Slashdot Mirror
The Future of PC Games, According to Microsoft
Geaty writes "Gamespot has an article up about Microsoft's big PC plans. Topics covered include why DirectX 9 will be the last DX for a while, the increased game support in Longhorn, and a 'standard' PC controller. Looks to this ignorant reader like Microsoft is trying to tackle the games market (again?), cornering matchmaking and patching. The controller issue seems like an attempt to bring to the PC platform some of the uniformity that consoles have."
some games are just easier to play on a game pad, and in my opionion is less strain on the hands, don't know if thats the same for everyoen though.
You can also sit further back from the screen, I know you could do this with remote keyboards or mice, or one's with long cables, but for the most part its impracticle.
I just thought on how cool it would be to play quake with the nintendo 64 controller.
Want cool? Buy it now.
I personally prefer using PS1 controllers with the EMS USB2 adapter.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Try playing Street Fighter II with a keyboard and mouse. Watch me whip you with a PS1 controller connected to the PC through an EMS USB2 adapter.
Well, if you want to make a fool of yourself, go ahead. I've been MAMEing on a keyboard since the start and continue to give diehard controller gamers a nice man-beating. I've even played them against me on the keyboard and them on the arcade control. See my website Mame Arcade Cabinet. When I play SFII, SFA, SFA2,SFA3 on keyboard I can rock anyone.
What you want is a Nostromo n50 Speedpad.
This thing is positively orgasmic. Four toggleable modes for every control. Ten keys. A D-pad. A wheel. Completely configurable. Any set of keys. For example, my D-pad does jump+forward, jump+back, etc etc, one key mode does movement, another mode does orders (while holding down the previous key pressed), yet another mode does taunts, and still another mode does acknowledgements.
Hot damn. I love this thing. A Speedpad positively screams "awesome" when you bring it to a lan party. I nearly pissed myself when I saw it at the Belkin booth at MacWorld New York.
I will now redundantly add my name to the end of my post. You know, in case you forgot me or something.
Either your loading the whole game into RAM, *shudder*
That's what PS1 and PS2 games do. They load a basic OS into RAM and then mount the CD drive read-only.
or it will include a program to automatically install when you run the game, and uninstall the program when you finish.
That's pretty much what Xbox games do.
Will I retire or break 10K?
The PS2 has both options for some games such as Red Faction 2. You can plug a USB mouse and keyboard into the console to play PC-style.
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." --George Orwell
But more importantly, Digital Anvil was founded by Chris (and Erin) Roberts, who made the Wing Commander and Privateer games at Origin. So Microsoft didn't steal the idea for Freelancer; Chris Roberts took it with him from Privateer. Unless you were referring to Elite, in which case Roberts stole that idea for Privateer.
Atomic Bomberman is a dream
You should try xblast, it's actually much more fun in my opinion. It's available here or for other platforms try the left links at the (noisy) homepage, or grab the Debian package.
If the game is designed properly certain levels should only need a set number of resources.
You could also do what the Xbox does. The Xbox has 3 ~800MB partitions setup purely for caching games. Each game you play gets on cache partition and they are rolled over if you play four games. Some Xbox games place their common resources directly on the cache partition during startup and display of the company logos.
After this is done all the common data or most of the data used in a level is on the HD. Only level specific data such as the map layouts that are loaded when you start a level are kept on the disk. This way you get a load inbetween levels, but there isn't a sputter during play of the level because the data it needs thats not in RAM is on the HD.
I view this as a definate plus. When the CD-ROM was originally released many computer games ran directly off the CD and only used the HD to store save files and maybe the executable to allow patching. As time progressed now more and more data is put on the HD, the CD has effectively become just one really large floppy disk for the game to be destributed on. With any hope this change will occur and lead to more efficient game design.
Let's just do an excercise in stating the obvious and think what we've come to expect from game controllers. Okay so when we think game controller, for sure we've got:
L and R up on the top
Six pressable buttons on your right thumb, essentially X Y Z and A B C (You can call those X, O, "Square", doodecahedron, white, black or whatever, you're not fooling us.)
Left thumb main directional control, likely an analog thumbstick
Nowadays, usually some directional control on the right side too!
Start button
Maybe Select Button?
Maybe Auxiliarry top buttons like L2, R2, or Z?
Maybe Auxiliarry D-pad complimenting analog sticks
Not so hard, right?
From a developer's point of view, it would be nice to know that EVERY game will have access to this same pool of inputs. It would be nice to know that all your players can reasonably have this same setup while they're playing your game. Then you can design your control schema around this base up front and not have to change it with every platform you port to.
As a design excercise, trying thinking up a control scheme for an imaginary PC game, then think of what controls you want it to have. It's almost too much freedom! Sometimes when game developers are designing for PC they think "Wow, look at all those keys! A-Z, 1-9, F1-F12, *gasp* Numerical keypad! It's my priveledge, nay my DUTY to use every last one of these keys!" Then your game ships with this handy "Quick Keys Guide", an intimidating page filled with confusing symbology that scares off casual gamers. Having a standard controller really helps constrain your design choices to a managable level.
Casual Game Player: "Computer? How am I ever gonna play games on that?!"
Advanced gamer: [Saying nothing, plugs PC Controller into USB slot.]
Casual Gamer Player: "OH!"