General Chat

Presuming there was a console to play it with - I'd take Phantasy Star III - The Generations of doom on Sega Megadrive. Without a doubt the RPG ive spent most time playing - (above 250hours) and still havent seen all the generations and played through their stories.

Ummmm Thats a tough one! there are so many different games I would want to take!

It's probably a toss up between Guild Wars or Disgea. I'm not as obsessed with Disgea as I am with Guild Wars, but the amount of time you *could* waste on Disgea could probably outwiegh Guild Wars.

I'd really love to get all my characters in Disgea up to level 5000! [:D]

morrowind would last me forever.

hmmm yeah its a tossup between morrowind and Ragnarok Online

Well I'm not sure about this one too...

If World of Warcraft did not exist, I would probably take Donkey Kong Country 2 or 3. Donkey Kong roxors my boxors! Omg wtf am I talking about?!? Damn u WoW!

I still exist by the way, I have just not had time to come to Sumea forums much with Uni and all. But I'm back for a brief amount of time!

Metal Gear 3

Are you people joking???

If I was stranded on a desert island I'd be thinking about which women not which computer game. Boy you people really are into this stuff.

Jagged Alliance 2! That game is like a "toy box" that you can do almost anything in.

Scott.

For PC I?d definitely take Guild Wars; apart from my current addiction to it, I think the game could last me forever. GW has a lot of places to explore and heaps of monsters to kill, though, I tend to stay away from the trolls. [;)]

*cough*

Er, and for PS2 I?d take Gran Turismo 4, as GT is the one game I can easily keep coming back to.

Yep Reznor - I like the cut 'o yer jib.

I'd probably pick something that shipped with a full modding support and docs so I could finally catch up on my game dev :)

HL2+SDK? UT2K4 maybe?

Then I'd just plug my non existent PC into the nearest palm tree and crank out game after game for the trolls monkeys to play.

I would have to say an MMO :) If I were stuck on an island with only a game I'd sure want someone to talk to!

If you had net access, why would you be on the deserted island for 'a long, long time'?

Surely you would call for help, rather then be stuck by yourself with your one game.

One game, hmmmmmm, probably something with a soundtrack i like.

Yes, you're all cheating. No online games. [:D]

for longevity, H.E.R.O on the atari 2600 [:)]

otherwise DOA beach volleyball -- that way I can name the ball Wilson, and togethor we will combine our efforts to escape the island.

But if the island had power and a game console, why not the net? But the PC has a virus that doesn?t let you do anything except play your one game?
GuildWars chat:
?Help, I?m stranded on a deserted island somewhere!?
?WTS firery broadsword?
?No I?m serious, help me!?
?Just map to a town dude..?
?No, in real life, I?m lost on a deserted island. My plane crashed??
?WTS firery broadsword?
?

As for island games;
Lost the game when/if it gets made, because it?s also set on a kooky island where weird things happen like palm trees with power supplies. Or Spy VS Spy for C64. That was also on a deserted island.

*Rubs hands eagerly awaiting Oblivion* :D

Snake Rattle n Roll on the good ole Nintendo 8 bit ( NES )

One of the few games where I still just cant beat the end boss. Drives me nuts.

Perfect Dark, probably. God, I clocked a lot of time into that game when it came out. It took me an eternity to hit level one in multiplayer mode.

lol, i never made level 1, as much as i wanted to i it took so long to raise the latter levels that i kept being distracted by new games and eventually stoped playing it. i was satisfyed though, i'd beaten the entire game in singleplayer (minus a few cheats) and beaten all the challenges in 1player multiplayer (my brothers just wern't good enough to help me with the 2 and 3 player versions).

so come to think of it, if morrowind is the game i would bring becuase it contains the most content to play through, then perfect dark would be the game i would bring because it is the game i could play for the longest time for pure enjoyment.

for My it would have to be Civ2. i must lost hundreds of hours the that game. I hope Civ4 will be better than 3 was.

-Chris

Either Solitaire or Tetris.....You are talking about forever after all....

Nah. TWO player solitaire and i'd train the monkeys on the island to play it. GO my prittys!! GO!!! MWHAHAHAH!!!

I had a preference of either Tetris or Bejewelled 2, and then I realised that I would probably get bored of them probably within a few months. I came to the conclusion that maybe a deck of cards would be better than a game for longevity, and then I remembered this great card game on the Amiga. It had 5 or so variations of Solitaire, and 15 or so other card games that you can play by yourself. The kicker is that you could play all the card games in succession and have your score saved in the highscore table. I seriously killed so much time with that game and trying to beat old scores. There's something about card games like Solitaire that you can play it forever.

Ahh solitare :D
But I dont think I could ever beat my time score on Windows solitare... I nailed it down to 62 seconds in some freak game... I must have been bored back then.

i once had a game where i couldnt do anything - no card could be moved anywhere. gameover before i was able to even begin! kind of exciting to find such a layout actually.

My ignorance leads me to belive that all the stuff that I have seen MTV make (be it those stupid shows on the mtv channel and the movies they have realeased) hold no real artistic and creative flare. So am I now to belive that the games they will be putting out be sub-standard aswell?

I suppose I'm just not an MTV fan. So this is a pretty biased opinion from me. [:p]

quote:be it those stupid shows on the mtv channel

MTV put on air "The Maxx" and for that alone I love them. :)

Pantmonger

Incidently has anyone seen Pootie Tang? Holy shit that movie is hilarious for simply being so bloody awfull, me and a friend were laughing about that one for months. If we get that kind of thing turned out in game form, heaven help us all :|

The Maxx. Score one.
Volcano High. Score two.

The rest, I can ignore in blissful ignorance [:)]

They also gave us Aeon Flux, another cool animation from Liquid television. But if the Xbox debut/Punk'd show and target audience of MTV is of any indication, we'll be getting flashy, loud extreme sports games that require little of your attention span and contain and overuse phrases like "wicked sick" [:D] Anyway, I think MTV Games would be a perfect match for the Xbox 360.

from gamasutra:

"MTV Games, the video game development division of MTV, has teamed up with Myelin Media to create an MTV-branded strategic alliance deal involving the poker title for PlayStation 2, Xbox, PlayStation Portable, and PC, Stacked with Daniel Negreanu. "This unparalleled alliance for Myelin Media?s Stacked with Daniel Negreanu represents a complete evolution in the world of poker and represents another exciting addition to the MTV Games family,? said Jeff Yapp of MTV Networks Music."

awsome! i'm so excited about this game. i mean, it's "a complete evolution in the world of poker", what more could you want!

hmm, hardly and 'exciting addition' if you ask me...

Wow... MTV comes out guns blazing to make poker? now theres an anti climax

What are you talking about? World Poker kicks ass!

Scott.

quote: Anyway, I can play with this all day.

Hahah Souri. You have too much time on your hands! Very cute. [:D]

I can see this growing fast! I'll probably be using this heaps along with whereis.com. Fun!

"ACMI" lat=-37.8175380981, lon=144.969143987

...or thereabouts. :)

This is awesome stuff.

I want a watch that can do this!

Scott.

I wouldn't be surprised if that becomes a reality in a few years. [;)] There's a GPS option blanked out in the menus and selecting it alerts you that it's in the subscribed version of Google Earth. I wonder if they're planning to get street names implemented sometime. That would pretty much make it the ultimate map service.

Mcdrewski, there's a "link to this page" that you can copy or bookmark on there. [;)]

Oh, btw.. [url="http://img238.echo.cx/my.php?image=lollergoogle8fi.jpg"]--> <--[/url]

This program is brilliant, I love it. I wonder how long till they get clearer pictures of different areas. the grand canyon was cool all in 3D, found a lot of famous land marks. I could sit on this for hours

its neat but without australian street names... finding anything but the city center is a little hard for me :P

Heeey, looks good. I've tried the NASA WorldWind program (saw it in the Green Guide), but the resolution at a street level was a little disappointing. I'll be sure to give this a go, too :D

"area 51" was interesting to find. Big shiny thing in the middle of nevada desert with a few airfield strips and quite a few enclosed hangar/building combos [:)]

Joel you Delver-of-secretive-things! That was one of the first searches I did too haha! [:D]

You know what would be pretty cool? If we had a list of co-ordinates for all the developer companies and places of interest related to game development/conferences in Australia. Make some fancy page for it 'n stuff. [:0]

Oh, and next time you're on Google Earth, check out the Grand Canyon. It's in accurate 3D [:0]

I'm not sure that a lot of companies want their physical locations diclosed - after all, many of them use PO Boxes etc for exactly that reason.

yeah i saw this a few weeks ago.. is so mutch fun if only i had fast connection it would be even better.. my frend was showing me some evil pentagram thing in area 51 that looks bad..realy bad..like somthing out of doom

the evil hexagram ...oww ots freaking me out just looking at it
http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/b/f/bfs124/area%2051%20Pictures/pages…

Geez thats cool.

That would be great for teaching geography I would imagine since the interactive nature is simple.

Mick Gordon
Lead Audio Engineer
Lava Injection Studios
www.lavainjection.com

quote:Originally posted by adie

my frend was showing me some evil pentagram thing in area 51 that looks bad..realy bad..like somthing out of doom

and

the evil hexagram ...oww ots freaking me out just looking at it

Evil pentagram or Children-of-Israel Hexagram, take yer pick. Looks more to me like a radar/radio telescope emplacement, but maybe that's just the mind control rays again.

Grumble... Google run just about entirely on GNU/Linux and they release windoze-only software [:(] Looks neat, but I can't be bothered rebooting.

whats buggin me is when i zoom in on some areas and typically itll sharpen things as i zoom in which is good but on the odd occasion it just dosent, and it assure me its loaded 100%. grrrrr
EDIT: shoulda realised that they wouldnt have high resolution for everywhere in the world, that 100% loading is correct. But theres not even high resolution for the whole of the melbourne CBD!

oh and
quote:Originally posted by mcdrewski

I'm not sure that a lot of companies want their physical locations diclosed - after all, many of them use PO Boxes etc for exactly that reason.

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/MoonUnit/20057145852_midway.jpg[…]
seems some dont get a choice

quote:Hazard: Joel you Delver-of-secretive-things! That was one of the first searches I did too haha!

Really? I was sitting here covered in mayonnaise, stalking you Troy....hehe.......errr........... :|

LOL - you bugged our place, thats what all those extra tiny black holes are in the walls here.... cameras!
I always knew you where some kind of secret operative [:O]

If you want to perve on Area 51, this site has all the binoculars, trench coats and moustach glasses you need for a good look.

http://www.dreamlandresort.com/

My friend said he foudn nurburgring... gonna go see if i can find it. It's in germany somewhere :P

Despite my earlier reservations, I realised that anyone in the white pages would have their address mapped anyway.

So, I took the sumea 'developers' list, and looked up the businesses in the white pages online. Anyone who's not easily found in the white pages (Kalescent, Team Bondi, many others) are not in here. I have kept the locations the same as the white pages gives me, even where it highlights the street only, and even where I personally know better and could pinpoint the office door exactly if I wanted.

PM or email me if you want to be added, removed, or details modified. I'll only feel happy adding MORE details about a company where someone from that company emails me :)

Oh, and anyone who wants to make icons for all the companies can feel free to send 'em through also.

[url]http://www.meeze.com/dpm/AusGameIndustry.kml[/url]
(also works great if you create a 'new network link' to this URL - then you'll magically get any corrections I make!)

PS: I mainly did this to prove that Brisbane is the epicentre of Australian gamedev :)

edit: changed to .kml file so it can be added as a network link.

Aww now I want Pizza :(
Mmmm Barbeque Chicken!

Good deal though! I'd get Sims 2 cause it's got cool charcater customization in it. [:D] But I don't think Troy would be pleased, as he doesn't like the Sims [:p]

Gah, my mum just bought The Sims 2 for my sister. :/

Rensa: as long as you didnt have to fork out some money

I wonder how much of Sims 2 would they have left compared to the other 2 games

I think youll find sims 2 the first one to empty of those 3.

Got them all but Sims 2. I will never waste money on the sims again though, I can enjoy it for a little while (overnight) but the concept is too similar through the whole series and it just becomes as stale as the first one. The first one I played for like two months before becoming bored.

Good deal... shame about the pizzas.

I would have to agree with you there hyperswivel.

Im gonna grab Vietnam. Hey, im not paying, free decent game + pizza :D.

I used to love pizza until one of my friends became store manager of a Pizza Hut once. We used to go there late at night and make our own pizzas, ALL THE TIME. I used to put like 5 times the amount of toppings on mine (it was still cold in the centre when it came out of the oven). Anyway, when you have pizzas like that a hundred times, you get sick of it pretty quick.

Seems like a pretty nice selection of games.

i really want to play it, but need a decent computer to play it :(

I play it and so does Troy (on occasions after work)
My character is lvl 20 :D PVP is awesome and I really like the game
it does get a bit repetitive after a while if you just go exploring for hours on end trying to find that elusive skill trainer. (like I do)
Kind of reminds me of NWN...

I absolutely love Guild Wars ATM. Totally obsessed. I?ve got a lvl 20 Ranger/Monk and just started a Mesmer/Elementalist which is lvl 12. The games certainly great value for money ? I?ve played around 120 hours total so far, still have much more to do, and all for $70!

Anux is right though, it does get repetitive towards the higher lvl?s when you?ve been everywhere, and just spend your time looking for the elite skills or best armour/weapons. Though there is always the Underworld to take on. Anyone done that? By far the toughest part of the game. Constant level 28 mobs of undead ? but the drops are incredible.

Without a doubt the best thing about GW is the social factor. Being in a good guild or a good group is paramount to having a good time in-game.

Unfortunately my small guild is falling apart, which is making the game pretty depressing to play ? always on my own looking for other players. So I?m looking for a good guild to join, preferable an Aussie one so there are others online the same time as me.

And I?m already looking forward to the expansion packs!

BTW, if anyone want?s to team up for some questing sometime, give me a whisper in-game (or PM me here). My current characters names are: Nici Acebridge, and Loth Lil Lidian.

try start up a Sumea guild there seems to be a few here who are playing, if I had it I would, I really want to play GW but without a decent computer there goes that idea

Guild Wars, while having high-res options, doesn?t demand high power like EQ2 or most other current gen games do.

Minimum requirements to run Guild Wars: Pentium 3 - 800 Mhz or equivalent, 256 MB RAM, Radeon 8500 or GeForce 3 or 4 MX with 32 MB VRAM, CD-ROM, 2GB HD space, sound card, internet connection, keyboard, mouse.

These days you could just about get that for less then the game itself costs. [:)]

I suppose the low specs and the free online play are the main reasons it's doing so well?

Well I play with a friend of mine, it was alright until we got to the "second level" of the game, and now we need 2 more people to play with :-)

I was thinking of starting my own guild, but I guess if you found the right Australian guild I'd be tempted to join.

So far I've only got a level 10 Warrior/Mesmer, and started about a level 5 Elementalist/Monk, I've only really played it for a few days so far.

Daemin - HOoooooo just you wait until you get a wee bit further on [:D]

Kalescent Studios has a guild - with a whopping 4 members, Warrior / Necro Lvl 20 , Elementalist / Ranger lvl 20 , Necro / Mesmer lvl 18 and a Monk / Elementalist lvl 11 ) and nearly got a guild hall [:)]

I was this close --> <-- to purchasing Guild Wars, but I've just ordered Battlefield 2. I think a game like Guild Wars would be bad for me. [:(]

HazarD: Just wondering, can you unjoin a guild, or is joining a guild permanent? It would be interesting trying it out with you guys. How about a game sometime this weekend then?

Daemin: The guild leader can boot people if they want to be booted. Im not sure if you can unjoin yourself though ??? re the game this weekend - sure thing although not sunday because we will be out at the IGDA, pm me with your character name and I'll add you to our friends list and meet up with you online [:D]

quote:I think a game like Guild Wars would be bad for me

Games are never bad Souri! Especially Guild Wars![:D] If you buy the game you will have so much fun!

*chants* Buy the game! Buy the game! [}:)]

Cool! Make sure your in the 2nd part of the game though, we cant team up with you if your in pre-searing ascalon.
I cant wait to do all those 1st quests again. I might use my 2nd character on those missions. Shes a mesmer / Elementalist lvl8
If I use my lvl 20 elementalist/ ranger she will be doing those 400 point hits, no fun!

I?ve had my eye on [url="http://www.anzgw.com/"]The Australian New Zealand Guild Wars Community[/url]. Looks like a pretty cool local guild. It's sort of a shame you can't join more then one guild at once, though I suppose it makes sense.

Yeah, we should have a Sumea Guild Wars meet up sometime. [:D]

Souri ? oh man, your missing some great RPGing! Even though it?s addictive (like all good games should be), it?s true that it?s possible to play in small doses and still have fun. It?s just that the more you play, the better it gets?

I now play it after work and before bed for a few hours each night, a quest or two, sometimes none. It's all good :-)

And yeah, I'll message you HazarD with the details.

[8)]24/7 At just trying to get beter,and im not sure what sleep is now its been far to long. Do MODs count?

here you go

http://www.off-limits.be/

i've stoped spare time work since i finsihed qantm and starte work. might pick it back up again in the future, but at the moment i'm enjoying actually having spare time at all!

I wanted to start something, but I guess I should finish the design document 1st

I haven't really sat down and developed anything outside of work at the moment. I have several ideas for interesting applications, and several more for interesting games, but so far all of my programmer effort is drained away at work. I play games and actually *gasp* have a life outside of work now.

3dArty: Of Course! Perhaps a link to the mod your working on would be good. And wheres all this progress youve been making ? show show show.

Livewire: Piker [:P]

Antsz: Get cracking on that design - only needs to be a rough at first! Just download that info from your mind onto good old fashioned paper.

Daemin: Blasphemer! Life and games doesnt work! [:P] . Actually I believe its really important to do and see not what the internet shows you but experience it for ones self. Good on you dude thumbs up. Did you ever think about dedicating an hour or 2 per day toward a serious hobby project though in hope of making your mark ?

Is the situation as follows ?

Has a saturation of proposals promising whizbang bling and fandangled code hoo-hah that are *never* delivered by these mashed together teams of inexperienced individuals - quenched the passion that any of us used to have as garage game developers ?
Or is it a pure lack of the ability to build a good team and with that team, work on a project that is financially feasible and challenging ?

Purely Curious for thoughts [:)]

For me (a programmer), any many of the people I know (who are also programmers), after starting work your private coding just stops. At the begining I coded all the time but it dropped off quickly. And after seeing a game right to the end, I haven't coded for more than a few hours in me 3 week holiday. I don't think it's that coding isn't fun anymore.. I'm not sure what. Maybe it's that you feel you've done something important and rewarding, and then you can spend time doing something as a reward for your hard work :).

ive had an idea for a design floating around in my ead for some time now, and i would like to write it all down and develop it, so i'l probably do that once i]ve had enough of free time. though i dont have much free time during the week, i dont get home from work until 7pm, and i usually play games then :) maybe i could do some work then....

Well even though I'm not programming a game at work, the actual thing that the company is doing is fairly exciting and there are a lot of problems, issues, ideas, and designs to sort out. I guess all of my design and problem-solving energies are used up at work.

HazarD: I just don't know if I would be able to find the time to code in my week, that would require some time on the weekends or something when I want to relax and prepare for the next working week.

HazarD: Last night I started on my introduction story about 3 pages of it, so im goin to spend 1 - 2 hours a week on my design document, im actually enjoying it.

I'm currently working on some small stuff at home (VERY simple).

Right now I'm tooling with an RPGesque combat system which I'm trialling in Python (which stops me from getting distracted by the urge to draw things). Great for running simulations. I plan to use this in one way or another in the future.

I think this is an interesting topic Hazard. I might bring it up this weekend. :)

Scott.

I'm reminded of when I used to work full time as a web designer and web developer, after working all day at the computer and coming home, the last thing on my mind was to turn on the computer and do more of the same at home (but I did anyway for Sumea). You just gotta keep motivated and have a goal that's worth striving for I guess.

I have a master plan full of whizbang bling and fandangled code hoo-hah.... and a small bit of -heh as well :)

prototyping in python eh? that sounds like a cool idea :P

usually get 10 to 20 hours a week of code done on my own stuff, currently playing around with code architecture and a comand prompt.

amazing how much spare time you have when you don't own a TV

The way some people complain about a lack of spare time in between their full-time jobs, I'm very much tempted, after uni, to just continue working part-time and coding or doing whatever pleases me in between. If a student can live off a part-time job, why can't... uh, other people? I have no intention of investing anything house-sized any time in the next decade or so. [:D]

Wait, there must be a catch - it couldn't possibly be that simple. *wanders off to mull over the problem*

Rensa: I have to agree with you on that one - I excersize daily, prepare food and eat healthily, work 12 - 14 hours a day 6 ( sometimes 7 )days a week, roughly 7 - 8 hours sleep every night. And even I have spare time to work on side projects outside of work and maintain a social life. Im also thinking of taking on a martial art or sport in the next year - it *is* that simple for me [:P]

Im thinking on doin some Aikido at the police citizen youth club for $7 a lesson, also trying to look for a basketball club

i've done next to no excercise in the past two and a bit years. too much time concentrating on study, but i'm getting back into basketball again soon (used to play lots, played rep and refereed - but it's been about 3 to 4 years since i stoped). me and a mate who also used to play are filling in for my brother's theam this tuesday - should be interesting [:)]. if i last 10 mins i'll be surprised. but now that i have free-time it's about time i got it again!

hehe. prepare yourself for a very sore wednesday livewire :).

I put competitive sport to the side during Qantm aswell. It really puts you out of the loop, I don't see myself playing cricket as high a level as i would've before i found art. piss up teams are more fun ayway :).

My spare time work, I try to stay away from the screen as much as possible. This doesn't mean i still cant work on skills though, starting to go to life drawing classes, sketchbooking, playing with sculpey is great fun to.

It's not the time that's tough to find, it's the motivation. After a 15 hour day you're suitably meh about everything.

If you're working on something pretty cool though, it can be easy to get over the "meh" hump.

About the only thing I don't have time to do at the moment is find time to go and get a haircut! Damn hairdressers closing before 10 every night. :P

Scott.

Having graduated uni, I've been working on a project till my visa
is processed. So far it does BSP occlusion, collision detection,
basic texturing and I'm currently integrating animation. It's written
in C++, as was my final year project- a 'reduced complexity
graphic rendering language'. Hopefully the two projects combined
will be enough to get my foot in the entry level door of a games
company. Apart from this I enjoy sleeping and annoying people
on them internets, as you can see by my tasteful green font. [}:)]

rezn0r: What kind of cool projects would you be interested in working on ?

quote:Originally posted by HazarD

Rensa: I have to agree with you on that one - I excersize daily, prepare food and eat healthily, work 12 - 14 hours a day 6 ( sometimes 7 )days a week, roughly 7 - 8 hours sleep every night. And even I have spare time to work on side projects outside of work and maintain a social life. Im also thinking of taking on a martial art or sport in the next year - it *is* that simple for me [:P]

ok, going off an average there, adding 20-30 mins for preparation of food, and another 30 mins for exercise, you have a grand total of 1.5 hours free time, not including time to get between things (travel, getting into and putting stuff away, etc)

you my friend are one crazy busy person [:D]

Rensa: it gets a little more complicated outside of school once you realise you want a better general quality of life. That goes from treating yourself to a coffee or 5 at your local cafe, to not having to worry about the 75c differance between canned and fresh foods at the supermarket [;)]

Not saying that someone can't live comfortably within their means, but life certainly does have a way of leading you into interesting situations which make you change your desires and perspective on things. Relationships, maturity, developing tastes, self worth, greed... all the fun stuff [:D]

J.I : Yeah at times ill admit its a bit much - but I seriously wouldnt have it any other way. Being constantly challenged and active has its disadvantages - but they are far outwieghed by the sense of achievement I get from it I guess. I/We have regular holidays though - usually after and before each big contract to keep everyone fresh.

Couldnt agree with you more on the leaving school bit [:P]

quote: I excersize daily, prepare food and eat healthily, work 12 - 14 hours a day 6 ( sometimes 7 )days a week, roughly 7 - 8 hours sleep every night

Don't forget the couple of hours you spend playing games each night :)

And it doesnt take you very long to cut an onion!!!

Currently attempting to work on another demo, I was working with a guy overseas on a promising project that he was talking to a publisher about who he had previously had published a game with. But as I have found with nearly EVERY internet project, there was change after change after change to the actual game, so frustration has gotten the better of me and I have put it off till they decide what they want to do.
While on the subject anyone got stories like this of promising games getting nowhere with overseas internet teams? Is there a way to actually get involved with a small one or two man team to get a demo actually finished via the net?

Sam

garh! been listening GDC audio files at work and they've been inspiring me to start on my design. problem is i still havnt begun the texture for my sumea comp entry! as much as i want to finish the entry, i also want to get stuck into the design! why must i be forced to prioritize!

quote:J.I : Yeah at times ill admit its a bit much - but I seriously wouldnt have it any other way. Being constantly challenged and active has its disadvantages - but they are far outwieghed by the sense of achievement I get from it I guess. I/We have regular holidays though - usually after and before each big contract to keep everyone fresh.

I'm the same animal. I always need something to fight and I'm not really happy unless everything around me is in turmoil. [:P] I find that the more you do, the more you can do. When you have limited time, you're forced to look at what you CAN do. It makes me a better person.

quote:rezn0r: What kind of cool projects would you be interested in working on ?

I'm very interested in many aspects of development.

I'm working in a large team at the moment which is giving me a better understanding of the process as a whole. In this kind of team, my ideal project would be an RPG (Bioware). This would be "cool" for me because I love the idea of providing a framework for users to "make their own legend" in your universe. My modus operandi is to make games in which the user can make their own meta games.

That said, I started as an indie and will always have a soft spot for it. In regards to indie games I'd like to pump out a bunch of "deceptively" small games, maybe as simplistic as [url]http://www.dopewars.com[/url]... tiny things that investigate risk vs reward in simplest terms (numeric). As simple as these stupid little games are, they can be more compelling than Tetris at times. This would make an awesome 48 hour programmer challenge if you ask me.

quote:While on the subject anyone got stories like this of promising games getting nowhere with overseas internet teams? Is there a way to actually get involved with a small one or two man team to get a demo actually finished via the net?

Very hard to do right. You should start a thread on this interesting topic and see if some of the old hands can offer their wisdom. Check out [url]http://www.joelonsoftware.com/[/url] from which you can glean some great tips.

Scott.

quote:Originally posted by Rensa

The way some people complain about a lack of spare time in between their full-time jobs, I'm very much tempted, after uni, to just continue working part-time and coding or doing whatever pleases me in between. If a student can live off a part-time job, why can't... uh, other people? I have no intention of investing anything house-sized any time in the next decade or so. [:D]

Wait, there must be a catch - it couldn't possibly be that simple. *wanders off to mull over the problem*

There is a catch, once you're not a full-time student anymore you lose all of those student discounts and prices, thus everything becomes oh-so more expensive. Plus what J.I. Styles said counts too, thought its lessened if you still live at home.

quote:Originally posted by Rensa

The way some people complain about a lack of spare time in between their full-time jobs, I'm very much tempted, after uni, to just continue working part-time and coding or doing whatever pleases me in between. If a student can live off a part-time job, why can't... uh, other people? I have no intention of investing anything house-sized any time in the next decade or so. [:D]

Wait, there must be a catch - it couldn't possibly be that simple. *wanders off to mull over the problem*

It IS do-able, but not too easy. Research postgraduates don't get any concessions or government support (though we don't have to pay any fees either), and mostly we work part-time. You do need a higher paying job that the sorts of things that undergraduate students tend to go for though.

My Computer cant run the demo, so I envy those whose computers can run it. gonna have to upgrade

Ive also been playing this like crazy and yeah its really awesome, im definetly getting a copy once it comes out now (somehow... still dont know how im going to fund that exactly). If you do get on a server where you people take advantage of the whole commander and squads setup it makes for some really cool gameplay. Ive been trying to have a go at everything, from spending entire games completely focused on the minimap as a commander (using voice chat and the commanders superior satelite to tell people where snipers are and then watch them creep up from behind and take them out was a particulary cool moment) to running around as a un assigned medic (shock paddles are really neat) and its all been great fun. The only gripes ive really faced are with.... well untactical players lets call them. the kind that do sit around at heli pads to spawn camp a whirlybird to go and crash it into the sea 20 seconds later or that dont follow orders etc. but theres only so much that the game itself can do to prevent that kind of behaviour, allthough the choice to punish or forgive a team killer, leave squads at will and create a mutiny upon your commander do help. Oh and the server browser is pretty darn awfull right now. There can be massive delays for simply scrolling (as souri said) and the server order buttons dont actually seem to do anything, or perhaps im just pressing the wrong things :S

so much rantage :P im gonna go back to playing now

Battlefield 2 MP Demo
*********************

Battlefield 2 Multiplayer Demo is Out ! Download it now ..
BF2 Mp Demo is battlefield2demo.exe 572.8mb (572,848,791 bytes)

Download Link's for BF2 MP Demo (Australian Traffic ) :

Internode Free Traffic Link :- http://games.internode.on.net/ or
http://games.internode.on.net/?page=filelist&filedetails=1461

iiNET Free Traffc Link :- ftp://ftp.iinet.net.au/games/demos/battlefield2demo.exe

Pipe Free Traffic Link :- http://3dgamers.planetmirror.com/pub/3dgamers/games/battlefield2/battle…

Bigpond Free Traffic Link :- http://www.gamearena.com.au/files/details/html/17047

Waix Free Traffic Link :- http://bur.st/~goodlet/battlefield2demo.exe
http://www.waix.net/~karjan/battlefield2demo.exe

Netspace Free Traffic Link:- http://files.gamespace.net.au/?sb_page=&sec=file&action=display&file_id…

Gaming SA - http://gamingsa.filearena.net/files/demos/Battlefield_2_Demo_GC.zip

Ausgamers (adds to quota traffic) :-
http://www.ausgamers.com/files/download/html/17047

Download Link's for BF2 MP Demo (Overseas Traffic ) :

ftp://largedownloads.ea.com/pub/demos/battlefield2demo.exe ( EA Games FTP)
http://www.gamespot.com/promos/bf2demo.html (gamespot Mirror)
http://www.3dgamers.com/dlselect/games/battlefield2/battlefield2demo.ex…
http://www.pcgameworld.com/details.php/id/5990/

System Requirements ( BF Demo)

* Windows XP (32-bit) with Admin rights
* 1.7 GHz Pentium 4 / Athlon XP or greater
* 512 MB or more
* 460MB of HD Space
* DirectX 9.0c compatible (*video)
* DirectX 9.0c compatible (sound)

Video card must have 128 MB or more memory and one of the following chipsets:

* NVIDIA GeForce FX 5700 or greater
* ATI Radeon 8500 or greater

those screens look sweet, man I want it so much, its gonna relive those BF1942 Demo days for me

OMG I wanna play it! *downloads demo to play after work*

*sigh* my computer can play it, but not that well!

I'm running things on medium on my machine, so the textures aren't as sharp as those screenshots, but it's still runs pretty good (my machine is just above the minimum specs). I'm totally digging the special ops class. The C4 is awesome. You can blow up tanks with just two of them (I prefer taking them out this way than the anti-tank class), or leave them on runways and blow up planes and other unsuspecting targets. I've done this lots of times at the MEC base and it's hilarious. Sometimes I'll just hang around the helicopter spawn and lug 2 C4's on them and hiding behind the wall. Some guys will jump in and fly off, and I detonate. [:D]

You can place them around your base and when you see your flag go neutral, you blow it up, and you can do this from anywhere on the map. I'm usually the one blowing up the artillery - although I've started to notice that Commanders are repairing their own artillery by dropping supplies near them (supplies heal and repair everything close by).

I usually play on the GameArena servers (the 64 player ones), and they had the unlimited time hack going which provided some really cool games. Unfortunately EA are starting to delist servers doing that, so GameArena have put back the 12 minute limit (boo!).

I don't think I've really experienced some of the crazyness that goes on in that game anywhere before, with planes and heli's duking it out above you, artillery support coming in blurring up the screen, while you're frantically trying to fend off some enemy troops with a tonne of teammates.

Oh, I've had a go at Commander 4 times now, and that mode always crashes the game after a while :/

My computer could easily handle the game, however my dialup connection can not!

Cmon telstra I want my broadband availability already!!! I'm getting left behind!

I've played this game a bit lately, and my initial impressions were quite high, but they're dropped off a fair bit.

Personally, I think that there should only be transport-oriented vehicles in the game (BlackHawk, APC, boats etc). IMHO, it would make the game far more interesting, as you'd have to rely on half-decent troop coordination.

I just got tired of round after round of players taking battle tanks and sitting just outside of spawn points, shooting those who have just spawned.

Similarly, having people taking the fighter jets, and dropping a salvo of bombs, killing five or six people in one salvo.

In fact, I think the game would take on another level if there were only transport vehicles and their control was dictated by the commander (of course, such a complex role would likely require at least two commanding roles). There are a myriad of reasons why I that this system would alleviate a number of problems present in BF2, but that's another rant for another day.

- a

Yeh, there's a fair bit of spawn killing with srtillery, jet bombing, and with vehicles like you mentioned. It would be nice if you could get a 2 second unvulnerability, because you're fodder as soon as you spawn. Or maybe make the spawn points slightly away from the flags and undercover.

People have gone pretty darn good at bombing from jets. You can watch them circle around and around spawn points and dropping their load, picking up massive kills.

playd the game the other day at a small lan (16 people). lots of fun, much better than BF1 - a lot of gameplay improvements. i still dont like aircraft, mainly because most people tend to jump in them and fly around shoting eachother rather than trying to complete the objectives or have any sense of team tactics. i still want to play in a good team game. in that respect i liked the smal map best - no aircraft and a very small combat area, meaning you were constantly in the think of the action, and the commander role was much more efective in this situation. so you certainly need enough people before you play a large map.

overall a good game, though not much new added other than the squads and commander, even the visuas dont look that great (they looked better in the screens and videos). almost the same as BF1 really.

so most of the game is just improvements on the existing game, it's a good game, but it's more of an upgrade than a sequal, classic EA sequal in other words.

It's not Battlefield 2, it's Battlefield 2005.

If only they had ditched the capture and hold random flag game mode. That was the big thing I really didn't like about Battlefield 1942/Desert Storm. If they had the link set up like Unreal Tournament 2004 so battles are more concentrated then this game would be much better. Throw in some critical map objectives and then it would be perfect!!

Argh i sware the actual game in the package that is B2 rules but everything around it stinks. The server browser, the accounts system etc.

The reason i bring this up now is because at the moment, i can't play. When attempting to login to my multiplayer account i either get a "server refused the connection" or a "database error" message (the second being way more common). Creating a new account isn't possible either, the same error messages appear. Brilliant...

*cough* play guildwars instead *cough*

Yeh, I had that problem last night. Seems like their central database server was down.

On a related issue about the server browser... quote:First of all, if you've played the demo, and there's something that irks you about it, then I regret to inform you that the retail game currently has the same problem ? there appears to be no difference between them (apart, obviously from all the extra maps, etc, in the full game).

Top of the irk list is the in-game multiplayer server browser, which lets you find servers running BF2 games and connect to them. To be brutally honest, this is a thing of horror which will repeatedly frustrate your efforts to connect to game servers. It's so bad that I wish I could turn it off. It's probably best to write down the IP addresses of a few favourite servers and type them in manually.

From [url="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=24079"]The Inquirer review[/url]. Typing down the IP is what I have resorted to as well since the server browser is so useless. [:(]

Yeah, the games is awesone, espeically when you are on a squad with people who actually know how to play the game. The server browser does stink though, the "no full games" filter does not work at all. I wish they would have some sort of post game messaging system between map rotations also.

Ever since I've installed that patch, the game has become unplayable. [:(] Long pauses during the game, or short pauses that go on for 15 times in a row. I usually end up dead after that.

apparently servers are being instructed to roll back the patch, consequently consumers basicaly need to reinstall

I finally bought it, the 1.02 patch makes it all good. I was also introduced to xfire, a very useful game messaging client.

[url="http://profile.xfire.com/redwyre"][img]http://miniprofile.xfire.com/bg/co/type/0/redwyre.png[/img][/url]

hey - i may be able to help out. i'm in aspendale.
a bit more info if you could? Like, how much time you'd be expecting, what time of day... etc :)

Getting a student or someone to help you out is probably a great way to get the basics down but there are hundreds of free tutorials on the net for beginners too. I'm looking at getting into game design myself next year nad over the last 6 months I've taught myself 3D Max and maya basics from free tutorials I've found around the net. Just another option for you :)

sure i like to make games for fun. Not that big a fan of the droid-like, manufacturing line poser figures which these seem to be though. perhaps not idea art resources for a non time intesive development 'free' game, but that may be just me.

those characters arent really anything special - the clothes and atire look ok but still the skin and a human face is nowhere near the level of everything else. Just low polygon with a meshsmooth whacked on 2 iterations. Id much prefer seeing a 20k + hand modelled and nicely textured photoreal character than these - thats just a blatant waste of resources.

That being said - I cannot wait for the day that we are seeing characters beyond the WOW intro as ingame characters.

So I'm getting the feeling that no one thinks its ok to replace graphic artists with product but that its ok to replace programmers with engines?

Would it shock anyone to know that figures this heavy 100,000 polys can be animated at 30+ fps on pretty low spec hardware - we?re doing it with 3 of them at once with smooth (our own efficient geometry blending) limitless animation (thousands of different frames) and a 500,000 poly background scene all on as little as NVidia 5200?s in an interactive games environment. If engines can't do that then they are holding you back ? same as not using assembly line models eh?

Engines will always be behind the game - yes they may promote some consistency but at what cost - creativity, efficiency and innovation!

If anyone including you JT want to have smooth limitless animation done on your high poly models with detailed textures, then get a great programmer (me or one or two others in the world maybe) let me know - 20k poly models are a snack - would a dozen in one scene with limitless animation be enough? After all its about staying ahead of the game not using an engine to keep up with it?

Otherwise use a games engine and throw in some assembly line models and you've got it the future of Indie and the games production world! CAPITALISM - THE CRAPIEST PRODUCT AT THE CHEAPEST PRICE (I think I'm going to trademark that for my Commerce Thesis)!

Ha Ha! (Maybe I should make this my signature?)

i'm a bit confused after reading your posts (it might just be because i'm tired). exactly which game developers use poser models in games? (i imagine these are poser characters). In my opinion it doesn't matter how many polys are available to an artist, what counts is how efficiently they are used. I agree with what Hazard said, and go as far as saying that i've seen a lot of 1500 poly models with top notch textures look far better than the 100,000 poly character you posted. once again though, i'm a bit lost trying to understand your point.

Just to reiterate my point - Im not really refering to the polycounts at all - more quality and an efficient use of teh resources available. If you offered me 100k polys and multiple 8192 textures + 6 weeks per character - Id gladly use every day, every polygon, and all that texture space with the utmost glee.

But if you think youve got what it takes to create a succesful and possibly commercially viable engine with which developers could use to make games with artwork like that - then by all means unleash this creation upon the world. I for one would love nothing more than to have such an unrestricted environment.

Back to the point though - what I was meaning to begin with was the fact that simply plonking a poser like character into any game is not paticularly beneficial to your game or game engine. You could probably make 4 characters look just as flawless and use a crapload less memory than just that average looking piece.

With regards to your experiment, Im sure once you get a cohesive game environment running, with lets say 5 - 10 of those characters running around with AI / Collision / Physics / Particle Effects / Occlusion / Shadows / Lighting / Sound and not to mention - being relatively bug free, Im pretty sure youll suffer from some nice performance hits.

On the other hand should you be feverishly working away on the engine as i type, and you suceed, then im sure in a short amount of time you could be a very rich person.

Kalescent Studios own model viewer tool has the capability to run animated characters with millions of polygons on screen as well, which we use for displaying our assets to clients - all the fandangled lighting / normal maps the whole works. But thats because its a raw rendering engine - quite different from a game engine - which im sure yours is also.

But like I mentioned above - feel free to dazzle.

P.s I wouldnt replace a programmer with an engine. Maybe if i was smart, had very little money - I would purchase a cheap already created engine, and then pay a programmer to build on it to a point where its suitable for what we as a team decide to build for our game. If I was in such a position I would do exactly the same for the art.

If I take on a game project, careful planning of the use of available resources is the ultimate priority. Nothing comes before that. And my team is my number 1 resource - they come first.

quote:If anyone including you JT want to have smooth limitless animation done on your high poly models with detailed textures, then get a great programmer (me or one or two others in the world maybe) let me know - 20k poly models are a snack - would a dozen in one scene with limitless animation be enough? After all its about staying ahead of the game not using an engine to keep up with it?

With a paragraph like this I would guess that our friend ?poser? is not so much interested in fostering a discussion but is more interested in making an ill educated statement about games manufacture / politics and blowing his own horn.

quote:
Would it shock anyone to know that figures this heavy 100,000 polys can be animated at 30+ fps on pretty low spec hardware

No it would not, but in a game you want to factor into that: environments, physics, sound, interaction code, lighting, player control and feedback , updating huds etc etc. That changes things somewhat.

Just because we operate under a capitalistic society does not mean. quote:
CAPITALISM - THE CRAPIEST PRODUCT AT THE CHEAPEST PRICE
Competition eliminates this unless you believe there is across the board price fixing and product limiting going on. If one company could make basic hardware show supa high poly models without it effecting gameplay in a negative way, they would do it to get one up on the competition and thus take a greater part of the game dollar.

As for your comment of quote: then get a great programmer (me or one or two others in the world maybe)
I will close my response by saying, ?get your hand off it mate.?

Pantmonger

Sorry Poser, it's a bit hard to follow you when you're jumping around many different points...
quote:"just pointing out that a lot of wealth is created for a country and a lot of innovation and risk taking comes from people not working 9-5 jobs. Pity we've got this droid-like, manufacturing line society now days?"

If you're meaning the take-less-risk / churn-out-another-sequel nature of the industry then I agree.

quote:Anyway, what does everyone think of doing games with 100,000 poly figures such as the ones attached?

Like what's been said, they look like poser models, and don't look very inspiring from a design point of view. I don't think we'll be seeing 100,000 polygon figures in game any time soon when a normal mapped 10,000-20,000 polygon model will just do fine. Save those cpu cycles for AI, eh! [;)]

quote:So I'm getting the feeling that no one thinks its ok to replace graphic artists with product but that its ok to replace programmers with engines?

It's much harder to make the visuals of the game coherent if you're buying off-the-shelf models and content from different sources, especially if your game is adhering to a particular style. I would say that the models would have to be extremely generic or real world (e.g car models) for this option work, and I don't see any problem with cost saving ways like this really.

Engines, if the cost of developing a new engine completely dwarfs the cost of licensing one (and the difference in return is negligable), why wouldn't you go with the cost effective option? It'll save time too.

Artists of the world unite!

Seriously, though do any of you people actually want to do a game indie? If you're models are so great I'd love to use them!

Dude.

Scott.

Do not feed the troll...

http://members.aol.com/intwg/trolls.htm

Geez, you people are all talk you really don't want to do anything do you? When's the next Star Trek convention?

yes a good read. cant say i agree with everything in there though, like the views on imersion, i think that's a definition as hard to pin down as 'gameplay'.

funny though.

I agree and disagree with this guy, Its just another rant.

IMO If you want to pipe up / moan and groan - then have a go, get into the industry and start making a change. 99% of the population can crit - less than .01% of the population are in a position to ever make a game that even began to touch on some of the ideas he talks of ( which are good ideas but simply recycled from many, many rants )

The reason why is money. Nice graphcis sells - and if you market right, you might have a chance of selling huge, regardless of whether the gameplay is great. Thats it plain and simple - for the time being.

The only people who could change this are the big guys, without a shitload of marketing, the small guy creates a fantastic and revolutionary gameplay design - and it makes him enough money to retire without even a fraction of the world knowing about it.

There are gamers that arent out there for the graphics sure - but I for one am an artist. I want to realise my dwarfs, demons and dragons in flawless polygon and sharp textured glory. Its not my job to be working gameplay & AI - I just cripple engines with phat bling.

I shouldnt think like that - but ive come to realise without money its 10,000 times harder to get your revolutionary idea built and on the shelves.

Having a rant might gather some followers, but whats the point if you dont have the funds to pay them to make something better?
Tell your followers one day " Okay now for this great cause we are all going to work together and change this for greater good! Please work with me to create an idea that changes games as we know them - i need 18 - 24 months of your time minimum and please tithe at the door on your way in every morning. " - watch the followers disperse.

Guarantee as soon as they are finished rioting they will still purchase Half Life 3 anyway - we are gamers at the end of the day arent we..... arent we ?

Weve been around to experience a fair few games now - but what about the 7 - 8 year olds that are playing with there first Ninti DS / Gameboy SP in a few years they might have there first PC and a copy of Half Life 3. WOW they are immersed in a new frantastic world. Do they give a crap about our views ? Not likely - its all new to them - give them... say... 10-15 years of exposure to the cycle and they might too be literate enough to post a rant of their own!

Another nail hit square on Hazard!

I read that article too, a few days ago now, and I had a very similar response to it.

My hope is that some people that read it get off their asses and make games that they like to play. Smaller groups making games they like to play will probably lead to more diverse gameplay types, and probably more immersive. So in other words go Indie's!

With that said I hope that one of these days I can actually start on one of the ideas that's been boiling around in my head for some time now.

This is more entertaining than it is thought provolking. It's almost game standup.

Most of the points raised are either valid but only relate to specific games (sports, FPS or platformers), not directly related to games at all (#3) or just tend to ramble instead of clearly identifying a problem.

quote:"Hey! Fix the problems with the most popular genres! But don't bother because you shouldn't be making games in those genres! Make something new! Oh, and don't make licenced games, because ALL licensed games are $55 turds." etc, etc.

Over at www.gamasutra.com there is an excellent collection of articles by Ernest Adams called "Game Designer: No Twinkie". These articles handle game specific gripes.

As for the bigger issues raised (women in games, games for women, R ratings, licensed properties VS new properties), there are plenty of Gamasutra features that discuss these problems at length. The GDC 2005 coverage, in particular, is definately worth your time.

Also, www.gamegirladvance.com offers a fresh perspective.

Cheers!

Adams next aritcle (he writes one for gamasutra each month) will be another "No Twinkie" one too, which are always good.

Hehe, yeah an entertaining read. Obviously this guys is frustrated with the apparant lack of creativity in the industry and starts out okay...

Item 1: Have you ever tried to write truly smart AI that appear to think anything like a human? There is a good reason some dev-teams have abandoned the whole thing in favour of multiplayer.

Item 2: Good point. All I see on the gaming store shelves at the moment are FPS's and RPG's and a smattering of RTS and sports titles. Where are the adventure games, the side-scrolling platformers and shooters, the puzzle games? 2D is not dead! There are some truly addictive games over at www.shockwave.com, and we would definitely benefit from seeing more of the stuff coming out of Japan and Korea.

Item 3: He has a point, but I still like nice graphics. What would be nice is if the gaming magazines moved from print media to electronic media - a magazine on CD where you can watch video reviews of the games in action.

Item 4: An old issue.

Item 5: If the vast majority of our dev-teams weren't dominated by males, I don't think this would be as big an issue.

Items 6 & 7: Very good points. With the current state of technology and some decent design work, really, developers have no excuse.

Item 8: This is about where he runs out of good points and drifts off into genre specific rants. Until somebody comes up with decent speech synthesis, we're stuck with prerecorded content.

Items 9-12: All one very long winded rant that flies in the face of Items 1 & 2. He wants realism, but that's kind of genre specific and AI is very difficult to make competitive within the confines of the game rules. As has already been said, immersion is a difficult thing to define.

Item 13: Almost completely disagree. Where's the fun in starting out with the biggest, most powerful gun that kills everything in the entire level with one shot right from the very start? I say almost because I think it is true that in some cases it is just a cheap way of extending the life of the game.

Item 14: Completely confused point. (Crates suck, but check out the sweet textures!)

Item 15: He has a point, but is behind the times again.

Item 16: We really are trying, but seriously, 100% bug free games? Pigs might fly...

Item 17: Actually this is a point. A games console should be first and foremost a games console. Any other capabilities shouldn't get in the way.

Item 18: An hypothetical point, but then cancels it out by saying he doesn't think it'll happen anyway.

Item 19: Genre specific rant.

Item 20: Pointless

...in the end, nothing but hot air, which I suppose is what you'd expect from a rant. The thing that really annoys me is that he offers nothing useful to help combat the problems. He just sits there and bitches.

personally i think jumping puzzles in FPS's work fine if done well. by which i mean if the gameplay/controls can support them in such a way that they are a challenge and not a pain in the arse then what's the problem? Turok made a lot of people cry with it's jumping puzzles, yet once you finally got the hang of it they were actually quite challenging. in the end the only person i got anoyed at when i failed a jumping puzzle was myself cos i knew that i could do it and it was me that screwed it up. granted, getting your skills to the point were jumping was downgraded from frustrating to anoying took a lot of gameplay (hey, i really enjoyed the game - hard mode without losing a life!), and in that respect they probably should not have been included in the form in which they were.

take Metroid Prime however as an alternative example - lots of jumping puzzels but rarely frustrating. the double jump is what fixed that i think. in fact, i dont believe you actually come up against any serious jumping puzzels until you actually got the ability to double jump. that sounds like GOOD game design to me.
hell, they put the screw attack in the sequal - a jumping item used to solve all manner of jumping puzzels as well as traverse the world - and no one complained!

regarding #18, this is actually a very interesting / important issue (although he hasn't really teased it out).

Developers and publishers are looking at digital distribution as the quick-fix for the industry (steam, real-arcade, revolution's back catalog). Downloadable bitesize content is fine, so long as it is free.

Pretty soon you'll see a game, GT5 for example, released with 300 cars. During the following 6 months, you will see "50 car content packs" released for $10 each.

Pretty much every next-gen console is capable of this, so keep an eye out as this will no doubt be a hot topic.

#17 - Additional features for consoles should be welcomed. Sure, they shouldn't cost you extra and they certain shouldn't jeapordise your gaming experience. The console that wins the next war will probably have the most shrewd additional features (tivo, hi-DVD(or whatever) playback, games on demand, FILMS on demand, free phone calls, free video chat, ad supported game content).

Do you think DVD playback hurt the PS2?

cheers

Ernest Adams has posted his latest Bad Game Designer: No Twinkie! on Gamasutra: [url]http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20050603/adams_01.shtml[/url]
Not as good as some of his earlier ones, but some good points none the less. he also has a bit of speel on crates.

quote:Originally posted by smeg

Pretty soon you'll see a game, GT5 for example, released with 300 cars. During the following 6 months, you will see "50 car content packs" released for $10 each.

Microsoft tried this with MechWarrior 4. They released packs that added additional 'Mechs to the game (two packs were released, one with 4 Clan, and one with 4 IS Mechs). They then made the packs compatible with MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries.

Seems to me this could reverse the current trend to include modding tools. If there is seen to be value in added content, then why whould you make the ability to make that content free?

Mmm, a tightrope the industry must walk, mmmm?

quote:Originally posted by mcdrewski

Seems to me this could reverse the current trend to include modding tools. If there is seen to be value in added content, then why whould you make the ability to make that content free?

Modders will not be in a position to make real money in this way. End user license agreements will no doubt see to that ("you can't make money of this game... blah"). However, Microsoft's marketplace would give you kudos dollars, or some other funny money, that you can then spend on other things.

The whole idea is that the user gets comfortable paying for content and exchanging real world money for MS funny money, and then MS reward ameteur content creators by passing on the funny money. At no point is it redeemable for real cash.

I can't find the article that backs up my funny money analogy, but i did find an interesting article looking at the marketplace and micro-transactions from a business POV. http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/03/16/news_6120586.html

Cheers

Good call, although that means you have two distinct segments in a congested market - fan-produced non-profit content and licensed for-profit content. I'll be interested to see it play out.

Well any extra content is for profit is the end-user is paying a subscription fee, you're basically trying to get htem to stay on your service for as long as possible.

Plus the indie content developers could get "hired" to do content packs for real money if their original content is first rate. Just as has happened with a lot of valve groups.

quote:Have you ever tried to write truly smart AI that appear to think anything like a human? There is a good reason some dev-teams have abandoned the whole thing in favour of multiplayer.

Yeah, it is a lot easier to write local area network latency code for a fps. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to address shortfalls in AI. New Xbox & PS3 are both in-order chips which isn't going to help, but we'll also have a shedload more power overall than we did before - the possibility to dedicate an entire chip soley to A.I. might actually work quite well (run the whole thing as an isolated unit, a set of state machines, feeding it 'stimuli' from the game every X milliseconds).

So we'll have more hardware support than ever before. What's the real problem here? The guy who wrote that page isn't asking for the T1000, he's asking for (I quote): "Give us A.I. that will actually outsmart us now and then."

It's not really that much to ask. An example he gives is: "Enemies who themselves have six different guns and switch up according to what the situation calls for?" Come on, don't tell me we couldn't code that up in 20 minutes. Granted some of the other examples would require a lot more work, such as AI that adapts and changes its strategy over time, but personally I'd love writing that kind of code.

I can't help thinking there'd be decent money in a really smart single player shooter too. Or am I dreaming :)

I also laughed about the comment that the whole selection of games mainly my point focusing on GTA, are all males. I was just watching the GTA SA credits pop up and wow... the Producer is female :O She is trying to get the game out there so obviously she isn't offended by it...

Well he has SOME points, but he obviously knows little about anything to do with the production of games. Saying programmers should take it back and do it again, not all programmers have uber skills and not all companies have bottomless pockets. Well nothing to say really you all pointed it out, this guy just wasted a few hours of his life typing up the review. Had a few laughs but yeah not really such a valid article, just a rant/unknowledgable opinion.

heh, random number work wonders in making things looks as if the AI did something intelegent. Humans are overly good at patern recognition...

Well I?ve changed the name of this thread to what it should have been to start with: A silly rant about the state of computer games. I found it a very amusing read and thought some others here might also enjoy it. However it?s obviously not a serious game development article, just a funny rant by some gamer, which is why I posted it in the general chat forum. As Smeg pointed out, it?s more entertaining then thought provoking; its value is in its comedy.

I also don?t agree with a lot of what he said, however there are a few valid points among his comedic rant. The main thing I think, as I said in my opening post, is the writer?s disagreement with the graphics first mentality. In theory I agree, as it would be great to see more of the Nintendo style of development where innovation seems to be the priority over pretty graphics. But the reality is that graphics sell. As a gamer I lover seeing the latest graphics in my games (as does everyone), and as an artist I would like to have the highest poly counts and texture resolutions available to work with.

However the basic attitude about graphics that most people have tends to annoy me. Many times I?ve found some obscure or non-mainstream game that was extremely fun to play though didn?t have the cutting edge graphics. Almost every time I find a game like this and try to show it to friends, they instantly dismiss it as a crappy game ? just because it doesn?t compare graphically to the latest shooter. I suppose this is more of a personal frustration about society?s materialistic nature then anything (a bit of personal physiological analysis there :P), but I can?t help but feel that if people generally weren?t so caught up in how games looked and were more concerned with how games played, then games on the whole would be a lot better.

The other main issue I agree with is the AI. I realise how difficult it is to implement well, but it really is frustrating sometimes when the game AI is incredibly stupid. Sometimes it really seems like game AI hasn?t advanced much at all in the past 10 years or so. To be fair though, there are some games that do reasonably good jobs with the way the agents react. I suppose my dreams of the perfect game, and always analysing and scrutinizing every game I play, do tend to cause me to focus on the problems of games, and sometimes miss the more subtle achievements that many games make.

Still, I have to agree with davedx on this:
quote:
It's not really that much to ask. An example he gives is: "Enemies who themselves have six different guns and switch up according to what the situation calls for?" Come on, don't tell me we couldn't code that up in 20 minutes. Granted some of the other examples would require a lot more work, such as AI that adapts and changes its strategy over time, but personally I'd love writing that kind of code.

I can't help thinking there'd be decent money in a really smart single player shooter too. Or am I dreaming :)

I?m sure that a game with really advanced AI, even at the expense of having the best graphics available, would do very well.

And to finish my little rant response, here are a couple of nice quotes from the first half of the article (evidence that this article should not be taken very seriously ? it?s just comedy [:)]):

quote:
Look at the little guy. The one who's just a head. I mean, let's face it: strategy is all that guy's got going for him. He has no limbs and he's already on fire.
---
Where's the game where we're a pre-op transsexual where the object of the game is to gather enough money to complete the operation?
---
Wow! This must be one of those new second-person shooters we've been hearing about where you spend the whole game looking at the hero's fucking eye. Because surely from now on they'll demonstrate the awesomeness of their game only with shots from the game, right?
---
Have you guys ever met a woman? Then why don't you try making just a few games that don't play off of a 14 year-old male's idea of womanhood on the apparent hope that he'll play the game one-handed?
---
Imagine if your word processing program did this, refusing to let you save your progress until you typed six more paragraphs.
---
Keep recycling the same mindless observations over and over again until we're pointing at our television with a shaking finger and screaming "EAT ME, JOHN! JUST EAT MEEEEEEE!"
---
It was cute that I could shoot Coke cans off the tables in Doom III. But then I shoot the magazine sitting next to it and it doesn't even show scuff marks. It's 2005! Give me environments that realistically react to what I do! Yes, it matters. It's immersion, bitch!
---
Isn't the world full of unemployed actors willing to do voice work in exchange for food or, you know, Heroin? "Do it with feeling this time, Cody, and I'll make the spiders in your brain go away!"

General Grievous made me laugh, so did Darth Sidious, in fact it was a big laughathon for me, so it was entertaining.

General Grievous: "I'm gonna swing my arms like this... And if you get in the way, it's your owwwn fault."

thats what the script shouldve been. lol

Err, I?ve got too much time on my hands? Here?s my review.

I enjoyed it. Though I?m not sure how much my love of CG influenced that opinion. It?s amazing how much the effects have improved since episode one. And there was some great design going on there ? I loved that lizard Obi-One rode, and the quick shot of the planet with those massive flowers, for example. Very cool.

I agree with Wiz in that General Grievous was ridiculous, though I suppose it looked okay.
quote:
General Grievous: "I'm gonna swing my arms like this... And if you get in the way, it's your owwwn fault."

thats what the script shouldve been. lol

LOL! [:D]

But seriously, I think it would have made much more sense just to keep Count Dooku (whatever his name is, played by Christopher Lee), who would have made for a more interesting villain for Obi-Wan in that battle sequence, then that stupid bug in a robot with lightsabers thing.

I was happy that the characters had more emotion then the previous two films, but it was still not up to the standard of the original trilogy on the character side of things. I mean just compare the romance between Anakin and Padme to Han and Leia?

I was disappointed with Mace Whats-his-name (Samuel L. Jackson) not really amounting to much. I was expecting something superbly cool from him for some reason.

Also I think it really needed more things connecting it to the original trilogy. There are many classic lines from the originals that could easily have been expended upon in this film, giving a much stronger sense of familiarity with the Star Wars universe and it?s characters. Instead Lucas simply used a couple of quick visual references to establish the connection with the original trilogy.

I just feel that the emphasis is on action and effects and not on the actual story, which is what made the original trilogy so great.

But the action and effects in Sith are spectacular, and make it an enjoyable ride. I?m mildly disappointed with the story, but thrilled by the action and effects. I?d give it 3 out of 4 lightsabers.

-And I loved the Frankenstein reference at the end.

i thought it was great. i was at the brisbane midnight session and took pleanty of photos (just a few below) and it was a great night. as for the movie - great. next to ot plot or story development, thogh i didnt expect much seeing as though it was pretty much just wrapping up everything. basically just a big excuse to go nuts with everything that's been developed so far. still, all in all i thought it was great, apart from the NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO - that was just plain tacky. it was crap. it was ust BAD. an incoherent ARRRRRRRRGHHHHHHH! or even no sound at all would have been so much better.

but i've said it before and i'll say it again - there should have been more stuff with wokies!![:D]

sorry about the quality - had to compress it to post it.
[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/LiveWire/2005530192553_nerds.jpg…]

Yoda failed to kick ass, although I love the force-smiting of the 2 red Empirial Guards when he walked into face Palpatine - hes old and green, so I suppose ill let him off.

Otherwise the movie was unbelievably cool. Anakin's acting is still nasty as ever.

Mace Windu ( Samuel L Jackson ) never worked with a lightsaber In my mind - I too was expecting something great from him, although kudos to him for getting palpatine in a position that even yoda couldnt.

The lizard that OB1 rode was by far my highlight - the skin & animation was amazing. I also notice the way its muscles wobbled when it ran - great job to the team.

My GF (not a computer person) made the comment that obi-wan's lizard mount was actually the worst part for her, in a kind of "can't they do ANYTHING without gratuitous CG any more?" vein.

-d

yeah when i saw the lizard i sort of felt the same in a small way. i dont know how to explain what i felt, but it was like - "that looks sooo CG". cos it obviously was i guess [:)]. though i still dont see how a robot with even four lightsabers is any kind of thread. he was trained to use lightsabers, he wasnt a jedi (as far as i could tell). not to mention e was made of metal - pick the bugger up and toss him, or better yet squash him like those other two unlucky fellas! still, awsome action.

also, i too was expecting big things from Mace, as were most other people i know who had sen the first two and were waiting for this one. i mean jackson can be such a bad arse when he wants to be so i was expecting soe awsome saber action (my of us figured he would fight anikin - particually since he's supposed to be the jedi's greatest swordsman). oh well, his death scene was pretty cool!

I was disappointed with what they gave Natalie Portman to do in this movie. She pretty much spent the whole thing in that darn apartment [:o)]. Oh, and I'm kinda puzzled at the way she died too. "Lost her will to live"?! C'mon!!

Actually, Anakin turned to the darkside way too quick during that Emperor/Jackson scene as well, I thought. Just wasn't convincing that he'd turn completely, just like that. Then straight away, he head off to kill some underlings?! :/

I agree the lizard and the huge flowers were extremely cool. But something I found slightly disappointing was the change in Padme's character compared to the other 2 movies. In the others her character was one of a very confident and strong woman, but in this one she was just a weak, vulnerable pregnant girl. I didn't see the reason for her drastic change in character. Anyway I still really enjoyed the movie - and have seen it a couple of times again already. [:D]

They probably should have left in the stuff with Padme going off to set up the beginnings of the rebellion ? it would have kept some of her character?s strength. Guess we?ll have to wait for the DVD for that.

I suppose I was expecting to see a bit more Samuel L. Jackson come through into Mace Windu:
"By order of the Jedi Council I?m placing your Dark ass under arrest motherf***er."

A friend of mine was a little annoyed that grevious lost like he did, what with being a robot and made of metal and all that he said he should have won more or less. But the whole point of general grevious as far as i can tell was to show basicaly that they were experimenting with human/cybord technology to keep people alive (hence the small mount of organic parts still in him) before they made darth (who "they" is exactly im not really sure, im sure someone could tell you), so he wasnt perfect, he was the experiment and that's why he lost like he did where as ofcourse darth was a lot more sucessfull in his "life."

plot line debates aside i thought it was a cool movie, nothing to put up the top of the all time A list but a good movie none the less. Allthough anikin and padme together was... pretty bad, dialouge and acting wise.

I saw it at midnight as well.
Before it started two guys came out the front and had a saber fight, started amusing but then turned very lame, very quickly. However soon this other guy came down and he had this massive saber (when he must have made himself) and everybody cheered. Funny stuff

The movie was great.
The acting and dialogue was a bit bad in some scenes and like most peoople I cringed when vader did his NOOOO!
Grevious looked cool, especially his ride, that was awesome.
Anakins dark side turn was fast, but with limited time in which to tell it I guess its was alright (And I thought his motivation for the turn was good enough). And then end saber fight with OBi was really good, in fact I didnt really like it how yoda was fighting palpitine aat the same time and the kept switching over.
The final scene with the two planets at sunset was a really great note to finish on.

Ive seen it twice and plan to see it one last time at the cinemas in a few weeks.

with reguards to how fast anikin turned, i agree. i forgot to mention that earlier. yeah he turned kind fast compared to what i was expecting - and i was really excited to see him turn after watching the previews and realising that they way he is turned is by the emperor making him see things from his point of view, so to speak. much better than crap like jedi academy where it's like: "you killed the good guy now you're bad". unfortunatly yeah, he did turn a little to fast but at least there was some thought into it. nobody just 'becomes' bad.

and i loved that final shot with the suns that caled back to ep 4 too. BUT WHY OH WHY would you put the final shot with darth stading on the bridge of the ship in the bloody trailer!!!! yeah, ok, you want to show darth - do you have to show one of the FINAL SHOTS OF THE MOVIE!?!?!?! i had a bad feeling about that shot the moment i saw the trailer. at least it didnt really spoil anything i guess.

Hey All!

Well, I went to the midnight session at Garden City and personally, not being the largest Star Wars fan in the world, I really enjoyed it.

What I liked:
* Man, I thought that battle at the start was fantastic. The good old rolling text followed by a fade to space and then a massive battle - wicked!
* To me, (again, comming from a non-hardcore fan) I thought that General Grievous was one of the coolest characters throughout the entire film.
* The music! Man, all the tiny hints and pieces of the famous themes hidden amongst the orchestration was a real highlight for me.
* The Millennium Falcon! - Did anybody see it flying around at the start! I didnt but my girlfriend pointed it out - top coolness points.

What I didnt like:
* The acting - do I need to explain???
* The sudden rush to tie up all the loose ends
* The corniness! - Gee, where to begin...(NOOOOOOOO)...(I love you more, no I love YOU more - FFS!)
* "We have just had a very expensive light saber fight all over the landing dock, up and down pipes covered in Lava, surfing on really hot Lava...but now I have the higher ground so your screwed!
* And, really, am I the only one that finds it odd that EP3 can have so many amputations in a film and escape an M rating, yet we have trouble getting NARC past OFLC?

Mick

i have never sen star wars as violent. i know it contains a lot of violence, but i think the fact that it's such a great action/mythic/fantasy/kids (and big kids) movie whatever, that the violence is overlooked by the views and not seen as bad. like its all not quite real. it's seen as a space fantasy, unlike many other films where the violence is more apparent or realistic.

dont know if you can make sence of what i'm trying to say there, but ti think that's the reason why star wars films get light ratings dispite the death and violence.

also, i've only seen it once, and i've been wanting to see it a second time at the IMAX theater on south bank. i went there last saturday witha friend (drove in from caboolture) only to find a very long line. i thought "that's impressive - its been out ofr over two weeks and there are still huge lines!" most likely cos it was on the IMAX screen ofcourse. unforunatly as we were halfway through the line for tickets an irritating SOLD OUT appeared accross the board. dang. another hour drive back home again. went and saw hitchhikers again with some friends that hadnt sen it et.

i'm going to see SW again on the IMAX screen this week end - only this time i'm booking in advance!

quote:Originally posted by Mick1460
* And, really, am I the only one that finds it odd that EP3 can have so many amputations in a film and escape an M rating, yet we have trouble getting NARC past OFLC?

it didn't, it is rated M in australia

I thought it was... um... Star Wars. As Something Positive said ?the delicate balance of pretty effects and piss poor acting?.
None of the original movies had good acting or a great scripts (but this below par even for SW).

As for every one saying that he turned to quickly I must disagree. He has been turning since episode 2. Any one else remember him wiping out a tribe of sand people? Then he got married and killed Dukoo etc. the bit with Mace when he "Turned" was when he finally decided that this was the only path that he could take to save to woman he loves. And he kills the younglings because he was told to and it will make him much more powerful in the dark side which he needs to save his woman. At least that?s what I think.

No I didn?t like the NOOOOOoooooo! Either.
The two other things that really pissed me off where;
R2D2?s super robotics when in the ?next? film he can barely stand up.
And Anakin force choking Padme. I know he?s being consumed by the dark side but his entire reason for it is to help her.

I also agree with the time line in this http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20050528 or somthing similar at least

-Chris

but you've got to admit, R2D2 taking out those two driods at the start was pretty cool!

[url]http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=episode3[/url]
another interesting ep3 viewpoint [;)]

That page/website is a crack up. [:D]

I was thinking about this - and I think the persistence and always-on nature of the xbox360 will mean it's a non-starter on MS's platform...

...their stuff will still have to be signed or else we'll have viruses and security exploits going wild on xbox live.

Nintendo's idea, however, would be excellent!

considering how tight nintendo have been in the past with signing games for their systems, and the high fees they charge, this is unlikely - but it would be awsome. if the dev kits were cheep and freely available to all range of companies - and even individuals - the system could potentially sell for it's homegrown/mod appeal alone. not to mention the number of fresh ideas that would be available.

certainly a way of attracting enormous third party support, something nintendo has been seriously lacking for several systems now...

Ninti have that nature about them - so it wouldnt surprise me. I think they are the long term smarter players out of the 3 top contenders anyway. They arent expressing their forward movement with graphical goodness and power like the others. I think they prefer to keep the steady winner going that they have. Some of their ideas are pretty left field but i like that about them, they dont always go for the sure fire money winners like Sony & Microshaft.

If only Sony would open up the PSP for homebrew development. That would seriously rock. [:D] (They're seem to be tightening it up even further through firmware [:(])

In regards to Sony opening up the PSP to home brew, they will, their just waiting for the right time. Don't forget that the PSP still hasn't been released in Europe and Australia.
And after an appalling presentation at E3 I'm reassured that Nintendo Has lost the plot, "Where living in the 80's" isn't a good company slogan.

Nintendo's comments about indie development on the revolution aren?t all they seem, by stating that indie games can be conceived on the revolution, don't mean jack.
They aren?t saying that dev kits will be cheaper, you can homebrew on it, or that you won't need a publisher.
They are saying that because the graphics on the Revolution aren?t as good as Sony or Microsoft, Indie developers won't need to spend big budgets on making a game.

What they seem to be forgetting is that in order to create a blockbuster "indie" game on any platform now days, you NEED a big budget, and how many publishers are going to want to produce original IP on a console that isn't selling because it doesn't live up to the "big boys" standards.
This will mean that original IP will be made for either PS3/Xbox360 and then ported to Revolution, making the? lesser Graphics = lesser budget? theory obsolete.

Yes it would be great if Nintendo made coding on the Revolution possible, but the playstation 1&2 both had homebrew support, and nothing came of it, plus if you really want to code some games you'd have a PC, right?

Lastly, don't forget that it's because of Nintendo that we require dev kits and a license fee to produce games for home consoles.

The console looks pretty simple, maybe a bit too plain. The controller looks very futuristic. [:D] The game shots look amazing. [:0]

"Capable of handling seven Bluetooth controllers" - I wonder if a developer will take advantage of that. [;)]

Yeah, looks like that thing is the real controller, its appeared in some more shots on gamespot. Looks ugly to me, but then what do I know - I prefered the original XBox controller to the S model [;)]

The console itself seems pretty lacking in design but I expect it'll fit in nicely alongside the rest of home entertainment gear.

It's interesting that they're supporting seven controllers, which is somewhat of an odd number. Guess we'll have to wait and see if they have anything interesting in mind.

The games are looking very awesome.

It's hard to tell if some of the games are pre-rendered or not, they look that good. I didn't know the Unreal 3 engine was going to [url="http://anandtech.com/tradeshows/showdoc.aspx?i=2417&p=7"]run on PS3 as well[/url]. It looks like Epic are in a pretty good seat at the moment.

I'd like to see the footage of the tech demo of the Final fantasy VII movies running real time that's been talked about!

"Contrary to the rumors we've heard, it looks like the PS3 will implement the Cell processor that we all were introduced to a few months ago - featuring a single PPE and 8 SPEs. There is one caveat however; the Cell processor in the PS3 will only feature 7 working SPEs, one will remain disabled in order to improve yields."

"The Cell in PS3 can decode up to 12 HD streams simultaneously at full frame rate."
[:0]

Another interesting point is that the PS3 is said to support HD 1080p, which is better than XBox 360's high-end support for HD 1080i.

They've starting putting up videos from the Sony Press Conference over at [url]www.gametrailers.com[/url]. Hopefully the FF7 demo will follow.

Full press conference of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo at http://www.gamespot.com/e3/e3live.html

Awesome stuff... Check out the rubber ducky/Eye toy/other tech demos in the Sony presentation. [:0]

gotta say im not a fan of that controller either, or the new xbox one to be honest. Watched the xbox press confrence and theres a lot of bold marketing talk which youd expect but all in all im not that hyped, most of the titles (infact, bar one or two) werent original IP and it was the one or two that were that made me go "wow." even with the crazy new graphics and all. It looks real nice, but im waiting to be completely wowed by the overall system still.

KillZone 2 looks great! - as does Warhawk... both on that game trailers site.

Gears of War (with the U3 engine) looks sweet!

http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=158894

i'll believe spec sheets when i see some unbiased comparisons and some kind of benchmarks. sony have always embelised their console's preformace, and i doubt microsoft would market it any differently. i do agree though that the PS3 looks far more powerful than the Xbox360 so far.

it'll be all about the games in the end that makes me want one or the other if i get one (as well as the nintendo revoluton cos i'm to much of a nintendo fan not to get one). funny that all the punches thrown so far have been along the lines of 'my cpu's bigger than your cpu' - no surprises there. yeah, you've both got stupidly powerful machines, great, i get it. now give me a reason to buy one by showing me some stand out games!

Just saw the clip of the real time FFVII intro movie. Awesome. Anyway, if anyone hasn't checked out that Sony conference on the PS3 at Gamespot that was mentioned earlier, it's definately worth seeing. The demonstrations with the characters (shaders, emulating light through skin, the Spiderman character) is incredible.

quote:Originally posted by MoonUnit

gotta say im not a fan of that controller either, or the new xbox one to be honest. Watched the xbox press confrence and theres a lot of bold marketing talk which youd expect but all in all im not that hyped, most of the titles (infact, bar one or two) werent original IP and it was the one or two that were that made me go "wow." even with the crazy new graphics and all. It looks real nice, but im waiting to be completely wowed by the overall system still.

The worst offender has to be EA who has [url="http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000270043116/"]about 14 games[/url] listed, but only Spore being the one game that isn't a sequel or movie tie-in [:o)].

I guess it's not surprising that developers/publishers take the safe route when developing for a new console and all the extra developing costs it requires. Hopefully, all that extra power of next gen consoles will encourage some new ways to play games later on.

see the PS3 eyetoy tech demo, where real cups were used to scoop up ingame water with ingame cups?

Perhaps a way to improve "ways to play games" would be to open up a homebrew scene for these consoles...

?

I've had a chance to look at some more of those videos. They're just unbelievable.

At the moment, the PS3 is looking like a much more complete system. It seems to beat the X360 across the board (at least in the specs given by MS and Sony). bruce over at [url]http://bigkid.com.au[/url] made up a neat comparison between the two: [url]http://bigkid.com.au/2005/05/17/xbox-360-vs-ps3/[/url].

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Hopefully, all that extra power of next gen consoles will encourage some new ways to play games later on.
Surprisingly, I read somewhere that MS had some big plans to invest a lot of money into new and original ideas and see which ones were profitable. I suppose we'll have to wait for MS's definition of "big plans" and "original ideas"

quote:Originally posted by Souri

The worst offender has to be EA who has about 14 games listed, but only Spore being the one game that isn't a sequel or movie tie-inUtter madness.

MS's ideas of 'profitable' are a quite obvious in the 'marketplace' aspect. I just hope they're not banking on people paying to outfit their in-game characters in fubu and Ecko (like the MTV launch hinted at).

Then again, the idea of paying $5 for a mobile ringtone strikes me as odd and non-profitable too, so I guess we'll see.

-d

PS: Imagine counter-strike being free to download and play, but needing REAL money to buy weapons and ammo every round...?

quote:Originally posted by MarkMash

Gears of War (with the U3 engine) looks sweet!

incidently thats the one im looking forward to the most :D oh god please do the same thing theyve done in the past and release the lateast unrealED with the latest UT

I downloaded the trailer for that from Gamespy. Looks awesome. It's an Xbox 360 exclusive though [:X]

quote:Perhaps a way to improve "ways to play games" would be to open up a homebrew scene for these consoles...

I'm in total agreement here. Considering the PS3 will use OpenGL|ES as its graphics API and supposedly use content distribution over broadband, there might even be a chance too. Though how much of one remains to be seen; I can't see them just giving indie devs an access-all-areas pass to make what they want.

It'll be fun to see how it pans out though. Have to say I've been suckered into it, not because of the "wow, l33t graphics!" factor, but because of the Cell. It looks like a horrendously complex beast to code for, but at the same time will give programmers a lot more freedom and flexibility (moving some of the graphics work back onto the CPU from the GPU; 7 general purpose cores to play around with).

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/attached/souri/20063161339_PS3.jpg[/img]

Grills Steak huh, Not only did Microsoft lose the Jap market with their "No sushi roller" approach, but now Sony will take away the US mid west too!

Apparently though the cocaine aerosol pump peripheral is still on the cards for the 360 so they'll keep the big cities. They'll be in trouble however if Sony actually get's the PS3 playing actual games as opposed to just boring ass CGI trailers like it does now.

I wonder what would be the better weapon in a fight, the 360 powerpack or the ps3 boomerang controller? The controller's surely the agile 'Ninja Girl' weapon wheras the 360 brick is the more, in there, f'off weapon... Surely the Google Vid will someday supply that answer.

[url="http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2493&…"]This Next-gen.biz artoicle[/url] is the best i've read about the PS3 news so far. The info presented at the press conference is all over the net, but this article actually has a closer look at what the news will actually mean.

From the gamesindustry.biz newsletter for 16/03/06:

Watching the reaction to Sony's announcements about the PlayStation 3 yesterday, we couldn't help wondering if the planets have just aligned for Sony in a particularly favourable way - or if this has been one of the most finely stage managed corporate information releases in history.

In case you missed the announcements themselves, the news is simple. PlayStation 3 is going to launch in early November in every worldwide territory - yes, including Europe - and the company is planning to have six million units on the market by the end of March 2007. Final development kits will be shipping in mid-May; there'll be a free and fully-featured online service from day one; the system will have a 60Gb hard drive by default, with strong hints that larger drives may also be available.

In the context of such a flood of information, and such an optimistic promise regarding the global launch timeline, nobody really seems to care that Sony is going to miss its target of launching the system in Spring 2006. Indeed, while Ken Kutaragi apologised profusely, in typically Japanese style, for the huge amount of speculation which has surrounded the PS3 launch plans, you can't help but feel that it's played right into their hands. Analysts confidently predicting that launches in some territories would slip to 2007, publishers expressing concern about the console not hitting Christmas, and the widespread belief that any Spring or Summer launch would be utterly hobbled by a complete dearth of stock for retailers to actually sell, had contributed to an atmosphere of gloom about the PS3's prospects in 2006. By alleviating the gloom caused by that speculation, Sony actually managed to make the announcement of a slippage sound like a positive thing. The stock markets certainly thought so, anyway - they pushed videogames stocks up significantly in the wake of the news of the launch date.

Of course, announcing a global launch is easy - actually executing on one is incredibly difficult, and there are two negative factors that need to be brought into consideration here. The first is the Xbox 360, which last Christmas ripped the heart out of some sectors of games retail by executing a global near-simultaneous launch which left every territory (aside from Japan) with hardly any units to sell. Pre-orders remained unfulfilled, money that should have been ringing through retail tills stayed firmly in gamers' pockets or was spent on other, non-games items, and overall it was hard to come away from the whole affair without thinking that if you can't do a global launch properly, you're better off just sticking to the easy option of a nice, staggered launch.

So a global simultaneous launch is difficult - to the point where Microsoft's Peter Moore was heard to opine that the software giant might never have tried to pull one off if it had known how hard it would be. But if Microsoft knows that, Sony should know it twice as well - because with PlayStation Portable, it promised just such a launch and ended up with a European launch running nine months behind the Japanese date, having found itself with insufficient units to satisfy even the demand in Japan on the originally proposed date of the worldwide launch.

PlayStation Portable, in summary, was a launch disaster by comparison with which even the Xbox 360 shortages look like a flawlessly executed plan. The question is, have Sony learned the right kind of lessons from this - or will the proposed November launch of the PS3 somehow turn into September 2007 in Europe and give Microsoft a head start of almost two years in the marketplace?

For now, it's almost impossible to say - but it's worth pointing out that a number of factors suggest that Sony Computer Entertainment has, indeed, emerged from the PSP fiasco as an older and wiser company.

Consider that the PlayStation 3, when it launches in November - IF it launches in November - will have had one of the longest gestation periods of any console. Early development kits for the system, which most of those working with the kits described as being surprisingly advanced for such early hardware, shipped over a year ago, and the absolutely final development kits - featuring production models of the Cell processor, RSX graphics part, Blu-Ray drive and so on - will be on their way to developers in mid-May, giving them a massive five months of working with final hardware and libraries before they have to ship launch titles.

For developers, that's a huge amount of breathing room, and it means that some of the launch titles in November will have been in full production for around 18 months - quite a lot longer than most console launch titles. For the rest of us, what this means is twofold. It means better launch titles, almost certainly - sure, they'll probably still be a bit on the derivative tick-the-boxes side of things, but at least they'll be polished. More importantly, what this means is that by mid-May, Sony expects to have final versions of every component in the PS3 to give to developers.

Once you have final versions of components to put in development kits, in effect, your console is finished - which means that leaked reports from manufacturing firms earlier this week indicating that Sony will start producing PlayStation 3 consoles in June are probably entirely accurate. In other words, this won't be another PlayStation Portable style mess where units are shoved out onto the market while the manufacturing plants are still limping their way up to full production; Sony has given itself five months to build up launch stocks of the console, and more importantly, to iron out production issues and get its factories cranking out consoles at a million units a month.

Much of this, admittedly, is conjecture - but we know the timeline for the development hardware and software, and huge amounts of information can be inferred from that data. All of it points to a PS3 launch which will be unlike anything we've seen from Sony previously, and a company which has learned bitter lessons from the miserable failure of its best-laid plans with the PlayStation Portable. Only time will tell if the company can really apply those lessons and execute on its ambitious plans - but for now, the enthusiasm of the stock market is understandable. Microsoft has an undeniable head-start, but as of this week, the market leader is back in the game.

I think anyone developer that thinks that Sony and its PS3 is just a joke is deluding themselves.

Based on the figures I have dug up, the PS2 has 91.6 million units, the XBOX 21.9 million and the GCUBE 19.4 million ? Sony have double the market share of both Microsoft and Nintendo combined. Microsoft may have a head start, but I doubt they will take much of Sony's market share ? especially with news of network / multiplayer support and a hard-drive from the get-go.

Nintendo are a wildcard, but I don't see them taking the largest market share ? they seem to me to be a secondary novel console to the average gamer's main console, due to its cheap price point and novel user-interface. Perhaps I am wrong, maybe it will have the same innovative mix and mystique that the IPOD has, and has seen it rise to fame and success. But then again...

I think many a developer likes to think that Sony and their PS3 is a joke, but, I only think they believe that in that believing that if the PS3 even comes close to what Sony are saying it can do, comes anywhere near to the Killzone ?demo,? then that is to believe that they are up shit-creek, without a paddle, without any arms, and only their shrivelled penis to propel and steer their boat.

Do I think that the PS3 will match the Killzone visuals? Probably not, but with enough time spent learning how best to use the PS3 hardware, how best to get the most out of it, it just might come damn close to it ? albeit without the same level of cinematic ?polish.? Sony have had some additional time to address technical issues with their hardware, to add support for new features ? or at least they say ? so their may be some surprises in store for developers as well as the average joe consumer. I also think that the PS3 is not as hard to develop for as some may want developers to believe. There seems to be enough evidence to suggest this, and to point it being easier than the learning curve that was the PS2.

Though, I think anyone with direct experience on a PS3 project, working with the PS3 development kits and building their own tech, could probably shed more light on that matter.

One million consoles produced a month:

32250 consoles produced in a day
1340 consoles produced in an hour
22 consoles produced a minute.
One console produced every 3 seconds

Prove me wrong. But I suspect there will be HUGE quality control issues hardware wise when the system comes out.

Same thing happened with the DS

my thoughts exactly, many a charred xmas tree will lay testament to the risk of buying the 360 and its initial faulty powerbrick.

Just guessing.. but some ppl may be interested in this nice vid :) MGS4 being shown in-engine.. oooooh.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5894964697549657011&q=ps3

And that million consoles a month, is spread over multiple outsourced factories and assembly plants. Its not just one shop making a PS3 :) You may have read about some of them, that are squawking about how they are starting up in June.. July :)

quote:Originally posted by Jackydablunt

I wonder what would be the better weapon in a fight, the 360 powerpack or the ps3 boomerang controller? The controller's surely the agile 'Ninja Girl' weapon wheras the 360 brick is the more, in there, f'off weapon... Surely the Google Vid will someday supply that answer.

[img]http://www.australiangamer.com/images/026.jpg[/img]

Hey, that's awesome. [:D]

Soooo.....

1: PS3 60 gb hd = $999
2: Two games = $120 each
3: Extra controller = $$$

Damn, that's pricey...

plus your sony branded, hd compliant tv ;)

Ill be buying a couple! [:D]

You can claim it on your tax too! (Can you do that with the HD TV as well? [:0])

The screenie makes a really good desktop snap @:-) Should be tasty indeed!

It looks like they have some interesting ideas planned for it, I just hope it doesn't move too far towards open battles ala Battlefield 1942, than the close quartered fighting/few choke points of Enemy Territory.

The footage of ShadowStorm on the PS3 looks *amazing*. Some of the titles out there are a huge leap over the Doom3/Half Life 2 stuff that we're all used to by now. [url="http://www.eurogamer.net/view_screenshot.php?image=assets/articles/a591…"]This pic of ShadowStorm[/url] has got some site's knickers in a knot though, who are claiming that Sony is flat out lying about some titles being in realtime.

The Getaway looks awesome, and I can only imagine what the next Grand Theft Auto will look like on the PS3. And Gods of War looks the shiznit. [:D]

[url="http://pc.ign.com/articles/614/614886p1.html"]Fallout 3[/url] [:O]

Two more pics of [url="http://www.shacknews.com/screens.x/et_quakewars/Enemy%20Territory:%20Qu…"]ET: Quake Wars[/url]...

That pic of the car crashing is so possible to do, did you notice that there are several discrete dirt particle clouds, not to mention all the broken pieces just being made out of triangles torn off from the car's mesh. It would just take some modellers/designers some time to input relative strength values for the major parts of the car so that the physics engine would be able to do its job. Making a complex simulation like that run in real time would only take more processing power, and since the PS3 is meant to have oodles of it (more than some super computers) I don't see this as a problem at all.

The terrain looks pretty stock standard too, though maybe they were referring to the actual nice rendering of the grass in the background when they said that sony was lying? :-P

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3140652

quote:On demo footage:
Regarding your question on the [Xbox 360 FFXI video], that is merely a demonstration to show you how the 360 looks in real-time. So what you saw is not Final Fantasy XI, we are currently studying and making plans for it. If I may add one point, that is that yesterday we had introduced the demo at the Sony conference as well as for the MS conference, and the demo we provided at the end of both conferences is an example of the quality of the visual content that we would be able to provide. That was to underscore the fact that with the PS3, that is the type of quality that the users can expect. It's not a Final Fantasy per se, it was strictly a demonstration to show the quality of the graphics in real time. It's not in a position where we can have people in the audience hold the controller, but it was in real time. ***We felt everyone else would be taking the same approach, but it seemed like Square Enix was the only one that provided a real time demonstration.***

fallout 3? heeeey it lives
does ET quake wars sound a tad like theyve just gone "that games neat... that games neat.... put them together for a doubly awesome game right?" none the les.... theyre probably right :P

Im liking the look of ET: Quake Wars but like Souri said hope they dont turn it into a Battlefield type game, but stick to the ET formula. As for Fallout 3 cant believe they are actually thinking on making it, lets see how it goes

Well taking a look at the Quake3 and Doom3 engines I dobut that they would make it into an outdoors shooter. Wasn't Quake2 all indoorsy anyways?

I wouldn't have minded having [url="http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000873043851"]a go in one of these[/url] [:D]

Gears of War is going to be [url="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9096"]Xbox 360 and PC as well[/url]! Anyway, the link is to a gameindustry.biz interview with Microsoft's J Allard, which I highly recommend reading. He's asked some tough questions about the Xbox 360. Also worth reading is gameindustry.biz's interview with Sony's [url="http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=9051"]Phil Harrison[/url]. Great interviews.

If anyone's interested in seeing the ET: Quake Wars trailer, [url="http://xfer03.ign.com/%5E996111858/movies/xboxmovies.gamespy.com/docroo…"]click here[/url]. Prey is looking pretty good as well! [url="http://dmode.datamachine.net/Preye32k5.wmv"]Movie here[/url].

I'm afraid of being labelled a FPS loser, but I'm looking forward to Quake Wars, Gears of War, UT2007, and Spore!

interesting interviews. Phill Harrison sure is good at avoidng answering some of the questions though isnt he? now we all have to guess which games wre captured from ingame footage, and which were renders...

If there is one E3 2005 image to remembered for all time, then I nominate it [url="http://www.kotaku.com/gaming/oddities/link-loses-head-at-e3-passes-out-…"]to be this one[/url].

The Trailer for Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is out and you can download it from here: (might add its looking pretty good)

[url]http://www.gamearena.com.au/files/details/html/17246[/url]

One thing to note on the trailer is the beginning:

"The following trailer is comprised of entirely in-game footage"

Do developers have say that these days to rid of misconceptions between fmv and in game?

AntsZ... yup :P The "casual" gamer is getting more and more aware of "scandals" like that because their becoming more talked about in the gaming media i suppose. Trailer looks great and since that is ingame footage should make for a racy game!

Man i hate cable! i miss the days when everyone had dialup...and as a result ppl posted links to small things.

*edit* aww im sorry cable, how could i be mad at you? For i have enjoyed you in the past. One day i shall enjoy your exquisite internet speedness again.....one day.

OMG

With this going around the net it's definitely going to raise expectations, which I'm afraid, Nintendo probably wont meet...

But damn that is cool.

thats a damn pretty good fake clip, it looked like someone had too much time on thier hands it definitely looks professional.

i saw that before and wow it had me convinced, a lot of time went into that clip for a fake :o i was wondering how they were going to pull off game enviroments that you can walk around inside your bedroom.

wow, looks great, very well done - at least until the 'gameplay' fotage. the terrible animation and dodgy samus design give it away i think.

Real Revolution looks like this:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3140623

Oh boy. The details from Nintendo's press conference is a bit underwhelming. Sure, they're not aiming to compete hardware wise in the next-gen race, but reselling old games for the new machine shouldn't be a major selling point for the console itself. :/ No details on the revolutionary aspect of the console yet (it's expected to involve the input controller), but I hope this isn't [url="http://www.sumea.com.au/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=2911"]another in Nintendo's list of mistakes[/url]. I'm not sure if a slimmer GBA is what the fans want either. It's worrying that the fake clip got me more excited than recent Nintendo news...

updated link
http://xeniac.com/xeniac/NintendoON.wmv

I was impressed more with the imagination that went into that vid than I have been with the ideas and practicalities of most every next gen e3 video so far.

Hey, you know it's funny to read back on what you've written in the height of all that excitement that was E3. I take back what I wrote in that post about Nintendo. I'm glad they're not in the hardware race and that they're approaching things differently. In any case, the hardware specs of the Nintendo Revolution aren't that bad at all (4 or 5 times the power of the Gamecube, wasn't it?). That should be able to do some really cool things.

I hope they do another game in the style of Wind Waker. That game looked amazing.

I read that the "2 or 3 times the power of the Gamecube" was just speculation. Got it from here:

http://cube.ign.com/articles/522/522559p2.html

The power of the revolution could be anything. Just gotta wait and see. (like with everything else about the Rev)

E3 summery:

microsoft over-hypes it all
sony bullshits it all
nintendo conceals it all

what exactly did we get out of it?

"Harrison then confirmed that past-gen, Nintendo-created titles will indeed be downloadable for free."

[url="http://gamesradar.msn.co.uk/news/default.asp?pagetypeid=2&articleid=360…"]Holy[/url]... [:0]

goodbye phantom's last hope :)

HORRAY! when i heared the news at E3 that nintendo was making it's prevoious titles available for download i thought: "sounds good, but i'm not paying any more than $5 do download a NES game" though i didnt consider that likly since they are charging $30 for NES to GBA re-releases.

free???? awsome. what's more, though the revolution will use wireless controllers, there are ports for gamecube controllers, so there shouldn't be any trouble playing older games on a weird new controller.

http://www.joystiq.com/entry/1234000830045939/

And the google japanese -> english translationish thing...

http://tinyurl.com/7r25r

quote:
As for the virtual console when it is free, the rumor which does not have basis with the net is flowing, but there is no schedule which is transmited simply. When the new work is bought, it can download when, as benefit with consistency of campaign it can download with period limitation when, you think there is various application methods. Using past property, we would like to take the shape where the profit is produced to Nintendo Co. and to the software manufacturer the #65379;

Anyone speak Japanese and want to do a bit better translation? :)

From what I've read on gamesites, it means that downloads won't be free, but will come as extras or bonuses with purchased games.

1up has an interview with the guy who created the fake Nintendo clip. [url="http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3141783"]Interesting[/url] [:)] He was working on some real cool stuff for it but suffered a HD crash.

"ut why spend all that time to create something so elaborately fake? The answer is surprisingly simple: attention. He wanted an outlet to prove his talents to the rest of the world, and the upcoming Revolution announcement offered the perfect opportunity."

"Here's the XBox 360!" *chick puts xbox on a pedestal* "Now here's a band!"

That's pretty much it.

quote:"Here's the XBox 360!" *chick puts xbox on a pedestal* "Now here's a band!"

Looks like their aiming spot on for their target demographic :P

PA had it right when they said

quote:The important thing to understand here is that, much like Twisp and Catsby that show was not for us. When I say us I am referring to the hardcore. The sorts of people who perhaps downloaded a torrent of last nights MTV show.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2005-05-13

quote:it seemed like MTV made it to appeal to mainstream audiences and not the hardcore gamer.

My god, imagine them trying to reach for the mainstream market, its almost as if they are trying to sell this product!

What a shocking thought.

To go against popular opinion I'm going to have to say I found the Xbox 360 to be pretty cool and .... stylish. (although it has a striking resemblance to HAL from 2001 A Space Odysee, lol)[:P]

It seems that underneath all the typical (and expected) hype and chest pounding there is some substanstial improvements and well thought out options for the larger gaming community, for both mainstream and hardcore alike.

I like the idea of gaming ladders, live enabling all games and high def resolutions, the WiFi is a great addition, external HD, wireless, webcam (finally might get to play a dancemat game on Xbox).

The specs seem more than adequate and until I actually play one I'm not going to even try comparing it to anything.

I think things look promising, can't wait to get one.

yeah, there is some promising specs for the Xbox 360 - havnt had the chance to read or watch the above links yet (will do shortly) but i just read a news post on gamasutra that talked about some if the online features and they sound pretty good.

OK, just read a whole bunch on gamespot about the system. sounds pretty damn powerful, though power has never impressed me that much. what did impress me however wa the fact that all games developed for it MUST support HDTV resolutions, 16:9 widescreen format, and 5.1 surround. i think this is great as it ensures that there will be little skimping on the audio (in theory), creating a better experience, likewise for the widescreen support, and to a lesser extent the HD support. granted i dont actually have a HDTV, widecreen tv, or 5.1 surround set up - but the potential is there for a great experience (in terms of visual and audio feedback) i any game when i do.

now i said above that more power dosnt impress me much. i look to the games, and so far i see at lot of the same. basically a whole bunch of racers, sci-fi FPSs, and sports games. no dount some of these could be great games (as i will draw on in a sec), but i'm seeing nothing new. though that's to be expected i guess. perhaps E3 will reveal something interesting.

I have however looked at Perfect Dark Zero, and at the moment this looks to be the only game that will make me buy an Xbox 360. infact, if it's as good as the original or goldeneye on the N64, then i would buy the system for that single game alone. which brings me back to yet another sci-fi FPS. yes it is, but damn the original was awsome. if the gameplay si anywere near as good it's gonna rock. it may bring little new to the genre, or games in general, but it can still be great. which kind of make my above comments hipocritical i guess.
though i wonder how it will turn out, since most of the upper Rare guys, and many responsible for GE and PD left Rare, at the end of the N64 run. only time will tell i guess.

also, i'm going to use this time to post a coment unrelated to most of what i've posted above. and that developers praising a console's 'awsome power' saying things like "we now have the power to make the games we've always wanted to make". - they say that every generation! if only now you have the processing power to make the games you've always wanted, why did you say that last generation aswell? and the generation before that? i think it's a load of crap. if they were to say "the new interface/online cababilities/interaction/other innovative new feature besides more cpu grunt, allows us the make the games we've always wanted" then i would be happy to listen. more graphic power dosnt change the way games are made so much that you can now do somthing that you couldnt do in the previous system (besides making it look nicer), where as a new interface or user connectivity feature that previously didnt exist could. there are some games using the DS stylus interface that simply would not be possible on a stadard joypad. a fundemental change like that is the only thing that will 'allow' the creation of games ideas not previously possible in my oppinion. if it's a great idea could be done on the same old interface, etc., then it could, and perhaps should, have been done already.

ok, end of rant.

I think the 12x DVD drive on the Xbox 360 will become pretty odd as the years go by. Microsoft have been pushing the idea of high definition gaming and relying on consumers to flock to HDTV, yet the system won't be able to show HD movies when Blue-ray or HD-DVD gets introduced (sometime later this year, I think). I guess that's the price for bringing a console in a bit early. I know some of the appeal of the PS2 was that it could play DVD movies as well, so a console that could play the new HD movies would be a good bonus.

quote:"we now have the power to make the games we've always wanted to make".

I think its going to take at least 3 - 4 more generations of console before they are at any level near the games I imagined when I was 10 years old some 14 years ago! So you wont catch me making that statement.

Was I the only one to be a bit surprised by the fact that they're using water cooling for the CPU? I'm sure it's been engineered well, but water cooling and long-term reliability don't particularly go well together, in my mind.

Microsoft is aiming for *one billion* Xbox 360 sales.. [:0]

J allard does look a little like Dr Evil...

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/exec/jallard/default.asp

:)

yeah i sorta raised an eyebrow at the one million thing, lol at allard comment.

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Microsoft is aiming for *one billion* Xbox 360 sales..
Hah!

quote:Originally posted by mcdrewski

J allard does look a little like Dr Evil...
He also looks exactly like a pirate. Something I was unaware of until Tycho pointed it out the other day: [url]http://www.penny-arcade.com/news.php3?date=2005-05-15[/url]

I thought this was rather amusing: [url]http://www.satori.org/blog/archives/000270.html[/url].

quote:I thought this was rather amusing: http://www.satori.org/blog/archives/000270.html.
that's pretty sad. didn't they think their console would get a good enough reception or something? this sort of tactic sounds just like microsoft though.

Who knows what they were thinking?

I simultaneously cringed and shuddered when I read that they had scripted pseudo-nerds to form X's with their arms in the crowd.

Geez.

quote:Originally posted by MoonUnit

yeah i sorta raised an eyebrow at the one million thing, lol at allard comment.

I know that's a typo, but it's one *BILLION* sales! Sony said they've sold 190 million units with PS1 and PS2. So Microsoft are aiming at over *five times* that ammount. That's just plain too wacky [;)]

And yeh, they seemed to have carried the MTV vibe over to the Xbox 360 press conference. Could've done without the fluff and spiritual zen stuff.

btw, Steve Balmer has pretty much said that there'll be a new revision of Xbox 360 down the track [url="http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000597043723/"]with a HD DVD drive[/url]..

whoopsie yeah you know what i meant. They seem really convinced of its wide market appeal... seems a bit over zealous to me

Why not aim for a billion? If they set their goal high they'll be trying extra hard to achieve it, and if because of that they sell 500 million, or even 250 million then they still would end up having a good result.

sounds to me like marketing again - MS: "we are going to sell 1 billion systems!" dumb-arse user: "wow! this system must be awsome! i want one!"

they're just talking themselves up. they cant hope to outsell the PS3 if you ask me, and i doubt even sony will make 500 million let alone 1 billion!

Im with Daemin on that one, its not a case of being realistic - its a case of expending all their energies in hope of achieveing something monumental.

Something that even when not met, maybe so far above and beyond what it would have been had you set your sights alot closer to the horizon.

Nothing wrong with being optimistic, but you have to be realistic! When you are aiming for 5 times the amount of the sales of the previous 2 best selling consoles of their generation, you have quite a monumental task. I know they're trying to capture non casual gamers, but the presentation didn't really convince me that they were really doing anything new. You're not going to get more "Velocitygirls" by having downloadable arcade/puzzle games, instant messaging etc and have them pony up $xxx for a new console when that stuff can already be done on a PC. They were talking about capturing a wider gaming audience, yet all the previews were sequels of racing, fps, fighting games etc which catered for the hardcore gamer!

news from gamasutra confirming hardware sales of consoles:

quote:Shipments of 90 million units since the console?s launch in Japan on March 4th 2000 represents a penetration speed more than 2 years and 3 months faster than the original PlayStation, which had a lifetime sales figure of just over 100 million.

Sony calculates that lifetime shipments for the PlayStation 2 will be around 120 million

...By comparison, worldwide shipments for the Xbox are currently put at approximately 21 million units
...Nintendo's GameCube is fairly close behind Microsoft's console, having a worldwide user base of around 18 million.

so basically sony has sold a 120 million PS1 and PS2's combined, while Xbox has just made 20 million. Xbox 360 to top 1 billion? (or 1 billion Xbox Live subscribers i heared someone else quote it as, which is more again since not everyone will use Xbox Live). Sorry, I dont think so. i mean - just look at those figues! The two biggest selling systems combined, each almost 5 times that of the Xbox, may just make it over 200 million. to say your going to sell in excess of 1 billion is just plain dumb.

it can't lift it's feet. there was a link on slashdot to a video of it walking a while ago and it is really just two wheeled feet, where you use 'handbrakes' to lock the foot and let the other one move ahead.

look cool though :)

Yeah. Probably a good thing, really. I wouldn't want to miss a step and turn my mech into a $43,000 roadblock.

it would be better if it could lift its feet, still the effect is there when you take that baby out for a spin :P
wonder if anyone gets "pulled over" by the local authorities

wow

oh dear, more fuel for the fire

indeed.

that's just crazy, i can understand why he'd be pissed though, if indeed the weapon could be sold for hard currency (and a lot of it). in a sence he really did run off with the money - and i would say that the firend killed him over that, not the virtual weapon. afterall, they both worked to get the weapon, he deserved some of the profits. so i wonder how much of that is motivation from him selling a virual item they worked so hard to get, or that fact that he kept all the money.

either way, murder probably went a tad bit too far...

There was a similar incident last year, where a guy created a business out of buying and selling game items, particularly in mmorpg's.
He went to the authorities, and after explaining several times how he makes money by selling "virtual" itmes to players, and that one of his customers had refused to pay real money for his virtual item, the authorities decided that the guy selling non-existent items was in fact the crook.
Since when did games become a market for trading anyway? Are we going to have a mini stock-market for in-game items? Game companies should outlaw this practice, as it is tantamount to cheating anyway.

Just imagine when selling game items does become protected by law, the government will jump all over it!

You would have to pay TAX when you sold your +10 UberBigSword [:0]

Heh, given the heavy taxation Australia has, I?d imagine so. They would probably also make you pay duty and GST for purchasing a virtual game item from an overseas source. A few days in World of Warcraft and not only do you get hit with the credit card bill for the server access, and the phone bill for being online, but also great big bill from Australian Customs...

I wonder if the black market on illegally imported weapons and items will spring up? I can just see the seedy types hanging around our schools now.

"psssst, wanna buy a cloak of invisibility.."

Seen it, the series looked a tad more interesting (story-wise) than the movie. Tho I initially didn't like Firefly because it got Dark Angel cancelled, and then itself.

The trailer does look interesting, but it would've been all the sweeter if they'd built up the world and story in the series more.

im personally not getting the buzz, admitedly i havent seen firefly but from the trailer alone i cant say im all that hyped

Here's a link to the fullscreen version if anyone's interested, 40mb
http://movies.apple.com/movies/universal/serenity/serenity_ifs2.mov

Personally I'm pretty psyched for it but I am a fan of the original series.

Hmm, I guess you have to be a fan of the original series to really appreciate it.

Most definitely, for fans of the series watching the trailer a flood of memories comes back of all the characters and their storylines that were built up in the series (and sadly cut short when it was getting interesting), if you're watching it without having seen Firefly then you're coming in cold and have no idea who anyone is or what their relationships are to each other and so all you can really judge it on is what you see (Ooh, spaceships, explosions, mystery girl who can KUNG FU!, pretty dull on the surface). Let's hope it balances out for fans and newcomers alike, he could bore the fans with repetition of character building or could lose newcomers by not giving them enough detail to be interested. I'm sure Joss will do a decent job though, fingers crossed.

Yeah I can see your point. Like you said it brings back so many memories, its just exciting to get something new from this awesome series. As long as the characters still what we all know, I'll be happy!

There doesn't seem to be any priest in the movie which is a disappointment, really like him. Not too keen on what they've done with River either, turned her into a kung fu kill machine, not really what she was about in the series, but you gotta spice things up for the big screen.

or fireup some cliches...

saw the trailer today. looks alright, and though adds usually arntmuch to go on, none of the lines seemed all that dodgy and the effects look nice. i hanvt seen the series myself, but from this i would probably go see it, or at least investigate some reviews about it.

Shepard Book is in the film, they just didn't show him in the trailer... I guess making River a kung fu chick was a bit cliche, but they were heading in the assassin direction in the series. With Joss writing the screenplay and directing I'm sure it will all be true to character, if anything a little darker. Fox originally made Joss make the characters more funny and light hearted after the pilot episode.

I think being a trailer that mainly focusses on the action, its hard to see that characters coming through. From people who have seen pre screenings, reports are that the characters are all true to the series.

Good point. I think that software development needs to come a long way to catch up with the level of hardware. Back in the early days of games, software had to be incredibly efficient to function under such tight technical limitations, and the result was beautifully designed software (so I believe, anyway). These days there is so much power in the hardware that highly efficient software design isn?t necessary and too expensive, so instead we incorporate relatively poor software design in order to get a product to market ASAP.

So I guess I?m saying that I think modern software design leaves much room for improvement, and I think said improvement won?t happen if we keep aiming for the biggest and best hardware. If hardware improvements hit a wall with what can be done (which seems inevitable at this point ? there are physical limits), then I guess software will finally have a chance to catch up.

I really think we could be doing so much more just with better software development.

I feel that games systems should be on the market much longer before the next generation is developed.

I personally think that for tasks such as word processing, most business applications, and most database tasks the desktop computing power that we have currently is far more than sufficient. Therefore to get the best out of the current technology the developers have to learn to use it more efficiently (read: using "bloated" libraries and languages such as Java, C#, and specifically .Net doesn't count).

However I think the main area that needs improvement is the actual user interface to the computing resources that we have. We're stuck in an aging paradigm and I see no real way out. All of the recent interface advancements are just really incremental improvements. (Did you notice how the preview images of longhorn look exactly like XP with a sidebar and different coloured skin?) In addition the applications built on top of the OS don't really have a better interface either. Applications that are made to save time in performing some tasks actually make them take longer than they should (I've had friends make comments about this with the software that they have to use).

With that said there will always be a market for faster processors and more processing power, especially in areas of high computation such as scientific physics simulations, and military systems. In these areas the software is pretty much completely optimised and therefore they need more hardware grunt.

We have to keep in mind though that the processing environment has to be tailored to the area that it will be used in, hence why the space shuttle has bugger all computing power compared to modern systems, why a microwave doesn't cook your food by using its processor, etc. It kind of disappoints me that the major x86 chip manufacturers aren't making the slower chips anymore, since you don't need 2GHz to do word processing with.

(I would highly recommend the podcasts from www.itconversations.com, especially the one from Claydon Christianssen (sp?), they are very interesting and relevant to these sorts of topics.)

Advancing 'technology' and hardware is usually of such great focus because you can see the improvements straight away (a faster better designed processor always runs things better than the previous slower processor). Whereas the fruits of refining software development techniques and the programming paradigm we operate under aren't immediately apparent.

quote:especially in areas of high computation such as scientific physics simulations, and military systems. In these areas the software is pretty much completely optimised and therefore they need more hardware grunt.I doubt that those systems are as highly optimised as you say - having spoken to a few people who work in the defence industry (for example) it appears writing non-buggy code is challenging enough, let alone accuracy of the simulation - and furthermore the performance of it! As for scientific simulations (increasingly fluid and aero mechanics), well those systems are all coded for reliable repeatable simulations - they aren't 'optimised' for speed as such either...so they need all the hardware resources they can get.

From my own experience, I've found that the more realistic you want your simulation to be, the more computing power you need. I would love to be able to run a proper weather simulator so I can model cloud formation properly but the sheer weight of computation needed makes that impossible. Instead, I'll have to come up with an approximation (not to be confused with optimisation) that looks convincing but is really nothing like the real thing. I guess it depends on the application in the end - do you want interactivity, or scientific accuracy?

More to the point though, the progress of technology might be a bit bewildering because of its speed, but I think that's half the reason I enjoy working in this field. It's exciting!

In engineering the word "model" typically refers to any approximation/algorithm which gives a result that represents the real system for specific observations. Just like you say Leto - it's all about what you want out of your "model" that says how good it is.

A "cloth simulation" as used by animators will normally need to act in a similar way to real cloth on the human scale, but the same term could refer to a weaving model used to detect manufacturing flaws. (I worked on one!)

Your approximation is just that, a model which focusses on the visual appearance of clouds. Sure, you might get more accurate results using a better model, but if it gives you what you need it's still a valid model.

I seem to recall seeing the anime movie Tekken a while back at the video store. Street Fighter also was an anime as well.(Much better than the live action one)

After I saw Resident Evil 2 for the first time I have now given up waiting for a good game to movie crossover coming out (Yes I was still holdin out). I had a look at the special features and the director said he put a few scenes in the movie that came strait from the game, to make us gamers happy. Pity the rest of the movie was shit.

Does anybody else think that hollywood is trying to cash in on the video game market by making their movies look like a game, at the cost of what could be realy solid action movies. (eg Die Hard "Yippie-ki-ay mother fucker" [:)]

I have to get triple word score for both "Tron" and "The Last Starfighter"...

I'm showing my age again, aren't I?

I think it was caled "War Games", a dodgy 80's film about a computer game that trys to start a nuclear war. Also there is Yu-ge-Yoo (or how ever the hell it's spelt), harry potter, LoTR, The Matrix and a tone of other kids movies.

okay, don't make me lay down rules now.
Harry Potter and LoTR were based on books. The Matrix doesn't qualify either. Wasn't Yu-Gi-oh a card game first? War Games almost passes but it doesn't feature any actual video games from reality. Actually, I'm not sure The Last Starfighter has much to do with real games.
Thinking more along the lines of The Wizard, where the Wonder Years kid enters a Nintendo tournament. That kinda thing. And if anyone starts listing games made from movies, I'll do their head in... :)

If those are the rules then you should remove Tron from your list as it was a game based on a movie, a very old movie. Fatal Fury has been turned into an anime. Can we list movies that rip off storylines from games? If so 'Memento' should be listed for lifting their premise from 'Planescape Torment'.

Yeah, I wasn't sure on Tron.
What about the Doom movie? Where did it go? Also heard rumours that John Woo (Face Off, Broken Arrow) was making a Metroid Prime movie.

quote:
Can anyone think of movies that feature video games, or are based on games?

So can we list movies that featured a particular video game in a scene (but wasn?t an important part of the movie)? That will test your movie/video game buffness!

Off the top of my head:

Terminator II featured Missile command, and After Burner in the video arcade scene where the T1000 first found John Connor.

Fast and the Furious featured Grand Turismo on the PS1 in one of the guys cars just before the four-car race at the beginning of the film.

Shaun of the Dead had a PS2 FPS game in it that they were playing at the start of the movie, but I wasn?t certain which game it was. It looked a bit like Kill Zone. Anyone know for sure?

Um, that?s hard. I can?t think of any others right now.

Oh ? an episode of Seinfield featured Frogger!

american mcgees alice is to be a ("live action") movie and writing is underway for a american mcgee oz triology in which apparently bruckheimer is interested! (sorry im a twisted films fan, ala burton).

Samurai Showdown

Does a TV series count? If so Battlestar Galactica was originally a video game.

If you want movies with games featured in them then there was the atari baseball game that fred savage was playing at the start of The Princess Bride

There's Spyhunter, the old arcade/8 bit game which has been revived on the PS2/Xbox.. I think The Rock is supposed to star in that movie.

There are some real shocking movies in this thread.. Double Dragon and the live Street Fighter movie.. *shudder*

In Production:

SILENT HILL

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/04/27/news_6123131.html

also I just remembered i heard about Splinter Cell a while ago...and sure enough... http://channels.lockergnome.com/game/archives/20041223_splinter_cell_th…

They play games in 'XXX'. Though I'm not completly sure which ones.

There's a couple of movies that feature games though there not 'real' games, just concepts....

'Big', where the kid at the start and then the end had to melt the wizard or something like that. And the fortune teller is a type of 'game'...blah.

Lawnmower Man uses 'games to teach' hah!

Of course there is 'Existenz' and 'The Thirteenth Floor'
*spoiler* where the game is the movie, ooops i gave away the plots

The movie 'Avalon' follows a similar theme as well, not a bad idea some coolish CG.

And the James Bond movie with the electric shock handles.

There was WarGames and Joysticks in the eighties that featured games.

There's also a Jackie Chan movie, not sure what it was called, there was a cool fight sequence at the end, where the characters for some reason turned into Street Fighter 2 characters, classic :)

And of course the extremely successful Final Fantasy: Spirits Within (cough) and the soon to be released Final Fantasy VII Advent Child(ren)?

Dungeon and Dragons :P. Except they don't get their dice out.

Owh...that hurt!!!

Rosco, the name of that Jackie Chan movie is 'City Hunter', and yes, Jackie himself dresses up as Chun-Li, it's disturbing how well he pulls it off.

Bloodrayne is in Post Production
Far Cry and Hunter: The Reckoning are in Pre-Production.

All directed / going to be directed by Uwe Boll, same guy that did Alone in the Dark and House of the Dead. He also bought the movie rights to Dungeon Siege.

Um...there's also a Seinfeld episode about Frogger. Although you don't ever see the game on screen, there's a pretty funny scene of George crossing the road Frogger style! (bird's eye view)

In Bloodsport, Van Damme plays some kung fu arcade game.

[url="http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/doom-3/609519p1.html"]Doom movie pics[/url]. The middle picture has some nice architecture.

btw, [url="http://imdb.com/chart/bottom"]IMDb's bottom 100 rated movies[/url] of all time, and here are the video game movies that made the list..

#83. Double Dragon (1994)
#69. Street Fighter (1994)
#64. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
#35. House of the Dead (2003)
#25. Alone in the Dark (2005)

Anyway, I read on Shacknews that [url="http://imdb.com/title/tt0383222/"]Bloodrayne[/url] is being directed by Uwe Boll, who also directed House of the Dead and Alone in the Dark. It does not bode too well for Bloodrayne, methinks.

A not so obvious game placement was in Charlie?s Angels Drew Barrymore walks past a glass door wearing nothing but an inflatable flower, but the kids inside don't notice cause their playing Final Fantasy 8.
The thing that stands out is that they seem to both be playing it.

Actually, that was a tip of the hat to ET, in which the same house (and of course a very young DB) was used, and the kids there were playing D&D...

Uwe Boll. The guy is nuts. Seriously. He needs to be stopped.

I just had a quick look at his [url="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0093051/"]profile on IMDB[/url], and saw some more game titles I hadn't known he was associated with. His current list is:

# Fear Effect (2008) (announced)
# Hunter: The Reckoning (2007) (announced)
# Far Cry (2006) (announced)
# Night Claws (2005) (announced)
# In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale (2006) (post-production)
# BloodRayne (2005) (completed)

# Alone in the Dark (2005)
# House of the Dead (2003)

Also not on that list is [url="http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3141458"]Postal[/url], which I have no idea why anyone would want to make into a film. It blows my mind that he can still make money from these films after they tank so badly apparently due to government support and tax breaks.

from gamasutra:

- Running With Scissors and Boll KG have announced that plans are still underway to convert the developer's infamous Postal game franchise into a feature film, directed by the equally infamous Uwe Boll. Boll's past game-to-film credits include House of the Dead, Alone in the Dark, and BloodRayne; in addition, he holds the license for Dungeon Siege, Far Cry, Hunter: The Reckoning, and Fear Effect. "I see it like a mirror for our society -- funny, violent, absurd!" said the director. "So then the movie must be powerful, strange, and so full of the game's political incorrect outrageousness that if we do it correct, we will all probably end up in jail!" Here's hoping.

O.o anyone noticed or really gather that most of these movies in pre production are horror/thriller/I can't possibly fuck it up type-o-movies.

They?re naturally picking the very easy ones to build up a story around.

Not being cynical. They have all the right to. But I?d like to see some more interesting concepts explored. Metriod Prime...As good a game it is.. And it is.. Would be kinda shallow without supporting characters...could be wrong.. I?d love to be oh so wrong on that one XD.

As I see it. To make a good movie form a game the game in question needs a solid interesting story to begin with. If a game is made purely on its merit of gimmick it's probably doomed to fail.

i'd love for you to be wrong on the metroid one aswell, unfortunatly though i'll have to agree with you. You simply cant make a movie out of most games, not games that are primarily gameplay driven anyway. Story driven games on the other hand could be adapted. movies are afterall about telling a story, but gameplay is the movie equivilent of action, not story. hence doom, RE, mortal kombat, mario bros are all lowgrade - they have little to no story, or when they do (mario bros) it has little to do with the game. what most of these moves take from the games is atmosphere, and sometimes backstory. certainly no great narative or character development.

I agree. There are plenty of games with worthwhile story?s that could make good movies, but for some reason movie producers keep focusing on games that were about gameplay. Maybe the Halo movie might be okay because it had a good plot?

I?ve always thought Max Payne could be a cool movie.

Not much of a surprise, but the [url="http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=21646"]Bloodrayne movie sucks[/url]. (no pun intended)

more from gamsutra:

" Only days after reaffirming his commitment to make the Postal movie, notorious director Uwe Boll has announced the creation of a new production company, Event Film, to handle his Dungeon Siege project. The official title of the movie will be In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, and Boll has announced plans to split the movie's release into two parts, similar to Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. The script promises "a huge epic adventure, and to support the exhibitors who can't accept a movie so long, we decided to split the movie in half," said Boll. The two halves of the movie will be released in quick succession, with part 1 coming out in November 2006 and part 2 in December 2006."

i just dont get why they keep alowing him to make these movies!! crap after crap after crap and they keep throwing more and more money at him!

at least with the Doom movie doing so [url="http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=6943"]poorly[/url] they may not make another one of thoses (yes, they were talking about a sequal), and it might have a roll over affect on this idoit!

They're dumping money into this either to (a) launder it, or (b) use it as a "bad" investment so they don't pay that much corporate tax.

I think this comic sums it all up really: http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/?t=archives&date=2005-10-24

I read somewhere that one of his biggest investors is getting done for tax evasion. [:D]

Ok, I just saw Doom the movie over the weekend.

That movie was almost a total flatliner. Apart from one small fight in a holding cell, and the often talked about first-person-view segment, there wasn't anything else that I thought was very exciting. Most of the other action sequences didn't do much for me.

The story was not great, and the plot and premise wasn't original. I enjoy movies where you sit on the edge of your seat wondering what happens next - and you'll get absolutely none of that with this movie. Totally predictable. As a popcorn flick, Doom was fine. Shut your brain off for an hour and a half, but c'mon, can't Hollywood come up with anything more intriguing than this [:(]

I think I've mentioned elsewhere that I tend to focus on things like the set design, and geez, they must've had a budget of $100 to spend here. If they could've spent some cash some better set designers and concept artists to come up with plastic moulds to put on the walls, or just grab pipes, panels, and electronics from dumps and other places to dress the walls up a bit so they don't look so bland. Some of the sets make this movie look like a cheap sc-fi show from TV.

Here is one, in Grosse Point Blank, there is a skirmish between the main character and anther hired-killer in a supermarket ? which used to be the site of his childhood home. Oblivious to the carnage of supermarket condiments and whizzing bullets is the teenage store clerk who whilst listening to his walkman is also engrossed in playing the arcade version of the original Doom.

Not sure, but I think they were using it to say something about violence and society in a way. Which I am cool with as long as they are not trying to make games as the collective work of the antichrist, paving the way for Christian hell on earth and his thousand year reign on earth ? or whatever the fundamentalist ?family first? Christian groups want everyone to believe with their scaremongering.

Personally, I really wish that they would stop making movies based on films, as they nearly always suck ? actually, I really wish they would stop making games out to the the root of all evil. Most games have next to no storyline, what does exist of it is merely a weak framework for shallow game world interaction ? like shooting and blowing shit up. Films on the other hand, need far more to entertain people with their plot, character development and dialogue as they are not interactive.

One movie I heard was in the works is the movie adaptation of Deus Ex. That one I wouldn?t mind seeing, even if it doesn?t get high-scores from reviewers ? just to see how a game that sold well because of its story gets translated and accepted in a film format.

Doom is a movie that I have vowed to never see, not even when they show it late at night on free-to-air TV as an oddity to entertain the night-owls with. Really, what in the hell where they thinking?!

this started happening to me a while ago, and then at work too, where i would play a game for a few minutes, and then the machine would quit the app, or reboot.

we checked the ram, changed video cards, did full diagnostics, and found no problems.

a lot of modern machines seem to cut the case cooling a bit fine, and tend not to report errors caused by this very well. My machine at work has now run with the case open for nearly a year without these problems happening again. people look at my funny when i try to tell them about these 'overheating' crashes, but, to me at least, they are real.

I?ve also had problems with my computer spontaneously rebooting while playing a game, which has turned out to be caused by overheating (I think). Though Neverwinter Nights really shouldn?t be causing the system to overheat, it?s usually things like Doom 3 or Half Life 2. What kind of system is it? Can you run more powerful games with no problems?

Anyway, a possible solution is to buy a better case with a large power supply. That?s how I fixed my system at least.

Also, I?ve read that modern computers supposedly run cooler with the case ON because they are designed for a specific air flow that doesn?t happen with the case removed, but everyone has there own theories about that.

My system is a Pentium 4 with 2.93GHz, 512MB and the video card is an ATI Radeon X300 SE 128MB.

Doom III, Half life 2 and FarCry all ran fine even during the middle of summer and I only have a fan in this room. It seems to be some of the slightly older games.

My computer used to reset quite often until I cleaned out all the gunk and dust accumulated in the cpu fan...

I had alot of BSOD crashes in ut2004 with some old nvidia drivers, try updating video card drivers.
It could be the problem... i know it's just a stab in the dark though.

NWN is very heat sensitive for some reason (imho it is very wierd having some programs that are more sensitive to a hot CPU than others). Take the side off the case, and aim a desk fan in at it. I've recently noticed that running a decent GPU on a small PSU (i.e. < 400 watts) makes the PSU get really, really hot, which in turn heats up the air inside the case, which in turn makes the CPU overheat.

After a bit of searching I found out what the problem was. Some people on the NWN forum had the same problem, and apparently it's got do with my sound card. I've got a Realtek High Definition thingy, and these other guys have the same thing.

After alot of wasted time looking for a new driver, I just turned off the Enable Hardware Sound option in the game and that seems to have fixed it (for now).

Thanx for everybodys help though.