If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.
(Try to avoid spoilers. The beginning can be played for free, so it's not
like you are losing anything.)

  Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.

yes, I heard it is very good.

BTW, does it happen to be anything like this:

http://www.comagame.net/

I played this one before Limbo was announced, so I wonder if Limbo is an
upgraded version for the XBox...

and no, I wouldn't call these games arcade... they are more in the same vein as
puzzle-platformers as (ancient) Prince of Persia or Another World...

>   Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
> his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.

Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
anymore...

He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
toy medium...

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
> his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.

Yeah, they're even making things like Heavy Rain, which is (from the demo I 
played) basically a movie that pauses occasionally to let you interact with 
the controller. Seems like the kind of thing much more appropriate to the 
Wii or Kinect, given that when you come to a door, you open it by cranking 
one of the joysticks in a half-circle or some such.

Yatzee reviewed Limbo, btw, along with Deathspark. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

On 12/5/2010 7:38 AM, nemesis wrote:
> Warp<war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:
>> If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.
>
> yes, I heard it is very good.
>
> BTW, does it happen to be anything like this:
>
> http://www.comagame.net/
>
> I played this one before Limbo was announced, so I wonder if Limbo is an
> upgraded version for the XBox...
>
> and no, I wouldn't call these games arcade... they are more in the same vein as
> puzzle-platformers as (ancient) Prince of Persia or Another World...
>
>>    Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
>> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
>> his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.
>
> Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
> first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
> anymore...
>
> He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
> toy medium...
>
>
He has, fairly obviously, never a) played games that have real stories 
(which could stand as movies, if you yanked out the player interaction), 
or b) gone to/heard of interactive art exhibits. That said, got one a 
bit back through steam and my reaction was.. "Oh, good.. Another Myst 
clone, which even the Myst team managed to make full 3D at one point, 
and including even more horribly awkward turn arounds and confusing 
steps to do things. 'Amnesia: Dark Descent', specifically. I mean, I 
have played some others and not minded "much", but this one just annoyed 
the hell out of me, for some reason.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> > Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
> > first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
> > anymore...
> >
> > He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
> > toy medium...
> >
> >
> He has, fairly obviously, never a) played games that have real stories 
> (which could stand as movies, if you yanked out the player interaction), 
> or b) gone to/heard of interactive art exhibits.

  He says: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a
game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and
poets."

  Even if that were true (which is debatable), it still doesn't make sense.
Is the requirement for something "being art" that it has to be comparable
with great examples of other fields of art?

  Is he, basically, saying that "if it's not great art, it's not art at
all"? That sounds like snobbery to me.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   He says: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a
> game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and
> poets."

Clearly, it's *harder* to do it in a game, since you have to deal with the 
interactive nature and the fact that it's supposed to be enjoyable to play. 
I think, tho, that if nothing else, he's comparing a medium that's what, 40 
years old at best, to one much older (cinema) and that took its own designs 
from one yet even older (theater)?  Ask in 200 years whether there's a video 
game as moving as the best live play.  Given that the best English author is 
still generally considered to be Shakespeare, who wrote so long ago that he 
wasn't even using modern English, I'd say he's jumping the gun in his judgment.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> "Oh, good.. Another Myst clone,

Yeah, for a while, there were a whole *bunch* of Myst clones that really 
sucked rather hard. I think both Lighthouse and Schism fell into that 
description.

Lighthouse sucked because if you're going to make an adventure game, you 
really need to be rather open and sandboxy about the environment. Making an 
intestinal adventure game really just is silly. For example, I spent the 
first 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the house. It 
wouldn't let me leave until I listened to the answering machine message. Not 
any message or hint or anything so crass. It just wouldn't interact with the 
door until you listened to the machine. Then the front door the same thing, 
but you had to take the umbrella. And so on.

schism had a novel idea - you start with two characters, and you have to 
help each other out at various points, switching between viewpoints. Except 
that the game starts with you going to a place to rescue the science team 
that was sent there to investigate the alien artifacts, and it ends with you 
finding out there was never a science team and it was all a ploy by the 
aliens to get you to get from where you landed to where they are. Huh? The 
boss that sent you on an interstellar rescue mission didn't know there 
wasn't anyone there to rescue? As soon as they made you run back and forth 
across the world full of slow, over-compressed quicktime events due to (I'm 
trying to remember the exact term here, but it was something like) "ritual 
deception" or some such, I knew it wasn't going to get any better. When it 
became impossible to solve one of the puzzle because the compression was so 
bad you couldn't read the combination you were supposed to plug in 
elsewhere, I just cheated my way thru. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

> BTW, does it happen to be anything like this:
 >
 > http://www.comagame.net/


Limbo is artistically similar to that, but the gameplay is much better. 
It's actually more of a platformer with physics puzzles.

  - Slime

Post a reply to this message

On 12/5/2010 4:35 PM, Darren New wrote:
>  Ask in 200 years
> whether there's a video game as moving as the best live play.

This has always been my view on the subject as well, and I'm surprised 
that I almost never see it mentioned in discussions on the matter.

Post a reply to this message

On 12/5/2010 9:08 AM, Warp wrote:
>    If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.
> (Try to avoid spoilers. The beginning can be played for free, so it's not
> like you are losing anything.)
>
>    Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
> his rationale.

His rationale is that he is employing a subjective definition of the 
term "art."  By his definition, a work is only art if it is pleasing to him.

He makes his living by presenting himself as an authority on art, with a 
sense of discernment that is superior to ours.  But since there can 
never be an objective reason for why one person's subjective opinion 
should be regarded as superior to another's, he position is inherently 
contradictory.  Which means we are justified in ignoring him.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle wrote:
> But since there can 
> never be an objective reason for why one person's subjective opinion 
> should be regarded as superior to another's,

I disagree this is as obvious as it sounds. That's precisely why we have 
experts to start with.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

On 12/5/2010 7:43 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> "Oh, good.. Another Myst clone,
>
> Yeah, for a while, there were a whole *bunch* of Myst clones that really
> sucked rather hard. I think both Lighthouse and Schism fell into that
> description.

I found even parts of Myst to be rather frustrating.  There are places 
where the interface is inconsistent, in that to progress, you have to 
try things that the game engine doesn't respond to anywhere else in the 
game.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

On 12/6/2010 4:23 PM, Darren New wrote:
> John VanSickle wrote:
>> But since there can never be an objective reason for why one person's
>> subjective opinion should be regarded as superior to another's,
>
> I disagree this is as obvious as it sounds. That's precisely why we have
> experts to start with.

I wasn't referring to all opinions, merely subjective ones.  Clearly a 
doctor's opinion on a medical issue is based on objective criteria (or 
at least it is supposed to be).  But some of what Ebert might have to 
say on a given work is reflective of tastes that we don't necessarily 
share.  Why are his tastes superior to ours?

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle wrote:
> I found even parts of Myst to be rather frustrating.  There are places 
> where the interface is inconsistent, in that to progress, you have to 
> try things that the game engine doesn't respond to anywhere else in the 
> game.

I remember there being things you could interact with that weren't obviously 
pointed out as such (like the door to the imager chamber), but I don't 
remember what you're talking about.  Like what, out of curiousity?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle wrote:
> I wasn't referring to all opinions, merely subjective ones.  Clearly a 
> doctor's opinion on a medical issue is based on objective criteria (or 
> at least it is supposed to be).  But some of what Ebert might have to 
> say on a given work is reflective of tastes that we don't necessarily 
> share.  Why are his tastes superior to ours?

I'm not sure one can easily rule out objective criteria that one cannot 
enunciate. What makes you think Ebert's opinions aren't based on objective 
criteria he just can't explain?

Or, as another example, one could survey a large number of people and 
discover that 90% of them like peanut butter, but only 6% like broccoli. 
 From this, one could say "peanut butter tastes better than broccoli." Yet 
that's based entirely on subjective opinions.

Is Shakespeare a better writer than Ebert?  What objective criteria do you 
use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

On 05/12/2010 02:08 PM, Warp wrote:

>    Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art.

As far as I can determine, "art" is anything excessively miserable or 
unpleasent. (Therefore something depressing like Shakespear's Macbeth 
would be considered "art", while the cheerful up-beat Crazy For You does 
not.)

Similarly, anything excessively cryptic, bizare and/or pointless 
qualifies as "modern art". (For, for example, if I spent the next 40 
years becoming a master painter and I paint a stunning landscape, this 
is not "modern art". If, however, I take a photograph of the dust at the 
back of my cupboard, that is "modern art".)

In summary: Who gives a **** about what is or is not "art"? I care only 
about what is or is not /enjoyable/.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> John VanSickle wrote:
> > But since there can
> > never be an objective reason for why one person's subjective opinion
> > should be regarded as superior to another's,
>
> I disagree this is as obvious as it sounds. That's precisely why we have
> experts to start with.

Experts may have a saying in technical fields, but not as much as in such a
subjective field as arts.  For instance, experts say this is worth 140 million
bucks:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/nov/03/usa.topstories3

To my ignorant peasant taste, it just looks like a badly used piece of toilet
paper... I'll take Mario Bros. any day for higher art...

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> What objective criteria do you
> use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?

one is the high watermark of its art, the culmination in technical flawlessness
and sheer thematic scope and development and a damn good representation of its
time; the other is barely much else than noise and much attitude trying to
overcome the lack of musical content...

Post a reply to this message

On 12/5/2010 1:52 PM, Warp wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>>> Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
>>> first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
>>> anymore...
>>>
>>> He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
>>> toy medium...
>>>
>>>
>> He has, fairly obviously, never a) played games that have real stories
>> (which could stand as movies, if you yanked out the player interaction),
>> or b) gone to/heard of interactive art exhibits.
>
>    He says: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a
> game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and
> poets."
>
>    Even if that were true (which is debatable), it still doesn't make sense.
> Is the requirement for something "being art" that it has to be comparable
> with great examples of other fields of art?
>
>    Is he, basically, saying that "if it's not great art, it's not art at
> all"? That sounds like snobbery to me.
>
Snort. Worse, I had to read a lot of the "great whatnots" in school, as 
I am sure a lot of other people did. As near as I could tell, "great" 
meant wordy, weak plotted and boring, mixed with a bit of, albeit 
understandable, confusion, delusion, bigotry, and/or cluelessness. The 
worst "junk" Sci-Fi often at least *attempted* to ask questions about 
whether or not the reality the people where it made sense at all, and 
give reasons why. The best of the "classics", like Hemingway, spent 10 
pages describing drapes billowing in the wind. You could SDL the damn 
things in less lines than it took for the man to describe one damn room. 
The actual book, if you removed all that stuff, would have been 2 more 
pages. lol

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 05/12/2010 02:08 PM, Warp wrote:
>
> >    Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> > be art.
>
> As far as I can determine, "art" is anything excessively miserable or
> unpleasent. (Therefore something depressing like Shakespear's Macbeth
> would be considered "art", while the cheerful up-beat Crazy For You does
> not.)

are you sure you come from the United Kingdom?

there's also plenty of examples of very aesthetically pleasing art out there,
it's just that tragedy and drama have much more punch.

It's also funny that you can remember painful moments very well, because it's
unpleasant and your organism doesn't want to ever make you forget those moments
so you don't go through the same process.  But enjoyable moments... those are
about as brief and faded in memory as an orgasm...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> To my ignorant peasant taste, it just looks like a badly used piece of toilet
> paper... I'll take Mario Bros. any day for higher art...

I agree. On the other hand, some of the stuff Piet Mondrian does looks 
simple but really isn't.

Also, there's all kinds of nifty stuff that was cool and cutting edge when 
it was done and is now much closer to trash-anyone-can-do. Someone with $100 
of software and some time on the school's computer today can put together 
special effects to shame Star Wars. Submitting a signed urinal to a modern 
art exhibit was fabulously inventive, the first time. Just like with Myst 
clones, the first one was a great innovation in the art form engendered by a 
radical technological invention, and the knock-offs were knock-offs.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> The best of the "classics", like Hemingway, spent 10
> pages describing drapes billowing in the wind. You could SDL the damn
> things in less lines than it took for the man to describe one damn room.
> The actual book, if you removed all that stuff, would have been 2 more
> pages. lol

Now you're being quite unfair.  "The old man and the sea" I have in high regard.
 Behind all those vivid fisherman daily duties descriptions lies really an
allegory for life itself, a bold and dramatic one.

I like structures, textures, carefully plotted details.  The beauty of it all
may even surpass any story or melody alone for me.  Which is why I love dense
literature as "Swann's Way" or thick contrapuntal Bach fugues.

Much of today's artworks are much too plain and shallow in their attempt to
quickly grab the short span attentions of today...

Post a reply to this message

On 06/12/2010 10:21 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Is Shakespeare a better writer than Ebert?  What objective criteria do
> you use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?

I think that we will need to wait a couple of hundred years to find out.
Let's see who survives the test of time.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

On 06/12/2010 10:29 PM, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> On 05/12/2010 02:08 PM, Warp wrote:
>
>> Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
>> be art.
>
> As far as I can determine, "art" is anything excessively miserable or
> unpleasent.

But you are a renowned ignoramus.

> (Therefore something depressing like Shakespear's Macbeth
> would be considered "art", while the cheerful up-beat Crazy For You does
> not.)
>

Shakespeare’s Macbeth can be thought of as depressing, I agree, but that 
is the nature of tragedies. I bet a pound to a penny even you quote 
Shakespeare.
Knock, knock?

> Similarly, anything excessively cryptic, bizare and/or pointless
> qualifies as "modern art". (For, for example, if I spent the next 40
> years becoming a master painter and I paint a stunning landscape, this
> is not "modern art". If, however, I take a photograph of the dust at the
> back of my cupboard, that is "modern art".)
>

Not if *you* do it. It has to be a *Name*, so fools can invest in it. ;-)

> In summary: Who gives a **** about what is or is not "art"? I care only
> about what is or is not /enjoyable/.
>
No one except a pedant would disagree, IMO.

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> > What objective criteria do you
> > use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?

> one is the high watermark of its art, the culmination in technical flawlessness
> and sheer thematic scope and development and a damn good representation of its
> time; the other is

  You should have continued that with: "the other is a classical music
composer from the early 1800's."

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Similarly, anything excessively cryptic, bizare and/or pointless 
> qualifies as "modern art".

  That means Haskell qualifies as modern art.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Snort. Worse, I had to read a lot of the "great whatnots" in school, as 
> I am sure a lot of other people did. As near as I could tell, "great" 
> meant wordy, weak plotted and boring, mixed with a bit of, albeit 
> understandable, confusion, delusion, bigotry, and/or cluelessness. 

This is what I was talking about, in part. Some of these novels were the 
first to explore the themes they spoke of in a way that contemporaries could 
understand. But, being the first, they weren't always the best, nor were 
they particularly written to survive the ages.

But they're culture. If I say "Godot is expected shortly" or "We're not in 
Kansas any more" or "sour grapes", you have an entire cultural background of 
associations to draw on.

Video games will be art when I can refer to someone as a Paul Denton and you 
know what I'm saying about that person.  We're not there yet, but it will 
eventually happen. We've only had maybe one generation of people growing up 
with video games being common. I was in high school or so when Pong was 
cutting edge, in college when Pac-Man was cutting edge.

(Indeed, we're almost there. I think that if you saw some fat lady shopping 
for donuts and I made the "wacca-wacca-wacca" noise, you'd probably 
understand instantly what I'm saying.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> What objective criteria do you
>>> use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?
> 
>> one is the high watermark of its art, the culmination in technical flawlessness
>> and sheer thematic scope and development and a damn good representation of its
>> time; the other is
> 
>   You should have continued that with: "the other is a classical music
> composer from the early 1800's."

That's exactly what I was expecting as I read it, yes. :-D

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New escreveu:
> Warp wrote:
>> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> What objective criteria do you
>>>> use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?
>>
>>> one is the high watermark of its art, the culmination in technical 
>>> flawlessness
>>> and sheer thematic scope and development and a damn good 
>>> representation of its
>>> time; the other is
>>
>>   You should have continued that with: "the other is a classical music
>> composer from the early 1800's."
> 
> That's exactly what I was expecting as I read it, yes. :-D

I expected more from you guys. :p

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

Warp escreveu:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Similarly, anything excessively cryptic, bizare and/or pointless 
>> qualifies as "modern art".
> 
>   That means Haskell qualifies as modern art.

more than C++?!

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

Post a reply to this message

On 07/12/2010 4:10 PM, Darren New wrote:
> But they're culture. If I say "Godot is expected shortly"

Tell Godot, we're down the pub. He can join us if he wants. :-P

-- 
Regards
     Stephen

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Similarly, anything excessively cryptic, bizare and/or pointless 
>> qualifies as "modern art".
> 
>   That means Haskell qualifies as modern art.

Bazinga!

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

On 12/6/2010 9:36 PM, nemesis wrote:
> Patrick Elliott<sel### [at] npgcablecom>  wrote:
>> The best of the "classics", like Hemingway, spent 10
>> pages describing drapes billowing in the wind. You could SDL the damn
>> things in less lines than it took for the man to describe one damn room.
>> The actual book, if you removed all that stuff, would have been 2 more
>> pages. lol
>
> Now you're being quite unfair.  "The old man and the sea" I have in high regard.
>   Behind all those vivid fisherman daily duties descriptions lies really an
> allegory for life itself, a bold and dramatic one.
>
> I like structures, textures, carefully plotted details.  The beauty of it all
> may even surpass any story or melody alone for me.  Which is why I love dense
> literature as "Swann's Way" or thick contrapuntal Bach fugues.
>
> Much of today's artworks are much too plain and shallow in their attempt to
> quickly grab the short span attentions of today...
>
>
Well, maybe a "bit" unfair. But there is a limit, and a lot of the stuff 
they insist you read ends up making you go, "Uh.. I read something 
better 6 times last week (can go through a 400 page book on like 8-9 
hours)." Its sort of like listening to Christmas songs. A few, isn't too 
bad, a lot, starts to get annoying, if you know how many had their 
melodies "stolen" from earlier, often better, works (heh, its religious 
music, profound, never mind telling more than one story, isn't exactly 
their forte..), it goes from annoying to mind numbing. Yeah, Hemingway 
would have done damn well as a FX artist, not so much writing scripts. 
Some others, like Clemens, are readable, even if a bit out of date. 
Shakespeare.. if you can get past the odd old english, great, but the 
odds of *ever* seeing that in school, unless its college, isn't real 
high. Most of it, was just dreadful.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

On 12/7/2010 9:10 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Snort. Worse, I had to read a lot of the "great whatnots" in school,
>> as I am sure a lot of other people did. As near as I could tell,
>> "great" meant wordy, weak plotted and boring, mixed with a bit of,
>> albeit understandable, confusion, delusion, bigotry, and/or cluelessness.
>
> This is what I was talking about, in part. Some of these novels were the
> first to explore the themes they spoke of in a way that contemporaries
> could understand. But, being the first, they weren't always the best,
> nor were they particularly written to survive the ages.
>
Precisely. To explore an idea fully you have to be able to break period 
conventions, but the period a lot of it comes from.. well, lets say that 
a modern equivalent would be writing a movie script about non-communist, 
in-house, American terrorists, when the top selling movie that week was 
Red Dawn. lol In some ways we have a much broader range of attitudes, so 
pretty much *anything* is bound to piss off some small percentage of 
people, no matter what the content, but the wobbles are a lot faster. 
Took Europe like hundreds of years to go from Roman orgies to allowing 
nudity on beaches, it took us... about 20 years to go from "Sorry, but 
what where you thinking with a stag film that had a women banging a dog 
in it, and yes, the damn Centaurs in the new Disney movie had better 
have something over their breasts!", to well, OK, I guess movies like 
The Short Bus are not "bad", even with the sex in it, and you can show 
some stuff, just not shot up close, or from certain angles, on *some* 
stations, at night. (i.e., a sudden rush to fix what was perceived as 
going *way* too far, to not having to buy the Playboy channel to get 
even soft core on TV.) The oscillations seem to be a bit faster these 
days, so expect like California to decide animal movies are OK, just as 
Kentucky declares that its now "God's State!", complete with its brand 
new Noah's Ark (I would love to know if "Goferwood" is termite proof, or 
where they plan to find it, since they are building it using "biblical 
materials and tools" lol), declares exposed ankles to be a mortal sin.

Bloody confusing country to live in. Half the stuff people do they want 
to arrest you for, and the other half they imagine everyone else wants 
*them* arrested for, being evil, anti-mythology, socialists...

> But they're culture. If I say "Godot is expected shortly" or "We're not
> in Kansas any more" or "sour grapes", you have an entire cultural
> background of associations to draw on.
>
Yeah. Kind of depressing when you look back and realize both how much 
one single religion has "informed" the whole mess, and how much of that 
they stole from a dozen others, then successfully convinced people they 
had come up with it first. Or funny.. Depends on which sort of twit is 
babbling about it at the moment.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

On 12/6/2010 5:17 PM, Darren New wrote:
> John VanSickle wrote:
>> I found even parts of Myst to be rather frustrating. There are places
>> where the interface is inconsistent, in that to progress, you have to
>> try things that the game engine doesn't respond to anywhere else in
>> the game.
>
> I remember there being things you could interact with that weren't
> obviously pointed out as such (like the door to the imager chamber), but
> I don't remember what you're talking about. Like what, out of curiousity?

The elevator in one of the ages.  You hit the button, and then have to 
jump out before it starts moving.  For the rest of the game, when you 
hit the button to make something go, you can't do anything until the 
animation is done.

But with this one elevator, you hit the button, then click somewhere 
else, and then everything goes fine.

Regards,
John

Post a reply to this message

John VanSickle wrote:
> But with this one elevator, you hit the button, then click somewhere 
> else, and then everything goes fine.

Ah yes. But that was the point. Plus there was a delay, a flashing light, 
and (IIRC) at least two other clues telling you where the secret was, as 
well as a label in the elevator.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

Post a reply to this message

> The elevator in one of the ages. You hit the button, and then have to
 > jump out before it starts moving. For the rest of the game, when you hit
 > the button to make something go, you can't do anything until the
 > animation is done.

I also got stuck at that part for a very long time.

  - Slime

Post a reply to this message

On Tue, 07 Dec 2010 18:53:47 +0200, nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> Darren New escreveu:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>>> What objective criteria do you
>>>>> use to show that Beethoven's music is superior to Def Leopard?
>>>
>>>> one is the high watermark of its art, the culmination in technical  
>>>> flawlessness
>>>> and sheer thematic scope and development and a damn good  
>>>> representation of its
>>>> time; the other is
>>>
>>>   You should have continued that with: "the other is a classical music
>>> composer from the early 1800's."
>>  That's exactly what I was expecting as I read it, yes. :-D
>
> I expected more from you guys. :p
>
IMO Beethoven, Mozart, Paganini, Bartok, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani,  
Vanessa Mae, Jean Michelle Jarre, Enya, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Rodrigo y  
Gabriela all made great music. I don't listen to their music much, but I  
still have respect for their great talent.

-Nekar Xenos-

Post a reply to this message