Marek

The award for best install sequence goes to...

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Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn!

Do you guys still remember that? The setup process was like the in-game interface, with a female computer voice and funky animated progress bar (there were three seperate ones) and holy jees it was just GREAT. It was still in the DOS era, so there were no graphical OS elements or any desktop to be seen. It was probably the one setup that required sound calibration before anything else. It completely put you into the mood for the game.

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I liked the broken sword one that let you play breakout while it was installing a (in those days) massive 200 megabytes!

More installations should have stuff to keep you occupied while they run; a pretty picture slide show just doesn't cut it.

The Operation Flashpoint install, while bland, had some cool 50's style radio announcements and music playing through the sequence. cool.

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I hate fancy instal mumbo-jumbo. It could be because my CD-RWRWRRWWRRWWW is five years old and doesn't converse fast enough that I get skippy, dragged-out music during musical instalations and the instalations last twice as long as they should. It is so fucking annoying. There should be a no-music option.

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Command & Conquer : Tiberian Sun

just as cool as the tiberian dawn one, it had the same "technology" feel to it, along with some excellent newspaper articles (even that had a hi-tech feel to it) telling us about the new units for the GDI & NOD.

of course, when EA Pacific took over, the installs went right back to being the normal InstallSheild crap. damn, i miss westwood :(

SiN

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EA Pacific is excused though given that Tiberian Sun was such a letdown, and Generals was actually a good game (albeit nothing like the previous C&C).

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Predictably, I loved the Grim Fandango installation process. It had Tim Schafer in it.

It's the only install process I actually remember of any game.

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Dare I ask... are there any games besides the C&C games that even qualify for "best install sequence?" I don't remember any. I loved the original C&C installer...

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I don't know; like Screwtape, I really enjoyed the Broken Sword one.

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Dare I ask... are there any games besides the C&C games that even qualify for "best install sequence?" I don't remember any. I loved the original C&C installer...

There are plenty that make an effort, but very few worth shouting about! Red Alert 2 (for Windows, obviously) shouts at you and generally annoys you with endless "top secret sssssh, enter your serial number government codes here!" messages. The Windows installation itself tells you at length about how much you're going to enjoy battling your way through endless 'helpful' WinXP features, trying to figure out how to turn them all off. Flight Unlimited 2 had some pretty pictures of planes, along with various air-traffic control voices, to get you in the mood...

But who really cares?! You're going to see these sequences about three times, max. What you really need, if the game insists on having excruciatingly long load times, is something entertaining during those (that preferably doesn't slow the loading itself down). Skidmarks 2 on the Amiga is pretty much the only game I can remember offering this - it allowed you to play Pong (either by yourself, controlling both paddles, or with a friend) while things were churning their way out of its many, many floppy disks. The same sort of idea would be ideal nowadays - I'm sure a quick black-and-white game of Pong couldn't possibly make UT2004 take any longer to load (is there a longer time than eternity? Oh, ho ho).

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Blair Witch Vol.1: Rustin Parr had the creepiest installation interim I've thus far seen. Basically a slideshow of some of the ghouls you meet and places you visit, but the soundtrack was chilling - a little girl crying, leaving echoes. The load screen was simple yet highly effective - a nearly indiscernible image of Parr's house deep at night, while the moon's lunar phase acted as a load meter.

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I have to go with marek and jake here, there is only one contender and that is C&C tyberian dawn. No discussion possible :)

All the following C & C games tried to emulate that but none of them got it right.

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I loved the C&C install programs (Ah, how I miss setting up sound cards) and the Broken Sword one, although the file copying hogged the system so much it skipped and was unplayable. Did anyone ever complete it before it was installed?

My all-time favorite install sequence is from a ripped game I installed once, back when pirated games was only available to me from people who knew people who reportedly had hundreds of CDs with games on them! Well, anyway, the game was a Class rip, and the guy who made the installer wisely chose not to play some lame mod file while the game installed (and this was a long install, with first extracting all the files, and then decompressing all the little sound files. Anyone remember this?), and instead looped a sound clip of him, this crackly-voiced teen, saying directly, and too loud, into his fifty cent microphone -- and I'm serious -- "Class rules".

Now that's an install sequence!

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I was talking about the original C&C, not any of the followups. I suspect those are all similar, but C&C 1 was the first game I'd seen with an install program that more resembled some weird amalgomation of the game's UI and some escapee from the early 90s demo scene than an installer and it totally blew me away. I guess the later C&C games followed suit but that ruled at the time. I'm sure if I saw it now it would actually be nothing more than some 3d spinning "metal" things and colorful progress bars, but I was surprised by it more than anything before or since when I first popped that CD in.

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I remember the Battlezone (the new one, not the old one) installation. It crashed because of its funkyness.

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It was the sub title for the original Command & Conquer 1.

Supposedly it was going to be a trilogy ... Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun and Tiberian Dusk. Alas, the C&C franchise has split off into things like Red Alert and Generals that are good games but they have nothing to do with the C&C universe.

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Dare I ask... are there any games besides the C&C games that even qualify for "best install sequence?" I don't remember any. I loved the original C&C installer...

Nox had quite a good one as well...

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I can still remember the funky voice of the E.V.A. say something along the lines of "please examine the readme file for last changes and notes"

That was also so cool about the installer, it said most things to you instead of merely showing it on screen. And when the installer was done it seamlessly went over to the intro movie of the game. And before you knew it you were 5 hours further :)

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It was the sub title for the original Command & Conquer 1.

Supposedly it was going to be a trilogy ... Tiberian Dawn, Tiberian Sun and Tiberian Dusk.

Completely off-topic, but the third was Tiberian Twilight actually... EA Pacific was going to make it (and had a bunch of concept art done) but they shelved it for Generals instead. And the original Red Alert was a prequel to Tiberian Dawn... (from the Soviet ending at least) RA2 was made by a different team (Westwood Pacific, which became EA Pacific, which became EALA) and thus sucked.

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I don't remember the "Tiberium Dawn" title anywhere on the US edition of C&C1... maybe I missed it. I was a lot less observant at that point.

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I got it! its

For last minute changes and notes, please examine the readme file

That was a memorable quote cause that meant your adventure with

Captain arsewipe and his pocket army
would be about to begin :)

If you want I can type over that paragraph as to my that writer called C & c captain arsewipe and his pocket army, but now I'm just being lazy

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I hate fancy instal mumbo-jumbo [...] It is so fucking annoying. There should be a no-music option.

Agreed. Any installer should be simple. And instead of adding music and custom interfaces, they should let me choose the name of the start menu folder (I think probably less than 50% of installers do this).

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Completely off-topic, but the third was Tiberian Twilight actually... EA Pacific was going to make it (and had a bunch of concept art done) but they shelved it for Generals instead. And the original Red Alert was a prequel to Tiberian Dawn... (from the Soviet ending at least) RA2 was made by a different team (Westwood Pacific, which became EA Pacific, which became EALA) and thus sucked.

nope, that isnt quite right. yes, the third part was the be called Tiberian Twilight. and RA was the prequel to C&C1. and RA2 was made by westwood pacific. but why EA-Pacific made RA2 is another story ...

... im not quite sure how that happend, but im pretty sure it was due to Westwood being sick of making RTS's ... they wanted to branch out a bit more. so they took a break, and let Westwood Pacific make RA2 (one of the ceo's i forget which one, choose the team as well). RA2 was a good game, not quite as good as RA1 IMO.

so anyway, Westwood proceed to make a bunch of flops : C&C Renegade and Earth & Beyond. this is while Westwood Pacific (now EA Pacific) are making hits, RA2 and C&C:Generals.

Westwood are all ready to finally get down to making Tiberian Twilight (not EAP), using the Generals engine ... except EA isnt interested anymore ... infact they arnt interested in Westwood at all. EA-Pacific, they thought, does a fine job of making C&C games, so screw westwood.

EA, those bastards, shut down Westwood and give the C&C rights to EA-Pacific. EAP are a fine development studio ... generals was a good rts, but it was a terrible C&C game ... it took everything i loved about C&C, and tossed it out the window (my main gripe is the warcraft-esque interface, which i cant stand)

and its such a pity too ... ive read old interviews with one of the ceo's of westwood (Brett something-or-the-other) saying that C&C wouldnt be a trilogy, it would go as far as 4-6 parts ... im really gonna miss the old "Tiberian x" branch in the C&C universe.

SiN

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Although Red Alert was a prequel, it really felt like it was at least half intended as a seperate brand. The way Kane was written into the story was a bit silly. (That said, when I first played Red Alert and first saw Kane make a brief appearance I was pretty much hyperventilating.)

They created such a great universe with C&C1. Kane was a *great* villian, the cutscenes were grand and often humerous and the whole backstory about the tiberium added a sense of mystery. Then somehow C&C2 messed it all up. C&C: Generals is possibly the best C&C game in terms of gameplay and balancing, but its setting is ridiculously bland compared to the original series.

C&C: Generals is addictive as fuck when played over a LAN. I know pretty much every pixel of that game.

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They created such a great universe with C&C1. Kane was a *great* villian, the cutscenes were grand and often humerous and the whole backstory about the tiberium added a sense of mystery. Then somehow C&C2 messed it all up. C&C: Generals is possibly the best C&C game in terms of gameplay and balancing, but its setting is ridiculously bland compared to the original series.

what exactly was so bad about Tiberian Sun? i thought it was amazing ... great missions, good story (for as far as i played anyway), great fmv's, excellent balancing, and a really cool/immersive universe. whats not to like?

and if u didnt find the "Daily Execution" cutscenes hilarious, ur sick in the mind i tell u! :)

SiN

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