Comment Re:...wait, ultima online still exists?.. (Score 1) 40
And Gargoyles too now
Comment Rule, Britannia! (Score 4, Interesting) 40
What a day! We just launched the open beta, and now I get to come home and see UO up on the front page of Slashdot!
This totally made my registration all those years ago worth it
Seriously! A lot of people don't even realize UO is even around, when it still has a playerbase that outshines (in size *and* passion) many of the newest entrants, who're so quick to fade away while Britannia lives on.
It's amazing, and humbling, when I think about how different UO is from the grindfests so prevalent these days, when all we do is try to let players live in the Ultima universe with some fun, tile-based physics and a penchant for interactivity (and in Felucca, a bit of brutality!)
The Stygian Abyss expansion may not be 3D (awww, sorry Ultima Underworld), but there's plenty homage paid to our rich past
Comment Awwwww... (Score 1) 133
Just don't try to eat the complementary M&Ms at +1.8gees, guys. A lesson learned the hard way!
Comment Re:Transcript of Richard Garriott's team of lawyer (Score 1) 107
Spam
Spam
Spam
Humbug
Major Spike in Security Threats To Online Games 48
Gamasutra reports on data from security software firm ESET, which shows a major increase in the number of gaming-related security threats over the last year. They attribute the rise in attacks to the amount of money involved in the games industry these days. ESET's full report (PDF) is also available.
"[ESET's research director, Jeff Debrosse] explains: 'It's a two-phase attack. If someone's account was compromised, then someone else can actually [using their avatar] during a chat session, or through in-game communication... they could leverage that people trust this person and point them at various URLs, and those URLs will either have drive-by malware or a specific [malware] executable. What ends up happening is that folks may end up downloading and using it. This is just one methodology.' These attackers also target gamers in external community sites, says Debrosse, through 'banners on websites or URLs in chat rooms or forums' — which can lead to unsafe URLs. 'If [users] don't have adequate protection, they could very well be downloading malware without their knowledge.'"
Comment Re:for reals? (Score 1) 148
Don't you understand!? With this, my god, we could build an entire virtual world, out of fully interactive, fully physic'd, fully exploding *barrels*!
Comment I'd love to... (Score 1) 148
...build games for it - but how does this translate to serving up virtual world games with unlimited photorealistic detail?
Does it draw the perspective for every individual logged on player ahead of time, cache it, and somehow overcome bandwidth and latency concerns to deliver something in higher quality than a local GPU can do?
Or is this about the architecture of the virtual world itself - messaging, AI threads, triggers, events, decision making? It would have to be one incredible world that required more than a rack of servers in a colo can admirably achieve today.
Now, as far as actual development goes, I can see how this would be an incredible tool. I'm just confused where the cloud becomes a gaming platform.
Comment Cascading failure (Score 5, Informative) 223
The report lists the immediate causes of death as depressurization, and then trauma (not properly restrained, or failure of restraint for upper body and head in sudden depressurization) for those who survived even that long.
Each event listed after is in of itself certain death, and the report makes sure to say that even if everyone were wearing their full equipment and had been properly restrained, there was no way to survive - there simply isn't a way for our current equipment to "eject" or have a "safety capsule."
The things we can take away are that all signs point to sudden, painless deaths well before breakup, and that the things learned in the investigation can be applied for greater safety in future missions.
Comment Obligatory IANAL but... (Score 2, Informative) 261
Yeah, prior art?
UO began development before the first patent was filed, was publicly demonstrated technology, and pretty much already did everything mentioned between the two patents.
Obvious point being that UO is a 2D game - or is it? It has three directions of movement, but is merely rendered in military projection by the client. As far as the server goes, every avatar is represented by an X, Y, Z coordinate set.
Draw shortcuts/prioritization by proximity, amount of other avatars/mobiles on screen? Yep.
Scalable server architecture? Yep.
Chat system? Yep.
Stable? So much so that UO is now the longest continually running MMO.
This isn't to mention Meridian 59, or the *other* MMO forerunners that already qualified for the title of 3D virtual world and were in public release before the first patent was filed.
Could someone illuminate what parts of the patent are *not* prior art from the earliest MMOs?
Comment Good night... (Score 1) 356
...sweet princess.
