How To Make a Good Gaming Sequel 150

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 04, 2011 @02:07AM from the forward-to-square-enix dept.

Kantor48 writes "In today's world of unimproved gaming sequels and saturated franchises, Arthur Kabrick looks at the best and worst sequels in recent history, and compares the changes they've made to the formulae of their franchises. By doing this, he comes up with a list of lessons that any game developer creating a sequel should follow, if at all possible, to ensure that the new game is a step up, rather than a step sideways or, as in some cases, a step down. The criteria include ensuring the game does not spend too much time in development, updating technology, and trying not to change the development team, as well as being wary of changing the basic formula so much that fans of the franchise are alienated."

1928 Time Traveler Caught On Film? 685

Posted by samzenpus on Thursday October 28, 2010 @02:17PM from the I-hate-time-travel-stories dept.

Many of you have submitted a story about Irish filmmaker George Clarke, who claims to have found a person using a cellphone in the "unused footage" section of the DVD The Circus, a Charlie Chaplin movie filmed in 1928. To me the bigger mystery is how someone who appears to be the offspring of Ram-Man and The Penguin got into a movie in the first place, especially if they were talking to a little metal box on set. Watch the video and decide for yourself.

Comment To be fair (Score 1) 123

by Tsunamio on Saturday June 12, 2010 @09:57PM (#32553900) Attached to: Google Tells Congress It Disclosed Wi-Fi Sniffing

Congress might also want to evaluate the transparency of this cute Google video, which assured the public of Street View's privacy safeguards, but gave no hint of the controversial WiFi collection.

That wouldn't be very reassuring.

Comment Re:The case is very simple (Score 1) 418

by Tsunamio on Wednesday April 28, 2010 @09:23PM (#32025094) Attached to: Rough Justice For Terry Childs

Childs is an idiot and yes, idiots go to jail. lets see him argue with Bubba about access to his ass.

I realize this is off topic, but it's a pet peeve of mine. Jail rape does happen on a wide scale, and it's a travesty. Making jokes about it seems to be the norm, but it shouldn't be. We don't actually sentence people to rape, because that's barbarous - right?

Simpler "Hello World" Demonstrated In C 582

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday March 16, 2010 @10:03PM from the non-obfuscated dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wondering where all that bloat comes from, causing even the classic 'Hello world' to weigh in at 11 KB? An MIT programmer decided to make a Linux C program so simple, she could explain every byte of the assembly. She found that gcc was including libc even when you don't ask for it. The blog shows how to compile a much simpler 'Hello world,' using no libraries at all. This takes me back to the days of programming bare-metal on DOS!"

Scientists Discover Booze That Won't Give You a Hangover 334

Posted by samzenpus on Tuesday March 02, 2010 @02:58PM from the go-ahead-and-have-another dept.

Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong of Chungnam National University have discovered that drinking alcohol with oxygen bubbles added leads to fewer hangovers and a shorter sobering up time. People drinking the bubbly booze sobered up 20-30 minutes faster and had less severe and fewer hangovers than people who drank the non-fizzy stuff. Kwon said: "The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage reduces plasma alcohol concentrations faster than a normal dissolved-oxygen alcohol beverage does. This could provide both clinical and real-life significance. The oxygen-enriched alcohol beverage would allow individuals to become sober faster, and reduce the side effects of acetaldehyde without a significant difference in alcohol's effects. Furthermore, the reduced time to a lower BAC may reduce alcohol-related accidents."

Comment Re:Politics (Score 1) 205

by Tsunamio on Tuesday February 23, 2010 @03:32AM (#31241746) Attached to: Lost Nazi Uranium Found In a Dutch Scrapyard

I suppose there's some sort of argument pro or con of climate change in this... exercise for the reader.

I'm pretty sure there is absolutely no argument for or against climate change in the Nazi suppression of Jewish scientists.

Comment Re:faster than intended? (Score 1, Offtopic) 807

by Tsunamio on Tuesday February 23, 2010 @03:01AM (#31241562) Attached to: Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic

"It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see."

I for one am sick of every open medium being censored in the hopes of keeping kids from learning about the naughty bits. Couldn't they just keep these in a separate, awesome part of the app store?

Comment Re:News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters (Score 1) 940

by Tsunamio on Sunday February 14, 2010 @04:50PM (#31136878) Attached to: Southwest Declares Kevin Smith Too Fat To Fly

...the last time Kevin Smith made a headline it was "Kevin Smith Previews Revenge of the Sith", and I don't think he did that on twitter.

As part of the nerd media /. is in fact part of Kevin Smith's personal army, so we muster our outrage to avenge him. Boo Southwest! Mean ol' corporation!

Comment Ask Slashdot: Ten Minutes Hate? (Score 5, Funny) 271

by Tsunamio on Wednesday January 13, 2010 @04:02AM (#30748062) Attached to: Is RCA's Airnergy Snake Oil?

I'm sure we can look forward to a vigorous debate, where both sides bring up excellent points. I certainly cannot say where the slashdot community will land on this question, and the article certainly doesn't give any hints! Thanks, Ben, for your valuable question, and I hope you find the answers both challenging and enlightening.

Comment Re:He's a singer.... (Score 2, Insightful) 569

by Tsunamio on Sunday January 03, 2010 @07:48PM (#30635608) Attached to: Bono Hopes Content Tracking Will Help Media Moguls

Well, singers have a direct stake in the system. They benefit from copyrights, and they are the innovators meant to be protected by it. Just because you haven't studied policy for years doesn't mean you don't have valid perspectives. Artists DO have a unique view to share! (on this issue, anyway; I don't mean to say that Bono really has anything important to contribute on the sexy cars issue)

Of course the greater reason this is here is that it will move papers/mad clicks. If Tiger Woods wanted to give his view on copyright and innovation right now, you betcha the NYT would oblige him with an op-ed.

Comment Re:Give it a rest, will you? (Score 1) 720

by Tsunamio on Tuesday November 10, 2009 @10:37PM (#30055266) Attached to: Whistleblower Claims IEA Is Downplaying Peak Oil

Who said they were smart? Power is not intelligence, and it's certainly not rationality. I would love to live in a world where Taoist sages allowed the people to look after themselves, but the world is run by greedy, power-hungry people, not a few of whom have serious mental issues that would be called sociopathy or narcissism in poorer people.

Comment He should win (Score 1) 550

by Tsunamio on Saturday November 07, 2009 @02:28PM (#30015664) Attached to: Visually Impaired Gamer Sues Sony

The suit also specifies the ways in which other companies have made their games accessible. For instance, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft allows the use of third-party mods in its game, which has led to the creation of several programs to include accessibility aids in the game. The suit also mentions Pin Interactive's action adventure PC game Terraformers, saying high-contrast 3D graphics modes, an audio compass, and voice-over detailing items collected in the game all serve to make the game more accessible.

Sony could make it more accessible at little cost, but they haven't, and the market isn't about to compel them. Applying the ADA really doesn't sound unreasonable. He's not asking for drastic changes or anything:

The suit, which doesn't mention SOE games by name but appears to focus on massively multiplayer online titles, requests the addition of visual cues to point gamers to their destinations for gamers with "disability impaired visual processing."

That's not difficult to implement - Sony should have done this on their own.

Comment Re:Streisand Effect? (Score 1) 560

by Tsunamio on Monday November 02, 2009 @11:58PM (#29959576) Attached to: Pirate Bay Closure Sparked P2P Explosion

True, but one would imagine this would skew the results in countries where drugs or prostitution are illegal more than it would where they aren't.

As for the citations requested above, I don't know much about prostitution, but Glenn Greenwald wrote a white paper for the Cato Institute in which he discusses Portugal's success with decriminalization of all drugs. There's a link to it on this page: http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=5887 .

On a side note I don't know how much piracy is being turned into a vice. My sense is that very few people associate any shame with it.

Comment Re:Sigh... (Score 1) 560

by Tsunamio on Monday November 02, 2009 @11:50PM (#29959512) Attached to: Pirate Bay Closure Sparked P2P Explosion

In evolutionary terms that makes you a failure. It's as if your genes never existed, since they stop here and go no further. But even if we ignore that.....

And of course we should, since 'loyalty to my genes' is not an emotion anybody feels, let alone lives life by.

There's a difference between charging for a song, and extortion. $1 per song isn't too bad if the song was CD-quality and had no time limit on usage (i.e. rest of my life). But to charge $1 for a poor-quality lossy-compressed song whose license-of-use can be revoked any time "they" feel like it is pure theft in my opinion.

It's no more theft than copying music, and slightly less. There's a difference between charging for a song and extortion, which is that one is a completely voluntary luxury exchange, and the other involves men with bats. Infringe copyrights if you want to (I do!), but don't dress it up with rationalizations.

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