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Crispy last won the day on December 21 2009

Crispy had the most liked content!

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About Crispy

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  • Birthday December 3

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    (Note: Avatar is a photo by http://flickr.com/photos/trussmonkey/)
  1. Woah there jdude. I get what you're saying, and to an extent I appreciate it, but please be careful about where this line of thought is leading. Are you saying that intolerance of homosexuality has to be tolerated simply because it's "cultural"? If so, what about a culture that doesn't tolerate black people? Or a culture that doesn't tolerate Jews? Should we tolerate those cultures? Sexuality is an immutable aspect of a person, much like race, or sex. Thus, if you argue for toleration of sexuality-based discrimination, then the same arguments can be used to tolerate racially-based discrimination, or sex-based discrimination. The media often does polarise these kinds of arguments, that's definitely true. Sometimes, however, one side really is just wrong. BTW, I don't mean to pick on you. There are other people in this thread who I disagree with more! (I won't name them, as I'm really not interested in starting a flame war.) This has been an over-serious post, so here's a semi-relevant xkcd to lighten the mood: Caption: "I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims." Sotha, that's an awesome story!
  2. Crispy

    Alien Swarm

    The Tremulous scene was way too hardcore for newbies like myself, sadly. I loved the mechanics, but there was absolutely no mercy in it. Getting upgrade points for kills is a nice idea in theory, but leaves no room for disparate player skill levels. It really needs a way for new players to involve themselves without feeding the other team and becoming liabilities. Take some lessons from TF2 - if they pick the right classes, new players can always make positive contributions even if they suck. Experienced players are still significantly more effective, of course. And yes, it is a bit too fast. Those little alien critters are speedy. This is bad no matter which team you're on; as a newbie human, they're way too hard to hit, and as a newbie alien, your character is way too fast to control... Eventually I just didn't have the time and energy to train myself up, so I stopped trying. I did play it on a LAN with some friends once, that was a bit better. Except that the humans won landslide victories every time, until the alien team figured out their tech tree, at which point the aliens won landslide victories every time. We humans never quite figured out the correct strategy.
  3. Last time I checked vid_restart was a guaranteed crash, at least on my config (Windows, NVidia).
  4. I read somewhere that there were serious management issues. Every time a shiny new thing came out from another game developer, the head honcho would say "oh! wow! we must have that in DNF!" And the long-suffering development team would have to implement it. Over and over again. I can only imagine how badly that must have sucked. Basically his attitude was that DNF absolutely had to be the best game ever, at any cost. Well, it cost all right... Like any volunteer project, TDM doesn't suffer from management issues because there is no management. Nobody can force anyone to do anything, so things only happen if people want them enough to make them happen themselves. (There is the occasional silly pet project, but in the best case it's a neat if less-than-useful new feature that boosts morale, and in the worst case it's only one team member wasting their time, not an entire development studio. )
  5. You realise that every source you try most likely gets their data from the same place, right? The high and the low are forecasts, whereas the actual number is real data from the field. That would explain the discrepancy - the forecast was just off (big surprise, I know). From those results, you could infer that the high might also be lower than predicted. If they sanity-checked the data, you'd lose that cue.
  6. Well, I'm not sure I could write a reference for someone I don't know... Couldn't say, but it certainly didn't hurt. Yep. It's pretty common. My second choice of employer actually had a fully open-plan office; like cubicles, but without the dividing partitions. I don't mind it; makes it easier to talk to people, and I'm up in a corner surrounded by partitions, so there's sufficient privacy for my liking.
  7. That is frickin' awesome. I glanced at Recast a little while ago and it sounded pretty good. How's it treating you? Well, yeah. It's a code library, intended for use by programmers, to be integrated into their own applications. Definitely not designed for end-users directly; not even for very savvy end-users.
  8. LOL, now there's a familiar name. My cubicle is adjacent to Jake's. Good luck! Study hard, build up a great portfolio, and practice practice practice! BTW, it's called "the Canberra, Australia arm of 2K Marin" now, get with the program.
  9. If they manage to connect, and if you've shared the files out, then yes. Note that this is true of all networking technologies. Wired Ethernet networks can still be physically tapped into (and usually aren't encrypted). Best strategies for mitigation are: 1. Don't let people connect: Use WPA2 encryption and strong passwords to prevent attackers from connecting to your network in the first place. Follow all security advice in your wireless router's manual (if any). 2. Don't put sensitive files in folders which are shared over the network: Um, duh. An important corollary is don't share your entire hard drive! 3. Do keep all your computers up to date with security patches. On Windows, that means turning Windows Update on and letting it do its thing. Casual attackers will have no hope of getting into a properly-secured network operated in this manner. Even serious attackers will find it difficult, and would probably opt for a different, easier method; like, say, breaking into your house and stealing your HDD. You can get wireless signal boosters to relay the signal to other floors. (Or even make them yourself, they're not very complicated.) Obscurity is not security. That's a shame, as it's definitely the preferred option for desktops. You can't run cables through the walls? Bit more expensive to get them properly fitted, but very nice to have. WPA2 is for wireless networks only, so good luck with that. Looks like most of these power adapters use either DES or AES. Prefer AES over any form of DES, and go for as many bits of encryption as you can get.
  10. "By offering 56-bit DES encryption, it is also much secure than other home networking technologies such as wireless Ethernet." LOL. 56-bit DES encryption is hardly secure. Back in the days of WEP this was probably true, but WPA2 is (believed to be) much more secure, if properly configured.
  11. There is probably some truth in that, in general, but that's only if one actually does "abandon" one's rights. Activision could certainly have signed an agreement giving a specific group of people the right to create that single game without harming their legal ownership of the IP. They do that kind of thing all the time with professional development studios, after all. What did that poor straw man ever do to you?
  12. If by "tons" you mean "a few pieces of concept art and one half-finished, untextured model" then sure, most mods do create "tons" of artwork before dying. Let me clarify my meaning: Making lots of good artwork takes a lot of time and effort. If you're willing to compromise on either quantity or quality (or both) then you can get it done a lot faster, but you run the risk of having a game that looks crap and/or repetitive. What greebo said about the code is true as well. You're right that starting from TDM as a base would give you a lot of stuff already. But it does sound like you're underestimating how much work would be required on top of that. I don't mean to be down on your idea. If you want to have a go at making it, I'm all in favour of that. Whether you finish or not it'll be a great learning experience, and if you do finish then it sounds like it could be pretty neat.
  13. You lost me after this line. Somebody call up all the game development studios in the world and tell them they can fire all but one of their artists - after all, it's not difficult work!
  14. To be fair, I should admit that there is a potentially legitimate issue for Activision here: Since they don't hold the purse-strings on this one, they have no control - in particular, no quality control. Even though we know it's a fan project, it's quite possible that someone would say to their friends "hey guys, check it out, a new King's Quest game!" Their friends download it, play it, decide that the quality doesn't meet their standards, and decide that the series as a whole sucks. (Stupid thing to do, I know - but have you ever read the comments section on YouTube? ) That damages the brand, and could theoretically reduce sales if Activision ever decides to fund a professional developer to make another King's Quest. To be clear, I'm not saying that TSL would have provoked such a reaction in reality, or that it was of low quality - I haven't seen it myself. I'm just saying that Activision does have at least one basis for real concern. That's just how publishers think. It still stinks.
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