Marek

Whenever Will Wright opens his mouth, awesomeness comes out. It's amazing to me how he can be so sciencey and creative at the same time. A true virtuoso. Which is why he doesn't belong at EA, but needs to run his own studio. Ahem. On an unrelated note, what's this patronising blurb? I ain't seen none.

I played this game on the PC, but I'm thinking its probably a port from a console or some Amiga machine. At least it felt that way. There were probably 16 colors, maybe less. Don't remember. The art style was very... brown and red I think, with white or grey buildings. You drove a tank around. You had a base with a garage. The base had walls that you could shoot through and gun turrets that took a lot more shooting at. There were also gates that only opened for you. I always played the game as a split-screen 2 player game. You had to win the other guy's base I think? Or just destroy the other guy's tank. Whatever. The truly incredible thing about this game was that you could just keep on going and going and going in whichever direction and get stuck in increasingly distant places... it was just the same airfields and bases and stuff, but it really felt like the world was huge. It was pointless for the gameplay as it felt like a 200-player map for a 2-player game, but I loved it anyway. During the startup I remember you could choose from three different types of tanks. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? It probably had a stupid title like Tank Attack or Master Blaster 2000.

DUDE! That's it!!! That rules so much. Ahhh, nostalgia... Thanks!

They can make battleships out of concrete?

Ehhh, let's go for Wesley Snipes.

Duke Nukem Forever has been in development for so long, yet we can can only guess for what reason. Fortunately, someone on the intarweb has all the answers. Prepare to be shocked...

Surely all those affected at least got a coupon to buy flowers for their wives.

That is hilarious. Best. Game. Ever.

Ah that reminds me. Someone should make a WWII themed game from the perspective of a war dog. Call of Duty meets A Dog's Life.

While we're at it, I might as well kill the person who crushed my spirit to such a degree that I willingly and knowingly made this game. It's what I tell girls in bars.

Hey what about a game where a prince has to rescue a princess and succeeds, only to realize it's not what he wanted because the princess has a terrible personality. What a shitty idea. Whoops I actually made that game. I will now kill myself.

Ah oops from Lars' story I thought he was a programmer.

Well, I don't think you're going to find much high-concept or super creative thinking at Davilex or PlayLogic if that's what you're expecting. Those companies are mostly about doing production and just trying to be competitive. Sorry to hear you guys (Lars, Rodi) asked a valid question and got collectively flushed by a room full of people, which is definitely a shitty attitude on their part. But maybe a programmer working for PlayLogic is not the right person to ask that question. Or most programmers, actually? Also maybe there are a lot of game design lectures at GDD and you just attended a game production lecture that had an emphasis on the business and practical side of things, which led to people dismissing your question. I'm not trying to defend something I don't know of, but I am just saying the lecture you saw might not be enough reason to be frustrated, at least not on a scale involving the HKU or Dutch game development scene as a whole. (I expect you to be frustrated with the people who shrugged off your question though.) Anyway, do you know Two Tribes? They're sort of the creative type of game developer. Maybe a lecture by one of them was more what you were expecting to hear -- not a dry lecture on game production by someone from PlayLogic. Apparently one or more GDD students had their internship at Two Tribes, working on fun pixely retro DS and N-Gage games.

Wasn't he on some sort of show with Ron Jeremy?

You might be correct about the cynical attitude of those students (I guess I'll find out myself next month assuming this is the same group that will come to my gig) but I think you might have jumped the gun in assuming you were the only ones who had a remote interest in the creative aspect of game design. I'd be surprised if none of the GDD students do in fact have creative ideas about games, and dream a lot about what their crazy auteur game would be like if they had a chance to make it. Judging by your story it seems they sort of accepted their fate and are maybe a bit too eager to show that they know what commercial realities await them, but that doesn't mean some of them might not secretly be dreamers. [And others might not even have the ambition to become lead game designer, and just want to become really good within their specific field. See Jake's post below - edit] As long as they do fun stuff at college while they still can, I'm not too terribly surprised by their attitudes. Then again I wasn't there.

Brilliant. I'm at work. Fortunately I managed to distract everyone with a birthday cake and so no one saw it when I opened that link.

"First, we're going to release the Counter-Strike: Source version of the CS Bot. This will be an improved version of the Condition Zero bot, and will be available for all owners of Counter-Strike: Source. Right now we're planning this for sometime early the week of the 17th. Also included is a remade version of the Condition Zero map, de_tides, rebuilt by Turtlerock Studios. Going into February, there will be a release of a new Counter-Strike: Source map by Valve level designer Dave Riller. It's a smaller hostage rescue map with the focus on close quarters fighting. This map is still being play tested, and we're looking forward to seeing what the community thinks of it."

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/action/splintercell3/media.html Check out Official Trailer #1. It was released yesterday. What an awesome trailer! It's actually really well done.

I'm sure Valve has some long-term ideas for CS:S. It seemed to me they just wanted to get the new "platform" done so to speak, and for that it's a good idea to re-make old levels cause you know exactly how far along you'll be in converting them. I do hope they really build on CS:S with new content now though. De_tides is kind of boring, but I'm merrily anticipating that new Valve-created level.

Fact: my parents offered to buy me Psychonauts as my birthday present. How awesome is that?

All that shit needs to be added in C&C: Generals.

It sucks that a) we don't have Cartoon Network here anymore as a result, we also don't have Adult Swim, and din't have it back when Cartoon Network was still on the cable anyway (it switched to Turner Classic Movies around that time of the day ) Erwin: I remember that show too. It might have been a collection of pilot episodes? I recall multiple segments from that show spinning off into shows of their own, including Dexter's Lab, Johnny Bravo and the one with that dog and the grampa and grandma.

I am here to say that eating ice cubes makes me feel very masculine, because it feels like I'm eating glass. Bye. P.S. I haven't read anything in this thread apart from the bit about snop.

How about Snop Doggy Dog?

Just curious, do any of you brits watch it? I'm somehow compelled to watch it religiously. I've been doing a lot of work during the evenings lately so I usually go to bed around 1 am when the rerun is on. I don't really care much at all for cars, but Top Gear is amazing! It's such a humorous show with so many fun features. (It's kind of the Idle Thumbs for cars, really. :shifty: Except they "update" every week. )