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It might be one of these or related/based off (can anyone recall/confirm for me?):

http://planetquake.gamespy.com...
http://icculus.org/twilight/da...

GhanBuriGhan's Morrowind Scripting Bible

I started modding Morrowind when I was 13 (around...2002ish). I had wanted to learn something that would allow me to make more advanced mods (instead of just adding static objects), so I decided to pick up scripting. It was tough going at first, but totally worth it. I continued modding for Oblivion, and got over 40000 downloads on the ones I made, which was quite the confidence boost for a high-school nerd.

I played Morrowind on a single-core 1.0GHz (pretty sure), 256 MB RAM, and a 32MB gfx card. I ran it in the crappiest resolution and got about 20 fps, but I played the hell out of that game. Probably put over a thousand hours into it.

SimCity is a really bad game and I certainly hope that heads will roll for ramming an unfinished, needlessly server dependent game into the fans eager hands just to try and make some numbers for the quarter... but is Riccitiello really leaving directly as a result of it? Yeah, there's the timing of it, but the reason EA gives for the departure is they're going to be about $100 million lower on their guidance than they expected. Could they really be $100 million short this quarter from SimCity?

So what are the numbers... SimCity sold 1.1 million copies at launch. For comparison the super-popular Skyrim had a $450 million dollar launch at 3.3 million copies. From that perspective, it certainly looks like SimCity really did make that dent... And considering SimCity 4 is still selling 10 years later, the money they're missing out on over the next 5 to 10 years could be ridiculous.

If PETA thinks that Pokemon is bad, I would like to direct them to this so-called game that makes a sport out of tipping cows! I would like to encourage PETA to protest my game in the most vocal way possible, because, damn, it's tough getting free press for a gambling game. Get it on Slashdot, on Gamespy, on CNN and on Time Magazine's site. Please? PETA? I'll give you a soy cookie!

You're forgetting that Glide was arguably the best API around at the time. That's why so many games supported it. I owned a lot of different 3D accelerators and the only ones that I can remember being worth anything back in 98 were the 3Dfx Voodoo cards and the Rendition Verite cards. Further, the software renderer in Unreal was actually quite good.

Glide was only supported by a single manufacturer. For an interesting read on Unreal 1 tech and various bugs and issues with various cards take a look here. It details things like lines of code required to support DirectX, Glide, OpenGL etc. I have fond memories of my Voodoo 3 2000. I also owned a 5500 (didn't buy it new) and the glorious Sound Blaster AWE64. And I'll agree with you that the Unreal Software renderer was very good and supported (nearly?) everything the hardware one did. It's a tough sell to say hardware will be slower than software (on identical setups).

Sales numbers don't usually reflect upon quality.

Very true! But, awards and peoples' (professional and amateur) reviews do which is why I mentioned them. Failing that there are always screenshots, which may not tell the entire story but help validate claims.

As far as Quake engines, Unreal surpassed id Tech 2 in every way. id Tech 3 surpassed Unreal in many ways, but was not as much of a technological leap as Unreal was from Q2. The comparison shots you've linked aren't equal because they show Q3 at maximum detail, while the UT shot is clearly someone playing with settings turned way down.

Surpassed them in every way? Perhaps you're not aware that when Unreal was released it featured poorly performing netcode and no OpenGL support (Directly from Tim Sweeny's own mouth and low hanging wiki fruit). Quake II came out before Unreal and ID Tech 2 beat them to the punch with multicolored lighting. Unreal's strengths were Unreal Script and their texture technology (which only worked with Glide, even then it was problematic thread lamenting the fact circa 2000). As far as the screenshots I didn't cherry pick them, you're welcome to find some better vintage shots along with hardware specs.

Games had been using redbook audio for years by then (ie. Mechwarrior 2, Super Street Fighter II, Little Big Adventure, FX Fighter, etc.), but it wasn't always the best choice because you couldn't have seamless transitions for dynamic music as you could with MIDI and MOD like formats.

Red book audio is not the same as an API provided by the Operating System. A specification enables you to write an implementation whereas an API is already implemented. Needless to say it isn't 3D nor is it specific to games, it's the specification for audio CDs developed by Phillips and Sony describing the CD's physical specifications, such as the tracks, sector and block layout, coding, and sampling etc.

"One of the best ever made" is not the same thing as "the best ever made". And I disagree with you about Mario. Star Control II is my personal choice for best ever.

I'll raise you a Robotron 2084.

But how did Windows get to that point? It didn't always have that huge library of applications and it wasn't always familiar to people. It gained popularity despite being a worse product than competitors (ie. GEOS and OS/2) in much the same way as Half-Life.

I provided some examples, which I'll refine and add to: it ran on a wide variety of hardware, it was easy to develop for, it ran DOS games which many people had and were quite familiar with (didn't require you to buy new everything). Dire

ANY company would do the same thing if suddenly they're product they were expecting revenue from was suddenly able to be accessed for free.

Many companies would, true, but not all. For example Mojang owner Markus Persson is ok with people pirating his game.. Other companies like Valve realise that piracy is better combated by offering a good service to buyers and building their reputation rather than trying desperately to retain control while pissing off their customer base. These companies are doing very well, perhaps they are on to something?

Average game development costs are estimated to be around $20M-$30M

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_development

..over 20M in 2010

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/108/1082176p1.html

Obviously the forces driving commercial games and games for the public sector are different, but the relative cost shouldn't be ignored.

The story claims that this is about copyright, and then links another slashdot story that doesn't mention copyright once.

Every story I can find about this says that it is a trademark dispute, not copyright.

http://pcmedia.gamespy.com/pc/image/article/643/643184/quakecon-case-mods-20050818025211019-001.jpg

Justin D. May, infamous iPad hacker.

Someone needs to tell the guys that wrote Dragon Age.

In fact, Gamespy's "Top 25 games of the 2000s"
http://pc.gamespy.com/articles/114/1145626p1.html
(they only have #25-#11 so far)
includes the following games that I would consider graphic adventure games:
23. Thief II: The Metal Age
16. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
14. The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind ...and later columns will most certainly include the Mass Effect games and Dragon Age as AAA titles, but most certainly will miss a whole host of excellent indie titles like Machinarium.

So yes, perhaps the "click all over the still screen looking for the "thing" you can manipulate cryptically" style 'adventure/puzzle' game is gone, replaced by graphically gorgeous, artistic, complex, deep, and engaging interplayable stories.

I'm cool with that.

http://www.joystiq.com/2008/01/24/the-xbox-turns-a-profit/ Xbox turns a profit starting First quarter 2008. http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/20346/Xbox-Division-Records-Second-Profitable-Year-in-a-Row/ 2009 ends 2nd year of profit for entertainment division on high sales from Xbox/xbox360 even being a tough year the xbox brand carried the division. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/28220/Xbox_360_Division_Pushes_165_Million_Profit_For_MS_Q3.php 10% profit for entertainment division on Xbox sales. http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/28/microsoft-announces-record-q1-revenue-thanks-xbox-360-consoles/ MS sites xbox360 as big part of profit numbers. http://xbox360.gamespy.com/articles/110/1104553p1.html xbox live had $1billion in revenue for 2010. I know you guys hate MS and want to see them fail but that took 2 minutes.

Start at the beginning, then work your way through the middle until you reach the end. Then stop.

And then keep coming back every MWF for the updates. :-) That is one of my favorite comics ever; very well-written/drawn, and almost never misses an update.

To keep this from just being a "+1," I'll share a few of my other favorites to lift OP's spirits:

http://www.dorktower.com/
http://irregularwebcomic.net/
http://www.basicinstructions.net/
http://nodwick.humor.gamespy.com/index.htm
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/ootslatest.html
http://xkcd.com/ (obligatory)

Then there's www.failblog.org and its sister sites. YMMV with individual items, but overall there's fun material there.

Lots of archive material to trawl with those. Enjoy!

The only thing nicer than seeing women smile is hearing them laugh.

Indeed.

You might try searching for Forsaken costumes. That's the best costume I could find on a quick search.

Closer to the MQ38 drone in Fuel of War.

Still not too close though.

After reading the Gamespy article , it does seem that the game was pulled out of RESPECT of a request by whoever runs the AAFES. But, then the GameStop spokesman, apparently wanting to convey the impression that GameStop thinks for itself, came up with the statement about respecting the soldiers.

Actually, this Gamespy article makes it sound like AAFES* asked Gamestop to pull the game. Logically (a dubious word to use in conjunction with military bureaucracy, but run with it a second)... Logically, that means that AAFES will pull the game from its own shelves as well.

This doesn't say anything about NEX (Naval Exchanges) and MCX (Marine Corps Exchanges), which were independent organizations last time I checked, so maybe the Sailors and Marines will be able to buy the game. And mock the Soldiers and Airmen.

*For those who haven't picked this up from context, "AAFES" means "Army and Air Force Exchange Service".

It's already been done for recent Bethesda open-world games. Capital Wasteland

3. Hyperbole. It's used as a conversation technique to emphasize a point. Learn communication techniques such as these and your life will run smoother. I'd hate to see you watch a TV show and write a dissertation on why Superman is inaccurate.

The only superheroes I follow are those of ps238 Aaron Williams offers sensible, effective ways to reform our schools.

That's because the problem in those cases were not the cartridge but the connector in the console.

Considering that Generations and Some Old Games did this a decade or more ago I'd say no.

http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php?view=MOTW.Detail&id=51

Good Memory! There is Phantasmagoria (early 90's) and Custer's Last Stand (early 80's). There is also a rather disturbing underground MMO called SocialoTron, that makes me fear for humanity.

The messed-up asian Hentai games like RapeLay haven't really seen a US release, certainly not a retail one, so they don't really count. The aforementioned MMO also isn't retail, though it has a US release.

In games in the west, any sex at all is considered controversial. Mass Effect's sex scene was probably the most visceral sex scene in modern gaming. Which is to say, it didn't show any bits, or any penetration, or really anything that couldn't be shown on post 9PM television. It was also incredibly controversial, and drew out a media firestorm. God of War, a game where you attempt to evicerate gods one at a time with giant claw-hooks of death, had their one sex scene off-camera. Grand Theft Auto, famed poster boy for how gaming is destroying all societal values, had their sex off camera. Source-of-all-evil posterboy Pyramid Head from Silent Hill gets as far as dry humping some mannequins through his clothes. Heck, Gologo 13 the NES title contained the incredibly controversial cut scene where two people hugged, then a curtain in their apartment closed.

There were a couple of bad sex-based games that pornographers experimented with in the financial boom at the end of the 90's. None of them went anywhere, as they were considered poison.

Sex really doesn't exist in games. There is some underdressed female protagonists, and some games have mechanics where people have children. But sex proper is basically verboten. Rape? In games? You'd have to admit that people have sex first, and that is still taboo.

Well, that's how most reporting and historical documentation works. Nothing new.
However, up until now all we had was one unsourced reference in a book which was copied many many times. We didn't even know how credible the claim was, especially considering that senior developer Eiji Aonuma thought differently. Now the author has proven that a guy called Mario Segale was a landlord for Nintendo and Miyamoto has acknowledged someone at NOA coming up with the name. That's definately worth something.

"and wasn't there a jet fighter "sim"?"

Could it be Air Quake?

http://planetquake.gamespy.com/View.php?view=Quake.Detail&id=344

I'm rather skeptical of how well boycotts do these days.

However, bad reviews and ratings seem to work.

I think you have misinterpreted this quote. What they want to do is turn CoD into a pay to play game, where they get monthly fees for multilayer game play like WoW. While I can't find the links now, there was a secretive poll by Activision to judge this possibility and other innuendos like your quote to suggest that this is where they are trying to go.

It does depend on the situation. I'm not going to give my employer the heads up that I'm looking, because they'll likely kick me out the door the same day (unwise on their part, but it has been the way they've done this kind of thing.) And, while there are jobs out there, the job market is not that great for job seekers (there are more of them at the moment than there are jobs.)

In any case, I want to have a backup plan before I jump ship, or indicate that I'm standing at the edge.

Denny Hamlin did win after training with a video game by papyrus:

http://www.gamespy.com/pc/nascar-racing-2003-season/712182p1.html

The programmer of papyrus is the same guy behind the new iRacing simulator.

However, I do agree that GT is not good enough compared with iRacing or the papyrus games.

I can indeed see you are trying to be nice, and I already think any fight we were having has ended.

I don't think my game matters, because I think anyone could have written a game and sent it in and they would have put the game in their magazine. I didn't even win the best game of that month ;) but I think it was pretty good considering I made it between the ages of 12 and 13. I did actually find the game on a website that had online versions of old Amiga Format disks, and I played it on an emulator a couple of years ago, it's still good fun :) I don't remember what issue number it was, page, whatever, though I still have that issue in a cupboard somewhere at my mum's house.

I was quite proud of it at the time, but I know I have done better things since then. For example I wrote some bots (called TEAMbot) to play against in Counter-Strike (the Half-Life 1 version of Counter-Strike, not Counter-Strike Source) around when I was 16. The site for them was still hosted up at Planet Half Life last year, looks like it's finally gone now. Looks like the version 1.2 Beta is still available on fileplanet and in other places though, and if you do ever feel like playing older versions of CS and need some bots to play against, I recommend them. The 1.2 version did have some memory leaks unfortunately, I didn't upload the fixed version because I was at university by that time and didn't have net access from my PC. Anyway, the bots are the personal project that I am most proud of, and in fact they took a lot more thinking than most of the programming I have done here at work lol.

HAHAHAHAHAAH.. oh man.. I just found this news article about my bots when searching around! http://planethalflife.gamespy.com/fullstory.php?id=97512 . The guy called me a "genius", that's hilarious.. I might be of above average intelligence, but I'm not a genius by any means ;)

Yeah, I haven't really been in any proper fights. I'm a tall and fit guy, with good reactions, done a little martial arts and I'm pretty good at sparring, but I have no idea how I'd be in a 'real' fight I guess ;) Even if you "win" apparently you still can feel bad for having beaten up another human being?

Considering Warren Spector was the lead developer for Deus Ex 2, perhaps he is not that somebody.

Well, according to Spector, it was Harvey Smith's baby, even if Spector did end up credited as lead designer.

"For me the biggest challenge is backing off and letting Harvey Smith's team make their game ... I'm definitely not the creative force on this one. I got the ball started last time, and now Harvey's running it."

If you look at Oblivion, and all the mods it has accrued through the years.. it's simply amazing. I've literally added hours upon hours to a game that already spans a very long time with its off the shelf content. The Lost Spires is just an example of what you can get when you give your players the ability to create their own content.

Actually, it kinda reminds me of Fargo's MMO chess idea :P

Ultima is one of my favorite series of all-time and that is what made Ultima 9 one of the worst games ever. Ultima V - Lazarus was a great remake of one of the best Ultima games ever using the dungeon siege engine. I would love to see what could happen with say the Diablo 3 engine.

The older Final Fantasy games were notorious for this (you spoony bard). Modern Final Fantasy titles (10, 11, Advent Children) have gotten extremely good.

At least you're talking about a series designed for a general audience.

It's been almost 10 years, and I'm still waiting for Segagaga. (A game about the gaming industry, specifically, the Sony vs. Sega marketshare battles of the early 2000s. The parallels with modern-day EA are disturbingly - yet hilariously - prophetic. I can't read a byte of Japanese, but the screenshots say it all.)

This company can manage a native port of this great sounding game and engine, but WTF happened to UT3 and when are Bethesda going to port Fallout 3 and DLCs to GNU eh? Never that's when!

Seems like only the little companies are preapred to dispense with the BS and try something truly original, UT2004 was ported when EPIC was still allowed to, then ATARI got in there and just like the old days of the 80's, they suits decided that they not going to support some Mickey Mouse hippy type O/S!

Ughh!

UT3's not even worth porting, there's still countless gameplay bugs that keep any serious teams from competing; you can't even access the server browser from the game (you have to disconnect, wait 8 seconds for loading, navigate through the server browser, then connect), and they've done nothing but alienate players with "additions" like in patch 2.0 counting bots as real players in the server player count (probably so that when people took screenshots of the "new server browser improvements" it would look like hundreds of people were playing-- UT3 from the getgo has struggled to attract any meaningful number of players) making it a nightmare to find a server with any _real_ players. They reneged in 2.1 but the damage was already done. [note-- Flight Sim 2006 has more players than UT3. What the heck is Flight Simulator 2006???] Epic fail for Epic.

This is yet another title that I refuse to buy because it is affiliated with EA. The last EA title I bought (and will ever buy) was the Command and Conquer 3: Kane's Wrath expansion. It turns out that its SecuROM was responsible for many of the problems experienced by users. Had they not chosen the path of intentionally cripple their products and prevent the right of first sale, I would have decided to purchase Red Alert 3 and this game. (I recognize that higher quality versions are available through 'alternate channels', but choose not to procure them in such a way.)

But you know what? It gets easier and easier to skip their inferior products. The Command and Conquer series is one that I had enjoyed since Tiberian Sun, but EA has managed to convince me steer clear of it. There are plenty of alternatives from companies that show respect to their customers, and those are the ones who will get my business. Yeah, yeah... -1 Redundant, but given the sheer lack of regard for users of their products it bears repeating.

I'd say that most popular first person shooter games that support user created conten

Take Paintball 2 [1], a Quake based shooter comes with some maps created by the designers. Some of these maps are rarely played online because they're not good maps. Instead players have created maps and these have entered global distribution due to good gameplay. Players are the best judge of fun!

'Crowdsourcing' is here to stay. Knowing what makes a game fun and implementing games are different things and this is why players see that they can do better.

If games accept content contributions, the situation will be no different. Since the game is not mature enough, content will be produced afterward by players who feel they can make better maps with better gameplay.

Crowdsourcing will always exist but only after release. I think the best thing studios can do is give credit and recognition to good map creators by including it in the distribution and publicly congratulate them.

1] http://digitalpaint.planetquake.gamespy.com/

Dunno why people keep saying this. The 360 controllers aren't going anywhere - you can still use them to play all the games that benefit from a controller.

In fact, you can use a controller and Natal at the same time, for additional expression and control. How is that not a useful thing?

So long as devs don't force Natal-style controls on people, just for the sake of the gimmick, but I think Lair taught them that lesson.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the Metroid secret worlds. By exploiting a glitch involving the doors, you could get past some walls and ceilings. Fans discovered some very strange areas. There was discussion years ago whether the secret worlds were inserted intentionally, but disassembling the game revealed that it was just non-map data being loaded by the game in areas outside the intended path.
http://mdb.classicgaming.gamespy.com/?g=m1&p=secretworlds

A similar glitch was found for Metroid 2. http://m2sw.zophar.net/

Le Stick from early 1980's.

Strange how wireless controllers took so long to become popular in the market.

In fact there's an archive of Tim Sweeney of posts and interviews out on the web.

As an aside, I remember reading an article Tim wrote about the programming languages back in 2000...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Imfree.jpg ... Rise of the Triad, an all around awesome game by the way; And for those not already amongst the enlightened: http://rott.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fun/ http://rott.classicgaming.gamespy.com/hell/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/9e/Imfree.jpg ... Rise of the Triad, an all around awesome game by the way; And for those not already amongst the enlightened: http://rott.classicgaming.gamespy.com/fun/ http://rott.classicgaming.gamespy.com/hell/

In some games you can turn it off, others you can't, but in this game it doesn't matter because there isn't any. Check out these images from the game. I searched, I couldn't find any that had any blood even. If we were talking about COD5 which has lots and lots of blood plus blown of arms and legs and torsos even - you would have something to talk about, but this game doesn't even have any that I can see.

They already got icculus to do the work, there's some mysterious legal hold up tho http://planetunreal.gamespy.com/pagetools/pagetools.php?act=printnews&id=145570 I doubt they will ever release it at this point, but maybe someone can get icculus drunk and find out wtf actually happened

You mean like AirQuake? :)

According to this interview: "We're not quite at the place where we'd hoped to be four months after launch, but we're close." Whatever that means.

Disclaimer:I'm a mmo pvp die-hard, which is why I stayed away from that game

Eh, that doesn't make any sense. WAR is arguably the best PvP MMO out right now, unless you want free-for-all.

K. C. Munchkin!, that's a good game:

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/488/488692p1.html

My Googlefu is strong and I believe you are talking about:

http://www.gamespy.com/articles/490/490363p1.html

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqddFGYvfgs

See details about the Magnavox Odyssey 2 here, including mentions of the Arcade ports that were relatively unpopular in the US but more successful in other countries:

http://www.allgame.com/cg/agg.dll?p=agg&sql=5:17

Neat, except that's a Quake II mod (which isn't to say that it's bad).

Right after I posted that, my Wikipedia crawling unearthed Tremulous, which "came in first in a Best free game based on GPL Quake source? poll on the PlanetQuake website." Another one mentioned a few times in the comments around here is Padman.

OpenArena looks like the closest match to Q3A for what that's worth.