How many construction workers does it take to build a building? There are over 20 specializations that go towards building anything to meet regulations.
The fact that very few programmers are in the position of developing the trading systems for firms -- at least the algorithmic logic part of it -- means a lot more than if they were part of a team. Usually it's a team of one, or two at most.
[ This blog post was written by Pascal Eggert. Pascal is an incredibly talented graphics designer, firearm enthusiast and reader of The Firearm Blog. He works for Crytek, a major German game studio...
Didn't know the NRA spread to Germany. Thanks bro.
...or maybe it doesn't actually work the way you say, because the corollary to your claim is that release will happen soonest if no one is ever added to the project (one member is requisite for the project to exist at all).
...or maybe you should have read the link he included at the end for more details instead of making a ridiculous straw man.
Admittedly, the parent misquoted. He should have said, "You cannot add developers to a late project and make it release sooner". But if you had taken the time and effort to check out that wiki article instead of knee jerking you would've seen the correct quote in the first sentence.
Also with two people at the terminal, doesn't that means you've got twice as many people doing the same job as other companies?
Problem is, I write code maybe 2-4% of the time I am at the terminal. Other times I'm reading the code...Most of the time I'm doing other stuff...
I think you answered your own question without realizing it, but just in case I'll elaborate from what I know.
In paired coding, the coders take turns coding and watching/reading. Like you said, much of coding work isn't typing in the code itself. So having a pair of coders, with one watching, the other writing, and both reading code and thinking about it in the interim, you catch both syntax and logic errors as they happen which can save a lot of time later. Also thanks to an extra perspective, you can overcome mental roadblocks faster...unless you never, ever get stumped on how to approach a problem or implement anything.
There's also no Boolean rule going on here that states that just because two programmers work in a pair, that they also must use the same computer or spend 100% of their time at one person's computer all day or do nothing but focus on one person's code or work on the exact same part of a project. There's time to do all the other daily stuff that you mentioned, and time enough (5-10% of the daily time by your own estimation, times two, plus discussion/explanation time) even on busy days to watch each other code.
It would also be awesome if people acknowledged that there's more than one subgroup of cyclists, and that some of them treat the roads differently than others.
No kidding. I hate cyclists who don't follow traffic laws as much as, if not more than drivers. They make cyclists who obey traffic laws and act predictably/courteously look bad. It creates a negative stereotype, and it shows in these comments.
It's kind of ironic that you mention 3.0 as the impetus for getting fed up with class/level systems, given that version 3.X in D&D bucks the trend of all other versions of D&D. For that matter it bucks the trend of all the class systems of RPGs that I know of except those specifically based off of D&D 3.X. In D&D 3.X you aren't stuck with the first class you pick. You aren't a Fighter from level 1 to 20 unless you want to be. At each new level you choose what class to add to your character, whether it's your existing class or a new one. You can mix up as many classes and prestige classes as you want as you level up to make a character that suits your needs. Each class level in D&D is more a small package of abilities you choose, and at each level you also get to spend skill points as you will - another thing unique to D&D 3.X and games derived directly from it. It's the least rigid, most versatile class system that I know of. It allows you to represent all kinds of character concepts and existing fantasy/game characters accurately if you have enough levels and source books to work with. I can't say the same for other class-based RPGs.
It's true a thumbstick is better for more precise movement, but in FPS generally you can get by well enough with one move speed for running and one for crouching/stealth. At least, I don't know of any competitive (aka PvP) first-person or third-person shooters where stealth or super fine movement is more important than fast and precise aiming.
You raise a good point with the curmudgeon angle. I can't stand playing shooters with a console controller, I need a mouse and keyboard. But this does not discount that there are people very, very good with the console controller. You probably can't argue the inherent superiority of one over the other but you can certainly see how personal preference can enter into it.
Actually, you can. Keyboard and mouse is superior compared to a game pad. Complex moves are easier to do with a keyboard and mouse, and the mouse is able to track more precisely and faster than an analog stick. Why do you think console games have some degree of autoaim built in while PC games do not? But the hard evidence came in when Quake 3 arena for the Dreamcast came out. It allowed Dreamcast players to play online with PC players. The best Dreamcast players got trashed by average PC players, even when controlling for ping/latency. This came up several years ago but there should still be a decent amount of info on the findings available via google.
Don't judge the effectiveness of months-long operations by one battle. General Anthony Zinni ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Zinni )had quite a bit of experience with the US operations in Somalia and he firmly believed that the US armed forces were capable of stabilizing the region with a unified and recognized Somali government (opposed to territorial warlords), but they were ordered to leave by President Clinton prematurely. You may want to read his memoirs to get a more detailed view of how things went down there, including the Somali politics!
One thing I think that has toned down the scare factor in RE4 and 5 is the way the new "zombie" level enemies (which I'll refer to as Ganados) behave.
Zombies felt no pain, were rotting, and wanted to eat you. Ganados flinch when shot by a 9mm, look fairly healthy, and generally try to bash you to death.
Zombies required a shotgun or higher grade weapon with scarce ammo to stop in their tracks with a single shot. Ganados stop in their tracks when shot with anything. And if you shoot them in the right places, you can do a huge knock back melee attack.
The Ganados seem more like "real" people, so they're more familiar, more predictable. The older zombies were unnatural and unrelenting. If you had 5 zombies coming at you and all you had was a 9mm, you were in deep shit. But if you now face 5 Ganados coming at you, you can more easily manage them by shooting them to slow them down, or you can shoot one in the leg and do a melee attack that knocks back your target. It might even knock back or daze other enemies.
I'd like to see the next RE game feature the old unrelenting zombies (and hell, throw in the crimson heads from Resident Evil: REmake) with the new control and combat engine.
I have a Linux box, I can program my own games. They will not have glitzy graphics like the gaming house ones, but they are just as much fun. I am working on upgrading a version of ROGUE that I found on Source Forge, just as entertaining as things like EverQuest but you don't need a $6000 graphics card to play it.
Hi. Have you seen this before? I think you'd find it relevant:)
There's a huge gulf of difference between making an open source game and using tools provided by a top-end company to make a map or a game modification for an existing, updated, and powerful game engine.
Take a look at the player-made content for TF2 some time. You'll find that a significant chunk of it stands up to the maps made by Valve. So I'm sorry, but your reasoning does not readily apply here.
Now why would PC gamers pay for levels when they can get free, player made levels using the free SDK? What would stop players from making slight modifications to the soon-to-be released Versus campaign levels and releasing them for free? Would stopping players from doing so be worth the cost to Valve?
You clearly don't know the game very well. TF2's special weapons are not truly upgrades. They're balanced in comparison to the standard weapons. They all have drawbacks compared to the standard weapons for the benefits they give. The majority of the "upgrades" have very situational uses. You'd know this if you took a trip to GameFAQs and read the equipment guide here -
For example, if you are a guest at somebody's house, it's polite to ask for what you need, rather than simply state the need. You wouldn't say "where's the bathroom" unless it's a rather close friend. Instead, you'll say something like "Do you mind if I use your restroom?".
My brother bought GTA4, and we simply can't get to run it on his 2 year old PC. He now faces the choice: pay about 1500 for a new rig in order to play GTA4 at acceptable rates. Or spend +/-450 on a PS3 and buy the game again....
Uhhh in October I built a PC that can run GTA4 smoothly for about 550.00 USD. I could have easily brought the price down and still run the game "at acceptable rates". I dunno where you pulled that exorbant price figure from, but you can see the recommended system specs here - http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/gta-iv-pc-delay.html
You can meet or exceed those recommended specs for PC for the price of a PS3 + USB keyboard + USB mouse + buying the game again. Just check out some systems on an online PC store (tigerdirect is the only comparable option to newegg and zipzoomfly that ships outside the USA that I know of) or by building it yourself.
Regarding the older games in the series: they always had a turbo slider, so you could change the speed of the game. Oh well...
Both the original and the HD remix version of the game does in fact have that slider. The line from the GP,
As for the game feeling like it's locked on a high super-turbo mode....I think that falls in with the territory of calling it a remix.
was a load of nonsense. Behold, factual information rather than vague conjecture!
14) Game speed. The game speeds match the arcade version of the game, but this is confusing so bear with me. In SF HD Remix, speed 3 is the default and is intended for tournament play and online play. It's the same speed as Japanese arcade speed 3, which is also known as US arcade speed 2. You don't really have to understand what's going on with all that, just play at the default speed 3 and be happy that it matches the arcade.
Furthermore, there is a speed 0 in there for the hardcore players. On all speeds except 0, the game uses its own system of dropping frames in order to increase speed (we didn't touch this, the arcade version did it too). This does affect whether some combos are possible/impossible. Speed 0 is slow, but it will let combo masters and makers of combo videos take frame-dropping out of the equation when they are trying to figure out which crazy combos are possible.
If you look at the speedrun subculture, people can "complete" most classic, deeply loved, games in ridiculously short amounts of time.
Does it devalue Doom to tens of millions of players, many of whom logged hundreds or thousands of hours in it, knowing that someone's managed a speedrun in an hour or two?
The thing is that speed runs also take a great deal of work to create. I'd go as far as to say they're a labor of love. The people who make that 10-minute or 1-hour speed run have spent hours upon hours exploring the game, memorizing it, mastering all the required skills, finding any possible bugs that may be advantageous, how to exploit any such bugs with a high success rate when desired, and optimizing any choices given in the game (such as equipment, paths chosen, etc). And that's before recording the run, which can take hundreds of attempts depending on if it's a segmented run (uses in-game save points) or not, the overall length of the game, the extent of random factors in the game, the difficulty of the game, mistake/time threshold, and so on.
Tool-assisted speed runs, which use emulator features to create an inhumanly perfect run, sometimes have save state re-loads in the tens of thousands (see the super mario 64 tool-assisted speed run on youtube, the number is posted at the start of the video).
All in all, people who speed run a game truly master it, ironically logging hours matching or beyond the hypothetical players whom you propose might be offended by a speed run.
One small problem with all this dynamism people are entertaining is that it makes comparisons between individuals mostly meaningless. I can tell my friend that I beat game X at level No Mercy, but if it plays different with different people, or even with the same person on different days, it deflates somewhat your bragging rights. Not a huge deal, tho.
Well, scores and/or ranks (which bias towards maintaining a high difficulty) would help mitigate this issue.
Dynamic difficulty works in certain games where there's a time limit and score. See the Geometry Wars series, and Pac Man: Championship Edition for successful examples.
It may be applicable to other games without a time limit, but it would have to be done in such a way to give the player feedback on their progress (like a rank you can see at all times, independent of your levels etc), reward the player for playing well (if you complete X part of the game with rank at Y or higher, you get Z reward), the option to bring the difficulty back up if they've fallen far at one point but gotten the hang of things in the mean time, etc. Actually...some of the Megaman Zero games on the GBA had features almost completely matching this, minus the ability to raise your rank other than through consistently good play.
Or you could do it the easy way like Bioware and have the difficulty adjustable at any time, so you can get through a tough spot if you really need to and then get back on with the game at the difficulty level you used before.
Slashdot Mirror
How many construction workers does it take to build a building? There are over 20 specializations that go towards building anything to meet regulations.
How many programmers to create HFT programs?
Oh.
Okay...
Didn't know the NRA spread to Germany. Thanks bro.
...or maybe you should have read the link he included at the end for more details instead of making a ridiculous straw man.
Admittedly, the parent misquoted. He should have said, "You cannot add developers to a late project and make it release sooner". But if you had taken the time and effort to check out that wiki article instead of knee jerking you would've seen the correct quote in the first sentence.
This might also be good for laparoscopic surgeons, who last I knew use a gamepad for crusing around in people's intestines.
I think there's a single elegant approach to follow that allows you to avoid all those assumptions you listed.
Imagine everyone that will be in your database does porn for a living.
Dead serious.
I feel ya there. That kind of approach to a disagreement is one of the few things that make me lose my cool =/
I think you answered your own question without realizing it, but just in case I'll elaborate from what I know.
In paired coding, the coders take turns coding and watching/reading. Like you said, much of coding work isn't typing in the code itself. So having a pair of coders, with one watching, the other writing, and both reading code and thinking about it in the interim, you catch both syntax and logic errors as they happen which can save a lot of time later. Also thanks to an extra perspective, you can overcome mental roadblocks faster...unless you never, ever get stumped on how to approach a problem or implement anything.
There's also no Boolean rule going on here that states that just because two programmers work in a pair, that they also must use the same computer or spend 100% of their time at one person's computer all day or do nothing but focus on one person's code or work on the exact same part of a project. There's time to do all the other daily stuff that you mentioned, and time enough (5-10% of the daily time by your own estimation, times two, plus discussion/explanation time) even on busy days to watch each other code.
It would also be awesome if people acknowledged that there's more than one subgroup of cyclists, and that some of them treat the roads differently than others.
No kidding. I hate cyclists who don't follow traffic laws as much as, if not more than drivers. They make cyclists who obey traffic laws and act predictably/courteously look bad. It creates a negative stereotype, and it shows in these comments.
It's kind of ironic that you mention 3.0 as the impetus for getting fed up with class/level systems, given that version 3.X in D&D bucks the trend of all other versions of D&D. For that matter it bucks the trend of all the class systems of RPGs that I know of except those specifically based off of D&D 3.X. In D&D 3.X you aren't stuck with the first class you pick. You aren't a Fighter from level 1 to 20 unless you want to be. At each new level you choose what class to add to your character, whether it's your existing class or a new one. You can mix up as many classes and prestige classes as you want as you level up to make a character that suits your needs. Each class level in D&D is more a small package of abilities you choose, and at each level you also get to spend skill points as you will - another thing unique to D&D 3.X and games derived directly from it. It's the least rigid, most versatile class system that I know of. It allows you to represent all kinds of character concepts and existing fantasy/game characters accurately if you have enough levels and source books to work with. I can't say the same for other class-based RPGs.
It's true a thumbstick is better for more precise movement, but in FPS generally you can get by well enough with one move speed for running and one for crouching/stealth. At least, I don't know of any competitive (aka PvP) first-person or third-person shooters where stealth or super fine movement is more important than fast and precise aiming.
Actually, you can. Keyboard and mouse is superior compared to a game pad. Complex moves are easier to do with a keyboard and mouse, and the mouse is able to track more precisely and faster than an analog stick. Why do you think console games have some degree of autoaim built in while PC games do not? But the hard evidence came in when Quake 3 arena for the Dreamcast came out. It allowed Dreamcast players to play online with PC players. The best Dreamcast players got trashed by average PC players, even when controlling for ping/latency. This came up several years ago but there should still be a decent amount of info on the findings available via google.
Don't judge the effectiveness of months-long operations by one battle. General Anthony Zinni ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Zinni )had quite a bit of experience with the US operations in Somalia and he firmly believed that the US armed forces were capable of stabilizing the region with a unified and recognized Somali government (opposed to territorial warlords), but they were ordered to leave by President Clinton prematurely. You may want to read his memoirs to get a more detailed view of how things went down there, including the Somali politics!
One thing I think that has toned down the scare factor in RE4 and 5 is the way the new "zombie" level enemies (which I'll refer to as Ganados) behave.
Zombies felt no pain, were rotting, and wanted to eat you. Ganados flinch when shot by a 9mm, look fairly healthy, and generally try to bash you to death.
Zombies required a shotgun or higher grade weapon with scarce ammo to stop in their tracks with a single shot. Ganados stop in their tracks when shot with anything. And if you shoot them in the right places, you can do a huge knock back melee attack.
The Ganados seem more like "real" people, so they're more familiar, more predictable. The older zombies were unnatural and unrelenting. If you had 5 zombies coming at you and all you had was a 9mm, you were in deep shit. But if you now face 5 Ganados coming at you, you can more easily manage them by shooting them to slow them down, or you can shoot one in the leg and do a melee attack that knocks back your target. It might even knock back or daze other enemies.
I'd like to see the next RE game feature the old unrelenting zombies (and hell, throw in the crimson heads from Resident Evil: REmake) with the new control and combat engine.
I have a Linux box, I can program my own games. They will not have glitzy graphics like the gaming house ones, but they are just as much fun. I am working on upgrading a version of ROGUE that I found on Source Forge, just as entertaining as things like EverQuest but you don't need a $6000 graphics card to play it.
Hi. Have you seen this before? I think you'd find it relevant :)
I really wish I had mod points to mod you up and mod the GP down for your elegant retort.
Take a look at the player-made content for TF2 some time. You'll find that a significant chunk of it stands up to the maps made by Valve. So I'm sorry, but your reasoning does not readily apply here.
Now why would PC gamers pay for levels when they can get free, player made levels using the free SDK? What would stop players from making slight modifications to the soon-to-be released Versus campaign levels and releasing them for free? Would stopping players from doing so be worth the cost to Valve?
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/file/437678/50550
I don't know but whenever I take an hour nap in a huge lawn near my work, I get mobbed by spiders.
For example, if you are a guest at somebody's house, it's polite to ask for what you need, rather than simply state the need. You wouldn't say "where's the bathroom" unless it's a rather close friend. Instead, you'll say something like "Do you mind if I use your restroom?".
Which, if you think about it, is pretty silly.
Sorry to say it, but manners matter.
Pretty deep!
Uhhh in October I built a PC that can run GTA4 smoothly for about 550.00 USD. I could have easily brought the price down and still run the game "at acceptable rates". I dunno where you pulled that exorbant price figure from, but you can see the recommended system specs here - http://blog.wired.com/games/2008/10/gta-iv-pc-delay.html
You can meet or exceed those recommended specs for PC for the price of a PS3 + USB keyboard + USB mouse + buying the game again. Just check out some systems on an online PC store (tigerdirect is the only comparable option to newegg and zipzoomfly that ships outside the USA that I know of) or by building it yourself.
Regarding the older games in the series: they always had a turbo slider, so you could change the speed of the game. Oh well...
Both the original and the HD remix version of the game does in fact have that slider. The line from the GP,
As for the game feeling like it's locked on a high super-turbo mode....I think that falls in with the territory of calling it a remix.
was a load of nonsense. Behold, factual information rather than vague conjecture!
14) Game speed. The game speeds match the arcade version of the game, but this is confusing so bear with me. In SF HD Remix, speed 3 is the default and is intended for tournament play and online play. It's the same speed as Japanese arcade speed 3, which is also known as US arcade speed 2. You don't really have to understand what's going on with all that, just play at the default speed 3 and be happy that it matches the arcade.
Furthermore, there is a speed 0 in there for the hardcore players. On all speeds except 0, the game uses its own system of dropping frames in order to increase speed (we didn't touch this, the arcade version did it too). This does affect whether some combos are possible/impossible. Speed 0 is slow, but it will let combo masters and makers of combo videos take frame-dropping out of the equation when they are trying to figure out which crazy combos are possible.
This information is straight from http://www.sirlin.net/articles/street-fighter-hd-remix-features.html . Sirlin was the lead designer for the game. So it doesn't get much more definitive than that.
The thing is that speed runs also take a great deal of work to create. I'd go as far as to say they're a labor of love. The people who make that 10-minute or 1-hour speed run have spent hours upon hours exploring the game, memorizing it, mastering all the required skills, finding any possible bugs that may be advantageous, how to exploit any such bugs with a high success rate when desired, and optimizing any choices given in the game (such as equipment, paths chosen, etc). And that's before recording the run, which can take hundreds of attempts depending on if it's a segmented run (uses in-game save points) or not, the overall length of the game, the extent of random factors in the game, the difficulty of the game, mistake/time threshold, and so on.
Tool-assisted speed runs, which use emulator features to create an inhumanly perfect run, sometimes have save state re-loads in the tens of thousands (see the super mario 64 tool-assisted speed run on youtube, the number is posted at the start of the video).
All in all, people who speed run a game truly master it, ironically logging hours matching or beyond the hypothetical players whom you propose might be offended by a speed run.
One small problem with all this dynamism people are entertaining is that it makes comparisons between individuals mostly meaningless. I can tell my friend that I beat game X at level No Mercy, but if it plays different with different people, or even with the same person on different days, it deflates somewhat your bragging rights. Not a huge deal, tho.
Well, scores and/or ranks (which bias towards maintaining a high difficulty) would help mitigate this issue.
It may be applicable to other games without a time limit, but it would have to be done in such a way to give the player feedback on their progress (like a rank you can see at all times, independent of your levels etc), reward the player for playing well (if you complete X part of the game with rank at Y or higher, you get Z reward), the option to bring the difficulty back up if they've fallen far at one point but gotten the hang of things in the mean time, etc. Actually...some of the Megaman Zero games on the GBA had features almost completely matching this, minus the ability to raise your rank other than through consistently good play.
Or you could do it the easy way like Bioware and have the difficulty adjustable at any time, so you can get through a tough spot if you really need to and then get back on with the game at the difficulty level you used before.