PHB: Why? Can it run on one core of a X? Coder: Well I suppose it can but... PHB: Shove it out the door then.
I think the PHB may have a point. Games are expensive to make, gamers are fickle, and if reviews say a game "looks dated" it is a death sentence for sales. Rewriting an engine to be multi-threaded after it is done will take a lot of time and money, and most PCs out there have more dated hardware than you think, so most current players won't see any benefints whatsoever from it anyway.
Two words: map-reduce (Score:4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on 07-05-29 6:29 (#19305183) Implement it, add CPUs, earn billion$. Just Google it.
Wow, fantastic. Turns out parallel programming was really really easy after all. I guess we can make all future computer science courses one week then, since every problem can be solved by map-reduce! The AC has finally found the silver bullet. Bravo, mods.
While some parts of.NET are not be as good as other offerings on the market, as a whole there is nothing which compares to it.
Yes there is, the Java platform, which has a larger number of users, developers, and platforms it has been ported to.
.NET brings everything under one roof
We know. Microsofts roof. I don't want to be there.
eliminates entire classes of "glue" and "can't get there from here" problems.
I notice you don't give any concrete examples to refute... Is it possible that some of these "can't get there from here" problems you mention exist on other platforms because they were designed with more security in mind, or to be more platform independent for instance?
You've all seen the demos of movies projected onto flying 3D surfaces etcetera
With.NET and Silverlight, it is slowly becoming possible to leverage the same skills and code on the Web (both server side and client side), the desktop, games consoles, set top boxes, PDAs and Mobile phones.
Just like the Java platform then, only 5 years late and Windows only.
It is great that you want to contribute with documentation. A great program/framework/OS/whatever that no one can use because there is no documentation to be found is worthless.
Sun has published a pretty good book called Read Me First! - A style guide for the computer industry. Covers "writing styles", legal guidelines, writing for an international audience, types of techical documents, and so on. Recommended. For a fun example of how NOT to write, read this page and see if you can figure out which sentences refer to the "old" bad way to do animations, and which sentences refer the new recommended way (the rest of the tutorial is pretty good though, and I really appreciate the time and effort people have spent on it - I just wish someone who knows more than me about Blender could rewrite that particular section.)
Which project to contribute to - well, you had three good examples there. Just pick any project you are passionate about and comfortable using, try to think about what documentation you would have found handy when you was learning to use it. Start writing that.
In order to meet increased demands for hype, IBM also announces the construction of a new fab for hype construction. "For a long time we hoped that we might retrofit the Cell hype fab to construct Snowflake hype, it is now clear that this new processor demands a completely new fab to create the quality and quantity of hype needed. This new hype will be so overpowering every engineer and programmer will have to relearn everything or risk being left behind. We expect our Snowflake hype will outperform our closest competitor by close to 5000%. It will also be cheaper." IBM engineer Thor Larssen stated.
Without a Linux implementation of Silverlight, 20% of websites will be completely inaccessible to Linux users in 5 years.
BS. Most websites today work fine with Firefox and Linux, despite Microsoft attempts at locking like ActiveX. Most companies now realises the benefits of platform independence (I've heard things are different in South Korea for instance).
But now you say that this just announced platform will start to break standards and compatibility (surprise!), and you say "WE MUST JUMP ON THIS BANDWAGON!!". Even if it was true that sites started forcing clients being dependent on Silverlight (a claim even fans of Silverlight like Miguel would probably dispute) I don't think that sounds like something we should hurry to adopt, it sounds like something that should be fought tooth and nail. If companies start locking you out, take your business elsewhere.
Death in space. That's gonna be nasty. They'll likely never allow jettisoning the body into space, as it's the body of a hero that deserves the full honors.
What? They need a piece of meat to salute? I don't mean to be callous, but that is the most un-rational stuff I've heard. Spend energy and space to store a dead body, on a spaceship where those two things are critically limited? Put up a big statue back on earth later instead if you are into the hero worship stuff. If I would die in space, I would be proud to be jettisoned into the great unknown.
Ah, the old arts vs engineering troll raises its head again.
Oops, I realised I should clarify this - I don't mean that YOU are a troll, fan777. I rather meant to say that this is a inflammatory topic which sets up an antagonistic relationship where none need to exist. Sorry.
Ask a British student proficient in art what he/she thinks about math, and I'm pretty sure the answer will be a blank look too.
Ah, the old arts vs engineering troll raises its head again. I don't know about the UK, but here in Sweden most people I meet who have studied at university level don't see an inherent conflict there, in fact many (like myself) have studied both, and value both.
Why does everything have to be so polarized all the time?
#3 isn't asking for the angle between two planes. It's asking for the angle between two lines that are not coplanar. I can't even imagine how to define the angle between two lines that don't intersect at some point. #1 has the same problem.
Yes, you are right, I screwed up when transcribing the text. I meant angle between two vectors, not to planes. I believe the book actually has a chapter (I've been peeking ahead a bit) on 3d vectors that can be either intersecting in one point, or "akew" (closest translation I can find of the Swedish word), meaning that if you project them onto a 2d surface, they would intersect. You can in fact calculate angles between angles that are akew.
I know how to get started on the first one at least.:)
1) Line BD right angle to line A1C
It is given that BD and AC are right angle, and on the z axis A1C is parallell to AC so it must also be right angle. Don't know if they want it formally proven using math notation, with trig or something. Then it is more difficult.
2) Determine angles between two planes
Thats actually next chapter in the book I'm doing on vectors right now, so I will be able to do it soon.
3) Angles between planes
Chapter after that.... angles beween vectors in 3d space.
Amen. It's going to be a new DRM infested attempt to get a monopoly in the media distribution market anyway - why the heck are you people outraged that it probably won't come to your platform? I'd be happy if it came to as few as possible.
Do the guys at SUN have such feature envy of C# (the bastard child of Java), that they can't just say enough is enough?
Sun does not control the development of Java, the Java Community Process does. And it is not C# that is seen as a threat I believe, but Ruby and functional languages. There is a VERY heated debate in the Java community over the new language features that are proposed for the Java platform, and both sides put up some very convincing arguments (simplicity is good vs a language needs to evolve, for instance). See for instance the different Closures proposals...
The only thing it offers is some compile-time sanity checking, but even that can be disabled through use of a new compiler pragma directive to suppress warnings.
Many operations are ERRORS, not warnings. This is caught by IDEs, and by the compiler.
In order to make it possible to interact with legacy code, you can pass a generified collection to a method that expects a "raw" collection. This gives you a very clear warning. So for 95% of all use cases, generics give you a lot of assistance. You manage to come up with a remaining 5% example, where a programmer casts, suppresses compiler warnings, and then passes in a object of the wrong type, and this makes generics worthless?
Wadler was involved with the design of Haskell, and he and people like Gilad Bracha designed Java generics. I trust their skills more than a Slashdot Anonymous Coward.
Naftalin and Wadler are also holding a Java One session this year, it is on Wednesday, session id is TS-2890. If you have a Sun Developer Connection account (free) you can watch it online after the conference is over.
I agree with reviewer, the book is very good. It is true that Java generics is a compile time check, and that the generics information is removed (erasure). Nevertheless, that was a deliberate tradeoff for backwards compatibility, and it still makes coding complex Java a lot safer and easier. Look for instance at the 1.5 and 1.6 improvements to the concurrency libraries with Future, Callable and Executors.
I haven't turned it on in months - between the horrific performance and the plethora of bugs (plus friends having the game crash in Act 2/Act 3), I figured I'd wait until it was stablized, then start playing.
So is it playable, or are they just trying to get more money from us for an unpatched game?
I think its playable as it is now. I still wish they could improve performance more, but it is slowly getting better with every patch; and I'd rather have new neat adventures to play. So I think it was good that they focused on scripting and tool improvements in the latest patch.
You can get vastly improved performance by lowering just a few of the graphics settings (nr of light sources for instance), and still have a very good looking game.
If you like me have been confused about stuff like DRI, Mesa, GLX Extensions and so on in logs and conf files when trying to get OpenGL drivers working under Linux, I recommend How Xgl works.
Thanks for all the great work PipBoy. I will play this next week, really looking forward to it!
Granny plugin announced, nice 1.06 patch content announced, expansion announced, Dark Waters release... It has been a good week for NWN2. I would have included the 1.05 patch, but.... you know.:)
Oh well, I'd rather wait a few more days than have a patch that infuriates the community.
It's amazing how different you can experience a game... I loved it! I respect that it might not lived up to all your expectations, but some things you say I think are a bit unjustified:
, worse writing, more cliches
Than the paper thin NWN1 original compaign, which was more of a demo of what you could do with the toolset? Really?
no actual functional improvement
Now that is BS... How about having a real party again like in BG2, with up to....I think it was 6 (?) controllable characters in the party, rather than the single NWN1 henchman which you couldn't control and kept running into enemies and getting killed. Or the strategic minigame of rebuilding the keep and recruiting people to it...
Companions were either tedious or worthless (and the romance options just horrible - which are the least-interesting stock characters - yeah, let's use those two)
Do you know you have uncovered all the subquests and all the dialogue for them? I do agree that Casavir was pretty wooden though... Sand, Bishop or even Khelgar or the Warlock would have made more interesting male romances.
, and will be shocked when so few people buy it, I suppose.
We shall see. At NWVault, the people so say they will buy the expansion outnumber the ones who don't by around 10-1.
Yes, most people seem happy with the camera controls now with the latest patches. You know you can quickly switch camera mode by pressing * on your numeric keyboard?
- More customisability for non-PC party members. It kinda sucked just being stuck without any flexibility in their class-level choices and meant that you couldn't really experiment with different prestige classes in the main campaign unless you actually did multiple playthroughs. - More "political" sections to the plot. Combat's fun, but so's politicking your way through the cities.
I agree totally with these!
- More tilesets.
A given. They have more experience now with the tools and the code, and can concentrate more on purely creating content. And modders are creating some really nice ones, I would be suprised if they weren't used in the expansion since Obsidian have already included community content such as AI patches in official updates.
- Give us a proper ending this time. Oh come on, were you even trying last time?
The expansion will continue the story from the original campaign... if you chose the non-evil ending that is. For the record, I liked the original ending. The fights were epic, and I fully expected them to do an ending open for expansions.
- Continue to throw in the planar elements from the plot of the main campaign. I enjoyed these a lot. The Forgotten Realms setting on its own can get a little stale. Mixing in elements of the Planescape world in NWN2 added a lot to it, in my experience, and this could be expanded further.
Do you know about Rogue Dao's Planescape trilogy? Looks very promising! If their skills in creating quests and dialogue is as good as their artwork, this will really be something to look forward to.
- Better rounded party interactions. Don't get me wrong, I liked the fact that NWN2 brought back a lot of the kind of dialogue we remembered from BG2 and missed from NWN1, but it didn't go far enough. Most of the dialogue trees in the game seemed to be focussed on just a few of the characters. Other characters never really got developed much at all.
Agreed, lack of time of course. We know that there was planned a very large subplot around Quara, her hinted-at extraordinary powers, and her rivalry with Sand, and that this would make what they did in the finale make more sense. Also Casavir was supposed to have a more content, including his past tragic love story, conflict with Bishop etc. And I think it obvious that it was planned that Neeshka (among others) could take some prestige classes.
- Epic levels? I can take 'em or leave 'em.
Same here. Fun for power gamers, but I think DnD games in general gets easier and easier as you rise in levels rather than more and more challenging, so I'd rather begin at a low level... and level more slowly this time so you get a greater sense of accomplishment! Of course, it would be difficult to continue the plot from the first game then.
Why would they? Google works with them to ensure that China's citizens see exactly what their government wants them to.
Good point... I guess what I meant was that more governments will try to use carrots and sticks on Google to make them present data in the way they want. Swedish company Eniro for instance, have edited away Swedish military bases from all their satellite images. Yep, nothing to see here, just forests and lakes... unless you compare it side by side with Google Earth. Oops!:D
Google Earth (and all similar satelite imagery tools) are just amazing... How long before, for instance, China bans its citizens from using it you think?
Slashdot Mirror
PHB: Why? Can it run on one core of a X?
Coder: Well I suppose it can but...
PHB: Shove it out the door then.
I think the PHB may have a point. Games are expensive to make, gamers are fickle, and if reviews say a game "looks dated" it is a death sentence for sales. Rewriting an engine to be multi-threaded after it is done will take a lot of time and money, and most PCs out there have more dated hardware than you think, so most current players won't see any benefints whatsoever from it anyway.
Two words: map-reduce
(Score:4, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on 07-05-29 6:29 (#19305183)
Implement it, add CPUs, earn billion$. Just Google it.
Wow, fantastic. Turns out parallel programming was really really easy after all. I guess we can make all future computer science courses one week then, since every problem can be solved by map-reduce! The AC has finally found the silver bullet. Bravo, mods.
While some parts of .NET are not be as good as other offerings on the market, as a whole there is nothing which compares to it.
.NET brings everything under one roof
.NET and Silverlight, it is slowly becoming possible to leverage the same skills and code on the Web (both server side and client side), the desktop, games consoles, set top boxes, PDAs and Mobile phones.
Yes there is, the Java platform, which has a larger number of users, developers, and platforms it has been ported to.
We know. Microsofts roof. I don't want to be there.
eliminates entire classes of "glue" and "can't get there from here" problems.
I notice you don't give any concrete examples to refute... Is it possible that some of these "can't get there from here" problems you mention exist on other platforms because they were designed with more security in mind, or to be more platform independent for instance?
You've all seen the demos of movies projected onto flying 3D surfaces etcetera
Pfft. Like that is new. Come back when it works both for Linux, Solaris, Mac, or Windows, OpenGL accelerated.
With
Just like the Java platform then, only 5 years late and Windows only.
Christ, that sounds like a commercial.
Yes, you do sound very much like a commercial.
It is great that you want to contribute with documentation. A great program/framework/OS/whatever that no one can use because there is no documentation to be found is worthless.
Sun has published a pretty good book called Read Me First! - A style guide for the computer industry. Covers "writing styles", legal guidelines, writing for an international audience, types of techical documents, and so on. Recommended. For a fun example of how NOT to write, read this page and see if you can figure out which sentences refer to the "old" bad way to do animations, and which sentences refer the new recommended way (the rest of the tutorial is pretty good though, and I really appreciate the time and effort people have spent on it - I just wish someone who knows more than me about Blender could rewrite that particular section.)
Which project to contribute to - well, you had three good examples there. Just pick any project you are passionate about and comfortable using, try to think about what documentation you would have found handy when you was learning to use it. Start writing that.
In order to meet increased demands for hype, IBM also announces the construction of a new fab for hype construction. "For a long time we hoped that we might retrofit the Cell hype fab to construct Snowflake hype, it is now clear that this new processor demands a completely new fab to create the quality and quantity of hype needed. This new hype will be so overpowering every engineer and programmer will have to relearn everything or risk being left behind. We expect our Snowflake hype will outperform our closest competitor by close to 5000%. It will also be cheaper." IBM engineer Thor Larssen stated.
Without a Linux implementation of Silverlight, 20% of websites will be completely inaccessible to Linux users in 5 years.
BS. Most websites today work fine with Firefox and Linux, despite Microsoft attempts at locking like ActiveX. Most companies now realises the benefits of platform independence (I've heard things are different in South Korea for instance).
But now you say that this just announced platform will start to break standards and compatibility (surprise!), and you say "WE MUST JUMP ON THIS BANDWAGON!!". Even if it was true that sites started forcing clients being dependent on Silverlight (a claim even fans of Silverlight like Miguel would probably dispute) I don't think that sounds like something we should hurry to adopt, it sounds like something that should be fought tooth and nail. If companies start locking you out, take your business elsewhere.
Death in space. That's gonna be nasty. They'll likely never allow jettisoning the body into space, as it's the body of a hero that deserves the full honors.
What? They need a piece of meat to salute? I don't mean to be callous, but that is the most un-rational stuff I've heard. Spend energy and space to store a dead body, on a spaceship where those two things are critically limited? Put up a big statue back on earth later instead if you are into the hero worship stuff. If I would die in space, I would be proud to be jettisoned into the great unknown.
Ah, the old arts vs engineering troll raises its head again.
Oops, I realised I should clarify this - I don't mean that YOU are a troll, fan777. I rather meant to say that this is a inflammatory topic which sets up an antagonistic relationship where none need to exist. Sorry.
Ask a British student proficient in art what he/she thinks about math, and I'm pretty sure the answer will be a blank look too.
Ah, the old arts vs engineering troll raises its head again. I don't know about the UK, but here in Sweden most people I meet who have studied at university level don't see an inherent conflict there, in fact many (like myself) have studied both, and value both.
Why does everything have to be so polarized all the time?
#3 isn't asking for the angle between two planes. It's asking for the angle between two lines that are not coplanar. I can't even imagine how to define the angle between two lines that don't intersect at some point. #1 has the same problem.
Yes, you are right, I screwed up when transcribing the text. I meant angle between two vectors, not to planes. I believe the book actually has a chapter (I've been peeking ahead a bit) on 3d vectors that can be either intersecting in one point, or "akew" (closest translation I can find of the Swedish word), meaning that if you project them onto a 2d surface, they would intersect. You can in fact calculate angles between angles that are akew.
I have not idea how to start the Chinese test.
:)
I know how to get started on the first one at least.
1) Line BD right angle to line A1C
It is given that BD and AC are right angle, and on the z axis A1C is parallell to AC so it must also be right angle. Don't know if they want it formally proven using math notation, with trig or something. Then it is more difficult.
2) Determine angles between two planes
Thats actually next chapter in the book I'm doing on vectors right now, so I will be able to do it soon.
3) Angles between planes
Chapter after that.... angles beween vectors in 3d space.
The solution is; don't use it.
Amen. It's going to be a new DRM infested attempt to get a monopoly in the media distribution market anyway - why the heck are you people outraged that it probably won't come to your platform? I'd be happy if it came to as few as possible.
Do the guys at SUN have such feature envy of C# (the bastard child of Java), that they can't just say enough is enough?
Sun does not control the development of Java, the Java Community Process does. And it is not C# that is seen as a threat I believe, but Ruby and functional languages. There is a VERY heated debate in the Java community over the new language features that are proposed for the Java platform, and both sides put up some very convincing arguments (simplicity is good vs a language needs to evolve, for instance). See for instance the different Closures proposals...
The only thing it offers is some compile-time sanity checking, but even that can be disabled through use of a new compiler pragma directive to suppress warnings.
Many operations are ERRORS, not warnings. This is caught by IDEs, and by the compiler.
In order to make it possible to interact with legacy code, you can pass a generified collection to a method that expects a "raw" collection. This gives you a very clear warning. So for 95% of all use cases, generics give you a lot of assistance. You manage to come up with a remaining 5% example, where a programmer casts, suppresses compiler warnings, and then passes in a object of the wrong type, and this makes generics worthless?
Wadler was involved with the design of Haskell, and he and people like Gilad Bracha designed Java generics. I trust their skills more than a Slashdot Anonymous Coward.
Naftalin and Wadler are also holding a Java One session this year, it is on Wednesday, session id is TS-2890. If you have a Sun Developer Connection account (free) you can watch it online after the conference is over.
I agree with reviewer, the book is very good. It is true that Java generics is a compile time check, and that the generics information is removed (erasure). Nevertheless, that was a deliberate tradeoff for backwards compatibility, and it still makes coding complex Java a lot safer and easier. Look for instance at the 1.5 and 1.6 improvements to the concurrency libraries with Future, Callable and Executors.
I haven't turned it on in months - between the horrific performance and the plethora of bugs (plus friends having the game crash in Act 2/Act 3), I figured I'd wait until it was stablized, then start playing.
So is it playable, or are they just trying to get more money from us for an unpatched game?
I think its playable as it is now. I still wish they could improve performance more, but it is slowly getting better with every patch; and I'd rather have new neat adventures to play. So I think it was good that they focused on scripting and tool improvements in the latest patch.
You can get vastly improved performance by lowering just a few of the graphics settings (nr of light sources for instance), and still have a very good looking game.
If you like me have been confused about stuff like DRI, Mesa, GLX Extensions and so on in logs and conf files when trying to get OpenGL drivers working under Linux, I recommend How Xgl works.
Thanks for all the great work PipBoy. I will play this next week, really looking forward to it!
:)
Granny plugin announced, nice 1.06 patch content announced, expansion announced, Dark Waters release... It has been a good week for NWN2. I would have included the 1.05 patch, but.... you know.
Oh well, I'd rather wait a few more days than have a patch that infuriates the community.
It's amazing how different you can experience a game... I loved it! I respect that it might not lived up to all your expectations, but some things you say I think are a bit unjustified:
, worse writing, more cliches
Than the paper thin NWN1 original compaign, which was more of a demo of what you could do with the toolset? Really?
no actual functional improvement
Now that is BS... How about having a real party again like in BG2, with up to....I think it was 6 (?) controllable characters in the party, rather than the single NWN1 henchman which you couldn't control and kept running into enemies and getting killed. Or the strategic minigame of rebuilding the keep and recruiting people to it...
Companions were either tedious or worthless (and the romance options just horrible - which are the least-interesting stock characters - yeah, let's use those two)
Do you know you have uncovered all the subquests and all the dialogue for them? I do agree that Casavir was pretty wooden though... Sand, Bishop or even Khelgar or the Warlock would have made more interesting male romances.
, and will be shocked when so few people buy it, I suppose.
We shall see. At NWVault, the people so say they will buy the expansion outnumber the ones who don't by around 10-1.
Better than Gibbon Guts I suppose.
Yes, most people seem happy with the camera controls now with the latest patches. You know you can quickly switch camera mode by pressing * on your numeric keyboard?
- More customisability for non-PC party members. It kinda sucked just being stuck without any flexibility in their class-level choices and meant that you couldn't really experiment with different prestige classes in the main campaign unless you actually did multiple playthroughs.
- More "political" sections to the plot. Combat's fun, but so's politicking your way through the cities.
I agree totally with these!
- More tilesets.
A given. They have more experience now with the tools and the code, and can concentrate more on purely creating content. And modders are creating some really nice ones, I would be suprised if they weren't used in the expansion since Obsidian have already included community content such as AI patches in official updates.
- Give us a proper ending this time. Oh come on, were you even trying last time?
The expansion will continue the story from the original campaign... if you chose the non-evil ending that is. For the record, I liked the original ending. The fights were epic, and I fully expected them to do an ending open for expansions.
- Continue to throw in the planar elements from the plot of the main campaign. I enjoyed these a lot. The Forgotten Realms setting on its own can get a little stale. Mixing in elements of the Planescape world in NWN2 added a lot to it, in my experience, and this could be expanded further.
Do you know about Rogue Dao's Planescape trilogy? Looks very promising! If their skills in creating quests and dialogue is as good as their artwork, this will really be something to look forward to.
- Better rounded party interactions. Don't get me wrong, I liked the fact that NWN2 brought back a lot of the kind of dialogue we remembered from BG2 and missed from NWN1, but it didn't go far enough. Most of the dialogue trees in the game seemed to be focussed on just a few of the characters. Other characters never really got developed much at all.
Agreed, lack of time of course. We know that there was planned a very large subplot around Quara, her hinted-at extraordinary powers, and her rivalry with Sand, and that this would make what they did in the finale make more sense. Also Casavir was supposed to have a more content, including his past tragic love story, conflict with Bishop etc. And I think it obvious that it was planned that Neeshka (among others) could take some prestige classes.
- Epic levels? I can take 'em or leave 'em.
Same here. Fun for power gamers, but I think DnD games in general gets easier and easier as you rise in levels rather than more and more challenging, so I'd rather begin at a low level... and level more slowly this time so you get a greater sense of accomplishment! Of course, it would be difficult to continue the plot from the first game then.
Why would they? Google works with them to ensure that China's citizens see exactly what their government wants them to.
:D
Good point... I guess what I meant was that more governments will try to use carrots and sticks on Google to make them present data in the way they want. Swedish company Eniro for instance, have edited away Swedish military bases from all their satellite images. Yep, nothing to see here, just forests and lakes... unless you compare it side by side with Google Earth. Oops!
The expansion will have epic levels.
Google Earth (and all similar satelite imagery tools) are just amazing... How long before, for instance, China bans its citizens from using it you think?
In a similar area, Slashdot posted before about maps overAmerican strip mining. Others have collected other links to deforestation, coral reefs, etc.