Posts by Thrik

This is a side-point but IMO if a game is genuinely great it should last someone 12–25 hours and remain exciting and awesome throughout. Ones that last less then that aren't a bad thing as clearly there's a demand for that short but sweet experience, but I don't like the fact that games lasting 5–8 hours are out there costing as much as the ones that last literally twice as long.

Nowadays I have to go looking up forum posts and shit to get an idea of how long a game actually is because it's not like they actually print 'oh yeah this lasts a few hours LOL' on the box.

lmao so much stupid in that pic.

I think most people who own both 360 and PS3 would lean towards saying you should give them a chance, they really do put together great stuff. With consoles getting so cheap and us getting so old it's pretty feasible to get both, but I'd definitely go with PS4 first just for the experience.

PS3 was way ahead of the 360 in terms of OS and software when it launched, even now the 360 has only just really caught up. It's going to be interesting to see if Sony repeats that.

Yep, it's a great reminder that if you're not happy with the way corporate assholes try to treat you, make a shitstorm about it. This and the SimCity backlash have made the kings in gaming realise the danger of getting too ballsy I think. Two epic disasters, and not by coincidence both involved infringing on gamers' enjoyment due to DRM.

No, all previously announced features are off. It's going to work just like the 360's discs and Xbox LIVE.

Yeah I'm still on team PS4 because I think it has the best overall control system. Despite the Kinect's advanced nature I still think the control options with the PS4 will lead to more interesting interaction in non-party games.

Who am I kidding though, I'm going to end up with both like a big bitch.

Microsoft have now got a good chance of competing because this will likely have earned them a lot of goodwill with those they pissed off. Could be one of the most incredible turnarounds in PR history.

Pretty retarded thing to do.

Worth remembering that Valve's system has been going for years so some people attached to projects will be for archival purposes. That said, it's entirely possible (if not likely) that Bailey will be contracted or re-hired to work on the HL3 audio.

Lol, anyone seen this? https://twitter.com/BreenGrub

It's by the HL1/HL2 writer. I don't think it's officially sanctioned/canon but it's basically meant to be Breen after the events of HL2 after having been turned into an advisor grub.

Another thing the Thief dudes could take a tip from Dishonored about is giving the player loads of HUD options even on consoles.

Sounds like Sony is actually pretty serious about this whole 'download part of a game and start playing before the rest downloads' thing:

http://kotaku.com/so...for-p-514144920

In principle I love the idea, but as some of you explained earlier it's far from trivial to implement in a game and it certainly isn't going to work for games that haven't been specifically engineered to take advantage of it. But, if programmers to start seriously getting on board with this at Sony's behest, could it work well? As someone who deals with preloading techniques a bit I can definitely speculate about ways they could manage it, but it'd require a fairly careful strategy for each game.

I guess the question is whether or not developers want to do it. But programmers are often known for wanting to be innovative rather than just sticking to the status quo, some might want to integrate this just for the sheer challenge of it. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out because I personally have experienced the pain of downloading increasingly big games on a slow internet connection and it is truly the worst.

Oh god.

http://www.valvetime.net/threads/update…tracker.243580/

Valve's project tracker leaked, includes L4D3, HL3, Source 2, and much more. Sounds like the HL3 group is small compared to the others, suggesting development is early stages. Maybe waiting for Source 2 to be fully ready?

lmao

[Blocked Image: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37346336/xbone-quiz-show.png]

Yeah, my point wasn't very well communicated. I think what I really meant was that I like to have something I like about a character. Hopefully there'll be plenty more to the Thief guy than the trailer made out, but it didn't do a very good job of making me want to play as him. I guess I'm a sucker for the fantasy of being a hero.

Haha, to be fair Grand Theft Auto tries (very weakly) to paint your character as a guy doing bad things because he has no choice. If I decide to go on some murderous fuck killing rampage that's more my own fault.

OK I think we're having these hurg designs if the authors can give permission?

Quote from Vilham

You can't shift AI calculations etc to "the cloud" without severe lag, On my uber german internet I have a ping of around 30ms to speedtest, to any game server that is probably about the same. That is an entire frame in a 30fps game. So I send the message to "the cloud" then the cloud has to process my AI, then I have to receive the message back. That is probably 45+ms for this calculation. It simply doesn't work with current internet infrastructure and it doesn't matter how "fast" your internet is, all that is is bandwidth, something that isn't an issue, the issue is entirely the ping.

It depends on how the game is put together though, surely? Many multiplayer games today have server-based bots, which are almost exactly the same concept: the assets for the NPC are on the gamer's machine, the logic and placement is handled by the server. I don't see how this same concept couldn't be applied to single-player games.

The latency is a definite issue, which is why this kind of thing is best suited to inherently multiplayer and co-op games more than single-player. Even then, it's best off being used for secondary stuff when possible (eg: animals in the game world).

Is there going to be any film left to watch if I view this trailer too?

Indeed... I'm of the opinion that trying to use servers too much in single-player games is a very bad thing. Even last night my internet connection went down for 15 minutes or so, what am I meant to do when that happens? Play with no physics/AI? Well the game would presumably just stop working completely.

I'd personally prefer to see the cloud largely only used for multiplayer/co-op, because then it can integrate seamlessly. And developers definitely need to be smart and not try and use it for time-sensitive things, because it's guaranteed that there'll be moments where things lag even if it's just for five seconds. Imagine how immersion-breaking it'd be if everything in the game world started warping in The Last of Us, lol.

Something I briefly touched on in my post was the DRM aspect, though. The more you talk to regular dudes the more you realise they have no idea WTF the cloud really is, and Microsoft's marketing makes it worse. I can easily see most next-gen games saying that they use the cloud even though they really don't, the same way SimCity claimed it did yet worked totally fine with no internet connection and a hacked config file. It's a potential always-online DRM trojan horse.