Thrik

Hahaha the IGN picture. And yes, I've seen those billboards quite a number of times during the past few weeks. They really are just weird like the site says. Now these ads are all over the country, all the terrorists who keep leaving massive stockpiles of bomb-making chemicals lying on the top of their bins will learn to hide them a bit better from now on.

I've gone mental for films this weekend and caught up with a load that've been long since discussed: Death Proof :tup: Gangs of New York :tup: In Bruges No Country for Old Men :tup: Rambo There Will Be Blood :tup:

I think it's just one of those things where it isn't superficially 'cool' enough for a lot of people. I remember when I was at the cinema with a load of mates, and there was a Call of Duty trailer followed by a LittleBIGPlanet trailer. Naturally, everyone was all "Yeah!", "360, man! 360!" when the Call of Duty trailer was on. Then the LittleBIGPlanet one showed, and it was pretty much silence and a "Fuckin' PS3" which came from somewhere down the aisle. An entirely anecdotal example, but it speaks volumes about how your mainstream gamers tend to stick to the things they're familiar with. Or something. I don't know, it just lamed me out a bit because I was sat there thinking "LOOKS GREAT!". But then, I can see how a lot of people might just be bewildered by it and not bother. On a lighter note, congratulations to Spaff and his co-webmaster for getting hired by Media Molecule!

Teeeee: http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/paula_murray_drinks.asp

Pretty good look at the numbers and such here: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/gdc-why-onlive-cant-possibly-work-article

I honestly think it's impossible to satisfactorily do this with existing infrastructures. Unless they can get the entire round trip of sending the control input to the cloud, processing the 3D, encoding to a video format, and then outputting back again down to about 35ms or less it'll simply be too laggy. At the moment when we play a PC game, it's generally double buffered and it renders a few frames in advance. As a result, most of what we see actually has a 32ms-ish delay. However, it is possible to bump this up to 42ms if you mess around with vertical sync and stuff, and even that is quite perceptible when it comes to input lag and totally ruins your accuracy in something like an FPS. It's probably difficult to understand just how damaging to a game input lag like this actually is unless you've experienced it. Just take my word for it: it sucks. The closest thing I can compare it to annoyance-wise is when your audio and video goes out of sync, except because of the tactile element it's even worse.

It's definitely one I'll play when I next go on LBP.

It's an awesome concept, but I can't help but feel the technology just won't do it justice for some time yet. Considering that some people complain about the input delay between their console and their TV (which is minute but perceptible), what must it be like for a web connection? Especially if that connection is a little unstable like many are — at least, they are here. I can see this becoming massive eventually, though. I think it's more a matter of when rather than if. I mean, let's imagine for a second that a huge company with almost infinite resources like Microsoft did something mental like overlook a relatively basic hardware design issue in a console they've sold millions of units of throughout the world. It'd be nice if they could just make those fixes on their end rather than having to replace consoles every time one exhibits the problem, both for Microsoft and for us.

Hah, looks awesome.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&q=&ie=UTF8&geocode=FSDnHgMdWu5KAA&split=0&ll=52.356942,4.910631&spn=0,359.999034&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=52.356961,4.910463&panoid=Um-cGa80Yl5NJiFE-JJ00Q&cbp=12,157.3123433157733,,0,5 ? If it's not even the right location he must have forgot to hit the 'Link' button in the corner.

It's pretty reliable. At least Google has made an earnest effort, without going through a billion miles of photos and blurring everyone manually. At the end of the day, it's not going to get much better than that. If the alternative is to not have Street View, then like I said: the privacy enthusiasts can go fuck themselves as far as I'm concerned. I love the service, and it wouldn't be possible without doing it the way it's been done.

It's fair enough, but as you say there're so many opportunities to be caught nowadays I personally find it impossible to care about. Lord knows how many random night club photos and shit I'm in on Facebook. I think Google has done the right thing by automatically blurring heads and respecting censorship requests, though. Really, the only person likely to recognise someone with a blurred head is the actual person.

What kind of damage? It's only driving down roads that any one of us could drive down, and both faces and number plates are pretty reliably blurred out. If you're doing something so shady that you're afraid people on public roads may see you doing it, perhaps you should reconsider doing whatever it is you do.

Heh, I didn't even realise Pepsi had redesigned their logo — understandable seeing as it's apparently US-only right now. What a complete waste of time and money. The new bottles look bland and rubbish.

I have to say, this thing is great. I've been viewing childhood places I haven't seen since I lived there over 10 years ago and all sorts — places I'd in all likelihood never have seen again. Anyone who complains about such a great service because of 'privacy issues', etc wants lining up and shooting.

Don't worry man, glorious Mansfield isn't covered either.

Haaaaaaahahahaha: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent:_Blood_on_the_Sand :tup: :tup:

is a billion kinds of awesome. Watch it on YouTube itself because it does need to be seen in high quality.I think what makes it particularly cool is that the process shown is actually quite similar to the way 3D environments are made today, even though the interface is mental (and very Minority Report). On a forum I run there're level designers who say they showed it to their friends/etc to try and help them understand what they actually do for a living — in essence, at least. Well worth watching.

Just basically seems like a colloquial/niche thing that kind of became a comic genre in its own right... or something. And then you've got people (including someone who edited that Wikipedia article) mixing up pixel art comics and sprite comics. Whatever the case, I think it's safe to say your friend is mistaken. I can't find anything to back up his interpretation, nor does it fly with my own reasonably broad knowledge of the area.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_comic Seems like your friend just got a bit confused.

Sounds like bollocks. What you're saying just sounds really confusing and not in line with anything I've encountered before.

Clearly the word has different meanings in different contexts, but with regards to what your friend was saying I think he's pretty much right. In today's games, a sprite is any kind of 2D element other than a texture. They can be fixed on a particular axis, or they can always face the player at the same angle no matter where in the environment they are. A modern example of a sprite is each particle of smoke in a game like Half-Life 2 — many of them come together to produce the illusion of actual smoke. This extends to all the various particle effects you see in games like Team Fortress 2 too, such as bullet ricochet flashes and the 2D 'Medic!' icon that appears above players' heads. Those aren't textured 3D models — they're sprites. I suppose this crosses into general 3D modelling too, as similar sprite-based particle systems are used to produce the various effects you see in film and television.

I'd imagine pretty much every RTS can be paused, assuming the action doesn't continue while you're in the ESC menu, saving your game, etc. You just might not be able to see what's going on.

Possible, but then it's no secret that Molyneux wants multiple further sequels — it stands to reason that (preliminary) work is occurring on Fable 3. And man, more DLC? Good news. I've still not managed to get the Knothole Island stuff yet, but I definitely will be seeing as it's fairly well received. I also like how they've tied its lore into Fable 1, with Knothole Glade being one of its towns. That's actually one of the things I like most about Fable 2: it has this epic kind of continuity with the world of Fable 1, even if it does repeat itself gameplay-wise at times. It definitely enhances your appreciation of the game a lot when you remember places like Wraithmarsh before it became... what it is. I'm looking forward to extending my Fable 2 experience a bit. If more is on the way I think I'll just wait for that and then give myself a nice big chunk of multi-DLC play.

Hello new people! You will be assimilated into the pot of wonder that is Idle Forums before long.