wavey

Colors

This is an excellent paint program. Really simple, my daughters love it and it produces qquite different results to phidias. Drawing is pressure sensitive (controlling either transparency or line width). You can email the images to your email account via wi-fi.

Just tried this, it's superb. Some of the pictures people have made with it are stunning.

Yes, using the first profile and thats the only one.

Are you broadcasting an SSID? I couldn't get DSOrganize (or any other homebrew) to connect without it, but commercial stuff worked fine either way.

This month was a 5-week month, as opposed to May which was only 4. Taking this into account and looking at the average weekly sales for each month we can see the following trends:

Wii - 10% drop

DS - 5.9% rise

PSP - 4.7% rise

PS3 - 4.5% drop

360 - 2.4% rise

Wii must have been supply constrained, 360 needs a price drop. The lack of any PS3 third-party software in the charts is worrying, especially with what we know of the poor third-party sales (15%) and lowest attach rate, but they've given themselves some time by dropping the price.

Here are some charts from GAF:

(...)

Here's another chart from GAF (via Qt3). It's just the monthly global sales, but it really emphasises the trends.

US figures for June:

Nintendo DS: 561,000

Wii: 381,780

PlayStation Portable: 290,100

PlayStation 2: 270,760

Xbox 360: 198,440

Game Boy Advance: 113,870

PlayStation 3: 98,470

Well if I was reporting these figures for the BBC, and had to choose a headline to somehow sum them up, I'd definitely go with

"PlayStation 3 sales boost in US"

Here's the story link:

http://www.maxconsole.net/?mode=news&newsid=18778

I'm convinced that article is fiction.

The part about the spontaneous discussion between strangers could well be true. Here's a leaked memo written by the VP of Corporate Communications for health insurance company Capital BlueCross, who went to see the film:

The Impact

[...]

In demonstration of its impact, an informal discussion group ensued outside the theatre after the movie. While some people recognized how one-sided the presentation was, most were incredulous and "I didn't know they (the insurers) did that!" was a common exclamation followed by a discussion of the example.

Why is it inconsistent? If you got an 8's worth of fun out of it then it's an 8.

But what's an "8's worth of fun" exactly? It doesn't mean anything until you put it in context.

For example, if you're reviewing say, STALKER, and think that it's better than Prey but worse than Half Life 2, surely it should get a mark higher than Prey but lower than HL2, as a guide for the readers?

I think scoring on a relative scale within a magazine is fine, and they do have different audiences. If a friend asks you to recommend her a book or a film, you'd take her tastes into account, and wouldn't recommend something that you know she'll hate.

But I also want to use websites like metacritic. I think the answer may lie in something like (the apparently defunct) MetaFuture was intending to do: first take into account the score distribution curve of your source, to let it be compared more directly with other sources.

The DS cheats - no two ways about it.

Its still quite easy though, so perhaps it was the only way the designers could make the game offer more of a challange.

Someone asked about the AI cheating on the official forums. The response from Steve Fawkner...

Hi All,

I can definitely state that the AI in NO way cheats, nor does it know what gems are going to fall. I wrote the AI code myself, so I am 100% certain of this.

Look at it another way...

a) I am a programmer, so I'm basically lazy

b ) Writing a cheating AI with look-ahead & multiple board evaluations is a LOT more work than writing a non-cheating AI that merely evaluates a single board

c) If I wanted to make the game harder, I actually would have done the LAZY thing and just given the monsters more Life Points

Cheers

-Steve

APOLOGIES IN ADVANCE as I'm going to drag us momentarily back into cable-discussion land.

BUT! This time it's multi-platform cable discussion. Woo!

Am I right in thinking that the switch linked above would work fine for me with proper auto switching all round with the following setup:

Freeview/PVR box via RGB Scart into input 1.

Wii via RGB Scart into input 6.

PS2 via S-video* into input 7 or 8.

*The reason for saying S-video is that on my current switcher I have to turn off the RGB selector when using the PS2 as a DVD player. But I presume the PAL PS2 outputs a proper colour picture via S-video**.

**Is this correct?

THANKS FOR ALL YOUR HELP.

According to the spec sheet, yes that should work as far as the switching goes, though I've not personally tried the auto-switching for S-Video. Don't know about PS2 / S-Video output though. (By the way, cheapest I found the scart switcher was about £50 at maplin if you're thinking of getting one)

I've posted this before, but for people with RGB / auto-switching problems, here's an expensive solution.

I use this scart block at home, and by plugging the Wii into Input 6, it works fine even with WiiConnect24. I think this is because Input 6 doesn't check the auto-switching pin, but instead monitors the video output when deciding whether to switch input.

I'm not sure why you think I'm suggesting anything is a reader's "fault", I'm merely pointing out that until you've actually put a magazine together on a regular basis it is unfair to make judgements.

What? Are you seriously saying that you can't criticize something without having tried it yourself first?

Does this extend to "making judgements" on videogames - that unless you've made one or two yourself, it'd be unfair to judge other people's efforts?

£425! Oh dear. This is going to be a catastrofuck for Sony.

I've got it, it's in Rudy Rucker's book about the 4th dimension, using Flatland as an analogy.

Spaceland! Enjoyable book, that, I'd recommend it. From what I remember, the caste/class system thing was part of the original Flatland.

You don't even need all of that, you just need one of the ones that are just a DS card. They're fairly new, but they're incredibly easy to use, you just throw whatever you want onto an SD card and that's pretty much it.

As hub2 mentioned, some homebrew needs the GBA slot, including Lemmings:

It will not work with devices that go into the top of the DS, such as the DS-X.

They've got an absolute nerve to charge £4.50 for such badly written crap.

Badly written? Out of interest, what do you consider to be good writing about games?

if 3 is the same as mine (mine has the same physical design but has white bounding boxes printed on the front - bought from argos 5 or so years back) it most certainly does carry an RGB signal, does it damn nicely too.

Sorry I might have got that wrong then. Does the widescreen switching work? I bought one a few years ago, and there was *something* that wasn't wired through, forcing me to get the cheaper first one.

Right, so which of these is the vaunted 'famous' one then?

1. http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5342361.htm

2. http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/s...roductId=561018

3. http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/5341922.htm

They all look the same to me.

1 works fine.

3, if I remember correctly, DOESN'T pass through RGB signals. Avoid! EDIT2: Maybe, maybe not: Xevious and I both think this won't do RGB, but djezz has a slightly different looking model that does.

Does anyone know any good RGB scart splitters?

I've now got my 360, PS2, Wii and Sky box to run through but I want them all to have good signal's and not quite sure what I need?

I've got this one from maplin, about £50. It's pretty good, auto-switching, plenty of inputs, and I've found you can solve the Wii's Scart-always-on problem by making sure the Wii is input 6 (a special input that apparently uses something other than scart control to determine if a signal is being sent).

Politicians aren't celebrities.

Politics is showbusiness for ugly people, as they say.

It might just be my setup, but doesn't this cable support widescreen switching? Even though I've set the console to widescreen, my TV reckons it's getting a 4:3 picture still, so I have to change manually. OK, not the worst thing that's ever happened to me, but a little bit annoying.

What is happening at Argos? Eh? I rang yesterday, and the woman said they've got them in the warehouse now, ready to dispatch for delivery for Friday. And now it's not the case.

Friday's gonna be crap waiting at the door all day.

I honestly wouldn't worry. The vast majority of people who have phoned up Argos on this and other forums have had the Friday delivery date confirmed. I'd guess there's the odd call centre employee who's not up to speed.

Argos got me my 360 on launch day. On their webpage, they state that the Wiis will be delivered on 8th Dec (or they certainly used to: I saved the page just in case). I doubt they'll be phoning everyone, apparently they've had 15,000 preorders (source: someone on the internet, so it's bound to be true).

It'll all be fine!

ARGOS NEWS

Just got off the phone with them, and the word from managerial staff is - and these are her words - they are **attempting** to deliver every Wii console on Launch Day. If you've had a phone call or email saying otherwise, then that still stands, but if you haven't been told no, then the answer is a yes.

She says they're in the warehouse NOW. NOW i tells you!

How exciting!

According to another forum, Argos said they'll be sending out letters today or tomorrow confirming the Wii orders. Which, if true, I'm surprised they haven't mentioned to anyone on here, so take it with a pinch of salt.

Why did I change? Well, Woolworths guarantee it. Argos didn't.

What exactly did Argos say? Everything they've sent me so far says I'll be getting it at launch. And what happened with the £10 voucher - do you have to return it or anything?

Have the other seven of you who ordered at Argos got confirmation emails yet?

I just got the "Thank you for your order" email the day that I ordered, nothing since. I wasn't expecting to hear from them until December to confirm delivery times. From one of their emails: "Argos will contact you in the week prior to launch to arrange delivery of your order"