CodeMonkey666

Well, okay, not much to this post, but I was just reading in EGM about how now 8-bit chip music is becoming big, complete with fan sites, home-coded programs for composing music, and people hacking up Gameboys and NES cartridges and systems to turn them into music machines. Then there's the fan-made games, with some people re-making current games as 2D versions. One group making a Metroid Prime remake is led by a 15 year-old. Also being done is a Zelda remake (though Nintendo is threatening the guy I believe). And then there's a 2D Halo game which some people thought was from Bungie. And then of course there's the videogame emulation scene, which got really big in 1998, then almost disappreared, but then came back. Makes you wonder what other videogame subgenres are going to come about in the near and long-term future. But I think it's all damn cool

You SOBs, I am flat broke right now, so I still am dying to get GTA:SA, Metal Gear Solid 3, Halo 2, and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. And then hell, I still have to complete a bunch of other games; I will be lying on my death bed trying to complete games, because there's so many I like. Speaking of, damn, you wonder how we'll all look back on like Super Mario Bros 3 and Chrono Trigger and such when we're all like 70 years old.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time WAS NOT a bad seller. Beyond Good & Evil was. I even remember articles on how the game was such a success.

Yes; they started giving away free copies of Splinter Cell with PoP, not free copies of PoP with Splinter Cell; if it is the reverse, then the author of the article I read misquoted Ubisoft's people.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was a huge success, so huge that Ubisoft started giving away free copies of Splinter Cell with it (and unfortunately for me I had bought my copy a week before they started this); BG&E bombed though, for whatever reason.

Hey, at the end of Beyond Good & Evil, if you watch through all of the credits, at the very, very end of them, you see Payj standing there (the Pig) straining and making a funny sound; you then see some green, alien-looking thing crawl out of his hand, and then the game goes back to the main menu. Was that like a cliffhanger since they originally meant to make a bunch of sequels for the game?? Or was it something normal and I just am confused??

Hey, I have a friend who wrote a program that basically monitors the student accounts of the students at my university and is updated every minute; if you enter your name and password, it can tell you how much debit you have left in your account. I was just wondering, like, HOW would the program do this?? Like how could it monitor the accounts of the campus network?

Yeah, it occurred to me to try that about 5 minutes after I had made this thread (googling the phrase). It turns out the code usually will work, it's just a lot of those programs do not have the " 'stdafx.h' using namespace std" coding in them, so they compile fine except for that one error. Usually that fixes it though. Thanx for the help however

Hey, I am new to programming, learning C++ right now. Anyhow, I decided to check out GameTutorials.com to see how their tutorials are. I downloaded some of their .Net tutorials for Visual Studio.Net I think it is, and then I used the code in Microsoft Visual Studio.Net 2003. Anyhow, everytime I try to build the code so I can see the results, it gives this one error that says, "Unexpected end of file while looking for precompiled header directive." Now that happens for every code tutorial I tried from gametutorials, and I seriously doubt the code writers are making the exact same mistake every time; so what exactly is the problem and how do I get the code to work??

I think Halo more depends on your skills with first-person shooters; I know of some guys who played it on EASY mode and had to use a cheat to be it; I played it on NORMAL, but I found the library to be extremely difficult. And then I know of some guys who beat it on LEGENDARY in a few days and thought it was nothing special. I have never played it on Legendary personally and I don't intend to, cuz I don't really like the game too much. I just beat it for the storyline. But I guess it just depends on one's skill with a FPS as to how difficult Legendary mode is.

I C; well, Digipen I believe is the best coding school for learning to program videogames. They are a hard school though. But they say the videogames industry is like that, which is why they are so hard.

Yeah, all the bosses in Ninja Gaiden follow a specific pattern, I noticed that. I really do love this game though; I am not saying that just because everyone else says that.

I have played and beaten both Red Faction for PS2 and Halo for Xbox. No other FPSs. Doom 3 is probably going to be my next one though

I do not see what is soooo hard supposedly about Ninja Gaiden, granted you get your butt kicked around a bit at first, but once you get the hang of it, you handle yourself fine. At least on NORMAL mode anyways. The only boss I had severe trouble with was Alma, and Itagaki said he put like 3 times as much work into her A.I. and all that to make her the hardest boss. And I don't see why some people have thrown their controllers for the first time with Ninja Gaiden. Everytime I have died in this game, it was my fault. The controls to this game are pretty much flawless from what I have seen. I have thrown stuff over numerous other games though. Such as battles in Final Fantasy 8 and 9, in which I was cursing like a drunken sailor at a stupid character to do their thing and attack the enemy (who is busy attacking like 3 times in a row or something) and I also threw my copy of Tomb Raider 3 across my bedroom due to I forget what (though I was 14 then). But Ninja Gaiden is one of my favorite games of all time. Great graphics, great controls, lots of weapons to choose from, enemies from attack helicopters and battle tanks to huge dragons and demons, it is a gamer's dream. So why do people call this game so difficult is beyond me. All you gotta do is turn aggressive, and start jumping and rolling and flipping all over the place if you are in a dire situation. And block decently!! And counter-attack. And everything is fine. The game IS difficult, but not SUPER ridiculously difficult, at least not unless you are fighting like in HARD mode I guess. And when you die, it's not because of some stupid control flaw in the game. Hopefully I can play through the game in super-hard mode too Also, what is up with people complaining about the camera!?! The ONLY time the camera ever went wacko on me was when I was battling Alma. Otherwise, the camera is fine. When I first started the game, I was a little iffy about not being able to control the camera, but now it is no problem. I just re-align the camera behind Ryu or use first-person view mode when I need a better look. Also, there is no real point of this post, I am just stating an opinion here because I feel like it

Neither my PS1 nor my PS2 has ever given me any problems. I played them all the time too.

I C, thanks for the info.

Hey maybe this is a weird question, but I am wondering, could a person with a computer science degree get a job as a game designer if they possessed good art skills as well, or journalistic skills? I say this because it is my intention to get a job in the videogame industry, but, despite my name, I don't know if I want to be a code monkey per se. Designing games, like role-playing games, and being involved with the artwork or storylines, characters, etc....of such games I find very interesting as well. So I mean does one need like a journalism degree or something for game design jobs, or can a computer science person, provided they have the proper skills, do so as well? I have read that these days to be professional games programmer, unless you are very smart, you need a computer science degree because it will cover some stuff that you just may not learn on your own. I don't know though if that is necessarily true, but if it is, does the same apply for game design positions? I wouldn't think journalism or art requires the same in-depth technical knowledge as programming 3D computer graphics. UGH I swear, for any young teenagers reading this, don't believe your parents when they say, "Oh, by the time you get to college, you'll know what you want to do career-wise."

Well, I will never tire of "computer graphics-looking" graphics. But I think games will always have the realistic-looking kind and the kind that are goofy-looking on purpose, like Ratchet & Clank, The Legend of Zelda, etc...remember, artwork drives the game industry too. And graphics are the artwork put into the gameplay. If all games looked like reality, there'd be a loss of the artwork, because the super-colorful, cool characters would not be there. Remember, the real world itself, aside from the tropics or a flower meadow, is not super colorful. It is the artwork of videogames and television, and such, that makes the world have more color to it. If games lose the colorful graphics, like Nintendo seems to favor a lot, and all look like movies, then all that colorful artwork will be out the window. No artwork of dragons, or of like Zelda, or Skies of Arcadia, etc....on game covers; they'd look like movie covers. So I think movie-realistic graphics will only happen in games that aim for realism specifically; I think we'll always have cartoony graphics and candy-colored worlds in games for fun. If you were to take like the casing for ratchet & Clank or for Ninja Gaiden or for Final Fantasy X back to 1932 and show it to people, they'd probably be amazed at all the color. Color these days is like more prevalent in society then it ever was. Even Pesi, who always had that old gray can, upgraded to the modern-looking blue can; because blue is more colorful, and symbolozies youth, vigoressness, etc.....color is very important. So I think games will always keep colorful, phony-looking graphics, as well as having movie-realism graphics perhaps, one day, or aiming towards movie realism anyhow.

Oh no, I wasn't implying that at all lol. NG would fry the PS2 (not meaning to sound like an XBOX fanboy, but it would)

This will send dirty-minded of me, but oh well; anyways, I think a totally new style of "gaming experience" would be like a Virtual Reality simulator that simulates reality; like how the Matrix does, sort of. You know, so like you could go and have sex with your fav. movie star or something; your brain wouldn't know the difference. Or, hell, likea real-live fighter-plane simulator. You could fight the battle of Midway in WWII FOR REAL, as far as your brain knew. Granted, you might need a little training, as the true equivalent to flying a real WWII plane isn't easy I'm sure, but after some initial training, you could bein the plane in the action. The only safeguards would be that if a bullet blew through your chest, the game didn't make your brain think a buller hit you in the chest. Also, if your plane got shot down, your brain wouldn't have to experience an actual nervous-system simulation of the crash impact (might kill you I'm guessing). But hey, otherwise, that would be cool. Hell, you could even go and slay dragons, for real!!! Or fight big cave trolls, from LOTR!!! And it would seem real, cuz your brain would interpret all the electrical signals thinking it was real. Like The Matrix. I know this is WAAAAAAY into the future, but it would still be an awesome gaming experience. Or, you could march in with a Roman Army, or be a ninja (though REAL ninja training takes many many many years to gain proficiency in, so unless you could "upload" martial arts skills and stealth skills into your brain, which I don't think you could do, you'd need to downgrade the realism of the game some). Only thing is, I'm sure there would be some terrorist hackers out there who would create ike some "Fires of Hell" program or bug in some game eventually to mke your brain literally think your body was on fire and you'd be stuck in there 'till your physical body died or something; I mean, if they do ever get the technology for such realistic gaming, I'm sure some mean-ass people would do some terrible stuff like that.

Hey, I was pondering, but like, we all love to look at beautiful, crisp, clean computer graphics. Anything from the candy-colored worlds of like Ratchet and Clank to the super-realistic graphics of Ninja Gaiden, everyone loves graphics. My question is, though, how far will graphics go? Cuz I don't think all gamers want to be palying a game that literally looks like a film. At least, I know I won't. Ninja Gaiden's graphics may look extremely realistic, but they still have that computer-generated "look" to them, which lets me know that they're computer graphics. Graphics where one literally could not tell the difference from movie film, I don't think I will like. So I guess my main question here is, like, what is everyone's own opinion on this?? Like, how far will the graphics go?? Will the games keep getting more and more realistic-looking visuals until they cannot be told apart from actual film (except for games that intentionally use funny graphics like platform games), or do you think developers will still leave in that "computer-generated" look?? There is still a difference between CG and reality; like, Ninja Gaiden's graphics I could look at all day. But, if Ninja Gaiden literally just looked like I was playing a movie right on the TV screen, with graphics indistinguishable from reality, I don't think I would like it nearly as much. Also, how would developer's cope with killing people?? In movies, if you slash a guy open with a sword, they just don't show it (well usually they don't, and if they do, it's only really quickly). Cuz if they did show it, only there was no blood, people would laugh. But if they do, they limit their audience. In games like Ninja Gaiden and Metal Gear solid, they don't limit the blood too much because the games look like computer graphics and you can tell it is fake. But if they get to movie-realism in graphics where you can't tell the difference, and then make a game like Ninja Gaiden, it might be a problem to be hacking at multiple guys, but without realistic cutting effects thrown in. Think of watching Braveheart, and seeing all those guys get hacked up, only no chests splitting open or intenstines coming out, etc....with movie-looking graphics, if you give a seen like that, like in a Ninja Gaiden type of game, it just wouldn't look right to see that katana cutting through enemies that look literally like real people, yet, you see no real gore. Not that people would actually want to see the gore, but with super realistic graphics, it might look stupid without it. The thing is, game companies keep trying to reach the ability to give photo-realistic, movie-equivalent graphics. So when we get to that point, where do we go from there??? And will games ever be able to actually utilize move-equivalent graphics in the game characters, if the game is about hacking and slashing. You can't have a scene that looks identical to reality, and then cut the guy through with a katana, yet only blood spills out, intead of the intestines, or whatever, depending on where you hit the person. you know what I mean; real movies limit what they show in terms of sword cutting because it would be too gory to show it and if they did show it and it didn't show the gore, people would say, "That's fake." but in games, you have to show the actual cutting through of the opponent; so with movie realistic graphics, that might be pose a problem since you might not want to show the gore to prevent every parenting group in the world from riding your back, yet all gamers will say, "This looks fake as all hell." In a game like Ninja Gaiden, even though it is realistic-looking, it still looks like computer graphics, just very very good ones, so with Ryu cutting through opponents like that, you just say, "This game has awesome graphics and is very arcade-like in the fighting." But with movie graphics, I don't know if that would fly. And by movie graphics, remember, I mean graphics where they are indistinguishable from reality. I dunno, I am rambling, just my opinions on this subject. What do you all think??? Cuz it is like we are trying to reach a goal, graphics-wise, that we may never be able to fully use (other than movies themselves I guess, so you could have Jackie Chan fight Bruce lee maybe, or something hahaha).

Okay, this is just a minor rant, but I feel like it Anyways, WHY in Ninja Gaiden, a game with great, tremendous graphical beauty, did they have to go and make the sky look like it's straight out of a PS1 game. Like, when I first entered Hayabusa village at the beginning of the game, you see the great graphics, then you look at the night sky, and you're like "WTF!?!!!??? That's the sky!?!?" I'm guessing maybe the XBOX's graphical capability limited what they could've done to the sky, since so much of it is used in the surface visuals; I hope so anyways, cuz I hate that lammo excuse for a sky with all the super-realistic graphics. Ratchet & Clank have much more realistic-looking skies then that.

Oh HA! I should've checked that number, and here I was worring about running out of space for my XBOX game saves. I guess by the time most people's systems are about to run out of space, the next XBOX will be out or whatever. And too many game saves just requires a memory card to transfer the data I guess.

What are all these numbers representative of (like 1080i or 720p)??? I don't know much about resolutions and that stuff (yet)

Thanx, but yep, you were all right, I was carrying the shoes around. I remember getting them from that location while playing there. I just didn't know I had them.