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.