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John Romero On Reinventing the Shooter
An anonymous reader writes: John Romero helped bring us Doom, Quake, and Wolfenstein, but he's also known for Daikatana — an immensely-hyped followup that flopped hard. After remaining on the periphery of game development since then, Romero announced last month that he's coming back to the FPS genre with a new game in development. Today, he spoke with Develop Magazine about his thoughts on the future of shooters. Many players worry that the genre is stagnant, but Romero disagrees that this has to be the case. "Shooters have so many places to go, but people just copy the same thing over and over because they're afraid to try something new. We've barely scratched the surface."
He also thinks the technology underpinning games matters less than ever. Romero says high poly counts and new shaders are a distraction from what's important: good game design. "Look at Minecraft – it's unbelievable that it was made by one person, right? And it shows there's plenty of room for something that will innovate and change the whole industry. If some brilliant designers take the lessons of Minecraft, take the idea of creation and playing with an environment, and try to work out what the next version of that is, and then if other people start refining that, it'll take Minecraft to an area where it will become a real genre, the creation game genre."
He also thinks the technology underpinning games matters less than ever. Romero says high poly counts and new shaders are a distraction from what's important: good game design. "Look at Minecraft – it's unbelievable that it was made by one person, right? And it shows there's plenty of room for something that will innovate and change the whole industry. If some brilliant designers take the lessons of Minecraft, take the idea of creation and playing with an environment, and try to work out what the next version of that is, and then if other people start refining that, it'll take Minecraft to an area where it will become a real genre, the creation game genre."
Sorry, I cannot read TFA without my trusty sidekick superfly
http://www.penny-arcade.com/co...
I don't know, pretty much every modern FPS is based on ideas thought up by this guy. I'm willing to give him a pass even on that last gigantic swing and miss.
Rob, Top five gaming crimes perpetuated by John Romero in the '00s. Go. Sub-question: is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?
So he's going to take a decade to make a version of Guncraft his bitch? This sounds like comedy gold waiting to happen.
But how do you know you're not in a local maximum? Not everybody can be Miles Davis and know exactly when something new is working, and be commercially successful at it. Hell, Miles Davis is probably the only person who ever did that in a low-probability field.
I'm probably preaching to the choir but this week's Zero Punctuation was all about Romero and doesn't paint him in the same positive light as TFA.
I am more interested in reinventing of John Romero, the old one only good as a bait for the inevitable flamewars. I am sure we can add more features.
You must not have played many FPS games.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
I've got ideas for plenty of shooters that do things differently. Two have actually made it to playable prototypes, and confirmed that yes, the ideas are fun. I'd describe them, but I'm in talks to produce them so I'll keep my mouth shut for now. All the marketers think we want are "realistic" modern arena shooters, "realistic" modern open-map shooters, "old-school" twitch shooters, or maybe an occasional squad-level tactical shooter. In other words, a CoD clone, a Battefield clone, a Q3/UT clone, or a R6 clone. That's it. That's 90% of the industry, just remaking the same three games over and over with different settings or skins or variations on the same fucking theme. It's really quite infuriating, since half of them aren't even *good* clones.
While I totally agree that Romero was an abject failure, his point still rings true. The need to obtain venture capital to launch a decent game has created an atmosphere stagnation in the genre, and dare I say, the field of game development as a whole. The requirement to produce results has superseded the game designers ability to implement new and interesting game mechanics in my opinion. It would be awesome to see more games that take the genre to a new level, even if the main proponent is someone who has't innovated in years.
Look at Minecraft – it's unbelievable that it was made by one person, right?
Wrong... the community created minecraft. All Notch did was let them do it. Shooters used to let you do that. Remember that? When we were allowed to make our own maps? I used to not even play the boxed game at all! I'd just go strait to the player made maps. Now you want so much control over the experience because you feel you need to monetize every damned pixel on the screen...
Hell, if you want to monetize it... monetize the map editor tools...
Want copy&paste? $5!
Pre-fab German bunker? $1!
Allow map makers that attract a lot of players to earn these tools based on visitors...
Give the players up-votes that would give the map makers in-game currency to improve maps with.
That would sell.
Let me guess, he's gonna make us his bitch?
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
Why anyone cares what this guy has to say boggles my mind. He may have had a hand in some good games decades ago, but what have you done for me lately?
Oh yeah, you took a steaming turd on my computer. Thanks.
In other news, North Korea is the best Korea.
A female canine player character might be an audience-alienating premise. Furry characters (as seen in Robin Hood and Star Fox) tend to be associated with E and E10+ ratings, while first person shooters tend toward M.
I hope that whatever Romero is doing doesn't turn out to be Free-2-Play or co-op or with multiplayer focus.
The beauty of his best games was that they were single-player, with some very fun multiplayer as a bonus. The current gaming industry mode seems to be co-op or multiplayer primarily with maybe a very short single-player campaign thrown in.
I understand that this trend started primarily as a way to prevent some kid in Estonia from having a nickel in his pocket that didn't belong to the gaming industry, and I don't fault them because their nature is to be money-grubbing monsters who basically hate their customers. But somehow, the great single-player games managed to make a nice profit. Nice enough to finance a stinker like Daikatana.
Oh, and there's a new meme going around the gaming industry and the domesticated, corrupt gaming press: The notion that someone current games are too long and give players too much to do. You'll hear phrases like "shorter, more focused game experiences" which basically means they can spend less on development (and let's face it, the gaming press is mostly made up of wannabe indie game devs). If they could figure out a way to sell a $59 game that lasted 45 minutes, they'd do it in a heartbeat. Yeah, it's going around. You're hearing about how "players don't want long games" and "gamers would rather have an intensely fun one hour game than a grindy 100 hour one", as if those were the only two choices. Of course, this ignores the wild success of games like Skyrim and even current ones like Divinity: Original Sin.
Anybody who observes consumer culture knows where this is going. It's not a new concept. Give people smaller boxes of cereal for the same price as a large box and maybe they won't notice or care. Start with a subscription-only service which markets itself as "commercial free" and then start slipping in commercials, as if it were always inevitable (maybe it was).
No, I'm pretty sure the big difference between the successful game publishers of today and the old-school types like Romero is that Romero actually seemed to like gaming and gamers. The level of cynicism in F2P, co-op, Day 1 DLC, etc etc is pretty shocking really when you step back and look at it. Until people start to understand the enormous power in their consumption choices, it will only get worse, and the industry is doing everything it can to make game customers feel helpless in the face of these inexorable industry changes. When in reality, they are anything but helpless.
I hope consumers wake up at some point, but I won't hold my breath.
You are welcome on my lawn.
He's right, you're wrong. Wolfenstein, Doom, Quake. That's a career any developer would be envious of, and yes, those games clearly defined the FPS genre.
Has he done anything lately? Not really. Has he had some big failures? Definitely. But he's still a better game developer than anyone posting on this article will ever be.
That said, I'm not sure I'm going to go to him first as an expert on the future of the gaming industry...
everything else was lacking.
To be fair, the American reboot of "Old Boy" was pretty great, I thought.
But generally, I agree.
However, I don't mind one bit if a game company reuses assets from a successful game. I thought Saints Row IV was one of the best games to come out that year (in fact, it was my GOTY), even though it was the same location, the same character models, the same voice talent (with a few additions) and the same textures.
Hey, I'm all for companies looking for ways to get it done cheaper and more efficiently, as long as the product gives real value for the price, which SRIV most certainly did, IMO.
I guess it's not about "reboot or not reboot" so much as it is about, "Make your goddamn products worth their price for a change".
You are welcome on my lawn.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
You're probably too young to remember, but Redneck Rampage had mosquitoes as big as a man's head, and they could, given time, do enough damage to kill you.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
"Just make the next Minecraft and you'll be rich" "all you have to do is be the next notch"
" Maybe you should go back and use that and tell me if Firefox is any better than that version."
Nope, because WWW didn't leak memory like a fucking sieve. Firefox 32? Just like every iteration before it, from XP to Win 7, is a straight up piece of swiss cheese when it comes to memory. I actually moved back to IE.
"we might still be using that original version which was pretty crappy and difficult to use."
Funny, having installed it in a Windows 3.1 VM and tested it out, it's nowhere near as bad as you think, assuming you have the brains and intuition to find stuff.
"Thanks for playing."
Oh please, you weren't even a player in the first place. You were just a pawn.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
why not? it happens in real life....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Reinventions and creatively redesigning games and activities into a virtual space is like, the thing that made the big devs of the old studios of yor. I don't think people inspired to change paradigms are bad people to design.
It's just a risky business model. But the results can be gr8. Most likely this guy can survive another failure and is more than happy to get the chance to take a risk on this next en devour they dream of.
Honestly I don't know really where the hell FPS's can be taken... that they havn't at some point by a mod... but I guess someone could roll out an fps quite quickly by mashing up mod ideas and just using a stock engine.
Wanna try something different check out the Hook and Minsta servers on Xonotic. Not my cup of tea but some super fast game play while you can fly around better than spider man.
http://www.xonotic.org/
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I dunno. I kind of agree with him [shudder]. FPS is sorely missing new ideas and his link to Minecraft is the most promising observation in years. I have always said that I may not be the best shooter but I am a good designer. Give me the ability to design my own weapons in-game and I will win a lot. But we are not talking about mech type building. We are talking fine-grained physics with metalworking, advanced chemistry and other real world complexity. This level of gaming is still beyond what computers can do but minecraft-type building would be a great step in that direction. I really want to see a game where you spend a month building, testing and refining your designs and five minutes in the actual battle. I am sure Romero will find a way to screw up but he sure is talking a good vision.
"take the idea of creation and playing with an environment, and try to work out what the next version of that is, and then if other people start refining that"
Red Faction: originally you could destroy terrain, in the newest you can rebuild some of it
I'm not sure I get your point. I was for the most part defending him and his career. But still, if he hasn't done anything notable in the industry in over a decade, there is good reason to question current relevancy of his opinions.
Though if you want to talk those with higher batting averages - John Carmack is the Babe Ruth of the Game Developer Hall of Fame, but even his recent games have been fairly mediocre. How about Michael Morhaime? Ray Muzyka? Sid Meyer? Tim Schafer? Sam Houser? Jason Jones? Ken Levine? Mostly relevant for 15+ years with consistent hits the whole time.
Romero did make at least one good point in his interview - it's not all about the technology. Good design, writing, understanding the customers/market, and adapting to that new market is just as important, and all of this I listed are still relevant because they focused on all of those things beyond the technology...
he used the phrase "take the lessons of"
Please retire
Hell no!
Romero is right. Good quality entertaining FPS have been thin on the ground lately.
It's become a stagnant genre, and it's time we had an Doom/Duke Nukem/Unreal/Half-Life successor. Daikatana was a failure in a large part because the AI for both enemies and the NPC sidekick characters was crap and messed up the rest of the gameplay. The bad guys, Barney and Alyx etc in HL2 showed that's a solved problem now.
In the words of the Duke, I say "Bring it on!".
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Praising one-man work (Minecraft), then "if only some brilliant designers take the lessons from Minecraft" (aka like Romero, right?), then it would elevate the genre and the gaming scene etc etc.
Hey Romero, people have already been creating/playing with the environment, if you want to "refine", better start working and stop talking, others are ahead in the game.
Portal 2?
Technology is essential to gaming, because without great code to back up your design (no matter how modest that design may be) your game will be glitchy, slow, or unplayable. In fact, Notch is a programmer first, designer second. The design of Minecraft (and many of his other games) seems to have evolved organically out of his programming experiments as well as the community.
So technology is still a big deal in gaming. Stop trying to convince us you're still relevant, Romero, and go sling some code. No game, no weiner.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Bullshit. You were probably 3 years old when it came out. For those of us who were into gaming at the time, it was revolutionary.
It did convincing pseudo-3D before 3D was even remotely possible though some brilliant use of precompiled BSP trees and sectors. And it had stereo audio and a kick ass sound track that were almost as creepy and immersive as the graphics.
And if the mind blowing graphics and audio at the time wasn't enough, it also supported 4 player gaming as well. The version that they released supported 2 player serial or 4 player IPX, but they released the source to the network drivers, which was another early first - game companies releasing source and working with players to add features and content. It wasn't long before a full Internet/UDP networked version was available, making it one of the early real-time multiplayer Internet games.
Wait, the Simpsons has no violence (and adult content)? You must have been watching a different TV show from what I have been watching the last 20+ years...
And I think you are talking about a completely different game genre. Do you actually know what the S in FPS stands for? Pretty sure there isn't a "whole market just waiting for" Nerf Deathmatch.
You are trying to avoid having your children exposed to all forms of violent entertainment? Including violent cartoons?
So what happens when they get into their teens and you no longer can control what they watch? (I assume that you don't have them locked up in the basement.)
They are going to be exposed to violence at a time when they feel the need to rebel against their parents and become more independent while associating the censorship with you. Does that sound like a good idea?
A first person SHOOTER without the violence? wtf? Go play nerf arena.
I guess it explains why I dont' watch the simpsons.. it's about as boring and bland as possible while still calling it 'comedy. I want the violence. It's part of the fun.
is it in fact unfair to criticize a formerly great artist for his latter day sins, is it better to burn out or fade away?
Doesn't matter as long as you're doing it in dignity.
bickerdyke
Notch.
Pretty sure there isn't a "whole market just waiting for" Nerf Deathmatch.
Actually, there very probably is. Deathmatch without the completely-unnecassary-anyway blood splatters. Fun weapons that cover you in goo, or shrink you to a tiny size, or whatever. Stuff you can play with your kids without the whole simulated murder thing going on. And yes I know we should all be outside climbing trees and/or inside singing songs around the piano, but video games can be quite fun.
There's no better FPS than Quake you mere mortal!
And it came on 4 floppies!
Romero's example of re-defining the creation/sandbox genre post-Minecraft is a little late to the game (pun shamelessly intended). At least one big player, Sony, has introduced a next-gen sandbox (currently in open Beta) called Landmark, and I'm sure others are forging ahead as well.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Pretty sure there isn't a "whole market just waiting for" Nerf Deathmatch.
Actually, there very probably is. Deathmatch without the completely-unnecassary-anyway blood splatters. Fun weapons that cover you in goo, or shrink you to a tiny size, or whatever. Stuff you can play with your kids without the whole simulated murder thing going on. And yes I know we should all be outside climbing trees and/or inside singing songs around the piano, but video games can be quite fun.
There are lots of Nerf Deathmatch games. One I remember in particular, was based on the Unreal 1 engine Nerf Arena Blast. It came out around the same time as UT so it felt very similar. There are plenty of gameplay videos on youtube.
I had fun with the demo back in the day
" Maybe you should go back and use that and tell me if Firefox is any better than that version."
Nope, because WWW didn't leak memory like a fucking sieve. Firefox 32? Just like every iteration before it, from XP to Win 7, is a straight up piece of swiss cheese when it comes to memory. I actually moved back to IE.
"we might still be using that original version which was pretty crappy and difficult to use."
Funny, having installed it in a Windows 3.1 VM and tested it out, it's nowhere near as bad as you think, assuming you have the brains and intuition to find stuff.
"Thanks for playing."
Oh please, you weren't even a player in the first place. You were just a pawn.
I think you are getting a little confused.
Firstly if you are seriously suggesting that Firebox is worse than Tim Berners-Lee's original WorldWideWeb brower, you are seriously deranged. The original WWW had no image support, and no bookmarks, to name just two features.
Ridiculous to suggest Firefox is not a massive improvement.
Secondly I genuinely would like to know how you managed to get a program designed for the NextStep platform to work on Windows 3.1. Here is a hint. You didn't.
The original WWW was developed in 1990 and was developed for the NextStep platform, Windows 3.1 came out in 1992. So you were probably using Mosaic if you indeed setup Windows 3.1 in a VM to make a point! Well done on that. Thanks actually for completely proving my point, Mosaic is significantly easier to use than the original WWW program. Go back and use the original WWW and compare the two.
Games Programmer And Designer
You obviosly watched too many beheading videos as a kid!
You and the likes of you are a good reason NOT to expose young children to violence!
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
Given them my money
Portal, Portal 2, QUBE, Antichamber
If you want to be seen, stand up. If you want to be heard, speak up. If you want to be respected, sit down and shut up.
I'm not saying Doom wasn't revolutionary, but 3D wasn't the reason. And saying it wasn't remotely possible is easily disproved.
Yeah. It was. Doom came out at a time when most 3D was little more than wireframe (Flight Simulator, LHX Attack Chopper, etc ), or still renders. (Links Golf), or various first person in a plainly 2D maze (Wolf3D, Ultima Underworld, Might and Magic 3...)
Then Doom showed up, and it was a revolution.
The moving platforms, the stair cases (and not just staircases away, but to platforms within the larger room, there windows between rooms, lights and shadow effects and the capper: the skyboxes -- you could see outside throw skylights, windows, even outdoor courtyards... it all combined to make the illusion complete --- it was still really a 2D maze at its heart, but the illusion of being in a 3D world was literally jaw dropping at the time.
Ultima online was impressive in its own right, but it had NOTHING on Doom. UO was claustrophobic, and it was very "square". It was an advancement forward, but they just are not remotely in the same league. UO was also still an Ultima RPG at its heart; it was much slower paced, the 3d viewport was confined to a small pane instead of being nearly the full screen, and the movement controls were odious (mouse click driven) which did not immerse you in being there. So in UO you still sort of stepped through it room by room step by step- click by click. That's how it was designed.
Doom was big open spaces, with loops, and corners, and obstacles to hide behind. The controls put you there. And you could RUN.
Nothing else was comparable.
At first glance, I thought John Romero had reinvented the scooter. Segway 2.0 with a BFG on the handle bar?
#o#
O Moo.
"It's become a stagnant genre, and it's time we had an Doom/Duke Nukem/Unreal/Half-Life successor"
The reality is many games single player aspect back then don't hold up very well if you play them back to back with modern games if you measure them on a feelings and "this is so awesome" standpoint, the rise of the cinemtic game - even as me an older gamer has shifted my preference hierarchy to want "both". I force myself to play brutal doom to get my "gameplay vegetables" because I hate the fact that hollywood props and cheap tricks give human brains higher highs in terms of excitement over intrinsic gameplay in terms of single player experiences. I really hate the fact that when I go back and play doom 2 I wish it was some hybrid of the cartoony doom I know and love and the best elements of hollywood deadspace, but minus the hollywood hyper realism. I was never a fan of the push towards realism in doom 3 on mars, I always loved the pixel art/toony type style of doom 2 and it was kind of awkward seeing the Cyber-Demon rendered realistically, when doom 2 had more of an artistic comic vibe with it's enemies like the walking spider brain that felt poached from Teenage mutant ninja turtles.
To say that modern games are all boring is a bit of an overstatement, they certainly DO cause excitement in their hollywood parts. I enjoy Assassins creeds world even if I have serious issues with the dumbed down combat when compared to prince of persia series also made by Ubisoft. I really do think the push for hollywood has seriously made developers dumber, newer generations of developers raised on Halo regen shields and hollywood handholding campaigns has been infecting all of gaming, I seriously question developers, that "they know what they are doing". Too often even simple and cheap to program things are missing in many modern games.
The problem modern games main problem is gameplay, PC (modding/dedicated servers) and challenge related but this is publishers trying to drive DRM and control the market by confiscating game ownership with encrypted steam games via steamworks DRM for multiplayer/matchmaking. Shooters FPS/TPS, they are most certainly by the numbers but the mass gaming audience prefers hollywood action movie over intrinsic gameplay generated by fun and challenge. To be honest with you, I thought half-life 2 was just a giant pile of fail, trying too hard to be the hollywood action movie type game it never really was really "here's an empty base with an experiment gone wrong, you are on your own". Half life one did it's best to get out of the players way, while Half-life 2 feels like a very force sequel. I think it comes down to Valve not really not know what they are doing storywise. When I got to the buggy desert/section I gave up, I just got too bored. Half-life 2 was poorly made in many areas and poorly paced. I lost interest.
Half-life, while it was one of the first 'movie based games' where there was story integrated into it, but it wasn't done as obnoxiously and overbearingly as it is done today. That being said, some obnoxious overbearingness works, if you play the singleplayer campaign of Transformers - Fall of cybertron, you'd be hard pressed to say that it couldn't compare in terms of fun to Doom 2.
Doom was made at a time before the integration of 'hollywood action movie/cartoon show inside a videogame' was mastered. The newer generation has problems going back and playing games that haven't mastered the hollywood integration like Mass effect 2, Call of duty and transformers fall of cybetron (sp campaign). I don't fault newer genreation gamers for that because even I as an older gamer know that when CPU/GPU power hit a threshold it was just easier to use high def AV to flash our primate brain in sensation, problem is instrinsic feelings related internally generated gameplay are easily overwhelmed and outcompeted in many (not all) instances of set piece hollywood bullshit. The kind of excitement we get from the hollywood is of a different character them the stre
One of the biggest limitations of the Shooter genre is right there in the name.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
First off, UO=Ultima Online. But that's not important.
You could definitely walk seamlessly, using the keyboard, in Ultima Underworld, it's not at all grid-based like Dungeon Master. You could also run and swim, you could have platforms you could see above and below at the same time(something not even duke 3d could do when it came out years later). It had 3d objects, not just sprites for everything(but still for most things). It had inclines and leaning walls, also something Doom lacked.
I'll give you that the lighting was better, the sky effects helped a *lot* with the claustrophobia, and the shooting was better since it was a shooter, not an RPG.
various first person in a plainly 2D maze (Wolf3D, Ultima Underworld, Might and Magic 3...)
Ultima Underworld was not a 2D maze. Look at the first screenshot in the wikipedia article for instance.
like Warzone 2100 (technically console first, but it lived on with PC)
I thought it was simultaneously released on PC and PSone. Yep, April '99 on the PC, May of '99 on the PSone.
Very interesting game. For those who haven't played it, it's an RTS with 3D map and units. (which is why it runs better on the PSone than the C&C's do) You design/build the units from building blocks of chassis, drive systems, weapons. Unlike other RTS's your units are smarter and collect experience. You actually want to recycle units and repair units and have the commands available to tell your units to "return to that location when damaged" or "use indirect fire at this target being painted by a target acquisition unit"
And the UI changes based on what controls you have in the PSone version. Plug in the PSone mouse and you get more on screen buttons. (though you'll lose the direct unit control hidden feature)
It's fully open source now too.
How is simply asking for an option with less gore trying to avoid having children exposed to all forms of violent entertainment?
I have it and it sucks, but it was the best non violent shooter I could find...
Exactly. Instead of a gun that kills, you could have a special effect weapon, ie a slow beam, a shrink beam, a blinding beam, a transport to somewhere useless beam. Have a range of special effects weapons with different effects with a bit of balance and humour and let the fun commence. The aim of the game could be to find and collect things and by shooting your opposition you retard their ability to collect. All the fun of a FPS without the murder.
So do I, but I don't want my kids exposed to that until they are teenagers. And Nerf Arena sucked arse...
Carmack's contribution however is to the game engine alone, not gameplay itself (though gameplay will be dependent on the engine's abilities). id's games got very stagnant in terms of of gameplay innovation, just the same thing over and over: shoot enemies, find key, unlock new area, shoot enemies, rinse, lather, repeat. The only things that really changed were the ability to move in true 3D, use colored lighting, more polys, better graphics, etc.. every recent id game has been more or less a demonstration platform for a new or improved engine, but not much else. Valve ushered in a whole new era with it's imaginative and immersive Half Life, and it's scripting sequences.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
The Simpsons are very adult oriented..they are on prime time on Sunday after football because that's the demographic they target and do very well in it. That being said even Looney Tunes aren't suitable for children by today's standards. I can't count how many times Daffy Duck has gotten his beak blown off by a shotgun or Elmer Fudd, Bugs, Tom and Jerry, Road Runner or any cartoon of that era has been shot or shot at someone. Even talk about that kind of stuff in school today and you are suspended and the bomb squad called. Point is that it's all subjective to an extent. There are plenty of older shooters that don't contain gore but you still have the whole pointing a virtual gun at virtual people issue everyone likes to get all pissy about. There are also plenty of games that require the same use of spatial awareness and fine motor skills that are used in FPS that aren't shooters.
Also worth pointing out that the factories and barracks were programmable. You could tell your factor to output 3 tanks, 6 jeeps and a helicopter (making up the units for an example, I don't remember the actual units) and it would produce that sequence as often as you liked. It was great to have an RTS that didn't have you micro managing everything.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
As dated as it is, I'll second this.
For whatever reason, I found it, despite it's lack of thematic consistency, the most fun FPS by far.. or maybe I'm just waxing nostalgic.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
One thing which has long irked me about the FPS genre is the static nature of the game world.
The advent of realistic physics engines has made it possible to move past this limitation, but very little effort has been expended to actually do so. Admittedly, I don't game as much as I used to, but the only game that's coming to mind right now is Crysis. I don't think I ever got very far in the game, but I vaguely remember buildings and other larger structures actually being made up of smaller pieces which could then be blown apart. A step in the right direction, for sure, but I've played a few shooters since then and this feature doesn't seem to have gained adoption in other games. In any case, even the implementation in Crysis was rather limited; as far as I know, the distinct structural elements of buildings couldn't be subsequently broken down into smaller-still pieces.
In Fallout 4, I want the explosives skill to be useful for gaining entry to otherwise-inaccessible areas by way of blowing up walls, doors, rubble. Wishful thinking, I know, but why can't we have this level of realism in 2014 when game physics engines have been impressing us for nearly a decade now? Couldn't this level of realism be used to enhance gameplay instead of just serving as eye candy?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
... this is the innovation that was Minecraft has led to a whole bunch of copy-cats by itself just like with the FPS games.
And within those groups many may not be very innovative.
You and the likes of you are a good reason NOT to expose young children to violence!
Thought control through censorship doesn't work. A better approach is gradual exposure combined with thoughtful reflection and ethical training, of course that takes work and who wants that?
I like how to consider better visuals = Hollywood = bad.
Every part of that is wrong.
" I think it comes down to Valve not really not know what they are doing storywise. "
Portal and Portal 2 had great stories. Subtle, interesting. Details left to the imagination. Fantastic
HL 2 had an interesting story. I never ran into any bugs, so I can't comment on that.
Just to be clear, you can have great graphics and a great game. Those are not mutually exclusive.
I also enjoy TF 2. For me, it's the perfect shooter... so far. Challenging, a lot of replay. Doesn't get boring.
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And it was shareware!
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You do know the 'S' in 'FPS' is for shooter, right? It's inherently violent because you are shooting cartoons.
I wonder what kind of kid is old enough for portal; which has some grim themes in it, but not for TF2.
BTW, you can find TF2 servers with the Birthday mode turned on; which I actually enjoy more the n the blood. It cracks me up when my character explodes in balloons, streamers, and a trike wheel.
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I can just say, playing Dooms and Quakes back in the 90s and having no idea about who was doing what at id, Doom I and II and Quake were incredible, and Quake II I wanted to like as it was visually awesome but it was dry somehow, something was missing; I don't think I even finished more than 4-5 levels. Years later I read in Masters of Doom that Romero quit after Quake. With Romero, the fun was gone too.
"I like how to consider better visuals = Hollywood = bad."
It's not merely "better visuals", it's the cinematic techniques where you stop say in Call of duty, to say call of duty isn't one giant action movie would be an understatement. I'm saying the "trying to be in a movie" bits distract from actually making a game because "immersion" and videogame like gameplay are at odds in say a single player campaign.
What happens is you start to obey the generic laws of the real world and the expectations of how things 'should' behave to a larger extent which limits the kinds of gameplay you can have in the game, which makes for incredible boredom from one sequel to another.
So you have little idea what you're talking about sadly. It's not 'merely' great graphics, it's the kind of design vs hollywood action sections in a game that conflict with one another. You simply can't do insanely crazy things because you've got the hollywood mindset happening and not the videogame mindset happening.
It just seems hypocritical to let you kids watch the 'Simpson's' with 'Itchy and Scratchy', then claim FPS are too violent.
Also, his post mention Duke Nukem, but he doesn't seem to know you can turn off the gore.
In short: It sounds like he is making it up. In fact, I hope he is because otherwise he is sending very mixed messages to his kids, as well setting them up to rebel in a violent manner. you know, based on his 1 post :)
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Obvious troll is obvious.
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Quake 2 was a pretty dull single player game IMO, and the only thing it brought to multiplayer (IMO) was the railgun. I really wanted to like it, but like you said, it just felt hollow. And starting off with nothing more than that lame laser pistol, that thing just sucked all kinds of hairy balls.
More than anything else, Q2 was a demonstration platform for, "Look- color lighting!". Too much of it, in a way. Much like Doom3 was, "Look, shadow volumes!"
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Also, to point out, it was open sourced a while ago, and has been improved and has quite a vibrant community behind it:
http://wz2100.net/
I played the original when I was young, and was happy to see it still exists, and is still a lot of fun to play. Plus works flawlessly on Linux :-)
Um, technically Firefox (2004) is a branch of a rebrand (Mozilla Suite, 1998) of an open-sourced product (Netscape Communicator, 1997) that was the successor of a commercial suite (Netscape Navigator, 1994) written by the same guys who did Mosaic back in 1993.
Apparently IE was also based on Mosaic around the same time. But did IE end up in the same boat as Windows 1.0-3.0 where nobody actually used it willingly until 3.1? 3.0 was August 1996, then 6.0 sat and chilled from 2001 until 2006.
With the amount of redesigning they've done with IE over the last several years I hardly think it's accurate to say Firefox is more of a reinvention. It was a long evolution that kept getting new names and teams working on it (although the Mozilla Suite lives on as SeaMonkey today, too).
P.S: For some bizarre reason, the IE Wikipedia article jumps from 1.5 to 8 in their main narrative. Um...pretty sure 6 was pretty noteworthy for a long time...
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
So your idea....for him....is to make a game that conforms to your personal sensibilities. Interesting.
> Surely there is a whole market just waiting for a good FPS that doesn't rely on murdering people?
I find this quite unlikely. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of fun to be had in games without simulated violence and a few games do come to mind, but, I doubt there are that many people so put off by a little simulated violence that it consitutes a large market that are "waiting".
Perhaps you should stop waiting, and start working on games for this market and prove it exists?
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Portal and Portal 2 are all about murdering people! Of course in this instance the people that are being murdered are the protagonists but it's not like it's non-violent.
I'm a big proponent of Minecraft as an educational tool. Granted it also has violence too but I'd say it's a less violent game than the Portal games. At it's basic level it teaches survival in a hostile world. If the kids get into it, it teaches planning, resource management, resource conservation, programming, and math, and also spurs creativity. Add in multiplayer and it teaches basic tenets of society like community, sharing/trading of goods, and respect of others property. It really is the best edutainment ever invented.
http://minecraft.gamepedia.com...
I was never a fan of the push towards realism in doom 3 on mars
Mod parent up. I was (still am) a big fan of the old Doom/Doom 2/Quake/Heretic type of games .I was seriously put off by (IMO) the excessive interactive dialog that I had to do with Doom 3 just to get going. I didn't buy Doom 3 to have a dialog with the characters, or to listen to them telling me the back story. I bought it to shoot demons and blew shit up. Almost every other game I've tried since then, I've felt them to be overly verbose and "immersive" in Hollywood crap.
It was like dealing with the FPS game version of Microsoft Bob!!!
If I wanted to be immersed, I would simply GTFO and talk to people or something else IRL.
I've got an idea for him, an FPS that has no violence that is suitable for kids as well as adults.
Angry Birds.
You obviosly watched too many beheading videos as a kid!
You and the likes of you are a good reason NOT to expose young children to violence!
Hyperbole and histrionics are not really good (read "intelligent") choices to make your point on the subject. Just sayin'
It just seems hypocritical to let you kids watch the 'Simpson's' with 'Itchy and Scratchy', then claim FPS are too violent.
Not to mention the Simpson's Halloween special - characters turned inside out. I'm sure the scene is someone in the youtubeez. And there are plenty of "shooting" games that do not involve blowing shit up. A quick visit to GameStop would show the options. Or jeez, man, Angry Birds.
Asking for a non-violent FPS option as if there weren't any is just an exercise in drama.
No real point here, just a rant and a flipoff - no need for applied rhetorics here! :)
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
sounds good to me. I always felt like minecraft was missing rocket launchers and warthogs .
Don't forget the awesome single-player three-monitor gameplay experience that was present in early versions of Doom 1. Sure you needed three computers to do it, but AFAIK no other PC game could do that.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
It worse when the desire to make an action movie works in detriment of the action game. Half Life had an almost perfect pacing. Valve knows how to lead the player. But many of those modern shooters don't. At a moment playing Battlefield 3 I was baffled because the game demanded that I stepped on a specific point before it would throw enemies against me and it all felt too artificial, like a director that wanted me to take my position before shooting the scene. That breaks immersion completely.
As a friend of mine at PDI/Dreamworks (who has worked on most of their movies from Antz to Shrek to HTTYD) told me "studios that brag about their time consuming and expensive 3D rendering but with results that don't look at good as those who take shortcuts just don't get movie making". Same is true for game making. If you can trick the viewer's brain to see what you want them to see, the technology doesn't really matter.
DOOM ran at 30FPS with 4 player multiplayer with *lighting*, doorways/windows, huge open spaces, outdoor/sky textures, etc. UU, which was a revolutionary game as well, rendered about 1/3 of the pixels with horrible frame rate and comparably little fast action. It was a revolutionary game, but *certainly* not as a full screen action FPS. High framerate full screen 3D FPS (the point of my comment) were not remotely possible, no.
And ironically it's prohibited by International law, of war while just plain killing someone is fine...
UU was a revolutionary game, but a 3D FPS is was NOT. It rendered in a small window at an awful framerate and minimal action/responsiveness. Obviously 3D was possible using high end hardware, tiny viewports, or single digit frame rates, but none of those are traits of an FPS.
Two totally different games. DOOM's expansive spaces (including large convincing outdoor areas), colored lighting, high res textures, and amazing framerate for what it did was most definitely revolutionary as a "3D FPS".
Please name all of those other "3D environments" that were superior in 1993?
Plus works flawlessly on Linux :-)
I don't have it installed myself, but packages are available in Fedora's repositories.
It just seems hypocritical to let you kids watch the 'Simpson's' with 'Itchy and Scratchy', then claim FPS are too violent.
Also, his post mention Duke Nukem, but he doesn't seem to know you can turn off the gore.
In short: It sounds like he is making it up. In fact, I hope he is because otherwise he is sending very mixed messages to his kids, as well setting them up to rebel in a violent manner. you know, based on his 1 post :)
My stance is less to avoid violence, just to teach that violence is never an answer outside of self-defense. You can teach this though without avoiding everything violent.
The absolute worst case-scenario though, are the modern wargames. That's the only genre I personally refuse to take part in (I'm in my 30's), and also for my children. It's DoD brainwash, who funds and aids games who paint the US military in a positive light. It's war propaganda, no way around it. It's not a hypothetical goal for the DoD. It's purposefully meant to get you to actually pickup a gun and go kill your fellow man, in the name of the flag.
http://www.accountkiller.com/en/delete-slashdot-account Stop visiting Slashdot.
You could definitely walk seamlessly, using the keyboard, in Ultima Underworld,
Wow, you are right. I only played it years ago, and didn't get that far. I remember using really clumsy mouse controls. Apparently UW uses szxc isntead of wasd, with w as run, and a/d as turn.
You could also run and swim,
Swimming wasn't really that interesting though, it was surface only. Making it little more than viewport elevation change, with a sound effect.
It had inclines and leaning walls, also something Doom lacked.
True.
Ultima Underworld was not a 2D maze. Look at the first screenshot in the wikipedia article for instance.
That screenshot looks no better than Doom's '2.5D', but I agree UW was actually doing more sophisticated rendering, since you could look up and down, and had angles etc.
But despite being technically more true 3D than Doom, the effect was less impressive, overall.
Doom, by restricting the view angle, was able skip or precalculate a ton of stuff, enabling it to deliver full screen action with a decent framerate. UW was confined to like 1/4 of the screen. Add to that the tricks Doom pulled with lighting and skyboxes and it was just a lot more impressive.
Perhaps a bigger element of it being a 'revolution' was that Doom ep1 was shareware, so everyone had it. And it was multiplayer. So it was installed in high school computer labs, and in offices etc.
Screw the rail gun! Give me the NAIL gun and get out of my way!
FPS = First Person Skiing
The Three Stooges and Batman were considered violent TV shows by my kindergarten teachers. Poke someone in the eye or screamed "BATMAN!" on the playground, you got your ass busteed. Today's kids today will probably get arrested for doing the same thing.
Especially when Quake can get 500+ FPS on a modern GPU video card. Woohoo!
DOOM was the shit because you could turn off every letter and number and punch zombies in the face and you'd be dead in like 10 seconds just like in real life.
But despite being technically more true 3D than Doom, the effect was less impressive, overall.
Doom, by restricting the view angle, was able skip or precalculate a ton of stuff, enabling it to deliver full screen action with a decent framerate. UW was confined to like 1/4 of the screen. Add to that the tricks Doom pulled with lighting and skyboxes and it was just a lot more impressive.
Perhaps a bigger element of it being a 'revolution' was that Doom ep1 was shareware, so everyone had it. And it was multiplayer. So it was installed in high school computer labs, and in offices etc.
We're in full agreement here. I did play a lot of UW, but nothing compared to the days upon days spent in Doom playing local deathmatches, or the single player maps or TCs, etc etc.
Doom is one of the best games ever made, I just took issue with the "before 3D was even remotely possible" bit :)
God forbid. When I was a kid, we had water guns, pellet guns (without that lame orange plastic shit), and we would get rowdy and roughhouse. By the standards of the time, I was pretty tame, but, by today's, I would be one of those 8yos labeled terrorists for bringing a fork to school or modeling the school building in some FPS. Today's parents are raising their kids kids to be the tame, delicate, and dependent special little snowflakes that today's society wants them to be. Yuck. A little blood splatter in their video games isn't going to turn them into murderers. That shit's been debunked thoroughly since the jack thompson and joe leiberman days.
At least we agree on nerf arena.
Yeah... hard hitting for 1989 maybe, when bart saying "eat my shorts" was considered crazily rebellious. By the mid 90s, Simpsons political and social content became extremely bland, and the jokes, unfunny. Staying power means having mass appeal, and that means being interesting enough to uninteresting minds, while being bland enough not to offend any of them to the point where there's serious backlash. Shit that that is dull as hell.
No, sorry, flight sims don't count. Flight sims in 1993 were either one awful ground texture with 1-2 objects on the screen (or in the case of X-Wing no ground textures). Some were good games, but not even remotely similar.
Beyrayal at Krondor used 1/2 the screen, could do maybe 1-2 FPS max in the world with *turn* based combat, and the graphics were awful compared to DOOM (though it was a fun game, just not competitive in gfx).
UU/UUII has been discussed already, they used 1/3 size screen and had single digit frame rates anyway. Felt very claustrophobic, really. But again great games, just not FPS. With FPS it is and always has been about the full screen immersive experience and the frame rate.
And AFAIK 3DO didn't have any decent 3D games in 1993. Later they did, and one of the better ones was - wait for it - DOOM (unfortunately in using real 3D effects it sacrificed one of its biggest strengths over the other games at the time - frame rate...)
I said *superior*, and - graphics wise - none of those came close.
386's were relatively ancient by 1993. I got a 486 in late 1992 to replace the 386 I bought in 1989 and was already jealous of the new Pentiums. Moore's law was in hyperdrive back then and the cutting edge games always relied on that.
UU2 still ran in 1/3 the screen size with slower average frame rate, awful navigation/controls and (intentionally) slower paced gameplay compared to DOOM. Face it, it was a great game but a different game, and it was NOT a fast action FPS by any stretch.
First Person Skiing
Are you referring to Tribes ?
Or he's just now realizing that Mojang (or the company that buys Mojang) will have a hard time suing the developers of all the Minecraft spinoffs for copyright or trade dress violation.
Same. But cap guns, water pistols, cowboys and Indians are all a little different for realistic graphic violence of today's video games. I have no problem once they're teenagers, but just like with sex, kids need to be allowed to be kids, at least until high school.
Doom stopped working ?
My copy is still working.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"