If plastics becomes popular again in everyday items, won't we all start to look like we did in the 70s?? Dear God, it must be stopped! Imagine Slashdot in those hideous yellow, turquoise and pink of a 70s kitchen. CmdrTaco will turn into Austin Powers, YEAH BABY, YEAH, and....
2000 Nobel price in chemistry
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Plastic Valley?
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· Score: 4
The 2000 Nobel price in chemistry was awarded for the discovery that plastics, despite what we all were taught, does in fact conduct electricity in some conditions. For those who like the whole explanation in detail, it is available here in PDF. There is also a short press release.
The official site is http://www.nobel.se/.
And while we are on the subject of plastics, this is also pretty cool. Instead of "lab on a chip" they are building a lab-on-a-CD. "The technology is already being exploited by Gyros, a spin-off created earlier this year by Amersham Pharmacia Biotech of Sweden. Gyros is betting that plastic compact discs are a better platform for future chemical and biological microdevices than are silicon chips. Apart from being much cheaper than silicon wafers, plastic discs are more compatible with biochemical substances. Also, embossing techniques for putting microstructures on a CD's surface already exist, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel."
In fact, the whole damn Technology Quarterly from The Economist is pretty damn interesting. I tried to get it submitted, but...(insert standard "Slashdot never posts my stories whine).
There is a game called Europa Univeralis created by Swedish team Paradox Entertainment. It is based on a classic boardgame and has sold record numbers in Sweden and Germany (among other countries) where it has been out for a couple of months. The American version just gone gold and it is extremely unlikely that any of your students have played it yet which makes it fair for all.
Your students will really have something to chew on there. The presentation and interface is really simple, but the economic, diplomatic, strategic and even religious models are extremely complex. A knowledge of economics is necessary, and so is a grasp of history. Computer Games Online gave it 4.5 stars and had this to say:
"Europa Universalis plays simultaneously at many different levels and constantly demands a great deal of situational awareness. It's more Imperialism than Civilization, though more complex than either. The economic system is the heart of the game. It's robust enough to accurately model development from the late Renaissance all the way through Mercantilism to early Colonialism. The game nimbly keeps track of a staggering amount of minutiae such as the inflationary effects of excess liquid cash, intergovernmental loans, trade policies, and a comprehensive list of commodities. While this sort of micormanagerial detail will usually fall below your radar in terms of management, it can have a serious impact on your foreign policy and statecraft. You will not feel bogged by these details, however-they are simply available for consideration whenever needed. "
Strategy Gaming said: "So what we are left with is a massively complicated game interweaving elements of religions, politics, colonialism, conquest, technology, and militarism taking place on a multifaceted map with layers of trade relationships, alliances and political relationships, while the map is constantly being expanded through exploration - in short, there's literally something for everyone. Wars, as is the historical fact, should typically be the last resort as their cost and consequence make the gains rarely equal the expenditure. A good player will be able to keep in mind the different venues of competition, and a weather-eye on their predicted opponents in each of these areas. Keeping ahead in this game is an extraordinary challenge, and I found myself constantly pausing the game to issue orders. The only thing I haven't been able to test in this beta is the multiplayer, but the developers have made it clear that it's been kept in mind. They are clearly aware that no matter how good the AI is - and it is, believe me (I confess I've actually asked one of the programmers if anyone has won the darn thing...and this is in beta) - this game will shine most brightly with humans running each of the player states."
And pc.ign.com: "I'm glad to see that the religious aspects of the game are equally important. Each nation has a particular religious identity (various types of Christians, Muslims, Sunni, Shia, etc.) and that identity influences the way other nations treat you. During the game, a few historical events will shift the religious balance to one side or the other. After the Reformation, for instance, Catholic countries can convert to Counter Reformation Catholicism. If a Counter Reformed Catholic nation defeats either a Protestant or Reformist nation, the Counter Reformation Catholic country can force the defeated nation to adopt Counter Reformation Catholicism as part of the peace settlement. And this is just one small example of the depth of the religious model in the game."
If moving somewhere for tax reasons, I think Sweden would be the last place to go.;-)
It just refers to my spam trap. If you look up, it says @home.es instead of @home.se. If people are not smart enough to figure it out in a couple of tries, I don't think I need to read what they write. So hopefully it is a stupidity trap as well. (On the other hand, @home probably have a Spanish branch as well, and making people's mail travel there only to bounce when no user is found is a bit of a bandwidth waste compared to having an impossible domain so they can't send it in the first place. But what the hell...I don't think I get enough mail for that to be a problem.)
I really like Spain by the way. Just about everything except the fucking bullfights. And there are blond people in Spain as well, just not as many.
Moderators, could you please use your moderation points for the posts dealing with the interesting issues of privacy and openness, and not waste them on the inevitable huge intercontinental flamewar? Thanks.
Thank you, thank you. *bows deeply* Here is another long boring rant. Hopefully less inflammatory. I'm in a better mood now.:-)
>As for my detailed reasons, wait until I put up my categorized "Unreal Sucks" webpages. I've already sent most of my grudges against Unreal to Tim Sweeney himself. On some of them, he admitted to something that could've been fixed.
Sure, I'm not saying UT, UnrealEngine or UnrealEd are perfect. There are lots of things that annoy me with them too (like the initially poor support for non-glide cards, and not-very-optimal OpenGL support still there for instance). I just got a bit peeved that you were slamming them for things that were patently untrue (like claiming Q3 came out first - UT was actually out in the shops around a month before). As for the Unreal sucks page...ok, sure, whatever makes you happy.
>As for the upcoming Unreal licensees, how many of them will score above 75% on PC Gamer? I'm forecasting only 4 of them will garner any good reviews (DNF's delay is its Achilles' heel).
I think you are unfairly biased again. Deus Ex 2 and Unreal Warfare have the great old teams, no known competition on the way, and should be almost guaranteed instant hits (~95%) unless they really screw up for some unforseen reason. I also have high hopes for Clive Barker's Undying and Unreal 2. Seraphim seems interesting. The rest are really too far away to comment on.
>As for the upcoming Id licensees, they're all but guaranteed to be excellent.
Lets hope so. I really don't care which engine they use, as long as the games are good. But I really think id have lost their creative spark. They are doing essentially the same one or two games again and again and again. No wonder American McGee and others left. What are the new amazing things currently in production? Doom. Wolfenstein. Whee... It feels like Carmack isn't interested in games anymore, just "mathematical masturbation". But, I shouldn't dismiss them until I get to try the games myself. Here is hoping they are good.
>Daikatana was the only bad Id licensee, and we all know that it's John Romero's fault.
Finally, we agree on something.;-)
Oh yeah, and it is obvious the Mother of All Fights is not fought on an alien space Arena, or transmitted by the Lliandri Mining Corporation. It is the eternal fan quarrel which is best - UT or Q3. Over a year later and people still get their blood preassure up over the issue. Amazing.
I'm afraid I have to disagree with you at almost everything you have written so far on Q3 and UT.
:-)
I'll just put it all together here for simplicitys sake:
>That's a laugh. You have to have a piece of Tim Sweeney's brain installed in your cranium just to do anything productive with Unrealed
That is really not true. I am a really crappy programmer. No doubt about that. I suck about equally at C/C++ and Java. The Unreal editor is not hard at all. I could figure out how to do lots of stuff without reading anything. There are lots of tutorials around for UnrealEd. I have not found anything like that for Q3. Granted, I haven't exactly searched for it, so if you tell me there are tutorials around I'll take your word for it.
>The Unreal Engine does very stupid things with decals
Examples? I know that in Q3 marks do not appear on curved surfaces, it is quite noticable.
>and sometimes entire brushes disappear from view at certain angles
I have not noticed this. What graphics card do you have? Have you tried downloading the latest patch for UT?
>From its 256x256x8bpp texture restriction (yes, I know the new rehash of the Unreal engine extended that to 2048x2048, but that's VAPORWARE!)
It's not vaporware. It is included in a functioning version available to licensees. Calling everything that hasn't been released yet vaporware is making the term meaningless. But I guess it only applies to products you don't like?
>to the lackluster collision detection (in every deathmatch, I see some weapon just sitting up in the air near a wall; obviously, the bounding boxes are too big and the weapon's bounding box is sitting on a T-junction or something
Again, I must say I have not seen these things.
>to the abysmally low quality of the levels and character models themselves (creating higher-polycount models/maps is near impossible due to numerous constraints)
Oh give it a rest. They might not have as much eye candy as Q3, but artistically they are much better in my opinion. The higher polycount argument is just plain wrong. Anyone who download the tech demo (months old) can see that you are talking out of your ass. The latest release notes say the engine is now capable of 200 times the polygon count of the old levels, and twice the map size.
>the Unreal engine is just too outdated
Which was why it was ported without problem to the PS2? And the reson they won an award for best engine just a couple of days ago? It is being updated all the time. The glide problem has been fixed. They get new licensees all the time.
>Furthermore, 3dfx is dead; Tim Sweeney saw that one coming, so he defected from them and started leeching from NVidia [...]Tim Sweeney was "pimpin' his mad skillz"
So because you prefer a f*cking computer game before another one you are doing poisonous ad hominem attacks aginst the guy who made the other game? Someone who has done nothing against you? Maybe you should get a life? The reason the first Unreal engine was almost impossible to run on anything else than Glide was because when it was first released, 3DFX were the only 3D card makers in town? Have you already forgotten this? Just about the only competition was the S3 Virge graphics de-accelerator. And at the moment nVidia are the dominant PC graphics card makers, like it or not. So optimising your game for nVidia cards is not "leeching up", it is something called a "smart move".
>Also, the netcode in UT still sucks (with a 300 ping, UT is absolutely unplayable, while Counter-Strike is decent to good, and Q3 is pretty good).
It works just fine for me. Again, have you downloaded a recent patch?
>He said, "Nah, get Half-Life. Unreal sucks."
Oh good, I guess that settles all then. Good to see you tried to find out for yourself with an open mind.
>How many prominent Unreal licensees are there in the near future? None that I've heard of.
That doesn't really surprise me. Try: Deus Ex 2. Duke Nukem Forever. Hired Guns. New Legends. Seraphim. Shadows of Reality. Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. Clive Barker's Undying. Unreal 2. Unreal Warfare. X-Com: Alliance.
And the old ones: Rune. Deus Ex. Unrealty. Nerf: Arena Blast. Unreal 1. Unreal Tournament. Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard. Wheel of Time.
>How many future Id Software-engine titles? Two (including the next DOOM).
Ooohhh. Impressive *sarcastic applause*
>I didn't mention Deus Ex because I didn't know what engine that ran on. Unlike SOME people here, I don't like to assume anything.
Heh, you are pretty funny. Next time you are going to troll, try to get the countries right first, or at least the continents.
Sweden.....
USA........
Maybe I should get you a World Atlas for your next birtday?
The majority of the Chinese Communist Party stopped being communist almost 20 years ago if you look at the economic perspective (even though some hardline conservatives keep trying to turn back the clock). They have quietly drifted closer and closer to market economy, even though the official media keeps spouting tired old cliches like "The march towards true socialism continues!".
However, some things are harder to let go of. Criticism of the party is still stomped down on HARD, as are all suggestion of a multi-party democracy. Also remaining is a fondness for the old Stalinist type mega-projects. Big is beautiful. Damn the environmental consequences or the fact that smaller projects would make more economic sense. It seems China still suffers somewhat from an inferiority complex and therefore see a need to bolster their national pride with these absurd projects that are an enormous waste of money. The most obvious example is the Three Gorges Project, the world's largest dam.
Corruption, bureaucracy, environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale, *millions* of people homeless, expensive electricity and a dubious safety record. When (if) it is finished, I wouldn't want to live downriver from it for all the whisky in Ireland.
I believe it isn't ID which develops Wolfenstein, but the guys who made that crappy gangster game? Not that really care. What I'm looking forward to:
* Clive Barker's Undying. Finally a new horror game with a really good plot? (Like System Shock 2)
* Unreal Warfare. 200 times more polygons in levels and characters than UT had. Double the world size. T&L. Better AI. Better everything. *drool*
* Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2. Yees!! Warren Specter! With UnrealEd2 they get all the tools, graphics, AI etc for free and can spend all time on making a good plot and a believable worlds.
it don't matter if it is good for a deathmatch, though it would help
Er, what would it help with?
Does anyone know of any sites dedicated to using 3D gaming engines for non-gaming purposes other than the article we saw a while back about a company using Q2 engine for an architectural walk-through? You know, maybe with resources that help take Autocad files and convert them to Quake maps?
There are plenty of people who use the Unreal engine for these sort of things, like the before mentioned Unrealty and the Notre Dame virtual tour. The Unreal engine is so easy to extend and modify because of its modular and object oriented design. The engine actually recently won a price for being so powerful and making development easier. Here is a list of recent improvements to the engine and the editor. Looks really sweet! DirectX 8 + GeForce + UnrealEngine looks like a good recipe for great upcoming games.
Gothenburg (or Göteborg if you're Swedish). But close enough, mate.:-)
I have triple glazing in my windows. It really keeps the cold out during winter, and cuts down on the noise from outside. When I was in Adelaide last year I was freezing my ass off in the winter. We had to close all doors and spend all evenings in the one room we heated up with the air-conditioner.
I was bitching about this to my landlord. "Oh no, we don't need insulation, this is Australia it doesn't get cold here. Bullshit! I'm colder here than I ever was in Sweden because it's both outside AND inside." His answer was that they couldn't insulate because it would pull the warmth in and make the summers unbearably hot. I tried to explain to him that it worked like a thermos. It doesn't matter if you keep hot coffee in them and go ski, or ice cold lemonade and go to the beach, the insulation keeps the contents the same, no matter what the outside temperatures are. But I don't know if he believed me.
Most Australian houses are really shoddily built. It is SUCH a waste of energy. In the summer the air-con is on full blast, and in winter the heating. But they have to keep them on constantly because the outside leaks in through the windows, around the door and so on. (Love the country though. I'm coming back as soon as possible.)
But we all know who the REAL wasters and destroyers of the planet are.
*points finger accusingly at Americans*
Well, as you might have noticed, as soon as someone post something anything praising the infinite wisdom of the US or Americans, it will get modded up as insightful. It doesn't matter if the poster knows nothing about the subject, the country he is comparing the US with, or even how to find his own ass with two hands; it WILL get modded up.
If someone who speaks three languages is called tri-lingual, someone who speaks two languages is called bi-lingual, what do you call someone who only speaks one language? American. *ta-daa*
Sorry. My favourite euro-trash joke there (it will probably cost me some karma points). But seriously, when I see people on Slashdot writing something like "whats teh point english is the universal language anyways so why should I learn a foreign language it is stupid" I fear there the joke is too close to the truth...
Learning a foreign language is opening yourself up to new ways of thinking. How can you claim you truly understand a foreign culture if all you know about it is what *they* choose to tell you about it, in English?
I am a little disturbed by some of the posts in this topic and I wonder why Slashdot felt it necessary to post this story. Mailing envelopes filled with trash, glue, dogpoop? One said he was hoping his letter was messing up the sorting machines at the post office. Why don't you kooks go all the way and put sharp objects or bombs in them while you are at it. What is all this going to accomplish except making life harder for the ordinary people working in the post office? You are going to make them sad or pissed off, and create worse service for yourself.
I don't have the problem of snail mail spam living in Sweden. I just put a small "No ads please" note on my door and the postman is obliged not to put any ads in there. If snail mail spam is as annoying as email ones are, I can understand people are mad, but I'm sure there are more constructive ways to handle this.
You want the site Gamasutra. They have articles on everything that is interesting both for experienced and new developers - programming, marketing, which platform to choose, how to do good plots, legal issues, sound, graphics, etc...
Some current articles:
Postmortem: Zombie's SpecOps: Rangers Lead the Way by Wyeth Ridgway [02.01.00] This third-person combat sim had to deliver up to 10,000 polygons per frame at real-time frame rates all while upholding rigorous standards of realism. Lead programmer Wyeth Ridgway discusses the features of the Viper engine created for SpecOps as well as what went right and wrong in development.
Optimizations Corner: An Optimized Matrix Library in C++ by Haim Barad [01.31.00] In this installment of the Optimizations Corner, Haim Barad discusses a better way to manipulate vectors and matrices using Intel's Streaming SIMD Extensions. In this article they present a set of optimized matrix routines that take advantage of SIMD architectural enhancements done to recent microprocessors which are a perfect fit for matrix and vector operations.
Artistic License: Acquiring, Managing and Dealing with Licenses (and Making Them Profitable) by Elizabeth J. Braswell [01.25.00] So you're thinking about trying the Sure Thing: to go after a popular character, TV show, book or movie, get the license, spend a little, make a million. There's just one catch - it isn't that easy. Elizabeth J. Braswell discusses the stickier details of acquiring a license, working with the licensor, creating an innovative product which will appeal to fans and even sublicensing - creatively making more than you expected.
Planning and Directing Motion Capture for Games by Melianthe Kines [01.19.00] Motion capture is a great tool for creating animation for certain types of games. Like any tool or piece of software, if you learn how to use it properly, it can make your life easier and produce great results, but if you try to wing it, chances are you'll end up wasting time and money and may come away with nothing useful. Melianthe Kines discusses motion capture in depth.
I agree. I have tried to get Slashdot to report on wireless for about a year now without success, and I have started to believe it might be something about the fact that they don't want to see their old systems and skills becoming obsolete now that they are king of the hill and media darlings. And so the new and young quickly turn conservative.
Oh yeah, maybe the reluctance also comes from the fact that the biggest growth areas of wireless isn't the US, but Japan and especially Europe. And we all know that if it isn't from the US, it must be worthless...
There's also the sense of the position and motion of parts of your body. This sense is sometimes referred to as the kinesthetic sense. (without moving your hands at all, what position is each of your fingers in?)
Oh yeah, that reminded me of a chapter in the book "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" by neurologist Oliver Sachs (the guy who Robin Williams portrays in Awakenings, and, to a lesser extent, Tom Cruise in Rainman). He came across a case of a woman who had lost her kinestetic sense after an accident. She could move her body normally, but she had lost all "feeling" for it. She described it as being trapped inside someone elses body, like being living dead. Her own body disgusted and terrified her.
Interesting article, and a very interesting Slashdot discussion. But something gets to me -
Ok, when I got to my first OO class, we read an article that basically said "If you know how to do procedural programming, you are ruined. You will now be stuck in old ways of thinking and be unable to grasp OO concepts that three year olds will intuitivly understand."
And now this - Java is soon dead, all hail the next generation languages. Damn, I'm 25 and still studying, but already I'm senile and obsolete.
But come to think if it, maybe there is a chance for me. I'm a really crappy programmer no matter what the language (VB, Java, C++, Prolog). I mean, after "Hello World" I'm pretty much lost. So maybe there is hope.;-)
Not in this case, no. The scientology connection
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DeCSS Author Arrested
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As others have pointed out, Norway was NOT allied with Nazi Germany. Perhaps you are thinking of Finland? And in that case as well, it was more of a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" than sympathizing with the nazi cause. Finland (a neighbour of the Soviet Union) hated and feared Russia more than it hated the nazis, and it indirectly aided Germany by attacking Russia. A descision they soon came to regret.
Do you know what this actually reminds me of? The scientology case. The "secret" OT materials were filed as evidence in a court case in Sweden, which according to Swedish law makes them public documents, so journalists and private citizens can study the evidence. Sweden takes freedom of information seriously. But the ultra rich scientology cult doesn't like to get their dirty secrets exposed, so they whispered into the ears of American politics, who in turn put pressure on Sweden to remove the documents, calling it a case of religious discrimination. Eventually they got their will through. And now this, ultrarich, ultrapowerful American film companies bribe^h^h^h^h^h^h sorry "lobby" American politicians, and soon the police are raiding a 16 year old boy. Deja vu.
I did know there were some differences between Swedish and American attitudes to sex, but I thought it mainly was the politicians and censors in America who cared. However, when we had an American exchange student from Colorado over for a year, I started to realize that maybe it was more widespread than I thought. On the first day of sports, we went into the lockerroom (which, in Sweden, usually doesn't have any lockers, just a lot of benches and hangers around the walls) and I saw him hanging around the shoestand. I said "Come on, you are going to be late!", but he just blushed and refused to change until we all had gone out. When he saw the shower room afterwards (no dividing walls, just hooks for the towels on one wall, and lots of shower nozzles on the other wall) he waited again until we all were gone.
Next week it was the same thing, he stood by the shoes and tried to hide behind a towel as he changed (and by trying to be invisible he made everyone stare of course), but eventually he overcome his bashfulness and started stripping like the rest of us.
I'm not trying to belittle Americans, say that our ways are better or anything, I just thought it was interesting.
Still, I wonder what he would have said about the sauna at my ju-jutsu club, where both men and women go at the same time, but with a towel over the naughty parts of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Hang on. Those are all good things. Carry on...
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The official site is http://www.nobel.se/.
And while we are on the subject of plastics, this is also pretty cool. Instead of "lab on a chip" they are building a lab-on-a-CD. "The technology is already being exploited by Gyros, a spin-off created earlier this year by Amersham Pharmacia Biotech of Sweden. Gyros is betting that plastic compact discs are a better platform for future chemical and biological microdevices than are silicon chips. Apart from being much cheaper than silicon wafers, plastic discs are more compatible with biochemical substances. Also, embossing techniques for putting microstructures on a CD's surface already exist, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel."
In fact, the whole damn Technology Quarterly from The Economist is pretty damn interesting. I tried to get it submitted, but...(insert standard "Slashdot never posts my stories whine).
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Cheers,
Lars
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Your students will really have something to chew on there. The presentation and interface is really simple, but the economic, diplomatic, strategic and even religious models are extremely complex. A knowledge of economics is necessary, and so is a grasp of history. Computer Games Online gave it 4.5 stars and had this to say: "Europa Universalis plays simultaneously at many different levels and constantly demands a great deal of situational awareness. It's more Imperialism than Civilization, though more complex than either. The economic system is the heart of the game. It's robust enough to accurately model development from the late Renaissance all the way through Mercantilism to early Colonialism. The game nimbly keeps track of a staggering amount of minutiae such as the inflationary effects of excess liquid cash, intergovernmental loans, trade policies, and a comprehensive list of commodities. While this sort of micormanagerial detail will usually fall below your radar in terms of management, it can have a serious impact on your foreign policy and statecraft. You will not feel bogged by these details, however-they are simply available for consideration whenever needed. "
Strategy Gaming said: "So what we are left with is a massively complicated game interweaving elements of religions, politics, colonialism, conquest, technology, and militarism taking place on a multifaceted map with layers of trade relationships, alliances and political relationships, while the map is constantly being expanded through exploration - in short, there's literally something for everyone. Wars, as is the historical fact, should typically be the last resort as their cost and consequence make the gains rarely equal the expenditure. A good player will be able to keep in mind the different venues of competition, and a weather-eye on their predicted opponents in each of these areas. Keeping ahead in this game is an extraordinary challenge, and I found myself constantly pausing the game to issue orders. The only thing I haven't been able to test in this beta is the multiplayer, but the developers have made it clear that it's been kept in mind. They are clearly aware that no matter how good the AI is - and it is, believe me (I confess I've actually asked one of the programmers if anyone has won the darn thing...and this is in beta) - this game will shine most brightly with humans running each of the player states."
And pc.ign.com: "I'm glad to see that the religious aspects of the game are equally important. Each nation has a particular religious identity (various types of Christians, Muslims, Sunni, Shia, etc.) and that identity influences the way other nations treat you. During the game, a few historical events will shift the religious balance to one side or the other. After the Reformation, for instance, Catholic countries can convert to Counter Reformation Catholicism. If a Counter Reformed Catholic nation defeats either a Protestant or Reformist nation, the Counter Reformation Catholic country can force the defeated nation to adopt Counter Reformation Catholicism as part of the peace settlement. And this is just one small example of the depth of the religious model in the game."
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It just refers to my spam trap. If you look up, it says @home.es instead of @home.se. If people are not smart enough to figure it out in a couple of tries, I don't think I need to read what they write. So hopefully it is a stupidity trap as well. (On the other hand, @home probably have a Spanish branch as well, and making people's mail travel there only to bounce when no user is found is a bit of a bandwidth waste compared to having an impossible domain so they can't send it in the first place. But what the hell...I don't think I get enough mail for that to be a problem.)
I really like Spain by the way. Just about everything except the fucking bullfights. And there are blond people in Spain as well, just not as many.
Cheers,
Lars
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Thank you, thank you. *bows deeply* Here is another long boring rant. Hopefully less inflammatory. I'm in a better mood now.
>As for my detailed reasons, wait until I put up my categorized "Unreal Sucks" webpages. I've already sent most of my grudges against Unreal to Tim Sweeney himself. On some of them, he admitted to something that could've been fixed.
Sure, I'm not saying UT, UnrealEngine or UnrealEd are perfect. There are lots of things that annoy me with them too (like the initially poor support for non-glide cards, and not-very-optimal OpenGL support still there for instance). I just got a bit peeved that you were slamming them for things that were patently untrue (like claiming Q3 came out first - UT was actually out in the shops around a month before). As for the Unreal sucks page...ok, sure, whatever makes you happy.
>As for the upcoming Unreal licensees, how many of them will score above 75% on PC Gamer? I'm forecasting only 4 of them will garner any good reviews (DNF's delay is its Achilles' heel).
I think you are unfairly biased again. Deus Ex 2 and Unreal Warfare have the great old teams, no known competition on the way, and should be almost guaranteed instant hits (~95%) unless they really screw up for some unforseen reason. I also have high hopes for Clive Barker's Undying and Unreal 2. Seraphim seems interesting. The rest are really too far away to comment on.
>As for the upcoming Id licensees, they're all but guaranteed to be excellent.
Lets hope so. I really don't care which engine they use, as long as the games are good. But I really think id have lost their creative spark. They are doing essentially the same one or two games again and again and again. No wonder American McGee and others left. What are the new amazing things currently in production? Doom. Wolfenstein. Whee... It feels like Carmack isn't interested in games anymore, just "mathematical masturbation". But, I shouldn't dismiss them until I get to try the games myself. Here is hoping they are good.
>Daikatana was the only bad Id licensee, and we all know that it's John Romero's fault.
Finally, we agree on something.
Oh yeah, and it is obvious the Mother of All Fights is not fought on an alien space Arena, or transmitted by the Lliandri Mining Corporation. It is the eternal fan quarrel which is best - UT or Q3. Over a year later and people still get their blood preassure up over the issue. Amazing.
Cheers,
Lars
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:-)
I'll just put it all together here for simplicitys sake:
>That's a laugh. You have to have a piece of Tim Sweeney's brain installed in your cranium just to do anything productive with Unrealed
That is really not true. I am a really crappy programmer. No doubt about that. I suck about equally at C/C++ and Java. The Unreal editor is not hard at all. I could figure out how to do lots of stuff without reading anything. There are lots of tutorials around for UnrealEd. I have not found anything like that for Q3. Granted, I haven't exactly searched for it, so if you tell me there are tutorials around I'll take your word for it.
>The Unreal Engine does very stupid things with decals
Examples? I know that in Q3 marks do not appear on curved surfaces, it is quite noticable.
>and sometimes entire brushes disappear from view at certain angles
I have not noticed this. What graphics card do you have? Have you tried downloading the latest patch for UT?
>From its 256x256x8bpp texture restriction (yes, I know the new rehash of the Unreal engine extended that to 2048x2048, but that's VAPORWARE!)
It's not vaporware. It is included in a functioning version available to licensees. Calling everything that hasn't been released yet vaporware is making the term meaningless. But I guess it only applies to products you don't like?
>to the lackluster collision detection (in every deathmatch, I see some weapon just sitting up in the air near a wall; obviously, the bounding boxes are too big and the weapon's bounding box is sitting on a T-junction or something
Again, I must say I have not seen these things.
>to the abysmally low quality of the levels and character models themselves (creating higher-polycount models/maps is near impossible due to numerous constraints)
Oh give it a rest. They might not have as much eye candy as Q3, but artistically they are much better in my opinion. The higher polycount argument is just plain wrong. Anyone who download the tech demo (months old) can see that you are talking out of your ass. The latest release notes say the engine is now capable of 200 times the polygon count of the old levels, and twice the map size.
>the Unreal engine is just too outdated
Which was why it was ported without problem to the PS2? And the reson they won an award for best engine just a couple of days ago? It is being updated all the time. The glide problem has been fixed. They get new licensees all the time.
>Furthermore, 3dfx is dead; Tim Sweeney saw that one coming, so he defected from them and started leeching from NVidia [...]Tim Sweeney was "pimpin' his mad skillz"
So because you prefer a f*cking computer game before another one you are doing poisonous ad hominem attacks aginst the guy who made the other game? Someone who has done nothing against you? Maybe you should get a life? The reason the first Unreal engine was almost impossible to run on anything else than Glide was because when it was first released, 3DFX were the only 3D card makers in town? Have you already forgotten this? Just about the only competition was the S3 Virge graphics de-accelerator. And at the moment nVidia are the dominant PC graphics card makers, like it or not. So optimising your game for nVidia cards is not "leeching up", it is something called a "smart move".
>Also, the netcode in UT still sucks (with a 300 ping, UT is absolutely unplayable, while Counter-Strike is decent to good, and Q3 is pretty good).
It works just fine for me. Again, have you downloaded a recent patch?
>He said, "Nah, get Half-Life. Unreal sucks."
Oh good, I guess that settles all then. Good to see you tried to find out for yourself with an open mind.
>How many prominent Unreal licensees are there in the near future? None that I've heard of.
That doesn't really surprise me. Try: Deus Ex 2. Duke Nukem Forever. Hired Guns. New Legends. Seraphim. Shadows of Reality. Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen. Clive Barker's Undying. Unreal 2. Unreal Warfare. X-Com: Alliance.
And the old ones: Rune. Deus Ex. Unrealty. Nerf: Arena Blast. Unreal 1. Unreal Tournament. Star Trek: Klingon Honor Guard. Wheel of Time.
>How many future Id Software-engine titles? Two (including the next DOOM).
Ooohhh. Impressive *sarcastic applause*
>I didn't mention Deus Ex because I didn't know what engine that ran on. Unlike SOME people here, I don't like to assume anything.
Sure....sure..... as we all could see.
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Sweden.....
USA........
Maybe I should get you a World Atlas for your next birtday?
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However, some things are harder to let go of. Criticism of the party is still stomped down on HARD, as are all suggestion of a multi-party democracy. Also remaining is a fondness for the old Stalinist type mega-projects. Big is beautiful. Damn the environmental consequences or the fact that smaller projects would make more economic sense. It seems China still suffers somewhat from an inferiority complex and therefore see a need to bolster their national pride with these absurd projects that are an enormous waste of money. The most obvious example is the Three Gorges Project, the world's largest dam.
Corruption, bureaucracy, environmental destruction on an unprecedented scale, *millions* of people homeless, expensive electricity and a dubious safety record. When (if) it is finished, I wouldn't want to live downriver from it for all the whisky in Ireland.
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* Clive Barker's Undying. Finally a new horror game with a really good plot? (Like System Shock 2)
* Unreal Warfare. 200 times more polygons in levels and characters than UT had. Double the world size. T&L. Better AI. Better everything. *drool*
* Thief 3 and Deus Ex 2. Yees!! Warren Specter! With UnrealEd2 they get all the tools, graphics, AI etc for free and can spend all time on making a good plot and a believable worlds.
All use the Unreal engine, funnily enough. :-)
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Er, what would it help with?
Does anyone know of any sites dedicated to using 3D gaming engines for non-gaming purposes other than the article we saw a while back about a company using Q2 engine for an architectural walk-through? You know, maybe with resources that help take Autocad files and convert them to Quake maps?
There are plenty of people who use the Unreal engine for these sort of things, like the before mentioned Unrealty and the Notre Dame virtual tour. The Unreal engine is so easy to extend and modify because of its modular and object oriented design. The engine actually recently won a price for being so powerful and making development easier. Here is a list of recent improvements to the engine and the editor. Looks really sweet! DirectX 8 + GeForce + UnrealEngine looks like a good recipe for great upcoming games.
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I have triple glazing in my windows. It really keeps the cold out during winter, and cuts down on the noise from outside. When I was in Adelaide last year I was freezing my ass off in the winter. We had to close all doors and spend all evenings in the one room we heated up with the air-conditioner.
I was bitching about this to my landlord. "Oh no, we don't need insulation, this is Australia it doesn't get cold here. Bullshit! I'm colder here than I ever was in Sweden because it's both outside AND inside." His answer was that they couldn't insulate because it would pull the warmth in and make the summers unbearably hot. I tried to explain to him that it worked like a thermos. It doesn't matter if you keep hot coffee in them and go ski, or ice cold lemonade and go to the beach, the insulation keeps the contents the same, no matter what the outside temperatures are. But I don't know if he believed me.
Most Australian houses are really shoddily built. It is SUCH a waste of energy. In the summer the air-con is on full blast, and in winter the heating. But they have to keep them on constantly because the outside leaks in through the windows, around the door and so on. (Love the country though. I'm coming back as soon as possible.)
But we all know who the REAL wasters and destroyers of the planet are.
*points finger accusingly at Americans*
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Sorry. My favourite euro-trash joke there (it will probably cost me some karma points). But seriously, when I see people on Slashdot writing something like "whats teh point english is the universal language anyways so why should I learn a foreign language it is stupid" I fear there the joke is too close to the truth...
Learning a foreign language is opening yourself up to new ways of thinking. How can you claim you truly understand a foreign culture if all you know about it is what *they* choose to tell you about it, in English?
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I don't have the problem of snail mail spam living in Sweden. I just put a small "No ads please" note on my door and the postman is obliged not to put any ads in there. If snail mail spam is as annoying as email ones are, I can understand people are mad, but I'm sure there are more constructive ways to handle this.
Bush: Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over.
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Yeah, now I'm glad I couldn't remove my first post. It's the most karma I have ever earned.
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I didn't read the article very carefully, I just saw "Startup...blah blah...something....game" Aha, its a game company.
Darn, I wish Slashdot allowed people do delete their own posts within the first minutes. *blush*
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Some current articles:
Postmortem: Zombie's SpecOps: Rangers Lead the Way by Wyeth Ridgway [02.01.00] This third-person combat sim had to deliver up to 10,000 polygons per frame at real-time frame rates all while upholding rigorous standards of realism. Lead programmer Wyeth Ridgway discusses the features of the Viper engine created for SpecOps as well as what went right and wrong in development.
Optimizations Corner: An Optimized Matrix Library in C++ by Haim Barad [01.31.00] In this installment of the Optimizations Corner, Haim Barad discusses a better way to manipulate vectors and matrices using Intel's Streaming SIMD Extensions. In this article they present a set of optimized matrix routines that take advantage of SIMD architectural enhancements done to recent microprocessors which are a perfect fit for matrix and vector operations.
Artistic License: Acquiring, Managing and Dealing with Licenses (and Making Them Profitable) by Elizabeth J. Braswell [01.25.00] So you're thinking about trying the Sure Thing: to go after a popular character, TV show, book or movie, get the license, spend a little, make a million. There's just one catch - it isn't that easy. Elizabeth J. Braswell discusses the stickier details of acquiring a license, working with the licensor, creating an innovative product which will appeal to fans and even sublicensing - creatively making more than you expected.
Planning and Directing Motion Capture for Games by Melianthe Kines [01.19.00] Motion capture is a great tool for creating animation for certain types of games. Like any tool or piece of software, if you learn how to use it properly, it can make your life easier and produce great results, but if you try to wing it, chances are you'll end up wasting time and money and may come away with nothing useful. Melianthe Kines discusses motion capture in depth.
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Oh yeah, maybe the reluctance also comes from the fact that the biggest growth areas of wireless isn't the US, but Japan and especially Europe. And we all know that if it isn't from the US, it must be worthless...
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Oh yeah, that reminded me of a chapter in the book "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" by neurologist Oliver Sachs (the guy who Robin Williams portrays in Awakenings, and, to a lesser extent, Tom Cruise in Rainman). He came across a case of a woman who had lost her kinestetic sense after an accident. She could move her body normally, but she had lost all "feeling" for it. She described it as being trapped inside someone elses body, like being living dead. Her own body disgusted and terrified her.
Pretty scary thought.
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Ok, when I got to my first OO class, we read an article that basically said "If you know how to do procedural programming, you are ruined. You will now be stuck in old ways of thinking and be unable to grasp OO concepts that three year olds will intuitivly understand."
And now this - Java is soon dead, all hail the next generation languages. Damn, I'm 25 and still studying, but already I'm senile and obsolete.
But come to think if it, maybe there is a chance for me. I'm a really crappy programmer no matter what the language (VB, Java, C++, Prolog). I mean, after "Hello World" I'm pretty much lost. So maybe there is hope.
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Do you know what this actually reminds me of? The scientology case. The "secret" OT materials were filed as evidence in a court case in Sweden, which according to Swedish law makes them public documents, so journalists and private citizens can study the evidence. Sweden takes freedom of information seriously. But the ultra rich scientology cult doesn't like to get their dirty secrets exposed, so they whispered into the ears of American politics, who in turn put pressure on Sweden to remove the documents, calling it a case of religious discrimination. Eventually they got their will through. And now this, ultrarich, ultrapowerful American film companies bribe^h^h^h^h^h^h sorry "lobby" American politicians, and soon the police are raiding a 16 year old boy. Deja vu.
I ask you - who are the fascists now?
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Next week it was the same thing, he stood by the shoes and tried to hide behind a towel as he changed (and by trying to be invisible he made everyone stare of course), but eventually he overcome his bashfulness and started stripping like the rest of us.
I'm not trying to belittle Americans, say that our ways are better or anything, I just thought it was interesting.
Still, I wonder what he would have said about the sauna at my ju-jutsu club, where both men and women go at the same time, but with a towel over the naughty parts of course.
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