Tag: games

Sierra made PC Gaming

When IBM debuted their PS/2 line in 1987, Ken, seeing the new machines’ lovely MCGA and VGA graphics and user-friendly mouse support, felt a bit like Noah must have when the first drops of rain finally began to fall. Yes, the machines were ridiculously expensive as propositions for the home, but given time, their technology would trickle down into more affordable price brackets. If nothing else, the PS/2 line was at long last a start. King’s Quest IV and its first real soundtrack score stands as a landmark moment in the evolution of computer games. The game did indeed do much to break the chicken-and-egg conundrum afflicting MS-DOS audio. But King’s Quest IV also advanced the state of the art of adventure gaming in other, less tech-centric ways. As evidenced by its prominent subtitle The Perils of Rosella, its protagonist is female. Hard as it may seem to believe today, when more adventure games than not seem to star women, this fact made King’s Quest IV almost unique in its day

100X faster metallic rendering

The standard approach to modeling the way surfaces reflect light assumes that the surfaces are smooth at the pixel level. But that’s not the case in the real world for metallic materials as well as fabrics, wood finishes and wood grain, among others. As a result, with current methods, these surfaces will appear noisy, grainy or glittery. “There is currently no algorithm that can efficiently render the rough appearance of real specular surfaces. This is highly unusual in modern computer graphics, where almost any other scene can be rendered given enough computing power.”

What are young men doing?

The average low-skilled, unemployed man plays video games an average of 12h. 22% of unemployed young men did not work the previous year either. These individuals are living with parents or relatives, and happiness surveys actually indicate that they’re quite content compared to their peers

large fractions of society are already doing what they would if UBI were here

Suburban Pokemon

you can’t have nice things if your chosen place of residence lacks the density.

Pokémon Go doesn’t appear to have taken off in rural Virginia quite the same way it has in every other corner of the universe. There are no hordes of fledgling Pokémon Masters like Ash Ketchum (protagonist of the immortal Pokémon animated series) crowding around street art or monuments, laughing about things like Pidgeys and PokéGyms. Looking at your smartphone screen, there is no map crowded with landmarks and Lure Modules. There is no one around you, and if there was, the map would appear mostly empty—just wide open spaces occasionally disrupted by a lonely equestrian statue that dispenses Poké Balls. Playing Pokémon Go is nearly impossible out in the sticks.