General Chat

the Australian IT section on news.com has an article now on piracy I believe, noting that it's increased in Australia relative to other "similar" countried.

pfffft

Good to see you making healthy comments on this discussion gaffer :)
CYer, Blitz

my personal opinion is a very liberal one, and i dislike the labelling of 'piracy' on copyright infringement by people who recieve no commercial gain for it (ie. sharing)

in my opinion, the industry would do well to adapt a model that works with the natural action of making copies over the internet (a system actually built for, wait for it, sharing information), ie. subscription based models with freely downloadable clients, micropayments and other newish ways of doing business

of course, it should be noted that my personal opinions likely do not match the official stance of irrational games, and that i do not really have a solution for this whole problem, but it just irks me when what can legally be defined as fair use in some cases is flatout labelled as 'piracy' =p

I pretty much agree with you gaffer. My particular irk is with distributors etc. who complain about the "piracy" of people downloading the game or whatever as costing them billions of dollars, however, the percentage of people who would actually buy the game if they couldn't get an illegal version is probably very small.
However, i would have to say that from reading sho-nuff's post he seems to be more talking about those who actually do pirate games on a large scale (and sell them) rather than the casual downloading by individuals.
This form of piracy IS a big problem IMO, particularly when the pirated product is sold as a legitimate legal copy of the product and the consumer can't even use their good judgement to decide not to buy the illegal product...
CYer, Blitz

Yeah I agree...
The only problem I have with I guess weaker forms of piracy (and it technically still is piracy - that is to say - sharing) is that it does hurt the industry - a little, not so much financially. We (gamers) vote for products by buying them, and if developers/publishers/distributors don't make cash out of products because everyone pirates them, then that kind of product doesn't get produced more often.

Technically speaking, no one actually "owns" a game (except for the publisher/developer relationship), they merely have a license (usually restricted) to use the software. When people breach that license it's technically piracy (ie duplicating the software and hence creating your own "license" for someone else to use, although it's usually much less formal).

I'm pretty much as guilty as most people, when I was young (ie sub 16) I used to pirate alot of stuff, but anything that I enjoyed I went out and bought the full product because I felt I owed it to the people who made it. Nowadays I tend to buy 90% of the games I play.

Oh another pet peeve of mine concerning piracy is when I go to some guys place and ask what games they've got and they give me one of those CD pouches and I have to look through a whole bunch of gold CDs with black texta on them. I'm quite proud of the 60+ collection of legal games (with boxes/manuals etc) that me (and my bro) have managed over the years.

There's probably about 15 of those 'classics' style boxes though - I'm not that loaded to buy games when they come out all the time :)
I'm still waiting for Diablo 2 to drop in price a bit. :)

quote:Originally posted by sho-nuff

If anyone has information about how companies have defended against piracy

I can't point to any particular articles, but I remember back in the Amiga days when Ocean spent the MOST amount of money on copy protection for a game at that time with Robocop 3 (the game came complete with a dongle!!). And the people who cracked it boasted they did it in a matter of hours. (I just did a search on the web, and found that they managed to released it before the actual game was shipped as well).. some old ways games used to provide protection inlude
uhm.. if you meant "defended against piracy" to mean through legislation... - sorry.. ;) I felt like tell that story.. hehe..

quote:Originally posted by Blitz

My particular irk is with distributors etc. who complain about the "piracy" of people downloading the game or whatever as costing them billions of dollars, however, the percentage of people who would actually buy the game if they couldn't get an illegal version is probably very small.

I wonder how they come up with the numbers actually.. and I agree, totally.

Great to hear your guys input on the subject, but does anyone know of how companies protect against copying there games? Or have they all just given up and accepted that it will happen no matter how cautious they are?

There are a few ways companies use to try and reduce the amount of "copying" or piracy. Off the top of my head...

CD Copy protection. Comes in various forms, this protection aims to prevent the CD being able to be successfully copied to another CD. This prevents "casual" users (eg. your average joe who doesn't know a whole lot about computers) from copying an original cd to give to their buddy, but is fairly useless as far as reasonably moderate computer users are concerned.

CD Keys. A unique key that you receive with a copy of the game, this key usually must be entered when installing the game otherwise the game won't install itself. For single-player (ie. offline) games, this is also relatively useless, as a single key can be used to install the game many times. CD Keys are more powerful in the online domain, as they can be checked for uniquness by the companies before they allow you to play. For instance WON.net, MicroSofts Zone, and Battle.net (i assume?) will only allow one instance of a key to be used in online play at a time (or something similar).
Similarly, online subscription-based games will usually only allow one account to be created per unique key (not totally sure on this one).

Specifically for consoles, their hardware and media may be manufactured in a certain way so that media that is not produced by them (ie. a burned CD/DVD) won't be able to be played on their hardware. This is semi-effective, although mod-chips don't help :P.
Also, using a non-common form of media, such as a cartridge or gamecubes mini-dvd thingy are used as not many people have access to blank media or devices to write to them.

Of course the problem is most of these protection mechanisms, with the pssible exception of online key checking, are useless in the face of mass-production piracy, which is where the problem lies.
CYer, Blitz

There was FADE in Operation Flashpoint which detected if the game data had been tampered with and then degraded performance (shittier graphics and poor framerate) before crashing. That slowed crackers (honkey mofos) down a little, but it was eventually beaten.

I've also heard of another arcade game that removed a gem on the second or third level so it was impossible for cracked players to advance beyond that level. If the crack team can't tell immediately if they've successfully cracked the game, it becomes a lot more difficult and time consuming to crack. The problem is, games will always be cracked.

By adding things like cd checks and cd keys, you're just annoying people. Pirates will be able to play your game anyway, and in some cases legitimate players will be stung. Personally, I don't want to put a cd in the drive every time I want to play my own games, so I crack them. And what if a key generator gives a pirate the key I paid for?

The model is currently broken and limiting the rights and resources of the public won't solve that. The model has to evolve to meet the new technology. User accounts are a step in the right direction. The problem is also closely tied to the publisher driven "boxopoly", and I have a feeling that both problems will be solved at once. *looks to the internet*

Btw, pirates that mass produce "RoMex games" are the scum of the earth and should be paper cut to death.

Scott.

quote:Originally posted by rezn0r

By adding things like cd checks and cd keys, you're just annoying people. Pirates will be able to play your game anyway, and in some cases legitimate players will be stung.

That's definately true with a lot of cases when something like Safedisc copy protection is used. Problems include certain CD drives not even recognizing the CD, slow loading times, and I've read somewhere that some games actually run slower (since the cd checks periodically? or needs to load while the game is playing?). Disabling Safedisc (using cracks) actually makes the game run faster, and better - which is not what you'd want to hear if you're a legitimate owner of the game [:P]
I thought CD keys just couldn't be generated from keys successfully? I think I read a John Carmack .plan that the chances of generating a valid Quake 3 key were astronomically rare..

Depends if you can figure out the algorithm used to generate the keys. These days most cd key algorithms are complex enough as to make it near impossible...it also depends on how well you can hide the algorithm in the checking code for when crackers reverse-engineer it to get at the algo...
CYer, Blitz

the only way to make it secure in my opinion, is to have a user account (pay to play), and you can only play if you have a valid account

charge the user for the account, not for the software itself which is, and always will be, freely copyable...

Gaffer: That's probably the way to go for the future, probably even for all software.

I think the general idea is to get people to pay for using the software, not for just having the software. Then hopefully there would be some incentive to get people to make longer games (especially in the fps department) since the one's now last less than 15 hours... :-(

the problem then becomes one of content building, because let me tell you, that 15 hours of you just played probably took 50 man years to produce ;)

Yeah, well technically all gamedevelopment will turn into is content development, since there are many tools out there for programming, but the art assets will take a long time to make. I personally think that an episodic game would work best, since a personm could make an episode, say that plays for several hours, sell that, then make more episodes etc. It kind of works like shareware and kind of like an online game where you pay per play so to speak.

Games always need new technology, thinking that you can innovate on content alone is flawed, and is the biggest downfall of those people who always argue that games should follow the hollywood model.

The bottom line is that design + content + code = game, you need all parts there, and you'll never EVER find a system that will just make the game for you, you will always have to write some code - it may tend more towards middleware + game specific code, but thats great imo

but there will always be the technical innovations that drive gameplay as well, and if you just make content, you will not be a part of that.

quote:Originally posted by Gaffer

the only way to make it secure in my opinion, is to have a user account (pay to play), and you can only play if you have a valid account

charge the user for the account, not for the software itself which is, and always will be, freely copyable...

There is a few issues with that theory.

Currently it is possible to go back to an older game, load it up and play again for no more money than the first time (does anyone other than me replay games?), even if this valid account system was a pay-once thing, it still requires that someone (developer, publisher) maintain the database of accounts. Perhaps this could be done by a third party, a company that does nothing but maintain these online databases. It also means that a user must keep track of yet another username/password. The internet itself is not stable enough for this, I know I would not tollerate a single-player game that I could not play becasue the accounts server is down. Then there is the issue that some users still do not have internet access, or if they do it is very limited. Finally, it would still be possible to 'crack' the game, all you need is to remove or 'dupe' the checks for the account, ie; all you need is time.

The only reason this system works for MMORPGs and other subscription games is that someone is being paid to maintain a database anyway, and that the essance of the game is to play it online on an offical server with updates and new content etc. Even these servers can be 'crack'able in a way, there are free servers out there now for both Ultima Online and EverQuest (others?) which are run by other users or can be run locally for a solo experiance.

David.

I'm only advocating that specific model for native online games, tacking it in that form onto what is actually a single player game is retarded.

Sorry, my reply was more directed to this comment:

quote:Originally posted by Daemin

Gaffer: That's probably the way to go for the future, probably even for all software.

I think the general idea is to get people to pay for using the software, not for just having the software. Then hopefully there would be some incentive to get people to make longer games (especially in the fps department) since the one's now last less than 15 hours... :-(

(Note the "all software" and about length of FPSs)
I should probally have included it in my original post, but I was too sleepy to realise.

Yeah, i ok, you've got me ;)

I acknowledge that its retarded, but that doesnt mean it wont happen - or at least people will try ;)

personally, the only solution that i can see is if you have a truly online game that requires a server, if you maintain a high quality community, it doesnt even matter if people rip your server off - you should be able to compete against a totally free similar server, based on the strength of your community alone.

a good example of where i think piracy is no problem at all is for online chess games:

take www.chessclub.com, its commercial, but it survives on having a good community and slightly modified software from the free chess playing stuff - http://www.freechess.org/, which again, survives and goes well - but it hasnt killed its commercial competition.

i guess what i'm saying is, i sure dont have all the answers, but if you game fits into a genre like that above (and yes, very few mainstream games out now really do), then piracy is no problem

the question is, can this sort of model be applied to more mainstream games, even ones without a natural online component

probably not, but i'm willing to bet that stuff like "steam" coming up from valve is going to move in a direction where users have free software downloading content for a price, and piracy is less of an issue

that can be cracked of course... but user account tracking can work against that

no answers, just questions, but there has to be a solution out there, the current system just does not work and its not going to get any better ;)

I think the key to everything is eternal vigilence / maintanance...

ie. money :)

Yep...

To me the obvious solution is just to make games that people feel are good enough to fork out the cash for, make people comfortable with spending money on it. Make consumers think they are getting really good value - and preferably they *actually get* good value for money.

It's not about the longevity either - that's a bit of a misonception. People buy DVDs and they have maybe 5 or 6 hours of content in total - less than half of some of the shorter games. They do cost a bit less, that's for sure, but people value it more than they do computer games. Some DVDs only have about 4 hours of stuff and cost $30 and people still dish out the cash.

I think alot of people don't see pirated games as illegitimate...there doesn't seem to be any 'shame' in having a pirated game - it's very accepted. It's more about changing people's attitudes than it is about forcing people to accept the publisher's point of view.

Perhaps releaseing a free version of the game, with low quality content and less options (maybe fixed max frame rate too). Then have the real version for sale with high quality content and all the options. The free version would be competing with any cracked versions, it would be smaller so distributed more easily, and if it has things like fixed frame rate crackers will try and crack that, and maybe not spend as much time cracking the real thing.

That way users will have the crap version and can play it freely, but they have a good reason to go buy the real thing. Maybe that could create shame when people have the choice between a working free version and a cracked real version.

Just a thought anyway

They do, its called a game demo.

;)

Yeah, Well I think it stems from the fact that you can get a DVD for about $30, sometimes less, and you can watch it several times without getting bored if it's your favourite movie etc. That's about 6-12 hours of entertainment for that $30 really. Going to the movies is similar, and even if you fork out $12 for the full price ticket that's 2-3 hours of entertainment. Games on the other hand cost $80-100 in Australia, which is a huge amount considering some of the newest FPS's (and some RTS's like C&C Generals) last for 10 hours total. Also nothing really new is being done with those games, the FPS's are the same old types of games, with interesting plots, better graphics etc, and some of the newest strategy titles are also same old same old (Warcraft 3 is excluded from here, as it is fun to play and has innovated a fair bit in terms of gameplay). It just doesn't seem to be good value really to spend a lot of money for potentially little entertainment value. However I have to point out that some games last for far longer - Neverwinter Nights, Dungeon Siege, Morrowind, well, mainly RPG games. I guess either the price drops for certain games here in Australia, or they improve in quality so that the money that people fork out for a game is worth it.

That's why I think new models of selling games should be explored, since then the consumer will more likely pay for a cheaper game, and then once they have it and they like it they are more likely to pay for any expansion packs or additional contents that's released. Also I think that the box that MMORPG's come in should be almost free, as you still pay the subscription fee to the publisher for running the damn game, so there's no real reason for you to have to fork out $90 for what is effectively a "demo" of the full game (only allowing you to play for 30 days for free).

Enough ranting for me I think...

Buying the box = development costs.
Subscription = running costs + more development costs (new *free* content) + some profit
Publishers could give away the game for free, but it takes them a looong time to recoup the development costs...say 10-12 months before they start turning an actual profit, and if the game is crap and half the people leave after 6 months then the publisher and/or developer is left with a large debt.
CYer, Blitz

Well I don't mean totally free, more like the first month's subscription fee, plus a bit more, say $30-40 for the box, since all ti would contain would be the CD. Even better, just distribute the game online!

Cheers mate, no hard feelings. Everyone makes mistakes :)

Looking forward to some good competition in the modeller challenge from ya!

Welcome! @:-D

Ratchet and Clank sequel, eh? Now THAT'S gotta be a fun project to work on. Rather a departure from your current list of football games. A welcomed change?

Some jawsome concepts you have there. Yet another Art Center guy to be envious of...

I've been a big fan of Wes Louie for ages. I've had his bookmarked for a while now, along with Joachim, and Feng Zhu's website (and a few others! I remember Joachim from the Amiga days though!).. some brilliant and inspiring work on Wes's site - everyone should definately check it out. That's the level we all should be aspiring to!! (The paintings are incredible - they remind me of the quality found in those huge yearly books with professional illustrator works/advertising art that I used to read in the library.. brilliant stuff)

Gidday Wes and welcome to Oz. lol

Quality stuff I really like your style, might have to pick your brain sometime about your 2D colouring techniques.

Hi guys!

Thanks for the warm welcome. Yeah, a R&C sequel. The game is looking really good and I play it everyday, so it has to be good :) Brain, you are right about the football games. It got mindless after a while and I wasn't able to fully utilize my creativity there. How creative can making texture maps for a football team be? Not very much, so I'm glad I am working on an action/adventure title now. I was going to go join a bunch of my friends from Art Center at ILM, but it's pretty expensive to live up there and I don't like the weather in the San Francisco area much...hehe. So...I'm back in Los Angeles! Well Souri, I thank you for accepting my registration. It's always nice to see more people who are creative. Hi Malus, nice to meet you as well. Any questions are always welcome. It's a holiday here today in the US, but I have to go to work! Big deadline this week, so I'll probably be there till almost midnight :( I'll catch up with you guys later, alright?

Hay Wes, ive seen your work b4. Not sure how i found ur site, but i think ur body of work is impressive.Its good to see you can finally put your talent to use on a title that requires more than pigskin and sweaty men.[:)]

Pretty kewl concept art :)

I bet it was the hammy dialogue!!

I knew it was never going to match up to the first film in regards to the story, so I went in without huge expectations. But, boy, I was pretty disappointed. There were some parts of the movie which I thought were just downright embarrassing (Morpheous's speech at Zion, the guy with the strange French accent at the restaurant for example). And all the action sequences - technically amazing as they were, just weren't intense or adrenaline rushing.. The highway car chase action sequence didn't do much for me - it hardly touches the car chase scenes in movies like Ronin. The story itself was pretty uninspiring.. some techno babble that went way too long at times too..

Wow i would have to dissagree on that one, i thought the movie rocked.

Although to be honest i was a little dubious at the start because it seemed like a totally different movie than the original but once it got going it was alot of fun.

The highway scene was awesome and despite what everyone is saying the fight scenes didnt seem to long to me but maybe im just easy to please.

Will agree with you that Morpheous's speech seemed a little "gay" but as i said to my girlfriend while we watched the whole zion party scene was to illustrate what they are all fighting to the death for ... theres some epic battles ahead and up to that point we had no emmotional attachment to zion other than the 1 or 2 lines of script in the first movie where they talked about it.

However, my prediction for the 3rd movie is that Zion is part of the matrix...

It seems this is one of those movies you either love or hate. I thought it was really good, although I do realise there were some really bad moments of filming/scripting in it. Overall if you were prepared to just have some fun and enjoy the ride the movie was great. However if you expected it to be similar to the original you were going to be bitterly disappointed if not left angry.

There's plenty of other over-rated movies out there. Take x-men 2 for example...people loved that but there were plenty of weaknesses in it too (I thought it rocked by the way). I think people just scrutinise the matrix sequel more than they probably realise they do. It was good fun! The action scenes had plenty of adrenaline if you were still accepting the movie at the time.

I think alot of people got too pissed off at the start and then made it their personal crusade to dislike the whole movie.

I think the plot was more than just techno/psycho babble. Alot of what the movie was carried on from the original. Power of beliefs - misguided beliefs, sheltering yourself from the truth or accepting the truth. Then there is that stuff about pre-determinism and choice etc. It wasn't just babble, alot of the characters actions and motivations were guided by these principals that they clung to.

I will say this for sure though, it wasn't as good as the first one.

Morpheous's speech just seemed out of character to me. Most likely due to him having to yell, whereas you're used to seeing him calm and soft spoken. The edge of the action sequences, I feel, have been taken away.. There wasn't as much sense of urgency or consequence to the outcome of the scenes. And the ideas for the action sequences seem to be the same as the last, just bigger. Rippling building explosions, sparring, sparring with weapons.. the ending with Trinity made me cringe.
I have to constantly remind myself that this is really half a film (the other half being Matrix 3), which explains why some of the new characters don't do anything, and why some segments of the film make no sense whatsover.. I'm guessing they'll expand on it in the next one. The kissing scene in the bathroom with Neo? What was with the cake eating scene? For me, personally, if they cut that part of the movie out, I wouldn't have complained. Don't tell me that French/German speaking guy didn't babble on! :) Same with the segment with the architect at the end.. Seemed way too drawn out, I thought. I felt that the twins were a bit of a let down too, playing a pretty minor role in the movie. No idea who they are, why they can do what they can do.. (**ok, did a bit of reading, and I should have gathered that they're just like agents for that rogue program).
A small thing I did like was Neo seeing the dependance and burden of being 'The One' that's been put onto him by those in Zion. That was pretty touching, but it didn't last for more than about 30 seconds total.

We know Neo is the one, we know he can kick arse in the Matrix. Everytime we see a Neo action scene, we know he is going to win hands down, so thats why that sense or urgency isn't there anymore. The french fella just went on and on... it was a bit pointless. The architect was too drawn out too.

That dance party/orgy in Zion didn't need to be in there, what was with that. It didn't seem to really work too well with how the rest of the people are portrayed there. One minute Zion is all these serious techy people and old beggars, next thing it is a bunch of primitive teenage cave people getting it on in the masses.

The CG doubles were really bad at points too... especially in the Neo vs 100 Agent Smith scenes.

Overall, I didn't mind the movie... but yeah it could have been a lot better.

If the ideas for the action sequences were the same as the last - what made the last ones not crap? And of course the action sequences had less edge, it was like pitting a hundred little kids against an adult kung fu monk dude, how often do little kids win?

Morpheus character I think was a little better explained. I mean you think about it - this guy is basically a fanatic - *even* in the original, I guess they just over-emphasised it in this one. (Fanatacism)'s what gives him his calm and confidence, but it also makes him a total fruit-loop sometimes.

The ending with trinity was poorly executed, the orgy scene - well what do you expect, I think it was trying to make a point about the whole "is the matrix so bad?" because people go after the same things inside and outside of the matrix (links up with that french guys' babble). But it was definitely a crap scene. As was the Orgasmirator cake (anyone else here seen Orgazmo? Damn funny at bits).

Obviously the twins were two constructs, I picked that one fairly easy. The architect segment was alright, but it was poorly edited and kind of removed some dramatic impact from the individual scenes that it was going on about.

For sure the movie could've been better. But there are lots of movies that could've been better, it just depends whether we are prepared/want to tolerate some movies faults in order to appreciate fully it's qualities.

Everyones a critic [:P]
What happened to just watching a movie and escaping for a few hours. I totally got my $7 dollars worth.

Hell yeah :)
I just feel people are taking apart this movie like no other. I mean no one hates star wars because luke skywalker says "But I was going to go down to (wierd name) station to pick up some power convertors"...I mean that's weak dialogue with s*** acting, but hardly anyone gets upset about it - the movie was still fun.

Obviously arguing whether a movie is good or bad is pretty futile, since everyone has different tastes and opinions, but of course, you wouldn't expect me to say a movie was crap without pointing out what I didn't like about it :) Those things I mentioned were the reasons I couldn't escape and enjoy it, and trust me, I did try!
Maitrek, try using episode 1 of Star Wars with Jar Jar Binks as an example, and you might get a different reaction ;). And the action sequences the first time round were better because they were original. Doing the same ideas the second time around (even though they were more fancier) takes away some of the surprise I guess.
I do agree with pretty much everything that's written in this thread - the difference I guess is that you were able to get over the flaws to enjoy the movie, but for me, they were what brought it down. I don't think I picked the movie apart too much at all. You should read some of the negative reviews of Matrix Reloaded on the web. :)

I'm with you malus I enjoy the movie for what it is and try not to get to bogged down with all the "why did the chicken cross the road" stuff.

Hell I even enjoyed Arnies Collateral Damage, sure it was crap but it was WATCHABLE crap :)

Souri: the Cake scene was to set up the "WHY" for frenchys wife to betray him... ie, he gives this hot chick an orgasmo cake.... she goes to the bathroom .. he follows and we assume gives her whatfor, later on when the wife sends the bodyguards/old agents to go get him she sez "You will find him in the ladies bathroom".

The twins are agents from a previous matrix, remember that the current matrix is the 5th version (according to the architech dude) and neo is the current "One"

And don't forget the lipstick that wasnt on his face :) Oh I picked up on that as soon as she said it and started to laugh. It took most of the others in the cinema about 1 more second to get it...

I liked the movie. I thought it was amazing - but I wasnt a real Matrix groupie with the first one...

The one part of the movie that I just can not stop laughing about is the fight scene with all the Hugo cops. It so reminds me of that Mad Onion benchmark test with all the same guys running around the screen shooting each other and falling down.

First time, I thought it was great but lacking in places but after seeing it a second time, I think it's much deeper than the first but it's pacing is a little off. It doesn't flow as well as the first one. It is a little less urgent as well - we know Neo can take anyone.

The theme for this one is different. The first movie was about "What is real?", this one is about "What is choice and do we really have a choice?". The speech with the Merovingian perfectly illustrates an age old question of whether we have free will or not. The Merov believes totally in causality (universal causation) where as Morpheus believes in choice.

Merovingian - "It all comes down to action, reaction. Cause, effect".
Morpheus - "No. It all begins with a choice."

I liked a lot of the subtle hints - and trying to work out why people are called what they are. For the record, the Merovingians were a line of Kings who believed they were directly descended from the line of Christ. Persephone was the (un)willing wife of Hades. Niobe is the character personified by arrogance and loses her 14 children etc...

I also thought that Zion is a part of the matrix, but then you have people who can't get into the Matrix (no plugs) but who knows?

Hmm. I can't really decide which one I like better so I'm gonna say that I like them both the same. There's some very cool bits like when the various Neo's all shout "Bullshit!" at the architect, the carchase, Morhpheus dealing with the twins and the fight INSIDE the car. I also liked how there's far more 'factions' in this movie.

Great stuff. Much deeper than the first one but the weirdness and pacing pretty much means it's as accessible.

Its all good to say that people shouldnot be a critic and just go enjoy the movie, but it can be hard to do that if the movie simply doesn't do anything for you. It may be that we simply don't enjoy the movie for what it is.

I don't see anything wrong with people criticising a movie. Its fine if people talk about how good the movie was, but it should also be fine if someone wants to talk about what they didn't enjoy. You can't force people to like something.

As for the comment on Mark Hamil's acting in Star Wars, I think the reason no one complained about that was the whole concept of the movie overshadowed it. Nothing like that had been done before. People weren't interested in seeing Mark Hamil whine, they wanted to see the space battles and lightsabre fights. By the time the second came around, people wanted more action plus something new, and they got that in the form of better writing, a good director and an awesome twist. Unfortunately it started to go downhill from Return of the Jedi.

The same was with the Matrix. No one went to see Keanu Reeves act or anything like that, it was all about the effects and style. The other parts of the movie didn't matter so much. With Reloaded they didn't do too bad a job, its just that the pace and some aspects of the store weren't all that crash hot. Sure it had the plot twist thing at the end, but its not quite as cool as say Agent Smith being Neo's Father :P

For sure it's fine for people to critique a movie - I'm just surprised that people fail to find anything good from the movie at the same time. It gives me the impression they are out to not enjoy the movie, and they aren't looking for the positives. Kind of a glass half empty style of critiqueing (negative) rather than glass half full. I'm not saying they are necessarily *trying* to dislike it, but they aren't really giving a huge effort into appreciating what it does do right.

I'm perfectly capable of talking about what made the matrix reloaded good and bad, I know there are some pretty bad moments in the movie and that's why I would be careful to say that it's a "great" movie, but it was certainly enjoyable anyway...

Souri - you're right, I think some people stomach average/poor movie making better than others.

I know average film making when I see it, and Matrix Reloaded had plenty, but I would never say that the movie "sucked.. big time." I can stomach the bad moments and enjoy the good parts (and there was plenty of good too in the Matrix Reloaded). From a purely critical/negative point of view I could point out alot of weak moments, but I've ruined so many movies for myself doing that - that I've realised movies are to be enjoyed, not intellectually digested like some kind of machinated process that must be crafted to perfection.

I found that the action scenes didn't leave you a moment to think, but the parts that required thinking didn't leave you a moment to think either... :P That's fine by me though, as I do most of my thinking of a movie after the movie, and the conclusions that I came up with were that the action sequences were better but the plot wasn't as good (except for the meeting with the Architect).

I think the movie was quite bad compared to the first one (dialogue reasons). The story flowed ok and it wasn?t hard to understand (main themes). It was just a big disappointment nevertheless but not a really movie.

The fight with the Smiths, first half of it was fine. Then Neo started to do the pole thing, that looked really bad as he looks too liquid and his clothes - wrong colour. It was too CG and that was crap. The why they rendered the coat; it was very heavy and thick for a while and then lighter; it was just inconsistent. (I observed that because I was bored with the fight as it was too long.) The good thing about them, nice choice of clothes.

Morpheus - this time, less hole filler make up and too many close ups of his face. For god's sake they shouldn't use a green background to film something that is for warm light...like that cave speech scene.

The sex scene...well the only good thing with that was the sweat looked real enough to convince me. Overall it was really too long...made me think I was in the middle of a boring game and then suddenly started to watch a porno. That scene showed me too much of Keanu Reeves and I didn?t like it.

That French guy, he?s only thinking of how to get laid more but he goes on and on about how he does it. A new meaning to date rape drugs ?I wrote that program?and it does?.

The Architect guy has the most interest and boring lines at the same time. I liked that scene. Maybe it?s the screens at the back; they were cleaver.

They have really bad music too...it kind of didn't suit the mood.

There are lots things that I don?t understand in the plot.
Bane, he looks like Smith with a beard but why did he cut his hand?
Smith seems to want to take over Neo but why? So he can fly or be The One?

quote:Originally posted by Leviron

That scene showed me too much of Keanu Reeves and I didn?t like it.

Lol! I completely agree :P

Homophobes :P

Picking apart special effects still seems a little harsh - I've always believed that if you can't stand special effects looking somewhat unrealistic (and can't just use your imagination), then don't go to the movies until 2010 when we have the computing power to make things look photrealistic :)

I think its fine to critic a movie and if you really disliked then go for it but I find most people nowdays go into movies with their critic goggles on super bitchy, "If I did it it would be much better" mode.

Maitrek I have to say that we do have computers cabable of making CG look realistic.
I did find the CG lacking in alot of areas and I wasn't trying to look for it either. There were some really shoddy parts that just jumped of the screen at you, probably because they did too many slow motion shots on CG characters, thats always a risky choice as it gives the viewer enough time to scan it properly.

The robot looked badly animated and his head was mr rubber ken doll man.
The agent crushing the car was also Ken doll rubber guy, he also looked like he had no weight and was made of rubber (bad lighting too).
In the big Neo/Agent smith fight Neo looked very rubbery in some areas (great in others though).

All in all most were great but some areas looked rushed and unfinished especially certain animations, lighting and cloth deformations.

Having said that, I didn't care, it didn't spoil the movie for me and I only noticed that because I'm trained in CG stuff I didn't go looking for a 'fight' as the case is with alot of movie goers. I enjoyed the movie immensely.

Like I said before, I got my $7 worth.

Leviron: This is my take on the things you found confusing.
Bane: This is agent Smith in a human body (he has managed to imprint himself on people) in my view he cut his hand because he wanted to experience the human feeling of pain, programs don't hurt in the matrix.

Smith: Wants to kill Neo because:
A. He is the only threat to his yet untold and unexplained plans to be the only one to alter the matrix and destroy Zion/humans. He was imprinted with some of Neo's "human' qualities and can now choose his fate unlike programs which are governed by rules in the Matrix. Remember he also feels humans are all virus's like cancer.
B. Hes just nasty. [:P]
C. he is still in some ways programmed to do it.

quote:Maitrek I have to say that we do have computers cabable of making CG look realistic.
I did find the CG lacking in alot of areas and I wasn't trying to look for it either. There were some really shoddy parts that just jumped of the screen at you, probably because they did too many slow motion shots on CG characters, thats always a risky choice as it gives the viewer enough time to scan it properly.

To me that second statement seems almost to be defeating the first statement :P
I definitely think although we can make still shots look good, we are miles behind on getting things that are moving to look realistic.

The creators of the Spider-Man CGI model spent a lot of time building it with proper anatomy, muscle structure, and made sure the limbs never went beyond their physical limit.. and people still put down the Spider-Man CGI, saying it was unrealistic. The CGI guys put it down to the fact that people have never seeing a human jump as far or swing that way before, and I think that applies here too. The human brain just isn't used to seeing guys jump on cars causing incredible damage, or spinning around a pole and doing some incredible things against a hundred clones before..

Maitrek: I said we can make it realistic, didn't say they did.
Souri: Spidermans lighting made him look off in my opinion, not the animation.

Realistic CG can be done, Golem/Balrog for instance. It just isn't done regulary.

I don't think the human brain not seeing it before has that much to do with it when it looks like rubber. That mainly bad lighting.

it was the lighting, facial detail and cloth simulation that clued me in whenever they used cg keanu or cg agent smith... surprising, because they apparently used image based lighting (IBL), which *should* have made the lighting extremely realistic

just goes to show how sensitive the human brain is to spotting fakes in human anatomy, especially faces...

Gollum (is that how it's spelt? Can't remember read the book a long time ago) did not look realistic. It was a very good effort though, but he's not expected to do so many things in slow motion as Neo is - Gollum was in motion quite alot.
Also, Gollum isn't human so we don't have such a pre-conception about how he moves and looks (and emotes) whereas we see people everyday and have very specific knowledge of how they look.
Having said that, the balrog was definitely awesome, but probably had better conditions to work with (dark cave etc) and most of the light in the scene was from the balrog and the associated firestorm rather than from a sun or other lights in the scene:)

Maitrek: Good point about gollum not being human but he was human enough for the brain to pick things if they were to off.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree my friend.

Heh - I can live with that :)
One thing I didn't quite figure out in the movie is how do they restart the matrix each time the destroy Zion? Also, how long does one matrix last for? Little nit picky things I know, but hard to figure out the consistency.
it does make sense to have a time limit on each matrix, because it's suppose to be set in the 90's and obviously the 90's don't just keep re-occurring.

whats everyone think about the architect ?
was he a program or a human plugged into the matrix
cos if he were human there shouldnt be any problem to smack him around

Peter Gillespie
www.3dluvr.com/eagor

hes a program I assume he wrote the matrix code along with that 2 timing oracle. Anyone else find the fact that shes called 'Oracle' amusing?

yeh thats kinda funny, but i think she was named oracle for other reasons. Its just a coincedence i suppose. I seriously doubt the Wachowskis are trying to prove a point by naming the 'nanny' the 'oracle'.

And BTW i thought they did a good job on the film. Besides the obvious nit picks everybody has mentioned here , i think that the Matrix series tells a worthwhile story, for in some way or other, there is a lesson in it for everyone.

Im looking forward to finding out what part Agent Smith plays in the big scheme of things, and seeing whether or not Neo delivers on the prophecy.

It would be cool if by some strange messed up 'matrix-ism', all 6 versions of Neo somehow returned to fight for Zion in the end. And to do so, they would have to focus on becoming specific body parts, then join together to form "neotron". Neotron then uses the matrix to transform Trinitys RSI into a tritan, which Neo then uses to destroy the matrix once and for all.

O.K that was just me talking s*** there, but on a serious note, does anyone get the impression that the Oracle is implying to Neo that the only way the war will end, is if the robots, programs and humans learn to live together? Maybe im looking into it too much, but if it proves true, then i think the film will end with them all beginning to build a new future, and then they will release the Matrix MMOG which allows people to help bring that new future to fruition. Eg waking up sleepy humans, destroying bad programs etc. Hmmmmmm....

Red...so i can meet the woman in red :)
And the whole learning kung fu in an hour thing is pretty cool too :)
CYer, Blitz

i wonder what the blue pill did anyway,
it probably kills you,
in that case i'd take the red.

I'd squish them together and take the purple pill. It may help with this hangover

Pantmonger

i havent seen 2 yet, but the line from the first one about the blue pill was something like
'youll wake up and think this was all a dream.'

Then pantmonger would be dreaming in reality - like a crazy person... :-)

The red pill for sure - what kind of drongo takes the blue one? It's set in 1999 - was anyone attached to that time period - I'd get out of there as quick as possible.

I'd take the green pill

Mmm... M&M's...

quote:Originally posted by Maitrek

The red pill for sure - what kind of drongo takes the blue one? It's set in 1999 - was anyone attached to that time period - I'd get out of there as quick as possible.

But you can... "party like it's 1999" !!!!

I'd take the blue pill so I could wake up in bed and get more sleep. I miss sleep.

Scott.

Can I take a raincheck?

I haven't had a look at it yet, but I wonder, does anyone buy gaming magazines anymore? When I was younger, I would buy *a lot* of magazines. From Zzap 64!, Computer + Video Games, and then Amiga Format, Australian Commodore Amiga Review etc... but I've found the internet pretty much killed off my game magazine purchasing habits. The only bonus I would see from buying a gaming magazine now would be coverdisks to save me from downloading stuff.

i used to buy pcpowerplay all the time but after ben mansill left that mag just went to shit.

speaking of mansil, does anyone read Atomic? one of the best aussie magazines out there i reckon

I still buy gaming mags for something to read on the train on the way to work :D

I used to buy pc gamer years and years ago, mainly for the coverdisc (back in 95/95 before i had net access). These days i have an xbox mag subscription, once again, for the coverdisc, although i do enjoy reading the mag, i think it's quite well put together (despite how much they may rip straight from the UK version :) )
Other than that, i don't think the net has really killed my magazine buying habits that much, i probably get most of my gaming news from this site :) I've never really followed games that closely in terms of knowing whats coming out when etc. I just find it difficult to find the time to keep up with all that stuff with so much else going on, so i jst rely on friends etc. to keep me in the loop :)
CYer, Blitz

I never really bought gamming mags, I used to buy APC alot (mainly for the cover disks), but these days it's all C++ and game dev. I have spent alot of money on gdmag @_@ (Well worth it though ;)

I get PCPowerplay and Atomic - both to run out in like one more issue. Right now I am not sure I want to resubscribe. Even PCPowerplay themselves have commented on how they use to review like 30 or 40 games and now they are lucky to get 20 in a mag. Because of this I find they are trying to shove more "junk" to pad out the mag. They also seem to be very FPS focused and I dont feel that they really rate any RPG that well unless it has a more "FPS" feel to it.

The good side of old school is that they have been putting some free games on their cd's the past few issues from "back in the day" :)

I used to buy the American PC Gamer, since I caught the bug when I was over there, but really, it kinda got old, having all those ads etc, and with the advent of the internet, it kinda made the magazines redundant, why bother getting demos when you can get the full version off the net?

Oh well...

quote:why bother getting demos when you can get the full version off the net?

I think it has something to do with um.... piracy being illegal, can we all say 'Copyright Infringment'. [:P]

Yeah, but when you have no money, demos tend to get boring when you can't buy the full game.

I usually just grab the american PC gamer. And Daemin if you have no money to buy games - try getting a job instead of asking mummy :P
(sorry - you left yourself open there)

Atomic is my main purchase, though I wish I still subscribed to HYPER. I've been a long time fan of HYPER since GameStar died out (plus I'm a Big Heavy Stuff fan, and with Elliot Fish as the Editor, it's an easy sell to me @;-)

I used to a buy a PC gamer and a PC format every now and then, but it was just all too expensive. I used to buy PC user for a while there because they were the cheapest mag, with some good info and had a lot of good stuff packed onto the coverdisc. Now I only buy one every few months or so for the coverdisc, so that I don't have to download the newest version or DirectX, Detonator Drivers, etc....

I have never seen a magazine go downhill as bad as Zzap64!.. That used to be such a great magazine for the C64, but as things got from bad to worse, the magazine went slimmer, and slimmer, and slimmer. And while that was happening, the proportion of advertisements grew, compared to actual content. Towards the end of the magazines life, it became a rather expensive pamplet!

quote:Originally posted by Souri

I have never seen a magazine go downhill as bad as Zzap64!.. That used to be such a great magazine for the C64, but as things from bad to worse, the magazine went slimmer, and slimmer, and slimmer. And while that was happening, the proportion of advertisements grew, compared to actual content. Towards the end of the magazines life, it became a rather expensive pamplet!

But god DAMN, did Zzap! 64 #107 rock... :)

BTW, Games(tm) rocks hard. Very much worth the read. (Especially the Retro section for old people like me who still think games made more than 6 months ago might still be worth playing) It's a UK mag, not an aussie one, btw.

About 5 years ago I buy HYPER a lot. I'll check that magazine out to see if I want to buy it.
Right now, reading New Scientist...not a game mag but somehow it's more useful.

I stopped buying PC Powerplay after I got letter of the month and they never sent out my Athlon....

technically it is both a uk mag and an aussie mag - i bought a copy the other day - issue five from the uk - then realised there was a local version - bought that.. issue two.. had the same 'is gaming good for you article'. i have a feeling they borrow 'alot'.. but since the uk mag was very impressive i really don't mind.

issue 5 of the uk mag had a zelda special.. did issue 1 of the aussie one have that (in the retro section)? cos i really wouldn't mind a copy of the first one.

Waiting (hoping) on a big Citizen Zero announcement...Time to break radio silence!!!
CYer, Blitz

I've just finished downloading Half Life 2 ingame footage.. http://users.pandora.be/vanhoef/HL2/halflife2_pce32003_2dn_qt.zip
It's quite impressive. [:)]

HL2 does indeed look spiffy. Some lovely scripted sequences there (love the one at the end with the blue tentacle things @:-) Have also gotten the Doom 3 trailer, which has peaked my interest a bit more for it, as the screenshots weren't doing alot for me. Grabbed the World of Warcraft trailer, and it still has me begging for more. I want it nooowwwww!

The Star Wars Galaxies trailer's also raised my interest. Sure, it's Star Wars and all, but that last gameplay flick I saw kinda left me not caring much. Now... where was I? *starts downloading the new Legacy of Kain trailer*

That movie you mention is from the pc.ign teaser. The one I linked is much better though! It really shows off some of the physics in the game. Pushing a clump of bed matresses and objects off a ledge inside (you see it fall off convincingly), lifting a heater with the gravity gun and throwing it at an enemy, who crashes into a soda machine (you get to see soda cans spit out and roll down the steps) etc.. Blowing up the wooden foundation under a metal container, to have it fall on the enemy below etrc.. pretty cool stuff!

Here's a whole heap of [url="http://users.pandora.be/vanhoef/HL2/index.html"]Half-Life 2 cam shots[/url].. 75 total, I think..

Let there be eight!!

http://www.cscentral.com/

Half life movies galore.

Here's 8 [url="http://mostlycloudy.net/~dnl2ba/multimedia/video/Video%20game-related/"]Half Life 2 tech demos[/url] (the same as what Malus posted), and a whole lot of other E3 stuff too!!! (I wish I had cable!!)

I don't know whether to laugh or cry, but I've downloaded 35mbs of a Half Life .mov file on dialup, only to have an "invalid sample number" error when opening the file. You might think I'm nuts, but I've started downloading the 520mb "everything" version now. Why would I be doing this? Because from what I've seen so far, it's really worth it. Seriously. :)
I've seen the E3 Doom 3 footage, and it feels like your typical old indoor fragging FPS game (strafe and spray) that I've played many times before, whereas Half Life 2 is like nothing I've ever seen. You can really feel your adrenaline rush during some of the firefights in the tech demos, they're that intense.
The attention to detail in HL2 is incredible. The lighting, and little things like glare from the road or pavements, depending on the position you are with the Sun (this effect you usually see in racing games like Gran Turismo, Grand Prix Challenge). The reflections of glass and windows look so "right" too and all add up to the believability of the environment.. there are some parts of the city which I thought looked so realistic.
Valve have mentioned somewhere that they spent a considerable amount of attention on lighting for the engine - I've seen some screenshots of the Hammer editor, and whilst the texture work isn't much different from what I've seen in the past, it looks incredible in-game.

Anyway, I've got about 40 hours left on that download. :P :)

Ouch... it so sucks when that happens. I'm a patient person, but when things like that happen, you realise how bad 56k is. One day, we'll all have broadband. Oh yes... yes we will.

Suprisingly, I've only downloaded 100MB over E3 so far. More to d/l, of course.

ah yeh the hl2 videos were the best, looks great, doom3's lighting looked better i think, but the physics and gameplay of hl2 looked heaps better.
i wanna pick people up with that gun, and then throw them at the aliens..

I'm not really looking forward to Doom3, that game seems to be more geared towards a console / arcade market in my mind.

Half Life 2: not another linear story shooter... (That's the thought that springs to mind anyway.

I thought linear story worked pretty well in Max Payne (to name a recent shooter with linear plot)

Linear doesn't have to mean the game will be bad. Did you actually see Half life 2's shit!
Man if it being linear is its only down fall I'm going to be "Super Happy Yellow Fun Malus". [:P]

I was totally blown away by Alex from the HL2 trailers. Full facial morphs, soft shadowing and her skin shaders just looks amazing!!

Halo2 looked pretty damn sweet too, though it's kind of hard not to compare everything to Halflife now.

I'm dissapointed there wasn't any ingame footage of the new Theif game though :(

Yeah, I saw the HL2 trailers, they're kinda impressive, but the question is will the AI be any smarter?

I liked when he blocked the door with the table to excape the AI guy after him, the guy couldn't get through the door, so he went up to the window and started shooting through that :)
I think the friendly AI has definately improved. In one of the street fighting scenes, the AI gave you cover fire to move forward, and then they bunnyhopped with you etc. which was cool. Just gonna have to wait and see.
CYer, Blitz

quote:It will play games from Universal Media Discs (UMD), which are 1.8GB, 60mm optical discs housed in a minidisk-style plastic cartridge.. The console will be powered by the latest 90nm semiconductor technology, with PSone-surpassing graphics under the control of NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline), and a capacity for around two hours of high resolution MPEG4-based FMV "at DVD quality", all of which will be pumped out onto a 4.5", 480x272 pixel TFT LCD widescreen (16:9 aspect ratio). It is also expected that the button layout will eventually resemble DualShock, with a few changes made to fit the smaller size of the console.

I'm pretty much blown away that they can make a PSOne beating machine in a handheld already.. Spinning media is gonna drain that battery though, I hope it lasts more than 2 hours while playing games. I wish they had wireless tech on it, but hey, that'll probably add too much to the cost of the thing..

And like I mentioned in my other thread (I didn't see this one! :)), Nintendo say they're not worried, but when you have the might and money of Sony against you, you HAVE to be worried. The comments I've read from Nintendo pretty much sum up as "we're not worried, we'll concentrate on games - games are the most important thing", which is pretty much what they said with the N64 and Gamecube..

quote:Originally posted by Souri

The comments I've read from Nintendo pretty much sum up as "we're not worried, we'll concentrate on games - games are the most important thing", which is pretty much what they said with the N64 and Gamecube..

Well, it worked for the original Game Boy...

quote:Originally posted by GooberMan
Well, it worked for the original Game Boy...

Yeah but the Gameboy never really had any big competition. Sure there was that Sega handheld, and some other one I can't remember. Nintendo also had the hold over the console market with the SNES, so I'm sure that would help to boost sales too.

Now they have some true competition in the form of Sony, so it will be interesting to see how well they hold up.

The gameboy has a very, very large list of games to choose from, it will take some time before Sony can stack up titles to compete with that.

Sony can lure those GBA developers with leaner licensing costs, and greater profit because of cheaper media than cartridges.. I agree that Sony does have some work cut out for them. Nintendo definately has a large number of titles, and a huge ground base of GBA users (aren't GBA's still outselling PS2's?).
And 1.8gbs!! You could be watching a few dvd's on one PSP disc! :)

Another good thing with the GB is that it's backwards compatible. To me, and I'm sure many others, that means alot. Sony could offer this, though sounds unlikely with this thang.

playing a handheld thats the size of a CD, and abit bigger, wouldnt be good.
but its probably easy to port the ps1 games onto the mini disc.
maybe u can even copy them staight across if u have the hardware to do it.
thats if the hardware is the same.

If they did make PS1 games play on it (ported across to the new disk size) that would be cool as and would solve the small range of games issue.

So Sweet

Pantmonger

Lava monkey: I think the discs are smaller than the average cd, more like Game cubes, maybe smaller.

quote:Originally posted by Major Clod

Yeah but the Gameboy never really had any big competition.

I'd call Sega and Atari pretty big competition... People brought Game Boys for games like Tetris and Zelda, which the other two systems didn't have.

Sega had Columns... well. I liked it. @;-)

*nods*
Columns rocked. I wore many batteries out on that game :)
CYer, Blitz

Need a subscription to see that article, unfortunately.

indeed it is pretty tasty :)

quote:Originally posted by Souri

Need a subscription to see that article, unfortunately.

Yeh, 2 bad about that. They were showing it 4 free for awhile, maybe u checkd the link too late.

In any case you should try to grab the trailer at fileplanet.

There's some Halo 2 [url="http://www.gamershell.com/hellzone_XBox_Halo_2.shtml"]pictures[/url] and a [url="http://www.gamershell.com/news_BHalo2BE3Trailer2003.shtml"]40mb E3 movie[/url] at Gamershell..

I seen that clip too Souri, but i have the sneaking suspision that it's a dummy clip, made be the creater of MGS (forgot his bloody name) to fool us hungry folk, keeping us at bay while he builds another milestone for all competitors to aspire to.

Snake eating a Snake? nah neva dat, sumthin is up 4 sho.

The original Metal Gear took place in a jungle setting, but yeah, I don't remember him fighting wild animals (just dogs)...

And that concept art kinda brings back memories of the original :)

EDIT: Wonder if they'll ever do a Maniac Mansion 3.... probably won't be as good as the first two though...

Has anyone been checking out the sequel to Full Throttle? Looks pants and it looks sure to be the worst sequel game since Escape from Monkey Island.

I just hope lucasarts declare the 'action'-adventure game dead and let more innovative companies pick up the legacy that they abandoned. I don't think I've heard anything about SM2 just yet.

Just checked the S&M2 trailer, and the humour definitely still looks to be there, but I crave 2D. Agreed that it needs to look brighter. They've got a standard looking 3D cartoon style happening. It LOOKS fancified, and it shouldn't. Also the lighting needs to be rectified. It's like bad global illumination, which really really doesn't suit the style that Sam and Max belong to. Then again, it's highly likely not going to be reminiscent of the actual game, looking all pre-rendered.

"Holy bouncing Buddha, Max! We're in 3D!"
"Ehh, it's been done."

They should listen to their characters.

The original Sam and Max ruled, I agree that the 3Dism has lost alot of that style and wacky imagery that made it so cool but hey I'll play Sam and max anything.

Watch out! Rabbits with ray guns!

The MSG3 clip looked like a students end of year demo not the polished clips we are used to from Hideo Kojima's and his crew of fine pixel monkeys.

Hope its a red herring.

On a related note to Sam and Max.... I'd like to see Lucas Arts recreate Monkey Island 1 and 2, Day of the Tentacle, and the original Sam and Max on the GBA, but that won't happen anytime soon...

Phwoah!! That's a rockin' idea GooberMan!

I've seen some more Metal Gear Solid 3 pics. I think Hideo has been watching Rambo II too many times. Oh, and here's some more [url="http://www.gamerspulse.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Screenshots2003&…"]fantastic Sam & Max 2 concept art[/url].
You know, I would absolutely love a Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle sequel. Day of the Tentacle is one of my most favourite Lucas Film games.. the artwork is brilliant, and pretty much timeless. If they could do a colourful Zelda-like 3D cartoon game (with absurd deformation etc), that would be cool.. although I'm not sure if the market has the patience anymore with point and click adventure games. They can be pretty frustrating at times. [:)]

Day Of The Tentacle = best plot of any Lucas Arts game evar. I love that game :)

And it might be possible to enact my idea about the GBA if you get in to some homebrew dev and port ScummVM to the GBA... :)

Sam & Max sequel cancelled [:(]

http://games.slashdot.org/games/04/03/03/2032200.shtml
http://www.mixnmojo.com/

Yipee!

(You can do so much more crazy stuff much more easily drawn in 2D rather than try to make a 3D engine do it)

This is most uncool - Lucasarts have lost many a loyal fan this day, and they truly deserve it.

Full throttle 2 and now sam & max 2 cancelled.
*saddened*
CYer, Blitz

Anyone who didn't suspect that it was going to get cancelled is obviously at least partially blinded by hope. Considering some of the other crap they've released, I find it surprising that they cite 'economical' reasons...if they wasted less money on crap games, and made better use of their franchises (bioware or whatever did a way better job) maybe they wouldn't suck the mountain of ass the size of olympus mons that they do today.

Having said that though, Lucasarts was once a great developer and there previous work is undeniably classic. At least now they won't have the chance to f up the sam and max legend.

I'm really disappointed about the cancellation - last year's E3 trailer was hilarious. The adventure genre is really beginning to dry up on the PC - I can't think of any upcoming adventure titles outside of Syberia 2 and The Longest Journey 2.

Maitrek: I actually think sam and max 2 would have been a great game if it had half of the humour and gameplay of the original.
Full throttle on the other hand was pretty terrible.

quote:I actually think sam and max 2 would have been a great game if it had half of the humour and gameplay of the original.

I'm not 100% sure, but I have a funny feeling that Maitrek will have something to say about the quality of the gameplay in the original... [:)]

Sam & Max's creator, Steve Purcell, comments on the axing of Sam & Max II...

http://www.mixnmojo.com/php/news/showfile.php?id=1535&category=advnews

so, it's true hey, i thought it was a rumour, oh well at least they still have Armed and Dangerous.

sure sam and max wasnt perfect (and had some deplorable sections), but it still ranks as one of the funniest games ive ever played..

how can you not love a bunny who dislikes the word acumen? pity about s&m2.. if it was anything as zany as the first one. it wouldve been great..

Matt D

A lot has been said about point and click graphic adventure games, but I played my nephew's Final Fantasy 9 a few days ago, and I felt that I'd been transported back to when games like Day of the Tentacle, Zak Mcracken etc were popular. It just felt the same. Sure rpgs games like FF9 have a strong emphasis on repetitive combat, but all the other attributes are there. Emphasis on story, lots of humour, screens of beautiful backgrounds, cinematic music, a degree of exploring (objects in scenes, finding information, conversations with people, dialoage etc).
I'm sure Sam & Max and other great adventure games of the past could be marketable as rpg's of now.

The only real problem with adventure games is that once you play them once, they are just too damn easy. A game that once upon a time took you four weeks to complete is done in two hours.

It is a pity though. Sam & Max and the best humor.

Chavoul - You're back!
Sam - And we're bigger than a bread box.
Max - Three bread box's even.

:)

quote:I'm sure Sam & Max and other great adventure games of the past could be marketable as rpg's of now.

That's what I call an 'interesting statement'.

It reminds me of my reaction to the Spellforge advertisement I saw in PC Gamer. It had a little caption saying 'RPG. RTS. Experience them together for the first time" or something like that.

To me it just spelt out why the PC industry marketing sucks so bad. We market things like 'genre bending', 'genre busting' and 'genre mixing', the next person who uses 'genre' is going to get pistol whipped. Why market a 'type' of game?

Anyway...that's a bit off topic.

The adventure game went no where because it's gameplay and format had no room for expansion and evolution, RPGs on the other hand can perform all sorts of trickery that *includes* (as a subset) most of the stuff that is done in classic adventure games.

That RPGs are still 'marketable' and adventure games are not is a credit to the work of the developers who have pushed RPGs forward, and serves as a notice to the adventure game developers who are now all out of business.

Twas a sad day for me when I first heard of Sam and Max 2 cancelled. I loved the 1st one which I think was ground breaking and somewhat contraversal at the time somewhat (not as much as Luisure Suit Larry [;)]).

Lucas Arts should be ashamed of themselves. *Smacks LA's hand* [V]

what about "Toasted Gonad Games" TGG...

Specially Able Software? SAS!

Scott.

A name that makes a cool acronym (i think thats the right one) is always cool, such as GoD (Gathering of Developers).
Oh, and if you're steering clear of an overused word, don't go with "Studios" :)
CYer, Blitz

Very true, solutions and studios seem over used. I think I'll be looking for some sort of acronym. I was thinking of something like Digital Fusion but Digital is probably way over used too, something a little more abstract would be better. Oh well, back to brainstorming

"Compu-Global-Hyper-Mega-Net". [;)] For a software/game development company, I say keep it simple and short - maybe even just one (made up) word, and definately no buzzwords.

Aim for the Japanese market... "Super Happy Fun Turbo Games!!!"

Hehe reminds me of that Japanese gameshow on the simpsons... "Happy Smile Super Challenge Family Wish Show"!

erm....

how about....

The MeToo Workshop

I always liked Simon Says Software :) But I looked it up and its actually registered *sniff*
Another one that always makes me snicker is Under-Ware... Now thats a good name for an Aussie software house imo!

I did not.

How about "The Cool Game Making People"? Has a nice ring to it...

I think the best way to go is to use an odd word, or a foriegn word which people aren't too familiar with, then through your business reputation, define the word as your own.

Nike is a perfect example of this. Although the name was taken from a greek (?) godess, the first mention of Nike, you think Jordan, Shoes, Expensive clothes, and great athletes etc. And if a company was to use Nike as a part of there business name, people would still think of the sports company first.

For a gaming developer, my only suggestion would be 'LOKO'.

P.S even Sumea is a cool word. I have no idea what a sumea is, but if somebody did mention it to me, straight away i would identify it with this site.

Hope this helps[;)]

I have a liking to small names, rather than a title strung together by buzzwords.. Nike is a good example of that.. other names I like include..
K*Grind - a big design company in Australia (I'm not sure if they're around anymore after the dot com bust).. the name came from some skateboard trick.
Kioken - a huge design company in USA. That name came from the founders who loved Street Fighter 2.. "Kioken" is what Chun Li says in one of her special moves..

Hack Solutions (ignoring the fact you don't want to use the word solution)
Double D Word
Exceptional exceptions
Game On

http://www.classicgaming.com/vault

there's also www.gamenews.com.au .. www.ausgamers.com.au

www.gamingsa.com and then you got mod sites such as www.ausns.org (natural selection for half life) and hello to all here - i will stick my head in once every so often

amckern

www.gamebiz.com.au

I own and run GameBiz since April 2001. Australia's largest multi platform website.

If you don't get a reply soon, let me know and I'll forward you to someone who might be able to help you out..

Well, I didn't get any replies today so if you could forward me onto someone who might be able to help me out it would be greatly appreciated Souri.

U should try CADSA out in Freo, they might be able to hook u up with summo people. If u dont know what CADSA is, look it up on the web and the site will tell all.

I was looking at there site yesterday, I think I will try and contact them. Thanks for the tip

Not a good idea to start this one FluffyCatFood. I smell smoke lol.

i dont care. if it has good multiplayer its all good by me :)

having a railgun and some nice cars will also help. lol

i wish it was that easy to get federal funding normally, maybe i'll pick a local political issue to make my next game out of.
How about a tycoon game based around Christopher Skase. :P

Or a game about pale aliens invading a planet and killing its inhabitants in the name of their mother ship Britannia. You are the plucky alien starship Captain James Cook.

Hang on that sounds familiar.....

I dunno.. when I first heard about it, I didn't immediately think "oh, I want to play this game!". My first response was "they're making a game out of this?!". And that's probably why it's making news.. (the $25,000 cost I wasn't shocked about). It's making entertainment of a pretty appalling situation and I think a computer game is the wrong medium to make a statement about the refugee problem. It's just bad taste, I think. Of course, that's not to say there aren't other games out there that also based in rather dubious scenarios. Just depends on which side of the fence you're sitting on.

Well I don't think it's a particularly amazing/revolutionary concept - and as far as the moral implications go, I think the computer games industry already has a label attached to it that we can't get rid of and it's not worth getting worked up about. Personally though, I bet ten bucks the game is a stinker.

I wouldn't think it's a good direction for the developer though. You know what they say though, any publicity is good publicity.

I heard an interview with two people that were making it this morning on TripleJ. It kinda sounds interesting that they're trying a new avenue for games - the political point one... They also mentioned Deus Ex as probably one of the more politically inclined games that they have come across.

But yeah, I don't think that it'll be fun to play, not for normal gamers though, I just can't see myself enjoying it. Maybe if I kept running the character into barbed wire, that might be fun for a few seconds.

Barbed wire is for sissies, try out the razor wire :)

i got almost 90% completed then had to give the console and memory card back :(

i want that game again. :)

haha thats pretty cool

i thought kingkong was bigger than that, Stay Puft
Marshmallow Man is like 4x bigger

King Kong could still beat him in a fight I say.

*makes them fight*

Scott.

I want to see a Super Star Destroyer like the Executor on there. Quite a few kilometres long, you'd be scrolling forever.

And what about a Borg Cube, or even a Death Star? :P

Cool site!

You wouldn't have enough pixels to draw those at that scale...

Since the death star is the size of a moon / small planet...

I mean do we really want to download a 50 meg image just to see that?

Maybe the guy who created that website should do another, but with 1 pixel = 100km ;) That guy must've invested some serious time and effort in researching all the sizes. It's pretty interesting to see the scale of some of these sci-fi ships though! And I never knew that Star Wars worm was so big [:)]

BUT WHERE IS THE ENTERPRISE?!!?!

Which enterprise?.

The current one (in the "newest" series) is the NX class ship there...

The one in the movies is the Soverign class ship... and Voyager is there too :-P

Ah, I see

Damien: You know too much about Star trek my friend. [:)]

The site was interesting too, god the dude who did that needs to get a better hobby though lol.

(yes, this is the thread for "stuff"!!)..

[img]http://www.sumea.com.au/simagesmisc/drunk.jpg[/img]

This is a pretty interesting image.. I'd like to hear the scientific explanation on why our brains get so confused by it..

ouch! my retina burns, it burns!!

Hmmm... must be a left brain thing. I find it easier to look at if I close one eye, but I don't know why.

i can only see out of 1 eye, but i still have trouble looking at it..
crappy brain has just got lazy i think, and it tries to auto-complete the image 4 u.

owies! my eyes!

I thought my screen stuffed up on me again. A very interesting picture, makes my head hurt.

Half Life 2 with another thousand counter-strike, day-of-defeat mods that is...

I gotta agree souri, so many WW2 mods and tactical realism mods, all so unoriginal and boring. They have these professional looking websites, for below average efforts and ideas. Shows you how much creativity there isn't. One Mod I'm looking forward to is http://outofhell.bp6.com/ The guy has done everything by himself, Its single player and it isnt based around WW2 or terrorism. Its already leagues ahead of the rest in my book.

The mod scene is pretty lapse for UT2K3, maybe because it has so much potential that people are scared to try new ground, that whole 'fear of failure, won't try thing'. Rehashing WW2 games and counterstrike ripoffs is safer; boring as hell but safer.

Too many damn gun models out there in my opinion, model some characters guys!!

Give us something new, something thought provoking, suspenseful, creative, shocking and confronting not just another mod with bigger, brighter eyecandy fluff tacked on.

Hey look at that the mod scene is now officially just like the game industry!

Lol, yes thats very true. I am very sick of CS clones! :P

well lets make a list of the mods they _would_ like to see made....

i dont mind the WWII & CS clone mods (if they're done well), but they can only go so far.

Peter Gillespie
www.3dluvr.com/eagor

Well, with UT2k3 capable of vehicles, it opens up a lot of possibilities for variations in gameplay.. I'd like to see a stylistic mario-kart racing kind of mod, but with some more crazier tracks.. also put it some element of getting out of the vehicle and running/collecting as part of the race. I'll leave you to think of what I could do with that.. [:)]

With a fair few people doing multiplayer hackings with GTA (I think there are 3 or 4 groups doing it now), I reckon a GTA kind of mod utilising UT2K3 would be cool.. an entire city level (of course, you'd have to design it so it wouldn't crawl on it's knees regarding frame rate) with scripted random events so that you can have 5 minutes of capture the vehicle, or deathmatch, racing, and whatever else you can come up with.. I'm not sure how if that is possible though?

If you've read the mod/collaboration section in this forum, you'll see that ideas are everywhere. Everyone has an idea. That multiplayer Contra sideway scrolling shooter/platformer was a cool idea.. There are plenty of ideas around.. For someone to say "You know what? I reckon we should do a WW2 mod as well" seems pretty crazy to me. I'm not going to be surprised though if a lot of people do it when Half-Life 2, or Doom 3 comes out..

I also think that these people who do those WW2 mods are really pushing a boulder up a hill. They're competing against some really good WW2/War titles out there (Battlefield 1942, R.Wolfenstein) etc.. so they're up against the quality work of a fulltime talented development team, with only a handfull of part time people. It's no wonder nothing much has come out since UT2K3 has been released (4-5 months now?)
So the emphasis, I think, should be taken away from trying to compete at that level (content heavy work - numerous types of models and weaponry with all their textures and animations), and focus more on something more small scaled..

if its gonna be vehicles, i reckon cross Driver with Halo and have chases throught the city like in GTA3 against rival gangs or cops, pack the cars with players and do drive-bys, jewel heists, pizza runs, street races, police chases, you name it.....
you could choose police or gangs or vigilante
and it would kick some a$$

Peter Gillespie
www.3dluvr.com/eagor

Along with my list of ideas, perhaps make some games where shooting doesn't mean killing, and the aim of the round isn't fragging, but perhaps collecting.. etc. Think outside the box a bit.

like an easter egg hunt!!!! :P

quote:Originally posted by Souri

This is probably just a rant, but I've spent the last few days looking at all the Unreal Tournament 2003 mods have on offer, and I gotta say I am pretty darn disappointed.
Did everyone remember the hype that UT2K3 had? Especially among the mod community. Rag-doll physics, latest state of the art game engine, great tools for the community etc.. I had some realy high hopes of people doing some remarkable things with it, but give the people the tools to create, and innovate, and all they do is a hundred cookie cutter clones!! I've just waded through countless WW2 (or insert another war conflict here), and Counterstrike clones.. each with a website containing lots of facts, member profiles, and a few 3D Studio Max renders of weapons.. but no ingame shots to speak of.

I'd also say 2003 must be a disappointing year for Epic.. no Duke Nukem Forever yet, UT2K3 is lower than Quake 3 in terms of online players, and Unreal 2 was a disappointment..

I am expecting Half Life 2 with another thousand mod derivatives..

I wonder if the fact that so many generic mods are due to the PC market being dominated by the 3 main genres of FPS, RTS and RPG (both on and offline). These genres usually follow certain themes, so it's hardly surprising that the demographic that play these games are more likely to make games that reflect what they play.

If console games could be modded, I suppose all we'd see are kart racers, platformers and psuedo-Japanese RPGs. But truth be told, I think there's a wee bit more variation in the console market. It's a pity most console players aren't clued up enough as PC gamers to make mods. A gross generalisation, I know, but console gaming is filled with casual gamers in a sense that all they want to do is play other peoples games. I suppose the equivalent of casual console gamers on the PC scene would be the sort that play web games and solitaire that come with Windows.

I know the Half-Life engine is like sooo old now that technologically it is a dinosaur, but Day Of defeat in my opinion is one of the best world war II games out there, Medal of Honour was very well put together (that Omaha beach had me stumped for ages) and Battlefield1942 is in a class of it's own currentley (vehicles rock), but in day of defeat you can lay down and set up your bipid for your machine gun and just mow people down, the sprinting and stamina also makes it more tactical, things battlefield lack.

When i first saw UT2003 i only saw flashy new effects that just got in the way of your vision which is annoying. It seems to me when a breakthrough is made in technology it gets overused/exaggerated, subtlety is the key.

The thing i find about first person shooters is they all have something that sets them apart from the others but all these features put together would be better (guess you can't just straight out steal another games features).

Redoing a game in a new engine (like the next generation of counter-strike we are going to see on the doom3 engine for example) is inevitable but all the fps games to me seem to lack the extra features that could make them more appealing, NOLF2 for example breaks new gound in my opinion (ok there was Deus Ex) with stealth, searching and upgradable player characteristics that made the game more appealing than your average shoot everything and run alot fps's.

Am i the only one who wants to see FPS's with persistant characters like in a MMORPG, that allows players to develop their character overtime making the game more challenging as you meet players levels ahead requiring other tactics (like avoidance, stealth, barganning)instead of just whoever goto the rocket launcher first? Missions like GTA3 in MMORPG would be so cool but large persistant worlds i guess aren't so easy (if even possible without server-hopping) in most if not all first person engines today. The new Matrix game may have something along these lines to offer... we will see (or i should research it more throughly)

my 25c

I would say what i think but then i would probably be dissapeared by the government :)
But yes it is scary, the US needs to get a smarter president and soon. I'll leave it at that.

Yep that is worrying. I hope some crazed American assassinates bush, he's too much of a war monger.
Although that North Korean Leader is also a nutter, taking away peoples babies because of his superstitious paranoia, he needs one of his fellow countrymen to knock him off as well.

I personally think North Korea is slightly more dangerous than America at the moment, simply because the American system (no matter how flawed people think it is) has checks to insure that no one person is in complete control, which is the exact opposite in North Korea.

And if the US does launch an offensive it would have to be a very fast and brutal one so that the North Korean forces are totally obliterated (well at least their long range missiles and air defences are destroyed).

I'm not so sure that America does have checks in regards to one person being in control, look at G.W.Bush and the whole post September 11 empowerment, he just had to declare a national state of emergency and there goes any opposition to his power.

Also - I think that a nuclear war has been a long time coming, I'm personally not going to get worked up about something that is inevitable, it's like being pissed off that you are going to die one day. If anyone has any disagreeance in regards to that particular view I have on human nature, email me, don't clutter this board with hate-crap.

Korea is a big problem but unintelligent knee jerk comments and threats from America and its establishments will just speed up if not directly cause any conflicts.
I find this gun-ho attitude and blind patriotic banter more worring than Koreas nuclear threat. Look at the way people opposed to the war are being labeled as traitors in America, its just like the Mcarthy era during the cold war, if your not with us your against us, what happened to their beloved 5th amendment? Hiprocray not democracy.

The get them before they get us reasoning is a naive, arrogant stance and America and its croonies (you listening howard) need to think about the innocent countries and people who are busy minding there own business when suddenly a nuke lands on there farm.

Maybe humans are finally about to reap what we've sown. None of us are innocent when we let these shitheads into office,

Someone develop a huge EMP generator in space to knock out all electricity for good, things were harsh on a personal level but safer for the world in general in the pre industrial era.

Armegeddon's going to be a ratings winner though, CNN will have it covered.

That offensive would have to be very fast, and would have to disarm every single nuclear warhead that North Korea would have, which I doubt they could do (the amount of intelligence that America has on North Korea has been reported as pretty poor - limited only to satellite photos)

quote:North Korea already has more than 100 nuclear warheads...
If America attack North Korean Yongbyon facility, North Korea attack New York, Washington, Chicago in less than 20 minutes.

The US government was playing it safe, downplaying the situation and going the diplomatic route, which I hope they continue. Planning a strike on a nuclear facility is just nuts at the moment - they seem pretty hell-bent on retaliation. A war with North Korea would be extremely nasty - million strong army, with a multitude amount of missile types, tanks and other armoury, and of course nuclear weapons. Very worrying.

North Korea's economy is absolutely borked.. Roughly US$5bn of the nations pitiful US$22bn budget goes into the military..

I recently read somewhere that they've begun to pay their military in promisary notes, rather than actual money - something along those lines anyways. I can't find the link.. So I could be wrong.

It does, if its true, paint a fairly grim picture of the standard of living in NK.

As for the comments made by Kim Myong-Chol....
[img]http://www.welovetheiraqiinformationminister.com/images/story.sahaf.mon…]

Some of what he has said may have some truth to it... But for the large part, I believe hes exaggerating things to the point of stupidity - playing on peoples fears..

This kinda reminds me of a few episodes of "The Outer Limits", it's interesting what thought-provoking TV can do to a person, although I doubt that any of the people in power actually watch thought provoking tv.

quote:Originally posted by Malus

Someone develop a huge EMP generator in space to knock out all electricity for good, things were harsh on a personal level but safer for the world in general in the pre industrial era.

Reminds me of the Kurt Russell movie Escape from LA. Man that was an awful movie.

Escape from LA wasn't *that* bad, at least it had decent music (Tool, White Zombie, etc), that kinda redemmed it a bit.

Ok so the music was good, but that wave riding down a canyon scene was an absolute joke! :P

On topic again...

quote:A top Russian Foreign Ministry official was quoted as saying yesterday in Tokyo that a "catastrophic" development of events in the US-North Korean nuclear standoff was imminent and could occur within the next day.

"It is probable that, as early as tomorrow, there will be a catastrophic development of events," Itar-Tass quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov as saying.

He added that the standoff had "reached an extreme stage" but did not give a more detailed explanation about his warning.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/23/1050777311990.html

and now this..

quote:The United States says it has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has resumed production of plutonium parts for bombs.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/04/23/1050777304686.html

eep

There goes America's efforts of the 90's for world disarmament...

me want to kill G `dubwya' b now...

Oh well, I doubt that'll happen any time soon...

Although if all the peaceniks in the world started to be in power the countries that wanted to could sooo take over, I guess we do need hard-asses, but GWB isn't smart or charismatic enough to be one of those people.

Nuclear weapons are like some token that when you have it you rise above the other countires in the world in nortoriety, it like wholly unbalances the whole stability of the planet. Pity America is still making more, I would've thought having enough to destroy the whole world several times over would've been enough for some people.

Well as far as I can tell it's just like people having guns, you give people the power to do something they have no concept of the consequence of and they'll do something stupid. You got to sit back and realise the human brain doesn't have the emotional scalability to rationalise and think clrealy about killing even ten people.

Imagine killing one person, try and think of how their family felt, or how you would feel is someone killed a family member, think of their friends etc and the entire quantity (if you will) opf emotional consequence. Imagine if you killed ten people - would you scale the remorse? Can you? I doubt it. It's just the same with everyone, we aren't equipped to make those kind of decisions. G.W.Bush wouldn't have any idea the level of sadness generated just by his little short few week war on Iraq, the brain has no conept of massive amounts of emotion.

As long as people have weapons, they will always use them without any ability to understand the power of their actions and the reactions involved.

(p.s. At this stage I plug Tae Kwon Do, because the only weapons I have I was born with, and if I were to kill someone, it'd take a heck of a long time to pummel them to death while I watch - which is suffice to say - far harder to do than pull a trigger or press a button).

If only we lived back in the days of honour and valor when killing someone with a gun was like beating up a child.

That's an interesting idea Souri, although if you follow the logic, and play some game - Postal 2 for instance for several hours in the same set of levels, surely that would make you want to buy the full game and play around with the rest of the game for longer than you normally would?

Personally i've played certain demos for a while, but usually the one's I like are RTS's, and their demos are locked in some other way (like a turn limit for M.A.X.) - although using a C&C hack I could get every single unit in the original C&C demo.

The other thing is I think developers are starting to add more content to their games, thus allowing for people to play longer than the 11-15 hours for a regular FPS game now. Well at least I hope that is what they are doing.

Back in the day, the only games I had were shareware, and they were just demos... I usually only played those rather than full games. The problem is that these days a warez copy is usually more freely available than the demo.

Scott.

I love the postal2 demo, I really enjoyed just walking around and watching the people, how all of a sudden they might just go nuts.

Oh yeah to remove the 7 minute limit type "set gamestate demotime 999999" in the console.(without the quotes)

I got this from Ausgamers.com..

quote:Players will NOT need Return to Castle Wolfenstein to play Enemy Territory (or the ET test we're releasing soon). ET is a free
stand-alone game, so anyone who wants to play will be able to download.

How cool is that?! [:)] I'll definately be getting it. I wonder why it's being released for free though..

I doubt that we'll see people playing game-demos solely, or not purchasing full games. All the benefits of a demo are in a pirated game anyway and they both cost next to nothing and are easy to get.

I read a while back that enemy territory was canned because it wasnt going in the desired direction, or it was taking to long, something along those lines anyway. Good of them to give it away then

omg!
'oh yes, it will be mine. it will be mine'

hmmm..this news didnt come out on the 11th did it???

2000 cars.. they'd better have a Datsun 120Y, complete with a rusted body, dodgy gearbox, and a "Disco sucks" bumper sticker on the back. This is another E3 rumour, which we'll have to wait and see if it turns out true. But if it was, it certainly sounds amazing. I remember reading something about GT3 - it took like 3 weeks to model just one car. That's why there were only 200 (I think?) in GT3.. Imagine all the work that's needed to fine tune and make sure 2000 cars feel like their real life counterparts..

Damage for cars hey, about time!
I remember reading something about the first 3 titles having trouble getting the actual car makers to license damage on their precious automobiles. Seems they thought images of their cars being damaged might make people believe they where unsafe. lol

Can't wait to destroy a 2 million dollar car while trying to slipstream my mates, woohoo!!

I think australia could benefit from some of those trained monkeys too Souri, damn I'll wear a monkey suit if it gets me a gig.

I think I'm a 32 waist on my monkey suit btw.

i defenity want older cars, they should make the game more like hotrod,
racing for pink slips, buying 2nd hand cars and working them, and buying parts out of the paper...
that was one of the best games.

I've been thinking about where Gran Turismo can go next as a car/driving simulator.. and I can come up with nothing else other than..

..fixing the damn cars yourself. [:)]

How about cards that flip? That should be included because of the damage to the cars I guess, but I've always thought it pretty stupid that it claims to be a real driving simulator but clamps the car to the ground when it looks like it's going to flip :P

Well it's not like they've got realistic vehicle dynamics either, yet it claims to be a real driving simulator :)

i sure hope they can get a mt panorama track for a bathurst 1000 race
but i doubt it :P

Peter Gillespie
www.3dluvr.com/eagor

quote:Originally posted by lava_monkey

i defenity want older cars, they should make the game more like hotrod,
racing for pink slips, buying 2nd hand cars and working them, and buying parts out of the paper...
that was one of the best games.

www.streetrod3.com

2000 cars that isnt true that means the game would be being built when the first gt was brought out. and i think that was such a good game when used cars were in it. but i do hope they bring more cars in but keep the bmw range down to a minimum.

-LOL-

quote:Originally posted by lava_monkey

i defenity want older cars, they should make the game more like hotrod,
racing for pink slips, buying 2nd hand cars and working them, and buying parts out of the paper...
that was one of the best games.

was that the game they released in like 93 for the pc? set back in the 60s or some s*** right? and you could drag cars for pink slips, and if u drove it too hard u would drop your transmission? If so, i agree witchu lava monkey. Best car game i ever played.

2000 cars? I'll believe it when I see it... I'd be willing to bet that the majority will be slight variations of any particular model.
I also doubt there'll be any serious damage if it does make it into the game, some manufacturers won't allow it at all, and some will only allow very superficial damage so they'll have to draw the line somewhere... I do hope however if we do see damage, it'll affect the handling and performance of the cars.

im looking forward to it car damange or not (altough it would be really good)..
i went out and got a PS2 just for gt3 a couple months back to start it again. almost at 90% now (again) so should wrap it up in time for 4 :)

I actually checked on the actual figure for the cars on gt4, and my referance stated that more than 500 cars will be on the game, nowhere near 2000!!! And that the divercity of the cars will be greater, from old historic cars to new 2003 models.

And it also stated that physical car damage will not be included. Sorry to those who wished to totally screw up 2 million dollar cars [V]

Well those who want damage will just have to get an XBox and wait for PGR2 [;)] (BTW, that's the stupidest wink icon I've ever seen, no offence).
Seriously, damage is a nice feature but since it usually doesn't affect the gameplay on these semi arcade racers, I personally don't think it's that important.

I'm guessing that is meant to represent half-life 2. Actually I wasn't all that interested until I saw that picture, now I'm rather excited

I'm not excited at all, I didn't think Half-Life was all that good, certainly doesn't lay claim to the best game ever title in my books, hardly even close. But that's just me, I could go on about what actually made it so average, but everyone is so awed by the game that there's no point :) Still I imagine there's a crapload of people out there that are drooling over the idea that HL2 might be on it's way.

I liked Half-Life.. it had a good story, and it was fun to play. When I first saw Half Life, I remember thinking "wow.. their mouths move when they talk!". How times have changed. [:)] If that is Half-Life 2, then I'd be pretty surprised. I hope Valve has learnt a lesson not to make premature announcements (and release Half Life 2 at least within a year of mentioning it).. [:)]
Wasn't Doom 3 supposed to be released before this E3?

doom3 tba

They should have printed the quote "Come get some!" under that crowbar, just to confuse people.

Valves been pretty quiet on whatever they have been working on which is a smart move. Look at 3dRealms and DNF, those guys really regret even mentioning the game.

Fluffy: Of course we can't ignore the main reason to keep quiet about a game, Daikatana... 'nuff said.

quote:I could go on about what actually made it so average, but everyone is so awed by the game that there's no point :)

The point is this is a message board discussing games, and we're discussing Half-Life, so rant away. Why would you come to a message board and make a post saying you don't want to talk? :p

Given the competition at the time, it was pretty impressive. Better level design, story, narrative and involvement than any FPS of the day. Better graphics and sound, although that's par for the course. The first FPS with a decent story, period. "Average" at the time was brown corridors, crates and rocket camping, not story and substance.

Good point Bunny, why come on here just to say you don't want to say something?

Half life isn't by todays standards that big of a wow factor but back then it was pretty special, as Bunny said we were going around with brown guns in brown rooms killing brown things without any obvious thought of storyline. Half life broke down some boundaries in both storytelling and the tech side, hopefully Valve can repeat this.

I do have to say it did lose my interest towards the last levels even back then and the bit were you had to jump down the crates, urgh memories of platformers in FPS games are not nice.

I myself can't wait for a half life 2, nearly as much as Dues Ex 2.

Okay - this is the second time I wrote this cause I lost some connection or something like that.

Three reasons for not ranting

1 - Looking back at the past few rants I've instigated, basically there's been about 20 plus replies involving the same argument and that's just irritating to read. Plus it takes alot of time, bandwidth (56K modem) and I've got other things to read like Race Car Vehicle Dynamics.

2 - It's not even close to on topic. If I wanted to rant about Half Life 1 (which I don't) then I'd go start my own post. This post is about Half Life 2 and people's anticipation for it.

3 - I know that people will only disagree, alot of people like Half Life, and the majority is "right" in this world (sorry to break it to ya people, that's how it is). Although my viewpoint is "valid" - it's simply just "alternative" (cynicism following) which basically just provides a venue for people to validate their viewpoint by agreeing with a whole bunch of people about how they think my view is incorrect. I'm already aware that my views on Half Life are not commonly opinion, and I have no interest in further validating that belief.

I mean seriously - look at it? There already is an echo in here...

FYI - I didn't just come on here to say that I didn't want to say anything. The original post said "Anyone else squirming in their seat blah blah"....and the last sentence in my post stated that I thought there would be, which is my opinion on the topic...

Grazie e buonanotte :)

Calm down.

Scott.

lol - I was about to say that I am calm, but then I realised that'd be too much of a cue for Anger Management references. :)

I wonder what engine they are using.... doom3?

I'm not squirming in my seat, but I'm looking forward to it... a game with a real story line.. ahhh, brings back memories....

HL didn't really impress me although it did have good scripted sequences and the sum of its parts did add up to a pretty good game at the time. Although i disagree about the story. Because there was about as much plot in HL as there is in an average Schwarzenneger (i can't spell his name properly)
The good thing about the HL story was you found out about it as apposed to being told it.
The ending was also very stupid and was such a typical action movie leaving open for a sequel ending and i hate those. (unless of course you chose not to jion up that is)
I am going to predict that HL2 will be quite dissapointing. But thats just what i think.
Personally the only game i want is Deus Ex 2

I'm waiting on Thief 3 myself.. System Shock 3 would be nice too...

Fallout 3 and Jagged Alliance 3 as well while we're on the number of 3.

Scott.

Does no one here play console games?

I think I'm looking forward to Halo 2 and the unveiling of MGS3 (which is rumoured to be happening). Most of all, I look forward to the previously unannounced games that show a lot of promise. Everyone knows the sequels are going to be better or as good as the first game (with a few exceptions) but with new games in a series, there's no way of telling what they're gonna play like.

I loved Half-life, simply for the fact that it broke the mould of what current FPS were back then. Half-life took you from one level to the next, with barely anything to seperate them. There were no annoying cutscenes, everything was delivered to you ingame.

It also was an excellent performing engine. It had great graphics and didn't need a top end machine for you to enjoy them.

Finally, it was valves support for the modding community that really made Half-Life great. It is an excellent game to work with.

I am looking forward to HL2 a hell of a lot, as well as Deus Ex 2!

I can't believe how everyone is anticipating sequels so much :) Halo was a good game, but I don't see it as needing a sequel so much although they could easily make another good FPS game. I think the reason Ion Storm (or whatever) are making Deus Ex 2 is because they probably want to atone for some of the really bad design flaws in the first game, and System Shock really does not need another sequel - the second one really raped the plot of the first one and should've perhaps just tried some other storyline completely and as for Thief 3? Well they keep improving that game each time, but I still wonder whether they'd be better off trying something new.

Sequels can be good, but I think there is a wierd obsession with them in the industry and more often than not, we don't realise that the original games are the ones that are most celebrated.

System Shock 2 wasn't that bad :) I loved it, it mostly had the same feel but shodan seemed rather different and the ending was rather pathetic. But it had the same kinda atmosphere from the orignal, which is why I loved it. ([url="http://wnn.warcry.com/aikida/index.php/strip/02nov27.png"]It does this to you[/url])

Thief 3 will actually be the end of the series, and from what little info they have released, it's going to be awsome :)

Like the movie industry, sequels are a very popular thing, simply due to the fact that the execs want to make a game that is guaranteed to bring in the money. A lot of original hit games don't have big marketing campaigns because they can't afford to spend huge abouts money on something that isn't a guaranteed success. Too big a risk.

Everyone is anticpating sequels because the publicity is forced down their throats. Nowhere near as many people know about "cool new game x" as compared to doom 3, so its a little hard for everyone to get excited about "game X". Even if a game isn't a sequel, if it is receiving a lot of interest it is most likely being developed by someone with a proven track record, like ID Software, or carries a brand name like Star Wars.

Unfortunately when "game x" is released and everyone goes crazy about how original and cool it is, it will probably end up with a sequel. :P The gaming industry, like everything else, revolves around profits, so there are many more sequels than "game x's" being released. While good for profits, it reduces the number of new and innovative games developed.

I don't mind sequels. In todays market, developers often have to leave a lot of stuff out due to time constraints so often a sequel is a definitive version of a game. If there's 3 games of the same series on the same platform, that's usually when I'm wary - ie Tomb Raider was great for the first couple but failed to add much to the franchise in the 4th and 5th.

I'm greatly anticipating MGS3 but I don't think it'll have the same dimensional jump from 1 to 2.

From the sounds of Edge's and EGM's preview of Halo 2, it sounds like it's going to be a deeply refined product, much like a Blizzard game. With the inclusion of Live! play, it could be a real console game winner.

quote:I don't mind sequels. In todays market, developers often have to leave a lot of stuff out due to time constraints so often a sequel is a definitive version of a game.

And people wonder why the consumer base is so small :)

It looks like Half Life 2 has been confirmed to be revealed at E3 as well, with a release before the end of the year.

After sequels reach #3, they should really take a deserved break for a few years.. get some ideas happening again, and jump back on a new generation of gfx cards/consoles.. Did anyone else think "Oh god, not another one!!" when Tony Hawk 4 or Tomb Raider 5 was announced? I loved Tomb Raider 1. Tomb Raider 2 was ok - it was pretty much the same game except Lara had ponytail physics and costume changes..[;)] 3 totally killed it for me - I thought it was terrible.

quote:Originally posted by Maitrek

quote:I don't mind sequels. In todays market, developers often have to leave a lot of stuff out due to time constraints so often a sequel is a definitive version of a game.

And people wonder why the consumer base is so small :)

I should rephrase that. I don't mind sequels to good games. But I stand by the original comment - how many times have you heard from a developer "We couldn't feature X in the prequel because of reason Y"? A single sequel won't hurt anyone, it's the 4th/5th edition with the numerous spin-offs released every year or 6 months that are the problem.

I wasn't saying sequels were bad, I'm just saying we are practically admitting here that we are releasing weaker games than we could be making. I think this is one area where console games "own" PC games, the level of polish in the gameplay in original titles. Console titles very rarely have big improvements in their sequels, whereas PC game sequels tend to differ greatly. I think thats because less emphasis is placed on tech and there is better developer support and a much broader market.

http://www.cscentral.com/forums/attachment.php?s=98d27cc85d5f208a74de81…
http://dynamic.gamespy.com/~hostileintent/ikonboard/iB_html/uploads/pos…

Scanned ingame pic of Half Life 2.. The character model looks pretty darn cool..

quote: I think this is one area where console games "own" PC games, the level of polish in the gameplay in original titles. Console titles very rarely have big improvements in their sequels, whereas PC game sequels tend to differ greatly. I think thats because less emphasis is placed on tech and there is better developer support and a much broader market.

There's a very obvious reason for that. Consoles are fixed hardware -PC's are not so if a console game receives a sequel on the same piece of hardware, then chances are, it will look quite similar but it will be much more finely honed. However, if you look at the console games that recieve a sequel on a new generation of hardware, then the results blow people away - MGS2, GTA3, Tony Hawks all have significant improvements both technically and gameplay wise over there predecessors. So if anything, PC games would have more emphasis on the tech as it has to cater for a wide range of specifications.

Personally I find the PC market extremely derivative. New concepts hardly exist, everything is either a.) RTS,FPS,RPG/MMOG or a Sim/Tycoon game (gross generalisation) - most of these utilising similar themes. I'd say there are just as few original titles on the PC market as there are in consoles. I walked into a store yesterday and it was all team based squad shooters and D&D rpgs with a fair helping of your standard RTS 'big names'. Hmm.. maybe I'm misinterpreting your meaning of 'original'? I take it you mean a title without a previous incarnation. However, I feel console titles have more polish, purely because they don't require a patch. Although I realise some patches improve games by adding new features, balance, whatever, why didnt they fix that before sending it to the market? I am aware of developement constraints...

As for a broader market, I'm not so sure. Granted there are more PCs in every household than consoles, but only a small number of those PCs out there are equipped to play the latest games. Combined with a higher level of piracy in the PC market, this proves why some PC developers are also going into the console market (Blizzard, Lionhead etc).

I suppose what's considered generic or derivative depends on what you're more familiar with - each market has it's own strengths and weaknesses and that's what attracts those types of gamers to them.

Sorry to be cutting in on the thread like this, but HOLY CRAP!!!!

http://www.xbox4uweb.de/

Go visit it now...!!! Half Life 2 sure does look *incredibly* polished..

Actually, here's a better link.. http://www.mikero.at.tf/

Those pics look absolutely awesome, Imagine the system requirements!!