alanschu

Criticism about the lack of devs posting. Particularly in response to the German-Codex incident.

It seems the lack of posting was giving people plenty to criticize about.

Paint works fine for converting a file to a base file type. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles...but if you don't need them, why bother getting something else? All of the screenshots I have posted were handled in Paint.

The Live Team has been disbanded. Someone better tell Mr. Bartel

It's probably done that way because something that may seem innocuous might actually not be as harmless as they thought. When you leave some parts of it up to the descretion of those that signed the NDA, then there's a chance that something he thinks is not covered by the NDA but actually was, then there's possible trouble. A blanket catch all of zero tolerance limits this opportunity.

So what's stopping you from still using 9.04? Furthermore, why is it bad that Garry feels his product is capable of making him some money now? Besides, if it's a big deal and people don't actually want to pay it, they will continue to use 9.04 and we'll go from there. Don't buy in too hard to the slippery slope fallacy.

Don't worry, mine will probably be criticized even more

It's less risky because you don't need to sell as many copies in order to see a return on your investment. Even with an outside investor. A game doesn't need to be a smash hit AAA title to make profit. Yes, you will get some developers/publishers that will only be interested in going for games that they think will sell the most, but it doesn't have to be that way. EDIT: BW, where did you hear you have to buy Garry's mod? Steam tells me it's third party, and when I go to his website, it has download links right there. As for "the Ship," was it ever actually released as a mod (for Half-Life)? If so, what's to stop you from still playing the mod? Just like how I don't need to pay to play CS:S with my retail copy of Half-Life 2 (nor did I have have to pay to play the original CS, even after it went retail, with Half-Life).

Talk to the marketting team. Why do you have to sign it?

I laughed at that too.

So I can just burn a copy of the DVD?

I would think the galaxy fluctuations would be pretty insignificant, given their distances. THough I guess there IS a whole lot of galaxy out there to make our ginormous distance less important. But it is r^2 Ok good. I didn't like the word "specific" so I was just clarifying exactly what you meant. Then what happens to the reflected energy? Is Venus' higher density atmosphere cause or effect? I'm sure if we had a runaway greenhouse happen, our atmosphere would be quite a bit more dense as well, given the fact that CO2 has more mass than Nitrogen. As for the CO2 concern, the concern isn't that CO2 alone is going to cause a runaway, but rather incremental increases will result in additional heating, which would result in increased water evaporation and so on.

One of the funniest moments I have experienced in a game.

If copy protection was perfect, there would be no more software piracy, which is the goal of copy protection. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The ideal may be for it to be perfect. But we're kidding ourselves if we think that copy protection providers actually expect their game to be uncrackable. Their realistic goal is to "good enough" to help improve the bottom line of the company that uses it. Yes. A game like Torment, which made money over the long run is too poor of a ROI. Investors typically like high ROI. It's really not as unreasonable as it sounds. People are an impatient bunch, and want, nay demand, instant gratification. These same people bitch and moan about the costs of games being too expensive, yet absolutely have to play it right now. Telling them that the cost will come down eventually means nothing and so on. It's a hard and messed up thing to prove, but I'm under the impression that they (both copy protectors as well as investors/publishers) have information that leads them to think that it does work. Otherwise they wouldn't waste money doing it, as it would lessen their ROI. Either that or they feel they need to keep doing it, as they are worried that if they don't do it they'd be saying piracy is okay (and possibly not a problem). But the rationale behind this would still be that they would anticipate increased piracy and as a result not make as much money.

If it escapes, it must have quite the escape velocity, unless maybe it somehow breaks down molecularly. I'm not disputing that it somehow becomes gaseous, but rather what happens to it when it goes. Is it just infrequent enough that we haven't observed it? And why wouldn't the volcanoes be enough to relieve the pressure?

Copy protection isn't meant to be perfect. EDIT: Funny, I'd figure you'd be against that sort of "central hub" thing.

Where does the matter go when it "sheds?" Does it turn into gas? I can't imagine it escaping, which would mean the atmosphere gets filled with even more junk. As for the proof, the Soviets landed a probe there so I imagine it looked around and went, "Oh look, Volcanoes."

Yeah, I had an edit. The Volcanoes are on Mars. Since Google searches like wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geology_of_Venus

Isn't there quite the history of volcanic activity? I don't think they are too active right now, but IIRC they have two gigantic peaks that were believed to be volcanoes. EDIT: That's Mars, though Venus still has a geology that displays a prevalence of shield volcanoes.

Play video games? :"> Have sex without paying for it? :(" Have a friend! More seriously, never really gave it much thought. I guess I'll be boring and say "be happy."

Outside of the distance to the sun (which is likely very significant), Venus and Earth are believed to be similar when created. Though it does rotate slower, and IIRC it actually rotates "backwards." It is bizarro. A quick check at Wikipedia indicates that it likely lost most of its water due to solar wind, which is an important thing to consider with respect to Earth. Water is an important carbon sink, and it sound like Venus was at a disadvantage from that point. It's high temperature also prevents liquid water period, making sure that water vapour stays water vapour (and is an important principle of the runaway greenhouse effect). Though it seems as though most of the water was probably gonzo due to the lack of protection from the solar wind. For some reason I remembered water vapour being important on Venus, but wiki says otherwise. It has been a few years since I took astronomy :"> Oh well, we have water on Earth. Go go water!

What if I do not care about my saved games? As for my mouse

Welcome to the business. Where have you been? If you're really lucky, you'll get some experience with some code obfuscators as well, to help make reverse engineering a lot more difficult.

I suck at flying too. Being the gunner is relatively painless though, especially with a good pilot who knows what it takes to give the gunner a good position. My friend and I dominated in BFV (while blaring Ride of the Valkyries to boot!), and were pretty good at BF2 helicopters as well. He enjoys flying, and was one of the first "good" pilots in BF1942 as well (since it's all he was interested in and kept practicing...got even better once he got a joystick). It was a ton of fun having him provide cover for me in my tank as I captured flag after flag. He wasn't the best dog fighter, but he was a fantastic dive bomber, even with the fighter plane (which would only drop a single bomb at a time instead of the two).

I was sold off of BF2 because of the silly Blackhawk. I enjoyed gunning in the attack choppers too though. Shooting down enemy choppers with the TV guided missiles is a ton of fun.