Black Mesa is a Source mod that's basically a remake / total conversion
of Half-Life (using the modern Source engine).

If you liked Half-Life, you should definitely check it out. It looks
awesome.

More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_%28video_game%29

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 9/15/2012 13:57, Warp wrote:
> More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_%28video_game%29

And BTW, it's released, and donation-ware.

http://release.blackmesasource.com/

Check out the "download now" torrent bit. I haven't installed it, but I'm 
told by those who do that you basically run the installer and you're good to 
go, without having to worry about whether you already have Steam or any 
other games with the same engine or anything like that.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Check out the "download now" torrent bit. I haven't installed it, but I'm 
> told by those who do that you basically run the installer and you're good to 
> go, without having to worry about whether you already have Steam or any 
> other games with the same engine or anything like that.

I don't know about that. It registers itself with steam and it requires the
Source SDK (which Steam downloads automatically when you run the game for
the first time). Since the SDK does not come with the game itself, I don't
know how it could run without Steam.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 9/15/2012 23:18, Warp wrote:
> Since the SDK does not come with the game itself, I don't
> know how it could run without Steam.

What I'm told is that if it doesn't find the SDK, it downloads it during the 
install process. (And I don't think Steam comes with the SDK - just the engine.)

In any case, I can't test that bit, since I already have Steam and all that 
installed, and it installed just fine.

Oh, I see. When you install it, it winds up in your Steam library. The first 
time you launch it from Steam, it says "Yo, there's a Steam update for you, 
this 4.7G thing called 'SDK'." So it treats the SDK install like any other 
Steam update. I Hadn't actually gotten around to trying it until I was 
already replying here. :-)

The installer offered to let me launch it (as installers are wont to do) and 
I wasn't running Steam, but I don't know if that would have started up Steam 
or what. Maybe it doesn't install at all if you don't have Steam. It *did* 
install directly into my (non-standard) Steam games storage directory on my 
alternate non-C: drive, so maybe it doesn't even start installing if Steam 
isn't around.

I don't know how (or if) it runs without one having an actual steam account. 
I'm just repeating what I was told by others.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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On 16/09/2012 06:54 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Oh, I see. When you install it, it winds up in your Steam library. The
> first time you launch it from Steam, it says "Yo, there's a Steam update
> for you, this 4.7G thing called 'SDK'." So it treats the SDK install
> like any other Steam update. I Hadn't actually gotten around to trying
> it until I was already replying here. :-)

Sounds like other Source-powered games I've played. (E.g., Dystopia, 
Insurgency.)

It's powered by Source, it shows up in Steam, but it isn't distributed 
by Steam, so it won't auto-update. (Although maybe that'll change in 
future... It looks like Valve are looking into actually /distributing/ 
more independent games through Steam...)

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On 15/09/2012 09:57 PM, Warp wrote:
> Black Mesa is a Source mod that's basically a remake / total conversion
> of Half-Life (using the modern Source engine).

They actually released it in the end? Man, I figured it was dead for sure...

> If you liked Half-Life, you should definitely check it out. It looks
> awesome.

Yeah, I read about this ages ago. I bet it won't be as cool as I'd hoped 
though... Only one way to know. ;-)

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > If you liked Half-Life, you should definitely check it out. It looks
> > awesome.

> Yeah, I read about this ages ago. I bet it won't be as cool as I'd hoped 
> though... Only one way to know. ;-)

I have liked it so far. It's not just one of those "let's upgrade the
original game with better models and textures". It has been, AFAIK,
developed from scratch. It follows the original game quite faithfully,
of course, but levels are often bigger and have more stuff in them, and
many puzzles and sequences are completely different from the original
(although the setting is usually the same).

Oh, and the voice acting is new, and quite well done.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 9/17/2012 1:28, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> It's powered by Source, it shows up in Steam, but it isn't distributed by
> Steam, so it won't auto-update.

Well, it used the auto-update mechanism built into steam to download the 
SDK. It shows up in Steam as an external shortcut, tho. It's an odd combination.

That said, it has apparently been "greenlighted" on Steams "greenlight" 
thing, so it'll probably be available properly through Steam in a few weeks.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

>> It's powered by Source, it shows up in Steam, but it isn't distributed by
>> Steam, so it won't auto-update.
>
> Well, it used the auto-update mechanism built into steam to download the
> SDK. It shows up in Steam as an external shortcut, tho. It's an odd
> combination.

The Source SDK is delivered through Steam. The game itself is not.

> That said, it has apparently been "greenlighted" on Steams "greenlight"
> thing, so it'll probably be available properly through Steam in a few
> weeks.

Yeah, so I hear. That should make things drastically easier if they 
start releasing updates. (I remember from Dystopia that every time an 
update came out, you suddenly lost the ability to play on all game 
servers until you manually track down, download and install a several 
hundred MB update. Not fun!)

Post a reply to this message

>> Yeah, I read about this ages ago. I bet it won't be as cool as I'd hoped
>> though... Only one way to know. ;-)
>
> I have liked it so far. It's not just one of those "let's upgrade the
> original game with better models and textures". It has been, AFAIK,
> developed from scratch. It follows the original game quite faithfully,
> of course, but levels are often bigger and have more stuff in them, and
> many puzzles and sequences are completely different from the original
> (although the setting is usually the same).
>
> Oh, and the voice acting is new, and quite well done.

Having had a chance to actually play this properly now, I'm liking what 
I'm seeing.

(I didn't like that it took me almost half an hour to find a mirror 
which would actually let me download the game.)

It's based on the HL2:EP2 engine. It does that same thing the other HL2 
games do, with the menu floating over a scene from the game. The default 
graphics settings it picked were a tad lower than what my graphics card 
can actually handle. (It didn't pick the right image resolution for my 
LCD, and it also decided not to turn on AA, which my mighty nVidia 
GeForce GTX 260 easily handles.)

There's a rather obnoxious quantity of loading pauses during the iconic 
intro sequence. A lot of the environments look a bit less *ridiculously 
implausible* now. The environment sounds seem better too. On the other 
hand, there seems to be a lower density of "cool glowy things".

This carries over to the rest of the game. A lot of the empty box 
corridors now have windows into other areas, and the place seems more 
like a buzzing hive of activity than it did before. Basically the place 
looks less barren and more interesting. On the other hand, fewer lasers 
and stuff.

The footsteps on carpet sound is pretty cool. And the music isn't bad.

The voice acting is... Well, it's certainly decent. I'd suggest it isn't 
as good as the original, but honestly the original was recorded in such 
low quality that it's hard to say. I notice that there are /female/ 
scientists now. And while in the original game, the occasional guy would 
murmur "greetings", now the scientists seem to have a hell of a lot more 
to say. (Even if most of it just foreshadows "everything's about do go 
wrong", or is otherwise ironic.)

And then eventually I arrived at THAT room. You know the one. Ground 
zero. The place were it all went wrong.

I like that it doesn't have parts of the machine just /levitating/ now. 
It looks like a machine that could actually physically exist, and that 
an engineer might design. I like the way the room lighting changes when 
you switch it on. But shortly after that, the room starts to become 
drastically over-bright, and the lighting changes aren't nearly as 
effective. Given that this is arguably the single most important moment 
in the game, it could have been slightly more cinematic.

Some of the models, textures and sounds are brand-new. Some of them I 
clearly recognise from HL2. Some of the better voice clips sound like 
they were voiced by Harry Robins himself, heh. The dialogue certainly 
comes across as a little less wooden - no doubt thanks to the improved 
game engine.

There were a few glitches. When the zombies first show up, one chased a 
security guard into the lift shaft I just climbed up, and stood there 
apparently stuck in a loop with him attacking and the guard not 
returning fire. I walked off and left them to it, still unarmed. There's 
a /lot/ of zombies here, considering I have no weapon. (I like how you 
eventually find the crowbar wedged in a door.)

In the original game, you find the Glock just before you enter the area 
where the houndeyes hang out. But not here, apparently. There's still a 
dead security guard, but this time there's no dropped gun on the floor. 
It's quite hard to kill the houndeyes with only a crowbar; you tend to 
get fairly severely injured before you can finish them.

Eventually I did get a gun. But ammo seems to be /really/ scarce. For 
that matter, there are a few health stations around, but almost every 
single HEV charging station seems to be deactivated for some reason. I 
spent almost the whole game so far with 0% suit charge. (The levels seem 
to reward exploration though; there's a few power modules hidden around 
the place.)

Likewise, for a good portion of the game I've been finding an awful lot 
of magnum ammo considering I don't have the magnum yet. In one very 
annoying instance, I actually found the magnum, battled a little further 
on, and died. When the game reloaded, I forget to recollect the magnum, 
and by the time I realised it was too late. So I /still/ don't have the 
magnum!

I did eventually get the SMG and the shotgun though. A got as far as the 
Blast Pit, and then decided I just couldn't be dealing with my 
least-favourite room in the entire game this late at night with almost 
no ammo left for any weapon...

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On 9/18/2012 2:49, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> (I didn't like that it took me almost half an hour to find a mirror which
> would actually let me download the game.)

That's what torrents are for. Quite literally - they were invented to make 
downloading massive patches faster for a large community of users.

> "greetings", now the scientists seem to have a hell of a lot more to say.

"Now... where did I put that emergency shut-down checklist?"

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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On 19/09/2012 05:08 AM, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/18/2012 2:49, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> (I didn't like that it took me almost half an hour to find a mirror which
>> would actually let me download the game.)
>
> That's what torrents are for. Quite literally - they were invented to
> make downloading massive patches faster for a large community of users.

It only took, like, a few minutes to actually /download/. What took me 
almost an hour was finding a download link that /works/.

All of them exhibit the same problem. I click the mirror I want. I see a 
30 second countdown, and then a message appears saying "Firefox blocked 
a popup window". So I manually click the redirect link, and end up on 
some file-sharing site. Then I get /another/ 30 second countdown, or 
maybe an advertisement video. And at the end of that, it won't let me 
actually download the file.

It took me an hour to sit through all this crap for each and every 
mirror until I got to one that lets me actually download the file.

> "Now... where did I put that emergency shut-down checklist?"

"I have /two/ PhDs. I cannot stand these menial tasks any longer. 'Stand 
here, push this button, go over there, pull that lever.' I tell you, I'm 
going to call the admin office, find out how many days holiday I've 
accrued in the last 25 years, and take some time off!"

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On 15/09/2012 09:57 PM, Warp wrote:
> Black Mesa is a Source mod that's basically a remake / total conversion
> of Half-Life (using the modern Source engine).

I love how all the TVs are made by "Fony". ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> On 9/15/2012 13:57, Warp wrote:
> > More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Mesa_%28video_game%29
>
> And BTW, it's released, and donation-ware.
>
> http://release.blackmesasource.com/
>
> Check out the "download now" torrent bit. I haven't installed it, but I'm
> told by those who do that you basically run the installer and you're good to
> go, without having to worry about whether you already have Steam or any
> other games with the same engine or anything like that.

That wasn't what I found. After (finally) finding a mirror that actually
provided it, I downloaded and installed (accepting the defaults) the Black Mesa
mod onto a brand-new Win7 notebook and afterward could not find anything
resembling an executable.

When I then attempted to install Steam, it would not, since its default
directory was not empty. The Black Mesa installation had already put a directory
with its stuff into it.

So, I think a proper installation procedure might be as follows.

1) Download and install Steam, and register with it during installation. (This
is free, and it does not seem to be necessary to validate the required email
address for this to work.)

2) Download and install the Black Mesa mod.

3) Run the Steam executable, let it install the Source SDK 2007, then run Black
Mesa.

Also, OP: thank you very much for posting this. I bought this notebook for my
SO, and wanted to verify that it can run modern games without difficulty (even
if it heats the house while doing so). Color me impressed, by both this game and
the new 'puter. I'd never even tried to play an FPS game until now.

Post a reply to this message

On 22/09/2012 03:47 AM, waggy wrote:
> When I then attempted to install Steam, it would not, since its default
> directory was not empty. The Black Mesa installation had already put a directory
> with its stuff into it.

Ah, see, I already play a large number of Steam-powered games. ;-)

> So, I think a proper installation procedure might be as follows.
>
> 1) Download and install Steam, and register with it during installation. (This
> is free, and it does not seem to be necessary to validate the required email
> address for this to work.)
>
> 2) Download and install the Black Mesa mod.
>
> 3) Run the Steam executable, let it install the Source SDK 2007, then run Black
> Mesa.

Yes.

(Although you might find the account stops working after a while if you 
don't validate the email, I'm not sure.)

> Also, OP: thank you very much for posting this. I bought this notebook for my
> SO, and wanted to verify that it can run modern games without difficulty (even
> if it heats the house while doing so). Color me impressed, by both this game and
> the new 'puter. I'd never even tried to play an FPS game until now.

The game is certainly good stuff...

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Am 19.09.2012 06:08, schrieb Darren New:
> On 9/18/2012 2:49, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> (I didn't like that it took me almost half an hour to find a mirror which
>> would actually let me download the game.)
>
> That's what torrents are for. Quite literally - they were invented to
> make downloading massive patches faster for a large community of users.

Well, it certainly is worthwhile it if all the other download sites 
throttle their bandwidth to a lousy 100 kB/s or even 50 kB/s.

So here I am, having overcome my resentment against the concept 
("Filesharing = Software/Media Piracy = Evil"), and downloading my first 
torrent ever...

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> On 22/09/2012 03:47 AM, waggy wrote:
> > So, I think a proper installation procedure might be as follows.
> > [...]
>
> Yes.
>
> (Although you might find the account stops working after a while if you
> don't validate the email, I'm not sure.)

Thank-you for the sanity check. I sent these instructions, with the necessary
links, to a younger colleague who hasn't been gaming for several years.

> > Also, OP: thank you very much for posting this. I bought this notebook for my
> > SO, and wanted to verify that it can run modern games without difficulty (even
> > if it heats the house while doing so). Color me impressed, by both this game and
> > the new 'puter. I'd never even tried to play an FPS game until now.
>
> The game is certainly good stuff...

I'm wondering if the interest I've noticed is indicative of a larger trend. My
SO and I are both mid-forties, female and male, respectively. She's been a
pretty heavy casual gamer, now showing some interest in AAA games. The
colleagues I've been talking with about videogames are males in their twenties
who used to game a lot when they were kids, but gave it up while slogging
through the grueling requirements for engineering degrees. It looks like, with
the right enticements, there are at least a few people willing to open new Steam
accounts.

It's reasonable to assume that Steam and other distributors will notice if this
is a significant trend, and do some market research to figure out both how to
bring in these new customers and what these folks are likely to buy once hooked.
My intuition is that there is a gap between casual games and AAA titles that may
see a bump in demand over the next few years.

My interest is primarily in videogame development, as this is currently my Plan
B in case the engineering research thing doesn't work out. It's looking like
there is a reasonable possibility I could put a small team together if, for
example, our research grant funding dries up. A small team with limited funding
obviously wouldn't be sufficient for AAA development, but I've been kicking
around some game ideas that might appeal to casual gamers who are considering
moving up to something a bit more intense than the typical hidden object and
match-three games.

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> So here I am, having overcome my resentment against the concept 
> ("Filesharing = Software/Media Piracy = Evil"), and downloading my first 
> torrent ever...

I think that resenting bittorrent because it's being used for piracy is
like reseting the internet itself for that same reason. Just because many
people use it for piracy doesn't mean you can't use it for completely
legal and legitimate goals.

With bittorrent, unlike many older sharing systems, you are sharing that
one game and *nothing else*. There's absolutely nothing to it.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 22/09/2012 03:29 PM, clipka wrote:
> So here I am, having overcome my resentment against the concept
> ("Filesharing = Software/Media Piracy = Evil"), and downloading my first
> torrent ever...

I've been using Bit Torrent for *years*, and I've never downloaded 
anything even remotely illegal with it. (Unless you believe that Linux 
violates software patents and is therefore illegal...)

In fact, it was only much later that I discovered that people use it for 
illegal stuff - or at least, that some people perceive it that way. I've 
never seen any illegal torrents - then again, I've never looked for them.

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On 22/09/2012 09:43 PM, waggy wrote:
> My interest is primarily in videogame development, as this is currently my Plan
> B in case the engineering research thing doesn't work out. It's looking like
> there is a reasonable possibility I could put a small team together if, for
> example, our research grant funding dries up. A small team with limited funding
> obviously wouldn't be sufficient for AAA development, but I've been kicking
> around some game ideas that might appeal to casual gamers who are considering
> moving up to something a bit more intense than the typical hidden object and
> match-three games.

What I find interesting is this:

The original HalfLife was a AAA game. Valve licensed the Quake 2 engine 
from id Software, for God knows how much money, and then spent [I would 
imagine] a considerable amount of time modifying it. They then built an 
entire game running on it. A whole heap of time, money and energy went 
into that game.

HalfLife 2 was based on the Source engine, an even more radically 
modified version of the old Quake engine. HL2:EP1 and HL2:EP2 saw even 
more features added to this engine. It represents a couple of 
man-centuries of work, I would imagine. All three of these games are 
definitely AAA titles.

Black Mesa is not a AAA title. As far as I can tell, nobody even got 
paid. But unlike when Valve paid id Software a crapload of money to 
license their game engine, the people behind Black Mesa were able to use 
the very latest version of the Source engine *for free*. They also used 
a whole bunch of game assets from HL2, CSS and similar. They can only do 
this because the game is free, of course; if you wanted to /sell/ this 
game, you'd have to license the technology.

Now, I don't imagine that one person could throw together a game like 
Black Mesa in a week or two. This has clearly taken a lot of people a 
very long time to develop. But it's impressive that all this could be 
done by free collaboration, using AAA assets for which free use is 
permitted.

An interesting time for game development indeed!

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Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Black Mesa is not a AAA title. As far as I can tell, nobody even got 
> paid. But unlike when Valve paid id Software a crapload of money to 
> license their game engine, the people behind Black Mesa were able to use 
> the very latest version of the Source engine *for free*. They also used 
> a whole bunch of game assets from HL2, CSS and similar. They can only do 
> this because the game is free, of course; if you wanted to /sell/ this 
> game, you'd have to license the technology.

Valve seems to be a really nice and non-evil game company. When someone
makes a mod, expansion or remake of their intellectual property, Valve's
lawyers are not getting lawgasms and sending cease&desist notifications
like mad. Instead, Valve encourages and embraces fan-made works based on
their IP.

This is quite unlike many other game companies (eg. Square-Enix is one
of the most infamous ones on this regard. They are real a-holes sometimes.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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On 23/09/2012 10:28 AM, Warp wrote:
> Valve seems to be a really nice and non-evil game company. When someone
> makes a mod, expansion or remake of their intellectual property, Valve's
> lawyers are not getting lawgasms and sending cease&desist notifications
> like mad. Instead, Valve encourages and embraces fan-made works based on
> their IP.

Hell, they just *made* the Source Film Maker, a tool who's only purpose 
for existing is to let fans make movies using Source-powered games. 
They're literally /encouraging/ people to use their IP.

If I wanted to be cynical, I might say "yeah, but you need to buy a 
Source-powered game in order to *use* SFM!" Except that, no, you don't. 
Check this out: TF2 is available *for free*! o_O

(Of course, TF2 also includes a trading system based on micropayments in 
real currency, but whatever...)

Valve's business model seems to be, loosely, "make people excited about 
your stuff, and they will be queuing up to buy more of it".

Post a reply to this message

On 23/09/2012 10:28 AM, Warp wrote:
> Valve seems to be a really nice and non-evil game company.

...and by total coincidence, I just read this:

http://tinyurl.com/ct7ok27

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On 21/09/2012 05:00 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 15/09/2012 09:57 PM, Warp wrote:
>> Black Mesa is a Source mod that's basically a remake / total conversion
>> of Half-Life (using the modern Source engine).
>
> I love how all the TVs are made by "Fony". ;-)

I found the gold gun. I'm loving how after it overcharges, you go in the 
room where it's kept, and there's just a pair of shoes in the middle of 
the room. Smoking. :-D

I'm not loving how the gold gun is now approximately as powerful as a 
water pistol. :-( That thing used to be the best gun in the game.

I also remember that in the original game, the SMG was a really powerful 
weapon - unlike in later games where they made it more "realistic" in 
that SMGs are really inaccurate. In Black Mesa, it seems they went with 
realism. If an enemy is more than about 20 yards away, you're wasting 
your time trying to use the SMG. You won't hit anything.

Which is a pity, because in HL1, when you picked up the SMG, suddenly 
you were like this unstoppable killing machine. The gun spits out 
bullets at an absurd rate, mowing down anything in your path. I suppose 
you could argue it made the game "too easy" - but generally you ran out 
of ammo so fast, it wasn't a big deal.

What I'm really liking is that a lot of the environments now look like 
real places that might actually exist, rather than a random collections 
of cubes with different texturing. The unethical labs actually have a 
different feel to the office complex, for example. Some really nice use 
of lighting. (Although it still bothers me how many corridors have 
random equipment with knobs and dials on it. Would you really put that 
in the middle of a corridor?)

The outdoor scenes feel more like somewhere out in the desert now. 
Storage areas /look like/ storage areas. Car parks have some cars in 
them. And so on. I'm really enjoying playing this game!

Post a reply to this message

On 9/19/2012 0:27, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> It only took, like, a few minutes to actually /download/. What took me
> almost an hour was finding a download link that /works/.

You didn't try the torrent download link on the home page of the project?

> "I have /two/ PhDs. I cannot stand these menial tasks any longer. 'Stand
> here, push this button, go over there, pull that lever.'

I cracked up from that too.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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On 23/09/2012 10:14 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/19/2012 0:27, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> It only took, like, a few minutes to actually /download/. What took me
>> almost an hour was finding a download link that /works/.
>
> You didn't try the torrent download link on the home page of the project?

I don't have a Bit Torrent client installed on this machine. And I 
didn't want to go to all the bother of doing that just for this one 
download. (Of course, if I'd have known how frigging long it was going 
to take...)

>> "I have /two/ PhDs. I cannot stand these menial tasks any longer. 'Stand
>> here, push this button, go over there, pull that lever.'
>
> I cracked up from that too.

Yeah, you can tell who this game is aimed at. ;-)

Post a reply to this message

On 9/23/2012 14:42, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> I don't have a Bit Torrent client installed on this machine.

Generally speaking, it's probably a good investment, given it's free.

Or, to phrase it differently, you would have spent less time getting your 
download than you spent looking where to get it without bittorrent. It's 
generally the fastest way to get anything, when it's available. (Partly due 
to piracy encouraging people to rent high-bandwidth servers for torrenting, 
amusingly enough.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

Post a reply to this message

On 23/09/2012 10:56 PM, Darren New wrote:
> On 9/23/2012 14:42, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> I don't have a Bit Torrent client installed on this machine.
>
> Generally speaking, it's probably a good investment, given it's free.

Oh sure, I know that. I mean I haven't set it up yet.

(Beyond merely installing it, I also need to reprogram our router to 
open the necessary incoming ports, so it's not like it just involves 
installing a program.)

Random fact: It amuses me how many bit torrent clients can be downloaded 
/using bit torrent/!

Post a reply to this message

Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> On 23/09/2012 10:14 PM, Darren New wrote:
> > On 9/19/2012 0:27, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> >> "I have /two/ PhDs. I cannot stand these menial tasks any longer. 'Stand
> >> here, push this button, go over there, pull that lever.'
> >
> > I cracked up from that too.
>
> Yeah, you can tell who this game is aimed at. ;-)

I thought this monologue was also poking a bit of fun at the player through the
fourth wall, since it describes the solution to many of the puzzles in the game.
:)

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On 9/23/2012 15:11, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> (Beyond merely installing it, I also need to reprogram our router to open
> the necessary incoming ports, so it's not like it just involves installing a
> program.)

Reprogramming your router should be trivial, even if you don't have UPnP 
turned on.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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On 9/23/2012 16:11, waggy wrote:
> Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>> On 23/09/2012 10:14 PM, Darren New wrote:
>>> On 9/19/2012 0:27, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
>>>> "I have /two/ PhDs. I cannot stand these menial tasks any longer. 'Stand
>>>> here, push this button, go over there, pull that lever.'
>>>
>>> I cracked up from that too.
>>
>> Yeah, you can tell who this game is aimed at. ;-)
>
> I thought this monologue was also poking a bit of fun at the player through the
> fourth wall, since it describes the solution to many of the puzzles in the game.
> :)

I figured it was breaking the fourth wall in that he doesn't realize he's an 
extra in a video game. I'm not sure if you're laughing at something different?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "They're the 1-800-#-GORILA of the telecom business."

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On 23/09/2012 12:06 PM, Orchid Win7 v1 wrote:
> I'm not loving how the gold gun is now approximately as powerful as a
> water pistol. :-( That thing used to be the best gun in the game.

Holy hell, they made the gluon gun *way* more powerful though... heh. 
It's actually worth a damn now.

Hey, and - woah! They haven't finished building Xen yet? Damnit! :-(

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