phinze - Slashdot User

Valve Discusses Team Fortress 2's Future 135

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday January 21, 2009 @07:27AM from the improving-and-evolving dept.

The Escapist chatted with Valve's Robin Walker about how the Team Fortress 2 team has been listening to feedback and continually updating the game to fix problems and add to the gameplay experience. Walker mentions that ideas for new classes are "floating around," and that a new mode of play will be introduced soon. "'Players have driven our entire approach to designing achievements, the way we tie unlockables to those achievements and the design of those new weapons themselves. The choices we made within the Medic and Heavy updates were very much the result of the ways that players have used that combination of classes within the game. The addition of the payload game mode came from players requesting an old Team Fortress Classic map called Hunted, and describing what they did and didn't like in that map.' ... The Scout is the next class slated for the special treatment, and Walker expects the update will be available early this year. Additionally, the team is juggling a number of side projects at the moment, including finally bringing a year's worth of the downloadable content and upgrades to the Xbox 360 version of the game. A new Payload map is in the works, more community maps are on the way and the team will soon unveil a very different new game mode."

Google To Fund Ideas That Will Change the World 165

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Friday September 26, 2008 @05:20PM from the we-should-all-become-deities-the-end dept.

Peace Corps Online writes "This week, as part of their tenth birthday celebration, Google announced the launch of project ten to the 100th, a project designed to inspire and fund the development of ideas that will help to change the world. They have called on members of the public to share their ideas for solutions that will help as many people as possible in the global community, offering a $10 million prize pool to back the development of those chosen as winners. 'We know there are countless brilliant ideas that need funding and support to come to fruition,' says Bethany Poole, Project Marketing Manager for Google. 'These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple — but they need to have impact.' The project's website asks entrants to classify their ideas into one of eight categories listed as Community, Opportunity, Energy, Environment, Health, Education, Shelter and Everything Else. Members of the public have until October 20th to submit their ideas by completing a simple form and answering a few short questions about their idea."

After 3 Years, Rockbox 3.0 Released 248

Posted by timothy on Friday September 26, 2008 @07:20AM from the adding-versatility dept.

DarkkOne writes "Rockbox version 3.0 is out. Three years in development, it marks the introduction of many new players since the 2.5 release and offers software-based playback allowing audio of nearly any commonly (or uncommonly) used format on a list of MP3 players by Apple, iRiver, Cowon, Archos, Toshiba and Sandisk. Beyond this it is FLOSS, under the GPL v2 license (or later), and includes a variety of plugins such as games and simple apps. 3.0 is the first official release for any players not made by Archos and more or less marks the beginning of a much more regular release cycle for the software."

Getting Away With a Cheap Graphics Card 290

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 25, 2008 @11:11PM from the time-value-of-money dept.

theraindog writes "High-end graphics cards get all the glory, but most folks have a difficult time justifying $300 or more for a single PC component. But what if you could get reasonable performance in all the latest games from a budget card costing as little as $70? With game developers targeting the relatively modest hardware available in current consoles and trickle-down bringing cutting-edge features down to budget price points, today's low-end graphics cards are more capable than ever. To find out which one offers the best value proposition, The Tech Report has rounded up eight graphics cards between $70 and $170, comparing their game performance, Blu-ray playback acceleration, noise levels, and power consumption, with interesting results."

Jack Thompson Disbarred 522

Posted by timothy on Thursday September 25, 2008 @02:41PM from the it-burns-it-burns dept.

Sockatume writes "The Florida Supreme Court has approved Judge Dava Tunis' recommendations for the permanent disbarment of John B. "Jack" Thompson, with no leave to reapply and $43,675.35 in disciplinary costs. The ruling is a step up from the enhanced disbarment that had been suggested by the prosecution, which would have forbidden him from reapplying for ten years. Thompson has 30 days to appeal the ruling before the disbarment is permanent. Thompson responds to the ruling."

Comment Re:Waste of time... (Score 1) 101

by phinze on Tuesday May 20, 2008 @07:50PM (#23485034) Attached to: 2008 Google Summer of Code Highlights

The photo tagging stuff Re: gallery made me laugh, are google sponsoring weekend projects now?

As the student who is working on this project, I understand that it may seem like something that could be hacked together in a few days, but I do think that there is quite a bit of work involved in doing it The Right Way. If the new set of features is to be integrated properly with the rest of the Gallery project, there are many design decisions and implementation details to consider, as well as extensive testing that must be done. If you are interested in tracking my progress, I will be keeping a development log throughout the summer.

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