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Army Funds Game Development
winter@ES writes: "The U.S. Army is teaming up with Sony, Pandemic Studios, and Quicksilver software to develop a pair of squad-level combat games. Through the Institute for Creative Technologies (jointly operated by the U.S. Army and the University of SOCAL) the Army will be funding and developing "C-Force", targetted for next-gen consoles, and "CS-12" for PCs. The project is headed up by Mech Warrior veteran, Rob Sears."
I hope the kinder dosent try rocket-jumping with LAWS portable rocket launchers...
Shall we play a game?
Global Thermo-Nuclear War
Would you not prefer a game of Chess?
No, Lets play Global Thermo-Nuclear War
OK.... Please select primary targets....
etc etc etc....just what we need.. half of the army running around screaming 'w00t'
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jonathan barket
Up that is. Blow himself Up. Heh.
There goes my points for clarity. :-)
Why not use Delta Force Landwarrior?
The only reason I can think of is that Delta Force is probably not quite what they are looking for. The article mentions the ability to command a squad of people, Delta Force doesn't have this ability. Yes you can play in a team but with no good system for orders. For that you need to look at games like Rouge Spear, or SWAT3. Both of these have floors but at least they try to include an element of planning and group work with the computer
Yes the ballistics and terrain in Delta Force are great, long range fire is effected by wind, and the bullets have fairly realistic flight paths but... People can run up stupidly steep hills, snipers can run for ages, drop to prone and instantly have a steady scope (hardly realistic). There is no team command and some things are sacrificed for playability, primarily the enemy AI. Those guys are sooooo easy to kill (unless you are playing on fog when they seem to be able to see about twice as far as you can which is very anoying), you can walk into a building and they just sit there watch you kill them, and they don't run away! I mean come on if you had killed all but one of a team of 8 people from a distance with a sniper's rife, would you really expect the 8th guy just to sit there and get killed?
If they want people to learn real world lessons from these games then they need serious AI, take a lesson from Shogun, in real life people can get scared, people can question orders that they don't think are reasonable.. and you can change those orders once the mission has started (unlike Rogue Spear). Enemy sqauds need to break and seek cover when they are attacked rather than just kneeling down.
Delta Force is a wonderfull game with a good balance between the real world and playability, it is great fun to play. But having said that it doesn't really fullfil the critiria of squad command etc. You can't perform any mission planning before starting the game, you can't plan your own attack, and you can't decide what time of day to attack. These are all things that need to be included in a game which teaches commanders not just foot soldiers
If you ever drop your keys into a river of molten lava, let'em go, because, man, they're gone.
Yet Another Realistic Soldier Sim?
The trouble with RSS's is that they're helluva frustrating. Ever played Hidden And Dangerous? And I'm not talking about the irritating crash bugs, the actual gameplay is so realistic that it can send you into screaming fits. You're crawling along in cover for ten minutes, then there's a crack and one of your men goes "Urgh" and curls up. You can't even see the enemy; in some missions, you can be shot from beyond the far clip plane. The solution is often to charge your 4 men forwards until you spot the sniper (getting cut down as you go), then reload the level, creep forwards, and saturate the far clip plane at that point with machine gun fire. A small tweak to the engine, to randomly place the enemy, would remove even this cheat, and make the game so "realistic" as to be unplayable.
So realism and gameplay don't necessarily go hand in hand. You have to allow some "cheats", like static enemy placement, which then ruins the value of the application as a training tool.
On the other hand, I'd rather see something like Hidden and Dangerous than Solider of Fortune. "Realism" in Soldier of Fortune means that you can blow your enemies into screaming, writhing piles of organs and detatched limbs (the ostensible message being that "Guns are no joke, kids!"), but the effect on enemy fire on you is to whittle a little off your health bar, and a medikit will fix that right back up and let you get back on with breaking the 1000 kill barrier. Just like in real life! Hmmm.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Osama Bin Laden is currently working in association with software company al-Qaedasoft to produce a new line of action games. Included in the series will be a game called:
"The Yanks Are Coming" inwhich you control taliban children with AK-47s, and must mow down as many american solders as possible.
"Attah's Fun Time" is a game aimed at a younger audience, inwhich the late mohammed attah (pilot of hijacked plane) will teach school children how to count "12-Degrees-North-15-Minutes" do arithmetic "5000ft -4000ft = 1000ft" and learn about shapes "Which tower looks like that tower?"
And finally, to replace the numbers of expensive training camps "Afgans Over the Line" or 'AOL' will be given away free to teach basic training, how to clean your AK-47, Piloting modern airliners, and how to get past passport control in 4 easy steps.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Has no one made the obligatory Ender's Game reference yet?
It's that "it's training, but it's not, but it is" sort of story.