Posts by Taylor

  • Fun with your games

    Quote from Bic-B@ll

    does the 1 nature damage for the top players mean that the damage went into the tens of millions?

    I think it means they fully resisted, but the game goes funny when dealing with numbers that high. One guy took 1, but resisted 19million, for example - and you can only resist 0, 25, 50, 75 or 100 ("resisted") percent.

    But resist or not, he's going to do it again in 3 seconds.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.alexandertaylor.net/stuff/eyebeam4.jpg]

    I died first in the log, but that's because this is instant and the game knows that I died a fraction of a second before the server tells me everyone else did too. At least I think that's why, regardless I wasn't the muppet who started the chain reaction.

  • Fun with your games

    I admit up front this is very geeky, but this was the most fun I've had in WoW for a long time. Nothing went wrong with the game, but our band of sad bastards met the current hardest boss in the game, who as some of you might know is called C'Thun and is an Old God (Call of Cthulhu references abound). But none of that matters, what matters is he first appears as a giant eye -- and this eye fires eye beams. He also spawns tentacles and mini-tentacles with eyes on them that also have eye beams.

    EYE BEAMS.

    [Blocked Image: http://www.alexandertaylor.net/stuff/eyebeam1.jpg]

    And whats cool about eye beams, apart from them being frikkin eye beams, is that when they hit someone they will bounce to nearby players doing double damage. Not double as in 2,500, 5,000, 7,500, 10,000, 12,500, etc. But 2,500, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 40,000, etc.

    Consider this:

    There's forty people in a raid.

    There is only one entrance into C'Thuns chamber.

    This entrance is quite small.

    He uses his eye beam every 3 seconds.

    What happens when one person accidently steps into C'Thuns agro radius while the other thirty nine stand on top of each other talking about the encounter?

    [Blocked Image: http://www.alexandertaylor.net/stuff/eyebeam3.jpg]

    The most damage I've previously taken was 10,000 from Broodlord, and that could've killed me twice. It's just numbers, it's just a boss, and they're just eye beams; but I really like this encounter. Hopefully we'll, y'know, get him to phase 2 next time. So he can start eating people as well.

  • a game developer's life

    Personally, that strikes a load of crap. In fact I'd go further and say it's a big load of crap.

    There's just so many ways that it's essentially a generic fear mongering rant that could, in its simplest form, apply to anything. Which has been moulded around computer games design with a bonus ‘no creativity’ rhetoric. There’s barely a word in it that isn’t subjective.

    Edit: The quote. I haven't read the main article because I find The Escapist is rather a poor soapbox powered by a stock photo archive. But maybe I'll give it the time of day when it's not 2am.

  • [Oblivion] All In One Basement

    Quote from generalvivi

    sounds interesting. i am afraid to play oblivion tho .... not sure if i want to lose to much of my life to it just yet. Prob the reason i havn't played w.o.w yet.

    I don't want to play it because it'll take up my WoW time...

    ...

    But this does sounds like an awesome add-on, and I'll tell the people I do know who play Oblivion about it.

  • I've got a proper job!

    I should be okay telling my e-friends about this.

    I haven't been around much recently because I've had no internet connection. And I haven't had an internet connection because I've moved halfway across England to work at The Creative Assembly, primarily as a level scripter.

    So yay. I hope you care, because otherwise this looks a bit vain.

  • WoW: Burning Crusade

    Quote from wacko

    I think the new race looks like crap... I mean come on... they crash landed and they look like they have shit hanging from thier face

    I don't really like the new race, and it's because they look really nice.

    Because if they look nice they look nothing like the Draenei. The one defining feature of the Draenei is that they are fugly, it should be a damn racial trait that debuffs surrounding players with Repulsion. They were brown monsterous things with hooked arms and a face was is 90% teeth. In WC3 3:TFT I hardly ever used Akama because I couldn't stand the sight of him. But they've completely changed their appearance so they're more attractive to the alliance.

    And the Draenei allied with the Blood Elves so eh, what? How? I don't want to read the Lore they posted because it's just a botch-together to get them to slot in the factions. God I'm such a geek. IT'S LORE. IT'S NOT REAL TAYLOR, YOU TIT.

    But anyway, all the PHAT LEWT and ZOMG CONTENT I can't wait for -- Blizzard's expansions are always awesome. I hope they overhaul some of the stuff in the current game too, like they usually do. And I hope someone hits Tigole around the back of the head with a rolled up newspaper and tells him to stop spending all his resources on raid content and throwing out an insult of a patch for everyone else. And I say that as someone at the Twin Emp's in AQ40 (damn you Unbalancing Strike).

    Edit: I expect this topic to die after my hugeass reply anyway, but if it doesn't can you format the link so it doesn't break the tables plx.

  • Two rants on level design, need opinions

    Ominous talk like “are the last true level designers?” makes me grimace. Are we talking creative leverage here? Here's a crappy example that worked until I typed it out: In Davej’s Etc campaign he had a lot more control over things than he did in Dust, and certainly a lot more control that he would have in a commercial product. He not only created the architecture for the maps themselves, but also the back-story, story sequences, events, everything. Of course the story was just there for an excuse to shoot things and the map was originally for him to play with env_shake, but the principal is he created a lot more aspects of the map.

    Basically my point is this; if we were all to go away and create a bullet pointed list of what we considered to be level design the lists would be very similar in certain places but very varying in others.

    Though that’s really all by-the-by, I agree with the OP in the first article that as things become more complex areas of the design process will be spread out over more people - it’s inevitable really. For instance, what’s a game designer today? Someone on a team that creates a design document highly subject to chance and oversees other people so they fulfil to their vision. Twenty years ago? A couple of guys in a basement on an Amstrad 464 doing everything.

    I don’t, however, agree the solution is for people to broaden their horizons to try and delay the effects of this. That seems kind of counterproductive; instead focusing on a specific aspect you enjoy (the architecture, the modelling, the textures, the scripting, etc) would seem like the better solution than being a jack-of-all-trades.

    I found it hard to digest the second article because it seems more assuming the different designers were not on the same wavelength, or at least that was the ideal I kept forcing into the text. I won’t comment on it, because I’m sure we’ll go off on a tangent.

  • what music are you listening 2 atm?

    Quote from D3ads

    DragonForce really do suck balls...

    PREACH IT BROTHER. PEOPLE ARE NOT ENTITLED TO THEIR OPINIONS ON THE INTERNET, ESPECIALLY ABOUT OBJECTIVE THINGS LIKE MUSIC.

    Seriously, when I saw a "wot r u listening 2" thread I imagined the following contents before clicking


    • [*:1b1bam6d]Listing of what people are listening to.
      [*:1b1bam6d]Obscure bands nobody has ever heard of.
      [*:1b1bam6d]Possible superiority complex from listening to bands nobody has ever heard of.
      [*:1b1bam6d]Deadlodes mighty opinion on the music you listen to.

    I don't think the date is relevant, the sound is supposedly reminiscent of classic metal. But the genre’s mean pretty much naff all these days anyway, because it seems there are almost as many as there are bands; I heard someone proclaim recently that he was into Dark Folk. Dark Folk? Does that even deserve capital letters? Of course I’m into Dark Pseudo Acid-Skivvle Symphonic Progressive Metal, personally. It’s not so much a genre as a social label, mind you. Though I’m glad it’s still underground where it can’t be besmirched by artists.

    I admit I like Dragonforce, their stupidly-over-the-top style appeals me - maybe that says something about me? I don't know. I swear they have Big Mario turning into Little Mario spliced into one song - I think that definately says something. Anyway, I’m glad people like Kerrang! (who actually play Busted on their music channel destroying any creditability they may have had but get a lot of readers/listeners/viewers) have picked up on them so they are more mainstream.

    It’s technical wankery, yes, makes a refreshing change from the thousands of generic nu-metal bands out there that I think must be produced in a factory somewhere.

    Oops.. It has occurred to me my bias is as visible as my epidermis, inadvertently creating quite a lot of irony. So I’ll stop harassing Deadlode but leave him with “sometimes I listen to The Fiery Furnaces.” Oh and I’ll answer the question, that’d be a good idea wouldn’t it? This week, I are been mostly listenin’ too:


    • [*:1b1bam6d]Trivium
      [*:1b1bam6d]Dragonforce
      [*:1b1bam6d]Audioslave
      [*:1b1bam6d]Soundgarden
      [*:1b1bam6d]Chimaira
      [*:1b1bam6d]Muse
      [*:1b1bam6d]Placebo
      [*:1b1bam6d]Queens of the Stone Age

  • 9/11 - some scientific stuff to think about it

    This thread reminds me of a conspiracy theory programme I saw on 9/11. Lots of people speak outrageous claims about 9/11 for an hour, about how there were explosions inside, skyscrapers aren’t built with the idea of them ever collapsing, there’s not enough debris (mainly about the pentagon), to the point where you actually start believing some of it.

    Then they bring in scientists, engineers and professors of whatever for the last half hour who say "well, actually, that's all bullshit." To which the conspiracy theorists retort "well, you can prove anything with facts."

  • What Games are you playing?

    True. Though I'm still playing it

    I just kind of wanted to mention Disgaea 2 and maybe create some interest in the series, but there's no other thread for it since it's not really the kind of thing most of us go for. I've been caught out :X

    And I agree they're all similar and it could get a bit stale after a while, but the inherent rules of any genre don’t really change too much. They’ve experimented with changing aspects before, and it doesn’t always go to well.

    For example: In Phantom Brave they tried to remove the grid and limit the amount of turns, and it really, really sucked. Because you skidded off the map all the goddamn time, positioning AoE attacks was a chore, and there was less strategy because your units were expendable.

  • What Games are you playing?

    I'm really not looking forward to any game but Disgaea 2 right now, which is a bit disapointing. And nobody else has mentioned the series! I imagine most of us are PC FPS players though.

    Want to see some amazing graphics, utlizing the Playstation 2 to the max?

    http://ps2.ign.com/objects/773/773797.html

    Heh. (Edit: If you scroll down the actual artwork, you'll find it's really nice - the problem is the shitty resolution)

    On a sidenote they've made an anime about it now, because the games are funny, there's a lot of interesting characters (undead demonic penguins that speak in haxor, I fucking kid you not) and the setting is very cool. Needless to say you should NOT WATCH IT, because it's terrible.

  • What Games are you playing?

    The only games I have played for the last 5 weeks are:

    World of Warcraft.

    Warcraft 3.

    Disgaea (BST EVR)

    Half-life 2.

    Quote from wacko

    those people are worthless bastards... and we taylor way to much to them when it comes to content. oh well next two patches will help with some of the content I hear

    Taylor would tailor your content if his application contained any credentials whatsoever and wasn’t thusly sorted into the round filing cabinet seconds after arrival

    Anyway, I made a character on the US realms initially because they all speak the lingo, and was one of the first few to kill Ragnaros v2.0 because I’m a sad git. I found the game completely raid orientated, in fact I had to make a character on the EU realms so I could raid around my job.

    As far as I know the new casual content consists of giving players more reasons to run these same instances they’ve been running for the past year to upgrade their class sets into slightly better class sets... maybe so their PUG lasts that vital second more in the battleground against the tier 2 epic equipped arranged team?

    Of course, I only know what’s been released. I really would hope there’s more planned for casual gamers before the expansion hits. Tigole can quote Vael deaths as he likes, it’s really crying out for a new 5/10-man instance (since ZG didn't really work out as the MC stepping stone, as it's harder).