toblix

FUCK YES

So there are ways to cheat the system, without it being cheating? That sounds pretty cool.

To me, that's like Earthworm Calibur. I know they're famous games people love, but I don't know that aspects they're referring to. Well, I know that Castlevania is mapped like a 2D grid, because I once bought a Castlevania game for the DS. And from the podcast I learned that in Metroid you open doors with missiles?

I know, if I didn't have any other choice I wouldn't have been able to wait!

Bought it and played it. It's pretty cool. I like that they've shaved down the time required to restart a level to the absolute minimum. It's essential to keep interest from dropping, but it's something a lot of developers seem to forget.

Obviously it will be an approximation (or rather, more of an approximation). There's no trick that lets you do that stuff in real-time with anywhere near the same level of precision, but, as with all CG, the point isn't that it's 100% realistic, but that it looks 100% realistic. I've seen some pretty good real-time GI, so I have no doubt they've got something like that in their engine.

AHA!

It's awesome that you're all able to do all sorts of various artistic stuff. I find myself always giving up almost immediately after attempting something. I've tried writing and drawing, and I've begun making games a million million times on all sorts of platforms, I've started thousands of 3d Studio Max projects and sometimes awesome music appears in my head, but soon after having started coding, or met some minor obstacle, or sat down at the piano I start thinking "this isn't going to work, you didn't plan this out you idiot, you'll never finish it!" and so I go back to playing other people's games, gawking at other people's art and listening to other people's great music. It's depressing in a way, but at least there's a bunch of awesome games, art and music being produced every day, so there's not some hole I'm not filling. Again, it's awesome that you're able to do all these things. I'm sure you become better people because of it.

Sorry, I often forget image size when linking from someone else's site. I'll keep it narrower in the future.

Quote: SignorSuperdouche: I'm pretty ignorant about this sort of thing. Could someone explain, in the simplest terms you can, what the implications of not having fully dynamic lighting are please? Would I be likely to notice the difference? In Doom 3, all the lighting was fully dynamic. That means that when they made the levels they just placed light sources around and the moment they did so the lights would light up everything and cast the right shadow, and it would look like this: Notice that the shadow edges are really hard. This is because shadows are really hard (as in demanding) to calculate to begin with, so realistic lighting that bounces off glossy surfaces, picking up new color, and shadows that blur correctly according to the source of and distance from the light cannot be done properly. You can fake it by blurring shadows uniformly, but it never looks as good as if you take the time to do it, as in: realistic lighting, which looks like this: Notice that all shadows are correctly blurred and that the white walls pick up colors from reflected light, etc. This took about 40 hours to render on a 1,7GHz P4. So you just can't do that shit 30 times a second, no matter how much you're John Carmack. So what they do is they combine the two techniques. They place light sources that won't move, ever, in the level. Then they let all their computers calculate this awesome lighting magic for a couple of days. Then they place Doom 3 style lights where there'll be dynamic shadows, for example around people and vehicles. These shadows won't look anywhere near as good, but they're really quick to draw. The result is this: Notice the difference between the landscape shadows (three days) and teh car shadows (three microseconds or whatever). So, to summarize: Static lighting looks awesome but takes hours and can't change. Dynamic lighting looks like crap (well, in comparison) but can be drawn on the fly.

For what it's worth the Kotaku preview mentions that the skin shaders are less like plastic an more like rubber, but in a good way(?).

Reading this thread reminds me of the trailer for Zenoclash, or a trailer. It wasn't epic, it didn't have awesome battles with glowing swords and talking about chosen ones, but it was, as I remember it really low-key, a guy explaining some different races to someone else. It was some details about how the way they behaved or something. It made me really interested in the game, and although I didn't much like the game, that's the kind of trailer that got me to buy it. If the world is interesting and has interesting details (which I guess should be one of the main goals of any RPG), they'd be better off just showing some aspects of that world, in all its non-epicness, rather than what we all know every RPG in the world always has, always (epic chosen ones and glowing magic). It's the same with movie trailers, the best ones are the ones that aren't just clips of the stuff we all know will be there, but some off-the-main-road thing that makes us curious.

More like Fallout 3 with cars and circuses.

Does the gaming market know what it wants any less than the film or TV market does? Isn't a pilot just like a tech demo/proof of concept, in the sense that "look what we'll do properly if you give us the money we need"? I guess that only makes sense for the technology / clever game hook part and not the storytelling.

It's pretty bad. If I hadn't heard Chris' tale of the dwarf joining the Hitler-Jugend, I wouldn't care about this at all. Now I care, but despite the trailers.

There's a video of the Zune HD used as a media thingie when connected to a HDTV. That's actually pretty sweet.

This preview makes me even more hopeful for the gameplay. Actual indoor combat (not that that's so special -- I just assumed it would be all outdoors), a strong focus on game flow (i.e. not a typical open-world game), varied race competitions (RC racing, jumping, etc.) and a themed combat arena which I look forward to trying out. I wonder if their reluctance to comment on multiplayer is because there will be none or little of it (a concession like the lack of dynamic lighting), or because it's going to totally awesome to the max (64 player huge battles, etc.).

Ah yes, I know about that but I've never tried it. To be honest, it'll have to be pretty subtle for me to use that in public rather than just backspacing a couple of times.

Although I know how my mind fills blurry game trailers with non-existing detail, this stuff really looks magnificent. Then there's this guy, which looks pretty non-magnificent (though I guess this could be from the old footage?) So I start thinking "it's too bad the characters are so p-- And then this guy comes along and looks pretty awesome. And some nice color: And also this guy here: I guess that could just be a cut-scene or something, but if you have this vast, awesomely detailed scenery, and then suddenly a giant fucking troll can just climb around the corner like that, things could get very fun very quickly. Also if the racing parts are good. With the reputation id has for great FPS controls, there's some hope they have what it takes to make really awesome arcade racer controls too. I was sort of ambivalent about the game itself, but I'm starting to think it might just play as good as it looks.

Couldn't Flash games, iPhone, XBLA, etc. be considered low-risk arenas for trying out the more crazy concepts? Obviously not all huge AAA etc. games can be reduced to bite-size, but for games with unproven concepts, mechanics or themes, wouldn't it be an option to make sort of a "Lite" version on one of these platforms? Has this maybe been done already in some way? There's been a lot of crazier indie games like Braid, World of Goo, etc. but already (my impression id) you're talking about a scope and budget where you have to be more averse of risk than one would like.

Yeah, it's on. Do I have to shake it a special way?

Chris tweeted this link here: And it got me thinking: This is how they should remake these games. By projecting the new backgrounds on 3D geometry and having slight -- slight --camera movement on all the scenes. It would require modelling all the shit, but it wouldn't have to be detailed models, you wouldn't need texturing (only the redone 2D art), and it would look awesome holy shit. The trick is that you get the awesome feeling of space that the 3D graphics combined with slight camera movement gives, but you get away with really simplistic 3D modelling, and no texturing. Please give me a reason this isn't one hell of an awesome idea. Okay, the whole seamless switching between old and new mode would be harder/more impossible to implement. BIG FUCKING DEAL. It's awesome 3D!

I don't know if this is the right forum, but it's game peripheral related, so... During our weekly GTA sessions I have a problem hearing what is being said in my headset, so I have to turn the game sound (on the speakers) way down, and even then I often miss what's being said. This happens with all the headsets I've tried (all of the same, wired, kind), so it's not a fault or anything. Has anyone tried any non-Microsoft headsets? What did you think?

Yeah, but they could just have increased the max volume of the little amplifier. I'd be able to live with having to change batteries a bit more often. It'd be minuscule compared to vibration and wireless communication anyway.

I think you're right. Not being a drummer or anything, I think the biggest reward, drum training-wise, you'll get is being able to repeat seemingly unrelated patterns with arms and feet. At first you'll resist it, but suddenly something clicks, and it's magical. Also, if you're serious about learning to drum, I would probably take some basic lessons from a drummer to get things like pose and grip right. Sitting in the right position and adjusting the set is key to not cramp up. Adjusting the chair a couple of inches was like night and day for me.