Podunk

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Posts posted by Podunk

  4. Posted

    Not of video game origin (not sure if this vocal arrangement was recorded for the game or licensed/whatevered from the choir that sung it), but this specific performance of this song provided a big enough impact in the opening mission of Homeworld that quite a few people now associate the song with the game.

    The choral "Agnus Dei" version of the adagio is Barber's own transcription, written nearly 30 years after his original Adagio for Strings. It's a pretty amazing piece of music.

  5. Posted

    Bah, fuck the haters, this looks awesome.

    My one reservation is how similar the overall aesthetic of Columbia looks to Airborn. Even the first couple of notes in the solo violin in Irrational's trailer soundtrack sound like they're lifted from the Airborn Theme (the guitar has the theme at about 0:54) ;(

    On repeated viewings the similarities are all very superficial, but the Airborn team has been chuckling about BioBorn and AirShock all morning. :D

  6. Posted

    Man, I think it looks like a hoot, and I think this new development direction is a great idea for Double Fine. I hope it's a roaring success for them. They deserve a roaring success, for a change.

  9. Posted

    Haha, Rise of the Triad, awesome. I haven't heard those tunes in ages. Where's the XBLA remake of ROTT? Someone needs to get on that, stat.

    A few of my faves, in no particular order:

    Grim Fandango

    Freedom Fighters (it's a tossup between that and Assassin's Creed 2 for Jesper Kyd soundtracks)

    SC: Chaos Theory

    Planescape: Torment

    Bioshock

    Silent Hill 2

    MGS2 (the Harry Gregson-Williams tracks)

    Red Faction: Guerrilla

    Icewind Dale

  10. Posted · Edited by Podunk

    I loved SWAT 4. I doubt that we'll see a sequel from Irrational, though, unless 2K bought the rights to the SWAT IP from Activision, who bought out Sierra.

    I would love to see them develop a co-op-centric game with some of the same mechanics, though, a la the aborted Division 9.

    edit: also, I should mention that the hospital map in SWAT 4 accounts for one of my most intense single player gaming experiences ever. After failing the mission multiple times, I finally had all of the hostages secured, but my entire team was incapped and there was one terrorist left somewhere in the darkened hallways of the lower levels. I was injured and limping, and completely out of ammo. My only weapon was my taser. I must've spent a good 30-40 minutes creeping through the hallways, checking every corner, expecting at any moment to get blind-sided by SMG fire or a shotgun blast. When I finally found the last terrorist crouched in the dark behind a stack of medical supplies, I nearly had a heart attack. I tasered that motherfucker in the face and cuffed him before he could get a shot off. :gaming:

  11. Posted

    http://www.pentadact.com/index.php/2008-10-24-far-cry-2-impersonation-of-a-buddy#comment-37628

    The guardposts thing - yeah, we're getting raked over the coals for that. Funny thing is, we did discuss it and unfortunately, while there are better theoretical solutions than repopulating them after unloading, none of them are terribly simple (in the time we had to react to the weakness). I decided it was better to have them repopulate rather than have the player be able to empty the world of gameplay too easily... I still think it is the better solution barring a really robust one that would have taken weeks we did not have. As much as I think it is the best possible solution, I admit I underestimated the response. Lesson learned.

    To be clear, I'm not saying that the Far Cry 2 team couldn't have come to some alternate solution. I'm saying that the respawning is tied to the way the game engine handles memory, and there is nothing a user with no access to the source code can do to change that. There's no ini file to tweak, or mod to apply.

    I'm not complaining about it, either. Far Cry 2 was one of my favorite games of the last five years, and I personally wasn't bothered by the respawning. I do feel that FC2 is uncommonly ripe for modding, if only Ubi would have released some mod tools.

  13. Posted

    Okay, so I'm not really big on DLC, but this I'm getting for sure. Why? Apparently Steve Gaynor is writer and lead designer.

    That's really cool. I saw the blurb earlier today and wondered if Steve was involved.

  15. Posted

    I never had any trouble just getting a ticket at the gate, but I've missed one or two of the recent ones so that might not be a good idea these days.

    Anyone know if there is any trouble just showing up on whatever day and getting a ticket at the gate?

    Yes.

    Last year PAX was entirely sold out by the weekend of the event, and no tickets were available at the door. If you want to get in, definitely buy in advance.

    I've planned for months to be up at PAX on Saturday. I desperately wish that there was some convenient way to rearrange my schedule in order to be at the Thumbstravaganza on Sunday.

  17. Posted

    No, but the devs (Could it even have been Hocking himself?) said that it was something that they wish they'd gotten rid of.

    I agree, I hated the whole respawn thing, it really got me screwed over several times.

    Clint Hocking once posted that the respawn rate isn't some fixed interval, but rather is tied to the way the game world is streamed into memory. A cleared guard post stays clear until the player moves far enough away that the engine has to clear it from RAM to make room for another section of the map. The next time the engine reloads that guard post, it will be repopulated.

    There are no parameters that can be accessed to change this. It is hard coded into the game engine. I don't understand enough about the nuts and bolts of the engine to know if it could be tweakable with mod tools, but it's a moot point since Ubi will never release FC2 mod tools. ;(

  18. Posted

    Hahaha, thanks!

    Yeah, I do some commercial stuff, but I try to seek out gigs that appeal to me creatively, which basically means I'm limited to doing this part time. At this point I'm more interested in working on cool projects with cool people than filling up the calendar with jobs for ad agencies and music libraries. One upside of that attitude is that I can drop a few hours to write some music for Max Ides without pissing off any clients. :grin:

  19. Posted

    I'm curious, what DAW and/or set of software did you use to make that?

    Also, you appear to be far better at this then me.

    Well, to be fair, I'm ostensibly a professional, and I'm working with some relatively high end tools. One way or another, I liked your track a lot. :)

    I'm using Cubase 5 and Wavelab 6, and this particular ditty employs Spectrasonics Omnisphere and a whole bunch of Kontakt sample libraries in Kontakt 4.1 (Cinematic Strings, EWQL Symphonic Orchestra Platinum, Tonehammer Epic Frame Drums and a badass set of free grandfather clock samples I found on the interwebs).

  24. Posted

    Hey dudes. I'm a long-time listener of the podcast. I just registered in the forums this week, in order to say "congrats" and "fuck you" to Chris on his new gig. I look forward to hanging out around here and maybe playing some games with y'all. :)