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Yodzilla posted:The only thing I remember about the N64 are games being a blurry mess and developers not knowing how to make controls that came even close to working with those weird little yellow buttons. Man I hated those things. All true, but those little yellow buttons + the analog stick were the first thing on the consoles to really mimic a desktop's AWSD + mouse controls (the yellow buttons being the AWSD, or is the popular acronym WASD, I forget, and the analog being the mouse). It was one of those randomly named control configurations in Goldeneye which I would always switch to upon starting multiplayer with my friends, along with increasing the look speed, thus allowing you to free-aim more efficiently and consequently pissing the hell out of other kids with the golden gun on levels like the temple. In Unreal 2, couldn't you choose which planet you wanted to visit next? Or am I conflating that with another game. I just remember running around a (relatively small) spaceship, talking to a few characters, including one which looked like the fork-lifter robot from Aliens, and then engaging a console allowing you to continue to your next destination. Proves how forgettable it was in comparison to the first... TheMammoth fucked around with this message at 21:40 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 03:13
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Really? Goddamned it. I know you're not necessarily suggesting that this enemy was intended for Half-Life 2, but it reminds me that I feel very similarly about Unreal 2 and Half-Life 2. They were both sequels to really impressive games, each had a phonebook of cut material that, if implemented, would have probably made them much closer to their prequels, and the final products focused on the weaker aspects of the original games--specifically combat with human opponents using a significantly gutted and unsatisfying arsenal. For those of you who have no idea what that is, the Half-Life wiki has you covered. It was an officially-endorsed* single-player mod for Half-Life that took place after HL1, but before HL2. You play as Freeman, and get to wear the HEV Mark VI suit (which is functionally identical to the suit from HL1), and go on a voyage of discovery that encompasses a Tomb Raider-esque Himalayan monastery, a Russian theme park, a hard-as-balls factory, and the ugliest security guard you'll ever encounter. Here's a video to give you the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_eAQWuJook (this mod encapsulates the thing we love most about Half-Life - unskippable lengthy cutscenes!) *by "officially endorsed*, I mean Valve included it on the Counterstrike CD Zero Star fucked around with this message at 03:22 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 03:16
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Edit: Sorry, nothing to see here. Totally posted in the wrong thread, sorry. Caesarian Sectarian fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 03:19
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The thing I remember most about the whole half life hype is I played the first one with no idea what it was, i remember hearing the name somewhere and then i got it and played it and i guess just skipped through it or something because I bought it off steam during one of the sales and being like "what the gently caress i don't remember any of this," though I did remember most of Xen oddly. The only thing I really remembered from playing it was finishing it and being like "eh it was ok" and promptly not caring about it for the next couple of years. Then half life 2 comes out and all my friends kept calling it the best game ever and ejaculating all over it so I played it at a lan party and the only thing I could think of it was that it made so many level and game design mistakes in my eyes (like making you sit around in a closed room while people spout exposition at you, some very obvious scripted events during the action sequences, every loving character blowing you for no reason) that I couldn't take it seriously at all. It really felt like some lovely mod to me. This feeling never has gone away and I still don't understand what the big deal was. I played Red Faction 1 a couple of years before and remember comparing the two and Red Faction always came out on top. I mean you can blow loving walls up and it had interesting weapons AND I could pretend I was Benny in Total Recall. I watched some series of videos last year where these guys talked about all the great design decisions made through the levels and compared it to homefront (i think) and sat there wondering if they played some different version of the game because nothing they said really worked with what they were showing, even considering the age of hl2. I think it really comes down to the fact that I never feel like I'm actually doing anything during the games. Things happen and I sit around watching them, I watch some npc do something, I came to an elevator now I have to sit there and watch it come down, there's a physics lever puzzle gotta sit there and see physics. All the important decisions are made by other people while I sit at the kids table drinking juice while the grown ups do important things. Which is a total 180 from hl1 where you end up doing everything and it seems important even if the reasons you do things are kinda vague. And it only got worse with the episodes (only this time with the creepiest game romance imaginable ugh) and spread to portal 2. And then I read raising the bar (is that the name of the cut content book?) and was like "why the gently caress did they cut out all the cool stuff?"
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Feb 26, 2013 03:33
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Cat Mattress posted:That's the thing I loved the most about it. Naming a slow-down button "turbo". Well regular speed was turbo compared to 4.77 mhz!
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Feb 26, 2013 03:37
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I'd have to dig out my copy of Raising the Bar, but from what I recall the gooey tentacle enemy being scrapped because it just wasn't that fun to fight. I don't think it was a prototype for the paints in Portal 2, as that mechanic came from Tag: The Power of Paint. The team that made it was hired by Valve and put their stuff into Portal 2.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:03
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Geight posted:I'd have to dig out my copy of Raising the Bar, but from what I recall the gooey tentacle enemy being scrapped because it just wasn't that fun to fight. I don't think it was a prototype for the paints in Portal 2, as that mechanic came from Tag: The Power of Paint. The team that made it was hired by Valve and put their stuff into Portal 2. Yeah, that was the "Hydra", and I'm pretty sure that's the official reason it was cut out (it wasn't fun to fight). For some reason I thought The Kins was talking about something else, though.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:15
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Really? Goddamned it. I know you're not necessarily suggesting that this enemy was intended for Half-Life 2, but it reminds me that I feel very similarly about Unreal 2 and Half-Life 2. They were both sequels to really impressive games, each had a phonebook of cut material that, if implemented, would have probably made them much closer to their prequels, and the final products focused on the weaker aspects of the original games--specifically combat with human opponents using a significantly gutted and unsatisfying arsenal. One of the many things that kills HL2 for me is the sound design for the guns. In HL1 the pistol had a loud, gritty, really satisfying sound when you shot it, and in HL2, the pistol sounded like a BB gun. The shotgun in 2 felt like a downgrade from the first, it held fewer shells, seemed to have worse accuracy, and just never felt as fun to use, to me. The MP7 felt like a total pea shooter. That kind of thing really hurts a game experience for me. That, and I thought all the vehicle segments were a total slog, and Episode 1 doesn't even let you have guns at all for a lot of the game. Not really impressed.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:39
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Komoxdos posted:One of the many things that kills HL2 for me is the sound design for the guns. In HL1 the pistol had a loud, gritty, really satisfying sound when you shot it, and in HL2, the pistol sounded like a BB gun. The shotgun in 2 felt like a downgrade from the first, it held fewer shells, seemed to have worse accuracy, and just never felt as fun to use, to me. The MP7 felt like a total pea shooter. That kind of thing really hurts a game experience for me. That, and I thought all the vehicle segments were a total slog, and Episode 1 doesn't even let you have guns at all for a lot of the game. Not really impressed. Plus the entire game is essentially a single hallway with a virtual girlfriend. The first one at least doesn't have a virtual girlfriend.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:49
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All of the scientists were my virtual girlfriends. We'd play hide-and-seek! 
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Feb 26, 2013 04:51
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I actually really like the gun sound effects in HL2, if anything some of them were a bit too loud. Also I could've sworn the shotgun sounds basically the same in both games.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:52
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Half-Life 2 is an adventure game in an FPS engine.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:55
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TheMammoth posted:In Unreal 2, couldn't you choose which planet you wanted to visit next? Or am I conflating that with another game. I just remember running around a (relatively small) spaceship, talking to a few characters, including one which looked like the fork-lifter robot from Aliens, and then engaging a console allowing you to continue to your next destination. Proves how forgettable it was in comparison to the first... You can't choose what planets you want to go to in U2. A shame, because it would be a fun incentive to replay the game.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:57
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I never figured out what "Thinking man's FPS" meant, but I remember that's what every magazine called HL2 when it was cleaning up the GOTY awards.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:58
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Physics puzzles.
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Feb 26, 2013 04:58
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Cream-of-Plenty posted:Yeah, that was the "Hydra", and I'm pretty sure that's the official reason it was cut out (it wasn't fun to fight). For some reason I thought The Kins was talking about something else, though.
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Feb 26, 2013 05:02
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Install Gentoo posted:Half-Life 2 is an adventure game in an FPS engine. Actually, Half-Life 2 is Wave Race 64 in a FPS engine. Seriously, gently caress that noise. 
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Feb 26, 2013 05:26
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Physics puzzles. All of which are seesaws.
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Feb 26, 2013 06:55
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Red_Mage posted:Remember that the N64 really had some "impressive" 3d hardware. It wound up getting the Turok series, Goldeneye, Daikatana, and Quake II. DMA (AKA Rockstar North) was handling the port, and given they'd just made Body Harvest from the ground up, it seemed they'd be up to the job. The N64 game was clearly based on the code base designed for Quake 64 and, as such, suffered from some of the same limitations. For instance, animation interpolation, a huge feature for Q2, was absent just as it was in Quake 1 and Quake 64. As a result, weapon and enemy animations all appeared to run at a much lower framerate than the game itself and look rather choppy. The sky box, animation, lighting, and map sizes are all directly comparable to Quake 64 rather than Quake 2. Unfortunately, it ran at a terribly inconsistent framerate and featured blurry textures all around (as you'd expect). Quake 2 on PSX, however, was incredible. It was designed using a custom renderer (not Q2) and pushes the PSX in a lot of unexpected ways. It features animation interpolation, higher resolution textures, minimal texture warping (it almost looks perspective correct at points), a stable framerate, and the original Quake 2 soundtrack. Take a look at the shots below. Seeing this running at a mostly stable 30 fps on PSX was pretty incredible. That second shot may not seem impressive but consider the texturing limitations of PSX and you realize that you're looking at something sharper than a lot of first generation PS2 games.   Anyone remember Forsaken? Now THAT was an impressive PSX effort. The PC version always received attention along with the gimped N64 version but the PSX version actually delivers the full PC experience at 60 frames per second. That's right, Forsaken on PSX runs at 60 fps (with occasional bouts of tearing when things get hot) and features the complete set of levels from the PC version without compromise. I could not believe how impressive the port was.
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Feb 26, 2013 14:23
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The Kins posted:Yeah, the thing I'm talking about was made during Episode 2's development. I believe it was called Blobulator? That was part of the three month small team thing that Gabe had everyone do. Parts of it became the goo system in Portal 2 along with the Tag stuff.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:41
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kirbysuperstar posted:All of which are seesaws. A thinking man's seesaw.
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Feb 26, 2013 17:43
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dark1x posted:Anyone remember Forsaken? Now THAT was an impressive PSX effort. The PC version always received attention along with the gimped N64 version but the PSX version actually delivers the full PC experience at 60 frames per second. That's right, Forsaken on PSX runs at 60 fps (with occasional bouts of tearing when things get hot) and features the complete set of levels from the PC version without compromise. I could not believe how impressive the port was. I remember the soundtrack being pretty good too. This begs the question of why didn't I play it more? I remember playing the first few levels of Forsaken and then...nothing. dark1x posted:Quake 2 on PSX, however, was incredible. It was designed using a custom renderer (not Q2) and pushes the PSX in a lot of unexpected ways. It features animation interpolation, higher resolution textures, minimal texture warping (it almost looks perspective correct at points), a stable framerate, and the original Quake 2 soundtrack. Take a look at the shots below. Seeing this running at a mostly stable 30 fps on PSX was pretty incredible. That second shot may not seem impressive but consider the texturing limitations of PSX and you realize that you're looking at something sharper than a lot of first generation PS2 games. Wow yeah this is pretty nice looking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUHudbgxWfY
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Feb 26, 2013 17:57
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Yodzilla posted:I remember the soundtrack being pretty good too. This begs the question of why didn't I play it more? I remember playing the first few levels of Forsaken and then...nothing.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:00
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Yodzilla posted:Wow yeah this is pretty nice looking:  That looks great for the PS1. Good framerate, graphics are relatively clean. Loading time didn't even seem that bad.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:05
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The Kins posted:Probably because you barfed your guts up? All those Descent-alikes are basically quantum motion-sickness generators. Haha nah, literally the only game that's ever given me motion sickness was the HD re-release of Marathon on the 360. That game was unplayable for me.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:07
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RyokoTK posted:
As you see in the video, the way loading is handled is quite nice as well. They break the levels up into smaller chunks (similar to Half-Life 1) and simply load in new chunks by using transition hallways. While it does break up the levels a bit more than they would otherwise have been the loading is fast enough that it never really gets on your nerves. It's just a little slower than those pauses you'd see in Halo when you reach a loading points. Very smart design.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:11
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Yodzilla posted:I remember the soundtrack being pretty good too. This begs the question of why didn't I play it more? I remember playing the first few levels of Forsaken and then...nothing. Whoaaa, that DOES look better than most PS2 launch games by FAR. Jeeze, that almost looks on-par with Timesplitters 2.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:12
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I never played PSX Q2 but it looks like they chopped up parts of levels from the PC version and made slight changes / mashed parts they liked together. I'll always love Q2 because I spent way too much time playing online but good lord the colored light back then was horrible. I remember seeing Q2test at my friends house with only software rendering and being blown away. I also remember putting in my voodoo 2 and then again being blown away. That reminds me, back then it seemed like every card had its own openGL.dll or glide.dll that it required you to drop into the Q2 directory. While voodoo 2 Q2 was super orange/red everywhere I remember seeing Q2 on a Voodoo3 and the colors were a lot darker and not over saturated. Edit: I was a super 3dfx fan boy and I still have my Voodoo 5. I would have my Voodoo 2 but it was in a friends machine and I think his parents threw it out - not knowing anything about computers / that it was mine. This was about 2000 I think.
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Feb 26, 2013 18:31
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SPACE HOMOS posted:Edit: I was a super 3dfx fan boy and I still have my Voodoo 5. I would have my Voodoo 2 but it was in a friends machine and I think his parents threw it out - not knowing anything about computers / that it was mine. This was about 2000 I think. Run Doom 3 on your Voodoo. Alternately run the first Modern Warfare game and take screenshots (it should work as it doesn't require any of the better shader models).
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Feb 26, 2013 19:11
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Red_Mage posted:Run Doom 3 on your Voodoo. Alternately run the first Modern Warfare game and take screenshots (it should work as it doesn't require any of the better shader models). I'd have to find a motherboard with an APG slot and equipment to match it. On that note I was thinking about slapping in my 560ti with my 670 for physx stuff but then only like 2 games really use it and my case would be cramped. Edit: Looking on newegg I could find an LGA775 motherboard with an agp slot as I do have another computer with a core 2. Its a shuttle case so I'd have to get another case too. If it wasn't 100 bucks to experiment I'd do it. SPACE HOMOS fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 19:20
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I have a Mac G4 tower with SLI Voodoo2 in it still. I use it for Unreal, Quake 1, Descent 3Dfx. It is a blast.
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Feb 26, 2013 19:36
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Yodzilla posted:I remember the soundtrack being pretty good too. This begs the question of why didn't I play it more? I remember playing the first few levels of Forsaken and then...nothing. Was that playing on an emulator or on an actual PS1? Because that is some black magic going on right there to get those kinds of graphics at that framerate on a PS1. E: Ok, it says in the description that he's playing it on a PS2, but considering that backwards compatibility was handled by having an actual PS1 built into it, it's pretty drat close to playing it on an original PS1.
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Feb 26, 2013 21:00
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Surely that Q2 port controls like rear end though, I mean there has to be a downside, right?
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Feb 26, 2013 21:05
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Reive posted:Surely that Q2 port controls like rear end though, I mean there has to be a downside, right?
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Feb 26, 2013 21:08
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Reive posted:Surely that Q2 port controls like rear end though, I mean there has to be a downside, right? If you had the PSX dual analog controller, you could use the controls much like any modern shooter. I believe it also had split-screen multiplayer. I'm pretty sure I played that, but there may have been limitations compared to singleplayer (like in some games there was no music when playing split-screen). My guess as to some of the reason why the PS was experimented with and pushed to its limits was Sony's relative openness to 3rd party developers compared to Nintendo, which pretty tightly controlled who could make games for the N64. Sony even released the Net Yaroze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Yaroze), a console-based development kit allowing anyone to make their own PS game. So, you had way more titles, many of them admittedly pretty bad, but also some pretty spectacular in terms of what they wrung out of the system. Whereas with the N64, you pretty much had only Nintendo, Rare, and a few others doing so. TheMammoth fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Feb 26, 2013 |
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Feb 26, 2013 21:38
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N64 carts were TINY in terms of storage compared to CDs. However, they were a lot more study and had vastly better load-times. For a kid-centric system like the N64, using media that can't be ruined by accidentally brushing it against a rough surface was probably a major design concern.
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Feb 26, 2013 21:41
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The PS games are probably streaming audio tracks off the CD during gameplay. It was never the case that cartridges could hold more than disks; a CD held 650MB in those days and the N64 only got up to 128MB carts at the very end of its life, with games like Conker's Bad Fur Day. I'm not sure why Nintendo stuck with cartridges. Two major advantages, though, are that cartridge load times are practically zero and you don't have to mess with memory cards.
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Feb 26, 2013 21:43
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TheMammoth posted:What confuses me, though, is that I thought part of Nintendo's decision to use carts while everyone else went to CD was because they could hold more than a traditional disc at that time? N64 cartridges topped out at 64 megabytes in the late stage releases Conker's Bad Fur Day, Zelda: Majora's Mask, and Resident Evil 2. Launch cartridges held only 8 megabytes. Meanwhile CD-ROM discs had held at least 640 MB since the 80s, which quickly grew to 700 MB by the mid 90s.
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Feb 26, 2013 21:45
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Tiny carts are better for pure gaming. 1) Less cutscenes 2) Less voice acting 3) Less loading
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Feb 26, 2013 21:45
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Dominic White posted:N64 carts were TINY in terms of storage compared to CDs. However, they were a lot more stu[r]dy and had vastly better load-times. For a kid-centric system like the N64, using media that can't be ruined by accidentally brushing it against a rough surface was probably a major design concern. Also, everybody was getting CD burners at the time, whereas the stuff to create custom cartridge was a lot more obscure and expensive. Pirating a game on a CD was therefore much easier (and therefore more widespread) than cartridge piracy; even if that did exist too of course.
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Feb 26, 2013 21:49
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