Was the original MOO3 concept better?

[13Matt13]

No, you don't

Point out one reasonable rebuttal to our position thats been given. And "knob-licker" doesnt count.

Terminating an overbudget, out of control project, and absorbing all of the costs, plus getting bad press for failing to produce anything on an already PR-hyped project is far worse than getting to market in some form, and recovering some of my costs and being able to at least attempt damage control from the PR aspect.

The point is that it should never have gotten to that point. It did b/c they canned the 2 people who were providing a unified design concept, whom TCO seems hell-bent on blaming.

Alan's a long time graphics guy who milked contacts he made on the software development seminar circuit, which is crowded with academics. He used to live just up the road from me, and was a regular at the San Diego 3D Studio user group meetings, which is where I first met him a decade ago. So I know about his background and his experience. Alan's a nice guy, and has a great graphics track record, but his freelance graphic skills and being around the industry and seminar circuit translate a lot better on a CV for a cutesie academic position than they do in the real world which is constrained by finances and outside forces (publishers, market, etc.

If you cant attack the argument, attack the man. Age-old, but still not very effective, tactic.

Actually, George and I are engineers by background too, but we both learned to read and stop scratching ourselves inappropriately in public, so we moved up past the knuckledragger stage to where things are actually done.

Wow, more personal attacks. Good mod conduct there!

You're getting off with being a more than a bit pissy yourself.

Ive broken no rule. Its not my fault the other position is indefensible. Get DanQ or someone in here and we'll see which side is guilty of a more serious infraction.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by DIH49
b. Please, for all that is holy, remember that spelling is your friend. and an extra period or comma or three wouldn't hurt either.

That has come up before but I guess you are new. He is disabled and doing a great job all things considered.

[CharlesBHoff]

Buying those Sams book on programing with the CD disk with
the computer langauge like C , C++ and other teach you some basic programming skill where you see that programming is than art form and there are limit to what can be done.

[DIH49]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


No, you don't.

I, like matt, would love to see just ONE logic-based rebuttle

This from the guy who used a sandbox as an analogy?

Let it never be said that i am not a great lover of irony. See, you just committed ANOTHER fallacy. The one i previously mentioned in fact: the Ad Hominem, ie the Personal Attack. In case it was missed the first time, i will restate the reason to this line being fallacious. A claimant's character has no bearing on the veracity of his claim.

That has come up before but I guess you are new. He is disabled and doing a great job all things considered.

ah, i see. in that case i withdraw and apologize for my earlier comment.

[Vince278]

I've always been a fan of Turbo Pascal and Borland's Pascal (now known as Delphi). More intuitive and just as versatile as C++.

[AminMaalouf]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat

but those games don't get out to the marketplace.

(Popular) art markets are strange places. There is a movie from Woody Allen about a playwriter and a gangster. As the things developed the gangster shows to be a talented writer and at some point he writes an unfinished play for his friend.

Woody Allen said in an interview he believes talents were by nature. He might be right or wrong, and the example offers no real parallel to moo3 but it seems to me we should keep things open, at least we should try; otherwise we end up playing neither civ nor moo but such fantastic card games which are included in every new operation system.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by 13Matt13
The point is that it should never have gotten to that point. It did b/c they canned the 2 people who were providing a unified design concept, whom TCO seems hell-bent on blaming.

So, from your privileged position as an insider, things were going absolutely hunky-dory when out of the blue these clueless management

If you cant attack the argument, attack the man. Age-old, but still not very effective, tactic.

You're not big on consistency are you? You play the "Alan is a god, what have you ever done" (attack the man by praising another man, never mind the argument), and when it gets turned back on you, you duck it by playing little debate society labeling games.

Wow, more personal attacks. Good mod conduct there!

Personal attacks? Are you the self-appointed spokesman for all engineer types now? Well, here's one directed at you, just so you can make sure. You're a hypocrite and a troll. You ***** about my characterization of engineers, which was in response to your slagging off "business majors" and managers. Gee, consistent there, aren't we?

Ive broken no rule. Its not my fault the other position is indefensible. Get DanQ or someone in here and we'll see which side is guilty of a more serious infraction.

It doesn't matter whether you broke a rule or not. You're snide, play little semantic games, duck issues and play debate games, then accuse others of the same. Trolls who play sweet and innocent then hit the complain to moderator link when they don't like how someone responds to their attitude don't get their complaints taken very seriously.

[DIH49]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


So, from your privileged position as an insider, things were going absolutely hunky-dory when out of the blue these clueless management

a. matt actually did have a pretty privileged position as being there from the beginning, and knowing most of the insiders.

b. i suggest proofreading, as i'm sure you wanted to say more than what you did.

Personal attacks? Are you the self-appointed spokesman for all engineer types now? Well, here's one directed at you, just so you can make sure. You're a hypocrite and a troll. You ***** about my characterization of engineers, which was in response to your slagging off "business majors" and managers. Gee, consistent there, aren't we?

a. it's fairly well known that buisness major is the least involved of all majors. that's not an insult, just an observation of the general beliefs of society.

b. you've just done ANOTHER fallacy. this is getting ridiculous. the fallacy this time around is called the Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. it works like this:

1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X.
3. Therefore X is false.

now this is a fallacy much the same reason the Ad Hominem proper is: that a person makes inconsistent claims does not make any particular claim he makes false. if a murderer tells you it's illegal to kill people, he's right even though he's done it himself.

It doesn't matter whether you broke a rule or not. You're snide, play little semantic games, duck issues and play debate games, then accuse others of the same. Trolls who play sweet and innocent then hit the complain to moderator link when they don't like how someone responds to their attitude don't get their complaints taken very seriously.

a. i would say that whether or not matt broke a rule does in fact, matter quite a bit.

b. ad hominem again.

c. as with all people who say the other dodges issues, you must meerly show the issue he's dodged, and i've no doubt he'll answer it.

d. if a troll plays sweet and innocent, he's not a troll by definition. Oh, and i'm a little shocked that people are allowed to break the rules in response to trolls. that's tantamount to saying if one person breaks the law it is immediately okay for all others near one to break the law as well.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DIH49


I, like matt, would love to see just ONE logic-based rebuttle

How about this one:

Originally posted by 13Matt13
RRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHTTTTTTTTT.

You must work for Infogrames. Nice to meet you. Where can I get some of what bottle youve been hitting?

Master of debating style there, isn't it? I'm impressed.

StormHOUND. And you DO know that they basically WERE the project, right?

Serious argument there, no fanboyism at all.

There's no rebuttal to an opinion. What has been supplied is a bunch of "praise Alan" and assumptions based on second hand (at least) accounts and some speculation as to how the original project went by the boards. Unless you think what has been released through the game press and forums is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which would be the first for the industry.

Present an argument, instead of opinions, and maybe there's something to rebut. Simply regurgitating "everything was fine until they canned Alan, (he rulez) then the other guys screwed it up" is not an argument.

Present an intelligent argument that acknowledges the fairly well known business realities of commercial software development in general, and commercial game development in particular, then you will have something either worth agreeing with, or worth the effort of rebuttal.

Let it never be said that i am not a great lover of irony. See, you just committed ANOTHER fallacy. The one i previously mentioned in fact: the Ad Hominem, ie the Personal Attack. In case it was missed the first time, i will restate the reason to this line being fallacious. A claimant's character has no bearing on the veracity of his claim.

You're so I could just reach out and pinch your little cheeky and ruffle your hair.

edit: and because i'm reasonably sure this will be nit-picked (not that it's likely i will come back and look, but for form's sake...)

I knew you'd be back to delight us all with more of your snide non-responses the moment you posted that.

The first and greatest fallacy of all is to avoid responding by doing nothing but accusing the other party of committing a fallacy.

I gave two alternatives. If you wanted to demonstrate a real fallacy, you could explain additional alternatives, and demonstrate they were equally viable and why this was so. Then the "fallacy" would be self-evident, and you wouldn't need to trumpet it. That would take real knowledge and effort, so why do that, when you can show your master debater skills and edumacate us all, naturally illustrating your examples with things like 1+1=4 and 1+1=12. Gee, you are a master debater.


Nice use of words in this post though. Unfortunately, comprehension is a bit selective. Let's dispose of the sandbox another way, shall we? "Building a sandbox" is a ridiculously poor analogy for a complex commercial software design/development process involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, a few dozen people, competing commercial interests (publishers, financiers, developers, etc.). It's so ridiculous, that it's not worth taking seriously. I didn't make any reference to character, I simply laughed at someone making a ridiculous analogy himself, then complaining about the quality of another party's analogy. Now, he could be an intelligent person who's just trolling, or a fanboy, or simply ignorant, or any of a number of things, not all of which are bad. I didn't speculate as to character or intention at all, I just pointed out the inconsistency of making absurd analogies, then criticizing someone else for purportedly doing the same thing.

ah, i see. in that case i withdraw and apologize for my earlier comment.

Yeah, Charles is hard to understand until you get used to him, but he is an intelligent guy with some good thoughts, who has a neurological problem that makes it hard for him to structurally put together sentences.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by DIH49
a. it's fairly well known that buisness major is the least involved of all majors. that's not an insult, just an observation of the general beliefs of society.

You can read. Probably at least as well as you can play word games. The insult is in the less than subtle implication that someone with "management experience" is a "business major" who thus doesn't know anything, yadda yadda blah blah.

b. you've just done ANOTHER fallacy. this is getting ridiculous. the fallacy this time around is called the Ad Hominem Tu Quoque. it works like this:

You seem obsessed here. It does get you out of substantive response to anything, though, doesn't it?

Let's simplify all the BS high school debating society label games, and reduce it to: one troll deserves another, and nothing more than another. How's that?

a. i would say that whether or not matt broke a rule does in fact, matter quite a bit.

What you would say doesn't matter as far as moderation. If someone trolls and insults, gets it back in return (albeit a bit escalated), and then whines to the mods, I'm not interested. If someone is attacked or insulted out of the blue, for no reason, then it's a different story.

"Breaking a rule" is a subset of overall conduct.

b. ad hominem again.

This is not a debating club, BTW. I'm giving the poster in question my opinion (toned down) of his conduct, as an explanation for why I'm really not interested in his current complaint about another poster's conduct in response.

d. if a troll plays sweet and innocent, he's not a troll by definition.

Most trolls don't admit it mid troll.

Oh, and i'm a little shocked that people are allowed to break the rules in response to trolls. that's tantamount to saying if one person breaks the law it is immediately okay for all others near one to break the law as well.

This is a private forum. There is no "law" here, only the owners rules. If someone is insulting, and gets insulted back, not too far out of proportion, I'm not interested.

[CharlesBHoff]

When I worked in a wharehouse every summer we dread the
summer internship from Harford bussien MBA program. First alot of then where know it all snob who didnot want to know
how a wharehouse work. They think wharehouse are outdated. Some where unable to do simple invertory check at all. How many peises of part number ######## do we have in actural stock ingoreing what the computer is saying we should have. Afew where nice to work with and want to learn how than wharehouse work.

Most MBA only learn how to take over than other companies and theory from textbook.

Afew time some highter up was saying we are those have
100,000 of part # &&&&&&&& in stock and when I chech
we have zero of part # &&&&&&&& in stock then I sent than half or whole day going all round the wharehouse cheching over pime box and overstock looking for then. Then they have six seperate people tell then we donot have it and they donot believe us untril they come down and find out we have zero part of the part number %%%%%%%%.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by AminMaalouf
(Popular) art markets are strange places. There is a movie from Woody Allen about a playwriter and a gangster. As the things developed the gangster shows to be a talented writer and at some point he writes an unfinished play for his friend.

Woody Allen said in an interview he believes talents were by nature. He might be right or wrong, and the example offers no real parallel to moo3 but it seems to me we should keep things open, at least we should try; otherwise we end up playing neither civ nor moo but such fantastic card games which are included in every new operation system.

The intersection of art (or in this case, games) and the marketplace is problematic for both consumers and developers.

I was a bit surprised to find (by accident) that people are still actively modding Panzer General II, and taking it beyond the original scope. Active modding communities are one way of adding to the quality of a game, but that's totally dependent on the level of modding support built into the game.

There's people starting FreeMOO (or whatever it's called), and Freeciv was kind of fun, but open source / freeware efforts can't compete in most genres.

Stars! was a big surprise in terms of how it was developed, and how successful it was, but when the same team tried to due a full on, commercial grade sequel, they couldn't get a (from their perspective) good enough publishing or venture capital deal, so the sequel concept slowly died, although it was outstanding for the time. Now, it's two years dormant, so the chances of resuscitation are almost nonexistant.

I haven't checked out RoN, but BHG has been around what, almost four years now, to roll out their debut product? Not all of that was in design, of course, but time you're trying to run a business or get venture capital is time you can't spend designing.

The state of game design and capability is such that we demand a lot, technically, aesthetically, and in replayability, but at the same time, it is increasingly difficult and expensive to produce that. I remember when PC games shipped on single 5 1/4 inch floppies, when the C64 was the game platform of choice, and when 4 color CGA was radically cool. There are two huge differences since then that affect everything we get, and the games that we'll never get (and may never want). First, there's an extensive legacy of great games, so it's virtually impossible to develop something that's so cool you stay up two full days and skip work or school to play it when it comes out. The original Pirates!, Railroad Tycoon, Civ, some of the original SSI games had that effect, because it was the first time you'd seen anything like it. The other issue is the overall complexity - even though you can standardize on Windows, GDI+ and DX, the demand for features and amount of hardware capability out there is huge.

People will keep trying to bring games to market so we're not all condemned to Freecell evermore, but the failure rate and disappointment rate is going to always be pretty high.

[Vince278]

I don't know about anyone else but my head hurts from reading whats been posted over the past hour or so.

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
You're so I could just reach out and pinch your little cheeky and ruffle your hair.

Thats got to be the nicest rebuttal I've ever heard.

[CharlesBHoff]

Originally posted by Vince278

I don't know about anyone else but my head hurts from reading whats been posted over the past hour or so.





Thats got to be the nicest rebuttal I've ever heard.

I hope I didnot offense anyone as I did work in many of than wharehouse and even for IRS for 3 year wearing than Hawaian shirt with than half nake lady on the back of it with her breast bare.

[Vince278]

Originally posted by CharlesBHoff
I hope I didnot offense anyone as I did work in many of than wharehouse and even for IRS for 3 year wearing than Hawaian shirt with than half nake lady on the back of it with her breast bare.

No, I was referring to the debate between MichaeltheGreat and DIH49. But I must admit you now have me curious about that Hawaiian shirt.