"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:op.wbzdtbo0eav7ka at localhost.localdomain...
> On Fri, 30 Mar 2012 04:21:12 -0400, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
>
>> "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message
>> news:jl3n59$qf7$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>
>>> Of course, I don't expect software to be as super-fine-tuned as it was
>>> on,
>>> say, the Apple 2 or Atari 2600. There *is* definitely some value in
>>> loosing a certain amount of performance to abstractions, up to a point.
>>> But we've blown way, way, WAAAY beyond that point.
>>>
>>> It's sickening how much gratuitous waste there is in a lot of "modern"
>>> software, and really for not much benefit, as D proves.
>
> 100% agree. There has been a huge trend in software to disregard
> performance because "the hardware will take care of it." Interestingly
> enough though, performance still turns heads :) That is, when faced with
> two applications that do the same thing, but one is twice as fast, most
> people will choose (and probably pay more for) the faster one.
>
Yup. And there's *also* still the issues of:
- Saving your user money on hardware.
- **Battery-Fucking-Life**
- Noise. All that extra processing produces more heat, thus requiring more
cooling and, often times, more fan noise.
- Environmentalism. All that useless processing causes the hardware to suck
up more electricity, and that means power plants burning more dino-fuel and
producing more nuclear waste.
- Environmentalism again: Less need for hardware upgrades means less
hardware in landfills.
>> Desktops are the worst offenders, and paricularly WinXP.
>
> Windows 7 is vastly better at both startup and shutdown than WinXP.
Yea, like I said, "particularly WinXP" ;)
>> On my old (super-low-power) NES, you could hit the power button,
>> and within one second you were at the title screen.
>
> You must have had a different version of NES. The process to start mine
> up was not nearly as fast. It went something like this:
>
> 1. Insert cartridge, push down cartridge, power on. (I cite this as one
> step because it became automatic to do this in 2 seconds)
> 2. Screen with horribly large pixellated game appears.
> 3. Power off, pull out cartridge.
> 4. Blow in bottom of cartridge, even though the pins are clean and free of
> dust (did this actually ever do anything?)
> 5. Re-insert cartridge, this time more firmly, push down deliberately to
> make sure game locks into place
> 6. Power on, normal screen comes up, push start button.
> 7. Play for about 2 minutes, game hangs with single audio tone.
> 8. Bang hand on top of NES to show it you mean business. Sometimes it
> will whimper back to playing mode.
> 9. After second hang, attempt to press reset button about 15 times.
> Peanut-sized pixels return.
> 10. Power off, remove catridge, repeat blowing procedure from step 4, but
> with slower more deliberate breath. Try a blowing pattern, like quick
> bursty blows in various locations. Insert cartidge even MORE firmly.
> Jiggle cartridge a bit to make sure the NES is aware there is a valid game
> for it to consume.
> 11. Lower cartridge, power on. Play game for another 5 minutes.
> 12. After next hang, turn power off, and watch cartoons.
>
Heh, good point :)
It didn't happen with brand new systems/carts though, it took awhile for
them to corrode and for the pins to warp. But yea, I'd actually forgotten
about that.
>> Some of that stuff isn't even a technical matter at all, but deliberate
>> design: Who the hell decided we need twenty company logos (fully
>> animated,
>> one at a time), then 10+ minutes of exposition and building "atmosphere",
>> followed by half an hour of (typically patronizing) tutorials before
>> actually getting to the real gameplay? Zelda Skyward Sword is the worst
>> offender, it literally takes *hours* to get past all the initial
>> exposition,
>> tutorials and shit into the real core of the game (I honestly started
>> wondering if there even *was* a game - "Did I pick up a Harry Potter
>> movie
>> by mistake?"). The original Zelda, you could get from power off to the
>> meat
>> of the gameplay in literally seconds. Game devs won't let you do that
>> now:
>> They've gotta show off their cinematography so they can get hired by
>> Pixar,
>> where they *really* wanted to be all along. (Meh, Dreamworks was always
>> better anyway ;) )
>
> When I bought the new Wii motion plus (that gives better sensitivity) with
> Wii Sports Resort, the first time you play, it makes you watch 8 minutes
> of instructional video on how to use your Wii motion plus. I thought at
> the time "Wow, that was a bit long, but I guess I only have to do it
> once." Then I went to my sister-in-law's house, and wanted to show her
> the game. This was *her* Wii's first time playing the game, so again, I
> had to watch the damn video (no way to skip). It happened a third time on
> my parents' Wii, and I was thinking "Man, this was a *bad* design
> decision".
>
Uh-huh. I've actually played a lot of Wii Sports Resort. I honestly can't
believe how much I ended up liking parts of it. I normally can't stand
"casual" games. I can't stand Miis (got sick of them within a year of the
Wii first coming out) I can't stand the non-disableable elevator music in
that game. And there are a lot of stinker games in Sports Resort (Cycling
anyone? Didn't think so) But I've played so much of the Bowling and Frisbee
Golf it's ridiculous. The Archery, Golf, Swordfighting, and Island Flyby are
surprisingly good, too. (The rest is largely forgettable, though.)
But yea, I really have gotten sick of Nintendo's bullshit:
- All their core IPs are getting systematically dumbed down.
- They never let you skip cutscenes, unless the game save says it's already
shown you it...which proves they're pulling that unskippable shit
*deliberately*. Truly moronic design. I don't even watch them, I just switch
to a TV channel, or turn the TV off and then come back later.
- The system menu "music" that never ends.
- The endless stream of nanny health screens. There's literally *two or
three* of them *every* time you turn on the system to play.
- Many game saves are *blocked* from being backed up to SD or even taken to
a friend's system.
- And oh yea, you're not allow to play imports, or write software or run
non-official code on a device you *legitimately own*.
Shit, they're actually *worse* than *Apple*, for fuck's sake! How the hell
is that even possible?
All that crap is why I decided "Fuck you, Nintendo" and softmodded the
goddamn thing. Thanks to things like Priiloader, a couple USB loader apps,
Homebrew Channel and Homebrew Browser:
- I no longer have the initial startup health screen.
- I no longer have to listen to that "music" in the system menu which got
painfully irritating after the first *year* of listening to it.
- I can do WTF I want with game saves.
- I can play imports. Fuck region coding.
- I can keep all my games on a USB HDD, so I:
* Don't have to worry about the discs getting damaged.
* OR the laser burning out (already became a problem on my XBox1, but
almost irrelevant now thanks to XBMC).
* OR swapping discs just to play something different (seriously, WTF is
this, 1995?).
* AND as a bonus, load times are now *much* faster.
- I can write software for it (Meh, if I ever had the time)
- I can play some very clever homebrew games like Sand Traps (
http://wiibrew.org/wiki/Sand_Traps )
Hail hackers, Fuck Nintendo's suits.
And fuck the DMCA - a completely illegitimate law and the *only* thing
making *any* of this illegal.
(Plus I can discover that a game is total crap *before* blowing fifty bucks
on it, instead of *after*...Not that I would do that...)