Little groups of teenage fanb0ys are gonna gather up and gangjump RPG'ers just like they do in, oh, I don't know, every other such PK-able ever made?
What a damned psychological prize that is. Think about it. Some buffoon RPG'er has been playing six months and you just ended all his effort by you and your buds hiding behind a tree.
Sorry, unless I hear of some spectacular system AND see it executed successfully in reality, I'll continue to doubt the viability of free-for-all PK games, thank you very much, regardless of how they are labeled.
> Would the V-22 Osprey have made a difference? > More to the point, how did we manage to spend > billions...without realizing that it didn't > work until so late into the process?
I believe certain senators or congressmen kept it going. The military had pubicly stated "WE DON'T WANT THIS PIECE OF SHIT" on more than one occasion.
Re:I didn't volunteer my money to burn up on reent
on
Shuttle Politics
·
· Score: 1
A brave man dies for freedom, while the free countries sit, filled with people wringing their hands at the evil concept of...freeing other nations.
There's no god damned hope for this planet.
If some murderous thief takes hostage a group of people in a store, the store isn't suddenly practicing respectable "self determination."
Better not free 'em. That's be "wrong". (Wrong in a way the theoretical god Yaweh would love. Sit there and do nothing.)
As I pointed out in another article on the same subject, notice how the two most powerful wizards in the movie, locked in mortal combat, did little more than simple psychokinetic tricks.
The powerful magic in that world is in slowly manipulating things behind the scenes, like in creating orcs and bending the minds of kings over years and centuries.
If you could play a wizard, what would you really do?
I've been on the Magnum there, at 200 feet, when it was the big thing. Actually got there early in the morning, and we ran straight to it and got 3-4 rides with little wait before the line got too long.
Went two summers ago, and did NOT go on Millenium, the 300-footer. It looks like a cartoon when you're standing there, like some goofy ride from a Bugs Bunny episode, with this curved drop.
That game was fantastic. It had a down-home feel to it that other base-building RTSs didn't.
DK I was better than II, I can still feel the blood pumping on some of those levels as I raced to build tunnels and reinforce the walls before the invading goodie-two-shoes broke through.
At several points, my imps were reinforcing the walls only moments before the dwarves on the other side reached those walls.
Don't know why they got rid of that feature for the second one, especially since they can, and frequently do, create open points that are impossible to reinforce and must be protected the hard way.
My only regret with DK was the ability to pick up creatures and dump them elsewhere, usually into a battle. (Yes, you heard that right.) It would have been nice if the warning-traps and guard room system worked better, so they could force you to design your dungeons better, with only warning traps to pull your creatures off their schedules and run down the halls to the battles.
After hours of Quake CTF online, I remember watching TV and seeing an ad where you were looking down a tube with a down-escalator in it, with a guy standing on it in a suit reading a paper. I commented to my buddy, damn! I've an urge to jump down into that tube and blast a rocket up his ass!
One of my buddies had, get this, an actual sound blaster-style card with Wolfenstein. The bad Nazis shouting "Mein leiben" or some such, misinterpreted by countless billions, including Beavis and Butt-head, as "My liver".
Although Starcraft set a new record for a game's storyline, Half-Life smashed that by a mile and a half.
Before I had even gotten off the tram (what game would have the balls to have you watch a 10 minute introduction before you started the game?) I was already having a better time than I had playing 99% of other games. That spider crawling construction vehicle, awesome. Drooool.
And then, when that was over, you STILL had half an hour to go before the regular "game" started.
You know what the sad thing was? I remember PC Gamer (or was it PC Games?) had an article on the five big upcomming "Quake Killers". They were:
Sin Duke Nukem 4 Unreal Don't remember Half-Life
Half-life had one screenshot of some guy in a suit standing in a doorway. It looked like it would be the also-ran of the pack. Quite the contrary.
Sin sucked, very little story. "Don't remember", I downloaded the demo. Monsters started appearing, had no idea why or where they were from. Didn't buy the game, needless to say. Unreal, graphically amazing, but weapons felt "weak". That Tyradium Shard gatling gun was a real embarassment of underpower.
Half-Life is still the Best Game of All Time. New games released today don't have the quality of story, even though the pattern is lying on the ground waiting for them to pick it up.
Some, Half-Life, Quake, Duke Nukem, Serious Sam, have got it. Others don't.
They say test audiences cheered at the end of Independence Day. Well, that didn't affect me that much, but two other things did.
One was, fifteen years ago, reading all thru Lord of the Rings, and finally seeing the hobbits reach their goal (Oh, please don't whine about a spoiler. Like the good guys weren't gonna win.)
The other was playing Duke Nukem 3D all the way through on hardest (well, hardest where the monsters didn't respawn.)
Level after freaky level, playing in the middle of the night approaching the giant spaceship, with that emergency whining going off for hours, I was going crazy.
Upon the final level, I came up, and had no devastators, and no rockets, and it took a hundred attempt to figure out how to mow down the dozens of tigers shooting at me with "only" the 3-barrel machine gun, and hacking out an ammo replenishment trail while avoiding "you one-eyed freak!"
Finally, I got him. He fell. Kick, "Game over!"
Quake, anticlimactic. Q2, I terminated with extreme prejudice = used my long-saved quad and pent, no prob, first try. Half-life, awesome game (especially on hard), end was awesome, figuring out how to open up baby's boghead, probably the most graphically pleasing ending. Still, I'll never forget "Game over!"
Ahh, playing Icewind Dale II on HoF, from true scratch, no importation of items or cash, with only two characters. I do so love a challenge.
What? You didn't think the heroes bards wrote songs about where the semi-sentient chimpanzees you people play, did you?
Bought an Atari (was no "2600" label back then) and it came with combat. Before the weekend was out, went and bought "Adventure".
The first time I went into another room, and a dragon came diagonally at me, I nearly sh8t my pants. The hair rising up on the back of the neck, OMG.
Twenty years later, bought a new, top-end Pentium Pro computer with Matrox Millenium II 3D card (pre-3DFX). To "test" it, bought Duke Nukem 3D. Played online, awesome! Bought Quake, played online, even more awesome!
Then I downloaded the Capture the Flag super-mod, with grappling hook. Version 3.5. I recall on one of the smaller maps being out in the no man's land, an empty room with a small hole in one end and two lifts and a huge door to your castle in the other.
One guy on my team came running by with the glowing blue flag waving behind him. It was an epiphanal moment, like Louis de Palma getting offered his first bribe. I just knew.
I just knew that all games throughout human history had been leading up to that point: the online, multi-player, team-based game. Deathmatch, as fun as that was, faded into boredom and irrelevancy like the final season of Three's Company.
I sat there and played for 36 hours straight, from noon of the day I installed it through 11 PM of the next day. I only stopped because I was falling asleep at the keyboard.
Over the next months and years, I got into better and better clans until only LGD and about 2 or 3 others could beat us. Gods, the fun that was.
There were other moments, like learning to "mouse", or holding the flag (on that same map) up in one castle turret as One Man Clan popped grenades down to protect me, or figuring out how to get the under-lava quad without the pentagram on that floaty moon-gravity level (oh did that piss people off.)
But that moment, with the guy with the flag running by, that was a choirs of angels moment. I knew. I just knew.
And what's up with Tassidar sacrificing himself at the end since "that's the only way".
Tassidar, you dumb oaf! I've got it surrounded by 10 aircraft carriers and a dozen well-entrenched long range human bombing artillery. Situation well in hand, goof! Believe me, nothing lives on that board and the big brain'll be dead shortly.
Tassidar, no! God damn it, you're too valuable, you egotictical ass! We got the situation in hand, get back here now!
Eh, well. I hadda keep him back so he wouldn't get killed most of the time anyway. Don't cry for him, Argentina.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the tubes on that one!
I'd hate to have to walk to an end terminal in an airport with these things trying to cover a typical day's air traffic:
"Yes, sir. Your 3-seater will be taking off from gate, let's see, 88428 B."
wait for it...
"No sir, I'm sorry. The slidewalks are being repaired today."
> The skill system will be drastically changed so
> you'll be able to create new viable character
> builds with the use of new skill synergy bonuses
If that's the same as my barbarian can kick even more ass, then I'm in!
> *stops with the Austin Powers jokes*
www.shhhhh.com
Dr. Evil Brown: My evil time machine requires 19.21 billion watts, what we scientists refer to as a (double quotes fingers in air) "giga" watt.
Other Scientists: Hahahahahahahahhaa
Dr. Evil Brown: What?
Other Scientist: Ha ha ha, sorry. It's just that, for comedy movies with wacky scientists, 19.21 billion watts just isn't that much anymore.
Dr. Evil Brown: Uhh, I shall build a new time machine. One that will require...one bil
Scientist waves hand up, more! more!
Dr. Evil Brown: One...one trillion watts!
Evil music swells.
By doing it in a miniscule fraction of a second, the overall power skyrockets.
And since my son's slumber party is watching Austin Powers II, and quotes are all the rage at the moment here, I'll leave off with...
Scott: A trillion is more than a billion, numb-nuts.
"Christ, he's tiny. I've got bigger chunks of corn in my crap."
> Knight deflating Kent was the best part of that film.
No, the cute, nerdly love interest with the dark hair and the full lips was the best, indeed only decent, part of that movie.
Little groups of teenage fanb0ys are gonna gather up and gangjump RPG'ers just like they do in, oh, I don't know, every other such PK-able ever made?
What a damned psychological prize that is. Think about it. Some buffoon RPG'er has been playing six months and you just ended all his effort by you and your buds hiding behind a tree.
Sorry, unless I hear of some spectacular system AND see it executed successfully in reality, I'll continue to doubt the viability of free-for-all PK games, thank you very much, regardless of how they are labeled.
> Would the V-22 Osprey have made a difference?
> More to the point, how did we manage to spend
> billions...without realizing that it didn't
> work until so late into the process?
I believe certain senators or congressmen kept it going. The military had pubicly stated "WE DON'T WANT THIS PIECE OF SHIT" on more than one occasion.
A brave man dies for freedom, while the free countries sit, filled with people wringing their hands at the evil concept of...freeing other nations.
There's no god damned hope for this planet.
If some murderous thief takes hostage a group of people in a store, the store isn't suddenly practicing respectable "self determination."
Better not free 'em. That's be "wrong". (Wrong in a way the theoretical god Yaweh would love. Sit there and do nothing.)
Making a class-based game on Star Wars without letting you be a Jedi is like making a pr0n online game and not letting you be John Holmes.
As I pointed out in another article on the same subject, notice how the two most powerful wizards in the movie, locked in mortal combat, did little more than simple psychokinetic tricks.
The powerful magic in that world is in slowly manipulating things behind the scenes, like in creating orcs and bending the minds of kings over years and centuries.
If you could play a wizard, what would you really do?
I've been on the Magnum there, at 200 feet, when it was the big thing. Actually got there early in the morning, and we ran straight to it and got 3-4 rides with little wait before the line got too long.
Went two summers ago, and did NOT go on Millenium, the 300-footer. It looks like a cartoon when you're standing there, like some goofy ride from a Bugs Bunny episode, with this curved drop.
This new one is totally BS.
http://www.geo.msu.edu/geo333/Treaties.html
> Please, someone, bring Permanent Death and more
> risky idea to the world of MMORPG and then,
> maybe, maybe I'll actually play one.
It's called mass marketing. For every one of you, there are 10,000 who will say, WTF! I just died and lost everything I had from the past six months?
With any luck, and nice asking, mmmmmmaybe they'll create a perma-death/cough up everything you're carrying server, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
That game was fantastic. It had a down-home feel to it that other base-building RTSs didn't.
DK I was better than II, I can still feel the blood pumping on some of those levels as I raced to build tunnels and reinforce the walls before the invading goodie-two-shoes broke through.
At several points, my imps were reinforcing the walls only moments before the dwarves on the other side reached those walls.
Don't know why they got rid of that feature for the second one, especially since they can, and frequently do, create open points that are impossible to reinforce and must be protected the hard way.
My only regret with DK was the ability to pick up creatures and dump them elsewhere, usually into a battle. (Yes, you heard that right.) It would have been nice if the warning-traps and guard room system worked better, so they could force you to design your dungeons better, with only warning traps to pull your creatures off their schedules and run down the halls to the battles.
I especially liked the French Maid outfit.
Rocket jumping == cool
Bunny hopping and running around perma-squatted == massive game design flaws.
After hours of Quake CTF online, I remember watching TV and seeing an ad where you were looking down a tube with a down-escalator in it, with a guy standing on it in a suit reading a paper. I commented to my buddy, damn! I've an urge to jump down into that tube and blast a rocket up his ass!
One of my buddies had, get this, an actual sound blaster-style card with Wolfenstein. The bad Nazis shouting "Mein leiben" or some such, misinterpreted by countless billions, including Beavis and Butt-head, as "My liver".
> I shed a tear at the cinematic before the final boss
I felt much the same way on the penultimate level's finale as Duke, true to promise, tore off the boss' head and began to read the newspaper.
Although Starcraft set a new record for a game's storyline, Half-Life smashed that by a mile and a half.
Before I had even gotten off the tram (what game would have the balls to have you watch a 10 minute introduction before you started the game?) I was already having a better time than I had playing 99% of other games. That spider crawling construction vehicle, awesome. Drooool.
And then, when that was over, you STILL had half an hour to go before the regular "game" started.
You know what the sad thing was? I remember PC Gamer (or was it PC Games?) had an article on the five big upcomming "Quake Killers". They were:
Sin
Duke Nukem 4
Unreal
Don't remember
Half-Life
Half-life had one screenshot of some guy in a suit standing in a doorway. It looked like it would be the also-ran of the pack. Quite the contrary.
Sin sucked, very little story. "Don't remember", I downloaded the demo. Monsters started appearing, had no idea why or where they were from. Didn't buy the game, needless to say. Unreal, graphically amazing, but weapons felt "weak". That Tyradium Shard gatling gun was a real embarassment of underpower.
Half-Life is still the Best Game of All Time. New games released today don't have the quality of story, even though the pattern is lying on the ground waiting for them to pick it up.
Some, Half-Life, Quake, Duke Nukem, Serious Sam, have got it. Others don't.
They say test audiences cheered at the end of Independence Day. Well, that didn't affect me that much, but two other things did.
One was, fifteen years ago, reading all thru Lord of the Rings, and finally seeing the hobbits reach their goal (Oh, please don't whine about a spoiler. Like the good guys weren't gonna win.)
The other was playing Duke Nukem 3D all the way through on hardest (well, hardest where the monsters didn't respawn.)
Level after freaky level, playing in the middle of the night approaching the giant spaceship, with that emergency whining going off for hours, I was going crazy.
Upon the final level, I came up, and had no devastators, and no rockets, and it took a hundred attempt to figure out how to mow down the dozens of tigers shooting at me with "only" the 3-barrel machine gun, and hacking out an ammo replenishment trail while avoiding "you one-eyed freak!"
Finally, I got him. He fell. Kick, "Game over!"
Quake, anticlimactic. Q2, I terminated with extreme prejudice = used my long-saved quad and pent, no prob, first try. Half-life, awesome game (especially on hard), end was awesome, figuring out how to open up baby's boghead, probably the most graphically pleasing ending. Still, I'll never forget "Game over!"
Ahh, playing Icewind Dale II on HoF, from true scratch, no importation of items or cash, with only two characters. I do so love a challenge.
What? You didn't think the heroes bards wrote songs about where the semi-sentient chimpanzees you people play, did you?
Bought an Atari (was no "2600" label back then) and it came with combat. Before the weekend was out, went and bought "Adventure".
The first time I went into another room, and a dragon came diagonally at me, I nearly sh8t my pants. The hair rising up on the back of the neck, OMG.
Twenty years later, bought a new, top-end Pentium Pro computer with Matrox Millenium II 3D card (pre-3DFX). To "test" it, bought Duke Nukem 3D. Played online, awesome! Bought Quake, played online, even more awesome!
Then I downloaded the Capture the Flag super-mod, with grappling hook. Version 3.5. I recall on one of the smaller maps being out in the no man's land, an empty room with a small hole in one end and two lifts and a huge door to your castle in the other.
One guy on my team came running by with the glowing blue flag waving behind him. It was an epiphanal moment, like Louis de Palma getting offered his first bribe. I just knew.
I just knew that all games throughout human history had been leading up to that point: the online, multi-player, team-based game. Deathmatch, as fun as that was, faded into boredom and irrelevancy like the final season of Three's Company.
I sat there and played for 36 hours straight, from noon of the day I installed it through 11 PM of the next day. I only stopped because I was falling asleep at the keyboard.
Over the next months and years, I got into better and better clans until only LGD and about 2 or 3 others could beat us. Gods, the fun that was.
There were other moments, like learning to "mouse", or holding the flag (on that same map) up in one castle turret as One Man Clan popped grenades down to protect me, or figuring out how to get the under-lava quad without the pentagram on that floaty moon-gravity level (oh did that piss people off.)
But that moment, with the guy with the flag running by, that was a choirs of angels moment. I knew. I just knew.
And what's up with Tassidar sacrificing himself at the end since "that's the only way".
Tassidar, you dumb oaf! I've got it surrounded by 10 aircraft carriers and a dozen well-entrenched long range human bombing artillery. Situation well in hand, goof! Believe me, nothing lives on that board and the big brain'll be dead shortly.
Tassidar, no! God damn it, you're too valuable, you egotictical ass! We got the situation in hand, get back here now!
Eh, well. I hadda keep him back so he wouldn't get killed most of the time anyway. Don't cry for him, Argentina.