Posts by Thrik

  • In the futur we will have to pay to play multiplayer

    I think it depends on the service. If you also get a load of services and Microsoft host extremely fast game servers themselves then a small fee is understandable (especially with game servers becoming really expensive to run these days, meaning hosts have to pay like $100+ a month for them -- a fact many players happily ignore as it doesn't affect them), but if all you're paying for is a server browser then obviously it's not acceptable and they'll be boycotted. I heavily doubt that's the case though.

  • Running games well on behemoth resolutions (1920x1200+)

    Since I'm feeling like a real dick head and taking your comment about memory being good for higher resolutions into consideration, I think I might just go for the 8800 GTX seeing as I've barely upgraded this thing since 2004 and have had enough of it being shit as fuck.

    For a processor I was going towards the core 2 duo e6600 and then a pair of 1gb corsair XMS2-6400C4 TwinX whatsits for RAM.

    Then it can all be obsolete again in a year.

  • Running games well on behemoth resolutions (1920x1200+)

    Being completely out of touch with computers yet having a load of cash to burn on a new PC, I turn to you guys in search of advice.

    At the moment I have a 24 inch Dell monitor that has a native resolution of 1920x1200. I know at least a few others here have one, so you can probably empathise with me when I say that running games on older hardware is a nightmare due to the huge resolution -- and of course using a lower one isn't a good solution due to the nature of LCDs.

    What I'm basically asking is: what kind of hardware do I need to run recent games (eg: Company of Heroes and any FPS of your choosing) at full whack on this thing?

    I read something ages ago that indicated certain cards in the same range performed almost the same at lower resolutions, but once bumped up to something like 1920x1200 one would gain a massive lead in performance. Would I be better off shelling out the bank on a high end card, or would a couple of lesser ones (like, GeForce 7s) running in dual give better performance when it comes to pumping out high resolutions? Or do pretty much all cards of the latest series cope with the higher resolutions well?

    If anyone has any other tips to give on buying a new computer right now (eg: what technologies to avoid/get) then go for it.

    I was basically thinking of something with 2gb of RAM, and one of the better core 2 duo arse bandits. The graphics card is the main thing I'm not sure how to approach.

  • Power Supplies, and video cards

    As far as I'm aware you're more liable to just hit a blue screen or something should your power supply be insufficient, due to the inevitable processing errors that'll occur. I haven't experienced it personally, but back when my graphics card turned out to be incompatible with my motherboard I observed that a lot of people were getting similar crashes due to the card requiring a higher voltage than most before it (it only needed 300W back then though).

    I wouldn't expect you'd get FPS issues as the calculations would just fail if it's not getting enough juice, or other components in your machine would suffer/crash due to the graphics card monopolising the power.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    There are of course classics that dodge classification, just like people can still play something like Monkey Island and enjoy it. What I meant was that while a lot of people today would be willing to go to the cinema or something and just take a risk on a modern movie, chances are they wouldn't if it were made using old technology and looked like something from a decade or more ago. When people get new stuff they expect it to look like it came from the era it was released.

    Just seems mental to me to invest the time in a much smaller audience and a much older engine when newer alternatives exist and masses desperate for high quality mods to hit newer engines like Source. People complain about the lack of a good mod scene in newer games, but why is that? Because people won't make the jump and get things started, that's why. The HL1 mod scene didn't happen overnight -- it took some dedicated individuals to make stuff like CS to inspire people.

    Hopefully Insurgency or something will serve that purpose with Source.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    I'd actually say you're narrow minded by essentially saying graphic quality is irrelevant.

    For a good analogy, why not routinely make films with 1950s technology instead of 2000s technology if the scripts are just as good?

    The answer is that the audience has gotten used to the modern standards of quality, and with the exception of older generations who grew up with the 1950s films, nobody is likely to enjoy it that much as it looks so disproportinately worse than everything else they're used to of the current day.

    Don't you guys even find that a lot of 80s and 90s movies look very outdated visually? Can you honestly say it doesn't lessen your immersion when the dinosaurs or whatever look a lot worse than they would today? Honestly?

    I appreciate the value of gameplay and atmosphere, but why can't they be developed with more recent technology? What I'm doing here is attacking the argument that there's still a very big HL1 player base for new/updated mods, not that it's impossible to make fun gameplay for an older engine.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    Yeah, Nih is right. Replying to a thread without reading the opinions and thoughts posted before is something that just rubs me the wrong way -- especially when you basically parrot things said towards the beginning that were debated later on. I wasn't trying to attack you.

    D3, I don't think it's silly. Didn't you used to want to work in the games industry as a mapper? How exactly are you ever going to achieve that if you're not willing to put in the "three times as much work" to keep up with the standards? As I said earlier, a lot of this unwilling to move on seems to stem from being unable to handle the extra detail requirements. A bunch of good looking maps on a nine-year-old engine might have impressed developers in 2003 (although still pushing it), but I seriously doubt they'll get you anywhere nowadays as the engine is simply incapable of looking as good as modern games, no matter how much those still working on it might want to believe otherwise.

    Sure, HL may still have some juice in it as far as squeezing visual quality goes, for Source has an immeasurably greater amount of potential. Why not put those hours into making a truly stunning Source map with superb optimisation rather than trying to make an outdated, obsolete engine look anywhere near as good as its modern counterparts?

    I know it's very tempting to say "Loads of people still play HL1 mods!", but the reality is that 98% of those exclusively play CS or DOD (addicted to the gameplay) and are incredibly unlikely to even check for let alone try new or other HL1 mods. I truly believe HL1's time has come, and if it weren't for CS and DOD still keeping a bunch of people around I believe nobody would argue with me.

  • Sales Breakdown for '06

    I'm thinking these figures are just as inaccurate as usual sales reports, which are largely pretty inaccurate as they only factor in sales during a certain (launch) period, ignore certain distribution methods, regions, or completely discount certain publishers as they don't release their sales data (I believe at least Valve falls into this category).

    Still, they give a good general idea of how well a game is doing in the general sense. Just don't rely on these numbers for any kind of solid evidence of a game selling better than another.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    Being honest though, I can't look at a HL1 map and take it seriously. I tried playing HL1 recently, and the graphics were so god awful I just couldn't carry on; all the atmosphere they held for me back in 1998 was just gone. Source maps on the other hand have much more available to them for creating an awesome atmosphere.

    I can't be the only person like this. I know that thousands of people still play HL1 engine games, but the vast majority (to the point where we're only talking 50-150 people per other mod) only play Counter-Strike or Day of Defeat, simply because it's something they've habitually done for years. There really isn't that much of a market outside those big hit mods.

    Source, on the other hand, has very few high-quality mods, and as a result there's a far bigger audience that's receptive to new mods. Again, feel free to prove me wrong, but I heavily doubt a new mod released for HL1 would make much of an impact at all. I simply don't think there's the audience there looking for new mods to play -- they just want to play CS.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    Don't get me wrong, I was dissing you or anyone else who maps for HL1. I just think it's a waste of talent to invest hours upon hours into an outdated engine which, whether anybody likes it or not, is very old and is considered extremely ugly by the vast majority of modern gamers. To put this into context, a lot of those who play modern action games like on Xbox Live and also CS:S and whenever were roughly six years old when HL1 came out -- to them it looks absolutely ancient.

    I also suspect that HL1 evidence has little industry relevance these days, and you'd be much better off with modern engine work; otherwise you're liable to end up coming across as a relic. I may be totally wrong on this, though.

    I think a lot of people just need nudging to new engines, since there's so much more potential to unleash creativity. I mean, remember 3D_Mike's HL2DM map, Avalon? That looked great and was very creative, yet would have been pretty much impossible on HL1. That's the type of thing I really want to see more of on HL2, yet it doesn't seem to happen.

    But as I said, I've been looking at HL1 content for over seven years now. No matter what I look at it, it looks like something I've seen before.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    Can you honestly not run Half-Life 2 at all? I mean, even Source has crossed over its second birthday and if my shit computer in 2004 could run it, bearing in mind you could get hardware of that calibre for peanuts these days, I don't see how it's impossible to create for a newer game.

    If it's truly the creativity that drives you, why not just produce your maps with a level of detail more akin to HL1 maps and run HL2 on lower settings? You should still end up with something meeting or outdoing HL1 standard visuals without becoming too laggy, and yet expose your work to a broader audience.

    Maybe I'm just jaded after looking at HL1 maps in Mapcore and other communities for the past seven years, though. It feels like a past era to me and yet they keep popping up.

  • Whats up with Sven-Co Op?

    It always sad when people can't move on. Lots of great talent wasted for a market that is destined to die before long. It's like the HL1 mappers that continue mapping for HL1 which is a hair away from being a decade old. Why not move on? Is it because they can't cope with learning new tools and development routines, or the more intensive requirement for detail, or what?

  • Splinter Cell: Double Agent

    It was on the Xbox first, but they seemed to take the PC market a lot more seriously back with the original and it felt like it was at home on the system. Sounds like they've slowly realised that the console audience is more worthy of their efforts, which is sadly true.

  • Get a degree or not ?

    I'd say education after school is good, though I haven't been to Uni. I just went to college, which in the UK is more like a school format (ie: live at home, go there) rather than somewhere where you actually live and breathe education for a few years. Those three years I spent at college were worthwhile though as it gave me lots of time to work on hobby websites as well as explore a different type of social life such as parties and just different people, etc.

    As far as actually impacting your career itself though I'm not sure. Certainly it'll help, but when it comes to art and design mediums I think work/portfolio speaks louder than paper. At best, a qualification is potentially a tiebreaker between two candidates with superb portfolios.