I was working on a game where you had 2 swords(actual plastic swords), and 5 cameras took input from various angles. I was able to detect where the sword was when you held them, and roughly where your body is... But there was a BLUR when you swing a sword that I couldn't figure out. Maybe when cameras become more advanced to be able to tackle more fps,(like 100+), you'll see games where you wield real life objects and fight things that come at you on the screen(or VR headset). Man, the world really needs to upgrade its computer vision technology. With today's hardware you should totally be able to use a camcorder to video tape an area of land and building, then render it into a 3d world. Its just software isn't there yet, but its being researched.
If a company wants more games released for their platform, they should release an SDK with it so everyone in the world could make games for it. Of course the company would hold final say if you're homebrew game can be published.
I don't know why they don't open source development for these game platforms, I know I'd love to develop games for new consoles.
Everyone thinks they're a game designer. Its not game design the companies are looking for, since EVERYONE thinks they're a game designer. Game companies are looking for highly intelligent programmers, or highly talented artists. Its EXACTLY like Hollywood, where they don't think they need writers, but they need big name actors and special effects.
Game design has some real challenges to it, and theres many things that seem like a good idea but isn't fun in a game. I'd be interested in taking an online course on game design just to see what they got right. I'm not saying I know everything, but I know some stuff like balancing mechanics, MMOG theory, etc. Like I said, everyone thinks they're a game designer, including me. And man is the industry hard to break into. I've had about 7 interviews in ten years and hundreds of job applications.
I'd want some way to be able to blow up buildings in a big PVP world. They wouldn't be indefensible if you allowed "ghost men" for logged out players. For those who don't know, "ghost men" are NPC controlled players who are offline. Simply log off at the fortress, and your character is a guardian of the place.
Instead of urban sprawl, you'd have a large world with spots of tight resistance in bases of various sizes.
The real difficulty would be providing the code to destroy walls. It'd have to allow concrete chunks to be blown off and fall to the ground, possibly injuring people on the ground, and becoming part of the game(more memory). If part of the building gets destroyed, a check should be made if another part of the building should collapse. To me thats the really tough coding, but would rock.
This will sound dumb to some(and most people shouldn't care), but since then I haven't decided if its morally right to play a game that advocates gangland violence. Vice City was my favorite game of all time, with the good vehicle physics, car chases, quests and storyline.
Yet I didn't buy San Andreas because I have moral issues with playing a villian. I think its wrong to get joy out of running over people, assasination, and prostitution, even if its just fantasy. Its sort of sick to have a desire to shoot RPGs into random people's cars. Now I still really want to play the game because I know its quality, but the morality of it all is at question for me.
Beyond my own personal debate... I think a lot of thought needs to go in to how games like these could affect America's youth too. When I was young, I played Atari and they had rules against violence. Now there are 5 year olds growing up, doing virtual bank jobs, giving them an ego boost that they can do criminal acts. I don't have the answers, maybe just default back to it being the parents responsibility.
I enjoyed early days with a tank and turrets. I'd lay out a turreted area where I could flee to, and then go run over people. When I got hurt I'd just go back and heal the tank in the turreted area. I could kill like 50 people at a run like this.
Problem with PlanetSide is that you can get everything you want in under a few hours(not much for RPG). That and you're in an army. When you're in an army, you share rations, and never get to hoard loot for yourself. I've said it before, but an optimal MMOFPS would have it so you could form a clan and create a custom fortress/factory. You'd constantly be fighting battles to secure more resources, and then using the resources to make your fortress/vehicles/self better.
Yes, I had lots of fun in PlanetSide, and abused some bugs(like killing all the spawn tubes but 1, and autokilling people who spawn in the last one). PlanetSide was fun, but it has no long term goals of building up your player/clan/bases. To me its HIGHLY important to have long term campaigns/gains in a subscription based game. If you want me playing for years, you need to give me new content over time or let the players make content.
You're right. Blizzard fans rave for content, and probably won't notice the grind. I noticed the grind from like level 5.
Just frustrates me that no one is breaking the MMORPG mold and trying new things. Theres a ton of things you could do with a MMORPG to make it fun and draw in customers that aren't in the market yet. Especially user created content(lots of time on your hands = creativity).Its just like Street Fighter 2's old popularity, if you make a killer game, people will turn out in droves for it. And a MMORPG should be fun for like 5-10 years. Ah screw it, I won't get into it, I could write a novel on this stuff.
I guess the game I am most awaiting from Blizzard is Starcraft 2.
Its swamped with quests where you seek out an object/NPC, or kill a sequence of monsters which lowers the tedium some.
The combat system involves clicking on some action keys, but isn't too complex.
Graphics are nice.
This game is one big level grind with Warcraft Lore in it. It may seem fun to some, but I was bored the whole time I betaed it. Maybe they'll introduce fun stuff down the road, but this game isn't what the market is thirsting for.
http://www.twilightwar.com/ is one I am very interested in
There needs to be a MMOFPS with more greed involved. Planetside doesn't cut it since you can't power your character up much. We need long term goals of: forming a good clan
Obtaining vehicles/equipment
Obtaining stats/levels
Creating a fortress
Heavy FPS fighting, and goal oriented tasks would keep your mind off the standard level grind found in current RPGS.
I'm not sure I have the coding power to pull this off though.
"As long as India is concerned, it's a bit harsh to spend bilions of dollars to send ppl into space, when so many in India are starving etc. However the problem is well beyond my comprehension, I bet that if they actually did spend the money just to buy some food, next ppl would be starving again, if however they spend on research, with some luck they will develop technological means to overcome poverty."
What I was thinking the other day was to have a governmental construction force, similar to the army, to build cities. Anyone who wants to volunteer for work will be given work to build a city. Houses/schools/places of buisness would be made that otherwise would not have been made, and not with a plan.
Make a governmental food program too, but it doesn't have to be tasty, just really cheap food thats nutritional. Most people wouldn't want to eat it except those who are starving.
With food and shelter taken care of, people wouldn't be in trouble and can spend their time on an education and bettering society themself.
Planetside has a pretty good array of vehicles, but obtaining them is too easy.
Getting a vehicle together should require a base , and resource obtaining.
Leveling in PlanetSide was simple and almost a pointless advancement system
There are no long term things to do in PlanetSide to make a name for yourself, like making a clan or a fortress. I used to go on sprees where I'd single handedly take out 50 people with my tank, I used to rock at Planetside, but the game was not long term viable. For a game to have long term viability, you need something to be striving for(RPG). At the same time it should be fun to play while striving(FPS).
Planetside did make a nice large scale FPS, but it didn't have enough RPG elements to make it last. Theres quite a few more reasons why PlanetSide didn't do as well as it could have too.
Customize Vehicles-Use a designer to build your own depending on cost, slap in seating/engines(conventional and jet)/fueltanks/armor/weapons/acesssories like radar or a snow plow in front.
Customize Fortress-Pay for all sorts of wall and floor pieces, gun turrets, fortifications, special buildings, etc. Design so players can really spend time making big castles.
Basically power sources would appear in the wild, and all the clans would have to compete for them. So teams would secure as many power sources as they can, but some would become hot zones where players fight over. Some basic rules to keep clan power in check, and you're set. You could even add alien invasions down the line.
Thanks for the info. I haven't been big into watching a lot of movies to keep up on the culture. Its amazing how easily one joke/idea can make another seem unoriginal. Or whats amazing is when the idea is recycled and no one cares.
For some reason, I was also thinking an SUV/soccermom combo taking out a zombie.
I never saw virus, and with your opinion, maybe I shouldn't.
I could definately see Ash at a gas station, using a gas pump as a flame thrower.
Maybe have some sort of anti-hero villian, who makes himself out to be some sort of overlord who's going to take over the world(I can never die), but keeps getting his ass kicked in every situation he appears in by a variety of people down to like an old lady with a walker, who later walks over his corpse.
Maybe Army of Darkness FanFiction is worth it. Spend some quality time writing scripts and sending them to Bruce. I know he says they're not doing any more sequels, but if you can make the guy laugh enough.
Maybe its a hobby I should start up. Video game programming isn't worth it anymore. I was also thinking about submitting SpaceBalls Episode 0 scripts, and Tron 2 scripts. I think in Tron 2, it would be cool if the video game things came out of the digitized world instead of people going in. I could imagine a tank coming through a worm hole and crushing down a bunch of parked cars.
Its exciting stuff to think about, movie scripts and all. You wouldn't think they take anything but creativity and some free time.
That sounds good, some modern day evilness, nothing wrong with oldschool meets suburbia.
But depends on your endings, because the drops he takes in the one leads him to the future, and that would be a great setting as well.
I could imagine zombies in mecha outfits... man I better stop now or I'll be no better than fan fiction authors. Theres tons that could be done though.
Would you like to offensively drive?
Slow down for pedestrians, or just beep?
Do you want to pull burnouts at every stoplight?
If someone is driving slower than you, do you want to tailgate them with your highbeams on in an attempt to get them to switch lanes?
Do you want to leave your turnsignals on for extended periods of time for no reason?
I could see a whole host of car hacks along these lines.
I think we'll have artificial intelligence before we have self driving cars. Once you have AI, any software can learn its hardware by trial and error. I'm not saying you slap some AI into a beater car and let it loose into a few demolition derbies to get it warmed up, though that'd be fun. I'm saying AI will have an imagination space that can judge whats going on and what may happen in the future, while sensors are constantly updating whats going on. Sure, like their paper says there will be network communication between cars, but first you need a car that can drive itself without wrecking. I guess it COULD be done without AI, but the senors you need to understand the road are exactly the sensors that we don't have, so we can't make AI.
A paper I did on AI, its easy reading:
www.geocities.com/James_Sager2
I've coded my own projects for 10 years, but never finished because I'm always aiming too high or think the game I'm working on is boring.
I never got in with a company, but it hasn't stopped me from developing games. I'm thinking of working with the half life 2 engine now.
Slashdot Mirror
I was working on a game where you had 2 swords(actual plastic swords), and 5 cameras took input from various angles. I was able to detect where the sword was when you held them, and roughly where your body is... But there was a BLUR when you swing a sword that I couldn't figure out. Maybe when cameras become more advanced to be able to tackle more fps,(like 100+), you'll see games where you wield real life objects and fight things that come at you on the screen(or VR headset). Man, the world really needs to upgrade its computer vision technology. With today's hardware you should totally be able to use a camcorder to video tape an area of land and building, then render it into a 3d world. Its just software isn't there yet, but its being researched.
If a company wants more games released for their platform, they should release an SDK with it so everyone in the world could make games for it. Of course the company would hold final say if you're homebrew game can be published.
I don't know why they don't open source development for these game platforms, I know I'd love to develop games for new consoles.
Everyone thinks they're a game designer. Its not game design the companies are looking for, since EVERYONE thinks they're a game designer. Game companies are looking for highly intelligent programmers, or highly talented artists. Its EXACTLY like Hollywood, where they don't think they need writers, but they need big name actors and special effects.
Game design has some real challenges to it, and theres many things that seem like a good idea but isn't fun in a game. I'd be interested in taking an online course on game design just to see what they got right. I'm not saying I know everything, but I know some stuff like balancing mechanics, MMOG theory, etc. Like I said, everyone thinks they're a game designer, including me. And man is the industry hard to break into. I've had about 7 interviews in ten years and hundreds of job applications.
I'd want some way to be able to blow up buildings in a big PVP world. They wouldn't be indefensible if you allowed "ghost men" for logged out players. For those who don't know, "ghost men" are NPC controlled players who are offline. Simply log off at the fortress, and your character is a guardian of the place.
Instead of urban sprawl, you'd have a large world with spots of tight resistance in bases of various sizes.
The real difficulty would be providing the code to destroy walls. It'd have to allow concrete chunks to be blown off and fall to the ground, possibly injuring people on the ground, and becoming part of the game(more memory). If part of the building gets destroyed, a check should be made if another part of the building should collapse. To me thats the really tough coding, but would rock.
This will sound dumb to some(and most people shouldn't care), but since then I haven't decided if its morally right to play a game that advocates gangland violence. Vice City was my favorite game of all time, with the good vehicle physics, car chases, quests and storyline.
Yet I didn't buy San Andreas because I have moral issues with playing a villian. I think its wrong to get joy out of running over people, assasination, and prostitution, even if its just fantasy. Its sort of sick to have a desire to shoot RPGs into random people's cars. Now I still really want to play the game because I know its quality, but the morality of it all is at question for me.
Beyond my own personal debate... I think a lot of thought needs to go in to how games like these could affect America's youth too. When I was young, I played Atari and they had rules against violence. Now there are 5 year olds growing up, doing virtual bank jobs, giving them an ego boost that they can do criminal acts. I don't have the answers, maybe just default back to it being the parents responsibility.
I enjoyed early days with a tank and turrets. I'd lay out a turreted area where I could flee to, and then go run over people. When I got hurt I'd just go back and heal the tank in the turreted area. I could kill like 50 people at a run like this.
Problem with PlanetSide is that you can get everything you want in under a few hours(not much for RPG). That and you're in an army. When you're in an army, you share rations, and never get to hoard loot for yourself. I've said it before, but an optimal MMOFPS would have it so you could form a clan and create a custom fortress/factory. You'd constantly be fighting battles to secure more resources, and then using the resources to make your fortress/vehicles/self better.
Yes, I had lots of fun in PlanetSide, and abused some bugs(like killing all the spawn tubes but 1, and autokilling people who spawn in the last one). PlanetSide was fun, but it has no long term goals of building up your player/clan/bases. To me its HIGHLY important to have long term campaigns/gains in a subscription based game. If you want me playing for years, you need to give me new content over time or let the players make content.
You're right. Blizzard fans rave for content, and probably won't notice the grind. I noticed the grind from like level 5.
Just frustrates me that no one is breaking the MMORPG mold and trying new things. Theres a ton of things you could do with a MMORPG to make it fun and draw in customers that aren't in the market yet. Especially user created content(lots of time on your hands = creativity).Its just like Street Fighter 2's old popularity, if you make a killer game, people will turn out in droves for it. And a MMORPG should be fun for like 5-10 years. Ah screw it, I won't get into it, I could write a novel on this stuff.
I guess the game I am most awaiting from Blizzard is Starcraft 2.
I love Blizzard, but WOW is nothing new.
Its swamped with quests where you seek out an object/NPC, or kill a sequence of monsters which lowers the tedium some.
The combat system involves clicking on some action keys, but isn't too complex.
Graphics are nice.
This game is one big level grind with Warcraft Lore in it. It may seem fun to some, but I was bored the whole time I betaed it. Maybe they'll introduce fun stuff down the road, but this game isn't what the market is thirsting for.
I'm interested in the mods.
http://www.twilightwar.com/ is one I am very interested in
There needs to be a MMOFPS with more greed involved. Planetside doesn't cut it since you can't power your character up much. We need long term goals of: forming a good clan
Obtaining vehicles/equipment
Obtaining stats/levels
Creating a fortress
Heavy FPS fighting, and goal oriented tasks would keep your mind off the standard level grind found in current RPGS.
I'm not sure I have the coding power to pull this off though.
"Not to mention the cheating tool it can become... "
How could you pass this off. "Mr. Jones, your Civics test is so easy I am putting myself at the liberty of playing some metroid while taking it."
Then again people used Ti-85 calculators in English class in my highschool.
"As long as India is concerned, it's a bit harsh to spend bilions of dollars to send ppl into space, when so many in India are starving etc. However the problem is well beyond my comprehension, I bet that if they actually did spend the money just to buy some food, next ppl would be starving again, if however they spend on research, with some luck they will develop technological means to overcome poverty."
What I was thinking the other day was to have a governmental construction force, similar to the army, to build cities. Anyone who wants to volunteer for work will be given work to build a city. Houses/schools/places of buisness would be made that otherwise would not have been made, and not with a plan.
Make a governmental food program too, but it doesn't have to be tasty, just really cheap food thats nutritional. Most people wouldn't want to eat it except those who are starving.
With food and shelter taken care of, people wouldn't be in trouble and can spend their time on an education and bettering society themself.
Planetside has a pretty good array of vehicles, but obtaining them is too easy.
Getting a vehicle together should require a base , and resource obtaining.
Leveling in PlanetSide was simple and almost a pointless advancement system
There are no long term things to do in PlanetSide to make a name for yourself, like making a clan or a fortress. I used to go on sprees where I'd single handedly take out 50 people with my tank, I used to rock at Planetside, but the game was not long term viable. For a game to have long term viability, you need something to be striving for(RPG). At the same time it should be fun to play while striving(FPS).
Planetside did make a nice large scale FPS, but it didn't have enough RPG elements to make it last. Theres quite a few more reasons why PlanetSide didn't do as well as it could have too.
Customize Vehicles-Use a designer to build your own depending on cost, slap in seating/engines(conventional and jet)/fueltanks/armor/weapons/acesssories like radar or a snow plow in front.
Customize Fortress-Pay for all sorts of wall and floor pieces, gun turrets, fortifications, special buildings, etc. Design so players can really spend time making big castles.
Basically power sources would appear in the wild, and all the clans would have to compete for them. So teams would secure as many power sources as they can, but some would become hot zones where players fight over. Some basic rules to keep clan power in check, and you're set. You could even add alien invasions down the line.
Except you drove your car up onto it and it interfaced.
I'm all for cheering on Linux. Its nice to see short term points though Linux is definately the choice for the long term game.
Thanks for the info. I haven't been big into watching a lot of movies to keep up on the culture. Its amazing how easily one joke/idea can make another seem unoriginal. Or whats amazing is when the idea is recycled and no one cares.
For some reason, I was also thinking an SUV/soccermom combo taking out a zombie.
I never saw virus, and with your opinion, maybe I shouldn't.
I could definately see Ash at a gas station, using a gas pump as a flame thrower.
Maybe have some sort of anti-hero villian, who makes himself out to be some sort of overlord who's going to take over the world(I can never die), but keeps getting his ass kicked in every situation he appears in by a variety of people down to like an old lady with a walker, who later walks over his corpse.
Maybe Army of Darkness FanFiction is worth it. Spend some quality time writing scripts and sending them to Bruce. I know he says they're not doing any more sequels, but if you can make the guy laugh enough. Maybe its a hobby I should start up. Video game programming isn't worth it anymore. I was also thinking about submitting SpaceBalls Episode 0 scripts, and Tron 2 scripts. I think in Tron 2, it would be cool if the video game things came out of the digitized world instead of people going in. I could imagine a tank coming through a worm hole and crushing down a bunch of parked cars. Its exciting stuff to think about, movie scripts and all. You wouldn't think they take anything but creativity and some free time.
That sounds good, some modern day evilness, nothing wrong with oldschool meets suburbia.
But depends on your endings, because the drops he takes in the one leads him to the future, and that would be a great setting as well.
I could imagine zombies in mecha outfits... man I better stop now or I'll be no better than fan fiction authors. Theres tons that could be done though.
We now have the year is 2004, we now have S-Marts. Instead of Evil Dead1, don't you think its time for Army of Darkness2?
Would you like to offensively drive? Slow down for pedestrians, or just beep? Do you want to pull burnouts at every stoplight? If someone is driving slower than you, do you want to tailgate them with your highbeams on in an attempt to get them to switch lanes? Do you want to leave your turnsignals on for extended periods of time for no reason? I could see a whole host of car hacks along these lines.
I thought you wanted a bicycle that automatically navigated. What do you want next, one that you don't have to pedal? You're living in a fantasy land.
I think we'll have artificial intelligence before we have self driving cars. Once you have AI, any software can learn its hardware by trial and error. I'm not saying you slap some AI into a beater car and let it loose into a few demolition derbies to get it warmed up, though that'd be fun. I'm saying AI will have an imagination space that can judge whats going on and what may happen in the future, while sensors are constantly updating whats going on. Sure, like their paper says there will be network communication between cars, but first you need a car that can drive itself without wrecking. I guess it COULD be done without AI, but the senors you need to understand the road are exactly the sensors that we don't have, so we can't make AI.
A paper I did on AI, its easy reading: www.geocities.com/James_Sager2
Earn up to $5000 a week. I doubt the guy wants a pay cut though.
I've coded my own projects for 10 years, but never finished because I'm always aiming too high or think the game I'm working on is boring. I never got in with a company, but it hasn't stopped me from developing games. I'm thinking of working with the half life 2 engine now.