I think uniting the whole world might be a bit strong but it definitely shows the difference between the west and some places where intellect isn't valued at all.
I have to wonder about intellect being valued in the west after a 'review of the year' I saw here in the UK. Our own Mars project was a failure - unluckily - but what astounded me about this part of the show was Brian Sewell - an art critic - who said he was "jubilant" at the failure apparently because the landing took place when people should be in church!!
Psion have said that their support for the old palmtops will run out in 2004 at which point I better pray that nothing goes wrong with my 5MX. Knowing this, I've been looking for something to potentially replace it on that fateful day. OK, so modern PDAs have fast processors, colour, USB, Bluetooth etc etc.
But the Psion has a keyboard... and that just pisses over the usability of them...
I've owned various Psions over the years and I can still count the crashes on one hand.
I agree with you wholeheartedly. I was part of the games industry for many years and in all that time I have seen so many articles, hints, tips, guidelines for creating games, written by both industry people and independent creators. Yet very very rarely have I seen guidelines for gameplay.
Our publisher was concerned only with visuals, but we were lucky to have the kind of programmers that would spend ages tweaking control routines so that - for example - moving the players ship or whatever would feel right.
the newer games are dumbed-down to appeal more to the masses
Oh boy, tell me about it. I was designing gameplay and in in particular story, background, characters for a game which was firmly targetted for an age of around mid 20s. Many months in and my writing was getting heavily rewritten and simplified and it was only then that I found out they'd decided to aim the thing squarely at 16 year olds.
Not that it occured to anyone to actually tell me or anything...
When I started with DMA, it was development for the C64 in the main, and the Amiga was still new. I did graphic conversions (squeezing all those nice Amiga bitmaps into a tiny character set that the C64 could use) before doing writing work, stories, backgrounds, character bios, that sort of stuff. It was story duties on HG for the Amiga, although by the time the 3D one came along it was myself that did the initial game design as well as updating the story. I was freelance by that time and my involvement ended when they decided not to use third parties anymore.
In a way I'm glad the 3D version isn't available because they ended up taking tremendous liberties with my characters and background.
As for the original, I'd be interested in finding out where the AGA version became available, not that I'm morally offended or anything, just that I wonder if it's the same version as the one I have, which is sitting on the original Amiga hard drive, including source. (The programmer gave it to me to make a backup because I still had a working Amiga) Whatever did happen to Psygnosis anyway? I wonder if it could be made open-source?
What about the upgraded Hired Guns (3D) for the Amiga/PC?
Actually there's two halves to this question. The original Amiga Hired Guns - DMA Design - had a lot of work done on it to up the colour content (this was in the 16 colour screen days!) to 256 colours, add new sound fx, completely new intro sequence and so on. However all the new work was being done single-handedly by the programmer, Scott Johnson, at home while he worked on a new game for DMA. Before it could be completed, he left to work for Microprose, working on the CD32 version of UFO.
As for the "3D" Hired Guns, this was intended to be a remake for the PC using the Unreal engine and was a DMA Design project until they got bought by Gremlin Graphics at which point the project ended up in the hands of Devil's Thumb Entertainment who spent five years making it before it got canned. I was involved for the first year (as one of the ex-DMA staff who worked on the original) and "development hell" doesn't even begin to describe it. As far as I know it was essentially complete.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, a single low-key item in the science section of the BBC website. I had to fight the urge a make a placard and go running into the street!
I have to wonder about intellect being valued in the west after a 'review of the year' I saw here in the UK. Our own Mars project was a failure - unluckily - but what astounded me about this part of the show was Brian Sewell - an art critic - who said he was "jubilant" at the failure apparently because the landing took place when people should be in church!!
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a box of Blu-ray disks being launched across town with a giant Acme rubber band.
And this affects what system the music gets played on in what way?
Because it fosters the impression that - fair or not - Apple must know a thing or two about music in a way that Microsoft can't possibly know.
It's even better than that - some Silicon Graphics machines from at least the mid-nineties were a gaudy purple!
But the Psion has a keyboard... and that just pisses over the usability of them...
I've owned various Psions over the years and I can still count the crashes on one hand.
I'm going to miss it.
Our publisher was concerned only with visuals, but we were lucky to have the kind of programmers that would spend ages tweaking control routines so that - for example - moving the players ship or whatever would feel right.
Oh boy, tell me about it. I was designing gameplay and in in particular story, background, characters for a game which was firmly targetted for an age of around mid 20s. Many months in and my writing was getting heavily rewritten and simplified and it was only then that I found out they'd decided to aim the thing squarely at 16 year olds.
Not that it occured to anyone to actually tell me or anything...
The monitor on my computer is a CRT and the display on the vector network analyser at my work is a CRT and yet somehow neither is a television set.
So Baird transmitted moving images ("tele" "vision") before Farnsworth and yet Farnsworth is the inventor of "television"? Hmmm.
In a way I'm glad the 3D version isn't available because they ended up taking tremendous liberties with my characters and background.
As for the original, I'd be interested in finding out where the AGA version became available, not that I'm morally offended or anything, just that I wonder if it's the same version as the one I have, which is sitting on the original Amiga hard drive, including source. (The programmer gave it to me to make a backup because I still had a working Amiga) Whatever did happen to Psygnosis anyway? I wonder if it could be made open-source?
Actually there's two halves to this question. The original Amiga Hired Guns - DMA Design - had a lot of work done on it to up the colour content (this was in the 16 colour screen days!) to 256 colours, add new sound fx, completely new intro sequence and so on. However all the new work was being done single-handedly by the programmer, Scott Johnson, at home while he worked on a new game for DMA. Before it could be completed, he left to work for Microprose, working on the CD32 version of UFO.
As for the "3D" Hired Guns, this was intended to be a remake for the PC using the Unreal engine and was a DMA Design project until they got bought by Gremlin Graphics at which point the project ended up in the hands of Devil's Thumb Entertainment who spent five years making it before it got canned. I was involved for the first year (as one of the ex-DMA staff who worked on the original) and "development hell" doesn't even begin to describe it. As far as I know it was essentially complete.