Posts by Thrik

  • Xbox One

    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).

  • Xbox One

    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.

  • E3 2013 - The Division | Ubisoft

    Different engine according to Wikipedia. The two don't actually look that similar IMO, the newer footage of Watch Dogs doesn't look as impressive to me as the earlier footage did. Maybe some things are being held back because of its current-gen release. This still looks awesome.

  • E3 2013 - The Division | Ubisoft

    Quote from paranoidMonkey

    The event behind the game explained.

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    ok gonna go kill myself now

  • Xbox One

    Quote

    ' timestamp='1371244187' post='335492']It really made me hold my horses on the Xbone hate and think twice about this whole thing. Xbone is getting a lot of shit because of their DRM, but I gotta say at least they're trying to fight this flawed system. (gamestop getting 95% profit out of used games)

    The GameStop point is really interesting. I don't know about anyone else, but I actually like going into a proper game shop, it's nice to see the hobby represented on the high street too.

    But in the UK the game store chains are FUCKED, literally all going bankrupt. And that's with these profits from used games — without them they're almost guaranteed to finally bite the dust. That's going to be sad because independent game stores can't replace them, MS is making that impossible with their system lol (they also need used games sales to survive).

    It sounds like things are much different in the US, I guess GameStop is successful and doing great over there? Are there any other chains? What about in other countries?

    Has it not occurred to those who say 'death to GameStop for making profit' that it's not necessarily a good thing for gaming as a whole to have no prominent store like that? I don't think I want everything to be online, I value the physical shopping experience and it's a good place to go with my gf for her to discover games, etc. And before I got my new internet connection, downloading full games was practically impossible so I needed the shops.

  • Mapcore swag

    Haha I agree with these sentiments and am glad to see there's demand!

    It so happens that after just moving I'm now catching up on a bunch of core-related tasks, one of which was sorting those fuckin' bots out (hope everyone's enjoying less spam) and now implementing an updated logo which will also be suitable for use as merch. We discussed Hurg and unfortunately can't really sell his face in case he tracks us down and murders us all, but any other ideas are welcome. Obviously there will be the logo on the typical merch (mugs, mouse pads, t-shirts, etc).

    Does anyone have thoughts on good sites for selling this stuff that we can use as an official 'shop'? You're right it'd be great if merch could help with the hosting costs and future updates, but I don't know much about which sites have good quality, don't rip you off, etc.

  • Battlefield 4

    Oh I thought you said PS4. Yeah those will probably be much lower.

    I think the PS4 might be the first console I can play Battlefield on. If they use the touch pad and/or the Move pointer well it could be accurate enough for me.

  • Xbox One

    Quote from FrieChamp

    Some interesting takes from one of the Microsoft engineers (allegedly):

    http://pastebin.com/uCmdh9jB

    Quote

    Honestly, if you care about anything other then pure games AT ALL. Xbox 1 > PS4. If all you do is play games, and nothing else, PS4.

    It's charming to see how much he believes in the technology, but seeing as he's completely biased and doesn't really know what Sony is doing in terms of its non-gaming stuff because they're yet to really say much about it makes it hard to take seriously.

    It's kind of fascinating to see how the Microsoft dudes are thinking, though. He's listing TV, SmartGlass, and the cloud computing like they're killer features. But he seems to be forgetting:

    • The PS3 could be a TVR for live TV using the PlayTV app years ago, the PS4 will probably do better
    • SmartGlass is only really useful IMO for using as a trackpad, the same thing the touch pad on the PS4 pad can do
    • The PS4 has cloud computing too

    The PS3 generally had great multimedia capabilities from launch, complete with a web browser and to this day the best photo/music/video players; iPlayer, Hulu, Netflix, etc soon followed. Despite Sony's game-focused marketing, I think Microsoft is going to be surprised by what they pull out of the bag in the end. They seem to be so obsessed with their own efforts that they've completely taken their eye off what their competitors are doing.

    It's interesting how much Microsoft believes in its DRM too, despite the overwhelming negative reactions from literally everyone. It's like they think they're saving us poor gamers from the horror of using discs(???).