You can do better encryption with DVD. Indeed, HD DVD was originally little more than DVD with some new copy protection and more efficient codecs -- they switched to a higher-capacity blue-laser format because a) they wanted to compete with Blu-ray for the data storage market and b) videophiles were adamantly against red-laser HD video and didn't believe the cost savings were worth the quality loss that would come with lower bitrates. Check out the early posts about HD DVD at the Home Theater Forum or the AVS Forum (back in the days when HD DVD was still a red-laser format) and you'll see that virtually nobody supported it -- HD DVD would've been dead out of the gate if they'd launched as a red-laser 4.7GB format versus Blu-ray's blue-laser 25GB spec. But there was no reason to switch to blue laser if better encryption was all they were interested in.
It's tough to get a feel for what Unity was all about, but as they say, a screenshot is worth a thousand words
Those screenshots are from the VLM 3, not the actual game. There's a few screens from the game itself here. Doesn't look all that different from the VLM shots, except it's in a tube and with a little spaceship flying around. There were a few shakycam gameplay videos out there which showed a bit more (including actual combat and some side-scrolling sections), but I never once got a sense of what the game was about beyond that -- the victory/loss conditions, the power-up and chaining systems (if any), what role the backgrounds played beyond looking cool, etc. I like Minter but I had a hard time getting really excited about Unity with so little sense of what it was actually like. And now I guess we'll never know, unless Minter plans on telling us someday.
I always heard that the N64's famous "blurriness" was a consequence of bilinear filtering combined with relatively low-res textures (due to limited cartridge space). I don't think the anti-aliasing was the culprit, although since the N64 only had edge anti-aliasing rather than true full-scene anti-aliasing, I'm not sure it helped that much either.
Yes. And as Armando pointed out, so far they haven't taken any legal recourse, so even if it did apply to Valve it's not an issue yet. Then there's the fact that entrapment requires coercion; simply offering somebody the opportunity to commit a crime does not constitute entrapment in and of itself (otherwise there'd be no such thing as sting operations).
I beat the game on Legendary a couple of days ago and I saw absolutely nothing about "February 9th." And believe me, I was paying attention (after the "I Love Bees" thing I assumed Bungie would sneak a hidden message in there somewhere). Everyone else I've talked to who's actually beat the game on Legendary says the same thing. Until some independent verification appears (along with some details on how to actually get this alleged alternate credits sequence, since simply beating the game on Legendary doesn't do it), I'm calling this a hoax.
True, but it's crap and everyone knows it. It's not in the least bit surprising that OpenGL outnumbers Direct3D by such a wide margin. I imagine that most of the Direct3D users are running CS Source.
where are the 3dfx cards?
Um, in dumpsters all across the nation? 3Dfx has been dead for awhile now.
"When I saw that Interplay had seemingly started selling off IPs, rather than see the Freespace IP fall into the WRONG hands, I thought it would be nice to TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT and which is totally BELOW my current skill levels and experience."
Why does this seem so oddly familiar? Oh, that's right, he's said it before:
"I'm used to developing and coding high-end migraine inducing modules for my games, therefore, going to a streamlined and less hardcore game, just gives my brain some breathing room...After the Battlecruiser series, believe me, anything else not even closely related to its complexity, will be like programming tic-tac-toe to me."
The result of this attitude? His Serious Engine project has yet to be made (which is what happens when you treat a game engine as an impulse buy) and Universal Combat was crap. If Smart does in fact end up with the Freespace IP, run as far as you possibly can in the opposite direction and brace yourself for the impending train wreck.
Well, yes, but in all fairness to Smart, the proprietor of that site (Bill Huffman) is also insane. If Smart is an arrogant egomaniacal asshole (yes) then Huffman is a crazy stalker. They deserve each other.
Also, while they did get S.T.U.N. Runner, STILL NO ARCADE TETRIS!
And there probably never will be. Atari only had the arcade rights to Tetris; the home rights are owned by different companies (they've changed hands quite a few times over the year so I suppose it's not impossible Midway will get their hands on them one day, but it's not likely). A home conversion of the arcade game, even emulated, would probably be considered a violation of the license. I imagine this is partly the same reason NBA Jam isn't included in this compilation, since Midway no longer owns the license. I do wish they had included Super High Impact, though.
As far as gameplay goes it's not really anything special, although it may have started the pseudo-3D Final Fight-style side-scroller genre (I'm not really sure). Graphically it's okay; the digitized graphics were a neat novelty for the time but in-game the sprites are too small to really tell. But as heretical as this may sound, NARC is great not because of the gameplay but simply for the style. From the over-the-top War on Drugs theme ("say no or die!") to the character names ("Hit Man" and "Max Force") to the ridiculous enemies (anyone who's ever been to the slums of America's inner cities will of course recognize the knife-throwing killer clowns) to the beyond-brilliant final boss (not going to spoil it for anyone, and words couldn't do it justice anyway) to the background music (the "NARC Rap" at the end is a better completion bonus than any "proper" ending could ever be) to the simple fact that you play a DEA agent with a goddamn rocket launcher, the game just oozes style. MAME unfortunately chokes on this game with my lowly five-year-old PC so you can bet I'll be picking this up on day one. And I may even give some of the other games in the collection a whirl, too...
MAME has raised the bar for this kind of work and put the lie to these proprietors who are coming along years after the fact doing what MAME has done in a far more portable fashion.
You do realize that a lot of the games in this collection run like shit with MAME, right?
Go into the game options and change the game mode from four-player to two-player. (Gauntlet I only allowed you to pick your character in the two-player mode; Gauntlet II let you pick them in both two- and four-player mode, even allowing multiple players to pick the same character.)
Supposedly the graphics, story and dialogue are there but the actual gameplay isn't coming along too well. After all this time and money I imagine MS had pretty high expectations. Of course MS has been canning titles right and left over the past couple of weeks (Mythica, the Xbox sports lineup, the next Oddworld game) so there's definitely some internal politics involved as well.
Which had nothing to do with copyright/trademark law. Parody movie titles are supposed to be pre-registered with the MPAA as a matter of course; New Line failed to do so and had to work out a separate deal with MGM. Had New Line done it properly there would be no issue. Anyway it seems to me that making a sequel to Rez and not calling it "Rez" would be no more a violation of copyright/trademark law than Rare making Perfect Dark after Goldeneye and not calling it "Goldeneye 2."
All the e-Reader NES games have used an emulator and as far as I know nobody has managed to "separate" the emulator from the ROMs. Not that it matters sicne there's already very good NES emulators available for the GBA.
Re:Where are all the good adventure makers...
on
Sam & Max Sequel Canceled
·
· Score: 2, Informative
What about all the people that worked on Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, Indy, etc...?
Ron Gilbert (Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion, Loom) - Makes children's games at Hulabee Entertainment (last I heard)
Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) - Working on Psychonauts (Xbox) at Doublefine Entertainment
Hal Barwood (Fate of Atlantis) - making terrible games at Lucasarts (most recently RTX Red Rock)
Michael Stemmle (Sam and Max) - Project leader on the now-canceled sequel; previously co-designed Escape from Monkey Island
Sean Clark (Sam and Max, The Dig) - Project leader on the now-canceled Full Throttle 2; co-designed Escape from Monkey Island
Slashdot Mirror
You can do better encryption with DVD. Indeed, HD DVD was originally little more than DVD with some new copy protection and more efficient codecs -- they switched to a higher-capacity blue-laser format because a) they wanted to compete with Blu-ray for the data storage market and b) videophiles were adamantly against red-laser HD video and didn't believe the cost savings were worth the quality loss that would come with lower bitrates. Check out the early posts about HD DVD at the Home Theater Forum or the AVS Forum (back in the days when HD DVD was still a red-laser format) and you'll see that virtually nobody supported it -- HD DVD would've been dead out of the gate if they'd launched as a red-laser 4.7GB format versus Blu-ray's blue-laser 25GB spec. But there was no reason to switch to blue laser if better encryption was all they were interested in.
I'm pretty sure the NV50 was canned, at least so far as the PC was concerned.
Those screenshots are from the VLM 3, not the actual game. There's a few screens from the game itself here. Doesn't look all that different from the VLM shots, except it's in a tube and with a little spaceship flying around. There were a few shakycam gameplay videos out there which showed a bit more (including actual combat and some side-scrolling sections), but I never once got a sense of what the game was about beyond that -- the victory/loss conditions, the power-up and chaining systems (if any), what role the backgrounds played beyond looking cool, etc. I like Minter but I had a hard time getting really excited about Unity with so little sense of what it was actually like. And now I guess we'll never know, unless Minter plans on telling us someday.
I always heard that the N64's famous "blurriness" was a consequence of bilinear filtering combined with relatively low-res textures (due to limited cartridge space). I don't think the anti-aliasing was the culprit, although since the N64 only had edge anti-aliasing rather than true full-scene anti-aliasing, I'm not sure it helped that much either.
I beat the game on Legendary a couple of days ago and I saw absolutely nothing about "February 9th." And believe me, I was paying attention (after the "I Love Bees" thing I assumed Bungie would sneak a hidden message in there somewhere). Everyone else I've talked to who's actually beat the game on Legendary says the same thing. Until some independent verification appears (along with some details on how to actually get this alleged alternate credits sequence, since simply beating the game on Legendary doesn't do it), I'm calling this a hoax.
True, but it's crap and everyone knows it. It's not in the least bit surprising that OpenGL outnumbers Direct3D by such a wide margin. I imagine that most of the Direct3D users are running CS Source.
Um, in dumpsters all across the nation? 3Dfx has been dead for awhile now.
Well, yes, but in all fairness to Smart, the proprietor of that site (Bill Huffman) is also insane. If Smart is an arrogant egomaniacal asshole (yes) then Huffman is a crazy stalker. They deserve each other.
Yep, that's it. From IGN:
The controllers are unique "Tetromino" designs, complete with twisting action to rotate the pieces in the direction that the user indicates.
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55 873
Paul Steed was for it too and Carmack (John) claimed that Carmack (Adrian) fired Steed in retaliation. Adrian denied it, of course.
Maybe The Day Today or Brass Eye should do a special report on this.
Folks should stop making fun games with no "redeeming social value" and make more unplayably boring pseudo-text adventures. Right, Chris?
Of course. That's why they've axed Psychonauts and green-lighted Blinx 2, right? Idiots.
As far as gameplay goes it's not really anything special, although it may have started the pseudo-3D Final Fight-style side-scroller genre (I'm not really sure). Graphically it's okay; the digitized graphics were a neat novelty for the time but in-game the sprites are too small to really tell. But as heretical as this may sound, NARC is great not because of the gameplay but simply for the style. From the over-the-top War on Drugs theme ("say no or die!") to the character names ("Hit Man" and "Max Force") to the ridiculous enemies (anyone who's ever been to the slums of America's inner cities will of course recognize the knife-throwing killer clowns) to the beyond-brilliant final boss (not going to spoil it for anyone, and words couldn't do it justice anyway) to the background music (the "NARC Rap" at the end is a better completion bonus than any "proper" ending could ever be) to the simple fact that you play a DEA agent with a goddamn rocket launcher, the game just oozes style. MAME unfortunately chokes on this game with my lowly five-year-old PC so you can bet I'll be picking this up on day one. And I may even give some of the other games in the collection a whirl, too...
Go into the game options and change the game mode from four-player to two-player. (Gauntlet I only allowed you to pick your character in the two-player mode; Gauntlet II let you pick them in both two- and four-player mode, even allowing multiple players to pick the same character.)
You can see some rare concept art for "Sid Meier's Dinosaurs!" here.
Supposedly the graphics, story and dialogue are there but the actual gameplay isn't coming along too well. After all this time and money I imagine MS had pretty high expectations. Of course MS has been canning titles right and left over the past couple of weeks (Mythica, the Xbox sports lineup, the next Oddworld game) so there's definitely some internal politics involved as well.
All the e-Reader NES games have used an emulator and as far as I know nobody has managed to "separate" the emulator from the ROMs. Not that it matters sicne there's already very good NES emulators available for the GBA.
Tim Schafer (Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Grim Fandango) - Working on Psychonauts (Xbox) at Doublefine Entertainment
Hal Barwood (Fate of Atlantis) - making terrible games at Lucasarts (most recently RTX Red Rock)
Michael Stemmle (Sam and Max) - Project leader on the now-canceled sequel; previously co-designed Escape from Monkey Island
Sean Clark (Sam and Max, The Dig) - Project leader on the now-canceled Full Throttle 2; co-designed Escape from Monkey Island