metadigital

I would recommend you read the original work. Really. It won't take long (even if you have to have your dictionary by your side whilst reading it; don't be embarassed, I find that the best way to read, so that if and when you encounter a word whose meaning is not entirely clear, even from its context); and I don't want to spoil it for you. (It is available for free online). But the themes of the book dealt with a lot of the emergent philosophy and science of the late nineteenth century, what with the Martians portraying the Darwinistic superior to humans, etc.

I would say that we are trapped in a Philip K D

Carl Sagan's novel Contact, perhaps?

Short answer: No.

Eddo, haven't you seen Doctor Who? A single Dalek, using a force field, completely circumvented all chemically detonated metallic projectile munitions shot at it by a squad of such machine rifles ... I'm sure a Jedi could do the same (or just use a force field).

I would say it is very satisfying to build something good, regardless of genre or target audience or even product; I would find certain happiness in being an excellent craftsman, even if I were a cobbler.

Isn't there a unified driver for older nVidia cards?

Hehe here's hoping. I was always disappointed with the level of reciprocation in Civ and AC. I don't remember either game opening up with the planet busters after I did for them. Hopefully they incorporate something similar to the UN in Alpha Centauri. I loved the ideas of proposing a Solar shade and other stuff like that. And having your cities domed in case of planetary flooding was also cool. AC was definitely a cool game (I'll have to remember to grab it when I go back to my parents' place to pick up Close Combat 2 & 3). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> What really annoyed me was that there was no real way to win using "tactical" thermonuclear war ... not even using a spy to detonate the bomb in a foreign city. And regardless of how much renewable energy your civilization produced, the globe warmed into a swamp after 2000, even if the other civilizations were insignificant ...

My problem with "civ" is that it's old. I played Civ v:1 on a friends comp waaaaaaaay back when.... well way back when for me. I also played it as a rom on my comp a few years back. I also played the living heck out of Civ 2. Civ 3... was an abomination. Between the "same ol' same ol'" factor and the fact they've lost their touch... I've no desire to buy a game I know will bore me. <_< <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Hmm, well, I played Civ on my own PC, and I lost several months, about 72-hours-straight at-a-time, playing Civ 2. Civ 3 I was profoundly unwelmed because it seemd to increase the un-fun stuff and decrease the fun stuff. But how can you get bored with civ? I remember playing the early precursors: some risk-style game on the Apple ][ (I think) whose name escapes me, then there was that other text-based one before it where you had to manage the resources of your kingdom and then the AI would provide the annual weather, crop yields, etc ... Fun, fun, fun!

I liked playing and winning. I thought it was odd, IIRC, that if you won three times in a row after a loss then you cleaned out the opponent. Even if you won fourteen times in a row previously, this wouldn't clean them out, but a loss followed by three in a row would.

Well, I would argue that it wasn't spoiled by the writing, per se. The only criticism I would level at it would be sequel-syndrome and too short. The graphics were okay. The big hype before release centred aound the environment being very responsive: you could hide behind a wall whilst the alarm goes off in another room and the sound would be dampened by the wall. Likewise there was a real effort made to make the shadows more realistic. The interface was gimped because it was a dual release on the consoles, so it couldn't provide the high resolution menus (the devs have to work with a largest screen resolution of the tv), HUD readout font resolutions and 110-key keyboard and three-plus button mouse interaction. I am playing through the sequel again now, and what is limiting my enjoyment is not the writing, to be sure. (Although I thought the game was a little short on my first playthrough: certainly one of the most appealing aspects of the first game was that every time it appeared to be ending, there would be a whole new section to play, again and again!) Even if you think the writing wasn't the strongest, and the graphics were a strong point, then you still have proof that better graphics and weaker writing make for a poorer result.

LIAR!!! I challenge you to quote me for *EVER* saying that! The fact that you infer it does not make it so, and you are a liar and a troll for stating it as a fact! I was writing a lengthy response, but I see no point in arguing with LIARS!!!!!! Please step in, moderator, or else you'll be letting Metadigital getting away with claiming that I said things I never did. I flatly deny that I ever said that graphics were more important than innovation. I simply said that that's what most people look at. There are only two possibitilies: Either metadigital cannot see that or he will not that see that. But either way his claims make him a liar, and he is not just misrepresenting me or infering things, he is saying I said things that are simply untrue. He didn't even disagree with me when I said that most players look at graphics first. In my book that makes Metadigital both a hypocrit as well as a liar and a troll! Step in, moderator, or the flamefest is certain!!! <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I shall ignore your childish histrionics (for the moment) and draw the argument back to its inception. In actuality, you picked up a point I made, which leads to the reasonable conclusion that you are opposing my original statement. Viz: I know what you mean, but don't forget a couple of things: [1]- Consumers (that's you and me) expect much more from games now, and we've usually seen it all before - the days when we see something truly original in games are over because it's all been done. [2]- All narrative is also spoken narrative - whatever is written must also be spoken, which requires every single word to be done by voice actors, and that's not exactly cheap. [3]- Computer games are an industry. Gone are the golden age of gaming, when each and every game was the love child of a specific programmer - now there are definite demands on what graphics, sounds, etc. that a game MUST have to be accepted. A game MAY NOT sell badly these days, since they demand too much attention - companies go backrupt, people lose their jobs and mouths aren't being fed when games don't sell now. Games really are that expensive to make now - what one man could do in the the gold age of the 80s now requires a team of 25+ people working full time for a year or more. That's a huge investment! [4]- This also means that the story must fit with the work schedule. I'd like to see a KotOR3 with diverse light and dark side paths throughout, but it's not going to happen - it would be far to costly to produce, since it would mean that the company has to basically write two games and have most people play only one. Therefore it will be "one size fits all". Not because the company doesn't want to do it, but because it is only thing that is possible. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> The points I have highlighted above speak for themselves, nevertheless, here is a brief synopsis: 1. Irrelevant comment on the rising standard expected in games: irrelevant because it could easily be applied to graphics or writing. I would tend to believe, simply by your post being a response to mine and not being prefaced with some sort of term of agreement, that it is meant to counter my point, thus leading to the implication supporting your next paragraphs, and countering mine, especially when combined with a later post:

Many a Scotsman will be irritated with your lack of respect for the great and grand Clyde shipyards, Mr Jags. (Billy Connoly started his welding career there; as you can se there were a lot of lay-offs and he went on to other things ...) Also, you forgot 1st July, 1805 was the day Nelson defeated Napoleon's great plan to invade Britain in the battle of Trafalgar; the numerical superiority of the French and Spanish navies were no match for the tactical genius of Lord Admiral Nelson ...

Does that mean people will be role-playing cRPG vicariously, over someone else's shoulder? Revolution: the Vicarious Shoulder Surfing cRPG Role Playing Game platform of choice ...

Oh well, not much scope for a civ game to please you, then. Unless we assume that a global thermonuclear confrontation would reset the technology tree back to the stone-age, similar to the effect of Ceasar buring the Great Library two millennia ago ... then we could have Earth: from post-apocalyptic now forward!

The guy who almost single-handedly created the modern hype surrounding Nessie (can't remember his name offhand) died recently, and so it has not kept the same intensity ...

Ah, okay, then yes, I think that is a sound narrative mechanic!

Like this a lot. It is far too overpowering to have two lightsabres, and there is no penalty (apart from the commensurate loss of feats)! I think you might want to consider a dual path plot, however, whereby the PC can either overtly choose to be DS at the beginning, or (preferably) begin the game at the same place but have a critical point where the DS and LS paths diverge. Yes, it was a big post, wasn't it?

Have you bothered to read the previous six threads of this subject? I have yet to read anything startlingly different in the last three of these threads. Secondly, I was advocating the insistence on quality writing, something I did in the first of these threads, and I have repeated it regularly throughout the series. The last post was dealing with a protracted argument based on the infraction caused by Jediphile suggesting that quality writing was not as important as graphical innovation. As we are dealing with audience contributions for the sequel, I think it is well within the scope of the topic to discuss the relative pros and contras of good writing versus innovative graphics. Once again, I voice my support for good writing above all else.

I would hope that the commonalities of good game design unite more games than their differences exclude. What I mean is, for example, good writing is paramount for good SF (Fallout) and fantasy (BG) games, just as much as it is for good noir (Max Payne) and thrillers (Alan Wake) ... or even historical RTS (Rome: Total War).

But it's the original team. And they've added a lot of the stuff from Alpha Centuri, too.

Maybe Kaftan will sell it to you cheap ...

Howdoes it end? "

They're probably waiting for us to kill ourselves first.

There was a programme on Channel 5 the other day expounding the theory about how UFOs were actually invented in WW2 Germany (in the super-top secret utility, the present-day Skoda factory). They had an interview with the German SS guy who had the idea and submitted it (he was kept out of the loop by the Germans), and the factory employees destroyed their prototypes when the Russians arrived. The SS dude (whose name escapes me for the moment) surrendered to the Russians and they gave him a research facility. This explains why so many of the "flying saucers" were seen around Washington state: close to a number of US secret bases and nuclear facilities. The mechanics were simple, a man could stand upright in the c0ckpit, and the rotating bezel created a low pressure above the saucer, so it was sucked up (much like an aeroplane's wing).