metadigital

Don't forget: Vacation (1983) Conan The Barbarian (1982) I guessing the SW wasn't the first to use the iconography, e.g: King Kong (1976) and maybe even: King Kong (1933)

OBS-4 looks like being on the Standard Map, with everone adjured to the latest Standard Rules.

Yeah, I bet he knows all the backdoor codes to gimp the opponents and make his PC god-like on ALL the servers ..! "

No. Posting story ideas is for self-aggrandizing wannabe writers and invederate fanboys, both of which do not describe me. I have already posted technical ideas for both plot and character development and execution; try reading the previous twelve threads, I appear in a significant portion!

Linkie for Voice Changer? I know that was one of the design decisions for Everquest 2: the devs didn't think it helped immersion if the 200 year old female elf sounded like Biff from the mailroom ...

Re-install Windows? Only if you are congenitally stupid, insane or masochistic! Uninstall and re-install the drivers, maybe, but not the whole OS. If the games work for a few minutes, then go fritz, it is heating. End of thread.

I had a similar "procedural" problem with my ISP the other day. [*] Cable modem intermittently failing. [*] Call service desk: half hour of trouble shooting (i.e. does the "ready" light come on the modem? "No", Oh, then I'll arrange for a technician to drop by. ) [*] ISP has wrongly recorded my postcode. Postcode must be correct before a site service call can be booked. Go back and call again (because they cannot put me through ). [*] Fix postcode. Customer Support cannot order site visit without a mandatory charge of

It's easy, just publish a text file (i.e. load it into your favourite browser) with the html codes: Æ æ Œ œ to get:

I'm not sure which bit of my post you failed to understand: [*]Daedalus comes to English from the Greek myth (Icarus's Father), via the Latin (as with all classics): [Latin daedalus, from Greek daidalos.]. [*]the

The oldest living organism is a tree in Tasmania. It takes up an entire mountain, and has been alive since the last ice age (c. 10-12k years). Barramundi, a type of fish, starts off as a male freshwater (river) fish, then grows up and out, to become a female saltwater fish. (Not sure how they end up mating; probably through a turnstile).

D

Just don't mention Aeon Flux to him. :ph34r: <{POST_SNAPBACK}> No. Ligatures are your friend. What about

I would just like to say that I think this is a marvelous idea.

FEAR is what will keep the local systems in line. Fear may help GoA to re-discover his searching skills, and ultimately help to find his missing Charisma!

Is Puuk any relation to Cuuk (of the Vegetable Wars fame, with Chew Brocoli and Darth Tater)?

John Carmack gives the Doom 3 engine to open source (the GNU Public Licence). John Carmack on the future of the gaming industry, during his traditional extemporaneous speech, at the recent Quakecon 2005. Carmack, Quakecon 2005 ... Here Carmack heaped praise on the decisions that Microsoft has made with the Xbox 360. "It's the best development environment I've seen on a console," he says. Microsoft has taken a very developer-centric approach, creating a system that's both powerful but easy to code for. This is in contrast to Nintendo, Sony, and (formerly) Sega, who generally focused on the hardware. Carmack ruminated on how throughout history consoles have swung back and forth between providing high-end hardware or development tools. Until the PS1 came out, nearly everything was done at the register level, but Sony's first console shipped with tools to help speed the development process. This was in opposition to the Sega Saturn, which was very powerful but nearly impossible to efficiently code for. Then, with the release of the PS2, Sony flip-flopped: the PS2 had much more complicated hardware and you basically had to program it at the low level again. Then along came the Xbox, which didn't have low-level access but was way easier to program. Carmack looks forward to what's coming up. "It'll be real interesting to see how this next generation pans out," he said. This time around, the Xbox 360 is coming out sooner and is easier to program; will it be enough to supplant Sony's market lead? ... Sony's position seems to be similar to the company's stance with the PS2: Sure, it'll be hard, but the really good developers will suck it up and figure it out. But Carmack wonders aloud: wouldn't it have been better to use multi-threaded processors to begin with? ... Multiple Processors for AI or Physics Proponents of faster and faster processors sometimes argue that now that graphics are reaching their 'peak,' extra processing power can be dedicated to calculation-intensive physics or Artificial Intelligence. (Carmack relates how an Engineer at IBM told him that graphics were basically "done.") Carmack disagrees, seeing that graphics still have a long way to go. "We'd like to be doing Lord-of-the-Rings type rendering in real-time," he states. That's still an order of magnitude more than what's possible with current machines, and Carmack is looking forward to it. That aside, Carmack spent a few minutes talking about Artificial Intelligence as something that can be offloaded to another processor for a cutting-edge game. Carmack is skeptical. AI is a very bleeding-edge science, and it can often be processor intensive, but when applied to games AI is usually a matter of scripting. What game designers want is a way to act as the 'director,' telling enemy and friendly characters where to stand and what to do. This doesn't take a ton of processing power. Moreover, even if you did throw tons of resources toward the AI, it might not be the best thing for gameplay. For instance, writing tons and tons of code to enable monsters to hide in the shadows and sneak around behind the player would be interesting, but often these types of things could be scripted for a fraction of the effort and - for most players - the experience would be just as cool if not cooler. Carmack recounts how players of the original DOOM would think that the monsters were doing all sorts of scheming and plotting and ambushing when, in truth, they were just using the equivalent of one page of C code and running the most basic of scripts. ... Open vs. Closed Console Platforms Carmack's talk changed gears at this point, starting with an aside about Sony. Although he raves about the Xbox 360 development tools, Carmack noted that Sony is making noise about making the PS3 a more open platform. As a big proponent of open source and - well, open anything - the programmer is excited to see if this goes anywhere. His biggest pet peeve with the console market is how closed off it is: you have to apply to be a developer and get a special development kit and get product approval from the hardware manufacturer, etc. (As opposed to the PC market, where anyone can develop and game creators can release content updates, point releases, and so on.) That's just the nature of the market. If the PS3 opens up, it'll be more like the old Commodore Amiga, a platform anyone can use for a variety of applications. Certainly Microsoft will never do this with the Xbox product line, but Carmack is holding out hope that Sony could experiment. Following that train of thought, Carmack asked how many people in the room had HDTVs at home. (I was surprised at how few people raised their hands - from where I sat it looked like less than a quarter of the audience. And these guys are hardcore!) Carmack pointed out that any sort of plan for using a console or set-top box as a computing device really requires the high resolution of an HDTV or computer monitor to be effective. Bringing the topic around full circle, he pointed out that Microsoft may enact a policy of requiring all Xbox 360 games to be rendered at HDTV resolutions, regardless of whether or not that decision helps with the design of the game. He says that some marketing person probably made that decision, another thing that bothers him about the console industry. ... Open Source, Modding, and Innovation Carmack is aware of the difficulties for new programmers who want to get into the business: it's a long way from staring at a blank page in a compiler to having Doom 3. What can be done? Over the past several years Carmack has done his part by releasing the source codes to his previous game engines. Which led up to a big announcement: Sometime over the next week or so, the Quake 3 source engine will be released under the GPL license. Since Q3 is still a viable development platform, the community should learn a lot from tearing into it. Carmack notes that the Punkbuster code has been removed so he hopes that cheating won't be a huge problem. Carmack thinks that innovation in the game industry, since it won't often come from large professional development houses, will likely come from the modification or open source communities. There, people can try random ideas to see what works. Example? Counter-Strike, one of the most popular games played online today, which started out as a handful of mod-makers trying to make something fun. The GPL license will allow people to take the Quake 3 engine and even go so far as to release a commercial product with it - provided that the source code is published alongside. Nobody has done this with any of the Quake engine games yet, but he hopes to see it happen someday. As an aside, he noted that most companies are too secretive with their source code. "It's not about the magic in the source code," he says, it's about the tons of little decisions coders make along the way to producing a finished game. It's all in the execution. ... When asked about the differences in platforms, Carmack noted that there's less of a distinction between developing for the next-gen consoles as there is for this generation. The difference between the Xbox and the PS2 was massive, but going back and forth between the Xbox 360 and the PS3 looks to be less of a problem. (Although still difficult.) ...

And therein you see how ridiculous your idea is: and I didn't have to do anything! Really, the biggest hurdle with your "Chosen One" plot device, apart from it being so hackneyed that clich

Just reading the cover again almost convinced me ... then I remembered the almost interminable gameplay. It IS fun, until it just becomes the same over and over again, which takes a little while. They got a lot right with it. These guys are re-making Ultima IX as a mod for Morrowind: http://cfkasper.de/board/

Heh, judging by the progress I seem to make in these games, I'll only have GM duties for two games and nothing else, so I am good to go. I'll draw up the next schedule over the weekend. All players please submit your preferences (email), I have sent the game invitation to you; I still don't have an email for Trobolov, though

Well, I certainly give you A for Effort; if volume counted for quality you would be a winner hands down ...

Divide and conquer ... similia similibus curantur

At least you are a real person to be compared with, not one of the simulations. PS phlegmatic: ... 2. Having or suggesting a calm, sluggish temperament; unemotional.

USER : jaguars4ever Nicknames : Jags, Mr Jags, Don Jaguar ---- ATTRIBUTES : [*]Intelligence: 3 - Posseses above average intellect. [*]Wits: 4

Don't mention the ex!