metadigital

Fortunately I think 'The Rock' is taking the role of the Sergeant, and not the main protagonist, too. (This will help raise the ambient acting level immeasurably.) It'll be a nice comfortable film for those old gamers who played Doom, much like the recent trend in Hollywood to cash in on old television series with varying degrees of faithfullness and talent. Could be a fun way to spend a couple of hours, though. I hope.

Earth is under siege by an alien race. The Strogg are cybernetic warriors--a mechanical frame and decaying body parts stabilized by flesh consumed in a systematic annihilation of other species and civilizations. In a desperate attempt to survive a Strogg attack on Earth, an armada of Earth's finest warriors is sent to take the battle to the Strogg home planet. Earth's initial assault force is nearly annihilated immediately, but one marine manages to infiltrate the base, bring down their planetary defense systems, and kill the Strogg's collective brain and leader--the Makron. Earth assumed the destruction of the Makron would end it all, but it didn't. That's where Quake II leaves off and Quake 4 begins. The Strogg are quickly regrouping. However, with the Strogg

Doom: the motion picture Demonic lashings of movie goodness. Oh, and 'The Rock' Outsourcing. That's the word we'd use to sum up Id's activities at the moment. Out-sourcing because, as Carmack recently announced at Quakecon, the Quake III engine source code is now freely available to download. When you consider that games like Call of Duty are built on that code you can see the potential for would-be devs on a budget. Outsourcing because the Doom licence has been offered up to the Gods of Hollywood and the movile is due in cinemas on 21st October. H IS FOR HELL Contrary to internet opinion the film is staying faithful to the game storyline. They ARE on Mars, there WILL be demons, and while edgy US PRs are relictant to use the H word, but [sic passim] fiery netherworlds aregoing to feature. The question is, how well will the feel of the game translate? We spoke to the movie's special effects director John Farhat and asked him. "Thirty two million people are expecting a very specific thing from the movie; I gotta say it was a real task. But you know there's so much in there for gamers to recognise"[sic] he says. He's right, too. The trailer has sparked off some excited debate, especially surrounding the first person sequence where viewers are treated to a live action remake of Doom, shot from the FPS perspective. "That sequence is a five minute continuous shot." says Farhat "We worked for three months just to get that right. You know, film screen ratios are long and skinny, so even working out exactly how the gun fits in there was a challenge. I had people like Tom [McAdams, ex-SAS officer and on-set military advisor] help me get the blocking right, so there's a lot of authenticity in there, both from a gaming point of view and a real world one." So that's real world authenticity in a film based on a game set on Mars during a demon invasion. Can't wait to see them pull that off ... PC Format, Issue 180, November 2005, p20.

Team Xbox, please make sure and get a fan of a comic book franchise to review a comic book game next time, this description is just plain stupid, everyone knows that this is called the Fastball Special. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> They were probably explaining the move to the non-fanbase readers; fans would automatically know what the description was called, using the proper noun alone would only have been good for "clique"-points. Of course, unless there was a space restriction, they could easily have put both ...

Good bluff, Jags! :cool: Oops, did I just let the cat out of the bag?

Yeah, well there's not much else going on at the moment, so I am on the excited side of indifference. Also, the previous incarnations were killers (even though I didn't play III much).

Killing/neutralising (for goodies) characters of opposite alignment should grant bonus alignment points. G0-T0 was actually integral to the PCs survival, at least initially, in K2, though. Hardly an enemy, more like an antagonist that must be co-operated with until and unless everyone's goals diverge ...

Anywayz0rz, bring on the Strogg!

Quake IV due for PC release in two weeks in the UK. :cool:

That's pretty good, Steve. I'd add to it a little more explanation for those outside the UK to make more from it, though: "hardworking families" is the ideal that all members of society compare themselves to; in the past, political parties and governements have used "working class" and "honest, decent", "man in the street", etc. Think workers controlling the means of production, realised. (Of course big business runs most of society collectively, only when one corporate sticks its head up out of the pack does the government get a clear shot at it to bring it down to size.) "new" is trying to re-define the political landscape, rather than tired old "left" and "right" nomenclature (which is taken from the original French revolutionary National Assembly: left and right), i.e. a "new" third or "middle" way. "Terr0rzr1stz" are the enemy of the "free people", which (co-incidentally) is what the state is representing and protecting. Therefore enemies of the state are enemies of the people, or so the logic goes. I think the term "Terrorist" is being slowly changed from its original literal meaning of "someone who uses fear to leverage extortion", into "enemy of the state". Pity. But it is equally assinine to argue that a "freedom fighter" is fighting for their own freedom, at the expense of the society in which they live. That isn't a freedom fighter, it's a selfish anarchist.

I still don't undersand the point of the neutical.

I'll be seeing it again this weekend most likely. Gotta drag my other roommate who cancelled at the last minute on friday because he got some vacuum tubes in the mail. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Cool! Vacuum tubes are t3H sh1zn1tz! That's the latest media advertising meta-technology, that is. Even includes the "viral" payload (first nine minutes of the film): i.e. as in "viral advertising" which is where people on the internets forward stuff they like to their friends (hence the metaphor) ... siz degrees of separation plus reference from a trusted source equals better bang-for-buck than squandering millions on ill-targeted advertising to people who wouldn't go and see the film anyway (like my mother).

Sounds like a bad case of Joss Whedon Envy, to me ... did your (obviously ex-) girlfriend compare you in -ahem- awkward ways to the Whedon?

posted by Zonk on Friday October 07, @19:58 (It's funny. Laugh.) karvind writes "This week Nobel prizes in Chemistry, Physics and Medicine were announced. Keeping up with the tradition, the 15th Annual Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held at Sander's Theater at Harvard University. Winners include: Will Humans Swim Faster or Slower in Syrup? (Chemistry), Electrically monitoring the activity of a brain cell in a locust while that locust was watching selected highlights from the movie "Star Wars" (Peace), The Significance of Mr. Richard Buckley's Exploding Trousers (Agricultural History) and many more. Interestingly Roy Glauber, who for ten years has humbly swept paper airplanes on the stage at the Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony, won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics. Archived video of the live webcast is also available for those who couldn't attend the ceremony." :cool:

Prions.

Why Microsoft Hates Blu-ray from the daggers-drawn dept. posted by Zonk on Friday October 07, @18:40 (Movies) An anonymous reader writes "The private feud just became public. Apparently, Gates yelled at Sony's CEO because the new copy protection Blu-ray has adopted would prevent players from streaming content to the Xbox 360. Since the PS3 will have Blu-ray support but the Xbox 360 only has a plain DVD drive, this means PS3 will be the only console that can play HD movies. Also, Paramount just announced support for Blu-ray and Warner Brothers may also jump ship. Will VHS vs. Betamax turn out differently this time?" Slashdot Stories for 2005-10-08

Cool.

Well, they don't eat you ALIVE, they wait for you to die first. (Not sure about the rulings of ritual homocide, though ...)

Cormack released the Quake III: Arena on GNU public licence. Use that.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by bluffing the other person, but though I'll see everyone's orders, since all orders including my own have to go through Kaftan, I won't see anyone's orders until it's too late to change my own, exactly as if I was a regular player. ... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I mean it is no longer possible to write this sort of order: A Tun - ION (sic) to the GM because you will know that it was a deliberate misrepresentation, not an accidental mistake.

What a smart man that Einstein was, using relativity to invent time travel and then proving it by travelling into the future to help observe our game of Diplomacy! By the way, everyone get your builds in, please.

What game? "

What temperature is the incendiary process? If it's several tens of thousands of degrees (like the core of the Sun), then immolation would be instantaneous, and a big saltwater crocodile would grab your body part and perform a death roll until you drowned (or got very dizzy), only to stow your remains until their larder had dwindled in a few weeks. I used to think I'd prefer jumping off a tall precipice to die, until I completed a few Bungee jumps; then I realised the headlong trajectory is not particularly pleasant. I would much prefer to go out after a good freefall (without a parachute). I don't see how anyone can give a reliable account of drowning, either. As Spock said in Star Trek 3 about needing a common frame of reference, to which McCoy responded: "You mean I would have to die, frist, in order to talk to you about death?" Back to the vote: either way you aren't going to suffer for long (unless the death is not by fire / eating, but complications thereof), so it doesn't matter. I wouldn't give a toss, really. Humans have disposed of their dead with fire (Jewish), burials at sea (You Only Live Twice) and recycling the bodies back to nature (Zoroastrians

... Because you don't want to spend the last seconds of your life insane AND lunch.