Too right. The first one I played was GH3, way more fun than I expected. So far I've bught something like 5 more games and a few albums of songs, but they started bringing them out *way* faster than I'm willing to buy. Plus, I've been waiting for the real guitar controller for RB3.
For what it's worth, I used to enjoy walking to work. I still ponder ditching the car from time to time, it would save me money overall. I used to be all about "faster" too, but when I was forced into walking (lost my license for three months a few years ago) I found I enjoyed it, relaxed, and actually ended up feeling I had more time because I had more time to think, and I stopped wasting so much time watching TV etc, because I actually started going for walks in the evening as well. The exercise of course helped me to feel better too, so I've made sure to keep up with it. So many people say they have no time, when it's just a matter of stress and tech addiction making them feel that way. It's so easy to piss away the hours checking for messages on Slashdot, Facebook, gamng, whatever..
I suppose I can't do anything but agree: I saw a comment by some idiot earlier today saying he'd bought World of Goo for the iPad. This is despite already having it on other platforms and not owning an iPad. Because it was on "sale" for $5 (and presumably he was planning to get an iPad eventually). Against that kind of mentality, I suppose your logic makes sense.
I'm sure it would be possible to create an algorithm that could determine the path (ie velocity and speed at any point) the basketball has taken after a couple of positive hits by the tennis balls, if you know the exact initial velocity of the tennis balls, how long they take to land, and where they've landed. The first hit will affect the path of the ball, but you could account for that too. Unless you're also having to deal with other factors of course, like invisible obstacles or changing winds, though with enough tennis balls you could map all of that too..
now imagine what could be possible with another leap like that?
I used to complain about dial-up when it was the only option, because I played LAN games and knew how nice things could be, how fast files could transfer, etc. Latency in online games is still worse than playing on a LAN, for obvious reasons. Bandwidth is obviously lagging behind too, but it's at a level where it's not really a pain in the ass any more.
I think we've already explored a lot of the options for high speed networking. Any further bumps in speed are generally going to be more of the same, but with more concurrent connections and more detail. Higher quality sound/video, stereoscopic video, perhaps stuff like having avatars in online games mimic the player's facial expressions and body movement (which could really be done already I guess, I only thought of it just now though when wondering what other kind of info could be sent with more bandwidth available).. better supercomputing abilities over WAN.. that kind of thing. Of course maybe some crazy new technology or idea will come along, but generally things are just following a logical progression rather than being truly amazing. Photosynth was the last bandwidth intensive application I saw that really made me go "wow". I suppose it still isn't possible on today's net connections though, it would still be better suited for LANs.
Yeah when I still used Windows I had actually started doing that. My Windows VM still has that arrangement actually. I usually remote desktop into it with a 1200x800 window, which is a strange in-between size I suppose.
Sure, but I hope they don't move entirely to making cheap little fluff games like you get on the iPhone. They already have plenty of handheld games which would port well to Android/iOS, and are well worth more than $2. You can already play these games with emulators of course..
The thing I find silly is that my phone has a larger screen than the two of these little ones put together, so this could work fine as a software feature rather than a hardware one. I think implementing multiple simultaneous desktops on a single display would be a nice idea. I don't find the one-at-a-time thing to be annoying though. Even on fully fledged PCs I tend to have one window maximised at a time, with different groups of apps on different desktops. The equivalent of alt-tab should be enough to make switching apps a better experience.
Read the article the guy (kind of) linked to. Woz is talking about a cruise control issue, not a "sticky gas pedal" as others complain about. And hitting the brakes cancels the acceleration. Anyone who is using cruise control should be ready to hit the brakes, and even observing their speed from time to time, or at least be aware that the cars revs are rising and the world is moving by at a faster rate. It's not auto-pilot.
Android has a pretty good solution. Drop down notification bar/console for getting updates, and if you need to click through to the update to the full app, a click of back will take you back to where you were before. Or hold down home and select the app you want out of the recently used apps list.
Haven't really used the iPhone so I don't know of how or if it tries to get around the problem of switching apps and keeping you up to date.
Yeah. I was going to make a clone just as a fun way to learn a new language, but if I released it it would be open source. I suppose the open source ones get away with it because there's no money in suing them.
Diablo, Nox, Dungeon Siege, The SIMS, pretty much any RTS, Torchlight.
With the exception of the Sims, because you don't really have to control a warrior who needs to dodge etc (though I don't play it simply because I found it boring pretty quickly), those are all games that I want to avoid because of the control system. The only C&C game I ever looked forward to was the FPS (though it ended up being crap of course).
I can control things with a mouse. Over the years I've flown planes and driven cars with a mouse. Hell, I even played a platformer game with a mouse on my Amiga at one point, by figuring out the weird directions you moved the mouse in corresponded to which moves on the controller (we only had 1 gamepad and wanted to play a 2 player game). It was pretty nonsensical and awkward, but possible. But the control stick just feels better, more direct and instantaneous - because it is. With any game that involves action, I know I prefer to have direct control over the avatar, whether on PC or a console.
Or you build a game like Racettear that simply has no click-to-move, even though it's played from an overhead perspective.
Having just looked at what that game is, it looks a lot like any other top down RPG. Would you really want to play Zelda with "click to move"? The only games that really work with click to move IMO are LucasArts style point'n'click games. (I hate RTSes)
it happens because it is assumed that the masses want the gameplay to be as simple as possible
I think it's more that "the masses" suck at gaming, and things like regenerative health make it way easier to get through a game, so it makes them feel like they're awesome players. Though really, it's not much different from having quicksave and quickload options on a PC, I used that an awful lot when I first played through Half-Life (the first FPS that actually had a story I wanted to complete).
I know that a 21" CRT is a different width from a 21" widescreen, but I find the extra width much more useful than the extra height, plus it obviously works much better for watching widescreen movies. I'd have to have a 30" CRT or something to get the same experience as a 22" widescreen device..
The last "monitor" I actually bought was an HDTV anyway. I decided what's the point in buying a normal sized monitor and a small TV, when I could just buy a big TV that also works fine as a large monitor?
In particular, 16:9 is terrible for old FPS games.
A lot of them presumably have command line or in-game console options to customise the field of vision and screen size etc. Any games based off of Quake and Unreal definitely do..
16:9 for a PC is just a massive waste of screen space for most things because 90% of apps and web pages are designed, if not with 4:3 in mind, then to support 4:3 and so you end up with horizontal letterboxing all the time.
It's great for productivity type stuff, you can have windows/documents side by side for reference purposes. Of course you have two displays which accomplishes the same thing - though you could have two widescreen displays for having even more windows open without needing to splash out for all that extra horizontal screen estate that often you don't really need when viewing and editing documents. Or if you do prefer a single page layout, you could mount it on its side. 4:3 tends to waste a lot of space when doing stuff like watching movies or editing documents.
Then when it comes to games, I much prefer having the extra field of vision at the side. Up and down isn't usually such a big deal, plus getting a 4:3 monitor that's as wide as a 22" widescreen would be very expensive.
So you're saying that any word with the numerical prefix Tetra should count as an infringement of the Tetris trademark simply for the name, even if the gameplay is completely unrelated to Tetris? That seems a little strange. The fact that it is an actual Tetris clone is what makes the name a bad idea, not simply the fact that the name has Tetra in it.
Because if there are thousands of people taking part, it's going to be difficult to track down and punish everyone involved, if the logs even managed to keep up.
Slashdot Mirror
Too right. The first one I played was GH3, way more fun than I expected. So far I've bught something like 5 more games and a few albums of songs, but they started bringing them out *way* faster than I'm willing to buy. Plus, I've been waiting for the real guitar controller for RB3.
I'm sure porn and computer games could help to lower that somewhat.
For what it's worth, I used to enjoy walking to work. I still ponder ditching the car from time to time, it would save me money overall. I used to be all about "faster" too, but when I was forced into walking (lost my license for three months a few years ago) I found I enjoyed it, relaxed, and actually ended up feeling I had more time because I had more time to think, and I stopped wasting so much time watching TV etc, because I actually started going for walks in the evening as well. The exercise of course helped me to feel better too, so I've made sure to keep up with it. So many people say they have no time, when it's just a matter of stress and tech addiction making them feel that way. It's so easy to piss away the hours checking for messages on Slashdot, Facebook, gamng, whatever..
I suppose I can't do anything but agree: I saw a comment by some idiot earlier today saying he'd bought World of Goo for the iPad. This is despite already having it on other platforms and not owning an iPad. Because it was on "sale" for $5 (and presumably he was planning to get an iPad eventually). Against that kind of mentality, I suppose your logic makes sense.
I'm sure it would be possible to create an algorithm that could determine the path (ie velocity and speed at any point) the basketball has taken after a couple of positive hits by the tennis balls, if you know the exact initial velocity of the tennis balls, how long they take to land, and where they've landed. The first hit will affect the path of the ball, but you could account for that too. Unless you're also having to deal with other factors of course, like invisible obstacles or changing winds, though with enough tennis balls you could map all of that too..
now imagine what could be possible with another leap like that?
I used to complain about dial-up when it was the only option, because I played LAN games and knew how nice things could be, how fast files could transfer, etc. Latency in online games is still worse than playing on a LAN, for obvious reasons. Bandwidth is obviously lagging behind too, but it's at a level where it's not really a pain in the ass any more.
I think we've already explored a lot of the options for high speed networking. Any further bumps in speed are generally going to be more of the same, but with more concurrent connections and more detail. Higher quality sound/video, stereoscopic video, perhaps stuff like having avatars in online games mimic the player's facial expressions and body movement (which could really be done already I guess, I only thought of it just now though when wondering what other kind of info could be sent with more bandwidth available).. better supercomputing abilities over WAN.. that kind of thing. Of course maybe some crazy new technology or idea will come along, but generally things are just following a logical progression rather than being truly amazing. Photosynth was the last bandwidth intensive application I saw that really made me go "wow". I suppose it still isn't possible on today's net connections though, it would still be better suited for LANs.
Yeah when I still used Windows I had actually started doing that. My Windows VM still has that arrangement actually. I usually remote desktop into it with a 1200x800 window, which is a strange in-between size I suppose.
you've got to move with the times.
Sure, but I hope they don't move entirely to making cheap little fluff games like you get on the iPhone. They already have plenty of handheld games which would port well to Android/iOS, and are well worth more than $2. You can already play these games with emulators of course..
The thing I find silly is that my phone has a larger screen than the two of these little ones put together, so this could work fine as a software feature rather than a hardware one. I think implementing multiple simultaneous desktops on a single display would be a nice idea. I don't find the one-at-a-time thing to be annoying though. Even on fully fledged PCs I tend to have one window maximised at a time, with different groups of apps on different desktops. The equivalent of alt-tab should be enough to make switching apps a better experience.
Read the article the guy (kind of) linked to. Woz is talking about a cruise control issue, not a "sticky gas pedal" as others complain about. And hitting the brakes cancels the acceleration. Anyone who is using cruise control should be ready to hit the brakes, and even observing their speed from time to time, or at least be aware that the cars revs are rising and the world is moving by at a faster rate. It's not auto-pilot.
Android has a pretty good solution. Drop down notification bar/console for getting updates, and if you need to click through to the update to the full app, a click of back will take you back to where you were before. Or hold down home and select the app you want out of the recently used apps list.
Haven't really used the iPhone so I don't know of how or if it tries to get around the problem of switching apps and keeping you up to date.
Yeah. I was going to make a clone just as a fun way to learn a new language, but if I released it it would be open source. I suppose the open source ones get away with it because there's no money in suing them.
Diablo, Nox, Dungeon Siege, The SIMS, pretty much any RTS, Torchlight.
With the exception of the Sims, because you don't really have to control a warrior who needs to dodge etc (though I don't play it simply because I found it boring pretty quickly), those are all games that I want to avoid because of the control system. The only C&C game I ever looked forward to was the FPS (though it ended up being crap of course).
I can control things with a mouse. Over the years I've flown planes and driven cars with a mouse. Hell, I even played a platformer game with a mouse on my Amiga at one point, by figuring out the weird directions you moved the mouse in corresponded to which moves on the controller (we only had 1 gamepad and wanted to play a 2 player game). It was pretty nonsensical and awkward, but possible. But the control stick just feels better, more direct and instantaneous - because it is. With any game that involves action, I know I prefer to have direct control over the avatar, whether on PC or a console.
Or you build a game like Racettear that simply has no click-to-move, even though it's played from an overhead perspective.
Having just looked at what that game is, it looks a lot like any other top down RPG. Would you really want to play Zelda with "click to move"? The only games that really work with click to move IMO are LucasArts style point'n'click games. (I hate RTSes)
You mean MUDs? Nethack?
it happens because it is assumed that the masses want the gameplay to be as simple as possible
I think it's more that "the masses" suck at gaming, and things like regenerative health make it way easier to get through a game, so it makes them feel like they're awesome players. Though really, it's not much different from having quicksave and quickload options on a PC, I used that an awful lot when I first played through Half-Life (the first FPS that actually had a story I wanted to complete).
I know that a 21" CRT is a different width from a 21" widescreen, but I find the extra width much more useful than the extra height, plus it obviously works much better for watching widescreen movies. I'd have to have a 30" CRT or something to get the same experience as a 22" widescreen device..
The last "monitor" I actually bought was an HDTV anyway. I decided what's the point in buying a normal sized monitor and a small TV, when I could just buy a big TV that also works fine as a large monitor?
In particular, 16:9 is terrible for old FPS games.
A lot of them presumably have command line or in-game console options to customise the field of vision and screen size etc. Any games based off of Quake and Unreal definitely do..
16:9 for a PC is just a massive waste of screen space for most things because 90% of apps and web pages are designed, if not with 4:3 in mind, then to support 4:3 and so you end up with horizontal letterboxing all the time.
It's great for productivity type stuff, you can have windows/documents side by side for reference purposes. Of course you have two displays which accomplishes the same thing - though you could have two widescreen displays for having even more windows open without needing to splash out for all that extra horizontal screen estate that often you don't really need when viewing and editing documents. Or if you do prefer a single page layout, you could mount it on its side. 4:3 tends to waste a lot of space when doing stuff like watching movies or editing documents.
Then when it comes to games, I much prefer having the extra field of vision at the side. Up and down isn't usually such a big deal, plus getting a 4:3 monitor that's as wide as a 22" widescreen would be very expensive.
"combined with a form of fusion, the machines would have all the power they would ever need"
So you're saying that any word with the numerical prefix Tetra should count as an infringement of the Tetris trademark simply for the name, even if the gameplay is completely unrelated to Tetris? That seems a little strange. The fact that it is an actual Tetris clone is what makes the name a bad idea, not simply the fact that the name has Tetra in it.
Because if there are thousands of people taking part, it's going to be difficult to track down and punish everyone involved, if the logs even managed to keep up.
Because it makes them like a GIANT TRANSFORMER!
cable TV, where real news always takes second billing to scandals
I thought the whole point of wikileaks was to leak scandals?
Why? I was pointing out how currency is basically already virtual.