[Forge]

Mark., on 08 July 2017 - 04:49 PM, said:

I have been using the same link for a long time. Today I noticed a message saying the domain has expired. Maybe all this time I have been redirected to duke4.net and didn't know it. Now, the autolinking is gone. I'll change my bookmark now. Thanks.

You were going to the original DN-R site, not the one hosted at Duke4.

After Tx did a site-rip and uploaded it here Kim renewed the subscription to the server hosting DN-R.
Apparently he let it expire. Again.
It's not all that surprising, he's done it multiple times and let the site fall off the internet on numerous occasions - that's also why CGS came about.

[Mr. Tibbs]

Valve have banned over 40,000 accounts for cheating, resulting in some incredible comments on the VAC page.

[High Treason]

To be fair, Valve have proven themselves to enact automatic bans for no good reason. Steam needs to fucking die anyway, or Valve as a whole, nothing good ever came of them.

[----]

High Treason, on 10 July 2017 - 11:33 PM, said:

... or Valve as a whole, nothing good ever came of them.

I quite liked the Half Life series and how it influenced interactive storytelling.

[LkMax]

Steam is a necessary evil. If it wasn't for Valve popularizing digital distribution I would still be sailing the seven seas and with no regret at all. Pay the equivalent of 1/4 of a minimum wage to buy a game? To hell with that!
I'm glad GOG came to be though.

[High Treason]

fuegerstef, on 11 July 2017 - 08:55 AM, said:

I quite liked the Half Life series and how it influenced interactive storytelling.

How exactly did it do this? I seem to recall several Clock Tower games, as well as others, which already did interactive story telling, not to mention their root genre of adventure games - Atlantis: The Lost Tales, Broken Sword, Little Big Adventure, things like that, often far more interactive and story-driven than Half-Life. You can't even say "Yeah, but Half-Life did it in an FPS." because Realms of the Haunting already did that two years prior, only it did it the other way around, putting FPS elements into what was otherwise an adventure game, yielding an interesting oddity I haven't really seen done much elsewhere.

LkMax, on 11 July 2017 - 12:39 PM, said:

Steam is a necessary evil. If it wasn't for Valve popularizing digital distribution I would still be sailing the seven seas and with no regret at all. Pay the equivalent of 1/4 of a minimum wage to buy a game? To hell with that!
I'm glad GOG came to be though.

Can't stand it and find it hard to enjoy games when they're constantly locked out because of Steam's load time, inefficient code or a slew of updates - I didn't load steam for a year once, I wanted to play a game, I couldn't play it for several days because of the updates needed for Steam and said game, not everyone has the option of fast internet and I was on a ~1Mbits line at that time, roughly ~2Mbit/s on average now. I'm not for piracy, but if your game, or its mandatory shovelware, restricts me from playing it when I'm merely an innocent consumer, it starts looking more and more than a viable option. I refuse to use Steam at all because of the problems involved, if you can't sell me a game without it, then you can't sell me the game - luckily for the devs, most new games don't interest me anyway, I think the newest I own is from 2009 and that's The Sims 3, a game which doesn't use Steam.
Origin is shit, but good god it's not as intrusive as Steam at all and doesn't need a cray just to show me a glorified web browser. GOG I would use, that seems legit, or it was when I dabbled with it early on, but I do prefer physical media where possible.

[----]

High Treason, on 11 July 2017 - 02:33 PM, said:

Realms of the Haunting already did that two years prior ...

You should have stated MYST instead. Because Realms is completely different from how Half Life uses storytelling. I thought that was more than obvious.

[High Treason]

Myst? Uh-huh, right, yeah... So I'm gathering you're not at all familiar with, nor bothered to familiarize yourself with, the Atlantis game I noted?

Kinda solves this one, doesn't it. Oh, well, I suppose it was easy for you to draw such conclusions when you clearly haven't played many games outside of the main-line "cook kid" titles. Don't worry, it's not your fault.

With Realms, then yeah, it does tell its story differently to Half-Life, because Half-Life basically doesn't bother aside from some crappy in game voice-overs here and there. Comparatively, RotH told its story fairly well, only the story was somewhat laughable. It also took the time to develop its protagonist as opposed to having him be silent, as that would break the immersion somewhat. When you think about it, they actually did quite well, getting the story across, given the material they had to work with.

[----]

See, and that's what I like more: Silent protagonists, because I want to live the adventure, not some random dude I cannot associate with. That's been done in non interactive media for thousands of years.

But tastes are different.

[Forge]

fuegerstef, on 12 July 2017 - 05:37 AM, said:

See, and that's what I like more: Silent protagonists,

[LkMax]

Silent protagonists actually break the immersion for me more than anything, it's really silly for my character to not interact with anyone in the world except when recieving orders in games like COD and MOH (and yet not saying anything back, ever). If the designer want me to feel like I'm the one personally "living the adventure" then I'd rather he at least give me options to choose from allowing me to reply to situations that arise (e.g. Unreal 2, Deus Ex, Vampire TMB).

High Treason, on 11 July 2017 - 02:33 PM, said:

-snip-

I see your point about internet speed, though that's not Steam's fault but your ISP's.
Through GOG you only need to download the installer once and their launcher is 100% optional, so there's that at least. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[----]

LkMax, on 12 July 2017 - 06:58 AM, said:

Silent protagonists actually break the immersion for me more than anything, it's really silly for my character to not interact with anyone in the world except when recieving orders in games like COD and MOH (and yet not saying anything back, ever). If the designer want me to feel like I'm the one personally "living the adventure" then I'd rather he at least give me options to choose from allowing me to reply to situations that arise (e.g. Unreal 2, Deus Ex, Vampire TMB).


I see your point about internet speed, though that's not Steam's fault but your ISP's.
Through GOG you only need to download the installer once and their launcher is 100% optional, so there's that at least. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

To me it depends on the character and situation. So many video game characters do stupid things or things I wouldn't do, so that I cannot enjoy it that much.
One example for that is the first Ankh where the main person does a lot of stupid things in the opening sequence. WIthout that, there would be no problem (and thus: no game).

In a few years I think technology would be good and far enough that your responses into the mic affects the other person (see the famous "Dragon Speech" of Chris Crawford on YT for further info). The mute protagonists of today and past are only due to limitation of technology nowadays (although SIri; Cortana and alike should already work with the limited laws in games) and that a lot of gamers actually like to play a different person instead of themselves*. Until then I have to live with Duke having the Holsom Twins around and I cannot scream at them to get lost and/or jump out of the window.

*) There had been surveys on that. Half the people like to be someone else, the other half likes to be themselves, even in games like WoW where the latter for example create avatars that represents themselves best and the former create characters very different from themselves. Tastes are different (although for the WOW survey it also came down to personality).

[High Treason]

One has to wonder why someone who dislikes talkie protagonists would sign up to a Duke Nukem forum... Why they got into the game in the first place...
Perhaps their argument is trash, or perhaps it is simply that Duke was a talking protagonist done right? Aside from our pal "Douche Nukem" featured in DNF. In which case their problem might not be that protagonists talk so much as that many of them that did, did so badly. Kyle Katarn is another example of a talking protagonist done fairly well, though he speaks much less than Duke - I'd still wager money that he was an influence to Duke 3D though, or that the game he appeared in was.

LkMax, on 12 July 2017 - 06:58 AM, said:

I see your point about internet speed, though that's not Steam's fault but your ISP's.
Through GOG you only need to download the installer once and their launcher is 100% optional, so there's that at least. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well that's beyond my control, it's them or no internet. Steam need to realize that this isn't entirely uncommon outside of their sheltered rich guy lives, because many of us refuse to put up with it. Updates should be optional, but even those that can be disabled always find a way of re-enabling themselves. For some reason, though on this one I wouldn't rule out ISP throttling as they have been known to do this, notably applying it to YouTube on numerous occasions, downloads from the servers Steam uses are much slower than those which Origin uses, though Origin also updates far more often than I'd like it to. Don't get the deal with these mandatory always online clients, imagine being a gamer today and having all that shit in your system tray all the time? Especially if the game includes its own shit like U-Play or Games for Windows Live or Rockstar Social Club. Fuck me, you'd need like an entire second machine just for the clients and DRM shit... Don't get me started on DRM, it never stops pirates but it sure as hell stops the innocent consumer. I lost fully working games to broken DRM that I'd have to buy again according to customer support, so they can go fuck themselves - yo ho, yo ho.
It seems GOG hasn't changed much then. There was no launcher when I used it last, just an installer for the game I bought and that was that. Only shit thing was that they didn't give me a working CD image which meant I was stuck with no music if I copied the installation to a DOS machine, thus rendering their service basically useless to me. Seemed great for people that are happy to use DOSBox though, or games that don't use CDs for anything, and it's good to know I haven't been unwittingly recommending something horrible to people for all these years.

[----]

High Treason, on 12 July 2017 - 08:07 AM, said:

Perhaps their argument is trash, or perhaps it is simply that Duke was a talking protagonist done right?

For me: He was done right (in DN3D). A few one liners after some kills or before a boss encounter. No switching to 3rd person nor having Duke making decisions I wouldn't do (and no "you are fucked"-line like in DNF'S hive).

[MusicallyInspired]

I like Duke. I love Half-Life.

[Sledgehammer]

fuegerstef, on 12 July 2017 - 07:13 AM, said:

Half the people like to be someone else, the other half likes to be themselves

Where is the third option? What about both? Though I'd rather say some people don't self-insert themselves into other characters while other people do. Personally I'd say that the only games I self-insert myself into others are RPGs, the ones where I can make my own character. And established characters I treat like someone else, you know kind of like my buddies or something, can't say it right, so sorry if it sounds weird, hopefully you're getting my point.

High Treason, on 12 July 2017 - 08:07 AM, said:

Well that's beyond my control, it's them or no internet.

Isn't it easier to deal with your own local ISP? Or do you guys have shitty internet in UK because some company has monopoly? Even if it would take some time you're more than likely able get some results if you deal with ISP.

The problem with Steam (or rather with publishers since they're the one who use DRM in their games, Steamworks, for example, is optional, there are some DRM-free games on Steam) is that there are always other people who use it and buy games with DRM which means this problem won't be fixed until enough people stop supporting those practices and we're talking about the whole world, not just one country. I can tell you that you alone have more chances even to kill your own ISP since it likely operates only in your country unlike Steam (though if they have monopoly that would be very difficult to kill them).

Otherwise, I totally agree with the rest what you said.

[Striker]

Good things to come out of Valve: Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (The gravity gun is a source of hilarity with friends, and it's overall a decent arena shooter), Counter-Strike: Source (not GO), Day of Defeat: Source, TF2 (Before it hats and the game entering microtransaction hell because of it), Portal/Portal 2 (Still have fun playing CO-OP on the second).

[----]

Sledgehammer, on 13 July 2017 - 09:28 AM, said:

Where is the third option? What about both? Though I'd rather say some people don't self-insert themselves into other characters while other people do. Personally I'd say that the only games I self-insert myself into others are RPGs, the ones where I can make my own character. And established characters I treat like someone else, you know kind of like my buddies or something, can't say it right, so sorry if it sounds weird, hopefully you're getting my point.

Yes, point comes across. I feel the same (although I am not an RPG* fan).

In UT I always played as Xen (the robot suit) as no other charcter wears black and has long hair. So, wearing a robot suit came closest.

[HulkNukem]

[High Treason]

fuegerstef, on 12 July 2017 - 08:37 AM, said:

For me: He was done right (in DN3D). A few one liners after some kills or before a boss encounter. No switching to 3rd person nor having Duke making decisions I wouldn't do (and no "you are fucked"-line like in DNF'S hive).

One notable feature of Duke, often forgotten, is that of being able to turn the "Duke Talk" off in the menus... Maybe that would be a good option for future games. Of course, shortly after Duke 3D came out another popular game removed not only protagonist characters, but even simple features like a "use" button. Unfortunately this game seemingly laid the groundwork for what would follow.

MusicallyInspired, on 12 July 2017 - 12:08 PM, said:

I like Duke. I love Half-Life.

Fair enough. I can't see why, but whatever.

Sledgehammer, on 13 July 2017 - 09:28 AM, said:

Where is the third option? What about both? Though I'd rather say some people don't self-insert themselves into other characters while other people do. Personally I'd say that the only games I self-insert myself into others are RPGs, the ones where I can make my own character. And established characters I treat like someone else, you know kind of like my buddies or something, can't say it right, so sorry if it sounds weird, hopefully you're getting my point.

Possibly part of the reason "The Sims" is popular, dicking around with character creation never really gets old.

Quote

Isn't it easier to deal with your own local ISP? Or do you guys have shitty internet in UK because some company has monopoly? Even if it would take some time you're more than likely able get some results if you deal with ISP.

The problem with Steam (or rather with publishers since they're the one who use DRM in their games, Steamworks, for example, is optional, there are some DRM-free games on Steam) is that there are always other people who use it and buy games with DRM which means this problem won't be fixed until enough people stop supporting those practices and we're talking about the whole world, not just one country. I can tell you that you alone have more chances even to kill your own ISP since it likely operates only in your country unlike Steam (though if they have monopoly that would be very difficult to kill them).

Otherwise, I totally agree with the rest what you said.

Locally there is a monopoly. Single ISP with practical immunity to OFCOM inspection due to careful placement of ex-CEO's into said organization.
As stated earlier, I refuse to purchase games with invasive DRM or overblown always-online crap - I don't mind things like SecureDisc or whatever. I know of others who are doing the same.

Striker, on 13 July 2017 - 11:09 AM, said:

Good things to come out of Valve: Half-Life 2: Deathmatch (The gravity gun is a source of hilarity with friends, and it's overall a decent arena shooter), Counter-Strike: Source (not GO), Day of Defeat: Source, TF2 (Before it hats and the game entering microtransaction hell because of it), Portal/Portal 2 (Still have fun playing CO-OP on the second).

Very subjective, not my cup of tea at all, they all just felt like novel Quake mods, not unlike the "Here's just one gimmick to mess with" things I might make for Duke 3D on occasion - the difference being, I know what I'm doing is half-assed and don't expect people to pay for them, or to hand over their personal info.

[Mr. Tibbs]

[Hank]

my uninstall screen with the Free Visual Studio after 20 min.


Apparently, to implement an old SDK you need to uninstall and then reinstall this software.
I think, it will stay uninstalled.

I know Qt Creator is not popular, but man, you can make shit work, with a few lines here and there.

[added]
b.t.w. when I interrupted the program, some internal loop woke up, moved on and the uninstall process took 12 minutes, after.

No big loss. The only time I need VS is to follow, better said try to follow EDuke32, I'm not that smart, for this nor the IDE.

[zykov eddy]

Too bad he didn't play Dookie Nukem.

[Fox]

High Treason, on 16 July 2017 - 03:17 AM, said:

One notable feature of Duke, often forgotten, is that of being able to turn the "Duke Talk" off in the menus... Maybe that would be a good option for future games. Of course, shortly after Duke 3D came out another popular game removed not only protagonist characters, but even simple features like a "use" button. Unfortunately this game seemingly laid the groundwork for what would follow.

Even if you don't like everything about Half-life, it was a revolutionary game. But I agree that it created a trend that ruined part of the genre.

[Hendricks266]

Half-Life has both a protagonist (albeit a silent one) and a use button. I'm not sure what game HT is talking about. Quake maybe?

[High Treason]

Probably because I was referring to Quake.

I genuinely feel that perhaps in another universe, later games instead built upon what was laid down by Dark Forces, Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior, where interactivity and such were ever advancing, as opposed to our universe that chose to build upon what was essentially Wolf3D with polygons... And Wolf3D wasn't really that great either, given it did little more than MIDI Maze had accomplished, though it deserves recognition for bringing the genre to people's attention. Still, can you imagine what might have happened if things did go that way, like where you'd go from a game like Blood for example? But alas, no, we went back to the primitive roots. I believe Quake, and its simply ghastly engine, did irreversible damage from which we have never truly recovered and probably never will.

Half-Life did have a use button, because I remember pressing it on those weird refill box things. Its controls were OK but it still had that slipping in syrup feel of other Quake titles. There were definitely a bunch of other games that did NOT feature use buttons or much of anything else though. To be fair, it wasn't a bad game, not for its time, but I can't really see how it innovated anything, it was just another guy in a suit in a Quake-like engine (In this case, it actually was that engine with modifications) like so many others of its time.

[MusicallyInspired]

It innovated narrative storytelling in FPS's. Which many (probably you?) believe was the bane of the genre, but I still think it's the one that did storytelling best out of any shooter. It changed it from an arcade contest game into a movie-like experience. Yes, they go overboard with that now, but back then it was new and they did it right. Also, interconnected levels. Did any other shooter have that before HL? I know Q2 kind of has it in some places...but once you beat an "area" it still shows you that ending screen with stats. All stuff to let you know you're playing a game.

[Hendricks266]

It may have been the first to successfully do narrative storytelling in an FPS, but the way they did it (setpiece rollercoasters) is pretty lame when you step back and think about it.

[MusicallyInspired]

I don't agree. But either way, it was the first to do it so you can't really blame it for being a product of its time.

[Marphy Black]

Hendricks266, on 19 July 2017 - 02:10 PM, said:

It may have been the first to successfully do narrative storytelling in an FPS, but the way they did it (setpiece rollercoasters) is pretty lame when you step back and think about it.

The writer for the Half-Life series, Marc Laidlaw, stated this about the storytelling in Half-Life:

Marc Laidlaw said:

It doesn’t seem that deep or complex in retrospect; we were just careful to create an illusion of depth, I think. I knew when I joined Valve that nobody was really using the FPS tools for storytelling and this was something the whole team wanted to do, even if they didn’t quite know how. ... The purpose of the story was to melt into the background and give the whole thing a sense of coherence. It was always meant to be almost invisible.

The intent behind Half-Life was not to convey a deep and elaborate storyline but to present a narrative in a convincing and immersive manner. Never once does it break away from the first person perspective to show a cutscene, bring up a mission objectives screen, show a level tally, or whatnot. The player's only clues to the plot are the tidbits gleaned from the environment, the characters around him, and the interactions (one-sided as they are) throughout in a continuous and interconnected game world. Funny enough, some of this only came about by pure happenstance (third person cutscenes were planned, but technical limitations forced them to stay in first person, etc), yet they managed a form of storytelling unlike any other in the genre to date.