This strikes me as an awful lot like the FMV games of the early 90's that plagued systems like the Sega CD. Obviously, I don't know all the details, but I don't want a game where I have to push the right button at the right time to win by setting into motion 27 other events that I'll only be able to watch and not participate in.
You are correct that football commentators often use a telestrator to draw lines on a replay of the previous play. But aye, there's the rub!
A game like football works so well on television because after each play, there's a stoppage of 30-45 seconds, giving the commentators plenty of time to discuss what just happened and bring in any other information they want/need to. This sort of discussion happens in a soccer match, of course, but often several seconds of action are missed.
But if you cut away from a Counter-Strike match to show a replay, you'd miss an awful lot of action due to the shortage of stoppages. You'd also need someone to decide very quickly which part of the action to show, since we're trying to do this stuff relatively live, right?
They sit in a chair and press keys on a keyboard and click buttons on a mouse. How many sports are there where a 400-pound man could succeed?
Answer: One, and that's because sumo wrestlers work extremely hard against other 400-pound men in a physical endeavor, and don't sit in a chair in front of a computer screen.
In a football game, there's really only one thing that you absolutely must concentrate on at any given time to follow the action, and that's the ball. Sure, there's plenty going on otherwise on the field, but seeing the receiver leap up and snag a long pass is more exciting to watch than the left tackle blocking a rusher.
But what do you focus on in a FPS? You can follow a single player, but you miss a lot of the action. You can focus on a spot, but again, you miss a lot of the action. Even as a free-floating spectator, there's too much going on to take it all in. Even if the game has objectives like places to plant explosives, you can't just focus on that one spot, since most of the action is away from there, anyway.
And in a RTS? Well, the early game buildup isn't terribly exciting. At least you can focus on a spot when two armies clash, so RTSes have that going for them. Still, it's a long way from football.
I think the essence of the problem is this: most FPSes and RTSes have a large element of deception, or at least concealment to them. You try to avoid revealing your location to your opponent. The problem is that this makes it more difficult for a spectator to watch because he doesn't know what to expect. In sports, there's much less concealment. Oh, sure, they try to keep their opponents from knowing their gameplan, but you at least know where the players are. If you want to make a FPS watchable, you need to stick all the players in a space where a spectator can see the whole area at once without much obstruction, while still being able to tell what's going on. Naturally, this might ruin the game itself, but that's hardly the point, is it?
Nah, Street Fighter's been done to death. I think they're up to Super Duper Awesome Street Pocket Puzzle Fighter EX Alpha 3 Gold vs. SNK Marvel Super Heroes Remix Unlimited: 72nd Iteration.
(note: I'm talking about the TF mod for Quake, not the Half-Life version.)
As one of the best snipers from the days of QuakeWorld Team Fortress (certainly not the best, but I was known), I have some expertise on the use of the sniper rifle in that game.
I don't know if this sort of implementation has been used elsewhere, but here's how the sniper rifle in that game worked. There was no zoom function on it, though a simple FOV script could solve that. A player had to stop moving or change direction while holding down his attack button. This would charge his sniper shot and the longer he held it down, the more damage it would do. While his shot would charge, his running speed would be drastically reduced (by about a factor of 1/10). He would release the attack button to fire it. A pretty good design, I'd say:
1) His chances of a one-shot kill would be pretty low if he was firing quickly, since his shots would never charge. He would need to have about a second or so to guarantee it (and even then, he'd have to hit the head or possibly chest to get it.)
2) The sniper class had low health, so getting close to him gave an opponent a good opportunity for a frag.
3) The maps often made it very clear from where the snipers would be shooting. Snipers never liked to expose themselves too much, and preferred to occupy fairly obvious but somewhat safer locations than less obvious but more dangerous places. In addition, most maps had alternate routes that would allow players to bypass snipers altogether (and the snipers would seldom waste their time defending those less-travelled routes.)
So, to sum up, Team Fortress did it pretty well.:)
as much attention as it is. After all, I believe it was NBA Jam which introduced this concept, though they called it "CPU Assist". Essentially, a player who was losing would get more and more help from the computer as his deficit grew and grew, making his shots much more likely to go in and letting him knock opposing players over much more easily. On the flip side, a player with a big lead would find most of his shots hitting iron, and his players would lose the ball and get knocked over if opposing players even looked at them.
I also recall reading many years ago in an issue of Sega Visions (Sega's failed answer to Nintendo Power) that the Jurassic Park game for the Genesis would have "Dynamic Play Adjustment". The only example I can recall of this is that if the player was doing well, gaps to jump would get wider. I'm sure there were other examples, but that's the only one I remember.
the concept of the "Bare Naked Mage" from the original Diablo. The idea was that players would use the mage character and try to equip themselves with items that had the worst curses possible, and the worse the penalty you were imposing upon yourself, the more "blessed" you were by the gods. Granted, this type of game allowed players to use the mage's skills, but the idea isn't that far off from this.
FFX was more movie than game. YOu spent more total time in the movies than in all the battles, exploring, taling to npcs, or anything else combined.
See, this is what people say to try to sound smart. No, you spend more time playing the game than you do in movies. It's not even close. You don't spend ~40 hours in movies. Got it?
"...said many Japanese gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the American fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough."
Oh, how times have changed. I seem to recall a decade or so ago that the U.S. was getting Doki Doki Panic instead of the real Super Mario Bros. 2, because it was too hard. Of course, we also got Final Fantasy II "easytype" with lots of good stuff dummied out.
the Street Fighter II Anniversary Edition, which "contains every incarnation of every character from each game released under the Street Fighter II name."
And once again, Eagle, the bad-ass British intelligence agent from the original Street Fighter, will go forgotten.
if I were doing a bunch of levelling by a tornado. I mean, I usually do my levelling in locations such as the Royal Crypt south of Endor (Dragon Warrior IV), the Northern Crater (Final Fantasy VII), or Zeon's Lair (Shining Force II), but certainly not by a tornado.
Slashdot Mirror
This strikes me as an awful lot like the FMV games of the early 90's that plagued systems like the Sega CD. Obviously, I don't know all the details, but I don't want a game where I have to push the right button at the right time to win by setting into motion 27 other events that I'll only be able to watch and not participate in.
"Fuck Everything, We're Going to Five Blades!" -from a recent Op-Ed in The Onion from the CEO of Gilette
Now #2 on the current list of most vaporous vaporware titles, behind only the obvious.
You are correct that football commentators often use a telestrator to draw lines on a replay of the previous play. But aye, there's the rub!
A game like football works so well on television because after each play, there's a stoppage of 30-45 seconds, giving the commentators plenty of time to discuss what just happened and bring in any other information they want/need to. This sort of discussion happens in a soccer match, of course, but often several seconds of action are missed.
But if you cut away from a Counter-Strike match to show a replay, you'd miss an awful lot of action due to the shortage of stoppages. You'd also need someone to decide very quickly which part of the action to show, since we're trying to do this stuff relatively live, right?
Uh, you didn't call them sports, and neither do I.
gg
They sit in a chair and press keys on a keyboard and click buttons on a mouse. How many sports are there where a 400-pound man could succeed?
Answer: One, and that's because sumo wrestlers work extremely hard against other 400-pound men in a physical endeavor, and don't sit in a chair in front of a computer screen.
In a football game, there's really only one thing that you absolutely must concentrate on at any given time to follow the action, and that's the ball. Sure, there's plenty going on otherwise on the field, but seeing the receiver leap up and snag a long pass is more exciting to watch than the left tackle blocking a rusher.
But what do you focus on in a FPS? You can follow a single player, but you miss a lot of the action. You can focus on a spot, but again, you miss a lot of the action. Even as a free-floating spectator, there's too much going on to take it all in. Even if the game has objectives like places to plant explosives, you can't just focus on that one spot, since most of the action is away from there, anyway.
And in a RTS? Well, the early game buildup isn't terribly exciting. At least you can focus on a spot when two armies clash, so RTSes have that going for them. Still, it's a long way from football.
I think the essence of the problem is this: most FPSes and RTSes have a large element of deception, or at least concealment to them. You try to avoid revealing your location to your opponent. The problem is that this makes it more difficult for a spectator to watch because he doesn't know what to expect. In sports, there's much less concealment. Oh, sure, they try to keep their opponents from knowing their gameplan, but you at least know where the players are. If you want to make a FPS watchable, you need to stick all the players in a space where a spectator can see the whole area at once without much obstruction, while still being able to tell what's going on. Naturally, this might ruin the game itself, but that's hardly the point, is it?
And if I change my sig, your post makes no more sense.
The reference, as I'm sure someone like you will find dear to his/her heart, is to an obscure character in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
gg
This sounds an awful lot like a Your Rights Online topic.
Try S-I-G-H-T.
Ugh, I hate spam.
I'm one of the few people who didn't like the game, and it was largely because of the sterility of the levels. It felt like work.
Man, good thing I don't let you decide for me what's funny and what isn't.
Nah, Street Fighter's been done to death. I think they're up to Super Duper Awesome Street Pocket Puzzle Fighter EX Alpha 3 Gold vs. SNK Marvel Super Heroes Remix Unlimited: 72nd Iteration.
Yes, yes, I know you meant Sci-Fi.
(note: I'm talking about the TF mod for Quake, not the Half-Life version.)
As one of the best snipers from the days of QuakeWorld Team Fortress (certainly not the best, but I was known), I have some expertise on the use of the sniper rifle in that game.
I don't know if this sort of implementation has been used elsewhere, but here's how the sniper rifle in that game worked. There was no zoom function on it, though a simple FOV script could solve that. A player had to stop moving or change direction while holding down his attack button. This would charge his sniper shot and the longer he held it down, the more damage it would do. While his shot would charge, his running speed would be drastically reduced (by about a factor of 1/10). He would release the attack button to fire it. A pretty good design, I'd say:
1) His chances of a one-shot kill would be pretty low if he was firing quickly, since his shots would never charge. He would need to have about a second or so to guarantee it (and even then, he'd have to hit the head or possibly chest to get it.)
2) The sniper class had low health, so getting close to him gave an opponent a good opportunity for a frag.
3) The maps often made it very clear from where the snipers would be shooting. Snipers never liked to expose themselves too much, and preferred to occupy fairly obvious but somewhat safer locations than less obvious but more dangerous places. In addition, most maps had alternate routes that would allow players to bypass snipers altogether (and the snipers would seldom waste their time defending those less-travelled routes.)
So, to sum up, Team Fortress did it pretty well. :)
Hah! You're right. But come on, give me credit for at least not thinking that the history of video games begins with the Nintendo 64.
Check it out.
as much attention as it is. After all, I believe it was NBA Jam which introduced this concept, though they called it "CPU Assist". Essentially, a player who was losing would get more and more help from the computer as his deficit grew and grew, making his shots much more likely to go in and letting him knock opposing players over much more easily. On the flip side, a player with a big lead would find most of his shots hitting iron, and his players would lose the ball and get knocked over if opposing players even looked at them.
I also recall reading many years ago in an issue of Sega Visions (Sega's failed answer to Nintendo Power) that the Jurassic Park game for the Genesis would have "Dynamic Play Adjustment". The only example I can recall of this is that if the player was doing well, gaps to jump would get wider. I'm sure there were other examples, but that's the only one I remember.
So, in other words, this ain't new.
I think I've seen this one.
the concept of the "Bare Naked Mage" from the original Diablo. The idea was that players would use the mage character and try to equip themselves with items that had the worst curses possible, and the worse the penalty you were imposing upon yourself, the more "blessed" you were by the gods. Granted, this type of game allowed players to use the mage's skills, but the idea isn't that far off from this.
FFX was more movie than game. YOu spent more total time in the movies than in all the battles, exploring, taling to npcs, or anything else combined.
See, this is what people say to try to sound smart. No, you spend more time playing the game than you do in movies. It's not even close. You don't spend ~40 hours in movies. Got it?
And this "work" is different from the original Final Fantasy how?
That one, I seem to recall, involved mega-levelling. Gold was in short supply early on in the game, too.
Here are some relevant stories on ESPN.com's ESPNGamer site:
http://sports.espn.go.com/espngamer/story?id=16372 28
http://sports.espn.go.com/espngamer/story?id=16429 83
We've been designing our own tracks since Excitebike, for Heaven's sake.
"...said many Japanese gamers don't really like challenging games, and that he wanted to make sure the American fans were pleased and found the game challenging enough."
Oh, how times have changed. I seem to recall a decade or so ago that the U.S. was getting Doki Doki Panic instead of the real Super Mario Bros. 2, because it was too hard. Of course, we also got Final Fantasy II "easytype" with lots of good stuff dummied out.
the Street Fighter II Anniversary Edition, which "contains every incarnation of every character from each game released under the Street Fighter II name."
And once again, Eagle, the bad-ass British intelligence agent from the original Street Fighter, will go forgotten.
if I were doing a bunch of levelling by a tornado. I mean, I usually do my levelling in locations such as the Royal Crypt south of Endor (Dragon Warrior IV), the Northern Crater (Final Fantasy VII), or Zeon's Lair (Shining Force II), but certainly not by a tornado.