"E For All" Game Expo Withers, PAX Thrives 64
After the continued struggles of E3 this year, it looks like another IDG-based games conference will have its own troubles. BigDownload reports that most major game manufacturers are skipping E For All, in part due to their focus on the upcoming Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) and BlizzCon (which will be televised). E for All will have major presentations by Microsoft and EA, but you'll have to go to PAX to see events and exhibits from other big publishers; for example, the playable Jumpgate Evolution demo, the Guild Wars tournament, or the Omegathon. The Seattle Times ran a story about Penny Arcade's creators and how PAX came into existence. Further competition for E For All is coming from the Tokyo Game Show, which runs in the beginning of October.
Being a Penny-Arcade fan.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I can say that it is good that a convention where the focus on gaming is valued more than the focus on the "market for gaming".
Hell... Penny Arcade was pushing the latest edition of Dungeons and Dragons table game not too long ago. I would guess that this is a fairly small market, but they don't care because they enjoy the game.
OMG JUMPGATE!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow!
I miss that game!
Man o man -- I'll be buying that on release day. I just hope it is half as good as the original jumpgate was when the servers had good traffic.
It wasn't nearly as much fun to turn the universe red when there weren't enough folks on to notice :(
Did they ever fix the 'nix hitbox? will be my very first question when I get my hands on this, the next will be 'Where am I going to find a decent joystick in 2009?!?!?! do they still make them?' followed by 'can we still replace the in game music with our own? and rewrite the HUDs?'
The original was awesome - its too bad 3DO screwed it up. Glad to see it back for with a sequel
Wow!
Re:OMG JUMPGATE!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
My understanding is it's a completely reworked game. Looks to be quite interesting and I am planning on checking it out myself.
Also, I love my Saitek x52 Joystick/Throttle. Lots of features and you can find it for about $90. Kinda salty, but not crazy expensive like some options, and I think it's a good value considering all the features and the quality feel. Thrustmaster has some cheaper ones (independent joy/throt) that work pretty well, but the feal cheaper and don't have nearly as many features. (As a side note, if you try to demo them in an electronics store, the x52 stick can loose it's tension if abused to hell and back by elementary children. I worked in such a store and ours was fine until some 11 year old punk thought he was Maverick and went nuts on it)
Re:Stock sound effects (Score:3, Interesting)
And a lot of games use the "pneumatic door open/close" sound effects from id Software's Doom.
Probably not. I'd start by assuming good faith and guess that Jumpgate and B5 just happened to license the same stock sound effects library.
Probably. Those same door effects from doom were used in Xcom: UFO Defense/Enemy Unknown (depending on where you lived) which came out the same year as Doom.)
Hell, those doors are pretty much the game equivalent of the "Wilhelm scream"
Re:Stock sound effects (Score:4, Interesting)
And a lot of games use the "pneumatic door open/close" sound effects from id Software's Doom.
...I'd start by assuming good faith and guess that Jumpgate and B5 just happened to license the same stock sound effects library.
Good guess. I can't answer specifically about Jumpgate and Babylon 5, but I know a bit about the Doom sounds. Quite a few of the sounds in Doom are pulled (often completely unaltered) from a huge general-purpose sound library called "The General 6000" from Sound Ideas. Most game companies I've worked for own a copy of this as part of the core of their sound library. Of course, if possible, modern sound designer will not use such common stock sound effects anymore unaltered, as a lot of these sounds are pretty recognizable.
http://sound-ideas.com/6000.html [sound-ideas.com]