I agree, however you can abstract certain things to a very high level where it allows users to "fill in the blank" with very standard tools, such as those found in any RTF editor or simple vector drawing program. The low level "techie" parts should always be in libraries or specific external tools/programs that you can pipe data through, the medium stuff should be the glue that holds it all together, and the rest, like the GUI, menus, help, language translation, documentation, program icon, etc, could be done at a very high level. A very simple to edit, high level script language that controls the user interface, could even be used to control various program parts, and encourage users to dip their toes into more technical regions.
Allow your program to pause and show you exactly where in the high level script you are, have mouse-over variables that show you their contents, mouse-over syntax that highlights the affected objects live in your program... Make it easy to substitute other libraries/tools for the ones your program uses, and let the user drop-in/drop-out additional features in that way (perhaps an "XML for libraries" could be done)... The best stuff to learn from is programs that let you mess around and manipulate them at a high level in realtime and let you see what your changes do.
Sure it may be pie-in-the-sky sounding stuff, but maybe in the future you could just highlight a bunch of libraries and tools, hook them up flow-chart style (the app does some magic to determine the reguired & optional bits to control options/parameters, see which menus they should live in, and create a default template GUI), and you could have just started creating a new program. Maybe something like this only a lot more abstract.
It should already be stupid to commit a crime. This guy seems to think that criminals don't believe laws are logical and beneficial. If they are committing a crime, they have already decided they don't care about that. A lot of crimes ARE stupid and are committed without regard to logic or consequence. This guy seems to think criminals will suddenly start thinking twice.
Look, you can't PREVENT crimes. Even if you have a camera, you'll only just be watching one already in progress. And if a criminal is worried about the camera, he will probably shoot it down. With an unlicensed weapon, no doubt. Way to go.
How would Dead Space or BioShock be without the atmosphere? How effective would Doom 3 have been without its shadows? How many people had trouble telling the difference between a dangerous mine and an ammo clip in GoldenEye on the N64 in a squashed 4-player split-screen?
Answer: Graphics are very important if you use them well, and they're meaningless if you don't have a game to back them up.
It would be a great idea to create unique single player game AI by making players substitute for monster AI. Players would get online with a game, say, an FPS. When your character enters a room that has enemies, the game can check if other players are in that same area online. If two characters are supposed to be fighting, do it like America's Army and make both sides appear as if they're the "good guy", except limit the health for the enemy character so that both can appear to have won in their own game, since it's a single player game. However, the enemy you have just fought would have had some sort of unique player-based AI.
By extension, perhaps player behavior can be scraped for other things, such as basing an NPC on the dialog tree choices that a user chose in their game, and have two users "talk to each other" without knowing it.
Sure, but one area the Wiimote has always made sense is first person shooters and other games that require you to target objects. Why doesn't Epic think Natal could work in its games?
On Internet Explorer, their excuse is that they're starting you with a clean slate configuration, even though their configuration files should be able to be interpreted and imported since MS designed them. But with Firefox? What's their excuse for changing a 3rd party application's configuration? Maybe this is a sign that MS is directly supporting Firefox under Windows now?
Those one-time bonus cards are an insult to me as a gamer, and I don't use those codes or buy any of the DLC as I believe a game should be self-contained and not require anything extra to be enjoyed, otherwise IT IS A BROKEN GAME.
I keep all of the games I buy and never sell them back, but this really pisses me off. I'm a collector (maybe not as rabid as some, I only care about the games I like and not about collecting every last rare gem), and I expect my games to work in the future as is.
Systems can break down, networks can be shut down. I don't want to go back and play something where there are big pieces missing for one reason or another. I'm not paying some company to hold parts of my game hostage.
I've got MadWorld, The Conduit, No More Heroes, Scarface, The Godfather, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2, Sam & Max, Resident Evil 4 & Umbrella Chronicles, Okami, Trauma Center, Excite Truck, Zelda, Blast Works.
These are all great games for hard core gamers. I admit, the Wii doesn't have every base covered, but for a bunch of games that work well with motion controls and are fun for hard core gamers, they have a decent spread. And if you wrote off games like Excite Truck or Okami, as many did, give them a second look.
I like the idea that anyone can publish something, anyone can remark on something, and anyone can seek out your comments. People can communicate in a neutral medium without worrying about immediate personal repercussions because then they don't fear to speak their minds.
You don't learn a lot when you can only see one shade in the spectrum, but on the internet you have everything, and this feels like a more realistic representation of what people think. You can see peoples' arguments instead of a finished product that can never be changed. You see the etymology of peoples' thoughts.
We haven't really had much structure in society, in terms of interpersonal relationships. They are wildly different. Personalities are wildly different. We all have different goals and different reasons and different opinions. Everyone has to learn about being on this planet together, but you aren't really privy to everyone's personal process. You just hear whatever comes out of their mouth at one given time, even though what they think, and what think they know, is constantly evolving.
The fact that you can observe all perspectives can help people learn about all of the different ways of thinking about something, and different ways of dealing with ways of thinking that are different than yours, but the internet is like a social equalizer. You may have search rankings, and ad priorities, and certain computers will ship with a general default configuration, and you may have favorite bookmarks that you load up every day that may put a bias on what a given individual will be exposed to. Invariably, however, people will find their way into many different areas of interest, which will present them with many different groups of people who will speak about things that they have picked up from many other places, and points of view are dispersed widely and vary widely, yet they are all available.
On web sites, you can have discussion forums with different topics that have different posts and within them, different threads, and different arguments. On Wikipedia, you can move through any topic by clicking on the area of interest, and you can see how the article changed and why. On Slashdot, you have people writing stories and comments and voting each other up. On 2chan you have unmoderated discussions on a wide variety of interests. Anyone can step in and drop some heavy knowledge, or they can blurt out an off-the-cuff remark, but we get way more variety than our every day communications, and we can seek out any topic we can come up with to get such perspectives.
I think it makes us healthier that we can see all that and take it in in a more unbiased manner. It drives home the point that the truth is the truth no matter where it comes from, because bullshit is less tolerated and picked apart. Conclusions may be drawn, but topics are forever evolving and nothing really ever stays the same on the internet. Even though there's a lot of stupid shit on the internet, I feel like I'm learning a lot of important stuff that I couldn't in school or a library, and even a lot that I can. But it's all easy and accessible.
People write, read, and pick apart literature as well. Movies too. I guess it's called "entertainment", but it also gives us insight into the human mind, so that's interesting as well.
No, it's because of the water pack. Miyamoto (the game's creator) said the goal of this design was to afford players a lot more forgiveness when it comes to jumping in a 3D space. Spatial orientation with only a 2D image is something you have to adapt to, and Mario Sunshine allows you to float in mid-air so you can catch yourself or correct your jump. They also let you attack enemies while standing still, by just spraying at them. Mario has more hit points in Mario Sunshine. In Mario Galaxy, you lose special suits after one hit, but you keep your back-pack in Mario Sunshine. There are a lot of reasons the game is more forgiving.
Or like in the new Prince of Persia, skip all the fights. My s.o. has a fun time with the game otherwise, why force someone to hand over the controller to someone else to get past a certain part of the game? Or those puzzle elements they throw in, I wasted a lot of time on those pools of dark matter that you have to connect. Why is that even in Prince of Persia?
Anyway, I just hope it isn't an excuse for developers to not refine and playtest their games. One crappy gameplay element, and I already hear the P.R. machine winding up ready to say "Oh, we put that in for the hard core!"
When you regulate it, people feel stifled and like they have to share important things in private. When you leave it open, there are bound to be some offensive people and some lunatics. There is no "win" state, there's always a trade-off. However, you can always choose to ignore these things as they are not forced on you any more than any other thing. We all have to deal with things we don't like, and something you may like might be something someone else will find offensive. There is no please-them-all solution, but we all have to be happy together. That's where respect comes in, but there's always disrespectful shit disturbers as well. As a society, we have to grow up and accept and tolerate and respect and understand. The sooner we accept that, the better.
It makes sense, but I'd even rather have a $30 DS or Wii, or used PS3/360 title than buy a blu-ray or DVD at full price these days. I just get my movies used for cheap.
It's a bit disingenuous to say that people only/mostly install CFW to play pirated games. The PSP didn't start out having very good games, and people still say its library is pretty slim. Most people I know who own a PSP only use it to play homebrew, and not PSP games at all. I don't think the PSP would have risen to such popularity if it wasn't for the homebrew scene.
As an actual games machine, it's cumbersome. The load times are long, UMDs suck up your battery, the games are too involving, and the amount/type of buttons on the PSP is not suited for the type of experiences that officially licensed developers are trying to cram in there. Homebrew games are perfect, and with emulators you have save states.
People don't like putting their PSPs to sleep because the battery still gets drained rather quickly, and you can't switch out games and resume quite as quickly as you can switch ROMs and load up a save state. If you play in short bursts you tend to forget where you are in a lengthier PSP game. So homebrew is much more attractive. For official games, dumping your UMDs on a memory stick is also a lot handier than carrying around a bunch of discs; They load faster, and use less battery.
While piracy is a problem on the PSP, it is not its biggest problem. The games just don't deliver what consumers want.
I'd rather they do this than doing away with the used market altogether with the market heading towards DRMed digital distribution that ties a copy to one system.
Having a large screen is a problem too, it's much harder to secure and absorbs more of the shock during a fall than the DS's screens, which is why 9/10 times you'll get dead pixels on a dropped PSP, and in the same situation the DS's screens will be fine.
Wikileaks has also played an important role in revealing secrets. In addition, Wikipedia also helps people disseminate information that is direct and to the point, in plain language, with references and with links to articles containing more specific information. It's an invaluable tool for knowledge. I hope it never disappears, and I am glad that they offer burnt-to-DVD versions of articles.
Plus, every time I visit a web site for information, I save it, because I never know if that information will disappear or change. When I go back, I save another copy so I can compare, and also so I can retain information in previous copies should I need to reference it.
It does seem convenient since MS could use the influx of cash (not to mention the good press if adoption goes well). However, considering that staying with a mature XP has worked out better, would it be worth it for businesses with existing XP installations to start migrating to Vista now since it has been tested, and hope for an extension of Vista's availability and support in the same vein as XP's?
I play games to be entertained, so I don't have to make my own fun. But in reality, things aren't so black and white.
Look at LittleBigPlanet, it has a great single player game, as well as a great construction mode. It also is fun co-op. Fun for everyone. In GTA4, you can play the story or mess around and both are rewarding. Medal of Honor 2 for the Wii has a FPS campaign mode as well as an on-rails shooter experience using the same campaign, and you can choose which you want to play.
How about: software that doesn't nag you, software that doesn't have radical GUI changes just to attract you to the new version, software that doesn't drop features to get you to buy new products or have Pro versions that you have to upgrade to, software that works together instead of trying to funnel you into its proprietary format, software that doesn't try to take over your preferences or install companion applications, software that doesn't expire.
Slashdot Mirror
Nevermind Moonlight, even Silverlight can't keep up with itself. The OS X version isn't even in sync.
I agree, however you can abstract certain things to a very high level where it allows users to "fill in the blank" with very standard tools, such as those found in any RTF editor or simple vector drawing program. The low level "techie" parts should always be in libraries or specific external tools/programs that you can pipe data through, the medium stuff should be the glue that holds it all together, and the rest, like the GUI, menus, help, language translation, documentation, program icon, etc, could be done at a very high level. A very simple to edit, high level script language that controls the user interface, could even be used to control various program parts, and encourage users to dip their toes into more technical regions.
Allow your program to pause and show you exactly where in the high level script you are, have mouse-over variables that show you their contents, mouse-over syntax that highlights the affected objects live in your program... Make it easy to substitute other libraries/tools for the ones your program uses, and let the user drop-in/drop-out additional features in that way (perhaps an "XML for libraries" could be done)... The best stuff to learn from is programs that let you mess around and manipulate them at a high level in realtime and let you see what your changes do.
Sure it may be pie-in-the-sky sounding stuff, but maybe in the future you could just highlight a bunch of libraries and tools, hook them up flow-chart style (the app does some magic to determine the reguired & optional bits to control options/parameters, see which menus they should live in, and create a default template GUI), and you could have just started creating a new program. Maybe something like this only a lot more abstract.
"It would be stupid to commit a crime."
It should already be stupid to commit a crime. This guy seems to think that criminals don't believe laws are logical and beneficial. If they are committing a crime, they have already decided they don't care about that. A lot of crimes ARE stupid and are committed without regard to logic or consequence. This guy seems to think criminals will suddenly start thinking twice.
Look, you can't PREVENT crimes. Even if you have a camera, you'll only just be watching one already in progress. And if a criminal is worried about the camera, he will probably shoot it down. With an unlicensed weapon, no doubt. Way to go.
There's no such thing as "exclusives" in the game world now... only "timed exclusives". Fallout 3 DLC for PS3.
How would Dead Space or BioShock be without the atmosphere? How effective would Doom 3 have been without its shadows? How many people had trouble telling the difference between a dangerous mine and an ammo clip in GoldenEye on the N64 in a squashed 4-player split-screen?
Answer: Graphics are very important if you use them well, and they're meaningless if you don't have a game to back them up.
It would be a great idea to create unique single player game AI by making players substitute for monster AI. Players would get online with a game, say, an FPS. When your character enters a room that has enemies, the game can check if other players are in that same area online. If two characters are supposed to be fighting, do it like America's Army and make both sides appear as if they're the "good guy", except limit the health for the enemy character so that both can appear to have won in their own game, since it's a single player game. However, the enemy you have just fought would have had some sort of unique player-based AI.
By extension, perhaps player behavior can be scraped for other things, such as basing an NPC on the dialog tree choices that a user chose in their game, and have two users "talk to each other" without knowing it.
Sure, but one area the Wiimote has always made sense is first person shooters and other games that require you to target objects. Why doesn't Epic think Natal could work in its games?
On Internet Explorer, their excuse is that they're starting you with a clean slate configuration, even though their configuration files should be able to be interpreted and imported since MS designed them. But with Firefox? What's their excuse for changing a 3rd party application's configuration? Maybe this is a sign that MS is directly supporting Firefox under Windows now?
Those one-time bonus cards are an insult to me as a gamer, and I don't use those codes or buy any of the DLC as I believe a game should be self-contained and not require anything extra to be enjoyed, otherwise IT IS A BROKEN GAME.
I keep all of the games I buy and never sell them back, but this really pisses me off. I'm a collector (maybe not as rabid as some, I only care about the games I like and not about collecting every last rare gem), and I expect my games to work in the future as is.
Systems can break down, networks can be shut down. I don't want to go back and play something where there are big pieces missing for one reason or another. I'm not paying some company to hold parts of my game hostage.
I've got MadWorld, The Conduit, No More Heroes, Scarface, The Godfather, Medal of Honor: Heroes 2, Sam & Max, Resident Evil 4 & Umbrella Chronicles, Okami, Trauma Center, Excite Truck, Zelda, Blast Works.
These are all great games for hard core gamers. I admit, the Wii doesn't have every base covered, but for a bunch of games that work well with motion controls and are fun for hard core gamers, they have a decent spread. And if you wrote off games like Excite Truck or Okami, as many did, give them a second look.
I like the idea that anyone can publish something, anyone can remark on something, and anyone can seek out your comments. People can communicate in a neutral medium without worrying about immediate personal repercussions because then they don't fear to speak their minds.
You don't learn a lot when you can only see one shade in the spectrum, but on the internet you have everything, and this feels like a more realistic representation of what people think. You can see peoples' arguments instead of a finished product that can never be changed. You see the etymology of peoples' thoughts.
We haven't really had much structure in society, in terms of interpersonal relationships. They are wildly different. Personalities are wildly different. We all have different goals and different reasons and different opinions. Everyone has to learn about being on this planet together, but you aren't really privy to everyone's personal process. You just hear whatever comes out of their mouth at one given time, even though what they think, and what think they know, is constantly evolving.
The fact that you can observe all perspectives can help people learn about all of the different ways of thinking about something, and different ways of dealing with ways of thinking that are different than yours, but the internet is like a social equalizer. You may have search rankings, and ad priorities, and certain computers will ship with a general default configuration, and you may have favorite bookmarks that you load up every day that may put a bias on what a given individual will be exposed to. Invariably, however, people will find their way into many different areas of interest, which will present them with many different groups of people who will speak about things that they have picked up from many other places, and points of view are dispersed widely and vary widely, yet they are all available.
On web sites, you can have discussion forums with different topics that have different posts and within them, different threads, and different arguments. On Wikipedia, you can move through any topic by clicking on the area of interest, and you can see how the article changed and why. On Slashdot, you have people writing stories and comments and voting each other up. On 2chan you have unmoderated discussions on a wide variety of interests. Anyone can step in and drop some heavy knowledge, or they can blurt out an off-the-cuff remark, but we get way more variety than our every day communications, and we can seek out any topic we can come up with to get such perspectives.
I think it makes us healthier that we can see all that and take it in in a more unbiased manner. It drives home the point that the truth is the truth no matter where it comes from, because bullshit is less tolerated and picked apart. Conclusions may be drawn, but topics are forever evolving and nothing really ever stays the same on the internet. Even though there's a lot of stupid shit on the internet, I feel like I'm learning a lot of important stuff that I couldn't in school or a library, and even a lot that I can. But it's all easy and accessible.
People write, read, and pick apart literature as well. Movies too. I guess it's called "entertainment", but it also gives us insight into the human mind, so that's interesting as well.
No, it's because of the water pack. Miyamoto (the game's creator) said the goal of this design was to afford players a lot more forgiveness when it comes to jumping in a 3D space. Spatial orientation with only a 2D image is something you have to adapt to, and Mario Sunshine allows you to float in mid-air so you can catch yourself or correct your jump. They also let you attack enemies while standing still, by just spraying at them. Mario has more hit points in Mario Sunshine. In Mario Galaxy, you lose special suits after one hit, but you keep your back-pack in Mario Sunshine. There are a lot of reasons the game is more forgiving.
Or like in the new Prince of Persia, skip all the fights. My s.o. has a fun time with the game otherwise, why force someone to hand over the controller to someone else to get past a certain part of the game? Or those puzzle elements they throw in, I wasted a lot of time on those pools of dark matter that you have to connect. Why is that even in Prince of Persia?
Anyway, I just hope it isn't an excuse for developers to not refine and playtest their games. One crappy gameplay element, and I already hear the P.R. machine winding up ready to say "Oh, we put that in for the hard core!"
When you regulate it, people feel stifled and like they have to share important things in private. When you leave it open, there are bound to be some offensive people and some lunatics. There is no "win" state, there's always a trade-off. However, you can always choose to ignore these things as they are not forced on you any more than any other thing. We all have to deal with things we don't like, and something you may like might be something someone else will find offensive. There is no please-them-all solution, but we all have to be happy together. That's where respect comes in, but there's always disrespectful shit disturbers as well. As a society, we have to grow up and accept and tolerate and respect and understand. The sooner we accept that, the better.
It makes sense, but I'd even rather have a $30 DS or Wii, or used PS3/360 title than buy a blu-ray or DVD at full price these days. I just get my movies used for cheap.
It's a bit disingenuous to say that people only/mostly install CFW to play pirated games. The PSP didn't start out having very good games, and people still say its library is pretty slim. Most people I know who own a PSP only use it to play homebrew, and not PSP games at all. I don't think the PSP would have risen to such popularity if it wasn't for the homebrew scene.
As an actual games machine, it's cumbersome. The load times are long, UMDs suck up your battery, the games are too involving, and the amount/type of buttons on the PSP is not suited for the type of experiences that officially licensed developers are trying to cram in there. Homebrew games are perfect, and with emulators you have save states.
People don't like putting their PSPs to sleep because the battery still gets drained rather quickly, and you can't switch out games and resume quite as quickly as you can switch ROMs and load up a save state. If you play in short bursts you tend to forget where you are in a lengthier PSP game. So homebrew is much more attractive. For official games, dumping your UMDs on a memory stick is also a lot handier than carrying around a bunch of discs; They load faster, and use less battery.
While piracy is a problem on the PSP, it is not its biggest problem. The games just don't deliver what consumers want.
I'd rather they do this than doing away with the used market altogether with the market heading towards DRMed digital distribution that ties a copy to one system.
Having a large screen is a problem too, it's much harder to secure and absorbs more of the shock during a fall than the DS's screens, which is why 9/10 times you'll get dead pixels on a dropped PSP, and in the same situation the DS's screens will be fine.
Wikileaks has also played an important role in revealing secrets. In addition, Wikipedia also helps people disseminate information that is direct and to the point, in plain language, with references and with links to articles containing more specific information. It's an invaluable tool for knowledge. I hope it never disappears, and I am glad that they offer burnt-to-DVD versions of articles.
Plus, every time I visit a web site for information, I save it, because I never know if that information will disappear or change. When I go back, I save another copy so I can compare, and also so I can retain information in previous copies should I need to reference it.
It does seem convenient since MS could use the influx of cash (not to mention the good press if adoption goes well). However, considering that staying with a mature XP has worked out better, would it be worth it for businesses with existing XP installations to start migrating to Vista now since it has been tested, and hope for an extension of Vista's availability and support in the same vein as XP's?
I play games to be entertained, so I don't have to make my own fun. But in reality, things aren't so black and white.
Look at LittleBigPlanet, it has a great single player game, as well as a great construction mode. It also is fun co-op. Fun for everyone. In GTA4, you can play the story or mess around and both are rewarding. Medal of Honor 2 for the Wii has a FPS campaign mode as well as an on-rails shooter experience using the same campaign, and you can choose which you want to play.
I'd like to ask this same question myself to many, many developers. It seems they either go for PS3/360 or Wii, rarely both.
I have to agree... like Resident Evil 5, I wish the target platform was Wii. These games were meant to be played with that controller.
How about: software that doesn't nag you, software that doesn't have radical GUI changes just to attract you to the new version, software that doesn't drop features to get you to buy new products or have Pro versions that you have to upgrade to, software that works together instead of trying to funnel you into its proprietary format, software that doesn't try to take over your preferences or install companion applications, software that doesn't expire.