Demigod

Quite good in a mindless shooter kind of way. some of the ai is quite good. One of the chaps picked up a handgrenade a german had thrown and threw it back. Most of it is very scripted though.

does this help?

jaws isnt to bad but he went down hill after that. The worst I have ever seen Starship troopers 2. It makes the origial look good.

I agree but I would be surprised if these take off. The cost is just to high at a time when cheaper comsoles are being released. Yes it costs no more than a midrange gpu, but a gpu is needed for games a ppu isnt. If its launch doesnt go well other makers arent going to take it up and the ppu could die a death. Cut $100 off it and it would sell like hot cakes but as it is I would be surprised. It launched at the end of the year, in he same timeframe as the x360 $300 for x360 $300 for a ppu? The company is fabless so if the first run isnt a success they wont die but I cant see that many people spending that much on one of these when the game will still run fine without it, just having fewer physics objects. edit: still I would like one some new vids http://www.airtightgames.com/currentproject.html

Its the NovodeX physics sdk api. Currently no other physics engine is supported,they could be but Havok etal would have to pay for this. Havok is working on duel core tech rather than ppu. The reson for this is price. It is uncertain at this ppoint how many gamers are going to pay $300 for a ppu Lots of info here http://personal.inet.fi/atk/kjh2348fs/ageia_physx.html The bigest problem that these cards face after price is that no graphiucs card at present can draw 50000 physics objects. Push 10000 particels and it impacts framerate

Unlike a bee which should not be able to fly but does. I would argue though that it is possible to know and prove things, though not everything. Mathematics for example can prove itself to be right. It is a fundimental part of its systems.

Ill agree with you on a lot of philosophy. It is arguing for arguments sake. perhaps valid when discussing the human condition but I fail to see ite relevance in any other field. But then gravity isnt a constant, it can fluctuate with the mass and speed of its origin. Time isnt a constant. Neither is the spped of light. Light can be stopped http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4474 the universe is an odd place.

Most of quantum mechanics is a fudge to explain something that doesn’t work properly. Quantum seems to be a crusade to make the universe fir the theory rather than the theory fit the universe. Time is also not static , as the experiments using atomic clocks show. Speed, density matter, or the lack there of, gravity etc can effect the flow of time or our perspective on it. Time is our perspective on the movement and interaction of matter and energy it is not something tangible on its own. If the "rules" that govern matter and energy change, and they do under different circumstances, then our perspective of time changes as well. I think we need to change the topic title to "life the universe and everything"

Sorry I meant your graphics card.

The a64 has a much better system, 2 locks and a bracket. Much easier and alot harder to smash the core, which Ive never done thankfully. I did once pull a cpu out of its socket when it stick to the bottom of the heat sink. It still worked amazingly. What gpu/vpu are you using?

Thief also had electricity.

I see you point, and agree with it somewhat but it is all still subjective. There are as many people in the world that would argue classical music is far to contained by the rules laid down by Bach and others, and they would be right. They classical composers managed to bring a world of expression to their music with these rules, but killed off much of the traditional folk music in the process due to the rules they created. Listen to traditional Romany music and you will find it has harsh melodies and sounds that to our ear are discordant. There is nothing wrong with the traditional music but to our ears they sound wrong as we are used to listening to traditional harmonies and chords who’s rules Bach and other pioneered I would not look on modern music so harshly. Yes there is a large amount of rubbish but then modern music in its various forms, has been around for barely a hundred years, and still uses the same basic rules of structure of classical, while classical has been developed over centuries. Also classical contains its share of dross. Thankfully you have to dig to find it now, but it is there. Give it a few centuries and I’m sure classical and "modern" will be able to stand together, as both even now contain outstanding pieces. But whether the audience for them will ever merge is a different matter.

Building on the old to make somthing new and better (sometimes) A bit like genetics really. Everything is an evolution of past ideas.

But then look at oasis. They would never have passed a talent or image test. They produced two or three half decent songs but they are still on tour. There is no understanding taste.

Now there is a game we canagree on. A great game and the story was very well executed. I hope illusion do another story driven game, Hidden and dengerous 1 and 2 are good rts/tactical shooters but mafia is a much better game.

One game you may enjoy is Fahrenheit, by quantic dream http://www.fahrenheitgame.com/index.php?lg=us Its a 3d adventure game more than an rpg but it does look interesting. What is you take on adventure games by the way? By their nature they are much more linier than rpg's but share the interactivity and generaly have well rounded plots

Fair enough. In that vein have you an opinion on Fear? It seems, to me, to be a mix of shooter, action adventure and a movie, as its set in a 24 hour time frame iirc Then there is the games Im looking forward to Alan wake, horror action adventure and Bioshock, which I cant find much on at all. Ill get oblivion for the mod tools but I cant see it being more than fedex missions with pretty ai and graphics. All the elder scrolls games have been like that after all. Ive never played a gothic game so I cant really comment on 3 but the screens look nice.

That is basicly claiming its not a shooter because you dont want it to be. You can run through huge chunks of doom3 without shooting There is a very big differance between story and gamplay. a shooter can have very good gameplay. Hl2 (of which I didnt think its plot was any better than doom3's btw) a shallow as it was had some great gamplay ideas. The physics puzzels while contrived were a good idea. The interaction with the environment made the game stand out. The good reason to go throgh the levels can be just as valid as the reason to godeliver chop up or negotiate as any rpg. That is a fair enough point From what I gether radient ai is day night cyles and built in npc to npc conversations, with context conversation (somthing morrowind could do but was never used outside of mods). It should look good but I cant see how this will improve the quests. It may make the environment more imersive though True, it certainly eveolved from B1, but then again the start dungeon, the sewers, the asylum, the castle, the druid grove, the elven forest, the underwater city, most of the game you still had to hack your way through. Infact if you didnt you got very little reward for doing anything as hacking was the primary means of expericance. Exeedingly dialogy intensive, but still a very unsatifying game imho, but still the expericnce was gained mostly, you guessed it, from killing things. Nope I did write a long critique over at steam powered about the plot holes and pantomime characters So would you agree that for the FPs to grow that they need to become more action adventure? Ill agree to an extent. But I think COD worked, and sold well, because it did what it set out to do. However much you dislike it COD was a movie where you got to shoot the guns. A serious sam with a ww2 setting that was imersive if you let it be. If the ai had been better and the characters more interactive, but more importantly it didnt have predetermined paths (I hate being on railes as it were), it could have been a much better game. I have some hope COD2 will remedy this, then again it is on the x360 as well.

What? Its perfectly true, as pointed out by your tomato comment Deus ex, you talk to people and have stats but 90% of the game you shoot people Thief. Yes you can ghost the whole thing but guess what you have weapons, you can go though the whole thing killing people Splinter cell, granted its not first person and you can ghost large parts, but the game comes with more gun modes than doom3 How are they not fps They certainly play like them. The point was fairly clear, and you made the point for me. Without the story which a few post up you argued didn’t matter + npc interaction you don’t have an RPG, you have a hack and slash much like serious sam. Put a good story in and you have an RPG, put a good story in an fps and you have a much better game. Just because it has levels where you kill people doesn’t mean it can’t have a good story. Oblivion and morrowind are 90% killing things, doing it to boost a stat doesn’t take away from the fact that you are just farming points to be strong enough to kill something else down the road. So Morrowind was bad. Everquest(Ill grant you), quildwars, wow, bauldurs gate, planescape? There missions were all variations on the go here kill or go here deliver go here collect, go here find/meet someone, go here wait for the weather to change. You claim but it this/these main plots that deviate from the FedEx type quest and made Baldurs etal what they were. For call of duty and doom3 you are correct on the purpose, but triebs 3 farcry(to an extent) Halflife2, NOLF 1 and 2, Pariah and so on your wrong. The plot here directed the missions aims, there were reasons given for the actions taken, alot more than go here fetch which was morrowinds main reason outside of the main quest. An fps that has a good story is no longer an fps because it has a good story a stats system and you can talk to people in it? I would argue that Call of Duty is a good game. Not for its story or particularly for its characters though the interaction does give it a certain charm. But it is good for its recreation of the period however over the top it tries to be.

But a little more about SIN2 pczone

You can boil them down to this yes. I don’t think they are, I was using an extream. But take the story and the interaction out ( the rpg elements) and you are left with a hack and slash, and fps with swords So do some good rpfps', Deus ex, thief splinter cell all offer multiple ways to complete tasks. Why? Take the npc interaction and the story out of an rpg and you get a big map and lots of things to kill. Which was my point, fps are becoming action adventure. They need to, on the one hand you get the Serious Sam games which some people enjoy to just blow stuff up, then the doom3 kind which adds a little plot as an excuse to shoot things. Then there is the dues ex, the Max Payne, Pariah, which add a plot and story but at the core are still point a gun and shoot games. But they have a plot a story and adventure to improve it. But that isn’t taking the story out. it is only removing the main plot I agree, But more stories (plots?) are created by the npc's, the “I lost my child can you help?” quest is a story. The endless go here kill that fetch this quests are just the same as a go to level what ever and massacre the npc's missions in an fps. The better the ai gets in an rpg the more stories are created in a believable way I agree. But there is no reason why the stories that explain in an fps (or action adventure if you will) why you have to go to point A and kill who ever, cant be as good as the story in an rpg where you are told to go to point A and kill someone or rescue someone or make a pot or what ever.

Please don’t be vulgar. But in any case I was referring to the ability to hide, sneak past. Pariah, farcry?- it wasn’t the aim in either game but could be done quite effectively. That is true to varying degrees but there is scope for this to improve. You site gothic 3 and oblivion as games you are looking forward to. What are they but fps with RPG elements? (Ok you can play in third person). The fps needs to expand and it has been doing. Deus ex (though it didn’t start it) can be sited as invigorating the fps formula and showing that rpg elements add to the experience. The story that you reject so utterly, and is central to the RPG experience, has to be improved to change the fps into the rpfps. Take the story out of the RPG and all you have is a landscape to wander about, and some very trivial npc's to trade with. But the main aim is to kill things, sounds abit like an fps with a bigger map. Take the story out of the fps and you have serious sam or just an excuse to shoot things. Take just the killing out of an rpg though and you have a story and characters an adventure game infact. The story and the characters are what make games, books and films work. Doom3 failed for many people not because it was too dark, and not because its guns weren’t good enough. but because there was little character building and about a paragraphs worth of plot. A complex plot can work in an fps as well as an rpg. Deus ex managed it, arguably its sequel did. It isn’t first person but Max Payne 1 and 2 managed it. But yes there is lots of room for improvement. Pariah aimed for this and missed by wide amount but the attempt was there. Perhaps those that worked did so because their main aim wasn’t to let you shoot things, story telling was.The shooting was a device to move the story/plot and characters along. None has the story depth of a true rpg, but they don’t have to, an rpg normally lasts about 40 hours in which you spend at least two thirds killing things, an fps normally last 10 hours at most The fps has to become more like an RPG, as you point out they are becoming very repetitive. Im looking forward to dreamfall btw. (http://www.dreamfall.com/)

It does make one wonder then if the lack of originality is such a problem that we are involved with a mod that’s stated goal is to recreate the playing experience, though not the setting, of a past game? After all improvements or not the core gamp lay will be the same or what is the point in making it? Any sequels stated goals are build on the success and good points of its predecessor. Stating that because only thief 1 and 2 were successful at this type of game play and so it is still fresh is a rather blinkered view. These two games are as derivative as any other fps, but like many fps it introduced one new mechanic an in this case it worked. Stealth to carrying degrees has been used in every fps since (save serious Sam :lol:) There are games that copy thief’s ideas closely and others that take what they need for their gamp lay mechanic to work. The closest to thief is splinter cell this merged the gamp lay mechanics of thief with the more traditional fps. You can ghost almost all of the first and third game, I’ve done it. The only real difference between these games is the setting and characters the basic rules of the game are the same. Can you name something new that can be done with stealth? Some of the newer fps' are merging RPG elements inspired by Deus ex, it is this merging and evolution of ideas that will keep the genre going. A complete new start is not possible for the simple reason that there is no point in recreating the wheel. The mechanics are not the problem. The problem is a lack of story depth. Some try, max Payne and strangely tribes 2, though that was very badly implemented the potential was there. If the stories are returned to the centre rather than as the excuse for the shooting then more of these games will be worth purchasing. The point about an artist publishing their own work and being paid for it if it has merit is well made. However this brings us full circle to a digital distribution system, and why I, though I hate the thing, will use steam. The developer is empowered by these systems to publish their own work. The only costs they incur are development and the distribution, which is massively smaller than printing the DVD manual and box. It allows them to gain a much larger share of the profits of their own works, and in the end their works will win or lose based on their work.

I see your point but from that thinking every tennis game is the same, every baseball game, every football game. The mechanics are the same, the interactions are set in stone (the rules) But these games don’t go stale because setting and the apposing team is different, the chance of winning is never known. The fps genre cannot change into something it is not. It will always boil down into pointing a gun and shooting. But the setting, the opposition and the difficulty and indeed the rules will change. The plot/story will also change and it is these things that need work. I will agree that many fps games are very similar but stating that all of them are the same and any new ones will be bad is plainly wrong. The evolution and innovation in this genre does have to be increased. INdeed I want a much better plot. I hopig that Remedy does it again with Alan wake (http://www.alanwake.com/) Ritual has produced some of the most interesting and rewarding games in this genre, I have hopes that SIN2 will build on this. If valve were doing it I don’t know if I would be at excited. Yes they know how to rework an ID engine and call it their own, and yes they make a good facial system but their plotting is full of hole's and their endings are right of seventies TV sci-fi. I hope you didnt take offence with my above post I reread it just now and It could read as a bit rude, which I didnt intend.

Do you read though? As every work of fiction has been derivetive since at least Homer. Scifi Horror? they can still be boiled down into the same stages as ever other type of fiction. (I did have the link for that somewhere I can remember the guys name who did the study) Yes every game is derivetive in some way of one that passed before but the improvments, the variuations on theme, the different combination of ideas, the story, make at least some of them worth playing. Biowares sytem by the way works in the game (Neverwinter nights) it isnt a seperate piece of software. You download the mod, install it, run the game. If you play the premium mod it connects to the server and you play. Think of it in the same way as a mmog. It isnt intrusive and Ive never had a problem with it. Systems like steam I dont like. Why do we need the programe. Why not just run it of a webpage and have the software/game we download just do a server check if they need one( Like xp and that is annoying enough) WHy the need for a secong piece of buggy software?