Nappi

In typical light detection applications, stray light problems can be eliminated, to an extent, by using a lock-in amplification scheme. They are probably already using a similar technique to synchronize the pulsed laser and the detection unit (they have to know which pulse the detected photons originated from), but considering how weak the twice-scattered signal must be, I would guess that moderate stray light would still completely ruin the experiment. Besides, a camera as sensitive as that is bound to be saturated in broad daylight conditions. I should probably read the article before I start guessing though. The car example is complete bullshit for so many reasons. The next generation cardioscope at least makes some sense.

Yeah, I can't help but grimace every time I see that text.

To be fair, I pretty sure that they are not actually nuns. They are only disguised as nuns so that their SM costumes wouldn't draw people's attention as they walk across the parking lot with bazookas and uzis in their hands.

Related to the control schemes discussion: http://i.imgur.com/JgKda.jpg Also, I still struggle with QTEs (and similar) with the Xbox360 controller I bought over a year ago. My brain simply refuses to make a distinction between RT and RB or acknowledge that "x" is on the left and not on the bottom.

I believe someone has gone to great lengths in order to make the letter appear so mundane. Study it more closely, however, and you will find a carefully crafted labyrinth of clues. For instance, 3 of the 9 numbers mentioned in the letter begin with 19 which is, of course, a prime number. Subtract 2, the first of the prime numbers and a number repeated over and over again in the letter, and you get 17, also mentioned in the letter. Now, 17 is also a prime number — the twin prime of 19!

You guys look ridiculous.

Ugh.. Sorry to hear. Have you checked whether you can replace that yourself?

Yes, that was a pretty poor example, written in haste. And I was not "mad at the game" by any means; I even explained why I think it wouldn't work. I didn't remember that people alerted guards if you were acting strangely (did they really?). That, as opposed to the constant "he must be late, and she must be beautiful", would indeed be the behavior I would expect from a 15th century person* when he/she sees someone parkouring on their beloved church. I obviously don't know how people would have reacted to that sort of thing back then, but it shouldn't be impossible to find out (though literature) what kind of behavior was expected of people at a given time and what kind of reaction "abnormal" behavior caused. I suppose a better example of the potential of incorporating people's attitudes and expectations as gameplay elements would be religion. Heresy, for instance, had severe consequences, and it would be interesting to see religion used as a penal system for preventing you from being too much of a dick in a video game. This, too, has probably been done already — I don't play enough video games. * From a 21th century person, as well, but to a lesser extent. Again, not the best example.

MY SON IS DEAD!

I am Reginald Conolly. These are not my sons.

(I have not yet had the time to read the essay.) I think Mafia did a fantastic job at making you feel like you lived at the beginning of the 20th century by tuning the gameplay mechanics accordingly. The guns were inaccurate and had terrible recoil, the cars were so underpowered that you could barely get on top of a hill, and the police had very limited opportunities in calling backup. Many people probably found these touches somewhat frustrating (I personally loved them), but I think that problem can be overcome by fine-tuning. I would like to see more developers incorporate history into the gameplay in this sort of way. For example, the medicine in medieval times was probably very dissimilar to ours and it would be nice to see someone try to convey that in a game (someone probably has already). People were struggling to find a satisfying explanation for various natural phenomena and many aspects of science were based on superstition. For once, a scheme hatched by your trusty scientist could turn out a complete failure. On a larger scale, certain behavior is always expected of people. The decision to divide The Name of the Rose into chapters based on the different "phases" of the daily life in the abbey made sure that the reader was always aware of what was expected of the protagonists at that moment. The fact no one gives a fuck about you climbing walls, running on rooftops, and being a complete dick in Assassin's Creed makes it hard to accept that you live in a 15th century (or any other century for that matter). This is obviously a poor example because the game would be frustrating as hell if the people alerted the guards the moment they see you acting strangely. Still, I think restrictions by expectations would help the player feel like he is living in historical time and not just historical city with modern rules. Of course these systems would have to be logical and carefully explained, so that the player would not feel like time-traveler who got lost.

I'm surprised that there are people who are surprised that not everyone know what A Canticle for Leibowitz is. I can admit that I have not heard of, or at least paid attention to, the novel before.

Very nice! The focus on "seeing around corners" aspect of the technology is pretty bizarre. I find it hard to believe that even the researchers themselves think that future cars might pack a femtosecond laser, a special camera and a computer with massive processing power just to be able to see around those tricky corners. There are obviously a ton of real applications for such a camera, and I would rather have heard him speculate on those. Oh well, that's the nature of TEDTalks, I suppose. (Still love them though!)

So Gatsby will be the book of January? Cool, I have it on my bookshelf. Just started reading Cloud Atlas, though, and I'm already hooked, so I'll have to see whether I can finish that and the Gatsby by next year to be able to take part in the pre-discussion (for once). Sean, Chris, (Jake?), please figure out a place to list the upcoming book podcast books (under "Shows" maybe?). This detective work is killing me. By the way, thanks for revealing the books well in advance! I really appreciate it.

That was in the trailer as well. The fact that they chose a quote in which their game is just compared to another game keeps blowing my mind (Machinima.com).

Yeah. Sleeping Dogs "Hong Kong" was tiny as compared to GTA IV (I think), but I never felt that the city should have been bigger.

The picture is pretty accurate if one interprets "bigger than" in that statement as "about the same size as".

I'll stick with goreplosion.

"Like Skyrim With Guns" -IGN.com

"Rockstar is leveraging cinematic tricks learned from Max Payne 3."

Finished it yesterday. Excellent game! I appreciate the fact that they didn't completely mix things up gameplaywise towards the end, potentially making all the sweet skills I had learned before useless. I'm sure that many people found the game way too easy on normal, but I actually liked the difficulty curve, or the partial lack thereof. While the enemies became tougher and more numerous towards the end, I was able to deal with them just fine because of my expanded arsenal. In fact, the first "assassination" was probably the hardest mission for me simply because I felt ill-equipped for the task. I was hoping for the Outsider thing to go somewhere cool. Instead, he just kept narrating the things I had done in case I had somehow missed their significance. The low chaos / high chaos ending felt a bit weird, but it did not bother me nearly as much as some all-pervasive morality system would have. I understood that the amount of chaos you cause also affects the number of guards and weepers in the following levels (?), which sounds at least somewhat organic and interesting.

I really liked the character specific mission in Mass Effect 2. I don't remember what the other side-missions were like, which leads me to believe that they were highly forgettable. I started playing Mass Effect 2 right after I had finished the first game and I didn't feel burned out by the end. I definitely agree that you should take a break between 2 and 3, though. I played through Mass Effect 2 and 3 as an infiltrator. The level designers did a good job at making sure that you never feel completely ill-equipped with a sniper rifle in your hand, i.e. enemies don't suddenly spawn 10 meters from your location and so on. I haven't tried any of the other classes. Soldier does sound a bit dull, though.

God damn.. that was fifteen minutes more than wasted.

I've played through each game in the main Assassin's Creed 2 main trilogy ( ), but I'm still unsure whether or not to buy this game. I was willing to forgive many many little things in the previous games, simply because exploring all the beautiful cities (especially in Assassin's Creed 2) was so much fun. I'm much less interested in Assassin's Creed: Wilderness, though. I was afraid that the drastic change of setting would not work without a fundamental change in gameplay mechanics, or else it simply would not be fun. The way you traverse the treetops or fight predators, as described by other barry, for example, sounds pretty dumb. I guess I will still buy this at some point. Probably not for Christmas, though.