Rick

My concern was that you wanted to use BMax for the project. Was getting me nervous!

That is possible, although I would find it hard to believe anyone would have enough time to design and create an MMO and have time for other projects. Either way you don't miss any chance to take a jab at me do you

Bah, because he and I are working on a project together and I'm hoping he doesn't use BMax because I'm not a fan of it.

Bah, why are you using BMax?

Wow. It would be cheaper to just learn how to animate. Even with the little time I have I'd be more inclined to just learn animation. Even if it was crappy at least now you have new skill to work on and someday maybe you can charge 2K for your animations

You are thinking of area triggers. Is it doable in lua but in my mind currently has limitations. The body must be defined in the model you bring in, in order to for you to be able to get a collision method called. There currently is no way to get a collision method called in lua for bodies that you make in lua code. Which sucks.

This is another good question to raise. One of the most popular games on PC is the MMO. Are you required to now host your database servers and game servers on their network for this to work? Would MMO developer companies be willing to give up that freedom if it's required? Piracy is a big part of the appeal yet MMO games don't worry so much about that since there is a subscription to play the game. I can see the benefits to this, but I don't think what he's claiming is possible on the scale they are planning on. I have a hard time believing the amount of hardware required for this to work and all the things that need to go right on the network side would allow them to make a profit. I'll eat my words if it works, but so far we see all hype. Why isn't it out yet? My guess is it most likely only works correctly in large scale cities and their trying to figure out what to do about the rest of the US.

I don't think trying to hybrid that would even be worth the hassle. As we all know, a ping value isn't like a graphics card where you can put on the box, requires this model. A person's ping can fluctuate so much in a given session. It would be video game suicide to require a ping of 80 ms or less to play an online game. The best you can say is requires broadband, but even then many people will have over an 80ms ping. If you are making a PC game that requires any sort of fast twitch, client side prediction is required. There isn't much getting around that yet. Add on top of that a household network where other people are doing things at the same time or cable where you share the line and it opens up for a disaster. Every online game out today and the last 10 years, with client side prediction, can smoothly handle a ping up to 250. Requiring anything less than that, without the network infrastructure in place like we have today and well into the next 5-10 years, would be a step in the reverse direction and only shrink your user base.

A steady 80ms or less lag time is required for this to work. I have broadband and it's very rare in any online game I play that I maintain that rate. If at any time it goes above that you will feel it and it will throw your game off. Also, there are certain kinds of games that I play in windowed mode while surfing the web on my other screen. Is this common? Probably not, but how many people have a network in their home? If a friend or family member is doing anything else like watching videos or downloading music or anything, this could severely hurt this system. Plus with the broadband companies starting to be all pissed about the amount of bandwidth usage and some charging more for what is used in a month and given the current infrastructure I can't see this company being a success. I think it's a great idea and if anything maybe it'll help push for better broadband infrastructure but I'd say to early. Think of an anticipated MMO that has ever been released. This will have about that many or more online at the same time trying to play when it first comes out. These MMO games basically always crash and have so much down time the first week or 2. If that happens at all it'll be a bust. The people that had their doubts will leave and never look back and that would be deadly for this company. I think the only way they could make it is if they start small in select cities and restrict people to a certain radius in those cities until they can fix any stability issue that WILL come up. Then slowly expand over time. You don't want to piss off your entire user base instantly by having the servers crash right away which is almost a given. It just is. Not matter how much testing you do it's almost impossible to have enough hardware in place for the amount of load you'll get right away if you open it up to everyone. From a business stand point when you first open your doors for something like this you'll need more hardware than what you would need once you are settled in, simply because everyone will be using it when you open the doors. Once you are settled in the usage will be much more predictable. On a personal standpoint, I would try this if there were enough titles to keep me interested. If the first week or 2 is nothing but server downtime and frustration I would cancel and almost never look back.

I feel less connected with this new site design for some reason.

Thanks man. I'll upgrade some day I promise It's just my company purchased this one for me so free is hard to pass up.

Bummer. I still use 2005 because I have the pro version of it.

Wait...an African swallow or European?

We do this at work sometimes when someone asks just a weird random question that obviously no one would know. People often forget about google. I often love when my parents or older people wonder about something and then just say oh well, like there is no way they could find out. Hello!! It's called google.

Maybe it's because I'm a programmer professionally and as a hobby and I spend all day typing code, but I can't see this being useful for that at all.

Do you know if those SoundPool DVD's work with the free version?

This isn't a phone though. People know what phones are about. They need a phone. Everyone has a phone. Even the iPod. It's music. You can listen to music while you do a million other things. Plus all this stuff was small enough to fit in your pocket. But a media center, this size? I just don't see it selling like the iPhone or iPod. If the OS was more like a normal OS where you do everything a normal OS can do, then it might sell because it can act as a really cool business tool as well.

http://gizmodo.com/5365299/courier-first-details-of-microsofts-secret-tablet Wow. Now that's cool. It's not just a movie. It's an experience!

I'll wait for the MS version where it runs an OS to let me do whatever I want to do.

Sadly thought this will be a huge success from the fanboys. Steve Jobs is a genius. He invented the tablet PC 5 years to late.

The down side is it requires you to wear a turtle neck and drive a hybrid. How is this different than a tablet PC?

Just another monthly fee to drain your wallet. The entire world is a monthly fee.

This couldn't be more true. It matters little if you have the best widget in the world, if it's not presented well, it just won't get used. The life of Linux.

OK, just to give an update, I guess my DSL modem was acting as a router as well. So I turned it on bridge mode so just my Linksys would be where I have to forward the ports and now all is good.

OK, outside people can't connect either. I also noticed that I can't have people connect to the Chat server Josh did created. When people ping me I don't see it on Wireshark but that's watching my PC's nic card so if things were getting lost at my router I wouldn't see it. Is there any program where I can see what's hitting my router and see what it's doing?