Slashdot Mirror

Oh, how I love being the commander in a public game of Natural Selection (linkie linkie). It usually goes something like:

Okay team, build those two infanty portals!
Nice, now build this armory!
NO, DON'T ALL HUMP IT AT ONCE! THE SKULK RUSH IS COMING! THE SKULK RUSH IS -- OH DEAR GOD, NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO!

On second thought... maybe I don't enjoy it as much as I thought. =P

Now, if there will ever be a true RTS/FPS (one builds, others drive around and blow stuff up with built units)...

I point you in the direction of Natural Selection - a quite good Half-Life mod that does exactly that (As long as you play the marines)

... with the death of Origin.

IMHO, *no* game developer, id included, pushed PC hardware more than them. Virtually all the Wing Commanders, Strike Commander, etc. ran horribly on anything but the highest-end hardware (when first released). I think what the PC games market needs right now is the exact opposite of what you describe - a company like Origin. By "forcing" people to upgrade, PC's might get some of the companies that switched to consoles back.

I do agree with you partially - my current gaming addiction is to Natural Selection, a Half-Life mod - gameplay is still very important.

-chris

Don't forget, they are still making the kick-ass FREE mods for the Half-Life engine. I'm having a lot of fun with this one. The interface is a first-person shooter, but it's actually a team-based resource management game. I'm not aware of any other game that's tried this (no, not even Warcraft - in Natural Selection, every grunt is another human player!). If you have the broadband and the time, check it out.

(As opposed to the nicknames for the pathetic, lifeless losers who sit in front of the computer all day playing Natural Selection, which would include me.)

Where they have a pie menu plug-in for Mozilla. I am a huge pie-menu fan. They are so much faster than a right click menu where you have to look down through all the options, and find the one that you want, and position the mouse just right, and then click. What a waste of motor control.

With pie menus, you can internalize the movement, and do it without even looking at the screen. I'm loving Radical's back and forward are just click, drag left (for back) or click drag right (for forward) When I want to full screen, I drag diagonally up and to the left, then curve around to the right. They've done a great job.

Another beautiful pie menu implementation is in Natural Selection the mod.

Now I just want to zip around web pages all day.

-Jim

Regardless of what features or addons they add to any given console, there is one advantage that the PC has: It's open.

The PC is the ideal platform for a small time developer to realize his vision. No publishers, no advertising deals, no selling your idea to clueless suits - nothing but your dev team, some cheap PC equipment, and time.

Whether you're coding your own engine or making a creative mod of someone else's, there is no better place to do that than the PC.

A game programmer friend of mine gave me a preview of Natural Selection and I am blown away by the amount of flexability that can be added to the half life engine. Charlie added a particle system for some smoke and dripping water effects. He made it more strategy-oriented by letting one player enter a control room where he can oversee operations and give resources and orders to the other players....

It's a beautiful thing.

-Jim