I would seriously doubt your stats on "aim-bot users".
Do you even have the game? If so do you play "Ground War" for more than a couple matches in a session? Don't try to bring your pre-biased views on the actual state of things if you don't have anything other than your preconceptions backing it. If you've actually been in Ground War for a few nights then I'm actually interested in why you think it's not really that bad.
It's pretty obvious when you watch it on the kill cam actually, the difference between human skill and what these programs can achieve has too large a gap. If the programs were made a bit more subtle then I will admit I would have a harder time telling the difference. Subtlety however, does not seem to have been the aim in designing these programs, so the distinction is clear, especially when you watch the replays.
Also, to clear up your misunderstanding, I've never even bothered accusing any of these players in game personally. A lot of people I'm playing with will try to call them on it, but I don't. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not that guy. I do however know several people who arethat guy.
ONLY 2500 accounts? That's not even a drop in the bucket, the slightest slap on the wrist of the anti-competitive players in MW2. Based on personal experience of having an aim-bot user in roughly 1 out of every 3 matches I'd say 2500 isn't even a start. Maybe it's a lot worse in some game modes, especially the 16 player "big game" matches where it's more likely simply due to having more people in game (or more targets? I suppose the bots like having more victims). I don't even like having them on my team, even though it's usually a win because the bot ends up stealing almost all the kills, or they just settle for a 25 kill tactical nuke and end it. Maybe if they get up to 2500 accounts per day it'll make a difference.
Most games in multimon scenarios really need odd number of displays.
Most yes, but not all. Supreme Commander offered in-game configuration for 2-monitor support and what they did with it worked quite well. Having a full-screen zoom-able mini-map was far more useful than I expected it would be. This could easily be implemented in several other RTS games to the same effect. It's at least a unique take on it, more than just simple resolution boosting.
Um, not even close, Overlord is like playing Pikmin with some slightly darker mood.
I recently stumbled upon a game called Dwarf Fortress which has some similarities to Dungeon Keeper. It lacks the easy interaction that DK had, and only has primitive tile based graphics available, but at least it's _something_ I'd still rather see Dungeon Keeper return though, or have Dwarf Fortress modernized to the point of being a suitable replacement.
I think Warcraft 3 is the best bet for a plot-line to use. It's set out in the most logical pattern and tells a naturally flowing story. The prior games were a bit unclear on how everything tied together depending on what side you happen to be playing, or if the one side of the story even happened at all. Warcraft 3 is fairly definite as all roads lead to the big tree, and as far as scenes I'd like to watch in cinema, hordes of undead storming the 3 allied races is fairly high on my list. Probably similar to the battle at helm's deep, only more spread out and smaller forts/keeps etc.
Um no, Punkbuster is shit. Just take a look at the support forums for Quake Live. In my experience, Quake Live lasted no longer than 15 seconds per session without PB exploding. Maybe (*maybe*) use VAC, as I have not had nearly as many issues with it.
Agree, I got the MX518 for gaming as it's primary role but it's still very much a professional mouse as well. I'd say avoid something like a Razor mouse though, the MX518 is really enough, and not all gaming mice directly translate well to doing work. I've been considering going back to the MX518 since the new Razor mouse feels so strange but I'm still trying to adapt (and yes, I am trying to program with the Razor mouse as well).
Starcraft survived from 1990s to today, with 800x600 2d graphics.
Actually Starcraft only runs at 640x480 (PC version anyway, I don't know about the Mac version). First game I know of that Blizzard offered 800x600 was the Diablo 2 Expansion.
Most Sata II drives should be able to fall back to Sata I. In fact, I've bought Sata II drives which have come configured as Sata I drives (apparently the user was expected to use the manufacturer boot utility to reconfigure the drive). My newer Hitachi drive came set as Sata II by default though so maybe Hitachi stopped doing that. Could be the difference between their consumer and enterprise series.
True, but sometimes it's necessary to bypass some ridiculously hard part of a game.
I'm seeing this happen in several titles now, and in my opinion it's just bad design. Where there is some ridiculous difficulty "spike" which is much harder than the content before it AND the content after it. The expected difficulty curve for a game starts low and goes high with maybe the occasional outliers (small outliers mind) for boss fights or the like. I don't have any issue with a small spike here and there, but if it goes too high and it never gets back up to that point, then it's severely misplaced. If the content exceeds the final level / boss or whatever then after passing it you've effectively won anyway.
In a well designed title, I see no point in cheating to get past a point, because if the difficulty curve is made properly I'd just have to cheat my way through the entire rest of the game anyway. By getting "stuck" at that point, I'm forced to learn whatever game-play mechanics that will allow me to survive future content. The problem here being that future content never required such skill, so cheating past the spike has no effect whatsoever at your ability to complete the rest of the game. The solution should not be to put in a bypass, it should be to rework the skill curve back to where it should be.
Geez, how about just making the help consist of GODDAMN HTML FILES?
Or how about just removing local help entirely? Seriously, when was the last time anybody used Windows help and found the answer they were looking for? Maybe for the most basic of problems, but anything that is seriously broke is going to need a lot more detail than the local help has ever offered me. If I actually need Windows help I'm either looking at google.com or msdn.com.
Windows has had NTFS for years (admittedly, several versions, but never any compatibility issues that I've come across)
XP will kill Shadow Copy data from Vista on NTFS volumes. Granted, all the data should be there and read / writes should work fine so it's not really a serious "compatibility" issue, it's more just like feature incompatibility. Of course after going back to Vista if you needed a prior version it's gone. And there might be some problems with System Restore if it's using Shadow Copy features.
How bout anyone with a game in beta has to let people at e3 play it, so they can see how unprepared for release it actually is *cough Demigod cough*
Good idea, except that Demigod's problems are almost entirely connectivity issues. The base engine performance is actually really polished. On a Local Area Network, all the problems Demigod has in it's matchmaking wouldn't have been seen at all. All their local machines should in theory be able to connect without incident, and none of the little routing issues which it's having now would be shown. So yes, in general it might help, but in Demigod's case the game would have looked BETTER than it does now.
I'm not entirely sure on this, but since Steam has a game backup feature and offline mode, I think it would be possible to re-install (import from backup) and use in offline mode as much as you want without ever connecting to a Steam server. Although since most users probably do not have secondary storage to dump their Steam collection on, most users will consider the Steam server to be their backup if a reinstall is necessary.
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Do you even have the game? If so do you play "Ground War" for more than a couple matches in a session? Don't try to bring your pre-biased views on the actual state of things if you don't have anything other than your preconceptions backing it. If you've actually been in Ground War for a few nights then I'm actually interested in why you think it's not really that bad.
It's pretty obvious when you watch it on the kill cam actually, the difference between human skill and what these programs can achieve has too large a gap. If the programs were made a bit more subtle then I will admit I would have a harder time telling the difference. Subtlety however, does not seem to have been the aim in designing these programs, so the distinction is clear, especially when you watch the replays.
Also, to clear up your misunderstanding, I've never even bothered accusing any of these players in game personally. A lot of people I'm playing with will try to call them on it, but I don't. Sorry to disappoint, but I'm not that guy. I do however know several people who are that guy.
ONLY 2500 accounts? That's not even a drop in the bucket, the slightest slap on the wrist of the anti-competitive players in MW2. Based on personal experience of having an aim-bot user in roughly 1 out of every 3 matches I'd say 2500 isn't even a start. Maybe it's a lot worse in some game modes, especially the 16 player "big game" matches where it's more likely simply due to having more people in game (or more targets? I suppose the bots like having more victims). I don't even like having them on my team, even though it's usually a win because the bot ends up stealing almost all the kills, or they just settle for a 25 kill tactical nuke and end it. Maybe if they get up to 2500 accounts per day it'll make a difference.
Wow, this must be a first. A car analogy was marked off topic? I thought I was reading Slashdot. Car analogies are on topic by default.
I followed you until you said "putz", at which point you became just another strange Yiddish using delinquent. Try harder next time.
Most yes, but not all. Supreme Commander offered in-game configuration for 2-monitor support and what they did with it worked quite well. Having a full-screen zoom-able mini-map was far more useful than I expected it would be. This could easily be implemented in several other RTS games to the same effect. It's at least a unique take on it, more than just simple resolution boosting.
Welcome to the real world?
Um, not even close, Overlord is like playing Pikmin with some slightly darker mood.
I recently stumbled upon a game called Dwarf Fortress which has some similarities to Dungeon Keeper. It lacks the easy interaction that DK had, and only has primitive tile based graphics available, but at least it's _something_ I'd still rather see Dungeon Keeper return though, or have Dwarf Fortress modernized to the point of being a suitable replacement.
I think Warcraft 3 is the best bet for a plot-line to use. It's set out in the most logical pattern and tells a naturally flowing story. The prior games were a bit unclear on how everything tied together depending on what side you happen to be playing, or if the one side of the story even happened at all. Warcraft 3 is fairly definite as all roads lead to the big tree, and as far as scenes I'd like to watch in cinema, hordes of undead storming the 3 allied races is fairly high on my list. Probably similar to the battle at helm's deep, only more spread out and smaller forts/keeps etc.
CCP is *still* talking about Ambulation? That's not even a dead horse anymore, it's the unrecognizable remains of a dead horse.
Exactly, this is why my backup only takes up 1.8TB instead of 1.9TB, because I was able to properly identify the stuff that really needed backed up.
Um no, Punkbuster is shit. Just take a look at the support forums for Quake Live. In my experience, Quake Live lasted no longer than 15 seconds per session without PB exploding. Maybe (*maybe*) use VAC, as I have not had nearly as many issues with it.
You forgot the sarcasm tags, it's ok, we all know it was an honest mistake.
Agree, I got the MX518 for gaming as it's primary role but it's still very much a professional mouse as well. I'd say avoid something like a Razor mouse though, the MX518 is really enough, and not all gaming mice directly translate well to doing work. I've been considering going back to the MX518 since the new Razor mouse feels so strange but I'm still trying to adapt (and yes, I am trying to program with the Razor mouse as well).
Actually Starcraft only runs at 640x480 (PC version anyway, I don't know about the Mac version). First game I know of that Blizzard offered 800x600 was the Diablo 2 Expansion.
That would break their monopoly on bad games.
Most Sata II drives should be able to fall back to Sata I. In fact, I've bought Sata II drives which have come configured as Sata I drives (apparently the user was expected to use the manufacturer boot utility to reconfigure the drive). My newer Hitachi drive came set as Sata II by default though so maybe Hitachi stopped doing that. Could be the difference between their consumer and enterprise series.
I'm seeing this happen in several titles now, and in my opinion it's just bad design. Where there is some ridiculous difficulty "spike" which is much harder than the content before it AND the content after it. The expected difficulty curve for a game starts low and goes high with maybe the occasional outliers (small outliers mind) for boss fights or the like. I don't have any issue with a small spike here and there, but if it goes too high and it never gets back up to that point, then it's severely misplaced. If the content exceeds the final level / boss or whatever then after passing it you've effectively won anyway.
In a well designed title, I see no point in cheating to get past a point, because if the difficulty curve is made properly I'd just have to cheat my way through the entire rest of the game anyway. By getting "stuck" at that point, I'm forced to learn whatever game-play mechanics that will allow me to survive future content. The problem here being that future content never required such skill, so cheating past the spike has no effect whatsoever at your ability to complete the rest of the game. The solution should not be to put in a bypass, it should be to rework the skill curve back to where it should be.
Well, as far as Quake goes I don't see much difference, camping the rocket launcher spawn point isn't gonna change much.
Or how about just removing local help entirely? Seriously, when was the last time anybody used Windows help and found the answer they were looking for? Maybe for the most basic of problems, but anything that is seriously broke is going to need a lot more detail than the local help has ever offered me. If I actually need Windows help I'm either looking at google.com or msdn.com.
Translation : Forces rework on code that would otherwise run fine given some bigger iron to run on.
I seriously doubt that the "innovative" new methods have added any value beyond meeting performance requirements.
XP will kill Shadow Copy data from Vista on NTFS volumes. Granted, all the data should be there and read / writes should work fine so it's not really a serious "compatibility" issue, it's more just like feature incompatibility. Of course after going back to Vista if you needed a prior version it's gone. And there might be some problems with System Restore if it's using Shadow Copy features.
Good idea, except that Demigod's problems are almost entirely connectivity issues. The base engine performance is actually really polished. On a Local Area Network, all the problems Demigod has in it's matchmaking wouldn't have been seen at all. All their local machines should in theory be able to connect without incident, and none of the little routing issues which it's having now would be shown. So yes, in general it might help, but in Demigod's case the game would have looked BETTER than it does now.
I'm not entirely sure on this, but since Steam has a game backup feature and offline mode, I think it would be possible to re-install (import from backup) and use in offline mode as much as you want without ever connecting to a Steam server. Although since most users probably do not have secondary storage to dump their Steam collection on, most users will consider the Steam server to be their backup if a reinstall is necessary.
Thanks for clearing that up. If you hadn't I'm sure everyone would have come to the wrong conclusion.