Sounds like your Sam & Max playing friend played one too many early Sierra adventure games, especially ones where one stupid mistake will make it IMPOSSIBLE to finish the game and to pour salt on the wound, there's no "game over" when you do it. Typing "give [item] to [person]" usually resulted in the person saying "Hey, thanks a lot! But now you'll NEVER get it back!" If you gave away or forgot to pick up a plot critical item, you're screwed, and you probably wouldn't know it until several hours and saves later when you reached a critical point in the game and you have to use that item. Because you can't go back and get the item, you got stuck and continue under any circumstances and the only solution was to go back to an old save.
Poor game design elements such as this can sour the player on future games where any sort of loss or setback is considered to be the same as "game over."
...was that damn asteroid mission. Picard gives the order to use the tractor beam to toss chunks of debris into the path of a huge planet-killing asteroid, but the AI of other ships kept automatically attacking the debris I was towing! To make things worse, there wasn't enough time to do it using only one ship. The solution I found eventually was to send the AI ships to different areas of the map simultaneously so they'd be out of weapons range of each other, have them each pick up an debris chunk, and one by one, place the chunks in front of the asteroid.
Of course, there were no in-mission saves, so having to do this part over and over was pure torture. I don't know if they patched this later or not. As soon as I finished the game, I couldn't uninstall it fast enough.
On a side note, did anyone else notice Janeway sounds like she did her voiceovers over the phone?
Nowadays, people think that the only way a game can take off is with massive amounts of violence and online capability. But I think the truth is that people just want a game that doesn't reach an ending. It can be the same game with the same characters, but as long as there is a steady flow of new things to do, people will continue playing. Hence the success of WoW and GTA.
So your examples of successful games that don't need massive amounts of violence and/or online capability are an MMORPG and a massively violent game?
Because of WoW's eight (count them EIGHT) characters per server per user account and no limit to the number of servers you can be on WoW has a far greater sense of your character merely being a toon or even just a nickname on irc.
It's actually 10. But how is this a bad thing? If I get bored of the character I'm playing, I can take a break and play a new toon of a new class with new professions with my friends on the same server without having to destroy all my hard work by having to delete my character, or buy another account, or force my friends to abandon their characters to join me on another realm just because I got bored.
So the so-called low-levelling curve and easy re-roll capabilties of WoW also has a down side. To counter, in SWG you had one character per server and a limited number of servers. Be an asshole and you had to face the consequences.
Now imagine a MMORPG were your account gets you just ONE character with ONE name. An alt means buying the game again. So if you get ignored by lots of people that actually has an effect.
This is what made SWG one of the worst MMORPG games. Did SOE severely nerf or break your profession after a big patch? Early Droid Engineers, I'm talking to you. Well, your choice is to give it up and delete your skills that you spend weeks or months working on (not to mention many, many credits buying supplies/weapons/armor/etc.) so you can have a PLAYABLE class for a while, or buy another account (why would you give these idiots more money for screwing up?), or just stop playing until SOE decides to fix it in a few months.
Let me take the entertainer class as an example. To me, it's fun class to play when you want to take a break and play a social class for a while. I just wouldn't want to be JUST an Entertainer, nor would I want to work my way up to be a Master Musician and then have to give it up to try something else. At least Ultima Online gave you 5 characters per server so you could try out the different skills...you could have your warrior character, your crafter/shopkeep character, your fishing/gatherer character, etc. You weren't confined to one style of gameplay only.
This really is what makes WoW so successful. I know plenty of people who are not interested in the end-game at all, but have fun building different characters up to 60. And with 10 characters on the same server, they can hang out with the same guildmates while doing it.
And believe me, there were plenty of assholes and spammers in SWG, even with only one character per server allowed.
Sounds more like Star Wars Galaxies to me. At least with WoW, if you read the quest text, they tell a good story to give you some sense of purpose to collecting [1..20] [Animal Anatomy].
Some of my favorite quest lines are the Onyxia quest line (Alliance and Horde versions), the "lost son" quest line in Eastern Plaguelands, the "Legend of Stalvan", "Hidden Diplomat", and the "Fallen Hero of the Horde" quest line in Blasted Lands... And that's just what comes to mind right now.
World of Starcraft, with localized Korean
on
Can Anyone Beat WoW?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
A quarter of the population of South Korea along would sign up. You'd get a minimum of 12 million subscribers and the return of Starcraft Breakfast Cereal.
FTFA: The machines' modems either did not get a dial tone or had other problems, Wilson said.
The modems work better when they're plugged in. Don't be surprised. These are government employees at work. (Just ask anyone who had to be evacuated from an airport terminal because some knucklehead TSA screener forgot to plug in the metal detector.)
However, all kidding aside, there's little doubt in my mind that the devices are probably genuinely defective given Diebold's track record. I think a lawsuit is in order, and at the very least our government is entitled to a full refund plus damages. I'd rather Diebold pay for these screw-ups than the American Taxpayer.
"You put an animal in a box, even a lab rat or gerbil, and the first thing it wants to do is climb out of it. If you don't put a lid on top of the bowl a goldfish it will eventually jump out to enlarge the environment it is living in," he said. "But a dolphin will never do that. In the marine parks, the dividers to keep the dolphins apart are only a foot or two above the water between the different pools," he said. Manger says the thought to jump over would simply not cross their unsophisticated minds.
So because the dolphin isn't brainless enough to jump out of its tank and beach itself and die in the process, that makes them stupid? I suppose by comparison the child that plays away from road isn't as smart as the kid that plays in traffic, you know, the one that's seeking to "enlarge his environment" by becoming road pizza.
"Are you smuggling drugs?" If I was working the ticket counter, I'd ask couples "Do you cheat on your spouse?" That would provoke a much more interesting response.
So because you don't bother to read the rules, that exempts you from following the rules?
This isn't about Blizzard installing secret rootkits on your PC. This is about you connecting to their servers and using their service and behaving accordingly. Just like how a health club has rules saying you can't take towels home or take photos in the locker room. You break the rules, you get kicked out...and usually without a refund.
"Shut up! Shut up! If I don't hear you, it's not illegal!" - Homer Simpson cheating on his taxes
Unattended gameplay is against the Terms of Service, not the EULA. You agree to this when you register your key, and again when you load up the game for the first time and every time a patch (no matter how small) is installed.
Despite the expensive tickets and overpriced food, crying babies, restless children, chatty couples, cell phones going off, people lighting up the room checking their e-mail on their Blackberries, and every other clichéd movie theater problem on the tip of every stand-up comedian's tongue, I say to myself: "I could put up with all of this if only the film projector was digital."
...if we could rent PC games. (And I'm not talking about services like Gametap that only offers really old games that came out years ago.)
I'd rather pay $15/mo to a Netflix style service and get PC Game DVDs and CDs delivered to me than go to my local retail store and spend $60 (or go online and spend $40 + shipping) on something that MIGHT be fun and may provide me with a few hours of entertainment depending on how quickly I finish the game. If I rent the game and really like it so much that I'll want to spend days playing it and playing it over again whenever I want, I'll buy it so I can do just that!
Oh, but people would just rip PC games from the CDs, crack the protection, and keep them forever? Before there was affordable broadband Internet, I would agree, but you can do that today by downloading the game from public torrents and get it a lot faster than waiting for the CDs to arrive in the mail and without paying a monthly fee to some rental company. You can do that with PS and X-Box games with a modded machine or with DVD movies, but that hasn't stopped companies from offering PS/X-Box games and movies for rent.
Am I missing something? I don't understand why there is no place to rent PC games these days.
Linux Operating Systems (RedHat, CentOS)
Linux Run Levels and Services Configuration (both xinetd and individual services)
Server/System Troubleshooting Skills
BASH scripting
Basic PERL
IPTables and Firewall Technologies
Load-Balancer Technologies
Intel Architecture Hardware Troubleshooting
Windows Server Administration
MSSQL, MySQL, and Sybase Administration
SSH Protocol Key Authentication
PHP Scripting
Apache Configuration
Mail Technologies (qmail, milters, spamassassin, clamav)
Tomcat Configuration
The importance of documentation and repeatable process.
Long-term architectural planning.
3 to 5 years of experience required
Job is located in downtown Portland
Job location is Portland, OR
Slashdot Mirror
Sounds like your Sam & Max playing friend played one too many early Sierra adventure games, especially ones where one stupid mistake will make it IMPOSSIBLE to finish the game and to pour salt on the wound, there's no "game over" when you do it. Typing "give [item] to [person]" usually resulted in the person saying "Hey, thanks a lot! But now you'll NEVER get it back!" If you gave away or forgot to pick up a plot critical item, you're screwed, and you probably wouldn't know it until several hours and saves later when you reached a critical point in the game and you have to use that item. Because you can't go back and get the item, you got stuck and continue under any circumstances and the only solution was to go back to an old save.
Poor game design elements such as this can sour the player on future games where any sort of loss or setback is considered to be the same as "game over."
...was that damn asteroid mission. Picard gives the order to use the tractor beam to toss chunks of debris into the path of a huge planet-killing asteroid, but the AI of other ships kept automatically attacking the debris I was towing! To make things worse, there wasn't enough time to do it using only one ship. The solution I found eventually was to send the AI ships to different areas of the map simultaneously so they'd be out of weapons range of each other, have them each pick up an debris chunk, and one by one, place the chunks in front of the asteroid.
Of course, there were no in-mission saves, so having to do this part over and over was pure torture. I don't know if they patched this later or not. As soon as I finished the game, I couldn't uninstall it fast enough.
On a side note, did anyone else notice Janeway sounds like she did her voiceovers over the phone?
...and give this joker's sites a pagerank of 0.
It's not like your choice makes any difference to a Diebold voting machine.
Nowadays, people think that the only way a game can take off is with massive amounts of violence and online capability. But I think the truth is that people just want a game that doesn't reach an ending. It can be the same game with the same characters, but as long as there is a steady flow of new things to do, people will continue playing. Hence the success of WoW and GTA.
So your examples of successful games that don't need massive amounts of violence and/or online capability are an MMORPG and a massively violent game?
They should've called it "Very HD" and saved "Ultra HD" for the next one.
Sound in space is just wrong.
The lack of sound during a space scene is realistic, but it's also very, very boring. Have you not seen "2001"? Snore.
*falls asleep and accidentally hits the "Destroy This Facility" button*
Because of WoW's eight (count them EIGHT) characters per server per user account and no limit to the number of servers you can be on WoW has a far greater sense of your character merely being a toon or even just a nickname on irc.
It's actually 10. But how is this a bad thing? If I get bored of the character I'm playing, I can take a break and play a new toon of a new class with new professions with my friends on the same server without having to destroy all my hard work by having to delete my character, or buy another account, or force my friends to abandon their characters to join me on another realm just because I got bored.
So the so-called low-levelling curve and easy re-roll capabilties of WoW also has a down side. To counter, in SWG you had one character per server and a limited number of servers. Be an asshole and you had to face the consequences.
Now imagine a MMORPG were your account gets you just ONE character with ONE name. An alt means buying the game again. So if you get ignored by lots of people that actually has an effect.
This is what made SWG one of the worst MMORPG games. Did SOE severely nerf or break your profession after a big patch? Early Droid Engineers, I'm talking to you. Well, your choice is to give it up and delete your skills that you spend weeks or months working on (not to mention many, many credits buying supplies/weapons/armor/etc.) so you can have a PLAYABLE class for a while, or buy another account (why would you give these idiots more money for screwing up?), or just stop playing until SOE decides to fix it in a few months.
Let me take the entertainer class as an example. To me, it's fun class to play when you want to take a break and play a social class for a while. I just wouldn't want to be JUST an Entertainer, nor would I want to work my way up to be a Master Musician and then have to give it up to try something else. At least Ultima Online gave you 5 characters per server so you could try out the different skills...you could have your warrior character, your crafter/shopkeep character, your fishing/gatherer character, etc. You weren't confined to one style of gameplay only.
This really is what makes WoW so successful. I know plenty of people who are not interested in the end-game at all, but have fun building different characters up to 60. And with 10 characters on the same server, they can hang out with the same guildmates while doing it.
And believe me, there were plenty of assholes and spammers in SWG, even with only one character per server allowed.
Sounds more like Star Wars Galaxies to me. At least with WoW, if you read the quest text, they tell a good story to give you some sense of purpose to collecting [1..20] [Animal Anatomy].
Some of my favorite quest lines are the Onyxia quest line (Alliance and Horde versions), the "lost son" quest line in Eastern Plaguelands, the "Legend of Stalvan", "Hidden Diplomat", and the "Fallen Hero of the Horde" quest line in Blasted Lands... And that's just what comes to mind right now.
A quarter of the population of South Korea along would sign up. You'd get a minimum of 12 million subscribers and the return of Starcraft Breakfast Cereal.
FTFA: The machines' modems either did not get a dial tone or had other problems, Wilson said.
The modems work better when they're plugged in. Don't be surprised. These are government employees at work. (Just ask anyone who had to be evacuated from an airport terminal because some knucklehead TSA screener forgot to plug in the metal detector.)
However, all kidding aside, there's little doubt in my mind that the devices are probably genuinely defective given Diebold's track record. I think a lawsuit is in order, and at the very least our government is entitled to a full refund plus damages. I'd rather Diebold pay for these screw-ups than the American Taxpayer.
...for Trauma Center: Second Opinion.
... stab!* "Doctor!"
*slash-slash-slash!
"You put an animal in a box, even a lab rat or gerbil, and the first thing it wants to do is climb out of it. If you don't put a lid on top of the bowl a goldfish it will eventually jump out to enlarge the environment it is living in," he said. "But a dolphin will never do that. In the marine parks, the dividers to keep the dolphins apart are only a foot or two above the water between the different pools," he said. Manger says the thought to jump over would simply not cross their unsophisticated minds.
So because the dolphin isn't brainless enough to jump out of its tank and beach itself and die in the process, that makes them stupid? I suppose by comparison the child that plays away from road isn't as smart as the kid that plays in traffic, you know, the one that's seeking to "enlarge his environment" by becoming road pizza.
"Are you smuggling drugs?" If I was working the ticket counter, I'd ask couples "Do you cheat on your spouse?" That would provoke a much more interesting response.
Full of spam? :(
Anyone have any idea what the exact model is?
Skywalker Ranch remains open for visitors to pay $15/mo to beat a dead horse.
Based on your timing and skill at entering in your account information on the login page, the fight begins!
Connecting...
Authenticating...
Server casts Lag Spike on you for 10503 damage. You die.
Unable to connect.
If you do really well, you might get to STAGE 2: "Retrieving Character List"
This isn't about Blizzard installing secret rootkits on your PC. This is about you connecting to their servers and using their service and behaving accordingly. Just like how a health club has rules saying you can't take towels home or take photos in the locker room. You break the rules, you get kicked out...and usually without a refund.
"Shut up! Shut up! If I don't hear you, it's not illegal!" - Homer Simpson cheating on his taxes
Unattended gameplay is against the Terms of Service, not the EULA. You agree to this when you register your key, and again when you load up the game for the first time and every time a patch (no matter how small) is installed.
Despite the expensive tickets and overpriced food, crying babies, restless children, chatty couples, cell phones going off, people lighting up the room checking their e-mail on their Blackberries, and every other clichéd movie theater problem on the tip of every stand-up comedian's tongue, I say to myself: "I could put up with all of this if only the film projector was digital."
...if we could rent PC games. (And I'm not talking about services like Gametap that only offers really old games that came out years ago.)
I'd rather pay $15/mo to a Netflix style service and get PC Game DVDs and CDs delivered to me than go to my local retail store and spend $60 (or go online and spend $40 + shipping) on something that MIGHT be fun and may provide me with a few hours of entertainment depending on how quickly I finish the game. If I rent the game and really like it so much that I'll want to spend days playing it and playing it over again whenever I want, I'll buy it so I can do just that!
Oh, but people would just rip PC games from the CDs, crack the protection, and keep them forever? Before there was affordable broadband Internet, I would agree, but you can do that today by downloading the game from public torrents and get it a lot faster than waiting for the CDs to arrive in the mail and without paying a monthly fee to some rental company. You can do that with PS and X-Box games with a modded machine or with DVD movies, but that hasn't stopped companies from offering PS/X-Box games and movies for rent.
Am I missing something? I don't understand why there is no place to rent PC games these days.
Matt Groening needs to start an episode with this opening to make one of the best couch gags ever!
"Game Experience May Change When Applying 3rd Party Hacks and Mods"
Required skills are:
Linux Operating Systems (RedHat, CentOS)
Linux Run Levels and Services Configuration (both xinetd and individual services)
Server/System Troubleshooting Skills
BASH scripting
Basic PERL
IPTables and Firewall Technologies
Load-Balancer Technologies
Intel Architecture Hardware Troubleshooting
Windows Server Administration
MSSQL, MySQL, and Sybase Administration
SSH Protocol Key Authentication
PHP Scripting
Apache Configuration
Mail Technologies (qmail, milters, spamassassin, clamav)
Tomcat Configuration
The importance of documentation and repeatable process.
Long-term architectural planning.
3 to 5 years of experience required
Job is located in downtown Portland
Job location is Portland, OR
Compensation: $15/hr