BioWare will provide tools, technology, and game assets from the original Neverwinter Nights as well as lend creative input and oversight to the development process
Gee, I can't wait for more creative input from the folks that brought us:
"Hey I know, let's lock the player's camera view whether they like it or not!"
For those readers who aren't overpaid server-heads and cringe at the idea of dropping over $1000 for a fancy harddrive, there's a more realistic option:
That gives a total of 480GB(0.75*640GB) of disk space in RAID 5. Providing a modest performance boost, as well as fault tolerance. According to this review the FastTrak controller provides good performance in a 4-disk configuration, but not 3. I'm planning on installing this on my A7N8X-E dlx in a few weeks.
I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD. Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture
Umm, backup a bit. Before VHS and Cable there was a thing called a 'movie theatre'. Oh wait, I think those are still around. Yeah, I think that's how hollywood can recoup movie-making costs...just like they managed to do for the previous 60 years.
That's actually legal enough... you're basically being offered two licenses when you get the code
It may or may not be legal, but it's certainly deceitful marketing.
About 3 months ago I decided that I needed a QOS(quality of service) solution for my network so I could use VOIP reliably over my DSL connection. After looking around I came across articles like these which describe how to convert the relatively inexpensive Linksys WRT54G router into a viable QOS solution for VOIP. Most of these articles will explain how wonderful Sveasoft is for releasing thier QOS firmware for free.
What Sveasoft is actually doing is charging for thier software, and using the GPL/free software reputation as marketing hype(very underhanded in my opinion). If you read Sveasoft's policy carefully you'll see that you need to subscribe to thier site($25 annually) in order to have access to the latest version of the firmware. But thier policy is changing all the time. Now you actually have to order a CD to get the latest version, and the website has changed to subscriber only.
Maybe this isn't Sveasoft's fault, but I bought the WRT54G just 2 months ago with the expectation that I'd be able to download QOS firmware for free without any hassles. Now I'm locked in and at Sveasoft's mercy because they are the only ones building a QOS solution for my router. Most articles describe them as white knights to the rescue of people who want VOIP on a budget, but they are using the GPL and the term 'free software' to thier own financial advantage.
Morrowing, the ultimate non-linear cRPG... you can go anywhere, do anything the game allows you AND NONE OF IT IS INTERESTING.
Id rather have a small world with a lot of detail than Morrowind.
Not to spit hairs here, but I really think you've got it wrong. Yes morrowind was agonizingly tedious and flat out boring compared to its prequels like daggerfall and arena. But the problem wasn't the games openendedness, it was the absolutely bland quest/leveling system. I.e. the world was pretty good, but the gameplay sucked.
Bethsoft made the tragic mistake of creating an absolutely vast game world(good), while creating a linear quest system within the world. It is so boring, questing is almost literally like running errands. You talk to someone, they give you a job...you run around and find something/kill someone and return to them. Every quest is like this, and you have to do each quest in order.
It's a terrible example of how gameplay structure was completely ignored. The reason arena and daggerfall were fun was because the world was very open-ended...and there was no imposed gameplay.
Ack, anyway I'm ranthing...let's just say that I'm glad fallout 3 is being made...but I'm depressed that it's bethsoft doing the writing. The sad thing is that all the morrowind sales have given them confidence that they are doing things right...they'll probably just clone morrowind and copy/paste to Fallout 3...just like they did with Pirates of the Carribean *sigh*.
There are MUDs in the US that do that right now and for free.
MUDs are a great way to get the MMORPG "feel" without having to pay an arm and a leg for expansions and monthly fees.
There is one thing about MMORGs and MUDs that I find incredibly frustrating though. It seems that whenever I start playing a new MUD or MMORG I get really into it and sink ungodly amounts of time into my character...which includes a very careful study of the rules of the MUD universe...then after about 2 or 3 months of feverish gameplay some bum in charge of the MUD ends up nerfing my character class.
I mean, I put something like 2000 hours into some of these characters only to have the guy who runs the MUD arbitrarity decide that I'm too powerful and he nerfs my character. It sucks, and after having it happen several times I'm loath to return to MUDs or MMORPGs(EQ). (You might be saying it's my fault for powerplaying, but lots of people ENJOY powerplaying. It's a form of roleplaying, and if you don't want it in your MUD then design your MUD to exclude it so I don't waste my time playing your game). I just wish there was some solidarity to these virtual worlds, because ultimately the player base is at the mercy of the game designers. It's almost like a form of political servitude. You have to constantly petition and ass-kiss to make sure your player class gets its fair share of upgrades(big problem in EQ especially). I'm not saying there's an easy fix to this but it's a drag to worry about while playing.
When I load up Wasteland or Fallout or Diablo I at least know the rules won't change as I'm playing it...it's agravating to me that I'm shying away from online games because of this issue, but it's true. I almost prefer playing single-player games now simply because I don't have to worry about some pain in the ass admin ruining my fun.
Don't act so smug and self-righteous. Congress has been degrading the public's right to access information for far too long. It used to be that you could go to places like the library and rent tapes, casettes, and relatively new novels.
The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Act and other recent IP acts extend the copyright term to something like 100 years. It's appalling, and serves no purpose other than to allow big corporations to buy and sell our cultural history just like so many other commodities. Our parents generation enjoyed the proper balance between protecting innovators and the public. It's clear that our current leaders have no respect for the value of the public domain.
We're raised on music, movies, and games only to learn that we have to pay a tithe to revisit our childhood. There's no reason we should stand for that. 5-10 years is more than sufficient time to ensure that an investor/artist is compensated. Until congress stops selling out the average american to corporations, there's no reason the average american should respect the acts of congress.
"The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed under a Democratic president. Please stop trying to pretend either party is terribly interested in giving you all the "fair use rights" you want for copyrighted works."
This is not a partisan issue, it's an american issue. Any freedom conscious american should be aware of how his/her senator is planning to vote on this bill. Is your representative voting to protect media lobbyists or the average american? This bill is a threat to freedom, a threat to free speech, a threat to the right to share information, and it cannot be allowed to take root in a country that values these things.
Please do whatever you can to stop this bill, it is the result of misguided FUD from the likes of the RIAA and the MPAA. Our congressmen and women deserve a chance to hear both sides of this issue. They cannot be faulted for neglegence if we don't perform our civic duty and make clear how damaging this bill is to you and me. How many of you have grudgingly gone to jury duty for a day or two? Is this issue any less important? Is there any public issue more deserving of your time?
Please don't sit on your hands on this one. If you have a phone, if you have stamps, if you have access to e-mail you can make a difference. Please contact your representatives and do your part to help preserve our digital democracy.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
Same here. I never liked EverQuest expansions, especially because they came out far too frequently
Something happened at Verant after the "Scars of Velius" expansion. I don't know what it was but EQ went downhill from there. "The Shadows of Luclin" was such an ugly, ill-concieved expansion. The bazaar is a moronic way of implementing player auctions. Why not run the auction on a separate chat channel, with visuals, accessible from any vender? Instead they decided to pack 600 players into the same zone and bring everyones graphic card to its knees.
A single programmer could have implemented a good auction system in a few weeks. Instead they make this crappy bazaar idea a 'feature' of thier expansion.
Unfortunately Sony is just using EQ as a convenient cash cow, leveraging its addictiveness to provide funds for the war against the x-box(I do sympathize, as Microsoft is as hostile as ever with its constant price gouging). Still it's a shame that such a great game/player community as Everquest used to be is being sacrificed.
Sure they need money to finance EQ2 and SWG, but it's sad that they are canabalizing such a wonderful piece of art as the original Everquest world. I bet you 5 to 1 that the artists/designers Sony end up hiring won't have clue-one how to breath real life into a fantasy world...it will just be another lifeless clone with slightly improved player models. *sigh*
Who knows, maybe another company will fill the very large shoes that EQ used to wear?
Oh wait, it would just be an eight year old machine that everybody uses anyway even though there are better machines readily available.
Don't knock counter-strike just because it's old. There's a reason that it's still popular, and I wish EA and some of the other "big" fps makers would pay more attention as to why it's been so succesful. Particularly it's smooth gameplay, quick movement/turning/weapon swapping, realistic theme, good open-map modders community, etc.
Not to troll...but that's hardly a selling point for the original poster. Most of us slashdotters here are IT folks, and frankly it's hard for me to believe how it can be more difficult to find a job that its been for us in the U.S. over the last few years.
I've seriously been considering moving to canada as I'm outraged to the point of exhaustion with the current administration, but there's really no plausible way to US->Canada without being able to find employment there.
Clearly just "moving there" and picking up the want-ads isn't the best way to go. So does anyone have any constructive advice (links?) on how displaced american IT workers can find work in Canada? Has anyone actually done this?
I really have to wonder to myself if the chinese govt has yet come to the realization that their constant drive to block/censor anti-govt internet content only leads to more anti-govt feelings of the people.
I feel the exact same way about file-sharing(in America).
if and when the funding get shut off - this internet2 will be turned to commerce inevitably.
And that was what happened in 1990s, sadly.
I think I understand your point. But keep in mind that many websites today are unable to afford the cost of bandwidth. They are needing to resort to popups, gaudy ads, and spyware just to stay in the black. As more and more people sign up for broadband cable/dsl this will become even more of a problem. The internets single biggest clog...bottleneck...is that bandwidth is way too expensive!
Introducing things like internet2 into the "mainstream" would do a lot to alleviate this problem.
And was blown away by the quality of the music composition. IMO it's superior to most of the music that's featured in todays films. Not only that, but it's entirely MIDI based. Kinda John Williams 'esque. Really great.
"Not sure, maybe the same person who ends up having to format and reinstall his OS at least once a month?"
My thinking exactly...why would anyone need to re-install their OS monthly???
Here's why. I don't want to spent $150 on a copy of windoze XP. But I prefer it over my copy of 95/98 because it's easy to install, it's stable, and has true multitasking capabilities. Windows is, has been, and probably always will be the PC gamers OS(As there is still no OS answer for DirectX on Linux).
Here's where the 1 month re-format comes in:
XP allows a 30-day "grace period" before you need to register online. So what I do is install my fathers copy of WinXP, use it for 30 days...then I have to go through my monthly ritual of completely reformatting the HD and then reinstalling XP. It sucks, but this is the world of the broke PC gamer today.
you know, whenever something like this comes up, someone always makes a funny comment relating it to sex. and it is funnny, and it does get you modded up. but you know - and bear with me here, i'm in a thoughtful kinda mood - not everything in life has to be about sex
Well said.
I am in fact a 29 year old unemployed geek/loser living in my parents basement who does nothing but surf porn on the web and play video games. I also have a girlfriend who is gracious enough to occasionally have sex with me. And, that's pretty much my entire life right now.
Most people who write those +5 funny jokes seem to assume that if a dork playing video games could get layed, it would somehow magically change his lifestyle. *shrug* Hasn't happened.
I think the big explosion in MMORPG growth will be when we see FPS type combat properly combined with a RPG.
Parent should be modded up. The two most popular on-line gaming genres are MMORGs and FPShooters. So what would EQ/FFXI + CS/BF1942 look like?
Maybe the latest SWG expansion is an attempt at blending these two modes of gameplay? The only problem I see is that with FPS games you usually end up getting killed every 5 minutes...so how do you incorporate that into an MMORG that heavily penalizes death?
but without the slow, paced feel of an slow, slow computer; it just doesn't seem right. And yes I do have a seperate computer set aside to play just these old games. Two computers actually.
I've actually found slow gameplay to be one of the less enjoyable aspects of playing the older games.
Recently I've been playing a lot of 80s/90s titles on Amiga and Atari emulators(Mostly because I can't download good PC titles any more because of the money grubbing bastards who are taking them off the abandonware list and trying to sell them as CDs now). My favorite is the Steem Atari ST emulator. It has some wonderful functions like fast-forward, macros, shortcuts etc.
So when the gameplay gets slow(like a battle sequence, or running across the game continent)I just hit the fast-forward key. Incorporating features like these into the emulator usually ends up providing a better gaming experience than can be had using a 'vintage' older system/setup.
Good interactive fiction doesn't need (and doesn't have) graphics for the same reason that pictures don't make a good book any better.
While I agree with your point I don't understand why this has to be such a black and white issue. It seems as if most of the posters here are of two camps:
1) Don't like graphics because it restricts our imagination. 2) Play games exclusively for cutting edge graphics and effects.
I.e. the movies vs. books camps. But some of my favorite gaming experiences fell somewhere in the middle. The best old RPG/adventure games I ever played(The Bards Tale, Wasteland, Pirates) provided good text based descriptions and writings, as well as thoughtful portrait bipmap style graphics. The "sweet spot" was when the graphics just helped the player's imagination along. This, in conjunction with the lush and and very well written story/plot elements helped to really bring the game to life.
I think this is kind of a lost art today. Because when we come face-to-face with that swamp troll or space marine, we actually buy into the graphical representation of the character...there's no breathing room for our imagination anymore. And I think ultimately it was our imagination that made the old games such a joy to play. (Just like when we were all kids playing with our GI Joes, etc)
The fact is that there is not a complete free software offering to counter the Quake and Unreal engines. Yes, crystalspace is nice, but it just doesn't have the complete feature-set and complete game to build a model of a full game onto.
What you're talking about is middleware. Libraries which help to support the ease of game development...and perhaps more importantly...make them easily transportable between Windows and Linux.
All of this would be solved if an OS version of DirectX was available for Linux.
1) Microsoft won the OS war...and then came Linux 2) Microsoft won the browser war...and then came Mozilla. 3) Microsoft won the office-suite war...and then came Open Office. 4) Microsoft has won the gaming middleware/library war...so where is the OS DirectX project?
Get that built, and everything else will fall into place.
Slashdot Mirror
Three words....
umm, make that 4-words, but still! =)
Three words....
There is a GOD!
BioWare will provide tools, technology, and game assets from the original Neverwinter Nights as well as lend creative input and oversight to the development process
Gee, I can't wait for more creative input from the folks that brought us:
"Hey I know, let's lock the player's camera view whether they like it or not!"
For those readers who aren't overpaid server-heads and cringe at the idea of dropping over $1000 for a fancy harddrive, there's a more realistic option:
$164 Promise FastTrak S150 SX4 RAID controller
$104X4 4XWD1600JD
------
$580
That gives a total of 480GB(0.75*640GB) of disk space in RAID 5. Providing a modest performance boost, as well as fault tolerance. According to this review the FastTrak controller provides good performance in a 4-disk configuration, but not 3. I'm planning on installing this on my A7N8X-E dlx in a few weeks.
I don't know about you, but it seems a bit much to ask me to pay twice the price of a good DVD. Call me a nut, but I'm guessing the average production cost for a PC game is a bit less than that of a motion picture
Umm, backup a bit. Before VHS and Cable there was a thing called a 'movie theatre'. Oh wait, I think those are still around. Yeah, I think that's how hollywood can recoup movie-making costs...just like they managed to do for the previous 60 years.
That's actually legal enough... you're basically being offered two licenses when you get the code
It may or may not be legal, but it's certainly deceitful marketing.
About 3 months ago I decided that I needed a QOS(quality of service) solution for my network so I could use VOIP reliably over my DSL connection. After looking around I came across articles like these which describe how to convert the relatively inexpensive Linksys WRT54G router into a viable QOS solution for VOIP. Most of these articles will explain how wonderful Sveasoft is for releasing thier QOS firmware for free.
What Sveasoft is actually doing is charging for thier software, and using the GPL/free software reputation as marketing hype(very underhanded in my opinion). If you read Sveasoft's policy carefully you'll see that you need to subscribe to thier site($25 annually) in order to have access to the latest version of the firmware. But thier policy is changing all the time. Now you actually have to order a CD to get the latest version, and the website has changed to subscriber only.
Maybe this isn't Sveasoft's fault, but I bought the WRT54G just 2 months ago with the expectation that I'd be able to download QOS firmware for free without any hassles. Now I'm locked in and at Sveasoft's mercy because they are the only ones building a QOS solution for my router. Most articles describe them as white knights to the rescue of people who want VOIP on a budget, but they are using the GPL and the term 'free software' to thier own financial advantage.
Morrowing, the ultimate non-linear cRPG ... you can go anywhere, do anything the game allows you AND NONE OF IT IS INTERESTING.
Id rather have a small world with a lot of detail than Morrowind.
Not to spit hairs here, but I really think you've got it wrong. Yes morrowind was agonizingly tedious and flat out boring compared to its prequels like daggerfall and arena. But the problem wasn't the games openendedness, it was the absolutely bland quest/leveling system. I.e. the world was pretty good, but the gameplay sucked.
Bethsoft made the tragic mistake of creating an absolutely vast game world(good), while creating a linear quest system within the world. It is so boring, questing is almost literally like running errands. You talk to someone, they give you a job...you run around and find something/kill someone and return to them. Every quest is like this, and you have to do each quest in order.
It's a terrible example of how gameplay structure was completely ignored. The reason arena and daggerfall were fun was because the world was very open-ended...and there was no imposed gameplay.
Ack, anyway I'm ranthing...let's just say that I'm glad fallout 3 is being made...but I'm depressed that it's bethsoft doing the writing. The sad thing is that all the morrowind sales have given them confidence that they are doing things right...they'll probably just clone morrowind and copy/paste to Fallout 3...just like they did with Pirates of the Carribean *sigh*.
There are MUDs in the US that do that right now and for free.
MUDs are a great way to get the MMORPG "feel" without having to pay an arm and a leg for expansions and monthly fees.
There is one thing about MMORGs and MUDs that I find incredibly frustrating though. It seems that whenever I start playing a new MUD or MMORG I get really into it and sink ungodly amounts of time into my character...which includes a very careful study of the rules of the MUD universe...then after about 2 or 3 months of feverish gameplay some bum in charge of the MUD ends up nerfing my character class.
I mean, I put something like 2000 hours into some of these characters only to have the guy who runs the MUD arbitrarity decide that I'm too powerful and he nerfs my character. It sucks, and after having it happen several times I'm loath to return to MUDs or MMORPGs(EQ). (You might be saying it's my fault for powerplaying, but lots of people ENJOY powerplaying. It's a form of roleplaying, and if you don't want it in your MUD then design your MUD to exclude it so I don't waste my time playing your game). I just wish there was some solidarity to these virtual worlds, because ultimately the player base is at the mercy of the game designers. It's almost like a form of political servitude. You have to constantly petition and ass-kiss to make sure your player class gets its fair share of upgrades(big problem in EQ especially). I'm not saying there's an easy fix to this but it's a drag to worry about while playing.
When I load up Wasteland or Fallout or Diablo I at least know the rules won't change as I'm playing it...it's agravating to me that I'm shying away from online games because of this issue, but it's true. I almost prefer playing single-player games now simply because I don't have to worry about some pain in the ass admin ruining my fun.
Oh please.
Don't act so smug and self-righteous. Congress has been degrading the public's right to access information for far too long. It used to be that you could go to places like the library and rent tapes, casettes, and relatively new novels.
The 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Act and other recent IP acts extend the copyright term to something like 100 years. It's appalling, and serves no purpose other than to allow big corporations to buy and sell our cultural history just like so many other commodities. Our parents generation enjoyed the proper balance between protecting innovators and the public. It's clear that our current leaders have no respect for the value of the public domain.
We're raised on music, movies, and games only to learn that we have to pay a tithe to revisit our childhood. There's no reason we should stand for that. 5-10 years is more than sufficient time to ensure that an investor/artist is compensated. Until congress stops selling out the average american to corporations, there's no reason the average american should respect the acts of congress.
"The Digital Millenium Copyright Act was passed under a Democratic president. Please stop trying to pretend either party is terribly interested in giving you all the "fair use rights" you want for copyrighted works."
This is not a partisan issue, it's an american issue. Any freedom conscious american should be aware of how his/her senator is planning to vote on this bill. Is your representative voting to protect media lobbyists or the average american? This bill is a threat to freedom, a threat to free speech, a threat to the right to share information, and it cannot be allowed to take root in a country that values these things.
Please do whatever you can to stop this bill, it is the result of misguided FUD from the likes of the RIAA and the MPAA. Our congressmen and women deserve a chance to hear both sides of this issue. They cannot be faulted for neglegence if we don't perform our civic duty and make clear how damaging this bill is to you and me. How many of you have grudgingly gone to jury duty for a day or two? Is this issue any less important? Is there any public issue more deserving of your time?
Please don't sit on your hands on this one. If you have a phone, if you have stamps, if you have access to e-mail you can make a difference. Please contact your representatives and do your part to help preserve our digital democracy.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."
The problem is people are using UT2004 as a benchmark.
If you really want to see your rig crawl (Noone does of course), try running 3DMark03
It's merciless.
Same here. I never liked EverQuest expansions, especially because they came out far too frequently
Something happened at Verant after the "Scars of Velius" expansion. I don't know what it was but EQ went downhill from there. "The Shadows of Luclin" was such an ugly, ill-concieved expansion. The bazaar is a moronic way of implementing player auctions. Why not run the auction on a separate chat channel, with visuals, accessible from any vender? Instead they decided to pack 600 players into the same zone and bring everyones graphic card to its knees.
A single programmer could have implemented a good auction system in a few weeks. Instead they make this crappy bazaar idea a 'feature' of thier expansion.
Unfortunately Sony is just using EQ as a convenient cash cow, leveraging its addictiveness to provide funds for the war against the x-box(I do sympathize, as Microsoft is as hostile as ever with its constant price gouging). Still it's a shame that such a great game/player community as Everquest used to be is being sacrificed.
Sure they need money to finance EQ2 and SWG, but it's sad that they are canabalizing such a wonderful piece of art as the original Everquest world. I bet you 5 to 1 that the artists/designers Sony end up hiring won't have clue-one how to breath real life into a fantasy world...it will just be another lifeless clone with slightly improved player models. *sigh*
Who knows, maybe another company will fill the very large shoes that EQ used to wear?
Oh wait, it would just be an eight year old machine that everybody uses anyway even though there are better machines readily available.
Don't knock counter-strike just because it's old. There's a reason that it's still popular, and I wish EA and some of the other "big" fps makers would pay more attention as to why it's been so succesful. Particularly it's smooth gameplay, quick movement/turning/weapon swapping, realistic theme, good open-map modders community, etc.
I would say its much harder to get a job
Not to troll...but that's hardly a selling point for the original poster. Most of us slashdotters here are IT folks, and frankly it's hard for me to believe how it can be more difficult to find a job that its been for us in the U.S. over the last few years.
I've seriously been considering moving to canada as I'm outraged to the point of exhaustion with the current administration, but there's really no plausible way to US->Canada without being able to find employment there.
Clearly just "moving there" and picking up the want-ads isn't the best way to go. So does anyone have any constructive advice (links?) on how displaced american IT workers can find work in Canada? Has anyone actually done this?
I really have to wonder to myself if the chinese govt has yet come to the realization that their constant drive to block/censor anti-govt internet content only leads to more anti-govt feelings of the people.
I feel the exact same way about file-sharing(in America).
Do these people have any shame?
if and when the funding get shut off - this internet2 will be turned to commerce inevitably.
And that was what happened in 1990s, sadly.
I think I understand your point. But keep in mind that many websites today are unable to afford the cost of bandwidth. They are needing to resort to popups, gaudy ads, and spyware just to stay in the black. As more and more people sign up for broadband cable/dsl this will become even more of a problem. The internets single biggest clog...bottleneck...is that bandwidth is way too expensive!
Introducing things like internet2 into the "mainstream" would do a lot to alleviate this problem.
Your time has GOT to be worth more than that to you.
I'm unemployed programmer, one thing I have plenty of is time.
Get a job, maybe
read above.
or just stop using XP.
reread my orignal post as to why XP is really my only option.
Holy frickin art snobbery batman!
Really, there is a shitload of good art in videogames. In fact ANYTHING CAN BE ART.
Yeah. I just recently installed a freely available copy of THE ELDER SCROLLS: ARENA
And was blown away by the quality of the music composition. IMO it's superior to most of the music that's featured in todays films. Not only that, but it's entirely MIDI based. Kinda John Williams 'esque. Really great.
"Not sure, maybe the same person who ends up having to format and reinstall his OS at least once a month?"
My thinking exactly...why would anyone need to re-install their OS monthly???
Here's why. I don't want to spent $150 on a copy of windoze XP. But I prefer it over my copy of 95/98 because it's easy to install, it's stable, and has true multitasking capabilities. Windows is, has been, and probably always will be the PC gamers OS(As there is still no OS answer for DirectX on Linux).
Here's where the 1 month re-format comes in:
XP allows a 30-day "grace period" before you need to register online. So what I do is install my fathers copy of WinXP, use it for 30 days...then I have to go through my monthly ritual of completely reformatting the HD and then reinstalling XP. It sucks, but this is the world of the broke PC gamer today.
Now you know.
you know, whenever something like this comes up, someone always makes a funny comment relating it to sex. and it is funnny, and it does get you modded up. but you know - and bear with me here, i'm in a thoughtful kinda mood - not everything in life has to be about sex
Well said.
I am in fact a 29 year old unemployed geek/loser living in my parents basement who does nothing but surf porn on the web and play video games. I also have a girlfriend who is gracious enough to occasionally have sex with me. And, that's pretty much my entire life right now.
Most people who write those +5 funny jokes seem to assume that if a dork playing video games could get layed, it would somehow magically change his lifestyle. *shrug* Hasn't happened.
I think the big explosion in MMORPG growth will be when we see FPS type combat properly combined with a RPG.
Parent should be modded up. The two most popular on-line gaming genres are MMORGs and FPShooters. So what would EQ/FFXI + CS/BF1942 look like?
Maybe the latest SWG expansion is an attempt at blending these two modes of gameplay? The only problem I see is that with FPS games you usually end up getting killed every 5 minutes...so how do you incorporate that into an MMORG that heavily penalizes death?
*shrug*
but without the slow, paced feel of an slow, slow computer; it just doesn't seem right. And yes I do have a seperate computer set aside to play just these old games. Two computers actually.
I've actually found slow gameplay to be one of the less enjoyable aspects of playing the older games.
Recently I've been playing a lot of 80s/90s titles on Amiga and Atari emulators(Mostly because I can't download good PC titles any more because of the money grubbing bastards who are taking them off the abandonware list and trying to sell them as CDs now). My favorite is the Steem Atari ST emulator. It has some wonderful functions like fast-forward, macros, shortcuts etc.
So when the gameplay gets slow(like a battle sequence, or running across the game continent)I just hit the fast-forward key. Incorporating features like these into the emulator usually ends up providing a better gaming experience than can be had using a 'vintage' older system/setup.
Good interactive fiction doesn't need (and doesn't have) graphics for the same reason that pictures don't make a good book any better.
While I agree with your point I don't understand why this has to be such a black and white issue. It seems as if most of the posters here are of two camps:
1) Don't like graphics because it restricts our imagination.
2) Play games exclusively for cutting edge graphics and effects.
I.e. the movies vs. books camps. But some of my favorite gaming experiences fell somewhere in the middle. The best old RPG/adventure games I ever played(The Bards Tale, Wasteland, Pirates) provided good text based descriptions and writings, as well as thoughtful portrait bipmap style graphics. The "sweet spot" was when the graphics just helped the player's imagination along. This, in conjunction with the lush and and very well written story/plot elements helped to really bring the game to life.
I think this is kind of a lost art today. Because when we come face-to-face with that swamp troll or space marine, we actually buy into the graphical representation of the character...there's no breathing room for our imagination anymore. And I think ultimately it was our imagination that made the old games such a joy to play. (Just like when we were all kids playing with our GI Joes, etc)
The fact is that there is not a complete free software offering to counter the Quake and Unreal engines. Yes, crystalspace is nice, but it just doesn't have the complete feature-set and complete game to build a model of a full game onto.
What you're talking about is middleware. Libraries which help to support the ease of game development...and perhaps more importantly...make them easily transportable between Windows and Linux.
All of this would be solved if an OS version of DirectX was available for Linux.
1) Microsoft won the OS war...and then came Linux
2) Microsoft won the browser war...and then came Mozilla.
3) Microsoft won the office-suite war...and then came Open Office.
4) Microsoft has won the gaming middleware/library war...so where is the OS DirectX project?
Get that built, and everything else will fall into place.