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Irrelevant Digression: The niftiest progress bar I've ever seen wasn't a progress bar. It was a little morality play. As the game installed a dinosaur slowly
by bdunbar 15y ago
Irrelevant Digression:
The niftiest progress bar I've ever seen wasn't a progress bar.
It was a little morality play.
As the game installed a dinosaur slowly bounced across the installer window and _ate_ a hapless user .. who didn't send in his registration card.
Still remember that, seventeen years later.
- sukuriant 15y agoUnfortunately, Atari owns a patent on little games loaded for someone to play while a larger bit of data is being loaded.
- bo1024 15y agoWhat, seriously?? How the hell can you patent that??
- krambs 15y agoI would love to see that patent. I have a hard time imagining it would be enforceable.
- icebraining 15y agoIt's probably this: http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=5718632.PN.&OS=PN/5718632&RS=PN/5718632 http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sec... It's actually issued to Namco, but it seems to describe exactly that. I think I have a PSOne Namco game with a preloader, possibly Tekken. I never so much as dreamed that was patented, though.
- sukuriant 15y agoYes, sorry. I was going off memory there. That's the patent I recall. Would update, but no longer have edit ability.
- makmanalp 15y agoWell, if bdunbar is correct there may be prior art.
- icebraining 15y agoWhat bdunbar described is more an animation than a game.
- bdunbar 15y agoThis wasn't a game, merely an animation. Purposefully crude drawings to go with the story line. Pity. If Oracle has wee little cartoon dinosaur mayhem I'd be a happier guy.
- morsch 15y agoBah. What a horrible patent of an obvious idea. At least it's an old bad patent: the one linked to in a cousin post was filed in 1995, so its twenty years are over in 2015. I guess there will still be loading screens in 2015.