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"Beneath Steel Sky" by Trurl's+Machine · 2004-04-04 05:00 · Score: 4, Interesting · on 3D, FPS File Manager

Actually, I was dreaming about this kind of User Interface ever since I played the classic "Beneath Steel Sky" graphical adventure. In this game, the player enters a virtual reality system to perform certain file management functions (basically, find an encrypted file and decrypt it). The game designers created a beautiful and consistent interface just for the game sake and I always wanted to have a real file manager like this. There's a screenshot gallery here, with sample screenshot from the VR UI. In fact, the VR Dock looks almost like a real Dock from MacOS X, introduced many years later. I wonder if Jonathan Ive played this game...

"Beneath Steel Sky" by Trurl's+Machine · 2004-04-04 05:00 · Score: 4, Interesting · on 3D, FPS File Manager

Actually, I was dreaming about this kind of User Interface ever since I played the classic "Beneath Steel Sky" graphical adventure. In this game, the player enters a virtual reality system to perform certain file management functions (basically, find an encrypted file and decrypt it). The game designers created a beautiful and consistent interface just for the game sake and I always wanted to have a real file manager like this. There's a screenshot gallery here, with sample screenshot from the VR UI. In fact, the VR Dock looks almost like a real Dock from MacOS X, introduced many years later. I wonder if Jonathan Ive played this game...

Not to feed the troll, but he is modded 5 by cgenman · 2004-04-03 23:41 · Score: 5, Informative · on When Game Development Goes Bad

"These buffoons" made decisions that seem perfectly rational at the time but in retrospect are a bad idea. Cutting their unique feature is always a bad idea, but when you're coming up significantly short on the funding end, that unique feature probably represented 1/4th of the budget. They chose to focus on developing the character that needed the most work, rather than working on the character that was OK. The publisher made the switch to the PS2, which supports with the cutting of co-op play. Using a licensed engine is a very reasonable thing to do usually, especially if you have no experience on that platform. Not continuing with the prototype is completely understandable if you are making your "first and greatest" game. You don't want the baggage of your prototype and hey, you licensed an engine for a reason, right? Nobody likes firing people, even if they are bringing the team down. And many people underestimate the publisher's role in development.

In other words, they did not make any uncomprehensible mistakes, and they didn't make any mistakes that haven't been made many times before in.

BTW, 600k will get you two coders and a office. How will you pay the artists? Designers? Testers? Mo-cap? Voice actors? Texturers? Administrators? Musicians? It makes me cry how much people with no connection to the industry underestimate the development process. "Just make it great." "What, really, makes a game great?" "You know, not bad stuff." And then they go on to quote some price and team size that might get them Prince of Persia 1, not the 275 people who worked on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, or the 230 people who worked on Halo.

600k is so low as to be downright insulting. What do you think we do all day? Play tetris? Why do you think we accept salaries of half of what we could earn elsewhere, doing twice the work?

Not to feed the troll, but he is modded 5 by cgenman · 2004-04-03 23:41 · Score: 5, Informative · on When Game Development Goes Bad

"These buffoons" made decisions that seem perfectly rational at the time but in retrospect are a bad idea. Cutting their unique feature is always a bad idea, but when you're coming up significantly short on the funding end, that unique feature probably represented 1/4th of the budget. They chose to focus on developing the character that needed the most work, rather than working on the character that was OK. The publisher made the switch to the PS2, which supports with the cutting of co-op play. Using a licensed engine is a very reasonable thing to do usually, especially if you have no experience on that platform. Not continuing with the prototype is completely understandable if you are making your "first and greatest" game. You don't want the baggage of your prototype and hey, you licensed an engine for a reason, right? Nobody likes firing people, even if they are bringing the team down. And many people underestimate the publisher's role in development.

In other words, they did not make any uncomprehensible mistakes, and they didn't make any mistakes that haven't been made many times before in.

BTW, 600k will get you two coders and a office. How will you pay the artists? Designers? Testers? Mo-cap? Voice actors? Texturers? Administrators? Musicians? It makes me cry how much people with no connection to the industry underestimate the development process. "Just make it great." "What, really, makes a game great?" "You know, not bad stuff." And then they go on to quote some price and team size that might get them Prince of Persia 1, not the 275 people who worked on Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, or the 230 people who worked on Halo.

600k is so low as to be downright insulting. What do you think we do all day? Play tetris? Why do you think we accept salaries of half of what we could earn elsewhere, doing twice the work?

Credit where credit is due.. by Migrant+Programmer · 2004-03-31 17:08 · Score: 4, Informative · on Vietnam - A Belated Gaming Invasion?

SEAL Team was a pretty groundbreaking game set in Vietnam, all the way back in 1993!

It was a realistic depiction of Vietnam too, because it was frickin' hard and I always died.

Re:Art Conversion by Dun+Malg · 2004-03-31 14:44 · Score: 1 · on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had?

Argh... Now I remember why I didn't continue to work for there. Here's an example of the maturity level at Software Toolworks in 1989. The sign for "VERN'S Orb O Rama" says at the bottom "eat here and get gas". Actually, it's hard to blame Software Toolworks; that was about the maturity level of computer games in general in 1989...

Art Conversion by Dun+Malg · 2004-03-31 10:43 · Score: 3, Interesting · on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had?

My worst devel job was converting game artwork for Beyond The Black Hole when Software Toolworks decided they wanted to port it from PC to Commodore 64. It was a gimmicky 3D breakout type game with a varied assortment of objects in the center. This pic shows the level where it's pool balls. Another one is bells and whistles (ha ha), while another was ducks(?). The guy who did the artwork for the PC had a 16x16 square grid and an 8 color palette with which to draw his objects. For the Commodore 64 version, I had to replicate all his little drawings in an 8x16 grid where each pixel is double-wide (8 double width pixels == 16 singles), and my palette consisted of four colors, one of which was "transparent"! The inital plan was to have me design these hideous little pictoglyphs on graph paper, calculate the two byte value of each 16 bit line, then enter those 32 bytes into a hex editor. I did the first screen of pics that way (it was the bells and whistles, I believe) and decided my life was too important for that and wrote my own drawing program. I did the best job I could translating, but it looked pretty bad (as did most C64 ports of PC games). My name showed up in the C64 version, much to my embarassment, but thankfully no trace of the C64 version's existence can be found any more.

PS if anyone can find the C64 version, I'd sure like a copy. I've long since lost my copy.

Art Conversion by Dun+Malg · 2004-03-31 10:43 · Score: 3, Interesting · on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had?

My worst devel job was converting game artwork for Beyond The Black Hole when Software Toolworks decided they wanted to port it from PC to Commodore 64. It was a gimmicky 3D breakout type game with a varied assortment of objects in the center. This pic shows the level where it's pool balls. Another one is bells and whistles (ha ha), while another was ducks(?). The guy who did the artwork for the PC had a 16x16 square grid and an 8 color palette with which to draw his objects. For the Commodore 64 version, I had to replicate all his little drawings in an 8x16 grid where each pixel is double-wide (8 double width pixels == 16 singles), and my palette consisted of four colors, one of which was "transparent"! The inital plan was to have me design these hideous little pictoglyphs on graph paper, calculate the two byte value of each 16 bit line, then enter those 32 bytes into a hex editor. I did the first screen of pics that way (it was the bells and whistles, I believe) and decided my life was too important for that and wrote my own drawing program. I did the best job I could translating, but it looked pretty bad (as did most C64 ports of PC games). My name showed up in the C64 version, much to my embarassment, but thankfully no trace of the C64 version's existence can be found any more.

PS if anyone can find the C64 version, I'd sure like a copy. I've long since lost my copy.

Art Conversion by Dun+Malg · 2004-03-31 10:43 · Score: 3, Interesting · on The Worst Development Job You've Ever Had?

My worst devel job was converting game artwork for Beyond The Black Hole when Software Toolworks decided they wanted to port it from PC to Commodore 64. It was a gimmicky 3D breakout type game with a varied assortment of objects in the center. This pic shows the level where it's pool balls. Another one is bells and whistles (ha ha), while another was ducks(?). The guy who did the artwork for the PC had a 16x16 square grid and an 8 color palette with which to draw his objects. For the Commodore 64 version, I had to replicate all his little drawings in an 8x16 grid where each pixel is double-wide (8 double width pixels == 16 singles), and my palette consisted of four colors, one of which was "transparent"! The inital plan was to have me design these hideous little pictoglyphs on graph paper, calculate the two byte value of each 16 bit line, then enter those 32 bytes into a hex editor. I did the first screen of pics that way (it was the bells and whistles, I believe) and decided my life was too important for that and wrote my own drawing program. I did the best job I could translating, but it looked pretty bad (as did most C64 ports of PC games). My name showed up in the C64 version, much to my embarassment, but thankfully no trace of the C64 version's existence can be found any more.

PS if anyone can find the C64 version, I'd sure like a copy. I've long since lost my copy.

Superhero League of Hoboken by Flyboy+Connor · 2004-03-29 07:02 · Score: 1 · on Strangest Retro Videogame Plots Pondered

Quote: "You are The Crimson Tape, new leader of the Superhero League of Hoboken, with the amazing power to Create Orginazational Charts. You'll be joined by Tropical Oil Man ("capable of raising the cholestoral level of his opponents"), Robomop ("an intelligent kitchen appliance capable of cleaning up almost any mess"), Iron Tummy ("capable of eating spicy foods without any distress"), Captain Excitement (his "aura of lethargy and dullness can put many opponents to sleep instantly"), and Mademoiselle Pepperoni ("capable of seeing inside a pizza box without even opening it")."

Re:lounge suit larry by BlueCodeWarrior · 2004-03-28 12:07 · Score: 1 · on Game Design Showdown Leads To Collateral Romance

Leisure Suit Larry, actually.

The link is to the newest one, Magna Cum laude.
The series has been around quite a while...Since 1991, actually. Okay, so maybe that's not a really long time...

Wait, the one I linked to is a VGA (? I'd call it 'graphical' myself...) remake of the original, text based game...so it's been around even longer.

Re:Again with the Warcraft! by Jerf · 2004-03-28 06:08 · Score: 1 · on Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?

If you're willing to leave the world of RTS, Master of Magic, turn-based fantasy strategy in 1995 had a credible hero system, with at the very least, all of the characteristics cited in the grandparent (except only one hero unit could be "rebuilt", if I'm understanding that correctly; the rest are gone when they die).

Given the maturity of the system even then I'd be surprised if that was a first even then; I'm just saying I saw it back there, too.

Re:Again with the Warcraft! by YokuYakuYoukai · 2004-03-28 05:55 · Score: 1 · on Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?

King's Bounty was what the whole heroes of might and magic series was based on, and that came out in 1990.

Re:Again with the Warcraft! by Nasarius · 2004-03-27 20:11 · Score: 2, Informative · on Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?

I love the HOMM series, but again, the Warlords series did it first :-)
Warlords II in 1993 had heroes. It's worth noting that in both these games, multiple heroes are allowed, while in the RTS's mentioned, it's only one.

Re:Again with the Warcraft! by ibullard · 2004-03-27 19:50 · Score: 2, Informative · on Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?

Heroes of Might and Magic[mobygames.com] did this in a turn based strategy game in 1995, four years before Warlords Battlecry.

There I go...showing my age again.

Re:Again with the Warcraft! by Nasarius · 2004-03-27 17:55 · Score: 4, Informative · on Creativity, a Problem for the Gaming Industry?

The game introduced the concept of Heros - special units that gained levels with battle experience. The various abilities they gained, the items they could purchase and use, the fact that they could be "rebuilt" once they died... these are very innovative concepts for an RTS

No no, they're really not. Warlords Battlecry did this about three years earlier, with much more depth.

Re:Former Sega Employee by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-26 14:26 · Score: 0 · on Sega Settles Discrimination Suit With Filipino Game Testers

Some games on which Mr. Peck has worked

Re:It's been said before by bigman2003 · 2004-03-25 10:51 · Score: 1 · on Key Publishers Scaling Back GameCube Titles, Zelda Sequel Hints

Here is a good list of Mario Games.

Mario Golf
Mario Golf 64

Mario Party
Mario Party 2
Mario Party 3
Mario Party 4
Mario Party 5

Super Mario Kart
Mario Kart 64
Mario Kart Double Dash
(Diddy Kong Racing could be thrown in here too)

A lot of their other games fall into the same trap- just re-making the same game for each generation of console.

I'm not going to say that it is junk. I owned the first 3 Nintendo consoles and I played the crap out of them (okay..not so much the 64, it was the beginning of the end for me). But after a while, you get sick of the same things, over and over. I used to love the Donkey Kong character- then I got a little burnt out on it.

Re:FPS more tolerant than the nation? by zonker · 2004-03-17 22:15 · Score: 0 · on On Gay Characters In Videogames

a fun game of old, rex nebular and the cosmic genderbender, had a part towards the end of the game where you had to transform into a woman to get past a genderscanner or somesuch to beat the game. twas an odd game, but lots of fun...

Avatar (for VR) predates 1990, morph sounds ~right by LinuxParanoid · 2004-03-15 09:04 · Score: 2, Informative · on OED Science Fiction Database Updated

I'm pretty sure the term avatar (for VR) predates 1990.

My first memory of the term "Avatar" being used to represent an online persona was on the online service Q-Link aka Quantum Link, a nationwide BBS system for the popular Commodore 64. (The parent company later became AOL.) They had a 2D graphics chat world called "Club Caribe" which I remember using the term "Avatar". (At the time, I thought it was a bit odd, since I was used to the term Avatar being used for the main character of Ultima IV (1985).) This would have been around 1988-1989 or so, which is earlier than the OED citation, although I do not have a printed source backup for this. (Check a C-64 magazine of that time period? Old copies of Compute Gazette, anyone?)

I've found a post from a MUD-Dev mailing list discussion thread held in 2001 on the same topic (what's the earliest use of the term avatar) that supports this recollection, and adds to it that the term might have been used by the predecessor of Club Caribe, Lucasfilm's Habitat (1984-1988), or possibly even earlier by Jaron Lanier. Again, no paper-based backup on this.

Regarding the term "morph", 1993 doesn't sound too far off; it might be a year or two earlier though. I ran across the term in late 1993 when trying to replicate the morphing process used by Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video for a computer graphics class (based on a white paper by Pacific Data Images). Both that video and Terminator 2: Judgement Day which used morphing came out in 1992. The CG morphing technique was known as morphing when I took the class in 1993. I'm not sure the PDI white paper used the term morphing though, so maybe the term's name caught on some time after the video came out. So it might be 1993, but I wouldn't be surprised if the term was used in 1992.

--LP

When I was teaching... by Vraylle · 2004-03-12 07:32 · Score: 1 · on G-rated Simulation Games?

Sim Farm was a dandy one that they loved.

West Point Bridge Design had them gleefully ripping out their own hair trying to match the posted records.

Life & Death II: The Brain has medically-sanctioned violence.

SHAMELESS PLUG: My personal favorite is WordWars, a nice vocabulary-building game with mild cartoonish violence, if the administration can handle that. It's my favorite, naturally, as I wrote it. :D

lies by McBeer · 2004-03-12 07:29 · Score: 1 · on Life After the Video Game Crash

I Don't know what this guy is talking about. There are lots of innovative new games. :p

Seriously I think its funny article, though I suspect that people will never get tired of games even if they are just the same old crap with increasingly pretty graphics.

Re:Nintendo's the SCO of the gaming industry by pla · 2004-03-12 06:35 · Score: 1 · on Nintendo Patents Handheld Emulation, Cracks Down

My recollection is as follows:

I think time has dulled all of our memories somewhat. So, I found a few relevant links. You have the end results correct, but the way we got there has quite a lot of relevance to the present topic...

1. Sony sue Connectix over their PS1 emulator. Settled out of court: Sony buy Connectix's emulator and promptly bury it.

Gamespot has an article covering the last actual case resolved in court on this issue, from 05/17/2000...

A San Francisco Federal Court judge, The Honorable Charles Legge, today dismissed copyright and trademark infringement claims initiated by Sony Computer Entertainment against Connectix Corp and its Connectix Video Game Station.

Now, the very next day Sony filed another suit, and Connectix settled. However, remember that Connectix, as a commercial project, had profit as a goal, not the good of the retrogaming community. So, Connectix didn't settle because they feared loosing (every indication, right down to the USSC refusing to entertain Sony's claims, suggested Sony had basically no case), the settled because Sony gave them far more than their cute little toy emulater would have ever made them.

So on this one, I would say we both have it right - Connectix did sell-out, in the context of settling the suit against them, but they basically won their day in court (the more important event here, in the bigger picture, since it set a legal precedent).

2. Sony sue Bleem! over their PS1 emulator. Bleem! go bankrupt defending the case, case dropped.

This one seems a tad less clear (plenty of articles out there about the case, but the timeline seems very muddy). However, I did find evidence that Bleem! at least survived Sony's initial onslaught, at Game Marketwatch, from 05/23/2001:

Bleem has filed suit against Sony in U.S. District Court, Northern District, California charging the company with using its market power to discourage retailers from carrying the Bleemcast.

So, at the very least, Bleem! didn't go under directly from Sony's initial suit - They went under because Sony pulled an MS-like tactic, using their market dominance to prevent anyone from making or selling Bleemcast.

Additionally, MobyGames has a brief introduction to emulator case history, discussing both the Connectix and Bleem! suits, as well as Nintendo's attack on UltraHLE. It includes the delicious quote (bolding mine),

In its opinion, the high court deemed the development and release of an emulator to be non-infringing provided that no patents were violated and that the final product itself did not contain any infringing code; furthermore, it also ruled emulation itself to be protected fair use of computer software.

I find it particularly interesting that Nintendo has taken a new approach, since the courts have repeatedly decided that emulation counts as fair use - They've opted to approach the patent issue (the first phrase in bold above) as this very topic addresses.

I suspect they will have some serious problems, however. With this current patent, filed for in 2000 and just now granted, prior art most definitely exists - On February 5th, 1997 Nicola Salmoria released MAME v0.1, which by the very nature of what it does (and its very name), it needs to decide what system to emulate based on the ROM set presented. Several other emulators (usually within a product family, such as SegaEMU for SG1000/SMS/Genesis/SCD, or VisualBoy Advance, for GB/GBC/SGB/SGB2/GBA) also support selecting a different emulation core based on the ROM, but I do not know offhand if any of those predate 2000. MAME, however, most certainly does.

Re:Sim Tower by robson · 2004-03-11 16:31 · Score: 3, Informative · on G-rated Simulation Games?

Sim Tower is kind of old but it's very good.

Ooo! Also Simfarm. Great little game, completely nonviolent and stealth-educational. Semi-abandonware; if you can't find it for sale, you might still be able to find it online somewhere.

Stupid horns by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-10 03:12 · Score: 0 · on LGP brings back Loki, Kind Of

I can't take seriously any game or other literature / entertainment that shows pictures of Vikings wearing those blasted horns. Vikings did not wear horns. It is really annoying to keep showing them wearing horns.

Besides, this game must be pretty dire to receive cover-art this bad, and not having received a Mobygames users-rating this long after release.

Re:Nintendo... by ryants · 2004-03-09 18:48 · Score: 1 · on Playstation 3 Already Won the Next Gen Battle?

Weren't you just saying you hated having to over-darken your art, but you were forced to do that because of the lower-poly models?

I'm not sure why you think lower-poly models imply darker art.

we decided to increase your polygon budget

Well, this would be nice, in an ideal world... but in the world of games programming, where optimisation is just a nice word for "shave it all down and cram it in until we run at 30 fps because we have to ship tomorrow", it just doesn't happen that way. :)

Nothing against you, but too many people claim to be too many things on the Internet.

No worries. Maybe this out of date bit of info will help convince you. :)

Barbarian (was:Re:Syndicate (the original)) by CandyMan · 2004-03-08 06:08 · Score: 1 · on A History of Video Game Controversy

IIRC, the reason for the outrage against barbarian was twofold: one, the graphic decapitations (as graphic as you can get on a C64). But second, and not least, the raunchy Frazetta-esque cover featuring page three girl Maria Whitaker.

Ah, those were the times...

I must REALLY be out of date... by JessLeah · 2004-03-08 04:40 · Score: 2, Funny · on A History of Video Game Controversy

When they mentioned "Manhunt", I thought they meant Manhunter: New York...

Dammit, two cancellations by ChaosDiscord · 2004-03-03 11:17 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Sam & Max Sequel Canceled

LucasArts also recently cancelled Full Throttle 2 . (Although good luck confirming it through official channels thanks to an incompetant web site at LucasArts.)

LucasArts has consistently shipped some of the best adventure games ever. The worst adventure games from LucasArts are still fun. They sell at least tolerably well. The most recent Monkey Island game did, I understand, quite well when ported to the PS2, even though it had been available on PC for a year or two at that point. Full Throttle and Sam & Max Hit the Road are two of the most creative adventure games ever; I know I wasn't the only person eagerly anticipating the sequels. (Sequels suck in general, yes, but LucasArts has proven that it's possible to buck the trend by releasing 4 great Monkey Island games.) Adventure gamers have gone from being able to look forward to two great games to zero. Feh. At least we can look forward to Dreamfall and Syberia 2 .

MobyGames' All Time Best by R5900 · 2004-03-03 10:42 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Sam & Max Sequel Canceled

MobyGames, the reference site for everyone, either involved in the game industry, or just in love with games, has its Top Rated Games: All Time Best list, based on game rankings by registered users :

1 Grim Fandango 4.19 (234 votes)
2 Curse of Monkey Island, The 4.14 (168 votes)
3 Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge 4.13 (203 votes)
4 Planescape: Torment 4.12 (189 votes)
5 Day of the Tentacle 4.11 (191 votes)
6 Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis 4.10 (231 votes)
7 Secret of Monkey Island, The 4.09 (285 votes)
8 Super Mario 64 4.08 (67 votes)
9 Fallout 4.08 (230 votes)
10 Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, The 4.07 (64 votes)

I'm really impressed by the cluelessness of LucasArts' management.

Castlevania and Contra by tepples · 2004-03-02 11:04 · Score: 1 · on Twenty-five Years at the Heart of Gaming

It will just be liek the games Nintendo has in its library that will never see the light of day again. They'd have to be on crack to think they could make a comercial sucess out of rereleasing Contra Force or Super Pitfall.

Nintendo made neither of those games. The Contra and Castlevania series are by Konami, which went on to make the Dance Dance Revolution series. The Pitfall series is by Activision, which went on to publish the Quake series (developed by Id Software) and the Tony Hawk series. Yes, I do remember Konami publishing ports of early Castlevania and Contra games to a modern PC format.

Re:My wishlist for GTA: San Andreas by danila · 2004-03-01 21:58 · Score: 1 · on Rockstar Announces GTA San Andreas

Have you played Mafia (2002)?

1. People getting in and out of cars? We only saw this to a limited extent(cops getting out of cars, carjackigns, etc). How about taxis that pickup/drop off people at random?
Done.

2. Different behaviors for different kind of peds? Some would be cowardly, some would be valiant, and some would be just downright crazy, all gang members aside.
Not exactly, but much better than GTA where they just randomly walk from nowhere to nowhere, until someone shoots them.

3. yes, more indoor locations.
Done. Including a brothel. ;)

4. I haven't gotten to it yet
[skipped]
the entry area to the junkyard.
This one doesn't belong with the other three. :) It's not really a suggestion for the next GTA, is it?

Re:Idiot by feidaykin · 2004-02-29 09:58 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Metroid II, Prime Get New Speed Run Records

Indeed, it is for the GB, not the NES. Here's proof.

Perhaps this record breaker guy was far too busy actually playing the game to notice it was on the GB, heh.

Antarctica and Jurassic Park by feidaykin · 2004-02-28 02:35 · Score: 4, Interesting · on New Dinosaurs Found in Antarctica

First, let me say that this discovery adds even more examples to the fact that Antarctica is a science sweet spot. From ancient fossils to some of the lowest natural temperatures on terra firma, Antarctica is a truly awesome place. It's really one of the last frontier's on the planet, second to perhaps the deepest oceans and the interior of the Earth.

Next, I'd like to admit that I'm a huge fan of dinosaurs. Anyone else here credit an interest in dinosaurs to the original 1993 Jurassic Park movie? This was actually the first movie I ever saw in a theater, and it's hard to believe that come July that will be 11 years ago.

When I saw the movie, I became obsessed with everything dinosaur. It shaped my entire future by also sparking a greater interest in science in general. So I'm basically the man I am today thanks to Jurassic Park. Which makes a good scapegoat for when people have a problem with me. ;)

And for a good laugh be sure to check out the Jurassic Park game for the SNES. When you go inside buildings it turns into a weird FPS mode that looks like absolute ass. (That'd be a perfect spot for a goatse link, damn, I should be a troll...)

Re:Reminds me of... by DerekLyons · 2004-02-24 18:01 · Score: 1 · on Space Station Managing, Post Mortem

Sounds like they were simply remaking the old game Omega, just the the game in this article is a remake of another game, EOS (Earth Orbiting Station). So much for indies and originality.

Re:Choose your weapon... by Nykon · 2004-02-23 08:46 · Score: 1 · on US Military Builds MMO Earth Simulator

"...the ultimate goal is to model the entire Earth using existing terrain data and a super-accurate physics model"

Hasn't this been done before?

Re:Who cares? by BigJimSlade · 2004-02-22 04:54 · Score: 4, Informative · on Stores Neglecting Old Videogame Packaging?

It's not like you'll have to worry about stores instituting such a policy anyway... simple economics says that if there is a market for those bare games (there is), they will support that market. As much as I hate seeing the games without their original packaging (except perhaps the SNES, with possibly the worst game packaging of any system) there's not much you can do about it. Perhaps the stores could offer an additional credit or two for games with their box and/or manual.

Having gotten my own house not too long ago, I've realized how much space that stuff takes up. I've actually gotten rid of quite a bit of boxes, or at least broken them down and put them in storage. I'm glad there are places online like MobyGames and The Video Game Museum to document the packaging of these games. And if you're an Amiga fan, don't forget to check out the CAPS project, which is not only providing *exact* replicas of original disks, but also high quality scans of the packaging.

Lest we forget Sierra's Rama game by OgdEnigmaX · 2004-02-18 05:38 · Score: 2, Informative · on Arthur C. Clarke Talks With The Onion

Sierra released a Myst-like adventure game based on the Rama series in 1997. I think I might still have my copy in a box somewhere...it was pretty good and pleasingly mindbending, IIRC. Included an interview with Clarke and Gentry Lee to boot. Having only read _Garden of Rama_ and _Rama Revealed_ I can't say how well it adapted _Rendezvous_ or _Rama II_, but Sierra's version was certainly recognizable to me.

Prior Art by planetsphinx · 2004-02-16 08:05 · Score: 2, Informative · on Sim City Inside The Sims - Russian Doll Effect?

I'm sure there was something even before my example here.. but in Day of the Tentacle you could play the prequal game, Maniac Mansion on a computer inside the game.

Prior Art by planetsphinx · 2004-02-16 08:05 · Score: 2, Informative · on Sim City Inside The Sims - Russian Doll Effect?

I'm sure there was something even before my example here.. but in Day of the Tentacle you could play the prequal game, Maniac Mansion on a computer inside the game.

Re:Bad Idea by aftk2 · 2004-02-13 04:38 · Score: 1 · on PalmSource Drops Mac Synchronization in Cobalt

The salary, standard benefits, payroll taxes, office overhead, etc. for a developer -- just the basic cost to have a programmer or computer graphics artist or the like on staff -- is a bare minimum of $200,000 a year. So a creating team of 15, working two years to produce the Mac version of the title is going to cost $9,000,000. Assume, just as a rule of thumb, that everything else the company needs to do for the game, including support, QA, advertising, the works, about doubles its cost.

Dude...really?

Hmm...so I'm checking out Mobygames' s Credits for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. It was, obviously, a huge production, and - unlike so many other games - was released simultaneously for the Mac and for Windows. I scrolled through the listing, expecting a large section to appear with the 15 or so individuals involved in creating the specific Mac code/content.

I was shocked!

There was one person credited with doing Macintosh programming, and three credited with additional Macintosh programming. And you know what else?! Two of those four total programmers were also listed in the generic Programming category.

So we've gone from 15 full time developers, costing upwards of 9 million dollars (WTF?!), to two Mac-only programmers.

Two. For a game with great production values, and a simultaneous cross-platform release. HIBT?

What else he Alexey Pajitnov done by GerritHoll · 2004-02-12 06:36 · Score: 5, Informative · on Tetris - From Russia With Love

What else has Alexey Pajitnov done, you ask? Here is the complete list

Project Gotham Racing 2 (2003), Microsoft
Rampage Puzzle Attack (2001), Midway Games
Tetris Worlds (2001), THQ Inc.
Microsoft Puzzle Collection Entertainment Pack (2000), Swing! Entertainment Media AG
The Next Tetris: Online Edition (2000), Crave Entertainment, Inc.
Pandora's Box (1999), Microsoft
Knight Moves (1996), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc.
Breakthru! (1994), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc.
El-Fish (1993), Maxis Software Inc.
Super Tetris (1991), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc.
Faces (1990), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc.
Welltris (1989), Spectrum Holobyte, Inc.
Tetris (original) (1986)