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PC Gaming's 10 Commandments
An anonymous reader tips a Tech Report article laying out ten sacred conventions of PC gaming. Quoting:
"VI. Keep thine configurations options exposed. PC gamers are used to being able to configure things. That comes from both necessity and whim, and while one doesn't necessarily need to cater to the latter, the former is a must. Games don't have to expose a 1000-line menu for every conceivable detail level on the torches of King Whatever's castle entrance, but we'd like at least some amount of granularity. ... X. Honor thine modders and mod communities. Not every game benefits from mod support, mind you. When they do and the tools exist, however, the result is almost invariably a much bigger and more pervasive community (especially on the multiplayer front). That, in turn, leads to a constant stream of sales. It truly is a win-win situation."
Good list. For once (and this doesn't happen often with these things), I don't think I disagree with a single entry. If I could add an eleventh, it would be:
"XI: If thou art an fps and if thou art not a realistic military simulator, thou shalt stick any ideas regarding two-weapon limits quite firmly where the sun shineth not.
Seriously, even console players seem to be getting sick of this particular convention, judging by the fact that one of the highest profile console fpses on the horizon, Resistance 3, is going back to the weapon-wheel system."
And while it's not a commandment, one thing I would really love to see on the PC is some kind of system (perhaps implemented via Steam or something) which carries my control bindings between similar games, so far as is possible. I like my mouse inverted, and I am quite insistant that my right mouse button makes my character jump, while "use" is always assigned to the space bar. Zoom/aim lives on the middle mouse button - never the right mouse button (even if the game in question doesn't feature jumping). It would be extremely nice if, even if only between games from the same developer, those settings could be carried over automatically.
having context sensitive buttons reduces complexity where complexity may not need to exist. Having one button to interact with the environment beats having one for interacting with buttons, switches, etc, and one to jump off the wall, another for...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I. Thou shalt win
Fallout 3 modding community comes to mind. those people have really made games out of the game with their mods. there is even a mod that lets you found your own post-apocalyptic village, build it up, trade and whatnot. i noticed that even tho fallout - new vegas was out just for a short while, the mod community already put out 12,000 files in mods for nv.
exhilarating, really. how much mods can do.
Read radical news here
XI. Though shalt not maketh Duke Nukem Forever, ever.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This. A thousand times this. Happened to me when I purchased Bioshock 2 from a bricks and mortar store for the special edition box/artwork/vinyl soundtrack. GFWL pops up and tells me that I have to create an ID in order to be able to save my single-player game. Wait...what? Another one: I bought Batman: Arkham Asylum on Steam when it was on sale. I start it up, and what do I see? GFWL. Today I started the game up and "Click to start", I'm presented with the login screen where I enter my GFWL login (which I use only for the 2 games I own which force it upon me). Then I'm told "There is an update for Games for Windows Live, if you refuse the update, you will exit the game. After updating, you may have to restart your computer. Do you want to update?". Awesome. Thanks for giving me a choice, dickbags. Then "Update complete, exit game and restart to play."
I love Steam. The sales, the library, (the browser overlay for consulting a walkthrough occasionally), the community stuff. I install a game and then run it. And it stays out of my way unless I need it. Games For Windows Live on the other hand, is an abortion that should be cast into the depths of hell. The only analog I've seen is "Mordac: Preventer of Information Services" in the Dilbert cartoons. It's like Microsoft wanted to come up with the most efficient way possible to stop people from enjoying the games they play. Every day spent alive, outside of a fire by the developers of GFWL is a day too many in my book.
Like any long-time Slashdot user, I didn't read the article, and I'm not going to, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to keep my opinions on this subject to myself. As an added bonus, I don't write like a dumbass, using Shakespearean English in 2011. Unfortunately, I do fucking curse a lot. If that offends you, good. It means that I win.
Commandment 1: Don't port console games to the PC. It always ends up pissing off the PC gamers, because the UI is shitty and the graphics look like they're from five years ago. If you simply must port your crappy console game to the PC, at least spend a few days reworking the UI, so that it looks decent and handles well on something other than console hardware (TVs and gamepads). Thanks to the relatively high resolutions of HDTV, this isn't as monstrous of a problem as it used to be, but it's still annoying as hell when PC games completely ignore the existence of joysticks, mice, and keyboards, in favor of an input method only an eight year old could love.
Commandment 2: Nothing in the history of gaming is more hated than DRM. Even John Romero probably still has a few fans. If your game is released with DRM, remove it after the launch. Most publishers know that DRM does nothing to stop casual piracy, once a crack is publicly released. Once that happens, why punish the legit buyers? Do the right thing and remove the DRM. Or just don't use DRM at all. Imagine that! Absolutely nothing is more frustrating than a game that won't run, because of broken/buggy DRM, except perhaps a game that won't even run, because the license server is down. Fuck you.
Commandment 3: Misogyny, homophobia, racism, and religious intolerance might sound like great concepts for your game, but they actually aren't. You'll have to just trust me on this one. Allowances can be made for irony, satire, parody, and/or social criticism, but you're probably not witty enough for this. Gender stereotypes are equally as frustrating.
Commandment 4: This is for Peter Molyneux. Peter, I love you, but you need to keep your big mouth shut. It makes promises that your development team can't keep. Seriously. Mouth shut until the game ships. Everyone will be much happier, and we'll avoid having to punch you when we meet you.
Commandment 5: Don't fuck with a successful formula, and don't run what was once a good concept into the ground. Yes, this part requires you to use your head. If you can't come up with a novel twist, then it's time to move on to a new project. If you think that the franchise needs to be "streamlined", then it's best to start over with a new franchise.
XI: Thou shalt never release Half-Life 3. Ever. EVER. Instead thou shalt waist thine time making Left 4 Dead 2 and making countless hats in Team Fortress 2.
Cracked made a few of these lists: http://www.cracked.com/article_16196_the-7-commandments-all-video-games-should-obey.html, http://www.cracked.com/article_15748_a-gamers-manifesto.html and http://www.cracked.com/article_17442_5-things-gaming-industry-will-never-fix-and-why.html. There's more, but most of them aren't as good...
Cracked.com also compiled a list. Ever year or so someone goes on a rant like this, and brands it "commandments". TFA focuses heavily on UI and corporate meddling on gamers' affairs; Cracked concentrated on gameplay and plot. Interestingly, both had rants about multiplayer, though with different things in mind.
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
While some things are legit, common sense UI issues, like the SF4 controller issue, most of it is latching onto conventions of the past for no other reason that they are conventions of the past. You really shouldn't need to edit the graphics settings more than like screen resolution and then "low, medium, high, ultra", at least in the game's interface. Maybe give people access to a plaintext config file if they want to do more, but there's no reason to expose more options than this through the user interface other than "PC gamers are used to it". Being "used to" something that makes for bad or confusing UI doesn't make it not a bad or confusing UI.
Corrolary:
Multifunction button binds and weapon inventory limits are legitimate game design choices that should be considered (almost) completely independent from platform. Yes, it is a legit design choice to make the player decide between the rocket launcher and the rail gun. And just because one game had a poor or buggy implementation of a multifunction button doesn't make it an invalid design choice. I prefer games that have a more simple interface. Just because a player has 104 keys in front of them doesn't excuse you from simplifying the interface.
Again, being "used to" something doesn't make it a good or valid design, or a design that should apply to all games equally. It doesn't mean we shouldn't seek improvement/innovation/change.
The button configs need to be more transparent, or bad and confusing shit can happen in critical moments. Oh, and I also want to choke her with my cock.
I think this can all be made much simpler:
Devs must be forced to play all ports of their game with several different PC's, controllers, players, connections, etc. be made to use every menu a hundred times, and be forced to watch other people do the same and FIX the problems.
Which would immediately expose all those flaws straight away, and give them an incentive to fix the damn things (because AFTERWARDS they will be made to do the same again and again and again).
In the past we used to call it play-testing. Apparently now we call it "That'll do".
For example the anti-aliasing thing. That is often not in a game because of technical limitations. If the developers choose to use a deferred lighting , which many do these days, then regular anti-aliasing doesn't work. You turn it on, nothing will happen.
To overcome that limitation you have two real choices:
1) Make your engine DirectX 10 or newer. There the GPU supports what is needed to so FSAA with a deferred lighting renderer. This is what we'll start seeing since Windows XP has dropped off in a big way and game markers are starting to be willing to target Vista/7 only (XP only has DX9) but it'll take some time. Some games do have multiple versions, and can support FSAA in their DX10+ version, but many don't bother to do that since it takes extra development resources.
2) Have the drivers deal with it. The graphics card drivers can do some trickery on hardware that is DX10 (or better) capable and force FSAA in games that can't handle it due to being DX9/deferred shading. That is fine but it takes implementation by the card maker (which nVidia and ATi do) and means you don't have the option in the game.
The guy needs to understand the difference between what he thinks would be nice and what is possible.
XI. Though shalt not make spaceship with maximum speed limit.
unless you state that its in different universe.
I know it sounds like nit picking and i had my fair share of fun playing freespace, freelancer and xseries, but I want at least semi realistic spaceship fights game.
the only games if I remember correctly were Orbiter (crazy ass simulation for nasa pilots in training) and actually very good (and for free) but a bit buggy and unfinished Babylon 5: I've Found Her.
This is about PC GAMING! There's no need to expose these options to console-tards, but PC gamers with vastly differing system specifications want/need as much control as they can get. "low, medium, high, ultra"? Bullshit. I want to be able to fiddle with shadows, anti-aliasing, model-details etc. etc. until I get my optimal frame-rate/experience available on my system. We're not asking for this for the sake of it...because we're used to it on the PC...it's because it's a good fucking idea for PC gamers. It can be hidden in an "advanced options" menu, completely obliterating any complaints about a bad or confusing UI.
Oh my fucking god, unskippable cut scenes infuriate me.
publisher.bik
developer.bik
nvidia/ati.bik
brand owner.bik
gameintro.bik
actual game menu
oh boy! are we having fun yet?
The attempt at ye old dumb fuck humor language is not funny.
It's been a while since I gamed a lot, but there were a few PC games I had that didn't allow this. This one is so hardwired into my hands that any game without it is totally unplayable for me.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Some recent examples. Just cause 1 and saints row 2: Driving, specifically steering is EXTREMELY difficult just using the mouse and the WASD keys. Fallout 3 and divinity 2: only 8 hotkeys? We need MORE!!! I assume the limit at 8 is due to a console controller. the 4 cardinal directions and the 4 diagonals make 8 Lost planet: very unusual control scheme for some of the functions and even the menus Dead space 1: cannot skip EA logo at game start. Cannot save anywhere, only at save points. Very slow to turn the view/turn your character around, bad if being attacked from behind Modern warfare 2: very linear level design
If I pay a good amount of money for a game, I don't want anyone telling me that I _HAVE_ to finish that one mission before I can move further.
If I play only casually, I do not want to try the same friggin level over and over.
And I sure as hell don't need anyone to tell me I should!
Thou shalt provide a dev console in game with real commands that will have effect on the fly.
Thou shalt not restrict the player to only the horrific in-game server browser.
Looking at you BFBC2(among others).
11: Your PC game MUST be from the PoV of a character waving a gun in front of his face.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Idiot writer is trying to sound all Biblical, yet has no idea how to do it properly.
It's real simple. Here's how it works, kids: You use "thy" where you would use "a" and "thine" where you would use "an" -- and for exactly the same reason, to avoid the glottal stop. "Thy armor" is awkward to say; "thine armor" flows more smoothly. And "thine game" just sounds ignorant and pretentious. It's:
- thine eyes
- thy gun
- thine armor
- thy game, and
- thy uniform (You don't say "an uniform", do you? No, because the "y" sound at the beginning of "uniform" obviates the need for the glottal stop.)
Sorry if I sound unduly harsh, but I sing a lot of church music, and this kind of nonsense just grates on my ears.
It's not just about playability the first time, though, IMHO.
1. Mods also add replay value.
E.g., putting a silencer on more weapons than the 10mm pistol (and I can take pride in being the first guy on the Nexus who put a silencer on a different weapon than the 10mm pistol, and before there even was a GECK as that) opened up a whole new possibility: to play a ranged stealth character from start to finish. In the normal game that 10mm pistol would get woefully underpowered by the end, so basically eventually you had to suck it up and just use loud weapons. Now I could have half a dozen different silent guns, ranging from point blank SMGs to long range sniper weapons.
And then there are the pure vanity replays, like playing a game only with a lightsaber, or in an Alucard suit and with the Jackal gun, or in a Boba Fett armour and with my very own EE-3 blaster carbine, or strictly by smashing heads with an authentic late-medieval six-flanged mace like an old-style D&D priest. Especially since many such concepts involved advancing different skills (e.g., if I use blasters, I'll want energy skills, so I might as well get medicine too and get Cyborg, etc) and sometimes figuring different ways to get past the same situations (e.g., I can't snipe with a melee polearm;)
Sure, FO3 was plenty playable without that. But, really, there's only so many times you can play it again only with the standard props. All those extra props let me have a lot more fun by giving me a reason to play the game again.
2. Modding the game is fun by itself.
I mean, sure, I didn't really need a 30mm/L40 portable cannon to play the game, but modelling and texturing it and the custom ammo was fun by itself. Or I didn't really need a scoped EE-3 blaster, but, you get the idea, it's fun to model all those fins and scratch the edges and darken the creases just right. Etc.
So, yeah, I'd say that Fallout 3 still benefited from being so moddable. Sure, it would be playable even without mods, but I think I got a lot more bang for my buck as it is.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
but some games wont let you re-map the mouse to moment keys. Sure I can then remap other ways, but why not let us do what we want!
By "moment keys" do you mean "movement keys"? If so, say I'm developing a side-scrolling platformer vaguely similar to Mario or Sonic or Mega Man series. How would you recommend that I map the motion of the player's character to a mouse? The closest thing I've ever seen to a mouse-controlled platformer was Kirby Canvas Curse for the DS, where the player drew extra platforms with a stylus.
The one thing I do like is the so-called "trainer" mode where you can give yourself infinite lives, or slower enemies, or just skip whole levels completely. That seems to be lacking in modern games.
Cheat codes wouldn't be compatible with the practice of reporting the player's achievements to a central server, which became common in 2006 after the Xbox 360 was released. Perhaps the game could just disable achievements on a save file once the player has used a cheat.
Thou shall charge only for content:
None of this buying +2 sword, or buying money with real world money. Micro transactions are fine, as long as the player gets something they can't get in game .
already.
Thou shall let a loser lose:
In single player games, tell the player when the situation is hopeless, don't let them struggle trying to win the impossible. In a multiplayer game, you need to give a losing team the chance to catch back up, or just end the game and be done with it. No one likes a hopeless game.
I think some game had inverted Y axis as the default
For me, inverted Y began with Star Fox, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, Star Fox 64, and Goldeneye.
VIII. Enough with the save points already! Once again, there are historical reasons for a poor or otherwise lacking feature: back in the early days, console games couldn't count on having much storage space, so they had to be stingy with saved games. But, once again, it's now 2011! Consoles and personal computers have gigabytes of storage at their disposal, so I can't really comprehend why you insist on having very defined places where progress can be saved. Even worse are those titles with auto-save checkpoints. Thanks, saving right as I run out of ammo or walk off a cliff is really helpful. Granted, there are games where saving the progress at every millisecond might prove tantamount to cheating, but allow us gamers to be the judges of that. If you really must block us from saving in a few spots, at least minimize those. Let us play your game our way.
Um, what? They're historic sure but it's also a technique for game pacing and part of a risk/reward or punishment mechanism. Whilst I don't particularly like that mechanism it has it's place and persistent memory isn't the sole reason for defined save points like is assumed here. Sounds like you have a bone to pick with the pacing of save points not save points entirely, and that's applicable to all platforms not PCs.
thanks to the consoles being from the stone age a $200 PC with a $60 GPU plays most games at 1600x900 or higher at decent framerates
But how many players can play at once? Cracked made another list of seven commandments, and the first was not providing a shared-screen mode for owners of home theater PCs. Not all households have the money for a separate gaming PC and separate copy of each game for each resident, or they have laptops that don't take GPU upgrades.
Add a purpose/intention/goal line/paragraph to every rule, and I might consider checking them out.
The US Constitution starts out with a list of purposes, but they're written so vaguely (such as "promote the general welfare") that they end up useless. In fact, its copyright clause begins with a purpose "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", but the Supreme Court has routinely ignored it (such as in Eldred v. Ashcroft), instead deferring judgment to Congress on whether a particular act of Congress "promote[s] the Progress".
they should have had a setting that let me say: "Hey, got an HD set here, you can shrink the font some to put more info on the screen."
Good idea. But the developer would have to make sure to ignore the setting and force large-print mode when the game is started on an SD set. I have a cousin who takes his Xbox 360 back and forth between an SDTV and an HDTV depending on who else is using what other TVs in the household. Do the HD consoles' operating systems even let the game see how the scaler is configured?
The worst bit of the level scaling in Oblivion are the guards.
EVERY SINGLE ONE is at least 5 levels above you and captains are 15 levels higher.
UNTIL you get to the "Recruitment" section when they're not levelled to you. Then, if you take the game slowly and build levels so you get some good loot to take with you, your aides are completely useless speed bumps.
Yet if you go back into the city and start stealing again, they're levelled.
Quest items should have been upped a lot if the intent was they were static items. You want them to last at least 6 levels of activity, and with the Daedra quest items, they ought to have been levelled from the start. At least there you could get a good "reason" for them: they're building off your own power because they're part of a sentient Daedric Prince.
It's a pity that the Shivering Isles pack doesn't give you much for being a Daedric Prince yourself, mind...
Where's the commandment "Thou shall not use DRM"?
Mods also add replay value.
Replay value is a tricky thing to balance. Adding replay value might cut sales of the sequel, as players will hold on to the first game or buy it from the bargain bin and then install mods. Adding mod support also increases the possibility that your game might make the news in a bad way if it gets modded into something that offends the Moral Guardians. But on console platforms, adding replay value encourages people to hold on to the first game rather than resell it to a used game store, driving more sales of new copies.
Indeed, you should be working on Elite IV instead.
Elite 4 is old. Millions of Pokemon trainers battled them over a decade ago.
Others have pointed some of these out, but I also don't agree with everything on that list, so here we go:
Thou shalt not shun thine player's mouse
By the same token, don't rely exclusively on the mouse. Yes, the mouse is going to be quick for configuring stuff and for navigating an unfamiliar menu. However, any game I end up playing a lot, I find myself wishing I could use the keyboard for navigation more -- I think that comes down to:
Remember thine user-interface conventions and keep them holy
I'm not sure there's a good technical way to do this yet, but it'd be really nice if every game didn't reinvent the GUI. Steam even seems to have its own windowing system and GUI library in order to be able to show you a chat window either outside in the OS or on top of a running game. But it does mean that they have to re-solve a lot of problems that GUIs have solved for decades. When I have a GUI up with a bunch of options, every input field in that form gets some sort of accelerator, or at least the tab key will move between them. Steam at least looks and feels kind of like normal windows, but I'm not sure they get that, and I know most games end up rolling their own UI directly on top of whatever 3D framework they're using, which is probably where we're getting the Huge Text of Doom.
One thing that's actually kind of refreshing is the ability to set visual options in a separate window before the game engine actually starts, but that has its own caveats -- I shouldn't have to restart the game to tweak resolution. Especially on older video cards, and with games with a lot of options, it's going to take me a few tries to find the right balance of performance vs visuals. Make that loop as tight as possible.
Anyway, moving on:
Thou shalt not accelerate mouse input
Can't really agree. Maybe don't make it the default, and maybe make it a checkbox somewhere. It's even possible that it's a useless feature. But remember, this is a PC game -- don't arbitrarily change the control from one behavior to another in a new version, make it an option.
Thou shalt not mix thine bindings
This one is also a bit mixed. Context-sensitive bindings can be a very good thing, though they do have all the problems mentioned here. What we want is some balance, perhaps a configurable balance, between the console idea of "press B to do anything" (Conker's Bad Fur Day had a lot of fun with this) and the old-school PC idea of "Bind a keystroke to everything." Duke Nukem 3D had an extensive keymap, including hotkeys for a number of inventory items like the jetpack. Old-school shooters in general would bind each weapon to a number. These are good things for more advanced players, and once you either master the everything-has-its-own-key keymap or figure out which items you care enough about to assign a key to, it's a good thing. Still, having a smaller set of controls I have to pick up to be adequate is very useful to get me playing until I reach that level -- so, for example, keys to navigate through my inventory and use an inventory item, or using the mousewheel to navigate through weapons, is much more critical than being able to press 'j' to instantly activate my jetpack, or 'h' to instantly activate my Holoduke, etc.
Lugaru has a ton of context-sensitivity, and there's no way it'd be playable if it wasn't context-sensitive. It's even part of the skill of learning to play this game well -- for example, to successfully perform a silent takedown, I need to somehow end up behind an enemy who hasn't noticed me yet, and press attack without pressing forward. Easy enough if I sneak up on them, much harder if I'm jumping from across the map and landing right behind them -- but immensely satisfying to be able to one-hit a wolf. The downside is that I often find myself blocking an attack (and being counter-blocked and then gang-beaten by all
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
A finger up the ass is less intrusive than a dick, but I still don't think anyone should be thanking people for putting their finger up the ass of the purchaser of the game just because the dick option wasn't used.
The only people I've met who dislike Steam are people who haven't used it or haven't used it in the past four or five years.
Then I guess you haven't met people who had a sudden Internet disconnection and couldn't get online to enable offline mode.
Interestingly, both had rants about multiplayer, though with different things in mind.
I want to agree with the first commandment from the Cracked article: "#7: Thou shalt let us play your game with real-life friends." It then goes on to advocate for split-screen support. But how is this practical on a PC? Several Slashdot users such as CronoCloud will vouch that most people aren't willing to connect a PC to a monitor big enough for "real-life friends" to fit around. (I can provide links to past comments if you want to see their reasoning.) Often the TV is one of the one-third of SDTVs that still haven't been replaced with a PC-compatible HDTV. Or the TV is in another room. Or people just don't want to shut down, unplug, plug, restart whenever switching between games and typical "desktop" uses of a computer. Or the real-life friends have since moved hundreds of miles/km away. And a lot of genres common to PCs (largely FPS and RTS) rely on hiding the location of your units from your opponents, which doesn't work so well if the other players can just screen-peek.
XI) Thou shalt not cripple games with DRM
XII) Thou shalt allow for co-op mode in multiplayer
Devs must be forced to play all ports of their game with several different PC's, controllers, players, connections, etc.
It'd be hard for a smaller indie studio to buy "several different PC's, controllers, players, connections, etc." with which to test. It can't afford to yet can't afford not to, so what's the best plan here?
Even a game that is released purely for PC can still smell of consolization.
I can think of one way this could happen, involving an indie studio too small to qualify for a console license. The game is developed for the PC with intent to port it to consoles eventually, and the studio starts selling copies for the PC in an attempt to build up the financial assets needed to approach Nintendo or Sony. Or is this the wrong way to go about it?
Well, there is of course that possibility, but it doesn't seem to have hurt either Bethesda or EA. I mean, Bethesda still sold FO:NV _and_ a metric buttload (about two thirds of an imperial arseload;) of DLC expansions for both FO3 and NV. And EA sold The Sims 2 and The Sims 3, and a butt-load of expansions and item packs for all 3 games, in spite of the existence of an unbelievable abundance of mods.
And about waiting for it to get to the bargain bin... look at The Sims. Not only the games didn't drop in price much over time, but even relatively minor expansion packs started at nearly full game price and only dropped in price very very slowly. Some would still cost more than half the price of a new game, some 2-3 years after release.
Fallout 3 also didn't drop in price all that fast. I mean, sure, it did, but slower than other games which only offered 10 hours of gameplay and then that was it.
Plus, there's plain old the factor that people talk to each other. Someone might buy your first game, because they heard good things about it. Even if then they skipped your next one, you still got the same money out of them, and got it a year or two earlier. It must be worth something.
Plus, there's the factor that no publisher is a complete monotony. The competition isn't just between your current game and your next game. It's also between your next game and the next game of the other publishers. The reputation of being extremely modder friendly made a lot of us pretty much guaranteed to buy any game Bethesda puts out, even if it means giving something else a skip.
The "moral guardians" sure seem to be running out of steam. Fallout 3 and NV have a bonanza of naked mods, bouncy boobs mods (no, literally), 'pornstar body' mods (makes the melons literally watermelon sized), lingerie mods, animated prostitution mods (yes, literally), mods that allow one to shot children, lolicon mods and screenshots, etc. It sure doesn't seem to have caused much of a fuss.
Mind you, there is the mandatory thread once a month from someone making some "OMG, why do you guys make naked women instead of modding the item *I* want", but that's about it.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I replied to someone else who mentioned the first Cracked article ("7 Commandments") linked in your post.
The third linked article ("5 Things The Gaming Industry Will Never Fix (And Why)") mentions Pac-Man as an example of games with no cut scenes, but Wikipedia claims that Pac-Man, with its "brief comical interludes about Pac-Man and the ghosts chasing each other around during those interludes, resembling simple entertaining silent-film type scenes", was the first game with cut scenes.
Though shalt not make spaceship with maximum speed limit.
unless you state that its in different universe.
It'd have to be in a different universe not to have a speed limit. Interstellar travel is just plain unrealistic in a universe like ours.
Oh hai ! Learn some English before publishing lists like this - "thou, thee, thy, thine" are the informal second person equivalents of the formal second person "you, you, your, yours" pronouns. (It's like "Du" vs. "Sie" in German or "Tu" vs. "Vous" in French.) So you wouldn't say "thine player's mouse" - the correct version is "thy player's mouse".
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You can put out a test version, an alpha, a beta, recruit a test group (mainly for free with such projects)
Are there best practices to prevent such test versions from getting leaked to the public before the release date?
take it round your mate's house and let his girlfriend try and break it
I've tried recruiting testers from among friends and family, but I've run into one problem. Those few people in my circle of friends and family who do play video games don't want to test a game more than once every two weeks. After they die once, they become bored and don't feel like practicing enough to test more difficult missions later in the game.
On the pc, sure, a weapon wheel system can work, alternatively the old 1-9 keybindings did ok.
On the Xbox controller, however, there's an arguably better system.
I've been playing Mafia II, which despite lots of realism respect, decided to have no 2-weapon cap, and the way they implemented it worked well--The D-pad controller that sits below the left stick is now bound to weapon select.
The bottom cycles through mid range weapons (shotguns, etc.) the left cycles through barehands and thrown weapons (molotov cocktails, grenades) the top cycles through rifles and SMGs, and the right cycles through pistols.
This allows you to select a weapon in the genre you want quickly if you're in a tight spot, then if you have time (say you're in cover) to cycle to the exact weapon you had in mind, but it keeps you from cycling through all your close range options while taking fire from a sniper 100 yards away before you get to a rifle that will actually get the job done.
Thou shalt make the game work only with video cards made within the past year that cost more than the game, itself.
I don't respond to AC's.
I pretty much agree 100% with TFA. Especially about the use of a mouse and having easier configuration of a game.
.ini files that you could scan through and change this or that to suit your needs. Easy tutorials and guides exist to let you know what all the settings do and their effects on the game. With ME2, they have all these .ini files boxed into one file called coalesced.ini, and it's not standard text style. There is an editor you can download called coalescededitor, and it does a good job of seperating everything out so you can make sense of it, and even includes a section of jump lists to get you to the most common settings to change. Such as disabling mouse acceleration. But, why should the community have to be the ones to implement a user friendly way to make the game experience better and more well suited to your system? Would it really have been so difficult for the company who HAS the code and the devs to have just put an extra menu in the config program that allows you to make these changes in a simple and efficient manner?
I recently reinstalled Mass Effect 1 and Mass Effect 2, as I wanted to do two full playthroughs of each, one as a good guy and one as a dick. I have all the DLC for both games, and am currently enjoying the bad guy playthrough on ME2.
After reading this article, I realized I had been thinking many of the same things it points out. Especially because of ME2.
For example, in ME2 there are areas where you cannot save. These are usually missions, and it can be frustrating if you suddenly realize you have to leave for work or some other engagement, but your less than halfway through getting Jack from Purgatory station. You either have to lose your progress or be late for work.
The worst offense of ME2 (in my opinion) is how ridiculously difficult it is to customize your graphical and quality experience with the game. With ME1, you had several
This leads into what is probably my biggest gripe about modern games (modern, to me, being roughly 2006-ish and up), and that is texture quality. This is a simplification of the issue, however, but still valid and indicitive of inherent issues with dumbed-down configurability. Lets take Mass Effect 2 for example, since it's still fresh on my mind. This is a beautiful game. Great color variety, awesome level designs, cool architecture through out, and some of the best looking character models of any game ever made. The animations (mostly suit-capture), the decent AI, and the storyline are just awesome. But, this game suffers from a very VERY common problem that virtually every game exhibits - garbage textures.
Now, don't get me wrong. The majority of the textures in ME2 are very good or even surprisingly realstic and superb. Take Zaeed for instance. His head and face texture is probably the best looking character texture I've ever seen in a game, even better than Crysis or Crysis 2 characters. Every time I see his face in the game, I seriously think "Man, that is friggin awesome work they did there."
But then I see Jack's body texture (normal costume, not alternate) and think, "Why the hell does her tattoo texture look so damn muddy and blurry? Why wouldn't they try to make a damned TATTOO'D body texture look super detailed and crisp?" And I look a the floor beneath my character. Muddled and blurry. I walk up to a wall. Muddled and blurry. I watch a cut scene with a close up of a mech. Muddled and blurry.
I understand the technical side of this issue. Higher rez textures use more memory and take longer to render and all that jazz. Blah blah cry me a river. This isn't 1998, and I don't have an 8Mb 3dFX card. I have a relatively cutting edge 560Ti 1Gb card. It can handle textures above 512 resolution. So stop hardcoding texture limits, and instead allow us gamers to use 4096 or 8192 textures if we wish. If your still using a Geforce 5600, well, time to upgrade anyway.
I also realize that using texture sizes of 8192 won't always fix a muddy looking wa
Halitosis - (n.) Halle Berry's Camel Toe.
12. Invisible walls should only be reachable by cheating. 13. The keyboard interface is not a second class citizen, some people aren't keyboard fans, but a half working keyboard system hurts. (supreme commander series). 14. Support switching audio on the fly.. Sometimes the roommate/neighbors/ guests arrive sooner than expected, and the headphones need to be put on/taken off.. no reason to make this a PITA. 15. Handle the windows key.. Hitting it mid game is a game-ender. 16. Make sound adjust easy.. I hate having game music overpowering the skype/vent/teamspeak/steam/xfire/etc audio connection to your friends. 17. Abuse the hardware, When a game lags, but the processor isn't pegged, it's a problem. 18. Allow for mid game entry when appropriate (I'm thinking Magicka). 19. Have a plan for using multiple monitors.
Thou shalt allow me to configure hotkeys for every action in the game.
So, I've been through Company of Heroe's useless menu. Then, after what seems like way too much searching, I've been to the website to download a custom hotkey configuration tool. Ok, sweet, I'll finally be able to make the control interface usable now. So I go to look for the 4 most important functions for any RTS, and they're fucking missing. Can you guess what those are?
Move camera up
Move camera down
Move camera left
Move camera right
Oh great, thanks Relic, or THQ, or, I don't know, whoever the fuck you are. So now I have 2 choices. I can jerk my mouse all over the table like a retard, to scroll by moving the pointer to the edge of the screen. Or, I can put my left hand on the 4 arrow keys for moving the camera. Well, at least that works. But you know what would be nice? If I had some nearby key that was programmed to zoom to last notification. Some easily accessible key. A key that I could hit reliably without ever having to look. Oh, I know! I'll just map my camera keys to ESDF, and then there will be plenty of other keys around that which I already know how to use by touch! .... Oh, wait, that's right. You fucked me on that one, didn't you?
Thou shalt allow me to change the game speed while the game is in progress.
Dear RTS devs, if I'm doing a comp stomp, you don't really have to worry about me cheating the comp. Let me change the game speed whenever I feel like it.
Thou shalt not assume that I want my scroll wheel to change weapons.
Dear FPS devs, my mouse, like many others, has a very easy-to-slide scroll wheel. On top of that, I like to keep a finger on the scroll wheel to be able to do a middle click for whatever action I desire. At a minimum, I'd like the wheel to be set to do nothing at all. I certainly don't want it to be changing weapons for me. Believe me, if I wanted to switch weapons, I'd just press the hotkey for that weapon.
Thou shalt not force me to allocate hotkeys for bullshit actions.
Dear RTS and FPS devs, I don't need a particular hotkey to tell my peasant to build that one particular building from the 3rd age that gives you access to certain upgrades. I only have to build one of those each skirmish, so I don't need a hotkey for that. I can use my mouse that one time to select the damn thing from a menu, jesus tapdancing christ. Nor do I need a particular hotkey for that one piece of shit gun that you thought was so cool but that I never use. Nor do need to allocate a hotkey to every little thing, like team-voice, for example, when I don't even use the in-game voice. And please don't mix this up with the first piece of advice above. ALLOWING mapping of all actions is not the same as REQUIRING mapping of all actions.
Thou shalt not allocate hotkeys behind my back after I exit the hotkey UI.
Hey RTS devs, I know you're just trying to avoid me leaving some important action unmapped, and so you set it automatically for me after I close the hotkey menu, even after I specifically turned it off. That's understandable. Well, not really, because I have more than 2 brain cells. But let's suppose, in some alternate universe, that I really need your dumb ass to clean up after me. Then you need to be explicit about that before I leave the hotkey UI, and I will take care of it. If you, in your infinite fucking wisdom, reallocate the hotkeys behind my back, then I usually get surprised when I tell one of my peasants to garrison in the town center, and instead he goes off trying to build a fucking barracks.
On second thought, even that's not good enough. Every time that we go through this little problem of you thinking you're smarter than me, and thus forcing me to allocate the million and fucking one bullshit hotkey actions that you've created, all I do is just go in and allocate all the bullshit actions to some bullshit key, like backslash or something. You know what would save us both a lot of time? If you, instead of trying to play l
Honestly? You can build your own for less than $300
Which is hard for kids under 18 who can't work a normal summer job due to child labor laws and don't live near enough lawns to mow to earn $300 in a summer. I remember my cousin trying to mow lawns over the summer but finding that the neighbors already had someone else mowing their lawns.
and on many PC games like FPS or RTS having your opponent see what you are doing just kinda ruins it.
And on many games like fighting or Bomberman having your opponent see what you are doing doesn't ruin it.
So if you want to play with friends and don't want them to have to drag their own towers it really ain't that high
One copy of a console game allowing four players costs $60. How much do four copies of a PC game cost?
All told you can get a playable gaming PC for less than $200
HD console: $300. PCs for players 2-4: $600. Ideally, I'd build two gaming PCs: one for the desk and one for the LCD HDTV, but too many of the games that would work on a TV never get ported to the PC.
"Oh, and if you insist on 5 minute long unskippable cutscenes followed by a hard bossfight for the love of Xenu have an autosave between them. Your beautifully rendered cutscene gets really tedious when you've heard the joke half-a-dozen times."
If I had a nickel for every time I had to listen to "...and your demon taint stains it!"
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Private servers make sense for some games, but not others. We had a first person shooter server at one of my employers, and most the office joined in over lunch. Great fun. But big MMORPG's like Runescape would not work well on a private server.
I have 2 rules for any PC game I buy:
1. No DRM. No exceptions, not even Steam. I don't care how much I'm drooling over an upcoming game. If it has DRM, I'm not touching it.
2. No console ports. Said game must be developed for PC first. I don't care how well it was ported over from console, I'm not interested.
These rules are actually pretty easy to abide by, as nowadays I just don't have as much time for gaming as I used to. Plus there are a plethora of indie games, not to mention the whole catalog from GOG, that I can turn to if I want something to play.
How serious am I about all this? Deus Ex was my all-time favorite game. I'm not even considering DX3, because it fails to meet my criteria.
One of my top complaints is how the camera is treated as a physical object in third-person games, and is constantly getting pushed around by objects and walls near the character. Frequently I find my character can see into areas that *I* cannot.
Cameras must be allowed to pass through *everything*, and every polygon between the camera and the character should highly transparent, if not invisible.
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
Beaten to the pedantic punch.
Let's give one example of my difficulty: It's hard to get a family of Call of Duty fans interested in a vertical shmup.
No achievement for level 3 (not beaten fairly), achivements for levels 4, 5 and 6 (beaten fairly).
Weapons obtained while cheating in level 3 would be used in levels 4, 5, and 6.
How doesn't that make it obvious to you, that that means, the purpose has to become the actual rule?
How doesn't that make it obvious to you, that that means, the purpose has to become the actual rule?
What isn't obvious is to what you intended "that" in "that means" to refer. The Supreme Court has shown that it isn't willing to make the purpose become the actual rule.
If you consider anyone gaming will most likely already have a PC
I mentioned "laptops that don't take GPU upgrades" earlier. And even if they "most likely already have a [desktop] PC" of their own, that doesn't necessarily mean they can cart it around whenever they visit real-life friends in case they happen to end up wanting to play a video game. Say I already have friends at my house, and we decide we want to have a LAN party. Should I send them all back home to run and get their PCs?
Well, yeah.
X. Honor thine modders and mod communities
I'm looking at you Peter Mollyneux! Tool you for destroying The Movies!