All that will happen is we programmers will have yet another huge, unresponsive monolithic agency taking more money out of our paycheck. Unions are the antithesis of free markets, especially when they start doing things like using member money to influence Congress.
The real solution is for game developers to not put up with this any more.
Well, as of right now, the game doesn't play any differently because of the 3D. Ultima VII's engine, while very pretty and technically advanced, had problems with small, critical objects falling behind large static objects (like tables) and therefore becoming inaccessible (the Goblin King's body in Serpent Isle is a notorious example). Being rotating the view would have fixed the problem, but of course that would have required real 3D.
Very nice for a quick hack - this version of the Exult engine basically reads out the bounding boxes of each object, creates a 3D object with those bounds, and then maps the original sprite onto the bounding box as a texture. That's very clever. Of course, actually cleaning this up (look at how flat the people are and how twisted the trees look) will take a ton of work, but now that we've got a taste of a real 3D U7 maybe the project will attract more attention and volunteers.
That's not the way Al tells it. According to Al, he actually did get permission from Coolio's lawyers, only to discover afteward that Coolio either didn't want the song made or (much more likely) thought he could get some free publicity by pretending he didn't like it. Al apologized to Coolio, who appears to have been properly placated.
As for the Amish not liking it...I don't think Al is sweating that too much. I mean, how the hell did they ever hear it in the first place?
Okay, I'm only about six hours in, but so far I've had nothing but fun with the game. The combat system is great - it's not like Final Fantasy Tactics where you feel like you're fighting the system and you win every fight by the skin of your teeth. Instead, if you stay together, use good formations and use your specials effectively, you'll always come out on top, which is great.
Plus, the story so far has been fantastic - I just finished chapter two (got the good ending), and I cannot wait to find out what happens next. The writing and voice acting are top-notch and the characters are great.
While I haven't finished the game and therefore cannot guarantee that it doesn't crap out further down, based on what I've played so far, I can't help but say that if you like tactical combat games, you MUST have this game. Even if you DON'T like them, you may still want to give it a try, since it's much more engaging and playable than most tactical combat games.
Now I just need to get it beat before Front Mission 4 comes out...
This guy saw no games in development. He heard no music or voice acting. He didn't meet any of Rare's developers - just saw them pointed out in the cafe. He couldn't even take a picture of the Rare sign in the lobby. What kind of tour is this? And why the hell does Rare feel the need to be so secretive? There are much better development houses that don't feel they need razor wire and security cameras.
They got me with DX:IW - I bought it at full price even after playing the demo and seeing the drastic changes they made to the game, in the hopes that there would still be something there. Ten hours later, I finished the game, watched all the endings, and uninstalled it. The experience was thoroughly mediocre. The odds are very good I'll never play that game again.
Thief: Deadly Shadows is using the exact same engine and was designed in the exact same way - as an Xbox game first. It's going to suffer from the same problems DX:IW did - small areas, limited interaction, difficult to use interface. And what the hell was wrong with the name Thief III?
Ugh...after Ion Storm butchered Deus Ex: Invisible War by designing it for the Xbox first, I'm NOT looking forward to Thief III any more; I know it'll simply be more of the same - low frame rates, inconsistent graphics, small areas and shallow gameplay.
Everyone is bagging on the original Dungeon Siege. While it wasn't the best game in the world, it did two interesting things that made me glad I'd picked it up. The "streaming world" technology was extremely well done; I'm really hoping that this will become the norm for ALL games - DEATH to load screens! If you're a developer and you want to know how they did it, Scott Bilas has tons of information on his site here: http://www.drizzle.com/~scottb/
Tho other thing I really liked was the character advancement system. Want to get good at something? Do that particular thing. No levelling, no "skill points", just practice.
While the plot and dialog were weak, these features, plus some interesting environments and enemies, made me glad I'd picked it up. And hopefully DS' weaknesses will be fixed in the sequel.
"Freedom is not the chance to do anything we want to do. Freedom is the chance to do what we should do. Now, in this context, do we free people really exercise 'freedom'?"
I've heard this point of view from many Muslims before - that freedom is bad because it means people will be free to sin, and that the freedom we value so highly is merely a smokescreen for our debauchery.
But who has the right to decide what I should do? Who has the right to dictate to me? People are going to disagree. "Right" is going to be different for everyone. Attempting to force a single set of extremely strict rules on everyone simply leads to totalitarianism - fascism disguised as religion. And that's exactly what Saudi Arabia and most of the surrounding Muslim states are.
If you want a view of how people live in Saudi Arabia, read this:
http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-saudi.html
This article makes it clear that the people in Saudi Arabia still commit all these "sinful" acts - they drink, smoke, have sex outside of marriage, listen to music, etc - but because of the incredibly stringent laws of Islam, they must do it all in secret, and they must deny to the outside world who they really are.
Such a system can only breed pathology. True freedom is the better way. It should be up to each individual to choose what is right (within reason, of course - your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, yada yada yada) and it should be up to each person to choose whether or not to do that right.
So I pose this question to you, and answer it without referring to Stallman: Is it ethical to dictate to people what they can and cannot do with things they themselves have made?
That spurious "10%" number includes every piece of entertainment software sold. Free software would destroy the computer game industry, which is how I make my living.
Um...that's a good game. Although I never win because all my friends know all the spells and the most effective spell combinations. Still, a very good game.
I just did not care for "Moon". The entire scenario was simply implausible for one thing; I'm fully aware that we will never have a permanent human presence on the moon simply because there's nothing up there worth staying for. But the casual sex (and even MORE casual violence, IE "remember your manners, Earther, 'cause there's an airlock right over there and I don't see you wearin' no suit") really put me off. Plus, when our "heroes" finally did manage to achieve their independence, they did so by throwing huge rocks at known population centers on earth, killing millions of defenseless people in the process. I just did not get what was supposed to be so frickin' "brilliant".
You can sum up whether Open Source is good for you very easily.
Are you selling goods or services? Open Source is your best friend, because it reduces your overhead.
Are you selling software itself? Open Source is your worst enemy, because it takes away your only revenue stream.
Make your decisions accordingly, but know that Open Source (or Free Software or whatever you want to call it) is not the panacea its proponents claim it is.
Irrational! You guys are some of my favorite developers - I loved System Shock 2 and Freedom Force, and can't wait for your next games. I just wish both of those games had sold better for you...I simply could not understand how System Shock, one of the most revered games of all time, could get a sequel that's just as good as the original, and it NOT become the best-selling game of the year.
Anyway, thanks for a great sequel. Thanks for breaking the "all superhero games either suck or get cancelled" curse. Thanks for doing something different, and I hope you guys continue to succeed.
Yeah, I'd be horrified at the lies, distortions and half-truths he uses to vilify my country. Plus, there's that whole "Pol Pot wasn't REALLY so bad" thing he does.
An addition to this would be that Starcraft was arguably one of the first RTS games to really have an involving story (and again this comes back to the characters, as they were developed in the cut-scenes but still had actual character to them even in the game itself).
Hello? Command & Conquer had this long before Starcraft. Even Warcraft II: Through the Dark Portal had good in-game story elements (even though that game didn't support between-mission cutscenes).
So what was it that Starcraft did that made it a great game? The only really new thing it did was to have three very different factions - everything else had been done before. But its story was engaging, the game was easy to play and had personality. It didn't do a lot new, but it did everything it did very well. Starcraft is proof that a game doesn't have to break ground to be superb and become a classic.
Shenmue was hyped to an amazing extent, both to players and to developers. Shenmue was going to revitalize the adventure game category, and show developers how games would be made from then on. If you go to Gamasutra, you can actually watch Yu Suzuki's original presentation of the game at the 2000 Game Developer Conference. It's a love-in of epic proportions.
Then the game was actually released. While it excelled in many areas - it had good characters, large environments, lots of interaction, etc, it also suffered from some severe gameplay problems that made it frustrating to play. Couple this with the fact that developers began to realize the resources the game required - five years of work by a one-hundred-person team! - and the development hype wore off as well. Eventually the shine wore off and reviewers began rating the game (or revising their ratings) based on how it actually played.
Disclaimer: I personally love Shenmue, and love its sequel, Shenmue II, even more. But I can recognize overhype when I see it.
You guys buy into a philosophy and a system that makes selling commercial software as difficult as possible, then bitch, moan and whine when nobody makes commercial software for your system.
Games are commercial software, and they always will be. You can't make money by selling the manual to a game. You can't make money by selling a "service plan" for a game. You can only make money by selling the software itself, a transaction Free Software is specifically designed to thwart.
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All that will happen is we programmers will have yet another huge, unresponsive monolithic agency taking more money out of our paycheck. Unions are the antithesis of free markets, especially when they start doing things like using member money to influence Congress.
The real solution is for game developers to not put up with this any more.
Tactical Studies Rules. And no, I didn't have to look. And yes, I've been a gamer for far too long.
Well, as of right now, the game doesn't play any differently because of the 3D. Ultima VII's engine, while very pretty and technically advanced, had problems with small, critical objects falling behind large static objects (like tables) and therefore becoming inaccessible (the Goblin King's body in Serpent Isle is a notorious example). Being rotating the view would have fixed the problem, but of course that would have required real 3D.
Very nice for a quick hack - this version of the Exult engine basically reads out the bounding boxes of each object, creates a 3D object with those bounds, and then maps the original sprite onto the bounding box as a texture. That's very clever. Of course, actually cleaning this up (look at how flat the people are and how twisted the trees look) will take a ton of work, but now that we've got a taste of a real 3D U7 maybe the project will attract more attention and volunteers.
That's not the way Al tells it. According to Al, he actually did get permission from Coolio's lawyers, only to discover afteward that Coolio either didn't want the song made or (much more likely) thought he could get some free publicity by pretending he didn't like it. Al apologized to Coolio, who appears to have been properly placated.
As for the Amish not liking it...I don't think Al is sweating that too much. I mean, how the hell did they ever hear it in the first place?
Holy Toledo, I thought I was the only one who did this!
For the record, the sequence went:
Weird Ed: "Daddy's been acting very strange since he started this secret project..."
Nurse Edna: "Yeah so?"
Weird Ed: "Well, mommy, I'm worried! He hasn't eaten in three years!"
Nurse Edna: "Yeah, so?!"
Weird Ed: "And he carries those bodies to the basement every night!"
Nurse Edna: "What's your point, Ed?"
Weird Ed: "Never mind..."
(Forgive inaccuracies - it's from memory.)
Okay, I'm only about six hours in, but so far I've had nothing but fun with the game. The combat system is great - it's not like Final Fantasy Tactics where you feel like you're fighting the system and you win every fight by the skin of your teeth. Instead, if you stay together, use good formations and use your specials effectively, you'll always come out on top, which is great.
Plus, the story so far has been fantastic - I just finished chapter two (got the good ending), and I cannot wait to find out what happens next. The writing and voice acting are top-notch and the characters are great.
While I haven't finished the game and therefore cannot guarantee that it doesn't crap out further down, based on what I've played so far, I can't help but say that if you like tactical combat games, you MUST have this game. Even if you DON'T like them, you may still want to give it a try, since it's much more engaging and playable than most tactical combat games.
Now I just need to get it beat before Front Mission 4 comes out...
This guy saw no games in development. He heard no music or voice acting. He didn't meet any of Rare's developers - just saw them pointed out in the cafe. He couldn't even take a picture of the Rare sign in the lobby. What kind of tour is this? And why the hell does Rare feel the need to be so secretive? There are much better development houses that don't feel they need razor wire and security cameras.
Completely anal developers + drooling fanboy = boring article.
They got me with DX:IW - I bought it at full price even after playing the demo and seeing the drastic changes they made to the game, in the hopes that there would still be something there. Ten hours later, I finished the game, watched all the endings, and uninstalled it. The experience was thoroughly mediocre. The odds are very good I'll never play that game again.
Thief: Deadly Shadows is using the exact same engine and was designed in the exact same way - as an Xbox game first. It's going to suffer from the same problems DX:IW did - small areas, limited interaction, difficult to use interface. And what the hell was wrong with the name Thief III?
Fool me twice, shame on me.
Ugh...after Ion Storm butchered Deus Ex: Invisible War by designing it for the Xbox first, I'm NOT looking forward to Thief III any more; I know it'll simply be more of the same - low frame rates, inconsistent graphics, small areas and shallow gameplay.
Everyone is bagging on the original Dungeon Siege. While it wasn't the best game in the world, it did two interesting things that made me glad I'd picked it up. The "streaming world" technology was extremely well done; I'm really hoping that this will become the norm for ALL games - DEATH to load screens! If you're a developer and you want to know how they did it, Scott Bilas has tons of information on his site here: http://www.drizzle.com/~scottb/
Tho other thing I really liked was the character advancement system. Want to get good at something? Do that particular thing. No levelling, no "skill points", just practice.
While the plot and dialog were weak, these features, plus some interesting environments and enemies, made me glad I'd picked it up. And hopefully DS' weaknesses will be fixed in the sequel.
"Freedom is not the chance to do anything we want to do. Freedom is the chance to do what we should do. Now, in this context, do we free people really exercise 'freedom'?"
I've heard this point of view from many Muslims before - that freedom is bad because it means people will be free to sin, and that the freedom we value so highly is merely a smokescreen for our debauchery.
But who has the right to decide what I should do? Who has the right to dictate to me? People are going to disagree. "Right" is going to be different for everyone. Attempting to force a single set of extremely strict rules on everyone simply leads to totalitarianism - fascism disguised as religion. And that's exactly what Saudi Arabia and most of the surrounding Muslim states are.
If you want a view of how people live in Saudi Arabia, read this:
http://www.lawrencewright.com/art-saudi.html
This article makes it clear that the people in Saudi Arabia still commit all these "sinful" acts - they drink, smoke, have sex outside of marriage, listen to music, etc - but because of the incredibly stringent laws of Islam, they must do it all in secret, and they must deny to the outside world who they really are.
Such a system can only breed pathology. True freedom is the better way. It should be up to each individual to choose what is right (within reason, of course - your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, yada yada yada) and it should be up to each person to choose whether or not to do that right.
So I pose this question to you, and answer it without referring to Stallman: Is it ethical to dictate to people what they can and cannot do with things they themselves have made?
That spurious "10%" number includes every piece of entertainment software sold. Free software would destroy the computer game industry, which is how I make my living.
Holy Toledo, your DAD designed Wiz-War?!
Um...that's a good game. Although I never win because all my friends know all the spells and the most effective spell combinations. Still, a very good game.
Oooh, does this include all the manuscripts for "The Last Dangerous Visions" that he's held onto for THIRTY YEARS NOW?
I just did not care for "Moon". The entire scenario was simply implausible for one thing; I'm fully aware that we will never have a permanent human presence on the moon simply because there's nothing up there worth staying for. But the casual sex (and even MORE casual violence, IE "remember your manners, Earther, 'cause there's an airlock right over there and I don't see you wearin' no suit") really put me off. Plus, when our "heroes" finally did manage to achieve their independence, they did so by throwing huge rocks at known population centers on earth, killing millions of defenseless people in the process. I just did not get what was supposed to be so frickin' "brilliant".
You can sum up whether Open Source is good for you very easily.
Are you selling goods or services? Open Source is your best friend, because it reduces your overhead.
Are you selling software itself? Open Source is your worst enemy, because it takes away your only revenue stream.
Make your decisions accordingly, but know that Open Source (or Free Software or whatever you want to call it) is not the panacea its proponents claim it is.
Irrational! You guys are some of my favorite developers - I loved System Shock 2 and Freedom Force, and can't wait for your next games. I just wish both of those games had sold better for you...I simply could not understand how System Shock, one of the most revered games of all time, could get a sequel that's just as good as the original, and it NOT become the best-selling game of the year.
Anyway, thanks for a great sequel. Thanks for breaking the "all superhero games either suck or get cancelled" curse. Thanks for doing something different, and I hope you guys continue to succeed.
Yeah, I'd be horrified at the lies, distortions and half-truths he uses to vilify my country. Plus, there's that whole "Pol Pot wasn't REALLY so bad" thing he does.
An addition to this would be that Starcraft was arguably one of the first RTS games to really have an involving story (and again this comes back to the characters, as they were developed in the cut-scenes but still had actual character to them even in the game itself).
Hello? Command & Conquer had this long before Starcraft. Even Warcraft II: Through the Dark Portal had good in-game story elements (even though that game didn't support between-mission cutscenes).
So what was it that Starcraft did that made it a great game? The only really new thing it did was to have three very different factions - everything else had been done before. But its story was engaging, the game was easy to play and had personality. It didn't do a lot new, but it did everything it did very well. Starcraft is proof that a game doesn't have to break ground to be superb and become a classic.
Shenmue was hyped to an amazing extent, both to players and to developers. Shenmue was going to revitalize the adventure game category, and show developers how games would be made from then on. If you go to Gamasutra, you can actually watch Yu Suzuki's original presentation of the game at the 2000 Game Developer Conference. It's a love-in of epic proportions.
Then the game was actually released. While it excelled in many areas - it had good characters, large environments, lots of interaction, etc, it also suffered from some severe gameplay problems that made it frustrating to play. Couple this with the fact that developers began to realize the resources the game required - five years of work by a one-hundred-person team! - and the development hype wore off as well. Eventually the shine wore off and reviewers began rating the game (or revising their ratings) based on how it actually played.
Disclaimer: I personally love Shenmue, and love its sequel, Shenmue II, even more. But I can recognize overhype when I see it.
If Valve thinks that supporting Linux will be more trouble than it is worth, then that is Linux's problem, not Valve's.
They could have easily written that engine using OpenGL...
Nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
You guys buy into a philosophy and a system that makes selling commercial software as difficult as possible, then bitch, moan and whine when nobody makes commercial software for your system.
Games are commercial software, and they always will be. You can't make money by selling the manual to a game. You can't make money by selling a "service plan" for a game. You can only make money by selling the software itself, a transaction Free Software is specifically designed to thwart.
You've got no one to blame but yourselves.