AwesomeOcelot

A lot of these games don't get released. I found Halo: CE and Halo 2 to be mediocre at best when they were released, I don't really see the point now as the FPS market was saturated then, and it's even more so now.

Elanee (NWN2) would have been great as a creepy stalker, I think her possessiveness should have been played up, I didn't want to be hit over the head with it, but I think it could have been introduced in subtle ways. e.g. She really sides with everything the PC does at first, to an uncomfortable extent. Then she tries to isolate you from your other party members. Then she starts being abusive if you stray or side with other party members. Bishop (NWN2) was offensively bad as a character, and I don't mean his alignment. I don't think he could get any more corny even if he always ended sentences with "muhahahaha" and tied damsels to rail road tracks. He always struck me more as an angsty teenager in dialogue, just saying random "evil" things while in a party of do gooders slaying evil things, it never really made sense. I absolutely hate goofy side kicks, the worst examples of this are probably Grobnar (NWN2) and Kang (Jade Empire). Khelgar (NWN2) and Alistair (DA:O) sometimes verge on this.

I read it, it's just that "pushing for" sounds like fobbing off, and you'd expect the devkit to have the same, if not possibly more, not less memory.

PS4 controller sounds a lot like the OUYA controller, if it really does have the general shape of the DualShock but a touchpad where start and select are then that's virtually the same. Sony would be foolish to have 4GB when Microsoft has 8GB, it's always the first to go when cost cutting but memory makes such a difference. If Sony are going for a more advanced GPU they're obviously going for a later release date. Since they're produced around the same time for around the same cost they're probably going to be similar enough that software is going to be the difference, with the PS3 performance often suffered as developers got to grips with the hardware, but that won't be the case this time. I can't see much effort spent on making multi-platform releases better on the Playstation, because they'll be negligible to the consumer anyway. Any news on how games are loaded? One of the reasons I mainly gamed on PC since 2000 is that loading times on consoles are so slow, if I use my SSD there are no loading times, and most games on my HDD are really fast. I wouldn't mind a SSD peripheral to just cache, it wouldn't have to split the market, just make it a dumb cache. It's interesting how we are seeing that these companies realized their mistakes, but at the time they stoutly defended Cell, in-order execution, 512MB memory.

People seem to have short memories, when the Xbox 360 launched the GPU was equivalent to the high tier of PC GPU although people would mostly be choosing 512MB memory which is more than the total memory Xbox 360 had, and the PC GPU memory would be clocked higher. By the time the PS3 launched the PC was already ahead. There was no leap in graphics compared to PC, but there was quite a big leap from the previous consoles, and that's where maybe there are a few doubts this time around.

You're talking about something else. If we're going down the shader and performance road, PS3 hasn't got much to complain about compared to PC, but I wasn't referring to that, I was referring to basic functionality that's fundamental to the PC platform. I give some slack to developers on PC for this because they have to target a range of systems, and I give them slack for PS3 because its a bitch to develop for, and that's really Sony's fault.

I don't know but I also think there is air of superciliousness and entitlement coming from your opinion. It sounds like you are expecting PC products to automatically be better than Console products or you won't support them. You remind me of the French nobility before the revolution. I am not trying to insult you, I am just being honest. Because PC is the automatically better platform, not because I expect the PC to be treated differently. It's the developers that have shown disdain for the PC as a platform if their game is not better than the console version, because they have not shown the platform the respect they did for the others. Console gamers would not put up with this. Obviously there's still a judgement of value to the task, and that's the point, these things are of such little cost but of such great value on the PC that it's quite clear that these people couldn't give less of a **** about the PC a gaming platform. There's many games on PC that are way better with a gamepad. Gamepads and joysticks have been with PC gaming for as long as it has existed, they're not a console thing. That's one of the things that makes PC gaming better, for RTS and FPS, mouse and keyboard is a million times better, but for other games gamepad is better, I wouldn't attempt to play racing or flight simulators with a keyboard.

That's rarely a problem, and I don't think Dark Souls is in the same class as things like Dead Space, it was never meant as a PC game and the developers are clearly devoid of PC development experience, I'm surprised it even exists. In this case people shouldn't complain about the effort, but question the decision for this to be the way they brought Dark Souls to the PC. Maybe going about it the way Double Fine brought Psychonauts to Mac OSX might have been the way to go. It's fine for a game that operates on the assumption of analogue movement to require a controller, as Dustforce requires digital input like a keyboard. The thing is there's no point in terms of development in requiring a specific peripheral, it doesn't exactly take much work to support general types of input. There's games like Beyond Good and Evil and Fable The Lost Chapters where I'd like the option of using a controller. FPS on the other hand should use a mouse and keyboard, it's a silly notion to use a gamepad, not interested at all.

We've had this thread before. In principle I think it's a good idea but I thought Dragon Age: Origins did it poorly, I didn't really care about the origins, it did feel rushed, like they didn't really put much effort into them. I prefer Arcanum's style, where you develop the back story of your character, but then I prefer that type of RPG, I felt in Dragon Age: Origins and the Neverwinter Nights games that I was always closely following a very linear narrative instead of being placed in a world to explore like older RPGs.

It's inherently a better experience if they do their jobs properly and with pride, instead of sloppiness, incompetence, and laziness. It's not like I'm asking for something beyond the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 versions in terms of work, they work hard to target those different platforms, design around the different interfaces, I expect to see the same level of care in the PC version. They've decided that they're going to plan and design their games around two consoles, and I've decided to consume other products. We're focusing on a small segment of gaming here anyway, they're titles that could have been console exclusives in the past. PC gaming is bigger than console gaming, PC gaming in revenue has consistently rivalled consoles in terms of traditional sales of games (retail and digital), but with MMO and Free-to-Play PC gaming is the biggest player in "core" gaming, and has the biggest install base if you just count the amount of computers with discrete DirectX 10+ graphics.

It's not entitled, they're a company making products. If they don't want to support PC properly, and do lazy ports, of course I'm not going to pay full price for it, especially since I can buy better games that are made for PC. Since when is choosing to not buy an inferior product entitlement? Some of the **** being pulled looks more like contempt than laziness or incompetence, textures, key remapping, and FOV specifically.

It's more like 4 days and since they've almost got $40k in the last 2 it's pretty much a certainty. When I heard "tablet" I was completely uninterested it. I can stomach point and click games that are tablet friendly, although that usually means a bad PC interface it almost undoubtedly means a bad ARPG. Free-to-play is also something I'm uninterested in, it usually means "spend more than a normal game" to get a comparable experience, and some games are losing a lot in terms of aesthetic and design, it has the same problems as the bad forms of DLC. I like the idea of Kickstarters for Linux support, as it's clearly is low priority for developers, but it's something Linux users would be willing to pay for.

I agree to some extent, some games more than others. Stretch goals like platform support, modding tools, paying developers more, I think should have priority in some genres of games. I wasn't a fan of the dungeons levels and extra classes as stretch goals in Project Eternity, I think designers should have control about that. In terms of the dungeon, you can just make each level smaller, so you have some room to manoeuvre. I think RPGs are different in the way they scale to other types of games, adding more writers and more programmers scripting to.flesh out Wasteland 2 and Project Eternity isn't necessarily going to make a RPG bloated, it's going to make it awesome. 6 axis shooters within a large universe like Elite and Star Citizen will also scale really well, you're not going to ever fill up that world too much by adding too many content creators. The Defense Grid team did a great and realistic campaign in terms of stretch goals, their model wouldn't have resulted in the problems Andy Schatz worries about. I hope people take note of that kind of planning, and apply it to future Kickstarter projects. Double Fine Adventure is a classic example of not being able to deal with going above expectations, at least as a campaign. Double Fine I think just said "you trust us", we;ll do something with this money, and for the most part I and other backers trust them. I don't know whether it's possible, but I'd like developers to stop the stretch goals when they're not sensible any more and just say, we'll use spill over for the next totally DRM-free project.

Wildman: Video Update #5: Mod tools and Project Mercury I'm really enjoying Chris Taylor's unfiltered nature, he said a lot of funny and stupid things in the Matt Chat video. It's definitely something, I just hope other people enjoy it as much as I do.

. He confirmed he was aiming for more than the goal, $2m at a minimum, so as to not have to lay off people. I don't think going in with expectations of almost double your goal is the right spirit with crowdfunding. Chris said the successful projects rode a "wave", and that's correct, but the reason Wildman didn't isn't because the wave dissipated, Pathfinder: Online, Elite:Dangerous, and Star Citizen proved appetite is still there for a particular type of campaign.

I knew what it was when I backed it a week ago. I thought it was pretty clear. Guess I was in the minority? It wasn't clear at all from the KickStarter page or updates, he did talk about some of the same things in interviews but didn't give specifics and the time scale was mentioned in the comments by a dev. What he laid out in update 6 simply was not there on Kickstarter, that's why update 6 exists. The prototype video in update 2 showed MOBA style AI controlled allies beating on one structure, but that's anything but clear. Confirmation bias exists.

From the prototype video, it's currently looking exactly like a MOBA game like DOTA or LoL, RTS controls of a hero like in Warcraft 3, but your units spawn and are AI controlled. Unlike MOBA games, you place your own structures to spawn AI allies. If you've played a MOBA game you should be able to understand this game, and if you've played Warcraft 3 it's not a big leap to understand a MOBA game. The RPG element is basically just that your hero behaves like a character in Torchlight or Diablo in terms of equipment, items, skills, and progression, where as Warcraft 3 or DOTA there's a lot less of that. There are quite a few high quality free MOBA games (League of Legends, Super Monday Night Combat), another one is coming out 2nd of Feb by the people who made Tribes: Ascend, it's called SMITE. Chris Taylor doesn't want to say this game is like a MOBA game, because there's so many of them about, and he wants to play up the differences, which there are quite a few large ones. MOBA and Tower defence/attack games are a sub genre of RTS, so a lot of their elements are RTS. This is the natural progression of MOBA and RTS games, Dawn of War II had stronger RPG elements than Warcraft 3, I think this takes it further. It seems like every game out has RPG elements now whether that's RTS, FPS, or Action Adventure, and I'm fine with that.

They also apparently had a bunch of projects in development that got canceled very recently. Yeah, they said a project got cancelled a month away from beta that they had been working on for years. It's almost becoming impossible to be an independent developer without also being your own publisher, they'll manage to sink any developer given enough time.

After 11 days of the campaign Chris Taylor has finally explained what Wildman is, I think it sounds good and something new. It's primarily a RTS with light RPG elements, you've got a campaign map linking battle maps, you carry over items, levelling, and captured unit type production from the battle map to the campaign map where you can then use them in subsequent battle maps. The gameplay, think RTS sub-genre, think tower defence (Defense Grid, Orcs Must Die), tower attack (Gratuitous Tank Battles), and MOBA (League of Legends, Defense of the Ancients) but you build structures for attacking units, you've got a powerful hero like Warcraft 3 or DOTA but even more like an ARPG character in Dungeon Siege or Torchlight. It's not about cavemen, they're aiming for prehistory to the middle of the medieval period. I don't think this decision is completely unrelated to working on Age of Empires Online. I don't think they've done much work on this kind of progression, they've only shown assets and concept art for the "caveman" period. This could produce a lot of variety and depth into the game. Video Update #4: How to Fit an RTS Into an Action-RPG The funding has completely stalled on this, for a few hours on Wednesday Kicktraq said the pledges were -$125. They've added new tiers for boxed collectors addition. I don't think they'll get to the total, they've taken too long to explain what the game is, they had massive lay offs (which should have happened before the campaign), and Chris Taylor publicly gave up on the campaign. So yeah, you probably couldn't run a worse Kickstarter campaign, but the people involved are game dev veterans, the concept is good. If you complain about the industry not producing new IP, new concepts, publishers, or DRM pitch in with trivial non-reward amounts.

They think that Dell is still a formidable player and asset to Windows based laptop/desktop/tablet revenue, they're just backing them. Windows licenses aren't that much for PC manufacturers, Microsoft is interested in maintaining its monopoly, it doesn't want to harm that. They're not going to undercut other manufacturers by much if anything, they didn't do that with the Surface, Google also didn't because they're both relying on the other manufacturers, they don't want them to suddenly look into Ubuntu for desktop and drop Windows RT entirely.

Game development is specialized as is much of application development, you couldn't just swap the people who work at Autodesk for the people work at Adobe, or the people who work on MS Office for the people who work on Windows. Some of them could work on both, others could if given enough time although they wouldn't necessarily be as good as an experienced developer, but some would not be able to. Someone writing database software isn't going to just be able to jump right into writing shaders.

Uplay is not one time activation, it's like Steam. You can login then go offline, but then you don't get multiplayer or updates. When I installed it, it installed a plugin in 4 browsers without my permission, this plugin has had incredibly bad security vulnerabilities. DRM is not a deal breaker, forcing me to use a poor piece of software and adding vulnerabilities to my computer is why I'm not getting Ubisoft games.

I'm glad Sega bought Relic, it could be much worse. You would think after doing such a good job and making money, enhancing the 40K brand, Sega could secure the 40K license for Relic but lets not kid ourselves, publishers and license owners rarely do things that make sense. I don't particularly like South Park, but I was probably going to try it at some point, not if its on UPlay. I wonder if the Xbox 720 and the PS4 will have the same hardware from AMD, that would make it easier for developers with multi-platform, it's hard to see them not using the same hardware if they come out around the same time and the CPU with integrated GPU is from AMD. Why are they choosing AMD when Nvidia seems to be pulling ahead, at least on PC? Microsoft has had a soft spot for AMD but Sony and Nintendo don't. Nvidia has decided to compete with the Sony Vita and Nintendo DS but I doubt they're worried enough to choose AMD over that. It'll be interesting if the Steam Box platform is dominated by Intel and Nvidia.

Yeah, at 1280x720. I'm fine with sacrificing resolution for frame rate. I think this generation of consoles might actually start below the performance of a mid to high range PC. I hope that the CPU is powerful, and that 8GB is correct, that should mean better gameplay. One of the reasons I think games have been lacking is the push for graphics on ageing hardware, but not in areas that matter: resolution, frame rate, texture size, and sacrificing AI, physics, and map size. It will be interesting to see what effect having x64 and AMD in the Xbox has on PC ports.

They are storied developers... just in RTS, which is probably a problem, if they had launched a RTS KickStarter "...from the creator of Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander ". They may have got over double their funding goal, because RTS isn't getting publisher funded as much and the ones that do aren't like TA or SC.