jay pettitt

Jonathon Frakes' head isn't an original creative work. D3 and TDM assets are (or aren't as the case may be). Copying matters not a jot whether it's done from scratch or alters a digital copy of the original. To be sure I don't actually think it matters here for such a tiny thing (certainly US law requires that you demonstrate some harm from the copying ~ or at least allows a defence that says that there's not ~ and harm is pretty doubtful here) - but it's arguable you're better off writing a brief that says TDM wants heads that look like a medieval Jonathon Frakes, rather than heads like the D3 assets - because one of those is covered by copyright law and the other is not.

My understanding of copyright is that effort or slight differences that arise from using an alternative methods or media count for nothing. For the purpose of going standalone, if we're copying D3 assets (to the extent that they're intentionally recognisable as D3 assets), then we're copying D3 assets. I'm sure neither Beth or Id would actually lose sleep over anything so trivial, but if there's a principled motivation toward creating an original creative work that's clear of copyright issues then some minor discontinuities with D3 generation missions might be the price that's paid there.

These days when we've all got spare cores idling then it almost certainly makes sense to do it in software, but back then, hardware DSP was more of a thing.

I think you'll only get results for Missions made for EAX. Don't know which if any qualify - but TDM itself has EAX support built in, so the option for mission makers to use it is there. There's an old video floating around youtube demonstrating EAX on TDM and it's actually pretty decent - if you can excuse the old school clippityclop foot steps Maybe it's possible for some of us who have EAX cards to edit existing missions and make them EAX friendly...? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccsKByfgB5s

The fact that Fritctional's grab and drag interaction is universally applied consistently to everything is, I think, part of why it works so damn well in their games.

It's interesting - I'm amassing an awful lot more data than I did maybe even a few years ago. If I had data I really cared about I'd keep a physical copy (DVD or some such) off site. Currently I have data I'd be a bit sad to lose, but nothing vital - so a web server and a portable hard drive do belt and braces for me. Having two+ backups is smart. I dropped my backup drive mid restore from a OS reinstall once and lost everything. Doh. Lesson learned. Is it me, or does Windows still basically provide no help at all if you want to back up your stuff or restore? It's common place in Linux Land and I think MacOSX too, to manage backups automagically out the box so it all just happens without you having to lift a finger.

I brought mine because I wanted something with a consistent, measurable line out (rather than a headphone jack) which is obviously not something most people would give a damn about - and because I was curious to play with EAX in my beginners competition FM entry, which again isn't everybody's first concern. Certainly I can hear a qualitative difference between on board and the express card (with all the nasty DSP off) - but it's different rather than obviously better. The headphone amp goes a lot louder, but the on board could already go too loud, so that's not particularly useful. I do have sound measurement kit (I actually wanted the line out so I can produce a signal for measuring with different speakers and different venues before doing EQ to fit) so I'll probably get curious one day and see what the actual difference between them is using graphs and science. The proper posh stuff is probably a different cup of tea again. But unless you've got a specific reason for wanting it (you work in sound and need good clean pre-amps) then yeah - on board audio seems okay to me. You'd be better off spending your pennies on decent headphones, women or cream cakes.

If EA don't think people should be able to sell things they've bought then EA would be in the wrong. And the EU have affirmed that's the case. EA don't make laws and don't have expertise in ethics. The EU courts do.

I think the point is that it doesn't matter. People who video game for a hobby probably sell on their games in order to buy more video games. It's not a zero-sum game.

Legitimate buyers ensure single ownership by way of being legitimate buyers. DRM is redundant in that scenario. Small, Indie, DRM free outfits clearly consider legitimate buyers to be their market audience. The EU ruling is not restricting legitimate buyers, it's protecting and enabling them.

My laptop already has that hardware Trusted platform stuff. You can't read the data on my hard-drive on any other machine. That has some implications (I have to back-up, because if I drop my lappy I'm stuffed) but it also means that I have a degree of data security. So swings and roundabouts. But the data protection on my hard drive doesn't have any impact on the the video games I may chose to buy. The situation as is is that it's (apparently) easy to avoid paying for commercially sold software - but enough people do anyway (and that's your market size). I don't see the EU ruling changing that. It'll irritate Sony, but that's Sony's fault for being so goddamn stupid in the first place.

If you're selling DRM free then you can't ensure single ownership anyway. Hell DRM has zilch success at ensuring single ownership. Enough people still seem to buy stuff to make it worthwhile. ps - my avatar pic is for sale.

I remember a vid of some fancy real-time acoustic modelling in Half Life 2. Can't find it though. Plenty of Vids of Aureal 3D though, which was doing similar, calculating reverbs and occlusion in real-time according to actual game geometry and faking positional audio with HRTF 15-20 years ago: (best with headphones) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8O6rtlmsIA

Look 'ear, I'm excited because I've got my first ever sound card capable of EAX - thanks to Creative, my laptop's Express Card slot and not a tiny amount of money. I, for one, would like to welcome me to 2004. At least I was excited, until I tried the thing. Back in the day (last century) my then PC had a little chip inside that did Aureal3d (what happened to them? - oh right I remember, Creative did a hostile takeover and killed 3D sound tech dead) and it was super awesome - they managed to fake 3d positional sound with stereo in a way so convincing and lifelike that you could pinpoint Thief's guards not just behind you but above and below too. It was a genuinely impressive and immersive experience. Eerily good in fact. So I had high hopes for 21st Century EAX 4.0. So far I'm not impressed. The DSP reverbs are genuinely, comically awful. Like $5 Wallmart Karaoke machine with built in SFX bad. Only worse. The transitions (transition really isn't the right word for it) between them jarringly abrupt and the implementation in the couple of games I've tried (Doom 3 mostly and a little bit of SS2) dodgy as hell. Are all small rooms Cavernous Caves on the left side and Echoey Cathedrals on the right? Reverb was 2004's bloom, right? Please tell me I'm doing it wrong.

Sometimes that sort of problem can be caused by the .htaccess file having the wrong settings. The proper settings differ with different hosts, server configuration, available software versions (php 4 and php 5 for instance) and content management software, so it's not always easy to give a one size fits all solution - but google is your friend.

Actually my sceptic sense did manage to dig up something else. Those islands aren't really made of bones - that's just something some bloke made up to attract ivory hunters.

My googling only revealed this.

I did a gig at the weekend (I don't play, I only do techy sound & electricals stuff) at a very nice pub with a very very nice old (disused) Brewery building standing watch behind it - <3 the Victorian industrial dirty red brick vibe. Google reveals that other more intrepid people have taken other more inspirational photos - http://www.flickr.com/photos/ant_43/sets/72157628829984029/with/6716620113/

I think it's an awesome thing all round. A little bit long mind. Not enough to be an actual problem here, but by the time there are a couple of these things length could start to chafe.

It is a pricey looking necklace though. I'd allow him a small smile.

I wish we could get some of their physics too. I'd love to have me some of that naturalistic interaction in TDM and the consistency that they have so it's the same system working the same way on all things is dreamy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ecZH0dbYS1k When I was small, I used to think that the ants and spiders I squashed would eventually take their revenge.

http://www.rockpaper...f-4-screenshot/ --edit-- Could this somehow make it easier/look cooler to view/aim over the shoulder 3rd person? Like, ya know, Splinter Cell?

Like the necklace. Don't like the Bat-Bow. I've said elsewhere, but the Thief 4 I'd like to see would be one where the tools are underpowered and require a bit of judgement and hand-eye coordination (and input) from the player to make them shine. I liked that the bow in T1 and T2 is underpowered. It leaves the player having to consider the arcing trajectory and judge how high to aim and there's a natural gameplay mechanic where difficulty ratchets up with distance. As a consequence, pulling off a trickyish long shot was that much more satisfying. So yeah, an uber bow that could be straight out of the Avengers Movie (or Crysis for that matter) (+every fashion in game making over the last decade) kinda feels like Thiaf is probably going backwards for me on several different levels. Whatever, I'm probably just grumpy. I guess we'll find out if this thing ever makes it out of vapourware limbo. Besides. The question for us is how does TDM keep pace. My vote is for dual wielding compound bows.

It's a bit low quality, but the lighting and composting looks like a half decent job. You can hardly blame the chap for the generic art direction. But what I really wanna know is, will we get a rocket launcher.