Joel Schultz

I just visited ESRB online, and couldn't dig up the "how-to" rating part. They have lots of descriptors that attach to the general rating itself (this helps to explain to the buyer why it got the rating it did). And I can see how a rater could easily do a check-list type thing with descriptors like that. But out of curiosity, after they have a checklist of which descriptors apply, how does this get chugged down into a final rating? Does anyone know if they have a publicly available guide or is that one of their "trade secrets" known only to them and to the parties that contract them to rate a game?

Then how about a "Best of Beta" special? You know, excerpts from beta on some goofy bugs, dumb mistakes, bad ideas, and some of the funnier banter that the SC may have called "whining" in the VCF? Sort of like crossing "TV's bloopers and practical jokes" with "Jaywalking" on the Tonight Show crossed with BCM. Hope someone understands what I mean...

LOL!

I had RedHat 7 installed. Installation went OK...after it forced me to replace my CD-ROM (believe it or not, the one I had didn't work with it!). Finding drivers for some of my other hardware took a bit of doing. After all was set up I tootled around it in it, tried out the different desktops (KDE Gnome) and so on. There's a lot of cool stuff. BUT the problem was: there's nothing I can do in it I can't do already in Windows. Sure, if I ever get a second PC in my house one day and decide to do a server dimes to donuts it will be Linux for speed and stability but for my everyday stuff, I didn't need it; it was more like a toy OS for me. Heh, even the GIMP has a Windows port; I didn't even need Linux for that. Anyway, last major upgrade I did I was afraid of how X Windows would react to my latest video card. Plus I was low on PSU voltage so the HD Linux sat on was disconnected. Maybe one day I'll resurrect it, but till then... You know, I think see why Linux doesn't appeal to Joe User. 1) The shell terminals. 2) Makefiles and compilers are scary. 3) Hardware drivers don't usually come with the hardware you buy; you have to look for them on the Internet (Joe User may not know how and could also be lazy). Setting it up can be kooky too (plug'n'play support not as robust as Windows). Provided the hardware is compatible with Linux (and some boxes don't even mention Linux and the sales reps are clueless too). 4) Windows is supposed to be more user-friendly and look how much trouble people have with that already (or computers in general) *g* 5) Manual "mounting" of external storage media (floppy disk, CDROM too but they can automount too). 6) It doesn't run MS Office programs (without jumping through additional hoops like emulators). 7) Finding other software isn't as easy as for Windows (e.g. games and family stuff - when's the last time you went to CompUSA or WalMart and saw a comparable amount of Linux games and productivity software in comparison with Windows stuff). 8) It's cheap and so is its software - and to most of the uninformed public, cheap = inferior. A stupid perception but nonetheless real. Linux definitely has the "hard-core" hacker/computer-geek appeal to it. I've tried both, and I appreciate Linux for what it can do. I just prefer Windows.

Genre: Free-form adventure/simulation Sub-genre: science-fiction/space We need a sub-genre. After all, it's possible (but unlikely) that someone could come up with a BCM in a fantasy or historical setting too. So we need to also say how it is different from other types that may be in the same genre. (Yes, I'm being optimistic that BCM will launch an industry-wide initiative for more games like it).

Great work zee! Nice to see another developer around these parts...

quote: Who says BCM doesn't work with the Radeon I believe what he was refering to was a line-item in the VCF or readme accompanying the E2 demo. There it mentioned that ground texturing did not work correctly due to a driver issue. You issued a workaround via some command-line switch that I don't recall at the moment to add to the shortcut that started the demo. Incidentally, SC, did ATI ever fix that? Does that texturing problem still occur, even using their "beta" drivers? [ 08-17-2001: Message edited by: Joel Schultz ]

So...this update of the VCF is last public beta update, if I understand your Swahili correctly Like a bunch of others, I've been a regular VCF reader/checker; it was the first thing I did when I sat down in front of the PC in the morning. So thanks for the update; that you even maintained and updated a public VCF has always been appreciated. I'm going to miss that little tradition. At least till next month, I guess. Well, let's all hope mid-September is IT. And remember everyone, he said "guess", and "all things being equal", and September does have 30 days in it... Let's let the man work!

[Edited: SC beat me to the part about EB's preorders] As for why the SC won't (or perhaps even can't) set a firm release date... Well, SC's already yelled at us for taking the thread off-topic so I'll leave my silly explanation to molder on my hard drive. Short & "serious" version: most developers (myself included, and perhaps even our SC) are generally incapable of reliably estimating the durations of tasks. Maybe it's feature creep, maybe it's the desire to nail one more bug, maybe it's the vagueness of some of the development process. I don't know quite why, but developers in general just can't seem to do it; researchers have even done even done studies on this. Hence you get paradigms like "Extreme Programming" (getting off-topic, so I'll stop there). If you really want to know "Are we there yet?" do what the rest of us do: watch the Version Control File. Particularly the section at the very end. As it gets shorter the release date draws closer; as it grows the date gets further. Speaking of which, we haven't had an update since the 9th of this month, hint hint... [ 08-15-2001: Message edited by: Joel Schultz ]

Or Robotech, so long as we're making absolutely insane MOD wishes...

quote: Originally from the Supreme Cmdr: the actual box, which goes into production this week, once the manual itself is finished. Hey! I didn't see that in the VCF! Trying to sneak one by us, eh? The big date's getting closer...

I have an MS Sidewinder Pro too, and am happy with it. It has nine buttons for "normal" mode, plus if you use its configuration panel you can program the buttons for keypresses, and since button 9 is "shift" you get a grand total of 16 programmable button functions, plus a programmable 8-way hat. Also supports a twist axis and throttle. It doesn't have force-feedback; that just doesn't really appeal to me. Force-feedback just doesn't seem to add that much to the game. quickly sprays self with flame-retardant I also have a Gravis Xterminator gamepad, but the stupid thing is (me) -- I bought it just before I "moved on" from the kind of games it would've been useful in . And my brother who actually did use it bought himself a PS/2 and lost interest in the PC. Oh well, I tend to drift over time from genre to genre, so I'll probably get some use out of it sooner or later... [ 08-13-2001: Message edited by: Joel Schultz ]

In a way, this was inspired by some comments made in this thread. With the demise of 3dFX, Glide support in games has gone the way of the dodo. (Aside: Menchise, you don't have to worry about what happens if nVidia goes down because their interface is all through OpenGL and DirectX, which are standards controlled by other parties, unlike Glide which was proprietary to 3dFX. Worry instead about someone like Microsoft, who controls DirectX lock, stock and barrel, going under). Now, I've also seen claims in various places that there are Glide "wrappers". Basically, all Glide is is a DLL that takes 3D graphics calls and shoots them to the hardware in a form the hardware understands. The wrappers are based on the idea that if you create a DLL that supports ALL the same function calls exactly, it looks like Glide to the game but it is doing something else entirely. Something useful...like translating Glide into equivalent DirectX or OpenGL calls. Of course this is slower than the direct Glide->3dFX hardware route since there's translation involved, but hey, we're running processors far and away faster than when Glide originally came out, not to mention modern graphics card speeds. The most "famous" Glide wrapping attempt I know of was being done by Creative Labs, to enable drivers for their graphics cards (and their cards ONLY) to support Glide. I remember following it but lost interest and don't know how that ended up. What I'm curious about is if anyone has tried any of these "underground" Glide wrappers, and with what success? I understand there's some considerable variation in the quality of the rendered graphics (no doubt due to quality of the translation layer). Has anyone tried them? Which are recommended? And of course the ultimate question: has anyone gotten one to work with BC3K?

IMO technical elegance can always beat brute force. This is why the Radeon series from ATI in 32-bit color started out with lower performance than contemporaneous nVidia cards at low resolutions, but easily outperformed it at higher resolutions. And also why I'm betting on ATI for the long haul (not to say nVidia doesn't have some interesting stuff in the works too, I just favor ATI for now). Back on topic, AMD appears to have the better pipeline; higher clock speeds tend to come naturally with time so given time, so AMD will get there too (just that Intel will likely get there first). Higher clock speed = more heat, which tends to shorten CPU life. So given a choice between Intel and AMD of equal performance but different speeds, I choose the lower speed. Also, higher clock speed = greater disparity between CPU and memory (be it L1 cache, L2 cache or system RAM). Shooting for higher and higher CPU clock speeds is pointless if other bottlenecks (like RAM speed) becomes significant (hence DDR). So IMHO again, AMD is taking the smarter approach by focusing on improving performance for a given clock speed. Of course, AMD and Intel are taking divergent courses with regard to 64-bit CPU support for 32-bit applications. That will be interesting to watch play out.

How 'bout replacing the composer (John Williams) with the Baja Men and calling it: Star Wars Episode II: Who Let the Clones Out?

Don't lump all the cheesy novels together. Yes, there is some cheese out there. But you'll never convincing me that T. Zahn's "Heir to the Empire"/"Dark Forces Rising"/"The Last Command" trilogy is cheese. Now if only we could see Grand Admiral Thrawn in a movie. I wonder who'd make the best actor to play him?

Wow, Tac, that hearkens back to the days of my undergrad and graduate comp sci classes... Just thought I'd add my $0.02 to the article for any tech-heads who're interested; if you aren't one just skip the rest of the post. BTW, the article was 100% correct on the impact of architectural decisions. Definitely gives you something to think about AMD and Intel. quote: At this point I'll bet you are wondering why anyone would ever want to make the pipeline longer? That's actually very simple, clock speed. Most consumers associate raw clock speed alone as how fast a processor is. If you make the pipeline longer the processor does less per clock cycle, making it much easier to run it at a higher clock speed. If all things were ideal the pipeline would be 3 stages long, eliminating the need for the predictor all together. Unfortuately it is VERY hard to get the whole processor to work at gigahertz speeds without things breaking down. If only small pieces at a time have to work at high speed that makes it a lot easier. It also reduces power consumption. Also, it increases parallelism in the processor. Rather than having it work on 2 or three instructions at a time, each stage of the pipeline is doing something. So a 20 stage pipeline means it has parts of (up to) 20 instructions being executed in parallel simultaneously. But there is a tradeoff: each stage of the pipeline has to move data to the next stage. (In fact, due to physical locations of pipeline stages on the chip, sometimes an entire clock cycle is needed just to move the bits from one pipeline unit to the next - a "dummy" stage.) At any rate, this movement imposes a small but constant overhead. The tradeoff occurs because the more pipeline stages you have, the shorter they (usually) get in time, plus you have to add the communication overhead for each additional stage. Beyond a certain point, adding pipeline stages yields diminishing returns because the the time to communicate data from one stage to the next starts to become significant.

quote: The only thing that could spoil the film now for me is if there's a storyline where Padme has an affair with Jar Jar Binks hence making him the father of Luke...... Aaawk! I just felt my stomach lurch into another dimension. I really needed that right before lunch. Not. Blech!

Yeah, that is a dumb title. Still...the Clone Wars sounded like a cool period of time. Obi-wan becomes a general, meets Leia's step-daddy, etc. Let's just hope that Palpatine sees Jar Jar Binks as some dire threat and offs him in some cool dark-side fashion about 3 seconds into the movie.

And how long is a long while?

Have you tried DISabling the A/P while in VTOL mode with "halt" issued? Or do you want the ships AI to have some control over it?

Ditto on all the positive feelings about TA. That's another great bargain find, you can find TA, Core Contigency, and a third CD-ROM of extra goodies now bundled all together at a great price. That was one cool game... Oddly enough, I didn't like it the first time I played it; I was still hooked on Age of Empires then. TA sort of grew on me after that.

quote: 3. Any other controls you think I should know about Yeah, all of them Seriously, you might want to start by printing out the keyboard reference docs that came with the demos. The BC3K manual from the now legacy game BC3K is also a good starting point.

quote: there will be a death limit and once you cross it Heh, imagine a Galcom Academy (or its Insurgent equivalent, or other similar facility) graduation commencement speech: [rp] Men and women, before accepting your assignment there's something you should know. We have cloning technology. If you die, you can be brought back. But getting dead is expensive: we have to bring you back and find new assets to replace what your stupidity got slagged. Doing that several times over is very expensive. So before you decide to get dead, you should seriously ask yourself this: "will we want to bring you back?" [/rp]

Not sure, but here's what I make of the ending: 1) Didn't the Lincoln temple mention "General Thade" conquering Earth? Didn't read it to carefully, so my guess may be way off... 2) Thade survived (ducked under a console while blaster bolts ricocheted around). So...I think that they are hoping to make a sequel, wherein someone busts Thade loose, and he gets his guys to go through the EM storm and conquer Earth, remaking it in his image or so. (Grasping at straws? I'm confused too here ) One thumb up and one down. The movie was worth seeing though, because if I didn't I'd have never heard this comment with respect to the female ape (can't remember name) who helped the humans: (Hero just emerges from lake with ape-lady on back; camera shot of ape-lady): Friend: "Hey, she looks like Michael Jackson!" ROFL!