Music that speaks nothing about the where, only the why. Certain environments have certain styles attached to them that make you think about those environments by just listening to the piece. Purely moody music makes you think about emotions and events but not places.

You could ban open proxies. I'm not sure about the details but I know Quakenet (IRC network) somehow checks if a client is connecting via proxy. I'm guessing the server attempts to use the proxy itself, and if it succeeds, it bans it.

For this thread, there is just supposed to be generic, strict mood pieces. Like a sad theme, a creepy theme, a happy theme, etc.

So purely moody music? No environmental themes at all?

Another stupid tradition I want no part in.

Did you even bother to look at the list? Most of them are free soundfonts.

I don't really understand what you mean; All game music is of a certain atmosphere/mood of the area it's meant for.

You ought to get yourself some new instruments, the FL Studio defaults suck. There's some over here.

Midi sounds like crap. If you wanna go that route, go with modules instead.

I never understood garbage collectors in the first place. What's wrong with manually releasing stuff when it's not needed? Especially with games where there are very specific events that release resources (changing levels, etc.).

I would say, the sheer complexity of implementing a game in every technical detail.  Any one component isn't all that bad, but getting a game-embedded GUI has been a nightmare (which is not done, only deferred)

Oh man I've been postponing writing my GUI system forever. It's just such a boring necessity.

There are the 2xsai-style methods, for example

They are not resolution independent, they only work up to 2 or 3 times larger.

Or you could automatically convert to a diffusion curves representation ala http://artis.imag.fr/Publications/2008/OBWBTS08/ first, and render with diffusion curves

Note the title at the top: "Diffusion Curves: A Vector Representation for Smooth-Shaded Images"

It's not a technique to make raster images resolution independent, but rather a vector graphics implementation. Sure you can convert a raster image with it, but you might as well just start drawing with vectors from the get-go.

They had an interesting solution over on gamedev:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/snippets/features/dx3d2dIndieRes/
I haven't tried it myself, but it looks very interesting.

That's just stretching it up? Hardly quality.

It's not the cost of approximating curves, it's the amount of vertices required to build really detailed curves at high resolutions.

If the person is running such high resolutions, I would expect him to have the GPU to back it up. And you can always decrease the quality if it's too much for your system to handle.

Hmm, I don't think fractals count as vectors.  If you want to be technical (and it sounds like you do?) then I would say you just need any procedural way of generating detail, which implies a much larger domain of techniques than 'vectors' (at least in how I use the word!).

I was wondering about that myself. But it's not really possible to procedurally generate sprites - Textures maybe, but textures have fractal elements - Sprites don't. So although you can procedurally add detail to a vector sprite, you can't outright generate one.

That's not resolution independence! Using enough triangles to make a shape bounded by Bezier curves look smooth on computer monitors isn't enough! Output to a billboard display or a bank of monitors, say, and the approximation is obvious and an eyesore. This may seem a pedantic distinction, but it shows your solution is not different in kind from the downscaling of very large textures.

I already told you that approximating Bezier curves during run-time isn't all that expensive. If you know the exact zoom levels of the game you could even do it during load-time, problem solved, resolution independence achieved.

The Strategical CopyCat.

Not very flattering but I guess it's fairly accurate. I feel some of the questions were too binary though, I also have a lot of new and unique ideas in addition to the improvement of existing concepts, usually in fused form.

Yes, different is bad. I think Starcraft decided to go for efficient, as opposed to intuitive. It allows for a greater degree of skill, but at the cost of a steeper learning curve. So it is bad in at least one way.

"Different is bad" is a very dangerous and short-sighted stance. This is exactly the way of thinking that prevents us from switching to more efficient energy sources, for example. Tradition is evil and only serves to slow progress down. I know new and different things can seem frightening or even threatening but we, as a civilization, cannot evolve unless we are willing to change.

I cannot comprehend how you can call hotkeys by index efficient. Are you even aware that the standard QWERTY keyboard isn't the most efficient layout to begin with?

You are still changing that "APM resource", as you might or might not have put it.

APM is not a resource, you're thinking about attention, but that's not affected by the interface to such degree. I'm not arguing that it won't change the game though, only that I doubt it changes it as much as you think.

It holds for StarCraft too. Changing the interface changes the game. If you replaced the interface with something that'd let you get a higher APM, then that'd change the game. You'd push buttons differently, the strategic choices you'd be making would be different, etc.

You say that like different is bad.

I also think you're overestimating the impact of such change. Fact is we'll never know exactly how much it would change things, so it's pointless to draw speculative conclusions.

modified "game of life"

It's termed "cellular automata".

[best]

It's going from that to "all games should have the same interface" or whatever that is ridiculous.

What's so ridiculous about it? It's not about having the same interface as much as it is about having the best interface. It just happens that WASD is exactly that (again, waiting to hear about those alternatives) for both genres.

When you look at the pathfinding algorithms, you quickly realize that they're simply ridiculous. My processor (1.6 Pentium 4) and Dwarf Fortress prove that it's not that awfully expensive to have at least semi-usable pathfinding instead of... well, this. So why are we still using this crap? If you can argue for bad pathfinding in a remotely convincing fashion then I will gladly erase this entire post. Seriously.

Well, Dwarf Fortress is tile-based, and has a pretty coarse grid at that. And I don't think pathfinding is the problem... At least, in every game after StarCraft I've played, units have always pathfinded pretty decently. I'd argue that the AI is the problem - The pathfinding works, it's just that it doesn't take anything else but the terrain into account.

Rushing is bad in my mind, and there's nothing that can change that. I think I have a good game plan and I'm up to my ears in zerglings before I can even build my defenses. One time it happened before I even had enough minerals to build a barracks. This is bad. I solved the problem (and the problem of uninspired mission objectives) by introducing a mechanic called Atrocity and another mechanic called Domain. These two go together like Yin and Yang, respectively.

I don't see anything wrong with rushing. It's just the result of basic game mechanics where being aggressive pays off. If you really don't want rushing, at least don't prevent it with such arbitrary rules... Just simply make it hard to attack and easy to defend at the beginning. In Supreme Commander, for example, your commander unit is very powerful, which prevents anyone from rushing until they've produced enough firepower later into the game. But your commander is also slow, and the only unit that can build in the beginning, so you can't attack with your commander either or you'll fall behind in economy.

The reason you got zerged before you even had a barracks was because you were too slow. This is the result of the bad interface we've discussed, and could be easily fixed in StarCraft by:

• Pausing the game for a few seconds before it begins, while being able to give orders
  
• Allowing you to queue up units even if you don't have the resources yet
• Allowing you to give orders to units that are still in production
• Allowing you to put down buildings even if you don't have the resources yet

These would eliminate the gap between players with uber-micro and players without.

I'm with Edmund. I don't really care. People do a lot more stupid things than drugs, like believe in god. 99% of the population is incomprehensibly different from me, so it's kind of pointless to care what they do, as long as I can go about my hacking undisturbed.

I suppose I'm pro legalizing drugs, just because it may have scientific implications in medicine and such.