Video Related.
You're forgetting that most Apple products are shafting you anyway. They can take the hit, believe me.
The Left 4 Dead series had that issue, and it may have been a factor in TF2 before they started releasing class packs - at which point it went from a financial issue to a technical one and its fate was secured.
Afraid to say they do. These days, for small development houses at least (Double Fine is included here, as they are not considered large or powerful in any way), the publisher says "You will ship on this date." and they have to or face heavy fines from the publisher in the form of reduced payout - and possibly lose their chance to publish any further games with them.
Egosoft is a perfect example of this. Developers of the 'X' series of games, they have never released a game that they've not had to patch on day one. Is this because they are terrible developers? No, hell no, they provide content patches like they are going out of season, have a massive mod community etc.
What they are, though, is a small development company trying to appease Deep Silver so they can keep their publishing deals.
The TF2 thing is a different issue all together at this point.
It'll take me a while to dig it out, but one of the main reasons TF2 on consoles isn't seeing updates like it is on the PC is a technical one - namely, the consoles can't physically handle all the added gear and so forth. The memory requirement is too great.
Valve was talking about releasing all the class packs and then patching the consoles once they were complete. Well, that looks like it won't happen now, so TF2 is going to have to sit where it is.
It'll be the publishers you have to attack. The devs very rarely have any say in delaying their product for fixing. Hell, they rarely have any say in patching their product after the fact.
I said it before and I'll say it again.
Guinness World Records is no more than a shadow of it's former self.
That is another thing that put me off a bit. Surely it can't be too hard to vectorise and upscale the original textures. Then again, not my mod =)
Firstly, graphically - and I've said this for the past year - wow. I've never been able to run the mod (the vanilla game barely runs on my old CPU - a mix of bad optimisation on the game's part and the fact I dared to not have the money for high end on it's release) but the friends of mine who have capable computers often show it off. It can be bland sometimes, but is usually gorgeous.
Secondly, though, the cars. While I appreciate the quality involved, the idea of having an Audi or Mercedes in the same world as the brands that parody them is an immersion shock for me. I'm unsure if they are required in the mod but every friend of mine who has it installed has them.
Except if the release schedule for GTA5 is anything like GTA4's, we won't see a PC release for about six months after the console release - and we don't even know when that is.
The current article is not clear as to whether it was development or film date that pushed it back. In fact, that is exactly what it says - it's unknown. My experience has shown me that licensed properties more often fall foul of the former, not the latter. Hence the basis of my comment.
You appear to be very protective over this. I can only assume you're an ST fan. In which case, not only do I approve of your tastes, but I wonder what world you live in where ST games have been consistently good.
I did click the article, I did skim it. I did miss the date and that particular comment.
Want to know how I know you can be a dick, alternate universe me?
Remember folks, Kickstarter isn't the only crowd funding website around - it is, however, one of the hardest ones to get in to. If you don't have a US bank account you're fresh out of luck on getting anything funded through them.
Other, awesome places that are for everybody on the planet rather than just the USA isolationists include [www.indiegogo.com] and [rockethub.com] to name just two.
Don't outvote them, it'd be a bad idea. Remember, the company that owns Nexus: The Jupiter Incident approached a (now restructuring) funding platform to make a sequel and it failed due to no small part from lack of traffic.
Of course the fact only Rock Paper Shotgun seemed to care didn't help that particular one.
Do I need to remind people again that Kickstarter isn't the only, nor is it the particularly the best, crowdfunder out there?
So it'll be a title that instead of having the two solid years of development it will most likely need, will only get twelve to fourteen months tops - and thus will suffer for it.
And people wonder why licensed games are often shit.
That really is a strange one. Usually the standard practice for shrinking is to shrink map size first, if it's available.
It was my understanding that the console versions had smaller versions of the 64 player maps. Naturally I could be wrong.
As for titan issues, when I picked the game up on release the only issue people had was connecting to a server. Any server. Period. But once you got into a game, 2142 didn't lag as much as people said. Sure when the titan was actually in motion it caused a little hiccup but it wasn't game breaking =)
Possibly, with the scaling back they have shown already.
After all, most of us are surprised the console can handle the game period, and you've seen the cutbacks they've had to make for it. =)
I am calling it now, based on the rare, inaccessible (due to "missing required files") server that shows up on the list occasionally.
Titan. DLC.
Afraid not - in fact this would be the only blue marble image for quite some time. The original picture was actually upside down - as that was the orientation of Apollo 17 at the time.
If you wan't some awesome seasonal photos, back in 2004 NASA carried out a project called "Blue Marble Next Generation" which provided a full map of the earth every month of 2004 - giving a very nice indication of the actual colour changes brought on by seasons. We're not talking low detail here, with NASA going as far to present a full 2GB-sized TAR file for anyone who wants it.
These images are available in resolutions up to 250m^2 per pixel. Order is a bit muddled, though. [visibleearth.nasa.gov]
You should check out the Visible Earth site in general, as newer higher quality images are being put out very often.
The picture you linked is actually the image taken in 2001 in July.
The original Blue Marble image, taken by Apollo 17, had a very washed out appearance and would have been dull brown as well had it been over the United States - as it was taken in December.
