He may have confused the terms, but he's got the right idea. Diamond is the hardest substance, but it's fairly easy to chip off a piece of it.
Carbon Fiber has similar issues. It's extremely strong under some stresses, but under others it snaps easily. From what I gather, CF is very rigid, but doesn't take impact or bending well.
Indeed. I took a picture of the cover of a game at Best Buy a couple months back. In moments I had a gaggle of employees staring at me, and a manager approaching. I can't take pictures. Why? 'Loss Prevention' says so. No other reason given, except something about 'prices'. After inquiring at other stores if I could take pictures of their prices, the answer was always 'no'. Why? Because they're afraid of losing money to people with lower prices.
I simply wanted to brag that my country had a certain game before my friend's country. I wasn't even planning to buy that. I was planning to buy 3 other pieces of software, a color laser printer, and some gaming stuff for the PC. They lost about $1200 in sales that day, and much more since then. Loss Prevention my ass... Loss Prediction.
I would have far prefered that the 'classic' controller not plug into the wand. It's annoying. It could simply have been a nice wireless controller, like everything else in this generation. Instead, I end up balancing a wiimote in my lap while I futz with the cord from the classic controller while playing.
I disagree that 'everyone' would have used the classic controller, too. The whole point of the Wii was the Wiimote and that's what would be used whenever possible. On the other hand, travesties like Super Paper Mario would have used the classic controller instead, with the wiimote serving a few odd functions. (Or none at all, for my money. It adds nothing to the game.)
Wii Sports, Trauma Center, Carnival Games... Those all work best with the motion controls. Just about everything else is worse, especially the FPSs.
The article also says it'll require Windows and the files will expire in 7 days. It's almost certainly Windows' DRM.
Oh well, guess I'll keep paying my blood money to the cable company and downloading the improved versions from the usual places. (Improved meaning I can get it whenever I want, with no DRM, no commercials, and in a format that I like.)
I agree with 3 of those... The adverts... I don't care so much. I understand they need to make money somehow, and as long as it's DRM-free I'll be able to fast-forward past the ones that drive me nuts.
As for 'quick access'... I typically download an episode (not from NBC yet, obviously) faster than I'd be able to drive to Blockbuster and back, even if you don't count the time it takes in the store. I don't see that they'll have a problem with 'quick access'.
Yeah, that was the difference. I thought you meant failed as a business. (Though, at this point, failure the lawsuit and failing the business are the same thing.)
"wasn't originally in the standard, it was added later"
Yeah, I covered that.
Good point on the 'unplug' thing. It's definitely easier to plug and unplug the smaller one, especially since seeing the corners on the big one takes me a couple tries if it's turned funny.
I hope exactly the opposite... I hope they have the sense to make wii-like wands, but keep the current joypads as well. In fact, the PS3 is poised to do that in this generation... They can firmware upgrade at any time, and the bluetooth will connect more than 1 kind of controller to it. (I've got a bluetooth tv-style remote for it.) If they simply re-shape the controller and keep the motion sensing, they'll have a wii-mote for the ps3.
I love my Wii, but the pitiful resolution always shocks me when I switch back to it after playing the PS3 or 360 for a while. The games are still fun, but I could wish they were visually stunning -and- fun.
Exactly, except the fraction. Either the community owns it, or it doesn't... There's no 'partially community owned'. It doesn't REALLY matter, though, since the project is open source. If Sun gets stupid, fork time - 'Completely Amazing Office' has a nice ring to it. The fact that the initials CAO is pronounced 'cow' should not be taken into consideration.;)
No, I tempered that with facts... Microsoft does typically have a lifecycle of a few years on their products. Also, most of their games work on 360 and PC both, and it won't be long before the PC's most basic video cards out-do the 360's. MS is going to have to figure out how to keep their console alive when that happens. One option (and maybe the only viable one) is to release a new console.
I admit it. I'm a sucker, and I'll buy the next MS Console when it comes out, whether it be 4 years or 10. I resisted the 360 for about a year, and I resisted the PS3 for about 6 months. (Getting the PS3 used and super cheap had a lot to do with that, though.)
I'm not yet convinced that Mass Effect is the next Halo, though... They've been advertising it as an RPG and it's extremely hard to get a long-running RPG series. Planning to have 3 of them before they even start reminds me a lot of Advent Rising... AR even got Orson Scott Card to write the plot, and where's the second game? I haven't even heard anything about it.
Anyhow, I think they'll need a LOT of luck to manage to get all 3 Mass Effect games to market before the 360 goes the way of the coelacanth. (Extinct, but with a few copies that didn't know they should be dead.)
So, 1 a year then, eh? Sony's been saying the 360's lifespan is about 5 years, since that's how the original XBox went. If they're correct (and I think they probably are) then there's 4 years left to produce 3 games... Pretty tight, if you plan to actually make changes to the engine. Not so bad if you just plan to change the levels and plot.
Second Life currently works by storing all the avatar's data (and graphics) server-side and streaming them to the client on request.
When the client goes to the new server, does that server then have to request and store all the graphics associated with that avatar? Or do other users have to request the data from the originating server? At what point do you say 'this character belongs to this server'? If someone creates a character on my private server, then goes elsewhere -forever-, am I forced to host their files on my server forever? What if the originating server goes offline... Is my avatar defunct?
I think this is a neat project, but I think that the fundamental way Second Life works (everything is server-side) won't support it. Everything will have to be client-side, which means SL could no longer charge people to upload graphics, sounds, and animations.
On the other hand, maybe they don't mean for this to be for the common man. Maybe they are only interested in creating a 'standard' that can only be used by companies willing to give them money and provide dedicated hosting for their own characters.
While I'm mildly annoyed by having to flip them over, I quickly learned to simply look at the plug before I stick it in. Having it be flippable would mean duplicating wires and/or contacts and would make the cables more susceptible to damage and more expensive.
As for the ends... Blame the device manufacturers. There were originally 2 ends, the fat one and the flat one, and there was 1 of each on every cable. All the others with 2.5mm and other proprietary ends that work on nothing else are solely the fault of the OEMs. Nobody asked them to do it, it never made sense to do it, and it's just a huge pain in the ass for everyone. Even the 'mini' one that's often used on small devices now wasn't originally in the standard, it was added later since a device that's only 1/4" tall can't fit a 1/2" plug into it. (I don't know the actual height, but you get my drift.)
Great article. Gives a lot more information that anything else so far. I've also been wondering if you can make it private... From that article, I'd guess the answer is 'no'. Once you share it, it looks like it's open to anyone.
Ignore the other response... The article didn't even say 'mmorpg'. They said 'one of the most popular virtual worlds', and that's certainly true.
It's simply not accessible enough. The web browser is very easy to get and use, but the VRML browser has always been a pain to even find, let alone use. Control schemes and movement typically suck, and the 3D worlds have always been very low-definition by necessity.
Second Life is the best VR browser out there, and even it is just barely above average as far as controls and movement go.
The other problem is that 3D doesn't really add much to most interactions. It's neat to think of having a 3D TV and all that, but will you -really- get much more out of the experience over regular TV? It's the same with VR on the web. A full VR world restricts movement rather than enhancing it, and inserting little 3D images into pages doesn't show anything that inserting a GIF can't.
Bah, answering myself... It will support physics and currently only has 2D clients. They're working on the 3D client. Sounds like it's more pre-alpha than alpha.
Has anyone got any -real- info on this? Does it include physics? Is it DirectX based? How flexible is it? Do you run the server, or do they? Can you do commercial apps, or only free ones? Can you restrict access to your worlds?
I can think of quite a few fun little physics-based games to make, but it would totally depend on how flexible this system is. I've been thinking about getting into game programmer for quite a while, but with the current frameworks out there, it's not a trivial task. This kit makes it sound trivial.
I've signed up for the alpha, of course... But I'd rather have some real information now.
I hear people say that X movie was bad, despite it raking in tens of millions of dollars in the first weekend... If it was REALLY that bad, they wouldn't have made that much money. In fact, I really enjoyed Even Almighty. I think it's a better movie than most movies 50 years ago. It may not be as good as the best movies, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to be entertaining.
I think we've been jaded by so many truly good movies that we've lost sight of what a 'bad' movie really is. I've a friend who regularly finds movies on IMBD that get like 2 and 3 stars, and he watches them... And reports that they were indeed as bad as people said. Those movies are so bad that they couldn't get investors to advertise them. And yet, the few I've watched are comparable to most of the ones in the 50s... Horrible acting, bad sound effects, bad or no visual effects, and totally transparent plot.
In other words, to find movies as bad as a typical 50s movie, you have to look hard these days. The industry has come a long way.
While I love KDE, GTK is 'free'er and I have to respect that. If I had to pick a graphics toolkit for commercial use, it wouldn't be Qt. If I wanted to make a commercial app for the Greenphone and Qtopia, I'd have to pay trolltech. If I wanted to make it for OpenMoko, I only have to give back any upgrades I make to GTK.
Since I'm both a user and developer, I can see the good in both toolkits... It's actually an ugly decision. I would like to eventually write some commercial games that use the accelerometers in the neo1973, so OpenMoko would be my choice.
Of course, I'm saying this without having actually used either system... Using the toolkit is no gaurantee you'll end up with a good, usable interface. I'll probably grab the 'emulators' for them and check them out before I decide.
Can you say that your way costs $9/mo or less? A PSTN line here would be $25/mo minimum. Setting up a PC here to run 24/7 and take care of my Asterisk would cost at least $9/mo in power.
So on the theory that Skype might die some day, I'm supposed to pay $25+/mo extra? That'd buy the Skype phone in 6 months. If they died in 6 months (which I seriously doubt) I could throw the phone away and be no worse off.
Thanks for the info, but Skype is cheaper. I pay $9/mo for unlimited in and out to real phone numbers (in the US and Canada) and of course internet contacts are free to anywhere.
For $150, I could get a phone that'll work anywhere I have a wifi connection. That's just work and home, but it's not intended to replace my cell, just to supplement it. At the moment I'm just using my n800 for Skype, though... It wasn't doing much else anyhow.
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He may have confused the terms, but he's got the right idea. Diamond is the hardest substance, but it's fairly easy to chip off a piece of it.
Carbon Fiber has similar issues. It's extremely strong under some stresses, but under others it snaps easily. From what I gather, CF is very rigid, but doesn't take impact or bending well.
Indeed. I took a picture of the cover of a game at Best Buy a couple months back. In moments I had a gaggle of employees staring at me, and a manager approaching. I can't take pictures. Why? 'Loss Prevention' says so. No other reason given, except something about 'prices'. After inquiring at other stores if I could take pictures of their prices, the answer was always 'no'. Why? Because they're afraid of losing money to people with lower prices.
I simply wanted to brag that my country had a certain game before my friend's country. I wasn't even planning to buy that. I was planning to buy 3 other pieces of software, a color laser printer, and some gaming stuff for the PC. They lost about $1200 in sales that day, and much more since then. Loss Prevention my ass... Loss Prediction.
I would have far prefered that the 'classic' controller not plug into the wand. It's annoying. It could simply have been a nice wireless controller, like everything else in this generation. Instead, I end up balancing a wiimote in my lap while I futz with the cord from the classic controller while playing.
I disagree that 'everyone' would have used the classic controller, too. The whole point of the Wii was the Wiimote and that's what would be used whenever possible. On the other hand, travesties like Super Paper Mario would have used the classic controller instead, with the wiimote serving a few odd functions. (Or none at all, for my money. It adds nothing to the game.)
Wii Sports, Trauma Center, Carnival Games... Those all work best with the motion controls. Just about everything else is worse, especially the FPSs.
The article also says it'll require Windows and the files will expire in 7 days. It's almost certainly Windows' DRM.
Oh well, guess I'll keep paying my blood money to the cable company and downloading the improved versions from the usual places. (Improved meaning I can get it whenever I want, with no DRM, no commercials, and in a format that I like.)
I agree with 3 of those... The adverts... I don't care so much. I understand they need to make money somehow, and as long as it's DRM-free I'll be able to fast-forward past the ones that drive me nuts.
As for 'quick access'... I typically download an episode (not from NBC yet, obviously) faster than I'd be able to drive to Blockbuster and back, even if you don't count the time it takes in the store. I don't see that they'll have a problem with 'quick access'.
Yeah, that was the difference. I thought you meant failed as a business. (Though, at this point, failure the lawsuit and failing the business are the same thing.)
"Er, so SCO failed because Linux was too successful?"
How did you get that from what he said? He claimed that Linux was no longer threatened by SCO, not that Linux was ever doing the threatening.
"wasn't originally in the standard, it was added later"
Yeah, I covered that.
Good point on the 'unplug' thing. It's definitely easier to plug and unplug the smaller one, especially since seeing the corners on the big one takes me a couple tries if it's turned funny.
I hope exactly the opposite... I hope they have the sense to make wii-like wands, but keep the current joypads as well. In fact, the PS3 is poised to do that in this generation... They can firmware upgrade at any time, and the bluetooth will connect more than 1 kind of controller to it. (I've got a bluetooth tv-style remote for it.) If they simply re-shape the controller and keep the motion sensing, they'll have a wii-mote for the ps3.
I love my Wii, but the pitiful resolution always shocks me when I switch back to it after playing the PS3 or 360 for a while. The games are still fun, but I could wish they were visually stunning -and- fun.
Exactly, except the fraction. Either the community owns it, or it doesn't... There's no 'partially community owned'. It doesn't REALLY matter, though, since the project is open source. If Sun gets stupid, fork time - 'Completely Amazing Office' has a nice ring to it. The fact that the initials CAO is pronounced 'cow' should not be taken into consideration. ;)
No, I tempered that with facts... Microsoft does typically have a lifecycle of a few years on their products. Also, most of their games work on 360 and PC both, and it won't be long before the PC's most basic video cards out-do the 360's. MS is going to have to figure out how to keep their console alive when that happens. One option (and maybe the only viable one) is to release a new console.
I admit it. I'm a sucker, and I'll buy the next MS Console when it comes out, whether it be 4 years or 10. I resisted the 360 for about a year, and I resisted the PS3 for about 6 months. (Getting the PS3 used and super cheap had a lot to do with that, though.)
I'm not yet convinced that Mass Effect is the next Halo, though... They've been advertising it as an RPG and it's extremely hard to get a long-running RPG series. Planning to have 3 of them before they even start reminds me a lot of Advent Rising... AR even got Orson Scott Card to write the plot, and where's the second game? I haven't even heard anything about it.
Anyhow, I think they'll need a LOT of luck to manage to get all 3 Mass Effect games to market before the 360 goes the way of the coelacanth. (Extinct, but with a few copies that didn't know they should be dead.)
So, 1 a year then, eh? Sony's been saying the 360's lifespan is about 5 years, since that's how the original XBox went. If they're correct (and I think they probably are) then there's 4 years left to produce 3 games... Pretty tight, if you plan to actually make changes to the engine. Not so bad if you just plan to change the levels and plot.
15 seconds on a site about a toolkit that's in pre-alpha told you whether it would succeed or not?
What's the lottery numbers this week, while you're at it?
I think you missed the most disturbing bit: "One fight takes place in a sewer, featuring solid water effects."
Eww? The sewer was bad enough, but 'solid water effects?' The mere beginnings of imagination have me wishing it wasn't almost lunch time.
You're right. I forgot the way more complicated solution. Silly me!
Second Life currently works by storing all the avatar's data (and graphics) server-side and streaming them to the client on request.
When the client goes to the new server, does that server then have to request and store all the graphics associated with that avatar? Or do other users have to request the data from the originating server? At what point do you say 'this character belongs to this server'? If someone creates a character on my private server, then goes elsewhere -forever-, am I forced to host their files on my server forever? What if the originating server goes offline... Is my avatar defunct?
I think this is a neat project, but I think that the fundamental way Second Life works (everything is server-side) won't support it. Everything will have to be client-side, which means SL could no longer charge people to upload graphics, sounds, and animations.
On the other hand, maybe they don't mean for this to be for the common man. Maybe they are only interested in creating a 'standard' that can only be used by companies willing to give them money and provide dedicated hosting for their own characters.
While I'm mildly annoyed by having to flip them over, I quickly learned to simply look at the plug before I stick it in. Having it be flippable would mean duplicating wires and/or contacts and would make the cables more susceptible to damage and more expensive.
As for the ends... Blame the device manufacturers. There were originally 2 ends, the fat one and the flat one, and there was 1 of each on every cable. All the others with 2.5mm and other proprietary ends that work on nothing else are solely the fault of the OEMs. Nobody asked them to do it, it never made sense to do it, and it's just a huge pain in the ass for everyone. Even the 'mini' one that's often used on small devices now wasn't originally in the standard, it was added later since a device that's only 1/4" tall can't fit a 1/2" plug into it. (I don't know the actual height, but you get my drift.)
Great article. Gives a lot more information that anything else so far. I've also been wondering if you can make it private... From that article, I'd guess the answer is 'no'. Once you share it, it looks like it's open to anyone.
Ignore the other response... The article didn't even say 'mmorpg'. They said 'one of the most popular virtual worlds', and that's certainly true.
It's simply not accessible enough. The web browser is very easy to get and use, but the VRML browser has always been a pain to even find, let alone use. Control schemes and movement typically suck, and the 3D worlds have always been very low-definition by necessity.
Second Life is the best VR browser out there, and even it is just barely above average as far as controls and movement go.
The other problem is that 3D doesn't really add much to most interactions. It's neat to think of having a 3D TV and all that, but will you -really- get much more out of the experience over regular TV? It's the same with VR on the web. A full VR world restricts movement rather than enhancing it, and inserting little 3D images into pages doesn't show anything that inserting a GIF can't.
Bah, answering myself... It will support physics and currently only has 2D clients. They're working on the 3D client. Sounds like it's more pre-alpha than alpha.
Has anyone got any -real- info on this? Does it include physics? Is it DirectX based? How flexible is it? Do you run the server, or do they? Can you do commercial apps, or only free ones? Can you restrict access to your worlds?
I can think of quite a few fun little physics-based games to make, but it would totally depend on how flexible this system is. I've been thinking about getting into game programmer for quite a while, but with the current frameworks out there, it's not a trivial task. This kit makes it sound trivial.
I've signed up for the alpha, of course... But I'd rather have some real information now.
I hear people say that X movie was bad, despite it raking in tens of millions of dollars in the first weekend... If it was REALLY that bad, they wouldn't have made that much money. In fact, I really enjoyed Even Almighty. I think it's a better movie than most movies 50 years ago. It may not be as good as the best movies, but it doesn't have to be. It just has to be entertaining.
I think we've been jaded by so many truly good movies that we've lost sight of what a 'bad' movie really is. I've a friend who regularly finds movies on IMBD that get like 2 and 3 stars, and he watches them... And reports that they were indeed as bad as people said. Those movies are so bad that they couldn't get investors to advertise them. And yet, the few I've watched are comparable to most of the ones in the 50s... Horrible acting, bad sound effects, bad or no visual effects, and totally transparent plot.
In other words, to find movies as bad as a typical 50s movie, you have to look hard these days. The industry has come a long way.
While I love KDE, GTK is 'free'er and I have to respect that. If I had to pick a graphics toolkit for commercial use, it wouldn't be Qt. If I wanted to make a commercial app for the Greenphone and Qtopia, I'd have to pay trolltech. If I wanted to make it for OpenMoko, I only have to give back any upgrades I make to GTK.
Since I'm both a user and developer, I can see the good in both toolkits... It's actually an ugly decision. I would like to eventually write some commercial games that use the accelerometers in the neo1973, so OpenMoko would be my choice.
Of course, I'm saying this without having actually used either system... Using the toolkit is no gaurantee you'll end up with a good, usable interface. I'll probably grab the 'emulators' for them and check them out before I decide.
Can you say that your way costs $9/mo or less? A PSTN line here would be $25/mo minimum. Setting up a PC here to run 24/7 and take care of my Asterisk would cost at least $9/mo in power.
So on the theory that Skype might die some day, I'm supposed to pay $25+/mo extra? That'd buy the Skype phone in 6 months. If they died in 6 months (which I seriously doubt) I could throw the phone away and be no worse off.
Thanks for the info, but Skype is cheaper. I pay $9/mo for unlimited in and out to real phone numbers (in the US and Canada) and of course internet contacts are free to anywhere.
For $150, I could get a phone that'll work anywhere I have a wifi connection. That's just work and home, but it's not intended to replace my cell, just to supplement it. At the moment I'm just using my n800 for Skype, though... It wasn't doing much else anyhow.