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Games With Crates Get No Twinkie

Posted by Zonk on from the items-can-come-from-other-containers dept.

Gamasutra's reoccuring feature "Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie" covers the subject of crates and barrels in games, (ala Old Man Murray) courtesy of designer Ernest Adams. From the article: "If there are crates in a place, there had better be pallets under them and at least one forklift as well. In fact, somebody wrote to me (unfortunately I lost his name in an E-mail crash) and pointed out that wooden crates are completely passé now anyway. Modern shipping is done in piles of cardboard boxes all held together with industrial-strength plastic wrap. Wood is heavy and expensive, cardboard is light, cheap, and recyclable. But our FPSes are still displaying 40-year-old shipping technology, even in futuristic science fiction games." He also touches on Rumble implimentation, Easy Mode, Split Screen, and Camera Angles.

93 comments

  1. Slashdot == Gamasutra delayed by MasterDirk · · Score: 2, Informative

    Why is is that almost every feature posted on (the admittedly good) Gamasutra makes a slashdot post about 12hrs later? Someone is really milking that site ;)

    --

    "Programming is like sex: one mistake and you have to support it for the rest of your life."

    1. Re:Slashdot == Gamasutra delayed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you rather have the "XBox 360 Continues To Exist" or "Playstation 3 Will Be Expensive" posts that seem to spring up every four hours?

  2. first thing we do... by LewieP · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...every day before work is have a forklift race, where u can win different prizes depending on what position you come in, then we spend the rest of the day moving aroun 15 wooden crates about the harbour.

    --
    oxymoron of the day - Xbox gamer
    1. Re:first thing we do... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Funny

      after that, you go and blow all the money in arcades and toy capsule machines. so much for saving up for that trip to hong kong.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    2. Re:first thing we do... by LewieP · · Score: 0

      ...erm, i need to find some sailors?

      --
      oxymoron of the day - Xbox gamer
  3. Eh. by irc.goatse.cx+troll · · Score: 1

    Do I really care? If I'm playing competitively I'll have all the textures disabled anyways (r_max_size 1), If I'm playing to try and get immersed in some alternate reality, then in that reality maybe they use crates to move everything around.

    Although I think this was targetting console games. You're playing a game where the means of getting your objective accomplished is shooting people, and the game even aims for you because you use a dinky analog stick. Do you care if the textures are bad?

    --
    Pain lasts, kid. Its how you know you're alive. Sometimes I think this growing up thing is just pain management-TheMaxx
    1. Re:Eh. by Suddenly_Dead · · Score: 1, Flamebait

      1) No one cares how "hardcore" you are.
      2) These games attempt to create a certain mood, and having crates in them may ruin that
      3) Console gamers care, because they only have a dinky analog stick (and often simple or shallow gameplay) and so the games make up for it with "story" and "atmosphere"

      Voila

  4. News at 11? by Steamhead · · Score: 1

    Wow... Honestly, who cares? No game is ever going to be perfectly accurate, I'd rather have a game with a good story and playability then small insignificant details such as this.

    1. Re:News at 11? by roseblood · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, this detail probably isn't even in error. I've yet to recieve an engine (think V-8, automotive) that didn't come in a WOODEN enclosure that looked an awful lot like a crate. Sure, thigs like brake pads, calipers, and other smaller and lighter items come in cardboard boxes, but for the BIG HEAVY stuff, crates still rule the shipping world.

      --
      There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
    2. Re:News at 11? by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, people like shiney things, not good plot and stuff.

      --
      Pretty Pictures!
    3. Re:News at 11? by Bob+MacSlack · · Score: 1

      I agree that crates are still in common use for many things, but how many of the gigantor crates you see in games make sense?

      I was actually going to point out how things larger than an engine would be put in something else, but I'm at a loss for what that actually is. What do you put something that's 8' tall into other than a crate?

    4. Re:News at 11? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My experience working at a iron pipe factory says that they just wrap it in plastic, and tie it to the back of the truck.

      Of course thats mostly big solid steel items.

    5. Re:News at 11? by Ugly+American · · Score: 1
      Guess it all depends on what kind of stuff you're dealing with. Most of the furniture and appliances I've seen shipped just come in cardboard boxes, perhaps with a built-in pallet on the bottom. These weren't little items, either; we had 450 pound armoires and entertainment centers coming in with nothing but a chintzy layer of cardboard to protect them from being banged around in shipment. The number of open freight claims we had at any given time was just insane.

      In about two years of work, I think I can remember a grand total of one wooden crate.

      --
      For sale: one sig space, gently used. Inquire for details.
    6. Re:News at 11? by reverseengineer · · Score: 1
      Most of the large lab equipment that comes in at my job is packaged as the article notes, very large cardboard boxes shrinkwrapped and belted to wooden pallets, usually with foam peanuts or rigid polystyrene forms to cushion the device inside. Forklifts and pallet jacks can then be used to easily move incredibly heavy objects around.

      I do not doubt, though, that many items are still packed in wooden or metal crates. The problem with these crates in video games, in my opinion, is not the mystery of how crates got to their location without the use of a pallet/forklift combo. That can be mildly amusing (and more so if the crates are too large to fit through any entrances to the room). The real frustration with crates is they generally mean the designers are trying to be creative, but have failed. When games started putting items in destructible crates, it was hailed as a move towards realism and immersion- ammo, medicine, etc. was mostly found in boxes, like in the real world, not floating and rotating in midair, Quake-style.

      Unfortunately, every game that features this then ruins the realism by treating the act of opening a box and retrieving an item in the most unrealistic way possible: your character uses a melee weapon (often, a crowbar) to smash a wooden crate completely into splinters to reveal a tiny item. The splinters persist for two seconds and magically vanish. It was fine for Half-Life in 1998, but you might think game developers might have clued into the fact that when most people in reality use crowbars to open wooden crates, they use the crowbar to carefully pry open a side, not smash the box to bits. Would you really smash a box apart with a crowbar (much less shoot the thing) if you thought it might contain grenades or rockets? And while in reality, I have seen some very small items packed in much larger boxes (often because a company doing the shipping has a "smallest" box much larger than the item in question), in games I have seen wooden crates large enough to hold a pair of refrigerators; when smashed, they reveal a single ammo magazine or medkit. While the addition of destructible crates to games, particularly FPS games, was a stab at realism, it tends to just make it so that whenever you want to grab a powerup, you need to switch weapons, hit the crate a couple times, grab the item, and switch weapons back. That's not realistic- that's annoying.

      Far worse are the indestructible crates many games feature- see one of these, and a stupid crate pushing or stacking puzzle is sure to follow. While improvements have been recently made (thanks, HL2!), picking up crates, walking with them in your hands, and setting them down where they need to be placed is usually a clumsy affair in a first-person shooter, one that often involves a crate appearing to float in front of you with no visible means of support, and a "setting down" where the box is awkwardly tossed in front of the player, hopefully in the place where the player wants it. There is rarely any actual intellectual challenge in crate puzzles, since "build a staircase of crates to the exit" and "push the crate on top of the floor switch" pretty much exhaust the possibilities.

      That being said, a number of my all-time favorite games consist largely of smashing or pushing boxes when there's a break in the combat, so it's not exactly a gamekiller when the game has crates, just an annoyance- same as the preponderance of time spent in sewer tunnels and HVAC ducts in many otherwise stellar games. For many games, it's worth noting the OMM quote for the Start-to-Crate analysis of DOOM (which starts the player facing a barrel, round cousin to the crate):"I remembered this game being better than science has shown it to actually be."

      --
      "FDA staff reviewers expressed concern about the number of patients who were left out of the study because they died."
  5. Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by leonbrooks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...but missing a few interesting ones in most cases, like being able to shoot people through walls. Real live battles would be a lot safer if twelve millimeters of wood stopped missiles and massive electric arcs.

    --
    Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
    1. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by qengho · · Score: 1


      Real live battles would be a lot safer if twelve millimeters of wood stopped missiles and massive electric arcs.

      Yeah, it always cracks me up to watch TV and movie gunfights where the antagonists hide behind wooden tables and drywall, which miraculously stop bullets. I'm so used to sneering at it that a recent episode of 24 caught me by surprise: the bad guy (actually a girl in this case) was trading shots with Jack Bauer and ducked behind a drywall column. Jack simply put three shots through the column and the villain crumpled. Heh. It was like watching the vacuum scenes in Firefly and noticing that there was--correctly, for a change--no sound.

    2. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by rossifer · · Score: 1

      I've never liked that assumed reality about fights in space.

      If I'm designing a human-ship interface for a fighting ship in space, I'm going to make sure that you can tell where other vessels all around you and what they're doing, (i.e. you'll know if it's moving, if it's coming closer and when it blows up, you'll hear that too).

      Of course, I'll be synthesizing the noises, and an outside explosion won't shake the bridge or throw anyone out of their chair or anything like that. But you'll hear other ships if I had anything to say about the design of the controls.

      Regards,
      Ross

    3. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by qengho · · Score: 1


      If I'm designing a human-ship interface for a fighting ship in space, I'm going to make sure that you can tell where other vessels all around you and what they're doing, (i.e. you'll know if it's moving, if it's coming closer and when it blows up, you'll hear that too).

      The scenes I was referring to were EVAs where they fired a rifle or set off explosives (or simply banged on things) and it was completely silent. LIke the exterior shots of the Jupiter atmospheric braking in 2010. The interior shots during that scene were full of noise and shaking, of course...

    4. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by NanoGator · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "...scenes in Firefly and noticing that there was--correctly, for a change--no sound."

      It's only 'correctly' if the characters in the story hear the sounds as well. We can nitpick sound in space to death, but nobody ever EVER complains about incidental music. They're the same thing.

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    5. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by Joe+Random · · Score: 1
      We can nitpick sound in space to death, but nobody ever EVER complains about incidental music. They're the same thing.
      No, they're really not the same thing at all. In most cases, it is always assumed that the characters in a movie cannot hear the musical score -- unless, of course, the music is shown to be coming from something in the character's environment.

      Sound effects, on the other hand, are always assumed to be coming from within the environment (with the exception of a laugh track), and are thus audible to the character.
    6. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by Nexzus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Make sure to include fuses in the control panels. Who knows how many nameless crewmembers have been killed by a console exploding in their face.

      --
      Karma: Can only be portioned out by the Cosmos.
    7. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by NanoGator · · Score: 1

      "Sound effects, on the other hand, are always assumed to be coming from within the environment (with the exception of a laugh track), and are thus audible to the character."

      Really? Ever watch one of those suspenseful moments where a bomb or an ordinary watch makes beeping noises every time the seconds tick by? How about the foot steps or breathing that we can hear that the potential victim cannot? (Terminator 3 springs to mind. The TX is looking for Catherine Brewster, she's in the room breathing nervously, but the TX doesn't hear her despite her above-human senses.)

      On a related note, most movies filmed 'in the dark' are often very well lit. Look at the Harrison Ford movie The Fugitive. Should we assume that the sewers in Chicago are really really well-lit? Um, no. What point is there to shooting in the dark?

      I guess it's all academic, though, since no character has ever said "Man that weapon firing out in space sure sounds like a cat gettin its balls twisted."

      --
      "Derp de derp."
    8. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by hey! · · Score: 1

      Yep. That's probably the lesson you can draw from the Iraq war.

      Modern weapons are so deadly you can't stand up to an army equipped with them. And they're talking about weapons that would make an individual solider even more lethal, like explosive rounds that will be computer programmed to detonate above their targets -- no more foxholes.

      So, if you are on the short end of the stick (i.e. the part that might be fun to play in a game) individual heroics don't count for much. Pretty much the only way you can stand up against a modern military force is not to. Applying the doctrines of Sun Tzu, you make sure you get to choose when to engage the enemy. In other words, you resort to insurgency tactics.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    9. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by WWWWolf · · Score: 1
      In most cases, it is always assumed that the characters in a movie cannot hear the musical score -- unless, of course, the music is shown to be coming from something in the character's environment.

      And that can even be broken if you don't know whether the music is meant to be on the background or not. That ambiguity can often be interesting until revealed. (see the movie Spy Hard and game Metal Gear Solid, just to mention a few notable examples...)

      Sound effects, on the other hand, are always assumed to be coming from within the environment (with the exception of a laugh track),

      ...and roar of the engines and zaps of laser guns in vacuum, and little things like that...

    10. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by EnderWigginsXenocide · · Score: 1

      I think the Andromeda quotes go something like: "Of course I had to come save you, and anyhow, they were playing Bhrams" Tyr, refering to the musical score played over the fire-fight scene. "You know I bet it's alot easier to find us with you playing that music" -Cpt. Hunt refering to Tyr smaller-than an i-pod, but super-loud walkman blasting out yet another musical score durring another fire-fight.

      --
      Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups. -- 0 1 My two bits
    11. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by thebagel · · Score: 2, Informative

      Eh heh... Brahms did lullabies. The quote went something more like "they were playing Wagner. I couldn't resist."

    12. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by Jacius · · Score: 1
      ...and roar of the engines and zaps of laser guns in vacuum, and little things like that...


      No, those are definitely suppposed to be coming from within the environment. The roar of the engines? It comes from the engines. The zaps of laser guns? They come from the laser guns.

      Whether or not we (or anybody) should be able to laser guns in space, is beside the point. The audience is given enough information (in this case, sound) to make things interesting.
    13. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by haystor · · Score: 1

      I really liked 2001 when Bowman gets locked outside the ship. The silence of an exterior shot is broken up by the heavy breathing of him inside the suit. It really gets across a feeling of controlled panic.

      --
      t
    14. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by qengho · · Score: 1


      The silence of an exterior shot is broken up by the heavy breathing of him inside the suit. It really gets across a feeling of controlled panic.

      Yeh, that's the point I've been trying to make. Some people just don't seem to grok it. Exterior space shots are SILENT. Interior shots (with atmosphere) can be as noisy as you like.

    15. Re:Playing with old tactics and attitudes too... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your comment just gave me a flashback to Waynes World. :)

  6. Wooden crates are completely passé? by ivan256 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Says who? Prettu much anything bigger than a few feet on a side that weighs between 250lbs and 1 ton comes in wood.

    A crate made out of particle board and 1x4s is about as cheap as it gets for strong shipping containers for heavy, expensive items. Order a full rack storage array, or an 5' industrial water filter or a V8 engine sometime and see for yourself.

    1. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by BigBir3d · · Score: 1

      Steel crates are all the rage in... well... everywhere but the USA. No fumigation certs to deal with. ;-)

    2. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by sigxcpu · · Score: 1

      Last time I checked (last week actually), millitary supplies, esp ammo came in wooden boxes.
      Even when they put stuff in metal boxes, they pack those into wodden ones.

      --
      As of Postgres v6.2, time travel is no longer supported.
    3. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by TopShelf · · Score: 1

      I work for a Swedish manufacturing company with operations around the world, and we use wooden crates for shipping all the time...

      --
      Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
    4. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by herc_mk2 · · Score: 1
      Prettu much anything bigger than a few feet on a side that weighs between 250lbs and 1 ton comes in wood.

      Well, how much does a single heath pack or one clip of ammo weigh? 'Cause that's all I ever find in crates in games...

    5. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, how much does a single heath pack or one clip of ammo weigh? 'Cause that's all I ever find in crates in games...

      Well there were probably more to begin with, but all those hapless grunts whose corpses litter the game areas used most of them up already...;)

    6. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by elrous0 · · Score: 1
      Well, how much does a single heath pack or one clip of ammo weigh?

      Oh man, I *HATE* med-packs. That to me is even worse than the crates. Since when has anyone had a major gunshot wound healed by a glorified first-aid kit?

      I liked the way Halo 2 did it much better. It saved you the hassle of finding med-packs and made a lot more sense.

      -Eric

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    7. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by mink · · Score: 1

      IBM racks and servers (all weighing in above the numbers you list) come bolted to a pallet with cardboard on the top/sides and a tip-over indicator.

      --
      Well I've wrestled with reality for thirty five years doctor, and I'm happy to say I finally won out over it.
    8. Re:Wooden crates are completely passé? by BigBir3d · · Score: 1

      look into asia.... china... ;-)

  7. Crates with no pallets by Makzu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Perfect Dark handled crates without pallets very well, I think. It had a nifty device attached to some of the crates that made them hover so that you could easily push them around. Likely some antigravity device or something similar. No need for pallets, forklifts, or anything.

  8. I see crates everywhere by bitingduck · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work in a high tech place that would be a great setting for a game, and there are crates all over the place. There's every sort of crate you could imagine-- big wooden ones, big plastic ones, metal ones, medium sized ones of wood, plastic or metal, little ones of all materials. All sorts of different paint jobs from bare wood to fancy bright paint with all sorts of warnings. We even have an internal website for sharing surplus material and it has a whole category with hundreds of used crates and shipping cases, with pictures of them available on-line. And most crates large enough to fit over the forks of forklift have rails to hold them high enough off the ground so they don't need to be palletized to be forked. Smaller cases get palletized, and sometimes saran wrapped to hold them in place.

    I hardly think we're unique, either-- all those crates come from somewhere, and when I see other peoples' facilities, they have lots of crates, too.

    If you spend much time in a place where people make actual stuff as opposed to arranging ones and zeros in useful ways, you'll see lots of crates.

    What is unrealistic are the signs that they put on them, but hey, they're games.

    1. Re:I see crates everywhere by Weeb · · Score: 1

      OMFG, please post pictures of these crates!

    2. Re:I see crates everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      OMFG, please post pictures of these crates!

      I've heard of a fair number of fetishes, but this one takes the crate.

  9. Hang on a minute... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Funny


    If the crates are made of metal, then how am I going to break into them with the crowbar?

    As for crates made of cardboard, they just aren't as satisfying to break...sorry.

    Now...crates made of glass or ceramic...now that's something I could get behind...

    ^_^

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    1. Re:Hang on a minute... by bluGill · · Score: 1

      Crowbars work on metal crates. Metal bends nicely once you get the sharp point in a crack. It isn't as satisfying as popping nails from a wood crate, and it is much more work. (though I suppose you could design a fancy latch so you can pry a crate open)

      Generally though you are better of with a wrench to remove the bolts holding the top on, or using a key (lock pick) to unlock it, depending on the crate design. Still a crow bar will work if you have the patience and muscle to use one.

    2. Re:Hang on a minute... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you ever sleep? No offense....

    3. Re:Hang on a minute... by thebagel · · Score: 1

      I think he meant the satisfying sound of the collision of crowbar and wood. You know...Half-Life? :)

  10. (cue whining from map developers) by Tom7 · · Score: 1

    But they're so easy to render...

    1. Re:(cue whining from map developers) by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 1

      Big, unbreakable crates are remarkably useful for other things, too. Firstly, they're handy cover for the player to duck behind, and generally don't look out of place no matter where they get put. Secondly, a large crate parked in front of a door may actually be blocking visibility, making the map run at many, many more frames per second than it might otherwise.

      Still, crates can get so utterly cliched, along with their traditional warehouse homes - I have managed to build a map with neither, fortunately. :-)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  11. Why stick with warehouses anyway? by mnmn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It makes me wonder why shoot and kill in one location at all? Think of de_dust, which makes more sense... hunting down terrorists in a small village. Although de_dust has practically no houses or even shops or vehicles, and too many crates.

    Look around you. There are apartments (great setting for a game, have never seen a complete apartment map, or a good one, there are villages, mountains, and certain places like airports, hospitals, downtown, offices, railway yard etc. The 747 map in CS was original too, but they overused airplanes in other maps.

    I wouldnt mind seeing an underground parking lot map. Think of the parking lot scene in terminator2... I always thought that was a great setting for a game lots of glass to break and places to duck.

    I was gonna say a school is good too, but I suppose its not.

    And if youre gonna make a warehouse, add computer desks, trucks, weighing and wrapping machinery, forklifts and lifttrucks, piles of crates arranged properly to maximize space...

    A library would be great if pieces of paper will fly if you shoot the books...

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:Why stick with warehouses anyway? by qoa · · Score: 1

      SWAT 4 has all kinds of odd enviroments in it. Including a 3 bedroom house.

      --
      Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
    2. Re:Why stick with warehouses anyway? by christopherfinke · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The reason you've probably never seen a good/complete apartment map is because of the limitations of the rendering engine. I've just about finished what I think is a great (and greatly detailed) map of my apartment building, but I can't get it to compile because there's too much detail/too many polygons (MAX_MAP_MODELS and MAX_MAP_CLIPNODES, for anyone else who does HL/CS mapping). I've gone as far as deleting all of the furniture/irregularly shaped objects in the map, but just having 3 floors of 30 empty 2-room apartments is too much for the compiler. Oh, and there aren't any crates in my map.

      (Off-topic: If anyone has some hints on how to easily fix these errors, I'd love to hear it.)

    3. Re:Why stick with warehouses anyway? by bitingduck · · Score: 1

      Forget about furniture and walls and rendering with polygons, just construct it all from crates.

    4. Re:Why stick with warehouses anyway? by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 3, Informative

      (Off-topic: If anyone has some hints on how to easily fix these errors, I'd love to hear it.)

      Off-topic solutions!

      MAX_MAP_MODELS: I think this one's when you have too many brush entities. The limit for the HL engine is 400, but you'd be best sticking under 200 or so for a multiplayer game. Actually, for a network game, the fewer entities of any kind, the better.

      MAX_MAP_CLIPNODES: This one is a bit more fiddly, and is the result of the player clipping being too complex. First, if you're not using a custom build of the Half-Life compilation tools, I'd suggest moving over immediately - there are numerous tweaks and new features which are absolutely invaluable for someone building a larger map, such as turning ornamentation brushes into func_illusionary entities to remove their clipnodes completely (but watch the map models count!). There's also the glorious 'NULL' texture which is ridiculously useful, tricks for hugely increasing the maximum number of planes in the map, and last but not least, my lovely realistic light_environment hack.

      The main trick to reducing the clipnodes count, however, is to put 'CLIP' brushes around any complex geometry. If you've got some roughly-cylindrical pipes, put a cuboid around them - likewise, if you've got some unreachable ceiling details such as vents, skylights or whatever, put another 'CLIP' brush around those too.

      Turning something like, say, some chairs and tables into a func_wall will make visibility much easier to calculate, assuming you haven't done so already - to reduce the map models count, you can probably tie an entire roomful of furniture to one brush entity. Plus with a relatively modern HLRAD, you can get the furniture to cast shadows again, although it can dramatically increase lighting calculation time while compiling.

      Finally, when you've got completely sick of the Half-Life engine, move on to Source. It's utterly awesome - maps can be so utterly, terrifyingly huge... :-)

      --
      Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
    5. Re:Why stick with warehouses anyway? by thebagel · · Score: 1

      I take it you haven't seen the map cs_twilight for CS Source. It's... almost an apartment building. Some offices, hallways, stairs... a basement, if I'm not mistaken. And I don't think there are any crates.

  12. crates are fun by csbrooks · · Score: 1

    Does anyone else think it's kinda *fun* to smash crates?

    --
    Game Company Database
    1. Re:crates are fun by buffer-overflowed · · Score: 2, Funny

      *looks up from smashing crates into people with the gravity gun*

      Nooooo...... :-D

      And hey, which is cooler, the warehouse scene where they're boxing the ark from Indiana Jones, or a bunch of pallets? How would you like it if the "very special award" arrived in a cardboard box full of peanuts rather than a wooden crate labeled "frage-eel"?

      --
      The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
    2. Re:crates are fun by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As I recall, Deus Ex had the best of all worlds; wooden crates, metal crates, and cardboard boxes of varying size. Heck, there were even TNT boxes and barrels of toxic waste...even trashcans and trashbags.

      That's a game environment you could practically live in, if you don't mind the lack of food variety and the hazards of plague and being shot at. ^_^

    3. Re:crates are fun by yoyhed · · Score: 1

      Exactly.. the cardboard boxes collapsing in Half-Life 2 were cool, but not nearly as satisfying/entertaining as the crates breaking.

      --
      WHO NEEDS SHIFT WHEN YOU HAVE CAPSLOCK/ DAMN1
    4. Re:crates are fun by Kyouryuu · · Score: 1

      A large part of Ratchet & Clank was breaking the million and one crates in that game, every one dropping useful bolts (the game's currency). I never got tired of it.

  13. furthermore... by larry+bagina · · Score: 1

    cardboard boxes are much nicer to sleep in when your parents kick you out of their basement.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

    1. Re:furthermore... by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 1

      You would rather sleep in a carboard box, than a wooden crate?

      I don't know, I think I'll take the sturdy crate.
      More insulation . . .
      Lasts longer . . .

      --
      Pretty Pictures!
  14. Sorry.. by Aphexian · · Score: 1

    Am I the only one that wondered what "an E-mail crash" was?

    I've had computers crash, servers crash, networks crash..... I've never had an "email crash" - I'm not really sure what that would entail. All the computers remain up but postfix or sendmail dies? Doesn't seem like that would cause me to lose my email... What sort of "E-mail crash" would cause me to lose a selective amoount of information, without trashing all of my information?

    1. Re:Sorry.. by lupinstel · · Score: 0

      Email crashes happen when all of the internets stop working. They are easy to fix though, just hold down your any key and reboot your CPU.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Cthulhu.
    2. Re:Sorry.. by Sigma+7 · · Score: 1
      I've had computers crash, servers crash, networks crash..... I've never had an "email crash" - I'm not really sure what that would entail. I'm sure you've heard of a specially formed e-mail message that causes Microsoft Outlook to crash - it involves a buffer overflow on the Date field. (The crash was actually in a PGP module, but crashed MS-Outlook nonetheless.) This is a crash involving an e-mail, and can be used as an example of an e-mail crash.

      However, the term More commonly implies that a computer failure has disrupted e-mail access. (e.g. a corporate-level e-mail server crashes or slows down to unacceptable levels, making it impossible to use the e-mail system for an entire week.)

      While "e-mail crash" might not be the correct technical term (for either of these cases), it is understood by most people.

      (BTW, I suspect you posted the message to the wrong topic. But that doesn't matter too much.)
  15. Ugh, Obvious. by Apiakun · · Score: 1

    Furthmore, we're playing games that deal in futuristic or past worlds that have little or no bearing to current events or technology. Now we're complaining about wooden crates? It makes no sense at all to compare what happens in fantasy to what exists in reality. Yes, wooden crates do exist in reality, so do packing peanuts. I haven't seen packing peanuts in a game either, so does someone want to submit a story here regarding the lack thereof?

    1. Re:Ugh, Obvious. by Kyouryuu · · Score: 1
      Course if you really want to get picky - what annoys me about futuristic games are the ones that have keyboards. Doom 3, Xenosaga - don't you think by the year 21XX we'd have something better by then? Maybe voice recognition? Or the nifty interfacing of Minority Report?

      Naturally, robot humanoid characters who use keyboards are one notch above this oddness. ;)

    2. Re:Ugh, Obvious. by arose · · Score: 1

      Would you expose your brain to untrusted systems?

      --
      Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
  16. You work at... by mister_slim · · Score: 1

    Black Mesa, don't you? Tell us the truth, Gordon!

  17. Simple solution by Dachannien · · Score: 1

    Who needs palettes when you have one of these?

  18. I love crates by dtfinch · · Score: 1

    Any good game needs plenty of inanimate objects that can be blown up.

    He has a point on the easy mode. A game should have an easy mode that really is easy, and just default to normal difficulty when the user starts a new game. Playing Battle of Wesnoth, there are some levels that are actually impossible on "easy" if you fail to save up enough money from the previous levels.

  19. Dude I agree crates is wrong we need to modernise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We need 2 like get rid of crates from gaymes and like modernise everything. When we get rid of like crates from games we can like broaden our horizons and our minds dude. When we like..get rid of crates from games dude we can like solve the world's problems like dude. Dude we need get more modern. Dude. We need to modernise games dude. When we have gotten like rid of crates from games we can get rid of sex and girly pron from games and have like ugly realistic looking women with like no tits. dude. then we can like make the world a better place, and then like with technology we will like be...where we always wanted to..be. like dude. Then when we have ultra res mega plixels at rez's of like 8000,000,000,000 by 4000,000,000,000 ultra ultra dude widescreen hi def dude at 17 trillion frames per second to play games with no crates and no hot chicks dude we will like be where we always wanted to be. Us radical gamers dude are pushing forward the social boundaries of like stuff. dude. no more sexist crates dude and we will like be there dude.

    P.S See my tutorials on how to play games(just click my giant 3MB animated Flash avitar which is like a mini OS). dude

  20. HL2 by amliebsch · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's why HL2 is the most realistic game ever. It has crates, oh yes. But it also has pallets. AND cardboard boxes!

    --
    If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
    1. Re:HL2 by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      But the crates are not ON the pallets. NOT realistic!

    2. Re:HL2 by Zangief · · Score: 1

      No it isn't. It has a glaring internal inconsistency!!

      Why do they need pallets and forklifts, if they have the Gravity Gun?

  21. Great quote... by cluke · · Score: 4, Interesting

    from the article:

    "..[developers have] still got that outmoded notion that the player is your adversary. He isn't. He's your audience, the person you're trying to entertain and provide enjoyment to."

    Amen! I hope the next time a designer considers putting a jumping puzzle or a maze into a game, he stops and thinks of that.

    1. Re:Great quote... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Every time you put a jumping puzzle or a maze into a game, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens!

    2. Re:Great quote... by archivis · · Score: 1

      God. Jumping puzzles in mazes just sprang into my mind. Argh the evil!

      Poor kitties.

      --
      In July O7, I got a mac pro. There's no punchline. Just endless joy and wonder.
  22. Uh huh... by DamienNightbane · · Score: 2, Funny

    The same article points out that you can't move crates without a forklift and a pallet for the crate to sit on. If there are crates in a place, there had better be pallets under them and at least one forklift as well.

    Because you know, it's not like crates have been around longer than forklifts.

  23. I suggest the following crate puzzle .. by RedLaggedTeut · · Score: 1

    All the crates have different heights and widths, and you have to fit them into a cargo container they just do fit in ;-)

    --
    I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
  24. How many engines should a spy run into? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Man. Everyone is focussing on a strange part of this article.

    Ok. Yes. You can argue that crates still *exist.*

    At the same time, when you walk around in videogame worlds, you hardly see anything *but* crates.

    From Doom, we learn much of Hell is constructed from the still-growing bones of the sinning masses... and from crates.

    If you read the Old Man Murray article, they test how long it takes to get to the first crate in various games. Usually, it's under thirty seconds.

    These crates never seem to contain anything. They're in environments where you wouldn't necessarily expect crates. There doesn't seem to be any way to move the crates around.... the pallets are a big deal, because a four foot wide crate is useless without a way to lift it.

    Game designers act as if crates are the most common item in the entire world. There is nothing you'll see more of than crates. Socks are not more common. Soda cans, chairs, magazines, and cigarettes are not. The only thing that comes anywhere near being as common is slightly withered potted plants.

    Once you've read the Old Man Murray article, it's hard to ever look at games the same way again. It *is* an error, and they make it because crates are really easy to render. They make it so a scene is full of objects, but they keep the polycount low.

    Now that we have enough polys available, crates are only so common because we're used to seeing crates in games. It's time to fix this. Also it would be nice to have fewer levels set in rusted-out warehouses, which is a cliche that built itself around the easy availability of crates.

    1. Re:How many engines should a spy run into? by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

      At least HL 2 had pallets all over the place. however, the crates were not ON the pallets, so they still made no sense...

    2. Re:How many engines should a spy run into? by ikkonoishi · · Score: 1

      Morrowind has lots of crates in it, but they all hold something, and fit into the general atmosphere of the game.

    3. Re:How many engines should a spy run into? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Morrowind has lots of crates in it, but they all hold something, and fit into the general atmosphere of the game.

      Then again Morrowind was an RPG, not a FPS...

  25. College Dorm by freakmn · · Score: 1

    All you have to do is slightly change the atmosphere from an apartment to a college dorm. This allows you to use crates in place of all of the furniture, making it easier for the engine to render.

    --
    warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
  26. i still by Sv-Manowar · · Score: 1

    I still want to know why in games, on roads, paper seems to be there. Everywhere you go, there always has to be newspaper on the road or blowing across the road somehow.

    Maybe I'm out of touch with the world of wooden crates, harbours and newspapers

    --
    Business Voyeur
  27. Post them online so game designers can see them! by Optic7 · · Score: 1

    I'm sure that game artists would love to have the kind of reference pictures you're talking about. After all, we can't expect them to know about all the different types of crates if they don't work in some kind of high-tech industrial warehouse.

    If you posted those pictures of the various crates online somewhere and maybe send the link to the authors of the two articles this week complaining about crates in games, you'd be contributing to the improvement of crates in games. :)

  28. Re:Post them online so game designers can see them by C0rinthian · · Score: 1

    Finally, we can reach levels of crate-realism that are impossible with current knowledge.

    The level of detail and accuracy on these crates will re-define gaming as we know it!

  29. Re:Post them online so game designers can see them by Optic7 · · Score: 1

    Absolutely! :) Then they can really put the new consoles' power to good use! Oh, not to mention that then we won't get a story every week complaining about crates in games.

  30. Unplayable camera angles by BenjyD · · Score: 1

    The unplayable camera angle thing really annoys me. Resident Evil, for example, was a terrible game because you couldn't see what you were doing: what fun is fighting off zombies if the only reason it's hard is because the camera angle means you can't see what's going on?

  31. Easy solution for 40-year-old shipping technology by wandazulu · · Score: 1

    ...set the game 40 years in the past.

    Seriously though, a film-noir-ish "On the Waterfront" kind of game would be pretty cool ... how come nobody has come up with a good 30s/40s/50s setting for a game, even a FPS?

  32. crates by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if they take our crates away they might as well take our gravity guns and crow bars; those jackasses