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

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>> 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*

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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".

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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>

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

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

Post a reply to this message

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

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.

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...

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.

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

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:50:05 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake thusly:

>   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.

Scab! Heh. OOC why the Xbox and not the PS3? I'm not fan-boying or  
anything I'm genuinely curious.

<snip>

> 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.

Which is why I made the leap some time ago.

> 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.)

Yeah as has been mentioned it's the fixed hardware. I was reading  
something from a developer about how all the processes in the game has a  
timing constraint  - this, this and this have to be done in this time in  
order for the screen to be redrawn. If you don't know the throughputs for  
the hardware it's more difficult to tweak.

>   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).

And that's the stupid thing about the PS3 you *can* use a keyboard and  
mouse (bluetooth and usb), but the games themselves have to accept their  
input to work. Not counting some of the old PS1/PS2 games I think only  
Unreal Tournament had this support, maddening.

> 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).

Keep at it. It still won't be as good as with a mouse, but it won't be  
impossible.

-- 
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

> Keep at it. It still won't be as good as with a mouse, but it won't be 
> impossible.

As usual I have a cool idea, google it, and find someone else has already 
done it:

http://www.xcm.cc/xcm_xfps_360.htm

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 11:48:26 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

>> Keep at it. It still won't be as good as with a mouse, but it won't be  
>> impossible.
>
> As usual I have a cool idea, google it, and find someone else has  
> already done it:
>
> http://www.xcm.cc/xcm_xfps_360.htm

There's some out for the PS3 too, which is hilarious for obvious reasons.

-- 
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

>> As usual I have a cool idea, google it, and find someone else has 
>> already done it:
>>
>> http://www.xcm.cc/xcm_xfps_360.htm
> 
> There's some out for the PS3 too, which is hilarious for obvious reasons.

Clearly I'm missing something...

Post a reply to this message

>>> As usual I have a cool idea, google it, and find someone else has 
>>> already done it:
>>>
>>> http://www.xcm.cc/xcm_xfps_360.htm
>>
>> There's some out for the PS3 too, which is hilarious for obvious reasons.
>
> Clearly I'm missing something...

Me too.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 13:07:22 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

>>>> As usual I have a cool idea, google it, and find someone else has  
>>>> already done it:
>>>>
>>>> http://www.xcm.cc/xcm_xfps_360.htm
>>>
>>> There's some out for the PS3 too, which is hilarious for obvious  
>>> reasons.
>>
>> Clearly I'm missing something...
>
> Me too.

Oh sorry. The PS3 natively supports a keyboard and mouse. The game  
developers just need to interface to it. In theory any game that is also  
developed for the PC or uses the Unreal engine could support k+m for the  
PS3; they just don't.

-- 
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

>>>> There's some out for the PS3 too, which is hilarious for obvious 
>>>> reasons.
>>>
>>> Clearly I'm missing something...
>>
>> Me too.
>
> Oh sorry. The PS3 natively supports a keyboard and mouse. The game 
> developers just need to interface to it. In theory any game that is also 
> developed for the PC or uses the Unreal engine could support k+m for the 
> PS3; they just don't.

Which is the point of these add-on boxes, they accept normal k+m and then 
present themselves to the console as a normal native gamepad.  The result is 
that any game that accepts input from the analogue stick can be controlled 
by a mouse.

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:18:05 +0100, scott <sco### [at] scottcom> did  
spake thusly:

>>>>> There's some out for the PS3 too, which is hilarious for obvious  
>>>>> reasons.
>>>>
>>>> Clearly I'm missing something...
>>>
>>> Me too.
>>
>> Oh sorry. The PS3 natively supports a keyboard and mouse. The game  
>> developers just need to interface to it. In theory any game that is  
>> also developed for the PC or uses the Unreal engine could support k+m  
>> for the PS3; they just don't.
>
> Which is the point of these add-on boxes, they accept normal k+m and  
> then present themselves to the console as a normal native gamepad.  The  
> result is that any game that accepts input from the analogue stick can  
> be controlled by a mouse.

But that's why I find it hilarious. This isn't a case of a third-party  
creating something that isn't there, it's creating something that already  
exists and isn't being used.

It's as if Sony had designed a car and created a power lead to plug in a  
radio, but all the radio creators decided to fit their products with  
batteries, so a third-party came along and created a battery pack and an  
extra power lead. I can just picture the Sony execs shaking their heads in  
bemusement.

-- 
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:

> It's as if Sony had designed a car and created a power lead to plug in a 
> radio, but all the radio creators decided to fit their products with 
> batteries, so a third-party came along and created a battery pack and an 
> extra power lead. I can just picture the Sony execs shaking their heads 
> in bemusement.

Or as if the manufacturers could make radios with an audio socket where 
you could plug in any concievable sound source, but instead they all 
created radios with a cassette slot, so 3rd parties came up with a tape 
adaptor...

...oh, wait, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED! >_<

Seriously, is there any specific reason that I can't plug my MP3 player 
into my car? Or is it just so that Renault can extract more money from 
me to have an MP3-capable head unit installed? (And even then it still 
won't play Ogg Vorbis...)

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:36:01 +0100, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>
>> It's as if Sony had designed a car and created a power lead to plug in  
>> a radio, but all the radio creators decided to fit their products with  
>> batteries, so a third-party came along and created a battery pack and  
>> an extra power lead. I can just picture the Sony execs shaking their  
>> heads in bemusement.
>
> Or as if the manufacturers could make radios with an audio socket where  
> you could plug in any concievable sound source, but instead they all  
> created radios with a cassette slot, so 3rd parties came up with a tape  
> adaptor...
>
> ...oh, wait, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED! >_<

Kind of. Imagine the radio manufacturers created them with both the  
cassette and audio socket, but didn't connect the socket; and then someone  
created the tape adaptor. Maybe it's just me but I find that thought  
amusing.

> Seriously, is there any specific reason that I can't plug my MP3 player  
> into my car?

Yes

> Or is it just so that Renault can extract more money from me to have an  
> MP3-capable head unit installed?

and there you go :-)

> (And even then it still won't play Ogg Vorbis...)

Ah come on they've only just got around to MP3.

-- 
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

> Seriously, is there any specific reason that I can't plug my MP3 player 
> into my car? Or is it just so that Renault can extract more money from me 
> to have an MP3-capable head unit installed? (And even then it still won't 
> play Ogg Vorbis...)

Car companies can easily have 90%+ margin on optional extras, it's how they 
make a significant proportion of their profit and it subsidises the base 
price of the car.

BTW, I'm sure with a little investigating you can find the analogue AUX 
inputs to the head unit and wire up a 3.5mm socket somewhere...

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
> Car companies can easily have 90%+ margin on optional extras.

Great. So I'm being deliberately stopped from doing something trivially 
easy just so Renault can make more profit. *sigh*

> BTW, I'm sure with a little investigating you can find the analogue AUX 
> inputs to the head unit and wire up a 3.5mm socket somewhere...

I wouldn't mind, but the stereo isn't replaceable. It's one of these 
units that's welded to the dashboard. It's nice that it matches the 
interior and everything (and it has things like satelite controls, and a 
feature where it turns the volume up when you reach a certain speed), 
but on the other hand it means you can *only* install one of the 4 
models of stereo that Renault sell. And it's so expensive that you might 
as well buy an entire new car; much cheaper than paying for an 
authorised dealer to install an authorised unit.

And all because they didn't include a 12p audio socket...

Post a reply to this message

>> Car companies can easily have 90%+ margin on optional extras.
>
> Great. So I'm being deliberately stopped from doing something trivially 
> easy just so Renault can make more profit. *sigh*

Actually they are using that extra profit to reduce the base price of their 
cars, so you should be thanking all the people spending thousands on extras 
for subsidising your car :-)

> I wouldn't mind, but the stereo isn't replaceable. It's one of these units 
> that's welded to the dashboard.

Extremely unlikely that you can't get it out (or that it's welded), dealers 
have to replace these sorts of things all the time.  You just have to look 
around for where the screws and catches are hidden under various bits of 
trim.  Online forums will no doubt have the answer if you can't figure it 
out for your particular car.

> but on the other hand it means you can *only* install one of the 4 models 
> of stereo that Renault sell. And it's so expensive that you might as well 
> buy an entire new car; much cheaper than paying for an authorised dealer 
> to install an authorised unit.
>
> And all because they didn't include a 12p audio socket...

My point is the electrical connection is probably right there behind *your* 
head unit, you just need to connect three wires to it.

If it's available as an after-fit option then you might be able to find 
online the actual official service guide for installing it.  I found the one 
for putting a USB socket in my car, but apparently it has to be wired up to 
some box of tricks in the boot, and involved taking out seats and stuff, so 
I decided not to bother.

Post a reply to this message

>> Great. So I'm being deliberately stopped from doing something 
>> trivially easy just so Renault can make more profit. *sigh*
> 
> Actually they are using that extra profit to reduce the base price of 
> their cars, so you should be thanking all the people spending thousands 
> on extras for subsidising your car :-)

It's almost like those companies that sell you a printer for £20 and 
then charge you £80 for the ink...

>> I wouldn't mind, but the stereo isn't replaceable. It's one of these 
>> units that's welded to the dashboard.
> 
> Extremely unlikely that you can't get it out (or that it's welded), 
> dealers have to replace these sorts of things all the time.

My point is, it's not a standard-sized stereo that you can just replace. 
It's a custom-fit job. Only a Renault stereo would be the correct size 
and shape (and colour, for that matter) to fit into the space. So I 
can't just go to the nearest shop and buy a decent stereo. I can *only* 
buy one from Renault. And, as I say, it would be cheaper to buy an 
entire new car. (Not to mention that Renault only offer 4 models of 
stereo to choose from for this car anyway.)

>> And all because they didn't include a 12p audio socket...
> 
> My point is the electrical connection is probably right there behind 
> *your* head unit, you just need to connect three wires to it.

I severely doubt it. If their intention is to force you to expend money, 
they will presumably have made this is difficult as humanly possible to 
prevent you not expending money.

> If it's available as an after-fit option then you might be able to find 
> online the actual official service guide for installing it.

As far as I can tell, none of the 4 available models has an audio 
socket. They have different radio capabilities, and there's an option to 
fit a CD changer. I think one model even supports MP3. But no audio 
socket. Ever. (Nor USB, by the way.)

I guess if you wanted USB, you'd have to buy a more expensive car. (How 
absurd is that?)

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> Illogical barriers to progress, invisible walls is snappier though.

Logical barriers is best, tho. Like Myst or Thief. :-)

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

The best racing game I saw has a mode you could unlock where it was one long 
street crossing another very busy street, and the game was to see how many 
points of destruction you could cause in a wreck.  It turned out that 
turning over the logging truck into the side of the gasoline tank truck did 
a very nice job of it.  And the explosions and other demolitions were 
wonderfully realistic.

-- 
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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Invisible wrote:
> My point is, it's not a standard-sized stereo that you can just replace. 

I doubt that's true. I suspect ifyou pulled the dashboard off, you'd see one 
of the standard-sized holes with a standard-sized radio with lots of trim 
making it fit smoothly into the dash.

-- 
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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And lo On Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:32:08 +0100, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake thusly:

> Phil Cook v2 wrote:
>> Illogical barriers to progress, invisible walls is snappier though.
>
> Logical barriers is best, tho. Like Myst or Thief. :-)
>
>> Well everyone's different. I can't stand racing games, my cousin loves  
>> them.
>
> The best racing game I saw has a mode you could unlock where it was one  
> long street crossing another very busy street, and the game was to see  
> how many points of destruction you could cause in a wreck.  It turned  
> out that turning over the logging truck into the side of the gasoline  
> tank truck did a very nice job of it.  And the explosions and other  
> demolitions were wonderfully realistic.

Hence Burnout Paradise being pretty much the only racing game I enjoy :-)


-- 
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:
> Hence Burnout Paradise being pretty much the only racing game I enjoy :-)

Is that what it's called? I'll have to see if I can get that for the xbox.

I played it on my brother's 9-foot projection tv screen. It was awesome.

-- 
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 wrote:
> Is that what it's called? I'll have to see if I can get that for the xbox.

Neat.
http://www.xbox.com/en-us/games/b/burnoutparadise/default.htm

For those who don't know what we're talking about:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-RjsMdOG6E

Imagine that where one of the sub-games is seeing how much destruction you 
can cause in a busy intersection.

-- 
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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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Sony ever fixed those issues

Ahahaha. At least then, when it was still partially Verent, you got the
"Sorry, citizen, but you are not allowed to do that in our game. We are
going to 'fix' this problem." They have moved from, "fixing bugs in ways
you hate." to, "use this micro-transaction to give us more money."

I did hear the quest got a kludge fix. Anyone can just start it in the
middle, without the petition for citizenship paper.

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On 6/10/2010 10:53 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> My point is, it's not a standard-sized stereo that you can just replace.
>
> I doubt that's true. I suspect ifyou pulled the dashboard off, you'd see
> one of the standard-sized holes with a standard-sized radio with lots of
> trim making it fit smoothly into the dash.
>

Yep. It's the same as my civic, probably. Only apparently the civic you 
can't actually remove the radio because it has part of the computer 
system for the dashboard. You have to relocate the head unit somewhere 
else if you want to use an aftermarket unit.

Usually shops that sell radios will have a dash plate that has an 
opening designed to fit a standard radio. It looks just like the OEM, 
only it's got a standard rectangular hole where the radio goes.

-- 
~Mike

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Warp wrote:
>>> 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.
> 

I know that with the Call of Duty series, you get a little auto-aim help
when firing from the hip in that the game just corrects the bullets
path. If you shoulder the weapon, or aim down the sights, or what ever
else the game has, it would snap the cross hair to the target. Both of
those are options that can be disabled per player. And both are disabled
in online-multiplayer, much to my annoyance.

You can get used to a joystick control. It's not impossible, it just
shares nothing with the skills used when using a mouse.

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"Phil Cook v2" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> wrote:
> And lo On Wed, 09 Jun 2010 19:50:05 +0100, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did
> spake thusly:
>
> >   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.
>
> Scab! Heh. OOC why the Xbox and not the PS3? I'm not fan-boying or
> anything I'm genuinely curious.

I guess it's because of the 2006's revolutionary-game hype around the
XBox-exclusive "Alan Wake".  If he gets hugely disapointed, I'd point him to
"Red Dead Redemption" from Rockstar, with its huge open-world set in the old
west.  Much more mindblowing stuff, with hardly any hype at all...

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Much more mindblowing stuff, with hardly any hype at all...

Which ZP has also reviewed this week. Very amusing, as always.

-- 
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 6/10/2010 10:09 AM, Sabrina Kilian wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Sony ever fixed those issues
>
> Ahahaha. At least then, when it was still partially Verent, you got the
> "Sorry, citizen, but you are not allowed to do that in our game. We are
> going to 'fix' this problem." They have moved from, "fixing bugs in ways
> you hate." to, "use this micro-transaction to give us more money."
>
> I did hear the quest got a kludge fix. Anyone can just start it in the
> middle, without the petition for citizenship paper.
Lovely.. Took me about 20 minutes looking through the code for the 
non-SOE server to find and fix all the issues with it, and even without 
testing all of it, I am pretty sure it got included in the most recent 
patches, and all of it works. It wasn't that damn hard to figure out. 
All you do is look through to see what they expect, what they give you, 
to give to the next guy, then make sure you can go back to the last one 
and get a new one, as long as a "flag" that tracks your progress shows 
you finished up to that point. Heck. I didn't even have to add my own 
bloody flag. The key one needed is already there, there just wasn't code 
in there to say:

if flag = 1 & !inventory_contains("thingie"){ \\i.e. you finished to 
this point.
   give "thingie";
   say "Someone found this laying around. Try not to lose it again.";}

Someone half brain dead could fix it, never mind people that code quests 
all the time for SOE. About 90% of all the changes I made where *all* 
basically those 3 lines, with small variations. Same with the class 
agents, which all used *identical* code, with the exception of some 
wording, since it was the *same* item they all gave you at that critical 
point.

Thankfully.. They seem to have been less sloppy with "most" things in 
EQ2. Though, I still have a "dark side" quest with some clown (which I 
can't complete because of it) that breaks another quest, if you are on 
it, unless you first delete the offending quest. Same NPC for both, but 
he won't progress the others, if you are already on the evil one you 
have to talk to him about, but can't, if you are not evil. Its quite 
absurd..., but its like 1 out of 3000+ quests that I have done, which 
has had a serious problem. Luclin in EQ1 on the other hand... was a 
bloody total damn mess. lol

-- 
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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On 6/9/2010 7:51 PM, nemesis wrote:
> 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
>
>
Sigh.. No. That isn't how it should bloody work. If you can optimize it 
to run well on something that has one core, less memory, and barely any 
HD, it makes no damn sense that you can't take *that* optimization, then 
just support the ability to self-tweak the damn thing to take advantage 
of everything the machine *can* do that the console can't. Its like 
buying a damned steering wheel cover for your car and discovering that 
its been "optimized" in such a manner that it works fine on a hybred, 
but placing it on an SUV will cause the engine to take 10 minutes to 
actually start, sets the maximum speed to be 3mph, and all the seats to 
rearrange themselves so you now only have room for yourself, and one 
very small pet, say.. a hampster, sans cage.

It simply doesn't make any damn sense at all that this should happen. 
Its the computer equivalent of attempting to empty the contents of a 
puddle, and finding that, by the time you have to drained the contents, 
it has mysteriously grown to fill a 150x50x12 foot swimming pool... 
These games **should** run on hardware that is 10 years older than what 
I have, based on the console its running on, but its using up enough 
resources, processor power, and storage, to require something only 1 
year older, and but 10 times the cost of what I actually own.

It has jack to do with the "difficulty of optimizing for a PC". The 
consoles **are** PCs, and the hardware they are running is usually 3 
generations older than the shit they "optimize" the PC version to run 
on. This is **de-optimization**.

-- 
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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> It has jack to do with the "difficulty of optimizing for a PC". The 
> consoles **are** PCs,

Yeh, apart from the fact that the CPU and GPU share the same RAM (eliminates 
the biggest bottleneck in PC games)

Or that the CPU has additional instructions for games (parallel vector math 
stuff)

Or that the GPU has way higher bandwidth than even the latest nVidia cards.

Simply put, if you're optimised your game for xbox it probably will not run 
at decent frame rate on even a modern PC out-of-the-box.  You're going to 
need to make some huge changes to your design to get it working well on a 
PC.

For a start you need to get rid of all the CPU<->GPU interactions per frame, 
and try to make more use of the GPU shaders.  This is not trivial, some 
effects might not even be possible to transfer.  Next you probably need to 
scale back on some of the full-scene post-processing stuff, as PC GPUs 
simply don't have the bandwidth, maybe you can try to figure out other ways 
to acheive the same via more complex shaders.  Then you probably need to 
re-optimise your vector math code for PC CPUs (or maybe the compiler does 
this automatically, IDK).

Anyway, it's not very simple like you make out.

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> It's almost like those companies that sell you a printer for £20 and then 
> charge you £80 for the ink...

Exactly.  The ones who don't charge 80 for their ink have to sell their 
printers for 40 to make any profit.  Then nobody buys it because it's double 
the price of the competition.  In both cases they rely on the fact that 
people only consider the "initial" or "base" price displayed in big flashy 
font.

> My point is, it's not a standard-sized stereo that you can just replace.

Yes I understand that, most cars are like that now.  It doesn't mean you 
can't take it out though.

>> My point is the electrical connection is probably right there behind 
>> *your* head unit, you just need to connect three wires to it.
>
> I severely doubt it.

So it would be more than a 12p audio socket then?

> If their intention is to force you to expend money, they will presumably 
> have made this is difficult as humanly possible to prevent you not 
> expending money.

They wouldn't put much effort in to it, believe me.  Heck you can even spend 
a few hundred pounds to modify the ECU to get the same performance as the 
next model up, they could easily prevent that if they could be bothered.  In 
reality not enough people do anything like this to make it worth their while 
working on it.

> As far as I can tell, none of the 4 available models has an audio socket.

Ah ok, so it probably doesn't exist then.  Sorry I misunderstood, I thought 
it was an option to have one installed.

Post a reply to this message

>> It's almost like those companies that sell you a printer for £20 and 
>> then charge you £80 for the ink...
> 
> Exactly.  The ones who don't charge 80 for their ink have to sell their 
> printers for 40 to make any profit.  Then nobody buys it because it's 
> double the price of the competition.  In both cases they rely on the 
> fact that people only consider the "initial" or "base" price displayed 
> in big flashy font.

Personally, when *I* buy a printer, I tend to look for one that looks 
like it isn't going to break after 3 uses, which usually rules out all 
the £20 printers. But apparently that's just me...

>> My point is, it's not a standard-sized stereo that you can just replace.
> 
> Yes I understand that, most cars are like that now.  It doesn't mean you 
> can't take it out though.

I'm sure you can take it out. The problem is that you can't put anything 
else in its place, because it won't be the right shape and won't have 
the custom Renault-specific connectors. (They're probably different on 
every model of Renault too, just to stop you taking the stereo from an 
expensive car and putting it into a cheap car.)

>>> My point is the electrical connection is probably right there behind 
>>> *your* head unit, you just need to connect three wires to it.
>>
>> I severely doubt it.
> 
> So it would be more than a 12p audio socket then?

I mean they've probably got all the connections in one of those big 
block terminals to prevent you from knowing which connection is which. 
(That's assuming there even *is* an input to the amplifier other than 
the tuner and CD DAC inside the head unit itself...)

>> If their intention is to force you to expend money, they will 
>> presumably have made this is difficult as humanly possible to prevent 
>> you not expending money.
> 
> They wouldn't put much effort in to it, believe me.  Heck you can even 
> spend a few hundred pounds to modify the ECU to get the same performance 
> as the next model up, they could easily prevent that if they could be 
> bothered.  In reality not enough people do anything like this to make it 
> worth their while working on it.

Just courious now, but... Does a Renault Megane actually *have* an ECU?

>> As far as I can tell, none of the 4 available models has an audio socket.
> 
> Ah ok, so it probably doesn't exist then.  Sorry I misunderstood, I 
> thought it was an option to have one installed.

Fair enough.

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