sLiPdIsCo

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Posts posted by sLiPdIsCo


  1. Ok so the next server event should be a server-wide capture the flag, with the flag being Jake.

     

    Whoever or whichever team has control of Jake at the end of a pre-decided period wins.

     

    Jake streams from the idle thumbs twitch channel and can do whatever he likes. People may choose to give him things to defend himself from capture.

     

    I like this idea. 

     

    So who shot me in the face at the end of the stream?


  2. from podacst, about Steam trades:

     

     

    They already did it. A year ago. I'm dissapointed in you, guys. It's called Steam Market and was mentioned in the email itself, you sell stuff for money going into your steam wallet and there is a 5% fee that goes to Valve and 10% fee to the game.

     

    Also, Valve totally monitors trading market since it started in TF2 several years ago. There were examples of some item that became rare and super-expensive on trades being reintroduced in new crates, to level the market a bit, etc.  I guess, you don't know about the earbuds, by the way? (And some other promo items from the early days)

     

    As the trade market was developing, there were a lot of 3rd party trading websites created, going far enough to have automated bots that could friend you and trade you item you wanted. In the last few months, Valve touched that subject too - with Steam Trade Offers and recently - official Trade Forums. 

     

    Jeez, i can (and want to) tell you so much about this whole steam/valve/tf2/dota2 economy stuff.

     

    I've made around $400 on the market from just a couple TF2 weapons.


  3. Sean, Rising Storm is the Pacific Theatre expansion for Red Orchestra 2. Like BF:1943 it has more interesting sound design than more typical shooters. The Marines and Imperial Army are highly asymmetrical in their abilities and weaponry. This makes weapon reports crucial low level tactical information. In a game that has friendly fire and one hit kills knowing the difference between an M1 Garand and Type 99 rifle gives lifesaving battlefield awareness.

    The audio also feeds into the macro strategic layer and map flow. The maps are rolling objective based, attack/defend affairs; when A and B are captured the spawns will shift and C and D will be contested. Spawn are also wave based, meaning that there is a natural ebb and flow to the conflict. This means that the audio periodically becomes harder to read and generally more stressful, especially as Marines close in on the Japanese with their cacophonous automatic weapons. The cheapness of human life and swiftness of death also means a full blooded assault will often be stopped in its tracks, which will lead to a sudden, unsettling quietness.

    I haven't even mentioned the dynamic barks and score. What I'm saying is I like the sounds the video game makes.

     

    I love this game and was going to bring this up. Hearing Japanese soldiers speak on the other side of a wall and giving their position away is the best.


  4. A lot of the things I saw the Thumbs do in the livestream didn't work in the demo, like the daisy-chained fuel tanks and the struts between sections. Also, the node mapping was dodgy, with near-perfect burns never quite getting the projected results. It basically felt like playing an incomplete, broken version of the game I just saw streamed, which accounts for my expectations.

     

    I mean, I think I'm still going to get it, probably even before the end of April. But that's because I'm choosing to privilege the livestream over the demo.

     

    The demo on the website is just a version from over a year ago. Sounds like it's the same on Steam.


  5. For those who have bought a development kit

    http://www.polygon.com/2013/3/18/4118218/doom-3-no-longer-included-in-oculus-rift-deal

     

    Doom 3 no longer included you can log in and request a steam voucher instead

    TF2 added support a couple days ago. 

     

    The barrier that needs to be breached is in manufacturing and cost IMO not necessarily in some kind of social acceptability. It's still very expensive for a very niche product (one without a lot of software support) and I think it will continue to be that way for at least the next 2-3 years. I'm sure something like this will show up in a big way eventually and I don't doubt this is the first really recognizable step. I just don't expect this to explode out to become the dominant form of game playing in the next 3-5 years. 

     

    Someone mentioned it earlier (in a sort of condescending way) but I don't know if a device like this is in line with how modern peoples attention works at all. It's going to need to scale a pretty high bar in terms of the fidelity of the experience in order to get people to focus their attention solely on that and be willing to "plug up" their senses to their local environment. I think occullus is exciting as all hell but I think like most technological advancements people are thinking well beyond where we actually are. Due to that I think lots of very smart people become blinded to "black swan" technologies that show up out of left field.

    Remember it's just dev kits that are shipping out for the kickstarter. Hard to knock something for having no software with no dev kits out there.

    I've heard $300 for the eventual retail product which in my opinion is pretty reasonable. 

     

    With the large amount of positive reaction from the press I'm super interested in it, but I'm terrified that my house will be robbed while using it.


  6. Remember the Novint Falcon? Portal with the Oculus Rift and Novint Falcon support would probably be cool, but also a total barf-fest.

    Didn't Chris mention once on the podcast that he had a Novint Falcon?

     

    As far as how Oculus will work with TF2 I imagine it'll be like head tracking in Arma. You can control where your head is looking with the Rift but your cross hairs are still controlled by your mouse. If that's how it is it could be a HUGE advantage and might convince me to get one. Plus, I want that hat. I need more hats.


  7. Oh, well shit, listening to the discussion again Sean actually flat out says there's something mechanical about the game that makes people what they are when playing it.

     

    I really, really disagree. I think people are managing frustration with loss, even casually, way too poorly.

    I really think it's just that a simple mistake can mean so much more in a LOMA. Me buying the wrong gun in round 2 of a CS match isn't gonna fuck me a couple rounds later. Making a simple mistake early on in DOTA can fuck you later on.


  8. Great episode, I really needed this tonight. I've had a rough couple days and needed the distraction and laughs. 

    By the way, the LOMA discussion about competitiveness, I'm very much of the same sort of mindset that Jake is with those games. Competitiveness in video games is not new. When I ran around in Counter-Strike ten years ago, if I fucked up I wasn't getting chewed out like this game was the main event. There were exhibition matches (which was playing whenever) and then clan matches that were very regulated on who could play and spectate. People were able to parse out the competitive behavior from playing for the sake of playing. In DotA and LoL there is a heavy atmosphere where every match is a competitive match (and I mean the negative kind of competitive). Why didn't these communities foster an establishment with exhibition matches and clan matches?

    The thing is that in CS one player could screw up and the rest of the team could easily make up for it. In a LOMA one person's simple mistake can cost everyone the match. Also, a round of CS is 2 minutes a LOMA round is closer to 30.