[Zaxx]

necroslut, on 30 March 2018 - 01:30 AM, said:

Yes, you can always adapt a game for a more limited platform, and if it's a great game people will generally accept it because it's the next best thing. But here we're talking about porting to a platform with less limitations, which is a very different situation. For starters, things like raising resolution will largely make the game look worse - not better - as it will show the limitations of the assets. If you remake all the assets and polish up all the levels to compensate, then why not just make a new game?
And making the game play faster would mean completely re-balancing everything - combat, movement, level design, maybe you'd have to scrap or completely rework some enemies that were no longer fun.
That kind of work might be worth it for a great game, but Zero Hour - even on its original platform - was never great. It was OK, it was adequate, maybe even good, but it wasn't great. And stripped from its console limitations it would - other than an improved framerate - be not better but worse than it originally was, because the conditions under which its design decisions made sense would no longer apply.

Pretty much this. The thing about Zero Hour is that it's exactly the type of game that was good for its time but has aged horribly. For the 90s its controls were impressive, its graphics were adequate and its gameplay was fun but now it feels like the most boring and clunky thing ever. Not every game can be Doom or Duke 3D where only the graphics has aged.

[Kerr Avon]

Commando Nukem, on 29 March 2018 - 09:11 PM, said:

You're conflating two different perspectives.Yes, there is a way that games are developed that makes them "console games." Weapon limits, aim assist, smaller sized maps with more linearity are all symptoms of many triple A developers aiming to facilitate a better console gaming experience.

Better how? The only thing in that list that *might* be necessary to improve gameplay for console gamers is aim assist. The other things you list are developer's choices, there's nothing implicit in console hardware that means a FPS can't have lots of weapons available at once to the player, or non-linear levels, smaller levels, and so on. Yes, consoles do generally have less memory than a decent gaming PC (but not always, even now some PC gamers still have less than 8GB) but unless a game is really badly planned or optimised then it can run on a console of the time too. Look at Morrowind, Oblivion, the Far Cry games, GTA V, etc, they all run fine on console are are very popular there. Even the meme starting Crysis, which was famous for needing a major PC at the time of it's release and still taxing a lot of PCs several years later, was ported very well to the XBox 360. And as far as I'm aware, the racing game Fuel still has the second largest game world (after Daggerfall), and Fuel is on consoles too, though of course Daggerfall isn't.

Yes, Duke Nukem Forever had to be cut up to fit on the XBox 360/PS3, but by all accounts before they started to make cuts it still ran very badly on PCs, because it was so badly put together. I won't even use the word un-optimised, because the 'game' at that time didn't need optimising, it needed to taking apart again, have the bad stuff removed, and then what little was worth keeping should have formcd the embryo of a good game. It wasn't the 360/PS3's fault that DNF had to be cut for them, as the consoles can and have run much more demanding games. That said, a game could well be written for the PC and be so demanding (legitimately demanding, not because of bad optimisation) that the PC needed is so far advanced over any current console that if a console version was released then it (the console version of the game) would have to be so cut back as to make it massively inferior to the PC version. And then the company's bosses would have to decide whether or not to create a console version. But that SHOULD NEVER mean that the PC version would have to be cut back too. The fact that DNF's PC version was butchered to fit it on console was down to a management decision, they didn't have to release it on a console, and even once the decision was made to release it on consoles, that still didn't mean that the game, once properly setup and working, couldn't be made to work on a console. Even if the game had never been considered for consoles, and we'd have gotten the 'full' game on PC, I really really doubt that it would have run well on any machine, due to the bugs and the apparently half-hearted state of what we did see.

On topic, granted, it was a console game (Halo) that started the dumbing down of first person shooters, but PC game developers were quick enough to copy it's weapon carrying limits and recharging shield (and how I hate those two gameplay mechanics), and nowdays Call of Duty and their 'realistic' (yeah right) ilk with their weapon carrying limits, recharging health, checkpoints every five yards, boring cliched stories with generic characters, linear levels that don't reward exploration, wapons that all look the same (unless you actually know real weapons), and near total lack of replayability in their single player campaigns, are as popular with PC gamers as with console gamers.

It might be true that the more intelligent games tend to come out on PCs rather than console, but unless you count indie games then that's not the case now, since PC AAA games tend to pander to the same lowest common denominators as console games do. And even when there was a more intelligent or more demanding PC game available, then as far as I can see, it tended to sell badly, as people don't want to thing. Look at System Shock and Doom. Both utterly fantastic games, yet the much more thoughtful System Shock sold a fraction of what the much more visceral Doom did. And when System Shock 2 came out, it's sales were utterly negligable compared to it's contemporary Half-Life's sales. And last years Prey, which is pretty System Shock 2 ish, that sold badly (on both PC and console) whilst Player Unknown Battlegrounds sold over thirty million. It's not a hard and fast rule, of course, and quality games (such as System Shock 1 and 2) do retain their devoted fans, but there is a reason why games companies so often try to make their games so intellectually undemanding, sadly.

[Kerr Avon]

necroslut, on 30 March 2018 - 01:30 AM, said:

It's not so much about the machine - though of course any platform has hardware limitations that need to be considered during development - as the control method and interface.

Yes, 3D platformers (among other things) play awfully with keyboard/mouse. And lightgun arcade games are pretty dull with a mouse, and unplayable with a controller. It's not a "PC master race" thing - it's just that taking a design out of it's natural habitat, where it has evolved, doesn't necessarily mean it will thrive outside

Also, I imagine Eurocom's new Build renderer was custom build for the N64's architecture and would need to be rewritten again. Worth it for a dated-looking, poorly-playing third-person shooter - and PC players on the time weren't big on consoley third-person shooters - that was in every simpler and less ambitious than it's predecessor? Sure, hardcore Duke fans might have enjoyed it, but it would hardly have been a PC hit... other than maybe with younger kids who wished they had a console instead of dad's PC..

Yes, you can always adapt a game for a more limited platform, and if it's a great game people will generally accept it because it's the next best thing. But here we're talking about porting to a platform with less limitations, which is a very different situation. For starters, things like raising resolution will largely make the game look worse - not better - as it will show the limitations of the assets. If you remake all the assets and polish up all the levels to compensate, then why not just make a new game?
And making the game play faster would mean completely re-balancing everything - combat, movement, level design, maybe you'd have to scrap or completely rework some enemies that were no longer fun.
That kind of work might be worth it for a great game, but Zero Hour - even on its original platform - was never great. It was OK, it was adequate, maybe even good, but it wasn't great. And stripped from its console limitations it would - other than an improved framerate - be not better but worse than it originally was, because the conditions under which its design decisions made sense would no longer apply.

I suppose. You make some very good points, and maybe even if Zero Hour had been ported to the PC, then other than the Duke Nukem connection, it wouldn't have looked attractive to many people. It could be weeks between good game releases on the N64 at times, and so maybe people were more likely to take a risk on buying a game for the N64 than for the PC, since good PC games appeared more regularly.

I do wish DN:ZH had come out for the PC though. There could have been some great fan-made mods for it.

Quote

Why they didn't (at the time) port Manhattan Project to consoles though... that is harder for me to understand.

The mystical ways of software houses are beyond mere mortals Someone apparently thought that the best way to start Daikatana would be to have you shooting robot frogs and insects, in the world's smallest and least convincing swamp.

Zaxx, on 30 March 2018 - 02:47 AM, said:

Pretty much this. The thing about Zero Hour is that it's exactly the type of game that was good for its time but has aged horribly. For the 90s its controls were impressive, its graphics were adequate and its gameplay was fun but now it feels like the most boring and clunky thing ever. Not every game can be Doom or Duke 3D where only the graphics has aged.

Oh, I still really like it, and I replay it maybe a couple of times a year. But yes, it is clunky, and in some ways it's aged really badly. For example, it has parts where you have to make a jump, and if you miss then you die, less than half-a-dozen in the entire game, but that's still a million too many. No game with long levels and no mid-game save should ever have a 'sudden death' mechanic, and at least most first/third person shooters have gotten rid of that nowadays. Plus in Zero Hour the snipers take off too much health, which isn't a problem when you've played the game often and can remember where the snipers are, but to someone new then it must be really frustrating. And the enemy AI wasn't great even for the time, as the enemies don't do anything other than shoot you or chase you around an obstacle to shoot or punch you. They don't hide behind cover, or work together to flank you, or even pick up and use a more powerful weapon if they accidentally walk over it. And your overall movement speed is slower than in most shooters of the time.

But it does have some really good points too, such as amusing humour, good and varied level design, fun (and period accurate) weapons, it's a fairly long game, and it is one of my favourites. To me it's a classic, because I can go back and play it and never get bored. But it's no Vanquish or Jet Force Gemini.

BTW, Two of the people who worked on DN:ZH, a programmer and a level designer (one was called Skellington, the other was Doctor Zhivago, I can't remember who was who) used to post on the Gamefaqs forums, and they said that (regarding DN:ZH) they wanted to reduce the damage done by snipers, add some sort of working checkpoint system, maybe add multiplayer bots (if time allowed) probably in the form of Duke's various in-game costumes, and I think they might also have commented on the A.I., but I might be mis-remembering that one. Anyway, the game was shipped before they could address the points to their satisfaction. Hence the long levels with no checkpoint system and snipers that can kill the unwary player.

[HulkNukem]

Zaxx, on 30 March 2018 - 02:47 AM, said:

Pretty much this. The thing about Zero Hour is that it's exactly the type of game that was good for its time but has aged horribly. For the 90s its controls were impressive, its graphics were adequate and its gameplay was fun but now it feels like the most boring and clunky thing ever. Not every game can be Doom or Duke 3D where only the graphics has aged.

The technical side of these games may have aged, but their overall look is timeless. Early polygonal games haven't aged all that great, especially compared to games that use sprites that came out earlier or around the same time. Lots of people bring up Doom 64 vs. Turok, and for good reason.

Lots of 360/PS3 era games are dated, and even some PS4/XBone stuff is already looking aged. Devs keep going for this "AAA quality" high end graphics, but no matter what, art style will always triumph in the end.
Doom looked amazing for the time while it was brand new, but today it still holds up.

As for Zero Hour, I'm really sad Fred/3DRealms completely lost the rights to Duke because Fred hinted at possible PC ports of Zero Hour.

[PokeThePower]

Bloodshot, on 17 March 2018 - 01:40 PM, said:

Even if they did release the 2001/2 version and it was hot garbage at least it would've been interesting garbage.

Quite possibly the absolute best way of describing what any content release prior to 2k6 exodus would be. Everything post 2k6 was a (completely understandable and correct given the circumstance) containment of the open ended interesting pile available.

Dan, on 17 March 2018 - 03:12 AM, said:

So than what was the reason in getting rid of all the open world RPGish gameplay? Was it all about getting the game running on consoles?

First I'd suggest you reel in your expectations of an "open world RPGish" game. Duke was no STALKER, but it had a very interesting foundation around 2k1/2k2 that I think Fred, etc. are quite rightly emphasizing their enthusiasm.

From there the "reason" was a very slow gradual death of a thousand cuts with a swift rapid reduction once the only team left was working for free on their savings just because they wanted to not run away from the problem. While I was off coasting on Modern Warfare 2 helping out with SpecOps those folks were spending their own dimes and talking to Gearbox about how to ship SOMETHING. That's a huge accomplishment. I can hate on the poop and rat microwaving all I like... but THEY shipped something and I didn't when I was part of the effort. /salute to them and lessons learned all around.

AdrenalinDragon, on 18 March 2018 - 06:05 PM, said:

Interesting. So Randy says it was nowhere near close to being a finished game, while Fred says it was. Who do we believe, or should we assume Wieder is the most accurate?

It depends on which build people are looking at. The E3 2k1 build is nowhere near as complete as the October 2k1 build. The 2k2 builds had the lighting issues, but the fundamental game hadn't changed much. 2k3/4 I was pushing to get a version of the Lake Mead level "Beta Tested" internally as I considered it far enough along. In 2k1 the Lake Mead boat level had two flat surfaces with panning mountains for the shores of the "lake" (you can see this in the 2k1 video). By the 2k3 footage you can see the shore has become full 3D, and the gameplay itself had evolved to going in and out of highway pillars, a crazy giant water gravity bowl under the fathership, along with going through the building seen in 2k1, etc. So the "best" Lake Mead level is FAR beyond the 2k1 build.

I'd be very surprised if Randy has ever played legacy DNFMatch, much less all the variations of the hard drive backups that still exist containing everything from 2k1 to 2k6. So his comments about what of interest is there are quite absurd, but taking Fred's 90% literally is also ripe for disappointment.

There is just a LOT of content. In one build in 2k3 the full Stratosphere with The Blob wall might be playable in rough form, but in 2k2 and 2k4 it's unplayable. etc. etc. This leads to...

Zaxx, on 19 March 2018 - 02:51 AM, said:

What we will get is a nice little archive to an amazing part of gaming history, an awesome tour in a museum but nothing else.

This is the ONLY reason to release the content... with each "sample point" requiring being able to load DukeEd. Everything else... (skinning tools, etc) can be shuffled off the deep end... but a variety of sample points with an editor that can be loaded and game that can be launched is all that is needed for the mod community to be able to take the museum and start to do amazing things with it. That's ALL the release should be for... is a looking glass into the madhouse.

Altered Reality, on 16 March 2018 - 07:10 PM, said:

The only way it can be released is if someone leaks it, which will not happen, because whoever leaks it would be discovered and sued to hell and back.

Anyone who leaks it now would probably get away easy... as they are unlikely to be a former 3DR employee. What they are likely to leak however, is an image of a former 3DR employee which would be the only trail possible to follow. Some random artist hard drive that never even cared happens to be the one leaked and then the leak turns out to be easily identified as their build due to some obscure ini file. Does 3DR sue the artist? Probably not... but those who COULD leak I assume have some degree of coherency that they have no desire to put that person in that position.

Altered Reality, on 16 March 2018 - 08:14 PM, said:

Holy crap, you sound seriously depressed. Even suicidal.

I know this is a very old conversation that has been put to rest but want to emphasize: You are projecting and ill equipped to decipher what you were reading. I have been in your shoes.

[OpenMaw]

Charlie, I just want to reiterate in case it hasn't been said in awhile, that your insights are always a pleasure to read and I think I can speak for a good majority of the community that we thank you for sharing it with us. It is a fact that it may be all we ever get of that thing we all, sometimes quite literally, dreamed about.

[Zaxx]

HulkNukem, on 30 March 2018 - 11:47 AM, said:

The technical side of these games may have aged, but their overall look is timeless. Early polygonal games haven't aged all that great, especially compared to games that use sprites that came out earlier or around the same time. Lots of people bring up Doom 64 vs. Turok, and for good reason.

While I think that's true in most cases (especially for Build games) I don't think it's true for Doom because the art design is just not up to snuff in that game. Some of the monsters look awesome while others look ridiculous, the textures are very simplistic without much variety and Doom 2 is mostly what we hate in those earlier modern military shooters: the colour palette just feels like different shades of brown, the Earth levels look really boring. Doom 64 on the other hand looks fantastic so it's really not a surprise that id used that game's art style as a reference for Doom 2016. Doom 64 finally has the artistry we like in these 2.5D sprite based games, Midway really knocked it out of the park with that game.

I agree on the Build games though not really when it comes to Duke 64: sure, it looks better than early 3D games like Goldeneye or Turok but Doom 64 destroys that game's looks and it was released for the same system + Duke 3D PC's darker tone and 2D explosions fit the game much better. Duke 3D PC has a great art design and the sprites and textures just have a high enough resolution so that it works much better BUT Shadow Warrior and Blood are the games that truly feel timeless in my opinion. There the resolution of the assets was higher than in Duke 3D just enough so that even if you play them in HD these days they can look wonderfully alive, especially with Build's interactivity.

Anyway there are some exceptions from the rule when it comes to early 3D games too: for example Grim Fandango has such a wonderful art style that those ugly graphics fit perfectly and they don't bother you at all (the 2D backgrounds help though ). Really when it comes to those more stylized games early 3D can look nice and once gaming discovered cel-shading we had great looking games like XIII that are still nice these days:

[PokeThePower]

Commando Nukem, on 30 March 2018 - 08:33 PM, said:

I just want to reiterate...

[PikaCommando]

Do any of the builds prior to Gearbox's acquisition even have a (somewhat) functional final boss/level?

[OpenMaw]

PikaCommando, on 31 March 2018 - 12:17 AM, said:

Do any of the builds prior to Gearbox's acquisition even have a (somewhat) functional final boss/level?

That's hard to say. It's impossible to really tell when the entirety of the "Fathership" segment was cut out or the alien homeworld sections. I'm assuming that, what was reshuffled for the Doctor Who Cloned me featured the final boss (The Empress)

Another way to look at it is, it was fairly late in the game that the bosses of Duke Nukem 3D were finalized, and the Cycloid wasn't initially the final boss it seems.

[Kerr Avon]

I always thought that XIII was under-rated and not nearly as well known as it deserved to be. It has some great ideas, mostly very well used, and is mostly very enjoyable (aside from the sometimes irritating forced-stealth sections, where when you fail and it's immediately game over, you feel like the game is being unfair), and it really deserved a sequel, especially given the game's ending. I remember before it came out, from the magazine screenshots (this was before the 'net fulfilled the roll of previewing games for us), that XIII looked bad, as it seemed ridiculous that a 'serious' first person shooter (as opposed to a comedic one) could have cartoon style graphics, but XIII really does make very good use of it, and the comic-book look of the game never comes across as childish or ill-fitted to the game.

Doom 64 is another great game, but I was never happy about the lack of multiplayer. Apparently the game's designers thought that gamers would never enjoy spilt screen deathmatch (the N64 didnt support LAN), so the game was single player only. Then Goldeneye came out and *massively* proved them wrong.

Blood! was brilliant, and Redneck Rampage is another Build game I've heard is good, but I never played it. My favourite build games on the PC are

Duke Nukem 3D > Blood! > Shadow Warrior 3D

I've not played any others, as far as I know.

And Turok is still really good. Most of my favourite first person shooters are of the older 'style', as I'm no fan of the modern style of first person shooters, with it's reliance on gaming mechanics such as recharging health, weapon carrying limits, idiot's prompts (on-screen indicators spelling out where you have to go, important or interactive in-game items glowing to catch your attention, etc), unskippable cutscenese, etc. I think some great first person shooters have been made in the last decade or so, such as Bioshock 2, DOOM 2016, Wolfenstein the New Order, Wolfenstein: Old Blood, Singularity, etc, but almost all of my favourites are ten or twenty years old now.

[Zaxx]

Kerr Avon, on 31 March 2018 - 03:25 AM, said:

I always thought that XIII was under-rated and not nearly as well known as it deserved to be. It has some great ideas, mostly very well used, and is mostly very enjoyable (aside from the sometimes irritating forced-stealth sections, where when you fail and it's immediately game over, you feel like the game is being unfair), and it really deserved a sequel, especially given the game's ending. I remember before it came out, from the magazine screenshots (this was before the 'net fulfilled the roll of previewing games for us), that XIII looked bad, as it seemed ridiculous that a 'serious' first person shooter (as opposed to a comedic one) could have cartoon style graphics, but XIII really does make very good use of it, and the comic-book look of the game never comes across as childish or ill-fitted to the game.

Oh yeah, XIII is great, I hope that it receives a remaster of some sort though because playing it nowadays is near impossible. The last time I tried it I ran into so many compatibility issues that I just had to give up.

Quote

Bioshock 2

I never understood why most critics and Bioshock fans received that game so poorly. Bioshock 2 was bloody fantastic, it had really good shooting mechanics with some nice depth while it retained most of the stuff that made the first game good (hell, when it comes to level design they even improved on it with some nice ideas). Even the story was great yet most people thought that was shit too guess because the overaching storyline is less interesting than what we had in Bioshock 1 and the meat of the games story is in the social narrative, stuff most people don't pay attention to.

Bioshock 2 is easily better than Infinite actually, it offers so much more.

[PikaCommando]

Commando Nukem, on 31 March 2018 - 12:46 AM, said:

That's hard to say. It's impossible to really tell when the entirety of the "Fathership" segment was cut out or the alien homeworld sections. I'm assuming that, what was reshuffled for the Doctor Who Cloned me featured the final boss (The Empress)

Another way to look at it is, it was fairly late in the game that the bosses of Duke Nukem 3D were finalized, and the Cycloid wasn't initially the final boss it seems.

The leaked plot had the Octaking as the final boss inside the Fathership, but I never knew there was going to be levels in the alien homeworld. Where's that information from? The leaked plot only says they have the coordinates to the alien homeworld before the ending in the talk show and that was after Dr. Proton was omitted from the story.

Duke was attacked by the Fathership during the Lake Mead section, but is the Lake Mead level before the Dam or after? Is the Mothership even in the pre-2009 versions (I think it's the thing firing the laser in the 2001 trailer during Grave's speech and casting a barrier around the casino in the 2006 gameplay footage)?

[PokeThePower]

PikaCommando, on 31 March 2018 - 12:17 AM, said:

Do any of the builds prior to Gearbox's acquisition even have a (somewhat) functional final boss/level?

Short answer, no. "Final" boss level was always on the horizon simply because "Final" situation all the existing content was going to lead up to was perpetually shifting so nothing ever locked in. The closest I remember to the "Final" boss level even being attempted was a pre-E32k1 map that was a HUGE docking bay in the alien main ship orbiting Earth that had enough room to store Eiffel Tower, London Ferris Wheel, Twin Towers, etc. because it had literally ripped them out of the ground and pulled them into the bay. Inside of that bay you could walk up to an early version of the EDF-209 robot scaled up to skyscraper height and have a Rock'm Sock'm Robot fight.

Alan had the cool moon stuff ongoing at various times that (from the outside) seems to have evolved into the stuff you see in the DLC.

On the flip side, there were tons of boss fights implemented to the point of playability and always verging on the edge of polishable through various incarnations of individual levels. The Fathership in LakeMead would envelop you in a gravity bowl and a giant space invaders circular wall while the three "engines" visible in the 2k3 video opened and closed, etc. Cole had The Blob wall in the Stratosphere that chased you through the whole level. There are probably more "boss" encounters through the years that were implemented that I've forgotten than I remember.

To be honest I always liked that DNF tilted away from overt boss situations for a long time. The Slick Willy layout stayed roughly the same for MANY years but what you could do inside had many iterations (the layout in the shipping version has nothing to do with the glimpses in legacy footage). At one point the whole damn place lit on fire which was its own kind of boss battle. A rogue EDF chopper was shooting at you through the roof once you reached the Queen Bee's office that had a boss battle setup requiring you to watch the spotlight in order to know when/where to attack. A (small) trailer (BDSM) park out back had you crawling around in underground vents dodging Bombshell commanding EDF to terminate you (she had bad info at the time), etc.

Zaxx, on 31 March 2018 - 05:19 AM, said:

Bioshock 2 is easily better than Infinite actually, it offers so much more.

Now you see why staying in business is hard and why I stick to my proficiency which is technical implementation of abstract design. I've seen far too many of my 90's peers wander off into roles that don't fit them and the carnage caused is easy to see in hindsight.

[PokeThePower]

PikaCommando, on 31 March 2018 - 06:15 AM, said:

The leaked plot had the Octaking as the final boss inside the Fathership, but I never knew there was going to be levels in the alien homeworld. Where's that information from?

George's butt.

PikaCommando, on 31 March 2018 - 06:15 AM, said:

Duke was attacked by the Fathership during the Lake Mead section, but is the Lake Mead level before the Dam or after?

Lake Mead was always pre-Hoover cross dressing.

PikaCommando, on 31 March 2018 - 06:15 AM, said:

Is the Mothership even in the pre-2009 versions (I think it's the thing firing the laser in the 2001 trailer during Grave's speech and casting a barrier around the casino in the 2006 gameplay footage)?

2k1 Grave's speech ship is an extremely early version of the ship that you see in the 2k3 Lake Mead footage.

For the most part during the development of DNF the alien story fatherships were theoretically "semi-common"... kinda like battlelords... while there was only one Mothership. Ergo the Queen Bee owner of Slick Willy strip club helping/abusing earth women for profit being a pivotal concept relative to the alien race. But to suggest that relationship was ever developed beyond a couple verbal chats and random cues in random builds would be VERY generous to the story development of DNF.

[OpenMaw]

PikaCommando, on 31 March 2018 - 06:15 AM, said:

The leaked plot had the Octaking as the final boss inside the Fathership, but I never knew there was going to be levels in the alien homeworld. Where's that information from? The leaked plot only says they have the coordinates to the alien homeworld before the ending in the talk show and that was after Dr. Proton was omitted from the story.

Duke was attacked by the Fathership during the Lake Mead section, but is the Lake Mead level before the Dam or after? Is the Mothership even in the pre-2009 versions (I think it's the thing firing the laser in the 2001 trailer during Grave's speech and casting a barrier around the casino in the 2006 gameplay footage)?

I honestly can't remember where I saw it, it was somewhere in the leaked documents where Duke was going around planting nuke charges similar to the leech/dam section.

Blue, on 31 March 2018 - 06:31 AM, said:

generous to the story development of DNF.

Seems like that was in a high state of flux.

[PokeThePower]

Commando Nukem, on 31 March 2018 - 06:52 AM, said:

Seems like that was in a high state of flux.

For most interactive products (especially shooters) it's better to mold your story to fit your highest interactive moments than it is to try to make interactive moments that mold to your story.

However you need someone in position to declare a cutoff point where the entire team knows they are shipping with X great moments, Y weak moments, and Z wrapper around it all.

You need the team to think about how to soften the gravity of the "not great" Y while still accepting that it's an inherent part of the product's DNA. Half Life 2 physics puzzles have HEAVY Y problems, but they did a good job of buffering the low potential such that their Y became an X ideal for imitators that didn't understand how to polish against the fundamental problems of physics puzzles... and subsequently failed heavily (some DNF puzzles fail the HL2 physics wishlist faillist test).

[PokeThePower]

In all of this discussion regarding the release of "suchandsuch" build it has to be couched in the reality of how DNF existed. Which was a folder on a shared network drive for many many years. Yes it eventually adopted modern source control standards, but for a while it was quite... raw... look at that batch file output.

This means "builds" are simply snapshots of harddrives on a specific day... not formal "OMG we've reached a milestone".

Prior to proper source control I deleted the network data of DNF at least twice on accident, requiring us to copy the project back up to the source folder from whatever person had run the sync batch file most recently. Which was sometimes a physical walk to each person and ask them to check when they last synced process.

My potential to even delete the network data being possible is a big easy to call out problem these days... but it has nothing to do with the fun factor of the game that was being developed at the time. Which is EASILY proven to be the far more important factor over perfect data control. I can think of only two times our sloppy data process was a development problem and I was the source of the problem both times due to over-zealous data purging. Both times it was resolved easily. With a focused release leader the DNF of sloppy data management would have easily shipped to fanfare.

[MusicallyInspired]

I still haven't played XIII. I bought it on GOG just before it was taken off.

[Zaxx]

MusicallyInspired, on 31 March 2018 - 09:25 AM, said:

I still haven't played XIII. I bought it on GOG just before it was taken off.

What are you waiting for, Christmas?

[HulkNukem]

Zaxx, on 31 March 2018 - 05:19 AM, said:

I never understood why most critics and Bioshock fans received that game so poorly. Bioshock 2 was bloody fantastic, it had really good shooting mechanics with some nice depth while it retained most of the stuff that made the first game good (hell, when it comes to level design they even improved on it with some nice ideas). Even the story was great yet most people thought that was shit too guess because the overaching storyline is less interesting than what we had in Bioshock 1 and the meat of the games story is in the social narrative, stuff most people don't pay attention to.

Bioshock 2 is easily better than Infinite actually, it offers so much more.

Because it was more of the same and shoehorned in characters it pretended always mattered yet never had a single mention in the previous game.
That and the fact playing as a Big Daddy was an absolute joke until the very end when you are fully upgraded.
It might have the most refined gameplay of the entire series, but the whole thing feels more like an expansion pack than a full fledged sequel, something Infinite, while still disappointing in its own way, managed to be.

[OpenMaw]

HulkNukem, on 01 April 2018 - 02:16 PM, said:

Because it was more of the same and shoehorned in characters it pretended always mattered yet never had a single mention in the previous game.
That and the fact playing as a Big Daddy was an absolute joke until the very end when you are fully upgraded.
It might have the most refined gameplay of the entire series, but the whole thing feels more like an expansion pack than a full fledged sequel, something Infinite, while still disappointing in its own way, managed to be.

Which is why Bioshock and System Shock 2 are still the best out of all the "shock" games thus far.

[Zaxx]

HulkNukem, on 01 April 2018 - 02:16 PM, said:

Because it was more of the same and shoehorned in characters it pretended always mattered yet never had a single mention in the previous game.

You mean how Levine shoehorned Elizabeth into the original game's story in Infinite's DLC like if she was the one who started everything?

Bioshock 2's story is not without its problems, there is a bit of what you mention because somewhy the devs wanted to fuse Sofia Lamb with the history of Rapture and that doesn't work out super well. You're supposed to believe that Jack hasn't heard about Lamb because she was in prison during the first game but that's all, other than that the game is a natural continuation of the story of Rapture and an expansion to its world. I don't agree that it's more of the same because it's really not, it's about what happens after the conclusion of the first game: Rapture is even more broken, the sea life is starting to reclaim the whole city as its inhabitants are getting more desperate and feral. The splicers of Bioshock 2 look a lot less human, Andrew Ryan was just a man with flawed ideas on capitalism and society but now an actual crazy person is running the show in the form of Lamb. Ryan just believed in the absolute form of capitalism but Lamb is such a crazy communist that she wants to destroy human individuality by some genetic manipulation (and in doing so she actually shows us why the absolute form of communism doesn't work: it's just not in our nature). It's great stuff.

And really the game is full of memorable sections like Ryan's Amusements, Siren Alley with its great sense of verticality and the fact that it gets flooded with water at the end, the part where you play as a little sister and get to experience how they see the world etc.

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That and the fact playing as a Big Daddy was an absolute joke until the very end when you are fully upgraded.

You did not play as a "Big Daddy" though but an early - and ultimately failed - version of the so called the Alpha Series. I think the idea was a great way to expand on the big daddies and the story itself could get a lot more personal and emotional by being a simple tale of a father searching for his daughter on the surface. In the first game Jack was just a genetically modified dude programmed to follow instructions and even after his bond with Fontaine was broken the story struggled to give him any kind of a personal journey while on the surface Bioshock 2 is about the bond between a father and his daughter. It's very touching and that's something I couldn't say about Bioshock 1 or Infinite, that's why to me even Bioshock 2's story holds up better than any of Levine's work on the series: in Bioshock 1 once the twist is done it's just "haha, he said would you kindly, haha" during replays while Bioshock 2 pulling on emotional strings is pretty timeless.

When it comes to shoehorned nonsense I think Burial at Sea takes the cake because there Ken Levine went out of his way to destroy what he had built. BaS has so many problems that it doesn't work at all as part of the Rapture storyline (and of course he had to add elements that make Bioshock 2 impossible too because he didn't like Bioshock 2... how petty is that?) so at the end you just have to cling to the see of doors, the get out of jail free card of Infinite's story because in BaS the plot holes are... well, they are infinite.

Edit: And compared to BaS Bioshock 2 has Minerva's Den as its DLC, a story that holds on its own with its masterful writing. There Porter's story is again super emotional and beautiful with a twist that's actually heartbreaking, it's the best kind of storytelling ever to be in a video game.

[Kerr Avon]

I'm not a great judge of graphics, as I'm not really a visual person, and I still play on the N64, PS2, etc, so I'm used to old, simplistic graphics. When I see a modern game review or forum post where a new game is described as having bad graphics, I can't see what the mean, as they usually look fine to me.

Zaxx, on 30 March 2018 - 08:40 PM, said:

[Doom 2's] Earth levels look really boring.

What was strange about Doom 2's Earth-bound levels was that id Software made no attempt, as far as I can remember, to make then seem like they were actually on Earth. Granted, the D2 engine couldn't have done a good job of representing any real life building, but you'd have thought that they'd have had, say, a level called "Xenomorph research intitute, New York", with the skybox/background graphic showing the Statue of Liberty and it's environment to give it the (as best the engine was possible) illusion of being set on New York's coast. They could have done this for all of the levels, having a background graphic of well known, easily recognisable landmarks (Stone Henge, the British Houses of Parliment, The Eiffel Tower, that place in the USA where the presidents' faces are carved into the mountain side, the Grand Canyon, etc). It wouldn't have been much, and it certainly wouldn't have wowed anyone, but it would be something towards making it feel like you were on Earth, and surely it wouldn't have been difficult to include.

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Doom 64 on the other hand looks fantastic so it's really not a surprise that id used that game's art style as a reference for Doom 2016. Doom 64 finally has the artistry we like in these 2.5D sprite based games, Midway really knocked it out of the park with that game.

Doom 64 is great, and to me it was the true Doom 3, not the official Doom 3, which wasn't Doom-ish at all. DOOM 2016, though, that did deserve to be called Doom 4. So for some reason they thought it should just be called DOOM...

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I agree on the Build games though not really when it comes to Duke 64: sure, it looks better than early 3D games like Goldeneye or Turok but Doom 64 destroys that game's looks and it was released for the same system + Duke 3D PC's darker tone and 2D explosions fit the game much better. Duke 3D PC has a great art design and the sprites and textures just have a high enough resolution so that it works much better BUT Shadow Warrior and Blood are the games that truly feel timeless in my opinion. There the resolution of the assets was higher than in Duke 3D just enough so that even if you play them in HD these days they can look wonderfully alive, especially with Build's interactivity.

I could never understand why people preferred Quake's look over Duke Nukem 3D's. Quake was brown, brown, brown, whereas DN3D had lots of colours (where appropriate for what it was trying to represent), Quake's levels tended to look similar, whereas DN3D's tried to make it's levels stand out from each other (though this became less successful in some later levels), and Quake had no interactive bvackground details to look at, whereas DN3D did this very well.

You rarely hear people talk about Shadow Warrior 3D, for some reason. Even at the time, I don't recall much discussion about it, and when people nowadays reminisce about the FPSs that they used to love, or still play, almost no one ever mentions SW, though Blood! and especially DN3D are frequenely mentioned.

Was Shadow Warrior 3D not advertised at the time, or what? It was released in 1997 (I had to check on Wikipedia), so I doubt it's 2D sprites (and texture warping thing when you look up and down, does Shadow Warrior 3D have that?) put many people off, not for another couple of years.

[necroslut]

Kerr Avon, on 02 April 2018 - 07:38 AM, said:

I could never understand why people preferred Quake's look over Duke Nukem 3D's. Quake was brown, brown, brown, whereas DN3D had lots of colours (where appropriate for what it was trying to represent), Quake's levels tended to look similar, whereas DN3D's tried to make it's levels stand out from each other (though this became less successful in some later levels), and Quake had no interactive bvackground details to look at, whereas DN3D did this very well.

Because Quake was mOdErN, and people have no taste and are easily impressed.

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You rarely hear people talk about Shadow Warrior 3D, for some reason. Even at the time, I don't recall much discussion about it, and when people nowadays reminisce about the FPSs that they used to love, or still play, almost no one ever mentions SW, though Blood! and especially DN3D are frequenely mentioned.

Was Shadow Warrior 3D not advertised at the time, or what? It was released in 1997 (I had to check on Wikipedia), so I doubt it's 2D sprites (and texture warping thing when you look up and down, does Shadow Warrior 3D have that?) put many people off, not for another couple of years.

At least here in Sweden Shadow Warrior was something of a hit, much more so than in the US it seems. Lots of people remember it fondly.

[Bloodshot]

Completely disagree.

Quake has a very cohesive grungy artstyle that works for the game's atmosphere, just because it's not your cup of tea doesn't mean people who like it have no taste.

If it didn't have a good artstyle people would have made mods like AD where they double down on what works about the artstyle and expand upon it through new textures.

[HulkNukem]

Zaxx, on 01 April 2018 - 11:49 PM, said:

You mean how Levine shoehorned Elizabeth into the original game's story in Infinite's DLC like if she was the one who started everything?

I always took that more as she started events in a separate universe Rapture, not necessarily that she started the events of Bioshock 1's Rapture.
For one, Winter Blast was changed to Old Man Winter, Rapture itself looks like it was designed completely different (wide open tall structures vs. BS1's cramped corridors), and you can find Dr. Suchong's corpse in BS1 and again in BAS2, but it's not the same location.

[OpenMaw]

Bloodshot, on 03 April 2018 - 12:10 PM, said:

Completely disagree.

Quake has a very cohesive grungy artstyle that works for the game's atmosphere, just because it's not your cup of tea doesn't mean people who like it have no taste.

If it didn't have a good artstyle people would have made mods like AD where they double down on what works about the artstyle and expand upon it through new textures.

Well i'm not sure if that's what necroslut was alluding to. I think he was referring more to the technical wow-wizzbangery having people falling over themselves moreso than the artstyle.

Though I do think there is merit in saying that Duke 3D has a more diverse and flavorful art style than Quake. Quake has a more singular note to it's forms and that's fine. It does it very well. Quake really does feel like Nine Inch Nails The Game sometimes, with it's grungey oppressive gothic and surreal atmosphere.

[PokeThePower]

Commando Nukem, on 03 April 2018 - 12:16 PM, said:

Though I do think there is merit in saying that Duke 3D has a more diverse and flavorful art style than Quake.

I was struck hard when watching the video you linked to how much better Duke 3D looked compared to Sin when ignoring technical mechanics. It's not that I didn't already think that, but to see the video flip between the two so quickly it reinforced how timeless Duke is vs Sin.

Bloodshot, on 03 April 2018 - 12:10 PM, said:

If it didn't have a good artstyle people would have made mods like AD where they double down on what works about the artstyle and expand upon it through new textures.

Quake has a unique style and that style due to technical limitations helped Quake break apart... which will always remain uniquely Quake. I have ample embarrassing Usenet posts complaining about Quake vs Duke 3D but in the end Quake did establish a style that is immediately recognizable and that is very very hard to do.

However... the only reason Quake broke out is because of its networking tech. If it wasn't Quake it was going to be some other game, and we'd probably be debating the visual style of *that* game instead.

That said, I like that a person could take Far Cry 5 and make a "Quake" style mod if they wanted and there are very clear signifiers that no game since, even Quake 2, have even tried to co-opt. I do think Quake's style is a bit timeless primarily due to circumstance and limitation... but you'd be able to make a game 100 years from now using art inspired by Quake and it would stand out as a Quake inspired project which is a hard thing to accomplish artistically.

[HulkNukem]

I also like the development stories about Quake, mainly how it was suppose to be something completely different but ended up being Polygonal Doom with Cthulhu elements.
I also like how they had no idea rocket jumping was a thing and they all apparently freaked out when the game launched and players found out and thought they had to remake the maps or take the rocket jumping out, but left it in because it was so cool.