I love you, my fellow homosexual. Sometimes it bothers me when people come up tome and ask for fashion advice, or some other crazy stuff that I just plain don't know about. I also get too many questiosn of "Are you really gay?" after not being able to help them. It's quite sad.
Anyways, on the issue of gays in video games. I think the Sims is the best example of what I want to see. I want to see a loving relationship between two characters, who are just like all the other polygon characters fromt he cover. They aren't gay from the start, but you form them to be that. Leave it up to the player, and if they do follow the gay route, don't make them into a stereotype. Just make them like everyone else.
Hopefully future Sims games will allow you to focus more on how you character acts. In terms of being "straight acting", flamboyant, masculine, or feminine. I'd actually rather not see more gay characters until they're fully capable for the player to mold. You leave a lot less of a chance of getting such content to backfire.
There are tons of people playing, but it really depends on the server. There isn't really a barren server, just don't have many people. I believe Ifrit is one of the servers, but really, there's plenty of people there so you won't slow down any.
Though are those huge servers, like the one I'm on, Ragnarok 3k-5k are usually online at a time, just about as many Japanese as English players, so hehe.
Oh, and don't forget, if you don't like that server you're on, you can always get a World Pass to join another server, but make sure you do this early on as it will only you CREATE a character on another server, not move an existing character.
While I do agree with what you're saying and your point. I haven't to say that not all EA games a sports and crappy licenses. I actually didn't think the slew of LOTR:Two Towers & Return of the King games were all that bad.:P Needed polishing yes, but eh EA did well with that.
Now let's see them do that with something else, something new.
Ah, I was trying to do exactly this with my classmates in high school. I figured it'd be the perfect game as the "shoot em ups" like UT and Quake were getting tiresome. You can only do one thing, an dthat's never fun.
ET provides you with missions that actually add some slight strategic play while keeping that "shoot em up" state. I just can't get enough of it, even those first 6 maps I still enjoy, it's always fun when both sides are competing equally.
While, I never got the chance to finally install ET at school. I still give it out as my FPS of choice over all others. And I'm one who usually HATES FPSs, but this is quite enjoyable. I mean hey, it's free, it's fun, it's addictive. What else could you want?
Finally, one of my most despised companies decides to step away from providing cheats for online games. It's about time they realized that their easy to access codes have ruined many games for other people.
I really don't mind cheating in games where you're not involved with others, but make others unhappy? To be honest, cheating devices can take away sales of some games, such as *coughs* PSO. While the latest versions of PSO are not hacked via a cheating device, before now that was a major problems and IMO ruined the first two versions. It may have also somewhat spawned the experiments into FSOD, BSOD, Card Wipes, etc that plagued the games.
Now, I don't really want to say that GameShark is totally at fault. Sega was quite lazy about cleaning up their act and patching the systems, but eh, they decided to just wait to start anew and lose a ton of money on keeping the servers running. Though, I do think that both should do their part. Game developers should take extra care to protect games from cheating in the online arenas. I've seen a lot of FPS PC games use PunkBuster and what not as a way to rid more common problems, and that's a step towards hope. Now, we finally get a major provider of cheats stepping away from online games. I'm quite happy.
Now if we can just figure out a way to screen players. XD
You must understand that this was just announced, and also we have just as much information, maybe slightly more, about the PSP which will also be releasing very soon.
I wouldn't expect any such information to be released until E3. That's given way too much. Nintendo likes working around speculation, though as of late I don't think it's worked in their favor as everyone seems to get disappointed.
They're just generating hype which is a good thing, it could get them quite the crowd at E3, not like they, or any other console, draws one.:p I just wouldn't expect much for a while.
What's with all the 3-D talk? o_O No where does Nintendo even allude to this and the only basis for everyone's claim that it will be some 3-D handheld is because the Virtual Boy has 2 screens.
I hope someone else read the article.
"Players will no longer be forced to interrupt game play to shift perspective, such as moving from a wide shot to a close up, or alternating between a character's ongoing battle and a map of the environment. Nintendo DS makes it possible to perform the tasks in real time by simply glancing from one screen to the other."
You're not using the screens in some bizarre Magic Eye fashion, they don't even hint to this. o_O This is merely an alternate way of doing split screen, but in games where screens are forced to cut half of the action, such as sports titles, they can keep from having to zoom in and out of the field. Everything stays constant.
Now if all the VB whiners would just say this is a byproduct then maybe I'd be a tad more content with their opinions. I see this no where though and I dislike seeing people pop things out of thin air.
Anywho, as far as my opinion. I don't like Nintendo making a third pillar of whatever form. It just seems to take away from the other two major systems if it is also a video game machine. If this could be used for other things, I could understand Nintendo's move.
E3 will answer all of course, and since it's a handheld. I've already added this to my wishlist. I collect.:p
Personally I doubt it, the GB region lock on them and as very well it shouldn't. I never got the point of them.
Though I curious to wonder whether they can include options like subtitling, and *MAYBE* language preferences. Hopefully Majesco can release more information sometime soon. This is BIG news for me as I've been wanting this thing for a while now.
Bah, the lack of love I see for it hurts me. It's by far my favorite system ever to be released.
While not a totally new idea in the handheld industry, it IS the first large and successful step towards the "correct" way to handle handheld gaming. Backlight, rechargable battery, flip screen since Nintendo's creation of the Gameboy Light. It has even cause quite a revolution for future handheld systems of other brands (PSP, Zodiac, N-Gage).
Oh and we musn't forget Wario Ware, I do believe someone did mention it earlier and I am quite glad about it. I think it was the only game to be released this year that actually could NOT be fit in any genre. I think "puzzle" may be the closest you can find, it had far to great a mix of other genres to be one.
Also, I don't think many remember Four Swords that came with Zelda: Link to the Past (Not a new game, but Four Swords was quite new) was quite an interesting creation of fun cooperative, yet competitive multiplayer in 2D system.
There are a whole slew of other titles on the GBA, that I'd rather not explain and just let others venture through them themselves, such as Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Mario and Luigi, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age (A "continuation" of the first Golden Sun, while not necessairly innovative it stills shows that the 2D system is NOT dead and can still impress).
Call this a fanboy rant if you please, but I must say that I am not that. I just favor the system. I do agree with many other suggestions from the various other consoles that are noteworthy, but I would just like the system of my choice to not go unmentioned. It was quite the right step towards the way portable gaming should be, and makes me all the more hopeful for the industry. Wireless multiplayer is next on the horizon, consoles are getting smaller... there maybe a time when they're just portable system able to plug into TVs.
Actually I'm pretty this is already possible, and I found something on google that already has a set up for it. Heard about it on TechTV today.
http://www.pacificneotek.com/
It's interesting, but I have no clue about how well it works.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.
on
Message in a Battle
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· Score: 1
You're probably right, either that or I just seem to notice things that look out of place or odd to me over other things and tends to stick in my head for quite a while.
Though I do agree with you about it being used for fantasy that we just can't manifest in our world. I support that, as how else would we be able to see it? It's when they go the other way around and just seem to get lazy and create car chases, crashes, and such via CG where it doesn't look as "real".
Though your last statement, about claiming it could be done better isn't what I'm trying to get at. I doubt there is any kind of better approch to the current state of CG and ROTK is probably state of the art. That doesn't mean it isn't flawed of course and needs work, though. Until we can get that I doubt I'll be able to appreciate certain uses of it.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I think you assumed something you shouldn't have.
I do not dislike movies for how horrible they are. I'm much more interested in the story, but really, this entire article is about CG so it should be expected that many would comment on CG in movies and not really the story.
I love the LOTR movies personally, but CG is still flawed and needs work. It's great for certain situations "far off shots of humans in which there are thousands to create" but sometimes it can be a bit of a bother.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 1
I agree with you totally. He's actually been the only CG only character to amaze me. For the same reasons as you posted.
Actually what suprised me the most was that interaction. Not just physically, but emotionally. It just goes to show that you can have a character incredibly important to the story without a single "live" actor. Though you still need people as a model to keep things working right.
Re:You know... things just don't amaze me.
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 1
Ah yes, Flight fo the Osiris, also made by Square Pictures. So of course I thought it was great in terms of looks.
Though my only problem with it, is Square tends to have problems making people look... "normal". Imperfections and such, or they focus too much on that with overuse of "blemishes". I dunno, when the first two introduced characters "strip" they end up still looking like models from clay.
Though you know what makes the whole experience better? Whatever precedes or surrounds the CG, if any. Movies that tend to be entirely CG tend to look better as everything fits. Movies which have CG sequences in the midst of live action shots (Matrix Reloaded) tend to stand out way too much and at many times just look plain stupid.
Also note that the men atop the elephants in ROTK bothered me as well. Was the idea of using the same idea as Treebeard for Merry and Pippin not applicable? With perspective shots they could have pulled it off with normal people.
Re:It's the *story* that makes it a good film.
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Glad this got modded up as I was going to post the same thing.
It seems that with the popularity of certain films here in America, story starts to get quite pointless to some film makers going for the quick buck. But it's always nice to see something stand strong, something that makes you laugh, cry, angered, and such.
Actually, I'm happy to say that my mom gave me an early gift of the boxset. So soon I'll have finally read the books.
Re:The battles would have been a lot better
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, realistically they do not have a single purpose in battle, and usually doesn't happen. Then again we're talking a movie, you can't really give much background, or character development as books gives in even 4 hours.
Somehow I think that the Gimli/Legolas example is used to show how they're eventually going to end up being great friends. It just seems a tad harder to show this in special segments due to the time alotted. It just makes it easier to show the strong bond between the two characters.
And,if you really notice, there isn't at all much other small talk during the battle scenes.
You know... things just don't amaze me.
on
Message in a Battle
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Despite how much work and how amazing these CG segments are for the current time period. I have yet to be impressed. I guess until I can actually not tell the difference, or at least only subtle differences, between real an fake. I'll be happy.
Really the biggest eyesore is CG people. I have yet to see something that really amazes me as it looks like a real person. To be honest, I found the closest being FF:Spirits Within. Crappy movie, but you have to admit the graphics were outstanding.
Nice to see you, THC, and I'm just as happy as you are. Time to load these files on my Archos and test it out.
I swear, Rockbox is one of my favorite open source projects. They never cease to amaze me.
"We have a good faith belief that such activities are not authorized by the copyright owners, their agents, or the law, and assert that the intbrmation in this..."
What's intbrmation?:P
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I love you, my fellow homosexual. Sometimes it bothers me when people come up tome and ask for fashion advice, or some other crazy stuff that I just plain don't know about. I also get too many questiosn of "Are you really gay?" after not being able to help them. It's quite sad. Anyways, on the issue of gays in video games. I think the Sims is the best example of what I want to see. I want to see a loving relationship between two characters, who are just like all the other polygon characters fromt he cover. They aren't gay from the start, but you form them to be that. Leave it up to the player, and if they do follow the gay route, don't make them into a stereotype. Just make them like everyone else. Hopefully future Sims games will allow you to focus more on how you character acts. In terms of being "straight acting", flamboyant, masculine, or feminine. I'd actually rather not see more gay characters until they're fully capable for the player to mold. You leave a lot less of a chance of getting such content to backfire.
There are tons of people playing, but it really depends on the server. There isn't really a barren server, just don't have many people. I believe Ifrit is one of the servers, but really, there's plenty of people there so you won't slow down any. Though are those huge servers, like the one I'm on, Ragnarok 3k-5k are usually online at a time, just about as many Japanese as English players, so hehe. Oh, and don't forget, if you don't like that server you're on, you can always get a World Pass to join another server, but make sure you do this early on as it will only you CREATE a character on another server, not move an existing character.
While I do agree with what you're saying and your point. I haven't to say that not all EA games a sports and crappy licenses. I actually didn't think the slew of LOTR:Two Towers & Return of the King games were all that bad. :P Needed polishing yes, but eh EA did well with that.
Now let's see them do that with something else, something new.
Ah, I was trying to do exactly this with my classmates in high school. I figured it'd be the perfect game as the "shoot em ups" like UT and Quake were getting tiresome. You can only do one thing, an dthat's never fun.
ET provides you with missions that actually add some slight strategic play while keeping that "shoot em up" state. I just can't get enough of it, even those first 6 maps I still enjoy, it's always fun when both sides are competing equally.
While, I never got the chance to finally install ET at school. I still give it out as my FPS of choice over all others. And I'm one who usually HATES FPSs, but this is quite enjoyable. I mean hey, it's free, it's fun, it's addictive. What else could you want?
Finally, one of my most despised companies decides to step away from providing cheats for online games. It's about time they realized that their easy to access codes have ruined many games for other people.
I really don't mind cheating in games where you're not involved with others, but make others unhappy? To be honest, cheating devices can take away sales of some games, such as *coughs* PSO. While the latest versions of PSO are not hacked via a cheating device, before now that was a major problems and IMO ruined the first two versions. It may have also somewhat spawned the experiments into FSOD, BSOD, Card Wipes, etc that plagued the games.
Now, I don't really want to say that GameShark is totally at fault. Sega was quite lazy about cleaning up their act and patching the systems, but eh, they decided to just wait to start anew and lose a ton of money on keeping the servers running. Though, I do think that both should do their part. Game developers should take extra care to protect games from cheating in the online arenas. I've seen a lot of FPS PC games use PunkBuster and what not as a way to rid more common problems, and that's a step towards hope. Now, we finally get a major provider of cheats stepping away from online games. I'm quite happy.
Now if we can just figure out a way to screen players. XD
You must understand that this was just announced, and also we have just as much information, maybe slightly more, about the PSP which will also be releasing very soon. I wouldn't expect any such information to be released until E3. That's given way too much. Nintendo likes working around speculation, though as of late I don't think it's worked in their favor as everyone seems to get disappointed. They're just generating hype which is a good thing, it could get them quite the crowd at E3, not like they, or any other console, draws one. :p I just wouldn't expect much for a while.
What's with all the 3-D talk? o_O No where does Nintendo even allude to this and the only basis for everyone's claim that it will be some 3-D handheld is because the Virtual Boy has 2 screens.
:p
I hope someone else read the article.
"Players will no longer be forced to interrupt game play to shift perspective, such as moving from a wide shot to a close up, or alternating between a character's ongoing battle and a map of the environment. Nintendo DS makes it possible to perform the tasks in real time by simply glancing from one screen to the other."
You're not using the screens in some bizarre Magic Eye fashion, they don't even hint to this. o_O This is merely an alternate way of doing split screen, but in games where screens are forced to cut half of the action, such as sports titles, they can keep from having to zoom in and out of the field. Everything stays constant.
Now if all the VB whiners would just say this is a byproduct then maybe I'd be a tad more content with their opinions. I see this no where though and I dislike seeing people pop things out of thin air.
Anywho, as far as my opinion. I don't like Nintendo making a third pillar of whatever form. It just seems to take away from the other two major systems if it is also a video game machine. If this could be used for other things, I could understand Nintendo's move.
E3 will answer all of course, and since it's a handheld. I've already added this to my wishlist. I collect.
That's what I was trying to say actually, but I left out a word as you can tell, "GBs have no region lock on them". Sorry about that.
Personally I doubt it, the GB region lock on them and as very well it shouldn't. I never got the point of them. Though I curious to wonder whether they can include options like subtitling, and *MAYBE* language preferences. Hopefully Majesco can release more information sometime soon. This is BIG news for me as I've been wanting this thing for a while now.
Bah, the lack of love I see for it hurts me. It's by far my favorite system ever to be released.
While not a totally new idea in the handheld industry, it IS the first large and successful step towards the "correct" way to handle handheld gaming. Backlight, rechargable battery, flip screen since Nintendo's creation of the Gameboy Light. It has even cause quite a revolution for future handheld systems of other brands (PSP, Zodiac, N-Gage).
Oh and we musn't forget Wario Ware, I do believe someone did mention it earlier and I am quite glad about it. I think it was the only game to be released this year that actually could NOT be fit in any genre. I think "puzzle" may be the closest you can find, it had far to great a mix of other genres to be one.
Also, I don't think many remember Four Swords that came with Zelda: Link to the Past (Not a new game, but Four Swords was quite new) was quite an interesting creation of fun cooperative, yet competitive multiplayer in 2D system.
There are a whole slew of other titles on the GBA, that I'd rather not explain and just let others venture through them themselves, such as Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, Mario and Luigi, Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, and Golden Sun: The Lost Age (A "continuation" of the first Golden Sun, while not necessairly innovative it stills shows that the 2D system is NOT dead and can still impress).
Call this a fanboy rant if you please, but I must say that I am not that. I just favor the system. I do agree with many other suggestions from the various other consoles that are noteworthy, but I would just like the system of my choice to not go unmentioned. It was quite the right step towards the way portable gaming should be, and makes me all the more hopeful for the industry. Wireless multiplayer is next on the horizon, consoles are getting smaller... there maybe a time when they're just portable system able to plug into TVs.
Actually I'm pretty this is already possible, and I found something on google that already has a set up for it. Heard about it on TechTV today. http://www.pacificneotek.com/ It's interesting, but I have no clue about how well it works.
You're probably right, either that or I just seem to notice things that look out of place or odd to me over other things and tends to stick in my head for quite a while.
Though I do agree with you about it being used for fantasy that we just can't manifest in our world. I support that, as how else would we be able to see it? It's when they go the other way around and just seem to get lazy and create car chases, crashes, and such via CG where it doesn't look as "real".
Though your last statement, about claiming it could be done better isn't what I'm trying to get at. I doubt there is any kind of better approch to the current state of CG and ROTK is probably state of the art. That doesn't mean it isn't flawed of course and needs work, though. Until we can get that I doubt I'll be able to appreciate certain uses of it.
I think you assumed something you shouldn't have. I do not dislike movies for how horrible they are. I'm much more interested in the story, but really, this entire article is about CG so it should be expected that many would comment on CG in movies and not really the story. I love the LOTR movies personally, but CG is still flawed and needs work. It's great for certain situations "far off shots of humans in which there are thousands to create" but sometimes it can be a bit of a bother.
I agree with you totally. He's actually been the only CG only character to amaze me. For the same reasons as you posted. Actually what suprised me the most was that interaction. Not just physically, but emotionally. It just goes to show that you can have a character incredibly important to the story without a single "live" actor. Though you still need people as a model to keep things working right.
Ah yes, Flight fo the Osiris, also made by Square Pictures. So of course I thought it was great in terms of looks. Though my only problem with it, is Square tends to have problems making people look... "normal". Imperfections and such, or they focus too much on that with overuse of "blemishes". I dunno, when the first two introduced characters "strip" they end up still looking like models from clay. Though you know what makes the whole experience better? Whatever precedes or surrounds the CG, if any. Movies that tend to be entirely CG tend to look better as everything fits. Movies which have CG sequences in the midst of live action shots (Matrix Reloaded) tend to stand out way too much and at many times just look plain stupid. Also note that the men atop the elephants in ROTK bothered me as well. Was the idea of using the same idea as Treebeard for Merry and Pippin not applicable? With perspective shots they could have pulled it off with normal people.
Glad this got modded up as I was going to post the same thing. It seems that with the popularity of certain films here in America, story starts to get quite pointless to some film makers going for the quick buck. But it's always nice to see something stand strong, something that makes you laugh, cry, angered, and such. Actually, I'm happy to say that my mom gave me an early gift of the boxset. So soon I'll have finally read the books.
Well, realistically they do not have a single purpose in battle, and usually doesn't happen. Then again we're talking a movie, you can't really give much background, or character development as books gives in even 4 hours. Somehow I think that the Gimli/Legolas example is used to show how they're eventually going to end up being great friends. It just seems a tad harder to show this in special segments due to the time alotted. It just makes it easier to show the strong bond between the two characters. And,if you really notice, there isn't at all much other small talk during the battle scenes.
Despite how much work and how amazing these CG segments are for the current time period. I have yet to be impressed. I guess until I can actually not tell the difference, or at least only subtle differences, between real an fake. I'll be happy.
Really the biggest eyesore is CG people. I have yet to see something that really amazes me as it looks like a real person. To be honest, I found the closest being FF:Spirits Within. Crappy movie, but you have to admit the graphics were outstanding.
I guess my standards are just too high.
Nice to see you, THC, and I'm just as happy as you are. Time to load these files on my Archos and test it out. I swear, Rockbox is one of my favorite open source projects. They never cease to amaze me.
"We have a good faith belief that such activities are not authorized by the copyright owners, their agents, or the law, and assert that the intbrmation in this..." What's intbrmation? :P
Indeed, there are plenty of people not sharing American music with the default name.