If the guy who invented the wheel told the guy who invented the axle that he couldn't use his wheel idea... where would we be now?

99% of everything in a Lambourhini or Chevy was invented by someone else... that is innovation. I'm all for scrapping copyright altogether and rolling with freedom of ideas.

Whoever does it better wins.

Let's get some perspective: these assets are for a handfull of very basic light shaders. They are certainly from Doom 3 but GSC (or anyone with even a limited artistic talent) could have made them in a couple of hours (as id almost certainly did).

As someone said before, the most likely scenario is that they were used for engine development and weren't intended to be included in the retail build. The fact that they weren't removed is nothing more than an embarrassing gaffe on GSC's part.


Off topic rant:

If I could copy my neighbour's high performance sports car such that in a few weeks everyone within a hundred miles has one then he's lost out because he no longer has an exclusive car.

He's only lost out if he considers that something is better simply because others can't/don't have it. That's nothing more than ego stroking vanity and greed - cry me a frikkin river for the poor guy.

I'd have much more respect for someone who owns a high performance sports car because he actually likes the high performance sports car. I'd have even more respect for him if he thinks it's so good everyone should have one.

The idea that you are somehow a better person for owning an object others can't have scores 4 out of 10 on the retard scale (4 being the the highest).

Its quite hypnotic really. Perhaps its a portal.

I'll refrain from obvious comments...

Yeh a Barney sequel would be good. Though a 'shoot the friendly resistance fighter or blow your cover' scenario would be pretty hardcore, not sure Valve would do it.

seriously who gives a fuck?

So you'd rather all news be company press releases? As far as I can see Kotaku refused corporate pressure and kept their integrity instead of selling out.

On the flipside Sony want to turn journos into corporate whores.

Well ASE tells me there's no servers oO

You can already play Quake 3 vs Dreamcast players. That was funny

Ubisoft dropped SF because of the bad press due to Christopher Spence's lawsuit against them (Ubisoft) (c http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=66009).

The lawsuit was for a vulnerability with older versions of StarForce that requires a user to be logged in locally to exploit (which makes it a low risk vulnerability).

The vulnerability was fixed and the lawsuit never saw a day in court (just as what would happen to a lawsuit by me against any software integrating IE because of it's multiple, better documented and more severe vulnerabilities) but bad press is bad press.

I imagine that the 'sick' computers you fixed also had all other redundant software removed, as I would expect from any half decent IT professional. As with others, you failed to document what the actual issue was and how it related to Starforce.

I can find only two 'real' issues specified by users while using StarForce (feel free to find more):

One is the lowering of the PIO mode of the disc drive when read errors occur, which is difficult to reverse by unexperienced users. However this is a known problem with Windows and occurs with any problematic disc (c http://winhlp.com/WxDMA.htm) regardless of wether Starforce is used or not; something that the Boycott Starforce (http://www.glop.org/starforce) website fails to mention.

The other issue was Starforce supposedly enforcing it's DRM by rebooting the machine. This was reported by cdfreaks to have been discovered by Futuremark; who later corrected them and pointed out that they had not uncovered anything related to Starforce - it was actually a post on their forums by a user (c http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/13212).

'Its software whos only function kicks in when you run the title that uses it. Get the f*ck over it!'

Good thing that you don't have the slightest clue how SF really works

My understanding is that it is a low level driver that is exposed to any software compiled with the Starforce SDK libraries. Therefore it requires a protected title to call it's methods.

What's yours?

Edit:
I don't know what thread you're reading but nobody here has done that

Here's a small sample of threads
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=64026
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=68715
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=49660
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=56737
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=61729
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=66852
http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/board.pl?action=viewthread&threadid=54590

Arbitrary 'I dont like StarForce, it installs a driver' posts aren't very informative. Out of all the threads above, and all the countless others I've read, nobody has ever bothered saying what the problem is; it seems to be people jumping on the hate SF bandwagon caused by some mysterious source a long time ago who said SF broke his DVD drive; aswell as a general misconception that StarForce runs as a perpetual process continually consuming your pc's resources (which it doesn't); or stopping non SF protected discs from loading (which I've never seen anyone personally testify to).

I don't care about SF either way, I like TrackMania. I'm just bored of all the SF posts detracting from what little discussion and exposure this great indie game gets.

This comment was edited on Oct 28, 18:36.

I wish every Trackmania post on Blues wouldn't descend into a foilhat wearing diatribe on a proprietry disc layer driver, even after all these years without a single person proving there's anything wrong with it.

Its software whos only function kicks in when you run the title that uses it. Get the f*ck over it!

Wheres the patch that removes the online auth?

which takes place at a gaming convention...

This is a Jack Thompson challenge?

http://gc.advancedmn.com/article.php?artid=5883

Still, I give points to any indy developer that manages to see a project through to completion

Same here, unless it's unoriginal pap like this.

Advice to indie devs on a shoestring: come up with something original.

...wow

I guess the Revolution is a lot more capable than people were thinking.

Counter-Strike has arguably been episodically developed over the years

Yeh, and I can just imagine everyone paying 15 bucks for each patch

The only way you could really show it off is to have a title written that only works with the board, and what publisher would go for that option?

A la Cellfactor (video here http://www.gdhardware.com/hardware/ppu/ageia/gdc06/004.htm). Ageia required, LAN only (due to the amount of bandwidth required to replicate the physics) and they are still looking for a publisher

One question from me: will one of these cards just improve performance, or will it be able to crack open a lot of new features?

ie, will it make the difference between all the grass and trees swaying, and not? Or will they sway anyway with a slight drop in FPS without the PPU?

If it's just a slight improvement in FPS then I'd just be looking to upgrade my GPU and CPU just as I do now, because they'd offer a much better performance improvement.

Actually id have always used it, and Epic too. It's a bit too much of a generic english term for someone to claim it as their own

Internet Is Key Tool For Insurgents.

Post Is Key Tool For Insurgents.

Vehicles Are Key Tools For Insurgents.

Weapons Are Key Tools For Insurgents.

Food And Water Are Key Tools For Insurgents.

duh...

It's funny how lots of people talk about other people's problems with Starforce and never their own

Nadeo give out a game for free and people still complain...

This comment was edited on Jan 27, 21:47.

The fact that nobody played it with UT doesn't mean nobody will play the retail version. Before you needed UT2004, to have some knowledge of the mod scene, and it was in competition with a billion other mods. Now it's a standalone game that anyone can pick up and play.

For example, my step father would be interested in a WWII shooter but absolutely no interest in Unreal Tournament, thus he was never exposed to RO. Now there's as much likelyhood of him picking it up at the shop than any other title.