alanschu

Halo was the forerunner to copy and paste level design. I enjoyed the levels in Mass Effect. I liked the super cleanliness of the Citadel because the Keepers kept it that way. The bad part of level design was the planet surfaces of sideplanets. Could have been much, much better in that regard.

Lol just preoccupied with FO3 at the moment.

Are people honestly surprised by the "bloat?" The fact that the commands for horses exist in the engine still has very little bearing on Fallout 3. And there's no point in giving someone time and money to remove stuff that isn't going to be used when you can have them working on other stuff. And if an end user tries using it in the console, well then they're stupid and get whatever random **** they deserve. Garbage in, garbage out. Until EA revamped their NBA Live code a few years ago, there was still legacy code for the Sega Genesis lying around. As an end user though, it doesn't really affect you. Some files might be larger on install or something like that, but it's not like you need to worry about any linking issues or compile time issues that would come with bloating the code. Huge chunks of that code isn't even referenced in games anymore. Quickbooks has millions of lines of code because of legacy stuff, because people don't like removing code "just in case." In a game though, I suspect much of the file size comes from resources and art assets and whatnot, rather than unnecessary functions in the executable.

A whole load of nothing. Played some NavyFIELD and Fallout 3 (so far).

Hey that's an Oilers prospect too! Go Eberle!

Fallout 3 is sucking up a lot of time!

Would you blame me!?!

Picked this up the other day and am having a blast. I am a bit disappointed that I seem to have to use the subways to navigated much of the urban areas, but it's been pretty minor. I really get the impression that I am exploring a desolate wasteland. I love looking into the horizon and seeing a vast landscape of blown out buildings. I'm only part way into the main plot (been to Washington Monument). Have helped out the people in Megaton and Big Town.

I have moved on to Fallout 3 now!

Haha, I have also played through it a second time... But I didn't get Fallout 3 for Christmas, so Steam is fired up and d/l right now. I have to beat it before school starts again on the 5th, right??

I'm not really tired to be honest....well, now that I'm not playing I am feeling myself starting to crash. I'll be gone shortly I think haha.

I got Mass Effect for Christmas on the PC. I installed it yesterday about 10 AM or so. I beat it around 1 PM today. 27 straight hours.... haha. Given I was up at 5 AM yesterday, at the time of this posting I've been up for about 36 hours haha. I guess this is a compliment to the game though. I loved the cinematic nature of the game.

Astutely put.

We'll not be constrained by his narrow definition of "CRPG." As for character creation...there's usually a lot of it, depending on which country you choose.

The tech teams were nice flavour I agree. Though I think they were a bit too rigid. I like the idea of being able to focus your technology in different ways if you want, which the tech teams didn't really allow. I think Johan said in one of the threads that this is not the case. However, I do know that in HOI2 air units prioritize areas that are currently in combat.

Due to some weirdness on my computer, my campaign has unfortunately kicked the bucket... I will be starting a new one though, which will work out better since I'll be able to give a more realtime recap of events rather than trying to remember things that I had done a few months earlier in the game time. I'll also do things differently, and try to not use foresight to my advantage such as stationing troops on Guadalcanal before the Japanese do, and recognizing that air power is devastating to unprotected fleets (meaning I'll try combat patrols with surface ships and whatnot). I'll be going more in depth as well, and will even consider [sound] tactical advice from the peanut gallery I am planning to give reports probably every couple weeks of the war. Sorry for the delays. School and whatnot caused a bit of a problem with the updates, but I'll restart and keep you guys posted. Since I won't be posting as much from memory, I'll be better able to give more detailed updates.

It was greed by Sundin. Just the same greed you and I have when we look for our jobs. I don't fault him for it.

I have been following this. Was giving you until the new year to start a post on it I am looking forward to improved naval battles. I know carriers are the keys to success in naval battles, but they were I win buttons with invincible CAG that was a poor abstraction. I like the increased level of detail for the divisions. I look forward to creating artillery regiments and whatnot, as well as army groups. I hope that the HQ system they have planned works out well. Having von Manstein directing the theater of operations in France, with Rommel as a subunit busting up a storm and running amok with his panzer division sounds like fun! I like the improvements to research and development, combined with the gearing bonus of production. Building lots of tanks improves your economy's ability to research and produce tank improvements. The general and specialized technologies (for aircraft) I like as well. It seemed a bit absurd in HOI2 that I could have the best interceptor planes in the world, but I'd still have to take years to make a quality air superiority fighter plane. I am curious how they will deal with allied research, or research in general. I'd kind of like the idea that as a particular tech gets researched, every country that researches it makes it a little easier for other countries to research it (kind of like what Civilization does), as research knowledge becomes more well known.

BWAHAHA I didn't expect this to happen hahaha. It was just a joke. (and taks was right btw, I did estimate it without a calculator, since 2^20 is roughly 1 million, since it's the definition of a megabyte, I can estimate that 2^18 is roughly 1,000,000/2^2 or 250k) Anyways, didn't realize it was such a sore spot haha

February and March The next couple of months were pretty quiet, relatively speaking. Though there were some good victories for the Allied forces. American troops are en route to Guadalcanal, and there is a reinforcement of Port Moresby. Both of these moves are in response to the loss of Rabaul towards the end of January. The Dutch East Indies campaign is going as expected...poorly. The southern tip of Borneo is now being assaulted, which has the fringe benefit of allowing my light cruisers and destroyers to make hit and run attacks on the landing ships. Several hits have been scored, and every transport sunk is one the Japanese can no longer use. Japanese forces have landed on Sumatra (Palembang) and Java Island (Batavia) and Dutch air and land forces are attempting to push them back. In the biggest victory of the region so far, when the Island of Bali was being assaulted and bombarded, Swordfish torpedo bombers from CV Illustrious, CV Indomitable, and CVL Hermes were able to score 4 torpedo hits on a Japanese BB. A sub operating off of Balikpapan reported seeing a BB capsize and sink several days later. Troops and supplies continue to be convoyed in to Australia, and India has fortified their border and building up significant LBA in the region. The Philippines continues to be under assault. The remaining ships in Manila have departed, scattering like sticks in the wind hoping to avoid Japanese air patrols. About 80% of the ships (mostly cargo ships) were successful in evacuating. B-17s continue to operate out of Manila, and continue to score hits on Japanese transports on almost a daily basis. Supplies are starting to run low both in Manila and Clark Field however. In the South/Central Pacific, CVTF continue to make rotating patrols near the Truk sea base. Some significant attacks on the port there saw several capital ship hits. Mostly CAs, but CV Junyo was in port at one point, and 8-10 bomb hits were reported on the vessel. She should be out of commission for quite some time. At the same time, a small Japanese CVTF approached the island, and both TF launched air attacks against each other. The Japanese attack with rebuffed, scoring no hits on CV Yorktown. On the other hand, Japanese CVL Shoho was hit by a few bombs, hurting her capabilities. CV Saratoga came in to relieve CV Yorktown, and saw another 15-20 bomb hits on CVL Shoho. Further patrols failed to detect her, and she is presumed to be sunk. In the meantime, additional hits on cruisers and CV Junyo at Truk commenced. Towards the end of the month, most ships returned to port. Allied High Command has plans to refit most of the American Navy, equipping their ships with improved AA capabilities, as well as Radar. So far the prognosis is pretty optimistic!

But will it let us estimate 2^18 without any calculators or anything?

Define revolutionary. System Shock 2 isn't revolutionary. It's a sequel! Deus Ex isn't that good, as it's just an evolution as well. Don't even get me started on how crappy Planescape: Torment is. It didn't add anything new to gaming. As much as I loved playing through Half-Life 2, it didn't leave the same wow factor that Half-Life 1 did. Probably because of Half-Life 1. Exactly. At times I wonder if some of the Half-Life hatred I see is simply because it's popular, and it's in vogue to bash the popular stuff.

The other big one that came out at that time was Unreal. I remember it being sort of Unreal vs. Half-Life. Both games had a fair bit of hoopla to them (though it wasn't until I read a review for Half-Life that I knew what Half-Life was, but at the time I wasn't really into PC gaming). As for whether or not Half-Life would have come out if Quake hadn't existed...I don't care. Quake does exist, and Valve liked the engine, licensed it, and modified the tar out of it. As for the progression of FPS games, I definitely put Duke Nukem 3D on the next evolution after Doom. It created a persona for the character, had interesting levels that we were able to related to (well, on the Earth levels anyways). It had basic scripted events which were pretty cool at the time. The sounds were great, and it actually added the ability to jump and voluntarily move in the Z-axis. It had style and substance, and as a bonus was FUN! I remember hearing about a "Doom killer" and scoffed at it, but Duke3D delivered. Environments that could be interacted with (often in humorous ways) and so forth. When I heard about Quake, I was hoping for a Duke Nukem 3D killer. Quake had kickass deathmatch, but the single player game was boring and uninspired, and while I was too young to truly appreciate that it was a fully 3D polygonal engine, I preferred sprites because quite frankly I found the low polygon characters to look rather foolish. Sure a necessary step to what we have today, but even games like GoldenEye and Turok for the N64 weren't games that made me think "ooo, the graphics for this game are awesome" especially when you got up close to the characters. I played a variety of FPS games...but ultimately when I first got my grubby little paws on Half-Life, I couldn't stop playing it until I was done. My cousin that started watching me play it about halfway through was equally enamored just by watching me play it. Add in pretty much the most successful mod of all time (as well as some great times with TFC, since I didn't get a chance to play TF for Quake 1), it's quite the recipe for success. I agree with Crash Girl that many of the games we see today are heavily influenced by Half-Life, which is in part why we look back on Half-Life and go "meh."

Ultima VII's dialogue tree was essentially a graphical version of the dialogue from Ultima VI. Though because we were no longer typing, we no longer needed to remember the key words required to have discussions with other NPCs (nor could we cheat and just type in the words if we already knew them). At times Ultima VII makes fun of the keyword system, such as when you talk with the actor that is playing The Avatar and he says his most common words are "Name" "Job" and "Bye." Dialogue was still very much a keyword based system, as it was in every Ultima game preceding it. I also remember party members getting upset with me for breaking the virtues (particularly stealing since I was prone to do it), in fact moreso than in Ultima VII (where NPCs typically only got mad if you moved something that did not belong to you...even if it meant moving the invisible caltrops out of the way so half of your party wouldn't die walking into the treasure cave). I didn't play Ultima VI nearly as long as I did Ultima VII (since I didn't own it), so I can't comment a whole lot on the world interaction. I know you could bake bread and whatnot in Ultima VII; I don't know if you could do that in Ultima VI. I do remember having everyone chill at the Blue Boar Inn, however, eating a meal (which I could do since it was possible to control each individual character with in a solo mode). NPCs had schedules and would go to bed, go to work, and all sorts of fun stuff like that. They'd lock their doors when they weren't home and so on. The big thing about Ultima VII is it was now a mouse driven interface. Outside of that it was very much Ultima VI with improved graphics, and a change to a real time environment (which was definitely a good thing, as the world otherwise stood still unless The Avatar did something). As for NOLF. That game was great too. It's sales are obviously lower because it doesn't have what Half-Life has that extends the life of FPS games, was a multiplayer mode (and in the case of HL: mods) that captured the attention of the players. While it's possible for a poor game to have good sales numbers due to hype and so forth (look at Driv3r), rarely is that success sustained. Half-Life may just be a Doom clone (a point a whole heartedly disagree with), but it does it really well and with a style and presentation better than other games at the time. But if you want to get super picky, you could make arguments that any FPS game is just an evolution of Doom (or Wolfenstein 3D if you prefer). Does a game need huge sales to be considered a good game? Of course not. Many of us consider Planescape: Torment or the first two Fallout games to be excellent games, and none of them were huge sellers. But if a game is able to keep selling copies for a significant number of years even if that game, as you yourself say, hasn't exactly aged well, it seems likely that it did something right. At the very least argue that much of its sales were a result of mods like Counterstrike and Day of Defeat before simply stating "Pfft, Doom clone that's overrated." As for how Half-Life hasn't aged very well, I am willing to bet that if you were to take someone and show them Half-Life: Black Mesa when it comes out, people will be impressed by it. Regardless of whether or not they played through the original Half-Life. In fact, I think the fact that a group of modders are willing to spend time recreating the original experience in Source is a testament to just how highly regarded the original Half-Life is. People don't seem to be out there creating mods that recreate the original Doom or anything like that.

He was off to a slow start I would say. Then he turned up the heat: http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/players/3637/g...AvE5gxvU.FivLYF