Posts by Jetsetlemming

  • OnLive

    I wouldn't get convinced by one guy's experience alone. For example, I've got a 30Mbps fiber line, and I live just outside a major American city. Trying to play Splinter Cell Conviction is unbearable due to the control lag. At least a second average time between moving the mouse and your aim moving to follow it. Makes shooting people who aren't standing still impossible. I just tried it again after seeing that video review and it has not improved since OnLive first went open beta (I got in pretty quickly). Other games run somewhat better, but look far worse, for example RFG has all the shadows and shaders turned off.

  • Retail threatens Steam ban

    Quote from Zeta

    Including the steam software on retail games and requiring it's use are very similar tactics to those that got Microsoft in a lot of legal trouble.

    On a vastly smaller scale. I've never been comfortable with the Internet Explorer anti-trust rulings in the EU anyway. How are you supposed to get an alternate browser in the first place without IE to go on the internet and get it?

  • Retail threatens Steam ban

    You can't have a monopoly on Civ 5. That's like saying Walmart has a monopoly on Sam's Choice, except less so because Civ 5 is sold outside Steam. It just connects to Steam when you install it. I'm sticking with my analogy of a gamestop preorder bonus. It favors one source of the product but does not exclude other sources. You can buy Civ 5 at Gamestop, or Best Buy, or Amazon, or Direct2Drive. It'll just install Steam when you install the game.

  • Retail threatens Steam ban

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    The monopoly is when Steam is integral part of a retail game.

    That's not what monopoly means, though. Monopoly would be when Steam has all of a given market (the retailers are specifying PC gaming) cornered to the exclusion of competition. This isn't the case. Including the steam client in certain select titles sold outside Steam is no more of a monopoly than gamestop exclusive preorder bonuses. Yes, they favor a specific store. No, they do not suddenly remove all competition.

  • Minecraft

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  • Call of Duty 7: Black Ops

    Quote from D3ads

    http://www.industrygamers.com/news/online-su…next-year/#What the.... fuuuuuu?

    Lol Michael "Steam will let you trade in your games" Pachter. Kotick has directly said in the past that he'd love to be able to get a Call of Duty subscription plan working, but that's just a dude who makes a shitload of money wanting to make more shitloads of money. He's also said he begrudges the console sales caused by Guitar Hero and wishes it were a standalone platform. Maybe there will be a "Call of Duty Heroes" type online PC game attempted at some point, but don't expect a patch for CODBLOPS adding a $15/mo charge to it.

  • Retail threatens Steam ban

    Quote from FrieChamp

    Steam is estimated to be around 80% of total digital sales, not total game sales of physical and digital combined. Ask any publisher, they will tell you that physical retail is a lot more important to them than digital. Simply because it still represents the bigger revenue stream.

    Last year NPD estimations crossed 50% for how much of total PC gaming in the US is represented by digital sales. And obviously a retail copy is going to have a much bigger cut taken away by somebody not the game's publisher, due to packaging, shipping, and Gamestop being a far bigger "monopoly" over game sales than Steam could remotely hope to be.

    In the US game stores that aren't Gamestop are pretty much completely dead. The only other retail sellers of videogames are big box stores that focus on other stuff, places like Walmart and Best Buy. Nobody directly competes with Gamestop in its market. And yet it's STEAM people are worried about becoming a monopoly? At least other DD platforms can still exist. Gamersgate and Impulse and Direct2Drive are all basically competing for the same customers (although Gamersgate gets games that Steam doesn't more often than the other two, frequently getting weird european stuff that most people haven't heard of, it's a pretty comfortable second place in online stores I use behind Steam).

  • Retail threatens Steam ban

    Quote from Steppenwolf

    Steam should only be an option that retail games give for people who like the socialising and the achievements, DLC etc. It shouldn't be integral part of a retail game. That indeed is creating a monopoly situation.

    I don't see how it's a monopoly situation for the game's copy protection to be an integral part. People who got games like Bioshock ahead of their official release dates couldn't play them either, because Bioshock was remotely activated by Securom before it would play.

  • ZeniMax Acquires Ex-Starbreeze Founder's Studio Machinegames

    I can't seem to wrap my mind around the concept of a Quake 5. I can just barely comprehend Doom 4 (and fully expect to be disappointed by it's unavoidable destiny as an average horror FPS with an average speed protagonist using average FPS weapons against average humanoid enemies).

    What happened to the Escape from Butcher Bay developer? They seemed pretty on the ball.

    Also, lol, "Bethesda's talented writers" I hope that was sarcasm

  • Call of Duty 7: Black Ops

    I'm not so much offended by the issue as curious. I wish the culture of the game industry was one more open about discussing things like this and we'd hear a public explanation for it instead of a press release saying something along the lines of "X game had Y issue, we sincerely apologize for this regrettable yet unforeseeable issue, here's a patch, please buy the DLC".

  • Call of Duty 7: Black Ops

    Quote

    ":1sc5ny3u]Lots of flickering (Could be the OC i got tho, overheating) and very very low FPS, even at low resolution, shadows off, no AA! And this machine is capable of running crysis maxed at @ 1680! Oo

    I've heard this is a problem with Steam somehow, it's using up all the cpu time it can get pinging servers or doing steamcloud stuff or something in the background. Either way the evidence points at codblops stressing the cpu while barely using the gpu/ram in comparison. The most common performance tweak I've heard is to run the game in Offline mode, alt-tab out of it, and kill steam.exe.

  • FPS design ~ the evolution

    Quote from Taylor

    I said there were differences; in fact I supplied one of my own. I disagree with the notion that capped turn speed means all games must devolve into straight lines, citing Bioshock as an counter-example. Luckily I already have a job and can retain my ideal of a world with junctions.But yes, this was a misinterpetation of your inital post being a "bloody consoles, they come over here and simplify our games" post. Which is wasn't, and I apologise. So let's not get bogged down.

    I would respond to your Bioshock example by pointing at Bioshock 2, and the second half of Bioshock 1, where both games became significantly more linear and straight forward than previously. Remember that before Bioshock Irrational was a PC exclusive developer and Bioshock likely began its life purely as a PC game. We already know lots of OTHER structural stuff changed in development.

    I would also point out that IMO those earlier sandbox-esque levels in Bioshock, up to the level before you get to Ryan, are significantly more fun and entertaining to me.

    Edit: Also the very first level of Bioshock, the one the demo's comprised of, was also pretty linear, and also added way late in Bioshock's development title as Irrational realized people were having trouble getting connected to the game world with the previous way the game sort of dropped in players in media res.

  • FPS design ~ the evolution

    Quote from Patrick_H

    Jetslemming, you described exactly the FPS designer's considerations for console FPS.

    I work on console FPS games. I can tell from experience that when we interview candidates from PC backgrounds to describe the the differences for developing FPS between PC and console, if they don't answer accordingly then they are no longer considered. I started doing PC level design mods and I was asked the same question for my first job. It's fine to disagree with that philosophy but good luck finding a job.

    I wasn't blaming it on consoles! I thought my meaning was inferred there. Obviously the demographic shift is to blame...they are one and the same.

    Cool then, can I have a job at where ever it is you work?

  • FPS design ~ the evolution

    Quote from Taylor

    Or perhaps, instead of casual console movement speeds suddenly rearing their heads after over two decades, it's a product of games, across all platforms, becoming more casual orientated and having more of a focus on a expensive, cutscene-heavy, story-driven game structure.

    There is a legitimate argument over console controls, specifically analog stick movement, discouraging complex level design. With a mouse looking around and finding different paths is fast and thoughtless compared to panning your view over with the right stick. Playing doom level maps with an analog stick's speed penalty for turning around is really annoying, I've tried it. It encourages smoother flowing, more corridor-esque maps. You just don't really want a 270 degree turn in a console shooter, because the player will get annoyed by taking three seconds just to go around that corner.

    Quote from Campaignjunkie

    The problem is hardware interface. We need a more accessible control scheme for FPS games; mouse and keyboard are too difficult to pick-up. The dual analog sticks are slightly better, but I still see beginners really struggle with it. Almost every other game genre is easier to pick-up, I feel like.

    Mouse is dead simple and completely obvious to anyone who gets ten seconds to figure it out. Keyboard is significantly more of a barrier to entry (so many buttons). I've often been tempted to try and set up a joystick + mouse setup for my PC, but then that would take the effort to dig out my ancient joystick out of storage and hope that somehow I could get it working on a modern OS (or buy a new one but damn that sounds like such a waste of money as a concept).

    Annoying how pretty much every single PC game ever that supports gamepads will only support the gamepad alone, or KBM alone, and refuse to let you mix and match. Dual Shock + mouse seems like a pretty good compromise to me. :/