Nightshape

They've learned from the mistakes in Alpha Protocol. Crate have physics, can bounce, roll, explode, implode, become sentient, and are actually one of the main factions in the game. The other, of course, being barrels. Am not impressed with list... Accept for maybe sentiance... Mefink pweehaps dats what Jabby work on.

I like Brennecke. He's always been friendly. I think he linked me to his old website, I'm certain I read some of his code... Some spring physics thingy... Anyways. Hope he adds some interested features!

Will the crates utilise crate 3.0 technology? And and... Will Obsidian be attempting to evolve the crate in any sense of the word? Bog standard crates suck!

I listend to the prodigy for many many hours. It was very loud! Wrote a bit of code too!

You're comparing bad design to bad design. I think having to run off back to town constantly to get health is just as bad as regen health. The former is probably worse actually since it is somewhat punitive. Regardless, I wouldn't have praise for either mechanic. And how does slowtrain suggest the world deals with health? *shrug* There's many variations depending on the game design. Ultimately you reward the player for doing things/movng forward, and you put the rewards in front of them, not behind them. Pretty straightforward really. You'd think wouldn't you, this can work, but in the case of an FPS this actually enforces pure run and gun gameplay, enemies drop health, player pushes forwards. Health regen promotes whack a mole style of shooting... Hiding behind cover allows you to regen health, this allows the AI to try and flank etc... How you give a player health actually fundementally changes the way the player will play, particularly in regards of firefights. If you run and gun with regen, you usually end up dead quickly. Likewise you end up dead if you don't get from behind cover to pick up health packs. So no, it isn't straightforwards at all.

Oh you guys...

You're comparing bad design to bad design. I think having to run off back to town constantly to get health is just as bad as regen health. The former is probably worse actually since it is somewhat punitive. Regardless, I wouldn't have praise for either mechanic. And how does slowtrain suggest the world deals with health?

I must have been playing a different game. In mine they weren't trying to cause world war 3, they were trying to boost there sales in a way that was accidentally going to create ww3. :/ That's what I meant. I need to find a way to replace the awful grenade explosion model. I don't mind most of the graphics in the game, but weak explosions just irritate me. It's not a model.

Me wondering what engine they're to be using.

You seem to be going the extra mile to prove my point. Yeah, it's clear that graphically those games are far ahead of anything that could have been done with the previous generation console. But apart from that, there's nothing that really makes me go 'wow, we couldn't have something like that with the PS2!'. The fidelity wouldn't have been the same on PS2, in terms of physics and AI. I will admit that there haven't been as many wow moments in games with this generation. Most of the advancements have been in graphics and physics, and naturally the PC is way ahead in that dept. Memory limitations on the old machines really made for a different experience in regards to physics, alot of it was prebaked. That's cool though because its all smoke and mirrors. You'd be amazed how little memory AI gets, never mind the cut of a single thread of CPU time.

*sigh* Another hand me down . I'm sure they'll do better with this than they did with AP. But seriously, this doesn't bode well, well unless they're actually going to make some more like IWD, then, well, then I shall smile some and enjoy.

Not wanting to open a really big can of worms, but the same could be said about pretty much every game I've played this year. Really, take out the graphic engine and you've got a game that was perfectly possible to produce for older generation consoles, considering that the design hasn't really changed that much (today everything has regenerating health, but that's about the only thing that has changed..). What you been playing? Dragon Age Mass Effect Fallout 3 A lot of other titles are indies/european lesser budget titles, so they aren't relevant. I've also fiddled a bit with Gears of War 2, which was honestly, a less-than-thrilling title IMHO, but that's just a matter of tastes. I'd say they're getting the best they can out of the consoles on the market... Fallout 3 with the Environments, open world streaming is a tough thing to do on a console. (Terrible animation though, YUK... Bit like AP in that respect). Mass Effect is visually pushing things fairly far, its very polished and stable. Dragon Age runs badly on consoles far as I know. Especially on the PS3. The challenge with all those games is in regards to memory constraints, and on PS3 the blasted GPU, and threading ala using the spu's. I mean sure you can always sqeeze more and more out of a system, but all those games are doing a hell of alot more than AP is. That said none of those games really have good AI . I don't mind the fact that AP is ugly, as much as it's ugly because of apparent ignorance on the dev teams part, particularly in regards to art. HUD clashing with the environment, that's seriously bad and not the kind of thing I expect from a professional outfit. Also, the texture's don't play nice with compression... They look like still camera shots which have been transfered around as jpg's then some terrible grading applied, by the time they're out the other end of the DXT compression they're so borked they're just ruined, and that's before you start to look at the fact that they're extremely low res in places. I can't imagine AP ever suffered from being vertex bound in terms of the geometry, it's extremely simple stuff... What can I say? It really is some of the most consistantly bad art I've seen in a game of this generation. It's almost like whoever sat down and hammered out the specifications for the art team didn't really understand the systems they were working with.

Not wanting to open a really big can of worms, but the same could be said about pretty much every game I've played this year. Really, take out the graphic engine and you've got a game that was perfectly possible to produce for older generation consoles, considering that the design hasn't really changed that much (today everything has regenerating health, but that's about the only thing that has changed..). What you been playing?

Im struggling to finish it. I felt boredom set in after Rome and halfway through Moscow, and now Im just rushing through the rest to see how it ends. Not that I expect the ending to be any good, the whole "evil company wants to start WW3" plot is ridicilous from start to finish. Funny... I'm feeling the same way.

To cut to the chase, Obsidian produced a poor product in regards to every area but the story. I think that it would have been possible to make AP for a previous generation console, that's how much it seems to be utilising the underlaying hardware. Technology is still a limiting factor, I should know I work with these consoles everyday. AP is limited by the ability of the team to deliver a polished, cutting edge, and artistic experience. Whatever the reason, it didn't happen.

To put it in perspective, the recent big seller... RDR, sold more than that in the UK alone. Still, it's likely that AP will shift around 250k units, which isn't so bad...

It isn't great, but considering the bashing by both the reviewers of the world, and also your type -- it's not bad, either. Seriously... That's a bad number regardless of the bashing. Heck, Blur has sold badly in the UK, something like 10k units if I remember correctly, and that was well recieved. 30K world wide isn't even worth talking about. Actual sales figures cost a fortune, and then they're not exact.

30k... If that's world wide... That isn't alot. That's bad, very bad....

Quick answer: NO!

That looks disappointing to me, which is unfortunate, I enjoyed RF:G. Yeah, throwing aliens into the mix... Not so bad if you start out with it, but to do it now... Thats just a bit odd, like a big flag saying "We're out of idea's"

So one of the guys at work, used to work for one of the Edios studio's, he managed to get his hands on the design document, and provided that things haven't changed too much, they've gone back and looked at the first Deus Ex and looking at that, and using that as a template. Personally I'm skeptical, but he seemed fairly convinced that it was going to be awesome. If anything the CGI trailer is freaking wicked.

... I'm tempted to just say... VATS lol. I just want to be clear on the fact that games are infact more versitile than movies, and its simply a matter of sales. A FPS which was turn based could be made, but I doubt it'd sell all that well...

Bulls**t. Alien shooter, and Alien Breed Impact... Are a couple of isometric shooters that spring to mind. If you make a shooter turn based, you get something like Jagged Alliance, which is also isometric. I wouldn't call those games shooter that would be like saying that Fallout was a shooter, just because you could aim a gun. They are called FPS for a reason. Hold on you're actually claiming that a game called Alien Shooter, isn't a shooter... Please. They're called "First Person Shooters", because they're "First Person", much as with books and perspectives in regards of prose. Shooter is generic, and applies to a pleathora of games over the years. You saiid " Games are less versatile, a shooter or action game won't have a isometric view, or have turn based systems.", this is BS. Fallout is an RPG, the combat involves turn based shooting, Fallout 3 is an FPS/RPG, a hybrid.

Bulls**t. Alien shooter, and Alien Breed Impact... Are a couple of isometric shooters that spring to mind. If you make a shooter turn based, you get something like Jagged Alliance, which is also isometric.