Quote from ThrikI'd be inclined to call a guy who bought 20 high-definition LCD televisions so he could turn a room of his house into a 360° viewing area a bit obsessed and sad, too.
I positively drool at the idea of this. My missus would go nuts though. Come to think of it, its probably a good thing that she keeps me in check 
I am finding it hard too see why there is so much negative feeling towards this. Fair enough if its a setup that has been built to exploit the game and farm gold then granted its sucky as it is essentially cheating. However, if its simply a dedicated player, using their own personal cash earned from a real life job to modify the game experience into a radically different form, I believe we should applaud him for the imagination, insight and technical know how he displays in doing so.
The technical skill alone required to get 40 boxes running off the same connex, all hooked up to KV switches and networked is tough enough. Beyond this I imagine you would need to essentially script yourself from scratch (in WoWs scripting language) a set of macros that would issue long chained orders to your first character, then switch control to a 2nd PC, give this character orders, switch to third PC, issue orders etc. You would need to build a wide range of different group tactics from the ground up to be able to effectively control this number of characters. This alone is a great achievement.
Also at its essence isn't he simply modifying, at client side, an essentially single player game into a group/squad based experience? Or with the 40 box example, into what could be considered an RTS? Surely this guy is only doing what the rest of us devs try to do day in day out, that is to modify an existing game framework into something radically different, yet still recognisable as to where it has come from, and as such easily understood by those who look at it.
I could rant on for ages about why I like this but I guess at its core the whole issue of whether this is sad or cool comes down to personal opinion, I see the ingenuity and ambition evident in what is being done, but I can see that others may view it as obsession gone too far. I'd be very interested to know more about the folks that do this kind of extreme multi boxing and whether they think they are "1337" or if they are just extreme hobbyists with too much spare cash.
Nice one Hessi, thanks for sharing 
Started making a map for it but enthusiasm and time quickly ran out....
I think Hessi was working on it too at one point.
Quote from ifOI don't get it, why do this? Are these people selling virtual stuffs?
Farming gold and selling it on teh internets for $$ most likely. Though some obsessives will run multiple boxes just for laffs. I used to have accounts running on 3 boxes at home when I used to play Diablo 2. Great for power leveling and muling stuff 
Heh I forgot I changed my avatar to Sony logo (posted a job in a different forum) makes me look like a proper fanboy 
Quote from ThrikI think a major thing to consider is that the 360 has been out for ages and naturally has a vast software collection. When the 360 was at the same stage the PS3 is currently at, everyone was saying how destined for failure it was due to its shit, uncompelling game library. Weirdly, everyone seems to have since completely forgotten about this.
Quoted for truth mate.
Sony just needs to get off its arse and re-integrate the rumble feature again. That along with a lower price and a better range of games should flog plenty more units. Random fact: In terms of raw numbers the PS3 is outselling the PS2 at the same point in its launch cycle.
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe are looking for a talented Level Designer to join one of its internal development teams (based in London). Applicants will need to display:
- Strong creative skills
- An understanding of single player level design
- An ability to model levels in Maya or Max
- An understanding of scripting (Java-based)
- A professional and diligent work ethic
- A passion for video games and an understanding of console gaming
PM me for a contact address and I'll forward along applications to the studio's recruiter.
Grats Rick.
Quote from ReNoEDIT: Oh, should also mention that there are reportsof broken 360's coming back with an extra heatsink installed on the CPU, so fingers crossed that will help. Hopefully they'll also start to use it on brand new 360's to reduce the chance of it happening from the start.
Microsoft won't even officially recognise that they are putting these heatsinks in repaired 360's simply saying that it is normal during a products lifecycle to optimise manufacturing cost & performance and to swap componants about to improve the machine.
These new heatsinks aren't being put in new 360's or Elites either, suggesting to me that there is a known manufacturing problem with the first few generations of 360's GPUs.
Not 360 bashing here, I got one and love it, but M$ really need to acknowledge this problem publicly.
Yeah I know this topic has been done to death but I thought I'd post this in case any of you didn't catch it. From 1up, Justin Lowe is now on his 12th 360.
Makes me nervous since mine has started crashing on Oblivion every few hours play 
You gotta be a US resident though right?
Yeah, me. All my mates who have one. They've only just really come back in stock in the UK after release in December.
I do however still know noone with a PS3 and the only time I've seen one is in the local Sony Centre window.
Contrary to this, everyone I know with a Wii hardly plays the thing since there's basically nothing decent out for em over here right now. Well except Mario Charged Strikers which is top 
Pretty much everyone I work with at Sony has a PS3 except me (too skint) but this is no surprise since we were sold em internally at a discount.
Outside of work I know only 1 person with a PS3 at the mo, pretty much everyone I know into gaming is hooked up on the 360, 'cause of the great range of games on it. But yeah back to the point Wii is getting horribly stale right now, there's just not enough quality stuff to play yet.
As long as they keep paying my wages...
Seriously though, yeah I think Sony have screwed up many times as Izuno points out, but when they get it right (PS1 / PS2) it seems to work.
I don't actually know anything about the "Sony wii controller" but I should imagine its just the tech that's going to get added to the existing dual shock not a design overhaul of the controller itself. Anyone remember the last abortion of a redesign the controller got?
[Blocked Image: http://www.modojo.com/media/features/159/boomerang.jpg]
Hopefully this news is just heads up on a refinement of the existing 6-axis control, and hopefully we'll also get rumble back in the next iteration of the controller now that Sony have settled with Immersion.
Anyways to the matter at hand. Milk and two sugars Vivi?
I don't think you guys should be so paranoid about this. You are not being asked to make specific criticisms about your employer, but rather the way the industry as a whole functions.
Personally I love my job at Sony, and they are by far the best employer I have worked for during my time in the industry. However this does not mean that they are totally perfect, something I am sure they would be happy to admit.
There are always negative aspects of the way the dev industry works that are bigger than any one employer, however powerful or successful they might be. I cannot see how expressing an opinion on what these are, and how you personally believe they can be improved could possibly be construed by an employer as any kind of grounds for discrimination towards you. In fact, doing so would almost certainly contravene employment laws in the European Union.
As for only having worked at one employer, sure this does give you a somewhat smaller range of experience from which to judge the industry, but at the same time all us folks on this forum talk and share experiences of dev and how it affects our day to day lives. In my opinion this makes us all more than eligible to make broad comment on the generalities of what is right about dev and what is wrong.
So come on, don't be shy, post up what you think, or at least mail Hourences your thoughts. Its just opinion, not NDA breaking disclosure
In crunch at work at the mo so its probably a good time for you to get some negative points about the industry out of me
Though its not out yet, it might be worth taking a look at some of the info on Hellgate London. That's an FPS/RPG/MMO hybrid that is looking pretty nice. Made by a lot of the Ex-Blizz / Diablo2 team too IIRC.
The lighting is a bit flat throughout and the shadows blurry (>lightmaps as suggested above).
The construction looks solid and competent, though the theme is a little uninspired. Not that theme has any real effect on gameplay to 99% of CS players.
Its a rather old mod (of a mod) but personally I have always thought the Ultimate Warcraft 3 mod of Counter-Strike was awesome. CS with RPG type experience, leveling and a choice of skills, attributes and resistances to be earned.
Since I added one to our gaming community's list of servers, most of the guys I game with have been playing little else
