Subjective Effect
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Posts posted by Subjective Effect
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It wiil be very difficult, yes, and one of the things that will distinguish a good mission from a great one.
I actually really dislike that mp3 from TDS. I never felt it fit well, but it might just be it's association with TDS that I don't like.
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Ok, I'm going to re-dissect your original post so you can understand what I mean.
Before you start reading my responses I hope you are aware that the way you have suggested these things is as if you think they should be included in most, if not all, missions (type dependent of course).
Multiple ways to enter a building/complete a mission - As well as adding to the replay factor it also gives the world a sense of freedom and makes it feel more like a real place than a linear game.
I totally agree.
Story - A mission whould have a story, or a lot of little interwoven stories, even if the player isn't directly involved in it. You should be able to follow the lives of some characters through conversations and so on.No. Missions often have a "story". I'll be using The 7th Crystal as an example here. There is a mission goal (find crystal), a plot (the head of the house has found a secret chamber) AND a story - he and his wife are suffering the aftermath of their daughter's death and it's all very tragic. You glean the plot and the story from notes you find. It's great.
Every mission needs a goal or it would be pointless. A plot fleshes out the world so that it seems like you are raiding a real place populated by individual characters and so although not essential really adds to the atmosphere.
But the story(ies) that you find about an unfaithful wife, or a secret romance between the princess and the gardener, whilst nice now and then and occasionally very amusing or interesting should not be part of every mission. If they were it would just be unoriginal. There is certainly a place for them, there is no doubt about that, but to suggest that EVERY mission SHOULD have one is over-egging it a bit.
A sense of discovery - The Indiana Jones effect of coming across a lost city, or even just finding that old trap door that Lord xxxx mentioned in his diary.
We all love this stuff. I certainly think that they are an important part of missions. But again - suggesting that EVERY mission should have them is suggesting turning them from interesting quirks to run of the mill banalities.
A Living City - The city in which the game takes place is a living, breathing monster. You should be able to hear it groan and hum. It should feel like it's ancient even if you just created it five minutes ago.
Ok, I got your point and agree with you.
Anticipation - You should always give an inkling to the player of what his deistination or next task is, so that he has something to work towards.
Why? This can sometimes kill a surprise. Useful if used correctly but by no means essential.
A twist - The mission should always end up slighty different from what the player though it was going to be when he started. A good example is the Sword mission from TDP.
No. Sometimes yes, but not always! The Sword has a MASSIVE twist. If every mission started one way and ended up being as radical a departure as The Sword it really would end up being the dullest of things. It would be "Oh yawn, look at that booooring twist. Again". Un. Original.
Originality - There's always a place for a builder church or guarded mansion, but if you can create an entirely new faction or setting all the better. Again you can start them off thinking it's a standard mission, then chance tack.
I agree with Spring. Use the existing factions to good effect. I'm all for the creation of smaller factions, conflicts and splinter factions, the occasional hinted at extra or encountered faction but people should stay away from new faction overkill.
Keep it human - Zombies and bug beasts have their place but try to break it up with some proper human interaction once in a while. See TDP for how not to do it.
Not a chance. People should have the freedom to create missions with whatever AI they want. If you want to send us to a haunted mansion on the edge of town, a catacomb, a haunted cathedral or anything else that's fine with me. And vice versa and all inbetween. Did you ever play The Inverted Manse?
Plenty of Sneaking - The Dark Mod at its core is a tight sneaking game and that's where the game gets a lot of it's tension too. Getting past the guards should be tough. Just running away from burricks and zombies through endless caverns is not sneaking.
Ha ha. I agree here.
Rewarding Loot - Every task completed should come with a quick reward for what you have done. In the old FPS games it was health & ammo, in the Dark Mod it's probably loot. Don't just throw it around where the player doesn't deserve it.
No. You managed to scale the wall and get across the rooftops and into that window? THAT is your reward - that you're in! Realistically placed loot should be paramount. I'm not against the coins that slipped through the casino floorboard into the basement, or the necklace in the Magpie nest but at least put loot were it will reasonably be.
To summarise; I just think your were suggesting overuse of certain elements that would cause lack of variety, freedom, but most important originality. If I break into a mansion I don't want The 7th Crystal's Plot Redux part 23.
And IF I ever get this thing working (damn you Vista and your 0.9.4 woes) you most certainly will find these elements in the 2 missions I have fully designed, concepted and plotted - 1 1/2 of which I was working on in T3Ed (I posted screens somewhere at some point) before it really started to become impossible (and I say 1 1/2 because 1 I thought was doable and the other would never have been possible in T3Ed so I was building a much tweaked and scaled back version):
Multiple ways to enter a building/complete a mission
Story
A sense of discovery
A partial twist
Originality
Plenty of Sneaking
So you can see, I'm not totally against all your ideas - just not ALL the time.
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Is someone going to update the Mod DB page? Doing so gets you in the Mod DB news and links to the newer videos will certainly get people salivating enough to vote!
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I disagree almost entirely.
Multiple ways to enter a building/complete a mission - This I agree with.
Plenty of Sneaking - This I agree with.
But the other things? No. Let me tell you why
Story - A mission does not need a story, certainly not of this type. If every mission has one they'll all end up being the same. Having a goal is a different thing.
A sense of discovery - No. Sometimes a house should just be a house.
A Living City - It doesn't have to take place in a city though! And it could be a city that is asleep. It's going to be at night after all and not everywhere will be open 24 hrs.
Anticipation - Arguable.
A twist - Most certainly not. What are we? The M. Night Shyamalan of games? "Always" have a twist? What? No. Why? That just gets dull.
Originality - ...if you can create an entirely new faction or setting all the better... No, no no. Original yes, but new factions? Do we really want 30 different factions? I don't think so.
Keep it human - No, no and again no. How is this original? We should have a range of mission types.
Rewarding Loot - Again this is cookie cutter mission making. If I ever get this thing working and do any maps you will most certainly not have "candy" loot put around near mission objectives. It'll be realistically placed.
Sorry to put such a downer on your thread Mac but I think what you have suggested will end up with a set of missions that are to similar and actually lacking in originality. You can make a good mission in any way that you want.
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Yup.
Should probably update TDM page on there. It doesn't have the newer screens or videos.
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That's a very narrow view of evolution. Besides, plenty of people want to have kids. Some of those that really want kids don't have them because they know it's not practical. They still want them though.
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I only have my sister and her kids as reference, they annoy and fight with one another all the time, and drive her mental. I don't mind visiting, but I seriously couldn't put up with 5 kids running around the house all day, making noise, breaking things, and generally getting into mischief and annoying me.
That's your sister and her kids though. I bet spars kids don't do the same because they are probably well disciplined and well behaved.
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Seconding oDD on the "Why XP?" question. Vista was an utter arse when I first got it but that was because out of the box, pre-updates, it seemed very unstable (and was reportedly so). But I had no net connection then. Once I go broadband back and it updated it's been less crash prone than XP was and TBH I prefer it.
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It's more common than you think, though not at these sizes! It's called a tricholith and lots of people who chew hair, and therefore mostly young women with long hair, get them.
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I lived in Taiwan for a few months and did Mandarin classes out there. I've no idea how Korean relates to Mandarin though. Korean and China share a border but the characters in Korean don't seem to have that much resemblance to Chinese (unlike in Japan where alot of it is identical even though the language has a completely different sound and structure).
Languages are languages. I think that German would be harder than Mandarin, but with study and exposure to using Korean I'm sure it will be fine. Babies learn it after all - how hard can it be?!
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You do know that newer versions of Risk have mission cards that are exactly like you describe right? Seriously, they do.
Never played the new Shogun, only the 80s version (still have it). Where would I find this new version?
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Best boardgame ever is Shogun. Like Risk, but much, much more complex. Set in Japan, natch, and came out years before the computer game fyi. Upto 5 players and it can last a day.
Another great boardgame is Settlers of Catan.
Of course Risk and Monopoly are good fun for quick games.
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Beowulf was ok. The animation is often of very high quality except for the faces. They still can't get faces right, although some of the scenes, and Beowulf's body at times, looked absolutely realistic.
What really spoilt it was the massive plot deviation and the stupid dialog. Yes, I know it was supposed to be "mature" but I don't see the point of much of the sex talk. It's not in the book and it just dumbed the film down.
If any Europeans see it can you confirm/deny Grendle sometimes speaking in Dutch please? That are a few things he says which were for all comprehension purposes to me (being half South African) Africaans/Dutch, but which could just be him speaking "funny" in the film. You'll know what I mean if/when you see it.
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That is exactly what I mean spar.
Komag - being able to see your arms, feet and body is not body awareness unless the model interacts meaningfully with the game world. If you tagged a visible body onto Garrett in T1 or 2 it would still lack almost all features of body awareness because there is no in-game physical model. The only thing it would have is an aid for feet placement but the little shadow that is there does this anyway.
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I think Thief 3 did body awareness correctly (apart from the jerky movement, of course), where you can look down and see your whole body, see your legs/knees prominently when crouched, etc, and I really like it a lot. Halo does this decently as well. It's one of the extremely rare things I think Dark Mod is inferior to T3 in.
I think Thief 3 got it completely wrong. You should not have to simulate certain aspects of body awareness if you are doing it at all and Thief 3 implements those aspects. Clunky movement, head-bob and gait matching that is just wrong, weird all or nothing movement and the much applauded but utterly ridiculous arms hitting things and knocking them off tables etc. It's not an anti-clumsy training tool and none of these things are noticeable in RL because we're built to incorporate them. It's not that different to implementing a balance issue in FPSs. We don't need it, it's stupid.
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Teams have been ordered to stop later in development than this though haven't they? Wasn't the Halo RTS close to release when MS made them stop?
Anyway, I don't think TDM can be breaking any copyright because the setting is in fact too dissimilar and it's also a toolset, not a game as such.
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But spar - TDM is a toolset. It's not a game. If it were a game I'd agree, but as a toolset you must let the primary users, the FM authors, know what can and cannot be expected in-game. That way they can design maps with gameplay features in mind.
Take the rope arrow as an example - the videos show that it can be used to pull crates over. If a mapper didn't know this he might build a level with a possible entry into a warehouse via ropearrow into a crate. But you'd just pull the crate off.
They need to know this stuff.
Yes, it will be in the documentation but I think that videos would serve several purposes:
1. Mappers would know what to expect before considering TDM without having to trawl through the docs.
2. Players of FMs would know how TDM stacks up to the TDS engine and The Dark Engine - when the feature set is complete this is bound to get some pulses racing.
3. It just shows off what the TDM team have achieved and for publicity it would be great. Stick it on mod sites, you tube, news sites etc. We know how Crysis will look and play but everyone wants to see a video baby oh yeah.
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Looks great! Of course.
It's wonderful seeing everything put together like this. One day it would be really good to see a technical video of each gameplay element, just to illustrate how everything works in comparison to T1, 2 and 3. Like the rope arrow videos, but with lots more in.
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Yes.
HL2 is a great game. Not just for the gameplay, which is varied and fun for a shooter, but for the story!
If you've played HL1 and remember what happened play HL2 - it has the best story/plot and the way it's told is fantastic.
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It's also really old news. It is funny though, I only read it all the way through recently.
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Sub Effect! You're a php coder! Please tell me you're awsome and will help me understand all my php5 questions!
Depends what you want to code. It's mostly database stuff. I haven't done any in a while but I have used php5 a little.
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They have the one-up Samsung to mine. I've had no issues with it - it's great for gaming.
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Isn't the definition method a predefined function that is often linked to an object? You probably use them all the time in php, I know I do. You might think of them as commands or something.
I have to get back to learning C++...
Is anyone else using Vista?
in DarkRadiant Feedback and Development
Posted
Further to this topic:
http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=6991&st=0
is anyone else using Vista?
If so what setup do you have and what version of DarkRadiant?
I'm using this setup and DarkRadiant v0.9.4 crashes on me, but v0.9.1 works:
Vista Home Premium
Intel Core 2 Duo 6600
2 Gb RAM
nVidia GTS 8800 320MB with latest nVidia drivers