I'm with you on the indie titles. Bastion took me totally by surprise. As did Orcs Must Die, Trine and quite a few others. There are also some actually free games like Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole which I would have bought for real money. The Indie scene is currently thriving in a way it never had before. Even if you take the old shareware scene into account.
Just watch a couple of the WTF Is... series by TotalBiscuit on YouTube to just get an inkling HOW creative and awesome the indie scene has become. There are quite a few pearls to be found there and some of them come in pay what you want bundles or are on sale on steam or from the developers directly with a $5 to $10 price tag. That's amazing.
I spent more time with Bastion than I did with any Assassin's Creed title and I enjoyed it much, much more. According to some this is the game of 2011, not Skyrim. Which of course is a matter of taste and opinion. Yes, some indie titles are THAT good. And I even picked it up for $5 dollars on steam. Thats value that boggles the mind.
I wouldn't be surprised to see it ported to Tegra3 devices(I don't know if Apple hardware can compete...possibly).
You can supposedly hook up game controllers to Tegra tablets. Or at least that's what I read in nVidia's own Tegra Zone or however they call it. If D3 works well over 3G and it is actually worth it and it synchs nicely with bnet then I might actually think about it. That's a lot of ifs but it does sound cool. Tegra3 should be more than able to run it and if you skip a bit of eye candy so should Tegra2. Funny how tablets suddenly compete with game consoles. You can hook up quite a lot of premium tablets to a PC screen or modern TV. If Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo don't get their act together soonish then they might find themselves cornered by mobile devices. This console generation was kept around far too long.
...and don't forget Bastion. It doesn't have a lot of different skills but it works best with a controller. It is more on the arcade side of things when compared to the behemoth that was D2.
But I do hope they will keep the console players on their own bit of bnet. They don't have keyboards so they can't type in chat and I don't want to use any form of voice chat with complete strangers. I live in Europe and we have an awful lot of different languages over here and most of the people try to speak English with varying levels of success. And there's always the shrill voices of kids which I'd rather not deal with. That's not fair from me but that's why I prefer to get on Vent with friends. Also I don't think console players will be able to compete with PC players due to the limits of controllers. And to be honest I'm not too fond of console players. That's propably unfair, but hey, it's just my opinion. Not a big deal.
Consoles have hardware from yesteryear. I'd imagine if you want to do really cool stuf thenn you'd have to be very clever and use features of the hardware in a way that wasn't quite intended by Sony/Microsoft/whatever. I have no other explanation why console games nowadays look and perform so much better on the same hardware specs than they did 3-4 years ago.
I also firmly believe that the majority of work done isn't coding but art. There is quite a lot of coding going on for sure, but the amount of art in modern AAA games is quite astonishing. And that's what bloats games to an 8GB+ install on disk. If you can reuse that and focus on getting it to work on another platform coding from scratch then you'd already have quite a lot of work done already. You may have to automatically downscale your art assets so it can run on old hardware like current gen consoles, tho. But that shouldn't be an issue for Blizz since I can't recall when they ever made games that were really, really demanding on hardware. Or highly optimized.
D2 was quite a mess at release. The game got better and better as the years went by. So not immediately hopping onto the bandwagon and giving it time to ripen might be a good choice.
I wonder how representative the beta actually was. From Blizzard's statements I'd say it was akin to Stony Field on normal level in D2. There was precious little challenge there since the difficulty level then was not more than a tutorial level. As a fresh graduate from nightmare level not quite being able to wear all the gear you had acquired for that character, Stony Field on hell difficulty could be quite daunting.
One good thing about console ports to PC is that game controller support is actually more common nowadays. I really don't like moving with keyboard and looking around with the mouse. OTOH I REALLY do hate targeting with a game controller. And cycling through targets.
Downside is:
-no key rebinding
-lousy UI(I'm looking at you, Skyrim)
-no proper windowed mode
-DirectX9(we've moved on ages ago even tho Steam statistics still claim that DirectX9 rigs are still in the majority)
-bad performance due to compatibility layers so you don't have to rewrite the engine from scratch
-less focus on pure more complex PC type games(I can't ever see something like SC2 or Heroes of Might and Magic being released on console)
A port from PC to console might work for D3. If they get the controls right. I didn't play the beta but controller enabled gameplay with Bastion was great and D3 won't be that far away from that, I suppose.
Kicking back and twitch playing with a controller in my hands and slaughtering hordes of monsters in D3 is something I'd quite enjoy. It's not as if that kind of games is rocket surgery. In case it doesn't work, well, there are plenty of other things to play. Due to the Steam holiday sales my gaming backlog is HUGE.
I never completed D2 single player. It felt more like it meaant something when I did it on closed BNet. And boy did I obsess with D2.
It was nice to trade with other players. Especially since the higher echelon players liked trading perfect gems for stuff that never quite dropped for me. Also there were a lot of sites and communities dedicated to D2. You were missing out if you didn't play closed BNet. It wasn't always a nice experience but you could easily tag along on boss/cow runs. Even tho it became repetitive in the end having company was actually a nice thing.
The thing that I didn't like was how rampant cheating was even in closed BNet. That I can easily do without. I never played the power classes but preferred playing fringe builds(like going lightly armoured elemental dual claw assassin or Zerker Barbarian or a healing Paladin) so at times I was not quite able to solo stuff especially after they did incease hell difficulty which indeed could be hell. So I won't miss offline play. If they can eliminate cheating then more power to them.
What worries me a little bit is how much having a console port will dumb down the controls and what you can do within the game. A couple of builds actually took some skill to play. As in: not spamming the same skill over and over again. And I took great pride not to play that way. That's something I would miss.
...and in case D3 will not be my cup of tea there still is Torchlight 2. It's not as if there are a ton of other games out there so you are not forced to play D3 if it isn't your thing. I dunno if I wil obsess with D3 as I did with D2. Sometimes OCD kicks in with games and sometimes it don't.
Well, Windows 7 didn't go beyond Vista by much. And I seriously doubt Windows 8 will need more resources than Windows 7. What else could they possibly add?
You are absolutely correct. If you are not into coding or gaming in which case you will want the newest and brightest shiny then a 5 year old machine will actually suit your needs.
Given how much work I can get done with a tablet I'd say that we have reached a plateau when it comes to user needs.
All hat may change with the new Windows that's due soonish. But I doubt it will drive hardware requirements beyond what most people have today.
Whenever I'm on a consulting gig and I do a lot of talking, note taking and need to juggle a couple of developers back at home base I find I can't live without my Xoom. My company laptop has sit firmly in its docking station for the last half year or so.
Yep, I now mostly use my tablet for mind maps but I wouldn't want to write a spec on it. But it is neat when on the road. 3G was totally worth it.
Had to buy a new computer, tho. Tried to only have the tablet at home for 3 months and it simply wasn't enough.
Never thought about it this way. I try to avoid all that campaigning news altogether because this will be going on for a long, long time. They tend to switch out the talking heads midways but overall too much money from not quite clean sources is spent on too much noise.
I'm not even sure he started the fantasy genre. But he made it popular.
I remember I first heard LOTR and the Hobbit on audio books. You know, the supposedly inferior Mind's Eye ones. Came as a bazillion cassettes in a wooden box. Before I had those I was terribly confused by the bit with the Balrog. Or was it the audiobooks that confused me and I read the book? Can't remember which.
It was a tedious read and you'd have to know it so you could skip the tedious bits. As an epic it was just that. And as an epic it translates beautifully into other media. The story matters, the form does not.
Never tried it. Not my genre. Plus it really got my heckles up so I wouldn't have liked it even if I tried.
But I believe it was a good game. I truly do.
You've been in a desperate situation before so you know that you'll want anything ANYTHING done. That's why I don't trust horror stories or anecdotes when it comes to healthcare. You are not in your best state of mind when you are desperate and anything that's being done will never be enough. It's quite easy to be unreasonable. A layman isn't trained to understand what's a reasonable expectation. And a layman in a desperate situation is not at his best.
When my girlfriend was in hospital with cervical cancer AND she had a huge portion of her guts cut out AND chemo therapy did more harm than good AND they kept finding it had spread further than they had thought AND I was told there was nothing to be done I was far from feeling reasonable.
Nothing to be done. That's hard to accept.
A broken pinky toe is not easy to fix. I never thought of going to a doctor when I had broken mine as I couldn't think of a good way to fix the mechanical problem myself. Tried gauze and tooth picks(they turned out to be not sturdy enough so I used a lot...and found out they are quite pointy). I didn't die from it and my shoes still fit. So...perhaps they are right not do do anything?
Back in university I took some medicine lectures to supplement my CS main courses. We had this lecturer who was a major proponent for Evidence Based Medicine. He said back then that based on statistics the younger a woman is the less usefull a mammography is. The younger the women are the worse their prognosis is to survive cancer. He argued that mass screening as proposed in the 80ies and 90ies would actually save only a tiny, tiny percentage of young women so'd be not worth the cost. I don't quite remember the details and the statistics and this was the most in your face example he gave. Back then I'd have agreed with him(although gnashing my teeth). Now I'd gladly punch him in his face.
Now imagine you weren't a US citizen and you first got wind of this...thing. How would you react? It might have been a good game but it was also quite blatant.
Using all types of media for propaganda is even older than the word "propaganda" itsself. Move along, there is nothing to be seen here.
Tell you what:
I never did. Well by accident with a football and much spanking followed because the other windows in our house weren't broken as is it turned out was the preferred state of windows. The preferred state of windows is an actual quote from my dad when I tried to side-track him by asking if a window were broken wouldn't it cease to function as a window?
He was a bit of a philosopher so I got some extra spanking for that. Out of spite I never read Plato but out of awe I never wilfully smashed any windows.
He is famous because he wrote books for punters. The great illustrated history of the universe and everything. It could even be read by fine arts majors. No need for at least 4 years of education to simply understand the cover sleeve blurp.
It could very well be that others have made bigger contributions and I couldn't be bothered to dreap up a measurement for that.
Well, ok, I can be bothered. I propose as a unit of measurement for contribution to humanity and the whole lot:
The stephenhwaking!
And thus he contributed one stephenhawking to humanity and the lot.
Now your turn: how much did for instance Feynmann contribute? In stephenhawking please since we have already established that Stephen Hawking contributed one stephenhawing and I wouldn't want all that hard work I did there go to waste. :p
Yes, well, you do paint an awful lot of people with an awfully broad brush. I could refute that by pointing out the popularity of the lottery in Germany and famously in Spain or the proverbial dead long-lost Uncle from America who left you a fortune annd the 99% protesters who are anything but optimistic.
And judging by your last sentence I couldn't tell if you are a Euro or US citizen. But you are correct on the EU news crews intervieing stupid Americans. The truly ludicrous is better news than the softly spoken, insightful answer you'd get otherwise.
To me, interviews are NOT a good way to form an opinion on a culture. The ones that get broadcast are always the interesting ones. Stupid, loud, shrill, dumb representing the subset of the population that actually has those properties. Or talking to a person on a bad day. Or several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict. Those soundbite interviews don't even say a lot about the interviewee but a lot more about video editing.
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I'm with you on the indie titles. Bastion took me totally by surprise. As did Orcs Must Die, Trine and quite a few others. There are also some actually free games like Stealth Bastard: Tactical Espionage Arsehole which I would have bought for real money. The Indie scene is currently thriving in a way it never had before. Even if you take the old shareware scene into account.
Just watch a couple of the WTF Is... series by TotalBiscuit on YouTube to just get an inkling HOW creative and awesome the indie scene has become. There are quite a few pearls to be found there and some of them come in pay what you want bundles or are on sale on steam or from the developers directly with a $5 to $10 price tag. That's amazing.
I spent more time with Bastion than I did with any Assassin's Creed title and I enjoyed it much, much more. According to some this is the game of 2011, not Skyrim. Which of course is a matter of taste and opinion. Yes, some indie titles are THAT good. And I even picked it up for $5 dollars on steam. Thats value that boggles the mind.
I wouldn't be surprised to see it ported to Tegra3 devices(I don't know if Apple hardware can compete...possibly).
You can supposedly hook up game controllers to Tegra tablets. Or at least that's what I read in nVidia's own Tegra Zone or however they call it. If D3 works well over 3G and it is actually worth it and it synchs nicely with bnet then I might actually think about it. That's a lot of ifs but it does sound cool. Tegra3 should be more than able to run it and if you skip a bit of eye candy so should Tegra2.
Funny how tablets suddenly compete with game consoles. You can hook up quite a lot of premium tablets to a PC screen or modern TV. If Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo don't get their act together soonish then they might find themselves cornered by mobile devices. This console generation was kept around far too long.
...and don't forget Bastion. It doesn't have a lot of different skills but it works best with a controller. It is more on the arcade side of things when compared to the behemoth that was D2.
But I do hope they will keep the console players on their own bit of bnet. They don't have keyboards so they can't type in chat and I don't want to use any form of voice chat with complete strangers. I live in Europe and we have an awful lot of different languages over here and most of the people try to speak English with varying levels of success. And there's always the shrill voices of kids which I'd rather not deal with. That's not fair from me but that's why I prefer to get on Vent with friends.
Also I don't think console players will be able to compete with PC players due to the limits of controllers. And to be honest I'm not too fond of console players. That's propably unfair, but hey, it's just my opinion. Not a big deal.
Which is a fine stance to take.
Consoles have hardware from yesteryear. I'd imagine if you want to do really cool stuf thenn you'd have to be very clever and use features of the hardware in a way that wasn't quite intended by Sony/Microsoft/whatever. I have no other explanation why console games nowadays look and perform so much better on the same hardware specs than they did 3-4 years ago.
I also firmly believe that the majority of work done isn't coding but art. There is quite a lot of coding going on for sure, but the amount of art in modern AAA games is quite astonishing. And that's what bloats games to an 8GB+ install on disk. If you can reuse that and focus on getting it to work on another platform coding from scratch then you'd already have quite a lot of work done already. You may have to automatically downscale your art assets so it can run on old hardware like current gen consoles, tho. But that shouldn't be an issue for Blizz since I can't recall when they ever made games that were really, really demanding on hardware. Or highly optimized.
D2 was quite a mess at release. The game got better and better as the years went by. So not immediately hopping onto the bandwagon and giving it time to ripen might be a good choice.
I wonder how representative the beta actually was. From Blizzard's statements I'd say it was akin to Stony Field on normal level in D2. There was precious little challenge there since the difficulty level then was not more than a tutorial level. As a fresh graduate from nightmare level not quite being able to wear all the gear you had acquired for that character, Stony Field on hell difficulty could be quite daunting.
We shall see.
One good thing about console ports to PC is that game controller support is actually more common nowadays. I really don't like moving with keyboard and looking around with the mouse. OTOH I REALLY do hate targeting with a game controller. And cycling through targets.
Downside is:
-no key rebinding
-lousy UI(I'm looking at you, Skyrim)
-no proper windowed mode
-DirectX9(we've moved on ages ago even tho Steam statistics still claim that DirectX9 rigs are still in the majority)
-bad performance due to compatibility layers so you don't have to rewrite the engine from scratch
-less focus on pure more complex PC type games(I can't ever see something like SC2 or Heroes of Might and Magic being released on console)
A port from PC to console might work for D3. If they get the controls right. I didn't play the beta but controller enabled gameplay with Bastion was great and D3 won't be that far away from that, I suppose.
Kicking back and twitch playing with a controller in my hands and slaughtering hordes of monsters in D3 is something I'd quite enjoy. It's not as if that kind of games is rocket surgery. In case it doesn't work, well, there are plenty of other things to play. Due to the Steam holiday sales my gaming backlog is HUGE.
I never completed D2 single player. It felt more like it meaant something when I did it on closed BNet. And boy did I obsess with D2.
...and in case D3 will not be my cup of tea there still is Torchlight 2. It's not as if there are a ton of other games out there so you are not forced to play D3 if it isn't your thing. I dunno if I wil obsess with D3 as I did with D2. Sometimes OCD kicks in with games and sometimes it don't.
It was nice to trade with other players. Especially since the higher echelon players liked trading perfect gems for stuff that never quite dropped for me. Also there were a lot of sites and communities dedicated to D2. You were missing out if you didn't play closed BNet. It wasn't always a nice experience but you could easily tag along on boss/cow runs. Even tho it became repetitive in the end having company was actually a nice thing.
The thing that I didn't like was how rampant cheating was even in closed BNet. That I can easily do without. I never played the power classes but preferred playing fringe builds(like going lightly armoured elemental dual claw assassin or Zerker Barbarian or a healing Paladin) so at times I was not quite able to solo stuff especially after they did incease hell difficulty which indeed could be hell. So I won't miss offline play. If they can eliminate cheating then more power to them.
What worries me a little bit is how much having a console port will dumb down the controls and what you can do within the game. A couple of builds actually took some skill to play. As in: not spamming the same skill over and over again. And I took great pride not to play that way. That's something I would miss.
When somebody is offering you a carrot then simply bending over backwards is sending the wrong signal.
When you ask who is actually paying for your campaining then the correct answer is: concerned blue collar workers. Like you and me.
Well, Windows 7 didn't go beyond Vista by much. And I seriously doubt Windows 8 will need more resources than Windows 7. What else could they possibly add?
Perhaps that's just me being naive.
You are absolutely correct. If you are not into coding or gaming in which case you will want the newest and brightest shiny then a 5 year old machine will actually suit your needs.
Given how much work I can get done with a tablet I'd say that we have reached a plateau when it comes to user needs.
All hat may change with the new Windows that's due soonish. But I doubt it will drive hardware requirements beyond what most people have today.
I dunno
Whenever I'm on a consulting gig and I do a lot of talking, note taking and need to juggle a couple of developers back at home base I find I can't live without my Xoom. My company laptop has sit firmly in its docking station for the last half year or so.
Yep, I now mostly use my tablet for mind maps but I wouldn't want to write a spec on it. But it is neat when on the road. 3G was totally worth it.
Had to buy a new computer, tho. Tried to only have the tablet at home for 3 months and it simply wasn't enough.
Never thought about it this way. I try to avoid all that campaigning news altogether because this will be going on for a long, long time. They tend to switch out the talking heads midways but overall too much money from not quite clean sources is spent on too much noise.
Yes, it is a popularity contest. Hence nobody wants to say anything wrong or rub anybody the wrong way hence they say nothing.
I wonder what those family values actually are they go on about.
A Miss America contest is much more honest. At least they shave their legs.
Funny thing is, they are at each other throats at the moment but once they have their candidate they'll endorse him and help him campaigning.
Every 4 years the same humbug.
...I even get the feeling that a lot of party members are actually in the wrong party.
Well? Listen to experts on the issues they are experts in and making your decisions based on what they have to say sounds pretty reasonable to me.
He also translated Pearl and The Green Knight.
I'm not even sure he started the fantasy genre. But he made it popular.
I remember I first heard LOTR and the Hobbit on audio books. You know, the supposedly inferior Mind's Eye ones. Came as a bazillion cassettes in a wooden box. Before I had those I was terribly confused by the bit with the Balrog. Or was it the audiobooks that confused me and I read the book? Can't remember which.
It was a tedious read and you'd have to know it so you could skip the tedious bits. As an epic it was just that. And as an epic it translates beautifully into other media. The story matters, the form does not.
Never tried it. Not my genre. Plus it really got my heckles up so I wouldn't have liked it even if I tried.
But I believe it was a good game. I truly do.
You've been in a desperate situation before so you know that you'll want anything ANYTHING done. That's why I don't trust horror stories or anecdotes when it comes to healthcare. You are not in your best state of mind when you are desperate and anything that's being done will never be enough. It's quite easy to be unreasonable. A layman isn't trained to understand what's a reasonable expectation. And a layman in a desperate situation is not at his best.
When my girlfriend was in hospital with cervical cancer AND she had a huge portion of her guts cut out AND chemo therapy did more harm than good AND they kept finding it had spread further than they had thought AND I was told there was nothing to be done I was far from feeling reasonable.
Nothing to be done. That's hard to accept.
A broken pinky toe is not easy to fix. I never thought of going to a doctor when I had broken mine as I couldn't think of a good way to fix the mechanical problem myself. Tried gauze and tooth picks(they turned out to be not sturdy enough so I used a lot...and found out they are quite pointy). I didn't die from it and my shoes still fit. So...perhaps they are right not do do anything?
Back in university I took some medicine lectures to supplement my CS main courses. We had this lecturer who was a major proponent for Evidence Based Medicine. He said back then that based on statistics the younger a woman is the less usefull a mammography is. The younger the women are the worse their prognosis is to survive cancer. He argued that mass screening as proposed in the 80ies and 90ies would actually save only a tiny, tiny percentage of young women so'd be not worth the cost. I don't quite remember the details and the statistics and this was the most in your face example he gave. Back then I'd have agreed with him(although gnashing my teeth).
Now I'd gladly punch him in his face.
Or the /. hive mind hasn't forgotten America's Army.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army
Now imagine you weren't a US citizen and you first got wind of this...thing. How would you react? It might have been a good game but it was also quite blatant.
Using all types of media for propaganda is even older than the word "propaganda" itsself. Move along, there is nothing to be seen here.
Well, speed cameras bring their own light so I think they might not actually have been needed.
Tell you what:
I never did. Well by accident with a football and much spanking followed because the other windows in our house weren't broken as is it turned out was the preferred state of windows. The preferred state of windows is an actual quote from my dad when I tried to side-track him by asking if a window were broken wouldn't it cease to function as a window?
He was a bit of a philosopher so I got some extra spanking for that. Out of spite I never read Plato but out of awe I never wilfully smashed any windows.
The disease shot first :(
He is famous because he wrote books for punters. The great illustrated history of the universe and everything. It could even be read by fine arts majors. No need for at least 4 years of education to simply understand the cover sleeve blurp.
:p
It could very well be that others have made bigger contributions and I couldn't be bothered to dreap up a measurement for that.
Well, ok, I can be bothered. I propose as a unit of measurement for contribution to humanity and the whole lot:
The stephenhwaking!
And thus he contributed one stephenhawking to humanity and the lot.
Now your turn: how much did for instance Feynmann contribute? In stephenhawking please since we have already established that Stephen Hawking contributed one stephenhawing and I wouldn't want all that hard work I did there go to waste.
Yes, well, you do paint an awful lot of people with an awfully broad brush. I could refute that by pointing out the popularity of the lottery in Germany and famously in Spain or the proverbial dead long-lost Uncle from America who left you a fortune annd the 99% protesters who are anything but optimistic.
And judging by your last sentence I couldn't tell if you are a Euro or US citizen. But you are correct on the EU news crews intervieing stupid Americans. The truly ludicrous is better news than the softly spoken, insightful answer you'd get otherwise.
To me, interviews are NOT a good way to form an opinion on a culture. The ones that get broadcast are always the interesting ones. Stupid, loud, shrill, dumb representing the subset of the population that actually has those properties. Or talking to a person on a bad day. Or several species of small furry animals gathered together in a cave and grooving with a Pict. Those soundbite interviews don't even say a lot about the interviewee but a lot more about video editing.