Posts by KungFuSquirrel

For whatever it means, they've changed their FAQ since that article; still looks like it'll be free of monthly fees but still curious to see the final payment model. Would be awesome if it's just a normal game purchase with the occasional expansion/DLC, but who knows.

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How much will APB cost?The price and payment model have not been finalized yet but we can say it won’t be the traditional monthly subscription model.

I'd sure like for it to be free-to-play, though; saves me the trouble of having to pick between APB and TOR.

Holy hooray I'm working in an office again. WOO.

Now I just need internet at home again.

Quote from dux

What a total cash in What I saw was: Bioshock, Fear and Stalker. What's happened to Raven?

If it's worth anything, the first prototype was put together about a year before I left Raven (I've been out for 3 years), though certainly it looks like it's taken a few cues from these games in the time since.

Prototype was among the highlights of my career so far, for whatever that's worth.

We ended the contract; I'm returning to normal full-time work.

Love the trailer, really well done. Might have to grab the retail bundle of this + Lost and Damned if/when I get around to finishing the main GTA4 story.

Starting work at Lightbox Interactive (former Warhawk/Incognito Entertainment crew) in Austin within the next week or two!

Less lurking, more active participation!

Also, does he say "Big up" in person as often as he does on the internet? Or actually live entirely in The Office quotes?

Quote from tundra_cool

Fuck. Yeah. I was hoping nobody would notice but it's only a placeholder so no worries.

Haha, sorry to ruin that one for you. Know a few guys who went there post-Raven, otherwise I'd never have caught it.

Sock? On Mapcore? What is this!

Is that the Day 1 Studios logo in shot 05?

Also, you have the best domain name ever.

Looks good so far!

After hearing some of the details, I respectively withdraw my "upswing" comment from the Wolf thread. :\

Quote from Section_Ei8ht

SecuROM 7.4 (from what I can tell), but it's not the obtrusive SecuROM (like what was originally in Bioshock or Mass Effect). This SecuROM just makes sure disk is in the drive when you start playing it. I'm an anti DRM freak, and I'm cool with it.

id also traditionally nukes the CD check after the first patch, so I'd expect it to disappear whenever that happens.

Quote from dux

Not an entirely convincing review from what was said. Raven seem to be going downhill a bit?

If anything, they're on a major upswing since my time there. But, this was a tough title for everyone who worked on it. The game is 5 years old; it started just before I started at Raven in 2004. I left Raven as a result of this title 3 years ago, as did numerous others. Coming from an insider perspective, the work Raven did on this game is flat-out stellar. Yeah, it's not perfect, and yeah it could be better. There's some really haphazard levels (Midtown) still in the game that have gone through 4 years of "first-map-itis" and repeated hacked-in changes. Hell, I've been gone nearly 3 years and I'm finding stuff that I did still in some areas. Frankly, the achievement list on the 360 is among the worst since Perfect Dark Zero. But in the months after many of us left, the guys still there took on some huge undertakings and the right guys got themselves into the right positions as they basically re-built the game from the ground-up. I really believe if they'd been able to make those changes sooner a lot of us might have stayed.

Where the game really shines is where they had the time and resources to completely abandon a lot of the old stuff, some of which was even good, but suffered from lack of direction and repeated changes and shifts. The new areas (if you've played the Farm and attached Nazi base) really showcase the potential that the whole game could have reached under better circumstances.

Certainly the place has had problems in the past, and certainly projects as messy as Quake and Wolf haven't helped things, either internally or with external perception. I think it's good for Raven to be able to put this chapter behind and move on. A lot of good guys have moved themselves up into lead positions, and the project lead from Quake 4 (who is hands-down one of the best guys I've had the chance to work with over the years) is back calling the shots on a new project as opposed to running clean-up duty on Wolf. They've got a new unannounced project going and still have Singularity coming out early next year that, if it goes well, could start a solid new chapter for the company.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

I was basically expecting Brink to be a commercial version of Action Half-life.

Oh, I didn't realize you were picturing the AHL/Max Payne style acrobatics, I was seeing more mantling/free-runner-y environment-linked movement, hence my confusion when you mentioned shooting. Does sound like it's more the latter, but I see where you're coming from now.

Depending what Max Payne 3 does, Stranglehold might be the closest thing currently available, and that was kinda meh.

I'm guessing the best analogy to this is likely the iPhone app store. Blizzard should probably have some kind of oversight to make sure no one's ripping anyone else off, but I also don't see people getting away with charging $10 for a single map. There's an important quote in that article:

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"Think about it like this: something like Defense of the Ancients, I think, would be something like a free map because it doesn't have a lot of original content," he added, while noting that Blizzard made the announcement today in order to give map makers time to start thinking about ideas.

It sounds like the bar of what they expect people to charge for is a bit higher, given the complexity that goes into something like DOTA and its popularity.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It's not like people can't still put out free maps, and I imagine most will still end up being free. I'm more interested in seeing what kind of in-game interface they'll be creating to go with this for sharing levels, and if it's something as awesome as building a map and plopping it on battle.net for all to see. Getting custom content out there for any game is only getting tougher; that kind of ease of content sharing would be a huge win for everyone involved.

Eh, Blizzard Time.

World of Warcraft, announced late 2001, released late 2004.

Starcraft 2 announced in 2007, coming 2010.

Diablo 3 announced in 2008...

The 12-minute monk montage looks pretty fantastic, but then again so do all of the class demos if you ask me. Looks like a crazy satisfying game to play.

Quote from Jetsetlemming

I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for this when I found doing acrobatics is limited by a sprint bar and you can't shoot while doing it, it's only for dodging and finding shortcuts essentially. If there are modded servers with higher player counts and shooting while doing crazy shit enabled, and the basic game is good, then I'll get enthused again.

To me that's a weird expectation to have; the sprint bar is a reasonable concern but at what point are you going to even be able to aim (let alone shoot) while vaulting over and around things, and how is this different than any other game that allows such moves?

I'm really eager to see this thing in motion; comments out of Quakecon (semi-echoed by Section_Ei8ht) made it sound like this was the game to see, even with Rage's pretty stellar showing.

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Dirt is one of my recent favorites and I'm loving how this one looks so far. Can't wait to play it. And the demo tomorrow? WOO

Congrats on this one, now get cracking on Dirt 3!

We always used to constantly joke that the touch buttons on the PS3 added $100 to the price... now it seems like we may have been on to something...

All seriousness, though, I thought it looked terrible from the top but the front view (and the way you'll be seeing it from the couch) looks fine, and might actually be an improvement in my book. PS3 library is pretty solid now compared to launch, with a few more good exclusives on the way... I'm 360/PC first, but I think this is a fine time to grab a PS3 if you don't have one yet.

Dark, that's pretty much the best image ever.

So apparently one of my old levels is actually still in the game; I spotted glimpses of it in the castle montage and a general trailer or two (though it's changed considerably, it didn't used to be castle-y). Talk about a blast from the past.

Edit: Also, I have to apologize, I shared this image with a bunch of Raven guys, and Manveer may have twittered about it and given credit to me instead... and now that post is being re-tweeted around the internet Doh!