Re:Some impressive things
on
Photosynth Demo
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Step 1) Get lots of photos of a given subject
Step 2) Process these photos and find "similar points"
Step 3) Start correlating points on separate photograps
With enough points in common on two or more photographs, you can begin to get an idea of the 3D relationship between the points, and also the cameras taking the photographs.
There are applications that allow you to do Step 2 manually (the clearest example of the process I found was http://www.3dphoto.dk/UK/technique-UK.htm), but Photosynth appears to do it automagically, which is the cool part.
The gold in question is the in-game currency players use to buy their character's equipment, training, food, and so forth.
The problem is that certain people are using either bots (AI players) or cheap labour (called gold farmers) to gather large amounts of gold, not for their own use, but to sell on to others.
This is against WoW policies, and will get your account banned.
It also impacts the game negatively; it distorts the game economy horribly, for one. The various sources of income (gathering various items, killing beasties and taking their stuff) become harder for genuine players, because the bots/farmers get there first. And you get less for them too, because the glut of farmed items drives the price down.
Meanwhile, the people who buy the gold spend it, generally on the more expensive and difficult-to-acquire items, which drives the prices for them up. So it's harder to make money in the first place, and harder to buy stuff with the gold you do get.
But of course the most irritating aspect by far is that in order to get customers, they spam the living heck out of players. This is astonishingly irksome.
To summarise the summary of the summary, gold sellers and buyers make the game less fun for everyone else.
I also think there should be a world story arc, which changes as time passes. The players could both participate in and disrupt the story. And maybe civilization crumbles and the world spirals into darkness, but online games are, if anything, evolution in progress. So maybe a year or so down the line a player decides to unite the people and rebuild the kingdom, a kingdom run by the players. And then it would be the players' job to protect civilization from demise. Or, maybe, the NPC heir to the throne rises and gathers a group of NPCs to help bring order back to the land. Who knows? Said ideas would require a group of GMs to help guide the world and keep things interesting.
Sounds good, until you made a change in the world that irritates most of your players, and they leave. And it's surprisingly easy to do - you change something you think is incidental, only to discover that your players all thought it was integral to the game experience. So integral, in fact, that they never even thought to mention it in the surveys and "what do you like about the game" research you did. See "New Coke".
One way to do this might be to have a main area with the usual static content, but a specific area with more dynamic content, for those who enjoy that kind of thing.
You contributed to the breaking of the in-game economy. You made it harder for other people, who don't happen to share your particular play style, to gain gold playing as the game designers intended. You made it profitable for the gold-selling ****tards to spam players' in-game mail and chat. You have made that game a worse place.
For me, it was the bit in the prison where you have to pull two levers to bring out two walls that you then walljump up. Only the levers (and walls) would then retract, such that you only have so much time to get up. For the longest time, I was unable to co-ordinate pulling lever 1, manoeuvring myself to pull lever 2, and then actually bouncing between the walls to get to the horizontal bar. Okay, this was because I was crap, but, it was a wall (or close to).
What I ended up doing was keeping the game running, then each day after work I'd turn the TV to the PS2 channel, have a go, fail, and then turn the TV off, until I felt like another run through. I was very deliberately not allowing myself to get frustrated.
That technique came in very handy for the last big acrobatics puzzle, the one you get when you've not got the dagger any more (no do-overs!). As soon as I lost the dagger I knew that there was going to be some huge long sequence that you would have to go through without timing it. I think it took me a week of five-minutes-every-time-I-was-bored to finally crack that...
What surprised me is when I installed the "Classic Doom" maps - the original DOOM shareware maps converted into DOOM3 maps. They were so much more fun than the actual DOOM3 maps.
Re:learn something new everyday
on
Game Writing
·
· Score: 1
At the risk of giving a serious reply to a funny post, the "fairly standard screenplay format" in Hollywood refers to the physical format - the typeface, character spacing, specific formatting for different sections (dialogue, character names, action description, location specifiers) and so forth. A sort of standardisation of information delivery protocols, if you will.
This means that an aspiring screenwriter will know how they are meant to present their stories; presumably this is contrasted with the games industry, which is apparently so bizarre that Excel is a good idea.
The fairly standard Hollywood movie formula, on the other hand, is indeed why so many movies suck.
I look forward to your realistically animated CGI masterpiece.
The answer of course, is that giving 3d virtual objects realistic weight, inertia and gravity is hard. Especially when you're dealing with a complex object like a human being, which can actually change where its centre of gravity is. I'm willing to bet that your 386 demos were using simple objects, not human beings.
CGI is a relatively new medium, unlike traditional 2d animation, which has 50, 60 years of extra development.
Everyone keeps harping on about static versus dynamic content; the problem with dynamic content is that you can't guarantee the user experience. What happens when Stormwind gets completely overrun by the Horde? How do you drop off the quests for NPCs in that area?
What happens when one faction gets complete dominance over the other because they've managed to capture all their capitals? The people who play the other faction stop playing, is what, and suddenly it's a one-faction game.
And if can actually clear out all the wolves from the forest, what happens to the next people who come along looking for wolf pelts?
I admit, I'd like it if, when you've finally finished the "Clear Out The Mine" quest, that the mine is actually cleared out when you next go there. But that then means that nobody else can then clear out that mine.
Builders are the types who want the ability to buy housed in MMORPGs, something Blizzard have been hinting at for a while (I believe there's even a housing area in Stormwind, or at least the portal that would lead to it).
Back in the day, that was the goal of many MUDs (the original MMORPG!); once you'd accumulated enough experience, you could become a "Wizard" and build your own dungeon for players to explore.
That's the real problem with Grey 17. They A plot is really dire (not just a naff monster, but bullets acting in ways firmly outside the laws of physics, and other problems), but the B plot is really quite good. So you can't just jettison the entire episode, like you can with TKO.
I would disagree - according to the Wikipedia article you qoute, and the usage I've always seen, it's any film-making using a gaming engine. Yes, it's often done by recording in-game footage with human-controlled characters, but it also covers using, say, Half Life's scripted sequences. This would appear to be effectively creating scripted sequences on the fly, so personally I'd count this as a form of Machinima.
Claiming Darwin somehow caused Hitler is like claiming Newton caused V2 rockets. So Newton is also a Nazi! Or something. And let's not get started on that Jesus bloke, and all the stuff done in His name.
And the other half is some user-submitted attack on "Liberals". It's weird - you can get two threads next to each other, one with Right-Wingers moaning how the evil Lefties will no doubt digg them down, and the other has Left-Wingers moaning about the Righties down-digging *then*.
Given the topic was Online Games, the problem is that the kind of delicate balancing you mention isn't really possible in a MMORG. Face-to-face the GM can fiddle lots of things for the small number of players; online, with tens of thousands? And a computer in charge?
If you make something too flexible, people can make characters that perform badly compared to optimised characters. But if you're too careful in balancing, the end result tends to be a feeling that there's not enough difference between the various character types. Tough to find the middle road.
It's not hereditary unless they can pass it onto their kids. So unless Ted Kennedy's successor is one of his offspring, it's not a hereditary position.
Slashdot Mirror
Step 1) Get lots of photos of a given subject
Step 2) Process these photos and find "similar points"
Step 3) Start correlating points on separate photograps
With enough points in common on two or more photographs, you can begin to get an idea of the 3D relationship between the points, and also the cameras taking the photographs.
There are applications that allow you to do Step 2 manually (the clearest example of the process I found was http://www.3dphoto.dk/UK/technique-UK.htm), but Photosynth appears to do it automagically, which is the cool part.
Now I'm wondering what the stats would be :)
Man, can you imagine if God dealt with His grievances in this world by litigation? Some part of me finds that idea immensely cool...
The problem is that certain people are using either bots (AI players) or cheap labour (called gold farmers) to gather large amounts of gold, not for their own use, but to sell on to others.
This is against WoW policies, and will get your account banned.
It also impacts the game negatively; it distorts the game economy horribly, for one. The various sources of income (gathering various items, killing beasties and taking their stuff) become harder for genuine players, because the bots/farmers get there first. And you get less for them too, because the glut of farmed items drives the price down.
Meanwhile, the people who buy the gold spend it, generally on the more expensive and difficult-to-acquire items, which drives the prices for them up. So it's harder to make money in the first place, and harder to buy stuff with the gold you do get.
But of course the most irritating aspect by far is that in order to get customers, they spam the living heck out of players. This is astonishingly irksome.
To summarise the summary of the summary, gold sellers and buyers make the game less fun for everyone else.
Sounds good, until you made a change in the world that irritates most of your players, and they leave. And it's surprisingly easy to do - you change something you think is incidental, only to discover that your players all thought it was integral to the game experience. So integral, in fact, that they never even thought to mention it in the surveys and "what do you like about the game" research you did. See "New Coke".
One way to do this might be to have a main area with the usual static content, but a specific area with more dynamic content, for those who enjoy that kind of thing.
Yes, you hurt people.
You contributed to the breaking of the in-game economy. You made it harder for other people, who don't happen to share your particular play style, to gain gold playing as the game designers intended. You made it profitable for the gold-selling ****tards to spam players' in-game mail and chat. You have made that game a worse place.
For me, it was the bit in the prison where you have to pull two levers to bring out two walls that you then walljump up. Only the levers (and walls) would then retract, such that you only have so much time to get up. For the longest time, I was unable to co-ordinate pulling lever 1, manoeuvring myself to pull lever 2, and then actually bouncing between the walls to get to the horizontal bar. Okay, this was because I was crap, but, it was a wall (or close to).
What I ended up doing was keeping the game running, then each day after work I'd turn the TV to the PS2 channel, have a go, fail, and then turn the TV off, until I felt like another run through. I was very deliberately not allowing myself to get frustrated.
That technique came in very handy for the last big acrobatics puzzle, the one you get when you've not got the dagger any more (no do-overs!). As soon as I lost the dagger I knew that there was going to be some huge long sequence that you would have to go through without timing it. I think it took me a week of five-minutes-every-time-I-was-bored to finally crack that...
What surprised me is when I installed the "Classic Doom" maps - the original DOOM shareware maps converted into DOOM3 maps. They were so much more fun than the actual DOOM3 maps.
At the risk of giving a serious reply to a funny post, the "fairly standard screenplay format" in Hollywood refers to the physical format - the typeface, character spacing, specific formatting for different sections (dialogue, character names, action description, location specifiers) and so forth. A sort of standardisation of information delivery protocols, if you will. This means that an aspiring screenwriter will know how they are meant to present their stories; presumably this is contrasted with the games industry, which is apparently so bizarre that Excel is a good idea. The fairly standard Hollywood movie formula, on the other hand, is indeed why so many movies suck.
I look forward to your realistically animated CGI masterpiece. The answer of course, is that giving 3d virtual objects realistic weight, inertia and gravity is hard. Especially when you're dealing with a complex object like a human being, which can actually change where its centre of gravity is. I'm willing to bet that your 386 demos were using simple objects, not human beings. CGI is a relatively new medium, unlike traditional 2d animation, which has 50, 60 years of extra development.
And this is bad because...?
Everyone keeps harping on about static versus dynamic content; the problem with dynamic content is that you can't guarantee the user experience. What happens when Stormwind gets completely overrun by the Horde? How do you drop off the quests for NPCs in that area? What happens when one faction gets complete dominance over the other because they've managed to capture all their capitals? The people who play the other faction stop playing, is what, and suddenly it's a one-faction game. And if can actually clear out all the wolves from the forest, what happens to the next people who come along looking for wolf pelts? I admit, I'd like it if, when you've finally finished the "Clear Out The Mine" quest, that the mine is actually cleared out when you next go there. But that then means that nobody else can then clear out that mine.
Builders are the types who want the ability to buy housed in MMORPGs, something Blizzard have been hinting at for a while (I believe there's even a housing area in Stormwind, or at least the portal that would lead to it). Back in the day, that was the goal of many MUDs (the original MMORPG!); once you'd accumulated enough experience, you could become a "Wizard" and build your own dungeon for players to explore.
That's the real problem with Grey 17. They A plot is really dire (not just a naff monster, but bullets acting in ways firmly outside the laws of physics, and other problems), but the B plot is really quite good. So you can't just jettison the entire episode, like you can with TKO.
Because there's a Discovery Mode for just that very purpose.
http://biggercheese.com/index.php?comic=383 'nuff said.
Like Star Wars or loathe it, it heralded a quantum change in the way movies were made, marketed, and viewed.
I would disagree - according to the Wikipedia article you qoute, and the usage I've always seen, it's any film-making using a gaming engine. Yes, it's often done by recording in-game footage with human-controlled characters, but it also covers using, say, Half Life's scripted sequences. This would appear to be effectively creating scripted sequences on the fly, so personally I'd count this as a form of Machinima.
It's almost as bad as Wikipedia or World of Warcraft...
Claiming Darwin somehow caused Hitler is like claiming Newton caused V2 rockets. So Newton is also a Nazi! Or something. And let's not get started on that Jesus bloke, and all the stuff done in His name.
And the other half is some user-submitted attack on "Liberals". It's weird - you can get two threads next to each other, one with Right-Wingers moaning how the evil Lefties will no doubt digg them down, and the other has Left-Wingers moaning about the Righties down-digging *then*.
Given the topic was Online Games, the problem is that the kind of delicate balancing you mention isn't really possible in a MMORG. Face-to-face the GM can fiddle lots of things for the small number of players; online, with tens of thousands? And a computer in charge? If you make something too flexible, people can make characters that perform badly compared to optimised characters. But if you're too careful in balancing, the end result tends to be a feeling that there's not enough difference between the various character types. Tough to find the middle road.
I remember that system. I also remember that whenever we levelled up, we would lose an entire gaming session assigning points and doing the maths.
How many years does it take to learn the proper use of your "you're"?
It's not hereditary unless they can pass it onto their kids. So unless Ted Kennedy's successor is one of his offspring, it's not a hereditary position.