zaphod

an interesting and relevant read: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_i ... tory=17350

maybe they should have used an anti-piracy system that actually works instead of some hacked and easily defeatable system that makes it appear as if the game is broken. If 85% of people pirate your game, it's probably pretty fucking easy to do it. They might as well sprinkle copies on the ground and yell at people for picking them up. Why go through the trouble of making an awesome game if you release it KNOWING that it will be extremely easy to crack / pirate? Or did they really think whatever system they had in place would work? I have been through studios closing in the past - it sucks, and I feel for them. But it pisses me off if people see this coming and are knowledgeable about these piracy rates and don't adapt or change the way they release games to compensate. These people deserve to be paid for every copy played, and there are systems out there that can accomplish that, you just can't rely on copy protection techniques from the last decade. They didn't work then, and they don't work now. A lot of developers might say "well we shouldn't have to do that!!!" well I'm sorry - but it's a fact of the market, and you can't "reason" with a market force, you can only react to it. The people that realize this and react accordingly will be the ones that drink the milkshake of the PC market as the others dry up.

I think they have baseball too

wouldn't EA own every major sports license if they bought take two?

I noticed someone tried to put it on digg here is the link if you want to digg it http://digg.com/pc_games/Nine_Paths_To_ ... _Greatness

is that a photograph or a screenshot?

this is my favorite bit of feedback from the article so far:

also, our development blog got mentioned on this list of "great development blogs" which seems to be getting spread around a bit and should bring us a little more attention, yay! Having this thread in the WIP model gallery forum is starting to seem a bit silly. Maybe a proper thread is in order soon. I'm kind of nostalgic about this one though

yea, we plan to have some skid marks in there for sure. In the corners and stuff I do have a road texture that blends to one with streaks on it, but maybe it's hard to see on the video or the streaks aren't dark enough. btw, the article I mentioned earlier in the thread is finally up on gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3 ... atness.php

here is an article I wrote a few months ago that finally got put up on gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3 ... atness.php It's about different things independent game developers are doing to develop games with very few resources.

nothing to show, but I just wanted to let everyone know we had our first playtest tonight, which consisted of 3 people driving around champion circuit bashing into each other (as there is no real gameplay yet). But the networking is coming along very nicely!

or maybe thats not a reflection and he is a half breed smurf / human

made an extensive blog update about the character http://nimblebit.blogspot.com/2008/02/r ... l-and.html mostly just explaining the process that went into creating and animating it. I also made a fun render of it posed in a little scene, I made it really high resolution so maybe I will find a place online to print me out a couple for fun. small rez medium rez large rez

I was sure hoping it would be that way :/ 2 emails, no response yet.

what is your source for this? It seemed like it was going to be much more open and free than that?

hard to tell much from crappy scans, it will be cool when some real screenshots get released.

I can say similar things, and it is of course wonderful that we got those opportunities that really helped us forth, but, that was years ago, and it all feels like it is declining right now (not just Valve). The modders from today dont have the chances anymore that we once had, you may have your job and career going now, but that doesnt really help the new generation of modders. They just need a good community, good tools, support, and so on. I agree, the excitement and number of mod releases has not seemed able to keep pace with the growing complexity of the average game. It used to be that people were just happy to slap some things together and put it out for the community to play with (remember playing the early CS betas? ). Now it seems like people give all the attention ( and maybe this is the norm now ) to mod teams that put together 20 man, professionally recruited dream teams that won't release anything for 2 years because it's not as pretty as a AAA title yet. I'm not sure what the answer is, maybe scaling back the size and visions of mod teams? Is the FPS genre even still valid for modders looking to create something efficiently that people will want to play? Maybe all the FPS modders should just give it up and start making indie games! just kidding!

Giving someone tools doesnt make them an artist or give them a free pass into the gaming industry. I dont even know where to begin with this statement and to be honest I feel some might be a little insulted by the insinuation that Valve got themt o where they are today... Again, I dont hate Valve, Epic, Id etc, I am just dissapointed by there declining interest in the modding community. what? why would you feel insulted. I never said that Valve awarded them talent they didn't have. I'm asserting that the tools Valve provided directly inspired a lot of people here to get into game development, and also that projects done with Valve provided tools directly led to a lot of people around here getting hired professionally.

My post was not meant to belittle anybody or treat anyone here like they are not developers. I assume everyone here is a developer, since there wouldn't be much point in being here if you were not. I would never shrug off the opinions of the people you mention, mostly becuase I AM one of those people you describe. I am just voicing my own opinion, on a subject I am very passionate about. My "bubble" comments were just meant to make the point that the mod world IS a very passionate and close-knit community, ( which I know first hand ) and it's easy to get caught up in details that might seem trivial when you step back and look at the entire state of things. I know I am repeating things that have already been said, I just mostly wanted to profess my take on things becuase I thought the idea that Valve does nothing but buy up mod teams to make things for them absolutely laughable.

so if you hand someone a controller, are they going to say - "now hold on a minute, is this art?"

fixed to be work-safe

thats a pretty lofty assumption. "Ok guys, I know that you are the best in the industry in a lot of areas - your work is critically acclaimed and shapes the face of games . . . but c'mon . . . lets pick up the pace guys . . . you guys aren't cutting it!" I wish more companies put out more smaller polished focused projects. There are enough "huge" and "great" games out there.

why is being considered "art" important?

does it matter at all that Valve is still the only company out there that seems to care at all about supporting the mod and user content community? What other company out there is supporting much of anything besides the ability to make a few deathmatch maps if that? ( maybe microsoft counts now w/ XNA & creators club? ) The assertion that Valve "buys up" mod teams and community talent becuase they are lazy just makes my jaw drop. How many opportunities have been provided for becuase of Valve's embracing modding? How many people on these forums right now are only working in the industry becuase of resources and opportunities that were provided by Valve? I know that I am one, and I could name you quite a few others right off the top of my head. Buying up talent? Valve is one of the only companies out there that makes it a policy to embrace and lift up the self-motivated modders and developers and give them a chance to do it for a living if they choose. How is that bad for ANYBODY? Fucking bastards found some talented students and gave them the chance to make a great game called portal, boy we can see how THAT turned out. It would have been much better if they had all gotten hired by random studios and put on work detail churning out the same rehashed shit that has been flowing like oil from the ground instead of being given the chance to construct their own personal vision of a game. I think that sometimes modders have a hard time seeing outside the mod developer bubble. Inside the bubble, things like the state of the tools, drama between developers, and the policies Valve choose are big issues. But if you stand outside the bubble and roam around on the larger game development plain, you start to see that it is still the largest and highest bubble if it's type floating around out there, and you start to notice that it's pretty unique. Valve is still putting that chance out there to amateur developers. You can argue about how they are managing and offering that chance, but the fact remains that they are the only major player out there offering that chance, or that even thinks that it's a valuable thing to do. If you think Valve's tools are bad, you should probably go try some others or try out some "from scratch" game engines. I think there would be a lot of stuff you run into that you had taken for granted with the source engine, buggy and annoying as it may be.

hope you don't think I'm being over critical for spending the time to mock this up.