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Games Entertainment

Gobs Of Gaming Goodies 109

Posted by timothy from the gather-giddily-gamebots dept.
Warrior-GS writes "The final part of the Future of PC Gaming is up at GameSpy. This one deals with the future of user-created games and talks to developers and mod makers, as well as identifying tools that can assist them. There is also a Q&A with Warren Spector on where he thinks PC gaming is headed in the next several years." John Scabadone points to a "nice article featuring an update on the state of the handheld gaming industry along with a roundtable of some of the premier developers." Read on below for several more gaming updates, too.

pandrew writes "Square has openly admitted to doing something people have been asking for for many years now: a sequel! Though not what most people have asked for (i.e. Final Fantasy 7) this is still a very big step in the Final Fantasy line, since no game in the series has ever had a follow up with a connecting storyline."

k-hell writes "The Mother of All Games, Scorched Earth has been updated to allow for playing on Internet. Rendered in OpenGL, Scorched 3D now features a 3D island environment and LAN and Internet play. See screenshots here. You can download a Windows binary package and/or Windows source package here. At the same time, you should also grab the excellent server browser The All-Seeing Eye."

Lucifer writes "'Sega announced a list of new Sega AGES game titles for PlayStation 2, remakes of their classic Master System, Mega Drive/Genesis, Saturn titles. Each game will retail for 2500 yen, and the first four titles are scheduled to release in Japan in summer 2003.' 15 years later and I'm going to start playing Phantasy Star again! ;-)"

Finally, bredroll writes "Attention fellow Geeks! Ever wanted to live 100ft underground in a ex British gov't nuclear bunker for three days and do nothing but geek at extreme levels and play LAN games? Well, we can help, This year's event includes food and bunks as well,

In-Bunker Events

  • Battle Royale (Robot Wars-type event)
  • Underground Noise Fest (see site)
  • High-speed switched LAN
  • Various LAN game tournaments
  • NTK will be there
  • + more ....
Users of all systems welcome, Linux, BSD, Windows, Mac, anything, the more diverse the better. The bunker is located in Essex (UK) near the town of Brentwood. Details about booking places and prices are on our site."
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Gobs Of Gaming Goodies More

Gobs Of Gaming Goodies

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  • Scorched Earth 2k (Score:5, Informative)

    by e8johan ( 605347 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:04AM (#4843150) Homepage Journal
    I just had to recommend this [scorch2000.com]. Great gameplay over network.
    • I tried the original scorch, which I actually registered for about 10 years back, and loved it. I've got some version (1.5?) on my 300MHz laptop and the timing has been flaky and options don't seem to like saving properly, hanging the game upon reload...

      This weekend, in between participating in a search for a missing friend (Marshall was found alive and reported returning home, many thanks to those who participated) I put some of the finishing touches on a new desktop system, which I'd love to play scorched earth on.

      There was a recommendation for a game called Worms, IIRC, but I haven't had a chance to check it out. I'll now have decent sound, 1280x1024 resolution and a processor less suited to burning my left knee and getting little else done.

      BTW, i'm more of a strategy gamer and was somewhat dismayed by offerings at the stores this weekend. Stuff like scorch, Iron Dragon [irondragon.org], Empire, and Conquest [magnodyne.com] are fun, any other recommendations from the Past of gaming? ;-)

      • You might give Moonbase Commander a look. It's decidedly New-School, but it really has a classic strategy feel.
        • I'll second Moonbase Commander [moonbasecommander.com]. I played and loved the demo, because it reminded me of Scorch and its ilk. I looked all over to find a copy to buy when it came out, but never located one. So, I forgot about it, until I saw it for $12.99 on the shelf in the Educational section of Best Buy this weekend. Now I just have to install it on my laptop (it has very low hardware requirements), so I can, ahem, keep busy during boring meetings and classes. :-)

          On a side note, there's a Worms-clone (which is in turn a descendant of Scorch) for Pocket PC called Snails [snailsgame.com], which I picked up a couple of weeks ago. Great Scorch-like fun on my Pocket PC while I'm waiting somewhere, stuck in traffic, etc.

          Jenova_Six

    • Re:Scorched Earth 2k (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mr. Moose ( 124255 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @10:37AM (#4843521)
      Looks like the /. crowd scorched the server...
    • I remember my calculus class in high school (ca. 1994) -- I was getting an A, and was bored, so instead of paying attention I wrote scorched earth for my Ti85 calculator.

      My port even did terrain damage! Those were the days. I can't believe I had the force of will to program in a language that had ONLY GLOBAL VARIABLES.

      Eventually I was spending so much time playing it and tweaking the code (in class, after school, at night...) that my grade(s) begain to slip. So, with an even greater force of will, I deleted it. It was my personal pandora's box and it had to go.

      Every now and then I use that calculator (of course I still have it) and think about all the fun I could be having had I not deleted that game.

  • Consoles (Score:1, Flamebait)

    by Omkar ( 618823 )
    I think the console development scene is more vibrant and innovative, especially Nintendo's first and second parties. Who cares where PC gaming is headed? Answer to rhetorical question: everyone except me :)

    • Re:Consoles (Score:2, Funny)

      by xmath ( 90486 )
      Console games? You mean like this [mr.net] and this [verde666.org] ? :-D
      • That's not xmath of 'Jade' noterity is it?
        • Eh, yup :-)

          I'm not really on HL anymore though.. things kinda went downhill with it after Jade died. You can find me on EFnet though if you want.

          Damn, I don't see any way to leave you a msg other than posting a comment.. I hope I don't get modded offtopic for this..
          • nice to 'see' you xmath :-)

            I don't go on HL anymore either - was a good laugh back in the day though...

            I wouldn't worry about getting modded down on this thread now - moderators are only interested in the current articles (he says as somone bitch-slaps him with a -1 offtopic).

            Anyway, nice to see a familiar name ;-) see you around !

            ntswerver

    • Re:Consoles (Score:3, Insightful)

      by scalis ( 594038 )
      I see your point and it actually is valid. Witha a big "However".
      Console (action) games right now are more advanced than their PC equivalents IMO.
      However, I remember when the Amiga games was many years in front of PC games but that is no longer the case. Also, when the first Playstation came out, games like NHL, MicroMachines and Wipeout surely beat PC games easy!
      Then came a period with incredible PC games with no real challenge from the console market, like Starcraft, Counterstrike and Quake.
      Now, a new set of consoles are making their way and we might see a migration from PC gaming to console gaming.... But my intuition says that we have not likely seen the last of PC gaming as the PC is always developing in the background while the consoles takes a couple of years between their generations.

      • I don't want to sound mean, but all your points are either wrong or obvious. Everyone already knows about whole console vs. PC release cycle, and your conclusion about the latest console generation is off.

        For years now, no console has come out leaps and bounds ahead of the then-current PC generation. By the time the N64 came out, it wasn't at all superior to a decent PC at that time. Ditto for the Dreamcast, PS2, and so on.

      • I really want to believe, because I am of the philosophy that my workstation should not be sullied by games. However I just don't see it: it'll be years before online console gaming matures to the point where online PC gaming is now. And as we all know: if you're playing with yourself, it's called "masturbation".

    • The great thing is that extending console games is becoming possible with the new generation consoles. For example, Timesplitters 2 [ign.com] (available for XBOX, PS2 and GameCube) includes a fully functional (and truly intuitive) map maker with which players can create single player missions and multiplayer levels.

      IMHO this is very cool, I didn't care much about Half-Life but spent many hours messing with it's level editor :)

      For "creative gamers" on nearly any computer platform there is Blender, which is licenced under the GPL. You can find both standalone [blender3d.org] and browser plugin based [blender3d.org] games at www.blender3d.org [blender3d.org]

  • Scorched Earth (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Poppa_joe ( 571379 ) <poppa_joe@NOSPaM.hotmail.com> on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:08AM (#4843159)
    Aww, hours of my youth were wasted playing this game. So simple yet so beautiful. There is nothing quite like a properly placed atomic death head missile. Another great game along this same venue is Worms Armageddon. If you never plaed it you have missed out.

  • The Mod article. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pxtl ( 151020 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:32AM (#4843220) Homepage
    Hmm - I'm a little dissappointed in that Modding community article. For example, they discussed modding in RTS games as if it had never been done before - when Total Annihilation had several total conversions for it, and was designed for such things (where the TC's for the Blizzard games were hack jobs). TA had a huge modding community - the devs demonstrated the power of the modding system by publishing a new unit every month.

    A good example of a new engine that people are going nuts to mod is UT2003. The game included a fully functional vehicle that is never used in the game just for modders to play with. DeathBall, one of the prominent mods, even got Epic to produce new announcer sounds just for their mod. For the UT gold edition, they included a handful of user-made mods on a second disk. As a UT player I've always been a bit bewildered at all the Half-Life die-hards when there are newer, more powerful and versitile engines to work with. For example, UT and Q3 mods are expected to include bot support in the mod. Imagine that. That being said, HL-Turbo is good fun.

    UT is also unique as it has a new paradigm for gameplay mods - UT's "mutators" aren't mutually exclusive. You can run multiple mutators on one server, mixing and matching several weapon sets, player class mods, gameplay mods, and server control mods. All those are kept separate from the gametype (CTF/DM/BombRun) so that mods don't have to reinvent the wheel every time they want to include something done in someone elses mod.
    • Yeah... I only bought UT and Quake III for mods in the first place. Mods have the ability to keep any game alive well beyond it's expected lifespan... heck, look at Doom 1! There are still people out there developing new and improved engines for it, and it's one of the oldest FPS out there. And, of course, there's the large number of modded Starcraft maps out there... OK, I don't really know where I'm going with this, so I should stop while I'm ahead. -Berrik Note to self: Staying up all night=Bad.

    • Re:The Mod article. (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm more than a little disappointed - it reads to me like something written by someone who has been given a few pages worth of notes on modding communities withought actually seeing one. If anything mods are becoming more and more ambitious and complex, rather than simply focusing on simple things. Take the throw-away mention of GTA3 mods for example - the reason that so few big mods have been made for it so far is simply because the mod community have have to build all the tools. From scratch. As in reverse engineering everything by hand (even the bytecode compiled scripting engine) and then using that knowledge to make editors. They have had virtually no help from Rockstar, yet there are now people working on whole new cities (if you look at the datafiles for Vice City you'll find that they even used some of the editors make by the mod community for making VC). IMO that's as impressive, if not more so, than people making mods for an engine that is well documented and supported by the developer like Half-Life or Unreal.

    • The reason I appreciate Half-Life mods so much is that they don't require frequent hardware and software purchases. In effect, the Half-Life engine is a virtual console such that I can guarantee that if I can run it, I can run any new mod that comes out. UT and Quake are constantly competing for the mod community's attention, all while coming out with a new version every few years.

      I'm more interested in game-play than chrome and stability over features. (Great example of a sequal that failed on both: Tribes 2.) What I'd love more than anything is a scalable or modular game engine so that hardware fanatics can keep upgrading to get more polygons, but I can play happily with my wireframes. I don't think this is an unreasonable request considering that game makes don't seem to be as deep in bed with video card mfg. as Microsoft is with Intel.

  • Oooooh! Shiny! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hosebee ( 218054 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:34AM (#4843226) Homepage
    FlyingLabs software [flyinglab.com] is developing Delta Green, which may or may not be very good. But, after seeing Doom3 at E3, the dev team has created some stunning visuals; particularly with the normal mapping technique. Check out vids here [flyinglab.com]. There's also a HomeLAN interview here [homelanfed.com].

  • Memo to Warren Spector (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:35AM (#4843230)
    What your next game needs isn't "huge strides in lighting, AI and game physics", it's an ending that doesn't suck. I would have been happier seeing an MPEG of the ending to Super Mario 3 than any of the lame sequences Deus Ex finished with.
    • I agree....Deus Ex sucked. I could not get into it at all.

      I am just glad that the industry got over the "multimedia" crap they were dishing out. Remember? They would take a game, add a little extra sound, and throw in some short videos that you got to see over and over.

      Remember that game Critical Path? You could finish the whole thing in about 10 minutes.
    • OK, possible spoilers below -

      I actually was pleased with the ending. If you didn't like the ending of Deus Ex, you probably didn't like the ending for Half Life, both end with a bit of a cliff-hanger, the need to make a choice, and the knowledge that this choice is basically an intimation of the content of the sequel.

      I loved Deus Ex, played it in it's entirety three times or more to try things different ways so far as upgrading different abilities went, to better explore the environment, and to find out how the plot would change if I made different choices.

      A little OT here but...I thought the game was excellent. It was long, absorbing, intelligent, and had a lot of replay value. The ending was excellent, because although it didn't offer up all of the answers on a platter, you achieve a major objective you had been working towards, it gave one a lot of food for thought, and it made me aware that a sequel was in the works before any sequel had been announced...more Deus Ex = good thing!
    • I did read somewhere that Ion Storm are aware that the ending of Deus Ex wasn't that great, however they also feel that no game has had a "good" ending. This doesn't mean they aren't going to try and give Deus Ex 2 a good ending.

      On the topic of the Warren Spector interview. Did anyone else read the quote "if developers just use processing power to create prettier backdrops, we're in trouble" and think of iD games and John Carmack?

      I think John Carmack makes Excelent game engines. Really Really pretty stuff. But gameplay wise Id games seems to be stuck in 1990. Every single preview of Doom 3 I have read has stated the gameplay to be something along the lines of "You hear monster, you see monster, you shoot monster, repeat." In other words, Doom 1 gameplay with a pretty engine. I read somewhere else that Carmack didn't even want ragdoll physics because it was "a gimick". If you are going to go that far then so is bumpmapping, and dynamic lighting. It's about realism and imersion.

      Gamers are much more sophisticated than they used to be. Games like Deus Ex and Thief have shown us that games can be so much more than this. Please!!! Give us something more!
    • *** SPOILER WARNING ***

      While not fully rendered, DVD-quality mini movies, I felt that the endings in Deus Ex were the most thought-provoking I've ever seen in a video game. I've *never* come away from a game pondering the philosophical and moral implications of my decisions and how they affected the ending before DX (and in a first-person shooter, no less!).

      I spent a lot of time afterward pondering which of the three options I would choose in real life, as well as debating them with friends who had also completed the game.

      The three options boil down to
      a) Anarchy- Maximum personal freedom, at the expense of a total societal collapse (and the misery that would be almost certain to result)
      b) Technological Totalitarianism- An efficient and peaceful outcome, but one where the human race effectively becomes subjugated by a benevolent AI
      c) Illuminati- Continuation of the status-quo, where personal freedom is an illusion and none of the world's societal ills are rectified, but where there is no disruption of anyone's life (except Bob Page, of course!)

      None are clearly better than any of the others. I think that the DX team did a magnificent job of crafting an intelligent ending worthy of the rest of the game. They'll have a tough time making the sequel live up to the original, and I can't wait to see what they come up with.

      -Cybrex

  • Digger.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Annoyed Coward ( 620173 )
    I miss good ol' Digger and Prince of Persia. Soon after I updated my PC to 286, I lost Digger (cuz it was too fast on 286.) :-(

    • Re:Digger.... (Score:2, Informative)

      by cameleon ( 149744 )
      Try this [digger.org]. Digger remade to play as the original, but run on modern pc's.

    • Re:Digger.... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      MAME's sister project, MESS, emulates consoles and computers, one of which being older PC-XT and AT class machines.

      Works great for all that old-timey code that used the mhz rating of the machine as its timing, and emulates common old hardware where need be (gravis ultrasound, adlib, MCGA adaptors)
    • " I miss good ol' Digger and Prince of Persia. Soon after I updated my PC to 286, I lost Digger (cuz it was too fast on 286.)"

      Yeah, but there is a trick you see... Press the little button next to "power". It should be labled "Turbo".
      This will immidiately disconnect the Turbo charger from your main computer engine and make it a slower "digger". =)
    • Prince of Persia runs great in DOSEMU [dosemu.org].

  • On the fly 'modding'... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zergwyn ( 514693 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @09:50AM (#4843277)
    One of the things that I have not seen discussed too much (at least on many gaming sites I read) is the lack of dynamic environments in most games. It has always bothered me that despite the graphics and models of games getting more and more realistic, approaching photorealism in some cases, I can still often shoot a rocket at a thin window or flower and have no effect. For a long time it was a running joke among a bunch of us playing Command and Conquer that the the main forces were nuts to make their buildings out of metal and advanced nanotech materials; instead, they should have used trees, which were not only plentiful but also capable of withstanding a direct nuclear strike with no damage.


    Granted, some games have been doing more with deformable terrain, but not enough. Red Faction had its GeoMod system, and some RTSs like C&C Tiberium Sun have things like rivers that freeze, but it really hasn't been taken to the extreme it should be. Especially in MMORPGs, I would be really intrigued if players could actually rearrange the face of the land. With really powerful spells or technology, it seems like one should be able to knock down mountains or carve out lakes. I think that, properly utilized, this would add a whole new dimension to strategy. Is the enemy's base at the bottom of a valley? Blast apart a nearby river and see if their base can survive underwater. Trigger a volcano on the area above them. Cause an avalanche to fall as they follow through a pass below a snowy slope. All sorts of things could be possible.


    Also, it would be nice to see more of a system in games where players can create their own new parts of the game. Already some games are starting to do this as well, with players able to make more powerful weapons and items. However, I would also like to see players able to create pretty much anything in game that they might mod. It is perfectly possible in certain situations that players might even be able to influence the creation of a new race, of new spells or monsters. More of this should be available as a part of the world.

    Yikes, getting kind of long winded here. Anyway, I hope in the future the CPU gets used more, as well as the GPU! Just my 2cents.

    • Re:On the fly 'modding'... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dabj.net ( 632281 ) <dabj02@student[ ]h.se ['.bt' in gap]> on Monday December 09, 2002 @10:01AM (#4843332)
      "With really powerful spells or technology, it seems like one should be able to knock down mountains or carve out lakes. I think that, properly utilized, this would add a whole new dimension to strategy. Is the enemy's base at the bottom of a valley? Blast apart a nearby river and see if their base can survive underwater. Trigger a volcano on the area above them. Cause an avalanche to fall as they follow through a pass below a snowy slope. All sorts of things could be possible"
      What, you mean like in Popoulus on the Amiga?

    • Re:On the fly 'modding'... (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The problem is that right now the landscape can live on your harddisk in a huge file. If you want to deform it on the fly (and keep it consistent for all players!) you have to download it from the server as you go. I'm not sure broadband is up for that just yet.

      Also, imagine the use of the savefile if singleplayer games started saving entire landscapes...
  • Attention fellow Geeks! Ever wanted to live 100ft underground in a ex British gov't nuclear bunker for three days and do nothing but geek at extreme levels and play LAN games?

    NO!!! I really don't! I could think of hundreds of other things that sound more appealing than that! =P

  • Handheld gaming industry? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by alexmogil ( 442209 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @10:21AM (#4843420) Homepage Journal
    What's there to report on the handheld gaming industry? There's:

    Nintendo

    The end. If Sega can't do it, about the only other competitor who would stand a chance would be (hate to say it) Microsoft. They are the only people who could stand to lose millions upon billions of dollars for five years to get a foothold in the handheld industry. Sony doesn't care. Palm/CE devices stink for gaming - too much dough. Phone gaming eats it.

    Nintendo is all there is. Who knows how they are treating the developers due to this fuzzy monopoly - their handheld division might be the Nintendo of the late 80's.

    • In Japan, the Wonderswan has been mounting some sort of challenge to the Gameboy for a while. But the GBA just about killed it, and it looks like Sony will pull it's support from the system soon - possibly in order to develop a handheld of it's own.

      Shame too that the Wonderswan never made it here. It has an EXCELLENT library of upgrades of some classic early golden age RPG's.
    • Actually, games on different PDA's are becoming more [gameloft.com] and more [ziosoft.com] advanced.
    • I don't see any evidence that Nintendo are abusing their monopoly in this area, however there are problems with their not having to compete. Case in point, the fact that the GBA has no backlighting, something that I would consider a necessity in this era. Nintendo argued that people would not be prepared to pay the extra $30 for a backlight, and that they wouldn't like the hit it would take to playing time due to battery drain. I think they are wrong.

      A lot of people are getting their GBA's modified so that they can actually see the games they want to play (and to be fair, the darkness of the screen doesn't seem to bother some people) I personally think that consumers should at least have had a choice. These kinds of fairly obvious blunders surprise me, and although I am happy with a Nintendo handheld, and probably wouldn't swap to a competing brand even if I could....the potential is there for companies to benefit from any mistakes they make. Can they really afford to behave as if they are unaware of this?
    • Nintendo is having a lot of trouble fighting the image that their games are targeted towards kids. Look at their most successful franchises - Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, etc... and while we may certainly enjoy playing them, there's still the lingering image of selling to the 8-14 group. (Who here remembers Nintendo Power? I've still got a mint issue 1.)

      In contrast, look at the perennials on the Playstation: MGS, Tony Hawk, etc. On the PS2: GTA3, MGS2, etc. On the Dreamcast: Shenmue. On the XBox, Splinter Cell and Steel Battalion. The reason the original PSX was a smash hit was because it had the games to sell itself to the teen, college, and adult crowd. This doesn't mean that said games are any more or less fun than the Nintendo classics, it's just a different image. Most of us have heard stories about the massive censoring required for third-party titles.

      Now, they've been getting away from that with Metroid Prime and some other GameCube titles, and they've had some decidedly grown up games for the N64. However, they're still fighting the kid image that got them where they are now.
  • FFX-2 looks beautiful, personally I don't care if it's a sequel, I guess that's kinda cool, I'm just ready for the next one. Though it sucks to have to wait so long, we won't see it in the US until the end of '03 if not later. Thankfully I'm revisiting some of the past greats, ... FFIII, Chrono Trigger, Lufia II. By the time I've finished playing through the classic rpgs maybe X-2 will be released in the US.
    • Thankfully I'm revisiting some of the past greats, ... FFIII, Chrono Trigger, Lufia II. By the time I've finished playing through the classic rpgs maybe X-2 will be released in the US.

      If you aren't already, you should use zSNES or Snes9x. Using 2xSaI can REALLY improve the look of many 2D games. Especially Crono Trigger...
      • I believe I'm using zSNES. I just dug up emulators a little while ago again. I tried them out way back and wasn't very happy with them. After running games on the DC with SNES and experiencing some slowdown, I decided to try pc emu's out again. I'm amazed at how polished some of them are, zSNES (or Snes9x if that's the one I'm using) is a very well written piece of software, wish I'd written it. It's nice to be able to play games I've loved in the past at my pc, avoinding the need to dig them out of the attic, or fight for space around the tv, with all the other console's dvd player, vcr, ect. Or having to blow on my Crono Trigger cartridge to get it to work ;)


        To be honest though the graphics don't bother me. I love the new games, they're gorgeous, but I love the old ones just the same. I get irritated at people (who are usually younger than I am) who try to be elitist about 2d rpg's. Though, it occurs to me right now, that if that were the type of games that were being made right now, we'd sure see more of them, because of a much smaller required developement time.

      • Oh my, its funny that Chrono Trigger is the game I'm in the middle of right now, and on that very emulator. It looks so incredibly much better, at least, it feels that way. I like.

        You forgot to mention the network-play capabilities of ZSNES! Can we say two-player Super Mario Kart??? w00t.
  • The people at Crawfish were great, and it's a real shame for Cameron and the others that this happened, despite them releasing world-beating games. I really wish them well for their next enterprises.
  • Or does FFX-2 give off the appearance of square catering (more than usual I know) to the 15 year old set? First direct sequel. Features the eye candy female charachters. Wearing skimpier than ever clothing... [ffinsider.net]

    No, Squares not juvenile... not at all... They haven't lost their ability to be affecting and innovative. They'd never sell out like those BMX XXX guys.

    Maybe I'll just wander over into this corner and cry for my broken memories.

  • Handheld + Java (Score:3, Interesting)

    by failrate ( 583914 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @11:02AM (#4843678) Homepage
    One thing that hanheld forgot to mention (glossing over the N-gage and cellphones), is that if written in J2ME according to the m-gaming portability specs, handheld developers should be able to port a single game to as many different products as they want as long as they don't tie themselves down to an API, like Qualcomm's BREW. While this still isn't as significant a market as GBA is, you can take a moment to consider that this means that a J2ME game can have a viable presence on cell-phones, the N-gage, Palm/PDA, the PC (under VM or not), and can even be presented as a fully featured demo on the companies home site for perusal before purchase. While this may not be enough to shrug off the dominance of Nintendo wholly, it should suggest that this alternate handheld market is more open to small developers, fan developers, etc. Try writing a J2ME game and then porting it to GBA... see what I mean? Additionally, many of these cell companies are so hungry for apps that they will actually go out of their way to encourage companies to write for them. Try finding a "Developers" section on the Nintendo site!

    • Unfortunately, J2ME is not write-once run-anywhere. Different handsets have different amounts of memory, processing speed, screen resolution, double-buffering or lack thereof, input restrictions, non-standard APIs for things like sound, etc. A Game Boy Advance is a Game Boy Advance. The new 2.0 tookit should help things, but it will take time before that settles into the channel and actual shipping handsets.
  • Since when is Mirc a new program?!!?
    (xchat is better anyway)

    Besides the look at the devlopers, why bother having an article at all. Nintendo has owned the handheld market from the get go, and there has been noone to stop it, even though the TurboExpress and NeoGeo pocket were my favorite stabs at it. The fact that Nintendo owns that market is fine with me, it's a last salvation for those who grew up on 2d graphics, and still love side scrollers, the developers trying to push
    3D on it is a nice attemp, but I'll always prefer 2D on my handheld thanks.

  • Gamespy. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @11:04AM (#4843697) Journal

    Knowing Gamespy, they will prolly encourage modding some more. hosting projects for various games and eventually "aqquiring" said mods, rebuild them to make them backwards incompatible and make them part of the Gamespy hive. That said, I'm convinced that Gamespy is a blight on the gaming community. Gamespy Arcade is a digital deathtrap, the Gamespy fileservers where demos are hosted require (free) registration at the cost of Gamespy opting you in on 10+ (spam/commercial email)* lists. The whole Gamespy play-online network absolutely sucks and the whole thing just reeks "monopolize" all over it.

    * = Choose your poison. Furthermore, if they want me to go to Gamespy to download a demo at 5KB/s while suffering huge ammounts of spam from signing up, then they can go straight to hell. I'm not going to buy a game anymore which involves GameSpy any way whatsoever. *kicks his BF 1942 cds*

    • Online gaming's changed for the worse, like the entire internet. Back when Quake was king (the original Quake), people had to be somewhat intelligent to even find their way onto the internet, much less figure out how to put Quake on top of it and get into a game.

      Fast forward to today, where any child, idiot, or grandmother can (and does) prance casually onto the internet for some gaming. Companies like Valve have worked hard to make sure anyone with a pulse and a PC can play their games (oh, I mean game, they've only made one... in how many years now?).

      The older games like Quake, whose fast-paced physics catered to serious gamers, are mostly gone. Companies now aim to attract the demographic us old-timers used to refer to as "campers". Why? Well, there are alot more of them! The games have changed. TFC has its souped-up point-and-kill heavy-weapons guy for losers - very different from its parent, QTF. Counter-strike, the most popular mod ever, is ALL ABOUT camping and waiting to respawn!

      And what about the gaming communities? Today's gaming communities are a far cry from those five years ago, filled with squabbling children, general anarchy, and lack of leadership due to a failure to draw anyone with a brain. Even worse, good websites have become expensive to run, and that keeps good websites from being made... unless you get hosted with someone like GameSpy, where your guests get interstitials and a 10 minute wait to download files from you. No thanks.

      That being said, GameSpy is just doing what they HAVE to do to stay in business, so good for them. Then again, I'd be the first to say that they're software is absolutely terrible (just use All Seeing Eye instead, its excellent), and alot of their content is absolute quantity-over-quality drivel. I worked for them back when gaming was different, and those were fun times, but it was bound to end some time. At least they managed to keep the doors open.

      I think the next step is for some company to figure out how to do what GameSpy does in a high-quality way (some sites are arguably doing it). FilePlanet's a good example. A site like that is SIMPLE to build and operate (believe me). It wouldn't take much effort to make a better one (actually a couple already exist), the problem is getting the money to get it off the ground and pay for bandwidth, etc.

      Anyways, I'm with you... I miss the old days. :)

  • state of handheld article (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The state of handhelds article states: "Nintendo has never seen a major competitor for their handheld systems. Nobody has ever has come close to the Game Boy series. Sega's Game Gear was much more powerful than the original Game Boy -- including the color games -- but the higher quality and quantity of the Game Boy games just crushed Sega's hopes in the 90's."

    The Atari Lynx color handheld was released around the same time as the gameboy & competed with it. It had several games that are still fun today.

    "but the higher quality and quantity of the Game Boy games"

    It was quantity, not quality.
    • Lynx ate batteries. GameGear ate batteries. Luckily technology has improved since then - batteries seem cheaper and colour screens are less hungry.
      • I've heard the battery excuse before and it just doesn't wash. Everyone with a taste for electronic battery-powered devices is aware of the fact that rechargeable batteries exist.

        The Gameboy won because it was cheaper, it had more games, and it had bigger, more recognizable franchises. Tetris alone could be blamed for ensuring the dominance of the Gameboy...for my mom, it sold two Gameboys, one Pocket Gameboy, one Gameboy Color and finally (once she enjoyed other games) a Gameboy Advance - ALL because she had to play Tetris and Dr. Mario. :)

  • Serious Sam for Linux (Score:3, Informative)

    by pyr0 ( 120990 ) on Monday December 09, 2002 @12:08PM (#4844043)
    In other gaming news, I just read over at Linuxgames [linuxgames.com] that there is now a Linux version [icculus.org] public beta of Serious Sam the First Encounter. It will even install the game from the cd for you. I tried it, and it runs with no hitches on my AthlonXP 1800+ with a GeForce 4 Ti 4200.
  • >> Capcom mentioned that Gun Survivor 4: Biohazard will support USB mouse, in addition to the GunCon 2 controller

    BioHazard == Resident Evil == I thought this was a gamecube 'exclusive'?

    I guess it's as exclusive to gamecube as Code Veronica was to Dreamcast.
    • the main biohazard/resident evil games are exclusive to the gamecube - that means anything that is part of the main storyline (re0, re1, re2, re3, re:cv, re4). Re1 was a total remake of the original, 0 and 4 are both brand new exclusives to the cube, and 2, 3, and cv are straight ports. As for the Gun Survivor 4: Biohazard, it's just an offshoot of the RE/Biohazard series which is why sony is getting it. Capcom decided to make a few spinoffs from the main storyline for the PS2, including an online game. Gun Survivor sounds to me like it's just another house of the dead rip-off, and the other RE title for ps2, RE Online, doesn't seem that it will really feel like RE. To me, RE was all about sitting by yourself in a dark room at all hours of the night having the shit scared out of you, but that might just be me... How online would work is beyond me.
      • The original RE: Survivor was actually pretty cool, not a House of the Dead ripoff at all. It was more of a FPS take on RE, but you used the gun (and the built in thumbpad) to play. It was still more adventure/exploring/survival than just run around and shoot everyone, though.

        An updated version with modern graphics would be welcome, IMO.

        Problem is, they crippled the last north american release to gamepad only - because using lightguns sends the wrong image to all the little children who buy games that are rated M. If they do the same with this, it'll be in the trash.
        • An updated version with modern graphics would be welcome, IMO. - That's exactly what the RE1 Remake is, a completely redone, enhanced version of the classic. RE0 which was just released is more of the same unfortunately. Then there's RE4, due out sometime before 2010, which will be 100% realtime with a reworked camera system and controls. If you want to see a video from 4, here's a link for ya: http://www.gccafe.com/news/2002november/22/news.ht ml
  • The handheld article seemed a bit one-sided to me. I think that it's the cell phones that Nintendo needs to worry about the most. So many people (kids included) already carry a cell phone 24/7, why not use it for gaming too? Cell phones also have the multi-player advantage. With airtime getting cheaper (slowly) multi-player games over the cell should become more common. As long as it won't eat the batteries or wear down the phone, why not. At home it's PS2 all the way.
    • Amen to that jonopolis. In the history of gaming the only handhelds that have lived to fight against the gameboy are the handhelds that arn't originally made for gaming. Sure the wonderswan is mildly popular, but is now where near being a threat to the game boy. Look at the PDA: not originally made for handheld gaming, but took off as a fairly profitable platform for games. Cell phones can work the same way. Throw a few cool games on them to wet people's wistles, then start offering little cards with other games made by some of the top video game developers and publishers.

  • The zip-file version of Scorched3D works in non-fullscreen (didn't test fs) under wine-20021031 (Debian/testing) however the fonts are unreadable. I'd do further testing, but trying to quit froze my Xwindows, so I've had enough of that. :)

    • I didn't manage to get it working on winex (rather new, CVS version), and my codeweavers build doesn't seem to have opengl support.

      Anyway it's open-source, someone go and port the damn thing to SDL already!

      Seems that nobody even noticed the whole game...
  • How about a few more classics:

    The old apogee/ID/etc games (Commander Keen and others). By today's standards crappy graphics but really fun and amusing at their time.

    Old sierra games: Why don't they bring back "Space Quest?" Those were the best
    SQ5: (WD-40, a garbage scow enterprise, a parody of kirk...)

    As for the final fantasy sequals... why not remake the old ones in 3d or better graphics. I've often thought that, if I could acquire permission from Square, I'd like to get a team together and remake FF2/FF3 (awesome plots) with modern graphics, instead of just a few new cinematics.
    • As a matter of fact Sierra is making a brand new Space Quest game :) As for remaking old FF games in updated graphics, I beleive I have heard that either they or some independant people might be doing that. Not sure though.
  • Quoth Warren Spector:
    As I said, we're rapidly reaching the point where you either have to throw a ridiculous number of people (artists and designers, mostly) onto a project, introducing all sorts of management, schedule, and quality / consistency problems into an already difficult process, or you have to find ways to automate processes usually considered "creative" in nature.
    Ever watch the credits roll at the end of a TV show or movie?

    As gaming increases in visual (although clearly not in psychological) complexity, it's only to be expected that the production payroll will increase considerably, too. Even famously tiny id software isn't exactly a garage outfit any more. At worst, this is a case of advancing technology promising a retreat on profits; better looking games raise the bar, requiring developers to stay in the race, which necessitates hiring... Sad, I'm sure, but nobody said game publishers are supposed to be as rich as they are. ;-)

    Two questions for Warren:

    1) How or why should this increased management challenge be any greater a burden for game developers than it is for Hollywood?

    2) Why would anyone want automated content, assuming, of course, that most of the gaming industry's currently human-generated output can be considered better than Xeroxed cliche?

  • My message is not that biological determinists were bad scientists or
    even that they were always wrong. Rather, I believe that science must be
    understood as a social phenomenon, a gutsy, human enterprise, not the work of
    robots programmed to collect pure information. I also present this view as
    an upbeat for science, not as a gloomy epitaph for a noble hope sacrificed on
    the alter of human limitations.
    I believe that a factual reality exists and that science, though often
    in an obtuse and erratic manner, can learn about it. Galileo was not shown
    the instruments of torture in an abstract debate about lunar motion. He had
    threatened the Church's conventional argument for social and doctrinal
    stability: the static world order with planets circling about a central
    earth, priests subordinate to the Pope and serfs to their lord. But the
    Church soon made its peace with Galileo's cosmology. They had no choice; the
    earth really does revolve about the sun.
    -- S.J. Gould, "The Mismeasure of Man"

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...

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