Parallel to the changes that we made in how the Bungie Timeline works, letting you search, filter and sort entries according to different criteria, we've now revamped the entire user profile system. Among other things, this allows us to bring back the Gamertag Database with much better features than before.
Eastbeast314 posted up links from Let's Kill Dave to the PPT presentations at this year's GDC, as offered by Microsoft. The Graphics Track (caution, direct link to large file!) includes a portion called "HDR The Bungie Way" about HDR lighting.
As of now, Rampancy.net is running on the latest and greatest stable version of the Drupal content management system, Drupal 4.7. This version has been out for some time, but just now supports all the contributed modules the site needs to run. Some features (like the gamertag database) are offline for the moment but should be back soon.
If you see any errors, drop me a line at narcogen@rampancy.net.
Yesterday I responded to Ozymandias' reasons why he couldn't endorse modchipping for adding new functionality, such as that supported by the excellent Xbox Media Center software, because it would harm Microsoft's business model, in which they subsidize the hardware and depend on you buying software and accessories. The assumption here is that every hacker who uses his Xbox for running Linux and XBMC spends less time gaming and buys fewer games. The real allegation there, of course, is that all hackers are really interested in is pirating games.
Ozymandias listed one other reason he thought someone might want to modchip an Xbox, and, not surprisingly, he doesn't condone this one, either.
Click "read more" below from the front page for the entire article.
Yesterday I mentioned Ozymandias' blog entry where he lists several reasons why an Xbox owner might want to modchip his console, as well as why he, in his own personal opinion, apart from being a Microsoft employee, could not approve of such actions.
The first was fairly clean-cut: because it enables piracy. Fair enough. Ozymandias then went a bit off the deep end on the piracy issue, which I commented on yesterday.
Another reason he says an owner might want to install a modchip would be to run other kinds of non-piracy related code on the Xbox. Some people just want to run Linux on an Xbox for the heck of it. Far more people are interested in the free Xbox Media Center software, which makes the media center features of even the newer Xbox 360, coupled with Windows Media Center edition, look like a black and white television with rabbit aerials.
Ozymandias' objection to the homebrew crowd is that it breaks Microsoft's business model. Poor Microsoft!
Click "read more" below from the front page for the entire article.
A lot of things about the console that would become the Xbox 360 were not clear before it was released.
Would it be backwards compatible-- yes or no? The answer ended up being... sort of.
At first glance, this story probably will inspire a lot of "duh, so what" responses. After all, modchips are used to do lots of things to your Xbox console, nearly all of which Microsoft doesn't want you to do.
They can let you play illegally copied games. They can let you modify your Xbox in ways that permit cheating on Xbox Live (although for the most part it can't stop them from detecting you). It can also let you run unrelated software on your Xbox, such as the Linux operating system, turning it into a codec-agnostic media player or even a budget PC. Neither of those things generate additional post-sale revenue to Microsoft, and some even make the company look bad (hee, hee! Linux on an Xbox!) or could draw the ire of organizations like the RIAA towards Microsoft if they are seen as contributing to infringement by, say, supporting codecs like DivX which are alleged to be used primarily for pirating video.
So what's not surprising is Ozymandias' latest blog entry where he details the reasons why Xbox owners might mod their box and the reasons why he can't "condone" it. He completely bypasses the cheating issue and never once mentions Xbox Live, so I'll also leave that mostly out of this. He does propose three reasons why he can imagine someone might mod an Xbox:
Nobody reasonable is going to argue that easy access to pirated games is bad for Microsoft, bad for the platform, and bad for deveopers. No one is going to expect Microsoft to condone using a modchip for this purpose.
Where this goes wrong is when Ozymandias decides he needs to pile on the piracy issue and make a lot of the same bogus generalizations that have been thrown around for the better part of two and a half decades now.
Click "read more" below for the entire article.
There's been a flurry of activity around the backwards compatibility feature of the Xbox 360 lately. Clearly, this has been a tough feature for Microsoft to make, maintain, and to promote. Just under 250 original Xbox games are compatible with the Xbox 360, which is less than a third of all the games available.
Larry 'Major Nelson' Hyrb has confirmed on his blog recent rumors that the Xbox 360 is getting a major update over Xbox Live sometime soon, perhaps next week. New features include background downloading and booting directly to the dashboard. More details will be in his podcast this Sunday.
Major Nelson has posted a list of the top ten High Definition video downloads on Xbox Live during E3.
The winner?
Do you have to ask?
Top spot went to the Halo 3 game trailer. Check Major Nelson's blog for the entire list.
Two separate articles on the port of Halo 2 to Windows Vista today. Kevin Unangst (no jokes please) talks to GamePro. Word is that Halo 2 for Vista will come out a bit after the OS' release, currently slated for early in 2007, and that the game most likely will not be cross-platform compatible with Halo 2 on the Xbox, as it would require changes on the Xbox version to work.
Early in Stubbs the Zombie, the game's eponymous street-shambler is captured by the police and taunted by Chief Masters, who wonders if "there'll be anything left to dissect" for Professor Wye.
Well, it seems there was.
Alex "The Man" Seropian pulled out the scalpel and put Stubbs and its creator Wideload Games under the knife at GDC, talking about what worked and what didn't work with their subcontractor-heavy business model:
Of course, in about the same span of time there was actually real, tangible, factual information to be had:
The latest system upgrade at this point is mostly completed, and the updated version is now "live" on the site. At the moment most of the old features should "just work" although there may be some occasional hiccups while the search index and caches rebuild themselves. You may click a link only to get a completely blank page; hit reload a couple of times and the problem should go away. If that one persists we'll definitely be looking at it.