Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > It's still on the market and dirt cheap! :)
>
>   Can you connect it to a CRT? If not, it won't be cheap.

we're talking about PS2, right?  It is standard definition system, best viewed
on CRT's indeed.

> > The last FFs worth of the name were FFVII
>
>   I have never understood the hype about that one. The graphics are just
> horrible (compare to other similar games for the PS1, such as Chrono Cross
> or FF IX) and the story is not all that compelling.

It was completely mindblowing back in early 1997.  Both in audio-visual wizardry
and in the creepy, cyberpunk setting.  There was simply nothing like it in game
consoles before.  I personally enjoyed FFVI more, but it was still terrific.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> >  and the audience for the game.
>
> I saw a great flowchart about which console to buy:
>
> Do you have friends?
> No:    Buy a PS3
> Yes:   Real friends, or internet friends?
>     Real friends: Buy a Wii
>     Internet friends:  Buy an XBox.

I've seen that before.  Here's a more realistic one:

Do you enjoy videogames?
Yes:  Buy a PS3 or XBox 360
don't care:  Buy a Wii for those fun moments with your kids or with friends
after a barbecue and some beer...

Really, I've bought a Wii because I thought my daughter would enjoy, but she's
one of those flash-games-for-lil-girls kinda gamer that doesn't enjoy game
consoles games that much, besides some sessions of Wii Sports.  And indeed, Wii
Sports is teh fun in barbecues, but that's about it.  Mario Galaxy 2 and all the
Metroid games are worth it, but come on!  can't live on Nintendo games alone...

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 30 May 2010 13:31:33 -0400, Warp wrote:

>   Doesn't sound like an economically sound solution to me.

Businesses often do things that are good for short term profit at the 
expense of long term profit.  Doesn't make sense, no, but there it is...

Jim

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 30 May 2010 11:52:51 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> And I understand
> the PS3 player is a very nice implementation.

It is, I can confirm that. :-)

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> Doesn't make sense, no, but there it is...

It makes sense if your company isn't already profitable. A dollar today at 
the expense of two dollars next month is a good deal if you only have a 
week's worth of money left before you go broke.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

Post a reply to this message

On Sun, 30 May 2010 15:16:32 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Doesn't make sense, no, but there it is...
> 
> It makes sense if your company isn't already profitable. A dollar today
> at the expense of two dollars next month is a good deal if you only have
> a week's worth of money left before you go broke.

True, but I've also seen it several times in profitable businesses as 
well, usually where middle management positions are short-lived, so 
saving money is a way to move ahead.  Profits tend to be longer term, so 
the way for middle managers to look good is to cut expenses regardless of 
the consequences to long-term profits; the logic often is that they won't 
be there to see the long-term results, so it doesn't matter, but the 
short term savings does (to their personal careers).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

Jim Henderson wrote:
> be there to see the long-term results, so it doesn't matter, but the 
> short term savings does (to their personal careers).

Yep. It also happens ever since mutual funds became common, so there's some 
small few investors that own huge amounts of stock and they don't really 
care for the long-term life of the company either, because they make money 
trading, not holding.  But they push for short-term profits to bump up the 
price.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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>  In 2005 Remedy Entertainment announced that they were developing a new
> revolutionary game named Alan Wake.
>
>  5 years have I been waiting for this game to be finished.

Oh, I remember reading about the cloth simulation in this game ... yes here 
it is:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4383/the_secrets_of_cloth_simulation_in_.php?print=1

Post a reply to this message

>> And I understand
>> the PS3 player is a very nice implementation.
> 
> It is, I can confirm that. :-)

And bluetooth remote controls rock!

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> Oh, I remember reading about the cloth simulation in this game ... yes 
> here it is:

Oh, me too. I hadn't realized it was a well-anticipated game.

>
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4383/the_secrets_of_cloth_simulation_in_.php?print=1


Damn. I was hoping to learn to do cloth simulation in PHP.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 31 May 2010 09:42:56 +0200, scott wrote:

>>> And I understand
>>> the PS3 player is a very nice implementation.
>> 
>> It is, I can confirm that. :-)
> 
> And bluetooth remote controls rock!

Yes, I do agree with that as well.  Now if I could find an inexpensive 
remote that had both Bluetooth & IR, that would be excellent (I have 5 
remotes right now for the various components in the AV system).

Jim

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> And I understand
>>> the PS3 player is a very nice implementation.
>>
>> It is, I can confirm that. :-)
> 
> And bluetooth remote controls rock!

Huh. I wonder if the XBox controller is bluetooth, or something specialized. 
I never really wondered if they used something standard.

I will say, the IR port on the xbox leaves much to be desired, as does using 
an xbox controller as a media player control.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> scott wrote:
> >
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4383/the_secrets_of_cloth_simulation_in_.php?print=1
>
> Damn. I was hoping to learn to do cloth simulation in PHP.

LOLZ

Post a reply to this message

> Huh. I wonder if the XBox controller is bluetooth, or something 
> specialized. I never really wondered if they used something standard.

Oh I don't know if the PS3 ones are standard bluetooth or not (I always 
assumed they were, but come to think about it I'm not sure).  My point 
really was that compared to IR remotes you don't have to point them at the 
TV, they just seem a lot more responsive.  Also the photo viewer on the PS3 
is cool, using the two analogue thumbsticks to zoom/pan.

A few things that annoy me about the PS3 GUI (or hopefully I'm just dumb and 
someone can tell me how to fix them):

1) Unless you prepare your memory stick/USB hard drive with certain folders, 
you always have to go to the menu and choose "Show entire contents" rather 
than just clicking on the drive icon.  At least have the option to disable 
this "feature" and show the whole drive straight away.

2) If you pause for more than a second or two while looking at the contents 
of a folder (eg you are choosing a song to play or a video to watch) then 
all the files apart from the one currently selected fade away to invisible! 
I think this behaviour was introduced with some update, because I'm sure it 
didn't always to do that.

3) I want to search for the next song to play *without* stopping the 
currently playing one!  How do I do that?

> I will say, the IR port on the xbox leaves much to be desired, as does 
> using an xbox controller as a media player control.

Someone gave me the PS3 bluray remote control thingy for a birthday, but I 
hardly used it because the gamepad works completely fine (and I know which 
buttons do what).  Also the gamepad I can charge by just plugging it into 
the USB of the PS3, the bluray remote needs me to get out my real battery 
charger every so often.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Sat, 29 May 2010 13:17:24 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake thusly:

>   In 2005 Remedy Entertainment announced that they were developing a new
> revolutionary game named Alan Wake.
>
>   5 years have I been waiting for this game to be finished.
>
>   Then Remedy Entertainment partnered with Microsoft, and the game was
> subsequently published exclusively for the Xbox360. No Windows version.
>
>   F************CK you Microsoft. F*CK YOU!

On the other hand a new revolutionary game conceived in 2005 might not be  
considered great shakes now. From reviews some are disappointed they  
dropped the sandbox aspect for a
linear fixed storyline approach. Reading those it seems to be an updated  
remastered version of Silent Hill 2.

Either way I don't think you're missing out on much.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook v2 <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
> From reviews some are disappointed they dropped the sandbox aspect for a
> linear fixed storyline approach.

  The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first modern "sandbox-style" game
I played, and it was a magnificent experience.

  Unfortunately after playing with it for a month or so, I got actually
immunized against the marvels of an open and realistic world, and afterwards
any sandbox-style game has been outright boring. Thus it would be such a
problem for me.

  (I go to more detail here: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/sandbox_games.html )

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first modern "sandbox-style" game
> I played, and it was a magnificent experience.
> 
>   Unfortunately after playing with it for a month or so, I got actually
> immunized against the marvels of an open and realistic world, and afterwards
> any sandbox-style game has been outright boring. Thus it would be such a
> problem for me.
> 
>   (I go to more detail here: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/sandbox_games.html )

 From what I've seen, some people use "it's a sandbox game" as an excuse 
for not developing any actual, you know, gameplay. You can just do 
whatever you want... but there's no particular point to it.

Then again, designing a game that's actually fun to play is surprisingly 
hard...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Warp wrote:
>   (I go to more detail here: http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/sandbox_games.html )

I find it very amusing you have an entire subdirectory named "Grrrr".  I 
might need to steal that idea some time.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first modern "sandbox-style" game
> I played, and it was a magnificent experience.

Actually, I'd say that Thief and Myst/Riven were both sandbox-style games. 
Thief had good puzzles and combat and such, Myst and Riven had good graphics 
(altho obviously limited to stills). Both were quite excellent and far from 
boring.

 > This isn't a problem if the game gives you clear quests which you can 
complete.

I think both Thief and Myst provided these without being pushy about it.

 > It's because they give you everything

I think that's a lovely, deep insight. I can totally see that.

Myst was rather sandboxy, but the whole point of the game was to unlock 
additional parts of the sandbox, finding keys to get into the next place. 
(Of course, it eventually got rather silly, as every combination lock had to 
have the combination written down somewhere fairly obvious, etc.) Thief 
would occasionally give you additional goals, or would make you 
find/fight/sneak past things to get to the next part, etc.

Hmmmm... A very interesting thought indeed.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first modern "sandbox-style" game
> > I played, and it was a magnificent experience.

> Actually, I'd say that Thief and Myst/Riven were both sandbox-style games. 

  Not in the sense that "a sandbox game" is usually used. What is usually
meant with it is that the whole outworld (which usually should be very big)
is completely open to be explored, so you can go anywhere you want and do
whatever you want. There are no levels which are played one after another,
like in more traditional games.

  Thief consists of levels, and the gameplay is pretty linear from level
to level. In Myst/Riven you are not completely free to go wherever you like,
but you are limited to predefined narrow paths (mainly due to technical
limitations).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Not in the sense that "a sandbox game" is usually used. What is usually
> meant with it is that the whole outworld (which usually should be very big)
> is completely open to be explored, so you can go anywhere you want and do
> whatever you want. There are no levels which are played one after another,
> like in more traditional games.

Fair enough. Certainly Myst and Riven fit that mold.  The later ones had 
more of an interactive story, so you have to (for example) solve some 
puzzles, then someone else comes along and does something, and then you have 
to go solve other puzzles.

>   Thief consists of levels, and the gameplay is pretty linear from level
> to level.

OK. But within each level, you could pretty do anything and everything you 
wanted, even to the point of managing to get places you weren't supposed to 
go by using the environment. Sure, inter-level it's linear.

> In Myst/Riven you are not completely free to go wherever you like,
> but you are limited to predefined narrow paths (mainly due to technical
> limitations).

The paths really go most everywhere. Other than being unable to swim, I 
can't think of too many places you couldn't get to for reasons not obvious 
in the level design. Indeed, a good amount of the fun of Riven was figuring 
out how to get to places you could see and knew you needed to be there, but 
you couldn't figure out where the entrance was.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Myst and Riven had good
> graphics (altho obviously limited to stills).

Following those: Myst III and Myst IV use 360° stills (so you can rotate the 
view freely), with a lot of live video embedded (way more real video of 
actors with chroma key than in Riven).

Myst V is the first in the series to use real-time 3D graphics.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Myst and Riven had good
>> graphics (altho obviously limited to stills).
> 
> Following those: Myst III and Myst IV use 360° stills (so you can 
rotate the 
> view freely), with a lot of live video embedded (way more real video of
 
> actors with chroma key than in Riven).
> 
> Myst V is the first in the series to use real-time 3D graphics.

There's also "RealMyst", which is Myst #1 redone with a 3D FPS engine. Lo
oks 
like crap, relatively speaking, because the care put into the original 
textures wasn't there in the engine.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:19:15 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
>> From reviews some are disappointed they dropped the sandbox aspect for a
>> linear fixed storyline approach.
>
>   The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was my first modern "sandbox-style" game
> I played, and it was a magnificent experience.
>
>   Unfortunately after playing with it for a month or so, I got actually
> immunized against the marvels of an open and realistic world, and  
> afterwards
> any sandbox-style game has been outright boring. Thus it would be such a
> problem for me.
>
>   (I go to more detail here:  
> http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/sandbox_games.html )

To my mind it's not that the sandbox gives you everything it's that your  
actions seem to be inconsequential to the story or the world. They are, in  
theory, open Final Fantasy games. "Oh no a giant meteor is about to hit  
our planet and only you can save us by defeating the dark wizard who pulls  
it closer, but first I'm having difficulty finding my sheep can you help?"  
there's a level of disconnect there if you just plough through the story  
you're either woefully underpowered or have a sense of unease that you've  
missed out on everything the world can offer. Try to take advantage of the  
'world' and as you say ennui sets in.

Okay I harp on about InFamous but it works. It's a small open world you  
can just run around, but the side-quests matter; fix the satellite uplinks  
and more people can contact you with jobs, sort out this problem and the  
enemies won't venture into that area in such high numbers meaning you  
don't have to run through then or stop to slug it out each time. It has an  
effect so much so that one of the side-missions I tend to leave to last is  
getting the El-Trains running; with them defunct you can use the railway  
as a quick transit system, with them running you have to watch out you  
don't get splattered by a train, on the plus side the trains move faster  
if you can hitch a ride and they can also splat enemies on the tracks too.  
All the side-missions connect to the main story and both affect the world  
around you.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> To my mind it's not that the sandbox gives you everything it's that your 
> actions seem to be inconsequential to the story or the world. 


In Black&White, you play a local God trying to keep your followers happy. 
It's also not particularly interesting. The hype sounded great, but it was 
like "Nice engine. Where's the game?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:

> In Black&White, you play a local God trying to keep your followers 
> happy. It's also not particularly interesting. The hype sounded great, 
> but it was like "Nice engine. Where's the game?"

Maybe it's just me, but given a game where you can do absolutely 
anything you want, my reaction is typically "so what are you supposed to 
do?"

(I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the best 
computer game ever written...)

Post a reply to this message

Yotzse reviewed it.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/1756-Alan-Wake

I haven't watched it yet, but there's almost undoubtably spoilers. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

>  Unfortunately after playing with it for a month or so, I got actually
> immunized against the marvels of an open and realistic world, and 
> afterwards
> any sandbox-style game has been outright boring. Thus it would be such a
> problem for me.
>
>  (I go to more detail here: 
> http://warp.povusers.org/grrr/sandbox_games.html )

I liked the way GTA does it, whereby you only get access to a limited area 
of the complete world initially, and are forced to get to some point in the 
story before other parts of the world become accessible (of course you can 
see the other areas on the map, which makes you want to get to them).  GTA 
is also very good how it has several separate storylines throughout the 
missions, and then some come together towards the end of the game whilst 
others remain separate.  Of course to make this work you cannot truly do any 
mission in any order, sometimes you get a "Complete X and come back here" 
message, but IME it wasn't very often.  Certainly GTA San Andreas was one of 
the best games I've ever played.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Yotzse reviewed it.
> 
> I haven't watched it yet, but there's almost undoubtably spoilers. :-)

Gotta love ZP! Sometimes I delude myself into thinking that I could do 
stuff like this. After all, it's just a guy talking really fast, right? 
Well, um... no. No I cannot do this. Sadly.

 From this review, I gather that it isn't very good.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:35:16 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> Darren New wrote:
>
>> In Black&White, you play a local God trying to keep your followers  
>> happy. It's also not particularly interesting. The hype sounded great,  
>> but it was like "Nice engine. Where's the game?"
>
> Maybe it's just me, but given a game where you can do absolutely  
> anything you want, my reaction is typically "so what are you supposed to  
> do?"
>
> (I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the best  
> computer game ever written...)

But it can work, look at the MMORPG like World of Warcraft. I recall  
reading something somewhere about development of some such game and they  
left it completely open and it bombed with the testers. Just as you said  
the attitude was "so what are you supposed to do?". The questions are - Is  
that because games have evolved such that the player is expected to be  
told what to do all the time and thus anything outside that is deemed  
'confusing? Or is the case that we simply don't like such open-ended  
structures within the games that we are supposed to be playing for fun?

I think the difference is that in one type of game you're presented with  
tasks and in the other you're expected to go out and find them yourself.  
In the former you know what you can do and can chose to ignore it, in the  
latter you get the 'now what?'

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

>> Maybe it's just me, but given a game where you can do absolutely 
>> anything you want, my reaction is typically "so what are you supposed 
>> to do?"
>>
>> (I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the 
>> best computer game ever written...)
> 
> But it can work, look at the MMORPG like World of Warcraft.

I don't play WoW, so I don't know quite how open-ended it is. OTOH, I 
gather that MMORPGs are all about the social element, so it would be 
really hopeless to design a single-player game along the same lines.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> And lo On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:35:16 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
> spake thusly:
>> (I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the
>> best computer game ever written...)
> 
> But it can work, look at the MMORPG like World of Warcraft. I recall
> reading something somewhere about development of some such game and they
> left it completely open and it bombed with the testers. Just as you said
> the attitude was "so what are you supposed to do?". The questions are -
> Is that because games have evolved such that the player is expected to
> be told what to do all the time and thus anything outside that is deemed
> 'confusing? Or is the case that we simply don't like such open-ended
> structures within the games that we are supposed to be playing for fun?
> 

If you approach a sandbox for the first time, with no toy shovel or
castle mold, and no clue about what sand even was, would you know of a
way to play in it? They are games, the universe has some rules to it,
but the player doesn't have a clue what they might be. So, they might
appeal to the game tester type who likes to push the engine around, but
that's it; the average player doesn't know what to do.

I don't know about early WoW stuff, but I have seen other games where
they expect the player to just drop players in and say "This is a
MMORPG, go be social." No information about your character, class,
skills, anything.

> I think the difference is that in one type of game you're presented with
> tasks and in the other you're expected to go out and find them yourself.
> In the former you know what you can do and can chose to ignore it, in
> the latter you get the 'now what?'
> 

It is hard to find the task if you do not have a clue how to find them.
I remember early days in Everquest, where the NPCs would only respond if
you were to /say the correct phrase to them. This worked well for the
times where the quest was obvious, or logical, or there was a reference
in something they said previously. In the worst cases, developers would
come back months and years later to say "oops, we misspelled something
in the trigger, now the phrase 'cookies' should work for that quest." Or
the rumor that there were 40% of the quests left unsolved by players, or
uncompleted by devs. Or quests that, after 11 years, still can not be
found that developers insist are active and in-game.

I have that problem with sandbox games, personally. I want some clue
about the game, or some goal to reach. Just exploring a world and
becoming all powerful isn't enough of a draw. Strangely, I have found
that a good challenge is to find interesting ways to lose sandbox games.
Dwarf Fortress taught me this one.

With no clue at all, all you have is the player community to fall back
on. Some have great player support, others have walls of obscure text
like "QQ moar, l2p newb".

Post a reply to this message

Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> appeal to the game tester type who likes to push the engine around, but
> that's it; the average player doesn't know what to do.

Well, I think most adventure games fall into that category. The point of the 
game is to figure out the point of the game, in part. I know it flumoxxes 
some people, but it *is* a form of game.

> It is hard to find the task if you do not have a clue how to find them.

The game *does* have to be structured well to make it obvious what the clues 
are.

> I have that problem with sandbox games, personally. I want some clue
> about the game, or some goal to reach.

I agree that if there's no actual goal, it doesn't sound very fun.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:22:44 +0100, Sabrina Kilian <ski### [at] vtedu>  
did spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> And lo On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:35:16 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
>> spake thusly:
>>> (I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the
>>> best computer game ever written...)
>>
>> But it can work, look at the MMORPG like World of Warcraft. I recall
>> reading something somewhere about development of some such game and they
>> left it completely open and it bombed with the testers. Just as you said
>> the attitude was "so what are you supposed to do?". The questions are -
>> Is that because games have evolved such that the player is expected to
>> be told what to do all the time and thus anything outside that is deemed
>> 'confusing? Or is the case that we simply don't like such open-ended
>> structures within the games that we are supposed to be playing for fun?
>
> If you approach a sandbox for the first time, with no toy shovel or
> castle mold, and no clue about what sand even was, would you know of a
> way to play in it? They are games, the universe has some rules to it,
> but the player doesn't have a clue what they might be. So, they might
> appeal to the game tester type who likes to push the engine around, but
> that's it; the average player doesn't know what to do.

So is it the case that we just expect the hand-holding and just gripe when  
it's not there, or that we don't like being left to fend for ourselves?  
Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a massive  
sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it looked so  
good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?

>> I think the difference is that in one type of game you're presented with
>> tasks and in the other you're expected to go out and find them yourself.
>> In the former you know what you can do and can chose to ignore it, in
>> the latter you get the 'now what?'

More thought on this. At their heart InFamous and Prototype are identical.  
You get to run freely around a city, there's story missions and side  
missions which you can take or ignore - pretty much identical. Yet I love  
InFamous and hate Prototype and the reason for this is that the majority  
of side-missions in Prototype have no connection to the wider world. Beat  
up 300 points worth of infected, defend these troops using only this  
power, run from point to point following these markers, collect the purple  
orbs; um why?

> It is hard to find the task if you do not have a clue how to find them.

Which is akin to the "how the heck was I supposed to know that?" moments  
that keeps GameFaqs in business.

> I remember early days in Everquest, where the NPCs would only respond if
> you were to /say the correct phrase to them. This worked well for the
> times where the quest was obvious, or logical, or there was a reference
> in something they said previously. In the worst cases, developers would
> come back months and years later to say "oops, we misspelled something
> in the trigger, now the phrase 'cookies' should work for that quest." Or
> the rumor that there were 40% of the quests left unsolved by players, or
> uncompleted by devs. Or quests that, after 11 years, still can not be
> found that developers insist are active and in-game.

I would count that more as a developer fault over a structural one, you  
know the quests exist you just can't get to them.

> I have that problem with sandbox games, personally. I want some clue
> about the game, or some goal to reach. Just exploring a world and
> becoming all powerful isn't enough of a draw.

It's amazing how quickly that gets dull; no challenge. Yet at the same  
time if the game artificially ramps up the level of your opponents in line  
with your progress it makes it feel pointless trying to be powerful.

> Strangely, I have found
> that a good challenge is to find interesting ways to lose sandbox games.
> Dwarf Fortress taught me this one.

Hmm the closest I get to that is spectacular deaths.

> With no clue at all, all you have is the player community to fall back
> on. Some have great player support, others have walls of obscure text
> like "QQ moar, l2p newb".

I feel the same way when I dip my toe into WoW "can you buff my dps so I  
can aggro?" what? :-)

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a 
> massive sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it 
> looked so good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?

I think even sandbox type games need careful level design and planning of 
guidance.  Myst is an excellent example.

You can't get off the island, and that's obvious from the start. You know 
books have something to do with why you're there, but there's no real 
backstory you need to understand. The hints on how to proceed are in plain 
view (namely, the letter from Atrus and the pages next to the books in the 
library).

Once you figure out you need the other pages, it's clear you have to find 
the books, find a page in each age, and find your way back. The other books 
in the library give hints as well.

So Myst starts with a set of simple goals once you take more than a dozen 
steps, obvious limitations on where you can go and what you can do, with 
hints telling you how to solve the puzzles without them being obvious. In 
addition, the puzzles are logical within the game space, rather than just 
arbitrary "you find a locked door, go hunt down the key that won't be far 
away."  There's a reason for things to be locked, and a reason for the key 
to be available.

Riven is similar: A handful of clues, thrown into the fray to figure out 
what you're supposed to do beyond "catch Gehn, rescue Catherine, signal 
Atrus."  But as the game progresses and you explore more, there are more 
hints and story that come about, just as left-over artifacts from the 
civilization and all, that tell you what you're supposed to be doing and how 
to resolve the conflicts.

The individual levels of Thief also sometimes had a similar structure. You'd 
have a main goal or two, that may or may not change as the game progresses, 
but a big sprawling level with no hint as to which way to go, where the 
secrets are, or how to achieve the goals you've been set. Other than "steal 
lots of goodies", there weren't really any utterly arbitrary goals there either.

Black & White was probably a decent game of a type I'm not really into. I 
don't much like real-time resource management games, but it was open, 
sprawling, and had various goals you could solve or you could ignore. (And 
some you had to solve for the story to progress.) It was nice because you 
could solve stuff in lots of ways. I'm honestly not sure why I didn't really 
like it. Probably because there wasn't any real exploring going on. There 
was open, and everything was above-ground and evident before you started. 
Nowhere was closed off, and you could see everything, and it's just a 
question of setting off the quests you felt like doing. There was no 
discovery, but just plodding thru the game doing what it told you to do.

Most of the other "Myst-like" games that came right after myst completley 
abandoned the "open" format. There was even one called "lighthouse" where 
you start in a house maybe a quarter mile from the lighthouse in question. I 
spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the first room 
before I realized you had to listen to the answering machine before the door 
would unlock (eh?). Then to get the front door to unlock, you had to pick up 
the umbrella in the stand.  Then you couldn't walk to the lighthouse - you 
had to find the car and drive there. Totally not what an adventure game is 
supposed to be like.

So, in short, an open world with no hidden bits to find and explore and 
challenge is just boring. There have to be places where it takes thinking to 
get to them. And it's best if the thinking is real-world logic. To say "this 
door is locked, let's find the key" is not nearly as interesting as "this 
door is locked, but it's made of wood, and there was an axe in the forest, 
let's see if I can open the door that way."

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

On 6/8/2010 7:19 AM, Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> And lo On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 03:22:44 +0100, Sabrina Kilian
> <ski### [at] vtedu> did spake thusly:
>
>> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>>> And lo On Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:35:16 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
>>> spake thusly:
>>>> (I had this problem with Frontier Elite II, which is supposedly the
>>>> best computer game ever written...)
>>>
>>> But it can work, look at the MMORPG like World of Warcraft. I recall
>>> reading something somewhere about development of some such game and they
>>> left it completely open and it bombed with the testers. Just as you said
>>> the attitude was "so what are you supposed to do?". The questions are -
>>> Is that because games have evolved such that the player is expected to
>>> be told what to do all the time and thus anything outside that is deemed
>>> 'confusing? Or is the case that we simply don't like such open-ended
>>> structures within the games that we are supposed to be playing for fun?
>>
>> If you approach a sandbox for the first time, with no toy shovel or
>> castle mold, and no clue about what sand even was, would you know of a
>> way to play in it? They are games, the universe has some rules to it,
>> but the player doesn't have a clue what they might be. So, they might
>> appeal to the game tester type who likes to push the engine around, but
>> that's it; the average player doesn't know what to do.
>
> So is it the case that we just expect the hand-holding and just gripe
> when it's not there, or that we don't like being left to fend for
> ourselves? Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a
> massive sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it
> looked so good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?
>
>>> I think the difference is that in one type of game you're presented with
>>> tasks and in the other you're expected to go out and find them yourself.
>>> In the former you know what you can do and can chose to ignore it, in
>>> the latter you get the 'now what?'
>
> More thought on this. At their heart InFamous and Prototype are
> identical. You get to run freely around a city, there's story missions
> and side missions which you can take or ignore - pretty much identical.
> Yet I love InFamous and hate Prototype and the reason for this is that
> the majority of side-missions in Prototype have no connection to the
> wider world. Beat up 300 points worth of infected, defend these troops
> using only this power, run from point to point following these markers,
> collect the purple orbs; um why?
>
>> It is hard to find the task if you do not have a clue how to find them.
>
> Which is akin to the "how the heck was I supposed to know that?" moments
> that keeps GameFaqs in business.
>
>> I remember early days in Everquest, where the NPCs would only respond if
>> you were to /say the correct phrase to them. This worked well for the
>> times where the quest was obvious, or logical, or there was a reference
>> in something they said previously. In the worst cases, developers would
>> come back months and years later to say "oops, we misspelled something
>> in the trigger, now the phrase 'cookies' should work for that quest." Or
>> the rumor that there were 40% of the quests left unsolved by players, or
>> uncompleted by devs. Or quests that, after 11 years, still can not be
>> found that developers insist are active and in-game.
>
> I would count that more as a developer fault over a structural one, you
> know the quests exist you just can't get to them.
>
Definitely. There is something called "ProjectEQ", which provides you 
your own server, and a script that can run the same quests as EQ1 had, 
up to a certain point in the updates (just a bit after the introduction 
of Luclin), one of the first things I ran into, and helped fix with my 
own changes, was tweaking the Luclin "Citizen" quests, so you can get 
new items, including your stupid tablet you had to always have for 
getting more missions from the city, any one of which, if you lost them, 
would render it impossible to even gain information about your own 
class, quests from the factions for that class, or nearly anything else 
in the city.

I have no idea if Sony ever fixed those issues in the still running 
servers that EQ1 still runs on.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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And lo On Tue, 08 Jun 2010 18:17:29 +0100, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> Take Myst, what the heck are you supposed to do yet it was a massive  
>> sellout; was that despite its open nature or simply because it looked  
>> so good that finding tasks naturally occurred as you looked around?
>
> I think even sandbox type games need careful level design and planning  
> of guidance.  Myst is an excellent example.
>
<snip>
>
> So Myst starts with a set of simple goals once you take more than a  
> dozen steps, obvious limitations on where you can go and what you can  
> do, with hints telling you how to solve the puzzles without them being  
> obvious. In addition, the puzzles are logical within the game space,  
> rather than just arbitrary "you find a locked door, go hunt down the key  
> that won't be far away."  There's a reason for things to be locked, and  
> a reason for the key to be available.

Exactly quest leads to quest with a natural progression that affects the  
world around you. Things make sense, kind of.

> The individual levels of Thief also sometimes had a similar structure.  
> You'd have a main goal or two, that may or may not change as the game  
> progresses, but a big sprawling level with no hint as to which way to  
> go, where the secrets are, or how to achieve the goals you've been set.  
> Other than "steal lots of goodies", there weren't really any utterly  
> arbitrary goals there either.

Again yes 'This is what you're supposed to do, go and do it'. And again  
the world would alter depending on your actions. One annoyance is that you  
couldn't lock doors behind you to stop the AI path-finding :-)
<snip>

> Most of the other "Myst-like" games that came right after myst  
> completley abandoned the "open" format. There was even one called  
> "lighthouse" where you start in a house maybe a quarter mile from the  
> lighthouse in question. I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to  
> get out of the first room before I realized you had to listen to the  
> answering machine before the door would unlock (eh?). Then to get the  
> front door to unlock, you had to pick up the umbrella in the stand.   
> Then you couldn't walk to the lighthouse - you had to find the car and  
> drive there. Totally not what an adventure game is supposed to be like.

But it does highlight developer thinking. Imagine the same game and I'd  
devised a trap in that you were sprayed with a substance that drives the  
local wildlife into a killing frenzy. Get sprayed and you're dead. So you  
use the umbrella to stop it getting on you. Except the umbrella is back at  
the house you started at. So either I drop my wonderful trap (not going to  
happen) or I turn it into an annoying precog trap (I'm about to get  
sprayed, hey that umbrella back in the house might help) or I just stop  
the player leaving the house without the umbrella despite the fact there's  
no reason at that point for them to take it.

> So, in short, an open world with no hidden bits to find and explore and  
> challenge is just boring. There have to be places where it takes  
> thinking to get to them. And it's best if the thinking is real-world  
> logic. To say "this door is locked, let's find the key" is not nearly as  
> interesting as "this door is locked, but it's made of wood, and there  
> was an axe in the forest, let's see if I can open the door that way."

I'm not sure about hidden bits. Oblivion had plenty of those and it still  
got dull, InFamous had none and I loved it. I agree with the  
multiple-option 'door is locked', but that costs time and money to  
develop. Best to ignore the fact there's an axe and force you to go get a  
key.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> you couldn't lock doors behind you to stop the AI path-finding :-)

What, in Thief?  If you pickpocketed the key, you could unlock the door, go 
thru, lock it, and the AI couldn't follow because it didn't have the key. It 
totally worked.

You couldn't relock something you picked unless you found the key, tho.

> But it does highlight developer thinking. 

Exactly.  I'm not sure I'd call it "developer thinking", but yes.

The trick is to drive the gameplay without any invisible walls.

> I'm not sure about hidden bits. Oblivion had plenty of those and it 
> still got dull, InFamous had none and I loved it. 

OK.  Well, *I* find it dull. :-) Maybe that's just because I play every game 
like an adventure game. ;-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Ok, this is a bit hard to confess, but I sold myself out, so to speak,
kind of. I went and bought an Xbox 360. I couldn't resist the alluring
siren song of the console anylonger, given how many great games are
published only for the consoles and not for Windows, and given that the
Xbox 360 supports a VGA monitor with a cable.

  Getting to finally play all those games whose covers I have only been able
to watch at the store is only one of the benefits, of course. From all the
Windows games I own, *at least* half of them present random crashing, hangups
or other malfunction (I don't know if it's a problem with the games
themselves, the different hardware drivers, the hardware itself, or a
combination), and my PC is becoming so old that it struggles running the
more recent games at even decent framerates with decent quality settings.
While I have never paid much attention to such talk, it is in practice so
that with the Xbox 360 it's just a relief that you can simply put the disc
in and play without having to worry at all about crashes, graphics settings,
latest drivers and whether your PC will be able to run it at all. Microsoft
has also made a quite good work at demanding game developers to minimize
loading times even when loading from DVD, because it really makes a big
difference: Sometimes Xbox 360 games seem to load from the DVD *faster*
than they seem to load from the HD in the PC, as incredible as that might
sound... (I don't really understand how they succeed in this, and why they
don't use the same technique in the Windows ports of the games, when they
exist.)

  Of course there are drawbacks too. For one, games deliberately have no
support for mouse and keyboard, even though the console would support them
(eg. you can plug in an USB keyboard and use it to write in the dashboard;
I'm assuming supporting USB mice is there or at least would be equally easy).
That means no FPS games for me. (Yes, I tried a few demos, and they were
next to impossible to play.) AFAIK this is a deliberate guideline by Microsoft
(or at least it was for the Xbox). Many of these FPS games are published for
both the Xbox 360 and Windows, and they don't have any problems in supporting
keyboard+mouse in the latter; they just deliberately don't support them in
the Xbox 360. Well, it's both their and my loss, because I won't be buying
FPS games (which is a shame really, because many of them *look* really great).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Ok, this is a bit hard to confess, but I sold myself out, so to speak,
> kind of. I went and bought an Xbox 360.

Congrats!

What part is the sell-out? That it's a console, or that it's a Microsoft 
console?  Just curious.

The games look great in HD, too, btw.  Strongly recommended if you can 
manage it.

> that with the Xbox 360 it's just a relief that you can simply put the disc
> in and play without having to worry at all about crashes, graphics settings,
> latest drivers and whether your PC will be able to run it at all. 

Things do indeed "just work" much better.

> sound... (I don't really understand how they succeed in this, and why they
> don't use the same technique in the Windows ports of the games, when they
> exist.)

I think what's happening is there's a lot of background loading going on. 
The XBox doesn't have nearly enough CPU memory to load an entire large game 
at once, so the devs have to go out of their way to make that part work.

I'm not sure why the same techniques wouldn't work on a PC, unless the 
device drivers for the DVD on a PC are in some way too blocking or something.

Half Life 2 on the XBox has long loading screens.  Batman loads while you're 
crawling thru the pipes from one place to another, or during cinematic cut 
scenes that load while you're fighting, or something like that. I think it 
depends on whether it was written for a PC and then ported to consoles or 
vice versa.

> I'm assuming supporting USB mice is there or at least would be equally easy).

 From everything I've read, there's no mouse support on the xbox. Keyboard 
(discouraged), gamepad, chatpad (a keyboard that attaches to the gamepad), 
and camera.

On the other hand, there's clearly support for voice as well, but that's 
never listed in the "these are the input devices we support", so maybe I'm 
missing something.

Plus there's the IR remote for the media player, which I have to assume 
appears as a keyboard or something, but I'll be able to find out soon enough 
when I start running my own code on the xbox. :-)

> That means no FPS games for me. (Yes, I tried a few demos, and they were
> next to impossible to play.)

I've found it takes getting used to, and some games manage it better than 
others. I can't drive in GTA (which is kind of ironic), but shooting in most 
of the games seems OK to me once I play the game a bit, even tho I agree 
it's a lot harder than on the PC with a mouse.

> Well, it's both their and my loss, because I won't be buying
> FPS games (which is a shame really, because many of them *look* really great).

There's usually a lot of auto-aiming support for this reason. Did you 
explore the game options and see if auto-aim is turned on? It's a setting on 
the console.

Also note that if you buy a fast USB memory stick, you can copy the games 
from the DVD to the stick (which uncompresses some of the data as it goes, 
as they usually seem to wind up between 6 and 8 gig on the stick) and play 
from the stick, which can be faster.

I have an XBox HD, and saving a bioshock game went from about 20 seconds to 
about 3 when I switched to saving games on the HD.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> >   Ok, this is a bit hard to confess, but I sold myself out, so to speak,
> > kind of. I went and bought an Xbox 360.

> Congrats!

> What part is the sell-out? That it's a console, or that it's a Microsoft 
> console?  Just curious.

  Well, here I am complaining how I have anticipated this one game for
five years, and then Microsoft decides that it will be published only
for the Xbox 360, seemingly as some kind of marketing campaing to boost
the sales of the console... And then I go and buy the console in question.
Hook, line and sinker.

> The games look great in HD, too, btw.  Strongly recommended if you can 
> manage it.

  My CRT is capable of displaying up tp 1600x1200 and a bit more, but for
whatever reason I don't understand, if you set up any resolution larger
than 1280x1024 the console will not let you specify a screen aspect ratio
of 4:3. It forces it to widescreen (and thus everything is squeezed
horizontally).

> > That means no FPS games for me. (Yes, I tried a few demos, and they were
> > next to impossible to play.)

> I've found it takes getting used to, and some games manage it better than 
> others. I can't drive in GTA (which is kind of ironic), but shooting in most 
> of the games seems OK to me once I play the game a bit, even tho I agree 
> it's a lot harder than on the PC with a mouse.

  I tried the demo of Battlefield: Bad Company, and while the game looked
great, it was almost impossible to play. You need pixel-level accuracy to
hit anything, which is basically impossible with the controller. With a
mouse it wouldn't be a problem.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Hook, line and sinker.

I see. I guess that's why they do it.

>> The games look great in HD, too, btw.  Strongly recommended if you can 
>> manage it.
> 
>   My CRT is capable of displaying up tp 1600x1200 and a bit more, but for
> whatever reason I don't understand, if you set up any resolution larger
> than 1280x1024 the console will not let you specify a screen aspect ratio
> of 4:3. It forces it to widescreen (and thus everything is squeezed
> horizontally).

Ah, I see. I was thinking you were talking 640x480 or something.

>   I tried the demo of Battlefield: Bad Company, 

Try a demo that was designed for a console to start with, like Batman or 
Bioshock or some such. You might find it's somewhat easier. I suspect part 
of the problem with driving in GTA is that the steering is way oversensitive 
for anything you could do with a controller. It might be right with a mouse, 
but the wheel basically goes side to side with the slightest joystick 
movement.  (Or I have something configured stupidly, but there isn't a whole 
lot of configuration you can get to on an XBox.)

Which gives me an idea... I'll have to see if anyone has written a 
target-practice or shooting gallery app.

> and while the game looked
> great, it was almost impossible to play. You need pixel-level accuracy to
> hit anything, which is basically impossible with the controller. With a
> mouse it wouldn't be a problem.

Yeah, that's not going to cut it.  The game has to be adjusted to account 
for being played with a joystick - it shouldn't be hard to hit what you're 
aiming at. Otherwise, you're right, it's pretty much unplayable.

But really, it took me a couple of hours to get to the point where I wasn't 
thinking about aiming, I was just aiming. At this point, when I'm doing my 
own thing and I'm writing the code to move, I have to run downstairs and 
boot up a game to remember which stick is "look" and which is "move", so I 
think I've internalized it pretty well.  And some of it is still difficult. :-)

Maybe see if you can borrow a FPS game that's designed for a console from a 
friend?  Or, isn't Alan Wake basically a shooter, or at least have a fair 
amount of shooting in it?  I bet if you go back after Alan Wake and try some 
of the other games, you'll find them easier.

There *is* a global-per-player auto-aim configuration setting on the 
console. (I.e., a per-player default as to whether you want it turned on.) 
Maybe you need to switch that too.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

Post a reply to this message

welcome to console gaming fun! :)

I heard XBox 360's controller is one of the best ever designed for FPS.  It
should, as many of the console's tops are FPS.  You'll eventually just get the
hang of it.  Not as easy as pointing and clicking, but does the job fine.
Eventually, I also guess something like Natal will mean point and shoot with
your bare hands...

Post a reply to this message

Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > The games look great in HD, too, btw.  Strongly recommended if you can
> > manage it.
>
>   My CRT is capable of displaying up tp 1600x1200 and a bit more, but for
> whatever reason I don't understand, if you set up any resolution larger
> than 1280x1024 the console will not let you specify a screen aspect ratio
> of 4:3. It forces it to widescreen (and thus everything is squeezed
> horizontally).

just so you know:  most HD games on consoles aren't really that high.  They
range mostly in the 720p zone or even less, very few of the graphical
heavyweights have managed to really do the 1080p hype any justice... perhaps
next gen... :P

Post a reply to this message

On 6/9/2010 12:15 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Warp wrote:
>> Ok, this is a bit hard to confess, but I sold myself out, so to speak,
>> kind of. I went and bought an Xbox 360.
>
> Congrats!
>
> What part is the sell-out? That it's a console, or that it's a Microsoft
> console? Just curious.
>
> The games look great in HD, too, btw. Strongly recommended if you can
> manage it.
>
>> that with the Xbox 360 it's just a relief that you can simply put the
>> disc
>> in and play without having to worry at all about crashes, graphics
>> settings,
>> latest drivers and whether your PC will be able to run it at all.
>
> Things do indeed "just work" much better.
>
>> sound... (I don't really understand how they succeed in this, and why
>> they
>> don't use the same technique in the Windows ports of the games, when they
>> exist.)
>
> I think what's happening is there's a lot of background loading going
> on. The XBox doesn't have nearly enough CPU memory to load an entire
> large game at once, so the devs have to go out of their way to make that
> part work.
>
> I'm not sure why the same techniques wouldn't work on a PC, unless the
> device drivers for the DVD on a PC are in some way too blocking or
> something.
>
> Half Life 2 on the XBox has long loading screens. Batman loads while
> you're crawling thru the pipes from one place to another, or during
> cinematic cut scenes that load while you're fighting, or something like
> that. I think it depends on whether it was written for a PC and then
> ported to consoles or vice versa.
>
Games like Force Unleashed and Bioshock 2 don't play well on better 
hardware though, which I find irritating to the point of shear 
stupidity. Why the @#$@$ optimize FU (other than because you want those 
letters to mean something else entirely) so it requires 2 cores to even 
load *at all*? Why optimize Bioshock 2 so that everything in it works 
*except* multiplayer, which crashes, and all the damn vending machines, 
plasmid description videos, or anything else that apparently "uses the 
other core" when you have it, but lags the game into oblivion if you don't?

This is what we get with consoles. People making games work perfectly 
fine on *that* hardware, but then figuring they don't need to bother 
when they then port it to the PC, because, well.. everyone has the 
fastest 4 core processor, with the best video card, and 50TB of 
storage... O.o Bloody pisses me off.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
  This is what we get with consoles. People making games work perfectly
> fine on *that* hardware, 

Which is exactly the reason companies like consoles. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>   This is what we get with consoles. People making games work perfectly
> > fine on *that* hardware,
>
> Which is exactly the reason companies like consoles. :-)

yes, and there's really no point in trying to optimize games for PC when
consumers can just throw more hardware at the issue.  Typical PC gamers are not
really running Pentium 4 these days.

Plus, it's much easier to cope with a single static architecture like a console
than the sheer variety of hardware and drivers for PC.  It's always amazing to
see the swann songs for consoles pushing it to the limits than seeing Crysis
running at 2x1080p, 64FSAA, 120FPS by running on a cluster. :)

and then, consoles are typically about shared familiar entertainment on the
living room rather than a lone experience on the basement PC... :P

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And lo On Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:51:57 +0100, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> you couldn't lock doors behind you to stop the AI path-finding :-)
>
> What, in Thief?  If you pickpocketed the key, you could unlock the door,  
> go thru, lock it, and the AI couldn't follow because it didn't have the  
> key. It totally worked.

Ah pick-pocketing the key, didn't do that very often.

> You couldn't relock something you picked unless you found the key, tho.
>
>> But it does highlight developer thinking.
>
> Exactly.  I'm not sure I'd call it "developer thinking", but yes.
>
> The trick is to drive the gameplay without any invisible walls.

Illogical barriers to progress, invisible walls is snappier though.

>> I'm not sure about hidden bits. Oblivion had plenty of those and it  
>> still got dull, InFamous had none and I loved it.
>
> OK.  Well, *I* find it dull. :-) Maybe that's just because I play every  
> game like an adventure game. ;-)

Well everyone's different. I can't stand racing games, my cousin loves  
them.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Warp wrote:
>   Ok, this is a bit hard to confess, but I sold myself out, so to speak,
> kind of. I went and bought an Xbox 360.

Hahahaha! :-D

> From all the
> Windows games I own, *at least* half of them present random crashing, hangups
> or other malfunction

I've heard a number of people say this. (E.g., there are certain people 
where every time we have a CSS match, they have to restart their PC a 
dozen times before CSS will launch without crashing.) I find this rather 
baffling. I have *never* seen CSS crash, even once.

About the only remotely similar thing I've seen it do is when my 
graphics card started dying... man, that was, uh, "special". Do you know 
what happens if you take a level map make up of X thousand polygons, 
take every 5th vertex and set either the X, Y or Z coordinate to zero? 
After a while it quickly becomes impossible to see where the hell you're 
going!

> my PC is becoming so old that it struggles running the
> more recent games at even decent framerates with decent quality settings.

I suppose that could be the problem.

When I first played AvP, it was rock solid. When I tried to play it on 
my current PC, it refused to play. At all. Wouldn't go past the menu 
screen. Just would not run. Claimed I had insufficient video RAM. (The 
box claims you need a minimum of 2 MB, and I only have 896 MB...)

The Settlers IV used to run fine (but for the occasional crash), but 
since I upgraded to a dual-core CPU, it utterly refuses to run at all. 
Won't even start up.

I could continue. Basically old games seem to not like being run on new 
hardware. (Now if I could just get hold of a Windows XP license code, I 
could use Virtual Box to solve this problem!)

> it's just a relief that you can simply put the disc
> in and play without having to worry at all about crashes, graphics settings,
> latest drivers and whether your PC will be able to run it at all.

That's the advantage of a static hardware platform, of course. It makes 
testing 20,000x easier. The disadvantage is... a static hardware 
platform. ;-) If you want more processing power, you must buy an entire 
new console. (Assuming one is even available in the first place!)

> Microsoft
> has also made a quite good work at demanding game developers to minimize
> loading times

No, I think you'll find that that's "market forces". As in, console 
gamers just won't pay money for a game that makes you sit and wait for 
it to load, so developers invest significant time and energy into making 
it fast. If they didn't, it wouldn't sell.

> (I don't really understand how they succeed in this, and why they
> don't use the same technique in the Windows ports of the games, when they
> exist.)

That makes two of us.

>   Of course there are drawbacks too. For one, games deliberately have no
> support for mouse and keyboard.

And this is the main reason why I will never, ever buy a console.

I have only ever owned one console, and I only got that so I could play 
Sonic the Hedgehog. And no, I didn't pay retail price for it either...

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Warp wrote:
>   Ok, this is a bit hard to confess, but I sold myself out, so to speak,
> kind of. I went and bought an Xbox 360.

But the big question is... IS ALAN WAKE ANY GOOD??? ;-)

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