Go rent Kingdom Hearts, or pick up a used copy. It's not formulaic at all. The familiar settings and characters help the game and add charm to a game that would have worked if cut from whole cloth and released as FF XI. The Gummy ship works like the airship in FF X2, and you can customize them with stuff you find or buy. The TGCs all work very well in the story. The cheese level is amazingly low. It's a fairly straightforward "kid from nowhere saves the universe and the girl" story, but not offensively so. Given the intensity the themes of despair, doubt and loneliness are presented with this is not a "kid game".
Adventuring with Donald and Goofy was actually pretty cool. And useful in combat, they're very good about hitting you with potions and saving your butt. The other characters you run into, some of whom you can bring into your party, are interesting. Well, Merlin and the Fairy Godmother got old fast, but the main story characters worked well. The Beast played in very well. And he kicks ass.
The original material in this is very good. The Heartless make a great enemy, there's enough whimsy in the character design that they aren't creepy, just scary 'cause you know their tough. The environments at the end stages are fantastic, rivaling or exceeding anything in FF X. The big bad boss you fight several times at the end bears a striking resemblance to Seymour. The stages of his transformation into progressively more dangerous forms is, however, executed much better. The sense that FF X was the rough draft of the design for KH is never more present than in how much more polished the Big Baddie is in KH.
Gameplay is just like FF X, except except for, well everything. KH plays like a 3D platformer, and a good one. Plus it has an RPG side that's nearly as deep as FFX. Most of the simplification is in the experience system, and in the fact that you only have one PC. It's an outstanding blend of RPG and platformer, in no way did it feel as if one element was tacked-on to the other.
I played KH before FF X (gonna defeat Sin this weekend !) and the renowned FF X looked much less sophisticated at first. The interaction with the environment in FF X just wasn't that great. Just walking around could be frustrating because there are places in the scene that look like you can jump up on easily, and they just aren't available. In KH you're fully in the environment, just as much as in Ratchet & Clank or Sly Cooper.
Puzzles are more varied in KH, which balances the more repetitive enemy selection. Boss battles in KH rule. Pretty much all the bosses are tough, and fun to beat. The Wicked Witch has a dragon form that is simply gorgeous. I walked into that fight with an odd spell selection loaded ("Stop" I consider to be a specialized spell). She looked at me with one head, open her mouth to breath fire, and I said "Stop !" *wham*wham*wham*. Put her down fast, taking very little damage. Others were brutal killing matches against enemiesI know I can beat, but can't pull off the timing the firs (several) tries.
Best of all, KH has no situations whatsoever in which you view a cutscene, return to gameplay and walk forward two steps to the next cutscene. Number two on my list of reasons to try it if you liked FF X is the ability to save anywhere. Except in between a series of three tough boss fights about 90% of the way through. What a pisser that was. I *knew* I was on the final track and could taste the end, but I had to break off and finish the Hades Cup to level my party just a bit.
Or answer the questions and send monthly invoices. My rule of thumb for this sort of thing is to take what you'd make in an ideal world (with your choice of sky colors), add a heft percentage and just send it to Accounts Payable. Net 30 terms are fine, after 90 days take 'em to court.
Cutscenes aside, I'd have to say that Jedi Academy is a game I'm probably going to buy. and I didn't get the last Jedi Knight game based on the demo. The controls - and pacing - of the last one just didn't grab me. And it just didn't feel right. It also ran a lot slower, which is odd given that they're both based on the Quake 3 engine. It must be the level design on all counts.
JA moves faster in combat, and has some tough opponents in it. Three cultists with lightsabers can be awfully entertaining.
The fact that Jedi Academy lets me play a scantilly-clad female Twi-lek jedi (blue) with two lightsabers can't have anything to do with it. It's not a cheap thrill, it's gonna cost me $40 when I finally break down and get it.
That's exactly why I use d6 whever I can talk people into it. It's a very flexible system. I've been able to work out linear conversions to d6 from Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller (I forget which edition, probably TNE) and Ars Magica (dead easy:-). I haven't done a lot of testing of these conversions, but I haven't found many rules where the mechanics aren't a straight conversion.
I will disagree about the sophistication of the d6 combat system; I've never even looked at the rules to any Storyteller game. In WEG's Star Wars (maybe not in the vanilla d6 rules which I don't have) there are two kinds of dodges; and multiple actions just cost a die from each roll for each extra action. Initiative I always just made opposed Dexterity rolls, and I'd give modifiers for a good story.
The basics for running d6 combat is using a narrative style of combat. Work out initiative and ask each player in turn "what do you do ?" I've run fantasy combat with d6 before, it works great. It's very well suited for playing out combat situations designed to fit the mood the GM desires and advance the plot.
And how do you measure relative power of characters?
Keep track of how many skill points you have ? Levels are artificial and (imho) if you're worried about the levels for balancing, chances are you have too much combat planned anyway.
There's a lot to be said for conceptually simple mechanics. I've taught D6 systems to complete noobs, and they really appreciate the "roll what it says on your character sheet" system. It may not be faster than D&D3.5, but it's plenty fast, no reference materials needed
It's not hard at all to have a system that makes more sense than 2e.
There's a story going around that Hubbard and Heinlein had a bet going as to who could start a successful religion. Hubbard won. Personally, I'll stick to rereading Stranger in a Strange Land every so often.
Yup. I was doing inventory (counting the Macs at HQ) for a Fortune 500 company between trouble-tickets. So I basically went everywhere, with a clipboard. Anyone asking what i was doing was told "proving a theory" and provided with a nice smile.
The difference with Apple is that Apple writes useful software that uses the new APIs in their upgrades. Other developers do too. An awful lot of Windows software out there writes to the older APIs, so Microsoft has to keep compatibility or people will bitch that their weird shareware app breaks.
Let's see, any software that depends on: Inkwell (not that there is any) Sherlock 3 WebKit (Opera) QuartzExtreme Rendezvous new or updated libraries on the Unix side
will break instantly if run on 10.15. Apple's marketing pitch is that the new capabilities that come from the new features are worth the upgrades. They've actually got more "cool new stuff" in daily use (Rendezvous) than Microsoft does.
Well, Apple just did that. And it seems to have done well. Of course, what they really did was fund several years of development of the OpenStep APIs and they're quietly shuffling the old stuff under the rug.
If Microosft can put a better kernel under their stuff, that'd be good. But I don't really see them rewriting everything in the new paradigm, since I don't believe.NET is going to be the "current big thing" when BlackComb ships. So that'll still leave them with an awful lot of Win32 baggage, and there's no road forward outside of their R&D labs.
I see a clear OS X advantage going forward, Apple has a better thechnology now.
I keep a C64 emulator around for this gem. You control a probe droid and have to reprogram a ship full of rogue droids. The main task is in a reprogramming contest. The contest is simple, flip switches by sending impulse down circuits. When time runs out, either you've flipped a majority and take control of the droid, or you lsoe and it's Game Over. This is complicated by having a limited number of pulses to fire, and by complications in the circuit diagram. It's pretty basic, but you never have any leisure to plan or study. Some droids you take over can just blast other robots - but your control burns out the droid you're riding in after a certain amount of time, so you can't blast your next ride.
Great game, simple concepts multplied into intense gameplay. It would have been a winner for GB or GB-Color. Paradroid Advance would probably be overdone and overcomplicated. I've beaten the damn thing maybe twice over the course of 15 years of (intermittent) gameplay.
RTFA, Burst barely managed to survive, "shrank to two employees" and then found some lawyers to work on contingency. They had employees, they were developing/marketing products based on their patents. They tried to do a deal with Microsoft and wound up crushed. Now they're suing. Maybe dealing with MS was a bad idea, but it's not supposed to (legally) be suicidal.
Burst.com is the victim here.
Software patents would be a seperate discussion. The topic under discussion here is "Microsoft conceals evidence when sued by the remnants of acompany they had tried to destroy".
You did see the part about 35 weeks worth of evidence withheld from discovery and claimed to have been destroyed ? We'll see this again in a couple of weeks when Microsoft has to show up with the backups that Sun found out they were keeping.
Slashdot Mirror
Go rent Kingdom Hearts, or pick up a used copy. It's not formulaic at all. The familiar settings and characters help the game and add charm to a game that would have worked if cut from whole cloth and released as FF XI. The Gummy ship works like the airship in FF X2, and you can customize them with stuff you find or buy. The TGCs all work very well in the story. The cheese level is amazingly low. It's a fairly straightforward "kid from nowhere saves the universe and the girl" story, but not offensively so. Given the intensity the themes of despair, doubt and loneliness are presented with this is not a "kid game".
Adventuring with Donald and Goofy was actually pretty cool. And useful in combat, they're very good about hitting you with potions and saving your butt. The other characters you run into, some of whom you can bring into your party, are interesting. Well, Merlin and the Fairy Godmother got old fast, but the main story characters worked well. The Beast played in very well. And he kicks ass.
The original material in this is very good. The Heartless make a great enemy, there's enough whimsy in the character design that they aren't creepy, just scary 'cause you know their tough. The environments at the end stages are fantastic, rivaling or exceeding anything in FF X. The big bad boss you fight several times at the end bears a striking resemblance to Seymour. The stages of his transformation into progressively more dangerous forms is, however, executed much better. The sense that FF X was the rough draft of the design for KH is never more present than in how much more polished the Big Baddie is in KH.
Gameplay is just like FF X, except except for, well everything. KH plays like a 3D platformer, and a good one. Plus it has an RPG side that's nearly as deep as FFX. Most of the simplification is in the experience system, and in the fact that you only have one PC. It's an outstanding blend of RPG and platformer, in no way did it feel as if one element was tacked-on to the other.
I played KH before FF X (gonna defeat Sin this weekend !) and the renowned FF X looked much less sophisticated at first. The interaction with the environment in FF X just wasn't that great. Just walking around could be frustrating because there are places in the scene that look like you can jump up on easily, and they just aren't available. In KH you're fully in the environment, just as much as in Ratchet & Clank or Sly Cooper.
Puzzles are more varied in KH, which balances the more repetitive enemy selection. Boss battles in KH rule. Pretty much all the bosses are tough, and fun to beat. The Wicked Witch has a dragon form that is simply gorgeous. I walked into that fight with an odd spell selection loaded ("Stop" I consider to be a specialized spell). She looked at me with one head, open her mouth to breath fire, and I said "Stop !" *wham*wham*wham*. Put her down fast, taking very little damage. Others were brutal killing matches against enemiesI know I can beat, but can't pull off the timing the firs (several) tries.
Best of all, KH has no situations whatsoever in which you view a cutscene, return to gameplay and walk forward two steps to the next cutscene. Number two on my list of reasons to try it if you liked FF X is the ability to save anywhere. Except in between a series of three tough boss fights about 90% of the way through. What a pisser that was. I *knew* I was on the final track and could taste the end, but I had to break off and finish the Hades Cup to level my party just a bit.
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Or answer the questions and send monthly invoices. My rule of thumb for this sort of thing is to take what you'd make in an ideal world (with your choice of sky colors), add a heft percentage and just send it to Accounts Payable. Net 30 terms are fine, after 90 days take 'em to court.
Shouldn't that be
4) PROPHET!!!
Excellent. How about a little peer pressure from his own religious community ?
So it's China, they'll provide a nice PRC-friendly reason.
n/t
Cutscenes aside, I'd have to say that Jedi Academy is a game I'm probably going to buy. and I didn't get the last Jedi Knight game based on the demo. The controls - and pacing - of the last one just didn't grab me. And it just didn't feel right. It also ran a lot slower, which is odd given that they're both based on the Quake 3 engine. It must be the level design on all counts.
JA moves faster in combat, and has some tough opponents in it. Three cultists with lightsabers can be awfully entertaining.
The fact that Jedi Academy lets me play a scantilly-clad female Twi-lek jedi (blue) with two lightsabers can't have anything to do with it. It's not a cheap thrill, it's gonna cost me $40 when I finally break down and get it.
That's exactly why I use d6 whever I can talk people into it. It's a very flexible system. I've been able to work out linear conversions to d6 from Cyberpunk 2020, Traveller (I forget which edition, probably TNE) and Ars Magica (dead easy :-). I haven't done a lot of testing of these conversions, but I haven't found many rules where the mechanics aren't a straight conversion.
I will disagree about the sophistication of the d6 combat system; I've never even looked at the rules to any Storyteller game. In WEG's Star Wars (maybe not in the vanilla d6 rules which I don't have) there are two kinds of dodges; and multiple actions just cost a die from each roll for each extra action. Initiative I always just made opposed Dexterity rolls, and I'd give modifiers for a good story.
The basics for running d6 combat is using a narrative style of combat. Work out initiative and ask each player in turn "what do you do ?" I've run fantasy combat with d6 before, it works great. It's very well suited for playing out combat situations designed to fit the mood the GM desires and advance the plot.
And how do you measure relative power of characters?
Keep track of how many skill points you have ? Levels are artificial and (imho) if you're worried about the levels for balancing, chances are you have too much combat planned anyway.
There's a lot to be said for conceptually simple mechanics. I've taught D6 systems to complete noobs, and they really appreciate the "roll what it says on your character sheet" system. It may not be faster than D&D3.5, but it's plenty fast, no reference materials needed
It's not hard at all to have a system that makes more sense than 2e.
*sigh*
The point is to see if the First Sale doctrine applies to digital media. It's a big question and it's worth being approached.
There's only one thing to say: pwned !
Gonna have to use that (or a derivative) on the BOFH at the home office.
There's a story going around that Hubbard and Heinlein had a bet going as to who could start a successful religion. Hubbard won. Personally, I'll stick to rereading Stranger in a Strange Land every so often.
Then they get a big tax bonus for a capital gains loss. That makes it practically free money.
Yup. I was doing inventory (counting the Macs at HQ) for a Fortune 500 company between trouble-tickets. So I basically went everywhere, with a clipboard. Anyone asking what i was doing was told "proving a theory" and provided with a nice smile.
That was a lot of fun in the executive suites.
I'd love to see the 'resolution' on that trouble ticket !
At least the "Sales team" at Deja Vu would be more honest about just wanting your money.
I've never had to try and get glitter out of my hair after an IT vendor's "sales pitch" either.
The difference with Apple is that Apple writes useful software that uses the new APIs in their upgrades. Other developers do too. An awful lot of Windows software out there writes to the older APIs, so Microsoft has to keep compatibility or people will bitch that their weird shareware app breaks.
Let's see, any software that depends on:
Inkwell (not that there is any)
Sherlock 3
WebKit (Opera)
QuartzExtreme
Rendezvous
new or updated libraries on the Unix side
will break instantly if run on 10.15. Apple's marketing pitch is that the new capabilities that come from the new features are worth the upgrades. They've actually got more "cool new stuff" in daily use (Rendezvous) than Microsoft does.
Well, Apple just did that. And it seems to have done well. Of course, what they really did was fund several years of development of the OpenStep APIs and they're quietly shuffling the old stuff under the rug.
.NET is going to be the "current big thing" when BlackComb ships. So that'll still leave them with an awful lot of Win32 baggage, and there's no road forward outside of their R&D labs.
If Microosft can put a better kernel under their stuff, that'd be good. But I don't really see them rewriting everything in the new paradigm, since I don't believe
I see a clear OS X advantage going forward, Apple has a better thechnology now.
It gets better:
http://paradroid.sourceforge.net/
GPL'd even.
That can't be good.
Da Bears !
oh, wait...
I keep a C64 emulator around for this gem. You control a probe droid and have to reprogram a ship full of rogue droids. The main task is in a reprogramming contest. The contest is simple, flip switches by sending impulse down circuits. When time runs out, either you've flipped a majority and take control of the droid, or you lsoe and it's Game Over. This is complicated by having a limited number of pulses to fire, and by complications in the circuit diagram. It's pretty basic, but you never have any leisure to plan or study. Some droids you take over can just blast other robots - but your control burns out the droid you're riding in after a certain amount of time, so you can't blast your next ride.
Great game, simple concepts multplied into intense gameplay. It would have been a winner for GB or GB-Color. Paradroid Advance would probably be overdone and overcomplicated. I've beaten the damn thing maybe twice over the course of 15 years of (intermittent) gameplay.
RTFA, Burst barely managed to survive, "shrank to two employees" and then found some lawyers to work on contingency. They had employees, they were developing/marketing products based on their patents. They tried to do a deal with Microsoft and wound up crushed. Now they're suing. Maybe dealing with MS was a bad idea, but it's not supposed to (legally) be suicidal.
Burst.com is the victim here.
Software patents would be a seperate discussion. The topic under discussion here is "Microsoft conceals evidence when sued by the remnants of acompany they had tried to destroy".
You did see the part about 35 weeks worth of evidence withheld from discovery and claimed to have been destroyed ? We'll see this again in a couple of weeks when Microsoft has to show up with the backups that Sun found out they were keeping.