Posts by Thrik

  • "Modern Warfare 3" ??

    I don't typically buy full games via Steam or any of its counterparts, so hopefully they'll be sensible enough to not make people dick around with Origin just to install and activate their games — they didn't with EA Downloader, which from what I can tell is exceedingly similar.

  • CANVAS: Site launch of an upcoming Source Engine game

    What, so your expectations are that this mod will die?

    No just kidding, this mod looks great. Very impressive use of the ageing Source technology, especially considering it's not even the Portal 2 version. Concept is very appealing too, although I really need to know more about what's actually gonna be going on in the game before I can say whether or not it truly appeals.

  • "Modern Warfare 3" ??

    Yeah, totally. For me Battlefield has always been the definitive multiplayer shooter experience. There's absolutely no comparison to the epic scale of the maps, the huge numbers of players, the excellent vehicles (makes CoD's vehicles feel like matchbox cars), emphasis on teamplay and classes, realism, etc. Some of my best gaming memories were crafted in Battlefield games, and I think the same goes for many others — hence the widespread love for Battlefield. I appreciate some have been indoctrinated a bit later and appreciate the single-player side of things, but I think it's fair to say the vast majority of people you see showing love for Battlefield are coming from the same history as me.

    For me a single Battlefield experience online is more exciting than all the scripted shit you get in any single-player war shooter, because you get the same kind of epic stuff happening — except it's totally unscripted and unpredictable, and you're dealing with the best 'AI' there is. This is why most BF fans aren't remotely interested in the single-player, because you get to enjoy all that crazy action online anyway in gigantic maps that're often literally 20+ times bigger than CoD's maps.

    Can't bloody wait for the first proper PC sequel since Battlefield 2142 (and even that was only a refresh of 2005's BF2).

  • Duke Nukem Forever

    Being all too familiar with the kind of negative reactions you always get after a game's been hyped up the arse I'm not getting too into the quality of the game as I want to try it before doing so, but this just isn't cool:

    Quote

    One level in particular takes place in an alien nest where Earth's women are being inseminated by giant penises. The women writhe and moan in a fairly humiliating fashion, and they regularly sob with no small amount of implied misery. In essence, the women look like they're getting raped. In fact, they are. That's the big joke of the level. The aliens are raping the women to create babies. Now, I'm a fan of offensive humor, but the "joke" in this level is so morbidly presented, so dark and downright unsettling, that I simply do not know if Gearbox intends for us to laugh or to throw up. I certainly found I was in danger of doing the latter over the former.By the time Duke Nukem finally makes a "You're fucked," joke, which he makes in front of two girls who are about to die in the process of getting sexually assaulted, Duke does not come across as cool, witty or likable in the least. He comes across as a vile, callous, thoroughly detestable psychopath.

    It's not impossible to make an alien rape joke amusing if you're clever enough, but the fact that nobody making this game actually bothered to try is what really concerns me. According to Gearbox, seeing women tortured was funny enough. According to common sense, it really, really wasn't.

    The fuck were they on while making this game? Hopefully this was 3D Realms' idea of humour and not Gearbox's.

  • "Modern Warfare 3" ??

    Quote from Serenius

    Can someone shed some light on what makes the SP campaign of CoD games any different than Battlefield games? Other than walls exploding and dust galore? Just trying to figure out how BF is almost the exact same game, but gets way more love than CoD.

    Nobody plays Battlefield games for the SP. In fact, until Bad Company there hadn't even been a Battlefield with a SP.

    When it comes down to pure multiplayer gameplay and fun — which is what most people are talking about when they compare the two — Battlefield wins hands-down. Much more variety with regards to what you can do, more depth to the gameplay, more emphasis on skill and teamwork (as opposed to just twitch reactions), and of course the best implementations of pretty much all wartime vehicles that any game's ever had.

  • Battlefield 3

    I actually really like the sound of this suppression fire feature as described in the official quote above, especially as it's not just limited to the 'Support' class. I doubt the effect will be too debilitating as it'd get abused too much, but it will provide an incentive for people to not jump into a hailstorm of bullets because not only will they die fast but they'll find it hard to think straight and aim correctly should they be stupid enough to try it (just like you would IRL).

  • Uncharted 3

    Quote

    ":3fak3las]mmm, maybe it's the the video compression but some things look pretty bland on there, I hope it's just me.Still, some of the action scenes and the themes they glimpsed at in the trailer points to an extraordinary game! So looking forward!

    I don't know why but a lot of videos from UC2 looked kind of gash, whereas in-game it just looked amazing. Maybe it's the video compression, maybe it's weird display settings they use, I dunno. I can't imagine this game not looking at least as good as UC2 though, considering how anal about visuals Naughty Dog are.

    And agreed, it's good they've not felt compelled out 'out-do' UC2 with OTT action, and instead are keeping to the series' central themes of strong storytelling, character development, etc. Kind of like how everyone expected Indiana Jones 2 to be fuckin' mental after the first, only for it to actually be quite a muted affair.

  • "Modern Warfare 3" ??

    Quote from insta

    Actually he had a lot of magazines. Maybe that doesn't matter to a civilian as yourself, but I've clocked alot of hours in counterstrike so with the increased use of semi-automatic and automatic firearms, the detachable box magazine became increasingly common. Soon after the adoption of the M1911 pistol, the term "magazine" was settled on by the military and firearms experts, though the term "clip" is often used in its place (though only for detachable magazines, never fixed). The defining difference between clips and magazines is the presence of a feed mechanism in a magazine, typically a spring loaded follower, which a clip lacks. Use of the term "clip" to refer to detachable magazines is a point of strong disagreement....

    lol wtf

  • Uncharted 3

    The trailer doesn't actually give much away, but I agree UC2 was a bit trailer-heavy and I'd rather have experienced a fair bit of it for the first time in-game. I am now officially on media blackout for UC3.

    With that said UC3 looks superb.

  • Uncharted 3

    Working mirror of trailer (from IGN so should stay up):

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  • The problem of crunch time in game development

    Quote from Skjalg

    bla bla bla

    bipedi bla bla

    We're driving into maybe land here, but maybe the features you are waiting for to be fixed would be fixed if you had no-talk thursdays?

    I spend almost 30 minutes before I delve into the groove where I can code really effectively. And if I am alloved to code straight for even 3 hours without any interruptions like IM/mail/people knocking at my office door then I can produce so much more than a whole week filled with interruptions.

    The whole point im trying to get across here is that pestering people with "hey have you fixed problem/feature/tool x so that i can work on task y" will not make things go faster, it will have the opposite effect. Which is why a no-talk thursday is a good idea. Pester your coders on thursday mornings and let them work thursday aftersnoons. Its not that bad to leave someone alone for 3~4 hours one day per week. Remember that when a coder have to reply to 12938429083742934 of these pesterings every day he gets no work done.

    or maybe what you're really saying is that you got hired to pester the coders so that no work gets done and you really dont want to lose your job hahahaha ;D

    Your pretty much agreeing with me there, I said earlier that if its not important you shouldn't be there, reminding someone isn't important as it is their responsibility to remember and get it done. Telling them of a new bug that stops your work dead is a good reason to interupt someone.

    No, because this is where I dont agree with you. You dont go and tell your programmer about a new bug when you find it, you file it in the bug tracking system so that the programmer can look at it when he has the time. If people ran to me every time they found a bug I'd delete the bug tracking system and rename my position from programmer to bug tracker.

    Also, even if you dont have a bug tracker, and you live in a world where programmers are supposed to remember every bug, but they dont, so you need to remind them. it probably wouldnt hurt to not bother them half a day per week. on a company-wide basis

    This does touch on an issue that I think is often at the root of why crunch is so often resorted to: incredibly bad management of resources, time, and people.

    It seems that a lot of people in the games industry — including those doing the managing — have absolutely no idea how to manage time efficiently. We face very similar issues in the web industry (where fortunately production times are smaller), and the thing that pushes projects beyond deadlines time after time is people being distracted from what they need to do and everyone's time not being managed well.

    For example one person might have a show-stopping problem and will go bother other people to sort it out so they can continue with their work, but the person they bother might have other people waiting on them too, and they might be engrossed in something which needs serious concentration, and they might have milestones hinging on them completing what they're doing. So while it might make sense to fix that oh-so important issue right then (and often when another staff member is pressuring them they'll oblige), this causes all sorts of issues. When this is happening every day of every week it mounts up to a serious loss of time. Small interruptions might seem minor but they kill productivity like mofos. I personally really lose my flow when I'm bothered about little issues.

    Where I work the solution was to bring in new directors and managers who are intimately experienced with running efficient companies, and while their strategies initially clashed with the easy-going nature of designers and programmers it's meant that deadlines are missed much less often. For example, programmers are no longer allowed to harass designers because they need something doing — they have to go through project managers, who schedule it in a way that's going to be best for the overall project. If it has to be fixed right then so the programmer can continue, fine. If it's going to be less damaging for the programmer to wait and maybe do something else if possible, that's the way it goes. Not an easy job but it saves bucketloads of time.

    Of course I don't work in all these crunching game studios so I can't say what exactly leads to the problems, but I know the above has always been the biggest factor (of several) where I've worked. I don't think it's a coincidence that a lack of management/leadership aptitude and a company full of computer geeks who worked their way into their various management positions through longevity go hand-in-hand.