Not just the title is misleading but the idea associated with it. Last time I checked (ok, that was a while ago), iPods came with ARM7 cores clocked at 80 MHz. Thing is, these CPUs don't have a floating point unit, so unless they write they weather simulators in fixed point arithmetic (lol, right) or go ahead with software floating point emulation (which would slow things down several times) they're not going to use these, they'd rather use more sophisticated stuff like ARM11s or Cortex A8s.
Virtually no original games are made for the Mac, they get a handful of ports from the PC that sell poorly. Right, ever heard of Ambrosia Software? Let me guess, you don't even have a Mac? Besides, what about the successful games that get released on Mac at the same time as on Windows? I for one don't think Apple is doing anything wrong about gaming. The Mac isn't meant to be a gaming platform, and due to the fact that every serious games boots Windows to play and that the desktop market share of Apple is so small things are the way you'd expect them to be. I certainly don't see how that'd prove anything about their capability to make a handheld console.
I think you're missing me point. I'm familiar with the point you're making, and I thing the problem should be seen as handicaps and advantages : big studios have the millions and the millions of work-time, homebrew devs have the freedom to innovate.
But my point is, everything isn't that nice on the homebrew front. Most of us don't really innovate, we follow, we try to reproduce what we tried and liked. In a way, it all boils down to not being able to truly think out of the box. When people try to think out of the box they come up with crappy puzzle games that don't really bring anything you, because they think that the crap big studios doesn't do is out of the box. It's not. Because our imagination is fuelled by what already exists in video games, and little by anything else. That's why we always end up doing the same stuff. We rush to coding and testing and skip the thinking part. Sure, we do think, we think about how we're gonna do things, about what twist we're gonna give to things. But we don't start the game making process at the root. We directly choose one of the big ass branches on the video game tree, and only start to think from that point on.
When you grow up playing video games, the only video game ideas you come up are very similar to the games you've played before. I thankfully have stayed fairly isolated, not by choice, from video games until my teenage years, so I cling on to the way I used to imagine freely and wildly I had as a child. That's only by remembering this and trying not to think of existing games that I can come up with ideas that aren't directly related to any other game.
they've become almost part of the game genre conventions
I think you just identified something that is a major problem and limitation when it comes to game creation. I think one of the biggest problems with games since they went mainstream around 1975 we, as creators, think about what's been done with other games before we think about anything else, and most importantly and worryingly, we are now practically incapable of thinking up a game idea independently of what has been done before.
I'm part of an homebrew games community, and I can tell you, when people think of making an original game, they think in terms of "I'm gonna make a game like this old game with a twist". And pretty much all the games we make are based on other games. Because we don't even for a second try to forget about what we know and look for what we'd really want.
Does it mean there's only so many types of games? Most people seem to think so, but I radically disagree. I think games just naturally aggregate around big obvious ideas, like "hey, shooting people is fun" or "driving fast cars is cool" or even "being a night elf rocks", as well popular classic games, like "hey tetris/pacman/pong was cool, let's make a variant of it". I think we are just short sighted, we stop at the big immediately obvious ideas and we stay there to the point we forgot there were other possibilities that we hadn't explored yet.
Game programmers in the 1960s were free in their thought process in that they were ignorant, they didn't know that aiming a pointing device at an on-screen enemy and pressing a button was fun. That's how they came up with very original (by today's standards) ideas like Spacewar! or Space Travel. Nowadays, someone might make a Spacewar!-like game, not because they had the same idea as the original developers, but because they want to make a remake of it.
No, the iPhone will not be the next handheld gaming device a la Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, etc. It's capabilities will be similar to Windows Mobile, with fewer games.
First off, considered the price point of the iPhone, what prevents them from upgrading their SoCs with something high-end and games oriented like a TI OMAP 3530 (the most powerful mobile SoC out there with such a good 3D chip even Quake III doesn't get anywhere near challenging it). And then, Windows Mobile? Are we talking about hardware or OS?
Let's see, what do you need to make a successful mobile console. A powerful SoC, which I don't see why Apple would stay away from, an OS that supports standard stuff for games like OpenGL ES 2.0 (the iPhone already supports it), and decent gaming controls, which means (and that's mandatory) a D-Pad or at worse a nub, and buttons like the SNES (4 on the right side and 2 shoulder buttons), which is pretty obvious if you want to make something that's more a console than anything else.
So let's see, Apple has been successful beyond words with its iPod line from 2001 to now, which has evolved into a PMP, and eventually into phone. So at that point, how would that be surprising than a move to the next logical step, which would be a $350 handheld console? Considered the fact that Apple has so much success and attracts so much hype whenever they release a product that fits in your pocket? Combined with the fact that Nintendo occupies the low-end range in handheld consoles and that Sony is such a lousy concurrent in the high end range? I mean, it would be easy for Apple to do better than Sony did with its PSP, and knowing Sony I have the feeling that they won't wise up a bit with their PSP 2.
Actually, can you see any reason why Apple shouldn't make a high-end $350-400 handheld console? Cause I can't, I just don't see how they could fail on this one.
Earth has Cruithne sharing it's orbit, which in it's own way is a "second moon"
If it's not permanently orbiting within the Earth's Hill sphere, it's no moon.
On a side not, since these moons were originally at Lagrangian points, it makes me wonder whether or not some of them could evolve into having a horseshoe orbit with the Earth. Actually a mission to one of these asteroids when they get about 1.5 Gm from Earth would be interesting and pretty easy as they would be close to Earth and moving pretty slowly. I guess you could look them up closer to find out if they share material in common with the Moon or anything.
According to sources in the government, Chinese hackers are acknowledged experts in setting up BOTS. A BOT is a parasite program embedded in a network, which hijacks the network and makes other computers act according to its wishes, which, in turn, are controlled by "external" forces.
BOTS? Really? As in BOTnets? Shows how much of a CLUE the journalist who wrote this has.
I love it when activists harm their cause, just like 1980s anti-nuclear environmentalists are to thank for our coal power plants.
My point is, what a better way to show people the dangers of drunk driving by letting them experience it in a game? People have no idea how bad at driving they would be once drunk. And people tend to use virtual experiences as experience anyways when that's all they've got.
So let people see how dangerous drunk driving is by letting them experience it first hand in the only way that can be safe, in a computer simulation. It's so much more valuable than ignorance.
they can pull the trigger much faster than you can get the gun and pull the trigger, and that makes you safer?
Why would they shoot you if you're obviously "just showing"? If you had to mug random people and that one of them calmly showed you his gun and told you to fuck off, would you shoot him? Knowing that he's not gonna shoot you if you don't try to shoot him, and that if you try to shoot him he might shoot you? So what would you do? I'd just walk away without turning my back on him, but he wouldn't have any reason to shoot me if I didn't take any of his money/belongings.
You guys seriously need to study game theory. For both players here the best solution, considering immediate risks (it's more dangerous for yourself to try to shoot first than not shoot at all), legal risks (wanna risk doing 25-to-life for that shit?) and psychological issues (do you really wanna spend the rest of your life remembering the guys face and wondering what happened to his family or whatever?) is to not shoot.
I'd like to see you shoot back when you've been shot first a couple of times. Otherwise, just get in line for your Darwin award.
And why on Earth would you get shot in the first place? If you're the mugger and that you see the person isn't about to shoot you at all you're not gonna take chances a) with your life (would you really shoot the person and take the risk you wouldn't knock them out before they shoot you back?) b) with the law (few people would kill people for no reason) c) maybe muggers are mostly all fairly normal people who are just a bit desperate for money, and not psychopathic nutters who kill people without thinking twice about it.
If what I said was so silly, then why do so many people in ghettos have guns just for protection? But the myth that a gun won't effectively protect you just won't die.. Same for the mythical image of the mugger who doesn't give a fuck about dying, going to jail or viciously killing innocent average middle class people for no reason.
Martial arts expert - Don't carry a gun. Just give them your wallet.
"Real life isn't like the movies" indeed. Lift your shirt to reveal a handgun and you'll see if he's still asking for your wallet. You think the mugger may shoot you for that? Yeah, fat chance, everyone knows that jackers love to shot people who will shoot them back instead of walking away when they pose no imminent threat (that is, don't try to reach for your gun, just show it).
Your 1.5 million crimes prevented count every instance where a person with a gun feels they prevented a crime. But lets be realistic. Was it the gun that prevented the crime? Or just the mere presence of a witness?
Criminals don't want head-to-head confrontation any more than you do. They want to steal from unoccupied homes.
People who ever step out of their house might be raped, assaulted, jacked or car jacked. The 1.5 million crimes in questions aren't all about people getting through your window to steal your VCR. If some career criminal pulls a gun to your head and tells you to get out of your car if you value your life, he won't care if you've got a "witness" with you. Having a gun isn't so much about protecting your home as it is protecting you in general. You're a lot less likely to be raped if you've got a Glock in your handbag (if you're a lady that is). I've seen stats and basically when 30% of rape attempts succeed, only 3% do when the victim has a gun.
Is the life of someone in my family worth 5 televisions?
Is the life of someone in your family worth the convenience of having a car? "The number of gun accidents, as he discovered, is somewhere around 1150/year." How many people die in car accidents in America every year? 10 times more? 20 times more? And how many crimes or deaths did cars prevent exactly? Yet people don't apply the same logic and decide to live with it. Why? Because a gun is meant to kill, a car is not. So people are all about the dangers of guns without realising that much more innocuous seeming things are an order of magnitude more dangerous or lethal.
But do you see Michael Moore going to the CEO of General Motors' house with a picture of a little girl who died in a car crash?
2) Watch youtube. Unsuccessful. No Flash. 11) MSN. Unsuccessful
Yeah well, I have a girlfriend too, and all she ever does on a computer is watch music videos on YouTube, write e-mails and chat on MSN. Maybe you'd like to weight your rating based on how important something is to the person tested (by asking them). Downloading a torrent and changing your mouse speed will probably rate to 0 while MSN will probably rate to "Why the hell would I need a computer if not for MSN?".
Am I the only one who's not impressed a bit by the Euphoria physics engine? It's not that I'm so not impressed but more the fact that from what I heard before it would consist pretty much of a fully body simulation with no cheating, like, a muscle, brain and bones simulation. I haven't played the game yet, but I've seen gameplay videos made by players who played the leaked version, and I'm fairly disappointed. It doesn't look like such a realistic simulation at all, looks like you can still "run against a wall". Also when you turn while walking it looks like your body is overly inclined to the side, and it looks like some stuff you'd except to jump on can't be jumped on, instead you jump still following a seemingly fixed animation, while getting parts of your limbs inside nearby objects in the process.
The blood isn't excessive, but if you're bothered by that sort of thing, you may want to skip the video.
Here's something that I've always wondered and never got an answer to. Why are some people bothered by the sight of blood? What's shocking about it? I really don't get it even a bit. Besides I always thought (my own) blood was kind of yummy.
They could play "spit in my mouth" from pretty far away. Or throw food in each other's mouth instead. Or "who pees the farthest". Or Tug O' War. Or paper plane throwing-based games (still works without gravity, but instead of falling down it just stops, which could make up for interesting plane interception games). Or throw arrows on a floating, and eventually spinning, target. Or a "blow race" : make some origami thing (or better yet blow a soap bubble), let it float still on the start "line" and blow on it to make it go forward. Or roll a rope around an astronaut, push him away and pull on the rope to make him spin. Or play Space Invaders : have an astronaut throwing a bunch of tiny objects that would serve as enemies slowly towards you and try to shoot them all away with a few other tiny objects that would serve as bullets. Make these enemies be tuning forks set to play different notes and try to make a cool tune while by hitting them. Or let pool table balls (or something equivalent, actually tennis table balls would be better) float and try to play 3D billard. Or try synchronous dance or whatever sky divers do. Make a very slow tiny RC plane (like so slow it couldn't fly on Earth, slower than walking speed), let a bunch of rings float in the air and try to make the plane go through them. Eventually adapt tiny sort of cannons on them and enjoy the possibilities. Invent a new form of break-dance. Stack up balls in mid-air and try to reproduce something similar to Newton's cradle. Try to make magnets orbit each other slowly (although I'm not sure that magnetic force is proportional to the square of the distance..). Modify a gun into shooting bullets 100 times slower and pretend it's Matrix' bullet time. Set up a bunch of parallel bars and do slomo gymnastics on them. Attach two astronauts using an elastic rope tied at their waist and let them try to run simultaneously on each other's feet. Put two transpolines on opposite walls and bounce from one to the other back and forth and try to do tricks, be they in slomo or not.
Why should I want to program in C++? I barely grasp the basic concepts of OOP and I don't see any need for them, plus I want to stick to low level programming. Besides C++ looks like gobbledegook to me. If I'm gonna use C++ to do exactly the same stuff as I do in C and nothing else then why even bother? Serious C coders use C because that's exactly what they need, and no other language does it better.
I believe compilers haven't always produced the same quality machine code as a modern GCC with -O2 (or better). Most of the time when I look at the assembly output produced from my C code by GCC on ARM using -O2 (in my experience without any optimisation the output looks like gobbledegook) it's pretty clever code (even if you can quickly spot a couple of instructions you could make become one) and I'd be willing to bet that it's most of the time better code than what most assembly coders from back in the day would have produced (now that people use GCC to make "fast assmebly prototypes" it's just cheating;-) ).
Assembly programming isn't a magic bullet to speed issues, often a good design (that is, conceiving the algorithm in a clever way) can help a hell of a lot better than hand-done Assembly optimisations), and even then it takes a good knowledge of the architecture you're programming for to see any improvement.
Slashdot Mirror
Too high-tech. A RAID array of floppies sounds more likely.
Not just the title is misleading but the idea associated with it. Last time I checked (ok, that was a while ago), iPods came with ARM7 cores clocked at 80 MHz. Thing is, these CPUs don't have a floating point unit, so unless they write they weather simulators in fixed point arithmetic (lol, right) or go ahead with software floating point emulation (which would slow things down several times) they're not going to use these, they'd rather use more sophisticated stuff like ARM11s or Cortex A8s.
the whole idea of an iPhone as games console is retarded
It's not about an iPhone AS a console but something similar, a spin off if you will, as a console.
most of which are old Windows ports.
Actually it's the Windows versions that are ports.
I think you're missing me point. I'm familiar with the point you're making, and I thing the problem should be seen as handicaps and advantages : big studios have the millions and the millions of work-time, homebrew devs have the freedom to innovate.
But my point is, everything isn't that nice on the homebrew front. Most of us don't really innovate, we follow, we try to reproduce what we tried and liked. In a way, it all boils down to not being able to truly think out of the box. When people try to think out of the box they come up with crappy puzzle games that don't really bring anything you, because they think that the crap big studios doesn't do is out of the box. It's not. Because our imagination is fuelled by what already exists in video games, and little by anything else. That's why we always end up doing the same stuff. We rush to coding and testing and skip the thinking part. Sure, we do think, we think about how we're gonna do things, about what twist we're gonna give to things. But we don't start the game making process at the root. We directly choose one of the big ass branches on the video game tree, and only start to think from that point on.
When you grow up playing video games, the only video game ideas you come up are very similar to the games you've played before. I thankfully have stayed fairly isolated, not by choice, from video games until my teenage years, so I cling on to the way I used to imagine freely and wildly I had as a child. That's only by remembering this and trying not to think of existing games that I can come up with ideas that aren't directly related to any other game.
they've become almost part of the game genre conventions
I think you just identified something that is a major problem and limitation when it comes to game creation. I think one of the biggest problems with games since they went mainstream around 1975 we, as creators, think about what's been done with other games before we think about anything else, and most importantly and worryingly, we are now practically incapable of thinking up a game idea independently of what has been done before.
I'm part of an homebrew games community, and I can tell you, when people think of making an original game, they think in terms of "I'm gonna make a game like this old game with a twist". And pretty much all the games we make are based on other games. Because we don't even for a second try to forget about what we know and look for what we'd really want.
Does it mean there's only so many types of games? Most people seem to think so, but I radically disagree. I think games just naturally aggregate around big obvious ideas, like "hey, shooting people is fun" or "driving fast cars is cool" or even "being a night elf rocks", as well popular classic games, like "hey tetris/pacman/pong was cool, let's make a variant of it". I think we are just short sighted, we stop at the big immediately obvious ideas and we stay there to the point we forgot there were other possibilities that we hadn't explored yet.
Game programmers in the 1960s were free in their thought process in that they were ignorant, they didn't know that aiming a pointing device at an on-screen enemy and pressing a button was fun. That's how they came up with very original (by today's standards) ideas like Spacewar! or Space Travel. Nowadays, someone might make a Spacewar!-like game, not because they had the same idea as the original developers, but because they want to make a remake of it.
No, the iPhone will not be the next handheld gaming device a la Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, etc. It's capabilities will be similar to Windows Mobile, with fewer games.
First off, considered the price point of the iPhone, what prevents them from upgrading their SoCs with something high-end and games oriented like a TI OMAP 3530 (the most powerful mobile SoC out there with such a good 3D chip even Quake III doesn't get anywhere near challenging it). And then, Windows Mobile? Are we talking about hardware or OS?
Let's see, what do you need to make a successful mobile console. A powerful SoC, which I don't see why Apple would stay away from, an OS that supports standard stuff for games like OpenGL ES 2.0 (the iPhone already supports it), and decent gaming controls, which means (and that's mandatory) a D-Pad or at worse a nub, and buttons like the SNES (4 on the right side and 2 shoulder buttons), which is pretty obvious if you want to make something that's more a console than anything else.
So let's see, Apple has been successful beyond words with its iPod line from 2001 to now, which has evolved into a PMP, and eventually into phone. So at that point, how would that be surprising than a move to the next logical step, which would be a $350 handheld console? Considered the fact that Apple has so much success and attracts so much hype whenever they release a product that fits in your pocket? Combined with the fact that Nintendo occupies the low-end range in handheld consoles and that Sony is such a lousy concurrent in the high end range? I mean, it would be easy for Apple to do better than Sony did with its PSP, and knowing Sony I have the feeling that they won't wise up a bit with their PSP 2.
Actually, can you see any reason why Apple shouldn't make a high-end $350-400 handheld console? Cause I can't, I just don't see how they could fail on this one.
Earth has Cruithne sharing it's orbit, which in it's own way is a "second moon"
If it's not permanently orbiting within the Earth's Hill sphere, it's no moon.
On a side not, since these moons were originally at Lagrangian points, it makes me wonder whether or not some of them could evolve into having a horseshoe orbit with the Earth. Actually a mission to one of these asteroids when they get about 1.5 Gm from Earth would be interesting and pretty easy as they would be close to Earth and moving pretty slowly. I guess you could look them up closer to find out if they share material in common with the Moon or anything.
He wants to steal other people's souls, not lose his own, you insensitive clod!
how one developer migrated from Windows to OS X
In other news, the number of OS X developers increased by 33.33% since 2007. Is 2008 the Year of OS X Development? More at 11!
According to sources in the government, Chinese hackers are acknowledged experts in setting up BOTS. A BOT is a parasite program embedded in a network, which hijacks the network and makes other computers act according to its wishes, which, in turn, are controlled by "external" forces.
BOTS? Really? As in BOTnets? Shows how much of a CLUE the journalist who wrote this has.
Computers don't pollute, coal power plants do.
I love it when activists harm their cause, just like 1980s anti-nuclear environmentalists are to thank for our coal power plants.
My point is, what a better way to show people the dangers of drunk driving by letting them experience it in a game? People have no idea how bad at driving they would be once drunk. And people tend to use virtual experiences as experience anyways when that's all they've got.
So let people see how dangerous drunk driving is by letting them experience it first hand in the only way that can be safe, in a computer simulation. It's so much more valuable than ignorance.
they can pull the trigger much faster than you can get the gun and pull the trigger, and that makes you safer?
Why would they shoot you if you're obviously "just showing"? If you had to mug random people and that one of them calmly showed you his gun and told you to fuck off, would you shoot him? Knowing that he's not gonna shoot you if you don't try to shoot him, and that if you try to shoot him he might shoot you? So what would you do? I'd just walk away without turning my back on him, but he wouldn't have any reason to shoot me if I didn't take any of his money/belongings.
You guys seriously need to study game theory. For both players here the best solution, considering immediate risks (it's more dangerous for yourself to try to shoot first than not shoot at all), legal risks (wanna risk doing 25-to-life for that shit?) and psychological issues (do you really wanna spend the rest of your life remembering the guys face and wondering what happened to his family or whatever?) is to not shoot.
I'd like to see you shoot back when you've been shot first a couple of times. Otherwise, just get in line for your Darwin award.
And why on Earth would you get shot in the first place? If you're the mugger and that you see the person isn't about to shoot you at all you're not gonna take chances a) with your life (would you really shoot the person and take the risk you wouldn't knock them out before they shoot you back?) b) with the law (few people would kill people for no reason) c) maybe muggers are mostly all fairly normal people who are just a bit desperate for money, and not psychopathic nutters who kill people without thinking twice about it.
If what I said was so silly, then why do so many people in ghettos have guns just for protection? But the myth that a gun won't effectively protect you just won't die.. Same for the mythical image of the mugger who doesn't give a fuck about dying, going to jail or viciously killing innocent average middle class people for no reason.
Martial arts expert - Don't carry a gun. Just give them your wallet.
"Real life isn't like the movies" indeed. Lift your shirt to reveal a handgun and you'll see if he's still asking for your wallet. You think the mugger may shoot you for that? Yeah, fat chance, everyone knows that jackers love to shot people who will shoot them back instead of walking away when they pose no imminent threat (that is, don't try to reach for your gun, just show it).
Your 1.5 million crimes prevented count every instance where a person with a gun feels they prevented a crime. But lets be realistic. Was it the gun that prevented the crime? Or just the mere presence of a witness?
Criminals don't want head-to-head confrontation any more than you do. They want to steal from unoccupied homes.
People who ever step out of their house might be raped, assaulted, jacked or car jacked. The 1.5 million crimes in questions aren't all about people getting through your window to steal your VCR. If some career criminal pulls a gun to your head and tells you to get out of your car if you value your life, he won't care if you've got a "witness" with you. Having a gun isn't so much about protecting your home as it is protecting you in general. You're a lot less likely to be raped if you've got a Glock in your handbag (if you're a lady that is). I've seen stats and basically when 30% of rape attempts succeed, only 3% do when the victim has a gun.
Is the life of someone in my family worth 5 televisions?
Is the life of someone in your family worth the convenience of having a car? "The number of gun accidents, as he discovered, is somewhere around 1150/year." How many people die in car accidents in America every year? 10 times more? 20 times more? And how many crimes or deaths did cars prevent exactly? Yet people don't apply the same logic and decide to live with it. Why? Because a gun is meant to kill, a car is not. So people are all about the dangers of guns without realising that much more innocuous seeming things are an order of magnitude more dangerous or lethal.
But do you see Michael Moore going to the CEO of General Motors' house with a picture of a little girl who died in a car crash?
2) Watch youtube. Unsuccessful. No Flash.
11) MSN. Unsuccessful
Yeah well, I have a girlfriend too, and all she ever does on a computer is watch music videos on YouTube, write e-mails and chat on MSN. Maybe you'd like to weight your rating based on how important something is to the person tested (by asking them). Downloading a torrent and changing your mouse speed will probably rate to 0 while MSN will probably rate to "Why the hell would I need a computer if not for MSN?".
Am I the only one who's not impressed a bit by the Euphoria physics engine? It's not that I'm so not impressed but more the fact that from what I heard before it would consist pretty much of a fully body simulation with no cheating, like, a muscle, brain and bones simulation. I haven't played the game yet, but I've seen gameplay videos made by players who played the leaked version, and I'm fairly disappointed. It doesn't look like such a realistic simulation at all, looks like you can still "run against a wall". Also when you turn while walking it looks like your body is overly inclined to the side, and it looks like some stuff you'd except to jump on can't be jumped on, instead you jump still following a seemingly fixed animation, while getting parts of your limbs inside nearby objects in the process.
Atom Art is the new Pixel Art
That's fine and dandy, but that doesn't tell me what people who are bothered even slightly by the sight of blood feel or think.
The blood isn't excessive, but if you're bothered by that sort of thing, you may want to skip the video.
Here's something that I've always wondered and never got an answer to. Why are some people bothered by the sight of blood? What's shocking about it? I really don't get it even a bit. Besides I always thought (my own) blood was kind of yummy.
They could play "spit in my mouth" from pretty far away. Or throw food in each other's mouth instead. Or "who pees the farthest". Or Tug O' War. Or paper plane throwing-based games (still works without gravity, but instead of falling down it just stops, which could make up for interesting plane interception games). Or throw arrows on a floating, and eventually spinning, target. Or a "blow race" : make some origami thing (or better yet blow a soap bubble), let it float still on the start "line" and blow on it to make it go forward. Or roll a rope around an astronaut, push him away and pull on the rope to make him spin. Or play Space Invaders : have an astronaut throwing a bunch of tiny objects that would serve as enemies slowly towards you and try to shoot them all away with a few other tiny objects that would serve as bullets. Make these enemies be tuning forks set to play different notes and try to make a cool tune while by hitting them. Or let pool table balls (or something equivalent, actually tennis table balls would be better) float and try to play 3D billard. Or try synchronous dance or whatever sky divers do. Make a very slow tiny RC plane (like so slow it couldn't fly on Earth, slower than walking speed), let a bunch of rings float in the air and try to make the plane go through them. Eventually adapt tiny sort of cannons on them and enjoy the possibilities. Invent a new form of break-dance. Stack up balls in mid-air and try to reproduce something similar to Newton's cradle. Try to make magnets orbit each other slowly (although I'm not sure that magnetic force is proportional to the square of the distance..). Modify a gun into shooting bullets 100 times slower and pretend it's Matrix' bullet time. Set up a bunch of parallel bars and do slomo gymnastics on them. Attach two astronauts using an elastic rope tied at their waist and let them try to run simultaneously on each other's feet. Put two transpolines on opposite walls and bounce from one to the other back and forth and try to do tricks, be they in slomo or not.
That's all I've got so far.
Why should I want to program in C++? I barely grasp the basic concepts of OOP and I don't see any need for them, plus I want to stick to low level programming. Besides C++ looks like gobbledegook to me. If I'm gonna use C++ to do exactly the same stuff as I do in C and nothing else then why even bother? Serious C coders use C because that's exactly what they need, and no other language does it better.
I believe compilers haven't always produced the same quality machine code as a modern GCC with -O2 (or better). Most of the time when I look at the assembly output produced from my C code by GCC on ARM using -O2 (in my experience without any optimisation the output looks like gobbledegook) it's pretty clever code (even if you can quickly spot a couple of instructions you could make become one) and I'd be willing to bet that it's most of the time better code than what most assembly coders from back in the day would have produced (now that people use GCC to make "fast assmebly prototypes" it's just cheating ;-) ).
Assembly programming isn't a magic bullet to speed issues, often a good design (that is, conceiving the algorithm in a clever way) can help a hell of a lot better than hand-done Assembly optimisations), and even then it takes a good knowledge of the architecture you're programming for to see any improvement.