Does it really matter if there is an infinite number?
If you read the article, you would notice that they are only talking about integer degree intersections, not every single possible point on the Earth. Even if they did refer to every single one of those infinite points, it wouldn't make it impossible as humans make contact with a large number of such points at any given time (and as a result, it would just be gradually painting areas as visited.)
(BTW, who modded Insightful? It definatly wasn't.)
I'm not sure what the author is talking about, and as a result, I'm not sure why this article was selected. For example:
, I was reminded that 3D polygonal graphics still haven't entirely surpassed 2D game art.
In this summary statement, the author himself states that he is comparing basic graphics to art. Nobody cares that bout this - what needs to be done is either a comparision between 2d graphics and 3D graphics, *OR* a comparison between 2D Art and 3D Art.
My problem with 3D graphics in games--and it's always been my problem with 3D graphics in games--is that they're unedited. You can often view the action from any angle, and frames of animation are typically never skipped. In a way, then, I think the cinematic power of gaming almost took a step back with the transition from 2D to 3D.
The only advantage of 2D movies is the fact that you can draw fancy art to as high as a detail as you want. 3D sequences, while not looking as fancy, do not require as much space as their 2D counterparts (by reusing models, textures and so on), and can be consistantly modified without having to redo many frames of work. Also, I am finding that modern games have cinametics comparable to how it should look like - it's a big jump from Dark Forces (an old Dos game that used simple cinamatics) or Jedi Ourcast (3D cinamatics don't look ultra-fancy, but get the job done.)
Not only that, but there are ways to convert 3D-graphics into pre-rendered 2D movies without problem. From there, it's quite easy to do the "editing" that the author seems to want. Not that it matters, since I have very rarely seen an issue with 3D graphics in the games I've played. The closest thing would be those "classy" screenshots posted on PlantUnreal, and those could be pulled off in a 2D game with the same complexity.
Besides, the author ignores the "rotating-corpse" issue that was visible in Doom where you could only see one side of the body after it was killed.
I still think 2D games handle collision detection (or the interaction between two characters or objects) better than 3D games do, on average. And having good collision detection is one of the most fundamentally important aspects of just about any game. Likewise, I think 2D game characters still have the capacity to display more-lifelike emotions than 3D game characters do.
This is easily countered by using Wing Commander 1 compared to X-Wing. While X-Wing might not have looked fancy, you could easily tell when you were about commit suicide by ramming a Star Destroyer. In Wing Commander 1, the collision box was independant of the sprite, and you could thus accidently bump into a Ralari without knowing it (not only that, but the collision box was based around a static box rather than the visible model/sprite.)
Now the other problem with collision detection in 2D games - in the games where collision means death, you either have a per-pixel collision detection, or bounding box collision detection. In the former, you die as soon as one pixel nicks whatever you are supposed to avoid. In the latter, you can't tell if that tight squeeze is fatal or not, let alone know the tolerance for that squeeze.
Mabye this was true in the era of Quake 1, but not anymore. 3D games have evolved since then, and are much better - either through graphics or some other complaint based on the difference between 2D and 3D.
The reviewers whining about this sort of graphics is just superficial. The real quality of the game is not how it appears on screen, unless there are glearingly major problems that interfere with gameplay (either through obscuring critical information, showing information that should be hidden, or by being distracting).
I'd bet if you sat a 10-12 year old down with one of those plug-n-play "retro" games they would have a blast.
I'll take you up on that. Find and run a copy of the game "Bazooka Bill", released on the C64.
This game alone is proof that just because it's old does not mean it's good. Not only that, but it also disproves the (inverse) correlation between graphics and quality.
Because static art is easier than dynamic. As simple as that
What happens when you make an error? You have to redo every single sprite that was affected by the error. While some sprites may be easily fixed by simply taking the initial image and rotating it by 45 degree increments, other problems need a bit more work.
Let's take Diablo, where the player character's are made of eight sprite sets (one per each orientation, and one sprite per animation frame.) Let's say that some high-up guy thinks that the necromancer looks a little too skimpy and should be changed t something more suitable. While changing one sprite is okay, you have to do the same change to eight different orientations, as well as each movement frame available.
Such changes will take a while under 2D - and it also proves that 2D art is more difficult than it's 3D counterparts.
For the umpteenth time, the USA did not break the treaty. It withdrew from the treaty, following the procedures contained in the treaty for withdrawal
Doesn't matter. Even though there is no diplomatic reprocussions for withdrawing from the treaty, the USA did not do a good enough of a job maintaining popular opinion with this withdrawl.
According to most people: there was first an initial announcement that the USA developed anti-missile technology, followed by plans to build a missile shield. The media then picked up on the fact that the missile shield was against the treaty, with an announcement a bit later that the US was withdrawing from the treaty. The more intellegent people see it as a form of "damage control" in order to ensure that this treaty doesn't get violated. However, picking off a random person from the street, and he will most likely view it as the treaty being broken as opposed to a legal withdraw (and that's what's important in politics).
Besides, just because something is legal doesn't mean that it is politically clear. For example, all those election promises that the politions throw around but aren't legally required to keep - the last time it happened, it was a necessairy to do so but caused significant anger among the voters.
In either of these two cases, the political parties in control did not invest enough in ensuring a good relationship with other entities (either other countries, or the voters within a country) for their legal, but questionable decision. While there are ways do help ensure that the relationships don't go too sour, the USA doesn't currently seem to be doing a good job of maintaining opinion (and the loss of opinion has been slowly building up from decisions that aren't exactly that good ideally, politically, or legally...)
There are ways around that too. I go down to Costco and buy a game, copy it, cut out the CD Key from the manual/cd insert and return the game for a full refund.
That "trick" won't work forever. When you return a game and it turns out that the CD-key was cut out of the package, you place yourself at risk because of a paper trail of making a purchase and getting a refund.
This isn't a simple thing like copyright infringement - it's something that can get you blacklisted at various software stores for fraud. (in addition to other things.)
Nice try buddy, except the earth was created 6000 years ago.
That's very nice to hear, but there was never a claim that the Earth was created otherwise.
Not only that, but he also managed to debunk your claim before you even made it, by mentioning the term "dinosaurs". Unless you want to try and claim that dinosaurs never existed and begin to look like a silly lunatic in the meantime...
The problem is that returning a game is usually a last resort for people.
The reason with returning the game is that most software stores refuse to issue any refund for opened software packages. As a result, you will find youself either confined to a small set of stores or from manufacturere-direct orders.
The only alternative is to take step #4 to the extreme: Not only do you send complaints to the developer/publisher, you also need to make those complaints public by putting it on a user review website. Be sure to site the "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" specification, including section "S1.6" for maximum effect - in fact, you could probably say the game is even more defective as you site other issues shown within that document.
Something's not right when a game you just downloaded off Kazaa is less of a hassle to play than the same game off the box. The "copy protection" craze has gone to far; no matter what, digital content of any kind *will* be copied and used illegally. You just can't get arround it, CD-Key, DMCA, Dongles, or whatever.
Actually, CD-Keys (and other subscription style software) are one of the few protection systems that work. They are very effective at restricing the pirate's ability to use online portions of the game, if it is implemented correctly. (i.e. the game only works if there the CD-Key has been printed at the press.)
Even though there are alternate servers or cracks to allow bypassing the CD-Check, not many people use them, and as a result, the pirate is placed in a smaller group of servers or players.
However, I do agree that other forms of protection can be eventually broken - if the system trusts the client at all, than it is vulnerable.
I really liked the game, it's the most retro game I've seen as far as copy protection
There's something slightly more retro in this field.
You've probably not heard of Firestarter - it installs easily, does not require the CD and does not require any CD-Key or any other license check to be performed. The game itself isn't a blockbuster, but it is a fairly inexpensive game that can provide a challenge.
Not to develop technology to shoot down deadly missiles, because it would require withdrawing from a treaty made with a no-longer-existant country in a different era.
While the country might no longer be officially existant, most people off the street don't see the difference between the various stages of Russia - the only differences between the different eras for such people would be some countries breaking off from the primary state. Even if breaking the treaty has no diplomatic reprocussions, it's great feed for an anti-Bush campaign or anti-US campaign.
The only way the treaty can be broken without political reprocussions would be if the remote country dissolves completely, if the treaty is mutually withdrawn or replaced, or if the country gets amalgamated. While there may be complaints, they will be very limited when one of those three conditions are met. There are other ways to avoid such problems, but they tend to be very rare.
Just so that you know, you might want to select "Slige" as your favoured map generator. Currently, it's the best one for the game, but has been idle for an extra long time (the author even took some time to answer e-mails when I contacted him - he really didn't have much free time.)
I would have liked to patch Slige to fix some scattered bugs but there is one problem - the author placed the entire source code into one file, making it fairly difficult to keep track of the general area where changes should be made. (Reason: The author claimed that it was easier to manage.)
But I have to mention Raven Software's attempt at random generated first person shooter maps in SoF2 : While very far from perfect, and limited to outdoor maps : it is a very good, and inovative thing they did (which got very unrecognised, imho).
Actually, I've seen random map generators for earlier games. The first random map generator released commercially would be RandRott, released on the Bonus Pack CD for the game.
There have also been some third party random map generators for Doom as well - the first one that actually worked would be Randseen, but that generator could only produce maps with 255 things before encountering a bug (which the author incorrectly blamed ID software for such a low limit when it turned out that RandSeen used an 8-byte counter for the number of things.)
Other than "minor" attempts, there haven't been much development in the Random map department.
And I'm sure those homebrew monstrosities will shake the gaming world...
Out of all of the games released, there have only been a select few that shook the gaming world - regardless of which genre that are released in. And as you know, those types of games are hyped up through advertisments and claims of revolutionary gameplay.
A small band of nerds updating Telengard in their free time does not a resurgence of a gaming genre make.
In case you haven't noticed, there is a signficant chunk of gamers that are on a tight budget that need to save up $50 or more just to get their hands on the latest game. By the time they get the $50, the "blockbuster" game in question is gone from the shelves, replaced by the next "blockbuster".
As long as this group of players exist, you will always see people going for rougelikes. And as you know, roguelikes are generally light weight as well - you won't need to update your computer every six months to keep playing these forms of games.
Much like Tux Racer, these games will have a whopping huge audience of around 10 people or so; the same people that put them together in the first place.
Have you checked the roguelike groups recently?
In case you haven't, the traffic on those newsgroups is comparable to a large number of the individual ForumPlanet forums about CNC, Quake, Deus Ex, etc. However, those more "fancy" games have players come and go all the time - roguelikes are the only genre that produces and keeps a significant stable player base. And as you know, a stable player base is much better than a large but trendy one.
I personally prefer the paranoia solution. You aren't allowed to know the rules;-). Endless crazy fun
While the paranoia situation works if done properly, most GMs don't know how manage a game properly. As a result, you will see GMs performing six rapid illegitimate deaths in a row where a drop pod "accidently" lands on a character, with the next drop pod "accidently" hitting two more characters.
The original games, Rainbow Six and Rainbow Six: Rogue Spear had a good deal of randomness. Contacts would move in patrol paths, starting at different positions each time you played, sometimes not appearing in the paths at all. Enemy positions on the pre-mission map were almost always approximate, you never knew if a terrorist would actually be at the indicated location. Each mission was satisfyingly unpredictable (to a reasonable degree), each time you played them.
Actually, I found that the randomness of Rainbow Six (the original game) to be fairly limited. The enemies might have appeared in various locations, but I haven't really noticed much of a difference - usually, the only changes in the enemy patrol paths have to do with taking a bit longer to complete a portion of the map.
Also, I found that Rainbow Six had enemies with "Aim-bot" accurracy. This resulted in either the mission being very easy or very hard (your teammates are easily gunned down by one enemy should you fall.)
The first two games required skill and adaptability, whereas R6 3 was reduced to a sort-of Counter-Strike "plus" to cash in on more casual gamers who weren't looking for the counter-terrorism simulation that characterized the originals. Very sad to see one of the most unique games butchered by attempts at garnering mass appeal.
Rainbow Six (Raven Shield) was the first game in the series where I noticed that enemies were in different locations than normal for each attempt of the map. However, in general, they were usually in the same place and could be dealt with by using Auto-Aim (either that or you die as soon as you step into their FOV - especially on 'Elite' difficulty.)
Of course, it was also the first game where I actually noticed an unnecessairy delay after throwing a grenade and switching to your primary weapon. (Why the fsck do you have to draw a second grenade and put it away before switching? Didn't see anything in the manual or training on how to do this properly.)
They all bring up games that are 7-8 years old and have zero bearing on what gamers are currently playing. It's absolute nonsense. I'm in my 30's, have been a gamer all my life, and remember quite well the games of the late 70's and onward. Guess what? Most of them don't hold up anymore compared to modern games
While it is true that most classic games don't hold a candle to modern games, it is usually based on the fact that 90% of all games are unaldurated crap. As long as a game is of high enough quality in game play, it will remain around for a long time - and will only disappear once it is replaced by a true successor
You mentioned Tetris - it's a very simple game that is suprisingly good at holding attention. The thing with Tetris is that the simple ans easy-to-learn game had is limited room for improvement, with the exception of "puzzles" and challenges (such as in NYET III: Revenge of the Mutant Stones). Even the inventor of Tetris couldn't make such a replacement.
The usual Nethack zealots really get me; there is a reason that Rogue-like games aren't produced in great quantity anymore (although you could make the case for the Diablo and Dungeon Siege games being their descendents), and that's because they frankly just aren't interesting.
From my understanding, there are a couple of major roguelikes under development, either at their base version or their source ports. Even so, I still see activity on the newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.development where a version update for a roguelike game appears (among discussion for creating a roguelike.), at a rate that indicates that roguelike development is in progress. While there has been a shift in some games from Ascii to bitmaps, these Roguelikes are still being developed.
Also, Roguelikes can still be interesting in the modern age - Nethack is one example where there is a massive amount of items and interactions between items and monsters, something that hasn't yet been reproduced in another CRPG.
Games have increasingly getting more and more complex over the years, and thankfully so have the graphics associated with them. The higher production values are noticeable, and the entire affair is more engaging than it's ever been.
Personally, I attributed the higher production values to the software development mills, where large quantites of software is released that has limited gameplay value. More often than not, most of the games being released (especially within the RTS genre) appear to have major issues that make gameplay substandard, either by boring or repetitive implementation (stereotypical of the FPS genre) or by a kludgy interface (stereotypical of the RTS genre.)
Does that mean that all old games are junk? Definitely not, but classic games that can hold one's attention indefinitely like Tetris are flukes.
I agree completely - however, I instead believe that most games after the semi-classic era (i.e. 1993-1998) are flukes for not knocking off the older games. Given the massive amount of games available on the market, there is no reason why developers haven't created a lessons learned database on what works and what doesn't. At the very least, there should be mental notes, such as the necessity of lead-ahead in modern games - but mental notes don't remain when there is a high turnover of employees.
3. The places you CAN play aren't usually very fun. Lots of dirt, tumbleweeds, stickers, etc, that I had to pick out of my clothes when I was done.
IIRC, there are places that have purchased enough land where it is possible to perform paintball with permission from the owner - usually known as paintball arenas. Of course, you probably know this along with the fact that they aren't always available in some areas.
5. Some people are assholes. I had a guy light me up from maybe 20 feet away, even though I had my hands up and was asking him which team he was on (he'd JUST entered in the middle of a game). He just kept shooting, wouldn't stop. Hurt like HELL. I was ready for a fist fight with that f***er. Anyone who has ever played paintball can share a similar story.
In case those idiots appear later, future players migh want to check out the 3-crack rule, where players that fire hit a target more than three times are thrown out of the game. Firing paintballs that rapidly is considered a safety hazard, and is a very good way of getting permanently banned from most arenas.
In Duke Nukem 3d you had to reload the pistol, IIRC, but it didn't show you how many shots you had left.
Actually, it did. The reload animation gets played when the number of bullets remaining reaches a multiple of 12. (And the number of bullets is listed on the HUD.)
Blah! After being used to Doom monsters, I tried to pick up quake. I'm used to these guys taking a few shotgun blasts at most to kill for non-bosses, but as far as I could tell, the weakest Quake monster took 5 grenades!
I'm not sure which monster you are talking about... The weakest "monster" in Quake would be the Dog, which is killed by two shotgun blasts with standard accurracy. Next would be the Solder and Enforcer, which require 2 and 4 hits respectivly.
The toughest monsters in Quake would be the Fiend, which can be killed with 10-20 shotgun blasts (or a few grenades), and the shamber (which is defeated by unloading the Nailgun/Super Nailgun). These two monsters are generally rare enough that you don't have to worry about them (in fact, on Easy/Normal, there is usually one nearby Quad for each shambler.)
Whatever you do, don't use the GL/RL on the shambler - it is resistant to explosive attacks.
A more annoying example is Jedi Knight 2 : Outcast. In particular the Cairn - Docking Bay level. Geez I'm supposed to be some kind of uber jedi-wannabe with a huge pile of weapons and yet if some git hits the alarm panel I don't get the chance to fight my way out.
Yes, I remember that section all too well. I wouldnt' find this to be a problem, if it werent for the fact that there were a few points where you were in a very high risk of being detected (and there wasn't a way around them, since it was a one-route map).
It's also inconsistant with the rest of the game - you kill many reminant soldiers, reborn, and dark jedi, but fail to one alarm. There wasn't really much of an explination on exactly how that happened.
The only place where forces stealth is close to being acceptable would be "Casing the Joint" in Thief II: The Metal Age - you are trying to map the place out before you steal an objective item in the next mission. If you get spotted, it is assumed that the masks won't be brought to the mansion. (I'm not sure that the casing mission is even required - however, it's part of the story where the master thief wants to make sure he knows the place before retrieving the critical items.)
No amount of storming into rooms armed with loads of guns and laying waste to massive amounts of my enemies will ever become dull.
As you know, some games have attempted to make the enemies more challenging. For example, Red Faction gives the mercenaries a rail driver, which is a one-hit kill weapon designed to penetrate walls (you can see enemies through walls with its thermal scope.)
I have yet to see a player who can complete a map containing such enemies without having to excessivly save and reload.
Am I missing something, or is there basically no story here?
The story is supposed to be intended to say that the copying of code was legally permitted. However, the phrasing of Slashdot's title and leading statement seems to distort this to imply that it is code theft rather than something that's permitted. (The 'dept' thing doesn't count, since it is easily glanced over.)
Jedi Knight is another unique FPS that comes to mind. It broke the mold by letting you use force powers and a lightsaber. You could still choose to play the game using the typical, blow everything up, method. However, it was intirely possible to play the entire game with just a lighsaber and your force powers.
Actually, Jedi Knight included situations where you were required to use the Lightsaber in a long battle - such as the various missions where it was you versus one Jedi opponent. From what I could tell, they were immune to ceratin explosive attacks, such as sequencer charges. It also didn't feel much different from other FPSes, since the fightscenes were a bit simplistic - you could just do circles around the opponent and swing the saber hoping to hit - eventually you would defeat the enemy jedi.
Jedi Knight II is a different story. In JKII, lightsabre combat was a bit more refined with certain special moves and three fighting styles - as well as updating the AI so that you can't use the old JK fighting tactic. They also included a sniper weapon that can sometimes bypass the lightsaber defence in multiplayer games, which is probably a good thing. Of course, the single player campaign of JKII was a bit heavy on jumping sequences.
I haven't tried Jedi Academy, but I'm sure that it improves on the ideas even more.
Slashdot Mirror
If you read the article, you would notice that they are only talking about integer degree intersections, not every single possible point on the Earth. Even if they did refer to every single one of those infinite points, it wouldn't make it impossible as humans make contact with a large number of such points at any given time (and as a result, it would just be gradually painting areas as visited.)
(BTW, who modded Insightful? It definatly wasn't.)
In this summary statement, the author himself states that he is comparing basic graphics to art. Nobody cares that bout this - what needs to be done is either a comparision between 2d graphics and 3D graphics, *OR* a comparison between 2D Art and 3D Art.
The only advantage of 2D movies is the fact that you can draw fancy art to as high as a detail as you want. 3D sequences, while not looking as fancy, do not require as much space as their 2D counterparts (by reusing models, textures and so on), and can be consistantly modified without having to redo many frames of work. Also, I am finding that modern games have cinametics comparable to how it should look like - it's a big jump from Dark Forces (an old Dos game that used simple cinamatics) or Jedi Ourcast (3D cinamatics don't look ultra-fancy, but get the job done.)
Not only that, but there are ways to convert 3D-graphics into pre-rendered 2D movies without problem. From there, it's quite easy to do the "editing" that the author seems to want. Not that it matters, since I have very rarely seen an issue with 3D graphics in the games I've played. The closest thing would be those "classy" screenshots posted on PlantUnreal, and those could be pulled off in a 2D game with the same complexity.
Besides, the author ignores the "rotating-corpse" issue that was visible in Doom where you could only see one side of the body after it was killed.
This is easily countered by using Wing Commander 1 compared to X-Wing. While X-Wing might not have looked fancy, you could easily tell when you were about commit suicide by ramming a Star Destroyer. In Wing Commander 1, the collision box was independant of the sprite, and you could thus accidently bump into a Ralari without knowing it (not only that, but the collision box was based around a static box rather than the visible model/sprite.)
Now the other problem with collision detection in 2D games - in the games where collision means death, you either have a per-pixel collision detection, or bounding box collision detection. In the former, you die as soon as one pixel nicks whatever you are supposed to avoid. In the latter, you can't tell if that tight squeeze is fatal or not, let alone know the tolerance for that squeeze.
Mabye this was true in the era of Quake 1, but not anymore. 3D games have evolved since then, and are much better - either through graphics or some other complaint based on the difference between 2D and 3D.
The reviewers whining about this sort of graphics is just superficial. The real quality of the game is not how it appears on screen, unless there are glearingly major problems that interfere with gameplay (either through obscuring critical information, showing information that should be hidden, or by being distracting).
This game alone is proof that just because it's old does not mean it's good. Not only that, but it also disproves the (inverse) correlation between graphics and quality.
Let's take Diablo, where the player character's are made of eight sprite sets (one per each orientation, and one sprite per animation frame.) Let's say that some high-up guy thinks that the necromancer looks a little too skimpy and should be changed t something more suitable. While changing one sprite is okay, you have to do the same change to eight different orientations, as well as each movement frame available.
Such changes will take a while under 2D - and it also proves that 2D art is more difficult than it's 3D counterparts.
According to most people: there was first an initial announcement that the USA developed anti-missile technology, followed by plans to build a missile shield. The media then picked up on the fact that the missile shield was against the treaty, with an announcement a bit later that the US was withdrawing from the treaty. The more intellegent people see it as a form of "damage control" in order to ensure that this treaty doesn't get violated. However, picking off a random person from the street, and he will most likely view it as the treaty being broken as opposed to a legal withdraw (and that's what's important in politics).
Besides, just because something is legal doesn't mean that it is politically clear. For example, all those election promises that the politions throw around but aren't legally required to keep - the last time it happened, it was a necessairy to do so but caused significant anger among the voters.
In either of these two cases, the political parties in control did not invest enough in ensuring a good relationship with other entities (either other countries, or the voters within a country) for their legal, but questionable decision. While there are ways do help ensure that the relationships don't go too sour, the USA doesn't currently seem to be doing a good job of maintaining opinion (and the loss of opinion has been slowly building up from decisions that aren't exactly that good ideally, politically, or legally...)
This isn't a simple thing like copyright infringement - it's something that can get you blacklisted at various software stores for fraud. (in addition to other things.)
Not only that, but he also managed to debunk your claim before you even made it, by mentioning the term "dinosaurs". Unless you want to try and claim that dinosaurs never existed and begin to look like a silly lunatic in the meantime...
The only alternative is to take step #4 to the extreme: Not only do you send complaints to the developer/publisher, you also need to make those complaints public by putting it on a user review website. Be sure to site the "Designed for Microsoft Windows XP" specification, including section "S1.6" for maximum effect - in fact, you could probably say the game is even more defective as you site other issues shown within that document.
Actually, CD-Keys (and other subscription style software) are one of the few protection systems that work. They are very effective at restricing the pirate's ability to use online portions of the game, if it is implemented correctly. (i.e. the game only works if there the CD-Key has been printed at the press.)
Even though there are alternate servers or cracks to allow bypassing the CD-Check, not many people use them, and as a result, the pirate is placed in a smaller group of servers or players.
However, I do agree that other forms of protection can be eventually broken - if the system trusts the client at all, than it is vulnerable.
You've probably not heard of Firestarter - it installs easily, does not require the CD and does not require any CD-Key or any other license check to be performed. The game itself isn't a blockbuster, but it is a fairly inexpensive game that can provide a challenge.
The only way the treaty can be broken without political reprocussions would be if the remote country dissolves completely, if the treaty is mutually withdrawn or replaced, or if the country gets amalgamated. While there may be complaints, they will be very limited when one of those three conditions are met. There are other ways to avoid such problems, but they tend to be very rare.
Just so that you know, you might want to select "Slige" as your favoured map generator. Currently, it's the best one for the game, but has been idle for an extra long time (the author even took some time to answer e-mails when I contacted him - he really didn't have much free time.)
I would have liked to patch Slige to fix some scattered bugs but there is one problem - the author placed the entire source code into one file, making it fairly difficult to keep track of the general area where changes should be made. (Reason: The author claimed that it was easier to manage.)
There have also been some third party random map generators for Doom as well - the first one that actually worked would be Randseen, but that generator could only produce maps with 255 things before encountering a bug (which the author incorrectly blamed ID software for such a low limit when it turned out that RandSeen used an 8-byte counter for the number of things.)
Other than "minor" attempts, there haven't been much development in the Random map department.
In case you haven't noticed, there is a signficant chunk of gamers that are on a tight budget that need to save up $50 or more just to get their hands on the latest game. By the time they get the $50, the "blockbuster" game in question is gone from the shelves, replaced by the next "blockbuster".
As long as this group of players exist, you will always see people going for rougelikes. And as you know, roguelikes are generally light weight as well - you won't need to update your computer every six months to keep playing these forms of games.
Have you checked the roguelike groups recently?
In case you haven't, the traffic on those newsgroups is comparable to a large number of the individual ForumPlanet forums about CNC, Quake, Deus Ex, etc. However, those more "fancy" games have players come and go all the time - roguelikes are the only genre that produces and keeps a significant stable player base. And as you know, a stable player base is much better than a large but trendy one.
Also, I found that Rainbow Six had enemies with "Aim-bot" accurracy. This resulted in either the mission being very easy or very hard (your teammates are easily gunned down by one enemy should you fall.)
Rainbow Six (Raven Shield) was the first game in the series where I noticed that enemies were in different locations than normal for each attempt of the map. However, in general, they were usually in the same place and could be dealt with by using Auto-Aim (either that or you die as soon as you step into their FOV - especially on 'Elite' difficulty.)
Of course, it was also the first game where I actually noticed an unnecessairy delay after throwing a grenade and switching to your primary weapon. (Why the fsck do you have to draw a second grenade and put it away before switching? Didn't see anything in the manual or training on how to do this properly.)
You mentioned Tetris - it's a very simple game that is suprisingly good at holding attention. The thing with Tetris is that the simple ans easy-to-learn game had is limited room for improvement, with the exception of "puzzles" and challenges (such as in NYET III: Revenge of the Mutant Stones). Even the inventor of Tetris couldn't make such a replacement.
From my understanding, there are a couple of major roguelikes under development, either at their base version or their source ports. Even so, I still see activity on the newsgroup rec.games.roguelike.development where a version update for a roguelike game appears (among discussion for creating a roguelike.), at a rate that indicates that roguelike development is in progress. While there has been a shift in some games from Ascii to bitmaps, these Roguelikes are still being developed.
Also, Roguelikes can still be interesting in the modern age - Nethack is one example where there is a massive amount of items and interactions between items and monsters, something that hasn't yet been reproduced in another CRPG.
Personally, I attributed the higher production values to the software development mills, where large quantites of software is released that has limited gameplay value. More often than not, most of the games being released (especially within the RTS genre) appear to have major issues that make gameplay substandard, either by boring or repetitive implementation (stereotypical of the FPS genre) or by a kludgy interface (stereotypical of the RTS genre.)
I agree completely - however, I instead believe that most games after the semi-classic era (i.e. 1993-1998) are flukes for not knocking off the older games. Given the massive amount of games available on the market, there is no reason why developers haven't created a lessons learned database on what works and what doesn't. At the very least, there should be mental notes, such as the necessity of lead-ahead in modern games - but mental notes don't remain when there is a high turnover of employees.
In case those idiots appear later, future players migh want to check out the 3-crack rule, where players that fire hit a target more than three times are thrown out of the game. Firing paintballs that rapidly is considered a safety hazard, and is a very good way of getting permanently banned from most arenas.
I'm not sure which monster you are talking about... The weakest "monster" in Quake would be the Dog, which is killed by two shotgun blasts with standard accurracy. Next would be the Solder and Enforcer, which require 2 and 4 hits respectivly.
The toughest monsters in Quake would be the Fiend, which can be killed with 10-20 shotgun blasts (or a few grenades), and the shamber (which is defeated by unloading the Nailgun/Super Nailgun). These two monsters are generally rare enough that you don't have to worry about them (in fact, on Easy/Normal, there is usually one nearby Quad for each shambler.)
Whatever you do, don't use the GL/RL on the shambler - it is resistant to explosive attacks.
It's also inconsistant with the rest of the game - you kill many reminant soldiers, reborn, and dark jedi, but fail to one alarm. There wasn't really much of an explination on exactly how that happened.
The only place where forces stealth is close to being acceptable would be "Casing the Joint" in Thief II: The Metal Age - you are trying to map the place out before you steal an objective item in the next mission. If you get spotted, it is assumed that the masks won't be brought to the mansion. (I'm not sure that the casing mission is even required - however, it's part of the story where the master thief wants to make sure he knows the place before retrieving the critical items.)
I have yet to see a player who can complete a map containing such enemies without having to excessivly save and reload.
Jedi Knight II is a different story. In JKII, lightsabre combat was a bit more refined with certain special moves and three fighting styles - as well as updating the AI so that you can't use the old JK fighting tactic. They also included a sniper weapon that can sometimes bypass the lightsaber defence in multiplayer games, which is probably a good thing. Of course, the single player campaign of JKII was a bit heavy on jumping sequences.
I haven't tried Jedi Academy, but I'm sure that it improves on the ideas even more.