Yet another faceless organization misses the boat. They see there is a desire for their content but instead of trying to find a way to earn money they decide to restrict access to their content as much as possible. This only leads to people finding alternate ways to get it.
What should they be doing right now? Setting up a web site that for a small monthly fee ($5) will allow you to watch, not download, all the japanese tv shows you want. Most people who care about Anime don't like the dubs so all they would have to do is subtitle them. The game shows are funnier with the bad voice overs, so get some college exchange students and allow them to do the bad voice overs for college credit.
I'm not quite sure I believe this to be the case as most people have experienced in forums, games, comment threads and other such internet environments, the internet seems to relieve people of their moral burdens. I have been called every name in the book for every race. Some people feel that if they are uncertain of what race you belong to they will call you derogatory names from each race until they get a reaction from you. Its one of the main reasons I stopped going online for Xbox live (Xbox). I got tired hearing 6 year olds calling my friends and I a random racist comment + swear word all while asking for some chocolate milk (This really did happen, I though it was just a cliche) when you beat them.
My dad also has experienced this same thing on Everquest. A group member, whom he played with for more than 6 months, asked him his race and he answered truthfully. From that point on this other player has gone out of his way to avoid my dad and will not talk to him. Maybe thats my dad's fault for even thinking about divulging that information but its a shame when they were truly a good team. Its also a shame that we might have to think about not saying who we are because we may suffer for it.
One of my Dad's characters is a Erudite. a black mage like character (I don't play EQ so I'm not sure). When he created the character he was greeted by people with such choice phrases as "N***** lover", "Look at the coon", and such. This wasn't expected from people who routinely play as elves, cat people, ogres, trolls,etc. Lets not even get started on creating a character with an Arab sounding name.
Has this situation gotten better. Yeah it has, as companies force real world consequences on these virtual accounts people have second thoughts about abusing online anonymity. We the player may not know who you are but Sony and Microsoft do. I think that we see less of this action as people get banned for saying inappropriate things. I personally have had a much better experience with Xbox Live on Xbox 360 than on Xbox but that may be due to not wanted to get the serial number for your $300-$400 dollar console banned from live.
While Kim expects that some third-party game developers will create 1080p games, he said that 720p will likely remain the norm.
"We believe 720p is the sweet-spot for high definition," he said, adding that Microsoft Game Studio titles will, for now, continue to be created at 720p.
Microsoft knows most people don't care for 1080p at this time that's why they will continue to make games in 720p for now. Any HD set is capable of 720p so this is by far the best resolution to make games for. Maybe in a few years 1080p will be more common but until then this feature is a novelty. Sony can't say that the Xbox 360 can't do 1080p which leads to one less advantage to getting a PS3.
I personally use the VGA cables to do 1280x720 and it looks great. If I can hook up a DVI cable to the PS3 then I'll do the same for it.
if Sony wants that much money from a customer, will it provide a legally binding contract to provide a console at launch?
Thats the big question in my opinion. If a offer like this was available in the US and Sony was legally bound to have a console for you at launch then I may bite. The problem with the 360 launch, at least in my corner of the US, was that all the game store knowingly sold more pre-orders than they would ever have gotten. On top of that the stores informed you that you would not get a launch system too close to the launch of the system. This meant that even if you went somewhere else to pre-order, chances are they would be just as sold out. This of course forced you to keep your money at a retailer that knowingly deceived you because you had a better chance of getting a 360 before Christmas from them. I ended up waiting in line at Walmart even though I reserved a system 2 month prior at a gamestop but didn't find out I wasn't getting one till a week before launch.
The deposit scheme also has the effect of spreading out the payment for the system. I could afford to pay for a PS3 + games + controller on launch day but when you add all that up at one time it presents a financial problem. Tax in my area is about 7.5% or about $45, a PS3 game is going to be at-least $60, a controller at least $40. You've spent $745 for a standard console launch package. $745 dollars poses a serious health risk for me. Mainly if I were to spend that much on games in one day my fiance would kill me. Literally. I would be a dead man. At least with a $200 deposit, I could give my fiance the appearance of only paying $545 for all that.
I noticed while in walmart that most people would instead of buying the console, they would put the console in layaway. I don't know if you use the same term in the UK but layaway is when you put money down on a product (~10%) and pay on the product over the course of weeks/months and the store holds the product for you. When you are done paying for the product you can take it home. This may be the only way people without as much disposable income can afford a PS3.
I don't think that "urban" games are dead. When any genre comes out and is successful there will be good and bad clones. Its all about the easy dollar. Find an idea that works and exploit it till you have to innovate. That what stopped Midway's "urban game", out of that million dollar concept testing they couldn't think of a single idea to make their game different.
If urban games are dead so is every other genre. how many shooters are there with bullet time. Look at all the games coming out based on unreal 3 or doom 3 engines. They all look the same, granted they look good. But the style is the same. Dark corridors, mutated monsters, monsters with metal implants, and etc. Even the stories are similar; Monster,demon,alien, or underground civilization wants to take over,enslave, or eat humanity. The only thing different is your choice of gimmick. This goes for fighters, RPGs, racing games, and all other genres as well.
With Cocoa, I strongly encourage using Interface Builder especially if you are learning. I typically only use Interface builder to build my UI so it retains the Aqua look and feel and make the GUI easier to maintain. You could do it all by hand if you wanted to, and there isn't any thing wrong with that. I have mixed using NIB with coding portions of the UI by hand and it works fine (personal projects). I haven't done a complete UI in code yet because you miss some of the benefits of Interface Builder and NIB files. Interface Builder creates all the objects for your GUI and serializes them in the NIB. Your app automatically reactivates the objects when its opened and connects objects to the appropriate targets and actions. This is wonderful for quickly creating apps that take full advantage of Cocoa controls and formatting because you don't have to write the code to initialize the UI and specify control behavior. Look in the object inspector to see all of what you can do without code. Coding by hand, you take on creating the GUI objects, initializing all the objects, connecting all the components, setting up the look and feel, etc. Try to create a NSButton by hand, it doesn't look like a Interface Builder NSButton at first. Also suppose the layout of the UI changes but you keep all the controls. If you code by hand you have to manually move all the components with code. In Interface Builder, just move the controls save the NIB and you are done, no change in code.
"AFAIK, this MUST be done graphically. It can't be coded. Or at least, it is strongly discouraged. This graphical nature took me quite awhile to get used to."
This can be done through code. use the setAction:(SEL)aSelector and setTarget:(id)target methods. setTarget tells the button which object to talk to setAction tells the button what you want to say to the object.
ex:
defined in header
IBOutlet NSButton *myButton;
in some function in source file
[myButton setTarget: self];//or any other object
[myButton setAction: @selector(toggleLines:)];
where toggle lines looks like
-(void) toggleLines: (id)button
Slashdot Mirror
Yet another faceless organization misses the boat. They see there is a desire for their content but instead of trying to find a way to earn money they decide to restrict access to their content as much as possible. This only leads to people finding alternate ways to get it.
What should they be doing right now? Setting up a web site that for a small monthly fee ($5) will allow you to watch, not download, all the japanese tv shows you want. Most people who care about Anime don't like the dubs so all they would have to do is subtitle them. The game shows are funnier with the bad voice overs, so get some college exchange students and allow them to do the bad voice overs for college credit.
Everybody wins.
I'm not quite sure I believe this to be the case as most people have experienced in forums, games, comment threads and other such internet environments, the internet seems to relieve people of their moral burdens. I have been called every name in the book for every race. Some people feel that if they are uncertain of what race you belong to they will call you derogatory names from each race until they get a reaction from you. Its one of the main reasons I stopped going online for Xbox live (Xbox). I got tired hearing 6 year olds calling my friends and I a random racist comment + swear word all while asking for some chocolate milk (This really did happen, I though it was just a cliche) when you beat them.
My dad also has experienced this same thing on Everquest. A group member, whom he played with for more than 6 months, asked him his race and he answered truthfully. From that point on this other player has gone out of his way to avoid my dad and will not talk to him. Maybe thats my dad's fault for even thinking about divulging that information but its a shame when they were truly a good team. Its also a shame that we might have to think about not saying who we are because we may suffer for it.
One of my Dad's characters is a Erudite. a black mage like character (I don't play EQ so I'm not sure). When he created the character he was greeted by people with such choice phrases as "N***** lover", "Look at the coon", and such. This wasn't expected from people who routinely play as elves, cat people, ogres, trolls,etc. Lets not even get started on creating a character with an Arab sounding name.
Has this situation gotten better. Yeah it has, as companies force real world consequences on these virtual accounts people have second thoughts about abusing online anonymity. We the player may not know who you are but Sony and Microsoft do. I think that we see less of this action as people get banned for saying inappropriate things. I personally have had a much better experience with Xbox Live on Xbox 360 than on Xbox but that may be due to not wanted to get the serial number for your $300-$400 dollar console banned from live.
I personally use the VGA cables to do 1280x720 and it looks great. If I can hook up a DVI cable to the PS3 then I'll do the same for it.
Thats the big question in my opinion. If a offer like this was available in the US and Sony was legally bound to have a console for you at launch then I may bite. The problem with the 360 launch, at least in my corner of the US, was that all the game store knowingly sold more pre-orders than they would ever have gotten. On top of that the stores informed you that you would not get a launch system too close to the launch of the system. This meant that even if you went somewhere else to pre-order, chances are they would be just as sold out. This of course forced you to keep your money at a retailer that knowingly deceived you because you had a better chance of getting a 360 before Christmas from them. I ended up waiting in line at Walmart even though I reserved a system 2 month prior at a gamestop but didn't find out I wasn't getting one till a week before launch.
The deposit scheme also has the effect of spreading out the payment for the system. I could afford to pay for a PS3 + games + controller on launch day but when you add all that up at one time it presents a financial problem. Tax in my area is about 7.5% or about $45, a PS3 game is going to be at-least $60, a controller at least $40. You've spent $745 for a standard console launch package. $745 dollars poses a serious health risk for me. Mainly if I were to spend that much on games in one day my fiance would kill me. Literally. I would be a dead man. At least with a $200 deposit, I could give my fiance the appearance of only paying $545 for all that.
I noticed while in walmart that most people would instead of buying the console, they would put the console in layaway. I don't know if you use the same term in the UK but layaway is when you put money down on a product (~10%) and pay on the product over the course of weeks/months and the store holds the product for you. When you are done paying for the product you can take it home. This may be the only way people without as much disposable income can afford a PS3.
I don't think that "urban" games are dead. When any genre comes out and is successful there will be good and bad clones. Its all about the easy dollar. Find an idea that works and exploit it till you have to innovate. That what stopped Midway's "urban game", out of that million dollar concept testing they couldn't think of a single idea to make their game different.
If urban games are dead so is every other genre. how many shooters are there with bullet time. Look at all the games coming out based on unreal 3 or doom 3 engines. They all look the same, granted they look good. But the style is the same. Dark corridors, mutated monsters, monsters with metal implants, and etc. Even the stories are similar; Monster,demon,alien, or underground civilization wants to take over,enslave, or eat humanity. The only thing different is your choice of gimmick. This goes for fighters, RPGs, racing games, and all other genres as well.
With Cocoa, I strongly encourage using Interface Builder especially if you are learning. I typically only use Interface builder to build my UI so it retains the Aqua look and feel and make the GUI easier to maintain. You could do it all by hand if you wanted to, and there isn't any thing wrong with that. I have mixed using NIB with coding portions of the UI by hand and it works fine (personal projects). I haven't done a complete UI in code yet because you miss some of the benefits of Interface Builder and NIB files. Interface Builder creates all the objects for your GUI and serializes them in the NIB. Your app automatically reactivates the objects when its opened and connects objects to the appropriate targets and actions. This is wonderful for quickly creating apps that take full advantage of Cocoa controls and formatting because you don't have to write the code to initialize the UI and specify control behavior. Look in the object inspector to see all of what you can do without code. Coding by hand, you take on creating the GUI objects, initializing all the objects, connecting all the components, setting up the look and feel, etc. Try to create a NSButton by hand, it doesn't look like a Interface Builder NSButton at first. Also suppose the layout of the UI changes but you keep all the controls. If you code by hand you have to manually move all the components with code. In Interface Builder, just move the controls save the NIB and you are done, no change in code.
"AFAIK, this MUST be done graphically. It can't be coded. Or at least, it is strongly discouraged. This graphical nature took me quite awhile to get used to."
//or any other object
This can be done through code. use the setAction:(SEL)aSelector and setTarget:(id)target methods. setTarget tells the button which object to talk to setAction tells the button what you want to say to the object.
ex:
defined in header
IBOutlet NSButton *myButton;
in some function in source file
[myButton setTarget: self];
[myButton setAction: @selector(toggleLines:)];
where toggle lines looks like
-(void) toggleLines: (id)button