Posts by Thrik

It might be worth pointing out that if you use Photoshop, make sure you use Save for Web instead of Save As when saving JPEGs. Not only do you get more specific compression options down to the percentage and all the comparison stuff, but it also chops out 10-100kb from the file size that's normally filled with superfluous meta data. Try getting a 800x600 jpeg and saving it twice as full quality with the same options under the two save modes and you'll see a difference of around 80kb.

A lot of people don't realise this, so don't feel patronised those who don't. D;

Easily OpFor.

Quote from Taylor

... even though five seconds into the game you're rather pally with the scientists.

You might have been! I stayed in character — Walter didn't even see it coming.

It's not a problem if you get your money's worth. I've thought so with every Valve purchase I've made thus far, and I know that many others share that opinion.

Not everyone can be pleased, of course.

-500fps on my machine.

You might be taking it a bit too literally, mabufo. As we've both agreed upon, Valve are currently counting the episodes as a collective game in their own right, but that's not to say there won't be a full length Half-Life game in the future. Would you call that Half-Life 3 if it came to be? I'd be inclined to, and so would Valve I'd imagine, regardless of what they say now!

Of course, the episodes could be a flying success (can't judge off of just one) and become Valve's future standard, assuming the players like it just as much as the developers. Who knows. No need to chastise them for it, though — they're just experimenting with game formatting.

Quote from D3ads

Those are real?!! They look fake to me as if they're too realistic to be in-game.. I suppose Frie would know though...

Considering you still mod for HL1, I'm not surprised you find this particularly amazing. It is real, though — I saw a few shakycam videos from E3 where the person in front of the machine was clearly actually playing it in real time.

Not surprising that it looks so good though when you think back to how stunning Far Cry looked when it came out. Crytek sure know how to make some dazzling engine.

Huh? What two classes are missing in DOD:S? I seriously can't remember. It's a good mod, though.

As for no HL3, what are you basing that on? Gabe said to 1up a few days ago that Valve will almost certainly return to a full length game at some point in the future, but for the moment their team is treating the episodic stuff with all the seriousness/focus that they'd ordinarily devote to a full title.

Funny feelings are all well and good, but Valve have consistently proven themselves over and over again, with Episode One being no apparent exception. I'm not sure where people are finding stuff to dig at Valve with, but they're sure reaching hard. As far as developer quality goes, Valve is right up there.

What Phatsniper said. We've had this discussion plenty of times before and almost everyone agrees.

Sorry D3.

Clearly phenomenal.

Wow, Polaris. That one statement has motivated me to dig out Twin snakes for this upcoming weekend.

Might be a bit too vague, but one of the first missions in the original Hitman was to climb on top of a certain building and snipe some guy once he appeared in the area with your sniper rifle.

If he's religious enough he'll count 'dying and going into heaven' as being saved. Crazy religios.

You could create waypoints for your team that appear in their first-person view, put markers such as 'attack here', 'defend here' and 'repair here' down, and even bring up a view of where all the deployables and such on the map were . Heck, you could even make a little window appear in the corner showing you a 3D view of a player if you click on them, and then give them direct orders.

It was a pretty thorough but underused part of the game, and it certainly had an RTS feel to it — if used with an attentive team, anyway. I'm not saying it was a full blown RTS, but certainly a milestone in a merger that's basically inevitable.

Tribes 2 had a command view too, with a detailed map of the level where you could plant beacons and such for the rest of your team. Pretty sure NS came out after 2001?

Really though, it's such an obvious evolution that any talk of ripping off is ludicrous.

Yeah, looks good, and I've heard positive things on the grapevine.

It'll never be as powerful as a fully fledged environment creation tool, which is exactly what a game level editor happens to be, but I guess a compromise has to be made when it comes to efficiency, scalability and compatibility. And let's face it, Worldcraft/Hammer can be serious pains in the arses at the best of times, and it's time consuming stuff.

A game level editor might just be overkill for the task at hand, even if it is a novel approach. Never play an ace if a two will do, as a wise dragon once said.

Nice guy or sneaky sod? It's a distinction that's sometimes very difficult to make.

DaveL is a shady bastard who's got a brilliant career ahead of him in PR because of his underhand nature. Those who don't think he's a cock haven't either spoken to or witnessed him in action on IRC/blogs/forums.

For example, phoning people up and having half-hour conversations with them because they said something bad about his mod in public. Or perhaps demanding that negative comments about his mod be taken down from a blog. And let's not forget his excellent ability to hype people up over absolutely nothing, which I always suspected but only now realise to be true having read this thread.

In fact, just look through the comments of the blog this thread began with and I'm sure you'll find plenty of examples.

The mod may have promise, but with a leader who's too obsessed with looking good and hyping everybody up for his own fame and fortune, it's going nowhere. If I can be proved wrong and a quality mod actually released then all the better, but I can't forsee it.

According to Iwata they're going to try and make sure there's something new to download each and every day, and will have people dedicated to this. I presume it'll only affect first-party titles and won't be anything massive each time, but still, it's a nice sentiment.

Nintendo's console having online capabilities period really excites me to be honest, though — nevermind all the extras. I mean, Mario Kart online? Yes fucking please.

All this stuff is really exciting considering the estimated launch price, which is incredibly affordable. If it were like the same price as the other consoles (lol PS3) I probably wouldn't be so excited, but the whole package of the Wii in general is really enticing. A lot of bang for your buck, as they say in a country that isn't mine.

The deciding factor will be whether or not they can get the third-party support en masse that they're going for to take advantage of all this stuff. Nintendo has said over and over again that they've learnt their lessons from the GameCube and that the new leadership will change things, but only time will tell in seeing if they can reverse the reputation damage that the aforementioned console did with the mainstream SonyBoys.

'Course.