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11/27 |
2005/3/22-23 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36808 Activity:nil |
3/22 Has anyone played the game "Postal"? \_ Yes. You know there are two? \_ no i did not. explain. \_ Postal is a ~1997 isometric-prespective kill-em-all game. Postal 2 is a ~2003 mission-oriented first person shooter. \_ yes, why? |
2005/3/14-16 [Recreation/Sports, Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Media] UID:36691 Activity:nil |
3/14 If you're bored, you can meander over to http://gamespot.com, click on Act of War: Direct Action, click on Developer Diary #2 movie, and watch as French game developers gloat over the tactical nuking of the White House. |
2005/3/12-14 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36662 Activity:nil |
3/12 New Legend of Zelda Trailer: http://www.zelda.com/universe/game/legendzelda |
2005/3/6-7 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36548 Activity:nil |
3/6 This is a pretty fun TRON game: http://www.gltron.org |
2005/2/21-22 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36353 Activity:nil |
2/21 Someone please point me to a web site to learn about Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and similar games? I'd like to know the rules of engagement in these games, like how character X beats character Y under Z conditions (levels, hitpoint, potions, etc). I just want to understand the complexity of the game, and maybe write ILP constraints and see if I can solve it or derive an optimal strategy using ILP solvers like CPLEX or something. I'm in desperate need of a PhD thesis. ok thx |
2005/2/19-21 [Computer/SW/Unix, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36258 Activity:low |
2/19 EQII's new /pizza command is really quite brilliant, but they're missing out on dozens of other marketing opportunities. What sort of ideas can you think of? \_ /hooker \_ Yay! \_ /term paper \_ /shower \_ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/17/48hours/main525965.shtml http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2000dec/gam20010105003667.htm I recommend "/psychologist" \_ You mean M-x doctor \_ /quit |
2005/2/19-22 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36256 Activity:moderate |
2/19 Looking for DVD players that play AVI/DIVX/misc files, recommendation? \_ Hacked xbox (+ airport express for wireless file transfer, if needed). The only limitation is that xbm can only up-convert un-encrypted vobs, so you have to rip your dvds and re-burn or ftp them to the xbox before you can watch movies in HD. \_ how hard is it to hack xbox? and do you install linux on it? \_ http://www.xbox-scene.com/tutorials.php?p=14|#14 If you're not handy with a soldering iron, you can always hire someone to do it. \_ The Xbox is pretty noisy. It's not a problem for gaming, but it's distracting when watching movies. \_ The Philips 642 is fairly nice/cheap. It tends to crop subtitles on some of the divx files I've played though \_ can I put 10 400M AVI's and make it play 10 hours? That's what I really need.. \_ Seriously get a hacked xbox. Just drop in a 120 gb hd and forget about wasting cds and dvds. \_ Right, the DVP642 is the standard DivX player currently. It's $63 on Amazon but sometimes back-ordered. I have one, it's fine; actually, many, many people have one. \_ I'm still waiting for a portable DVD player that plays AVI/DIVX/etc. |
2005/2/18-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Humor] UID:36240 Activity:low Cat_by:auto Edit_by:auto |
2/18 http://everquest2.station.sony.com/pizza A sign of the times, or something \_ it would be cool if I could use motd to order pizza, because that's pretty addictive as well. \_ Just post your home address and credit card number, and we'll, uh, order something for you. \_ Everquest rules! |
2005/2/8 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:36096 Activity:moderate |
2/7 Playstation 3 preview pic link:tinyurl.com/6xmuj -John \_ I don't see BELLS and WHISTLES. \_ I'd rather have a p-p-p-powerbook \_ I'll totally buy one, could you ship me one? I'll pay when I get it. Is overseas shipping ok? |
2005/1/28-29 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35961 Activity:nil |
1/28 Seanbaby's 20 Worst Video Games Of All Time, the Director's Cut: http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/egm.htm |
2005/1/13-14 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35698 Activity:moderate |
1/13 I'm looking for a fun, cool electronic gadget toy for $100 or less. Suggestions? \_ Ipod shuffle crap. \_ The OMRON HJ112 pedometer at Amazon for $31! (Or, just click Top Sellers and Electronics category) \_ does it work? Is it accurate? \_ the user reviews on Amazon all say it's the bees knees of course if you wanted to be elite, you could get a GPS pedometer which will be more exact about how far you've gone, but I think they're too big these days \_ Laser pointer. Some dogs like to chase the dot. \_ i hear green ones have a really long range, enough for airline pilots to see ... \_ pet lover. \_ If you like to cook, I got a digital probe thermometer for $18 at Target. It takes all the guesswork out of doneness and it's kind of neat watching a roast's internal temperature creep upwards. \_ GameBoy Advance SP. $80 + cost of games. \_ Handheld GPS |
2005/1/5-6 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35556 Activity:kinda low |
1/5 WoW players, what are your experiences? Is it soloable at high levels? How does it compare to other games you've played? \_ Come to #wow on screwdriver irc. \_ Come to #wow on screwdriver.CSUA irc. \_ Whether or not it is soloable really depends on class. DONT be a mage if you want to solo! Paladins probably work the best for that. Grouping isn't forced but definitely makes some things easier. Very addictive, very well done, great graphics and artwork. Crafting seems to largely be a waste/hobby. Take up two gathering clases for professions, just for the money. Occasional server problems, but not more than any MMO I've dealt with. -ERic \_ Hunter and warlock are the best solo classes. All classes can solo. \_ My younger brother who plays it really likes the fact that PKing is encouraged. Dying isn't a big deal unlike other games - you don't lose much time and none of your cash or items. And if you don't want to be a PK you can just leave the PK flag off. There's also a challenge/duel option where, at the end of the duel, the two fighters remain alive and retain their original HP. \_ Unless you play on a PvP server, in which case you can't turn off the PvP flag in contested or enemy territory. Also, you don't return to your original HP after duels, but at least you don't die. Anymore. -geordan \_ In conclusion, nerf paladins. -geordan |
2004/12/31 [Politics/Foreign/Canada, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35503 Activity:low |
12/30 katamari! http://csua.org/u/aj8 - danh \_ I will never understand why people flip over this game. It was amusing for about 10 minutes. After that it was just kinda stupid. \_ It's not our fault you have no taste. |
2004/12/10-12 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35244 Activity:kinda low |
12/9 http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/12/09/hospitals.gaming.ap/index.html Video games calm kids more so than tranquilizer and parents. \_ In other news, oral sex performed my nurses on adult males show profound calming effect before anesthesia takes over. \_ I will do my part for science and volunteer for that study. \_ So will Helga the East German nurse. -John |
2004/12/6 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35185 Activity:high |
12/6 Are you too old for a GameBoy? \_ Yes. The LCD display is too hard to see for my eyes. \_ No, but too old for a lot of its games. -24 \_ what kind of games (besides Mario bros type of games?) \_ Advance Wars rules. -tom \_ Tom, you and I had our differences in the past, but if you like Advance Wars, check out Nectaris for ps1. Love that game. -- ilyas \_ will you give me a PS1 and a TV to use it with? -tom \_ You can also try nectaris for the PC or the tg16 emulator (although the graphics are suckier... not that nectaris is about graphics), just to see how it plays. -- ilyas \_ tom and ilyas making up! awww .... \_ No way. Tom has cooties. -- ilyas \_ and you know that because... \_ tom and ilyas are actually the same person, and he is responsible for 99% of all postings to MOTD \_ So, John, williamc, ausman, and meyers are all just subroutines? What about The Geordan? \_ tom + ilyas = TOMILYAS -> MOSTLY A.I. \_ My LOST AI! \_ A, SO MILTY! \_ I LOST YAM! MOIST LAY! \_ MOLT, I SAY! \_ Check out Wario. It's much more fun that it sounds. |
2004/12/3-4 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:35164 Activity:nil |
12/3 Sid Meier's Pirates r0x3s HL2's b0x0rz. Also, HL1 > HL2 (not technically, of course, but as a game - HL1 was just more memorable and satisfying back then than HL2 today). In this respect, The Sims 2 > HL2 as well. \_ is Pirates challenging at all? I tried it at a demo station somewhere and was easily capturing ships left and right. That's what I remember of the original too. And HL2 multiplayer is pretty fun (CS:S and HL2DM). \_ In Apprentice mode, everything is meant to be easy. Two difficulty levels up (Adventurer) isn't bad. You also get 20% of the total lewt as opposed to 5% when dividing plunder. (Periodically your crew will become restless and you'll need to start over with one selected ship + ~ 1 year.) Dancing is the toughest part of this game, but it is rewarding. \_ Sorry, you're simply wrong on this. HL2 is amazing. You've just played HL1 more. \_ The new Pirates and The Sims 2 are/were just MORE FUN for me than HL2, which is all I'm really saying. With respect to technical HL2, which is all I'm really saying. HL1 back in the day was more fun than HL2 today, for me. With respect to technical achievements, HL2 wins hands-down. I guess "HL1 > HL2" is kind of trollish. -op \_ That's because u = teh gey suk! Ehh.. nevermind. It could also be that you're just getting tired of first person shooters. I got pretty tired of them back with Doom 2. I only rarely see one that I like. (AvP was awesome.) |
2004/11/22 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Academia/StanfUrd] UID:35015 Activity:high |
11/22 'Furd Daily: http://csua.org/u/a2o "Unforeseen were the penalties and the lack of sportsmanship displayed by both teams, especially towards the end of the game. ... It wasn't only the Cardinal who were playing dirty at the end of the game. Defensive tackle Babatunde Oshinowo was injured on what he thought was a dirty block by the Cal offensive line late in the game. While the Cardinal did pick up a lot of personal fouls, a good number were offset by personal fouls on the Bears." \_ Sshhh.... we beat them well; we can afford to be magnanimous. Just smile condescendingly if you must. \_ "They were playing just as dirty as we were!" |
2004/11/21-22 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:35004 Activity:moderate |
11/21 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139213,00.html JFK assasination made into a video game. \_ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6549265 with pictures \_ Sweet! When's the WTC game going to come out? \_ 2041 |
11/27 |
2004/11/19-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:34988 Activity:nil |
11/19 Saturday, 11/20, 12:30pm Cal will find a way to lose the game: \_ I prefer the phrase "Snatch defeat from the jaws of victory." Cal Golden Bears roll on: . \_ Roll on, you bears! \_ The Stanford newspaper is already saying how this would be the biggest upset in Big Game history if they win. Nice big 'if' \_ They just want everyone to forget "The Play", where even having John Elway as their QB wasn't enough to seal the victory. |
2004/11/17-18 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34936 Activity:high 61%like:30535 53%like:34200 |
11/17 Half-life 2: Best - game - evuh! \_ Let's hear an in depth review! \_ Better than Cats. \_ I could play it again and again! \_ Basically: Far Cry with a much better story, much better levels, better physics, better graphics, outstanding polish, and the best NPC emotions/animation ever. Still heavily scripted, and still has intra-level loading like HL1. Say good-bye to Doom 3 with its relatively small, block-like levels inhabited by NFL players. HL2 features which obviously need improvement: (1) Better, more realistic SMG or the addition of an assault rifle (what, am I just going to use the Magnum or 9mm for all distance shots?) (2) Better story (people who could tell you wtf is going on, don't) (3) Better enemy AI (duh, you'll see) (4) Better NPC-ally AI (they jumble up and get in the way easily) (5) Realistic pineapple grenades \_ Yeah, I've heard the AI is a bit of downgrade from HL1. This seems wierd to me, since that was a main selling point of HL1. \_ I've only played a few hours, but this is about right. The ability to pick up just about anything in the game adds a lot. The intra-level loading does break the immersive feeling, especially because the load times are longer than HL1. But this is a *really* *great* game. \_ I don't play video games much since college, so I have no idea WTF this is all about. What I do know is that I have nieces and nephews who want a game console for Xmas. Which is the best to get? Are titles like HL2 available on multiple consoles? \_ HL2 is PC only. \_ PlayStation 2. \_ It depends, how old are they? What kind of games do they like? What kind of games do their parents want them to play? \_ Ages 5-17, most about 8-14. They like Tony Hawk, Justice League, Sonic, that Dolphin game, and that stuff. Their parents prefer stuff that's cutesy rather than violent. They have PS1 already. \_ Pretty much a toss-up between PS2 and Gamecube then. Xbox is right out. Probably PS2 is a better choice, but the parents would probably prefer the gamecube, since pretty much all the games are non-violent. \_ If you get them a Gamecube you will forever be known as the uncle who cheaped out and didn't get them a PS2. Tell the parents the kids can't play Dance Dance Revolution with a DDR pad and lose weight that way with a Gamecube. \_ People still play with the PS2? I haven't bought a game for that console in over a year. Past ten games or so have all been GC or XBox \_ GC has a few good unique games. Kids would be happy to have both. The biggest PS2 game is Grand Theft Auto which is obviously pretty violent. Big game coming out is a new Metal Gear, not exactly cutesy. GC will have a new Zelda game next year that should be pretty great. Man how many kids are in this family? "Most" 8-14? \_ 5 kids. 5, 6, 8, 8, 15, 17. It's not just the kids, but also their friends. \_ That's six kids. \_ The 6th is a different nephew, but he will be over to play it. 5 kids in 1 family. \_ GTA III |
2004/11/11-12 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34829 Activity:high |
11/11 Okay, my bro was from UW-Madison, and he's bringing his family to visit our uncle in LA end of the year. We are thinking of going to see Cal vs Badger in the Rosebowl since this would probably be once in a lifetime. Anyone has any experience as to how best to get tickets and how much they would cost? \_ End zone tickets are selling for $250/each on EBay right now. I doubt they are going to get any cheaper. If you want good seats, expect to pay up to $750 each. \_ I am a little worried about fraud. Is there a reputable source for getting tickets? \_ <DEAD>rickstickets.com<DEAD> has worked for me. rick is a cool guy. \_ Hope you two still get along afterwards. \_ Easy tiger, we've still got 3 games left. A lot can happen. \_ Not to mention getting picked for a bowl that isn't the Rose is a slim possibility even if we win out. How are people able to buy tickets for games that aren't decided yet? Does it mean they get stuck with Purdue-Texas (e.g.) in the Rose if that's how it turns out? \_ I'm sure someone will buy them off you later \_ Maybe not for what you paid for them. \_ I don't see Cal or Wisconsin losing more than 1 of their conference games left. Maybe USC will lose a game and bump Cal out of the Rosebowl, or Wisconsin may have some chance to play in the National Championship game if both Auburn and Oklahoma lose one of their remaining games. But you are right, I do plan to wait for things to clear up, but no harm asking about it now. - op \_ Limited tickets available to general public on 12/7 @ 8am. Call Ticketmaster (info @ http://tournamentofroses.com) |
2004/11/9 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:34771 Activity:high |
11/8 Why do these guys look like the terrorists in Counter-Strike? http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/041108/481/bag11811081424 \_ Because they killed all the sodomizing homosexuals who could tell them that lumberjack shirts and checkered kaffiyehs simply do not match. -John \_ On a side note, does it ever get cold enough in Iraq or the rest of the Middle East to justify owning a balaclava? \_ Yes. Ever been in a desert at night? It gets cold. \_ Damn, good point. Bang goes another theory. |
2004/11/2 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34536 Activity:nil |
11/2 CNN - "Bush also played gin rummy with some advisers on each leg of the trip [between campaign stops today]." So, how many games did you think he won? How many games did his peons let him win? -troll |
2004/10/31-11/1 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:34469 Activity:nil |
10/31 President Forever Game: http://www.computer-game.us/strategy_war/president2000.htm |
2004/10/28 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:34399 Activity:nil |
10/28 The Brain Game! http://www.imgag.com/product/full/ap/3067907/graphic1.swf |
2004/10/26 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34361 Activity:moderate |
10/26 PC Computer Games? Xbox? PS2? \_ Context? \_ what do you prefer to play/buy. \_ PC. I like turn-based strategy games which are few and far between on consoles, and for non-action games, keyboard+mouse input is really nice to have. \_ Nectaris: military madness is an awesome PS1 turn-based strategy game. \_ Gamecube. My favorite system for get-togethers, with the most fun 4-player games (Super Smash Bros Melee, Mario Kart, etc) \_ gamecube = teh gay \_ whoops. sorry. lemme go back to my games where i blow shit up and endlessly accumulate frags. \_ You've been baited -troll \_ Donkey Konga! |
2004/10/26-27 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34352 Activity:very high |
10/26 I haven't played any computer games in a very very long time. What is a fun game to play in cooperative mode? I'm primarily looking for first person shooter type games, but would be interested to hear alternative suggestions. \_ Bubble Bobble \_ Star Wars Battlefront allows you to play coperatively, and you're part of a massive group effort. It may start to lose appeal in frequent replays, but right now it's a blast. Also, I just bought Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, and I'm loving it. There's a multi- player version, but I don't know if it's cooperative; if it were, that would be tres sweet. (And why did this get overwritten?) \_ Cooperative mode as in buddies vs AI or buddies vs other players over the internets [sic]? I've had a lot of fun playing BattleField 1942 on the internets [sic] if you find a good server it's a nice teamwork game (4 players per bomber, 4 per battleship, etc.) \_ BF1942 AI is teh suck, don't bother with coop mode against the computer, but yeah, the teamplay is really nice. Have yet to try BF2. -John \_ BF:Vietnam is fairly additive. With the latest patch, you now have maps that have added tunnels and sewers. There is also a mod that updates the BF:1942 maps to the newer engine with is very fun. Another game thats fun multiplayer is Unreal Tournament 2004 in Onslaught mode. -rollee \_ If the last LAN co-op you played was Serious Sam 2, you haven't missed anything. Not much else. For online team v team co-op, CounterStrike: Source is fun. Unreal Tournament looks fun against bots, but it looks too twitchy to me. There is an Aliens UT mod strictly against the AI, kinda fun. \_ The last good co-op game I played was doom2, haha -!op \_ I've heard co-op in Halo is great (on xbox--co-op isn't available on the PC port). \_ MMOs like world of warcraft are good for coop play. It's required really, to avoid some of the tedious stuff. Still takes too long to play though. \_ Is WOW out yet? \_ Not yet. Will be in open beta soon, I suspect. -geordan \_ Alpha bastard. -- ilyas \_ I know. -geordan \_ MMOs are a niche market, imho. -- ilyas \_ how do you figure? they have many millions of users among them and make lots of money. \_ Well, lots of koreans and japanese play. A typical American kid/teenager/young adult doesn't strike me as a MMO type. *shrug*. MMOs are built on timesinks and 'character-building-as-work.' I don't think that sort of fun is very widespread in American culture. -- ilyas \_ Your suppositions are belied by the facts: http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000194.php \_ Wtf? I am well aware of MMO demographics. What does that have to do with my assertion that most young people will not play everquest? How many subscribers do you think everquest has? Do you understand the difference between 'most people who play everquest are young males' and 'most young males do not play everquest'? -- ilyas \_ Don't bring logic to a video game discussion. \_ Video games are still basically a geek thing in the popular culture. But would you consider Diablo a niche market? MMOs have a lot wider appeal than that with some of the same timewasting dynamics. \_ Diablo is much more accessible than a typical MMO. I think Diablo is pretty mainstream. It's about as close to mainstream as an RPG will come. -- ilyas \_ Well I've only tried WoW but based on that you're just wrong. I've seen a lot of interest from young males (again, only a certain class of them even play PC games and a further subset stray from the FPS genre). WoW is very comparable to Diablo in basic "get quest, go kill stuff, keep upgrading weapons/armor/skills" gameplay. The combat is slower paced and doesn't have the action-game aspect of Diablo (frantically clicking and running around). It's just a far more rich game world, and has more to do besides just constant combat. The social aspect is something you can't find in regular games and appeals to a lot of people. The Sims is the best seller and doesn't try to target the teenage boy demographic, which Diablo was all about. \_ Blizzard is a good company, and WoW is a good game. If any MMO has a chance at 'mainstream status,' WoW is it. I don't think it will reach it in the US, simply because most US gamers aren't really into these kinds of RPGs. Anyways, this entire thread is strung out on dorkosterone. I am stopping, before someone trolls me into a long rant about MMO design, that I will later regret. Guildwars is more likely to be mainstream than WoW, I think. -- ilyas \_ fwiw I don't plan to buy WoW and only played a few days. just takes too much time to do anything. Playing in teams is fun but you have to play long periods to make the most of that and find a good group. Or if you make friends in the game you have to keep up with them and regularly stay in touch. I have a real life to attend to thanks. It could work by scheduling times with a friend so you keep in sync. Going solo is unrewarding and the game punishes it. |
2004/10/18-19 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:34206 Activity:high |
10/18 sexy women kicking men's ass in Counter Strike: http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/fun.games/10/18/games.swedishgirls.ap/index.html \_ Wow, it's great that women today are judged on their abilities, not their short skirts. Nice legs, though. -John |
2004/10/18-19 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34200 Activity:high 53%like:34936 |
10/18 Half-Life 2 has gone gold. Street date: November 16 http://www.vugames.com/news_story.do?storyId=1963 \_ Not released via Steam until it's available on store shelves. Boo! \_ I think this is apropos... http://penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-10-15&res=l \_ Steam purchase == activation. I never buy products with "activation" \_ I thought steam was just a way to activate something you downloaded, rather than running out to buy a physical copy? Unlike some products which require you to go buy a hardcopy, then activate online. -John \_ Steam is nice in that it gives you an account, and you can actually use the game from your account on multiple systems. The disadvantage is the net MUST be working for you to be able to play! \_ You don't get the equivalent of a cd key you can take somewhere with you? I mean, with a hardcopy, you need to have the booklet/case/piece of paper with the key on it along... -John \_ The games you can play are tied to your password- protected account. It's just like AIM or MSN Messenger. Login to multiple PCs with your account, download the full game to every PC - but only one person can play at a time (using your account). \_ Yes you do, but you have to connect to the online service to activate even if you just want to play the single-player version (only once per install). \_ The retail boxed version won't require product activation? \_ Not as far as I know. CD-Key only. \_ I wasted an unhealthy percentage of my weekend in Counter-Strike: Source. It's the same old thing but I had forgotten how addictive it is. I think I'll quit again now though. I had AK-47 sounds \_ AK-47 sounds cooler in real life. replaying in my head when trying to fall asleep. Yesterday played with team kill turned on which was a new twist for me. \_ Well, and aiming is a lot more forgiving. You can be zipping left and right and your first shot will always be dead in the center. Aim is primarily affected by "recoil" now. Plus, there are less aimbots with CS: Source. \_ fewer \_ but yermom wants more \_ Plus there are the motivational posters like: <DEAD>_render_.blogspot.com/2004/10/cssource-motivational-posters.html<DEAD> |
2004/10/14-15 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34134 Activity:kinda low |
10/14 Duh. CompSci team wins Prisoner's Dilemma tournament by cheating http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,65317,00.html?tw=rss.TOP (Okay, more accurately, the rules were set up to allow this sort of completely lame win.) \_ One man's cheating is another's innovative solution. \_ I would say smart people already thought of this but dismissed it out of hand as lame. \_ If it's good enough for Captain Kirk ... \_ All they did was take the game up a level. The original winning strategy is based on the idea of greater wins over a longer period for a single player; the current idea is based on the idea of greater wins for a *team* over a longer period without regard to the losses. Future iterations of the game would need to take into account net wins/losses for teams or limit the number of entries a team could make. What's exciting is that this is the first time it's been shaken up like this in 20 years. \_ omfg, I can't believe you think this. This is so utterly lame I am ... urgh, whatever. \_ Not quite: The greater wins for an individual AS PART OF A team. if you averaged the team score, it was probably very low because of the sacrificial behavior of most of the team members. |
2004/10/13-15 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:34095 Activity:kinda low |
10/13 Here's a stupid question, can I copy playstation2 games using my DVD writer? DVD+R? -R? booktype? \_ I know DVD-R works but I think you need to get your PS2 modchipped. \_ So ps2 will not work with DVD-R or +R unless chipped? \_ I think there's some boot-disc hack also, but basically: yes. \_ You want to start at http://lik-sang.com--they at least used to sell modchips for Xbox/PS2. I think they had some court trouble, but as another hint, an Italian judge ruled recently that modchipping was fair use and that Sony/MS could go sod off. For some more chip info, go to http://www.livejournal.com/community/modchips and if you have some specific questions, I have a few friends who're heavily into this stuff who'll probably gladly help out if you drop me a mail. -John \_ How would this even work for PS2 discs that exceed 4.3 GiB? Wow, you used THE STANDARD _/ \_ If you have a way of transferring data to a memory card, there's a buffer overflow trick that will allow you to boot arbitrary programs (there's a similar trick for the XBOX), which I've gotten to run software that will backup PS2 games to a maxtor hd that hooks into the PS2 network adaptor. There's supposedly programs that will boot DVD-Rs on the PS2, so if you can load that program using the boot trick, you won't need to mod. Please post if you can get this to work. Thanks |
2004/10/6 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Academia/Berkeley/CSUA] UID:33947 Activity:low |
10/6 aaron the philanthropist, now that you're a rich Googler (you've been with the company since 1998, no?), how much are you going to donate to CSUA? \_ no. --aaron \_ In the old days we got as much money as we could and spent the excess on nice things like volleyball equipments, beach party stuff, video games, etc. I'd imagine the current politburo could have asked for lots of money and squander them on XBox, games, PDAs, and other things. The fact that it hasn't probably means that they've turned into nice honest people or something. |
2004/10/1 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:33895 Activity:nil |
10/1 Game over for Peoplesoft. |
2004/9/26-27 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33759 Activity:moderate |
9/26 Has anyone played Dungeon Siege? I know its an old game, but I saw it on sale and wanted to know if it was any good before I bought it. \_ Dungeon Siege is like a crappy, Microsoft version of Diablo 2. Diablo 2 is much more fun. \_ DS is an old game that I still sometimes load up for kicks. D2 is rehashed crap with zero replaybility. \_ Is that why people still play D2 by the thousands on battlenet, and why there are D2 item selling businesses on the internet? No one plays DS except you. \_ Lots of people commit suicide every year so suicide must be good. That's the best you can come up with? \_ Suicide is great, try it. \_ A new twist on the "Coors" beer argument. \_ I so thoroughly wanted to be done with this game that I started just racing the characters through, ignoring the monsters. And it worked. \_ D2 >> Dungeon Siege. The makers of Dungeon Siege failed to grasp what makes Diablo fun. -- ilyas what makes Diablo fun. Sacred is apparently a better attempt, but I never played it. -- ilyas \_ I've played Sacred. Sacred is poo. DS >>> Sacred. \_ It's probably worth $5 but don't spend more than $10. |
2004/9/24-25 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Domestic/Gay] UID:33743 Activity:nil |
9/24 Scott Kurtz breaks down the proper use of the word "gay" http://www.pvponline.com \_ I would add another use of the adjective "gay." Using it sarcastically in a context where some dickhead 17 year old meathead jock might, but around people who know you don't mean it in the same way is a subtle way of making fun of the 17 year old meathead jock, which I don't feel the slightest bit bad about. \_ scott kurtz = teh ghey \_ w00t! scott kurtz = pwned |
2004/9/19-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33623 Activity:high |
9/18 The Sims 2, TOTALLY AWSOME. I love how you can look at people's expressions. It's like being a director in a soap opera. EA is awsome. BTW you nuke this one more time, I'll retaliate. \_ how do I do a "woohoo" in Sims? My love stat is 100/100 and they sleep on the same bed but nothing happens \_ In Sims 1 at least they have to 'play' using the heart-shaped bed \_ have both sims Relax. the sex option will open then. See http://gamefaqs.com forums if you have more questions. I agree it is a totally awesome game, extremely polished. I "beat" it yesterday and still think it's the best-game-ever, and I've played a lot of games. \_ CIVILIZATION SERIES BEST GAME EVER!!! \_ How do you "beat" it? I thought the sims was just an aimless endless dollhouse game where you constantly tell your sims to eat and take a crap. \_ I've heard in this one they're a lot smarter about remembering to eat and go to the bathroom all by themselves \_ You're right in that there is no endgame screen. I decided maxing out all my skills == beating the game. \_ how much will I have to upgrade my computer to play this game properly? \_ I don't remember exactly but I think you should have: 1GHz proc, 256-512MB RAM, 3.5GB disk, Radeon 9000 or GeForce 3 \_ Try the Microsoft Windows XP Game Advisor, needs IE: http://csua.org/u otherwise just google for sims 2 http://csua.org/u/94k otherwise just google for sims 2 |
2004/9/17-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33590 Activity:high |
9/17 The Sims 2 -- Best - Game - Ever!!1!!! (really!) \_ I believe it's spelled EVAR!!! \_ But where are the guns? \_ I took the blue licorice and got fired. \_ Having spent the past 10 months of my life working on that game, it's somewhat weird and comforting for me to see this on the MOTD. \_ Man, that must really suck, to have to work on a dollhouse game... \_ Ignore the jobless, clueless troll above. Any Easter eggs you can give us the 411 on? \_ How did you get started in the gaming industry? I get the sense that AI and graphics as taught at Berkeley aren't particularly helpful if one wants to work in the field. I know people once got started tinkering at home or in the demo scene. It seems like the teams making games today are really big. If this is the case, how can one person working alone produce something that comes close to a modern shipping game, that is, something impressive enough to land a development position in a gaming company? \_ They can't. You can get in at the bottom or you can maybe publish a free game that catches on and turn that into something. A few folks made it as modders but very few. \_ Okay, what's the bottom? Tech support? Play testing? \_ I assume you want to be a programmer, not an artist or other creative type? I suggest finding a small company that will pay you nothing or look for a junior job at a huge place like EA that will find *something* for you to do. Why would you want to work in an industry that pays so much less than anywhere else for the same work? Just curious, but how old are you? When I interviewed at Maxis/EA, everyone was early 20s or late 30s and older with nothing in the late 20s to late 30s gap. I was late 20s/early 30s at the time and found it weird and not a good fit. \_ if you want to be an artist-type, you might find something at the academy of art, SF, or SF art institute. very expensive if you go this route. |
2004/9/13 [Computer/HW/CPU, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33497 Activity:nil |
9/12 I don't play games but I want to play Beyond Good and Evil. I seek people's opinions as to the cheapest way to do this. I own no console and my computer has only the standar-issue graphics card. \_ What's your CPU and RAM? Do you have an AGP slot? \_ 1998 HP Pavillion. 199 MHz. 128M RAM. Yes - The old fashioned kind. \_ No such thing. The Pentium II started at 233 MHz. Oh, and there's a difference between Hertz and MegaHertz. \_ You'll either need to buy a console or get an all-new system. 6 years is long enough for an upgrade anyway. \_ OK. But would it be better to buy a used PS2 or Xbox, instead? That's what I'm asking, really. -OP \_ If you're ONLY concern is to play the game as cheaply as possible, then buy (or rent from Blockbuster) a used console. The graphical quality will be best on a PC with a DirectX-9.0 video card, but that will be a lot more money. If my system was 6 years old I'd upgrade for a lot of reasons, but your priorities may vary. \_ Thx. It actually hadn't occurred to me that I can rent consoles. That's what I'm going to do...as soon as the wife goes out for awhile. \_ New ones are ~$150, aren't they? You can also rent them from some video stores. \_ Why don't you just look and see? They're the same price new. I'd pick based on if you think there are any other games of interest. But, Xbox is capable of better graphics, which might be better in BG&E. \_ As above, thank you both. These were useful answers. |
2004/9/9 [Science/Disaster, Consumer/CellPhone, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33436 Activity:high |
9/9 Ali Rahimi's dumb retro phone thing makes it into the NY times http://nytimes.com/2004/09/09/technology/circuits/09retr.html?8hpib \_ The bluetooth model would be cooler without the cord. \_ what's the csuamotd user id and password? \_ Go Media Whores of the CSUA, Go! \_ There's some dude in the UK who actually builds cell phones into old handsets. Can't find the guy's page anymore, though. They look pretty spiffy. -John |
2004/9/7-8 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33400 Activity:kinda low |
9/7 Atari to Reissue Scores of Old games http://csua.org/u/8yb (Yahoo! News) \_ What I can't figure about the flashback is, apparently it's just an Atari 7800 with no cartridge slot, and 20 built in games. Is a cartridge slot really that freaking expensive? What if I have some 7800 or 2600 games I'd like to play on the beast? WIth a cart slot, they could even release expansion carts. \_ A few months ago I saw an Atari game machine in a store which has about 10 old games. The whole machine is just one old-style joystick (the black one with a red button). There is no console. All the electronics are packed in the joystick. Don't remember if there's a name for it. \_ Walmart or Target might have . $19.99 |
2004/9/7 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33384 Activity:nil |
9/7 And touching on videogames, I've seen some people pretty excited for Gradius V, which comes out in spetember. I played this game at the cgexpo. It's really annoying. It feels more like it's mocking the 2D shooter genera than tring to be a good one. You've got all the enemies flying around you, shooting at you from every possible angle, and you're stuck shooting straight to the right side of the screen. It's like the game is saying, "If you were in 3D you could move around like this boss, but you can't. You're only 2D. You can only shoot at the right side of screen. Too bad there are no enemies over there. Ha, ha!" |
2004/9/2-3 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:33301 Activity:high |
9/2 Is it possible to download bloody patches (patches that show actual blood instead of a cross) and Swastica patches for Battlefield 1942/Vietnam games? I want more realism... \_ Get out a pixel editor. Anyway, good games don't require that stuff. One of the best fighting games I ever played was so good I didn't even notice there was no blood or special killing moves until I'd been playing for 2 days. \_ Uhh... which would called? \_ Yes. Google for 'blood patch.' Also if you mail me I will dig out a URL that has a ton of good no-cd patches and the likes. Be careful though, as patching the exe may cause trouble with things like Punkbuster for online play, as well as with other forms of verification used by the game. -John \_ if I patch the enemies, would they glow bright in the jungles? I'm wondering if I can do this so that I can see them clearly and piss everyone off. \_ Probably. There are plenty of "overlay" clients that run behind your game and recognize certain color tones (i.e. enemy uniforms) and highlight them. -John \_ Use motdedit! |
2004/8/31 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Reference/Military] UID:33260 Activity:very high |
8/31 http://planetmayhem.org/glossary#91 Aimbot, autoshoot, wallhack, all here. Useful if you play games. \_ A non-trivial intersection between motd posters and the CS crowd would make all too much sense... with all of them 'w00t' and 'omg you got pwned' crap I keep seeing here. -- ilyas 'w00t' and 'omg you got pwned' things I keep seeing here. -- ilyas \_ Translation: ilyas is talking down 2 all u l00z3rS!!1! \_ n00b \_ Yeah, I hear there are a few gun nuts on motd. \_ What's a gun nut? Someone who believes owning a handgun is a good idea? -- ilyas \_ you can own 20 guns and not be a gun nut. you can hunt and target shoot and not be a gun nut. You can have a gun you carry at all times for protection and not be a gun nut. A gun nut is someone who *believes* in gun ownership as some sort of philosophical position, not just because they want to kill deer, protect themselves or practice their eye-hand coordination. That's a gun nut. \_ Wow, nicely summed up. \_ I don't understand this summary. Are the asterisks somehow significant? I believe in life, liberty, etc. Does that make me a life nut or a liberty nut? Of course I believe in all the rights I think I have. What you are saying is coming across as 'anyone who tries to defend a position I don't agree with is a nut.' Well, that's great, we found the nut in the conversation, and it ain't me. Or maybe you just object to people trying to come up with principled justifications for what they believe in, and rather the world was just a giant meaningless compromise between competing interest groups. That's not nutty, that's sad and depressing. -- ilyas \_ alan keyes is a "gun nut" \_ Anyone who uses cheats for an online game doesn't deserve to live. \_ "CAMELOT!" "It's only a model..." "Shh!" |
2004/8/31 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Reference/History/WW2] UID:33245 Activity:high |
8/31 Battlefield Vietnam is AWSOME! I just downloaded the WW2 mod from EA and now I can play some of the BF1942 maps. It is really really nice. It's like buy 2 games for the price of 1, with a LOT of improvements. \_ You did not deserve to download that mod and are unfit to play multiplayer. -Battlefield Vietnam Veterans for Truth \_ Okay that was pretty funny. \_ http://tinyurl.com/67x4j http://www.gengamers.com/html/bv-27.html \_ the Napalm on the F4-- totally useless the mortars-- hard to aim, the range of harm is limited. USELESS heat seeking missiles-- totally cool \_ Do you get a purple heart for suffering 1 point of damage from your own grenade you threw when you thought someone was there, but actually no one was shooting at you? \_ Use your name, coward, so I can mug you and make an imprint of my dad's purple heart in your forehead with a bat. \_ tough guy! reminds me of being 13 on a 300 baud modem when everyone was telling their 'enemies' to show at some park but no one ever did. \_ actually when I was 15 and I had a fast 1200 baud modem I tricked one of my enemies into showing up at a restaurant (he stole my girlfriend so I made up a fake girl account on a BBS that he visited frequently) and he got really pissed that he waited 3 hours and asked me why I didn't show up and I just wrote back "fuck off you pervert." That'll show him not to steal other people's gf. Ah those were the days \_ You think you won that exchange? He waited three hours in a restaurant and fucked your girl. Can I get that special as well please? To go. Thanks. \_ Women are property! There's a strong conservative value! \_ No, but you do get a silver star for valor with a "v" for valor on it which has never been issued. \_ So how many [DEM] JOhn_KErry players have you seen online? Do they run away after the first shot? \_ They kill [REP] and [VC] with their bare hands. \_ For some reason [REP] John_McCain always gets shot in the back by his clanmates. \_ You guys are awesome. This totally made my day. |
2004/8/16 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Foreign/Europe] UID:32933 Activity:very high |
8/16 Is it just me or do the Olympic Games in Greece this year seem to really suck? It seems like nobody is really interested in them and the stands are all empty. There doesn't seem to be a lot of promotion either. I remember the games back in 2000 sure seemed a bit more exciting. And it seems like the US, Germany, Russia, traditional Olympic powerhouses are really sucking this year. \_ The USA vs Puerto Rico basketball game was most exciting game! \_ Why do you hate America? \_ "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." \_ Did anyone notice that on the 'Al-Qaeda hard drive' they refered to the CIA and Mossad as 'Foreign Competitors'? \_ I don't get your point. \_ It would be more exciting if something blew up. \_ I'd be interested except I hate the coverage. I don't have a Tivo so it's basically unwatchable. It feels like half the time is spent with commercials, theme music, and random commentators. |
2004/8/11-12 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:32822 Activity:kinda low |
8/11 After spending over a day practicing, I can finally hover a helicoptor. Battlefield Vietnam is the coolest game out there. Much better than 1942. Go EA! Beat MS games! \_ I dunno about BFV, but 1942 was only good in multiplayer. If you don't mind absence of toys like loads of vehicles, try Call of Duty--it's awesome. -John \_ Agreed! Call of Duty was extremely good in 1 player. --aaron \_ What is your login? Let's get on a server together sometime. --aaron \_ Mine's "mrfluffy". I usually play at Eudemonia in Berkeley --jeffwong, not op |
2004/8/9 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:32793 Activity:nil |
8/9 I am about to proceed to check-out on http://half.com and suddenly I got "The specified module could not be found." after entering the password. Is this a problem with my browser or the site? |
2004/8/3 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:32662 Activity:very high |
8/3 Doom 3 is fun and pretty, but Half Life 1 and System Shock 2 both had more "wow". Doom 3 feels like a console port, what with the blocky levels, blocky human models, weak weapons, and other intangibles. Although it has its weaknesses (especially with stocking enemies in illogical places for scripted ambushes -- you always need to turn your back since they'll just create a monster somewhere without opening a secret door or drawing a teleport effect), Doom 3 is ultimately a game you will want to play and come back to for the next level. Despite its negative points, go buy it now now now. (Side note: They had the level designer for Doom 1 come back as lead level designer for Doom 3 -- it definitely shows. You'll know what I mean when you play, and not in a good way.) \_ Is it true there's a code to load the old version of Doom? \_ What quality setting were you using? Supposeadly the models look a lot smoother if you don't compress the normal maps. \_ High. When I say blocky models, all the characters are football players who fill up most of the corridor, even the scientists. I also forgot that this will be an X-Box supported game. And it totally shows (everything I've written). Yet, it's still fun. \_ Don't you find it really dark? I could hardly see anything. The only reason it was playable on my computer (AthlonXP 2500+, 9800) was that most of the time the gpu was sticking black pixels on the screen. \_ I set my gamma at about 40% (80% was too much) and played in the dark, and that's fine. As for frame rate, 1024x768 on my Athlon 64 3200+ with Radeon 9600 XT is fine on High; my younger brother has a Pentium 4 2.26 with 9600, and he's fine on High as well. What's really, really annoying is the stuttering when a door opens and the new textures for that guy who's about to waste you need to load -- try this: http://csua.org/u/8fq \_ Another point, Doom 3 feels like it is targeted at 13-year-olds, whereas the two other games I mentioned and most good RPGs feel like they are targeted at 16-year-olds. -op \_ Good RPGs are targeted for mature teenagers and old people. Youngins these days think diablo is an rpg. *sigh*. -- ilyas Consider the average age of people posting on the wizardry 8 forums. Youngins these days think diablo is an rpg. *sigh*. -- ilyas |
2004/8/2-3 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:32633 Activity:very high |
8/2 Doom 3 Review: http://www.telefragged.com/reviews/doom3 \_ OMG that review is teh suck1!!!!!!1 \_ Someone's personal review: http://csua.org/u/8f5 \_ This sounds like what I expected. ID has been remaking the same game since Doom 1. Even Return to Wolfenstien was basically the same crap. \_ I played through some beginning parts. The levels are so pitch dark that you can barely see anything, and monsters pop out from various places accompanied by startling noises. It's simple but basically works, I started to get pretty pumped up. Graphically it taxes my system pretty hard. But the graphics don't match the hype IMO. The animation and lip syncing doesn't match Half-Life 2 video I've seen. The dynamic lighting looks spectacular sometimes, and combined with the highly detailed surfaces does achieve a great atmosphere, but doesn't seem so incredibly better than other recent games as hype would have it (Deus Ex 2 had similar technology for example, but wasn't as polished). It achieves a nice cinematic feel. I'll reserve further judgment until I play through it. \_ I've been thinking this same thought for the whole day: Why don't the marines of the future have the ability to mount a little flashlight on their gun? \_ Nah, it would give away their position. I'm sure we'll have flashlight technology in the next iteration when the gfx cards can actually handle a full scene without stuttering. \_ Or, more likely, a damn helmet light, with an infrared toggle. Or at least hold a flashlight and pistol at the same time... Mulder and Scully do it all the time. Pretty lame. \_ Do M&S have BFG9000s? No. They don't. |
2004/7/28 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:32520 Activity:high |
7/27 Hey, laser-game (reflections?) playing person(s), did you get around that level loading problem? I get the same thing trying to go to level 23. \_ try this url instead - http://www.nailmaster.ru/laser.html \_ thanks. \_ further proof that French programmars are all about aesthetics \_ watch out for the pop up that says your computer is infected and leads you to a commercial site \_ further proof that French programmers are all about aesthetics and little function. To recap: http://csua.com/?entry=32455 \_ and http://csua.com/?entry=11448 although, i visited http://globulos.com yesterday for the first time in many months and it seems they're improving it. \_ that's because the number of users are cut in half, DUH. |
2004/7/23-24 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:32455 Activity:kinda low |
7/23 Cool game http://www.ace21.freesurf.fr/gamuz/jeux/laser.swf \_ Godamn it this has the same addictiveness as globulos. Anyways, I'm stuck on level 22. Literally. The screen says "loading..." and it just wouldn't load level 22. Anyone else have this problem? |
2004/7/15 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:32291 Activity:low |
7/14 East German Arcade Game: http://www.bbc.co.uk/wiltshire/features/polyplay.shtml |
2004/7/7 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton] UID:31197 Activity:nil |
7/7 Yikes! Scotty has alzheimers! http://tinyurl.com/3ckj9 \_ Dude! Scotty has a 4 year-old daughter! Wow! |
2004/6/28-30 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:31049 Activity:insanely high |
6/28 What's a better 3D WW2 shooter game, Battlefield 1942, Call of Duty, or something else? \_ Medal of Honor. Very cool, very difficult D-Day Landing. Well, then it kinda gets repetitive, but there you go. BF1942 is best played multiplayer with lots of people, preferably not twinks. \_ Seconded. I really enjoy 1942 (loads of variety, not too twitchy) multiplayer, ith some clued people. I understand that for single-player, CoD is brilliant though. -John \_ Thirded. BF42 is pretty awesome with good teams. -eric \_ Fourthed. BF1942 also has the awesome expansion pack Desert Combat which is free and revolves around the first Gulf War (vaguely). There are better vehicles to pilot including choppers and an AC130 gunship. Also, consider BF:Vietnam where the terrain and tactics are more interesting. I say BF1942 has better graphics and gameplay than MoH. --jeffwong \_ Does anyone else think that turning genuine human sacrifice into a game is deeply disturbing? \_ nope. \_ Yup. Kids might get ideas, better ban it. -John \_ That is not what I mean. I don't think that these games are bad in and of themselves. It just seems to me that most people I've met treat these just like any other FPS and do not realize that real men fought and died at the battles that are depicted in the game. This I found somewhat disturbing. I was wondering if anyone else felt the same way. \_ They turn it into movies, why not games? By the way you just jumped from "deeply" to "somewhat" disturbing. \_ He's already getting used to the violence. \_ Guess you are right. \_ You mean like that Aztec ball game? \_ Don't forget the Call of Duty Russian missions. Those were great. |
2004/6/20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30923 Activity:very high |
6/19 BORING ASS MOTD. UGH! \_ Sorry. Too busy playing City of Heroes. Maybe you should get off your ass and do something to entertain us for once? I'm sick and tired of your whining trap on here bitching about how boring the rest of us are. Do something to make it exciting. \_ City of Heroes!? Oh God... \_ Yeah like all you idiots playing nethack, BF1942 and the rest are so kewl. \_ Let me spell it out for you. CoH sucks because THERE IS NO EQUIPMENT IN IT. NO SHINIES. IT'S BORING! \_ I'm still trying to think of a game that's as lame as the metagame of discussing games on the motd. |
2004/6/18 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30886 Activity:high |
6/18 I've read a few message boards and articles from professional black jack players who make it seem like their only problem with making unlimited cash is getting kicked out of casinos. It was my understanding that even with 'perfect play', the odds are still in favor of the house slightly and thus over time a player is going to lose money just like the average shlump, just slower. How are these guys making money playing a game that doesn't favor them in the long term? Of course they don't tell you how unless you buy their book. I'm just curious, I don't want to buy someone's $99 book. \_ With a contant size bet and perfect play, the odds are against you in most versions of blackjack and you will eventually go broke. The key in counting cards is to bet lots of money when there are many high cards in the deck (this is when you have the advantage) and bet as little as possible otherwise. By varying your bet based on the count, you can consistently make money. The tricky part is (1) counting cards effectively enough that you don't get flustered by the lights and the action and make an error and (2) concealing from the casions that you are counting. I've read that even one mistake an hour is enoough to destroy the benefit of counting. Check out a book from the library for more info. I recommend "Blackjack your way to riches" by Canfield as a readable intro. -emin \_ Estimated edge for most systems are 1-1.5%. Conditions might raise that to 2%. One mistake an hour will wipe your profit. See http://www.faqs.org/faqs/gambling-faq/blackjack for an See http://www.faqs.org/faqs/gambling-faq/blackjack for an intro to basic strategy and simple counting systems. |
2004/6/18 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30885 Activity:very high |
6/18 Is this a good game? http://www.atari.com/axisandallies/us/thegame.php \_ It looks pretty in the demo movie and they claim historically accurate equipment, etc, but combat itself looks like the standard RTS "crank em out, rope em in, send em into enemy base, repeat until victory". Not that that is a bad thing. I like games like that but I don't see anything super original here. The RTS genre hasn't changed in many years. \_ It looks interesting, but it also looks suspiciously like WarCraft with different units. \_ If you want a game which approximates the combat of the era better than the obviously stupid RTS model, check out the Combat Mission games. -- ilyas \_ I like RTS games but they're really best with fantastic weapons, special units, etc. The ones where they try to be historically accurate always suck because it pisses me off when stupid AI destroys the realism. Like why is my American soldier just standing there and not running for cover when he sees a German tank coming up the road firing at him? Why does the Japanese soldier shoot at the APC with a rifle while 5 US marines casually stroll up next to him and kill him at point blank? ARGH! \_ It's true. Combat Mission is really fun against another human though. It is also RTS, but not like Starcraft. -- ilyas \_ What are some of the original RTS'? Were Dune II and Warcraft RTS'? \_ yes. \_ Yeah, I think Dune 2 was the first one of its type. \_ After Dune II, there was Warcraft and Command & Conquer. WC was all about a small number of units with special powers for some of them. C&C was about piles and piles of rock/paper/ scissors units, building as many of each type as possible and flooding the enemy base with them. \_ You should check out Rise of Nations. It combines a lot of elements from Turn based strategy games into RTS. RoN rocks!! It has completely changed the RTS genre. It is THE BEST RTS out there right now. Gamespot Review: http://csua.org/u/7tc \_ RoN was ok. Where does the turn based part come in? Did I miss some vital part of the game? \_ Borders, Attrition in enemy territory, no running out of resources (rather commerce limits), cannot destroy cities (you assimilate your opponents cities). Single player RoN is very good, but in multiplayer games is where it really shines. Gone are the days where you can rush your opponent and crush (although it is fun), you can choose to have a peace period in the beginning where no one can attack another. You can also win the game by other means than crushing your opponent by expanding your nation's presense (territory victory) or create multiple wonders and achieve a wonder victory. I can go on, but I'll stop here. \_ I think we have a different idea of what turn based implies. If I can't stop and think about my move for a few minutes and beat my enemy with superior strategy rather than tactics then it isn't turn based, imo. \_ Did anyone ever play Robosport? That was one of my favorite games of all time? Unfortunately, I can't get OS X to run it because the ROM I have only works for 16 color mode. \_ I couldn't get the playable demo to run on my PC. There was some stupid activation issue and I guess their server is permanently down or something. \_ Gamespot Preview: http://csua.org/u/7t5 \_ Looks cool but I can't imagine being able to finish a game. 5 players, multiple battles each turn, 1 RTS game within each battle. 5 players, multiple battles each turn, 1 RTS game within each battle. [formatd] it's going to take days to finish a game. |
2004/6/10-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:30731 Activity:moderate |
6/10 Cal football games to be broadcast on the radio in SoCal. http://calbears.collegesports.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/061004aaa.html \_ Not free. Not on Yahoo Sports, anyway. If you know of a way to get it for free, let me know. \_ It's about time. \_ You can listen to the games over the Internet, though. It used to be free. It might still be. \_ Might be hard to do while you're stuck on the 405. \_ Satellite. \_ Not free. Not on Yahoo Sports, anyway. If you know of a way to get it for free, let me know. |
2004/6/3 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:30561 Activity:high |
6/2 Game review: Beyond Good and Evil. Really well done, how come I didn't hear squat about his game before now? Horrid title, good gameplay, lags a little in the middle, but what game doesn't? Does a great job with the learning curve, never seems too hard. Probably a bit short, but these days I appreciate a good well done short game. Definate renter, possible buy. -aspo \_ Beyond Good & Evil sucks. It got great reviews by most critics, but the public didn't buy it at all. I did, unfortunately. I played the first hour of the game and immediately put it on eBay, to me it's THAT BAD. What's to not like: - Ugly character: short hair, looks like a boy, no body, green lipstick, looks like an 80's punk girl. In a game you're the character, the person has to be likable, Jade is not. - Boring character: no charisma, nothing, she's boring - Stupid side-kick: a pig as a sidekick? Maybe when I was 10 years old, not in an adult game. Imagine if Solid Snake was walking around with a talking pig, insults adult intelligence. - Hammy: too tounge and cheek, very hammy dialogue, the voice acting seems partly joking partly serious, too in-your-face. - Boring gameplay: take pictures, fight, take pictures, fight... + Great graphics + Great production value \_ A pig for a sidekick? That's nutty. Really? Does it fight or carry a pig-gun or something? \_ If you get low on energy, you get to eat it. \_ Weird. And this got rated a great game by someone? |
2004/5/31-6/1 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30513 Activity:kinda low |
5/31 I've decided to give in and try out DDR. I have a PS2, what should I get? DDR? DDRMax? What's the difference? \_ DDR == PSone, DDRMax == PS2. i am selling my Ignition 2.0 pads (two of them). e-mail if you are interested. --jwang \_ Throw away $2 in the arcade first. \_ I'd rather rent or buy a used copy than embarrass myself in the arcades. :) \_ Well, don't forget you need a dance pad as well. The cheap ones run about $20. What's the problem with arcades? No one there will know you, or care for that matter. I've seem plenty of newbies play. \_ Exactly. I was going to say, make sure to get good pads, that makes a huge difference. The Ignitions are good, someone else posted another company that makes similar ones for half the price (~$50). There are some differences between Max and the older (PS1) versions, I'd suggest getting Max if you have a PS2 anyway. Look at the online reviews re: song selection, etc. |
2004/5/25-26 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30411 Activity:very high |
5/25 Oh ilyas (and other zelda peepz): http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/243453.asp?site=NLB0518#Screenshots although the psp looks cooler than anything nintendough put out.. that thing has usb and 802.11 on it - will it boot netbsd or linux? \_ I am a zelda people? -- ilyas \_ I am a Zelda people? The last time I played Zelda was in the CSUA office like 5 years ago, amusing those present by killing Link's twin with a hammer: "What's that? The twin can't mimic the hammer? Well that's just too bad!" -- ilyas \_ You really liked the zelda line, iirc. \_ Hey, what else do I like, unbiased stranger? -- ilyas |
2004/5/20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30316 Activity:very high |
5/20 Everquest fraud: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040506.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20040513.html \_ EQ? Who cares? It's a stupid and _boring_ game. \_ Someone didn't get their Prozac this morning. \- are you are such a loser apparently you dont realize EQ is about 5th in terms of what this situation is about. --psb 5th in terms of what these articles are about. --psb \_ Hmm... Something is kinda telling me these people are only getting what they deserve for letting their fantasy life take over so much of their real life. \_ There's a real easy solution to this, just make it illegal to buy and sell "virtual" goods. We shut down sites that buy and sell this kind of crap, and people who get scammed can just duke it out in small claims court. \_ Er, but what about virtual goods like digital music? |
2004/5/14-15 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/HW] UID:30231 Activity:moderate |
5/14 Anyone have any experience using a modded Xbox as a "media center" PC and/or networked video jukebox? Any pitfalls or suggestions? Can it mount external USB drives? Can it act as a SMB server? \_ Don't know about the software featured on /. yesterday, but a lot of people use xbox as a frontend for mythtv, which is a linux based project, so yeah, you can do both of those with linux. |
2004/5/8-9 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30097 Activity:nil |
5/7 Fun site when you're working on a Fri nite: http://www.funforwards.com/flash/june03/kungfu_bunny.cfm http://www.addictinggames.com http://www.funnydot.com/flashgamesp/Cyber-Mice-Party.html |
2004/5/4-5 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:30008 Activity:high |
5/4 I want to buy 'settlers of catan' online (because the idea of leaving the house is abohorent to me). Also, i'm a cheap bastard is there some discount game place online :) \_ It's called "<DEAD>www.ebay.com"<DEAD> You might have heard of it. \_http://www.google.com/froogle?q=settlers+of+catan&btnG=Search+Froogle&scoring=p \_ http://tinyurl.com/yrlzz (froogle) \_ I got it and others from http://funagain.com, they were nice/fast \- funagain and fairplay are good in service and price. if you are trying to save $, you should try to cluster to amortize shipping cost ... like with catan you might get the 5-6pp set at the same time. actually if you are in berkeley, i might be interested in clustering a game order. --psb \_ funagain is good. fairplay is usually cheaper but i've never ordered from them... i just get funagain to match their prices. \_ Crypto fascist! |
2004/5/4 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Reference/History/WW2] UID:29999 Activity:high |
5/4 Historical strategy games buffs, play these two: (a) Europa Universalis 2, (b) Victoria. Steep learning curve, but very fun. There is also a WWII one using the same engine, but that's probably not for everybody. -- ilyas \_ Are either of these free or Free? \_ No. -- ilyas |
2004/5/4 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Reference/History/WW2/Germany] UID:29989 Activity:high |
5/3 Attention 3d 1st person shooter gamerz: Battlefield Vietnam, yay or nay? -BF1942 dude, alias "Nazi killing machine" \_ I'm waiting for the truly accurate military video game where you lay around terrified 98% of the time ... and then get insta-maimed/ killed by a sniper or pipe-bomb. \_ BFV is much more immersive than BF1942. Plus infantry actually stand a chance against tanks and helis. The terrain is beautiful. \_ but should they stand a chance? against a heli? please.... \_ With a Stinger, sure they should. If you want game balance + realism, make stingers easy to obtain. \_ Well, this improves game balance. All you have to do is whip out your RPK or M60 and start belting it out. When they realize they are being shot at, they have to turn around, find you, aim their chopper at you and shoot. Oh and in that time, you get to find a place to hide. Most people are crappy chopper pilots and are not resourceful enough to pickup other players to act as door gunners. \_ I'm still waiting for Battlefield: Iraq \_ uh, desert sucks? \_ No! Urban guerilla warfare! \_ it's been done in BF1942, the Red Army field (forgot the name) It's a nasty terrain. |
2004/4/29 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Computer] UID:13452 Activity:very high Edit_by:auto |
4/28 Playtested "Shinteki" last weekend. Day-long puzzle-road-rally event. Well run and should be lots of fun for both experienced players and folks who haven't done something like this before. http://www.shinteki.com (May 8, 15, or 22). -jowens \_ This sounds like fun, but I'd like to know more. Could you do a write-up on your experience? ok, tnx \_ Well, that would be kind of giving away the whole thing, since what I playtested is exactly what it will be like. Here's a writeup of another one from the same group that's running Shinteki (in Las Vegas, and more elaborate of course): http://csua.org/u/744 Let me know if you want more info. |
2004/4/27 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:13401 Activity:nil |
4/27 Has anyone played Rainbow Six (Raven Shield)? If so, did you like it? Splinter Cell (1&2) seemed pretty good, so I was thinking about trying out other Tom Clancy games, but I'm a little wary because I've been told that they are very "realistic". \_ You want violent games that aren't realistic? You can get a free download of pacman at http://download.com. \_ If I wanted realistic I'd join up. I'm a scrawny coder who likes to shoot things for a few hrs a week. Too much "realism" (a la SoCom) bores me. \_ Have you tried Serious Sam or the sequel? Very fun and surreal \_ No. I'll look into them. \_ try FarCry \_ agreed, you need a "real" computer and video card, tho \_ I liked SC 1&2, and also Ghost Recon. Missions in Ghost Recon can take a looong time though (once I got used to it, I really liked it). Never played R6. |
2004/4/23 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:13347 Activity:high |
4/23 Man choses playstation 2 over hot date: http://ps2.ign.com/articles/508/508371p1.html?fromint=1 \-"it takes a lot of ploygons to approximate spheres" --psb \_ is that some kind of obscure Flatland reference? \_ Spheres are overrated. Complex curves are much better. \_ Ah, but with NURBS... How many of you would do the same? \_ at least one person would choose otherwise: http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/mis/29328995.html \_ I'm happily married to a hot woman. I'd take the ps2. \_ What he said. \_ Hotter than Jordan? Let's see a picture. \_ Jordan is fat. \_ Jordan is hot, but you can always get hot girls but PS2 is free and lasts a while \_ Hot chicks are over-rated. \_ That person is an idiot who will regret this later when he can't even get a woman under 40 to talk to him. All the girls in college who were "fat" or otherwise less than perfect start to look better and better the older you get. Woman aside, why not go out instead of spending more time in front of a CRT? \_ Why not pursue a relationship based on mutual interests with a normal person than an expenses-paid dinner with a chick who's crazy enough (or shrewd enough) to take an all-expenses-paid dinner with whichever shmuck happens to sound better in a random draw of the audience? Get the playstation, then tell the next girl you date you took it because you weren't interested in some meaningless fling. You can thank me when you wake up next to her the next morning. Then you can go play Final Fantasy X. |
2004/4/21-22 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:13312 Activity:nil |
4/21 Does anyone archive funny/cute flash games posted on the motd? I really need to do something fun before I am officially laid off on Friday. \_ try this you pathetic depressed laid-off silicon valley engineer: http://www.bol.ucla.edu/~jha331 \_ In my day we surfed porn and planted at bombs. Kids these days. \_ http://www.ebaumsworld.com/helicopter.shtml http://games.geekhaven.net/penguin/penguin.swf http://www.jfedor.org/misc2/penguin.swf (with sound) -John \_ http://www.urban75.com/Punch/gates.html http://www.axlrosen.net \_ http://www.orisinal.com -- awesome \_ Why do you hate america? |
2004/4/14-15 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:13190 Activity:low |
4/14 Not that there are any undergrads left in the CSUA, but particularly for them: Several upcoming puzzle-fest-road-rally-scavenger-hunt "Game" events in the next few months. This is spurred by the request of the people running the Genome Game http://www.genodix.com (Jul 10-11) indicating they'd like more undergrad participation. Since the Game started at Stanford it's mostly Stanford folks who play; I'd like to see some more Bears on the road. Non-undergrads welcome too. It's tons of fun. Other upcoming events: - BANG 6 (Apr 18) http://www.bloodandbones.com/thegame/bang6.html - Shinteki (May 8, 15, or 22) http://shinteki.com - Justice Unlimited (Jul 31-Aug 1) http://www.snout.org/Game About the Game: http://www.gamecontrol.com, lots of good links at http://www.snout.org/Game. Questions? Lemme know. -jowens \_ Actually, the CSUA is doing quite well among undergrads these days. Excellent leadership and enthusiasm have contributed to something of a renaissance over the last few sememsters. None of them read the motd though. (It's not displayed automatically on startup for new members anymore. :( ) \_ why nopt? \_ because paolo was whipped \_ Who knew? Cool. How might I publicize this among undergrads? \_ send it to csua@csua or office-hosers. You could also just send it to the Librarian and have him post it on the web page calender or something. \_ Considering the extremely questionable nature of some of the stuff that gets posted here, its probably best that the first thing a new member is confronted with when they login is NOT the motd.public. \_ Are you saying they can't deal with open debate and a little ranting? They're adults. They'll deal. They don't need you or anyone else to nanny them. \_ They may all be adults, but the content on the motd is not. \_ So what? They don't have to read it but they should not be nannied into not having the opportunity to read and participate. \_ I know that the motd is pretty questionable, but not exposing new members to it basically means the motd will slowly die as us allums get lives. Which, may be just fine. But things are already smelling kinda stagnant around here. \_ hey, some of us ugrads do read the motd; several are friends of mine. - erikk |
2004/4/6-7 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:13041 Activity:nil Cat_by:auto |
4/6 Cute little "life" kind of game: http://www.rgb-game.com You build organisms out of some number of red, blue, or green blobs, which need to eat those colors in the environment to reproduce. But the blobs also impart abilities to the organism. \_ You bastard. There goes my afternoon. \_ 69000 so far. still got a bunch on the board. \_ I got 370000 but then I kind of screwed it up. Forgot for a second that adding something would drop my score, plus now the board balance seems screwed up and probably can't recover. I was using one blob of each color but the reds all died at some point. Now it's toast. \_ 73409 with 6red, 6green \_ That's really interesting getting symbiosis going. 2r1g, 1b2g is working pretty well. Also 1g, 2b1r \_ 445321, 1g 1b 1r, but I tossed some more in early on. \_ Fantastic and evil. I'll never work again. -John \_ again? |
2004/2/23-24 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:12357 Activity:nil |
2/23 I was reading about 321 Studio being sued for their DVD XCopy software. I've never used it or ever owned a DVD burner, but I got curious and did some more reading through Google. So apparently you can't use it to rip PS2/XBox games. Now, would that be because of technical-related difficulties (e.g., it's harder to break the code on these game discs) or legal concerns (i.e., Sony/Microsoft are more likely to sue us than Hollywood)? \_ I don't know about PS2, but there is not problem ripping XBox games using a DVD burner. In fact with XBox you don't even have to waste a dvd on the game, you can just rip the game and then copy it to the Xbox's hd and play it from there. I do this for all my games since they load much faster from hd than from the DVD-Rom. \_ About how many games can it hold? \_ The 10 gb drive that came with my xbox holds about 2 games. I've upgraded to a 80 gb drive and that holds about 15 games. \_ Do you have any URL that has more information on how to do this? |
2004/2/20-25 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:12321 Activity:nil |
2/20 Looking to contract out some work to experienced game artists who don't suck ass. email jon@number-none.com \_ What I do in my own time is none of your business! \_ I'm still concerned about sucking ass. I'm an experienced game artist but how do I know in advance if I suck ass? Thanks! \_ What exactly does it mean to suck ass? Does it require the act of physically putting someone's entire ass in one's mouth while applying oral suction? Would one buttock be enough? What if the ass were too large to fit within the oral cavity? Would whatever smaller of piece of ass one could fit and apply suction upon still count as sucking ass? Thanks! \_ Ass sucking is not the proper nor terribly pleasurable way to treat an ass. See PETA argument above for more details. \_ Instead of looking for someone who won't mistreat an ass, shouldn't poster be telling what they *are* looking for? \_ I'm going to take a wild guess here, and say he might be looking for experienced game artists. \_ Yes, but he already says that. So he really wants experienced game artists who don't "suck ass". I'm concerned with the ass sucking part. Before I send my portfolio in I'd like to know if I've been sucking ass or maybe I have been but I've been doing it wrong or something. It's good to be prepared for these things. \_ I think I can say with confidence that blojo has no interest in hiring you. -tom \_ you "think" you can say that with "confidence"? \_ you expected better from tom? |
2004/2/2-3 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:12078 Activity:kinda low 50%like:12085 |
2/2 I've never played Chinese Chess. Any comments about it? Aside from: http://www.chessvariants.com/xiangqi.html \_ it's a good game, more like chess and less like Go or weiqi. Probably a little less complex and difficult than chess, but you need a few dozen games before you can possibly beat me, a decent amateur, if you are pretty bright \_ [ Chicom troll censored, Chinese government style. ] \_ I think he means less complex is equivalent to fewer possible moves \_ Also called Elephant Chess. Very challenging and well-balanced. It seems simpler than chess, at first, but takes almost as much skill to master, so in that respect, it's similar. Perhaps chess has a greater number of variations, but both have a greater magnitude of variation than most non-experts can calculate, so mastery is of a similarly high level. Btw, you can play online, too: http://www.xiangqiclub.com -nivra \_ Darn! I went to the site, and got slaughtered. Those people pretty good. \_ can one calculate the complexity of both games recursively? For example, how many moves exist by multiplying the number of moves for each piece with the next move, etc etc. Maybe that'll tell you mathematically how complex both games are. \_ No. \_ The Horse in Chinese chess moves the same way as the Knight. (A knight piece is a horse anyway.) The Chariot moves the same way as the Rook. The Elephant moves somewhat similarly to the Bishop. The initial positions of Chariot, Horse and Elephant are the same as those of Rook, Knight and Bishop too. \_ not quite the same as in western chess. The Chinese Horse can't jump over pieces; it always moves vertically/horizontally and then diagonally. \_ which bought a interesting point. I am long suspect the Western Chess and the Chinese "elephant" Chess derive from the same historical Origin, as a lot pieces moves in similar way and has similiar constraint. \_ I believe western chess has arab origins who are known to have been in contact with the chinese so it seems likely one got it from the other. I don't know which had it first. \_ Chess came from an Indian game called Chaturanga. It came to Europe (in chess form) via Arabs, and to China (in chinese chess form) likely directly. -- ilyas \_ thanks for the info. Interesting how there is no concept of a queen in the game. But it looks interesting enough. I like the concept of cannons and palace, and palace guards. \_ beware the double cannon checkmate and the cannon behind horse checkmate \_ are there are a lot of resources for english speaking players? computer games? game databases? \_ related question. Anybody here play wei-chi or go? I heard that the rules of the game are so simple but the strategy is so complicated that we still can't write computer programs that play the game. Or rather a program that's any good. Not like deep blue. \_ I play. Very amateur. There is a Berkeley Go Club, iirc. -nivra \_ Computer chess works because the number of moves that are legal on any one turn are managable, so you can search reasonably deep. Go has way to many moves to perform a good search, so the better Go programs have to do some sort of pattern recognition, IIRC. \_ I play wei-chi (badly). Always looking for more people to play. -- ilyas \_ I am a rookie go player. Go has simple rules. I wouldn't call the strategy complicated. It's just very different. Go has start game, middle game and end game, moving from vision, imagination and creativity to the analytical, from my limited understanding. Last time, I played online a few years back, I beat the guy who gave me a four seed advantage, which is huge. He thinks I play well for someone with less than 10 games experience. He didn't know I read a Go book from the game store on Shattuck. And I played very conservatively, using the 4 seed advantage to sit on him. Still I almost lost it all (one-seed slower and a big chunk of my seeds would have been lost). I think making a good computer player is possible, but it requires a different approach than chess. The Go book I bought had a game by two masters with explanation of what they are trying to do, and it was just very beautiful the way each seed is placed at just the right place which at first doesn't appear good, but slowly built up to a grand vision, with developing patterns appearing like a monster jaw, etc. \_ I should add that some go rules are not so simple. In particular, rules governing ko (repetition) and scoring can be a real bear. In fact, such rules differ depending on the country you play in. The strategy in wei-chi is much more complicated than in chess, in my opinion. In fact, the strategy is what's hard about wei-chi, tactical aspects of the game can be well-handled by known search techniques. -- ilyas \_ cf. shogi. There are similarities to chess, but big differences as well. For example, when you take a piece, it goes into your reserves and you can play it almost anywhere on the board. Also, pieces can be promoted under certain circumstances, altering their movement. Also hard to create an algorithm to emulate. \_ "hard to create an algorithm to emulate?" What does this even mean? Do you know what the words 'algorithm' and 'emulate' mean? \_ One of those english majors who took CS to play netrek and did well in neither. \_ Chinese Chess has the (big in my book) advantage of being a much quicker game. (fewer moves per game, king is much more restricted making for a shorter end-game). I just learned to play and I like it alot (though i've played only few games). Here is a decent online Java app: -crebbs http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Grid/6544/cccintro.htm |
2004/1/27 [Politics, Computer/Networking, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29764 Activity:kinda low |
1/26 MSFT is taking over http://MikeRoweSoft.com (CNN) \_ damn, this was people's last stand against the Sauron. Now he's going to take over the world. \_ resistance is futile. you will be assimilated. \_ Now what'll happen to http://mycrowsoft.com and <DEAD>mycrowessoft.com<DEAD>? |
2004/1/15 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11788 Activity:high |
1/14 Re: deep blue thread yesterday. I actually met the designer of deep blue, Feng-Hsiung Hsu, a couple of times because he's a friend of my wife's family. People just call him "deep blue". :-) After he left IBM, VCs started throwing money in his direction for his startup. Not sure what happened to his company. -taiwanese guy \_ my summary of this thread: <DEAD>www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/2004/01/13<DEAD> \_ Luddite! \_ I've read up on some URLs. The Deep Blue team was allowed to modify the program between games in the tournament. These modifications were made with the help of human grandmasters. Deep Blue didn't beat Kasparov. Rather, Deep Blue with between- game tweaking by human grandmasters beat Kasparov. That closes the issue in my book. (That Kasparov went nuts and was incorrect in suggesting that Deep Blue was being modified during the game doesn't change the main point.) \_ Yes, but Kasparov consults (quite frequently) with fellow grandmasters during (when recessed) and between games. He also employs computers to look for variations. So the resources available to the Deep Blue team are available to Kasparov. Similarly between games Fischer would consult others for advise and modify his tactics according to past games. So it's not really fair to say that the Deep Blue team can't modify the program to reflect what essentially amounts to learning. A human tweaks himself between games, so why can't a computer program be tweaked in between games? \_ wait a second. he talks to grandmasters *during* games? how can that be? that's like chess by committee. I think you're wrong there. Or else grandmasters advising Deep Blue would be ok. \_ You could even argue that Deep Blue was "talking with other grandmasters and improving its strategy" between games, just like Kasparov could do the same. But while it sounds appealing, I'm kind of uneasy about this reasoning. \_ I think it would be better if neither side could do any out side consulting or tweaking. My gut feeling was that Kasparov was alone here, and the corporate resources of IBM way outmatched him in the between-game improvements. \_ Well in the end the machine played by itself each game. Being tweaked before and after games doesn't really change that. GK made some mistakes too. It's not like they would know what Kasparov would do in the next game. \_ Some would argue that the engine was so tweaked to play Kasparov, that it wasn't a general engine, but rather a "beat Kasparov" engine. We'll never know, since it didn'y play anyone else. \_ That's true for any world-class chess player preparing the issue in my book. for a match. Such a player would spend a lot of time optimizing his play for his opponent by studying his games, preparing tailored opening surprises, etc. -- ilyas |
2004/1/8-9 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11719 Activity:moderate 50%like:30052 |
1/7 Do you compete in anything these days? (non-sex related) (Sports, Netrek, board games, ...) \_ Basketball, Poker, board games, computer games in that order of frequency. - crebbs \_ what level are you? Win any competitions/money? What board games? \_ does netrek have an official rating system? Is anyone on csua rated? \_ netrek doesn't have ratings akin to chess ratings; it's closer to MUD/Evercrack with levels. There are a number of CSUA geeks who have at least one Admiral. -tom \_ Counterstrike, Halo. \_ Shooting real guns - no sim shit. \_ are you in competition shooting? Biathalon? Skeet shooting? \_ What do you have against competative sex? \_ I compete in the MOTD. \_ Competitive censoring? \_Competitive trolling. |
2004/1/7 [Politics/Domestic/California, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11701 Activity:nil |
1/6 Pete Rose is a liar and a scumbag. \_ I was shocked, shocked to hear that he had bet on baseball. \_ Casablanca reference acknowledged. \_ please tell us how you really feel about him \_ Why is he a scumbag, aside from betting on baseball and then lying about it? I'm serious. \_ baseball elders get cranky when you bet on baseball, especially if you are managing a team. ever heard of the "black sox"? \_ well what you mention is at the center of it. It's also about him constantly pandering for attention, refusing to admit to truth, showing no remorse or guilt for wrong-doing. If you believe Gioso, he also had no qualms about corking his bat. What about the insinuation that since he bet everyday on games, and on the Reds, who he managed, only sometimes, that the very act of "not betting" on the Reds is a signal that he thought the Reds might lose. Oh, and perhaps the only reason that this news is hitting the airwaves "now," is because Pete stands to profit from a book, and the HOF announcement is today. \_ I hadn't heard about any bat corking. Re: the gambling, I think that although it was against the rules, it was not "wrong". Lying about it was, but not bad enough to make him a scumbag. \_ bat corking: http://csua.org/u/5g1 also, the gambling is wrong. Again, do you really think Pete would manage the same when he bet for the Reds to win and when he did not bet for the Reds to win? What about blowing out a pitcher's arm in May in order to get that crucial last inning when there's 5 months of baseball left? Furthermore, Pete had to know that not betting on the Reds would signal the mob bosses. How hard do you think he played to win while he had that knowledge. \_ I would expect that rather than doing a half-assed job when he didn't have any bets going, it's more likely that he placed bets when he had "inside information" which favored the Reds. This would be insider trading with respect to his bookie, but that doesn't bother me. \_ of course he had inside information. he was their manager. What about the situation which may or may not have happened where he gets pressure put on him by mob bosses to whom he owes money to throw a game? If the betting on baseball doesn't bother you, and the inherent conflict in interest involved, whether he was betting to win or to lose, and the lying, public pandering, and insincere begging he has done in public since 1989 don't bother you, then maybe in your eyes he's not a scumbag. These things do bother me, however. In general, it's been his character, his willingness to do anything for a $, and his willingness to do anything, say anything to get back into the HOF regardless of what he hurts or what he has to say to do it. \_ some people just don't care about character. to them there is nothing someone can do that is 'wrong' or immoral because they don't believe in morality. anything that someone can get away with is ok because they have no sense of right and wrong. you're wasting your time trying to explain immorality to someone that has no morals. \_ you people are incredible. we just had a thread about how EVIL teachers are bleeding the taxpayer dry with their 30k/yr salaries for teaching kids, but when it comes to baseball teams subsidised by the taxpayer for the profit of a few millionares all you fuckers care about is who gambled or cheated. \_ 30k/year? Bullshit. In CA, try 50k for passing the 10th grade level exam and 70-80k for taking a few night or summer classes and getting an "advanced" teaching credential or "masters" in education from *any* third rate school. You're so full of crap. You know nothing about the teacher's union or teaching. You're not even trolling anymore. You're just spreading outright lies and complete misinformation at best. Please just go away. \_ Is there anything more boring than baseball. I'd rather watch grass grow. \_ Yes, there is. It's called Cricket. |
2004/1/5 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:11662 Activity:very high |
1/4 Ok so what's the next bowl game for the bears? \_ 2010 \_ If we don't go to a major bowl next year, it will be a disappointment. We lose very little from this team, so both offense and defense should be better next year than they were this year. We have playmakers on both sides of the ball. -tom \_ so are we done this year? We did Insight Bowl, now what's next? (if anything)? |
2003/12/31-2004/1/2 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:11631 Activity:moderate |
12/31 How do I go about getting tickets for Friday night's Cal BBall game? I'm an alum. I've never gone to a Cal ball game before. -crebbs \_ why are you going now? \_ Part of friend's 30th B-day. \_ http://calbears.ocsn.com/tickets/cal-tickets.html if there are any left. If not, you can try craigslist \_ Isn't that illegal? or stubhub, or if you are really determined, buy them scalpers outside the arena before the game. -ausman or stubhub, or if you are really determined, buy them from scalpers outside the arena before the game. -ausman \_ Isn't that illegal? \_ No, it's not. Scalping tickets for less than or equal to the amount than the printed price on the ticket is perfectly legal. |
2003/12/31 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11626 Activity:nil |
12/30 http://www.wilddivine.com - anyone played this? Cool or crap? \_ Reviewed on http://Discover.com http://csua.org/u/5ee |
2003/12/19-20 [Transportation/Car, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11523 Activity:nil |
12/18 earn some quick shopping money this weekend flyering cars for http://govojo.com - the netflix for games. email brain for details \_ Yay! More trash in the gutters! Like my email and US mail spam wasn't enough, now I've got to toss your shit off my car at BART. \_ yeah, like we needed more trash in the gutters. \_ what's wrong with http://redoctane.com? |
2003/12/14 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11450 Activity:nil |
12/13 I just got a palm zire (B&W). what are some good freeware games? something like chess or a scrolling airplane shooter? \_ http://www.freewarepalm.com Let me know if you find anything cool. \_ Dopewars. Great for meetings. -John |
2003/12/12-13 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11425 Activity:low |
12/11 My latest addiction: http://globulos.com \_ Dude, you suck. Look what time it is. I've been playing this for hours now. Hate you. -phuqm \_ Seconded. I have so very rarely wanted to lynch someone so generous. You bastard. \_ Thirded. I was up till 3. And it made me forget to make mashed potatoes. \_ Totally fucking EVIL!!! I was up until 5am playing this crap, and I've had an urge all day to play it at work. Then again, maybe that is because I hate my job. -phale \_ I tried it this morning but pulled myself away. This seems like it will have more staying power than isketch \_ Are there any good, up to date "simple" game listings? "Castle" was a cool one, I also like the Dismount games (simulations of people falling down stairs and crashing trucks). |
2003/12/10-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/HW/Memory] UID:11384 Activity:nil |
12/9 Anyone have any experience with the DDR RedOctane pad? I've been happy with my Ignition 2.0 pads, but wanted to get a more affordable for my brother's kids... Thx! http://redoctane.com/ddr.html \_ i got Ignition 2.0's as well, but there are very similar BNS pads for $50. see the listing and review links here: http://www.buynshop.com/productinfo/44/VG-DDR-ULTDX \_ Are the ignition pads really worth the price? I can buy pads at EB Games for 1/3. \_ the ignition pads are *GREAT* - solid, responsive, can't complain at all. After a year of hard dancing, the foam is still as thick/soft as new. Well worth it if you're serious, but at a higher price. -op \_ My friend bought these, $39 for a foam pad: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/ddrgame/deigpad.html He's had it for a few months and it lasted way better than the $20 pads. If you look around you can get the cheap plastic ones for about $10-15, here is one: http://talkall-wireless.site.yahoo.net/playddrdanpa.html -oj \_ Every once in a great while, the motd comes through with a better collection of info than I've been able to find through much googling. I hate that. \_ Thanks for the great feedback! Another DDR-related question - how does DDR MAX 2 compare to Konamix? Worth upgrading to a PS2 for? (got the PS1 just for DDR, thinking of upgrading for MAX and Karaoke Revolution) \_ around 70 songs in MAX2, freeze arrows, 60fps for the arrow movement, "light" mode (1-3 feet). songlists: http://www.ddrfreak.com/versions/listver.php -oj |
2003/12/5-6 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11320 Activity:nil |
12/4 Has anyone played either "San Marco" "El Grande" or "Puerto Rico" (the games)? Any comments/reviews? \_ Puerto Rico is very good. At almost every turn, there's a "correct" move--it's a game for the analytical. -tom \- Complexity? Is it a social game or all strategy? \_ moderately complex. More strategy than social. -tom \_ Played puerto rico for the first time last week, it's a hoot. Lots of strategy, though, that we were just scratching the surface of, I think. http://Funagain.com has decent prices. \-hola, is "funagain" the default game site on the weeb? ... at least for price? i am thinking of buying PR, EG, SM and Princes of Florence from them. There is a place in florida still selling MORE COSMIC ENCOUNTER(shrink wrap) for $30. This is a pretty good deal iff you have the Mayfair Cosmic. I am pretty sure you'll be able to sell this at a profit if in good condition. Ok tnx. --psb |
2003/12/3 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11287 Activity:nil |
12/2 If anyone wants to see a video of some guy beating mario bros 3 in ~11 minutes, look at /csua/tmp/mariobros3.wmv (~18 MB). \_ out of curiosity, why is that interesting/impressive? \_ what, is that too slow for you? maybe i'm just easily impressed. \_ No, specifically, what about it is impressive? Did he find a shortcut through, and then memorize the moves? Or is that the whole game? Or ... Basically, "what makes this impressive?", from someone who hasn't played the game but is randomly curious... \_ just watch it, the guy makes almost no unnecessary movements. there are just some sequences that are incredibly well-timed. -- !op \_ no unnecessary movements except for getting nonstop 1-ups on the scroller levels. that's just showing off. -geordan \_ It's amazing because he beat the whole game in 11+ minutes when it should've taken an hour or so (at least with my sad gaming skills). Also, he did it with such minimal movements (well, minimal while still getting 99 lives). \_ Amazing. I would say flawless but one of his cards was a mushroom and not a star. \_ That's intentional. If he got 3 stars it would take longer to play the little anthem and award free lives, which he really had enough of. -bz \_ Genius. Pure Genius. \_ Wow! Absolutely incredible. \_ He used an emulator to slow speed down to 1/30th, also saved and reloaded. \_ I thought it was too perfect. You have a URL to back up that claim? \_ it looks like it was captured from a real NES. Emulators don't produce the weird screen artifacts on the side. \_ http://soramimi.egoism.jp/emu.htm is Morimoto's web page. He describes doing exactly what is asserted here. -brain \_ That's great, he describes it... in Japanese! \_ You've never heard of http://babelfish.altavista.com ? (Mind you, you need a good sense of humor to work through it....) \_ The part where he got 74 1-up's had me giggling like a little schoolgirl. \_ You should all watch Quake done Quick |
2003/11/24 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11206 Activity:low |
11/24 M$ Using PPC in XBox to Kill Linux: http://tinyurl.com/wbrl (redherring.com) \_ that has got to be one of the dumbest articles I've read in years \_ agreed.. |
2003/11/20-21 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:11160 Activity:high |
11/20 Does anyone else use eMule to pirate games/sw? It's great! \_ Don't Copy That Floppy! \_ Best. Video. Ever. \_ usenet. the only way you can be tracked is if your isp turns over logs. \_ I like W.A.S.T.E. but you need ot trust your friends, and it doesn't scale too well \_ how do new warez get into the system? \_ By the whim of trystero... |
2003/11/16 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Foreign/Asia/Taiwan, Recreation/Shopping] UID:11098 Activity:nil |
11/16 http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2003/11/14/2003075781 Gigolo school raided by police. |
2003/11/12 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:11043 Activity:nil |
11/12 A cute little adventure-ish game that doesn't take too long to finish. http://www.freshsensation.com/samorost.swf http://www.samorost2.net/samorost1 |
2003/11/4 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:10927 Activity:nil |
11/3 I'm stuck at work twiddling for 3 hours. What easy to learn online games are out there? No pay services, please, I just need to kill one evening. Thanks! \_ http://espgame.com \_ nethack! \_ http://www.popcap.com/gamepopup.php?theGame=bookworm \_ http://isketch.com http://www.crystalnewmedia.com/gridlock/gridlock.swf http://www.xgenstudios.com/castle \_ sounds like a lot of people are on the same boat. \_ you all rock! thanks! 3 hours killed. --op |
2003/10/10-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/SW/Languages/Functional] UID:10579 Activity:nil |
10/10 New copy protection scheme: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994248 \_ for software, not A&V \_ if it's software, it can be hacked. they're just making it more difficult. \_ "copy protection" through standard-munging is lame. \_ This is as old as Ultima. The game companies put in something which detects if you have a pirated copy 1/3 through the game. Crackers release a fix to the first crack later. \_ Now imagine (as always happens) the false positives on this? Everyone gets to blame the game. |
2003/9/24 [Recreation/Dating, Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:10306 Activity:low |
9/24 Half-life 2 delayed from Sep. 30 release. Release date unknown. \_ Who cares? It's all the same. \_ I've built my entire life around game release dates. I check all the release date schedules on an hourly basis and auto alert myself via my pager and email if anything chances! \_ How have you not committed suicide over Duke Nukem Forever? \_ I bet this guy is obsessed with masturbating, too. \_ Heresy!!! \_ but I heard game cubes are now down to $99. |
2003/8/22-23 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29440 Activity:very high |
8/22 I just got a new computer and I wanna try out its capabilities (I got 3GHz, 2Gig RAM, and a Radeon 9800 vid card). I want to try out games where you see a LOT of blood and body disfigurement, preferably where you're a general or a gunner trying to get rid of a swarm of inferior army. What are some games that'll satisfy the above requirements? \_ Watch Al-Jazeera \_ use your imagination. http://games.yahoo.com/go \_ Quake 3 alpha? \_ In Civ1 you run a vast civilization and destroy entire races. I think you're looking for civ1. On the other hand, anyone who spends a few grand on parts they don't need probably has a of more spare cash around. I'll be your "Game Consultant". I charge $250/hr or per question with a minimum charge of 4hrs/4questions and you pay in advance. \_ civ1? As in Sid Meier's Civilization? I played that on my 386 game. Pretty cool. No blood though. \_ Yeah, but think of the blood involved in wiping out multiple enemy civs that might have a few million people _each_! That's more blood per turn than all the Quake, Doom, RTCW, etc, games ever played combined! \_ Serious Sam \_ And SS2. These two harken back to the Doom/Doom2 days when there were a shitload of monsters all coming after you all at once. This one outdoor level with two pyramids took me ten tries to pass (but my oh my, how high the death count was) \_ Half-Life 2 is what you'll want next month. There's nothing right now to really push your system. For relatively recent action games try Jedi Knight 2 or Battlefield 1942 (online only). \_ Gunmetal (http://www.nvidia.com/object/game_gunmetal.html brought my Athlon 1700 + GeForce 4400 to its knees, and not even at max graphics quality. \_ his machine is over twice as fast as yours btw \_ It's all about the graphics card, not the CPU on these sorts of games. Stick in a 100000ghz cpu and a shitty GPU and it won't run any faster. Bottlenecks, kids. Think bottlenecks. I guess bottles aren't shaped like that anymore. \_ cpu is still important. 100000ghz cpu would probably do much better than any existing gpu, assuming software rendering support. \_ yeah plus that 9800pro is a lot more powerful than 4400. easily 2x fps with anti-aliasing and aniso filtering. with fewer features the games become CPU-limited. \_ Bottlenecks!!! Your memory and system bus can't feed your infinite mhz cpu. So no, it won't go faster due to software rendering without some incredibly rebuild of all the buses *and* hey guess what? Your monitor is hooked up to your video card (shocker!) and again you're stuck with whatever copy-to-video-ram speed your video card can do. \_ *sigh* I had just bought the Athlon+GeForce last year, and though it's plenty fast, I'm dreading seeing how HL2 or Doom3 performs. Thus far, only Gunmetal chokes my system... well, that and that ATI-happy benchmarking program, 3DMark2003. \_ I still game on a P3-700. Until very recently it was a p3-450. The 700 was an upgrade. |
2003/8/21 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:29429 Activity:nil |
8/21 smurf finally writes a game: http://fa.xmunkki.org |
2003/8/20-22 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/Companies/Yahoo] UID:29400 Activity:low |
8/19 Programmer / Engineer position open in the Yahoo! Games group. /csua/pub/jobs/Yahoo for more info. -- nickkral \_ why did you take out the posts below. Can't handle criticism? \_ he didn't. \_ nick, you don't play games all that well and you're not even hip, why are you in the game division? |
2003/8/19-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29393 Activity:very high |
8/19 Stupid Motd Poll. I play video games often/allthetime: . I play video games occasionally (<once a week): . I rarely/never play video games: ... \_ i put "often" but for me it happens in binges. other times i don't play for weeks. \_ i'm like this too, as i suspect many are. -phuqm \_ About once a year I'll play video games a lot for 2-3 weeks, but that averages to <once a week... |
2003/8/19-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29389 Activity:low |
8/19 ilyas, is Command & Conquer a good game? Graphics look nice. If it's good tell me and I'll go get it \_ Command & Conquer Tiberian Sun is fun (especially multiplayer) -not ilyas \_ I hate RTS games with a passion, so I am the wrong person to ask. -- ilyas \_ C&C Generals is the most recent in the series. It was fun enough. There are some balance issues between the 3 sides. The single player campaign was ok but nothing fantastic and didn't have Westwood's more usual storyline and cut scenes. No cut scenes at all in this one. Overall its ok but lacks that certain spark that great games have. Don't pay $50 for it unless you've got money burning a hole in your pocket. |
2003/8/19-20 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29385 Activity:insanely high |
8/18 Can someone repost a list of good strategic war games that don't emphasize on civ build-ups? Thanks. \_ Risk, Axis & Allies are good board games. Anything from SSI is probably too complex. -John \_ Avalon Hill Games \_ What do you mean by strategic? True wargames differ by scale, and are divided into 'tactical' (brigade level, and lower), and 'operational' (army level, and above). A good example of the first group is Squad Leader. A good example of the second group is Talonsoft's Operational Art of War. I prefer operational games myself, but those games are no longer wargames per se, they often model diplomatic, economic, and geopolitical considerations (not to mention logistics). Thus, they are by necessity civ-like. Good recent operational games are Hearts of Iron (centering on WWII), and Europa Universalis (centering on 15th-19th century) by Paradox Entertainment, both use the same engine. An excellent tactical game is Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin, by Battlefront. If you are interested in wargames, drop me an email and we can chat more. I am always looking for more people to play (AI tends to suck in complicated wargames, not surprisingly). -- ilyas \_ chess. \_ baiting tom. \_ not good, not strategic, not a war game. well ok, it's good. and it's a game. but it's like playing solitaire and cheating. you can't lose because it's too easy. \_ like yermom? -!tom \_ "i know you are but what am i?" \_ "it's too easy, like yermom" \_ checkers. \_ Settlers of Catan is a simple yet very enjoyable strategic game, but it's based on resources and growth not war. There are supposedly expansion packs or newer versions that incorporate war, though. \_ settlers of catan is great, (even women enjoy it), but it isn't a war game. \_ odd game. i won my first game and i'm still not sure why. \_ Settlers is an example of a steamroller game. A few lucky rolls of the dice, and you win: some advantage leads to more advantage, exponentially. It's not like netrek, where the more you succeed, the harder it is to gain more. \_ If you like Settlers check out Puerto Rico. A bit more complicated, but really fun and there's almost no element of luck involved. \_ there is luck in Puerto Rico -- the order and ability of players is important. \_ With the "Cities and Knights" expansion, Settlers is a much better game, because it's easier to gang up on whomever's in front. -tom \_ Even without the expansion, whenever I play Settlers people gang up on whoever is in front by using the robber, refusing to trade with the leader, using hostile development cards, etc. If you feel that Settlers is a "steamroller game", you should try playing against better opponents. \_ Yes, but all of those things often don't make too much of a dent in the front-runner. With enough of an advantage, and some good dice rolls you can triumph over all possible opposition in Settlers. The robber is at the level of an irritant only, if you're big enough. \_ But cards like "Wedding" and "Sabotage", plus futzing around with knights if you've got grain, makes Cities and Knights a lot more dynamic, and it's feasible to gain 4 or 5 victory points in a single turn if you plan it right. I agree that the base Settlers game tends to steamroll. -tom \_ Board games or computer games? \_ board game: Rise and Fall fo the Third Reich ... \_ Takes forever to set up, ages to get the hang of, and aeons to play. I recommend against this and most Avalon Hill games unless you're willing to put in a lot of time with your hard-core gamer friends, at which point they are pretty decent. -John \_ how much of a hardcore gamer are you John? \_ Not nearly enough to spend 3 days learning Rise & Fall...you're talking to Mr. short attention span here. :-) -John \_ Fist of Fury in My Pants. \_ Matrix Games is supposed to be releasing a PC version of the ultra-complicated Napoleonic classic Empires in Arms later this year. Looks promising. \_ Cosmic Encounters. After 3 sessions of CE with 6 or 7 players that last anywhere from 15 minutes to 8 hours you'll have earned your degree in Cosmic Lawyering and be ready to squish the little peons who normally argue in places like the US Supreme Court and the Motd. \_ is it a cutt-throat game? More so than Diplomacy? \_ Diplomacy is for the weak. It has set rules and a known starting position. Only the strong survive in the world of Cosmic Encounter. \_ Have you played CE against PSB? \_ I would not dare challenge the psb. I am beneath. \_ I'm having a Big U moment. \- hey i went 13 CE wins in a row ... ATOMIC ENCOUNTER ... molon labe. --psb |
2003/8/15-16 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29362 Activity:high |
8/15 Rise of Nations is pretty cool, BUT, are there games that emphasizes less on build-up (technology, citizens, research, etc) and more on strategic fighting? Like simply moving troops, using artillery, etc? This build-up process is simply stupid. \_ "amateurs talk about strategy, pros talk about logistics" \_ there are games which allow you to manage supply lines and such \_ Nectaris: Military Madness for PSX. One of my all time favorites. It's a turn-based game though, but I think that's better than RTS anyways. [edit] Btw, N: MM feels a lot more like a board game than a video game. If you are a hardcore grognard, try something like Europa Universalis or wait for Road to Moscow to come out. Also, check out http://grognard.com. -- ilyas Also, check out http://grognard.com. [edit2] Sorry, I remembered one more thing: check out Combat Mission games from Battlefront. Yes, I play wargames a lot. -- ilyas \_ play regular wargames. maybe like Hearts of Iron \_ agree with above. there are tons of set piece turn based games out there with a lot more strategic depth than the click fest you'll get in any RTS game. |
2003/8/9-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29295 Activity:kinda low |
8/10 Rise of Nations, yay or nay? \_ Is it like Civilization? \_ I hear it is a good game, but I never played it myself. \_ It is awesome, especially if you like RTS games. Two thumbs up. |
2003/8/2-4 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29220 Activity:high |
8/2 Has anyone played Medal of Honor online/multiplayer? Any good? The XBox version sucks. -John \_ Because the Xbox is the same as buying a 3 year old PC. \_ not quite. The fact that it is a single target lets you do a hell of a lot more machine specific optimization, and the bus architecture is more suited to games than a pc is. So go with a year or two old. \_ Nyet, comrade! Most of the high end games such as FPS and flight sims are optimizing for both the cpu and video card on PC's. The xbox version isn't going to ever compare to the PC version of anything only a year old. Two is pushing it. I've played plenty of both and the xbox just looks lame. You can turn on *everything* on these newer games on an older PC system and play 640x480 (similar to the TV the xbox is sending output) and get more FPS than you'll need and it'll still look better than xbox. What xbox has going for it is the console thing with game paddles, etc. Sometimes keyboard and mouse just doesn't cut it. \_ yes they are optimized but not nearly as optimized. It just just isn't possible. (That being said a lot of xbox developers are just lazy.) And as far your resolution claims, we these days fill rate is rarely the bottleneck, especially not at 640x480. (ok, if you have a full screen particle system with 100s of alphaed particles, but I'm not talking about that kind of case.) \_ the screen res. is a minor side issue from where I was really trying to go: xbox is a console. consoles have an advantage in HID and the owners expect less as well. any PC game that came out today looking as lame as the best xbox game isn't going to break even or probably get shelf space. consoles are the low end of the game market. buy a pc if you want real gaming. \_ luckily, first person shooters and flight sims aren't very entertaining \_ i agree, however a few million others think otherwise. what are you playing if not fps and flight sims? ive been playing NWN and C&C:Generals lately. \_ flight sims sell for crap these days. There is a reason they aren't being made much anymore. |
2003/7/29-30 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29164 Activity:very high |
7/28 What are some of the cool games out there for PC nowadays?s \_ I thought morrowind was neat. \_ morrowind sucks donkey balls \_ C&C Generals if you like rts games. Why don't you tell us what type of games you like? Then we can help you better. \_ My brother has recently played ETM and EF2. He's currently working on KOTOR. All of these games looked pretty good. \_ Battlefield 1942. Super-addictive online. And you get to bayonet people. -John \_ I played Warcraft III. The expansion pack just came out but I haven't played that yet. The only other games I've played in the past five years were Diablo (sucked) and Starcraft (great). \_ I just finished single player expansion for WC3. Pretty fun. I like the new units. \_ Yeah, but the new units have even more micromanagement issues. I pick up War3 occasionally, but it's even more of a clickfest of SC. \_ I think that's the point. They want you to micromanage instead of building mass grunts and sending them off to fight. \_ Another reason why RoN is better: You can select to not allow rushing in which case you receive a huge amount of attrition damage in enemy territory (in addition to tons of other multiplayer options). \_ What genre? RTS (Warcraft), FPS (Counterstrike), RPG (Diablo?), Adventure (King's Quest), Action (Street Fighter), etc? \_ Check out Rise of Nations(RTS) with a unique blend of ideas taken from Turn based strategy games(like Civ 3). Its Awesome. Loved Warcraft III, but Rise of Nations is much better, cannot go back. The Multiplayer games rock! \_ I hated WC3. I couldn't even make myself finish the single player campaign. Is RoN the same deal with silly hero units and artificially small squads and the standard war craft deal with a small variety of units with heavy paper-rock-scissors? \_ It does have units in the P-R-S format that you mention, but it has others which are not. RoN has a HUGE variety of units. It does not have hero units. It does not have campaigns like Warcraft III, instead it has a 'Conquer the World' scenario really good. which plays out differently every time you play. Check out this link to find out how it has changed the RTS genre and why its waaay better than other RTS games: link:csua.org/u/3rn \_ As much as I hear RoN is good, I couldn't stand the high speed of the units. Reminded me of a clickfest. The last RTS I really liked was Empire Earth, although it was painful whenever your ally decided to drop a few nukes on you, just for fun. \_ Try playing on the slowers speeds. It has 4 different speeds. The normal speed is quite fast, but you can play on 'slow' or 'very slow' and you can even select that technologies are researched fast, units are created fast, etc. \_ Play Planescape: Torment. A few years old, but as someone else wrote, "the best book I ever played". System Shock 2 is also really good. Just make sure you download the patch that prevents your guns from degrading, and stops respawns. You can even do SS2 multiplayer, although you have to stay on the same level. \_ been playing billy boy's Age of Empires for the past 6 years, the most mileage i've gotten out of a game. \_ been playing billy boy's Age of Empires on the zone for the past 6 years, the most mileage i've gotten out of a game. |
2003/7/22-23 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:29103 Activity:nil |
7/22 Thank god for *nix millebourne(sp). I killed a whole work day doing nothing but losing to the computer. I think it cheats. An entire game without a single "Go" card? |
2003/7/16-17 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:29059 Activity:kinda low |
7/15 Seen the Dungeon Siege II trailer? Anyone believe that the whole thing is really from the in-game engine? \_ Sure, why not? Looks about par as far as game engines go. The Doom3 trailer was much more impressive graphics wise, and that was all in-game engine driven too. If it were CGI, I'd expect a lot more. \_ I wonder how much hardware it takes to play a game that looks like that during game play without slowdowns. \_ Most likely ATI Radeon 9800 and an insanely fast 2+Ghz CPU |
2003/7/15-16 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Reference/History/WW2/Germany] UID:29040 Activity:high |
7/14 We have a lot of games that kill Nazis and Japs (Medal of Honor, MS Combat Flight Simulator, etc etc etc). Just out of curiousity, do the Germans/Japanese make games that kill the Allies? \_ while there is plenty of nazi paraphenalia in Japan, I have never seen a game where you actually fight the US. There are plenty where you try to take over Asia though! Also I believe the swastika is illegal in Germany. -brain \_ Wolfenstein 3D is illegal in Germany for the Nazi imagery. Probably the original Wolfenstein was not illegal though because the graphics were so shitty! \_ Games involving killing humans are illegal there. C&C had humans replaced by robots. There is a game called 'camp commander' in the underground nazi scene in .de that's a resource-management game involving sending "Turks" off to concentration camps. There are a few games where you play nazis/japs, like Battlefield 1942, and the old Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (the sound clips in BF1942 are absolutely hilarious.) -John \_ i wonder how come we don't have any game like "Slave Tycoon." \_ that'd be REALLY cool too. I'm looking for similar games, like Clubbing Baby Seals and Tiger Hunting \_ You should play Fallout 2. Jet, man, Fucking Jet! \_ there are lots of games where you can play a Japanese Zero and shoot the Americans, or drive a Panzer tank and kill the Allies. \_ or play the iraqi killing american troops. \_ Not really because those Japanese and those Nazi are 'gone'. The people there now (mostly) don't associate themselves with those dead empires. Do you associate yourself with the slave holding \_ No but it's a reeeallly touchy subject in both Japan and Germany. Infinitely more so than anything you can imagine here about slaves or indians. -John south in this country? The natives? The Spanish who held CA? The French who held the center of the country? The Russians who held Alaska? \_ I associate myself with cowboys who kill injun savages. \_ Are there any games where I can play Israeli troops and exterminate palestinians? I'm too much of a pussy to join the Israeli army to do that, so I want to do the next best thing. Thanks. \_ No, but I've seen the "Palestinian Pizza Bomber game" followed closely by the sequels, "Disco Bomber", "University Bomber", "Bus Bomber" and "Hotel Bomber" which were all included in a special "Push them into the sea" pack which had a special addon where you get to toss old wheelchair bound Jews into the sea from a cruise ship you've taken over. I'm looking forward to "The Last Arab/Israeli War" game where the Arabs attack (again) and win this time and you get to play Arabs butchering Jews in the streets en masse while the UN passes resolutions against the wicked Jews for getting in the way of your axes and bullets. \_ Can we have an adult themed fantasy role playing game like ultima6 or something but with lots of kinky sex? \_ Write it and they shall cum. |
2003/7/14-15 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:29029 Activity:nil |
7/13 Real Life, Reviewed by Gamespot: http://csua.org/u/3m6 |
2003/7/1 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/SW/Mail] UID:28874 Activity:insanely high |
6/30 related to the friendster thread below. Do most of you even have time to 'try new stuff on the web'? When I was a student I had time to screw around and surf all day. After graduating and getting a job and getting married, I don't have time for that. My web surfing consists entirely of a few sites like yahoo and google and some technical web sites like http://ietf.org or financial info like irs.gov. Even then I'm looking for specific info. I don't randomly surf. I stop as soon as I find the info I need. Anybody else in the same boat? \_ Occasionally while taking a break or eating at my desk or waiting for a client to get back to me (when I'm at their office with nothing else to do.) Not for hours on end, though. -John \_ yet another reason marriage is for suckers \_ if you think randomly surfing the web is better than having a life, you're either very very young or I pity you. --done both \_ having a life != being married \_ randomly surfing web == not having life being married == having life for those with real marriage \_ Just don't be so PW. My wife expects me to spend an hour or two online a night. Beats sitting in front of the TV set. \_ Try friendster and you will learn. Bye bye marriage and job sucka!!! You're HOOKED. h0oK3t! \_ yeah, right after I get one more everquest level. \_ it makes it easier to set up extramarital affairs. but yeah, after marriage, you pretty much disappear. i think they call it "growing up". -sl \_ I see webbrowsing as roughly equal to reading magazines. Do you read Time/Life/NewsWeek/Harpers/Barrons/Economist/etc? People/Cosmo/Red's Digest/SciAm/Nature/Science/etc? \_ science, nature, sciam and economist are available online, and the other things you named are fucking trash. \_ The Economist and Barrons are trash? Fucking trash? ???? You must have a really amazing reading list. \_ maybe you should add the motd to your reading list before posting. I did not include the Economist in the "fucking trash" list. \_ I beg to differ. Web surfing is highly personal and individual. Reading a magazine can be a social event. I can easily show my wife some interesting article when she's sitting next to me on the couch. Can't do that with computers. And not easily with a laptop also. Plus with a magazine or book I can rest my head on my wife's lap while reading (or vice versa). It's a lot more fun reading while you stroke your wife's hair. ;-) \_ though I am loth to respond to idiot trolls, let me make the point that our definition of what is "social" changes with technology. When the telephone first was introduced, luddites had the same idea, that somehow you weren't socially interacting if you couldn't see the other person. Most of the world has gotten over that by now. Email and other electronic communications are just another type of social interaction, with different parameters. While you can't "show your wife" a web page you're looking at, you can mail her a URL. -tom \_ Every day I wake up and recite a long prayer thanking God I don't work with Tom. \_ Your redefining "troll" to mean "anything I disagree with" is like the NOW bimbos defining sex in marriage as rape. You make the term meaningless. \_ Yeah I love stroking your wife's hair while reading, too. |
2003/6/26 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28842 Activity:very high |
6/26 Does anybody remember ExciteBike? That game was so rad. \_ I play it in Animal Crossing in on GameCube. \_ those small ramps that shot you straight into the air were the best! \_ especially when you could land on the downward ramp and just coast along at super speed. \_ I've played it pretty frequently in the last few weeks, once I found that it was among my 4GB of mame roms (under 'vs. ExciteBike'). I loved that game in the arcade, but wasn't very good at it. \_ I dunno man, it was fun to play for a bit, but I never really got too into actually trying to win the races or whatever. and what was the deal with the fact that there were always bikers ahead of you to pass, even if you were in the lead and hadn't made one lap yet? so lame. Now, Kung Fu... there was game. \_ Building your own tracks was the best. 50 laps, cooldown zones everywhere, and then you'd just ride the bike and knock over other racers. And of course the cool jumps. \_ there was recently a dirt bike game that had the old excitebike music as something to unlock.. anyone know the name? |
2003/6/26 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/SW/Graphics] UID:28841 Activity:insanely high |
6/25 Has anyone attended Academy of Arts in SF? I would like to know if this is a good school to go to in order to study computer animation and modelling. \_ my gf worked and took classes there for years. She decided that it was NOT a good way to learn 3D and ended up taking classes independently for a certificate with companies such as "Mesmer". Note that AoA classes are NOT transferable to other schools, nor do they teach you what you need to land a real job or do your own sizeable project. Email me if you'd like more details. -brain \_ Magic cursed words: unaccredited school. As noted, you'd be better off with one of the local comp. animation schools. \_ Mesmer's offering a bunch of 1-5 day classes in the fall. If I were to go with one, which package should I look into? (alias, 3dsmax, softimage, maya) \_ Maya is the program of choice in film. Max is still leading in games, but Maya is a major contender. So it depends on what you want to do with the knowledge. The artists I know that have used both prefer Max. Then again, most of the artists I know are in the game biz. Ultimately, once you learn one, picking up another isn't too big of a deal. -bz \_ i think you should email wolberg@csua \_ I love you Carrie! |
2003/6/21-22 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28797 Activity:moderate |
6/21 Fun game we played yesterday: http://quiz.ngsec.biz:8080/game1/index.php some of you should make it to level 10 within 2 hours. Took us 2 hours, and yes google is allowed. Cheers. \_ 2 hours? Took about 15 minutes to zip through. Google? pshaw! \_ J00 R ZO 733+! \_ I am so teet? What? \_ I'm so 318 that I'm going to hack your keyboard and make it automatically convert all your future posts to real English. \_ If it took you 15 minutes, then congrats, altho I was hoping my post would spark discussion about how you did it, rants about php, warnings about fopen, discussion about how this could be avoided. But hey if it took you 15 minutes, more power to you. \_ Discussion of what? A lot of it was time wasting trying to guess fake passwords. \_ is this something like http://www.try2hack.nl |
2003/6/6-7 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28654 Activity:kinda low 80%like:28648 |
6/5 SimOnline: Mobs Form: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6019958.htm \_ UPDATE: It's a nice day outside. -John \_ So here's two side-by-side items I think the typical CSUAer will find most the interesting: ``I am amazed personally as to how this whole game has become so real . . . I spend more time with my computer than I do with my friends,'' said Velie, who like about 60 percent of the players, is a woman. Which makes it clear that you *can* meet women online, just not playing quake, *and* those women are just as fucked up as you are. We prefer to be called differently _/ prioritized, thank you. \_ You can prefer anything. You're still fucked up as much as any other lifeless drone who spends more time online than off. |
2003/6/6 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28648 Activity:high 80%like:28654 |
6/5 SimOnline: Fobs Form: http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6019958.htm \_ UPDATE: It's a nice day outside. -John \_ So here's two side-by-side items I think the typical CSUAer will find most the interesting: ``I am amazed personally as to how this whole game has become so real . . . I spend more time with my computer than I do with my friends,'' said Velie, who like about 60 percent of the players, is a woman. Which makes it clear that you *can* meet women online, just not playing quake, *and* those women are just as fucked up as you are. We prefer to be called differently _/ prioritized, thank you. |
2003/6/5 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28639 Activity:high |
6/4 Is there a game review site that covers all these new MMOG games out now? I was in compusa today and there's at least 4 new ones I've never heard of. The boxes of course don't tell you anything about any of them. Thanks! \_ ign and gamespot seem to cover the big ones eventually. i think they're all worthless. stick to diablo 2... no monthly fee and the same basic game mechanic. \_ Some Neverwinter Night servers have job systems implemented |
2003/5/26-28 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28558 Activity:high |
5/26 http://www.sirlin.net/Features/RubinsFans2.jpg Totally work safe but might cost a few SANity points. \_ I don't get it. \_ Yeah, what the hell is that? \_ http://www.sirlin.net/Features/feature_GameBalancePart1.htm "Female fans of top Magic the Gathering player Ben Rubin await his arrival at a Pro Tour tournament in Sydney, Australia." \_ There's a recognized top Magic player?! Words escape me... |
2003/5/16 [Recreation/Sports, Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28461 Activity:moderate |
5/15 Would someone be so kind as to post a "Complete" Gamespot ID and password. I want to watch some game previews and $30 is just a bit much. I'm actually disappointed the game companies don't post these on their own sites. \_ Why waste their own bandwidth when there are web companies like Gamespot who would gladly host their stuff for them? And $25 is chump change for a year's worth of access. Oh, and yes, the Half-Life 2 videos are most impressive. \_ Thanks for the pointer. Now kicking in my p2p client... ...yes, those are pretty neat! \_ I don't think you even have to go that far. If I'm not mistaken, some of the videos are BitTorrent'ed \_ Really? I'm googling and not finding. Perhaps I suck. |
2003/4/29-30 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:28260 Activity:high |
4/29 This guy is awesome! Why doesn't Berkeley have cool people this like? http://www.ai.mit.edu/~rahimi/coolmf \_ We used to. \_ I like the d10 in the photo. It's real old school. \_ Yeah because people who game today have a different shape for 10 sided dice. \_ No, because it's all about the d20 these days. What sort of nerdy geek, are you? \_ Oh. I didn't know that. How many d20's do I roll for a dagger hit? SHIT! I've been gaming all wrong!!! \_ Sigh. Go home and play Diablo. Leave the real gaming to those who know what they're doing. \_ Diablo? What gave you the idea I play that shit? \_ A true geek would use a d100. \_ you mean 2d10? \_ the shape of the ten sided dice has changed? I did not know that. \_ well there are these really annoying 10 siders that look sort of like cylindars and take forever to stop rolling. \_ speaking of which, do you see gamers using their palm pilots to aid gaming? \_ You trust the DM to tell you the truth about whether or not a gold dragon can take a hit from a +35 flaming sword of perpetual destruction and survive?!? \_ Munchkin! Everyone knows the flaming sword of perpetual destruction can't go above +30! \_ hi, i'm a liar \_ who is a liar? \_ it depends on what your definition of the word "is" is \_ I did not have sex with that woman! I only inhaled! It was a chemical weapons plant, not an aspirin factory and I was not wagging the dog! \_ What's d10 and d20 ? \_ http://www.abookorgame.com/reviews/dice/images/blue-10-dice-set-10-a.jpg http://www.abookorgame.com/reviews/dice/images/gem-20-die-a.jpg \_ ten and twenty sided dice. \_ Why is "university" spelled wrong? It's written "MIT univeristy" on the website. \_ What, like MIT nerds need to spel correcly? \_ Why is Ali so fat now? And I don't mean phat. \_ url? |
2003/4/14-15 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Academia/StanfUrd] UID:28120 Activity:kinda low 50%like:10063 |
4/14 Will Kyle Boller have a good NFL career? \_ No. He's not better than Pat Barnes (who wasn't that great to begin with), and look where Barnes is now (nowhere). \_ QB's are hard to predict; I thought Barnes was a sure-fire winner, and also Ryan Leaf, and we know how that worked out. However, it is worth noting that Boller has significantly raised his stock in the NFL combines, while Barnes' stock dropped. Boller was originally projected as a late-round selection and now most sites have him going in the first round. He's tall, mobile and has an astounding arm (at the combine he threw a ball through the uprights from midfield, while on one knee). He will definitely get a chance. -tom \_ strong arms aren't everything these days. mobility seems to more important. teams are spreading the field, and not putting enough blockers for the QB, and so the QB has to improvise. \_ yes, but that's why his stock is rising; he ran a 4.6 at the combine, the fastest time for a pure QB. -tom \_ hope he has a good NFL Career. Was Jim Plunkett ex-Cal? \_ hardly: he was ex-Stanford. -tom \_ Stanford QBs seem to have greater prominence in the NFL: Elway and Plunkett, for example. \_ Yeah, but we have the best tight-end (Gonzalez) and kick returner (O'Neal) in the game \_ we also have a number of pro-bowl linemen. In fact, Cal is one of the top schools in the country in terms of number of players in the pros. -tom _/ What about Pac-10 as a whole? Looks like Miami*/Florida*/ Ohio State have large number of top NFL players. \_ This factoid just seems to prove how bad our coaching is. Great players, lousy record. What else coudl it be? \_ Cal has rarely had depth to recover from injuries. \_ Who's the last Cal QB with a significant NFL career? Joe Kapp? \_ Craig Morton. -tom \_ QB rankings in draft: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfldraft/story?page=qb_rankings |
2003/3/10-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:27639 Activity:high |
3/9 Interested in coding games for a living? Check out Three Rings Design. They are working on a game called Puzzle Pirates. It's a massively multiplayer game that's not 'just another treadmill' (TM), and may appeal to a wider demographic than the traditional hard core gamer set. They are looking for a kickass Java hacker. Job details at: http://threerings.net/jobs I met Daniel James, Three Rings' CEO and one of their game designers at the annual MUD-DEV dinner held during GDC. He seems like a pretty cool guy, and I have it on good advice that he is a standup guy when it comes to business stuff. Mention you heard about this from me, by way of the Berkeley Computer Science Undergraduate Association. If you have further questions, feel free to drop me an email. -dans \_ Other random info... their head art guy is Rick Keagy. Cal grad, and cool fellow that worked with blojo and me in the Bolt-Action days. -bz \_ I'll check it out right after I kill just one more mob. I think he'll drop the stone shield of karthas for sure this time! \_ Oh, yeah, as an added bonus, you get to make piratey noises as part of your job, without having to be a warez kiddie. -dans \_ Is that part of the interview? "AAARRRRR! AVAST YE MATEY! SHIVER ME TIMBERS IF IT ISN'T EDONKEY SCUM!" Like that? Do I win? \_ I dunno. I don't work there. I just got a very good vibe from Mr. James, and heard good buzz about the game. Of course, this begs the quest, why am I not trying to get this job? Main reason is that I'm a little busy with trying to finally graduate, and, apparently, they want someone NOW. \_ A general observation on game developers. I'm not one and I have this image of game developers being a bunch of slackers who slap something together that sort of works and never fix bugs. Seems like the nature of the industry. It's not critical and there's never a version 1.1. Another thing is commitment to the job. Turnover seems high. Can't get their ass in gear and do maintainance work or write specs. That's why I haven't hired anyone with a background in gaming industry and is looking to switch. Am I being too harsh? \_ I'm inclined to disagree with you entirely. I work for a MUD company, and everyone here works his/her ASS off. We have limited resources and often need to choose between maintenance and feeping creaturism. This is an engineering tradeoff like any other with costs and benefits associated with each option. Unlike business/productivity software, when it comes to games, one can make pretty strong arguments for features over bugfixes. Basically, new features in games often make all users happier, while new features in a word processor will probably only appeal to a small portion of existing users. Bugfixes in games only please the people affected by the bug. That said, when a game crashes, what have you lost? Some play time. When your word processor crashes and you lose your PhD thesis, you're going to be pissed. Like many things, ymmv. -dans \_ dans, you're confirming my views on game developers as far as fixing bugs go. Nothing personal, but it's the nature of the industry not to fix bugs but put out features. Fine. If I need a guy to sit down and fix bugs and write specs, game developers aren't a good fit. Writing design specs and test plans is more important than actually doing the work for nearly all non-gaming businesses. Are game programmers cut out to do this? \_ I think you misunderstand what I said. I'm not saying that game programmers choose features over bugfixes because that's what they like to do (though that may be true for some), I'm saying they make this choice because it is often the correct engineering decision for the situation. The same can be said for folks who chose to use two digits to represent the year in systems that were never meant to last until Y2K. I have seen people that program games, and are capable of writing a solid spec, testing plans, and following up on the project. For example, our very own appel holds the distinction of being the most frighteningly good documentation writer I have ever met. He also happens to be the guy who hired me at Skotos. :) -dans \_ sounds like you don't know what an SDLC consists of \_ Considering many game engines are used by multiple teams at once over a lifespan of several games and possibly even for several generations of consoles, I think good game programmers need to be able to document code, fix bugs in a timely manner, all the while adding features to keep the engine cutting edge. Oh and as far as bugs go, console games don't get to be patched and so the console company tends to be pretty anal at making sure there are no bugs in there. (Not to mention a computer game's complexity is insane compared to something like a word processor.) \_ Game development is so much more difficult in every way than the puny "software development" you're familiar with, that this discussion is pointless. Go try and make a modern game before you go slagging game developers. -blojo PS: Not to say that a lot of game developers aren't lame. Just like any industry, there are plenty of dumbasses. Yet most other "software developers" don't even measure up to those dumbasses. Sad but true. \_ I see blojo has done some empirical studies of the software development industry and has come forward to present his results. Hear hear! \_ I'd agree with him... game dev salaries are lower than elsewhere in CS because the supply of geeks who want to do games is high. Companies can afford to be picky, and their interview processes are usually tougher. You can argue that perhaps game developers are more willing to use hacks to squeeze some more performance out of the engine, but to question their overall professionalism and engineering quality is probably misguided. \_ Game development is all he knows. He may be right, in some limited sense (I am still not convinced) but more likely he is just shooting his mouth off. |
2003/2/25-26 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:27516 Activity:nil |
2/24 nethack-3.4.1 installed. You can use ~mconst/bin/nethack-convert to move a 3.4.0 saved game to 3.4.1; please let me know if anything goes wrong. --mconst |
2003/2/8-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/HW/Drives] UID:27348 Activity:moderate |
2/8 I'm going on a digital photography jaunt soon and I need a simple way to store a large amount of images from my compact flash cards. Is there some sort of device (say 10G of space) that would allow me to transfer files from the CF cards? I don't want to purchase a laptop for this purpose alone, and I also don't want to buy several gigs worth of CF. \_ you need a CF->CD Burner. lemme know if you find out that this exists \_ uh, no, he needs CF->HD. There are a number of such devices. \_ http://www.interactivemediacorp.com/mediaxchange.html http://www.mindsatwork.net \_ http://www.dpreview.com Look at Storage and Media forum. You are looking for something called Digital Wallet. Cheapest price without HD is about $80. \- are you going to be near electrical power on your "jaunt"? if not, what are you going to do to juice up non-disposable battery powered stuff? does anyone have experience with a solar charger? i am thinking about one for 2003 Sola Khumbu Expedition. --psb \- i gave this some more thought. i dont know where you are going [what kinds of conditions you will be facing] or how long you will be gone or how many pix you expect to take, but i think a not unreasonable idea is to beg/borrow/ steal as many compact flash/micro drives as you can from your friends. keep in mind some drives may not work at altitude, and i'd be a little nervous about carrying all on one potentially fragile digital wallet ... especially under harsh conditions ... altitude, dusty, crossing streams etc. are you sure you will need 10gigs? i think jpegs shot at 2-3megs are pretty decent quality and that is 300+ shots on a 1gb microdrive. if you were an associate of and you had reasonable liquidity and not a history of being ass, i would probably loan you my digital media in return for lunch or even a good postcard. if we are talking about a 3month trip, of course that is a different matter.--psb \_ A microdrive is more fragile than a Digital Wallet. Even if the Wallet fails, the hard disk inside will likely still be usable. -tom \_ it'd be cool to be able to use an iPod to this end. \_ or an XBox! \_ well... I made the iPod remark in light of psb's "what about electricity" comment. ok tnx. \_ Yeah, but with an XBox it's a sleek looking digital entertainment center, and you'd also be able store your photos on it for just $200 and you'd be socking it to Microsoft. Modchips rule. \_ how is buying products from Microsoft "socking it to Microsoft"? \_ supposedly Xboxes are sold at a loss. \_ of course if you buy one microsoft gets to add 1 to the numbers of xboes sold column which is a big deal. The fact that the xbox is outselling the gamecube is killing the cube. Also it is giving the xbox incredible amounts of credibility. \_ try the archos jukebox multimedia with optional card reader. 20gb. http://www.archos.com |
2003/1/26-27 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:27203 Activity:nil |
1/24 Mech Warrior 4 Mercenaries: do not buy. Serious game suckage. The only thing that made the game take more than 5 hours to complete was having to restart a few of the "oh no instantly dead again" missions many times each. When I saw the final cut scene I was thinking, "Oh cool, now I can really get into the game" before I realised this was an outro, not a cut scene leading to more interesting missions and mechs. The only good thing I can say is that it has God Mode so that I could quickly see the other 2 mediocre alternate ending cut scenes without a lot of replay hassle. |
2003/1/24-25 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:27191 Activity:very high |
1/24 Moo3 gone gold for anyone who loved moo or moo2. \_ Note the 1 month store delivery time. -- moo fan \_ Yes, but that's better than "in final regression testing, will be released very soon now". \_ i have bad apprehensions about moo3. its graphics are rather assy. \_ They made a real effort to remove micromanagement, the first such effort to my knowledge among games of this type. I think it's worth checking out. If you play games like moo or civ for graphics you are barking up the wrong tree, friend. -- moo fan \_ Empire anyone? \_ to the person who asked which one: the original computer game in the 80s (destroyers, battleships...) \_ graphics? If you want eye candy go play doom3. These are slow long drawn out thinking games. The graphics are nothing more than place holders for information. Maybe PS2 or xbox is more your speed? I don't mean that as an insult. Just different things are fun for different people. now begins the wait for moo4! :-) \_ i played civ1, moo1, moo2, mom, etc. i like the graphics to be clear and nice to look at. it doesn't need fancy bumpmapped 3d whatever, but good art and UI...I find various aspects of the screenshots i've seen turn me off, ie worse than moo2. \_ Don't kill me, but what's moo? Is it a cow game? \_ Masters Of Orion \_ Yes. It's fun. Dominate the galaxy. Meet strange new species, and kill them. Or interbreed. Whatever. \_ Basic idea is thus: start with your low tech barely space capable race on one planet, invest planetary resources in research, building ships, planetary improvements, etc. Expand to other worlds, other star systems, meet other alien races/players, trade with them, eventually crush them, rule the galaxy. This is "4x" genre. Explore, expand, exploit, exterminate. Classic. \_ Hopefully it's funner than Civ3 \_ MOO3 has built-in multi-player, and I think part of the delay was in fixing late-game show-stoppers in multi-player (sounded like corrupted game-crashing save games in SP too) |
2003/1/14 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/SW/Apps/Media] UID:27091 Activity:high |
1/13 http://www.looper.info/contents.htm Does anybody know anything about this band? I just recently heard some stuff by them (like it a lot) and their website says that the lead guy has "disappeared" but mentions that it could just be his artistic temperament at play. Is there really a police investigation or is it just a stunt? \_ main member from Belle & Sebastian, don't know much more than that. -sax \_ I don't know anything about the band really, but they did have a cool song, "Mondo 77" on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack. \_ It's also on the XBox game that involves "Kudos". \_ They were the opening band for a Flaming Lips concert a couple of years ago (either that or Radiohead). pretty nice stuff. |
2003/1/7-8 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Computer/HW/Memory] UID:27018 Activity:high |
1/7 Does saving PS1 game data on PS2 require a PS1 memory card? \_ yes. --jwang@playstation I STFWed and found many conflicting answers. Anyone has first-hand experience on this? \_ Ask Sony. \_ Yes. Because PS1 memory cards use blocks and PS2's don't, I think. -geordan \_ I'll try it tonight and post or email the results. --peterl |
2003/1/4-5 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26989 Activity:nil |
1/4 http://www.chroniclogic.com/toverview.html This game is awesome |
2002/12/27 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:26922 Activity:high |
12/26 What is the best way to make a Linux game (xlander) run slower? \_ hit the turbo button on your 386 \_ on a pentium. \_ Change the program so that it doesn't run faster if it gets extra CPU time. Use the Source, Luke! |
2002/12/17-18 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26843 Activity:kinda low |
12/16 Do you like Sega Mobile? http://www.zakzak.co.jp/top/t-2002_10/2t2002101108.html (not work safe) ;-) \_ better link (unless you actually READ japanese) : http://www.zakzak.co.jp/top/t-2002_10/image/2t2002101108megumi_b.jpg \_ what's not work safe about an oiled up chick with a big rack in a bikini? \_ Megumi. DOB 09/25/81, T156 B94 W60 H86 (in cm). Hot! |
2002/12/14 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26817 Activity:nil |
12/13 http://www.solidsharkey.com/nocturnal.html |
2002/12/13-14 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26803 Activity:nil |
12/12 Anyone have any ideas when the playstation 3 is due to come out? STFW returns a LOT of bogus links... \_ my understanding is not before summer 2004. the "cell" chip won't be done before then. \_ dude im leik totalley waiting for the ps-9 like in that commershul where itz leik totalley reel! |
2002/12/13-14 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26802 Activity:high |
12/12 Can anyone recommend some good non-fighting multiplayer PS2 games? (e.g. similar to mariokart on N64 or fusion frenzy on Xbox) Thx!- mds \_ head-to-head: NBA Street, Burnout 2, DDR (dance pad) coop: Baldur's Gate, Contra, Time Crisis 2 (GunCon) \_ GT:ASpec \_ Fusion Frenzy and good do not go together \_ It was definitely different/amusing... :) \_ Fusion Frenzy was a real crowd pleaser when i played it, especailly sumo (the american gladiator style game). \_ Let your boys fight; they'll learn not to kill. \_ you're an idiot. \_ The Bust-A-Move series is always good (somewhat Tetris like if you've never seen it) \_ SSX:Tricky is loads of fun. \_ Madden Football, any sports game \_ Especially hockey \_ It's actually for my wife, and she isn't into sports... Sorry, should have specified that. Bust-a-move sounds great, thanks! - OP |
2002/12/9 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26755 Activity:high |
12/8 Ice Wind Dale II: Finally finished this fucker after setting it aside for a month. What a nightmare. I don't know how this game is supposed to be beatable without cheating. And the outro was *really* weak considering what they put you through to get there. When playing on normal difficulty it shouldn't take multiple reloads and abusing game bugs to finish the final battle. \_ how many hours did you spend on this? What are the most addicting games the rest of you have played? \_ I find Doom 1&2 pretty damn addicting. I've been replaying them on ultraviolence using the stuff at http://www.doomsdayhq.com \_ Nethack. \_ I didn't keep close track but maybe 60? Disk space recovered. |
2002/11/24 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:26620 Activity:high |
11/24 Hey, I missed the big game (projects), is there any way I can watch the game online? I can't even find clips... \_ whiny liberal scum! \_ It's John Ashcroft! He's found me out! |
2002/11/24 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:26619 Activity:high |
11/23 Why is your stupid article about Pelosi and how she's responsible for high housing prices in SF more important than my Big Game article? And why the hell are you battling with me for control of the motd at 11PM on a Saturday night? Who the heck are you? - danh \_ It's probably the same whiny shithead that was insistent about claiming "all football players are rapists" was a refined debate tactic. \_ No, it isn't. And that 'idiot' claimed no such thing. You're a moron. If you're going to use direct quotes at least put in the 5 seconds required to dig up what someone actually said. Yet another blazing idiot disgraces the motd (that's you, btw) and doesn't even see his own hypocritical stupidity. Learn to read and then return. \_ If it makes you feel good about yourself to believe that, then go for it. You're still an idiot, though. Just like that other self-styled debate 'expert'. \_ Both (all three?) of you have already lost. -pld \_ Ten to One says the message above was by the same idiot. |
2002/11/22-23 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:26604 Activity:nil |
11/21 For Cal football games, can you sit anywhere in your assigned section or must you sit in your assigned seat? Is seating first come/first serve? \_ Know you nothing, grasshoppa? This is Cal. You have an assigned number. Use appropriately or they'll send a dorm health worker around to show you how. \_ The student section is general admission, the rest is assigned seating. In most cases, you can move around a fair amount, but not so much for the Big Game. |
2002/11/8 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26464 Activity:moderate |
11/7 Does anyone want to buy my copy of Vice City? It is in perfect condition and the is fun as hell, I jsut shouldn't have spent that money on a game right now. -aspolito \_ rent it to the CSUA office \_ Jobless and nearly homeless? Sell your body to strange men. parts_/ |
2002/10/28-29 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:26339 Activity:moderate |
10/28 http://www.evilninja.net/buybush.htm \_ brilliant. \_ at least it's a bit more clever than the standard "bush is stupid and stole the election from that nice man Al". |
2002/10/25-28 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:26320 Activity:nil |
10/24 Has anybody tried ripping songs from an XBox game? I stfw but only find stuff about ripping a regular cd to the xbox HD. \- emacs M-x extract-audio xbox RET |
2002/10/7 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:26118 Activity:nil |
10/6 Merchants of Andromeda is a pretty decent puzzle game --pld |
2002/8/27-28 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:25706 Activity:high |
8/27 Anyone knows how to get a development kit for Nintendo (n64, gc) from sources other than Nintendo. (dead company?) \_ nintendo is dead?? \_ know.. hope to get spare sys from dead companies \_ I know a GC development kit costs around $10K, good luck... (Oh and the compiler you need to buy from someone else and goes for about 5k.) |
2002/8/26 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:25692 Activity:high |
8/26 After doing quickie install/try/delete of about 15 recent games over the weekend I finally found one that's actually fun. The Thing. I'm not a big fan of FPS-style games (this is over the shoulder but same idea) but I like this one. There's an actual plot, you can't trust your team mates, they don't trust you, and everything is classic military quality fubar. \_ does it have anything to do with the movie? \_ Yes, it's a game-based 'sequel' where you're the commander on the ground of a military unit sent to find out what happened to the scientists in the movie. There's a few direct movie references but nothing that gets in the way of the game. Sort of like the way Aliens was the military sequel to Alien but with The Thing instead. \_ Are they ever coming out with the movie sequel Thing II, or did I miss it? Not another remake, but real sequel. |
2002/8/16-17 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:25589 Activity:kinda low |
8/16 deep-sexed by microsoft again: Additionally, the company took a charge in the quarter, which ended July 28, to write down excess inventories of Xbox and nForce chips. The surplus of chipsets for the Xbox, the gaming console developed by Microsoft, was made obsolete when the software behemoth shifted to new security chip codes during the first quarter. \_ Who was this? Nvidia? \_ C'mon, Bill can't reach that deep. He's micro and he's soft. \_ Nice job. Write off the chipset as complete loss for tax purposes and take a minor hit which can be covered easily by MS cash surplus. Ooo and it force everyone to upgrade to the more secure version. \_ this would be Nvidia taking a charge for nforce chips. and "secure" == "better copy protection". \_ This was an attempt (which will be defeated) to kill mod chips, which will of course be changed to work with new xbox protections. \_ Nvidia still made money though. |
2002/8/15-16 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:25578 Activity:nil |
8/15 ESPN Classic is showing the 1982 Big Game again on Saturday, 9-11 a.m. Is someone gonna record it and digitize a good quality version of "The Play"? \_ What's the significance of that year's Big Game? I was too young back then. \_ "The Play." \_ Five laterals and one trumpet player. \_trombone \_ The Play plus John Elways last college football game? The stanford band getting trampled on the field as well. \_ The best part is hearing Elway whine about Cal ruining the end of his college career. Bwahaha! |
2002/8/5 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:25497 Activity:high |
8/5 A while back there was a commercial of a video game and it has a tank chasing and shooting at snuggles, the fabric softner bear. Anybody remember the name of the game? I'm trying to find the commercial. \_ 3DO, Battletanks or something |
2002/7/30 [Recreation/Computer/Games] UID:25444 Activity:high |
7/29 Do game boy games work in game boy advance? \_ yes \_ Not particularly well, by all reports. The problem is that the games have to be played in a compressed area on the GBA's wide screen (GBC games only have a resolution of 160x140), and this makes them dark and hard to see. While they can be expanded to fill the whole screen using the shoulder buttons, the difference in screen dimensions means that they look stretched and distorted. The best advice is to keep your GBC and use the GBA to play GBA games. http://www.gbacentral.net/gbadv.html \_ or do like i do and play them all on my 19" PC monitor. |
2002/7/29 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:25437 Activity:high |
7/29 All my favorite PC gamer news sites are dead. I'm down to gamespot which is nothing more than advertising and screenshots. What are the rest of you reading? Thanks for any URLs. \_ whatever happened to http://gamers.com? \_ dead dead dead \_ how about http://ign.com? \_ I just don't know which is why I'm asking. All PC gamer news URLs appreciated. --OP \_ http://shacknews.com, http://evilavatar.com -blojob |
2002/7/10-11 [Recreation/Computer/Games, Recreation/Sports] UID:25324 Activity:very high |
7/10 I forgot to mention it yesterday, but Rod Steiger is THE most connected actor in Hollywood history, in terms of the Kevin Bacon Game. That is to say, if you play the Rod Steiger game instead, the average path length is shorter than for any other game, like the Groucho Marx game or the Adam Sandler game. - cody \_ is that like an erdos number? \_ "was", not "is". He's dead, Jim. \_ Ted Williams is still the last person to hit .400, even though Ted Williams no longer "is." -tom \_ Well, he also 'was' the last person to do so. Om. -John \_ Well, it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is. \_ *laugh* And we have a winner! \_ Ted Williams is at 77K. \_ But, but...you wouldn't say "g. washington IS the first pres", you'd say "g. washington was the first US pres." right? \_ maybe.. the fact of this presidency being first does not change with time so perhaps "is" is acceptable? \_ no, we always refer to dead people in past tense even if their accomplishments are current such as first pres. or fastest runner or most records sold, whatever, etc. it is the living/dead status of the person that is being tensed, not their accomplishment. \_ It depends on the sentence and the context. -tom \_ no, it doesn't. you may have heard that english grammar has a lack of rules. this is false. the rules are specified by a secret, anonymous body of CSUA members who let the rules be known by motd posts. these rules may never be broken. \_ We are the MOTD Grammarian Star Chamber Police. We took English in HS and remember most of it, so we aren't taking any crap about "it depends" from those who don't remember and want to make it all up. --MGSCP \_ well, MGSCP, surely you'll understand that the sentence "Ted Williams *was* the last player to hit .400" is ambiguous. It implies that someone else has hit .400 since then and is now the record-holder. Babe Ruth *was* the single-season record-holder for home runs. Babe Ruth *is* the single-season record-holder for walks. -tom \_ We'll drop by with black masks later to explain the difference to you. --MGSCP \_ Three demerits!! Tom is the founding member of the MGSCP. \_ Speaking of demerits, anybody remember that old arcade game where you drive around and get penalized demerits? I can't remember anything else about it because it was like 15-20 years ago and I'm getting old and slow. |
11/27 |