Nothing wrong with dying if you're doing what you love.

Except if you want to keep on doing it...

"There has been a feeling that game companies should be immune from the downturn, because entertainment generally does well in economic downturns,"

Uh yeah. The game industry has always been a place of laughter and joy before now. Shocking to see a game company closing! Never happened before!


Sorry for the sarcasm but where have those people that were quoted (whoever they are) been in the last 5 years? *shakes head*

could you show me some concrete info on the supposed MySQL performance advantage over postgresql

Well, it's not guaranteed to be objective but there's a pretty well-written comparison between MySQL and PostgreSQL on the MySQL site at:

http://www.mysql.com/documentation/mysql/bychapter/manual_Introduction.html#Compare_PostgreSQL

Even though the developers of MySQL are obviously biased, they seem to make an afford to be objective.

In case you only want the raw numbers, here's a direct link to the benchmarking results (also linked on the comparison page):

http://www.mysql.com/information/benchmarks.html

I understand that distinction. Someone on the official forum keeps claiming that Fox Interactive actually made the game and that Monolith did not. Maybe they meant Fox wrote it.

Fox Interactive is the publisher, Monolith wrote the game, LithTech created the engine.

I imagine that mission is probably okay if you're the guns blazing type, but trying to do it sneaky the respawning guards are particularly onerous.

Actually I'm the sneaky type. I played through the whole demo without once killing someone who had seen me. I don't think the difficulty level is any higher than in NOLF1.

And respawning enemies? I didn't notice any, certainly not in the demo levels.

Coupled with the cameras and windows I've had to reload that mission

Uh. That's the challenge in being sneaky, right? You hear a camera whirring around the corner you either find another way or try to get past without giving it enough time to focus. And what's bad about windows? After all, you can see through them just as well as the enemy, so where's the difference compared to plain air when it comes to sneaking?

A great first example, is that MySQL can't do transactions, and PostgreSQL can.

MySQL supports transactions, in its most recent version. See my other post. MySQL's capabilites have come a long way during the last year.

I've hear all kinds of great stuff about postgreSQL but don't know why it's better.

Well, better is a relative term and depends on your needs. MySQL is a lot faster than PostgreSQL but does not offer as many features. At least up until recently. From what I've seen the new MySQL 4.0 is quite a bit more advanced and offers lots of stuff that was previously missing. Like proper transaction support, for example.

My advice is to take a look at MySQL first and see wether it provides the stuff you need. If it does, go fot it as it has an enormous performance advantage compared with PostgreSQL. If you need more advanced features you'll (obviously) have to use something else and in that case PostgreSQL is probably not a bad choice.

I thought I heard Monolith only provided the engine for NOLF2 and didn't actually do the game this time

A few years ago the LithTech part of Monolith was split off into a new company called Lithtech, Inc. Monolith continued an independent life, only creating games not the technology.

LithTech provided the engine for NOLF2 and the game was done by Monolith.

Oh, and I don't agree with your dislike of the Underwater Base (I only played in in the demo so far, though). What's so bad about it?

Users could post some links or news in a comments section while you were away. Just a thought.

Uh...yeah. That's what I said :).

Blue, is it just me or are you experiencing quite a lot of signs of being overworked lately? When was the last time you actually took a day off?

I know that you don't have anyone who could take over for you right now, but I think maybe you should nevertheless go on a vacation for a weekend, maybe take Mrs Blue on a tour through the country and recharge your bio-batteries.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a BluesNews addict and I don't know yet how I can deal with not getting my daily fix ;). But your health should come first. You know, there's a reason why people invented weekends and holidays and I guess even someone as dutiful as you needs some distance from work once in a while.

And maybe it would even be fun for us users - we could make do with a user-generated bluesnews on the messageboards for a few days. Mike Martinez could post all those weird links he currently submits, Ray can tell us about the latest Gold announcements and everyone else can just post anything he/she stumbles across. It will be a big party! ... maybe

Interestingly enough, the day *after* All Hallows' Mass, November 2nd, is celebrated in Mexico as the Day of the Dead...

Ahhhh, the day I fondly think of as "Grim Fandango Day" :).

Never heard of it before. Games are truly a superior cultural education tool ;).

Excellent program, Xil. Thank you!

Same from me. One of those tools that after a while turn out to be much more useful than you'd think at first :). Great piece of software.

http://users.ign.com/collection/b[AlexVanKaam

Just curious: are you the guy who wrote the Motherboard Monitor?

Uh, the first time I heard about that game was a few weeks ago. Anyone know how long it has been in development?

Aren't the developers the same that also did Sniper?

The deal here is that network telivision is regulated by the government

Actually, I believe that's also the case here in Germany. But it seems that our laws in that respect are a bit more generous -- essentially, as long as it's not hardcore porn it is ok to show it after 10pm.

On a side-note: there is actually a precise definition of what constitutes pornography here - based on the "erection angle" of the penis. If I remember correctly, if it's less than 30 degrees it is not considered porn :).

I can picture morale-protectors sitting in front of their TV with some angle-measurement tool, trying to figure out wether they can complain to someone %).

After having proven my in-depth knowledge of Australian culture, here's a more serious question:

What about nude women? I don't know about the US, but our TV is full of them. Is that also unacceptable? Or are the producers of US TV shows simply all men?

[EDIT] scratch that. I just realized that most of the stuff we see here originates in Hollywood, so I guess nude women are considered "politcally correct" :). How they can justify the difference is beyond me, though.

This comment was edited on Oct 10, 08:53.

Didn't you know? This is America!

Uh, ok :).

So you think this is really just to be politically correct? Are they afraid that people will see this is as an Australian stereotype and that they could think all men in Australia run around naked with only a cape on?

How ridiculous! Everyone knows that an Australian man goes nowhere without at least one tin of Fosters beer in his hand!

No worries, she'll be right!

... are not allowed to perform in a late show? (it is a late show, right?).

Seems much too prudish to me -- everyone who has seen these guys knows that it's essentially a comedy act. Even though they are naked there's certainly nothing pornographic about it, so what's the big deal?

We had them on public TV here in Germany and I've got to say it was quite a good show. Seems a waste to not let them perform when they are there...

Exactly what is so special about Nimo?

It installs some codecs of low quality. In particular, it installs the Radium MP3 codec which is an illegal hack of the original Fraunhonhofer codec and has quite a few bugs. It works pretty well for encoding MP3s but absolutely sucks for decoding them.

The thing is that the Radium codec has a higher priority than the codec NOLF2 installs, so it will be used instead when the game decodes its music/speech.

Aaaah. The joys of using DirectShow for playback.

I guess Monolith will integrate the sound decoder into the game next time to prevent this support nightmare :).

I think the message is actually even more direct like "Your security has been violated. You are being watched".

Yeah, those are pretty bad. I've just now seen another one of those banners: "Your computer is currently broadcasting an IP address that allows everyone access to your computer!!!"

Beware of that ultimate weapon called IP address!

Here's a hint for your wife: there's (apparently) a federal law that requires all fake security alerts to contain multiple exclamation marks. Just tell her it's a joke and she can safely ignore all messages that have more than one "!" in it. It is a fail-safe method to recognize spam