SplaTtzZ
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Posts posted by SplaTtzZ
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I will always recommend Sennheiser's to someone wanting to get into a good pair of headphones, while audiophiles will say that anything under the extreme high end is useless, the vast majority of people just dont head or care about it. HD555's are extremely comfy and sound great, they however are 'open back', which allows outside sound in, if you dont work in a woodmill that's most likely not a very big issue. I havent tested their gaming headsets personally, I dont like mics etc on my headphones.
Agreed I highly recommend these too, I have HD555's and if you can afford them Crispy they're extremely comfortable and have great sound. Mine lasted 2 - 2.5 years but i wore the heck out of them and they got too manky so i bought some new ones. They're not USB but so you'll need to have the correct port on your PC (3.5mm jack). I got mine online from a place in Melbourne called PC Case Gear (unfortunately they no longer seem to sell them) and they were cheaper than retail; but you can shop around, i know JB Hifi sells them if you're interested. They retail pretty expensive though; like between 250-350 AUD.
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What I did find out from the official response is that the game is being made primarily for the PC first. If it is ever done for consoles it will be ported over. So far the only announcement is that it's a PC title. That's the official word from Eidos Montreal forums.
Hmmm, where have I heard that before?
Oh thats right, Operation Flashpoint devs said the same thing too. Infinity Ward also came up with 'This is the single biggest development we've made for PC...' bullshit when they released the matchmaking system they named IWNet. Turned out they pretty much lied straight to everyone faces because it was basically just a console port. I wouldn't hold your breath over a PC exclusive; you can count on your fingers the number of PC exlusive games released in 09, and most of those would be either MMO's or strategy games, neither of which work well on consoles. If there were FPS's then they were made in Russia/Eastern Bloc or were 'indy'. Pretty much only the PC version of Dragon Age kept up with its dev's retoric.
Again its not necessarily a bad thing thats it destined for consoles; and if they break the trend and actually make it for PC first then for consoles it might be really good. But tbh i can't see it fitting with the nature of the industry today, and more than likely it will be the other way around, made for consoles first and foremost.
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To my knowledge most of the industry awards are all web based, ie. gaming review websites giving out goty awards or something whereas what I'm thinking of with an Academy Awards of Gaming
is something on the lines of the hollywood version with all the glitz and glamour. Though already i can see holes in this idea; mainly because the protagonists of games aren't real people who can show up but pixels on a screen. And that therefore means any such industry wide awards would have to be given to the developers and I dont think I'd spend valuable time watching the likes of Cliffy B or Derek Smart take the stage. I guess what I'd like to see is an independent body reviewing games based on their artistic merits; I mean I rarely watch the academy awards but I do hear about which movies win and any time I see a movie that has won awards i'll generally rent it out, if for no other reason than i trust the academy's review board that the film is well made both from an artistic and technical standpoint. I think that such a body in the gaming industry (lord knows how its membership would be formed or how it would remain independent) could give much needed mass marketing appeal for lesser known titles that don't include mute, amnesiac space marines. I don't think current review websites and the like really cut it.Of course this also opens up a whole can of worms as to what exactly constitutes an 'artful' game; cos various games like serious sam which had no plot really at all were nevertheless great fun!
As to protagonists speaking, i've always found it completely immersion breaking when they dont say anything, for a number of reasons. Firstly is that most if not all the dialogue therefore has to be stilted in such a way to not allow the player interaction. Most of the dialogue then seems to revolve around NPCs asking rhetorical questions or questions which they answer for you; and giving orders. Secondly, whilst I would agree with that article and Ken Levine that cut scenes are'nt always a good way to advance plot, if done properly I think they can be quite entertaining. Failing that allowing the player some interaction, like for example Mass Effect, even if this seems less natural, is better than having a mute character.
In my own experience with Half Life 2, I generally spent the dialogue scenes like the professor's lab just acting like a complete asshole, jumping on tables, kicking shit over and playing with the little gizmos. This was simply because i had no input for any of the dialogue and therefore was not invested in the scene.
I've always preffered or invested more in Rpg's than other genres for this exact reason, but then i guess that's the whole point of roleplaying
Most of the older games i've enjoyed the most tend to be the most dialogue heavy or have creative and interesting plots. Thief is definitely a prime example, not only for its very innovative gameplay mechanics like stealth; but also because of its interesting plot and narrative. Garret was truly a character i liked playing as; because he was a complex character and an anti-hero. I think thats what alot of older games had going for them, since the technology was not as good at suspending disbelief or being immersive as it is today developers relied much more on plot and good storytelling. Though of course i might just be nostalgic about my youth 
I just found out a game called Operation Flashpoint: Dragon RisingBe wary of this one. It is more realistic than you average fps but not as realistic as the original Op Flashpoint games or Arma (alot of users on the forums are complaining it isn't realistic or hard enough). It does however have alot less bugs than its main rival Arma II and is much more polished. Multiplayer however is a little screwed atm with no dedicated servers (its a console port) but i think theres a patch coming soon. Also there will be fan made missions (pc version has an editor) and maybe mods too i guess but don't quote me on that last one
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If we're recommending 2D games (or at least platformers) I'm gonna throw my 2 cents in and vote for Trine! I quite enjoyed this game even though the puzzles were fairly easy. It kind of reminds me alot of the Lost Vikings which I played when i was a kid
On the subject of older games being more intereseting I'm kind of half and half; i do think alot of the older games are better than their conemporaries but i think if i were to play them now they'd be crap. That said there are alot of older gems that truly were both fun to play and had engaging storylines and other elements; or truly revolutionary gameplay. I'm sort of compiling a list in my head of my gripes with modern games; so far the most annoying trends i've seen are:
Protagonists who are Space marines or any other kind of 'marine' and who wear large, encumbering suits of body/robot armour, (unless they're space marines from warhammer 40k who are pretty cool )(Edit: marines from the Aliens IP are also ok)
Protagonists who have amnesia
Protagonists who cant/won't ever talk
Short (also easy to beat) games
I mean making the guy from Doom a space marine, who doesnt talk or have any backstory was probably ok to do in the 90's when it was relatively fresh; but it seems to me that games trying to do this today are becoming very very stale (im lookin at you Gears of War and Halo). Thats why i like Mass Effect; you were actually able to give your character a backstory that played into the game quite well, he/she talked and had his/her own personality; it didnt even matter that he/she was in space and technically a marine!
In some ways what I think the game industry needs is its own form of the Academy Awards; or at least some entity that will push the medium further towards making more artful games.
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Wow the screens and that video seem pretty impressive.
I know very little about graphics and modelling; but i'm assuming Tesselation allows you to produce better looking curves in a model without increasing polygon count?
By which i mean instead of adding more and more vertices to try and create a curved or circular object you can simply create a rough outline and use tesselation to simulate the curve?
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Mark Hamil has been the voice of the Joker since the 1992 animated Batman series. He 'IS' the joker.
Wow just goes to show how much I know about it
I've never actually seen any of the animated stuff, so it came as quite a surprise to me! I would never have picked it though, having seen him pretty much only in Star Wars and never in any other movie I never really thought he was that good an actor to be honest, and thus would have thought a character like the joker beyond his thespian skills.
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Yep; great game IMO. It was pretty short i thought, but I liked how they expanded on the comic book universe, as opposed to the recent movies; but that they still managed to keep it mature and sophisticated enough to keep my interest. Combat was excellent, very fluid, it really made it seem like batman was a true martial artist. Graphics were very pretty too, and the soundtrack and voice acting were fantastic.
Mark Hamil as the Joker was just one of those wtf!? moments for me; having never seen him outside of the Star Wars movies I wouldn't have picked him to do voice acting, particularly the voice of the Joker. However, in the end I thought he did a really fantastic job with the Joker's voice, he seemed to perfectly capture the character with his manical giggling and crazy dialogue.
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Meh, alot of posters on ttlg to my mind seem to be too conservative and simply want a cut/paste of thief, and are unwilling to see any changes to a game they seem to perceive as flawless.
More on topic though, one thing I particularly liked about the combat was the parrying and blocking done by guards. It seemed as though after they hit you they immediately assumed a defensive stance, ready for your counter-attack. Thus the combat seemed more rythmical to me and is how I woud perceive melee combat to play out. I particularly like also how there seems to be more emphasis towards foot-work and positioning relative to your opponent.
1 question though, was it merely coincidence or a function of ai behaviour that made one guard seem to retreat then come back and attack you from behind in Demonstration Video #1? The fight seemed to be going your way Mortem, until that guard flanked you!
Either way I look forward to the fights (and getting my arse handed to me)
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On the subject of battle-bread and combat I have to say the sword fighting looks great in TDM; it seems you guys have managed to capture the essence of combat in the thief games whilst making it much more visceral, i look forward to seeing it in the final release.
From the videos it also seems like the thief is getting his arse kicked more often than not
it'll be interesting to finally play an fps more about avoiding and escaping combat than engaging in it. I never really tried many of the mods or fms for thief and as such found the vanilla games to be fairly lenient in regards to being discovered or fighting. Its good to see that this might not be the case for TDM! -
What's ghost?
I'd say he's talking about Norton's Ghost backup program, which I believe is still dos-based, and basically partitions and creates a mirror image of your hdd.
Damn, I'm using AVG at the moment. My firewall keeps defaulting to 'Allow All' when I start windows, and even when i change it to 'Small Home or Office Network' it sometimes randomly changes back to allow all.
I should probably change as well. I use Norton on my other computer and it doesn't seem too bad. Does anyone on these boards use McCaffee or PC-Cillin? I havent tried them in ages.
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Try the second installment in the series guys: Black Plague. You get no weapons at all so forget about ambushing people
you have to use physics to fight them! Having said that though the enemies are pretty slow and stupid; towards the end of the game there was this one bit where I just kept running around a pillar until the bad guy couldnt keep up with me. There are some good parts though when you dont have anywhere to run and this dude is breaking down the door trying to get inside and gut you; those moments were pretty tense. But overall the AI needed a little more work.
Speaking of scary and tense I'm actually downloading Silent Hill 3 right now...
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I just wanna know how the hell they kept getting money and investors for as long as they did. They must have had a really fantastic marketing team and PR campaign to stay afloat for that long and release only 2 other games (Prey and Max Payne).
I heard the graphics engine they are using in that trailer is some incarnation of the Unreal Engine; but apparently the development process was taking so long that they changed the engine more than a few times over the years to keep current with other games being released.
Bit of a shame really because the 3DRealms team had talent, and they showed that with Max Payne and Prey.
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I've had the red ring of death twice so far since I bought the 360 on release, both times I just bitched about it to EB until they gave me a brand new one. You have to call India though to get a special number which is seriously the biggest pain in the arse. The one I have now so far is working fine, i just keep it well ventilated and try not to move it overly much (read:at all).
I think I like the 360 more than the playstation 3 (which I also own) simply because you can get more DLC; though mitigating this asset is having to pay for all the DLC with microsoft's special Disney money and having to pay for a subscription to play online. The 360 I think generally gets better exclusive games from American Developers which I prefer over Sony's Japanese exlusives.
Never had any of my discs ever damaged from the 360 though, did you move console at all when it was running?
Overall IMO I think the PC is a better platform than both of them put together.
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Incidentally - I was wondering what people think about timing re: TDM release and Thief 4 announcement and then release? I strikes me that Thief 4 will likely be out at the same time or soon after any big campaign that is made in a T2X style.
I would say that this probably won't be a problem for two reasons:
1. TDM is a community project with no goal towards making a profit (as far as I know)
and;
2. Considering how much effort and how long it took to get an editor for TDS I wouldn't hold my breath that any Thief 4 will come with a ready to use editor or any support.
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I'm not so much worried about the development studio, who hopefully will remain true to the series, as I am the publishers. Eidos is going downhill with its continued insistence on flogging that old, dead horse Lara Croft; I'd feel more comfortable if the IP were in better hands.
Then again the whole publishing industry is consolidating so rapidly that soon the only other hands would be Ubisoft's or, heaven forbid, EA.
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Yeah something like a video tutorial would be pretty awesome! That is, if you guys had the time to do one of course
I imagine its gonna be pretty hectic from now until a Beta release -
Yeah nice update! Can't believe you guys are at the stage where you're preparing to release a beta! It's been like 4 or so years now right? My memory's hazy; but congrats anyway!
Any chance we could get a video of the lock picking system in action? I'm dying to see what its like in-game
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Ah, well, that's a shame I guess. I do like how games from behind the Iron Curtain actually try to do something new or unique with the gameplay for an fps; Stalker was one game I thought had a really unique setting and ideas, it sounded great on paper.
Unfortunately, and it seems the same way with Cryostasis as well, all those good ideas and innovations just don't seem to be executed in a way that could make them enjoyable for the player or relevant to the game, if they even get put in at all.
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They're pretty nice mate! Whats the editor for Farcry 2 like? easy to use? I have it on my comp somewhere but i never really opened it up to see what it was like.
The graphics for Farcry 2 were really, really good; it really does look like Africa. Though unfortunately for me that didn't stop it from being one of the worst games i've had to suffer through in quite some time; the gameplay in Farcry 2 was just shot to shit.
Hopefully some good mods will be made for it, because those graphics are really nice.
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Congrats Mate!
lol @ the 'alien wearing a monocle' in the game description
I like 4X games so i'll download this and give it a go!
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Wow that is dodgy. I hope they didnt charge you much for that
Buy Asus next time hehe
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There is really no true dos in windows 2000 through xp though. Why not download a windows 98 startup disk, and get into dos that way. Should be able to easily do whatever you want then.
This is probably the best bet, seeing as you have the option to format your hard drive through the dos setup program. And the startup disks arent all that large either.
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Are you doing this command from the MS-DoS command prompt or the command prompt within Windows? It seems odd that there would be files in use if you're doing it in Dos because windows shouldn't have had a chance to load up yet. When you first switch your computer on start hitting F8 at the bios and POST screens before windows starts loading, to get a bunch of options; choose the command prompt option and try the RD command in there before windows has loaded.
Movies of All Time
in Off-Topic
Posted
I dunno if someone has mentioned it already, but the best B-Movie ever IMO was Peter Jackson's Braindead, which i think is retitled Dead-Alive in the states for some stupid reason. It was hilarious, It's so ridiculously over the top I couldn't stop laughing the whole way through. Its very gory, like i think it holds a record for the most blood used in a film ever, but it's a masterpiece of NZ cinema i think, much like Jackson's later work The Lord of the Rings.
I like some Australian films as well so I'd have to recommend Mad Max 2 (again retitled Road-Warrior in the states
) and I also liked The Proposition alot too.
I second this movie; easily one of if not the best war movies ever made IMO.