Posts by hessi

i agree. the flash might be a nice presentation, but please keep it small enough to fit on a screen. i cant get it onto my screen from my macbook pro 15" in a 1440x900 resolution. though if it has to be that big please put all navigation to the top so i can at least skip stuff without scrolling.

Quote from OL

you suck he probably really looks that way

i know him from photos. he definitely does NOT look that way. probably it is you who sucks? [Blocked Image: https://migrationtest.mapcore.org/public/style_emoticons/default/mapcore_smilies/emot_shakehead.gif]

hahaha. check out what the sign on the fascade says then you might know who made the photo resources

lighting preview is avaible only in Orangbox based mods. what a shitload of fuck.

Quote

":2xoxfmnc]Wonder why no one posted nintendo nerd's videos yet!

Quote from hessi

.....for bad games i would refer to AVGN

.....

i checked that tool, but its rather usable in my eyes. the UI is horrible. though i want to run my bspzip on my own. i want to have 100% of control over the inclusion process.

oh and i think the tool you posted isnt open source and not command line based.

hi folks. since i recently made a bsp for dod_kolsch that should include all custom content i hit the problem of writing a file list with relative and absolute paths for bspzip. bspzip is a sourcesdk default application, but you can't hint it to a specific directory to include all files that are in there.

to bypass this poor situation i wrote a litte command line based java application, that iterates through a folder and spits out the correct format.

you can download it here: http://www.thomashess.net/exchange/DirtyHelper.jar

to run it you have to open a command line (windows key + r -> enter "cmd" -> click on ok) and browse to the directory that contains the jar. now run the following command "java -jar DirtyHelper.jar PATH_OF_YOUR_RELEASE_FOLDER OUTPUT_FILE_NAME" while PATH_OF_YOUR_RELEASE_FOLDER equals a folder that contains all files that should be included (for example i make a folder on my desktop and recreate the source engine folder layout and put in every file where it belongs. that way i dont include files that i dont need) and OUTPUT_FILE_NAME equals a filename like "files.txt"

then you see some output on your screen. after the termination you find files.txt in the folder of the DirtyHelper. you can now run bspzip with the filelist.

the jar file is including source codes, so you can modify and/or check out for security reasons

Quote from Synthesizer

MOH: Pacific Assault. I don't know why they would put a medic in the game when you only get one heal per level, but your squadmates get infinite heals Also, the plane flying sequence was so horribly hard. It had the worst controls ever, the only way I beat it was to put the mouse speed up to max and spin around in extremely tight circles.

got to agree on those points but IMO it was so bad that i would mention it. btw the pearl harbor scene at the beginning was so stunning and intense. it was the reason for me to buy the game. since i didnt i think 30$ would have been fine. i got it for like 10euro (15$) as EA nice price. another example of a game that i first pirated and didnt play through because i got bored too early. then i saw it for 10 euros and i was like: ok 10euro for the fucking most awesome pearl harbor scene yet in a game. that's a fair deal. though the rest of the game was ok but never worth 40 or 50$. i wouldnt even mention the game in any list of important games. even this list is too important. MOH:PA is just too generic in the 90% of levels that follow the opening!

dont you have a digital camera to put on photos? btw your head seems to have wrong proportions. eyers are too high up in the air. if you make reference photos of heads, make sure you take the biggest distance to the person and the maximum zoom. so you can remove as much perspective as possible to get "perfect" modeling references.

i recently played "Conker" on xbox and what brought my piss to a boil was the racing scene. i had to play it like for 3 hours to beat it. it's not that i suck at games. people could probably call me a hardcore gamer but this level was so bad. once you fuck up you are done for. no way of getting the lead back. additionally there were heavy player clipping bugs in the level so you have to jump on the right places.

for bad games i would refer to AVGN

usually i deleted the bad games so i don't remember all of them. i kind of hated "Loom". I was so excited to see a Lucas Arts adventure and i thought "its lucas arts, you cant go wrong with that" but yes, you can! worst interaction i have ever seen in any adventure game. why do people have to remember tones to do certain stuff.

this reminds me of Leisure Suite Larry 7. You had to enter specific words to finish the game. But there were no clues on which words you could enter. there was a context menu but you could always enter your own statements so WTF: i know 1000000s of words. which one should i enter? that was a bad game (even the jokes were funny)

step: make some sports, fat boy!

and klein is always with the chicks... so this is all business as usual at mapcore.

but online distribution isnt perfect at all! just to throw in a point: "social engineering" many users don't think about losing their accounts through phishing etc. of course we know which site to trust, but tell that a 12 or 13 year old.

no matter what it looks like in any other tool, we can only give feedback from what we see. i thought the same thing as aevirex: looks like 2004.

the lighting is without any harshness. all areas are near fullbirght. making a histogram out ofthe screenshots would show that there is no really dark places that would give a good contrast.

from brush and model work it's all really bland. its all 45 or 90 degree.a lot of edges are hard. this kind of reminds me of the quake and half life. for those games that was ok since they relied on CSG and BSP tools for the entire level. But now where your level (==the visuals) can be made 99% in a modeling app there is no excuse for such a lack of details.

i didnt play second life but all i know is that this was a successfull game that looked like shit. but who seriously cares on graphics, if the game runs on any computer and you can make things you couldnt do in aother games before.

if the visuals are more important than the game you shouldnt be in the game industry my very friend.

i still love my macbook pro since it is more powerfull. of course it is bigger but it is still slimer than most notebooks out there. got a nice cooling that is really silent. having a LED display would be nice though.

macbook air seems to be targeted for those who dont need hardcore computing hardware.

my point fo creating your own games goes far beyond what we got today. eve nthe whole SDK is much too complex. you need like 6 months or years to make something decent and fun. a lot of the technical stuff should be put underneath a nice interface allowing less experienced people to make what ever they want. also another way to drop down prices: sell a game in different versions. for exmaple in some games i wouldnt play like 50% of the multiplayer maps. so why pay for those? there should be something like a 5$ deal. get the game for 5$ and customize it with the content you want or buy all the stuff for the regular 50$ or what ever. in this context opening a market to Hobbyists to sell their work would be genious. like "make a map publish it on our platform and for each 1000th download of your map you get a gift (like a mappack or what ever). the money from buying would go to the game developer." new strategies such as those are needed. this would help improve games a lot. thats what i was talking about user generated content.

i want a balloon flying over the track and some skyscrapers in the far background. probably lots of trees wouldnt hurt.

dont coppy that floppy. this was like 15 years ago and there is still a pc game market. oh and btw. those who claim that warezing is evil and shit all the way through: i cant imagine you got your first software licenses legally. i wonder how many people here got legal copies of 3dMax Maya Zbrush Photoshop Mudbox or what ever. and i am talking of those licenses you bought for your self and not those you use at work. so better think twice.

geez. i didnt say "ok folks. priate what ever you want. never pay for anything" you absolutly didnt get my point. this whole discussion is useless because each side ignores what ever the other says. there will be no debating on a possible solution to make all people happy.

keys to a solution:

- make production less expensive to make a price drop

- work with less people to lower coordination costs

- give the people a way to honor what should be honored

- punish those who ignore player needs or testing before the actual production, since they might create shit

- destroy all game magazines since they are "paid" for their ratings

- include the customer into the production so the developer notices in early stages wether his product wins or fails.

- support user generated content. a game a user creates will be as close to his expectations as it could possibly get. it might only please him, but who cares if anybody can make changes as he wants.

- punish all people that do not coop with these rules.

i think lots of you people still live in the year 2000 where game is product noone sees before its released or previewed. even the previews are being made like 2-3 months before a release. so there wont be any big changes. game flaws will be in the game. no matter what happens.

bottom line:

make games that people want or better: let people make the games they want.

... and piracy possibly will be lowered. there will always be some people who cant afford or buy games because they are assholes or just dont have the money.

since it fits in here so well:

[Blocked Image: http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/3732/piracykb0.jpg]

i know that you have put a lot of effort into the game, but if i look back: i also wasted so much money on crappy games that the industry owes me! visually i think crysis is far the best island game i have ever SEEN. but when i buy a game the graphics is what matters much less then fun. the gameindustry hasnt noticed yet that games need to change dramatically. we have seen the same shit over and over again. i can give a list of things i dislike at current games

- too complex menus because the game designers wanted to go super awesome and let the player to so many things

- too hard games where you got to load a savegame over and over to finally make it. savegames should be made for saving a progress in a situation where you have to turn off the game. like a book. a book where you have to read the same page like 100 times you dont finish. and you call it a shitload of fuck. a book should be read smoothly in a rush. so do games. and most fail horribly.

considering a debate on demos vs. pirated games:

both suck big time, but i'd prefer a pirated copy since i want to judge a game from the complete basis. not only a 10 minute extract. you cant judge a book or movie from just spending 10 minutes on it. the best solution to this problem comes from valve: those free weekends are genious. you can legally check out as much stuff as you want. and if you want to continue palying, you can buy the damn piece. thats how things should be done.

those who know me closer from real life know me saying "Kein Applaus für Scheisse".

To get my points in a propper perspective: the last game i pirated was "the guild 2" since i worked on the damn game and didnt even get a free copy. though the game was shit and they had lots of spare copies in the stores. thats about 1 year ago. meanwhile i purchased the following games:

fable

fable lost chapters

conker

max payne 2

overlord

viva pinata

kameo

call of duty 3

bioshock

lego star wars

burnout revenge

super paper mario

psychonauts

probably even more. so thats AT LEAST a 1:12 ratio.

the point is: i dont have money to waste. so i take all possibilities to evaluate those how deserve it. i don't want to ruin those who work hard, but i don't want them to think that the stuff they do is good if it isnt. i'd go so far to "force" people quit jobs at crappy studios since they kind of support shitty games from being produced and support stupid game designers that still live in 1985.

nintendo is on the right path. they got an innovative console and a different and interesting system that doesnt even allow the developers to focus on graphics. if a Wii developer wants to make a graphically top notch game he will fail compared to PC or PS3 games. so nintendo drew a line where every developer has to be more creative in a fun/game domain.

mostly all of us work in a graphics department. probably it would be usefull for the next years to put our self on the list of those who failed making good games.