From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,FREEMAIL_FROM autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Thread: 103376,c9d5fc258548b22a X-Google-NewGroupId: yes X-Google-Attributes: gida07f3367d7,domainid0,public,usenet X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit Path: g2news2.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!news2.glorb.com!news-xxxfer.readnews.com!news-out.readnews.com!postnews3.readnews.com!postbox2.readnews.com!not-for-mail Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2011 15:08:23 -0500 From: Hyman Rosen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.14) Gecko/20110221 Thunderbird/3.1.8 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: How do I write directly to a memory address? References: <67063a5b-f588-45ea-bf22-ca4ba0196ee6@l11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com> <4d4c232a$0$28967$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <4D4D6506.50909@obry.net> <4d50095f$0$22393$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <4d6d56c4$0$11509$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <16u9ka51wbukr$.1fj2sb73j9rv6.dlg@40tude.net> <4d6d627b$0$11509$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <74986d0a-0d5b-4396-8c77-adff72e870a2@d26g2000prn.googlegroups.com> <4d6eafc7$0$17913$a8266bb1@postbox2.readnews.com> <4d6eb309$0$17913$a8266bb1@postbox2.readnews.com> <4d6ed212$0$17960$a8266bb1@postbox2.readnews.com> <8985b302-96b8-4f22-aa4d-d64945047f90@r4g2000prm.googlegroups.com> <4d6ee8e2$0$14912$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <4d6f2fcb$0$14547$882e7ee2@usenet-news.net> <13gwfl525mu1u.12yk6sh24m6ug.dlg@40tude.net> <4d6fd539$0$17927$a8266bb1@postbox2.readnews.com> <105nd71xwbeue$.w1crnwerweta.dlg@40tude.net> In-Reply-To: <105nd71xwbeue$.w1crnwerweta.dlg@40tude.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <4d6ff539$0$17926$a8266bb1@postbox2.readnews.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 198.186.190.52 X-Trace: 1299182905 postbox2.readnews.com 17926 198.186.190.52:43835 Xref: g2news2.google.com comp.lang.ada:18742 Date: 2011-03-03T15:08:23-05:00 List-Id: On 3/3/2011 1:32 PM, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > Now I wonder if you ever used DB, because I am using them on daily basis. Yes, also on a daily basis, with symmetric four-way replication to sites around the world. We use Sybase and Oracle. >> This is certainly not universally true. Consumer applications such >> as games are reviewed upon release and the presence of errors can >> destroy sales and ruin a company > > When you bought a game last time? Was it Angry Birds? (:-)) What's wrong with Angry Birds? I've bought Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and various others. I also own a variety of games on the Nintendo DS and Wii. Both of those systems do not allow games to be patched, so the initial version is the only version. > No game is usable before the patch 1.2. The game must be rolled out > to a certain event, e.g. Christmas and nobody would mind if it crashes. Certainly the former is false for unpatchable console games. And certainly release date pressure causes games to be released containing errors, but those are errors are unwanted and absolutely can destroy a game's sales and the company that created it. There are any number of such infamous debacles. However, customers are in fact tolerant of errors when they do not impact the entire experience too severely, and hitting release dates is important as well - a company cannot make money on a game if it is not being sold. So a company must find a balance. > Vendors cut games into pieces in order to sell them as DLCs. Of what relevance is that? > For more than 10 years I saw no game with a usable UI. I found Dragon Age: Origins to be perfectly usable. > The most exciting is the saga of 3rd mouse button. Mouses have no 2 > button for about 20 years. Nevertheless each game maps something vital > to the non-existent button. Huh? > Less than a half of games can survive Alt-tab. Many games play perfectly well inside a window instead of full screen. > None have normal saving. 20 years ago Doom I had saving, behold 20 > years of steady progress. How a game saves is a gameplay design decision. It has nothing to do with software design. Mass Effect and Dragon Age have auto saving, quick saving bound to a function key, and ordinary menu-based saving at any point except during combat (deliberately). > Graphics is way worse than a cheap PC accelerator can deliver. Huh? I mostly play on a PC. But the more advanced consoles (Xbox 360 and PS3) have beautiful graphics. > That is because games are developed for consoles and nobody cares > for a fair PC port. Diablo, Starcraft, and World of Warcraft are all exclusively on PCs and have generated billions of dollars in revenue. > Original new games are non-existent. See Angry Birds. > There are endless remakes of endless sequels of corridor > shooters like CoD, so-called "RPG" where there is neither roles nor > playing, boring never changing simulators like ANNO and car races. Don't > even try to search for a good quest, there is none. Of course you will tell > me that this is what customers wanted... It is the same as for Hollywood movies. The expense involved in their creation leads to a very risk-averse design philosophy. You might want to read Mark Rosewater's game design articles on Magic the Gathering He worked as a writer on the TV show Roseanne before that, and one of his most compelling insights is that the best way to sell a new thing is to say that "it is just like this, except for that" because people want both the known and the new. Then every once in a while a pioneer invents something genuinely new and popular, and that becomes the new known from which derivatives can be cloned. But in any case, the originality of game design and the quality of user interface design is not especially related to the design of the software. Indeed, here on c.l.a. we often see people thinking that it would be a good idea to write a browser in Ada, or a web server in Ada, or an operating system in Ada. > Sure, Windows, Visual Studio, MS-Office are all bought because their > excellent new features... Yes, in fact. Certainly Visual Studio is upgraded with support for new languages (C#, F#) and systems (.net). Windows and Office are supported by Microsoft with free patch downloads, so it is not necessary to buy new versions just to get defects fixed. In fact, I expect that most people just have whatever version of Windows their computer came with, and whatever version of Office they first bought.