No matter how powerful a computer gets there is still something much more touching about dealing with real people in real life.
Feh. Real people are overrated. Try dealing with metagaming powergamers who see nothing wrong with it (and technically, there is nothing wrong as it follows "teh roolz"). Burn out happens faster when you're at opposing sides of playing styles.
WotC did a survey where they broke down the player types into what people wanted in their RPG experience. From what I can see from WotC's current products and the computer games coming out, there is currently a bias towards the combat focused side. One could say that about the old Gold Box games, which are classics, but shouldn't games have evolved in the decade since? The critically acclaimed Planescape Torment, an innovative game in which only the ruleset was not, has shown that it's not the industry, it's just that most gamers aren't interested. Lamentation for Torment's poor sales indeed.
The Windows 95 versions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter was when they converted the games to the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game engine (with some extra tweaks) and called it the X-Wing Collector Series (which came with a semi-demo for XvT). By converted, I mean they converted the missions as everything else was the same from the original games. Imagine flying about in the nice 3D engine only to come back to the low resolution interface and cutscenes of old. Of course, the conversion means you can't sit in a Star Destroyer's blind spot behind its engines and just blast away anymore since engine wash was introduced. They later resold it again in the X-Wing Trilogy (obviously with X-Wing Alliance).
FYI, Totally Games made the games for Lucasarts. They also made Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Star Trek Bridge Commander, and the recent Secret Weapons over Normandy just to name a few. Incidently, somewhere on Totally Games' message board, they were discussing that while they would like to have done an expansion for XWA, Lucasarts would not have funded it because they rarely made money and XWA sold 1/3 of the original X-Wing (ARGH! Anyone else besides me who buys games no one buys?).
"recruiting more women coders, artists and level designers"
I don't know about this. It might help, it might not. I find women all have different tastes. Some like the Final Fantasy games with its high character driven drama (with fighting), others like puzzle games (fast to start, fast to stop), while others like something cute and fun (Nintendo's various "kiddie" titles). This looks like it's targetting the FPS or the 3rd person action/adventure which is not where they usually are found (not that I'm saying women don't play such).
I'd say in general, if you're a woman game developer, you probably have similar tastes to other women game developers rather than all women.
On the other hand, focusing on women (maybe near naked) with oversized parts of the anatomy does turn women off. Developers are supposed to concentrate on the character of the female avatar (strength of will, determination, I am woman hear me raaawwrrr), but instead choose to appeal to the traditional male demographic because they're the only consistent game buyers.
I blame publishers who are more interested with "safe games" like Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Deus Ex 2, and Blah 14 or those with a big money inducing licensed name in the title like Enter the Matrix or whatever other game Hollywood thinks will get them more cash.
Innovation is tough when no one wants to pay you for it. Developers are kind of stuck in this twisted games industry that says you can make something new or you can make something everyone is buying.
However, I stand with those who don't see much in the FPS movement because really, it's these players who are shouting about Doom. So for what it's worth, I may hold bias.
For me, the game that screamed "sound card, video card, and CPU" was Dune 2. Then it was X-Wing, then Tie Fighter.
Doom splashed big I think because of the style and pace of its gameplay which has endured for so many shooters since. It's fast to get into and get going, by yourself or with a group of people. That's where it defined itself.
I also never got into Doom. I tried, but after 5 minutes into the second episode, I realised I was just playing the first episode again with different maps.
People like to point out the pseudo-3Dness of Doom, but a certain first person PC RPG had came out many months previous that did it already: Ultima Underworld. The difference is play pace.
However, I do acknowledge Doom for what it did ie the popularising.
SQLServer2005 will always enforce SSL connections and the en/decryption is going to follow the WS-Security spec. Why?
Because it will be able to be accessed like a web service. XML request wraps SQL and an XML response with the resulting row set is returned. That response is what will be locked down. In a sense, they are relying on XML to/from object (de)serialisation for the O/R mapping particularly when using the.NET way (and perhaps trying to remove the need for JDBC and similar dbc middleware).
Microsoft are also trying to hammer into deployers not to put this in full view of the Internet for obvious reasons.
Camera:
It did it after many patches (it was into the 20s IIRC). The hardcore would have all this, but for the rest who bought it on release (and did not continue the love affair after the lacklustre Official Campaign), all this was missing. Games only get noise to generate hype for release and the NWN hype did not have this to hype (in fact, Bioware actively fought this for many patch releases until the community convinced them that the game is meant for players, not designers).
Pausing:
No innovation here as this was present back in Baldur's Gate, but the context of this statement after the previous may lead to the innovation conclusion.
Is there anywhere that details the differences between the 6th and previous editions (or even between any each of the point releases)? I search but can not find.
With regard to Knights of the Old Republic breaking new ground (I don't count Morrowind as it doesn't have anywhere as much buzz KotOR seems to have from what I can tell), I think it is a bit early to decide that Western RPGs are seeing a rise in interest. Is it the quality of KotOR that is drawing the console crowd or is it the "Star Wars" branding? We'll find out when Bioware releases their X-Box exclusive game, Jade Empire.
I don't think RPG developers are moving to consoles because there's a burgeoning RPG market. They are testing the waters because a console game sales failure is equivalent to a PC game awesome sales success. It's just another market and has nothing to do with hardware or storage or whatever because it is all about the story and related content.
Forgot the anti-MS slant...:P It's also because Microsoft are throwing big cash at developers to help their X-Box cause.
Actually, no, they haven't lost it. Yet. Interplay have those rights, IIRC, until 2005 which includes starting development in that year. They have all of Planescape and the Sword Coast region of the Forgotten Realms to make games from due to contracts and such from TSR - before WotC and before Hasbro and before Infogrames. However, they won't be making another Planescape game likely due to pure sales reasons and the fact that Interplay seems to want to play it safe at the moment. They did go and make the two Icewind Dale games (which themselves are solid games, but more hacky and slashy in a strategically good way) though because FR is more "traditional" than Planescape was, but the developers seem a bit tired of that at the moment and were looking for something different (like Fallout 3).
There was no BG3. Closest thing to that was Throne of Bhaal, the BG2 expansion which was pretty much a whole game in its own right, though much shorter than BG2, but just as epic. Technology just moved on as review after review as time went on kept complaining about the "outdated" graphics, so I suppose that's why they stopped (as well as the increasingly hacked up code required to make the Infinity engine do neat things).
I have a 19" Trinitron and have "issues" that I am trying to sort out with Sony's designated repair guys. There is a misconvergence in the part of the screen above the top dampening wire (those black lines) such that perfect letters below are blurry messes above. Adjust the top and the bottom is screwed. When I sent it in for repair, Sony repair software or whatever they use removed one of the settings (landing) and only recently have they released a new version - a couple of months after I discovered it.
Besides that, yes, great contrast. Yes, VERY sharp text. I hate the lines and tried to find a true flat CRT without them (ie without aperture grille tech), but couldn't find one.
CRT monitors are analogue devices. Just because yours is AEWSOEM!! may not mean someone else has an equal amount of awesomeness. VIEW the screen at the store if you can. Make sure that it is good. 19 inches of monitor is a pain to move about for repair.
Slashdot Mirror
... not made in Japan?
Yes, Wisdom was the most important statistic and yes, Torment could be resolved in a Fallout way.
Remember to play it evil. Unlike KotOR's weak attempt (i.e. who needs roleplaying when you have Force Lightning), I found it done well.
No matter how powerful a computer gets there is still something much more touching about dealing with real people in real life.
Feh. Real people are overrated. Try dealing with metagaming powergamers who see nothing wrong with it (and technically, there is nothing wrong as it follows "teh roolz"). Burn out happens faster when you're at opposing sides of playing styles.
WotC did a survey where they broke down the player types into what people wanted in their RPG experience. From what I can see from WotC's current products and the computer games coming out, there is currently a bias towards the combat focused side. One could say that about the old Gold Box games, which are classics, but shouldn't games have evolved in the decade since? The critically acclaimed Planescape Torment, an innovative game in which only the ruleset was not, has shown that it's not the industry, it's just that most gamers aren't interested. Lamentation for Torment's poor sales indeed.
No, there is another. I think...
The Windows 95 versions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter was when they converted the games to the X-Wing vs Tie Fighter game engine (with some extra tweaks) and called it the X-Wing Collector Series (which came with a semi-demo for XvT). By converted, I mean they converted the missions as everything else was the same from the original games. Imagine flying about in the nice 3D engine only to come back to the low resolution interface and cutscenes of old. Of course, the conversion means you can't sit in a Star Destroyer's blind spot behind its engines and just blast away anymore since engine wash was introduced. They later resold it again in the X-Wing Trilogy (obviously with X-Wing Alliance).
FYI, Totally Games made the games for Lucasarts. They also made Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, Star Trek Bridge Commander, and the recent Secret Weapons over Normandy just to name a few. Incidently, somewhere on Totally Games' message board, they were discussing that while they would like to have done an expansion for XWA, Lucasarts would not have funded it because they rarely made money and XWA sold 1/3 of the original X-Wing (ARGH! Anyone else besides me who buys games no one buys?).
How many of you played it as your first game?
Alright, who feels old?
... aka Star Control 2
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
I'd say in general, if you're a woman game developer, you probably have similar tastes to other women game developers rather than all women.
On the other hand, focusing on women (maybe near naked) with oversized parts of the anatomy does turn women off. Developers are supposed to concentrate on the character of the female avatar (strength of will, determination, I am woman hear me raaawwrrr), but instead choose to appeal to the traditional male demographic because they're the only consistent game buyers.
Lastly, this topic was talked about at GDC2004. They didn't seem to get anywhere though.
(Off topic... I'd tried to read the article at msnbc but it looks like they stop
I blame publishers who are more interested with "safe games" like Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, Deus Ex 2, and Blah 14 or those with a big money inducing licensed name in the title like Enter the Matrix or whatever other game Hollywood thinks will get them more cash.
Innovation is tough when no one wants to pay you for it. Developers are kind of stuck in this twisted games industry that says you can make something new or you can make something everyone is buying.
I disagree.
However, I stand with those who don't see much in the FPS movement because really, it's these players who are shouting about Doom. So for what it's worth, I may hold bias.
For me, the game that screamed "sound card, video card, and CPU" was Dune 2. Then it was X-Wing, then Tie Fighter.
Doom splashed big I think because of the style and pace of its gameplay which has endured for so many shooters since. It's fast to get into and get going, by yourself or with a group of people. That's where it defined itself.
I agree.
I also never got into Doom. I tried, but after 5 minutes into the second episode, I realised I was just playing the first episode again with different maps.
People like to point out the pseudo-3Dness of Doom, but a certain first person PC RPG had came out many months previous that did it already: Ultima Underworld. The difference is play pace.
However, I do acknowledge Doom for what it did ie the popularising.
SQLServer2005 will always enforce SSL connections and the en/decryption is going to follow the WS-Security spec. Why?
.NET way (and perhaps trying to remove the need for JDBC and similar dbc middleware).
Because it will be able to be accessed like a web service. XML request wraps SQL and an XML response with the resulting row set is returned. That response is what will be locked down. In a sense, they are relying on XML to/from object (de)serialisation for the O/R mapping particularly when using the
Microsoft are also trying to hammer into deployers not to put this in full view of the Internet for obvious reasons.
Camera:
It did it after many patches (it was into the 20s IIRC). The hardcore would have all this, but for the rest who bought it on release (and did not continue the love affair after the lacklustre Official Campaign), all this was missing. Games only get noise to generate hype for release and the NWN hype did not have this to hype (in fact, Bioware actively fought this for many patch releases until the community convinced them that the game is meant for players, not designers).
Pausing:
No innovation here as this was present back in Baldur's Gate, but the context of this statement after the previous may lead to the innovation conclusion.
Is there anywhere that details the differences between the 6th and previous editions (or even between any each of the point releases)? I search but can not find.
... did it a few times. A few times too many I thought.
It found its way into Irrational's Freedom Force and will probably make a reappearance into the upcoming sequel.
Admittedly, that's just one game.
With regard to Knights of the Old Republic breaking new ground (I don't count Morrowind as it doesn't have anywhere as much buzz KotOR seems to have from what I can tell), I think it is a bit early to decide that Western RPGs are seeing a rise in interest. Is it the quality of KotOR that is drawing the console crowd or is it the "Star Wars" branding? We'll find out when Bioware releases their X-Box exclusive game, Jade Empire.
I don't think RPG developers are moving to consoles because there's a burgeoning RPG market. They are testing the waters because a console game sales failure is equivalent to a PC game awesome sales success. It's just another market and has nothing to do with hardware or storage or whatever because it is all about the story and related content.
Forgot the anti-MS slant... :P
It's also because Microsoft are throwing big cash at developers to help their X-Box cause.
Actually, no, they haven't lost it. Yet. Interplay have those rights, IIRC, until 2005 which includes starting development in that year. They have all of Planescape and the Sword Coast region of the Forgotten Realms to make games from due to contracts and such from TSR - before WotC and before Hasbro and before Infogrames. However, they won't be making another Planescape game likely due to pure sales reasons and the fact that Interplay seems to want to play it safe at the moment. They did go and make the two Icewind Dale games (which themselves are solid games, but more hacky and slashy in a strategically good way) though because FR is more "traditional" than Planescape was, but the developers seem a bit tired of that at the moment and were looking for something different (like Fallout 3).
There was no BG3. Closest thing to that was Throne of Bhaal, the BG2 expansion which was pretty much a whole game in its own right, though much shorter than BG2, but just as epic. Technology just moved on as review after review as time went on kept complaining about the "outdated" graphics, so I suppose that's why they stopped (as well as the increasingly hacked up code required to make the Infinity engine do neat things).
I have a 19" Trinitron and have "issues" that I am trying to sort out with Sony's designated repair guys. There is a misconvergence in the part of the screen above the top dampening wire (those black lines) such that perfect letters below are blurry messes above. Adjust the top and the bottom is screwed. When I sent it in for repair, Sony repair software or whatever they use removed one of the settings (landing) and only recently have they released a new version - a couple of months after I discovered it.
Besides that, yes, great contrast. Yes, VERY sharp text. I hate the lines and tried to find a true flat CRT without them (ie without aperture grille tech), but couldn't find one.
CRT monitors are analogue devices. Just because yours is AEWSOEM!! may not mean someone else has an equal amount of awesomeness. VIEW the screen at the store if you can. Make sure that it is good. 19 inches of monitor is a pain to move about for repair.
"What do we do?!"
*whirr*
"We die."
I hope so...
"Never go in against a monopoly when death is on the line! HAHAHAHAH-*THUD*"