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Max Payne 3 slowly dives onto Mac this week
werd
by Steve Gibson, Feb 07, 2003 8:21am PSTHey check it out the weekend is coming! Not sure what the plan is but I think the woman is expecting me to venture outside or some nonsense. I thinking about tanning in front of the monitor here at home though... I finally wrapped up a deal with Computer Games magazine yesterday as a new perk for the Mercury system for new subscribers by the way. We're also working on getting the offer to existing subscribers in the next few weeks. Hrm yea, breakfast sounds about right. movie: Ya know, I've had more rewarding relationships... but at least I can keep telling the same jokes.
However, there is another issue to address. NON-public demos, or private betas. Much like the stuff Blizzard does with their multiplayer private beta tests of upcoming games or what Westwood did through Fileplanet for Generals. (One would hope Westwood does plan on a public demo soon)
Now, obviously private betas will never be public, because well.. they are private. The publishers want to limit the # of people who get their software... controlled userbase, load tweaking blah blah etc.
So now then, these private betas/playtests/etc where the publisher wishes to limit exposure for one reason or another are a different beast. If a publisher or developer approaches me and says "Hey I'd like your subscribers to try out the beta of our new product" what would you do?
A - Take it
B - Take it, and attempt to somehow work in some of your non-paying members too.
C - Dont take it, tell the publisher the only playtests should be worldwide and they are dumb for even trying to do a limited beta.
D - Dont take it, dont give a reason.
To me, B seems like the best choice right now, but I'm hoping that you guys have some input on this? If Blizzard asked for mercury members to test world of warcraft or diablo3 or something?, who knows...
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what of popular:
NOFL2
CounterStrice ?
Unreal2 is said - AVERAGE -2.5 of 5 too low for nice play?
For the TLDR crowd, that post says "Bots are too accurate with Machineguns" and the rest of this post says, "Here's how I can fix this".
First, remember that a bot has a notion of where it thinks its aiming (which is different from where it's actually aiming). The idea is that the place a bot thinks its aiming at will converge over time to where it's actually aiming. The general way this works for a human is they use the crosshairs-- The crosshairs provide a visual indication of where the player is actually aiming. Humans process this information but it takes time to do so. A fast reaction time means the perceived aim location converges to the actual aim location quickly, while a slow reaction time means the convergance rate is slower. In general, most players miss because they aren't aiming where they think they. They do NOT miss because they selected the wrong location to aim.
So what does this have to do with Machinegun accuracy? Well, when you fire a weapon, it gives feedback to your player as well. Maybe the railgun trail, or you see a rocket fly out. Even bullet marks for the machinegun. And of course, you get the *DING* sound when you hit someone. All of this is feedback that players process. The machinegun is one of the few weapons with a spread. This means that some of the machinegun feedback is actually false information! So a good player will highly value feedback from an accurate weapon, like the railgun, and attempt to discount feedback from inaccurate ones, like the machinegun. The better they are at aiming, the more they can ignore the feedback, although it's impossible to perfectly disregard it.
Here is the proposed solution. Each bot think frame, the bot calls some kind of AddAimFeedback() function for each kind of information it received. It will call this every frame for the crosshair feedback. And if the bot fired last frame, it will call AddAimFeedback() again for whatever feedback the weapon created. Each call to the function requires the following information:
- Location (Where does this information say the bot is aiming-- where it's actually aiming or somewhere else?)
- Spread (What is the maximum inaccuracy that "Location" could have?)
- Notability (How notable is this information to an unskilled player?)
- Aim skill (How well the bot can aim with this weapon)
So for example, the crosshair always has location "center", spread 0, and notability 5%. A railgun shot, since it has a huge trail, has location "center", spread 0, notability 20% or so. The machinegun has location "bullet impact spot", spread 25 degrees, and notability 10% (higher than the crosshair because it includes audial feedback).
Here's the trick. If a weapon has zero spread, the bot knows the information is good. Therefore a good bot will increase the notability-- the higher the skill, the higher the notability. But if a weapon has positive spread, the bot knows the information is probably wrong, and good bots will decrease notability. High skill in this situation equates to lower notability percentage. So good bots will pay attention to feedback from Lightning gun and Railgun while disregarding Shotgun and Machinegun as much as possible. Bad bots will just blindly process whatever information is given to them.
Incidently, the same idea applies for projectiles-- when you see a projectile in game, you can estimate where it is heading and deduce where you must have been aiming.
Does anyone see issues in this, or more ideas? Are there any other things players use to verify where they are actually aiming (other than weapon shots and crosshairs)? I'll code this up this weekend. If all goes well, I'll have another Brainworks beta out this weekend or by Monday. Then I'll start the item pickup coding, and hopefully that will be the end of things.
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Lucas has stated that the original versions of Star Wars Episodes IV-VI will not be released on DVD. Ever.
Read the following article and then read the rest of this post...
( http://www.thedigitalbits.com/#mytwocents )
...now...let's get together on this. What can we do here? As a rather large group of individuals, most of us care greatly about these films. I know I do.
Let's get our collective mind together and come up with some ways to get the message to Mr. Lucas that we will accept nothing less than a DVD release of these original films.
Petitions? Maybe...but that doesn't do much good.
Bulk letters? Now we may be talking. I'll gladly set up a P.O. Box or post an address where I can receive letters from you guys and I'll send them to Mr. Lucas. We've got to work together, but I really think we can make a difference on this. Let's speak up and change things, damn it.
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God fucking damn it.
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THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS! Can some physics gurus please help?
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It's all good except for the occasional fisting/peeing moment.
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1. Roman Polanski
2. Terrence Malick
3. Quentin Tarantino
4. Steven Soderbergh
5. David Lynch
6. Ridley Scott
7. Alan Parker
8. [Your choice here]
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I WANT TO HEAR ALL THINGS CONSIDERED< NOT BEGGING FOR MONEY
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Mine over the years:
Cat - Whiskey (aka Bu-Bun, aka FUUUUZEEEE")
Dogs - Rosco (mix) and George (terrier)
Rat (!) - Sneakers (black rat with white paws)
Birds - Chirpy (parakeet) and a few others I cant remember anymore
one of the birds died when Whiskey ate it, another one flew away, and the other died of old age. Rosco got a brain tumor, had to put her down, George had a skin condition and had to be put down (always gnawing at himself), Whiskey got old and sick, put down... and Sneakers I gave one of those plastic bouncy balls cuz I thought he would play with it and roll around on it like in the circuis. Instead he got cancer and died. :/ Stupid me... then again I was young.
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if you have some AA settings turned on in your control panel (for all games, like a global setting), will 3dmark use these? or does 3dmark ignore those settings unless you turn AA on inside of 3dmark.
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Washington, February 7: President Bush has signed a secret directive ordering the development of a national-level guidance to determine when and how the US would launch cyber-attacks against enemy computer networks, according to administration officials.
PS. doesn't seem that secret.
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Make everyone have police powers. Kinda like volunteering police force, but you keep 50% of the money. Say, you see someone speeding, you stop him and get $150. See someone smoking where it's not allowed, get their info, get 1/2 of the money.
See someone buying cigarettes for minors, charge him..
It would be perfect society, no one would have balls to do anything illegal.
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am i correct in assuming that i really don't need a firewall if i'm behind a router? the router doesn't have any firewall stuff going on. i'm thinking that since all outside requests are tossed out unless the router is told to forward it, computers behind the router are relatively safe.
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http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=518
Plus all the secret catch phrases and terms we use that only another fellow shacker would understand if you were to mention in person/public makes it seem all the more like an inside joke, to those "in the know".
Ah goodness me, what is it about this magical place that brings us all here, to share our thoughts, hopes and dreams?
Oh yea.
teh Gibson.
A big shout out to sCary for keepin this join happenin ever since the days of Q... hey Steve, when's the next DM6 1on1 comin out, "balls out" computer systems, or the weekly suckage? That shit was tha best....
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"Let me see what you have" translates to "I give you the honor of looking at my aweseome peni... err, I mean equipment."
"Hey, you wanna duel?"
"No thanks, I'm still building my character."
"Yeah, you probably couldn't even hit me. lol. <contine to go on about their impressive stats"
Cocksmokers, all of them!
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The S3 Pro Savage or something was at the bottom, below "Generic VGA" hee hee.
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It claimed to draw upon "a number of sources, including intelligence material". But red-faced officials admitted today that whole swathes were lifted word for word -- grammatical slips and all -- from a student thesis.
Oh now what's sweet. Tony Blair wants to send his country into war, and he can't correct the grammar when he steals the basis for his decision from a student's thesis.
GG Tony.
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Old News?
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Let's get pissed.
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