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Comment Re:Eh, the game sucked (Score 1) 301

by vraa (#25648157) Attached to: EA Recommends Hilarious Work-Around For RA3 CD-Key
Hey I loved the original CNC Gold :) Or CNC 95 or whatever it was called. Loved RA, RA2 IMO was the decline Tiberium Sun was so-so, Firestorm was just eh as well I loved AOE/AOK and all it's friends. AOE3 has let me down. I never played TA BUT this leads me to the main point of this: Try out TA Spring It's a 3D engine and there are many mods made for it, most of the popular ones from the TA strain There are units like PeeWee's, Big Bertha's, Buzzsaw's, ARM vs Core, etc. It's much more abstract than CNC, but if you could bleieve that Nod vs GDI... I'm sure it'd be easy enough :) http://spring.clan-sy.com/

Feed The Register: NASA packs bucket and spade for new Mars mission (theregister.com)

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Going digging for ice

NASA is packing its things and getting ready for an ice-hunting trip to Mars. The space agency says it is preparing for the August 3 launch of the Phoenix lander, the first NASA mission specifically designed to touch and analyse water on the dwarf planet. The aim is to discover whether or not there are areas on the Martian surface that could, even now, harbour Martian microbes.

Backyard Chefs Fired Up Over Infrared Grills 229

Posted by Zonk from the there's-no-manly-technology-icon dept.
Vicissidude writes "With the expiration of a key patent, major gas-grill manufacturers have scrambled to bring infrared cooking to the masses. The grills are still powered by propane and have traditional gas burners that heat mostly by convection — or hot air. But they also can cook foods with radiant heat generated by one or more infrared burners. Char-Broil says its advanced burners operate at 450 to 900 degrees, hotter than the 450 to 750 degrees of standard gas burners. And unlike charcoal, which can require 20 to 30 minutes to reach its 700-degree cooking temperature, heat from the infrared burners can be adjusted quickly. Bill Best, founder of Thermal Electric of Columbia, S.C., developed the technology in the 1960s, primarily to give automakers a faster way to dry the paint on cars."

Feed Why we hate the modern mobile phone (theregister.com)

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Phone fury (and carrier cringes)

Letters After my piece lamenting how Nokia's high end phones had lost their ease of use and reliability, we got a letter from reader Brendon McLean. "It's not just Nokia!", wrote Brendon - "but an industry-wide problem". And he encapsulated his complaints very succinctly. So we invited him to expand a little, which he did here yesterday.

Feed New Research Advances Energy Efficiency, Safety And Performance Of Public Transi (sciencedaily.com)

From feed by sdfeed
New project is designed to implement state-of-the-art vehicle monitoring technology into public transit fleets. The monitoring system will assist the fleet in increasing energy efficiency, improving vehicle performance and increasing overall safety. Ultimately, the project will also assist the authority in testing the effectiveness of alternative fuel use in its bus fleet.
User Journal

Journal Journal: Where's the voice of dissent when it comes to White Boxes? 1

Journal by sailships

In researching the rise and the role of white boxes in the technology marketplace recently, I found either articles praising white boxes, or companies priding themselves that they don't use them.

What I didn't find was hard facts against white boxes.

For example:
Programming

Submission + - Indie 3D Game Engines?

Submitted by TBBScorpion
TBBScorpion writes: Questions: Which of the Indie 3D game engines are worth while? How long until Ogre3D and other open source engines catch up?

Lately I have been investigating 3D game engines. I was mostly paying attention to open source engines like Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, etc. Then I found out about cheap Indie licenses for commercial game engines like Torque Game Engine ($150), Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and the C4 Engine ($200 + free upgrades).

I found a list of top commercial and open source game engines at devmaster.net in case anyone is interested (I didn't want to take the time to list all the engines, but there are more good ones that I did not list on this page.

Here is my dilemma and question... Which of the engines are worth investing in? Buy an indie license or hold out for open source? Or start with indie and switch later if open source catches up?

Torque Game Engine 1.5 works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux but lacks modern shader support (except for something about a free modernization kit). I mostly do cross-platform software development so I like this feature.

But then there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support and the Atlas terrain paging feature and a few other nice features, but is DirectX9 based and is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?

The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but potentially more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.

The features I am hoping for are:
  • Cross-platform if possible
  • Modern shader support
  • Terrain paging system built-in
  • Model, material and animation import from Blender 3d


When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing the seem to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. Physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other Physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines? What does the slashdot community think about the topic?

Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002... so I'm ready to dive into the engine code.
Science

Polyethylene Bulletproof Vests Better Than Kevlar 345

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the hard-wear dept.
teflonscout writes "When I think of bulletproof vests, the first word that comes to mind is Kevlar. Wired is running a story on Dynema SB61, a bulletproof material that is made of polyethylene. It is a higher grade of the plastic found in Tupperware. The story also mentions the recall of Second Chance bulletproof vests that were made from Zylon, a material that degraded slowly when exposed to moisture. At least one police officer was injured when a bullet penetrated his Zylon vest. Polyethylene is impervious to moisture. The first vests made from this new material are 5mm thick and can stop a 9mm bullet traveling at 1777 feet per second, which is slightly better than other top of the line vests."
Media

Taiwanese Company to Mass Produce Rewritable HD Discs 120

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the places-to-put-your-stuff dept.
Lucas123 writes "Ritek Corp. plans to start mass producing BD-RE and HD DVD-RE next quarter. 'Initially, however, BD-RE and HD DVD-RE discs will be pricey. The average cost per disc will remain around $10 in retail outlets, despite production costs of around $5 per disc, said Eric Ai, a Ritek representative. Prices won't likely come down until other mass disc producers in Taiwan win accreditation to make the discs, and ramp up volumes.'"

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