...How big is the line?
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Got this while wrestling with Quake Live (four hours and I still haven't started playing yet!)
[IMG]http://i43.tinypic.com/30sy6oz.jpg[/IMG]
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Though a nice WTF on the part of Quake Live, I have to thank you for introducing me to the Interface Hall of Shame. Apple has quite the collection of amusing GUI WTF's, there... even if the site hasn't been updated in the past eight years.
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@North Bus said:
Though a nice WTF on the part of Quake Live, I have to thank you for introducing me to the Interface Hall of Shame. Apple has quite the collection of amusing GUI WTF's, there... even if the site hasn't been updated in the past eight years.
I remember reading that site many years ago. Much to my dismay, many of the bad principles so thoroughly shamed there have become common practice in a lot of apps, like Windows Media Player.
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It looks like either AJAX or server-side code is calling another page, which should be returning a text/plain with the number of people in front of you in line, but you're probably getting back an error page instead, probably something like "session table full" or whatever. Sucks that their error handling is totally non-robust.
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@TwelveBaud said:
It looks like either AJAX or server-side code is calling another page, which should be returning a text/plain with the number of people in front of you in line, but you're probably getting back an error page instead, probably something like "session table full" or whatever. Sucks that their error handling is totally non-robust.
Nevertheless though you have to give them credit for escaping the HTML that shouldn't be there in the first place...
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TBH, the big gap between the QL marketing and the implementation is WTFy in itself. The marketing says you can "play anywhere", but you need to install an MSI package on the computer you intend to play on (which you need administrator access to do, automatically removing work, school, public computers, and anywhere outside somebody's house from the realm of possibilities), and what's more, it only works in Windows XP and Vista, meaning you can only run it on a subset of the systems you could run Quake 3 on anyway. It's "web browser based" but doesn't actually integrate with the browser at all, merely getting passed the server, port, and screen dimensions via HTML. In summary, it's free-to-play Quake 3 (+TA) (literally, all the weapons and most of the levels and player models are lifted verbatim from Quake 3 with minor gameplay tweaks) with a player matchmaking system, an AJAXy server browser, in-game ads, and a few new levels. (Okay, it also has Xbox Live style achievements, IMO the biggest gimmick ever, and an integrated instant messenger, not like we already have several thousand servers to choose from.) Definitely doesn't live up to the hype.
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@roothorick said:
The marketing says you can "play anywhere", but you need to install an MSI package on the computer you intend to play on
The real WTF indeed. Kind of makes the "in-browser" thingie useless....
When I first heard about it (yesterday) I thought: "Wow, they ported Quake 3 to what? Javascript, nah can't be. Flash? Maybe. Java, could be. ActiveX? Most likely but wouldn't make it exactly cross-browser.". Turns out it's even worse than ActiveX (noting how my mouse cursor doesn't work in Firefox so i can only play it in Windows XP+Vista on IE)
