a few suggestions

• for god's sake make the interface auto-download patches and updates. Don't make the user do it. You connect to the server anyways to access your stats( which are another excellent idea byt the way), just give people the latest patch.just like MMORRPIGSES do it. You login to the server, it downloads the patch. So everyone's on the same version.
• more stuff in the kits. Not just upgraded guns, but upgraded everything-better wrenches for the engineers(repair twice as fast), different types of grenades, grappling hooks that shoot higher, medpacks that heal faster. And all individually selectable. More customizable kits.
  
• it's like you're improving you're character- as you go up in rank, you get better at things.
• more things for engineers to do- i was thinking it might be cool if they could build a low wall for defense, maybe with a gun attached to it, given enough time. But they could build it anywhere. Increase their usefullness in a defensive way. Maybe they could build bridges too. Kind of like the snipers crossbow, you point the cursor at the endpoint to see if it's within your(brideg-building range). multiple engineers could build it faster.

guess thats it for now.

i'm not giving up games

silly

i've benn playing a lot of Battlefield2 llately. a lot. I'ts a great game, a great online game, but flawed. The expansion pack came at just the right moment for me, as i was starting to tire of the maps and got used to the weapons. Bam! all new content. So i'm hooked.

The flaws lie mostly in the interface. The actual gameplay is close to perfect. What i mean by that is that all that needs to be done is to add content and perform balanceing tweaks. The engine does what it needs to.
The interface art itself is actually very good, dynamic with a realistic feel. But the layout of things and the way interface buttons respond so sluggishly. ugh. The First Rule of Interface Design (is you do not talk bout interface design) is that it has to be responsive. It has to respond instantly. So you know what you pressed.

The online element is integrated beautifully into the game. You hardly notice it. That's the good part. The persistent character thing works really well for a FPS. And the idea of giving the levels the names of ranks in the army was a stroke of genius. of course! right?

The music is exceptional. Exceptional.have you noticed that all the songs have the same main theme, just interpreted with different styles of music ('middle eastern' sounding, or 'chinese' sounding for example) but the main theme is the same. But what really blew me away was when i remembered that Battlefield 1942 (the game that this game is the '2' to(Toto too? yes, Toto too!(sorry))) had the same theme as well, just with a war movie-like martial-sounding tfeel to it. Wow. So it's the theme to the game series, like a tv show would have a theme. Cool.

i have a couple of suggestions.

farewell to games forever

nya hah hah.
not really. anyway, well, i changed my major. i'm now an Animation (and media arts(whatevert that means)) major.How come? a couple of reasons. then i'll tell ya why i'm pretty much happy about it.


i suppose a growing disappointment with games is part of the answer but really it's that i wasn't drawing enough. It seemed like most of my time in my computer stuff classes was spent wrestling somehow with the hardware or software in some way. a low proportion of time was spent on actually working on the assignment.And when you did finally get to work on it, it was rushed. You know what i mean- version mismatches (You're wroking on the latest version of say, Maya at home, and the school has an older version and guess what? the files are not backwards compatible), data losses, general computer fuckups, and then in terms of software- geezus. Some programs have such a lousy interface, so hard to use, so fulll of 'you just have to know' type thingsd,.gr. /...rrr

Where's the interface on a pencil?

i think that's it really. It was taking hours to do stuff that i could have drawn
SFX: FINGERS SNAP
just like that
With any of the classes that had projects that were to be drawn, i just sat down and did them and that was that.
it doesn't seem right to say 'it was the easier choice', but it kinda was.

i think i'm happy with my decision. the animation teachers seem cooler. They seem like happier people, fun people, they'd be fun at a party. Whereas the games teachers... Some of them would be good, but not all of them. you know.

it's finals again

there's always one weekend just before the term is over, where you have to just basically get everything done, like a drop dead date? What i do is i devote a weeknd to it, just being efficient and getiing everythinng done? at least tolerably? You can go through and refine later. anyway, i'm doing that.

Stolen from Blues News:

We know that some players currently engage in repetitive farming activities for the primary purpose of unlocking skills and items for PvP. Rather than preserving the effectiveness of farming for this purpose, it is our intention to address the larger issue of the need for farming by assessing how players acquire and unlock items, runes, and skills, and then by taking steps to ensure that players can acquire and unlock these things through normal gameplay. We believe that the most effective way to play the game should also be the most fun way to play the game. You can expect to see the first meaningful changes towards this goal next week.


This is definitely one to watch!!!LOL!!1!

I'll be sure and check back when they've removed the boring and repetiitve parts and put the fun in.

penny arcade: a loser is you

Can't tell the difference between hype and ideas. Plus that one guy's a christian and a neat freak, which sorta weirds me out.

Joke weak. And childish, too: It really shoulda been Will Wright's SPERM, with a big Citizen Kane poster of Will with the word SPERM. And the people in the audience could be clamoring for Will Wright's Sperm. That'd be great. Plus it like rhymes. But what do they give us?

well, it is funny to hear 'pee in my hair'. once.

i quit playing city of heroes

why? have a look below. 'What's bad' is bigger than 'what's good'. That's all there is to it.

That and i just can't stomach the tedious bullshit anymore after hearing about Will Wright's upcoming game Spore. i'll maybe do an in depth thing on it later, but for now, watch the video of the presentation he gave at GDC. It's a nice antidote to E3 and all the hype about the new consoles.

Despite what Penny-Arcade says, hype is not a the guy that made the game telling you about his game and demonstrating it to you before your eyes. Hype is going to a closed-door showing of prerendered videos that may or may not be from games from the new console coming out at the end of this year maybe.

Everything has a number on the end of it now. it's so fucking tedious. i'm becoming disillusioned, which really sucks because that's what i'm ostensibly studying for- to enter this diseased, retarded, navel-gazing, tail-eating industry. I thought i had a pretty good idea of what the industry was about- i did work for a couple game companies before deciding to go back to school. I worked in the trenches too- test. If you don't really like games and their potential, test will weed you out forthwith. It's like seeing the courtesan without her makeup, it really is.

Will Wright's Spore is the only thing i've heard lately that makes me prick up my ears and listen. So im soaking up information on this one.

What's bad about City of Heroes

What you see is not what you get-a simple example will suffice. Say you want to punch someone. Activate the basic punch ability. But you're not in melee range. Okay, no problem, you close in. But here a funny thing happens. Once you get into range, it'll activate the punch power and you'll take a swing. But keep running past the guy you want to hit. You can be nowhere near the guy you're swinging at, and you'll do your punch animation, and do damage. It's just a dice roll, your accuracy against his agility or whatever. Aim has nothing to do with it. The actual animations that you see your character perform have nothing to do with it. There's no skill involved. And every power works like this.

getting around is tedious- you really need to have a travel power, like flight or super speed, even if it doesn't fit your character. Also, those are the only two travel powers there are. Oh, i guess there's super leap as well. Teleport is available, but it's not a travel power. It doesn't work like you think it would. You can bring other team members to your position, which is undeniably useful, but you can't travel with it. You have to go where everyone wants to be manually (pedally) and then teleport everyone to your position.


Player vs Player is not very fun. Some classes are support classes. Some classes have 'hold' or 'entangle' type powers. It's not fun to have these sorts of things cast on you. Also, PvP takes place in an Arena that is separate from the main game. You don't earn anything in the Arena that affects your character, like experience. There's just an entirely new point system-Arena points. Putting something like this in the game is akin to fixing the failure of an intelligence agency (actually, two) to warn or prevent an impending terrorist attack by creating an entirely new intelligence agency, and all bueracracies appurtaining thereunto. The Arena is nothing but bragging rights and as such is useless. Everything should tie back into the main game.

Not much variety in powers-they're clearly spells, just like in an RPG. Fire, Ice, Earth. There really are no 'strange' powers like stretching or swinging on webs, or clinging to walls (wouldn't that be easy to program?), or sensing danger, or shrinking to the size of an atom or shapeshifting or even having a bow with high-tech goddamn arrows. Or a gun that shoots paste.

Many powers you would think would be interesting are not. You would think with super strength you could pick up cars and hurl them at enemies, or uproot lampposts and swing them like a giant Louisville Slugger or wrap them around groups of thugs or interact with the environment in some way. Nope. Buffs to defense, buffs to offense. A failure of imagination, or more likely execution. I know sometimes stuff has to be cut to make milestones, but...

The hero creation system is quite fun, but the interface is so poor, it looks like programmer art. it's clearly just dressed-up drop-down boxes. Is this really the best way? The background of the hero creation screen is black. What if you want to make a hero dressed in black? Well, you can't see him, that's what. You have only about 10 faces to choose from for your hero, and they're just bitmaps. You can't change the shape of your nose or the type of mouth for example. If you want glowing eyes, there's only one face bitmap that has glowing eyes. just. one. A lot of the accessories you can choose will clip through the body, i guess because you can change the body shape, but come on, that makes those accessories unusable.

Actually the interface of the whole game is awful. The text entry boxes, there's a little triangle below the level of the text that shows you where you are. You can never tell where you are in the text, the triangle is tiny and flashes on and off somewhat intermittently. Please, just give us a vertical line between letters. And please give us the ability to highlight and copy and paste. This may seem like a small thing, but you'll be typing a lot in this game. And if they can't even handle text entry properly...

One more interface issue- the icons that represent the powers in your HUD. They're all the same. Okay, there are 3 or 4 different types, and they're pallete-swapped to represent fire, ice, radiation, etc. Come on. If it's pallete-swapped, that means it's a different file, and if it's a different file, it can have different artwork. This was so disappointing to me, that the power icons were so similar, even for wildly different powers- holds or attacks, they all look the same.

Dancing. A major part of the game is social interaction, by design. Another major part of the game is waiting around for party members to arrive. Dancing is a cool thing to do while waiting and chatting, breaks up the tedium. So why is dancing so poorly implemented? It could be truly cool, but it totally falls down. Here's how it works- there's a selection calle Boombox, under which are a number of really shitty songs, loops really. When you choose one, your character whips out a boombox from another dimension, plops it down and starts dancing. Sort of. Really just moving a bit. No matter which song loops you choose, you do the same dance at the same speed. You can do other dances, but they're under a completely different menu and you cant choose the dance you want to do. You select 'dance' and you do one of about five dances at random. At random. And the dances... they're poor. They're just white-bread arm-flailing, you don't even move your feet, much less your hips. How much cooler would the game be if you could choose your dance, from actual dances. You know, real ones. Like the mashed potato, the swim, the frug, the fly, the Batusi ferchrissakes. The robot! The cabbage patch! Not whole dances, but moves that could be chained together. You could have a real dance party. And really, the music should be not complete songs, but tracks, so people could get together and make music collaboratively. That would be doing it right.

The fatal flaw of City of Heroes, though, is this- you can't be the hero you want to be. Copyrights. i completely understand why, but it's also a natural desire for people to want to play heroes they know and like. The powers of familiar heroes are in the game. Very similar costumes to familiar heroes are in the game. But there are developers roaming around the City who can change your costume and your name on the spot if you're too close to a licensed property. I totally understand why they do this- they have to, so they don't get sued. Again. They give you a free costume change when they do it and you can repec all your powers for free as well, they're not at all assholes about it.

Even so...
it's flawed at its core. The idea is self-defeating.

well, is that it? all i can remember... for now!

what's good abut City of Heroes

Conceptually, it's awesome- couldn't be better. You are... whoever you are in your everyday life, but at night you go to Paragon City, don your alter ego, and fight crime. It integrates the player's real life as part of the game, fitting perfectly with the comic book hero concept.

They did a good job in generalizing the crazy variety of possible heroes into high-level groupings they call Archetypes. The archetypes themselves are well thought-out in their interactions. It encourages grouping because a lot of the classes (Archetypes, but i grow tired of typing that) are support- or cooperation-based. There's really only one or two classes that can go off completely on their own. I call them the 'selfish classes'. Most classes however, have some sort of weakness that is compensated for by the strength of another class.

Teaming is the best part of this game. When everyone works together, all the support powers work together, you're an unstoppable team. It's awesome to behold.

They've got that Marvel love of cool words. It's shot throughout the whole game, but one example is that you can earn titles such the Unyeilding [your hero name], the Rugged [*], or the Tenacious X. Very cool. It's like you have a comic of your own like the Amazing Spider-Man or the Incredible Hulk.

The effects are very good. The types of powers are all visually distinct, flashy and cool, and very comic-booky. Energy blasts have those mod little op-art circles in them, they look great, pure Kirby Energy. The sound effects are also very good, all the more so when your remember that there's no sound in comics- you imagine all the sounds in your own head. They sound perfectly right for all that. I personally would have gone with sound effect words that pop up, Batman TV series stylee: ZOP! BORT! POOOO!

But some people might think that's silly. As if comics aren't silly.

Overall, i think they did a good job of integrating different types and styles of heroes and making them fit within their framework. You can play grim-n-gritty claw-slashin' heroes or cape-wearin paragons of justice if you so choose.

Video Games Can be Art

exhibit A:

The new console Sims game, Sims in the City.
first of all, i should warn you, i'm going to be giving away the "ending" to the game because i want to discuss how it does what it does. If you want to discover the end for yourself (and i highly recommend it, it's one of the best game endings ever.) then don't read any furthur.
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what did i say? Right, the ending.
anyway, to meake a long story shorter, the console version of the Sims neatly folds the older PC version within it. Here's what i mean: remember the PC Sims game? It was basically a toy, not a game. You played with it. There wasn't any hrad-wired goal built into the game. Maybe Will Wright didn't like that or maybe he caught some flak for it. Either way, this new version has very clear goals. It's more focused. It's a better game for it. But the thing is, in the new Sims game, once you complete the goals, you basically have a house and people you can customize and no goals. Do you see? You get the first game as a reward for beating the new game.

genius game design, and i don't think people give Will Wright enough credit.

Oh yeah, so about the ending. You're given a house to decorate as you like, no more goals, and infinite money. but here's the thing, the big secret: You get as much money as you can crank out. Literally. The big reward is a money making machine. But you have to crank it yourself.

So are games art?
my definition of art is 'tells us something about our lives in the real world.'

game balancing and testing made easy

1.Notice at what point the game begins to become fun.
2.Make that the start of the game

im learning about addictiveness

i mean in games. how to put that quality in games. Been sampling mmorpgs lately. Sove of them hame that quality. I'm trying to figure it out.

You know what else has that quality? The Sims. Especially the new one for PS2. I'll tell you why. later.

fun to relax.

also have a programming class- through a weird accident, it's an
advanced programming class- way beyond my level. But i'm gonna give
it a try. It's cool, but a little daunting. I'm studying right now.
P.S. okay not really.

but at least you can turn him off.

i'm sick. i think i've got bird flu or something. i don't feel like playing games. That's how you know you're really sick. Nothing seems fun. Actually, that's one of the main symptoms of depression.

anyway, short answer(we just had midterms): here's what i'm playing:

Rumble Roses- excellent nich-market game. One question remains- if you're going for that market, why leave out the most important feature

to that market? I'm talking about free camera and replay.

Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater- God, what a title. It's a totally other language. The game i can sum up in one word-meticulous. If you like meticulous games, this is your game.

Burnout 3:Takedown- Very fun game. Annoying DJ. Probably tring to be like SSX. And failing. The thing is, in SSX, the DJ gave you information. He told you who the next boss was going to be, he told you about the track you were going to race on, he told you when you were getting famous. Those things enhance the game. In Burnout, the DJ doesn't say anything useful, he's a shitty actor, and he repeats the same four messages ad infinitum.

but at least you can turn him off.

The new Leisure Suit Larry so almost didn't suck

it could have been great.
more about how later.