Posts by Izuno

um....

Overall: a lot of interesting ideas in different areas of film thrown together in a giant clusterfuck of a movie that i'll never want to see again, despite enjoying some parts of it greatly. (by contrast, i own all 3 SE's of LotR). Anyway...basically what Fletch said.

My Analysis:

- Shitty writing. All around. I guess they were going for more of a *nod* or *wink* to the original Kong but I only saw that once like 8 years ago and I think a lot of the nods/winks didn't really work. Sure, the nod to Fay Rae (original female lead in 1933 Kong) was cute...but whatever. So many story threads left unclosed you end up not caring about the whole of it. (ok...not really different from Fletch's points...)

- Worst character development evarrr At least in LotR the characters develop and have some complexity about them.

- To many bugs I didn't think all the bugs and the Penis Monsters were really that needed. Cool in concept, but I just looked away cause I just had a Macho Combo platter at El Torito before the movie. But the excessive nastiness was not needed for a mass mainstream LotR-esque audience. It's okay to do some grossout-ness but they went over the top and too far to keep many people's eyes on the screen. At one point i looked back during the festival of bugs and most people were holding their hands over their eyes. Nice job, Peter. And this links too...

- WTF? Jello dinosaurs? Yeah those tumbling brontosaurusususususes must have been a cool concept on paper but on film, that whole scene annoyed the shit out of me. Those tiny humans would all have been squashed. (And the dinosaurs looked shitty.) The scene went on and on and on, i just couldn't take it. Remember that Godzilla movie that came out in the late 90's? There was this 20 minute chase scene that made a shitty movie even shittier. This tumbling jello-dinosaur scene had the same effect. Oh yeah, so did the bug scene.

I did like the stuff in NY (the scene in the park on the ice wasn't too bad.)

I thought Kong itself looked good and the fight with the T-rex(es) was crazy and bullshit, but actually entertaining and probably my favorite action part.

Bah...movie did about $66million or so in the US in first 5 days? I heard industry analysts were expecting about $100 million. Put it in perspective, would rather see LotR (any of the 3) in theatre again than Kong.

I think the biggest tragedy about the movie is that Kong is really the most interesting character and he has no dialogue and at the end, is just a big ape.

Congrats!

glad to see you are starting him off right with a game controller in hand!

ah...just finally got CT for my xbox this weekend. Once i finish God of War it's my next game. (yeah...behind)

Klein you doing any texture or shader work or anything for SC:DA? You did a little for CT, right?

Hahaha!!! Irritating? yes...but they sorta go away after a page on long enough!

Can you get them to flash neon colors and spin and vibrate and make noise....

er....just leave em they way they are.

Awesome! I love Wikis! Over the summer my main project had a wiki at the developer and man I loved using it.

Now we just need to know what we'll use it for...maybe more good devs from the industry will stumble onto our little site.

Oh I did a little more editing, Tom...just grammar. But i guess with a WIki we don't need to post of every little change.

glad things are hopefully working out for you. there is gaming stuff down in the SD area...Sony, Rockstar, even a THQ studio. I know there is more. Best-o-luck. We need more Zaph content in published games!

lol....we've got HDTV, a 42" Panasonic plasma model (forget the model number and exact specs) but it runs HD compatible games on PS2 and Xbox really well. So much nicer than on my standard 27" tube. Sad thing is I have no X360 at home yet. Bah!!! (how many of us actually have a 360 at home besides the Mazzlenator?)

But I gotta check through the settings and specs, see if it can do 720p and at least 1080i....all X360 games are required to do 720p at minimum so if ur gonna buy a new HDTV, definitely make sure it can do 720p and not just 480p like some older HD TVs.

Poor Zap.

Poor Midway. I know some poeple there...really nice guys. Plus the HQ is in Chicago which is the bestest city in the world!!! Midway has some rebounds recently with their core brands but still made some bad ones so the financials are hurting.

Zap we need to get you in a great company that is a match for your talent. If you want to relocate back up to Los Angeles area i'm sure you find something pwnage! (or Texas area...or Seattle area...)

[ramble]

Honestly I loved Pandora Tomorrow...just as much as i loved the first Splinter Cell.

But the good news ends there...i have yet to play Chaos Theory!!! (Only played the first level...er...the demo) Been so busy I haven't had time to get through a lot of games. I'm only now getting through God of War (which forced me to dust off the PS2)

I think over the holidays I will finish Chaos Theory on the ol Xbox just so I can stay up to speed with the series before I get to Double Agent...when that's eventually released in 06.

Why do I share all this story? Because Splinter Cell owns. yeah, maybe some people are getting tired of it, but not me. I should have finished CT months ago but RL got in the way (barely played any games for a while).

....

So as far as Sam Fisher going a little Jack Bauer, I say good times. 24 OWNS!!! I love the Jack Bauer type of character.

[/ramble]

maybe we need a "gift exchange" mod of Stacker.

You go around exchanging gifts with people (or just "giving" gifts) a la a first person shooter.

- You have different "gift devices" for various purposes

- You have a stocking stuffer devices for small gifts

- You have an apparrel (sp) device for giving socks, ties, shirts etc.

- You have an electronics/gadgets device to give out cool gifts etc.

- "Enemies" would be people in the community you have to give gifts to before they start complaining.

Sort of like when Itch & Scratchy show temporarily changed to a cartoon about loving and sharing after Marge got the community riled up over cartoon violence. "Love and share, love and love and share! Love Love Love! Share Share Share! The Itchy and Scratchy showwwww!"

yada yada, etc, and so forth, as such, in this vein, ....

even it if behaves exactly like a first person shooter except with gifts instead of guns and loved ones instead of monster, zombies, terrorists, or Nazis, it would still be the same functionality.

Maybe if Rockstar made that kind of game people might relax and Jack Thompson would say "Uh...um.........well that game....uh......um....yeah..."

(oh noes! I've made this Political!!!)

OK those cube icons...Here is why I don't think they are good:

They don't give any indication of what they mean. I like icon images that have some kind of meaning. Those are only colored cubes. I don't mind an artistic, unified theme, just make the images a little more functional. Otherwise people will constantly looking to the guides to reminde themselves what they mean.

As for new logo up top...I'll take what I get. I'm not an artist so as long as it is clean, readable and not vomit-inducing, that's good.

it's been Georfed!

nice work.

played the demo last night for a few minutes...didn't have that long.

the music in the demo/intro thing was pretty cool.

once I started playing i only had 5 minutes and could see how it would be cool. I really liked the FPS-esque camera controls. I sorta got my ass handed to me cause I didn't try to really learn it yet. seems worthy of more investigation for sure.

my first thought when looking at it was, "these guys must have concentrated on gameplay quality (design, I mean) rather than graphics" which is obviously a no brainer. But still, there is an engrossing graphical appeal to it.

Quote from ReNo

My flatmate and I weren't all that impressed to be honest. It does look seriously pretty and all with its destructible environments, but nothing really happens from a gameplay point of view in the trailer. I hope that is just a biproduct of it being a trailer and not gameplay footage but I could be wrong. Anyways, just thought I'd offer a more sceptical, or at least less enthusiastic and excited, view of it so far Doesn't really matter to me anyway though, as I'm not a big RTS player and not a big fan of the WWII era, meaning I'm clearly not the target market! Love the visuals though - that engine would be lovely for the Commandos games. Provided they stopped soldiers from facing the entirely wrong direction when throwing grenades that is

if you play Dawn of War, you will get a sense of Relic's RTS gameplay they are putting into Company of Heroes. CoH will be more advanced though, just given the time that has passed since DoW.

man...this is the Midway game, right?

they are out there pimping how clever their marketing was on a limited budget...to market a great game...

a very short game i guess.

I think the best process is as follows:

Have an "Articles" Forum where new articles get proposed. Basically, someone starts a thread with the idea, it is discussed, and at somepoint someone (or a group) writes it. It could be reviewed internally to mapcore, then ultimately posted on the front page.

That's only one idea for a potential process here.

Here's the question: If were going have anything on the front page that is like an article or has some kind of opinion/review/analysis that someone has to place up there, do we need to have someone in Mapcore give it the okay? Technically it should be the owners of the website or people they designate.

But this is sort of an "open" community. We could have a committee (uh..here we go with the committees) decide, or the admins or designated mods...something.

Basically, it is the same fundamental process of GameSpy or IGN or something: you have an editing staff that has the final say on website content.

So something to chew over. I am not proposing that Mapcore become the next gamespy or IGN, just it would be cool for a community like ours to give a collective insight into the game design and game industry issues.

Again, just laying out the ideas and giving us things to think about. A way to start this is for someone to come up with an article, write it, post it in a forum, and then we debate the shit out of it. Somehow we have to settle the debate and then we post it online. Hopefully we can get some consensus on these things if we do them, once we debate it.

Good times....

now just need an article idea...

Quote from von*ferret

Thrik already has a review site, why not work with him?

I suppose. I do like the idea of Mapcore "branded" content that's more than reviews. I guess someone just needs to come up with an article and write it...or an idea or whatever. I do a LOT of writing and would love to work on this stuff.

need to think about this more.

well...i don't think we are becoming a news site, so we don't really need links to external websites and newsy stuff...there is no full staff like at PlanetHalflife or whatnot...

Just thinking about the center panel. latest forum threads won't really attract new people or make us "betterererer"...maybe having cool screenshots...

wait...idea brewing...this would take work, coordination yada yada, but what about a "Mapcore Article" or "Mapcore Analysis" or "Mapcore Review" every couple weeks about a hot new game or some industry development? We could possibly even conduct polls and runs some threads for members to comment on a particular topic, then we write up a good article on the subject with results of our quantitative/qualitative analysis/opinions. In the end, this could be a "hardcore gamer / game-designer" opinion about industry topic. Even a game review.

The point? it might be somethign worth reading to outsiders and could help "promote" mapcore a bit more.

Personally, I love writing that kind of stuff and have done a lot of it. I'd love to do something like that. Examples article ideas:

- Mapcore opinion of the X360 launch. Will X360 succeed? By how much?

(Who's got one...what are the good games and why are they good? etc)

- Game review of latest and greatest PC or Console game (pretty straight forward)

- ESRB ratings relevancy and opinion on violence controversy

- Mapcorians experiences with Steam/downloadable games. How will this impact consoles? Do you play X360 arcade games? Do you buy X360 downloadable content? Do you think PC gaming will shift more and more to downloadable purchase instead of retail boxed games? etc.

etc.

Just throwing out the idea. The good thing is, we can do this at our own pace and put up articles as we see fit, not be pressed for time/deadlines.

like i said, we need some specific goals if we're going to "do" anything. right now mapcore is a great place for discussion on gaming, game design etc for people really into gaming and making games. I don't think there is any other place quite like this with such a good mix of industry and mod and aspriring talent from a wide variety of functions (art, animtion, level design, etc etc)

Personally, I love the business, industry and project management discussion we incorporate into many threads. I would love to see a "business of the industry" type forum, but for now we sort of cover that between Mapcore and General, so I don't think there is such a need for it.

I think our niche is the fact that we know gaming and design...for now we should stick to it.

Oh...hi Zaph! good to see you!

As always, cleaning up the idiocy in our more "serious" forums is always a good thing.

Quote from RD

looks good, but i hope its a bit less cinematic ingame and more topdown playable

oh..you can basically use any camera angle like in Dawn of War. so if you want standard RTS camera, good times. if you want to move it to whatever angle, go for it, too.