And online communication is easier to control and a lot more forgiving. You don't have to respond all the time. You can
Things can get awkward very easily in real life communication and if you don't have the experience, aptitude or attitude to deal with it you probably avoid anything that could be potentially difficult.
I think there is a general profile to MMORPG players. It's just that the numbers have been underestimated and I think it reveals how subjectively difficult life for many people is. And I suspect that it shows how fundamentally afraid people are.
Just my opinion of course.
I know, basically every enjoyable activity (with a slight twist of mind even every non-enjoyable one) can be addictive. But there are some modificators to apply for MMORPGS:
1. The +1 Syndrome (aka carrot-on-a-stick)
There is always an desirable item, either in game or social terms, about to be gained by you if you just invest 'a couple of minutes'. Over and over again. And the hunters and gatherers in us love accumulating anything of value, perceived or real.
2. Teamwork
There was a story once, I think even on Slashdot, about the brain and some glands releasing neurotransmitters similar in structure to cocaine, which can be quite physically addictive. Hence the cooperative PvE game is so popular and the lovely term 'Evercrack' isn't too far off.
3. Freedom of aesthetics and personality
The distraction from personal deficits and choice of visual appeal and, within limits, personality. Only few of us are really self-confident in all aspects or ignorant or arrogant enough to not care about our deficits. Online worlds are a welcome escape. And the more immersive they are, the better the escape they provide.
4. Community
People having a hard time communicating and bonding in RL can take advatage of 3. and built some kind of bond online, which as substitutes for a difficult and/or flawed real life can become subjectively important to the playing person, driving them to spend even more time online. There are other factors playing into it, but I think these are among the most important ones.
While indeed the increased performance and data processing capabilities of the next-gen consoles demands more and better art and content judging by expectations, leveraging middleware like UE3 or Renderware takes a lot of stress of the devs, allowing them to be very near to the cutting edge technology-wise allowing more ressources to be spent on design and content.
Additionally, to make use of the increased processing power without increasing costs and needed time too much I expect procedural content to experience a quite significant rise in popularity. UE3 even supposedly contains tools for static and dynamic procedural content creation, which while leveling the content quality a bit allows for more content which benefits teams without all the manpower they'd need. And procedural content tools have a lot of research and development yet to be done to improve their quality, but it will happen. I think game development will be more about giving all the content a context and designing an experience again.
Oh, well, whatever happens, I think it's going to be interesting.
Make sure to slap the hungry monkey's wrist that sees a stick next to an ant hill. Does wonders for intellectual development on a macro- and microscale.
I wonder, do more angels fit onto the head of a pin if arranged perpendicularly?
I think Monkey Island (3 I think it was) had this 'story being told' motif earlier than PoP.
Still, the new PoP franchise is pretty damn good and it seems like the third installment will rectify the flaws introduced with the second one.
TFA: Longest introduction to an iPod ad ever.
And I had though a direct Spinal Tap quote would be recognized. Got to spell everything out the next time for some people.
Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Patent "Making fun of Microsoft".
Disgaea: almost definitely for a more mature (read patient) crowd. The story is there, but the focus is now on the battles themselves. The thinking person will definitely triumph over the button-masher here.
Disgaea?
The person with more time at his hand will definitely triumph over any thinking person here.