It's thoroughly retarded how little effort the patent office puts into debunking incoming patents, given that companies spend six figures on actually creating the goddamn legal monsters - you could spend a day's work just doing a little digging for prior art.
Well, there were one or two spots, but nothing like the endless hunting on the map screen from Doom 2. In Halo, there were a few times when I almost just wanted the old Golden Axe brawler cliche of "the area is clear - go that way".
That's the thing - I find the best action FPS games are the ones with no empty rooms, no nasty puzzles - just room after room of varied carnage, with the occasional puzzle that you perform incidentally with the violence.
I think more FPS makers need to look at Halo II for a guide of how to make an FPS. Frequent checkpoints don't break immersion (instead of hitting autosave before you round each corner), ammo is plentiful but your inventory doesn't get crowded because you only carry 2 guns. No hunting for health packs (shields jump back to full if you get out of combat for a minute), no getting lost - just room after room of varied combat. Serious Sam is similar, although it has the old crap involving inventory fiddling and manually quicksaving.
As for good AI, look at FPS online games like Quake 3 and UT2k4. The AI isn't genius, but isn't a moron either. UT2k4's AI plays generally like a human.
Some of the complaints there I disagreed with totally - having onscreen text info is a good thing in games where immersion isn't the whole point - like UT2k4, there's tons of onscreen HUD data, and I love it.
The problem is not the manual, or the box, or the disk. It's the legal standpoint. In many parts of the world, there's a legal requirement to provide support - for someone to stand behind their product and take the lawsuits if the software eats their entire computer. If nobody does it - guess who takes the fall? The computer store.
Personally, I think a business could go far just by taking the major desktop opensource packages and just sell them as their products and set up a call center in india.
Good point - I have an iron ring too, and I'm a righty. I feel stupid for not thinking about this myself. For the uninformed: all Canadian engineers where an iron ring on their right pinky finger.
That probably wouldn't work too well with this environment.
Dunno about art, but I know what I liked, and I enjoyed RD much better than Pulp Fiction. And besides, it would be logically consistent with them choosing Star Wars over Empire - pick the lower-budget, earlier, raw breakthrough film.
Pulp Fiction was a bunch of pseudo-related short-stories in no particular order. Resevoir Dogs managed to tell a complete story in a non-linear fashion without messing it up (unlike that crapfest 21 Grams - why does hollywood so love Sean Penn?)
Until you run into systems where some retarded DB admin as decided that paswords shall not be longer than 13 characters. That's one that pisses me off to no end.
Then you're missing out. I find it's good to play the best of each genre. For example, I normally detest 4X games, but make a special exception for Master of Magic. Likewise, many anti-MMORPG people have fallen in love with World of Warcraft.
I'm quite happy it didn't come out - it means that a) Darwin is doing his work on it's investors and b) there would have been something desperately wrong with a world where Phantom is released and Indrema is canned.
Even if there was a need, it wouldn't be that bad. Think about it - all the content is already on the disks. All the 360s are already online - so all MS needs to do is release a replacement of the binary executable (which is tiny compared to the game content) - say a 5 meg download, tops. Use the CD in drive as proof of purchase - you need it anyways for the game content. Then just store the new binaries on the HDD.
No. I'm a gamer too, but was able to look passed my fandom and admit it - FF:SW was weak. Slow pace, weak script, and a dull story. I was high as a kite when I saw the movie, and I was still disappointed with the plot.
And the voice actors can't be blamed - they had solid actors involved (unless you want to say that Steve Buschemi and Donald Sutherland are talentless).
It wasn't just about being let-down. It was a weak movie, plain and simple. I think the problem was that they didn't want to do their usual FF fare and wanted an American-style story, but didn't really know how to do the American-style story. This is why Advent might be better - they're working in a more comfortable field.
Halo II's co-op was freaking perfect. All co-op devs need to learn it's lessons. No losing your teammates (you spawn up to the next checkpoint when the other player reaches it), no quicksave confusion (respawn at last checkpoint), no fighting over health (just sit still, your shields return). Just room after room of carnage. It was perfect. Halo II had its flaws, but for co-op gameplay it perfected the concept.
UT:U4E. Best weapon inventory ever, and not "we have 80 different assault rifles" - it was an assload of actually different weapons, from the bland (M-16) to the bizarre (Atomic Robot Baby Doll).
LAN parties are an assload of work. At least an hour of set-up time and days of planning. I like to be able to play now, when I have 2 friends over. I can do that with my trusty old Dreamcast.
And why do you need same-screen multiplayer on PCs?
Because I want it. Because the best fun you can have with a screen is crowding a whole bunch've people onto a sofa in front of a big projector and playing Bomberman, Super Smash Brothers, and Powerstone II till the cows come home.
Now that more people are hooking PCs up to the living room TV sets, I hope to see opensource developers making more fun party games. USB gamepads and hubs also mean that gameports and keyjamming are no longer an excuse.
Better approach I've seen than FF is that team-damage is 50% and 50% self-damage from shooting teammates. It means that the right people are punished - either he shouldn't have gotten in your line of fire, or you shouldn't have shot him. Assault is obscene for the amount of just firing into the carnage, and that kind of tweaking would help a lot.
Good point. UT2k4 is hell for loading times, especially considering that the average map is 5 megs that all your fellow players are trying to grab at the same time, and alt-tabbing out of the game while DLing often brings the game down.
While the game is excellent, I think they need to keep a tighter structure on how modding and mod-serving is done. Many new maps are just old maps with new vehicle loadouts (or even just a new texture set), and you have to download the whole map all over again. Custom player models are never, ever used, and custom content often makes me wince from the download times.
You're missing out. Assault is wicked fun with a good map (look for servers running the s7 series). Nothing like pitting a line of tanks, mantas, and turrets against a few tanks and a Levi.
VCTF is also excellent - much more intense than ONS. I just wish there was a 1flag VCTF.
Stop playing Torlan and Urban over and over again then. Lots of ONS maps are more than large enough for the aircraft. The popular ones don't, because it turns the game into being entirely aircraft-and-manta based.
IMHO, U2k4 was the first game to seamlessly mix deathmatch-style fast action combat with Tribes-scale epic warfare.
Plus, if there's going to be online game playing through the DS, what about simple browsing? That's particularly relevant since many hotspots reroute outbound HTTP requests to the login page in order to handle logging on to their network.
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Lets not forget, watch The Rock and Vin Diesel and see who wins the award for Best Videogame Character.
It's thoroughly retarded how little effort the patent office puts into debunking incoming patents, given that companies spend six figures on actually creating the goddamn legal monsters - you could spend a day's work just doing a little digging for prior art.
Well, there were one or two spots, but nothing like the endless hunting on the map screen from Doom 2. In Halo, there were a few times when I almost just wanted the old Golden Axe brawler cliche of "the area is clear - go that way".
That's the thing - I find the best action FPS games are the ones with no empty rooms, no nasty puzzles - just room after room of varied carnage, with the occasional puzzle that you perform incidentally with the violence.
I think more FPS makers need to look at Halo II for a guide of how to make an FPS. Frequent checkpoints don't break immersion (instead of hitting autosave before you round each corner), ammo is plentiful but your inventory doesn't get crowded because you only carry 2 guns. No hunting for health packs (shields jump back to full if you get out of combat for a minute), no getting lost - just room after room of varied combat. Serious Sam is similar, although it has the old crap involving inventory fiddling and manually quicksaving.
As for good AI, look at FPS online games like Quake 3 and UT2k4. The AI isn't genius, but isn't a moron either. UT2k4's AI plays generally like a human.
Some of the complaints there I disagreed with totally - having onscreen text info is a good thing in games where immersion isn't the whole point - like UT2k4, there's tons of onscreen HUD data, and I love it.
The problem is not the manual, or the box, or the disk. It's the legal standpoint. In many parts of the world, there's a legal requirement to provide support - for someone to stand behind their product and take the lawsuits if the software eats their entire computer. If nobody does it - guess who takes the fall? The computer store.
Personally, I think a business could go far just by taking the major desktop opensource packages and just sell them as their products and set up a call center in india.
Good point - I have an iron ring too, and I'm a righty. I feel stupid for not thinking about this myself. For the uninformed: all Canadian engineers where an iron ring on their right pinky finger.
That probably wouldn't work too well with this environment.
Dunno about art, but I know what I liked, and I enjoyed RD much better than Pulp Fiction. And besides, it would be logically consistent with them choosing Star Wars over Empire - pick the lower-budget, earlier, raw breakthrough film.
Pulp Fiction was a bunch of pseudo-related short-stories in no particular order. Resevoir Dogs managed to tell a complete story in a non-linear fashion without messing it up (unlike that crapfest 21 Grams - why does hollywood so love Sean Penn?)
Likewise, they listed Pulp Fiction instead of Tarantino's far superior Resevoir Dogs.
Right. WTF does Cannes have to do with Time? Time is the magazine that insists that Anne Coulter is sane and Al Gore is not.
It's like an automatic flamewar.
Oh, and Steven Spielberg Godwinned the Oscars.
Until you run into systems where some retarded DB admin as decided that paswords shall not be longer than 13 characters. That's one that pisses me off to no end.
Then you're missing out. I find it's good to play the best of each genre. For example, I normally detest 4X games, but make a special exception for Master of Magic. Likewise, many anti-MMORPG people have fallen in love with World of Warcraft.
iirc, the form used on computers is usually considered the "modified simplex method" because it involves calculating less of the tableau.
I'm quite happy it didn't come out - it means that
a) Darwin is doing his work on it's investors and
b) there would have been something desperately wrong with a world where Phantom is released and Indrema is canned.
Even if there was a need, it wouldn't be that bad. Think about it - all the content is already on the disks. All the 360s are already online - so all MS needs to do is release a replacement of the binary executable (which is tiny compared to the game content) - say a 5 meg download, tops. Use the CD in drive as proof of purchase - you need it anyways for the game content. Then just store the new binaries on the HDD.
No biggie at all.
No. I'm a gamer too, but was able to look passed my fandom and admit it - FF:SW was weak. Slow pace, weak script, and a dull story. I was high as a kite when I saw the movie, and I was still disappointed with the plot.
And the voice actors can't be blamed - they had solid actors involved (unless you want to say that Steve Buschemi and Donald Sutherland are talentless).
It wasn't just about being let-down. It was a weak movie, plain and simple. I think the problem was that they didn't want to do their usual FF fare and wanted an American-style story, but didn't really know how to do the American-style story. This is why Advent might be better - they're working in a more comfortable field.
Halo II's co-op was freaking perfect. All co-op devs need to learn it's lessons. No losing your teammates (you spawn up to the next checkpoint when the other player reaches it), no quicksave confusion (respawn at last checkpoint), no fighting over health (just sit still, your shields return). Just room after room of carnage. It was perfect. Halo II had its flaws, but for co-op gameplay it perfected the concept.
UT:U4E. Best weapon inventory ever, and not "we have 80 different assault rifles" - it was an assload of actually different weapons, from the bland (M-16) to the bizarre (Atomic Robot Baby Doll).
LAN parties are an assload of work. At least an hour of set-up time and days of planning. I like to be able to play now, when I have 2 friends over. I can do that with my trusty old Dreamcast.
And why do you need same-screen multiplayer on PCs?
Because I want it. Because the best fun you can have with a screen is crowding a whole bunch've people onto a sofa in front of a big projector and playing Bomberman, Super Smash Brothers, and Powerstone II till the cows come home.
Now that more people are hooking PCs up to the living room TV sets, I hope to see opensource developers making more fun party games. USB gamepads and hubs also mean that gameports and keyjamming are no longer an excuse.
Better approach I've seen than FF is that team-damage is 50% and 50% self-damage from shooting teammates. It means that the right people are punished - either he shouldn't have gotten in your line of fire, or you shouldn't have shot him. Assault is obscene for the amount of just firing into the carnage, and that kind of tweaking would help a lot.
Good point. UT2k4 is hell for loading times, especially considering that the average map is 5 megs that all your fellow players are trying to grab at the same time, and alt-tabbing out of the game while DLing often brings the game down.
While the game is excellent, I think they need to keep a tighter structure on how modding and mod-serving is done. Many new maps are just old maps with new vehicle loadouts (or even just a new texture set), and you have to download the whole map all over again. Custom player models are never, ever used, and custom content often makes me wince from the download times.
You're missing out. Assault is wicked fun with a good map (look for servers running the s7 series). Nothing like pitting a line of tanks, mantas, and turrets against a few tanks and a Levi.
VCTF is also excellent - much more intense than ONS. I just wish there was a 1flag VCTF.
Stop playing Torlan and Urban over and over again then. Lots of ONS maps are more than large enough for the aircraft. The popular ones don't, because it turns the game into being entirely aircraft-and-manta based.
IMHO, U2k4 was the first game to seamlessly mix deathmatch-style fast action combat with Tribes-scale epic warfare.
Plus, if there's going to be online game playing through the DS, what about simple browsing? That's particularly relevant since many hotspots reroute outbound HTTP requests to the login page in order to handle logging on to their network.