Content is the most difficult thing about games now. Seriously. The engine is not where most of the resources go.
It's a hell of a lot more difficult creating a decent in game universe than creating an engine. Think about it - games now require _loads_ of textures someone has to paint. Loads of voiceovers someone has to do. Loads of text someone has to write. And debug, optimise, etc. The engine is not the tough bit. A lot of it is dull, dull work.
That being said, there are success stories, but they are few and far between. Fall from Heaven (civ4), Magna Mundi (EU3) - (though look at how that has turned out now), quite a few for X3, and obviously the old poster boy, counterstrike. These mods relied upon a large initial userbase.
Seriously, content is king now, and it's hard to do without loads of work.
I still see a lot of value in Q3 based projects. They really look good enough(for me), and I hear good things about the netcode.
Literally yesterday, I was looking at a bridge in Lord of the Rings Online (which is quite pretty otherwise), and thought to myself : Why isn't it curved?
It seems the fashion with engines now is to drop curved edges - I'm not sure why. They look so much better, and have been around for ages. Quake 3 did these brilliantly, and when it came out, I thought that would be the end of crappy lumpy bridges, etc. No such luck, they're still with us, over a decade later.
Anyone with knowledge of this issue, and why they're still about?
It's because Labour (for those who don't know, they're the most left-wing of our parties) in their infinite wisdom decided to privatise everything they could in the 90's, and the EU rules mandate fair exchange of goods and competition. So we have to allow foreign countries access to our markets, now we've privatised them.
Note that we have the infrastructure and resources to supply ourselves with fossil fuels, energy, etc, for quite a while longer (except for coal - it would take a while to get our coal mines up and running again, thanks to the Conservatives, in their infinite wisdom). Our production of oil for example, is about the same as the demand. However, we export about 25% of it, and import other oil to make up the shortfall. Trade is good, right?
That's kind of the point. The entire purpose of patents is to protect inventions made by someone which would not have been released to the public otherwise. If the patented invention could be invented by someone else anyway, the patent is purely a money making exercise, and not in the public good.
It's just like a gasoline car. If you floor it 0-60 every single time your MPG drops. If you gently accelerate your MPG increases.
I always wonder about this - since about 60 is the optimum cruising speed in terms of MPG, why is it not more efficient to quickly get to the optimum, rather than pootle along at lower more inefficient speeds?
I do realise this is a slightly facetious question, since I know one thing that kills mpg is higher engine revs, which is generally required for quick 0-60 times. However, seriously, I'd like to know the most mpg efficient way to drive, and if it's not accelerating as fast as possible to 60 using low revs, why is it not?
Also, note that this may not be the case for electrics - are they actually more efficient at "low revs"? If not, surely it should be most efficient to floor it every time (unless you're braking soon after, obviously).
the trend is clear- amateurs are playing less and less of a role. The biggest reason is that it's simply harder to make a discovery now than it was 100 or 200 years ago.
This is the case in some fields, but not others. Within mathematics and physics, it is still currently entirely possible to make new discoveries without apparatus. You've got to specialise, and you'll probably have to work most of your life trying to do it, and you'll probably be unsuccessful, but that was always the case.
The major hurdle is testing theories - I'd wager that there are at least tens, if not hundreds of theories out there that have been posited, and are a huge improvement over our current scientific consensus. Testing whether they are correct is the tough bit. In some fields this can be prohibitively expensive, that is the problem.
This kind of goes back to why "wonder drugs" that are discovered are not immediately implemented. The testing of efficacy is the tough bit, not the postulation of it.
Back in the day, Orville and Wilbur Wright put together the world's most advanced aircraft in their bicycle workshop; these days huge teams of engineers labor at Boeing or Skunkworks to put together the newest plane.
You're not comparing like with like. Back in the day, most people in the multi-million research lab equivalents of the time thought flight was impossible - that's _why_ the wright brothers used their bicycle workshop. Those university and government research labs existed, they just did not believe flight was in any way practical.
Overall, I do agree with the sentiment of your post, in that I agree it has got harder. However, I do think it is inflating the issue a lot, diminishing the amateurs of the past, and underestimating the potential of possible new amateur discoveries. The examples you have given for things that could not have been achieved today are once in a generation discoveries - you don't expect to see them occurring regularly.
I agree... save for the fact they could possibly have expected the growth to be better (this is an emerging market, with such you're always going to have multi-digit percentage growth factors).
I'm not sure exactly which market Seagate are aiming for here. The high performance market will go either entirely SSD, or one relatively big SSD and a huge magnetic for the rest of the stuff. The low performance consumer market will see the numbers, and take the cheap magnetic drive. The mid range market is possible their aim - but then they have to compete against a tiny SSD combined with a normal magnetic.
If they are aiming for the mid-range market, they're going to have to be cheaper, and if they're going to be cheaper, they're struggling.
The ability to freely (without human intervention) interbreed and produce fertile offspring is central to the definition of what a species is.
This definition is crap though. If animal A can interbreed with animal B, and animal B with C, but A cannot with C, then you cannot define the species. There are real world examples of this, albeit a little more convoluted : see the herring gull and lesser black backed gull.
GP It's so terrible and boring to level and grind for good gear
P The only reason that those games were bearable...not have to spend countless hours, waste
You're missing the point. The entire point of Diablo is to spend a long time grinding on the offchance you get something good. That is the point. That is what it is, that is what it was, and if you cheated to get it, you didn't get get diablo.
I was sexually abused as a kid. It did fuck me up a bit, but not too badly, and I got over it. I'm now a relatively happy, well adjusted person - currently single, but have had numerous normal, healthy relationships.
If you're seriously suggesting that I'd be better off dead, you can go fuck yourself.
Not true. I've seen plenty of adult cats playing with smaller animals, then killing them, just for the fun of it.
Also, there are killer whales - they play with sea lions a lot, throwing them in the air, etc, before they eat them. They also kill stuff they do not eat, too.
So what the fuck will that have to do with this study?
Seriously, you want the scientists to tell you what is "good" and what is "bad"? You don't want the scientists to publish their results, and show evidence that some things may have a positive or negative effect?
You comment makes as much sense as someone complaining that the radiotherapy their mother received didn't cure her alzheimer's.
You could try the x3 series. You start at the bottom, so there's a lot of piloting your own small ship early on, but later on you can own industry chains and warships. And when you get there, the battles can be truly epic.
If the better graphics lead to a better game, then I care. I understand what you're saying, but better graphics make a game better. Denying that is a luddite philosophy.
Of course, all the pretty in the world can't make a shit not a shit.
Whoever thought that having players ignore the painstakingly crafted cutscene and focus instead upon a flashing X icon was a good idea is deranged, and I can't understand why the idea persists.
Whether cutscenes are good or bad is another question, but don't fuck up your cutscene by having players look for stupid icons that pop up. Please.
I know I'm talking about taking the food off developers' plates when I say it, but there is a time when a franchise should die, and that was the end of the Empire Strikes Back.
If that happened, we'd never have had the backstroke of the west, which in my opinion was the highlight of the star wars series of films.
I had this problem, though not as bad since my 460 does output sound (made me jump out of my skin the first time I hooked it up to a TV), but I wanted to use the motherboard sound because I had a pair of speakers run by the computer in another room. Like you, simply switching the default sound card to the one I wanted didn't work. However, when I actually disabled the nvidia sound driver in device manager, and made the other default, that did fix it. Since you said you tried everything, I guess you already tried that, and since you've got rid of the card anyway this is pretty much moot for you anyway. If anyone else is having this problem, it may be of use for them though.
I've thought about this for a while... and I don't give a shit about the physical media.
In fact, I hate the physical media. I don't want the physical media at all. It clutters up my life, I get annoyed when I can't find it, I get annoyed when I find it in my way, and it's just fucking annoying.
I do have a connection to the internet, and I do like some of the services.
Slashdot Mirror
Content is the most difficult thing about games now. Seriously. The engine is not where most of the resources go.
It's a hell of a lot more difficult creating a decent in game universe than creating an engine. Think about it - games now require _loads_ of textures someone has to paint. Loads of voiceovers someone has to do. Loads of text someone has to write. And debug, optimise, etc. The engine is not the tough bit. A lot of it is dull, dull work.
That being said, there are success stories, but they are few and far between. Fall from Heaven (civ4), Magna Mundi (EU3) - (though look at how that has turned out now), quite a few for X3, and obviously the old poster boy, counterstrike. These mods relied upon a large initial userbase.
Seriously, content is king now, and it's hard to do without loads of work.
ok.... why don't they just have _two_ 12:34:60's then?
Thinking about it.... 12:34:60 is the leap second - 12:34:61 would be a second leap second.
So, why don't they have 2 12:34:59's?
I still see a lot of value in Q3 based projects. They really look good enough(for me), and I hear good things about the netcode.
Literally yesterday, I was looking at a bridge in Lord of the Rings Online (which is quite pretty otherwise), and thought to myself : Why isn't it curved?
It seems the fashion with engines now is to drop curved edges - I'm not sure why. They look so much better, and have been around for ages. Quake 3 did these brilliantly, and when it came out, I thought that would be the end of crappy lumpy bridges, etc. No such luck, they're still with us, over a decade later.
Anyone with knowledge of this issue, and why they're still about?
It's because Labour (for those who don't know, they're the most left-wing of our parties) in their infinite wisdom decided to privatise everything they could in the 90's, and the EU rules mandate fair exchange of goods and competition. So we have to allow foreign countries access to our markets, now we've privatised them.
Note that we have the infrastructure and resources to supply ourselves with fossil fuels, energy, etc, for quite a while longer (except for coal - it would take a while to get our coal mines up and running again, thanks to the Conservatives, in their infinite wisdom). Our production of oil for example, is about the same as the demand. However, we export about 25% of it, and import other oil to make up the shortfall. Trade is good, right?
That's kind of the point. The entire purpose of patents is to protect inventions made by someone which would not have been released to the public otherwise. If the patented invention could be invented by someone else anyway, the patent is purely a money making exercise, and not in the public good.
It's just like a gasoline car. If you floor it 0-60 every single time your MPG drops. If you gently accelerate your MPG increases.
I always wonder about this - since about 60 is the optimum cruising speed in terms of MPG, why is it not more efficient to quickly get to the optimum, rather than pootle along at lower more inefficient speeds?
I do realise this is a slightly facetious question, since I know one thing that kills mpg is higher engine revs, which is generally required for quick 0-60 times. However, seriously, I'd like to know the most mpg efficient way to drive, and if it's not accelerating as fast as possible to 60 using low revs, why is it not?
Also, note that this may not be the case for electrics - are they actually more efficient at "low revs"? If not, surely it should be most efficient to floor it every time (unless you're braking soon after, obviously).
Everyone can believe whatever they want, as long as they keep it private.
You don't have to keep your religion private in France, not legally, anyway. I don't know what gave you that idea.
the trend is clear- amateurs are playing less and less of a role. The biggest reason is that it's simply harder to make a discovery now than it was 100 or 200 years ago.
This is the case in some fields, but not others. Within mathematics and physics, it is still currently entirely possible to make new discoveries without apparatus. You've got to specialise, and you'll probably have to work most of your life trying to do it, and you'll probably be unsuccessful, but that was always the case.
The major hurdle is testing theories - I'd wager that there are at least tens, if not hundreds of theories out there that have been posited, and are a huge improvement over our current scientific consensus. Testing whether they are correct is the tough bit. In some fields this can be prohibitively expensive, that is the problem.
This kind of goes back to why "wonder drugs" that are discovered are not immediately implemented. The testing of efficacy is the tough bit, not the postulation of it.
Back in the day, Orville and Wilbur Wright put together the world's most advanced aircraft in their bicycle workshop; these days huge teams of engineers labor at Boeing or Skunkworks to put together the newest plane.
You're not comparing like with like. Back in the day, most people in the multi-million research lab equivalents of the time thought flight was impossible - that's _why_ the wright brothers used their bicycle workshop. Those university and government research labs existed, they just did not believe flight was in any way practical.
Overall, I do agree with the sentiment of your post, in that I agree it has got harder. However, I do think it is inflating the issue a lot, diminishing the amateurs of the past, and underestimating the potential of possible new amateur discoveries. The examples you have given for things that could not have been achieved today are once in a generation discoveries - you don't expect to see them occurring regularly.
I'm sure it'll be handled much in the same way that the way that Sherlock Holmes being a cocaine user has always been handled.
I agree... save for the fact they could possibly have expected the growth to be better (this is an emerging market, with such you're always going to have multi-digit percentage growth factors).
I'm not sure exactly which market Seagate are aiming for here. The high performance market will go either entirely SSD, or one relatively big SSD and a huge magnetic for the rest of the stuff. The low performance consumer market will see the numbers, and take the cheap magnetic drive. The mid range market is possible their aim - but then they have to compete against a tiny SSD combined with a normal magnetic.
If they are aiming for the mid-range market, they're going to have to be cheaper, and if they're going to be cheaper, they're struggling.
The ability to freely (without human intervention) interbreed and produce fertile offspring is central to the definition of what a species is.
This definition is crap though. If animal A can interbreed with animal B, and animal B with C, but A cannot with C, then you cannot define the species. There are real world examples of this, albeit a little more convoluted : see the herring gull and lesser black backed gull.
Which alternative do you have?
Yes, Sony are scummy, so are all the other multinationals. What do you want the consumer to do? What is the alternative?
I'm serious here, name a "good" company I should purchase from.
GP It's so terrible and boring to level and grind for good gear
P The only reason that those games were bearable ...not have to spend countless hours, waste
You're missing the point. The entire point of Diablo is to spend a long time grinding on the offchance you get something good. That is the point. That is what it is, that is what it was, and if you cheated to get it, you didn't get get diablo.
I remember when I used to get single digit pings on my ISDN line, on random Quake servers...
Seriously, why has the internet gone so far backwards in this respect? Is it consumerism, so that people are just looking at download speed?
I was sexually abused as a kid. It did fuck me up a bit, but not too badly, and I got over it. I'm now a relatively happy, well adjusted person - currently single, but have had numerous normal, healthy relationships.
If you're seriously suggesting that I'd be better off dead, you can go fuck yourself.
Well... it's not. At least not from where I'm sitting. Using BT broadband, not exactly some stick it to the man indie ISP.
That being said, I've already stumbled across 3 mirrors of TPB, so even if this is actually implemented, it won't make the smallest bit of difference.
Not true. I've seen plenty of adult cats playing with smaller animals, then killing them, just for the fun of it.
Also, there are killer whales - they play with sea lions a lot, throwing them in the air, etc, before they eat them. They also kill stuff they do not eat, too.
I reckon the slashdot editors should just have gone the whole hog, with :
"2013 : The Year of OpenStack on the Desktop?"
So what the fuck will that have to do with this study?
Seriously, you want the scientists to tell you what is "good" and what is "bad"? You don't want the scientists to publish their results, and show evidence that some things may have a positive or negative effect?
You comment makes as much sense as someone complaining that the radiotherapy their mother received didn't cure her alzheimer's.
gah... The web always conspires against me.
You could try the x3 series. You start at the bottom, so there's a lot of piloting your own small ship early on, but later on you can own industry chains and warships. And when you get there, the battles can be truly epic.
If the better graphics lead to a better game, then I care. I understand what you're saying, but better graphics make a game better. Denying that is a luddite philosophy.
Of course, all the pretty in the world can't make a shit not a shit.
Agreed : they're shit.
Whoever thought that having players ignore the painstakingly crafted cutscene and focus instead upon a flashing X icon was a good idea is deranged, and I can't understand why the idea persists.
Whether cutscenes are good or bad is another question, but don't fuck up your cutscene by having players look for stupid icons that pop up. Please.
I know I'm talking about taking the food off developers' plates when I say it, but there is a time when a franchise should die, and that was the end of the Empire Strikes Back.
If that happened, we'd never have had the backstroke of the west, which in my opinion was the highlight of the star wars series of films.
I had this problem, though not as bad since my 460 does output sound (made me jump out of my skin the first time I hooked it up to a TV), but I wanted to use the motherboard sound because I had a pair of speakers run by the computer in another room. Like you, simply switching the default sound card to the one I wanted didn't work. However, when I actually disabled the nvidia sound driver in device manager, and made the other default, that did fix it. Since you said you tried everything, I guess you already tried that, and since you've got rid of the card anyway this is pretty much moot for you anyway. If anyone else is having this problem, it may be of use for them though.
I've thought about this for a while... and I don't give a shit about the physical media.
In fact, I hate the physical media. I don't want the physical media at all. It clutters up my life, I get annoyed when I can't find it, I get annoyed when I find it in my way, and it's just fucking annoying.
I do have a connection to the internet, and I do like some of the services.