Tremble, peasants! For we here at NosCo once again have fully working internet access!
...Okay, now which button cues the dramatic lightning bolt...?
But yeah. Since Tuesday the 22nd, I've been operating on ever-worsening internet. When it started, it was annoying -- it would go out every half hour or so, stay down five minutes, and then be back up. Yesterday morning, I was lucky if I could get through the three pages required to check my email before the modem pooched. My last comment on the Nexus took five or six reconnections to actually get through.
Turned out to be two issues: whoever worked in the junction box last had made, as the technician put it: "a mess". The co-ax to my apartment was so kinked up he described it as a "zig zag"; and noted that the cable was so bent that the filament or whatever co-ax has to transmit the signal was broken, dropping my signal strength so low that neither modem nor cable box could keep a connection when the wind blew -- which here in the Columbia River Hellhol- I mean Basin, is always.
On top of that, something (or things) in my modem was in its death throes. Hence the worsening performance as time went on. Some swapped junction cables and a new modem later, and here I am again.
I'd love to flip Charter Cable shit over the incident, and go on a tirade about their customer support as so many others have... but I can't in good conscience. Real life issues kept me from getting in touch with tech support until Wednesday of this week (and they showed up to fix it on Thursday, so not bad time); and yes it took two visits to fix, but that was mostly my fault for not testing the "fixed" connection with a sustained download before the guy left. Other than issues with piss-poor reception on my cell phone to call tech support (which they have no control over) I found the entire process straight-forward and simple; and the tech they sent out seemed to know his business.
I have to confess, I did a Google search earlier in the week trying to check for other problems in my area -- local contractors are bad about digging ditches without calling and cutting the regional fiber-op backbone (happens at least once a year, sometimes more) -- and the entire first page of results was nothing but people bitching that Charter didn't fix whatever they had wrong. I was expecting to be left hanging; when he said that the problem was signal strength in the junction box, I figured someone in the complex had tied one too many lines in on Tuesday, and that last straw finally broke the camel's back and we couldn't get cable internet anymore.
I was wrong. They fixed me up, and after catching up on some torrents and downloading that driver update I'd been needing since Thursday (no, no: the last Thursday, not yesterday), she's still running perfectly. Not only that, but the new modem has some kind of enhancements over the old one and my connection now tops out at 2m/bit instead of 1m/bit. Sustained download speeds of 1.9 megabytes a second. Well, it ain't flyin' cars... but that's living-in-the-future enough for me.
And junction box shenanigans and burned out modems are officially considered "not your fault" so it didn't cost me one red cent.
So while anecdotal evidence may still support them sucking, my personal experience now conflicts with that; and I'm pretty happy with my internet service. Still wish I could get the Military Channel and Nicktoons TV instead of eight versions of Telemundo... but that's a rant for another day. I'm just happy I didn't end up having to switch to the local phone company's craptastic excuse for A/DSL; which I had back in '06 -- cannot say I miss those big 30k/sec downstream speeds, either. What? No, I didn't miss a zero: thirty kilobytes a second.
Anyway. Should be posts incoming. As I noted in passing in the NCCS comments the other day, I ended up with a new video card; since my long-serving 8800GTS was on its way to Video-Card-Valhalla. It's the dust. Cakes up the fan bearings, fan stops, GPU fries. Ended up catching a helluva sale on a GTX650ti 2gb; though my old-ass PC doesn't much like the PCIe 3.0 format apparently. Am hoping the new drivers I finally managed to get yesterday will help with that.
I have since assembled a mess 'o screenshots; enough for six or so posts... but couldn't do much with them when I couldn't reliably access Picasa to graft them into posts. Of course now I have to separate them, sort out the ones that aren't suitable for public sharing (I. Admit. NOTHING.), and then arrange thoughts that go with them into semi-coherency for posts... so it may still be awhile.
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video games. Show all posts
Friday, February 1, 2013
Thursday, August 2, 2012
STALKER, Bethsoft Style?
So, I know I'm not big on relating actual... y'know, news around here -- mostly opting instead to bore everyone with drivel about my silly little mods -- but this caught my attention enough that I had to comment.
Apparently, Bethesda just bought the rights to STALKER.
Theory is that it's likely to use the new(ish) Skyrim/"Creation" engine.
I'm torn on this. On the one hand, Bethsoft is... Bethsoft. If they do a STALKER title we can expect only a half dozen voice actors, huge plot holes, and horrific bugs that may or may not ever be fully fixed.
On the other hand, we also get the almost obscenely easy to mod Creation engine; which has the potential to make up for all that and more still.
I've always loved the idea of STALKER -- for those not familiar, the games follow the progress of different men sent into "the zone" (the off-limits irradiated zone around Chernobyl in the Ukraine) for various purposes. In the world of STALKER, radiation on that level is rather comic-book-y, creating horrible monsters and mutating people. However, the zone is also home to a treasure trove of "artifacts"; strange objects worth insane amounts of money in the outside world. Thus, a class of treasure hunters has moved into the zone to find the items. With the hunters came military forces, mercenaries, and scientists; all with their own plans and purposes.
The existing STALKER games are similar to our beloved/hated Gamebryo titles, in that there is not a fixed, rigidly adhered to quest chain. There are missions, but you can also bum around the zone doing as you please and just exploring, hunting phat lewtz, or what-have-you.
The problem I had with the games -- and what kept me from really getting into them -- was the solitary nature. By the time the STALKER games hit, I had been playing Oblivion and was used to sandboxing with companions. Call of Pripyat and Clear Skies both hit after FO3, and well... we don't need to go into detail about my FO3 games.
STALKER, conversely, is more akin to survival horror in that it's mostly solitary. You can, at times, hire a guide or mercenary; but aside from that your only interaction with NPCs is in camps/bases, or random patrols you run into. There's no one you can have as a member of your party; to give orders to, go where you go, et cetera. Combine that with the fact that inserting new characters into the games is an ordeal and a half, and you have a game that is not companion-monger friendly.
I've always thought that having the ability to add companions, even without the added functionality possible in FO3/NV; even if you could only have one at a time, would make the game so much better.
I dunno; I've been thinking about it a good ten minutes now, and I just can't decide whether this would be a good or bad thing.
Although, the idea of watching the Creation engine render the sunrise over the iconic Ferris wheel in Pripyat...
The idea of moving into that high-rise apartment complex overlooking said wheel and converting it into a base for my army of evil redheads...
In the thread where I saw the link, someone compared Bethsoft-made STALKER to a whole game akin to Dead Money from NV on hardcore mode. This idea... I am not as big on. I didn't much care for Dead Money; and can't say as I'd be keen on playing an entire game set in that type of area. Although I will grant that DM would have been much less annoying if not for that stupid LOLUCANTGOHERE collar; so I dunno, maybe it wouldn't suck.
Apparently, Bethesda just bought the rights to STALKER.
Theory is that it's likely to use the new(ish) Skyrim/"Creation" engine.
I'm torn on this. On the one hand, Bethsoft is... Bethsoft. If they do a STALKER title we can expect only a half dozen voice actors, huge plot holes, and horrific bugs that may or may not ever be fully fixed.
On the other hand, we also get the almost obscenely easy to mod Creation engine; which has the potential to make up for all that and more still.
I've always loved the idea of STALKER -- for those not familiar, the games follow the progress of different men sent into "the zone" (the off-limits irradiated zone around Chernobyl in the Ukraine) for various purposes. In the world of STALKER, radiation on that level is rather comic-book-y, creating horrible monsters and mutating people. However, the zone is also home to a treasure trove of "artifacts"; strange objects worth insane amounts of money in the outside world. Thus, a class of treasure hunters has moved into the zone to find the items. With the hunters came military forces, mercenaries, and scientists; all with their own plans and purposes.
The existing STALKER games are similar to our beloved/hated Gamebryo titles, in that there is not a fixed, rigidly adhered to quest chain. There are missions, but you can also bum around the zone doing as you please and just exploring, hunting phat lewtz, or what-have-you.
The problem I had with the games -- and what kept me from really getting into them -- was the solitary nature. By the time the STALKER games hit, I had been playing Oblivion and was used to sandboxing with companions. Call of Pripyat and Clear Skies both hit after FO3, and well... we don't need to go into detail about my FO3 games.
STALKER, conversely, is more akin to survival horror in that it's mostly solitary. You can, at times, hire a guide or mercenary; but aside from that your only interaction with NPCs is in camps/bases, or random patrols you run into. There's no one you can have as a member of your party; to give orders to, go where you go, et cetera. Combine that with the fact that inserting new characters into the games is an ordeal and a half, and you have a game that is not companion-monger friendly.
I've always thought that having the ability to add companions, even without the added functionality possible in FO3/NV; even if you could only have one at a time, would make the game so much better.
I dunno; I've been thinking about it a good ten minutes now, and I just can't decide whether this would be a good or bad thing.
Although, the idea of watching the Creation engine render the sunrise over the iconic Ferris wheel in Pripyat...
The idea of moving into that high-rise apartment complex overlooking said wheel and converting it into a base for my army of evil redheads...
In the thread where I saw the link, someone compared Bethsoft-made STALKER to a whole game akin to Dead Money from NV on hardcore mode. This idea... I am not as big on. I didn't much care for Dead Money; and can't say as I'd be keen on playing an entire game set in that type of area. Although I will grant that DM would have been much less annoying if not for that stupid LOLUCANTGOHERE collar; so I dunno, maybe it wouldn't suck.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Vacationing in Skyrim
So... you may have noticed (or not) that I randomly went dark before actually finishing my series of posts on the greatest FNV mod you'll never get to play (never miss an opportunity to twist that knife, Kiddies!).
To the considerable chagrin of several people, I didn't die. After nine odd weeks of heavy modding, I was just burning out on FNV something fierce.
About a month or five weeks ago I decided to pick Skyrim back up. I got to play it for all of about a week on 1.5, which worked beautifully... before Bethsoft "upgraded" to 1.6 (and Steam helpfully auto-updated it despite being told not to); which is a steaming pile of shit, and just goes to prove the notion many of us have that their patch team either hate our guts, or are the most incompetent bunch of fucks to ever be employed in the software field. How they managed to break something that was already fixed is beyond me... but hey! We have mounted combat now! Sometimes, sorta, with most races; for people who ride horses in the game. I don't, so it's a total waste to me; but I'm sure some mid-level manager considers it an accomplishment. Personally, I'd rather have a construction set that worked worth half a shit... but that may just be me.
Since upgrading to 1.6, though... the game experience went to hell. I've lost five sets of saves now to corruption (average save-game life is about ten to fifteen hours' play time). Framerates dropped from an uninspiring but playable 20 - 25 to five to ten; and there was about a twenty percent chance of BSoD on every cell change.
I've since begun a purge on my data folder. Dropped from over fifty mods to thirty-five; and aggressively removed anything and everything not actively required to run my game with the mods I kept. The big kicker seems to have been scripts; which are a clusterfuck in Skyrim. Rather than being contained inside the esps as in previous games, scripts are now separate objects that sit in their own folder. Between the mods that "improve" scripts they shouldn't, and the ones that are just plain badly written; that script folder seems to be the lion's share of my issues. I've cleaned out what I could; but since most people don't care enough to tag their custom content to make it easier to identify which plugin it belongs to... I've got to now go through each archive in my downloads folder, and check each one for scripts -- then delete any scripts not found to be contained within said archives.
My initial purge included removal of Deadlier Dragons and Jaysus Swords. With just those two gone, FPS have returned to over 20 and last night I managed over eighty minutes of play before the game hit an infinite loading bug on fast travel and had to be manually killed via Windows task manager. Which sounds bad... but is an immense improvement over five minutes of stuttering followed by a BSoD or hard lock. I'm hoping when I work up the giveafuck level required to finish the purge, it'll return things to the three-hours-at-a-time play I used to have. Not holding my breath; as 1.6 seems to be a horribly buggy patch... but anything will be an improvement over last week.
Heard an interesting note on Skyrim performance several days ago, too. The theory was professed that shadows in the game are so problematic for framerates and reliability in general because to make it console-friendly, Beth hard-coded the engine to run all shadows through the CPU, rather than GPU. So not only do shadow-heavy areas tend to cause CPU clogging, but when you hit an area with more shadows active than your CPU can render all by its lonesome, it just says fuck it and refuses to try. Sadly, the refusal to try does not end in shadows simply not being rendered -- it tends to result in more sinister things and then profane yelling from my direction.
Not something I have the resources to run down and verify; but it certainly fits the symptoms my PC has been experiencing since day one trying to run the game -- and would also explain why my craptastic little eMachine here will handle other higher-drain games with aplomb; but crashes and burns with regularity where Skyrim is involved even at low settings. Rather a hope-killer if true; since combined with its piss-poor multi-core and large RAM support, that means you effectively cannot upgrade a computer enough to provide good, stable performance with the game.
After finding out about the shadows, I hit on an idea. Disable them. I don't mean through that hand-holding kiddie-shit launcher and its sliders that may or may not actually do anything; I went into the ini files and disabled all shadows -- set all distances to zero, all radii to zero.
And... it worked. FPS through the roof; no more stutter; load times were fast, and no crashing. Well, at least during my limited play-test session -- crashing would probably have resumed eventually; it seems to mostly be a matter of when the game fills up my cache, so no shadows should equal slower filling.
Sliiiight down side that it also killed most lights. Not quite sure which setting labeled 'shadow' affects dynamic lights... so I reverted the ini files to backups (see? this is why we always make backups before editing ini files...) until I have time to go through setting by setting and see which caused the issue. Considering that even with the mods purged, the engine itself still has Beth's trademark memory leak... checking all those settings one by one will take awhile.
But since I know none of you come here for my pseudo-philosophical prattle, have some screenshot posts...
To the considerable chagrin of several people, I didn't die. After nine odd weeks of heavy modding, I was just burning out on FNV something fierce.
About a month or five weeks ago I decided to pick Skyrim back up. I got to play it for all of about a week on 1.5, which worked beautifully... before Bethsoft "upgraded" to 1.6 (and Steam helpfully auto-updated it despite being told not to); which is a steaming pile of shit, and just goes to prove the notion many of us have that their patch team either hate our guts, or are the most incompetent bunch of fucks to ever be employed in the software field. How they managed to break something that was already fixed is beyond me... but hey! We have mounted combat now! Sometimes, sorta, with most races; for people who ride horses in the game. I don't, so it's a total waste to me; but I'm sure some mid-level manager considers it an accomplishment. Personally, I'd rather have a construction set that worked worth half a shit... but that may just be me.
Since upgrading to 1.6, though... the game experience went to hell. I've lost five sets of saves now to corruption (average save-game life is about ten to fifteen hours' play time). Framerates dropped from an uninspiring but playable 20 - 25 to five to ten; and there was about a twenty percent chance of BSoD on every cell change.
I've since begun a purge on my data folder. Dropped from over fifty mods to thirty-five; and aggressively removed anything and everything not actively required to run my game with the mods I kept. The big kicker seems to have been scripts; which are a clusterfuck in Skyrim. Rather than being contained inside the esps as in previous games, scripts are now separate objects that sit in their own folder. Between the mods that "improve" scripts they shouldn't, and the ones that are just plain badly written; that script folder seems to be the lion's share of my issues. I've cleaned out what I could; but since most people don't care enough to tag their custom content to make it easier to identify which plugin it belongs to... I've got to now go through each archive in my downloads folder, and check each one for scripts -- then delete any scripts not found to be contained within said archives.
My initial purge included removal of Deadlier Dragons and Jaysus Swords. With just those two gone, FPS have returned to over 20 and last night I managed over eighty minutes of play before the game hit an infinite loading bug on fast travel and had to be manually killed via Windows task manager. Which sounds bad... but is an immense improvement over five minutes of stuttering followed by a BSoD or hard lock. I'm hoping when I work up the giveafuck level required to finish the purge, it'll return things to the three-hours-at-a-time play I used to have. Not holding my breath; as 1.6 seems to be a horribly buggy patch... but anything will be an improvement over last week.
Heard an interesting note on Skyrim performance several days ago, too. The theory was professed that shadows in the game are so problematic for framerates and reliability in general because to make it console-friendly, Beth hard-coded the engine to run all shadows through the CPU, rather than GPU. So not only do shadow-heavy areas tend to cause CPU clogging, but when you hit an area with more shadows active than your CPU can render all by its lonesome, it just says fuck it and refuses to try. Sadly, the refusal to try does not end in shadows simply not being rendered -- it tends to result in more sinister things and then profane yelling from my direction.
Not something I have the resources to run down and verify; but it certainly fits the symptoms my PC has been experiencing since day one trying to run the game -- and would also explain why my craptastic little eMachine here will handle other higher-drain games with aplomb; but crashes and burns with regularity where Skyrim is involved even at low settings. Rather a hope-killer if true; since combined with its piss-poor multi-core and large RAM support, that means you effectively cannot upgrade a computer enough to provide good, stable performance with the game.
After finding out about the shadows, I hit on an idea. Disable them. I don't mean through that hand-holding kiddie-shit launcher and its sliders that may or may not actually do anything; I went into the ini files and disabled all shadows -- set all distances to zero, all radii to zero.
And... it worked. FPS through the roof; no more stutter; load times were fast, and no crashing. Well, at least during my limited play-test session -- crashing would probably have resumed eventually; it seems to mostly be a matter of when the game fills up my cache, so no shadows should equal slower filling.
Sliiiight down side that it also killed most lights. Not quite sure which setting labeled 'shadow' affects dynamic lights... so I reverted the ini files to backups (see? this is why we always make backups before editing ini files...) until I have time to go through setting by setting and see which caused the issue. Considering that even with the mods purged, the engine itself still has Beth's trademark memory leak... checking all those settings one by one will take awhile.
But since I know none of you come here for my pseudo-philosophical prattle, have some screenshot posts...
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Up The Wall
...Or, Making me second guess myself.
I've gotta confess, FNV is driving me insane, lately. Well, more-so than I normally am, anyway.
There for awhile, I had it working more or less well; and could play mostly crash free. That game is apparently gone. Played most of yesterday, and it's back to its old standby of crashing completely at random. Can be two minutes in, can be two hours; and every third or fourth loading screen results in either crash or lockup. I've gotten quite habitual at tapping the quick save key.
Far as I can tell, it's all memory-related. The game crashes when loading, as in loading screens; but almost every play-time crash is when it's either loading in new terrain/buildings, or activating spawns to "pop in" the 3d models of actors/creatures. With the occasional crash during the start of combat -- but I've ranted more than once over the memory drain of companions when combat starts. I don't know what they're doing, but the game uses a massive amount of memory for about ten seconds and then goes back to normal. If the memory leak that Bethsoft could never be bothered to fix already has the cache in a sad state when that massive draw hits... well, imagine the noise Wile E. makes as he heads for the desert floor.
It's actually gotten to the point that it's made me doubt my PC here. Granted, the eMachine here would turn the stomach of most "serious gamers"; but for the relative pittance I paid for it back in 2007, it's given one hell of a term of service even if it pooches tomorrow. All the crashing, the BSoDs, performance problems; it's all made me think at various times that I had a virus, my RAM was going bad, and the GPU had fried/was in the process of frying (long-time readers may recall that I had a GPU pooch in 2009, taking me out of FO3 for a couple weeks; so I'm a bit paranoid about it happening again).
And of course, the problems are near identical in Skyrim. Random crashes (mostly on loading new cells or assets); and BSoDs if I'm not careful about keeping Firefox reined in before trying to play (Flash has a happyfuntime memory leak, too). So naturally, it's my PC, right?
Well...
Occasionally, I feel the need to put things into perspective; or just to play something different. From time to time, I'll abandon my usual haunts in favor or enacting death and destruction on much larger scales -- strategy games. Anyone who's played it can tell you Sins of a Solar Empire is no slouch in the system hardware drain arena, and a while back when frustrated beyond my tolerance by Skyrim, I played an entire medium-large campaign in one sitting. To the tune of seven hours and change; straight. Not only did it not crash, but when done it unloaded from Windows memory without incident (though it took about five minutes to fully clear... yowch) and I was able to continue computing normally.
Huh, so that's what happens when you have an engine written by people who actually play games, instead of people just looking for a paycheck. Between Bethsoft and EA fucking me over every chance they get, I sometimes forget companies like Stardock exist. Shame they don't do sandbox FPS/RPG hybrids. Probably wouldn't have any asinine DRM, either...
Anyway, what got me thinking about all this was yesterday morning I was browsing around a Fallout forum and happened to be linked to Slof's site; where I saw her notation that Fallout 3 and NV were too crash-happy for her and had been abandoned.
It really sucks, because I love FNV and Skyrim in concept. It's just that in execution... Trying to get either game working worth a damn is rather like pulling teeth prior to the advent of anesthetic -- all you can really do is take a big drink of something high-proof, grip the chair arm tightly, and hope for the best. And much like pulling teeth, at the end of the day you usually wish you had spent it doing something else.
On an interesting note: despite being nominally the same engine as the other three (they can say what they want; Skyrim is still absofuckinglutely Gamebryo; just with a more annoying scripting format shoehorned in), Oblivion is pretty stable. I can play it three or four hours; with only the odd (once? twice a week, maybe) crash caused by some less than ideal scripting in some converted Japanese mods I won't go into the exact nature of here. It also at least partially destroys the "it's my PC" theory as well; since the way I have it set up Oblivion is more of an overall memory drain than FNV -- I've installed entirely too many HGEC bodies and armors; and the amount of drain that game can rack up is astounding, even at the relatively low graphics settings I run. Still, the memory leak wasn't as bad in that iteration of the engine, so it takes longer for the game to crash and burn.
Still, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about FNV. It would figure that right after I get my estate finished the damned thing stops working right. Probably has something to do with some mods I installed last month in an attempt to "make the game more interesting". Populated wasteland and casinos, angel park, a world of pain, the monster mod, and a few others...
They fucked my game so bad it's worthy of a Lifetime daytime movie about the evils of rape. I resisted ranting about them at the time because I try hard not to step on other modders' toes; especially when I don't know exactly what went wrong where... and "momod" broke my game so fucking bad I never got a chance to run down exactly what did it. It's MMM all over again. The others were varying levels of suck, fail, and pointless.
I cleared all the stuff out, of course... but not all at once. I had some foolish notions of being able to salvage some of the mods, and kept them active into the early stages of the game I'm currently playing. This, obviously, was a mistake. Judging by how much bigger each save file I make is than the previous one, it looks like there may be some bloat in there someplace. Probably doesn't help that I've modified my load order multiple times, and had to fix the master listing in two WME plugins to get them to behave -- savegames tend not to like having stuff like that changed.
So, it's looking like much as I don't want to -- especially being thirty-four hours in now -- I'm going to have to dump this set of saves; wipe them all, and start an entirely new game, since somehow my "clean save" ended up with Armor By Race in it (don't ask how -- I turned that stupid thing off at least a dozen times, and it would never shut down; I ended up having to delete the piece of shit to make it go away). After, of course, going through my data directory with a fine toothed comb and purging out every mesh and texture that isn't supposed to be there anymore.
I realize they weren't as moddable; but sometimes I miss the old days of gaming. You kids in the audience may not know this, but before the internet became ubiquitous, companies had to put out games that worked reasonably well at release. "Patching" involved disks (yes, with a K) and could be very expensive business. Of course, I don't have to memorize the IRQ, DMA, and Hex address of my game port and sound card for modern games... so there is that up side.
You know, I spent an hour or so yesterday morning working on my 1911's here at the desk while waiting on FNV to stop being stupid, and I have to confess: the older I get, the more I prefer that sort of stuff. I swear, games just get more and more unreliable and randomly coded every year... but steel will always be steel; and will always obey physics. Now if I could just figure out how to get that damned leather to stop squeaking... or failing that, I suppose I could break down and buy my own kydex forming table...
I've gotta confess, FNV is driving me insane, lately. Well, more-so than I normally am, anyway.
There for awhile, I had it working more or less well; and could play mostly crash free. That game is apparently gone. Played most of yesterday, and it's back to its old standby of crashing completely at random. Can be two minutes in, can be two hours; and every third or fourth loading screen results in either crash or lockup. I've gotten quite habitual at tapping the quick save key.
Far as I can tell, it's all memory-related. The game crashes when loading, as in loading screens; but almost every play-time crash is when it's either loading in new terrain/buildings, or activating spawns to "pop in" the 3d models of actors/creatures. With the occasional crash during the start of combat -- but I've ranted more than once over the memory drain of companions when combat starts. I don't know what they're doing, but the game uses a massive amount of memory for about ten seconds and then goes back to normal. If the memory leak that Bethsoft could never be bothered to fix already has the cache in a sad state when that massive draw hits... well, imagine the noise Wile E. makes as he heads for the desert floor.
It's actually gotten to the point that it's made me doubt my PC here. Granted, the eMachine here would turn the stomach of most "serious gamers"; but for the relative pittance I paid for it back in 2007, it's given one hell of a term of service even if it pooches tomorrow. All the crashing, the BSoDs, performance problems; it's all made me think at various times that I had a virus, my RAM was going bad, and the GPU had fried/was in the process of frying (long-time readers may recall that I had a GPU pooch in 2009, taking me out of FO3 for a couple weeks; so I'm a bit paranoid about it happening again).
And of course, the problems are near identical in Skyrim. Random crashes (mostly on loading new cells or assets); and BSoDs if I'm not careful about keeping Firefox reined in before trying to play (Flash has a happyfuntime memory leak, too). So naturally, it's my PC, right?
Well...
Occasionally, I feel the need to put things into perspective; or just to play something different. From time to time, I'll abandon my usual haunts in favor or enacting death and destruction on much larger scales -- strategy games. Anyone who's played it can tell you Sins of a Solar Empire is no slouch in the system hardware drain arena, and a while back when frustrated beyond my tolerance by Skyrim, I played an entire medium-large campaign in one sitting. To the tune of seven hours and change; straight. Not only did it not crash, but when done it unloaded from Windows memory without incident (though it took about five minutes to fully clear... yowch) and I was able to continue computing normally.
Huh, so that's what happens when you have an engine written by people who actually play games, instead of people just looking for a paycheck. Between Bethsoft and EA fucking me over every chance they get, I sometimes forget companies like Stardock exist. Shame they don't do sandbox FPS/RPG hybrids. Probably wouldn't have any asinine DRM, either...
Anyway, what got me thinking about all this was yesterday morning I was browsing around a Fallout forum and happened to be linked to Slof's site; where I saw her notation that Fallout 3 and NV were too crash-happy for her and had been abandoned.
It really sucks, because I love FNV and Skyrim in concept. It's just that in execution... Trying to get either game working worth a damn is rather like pulling teeth prior to the advent of anesthetic -- all you can really do is take a big drink of something high-proof, grip the chair arm tightly, and hope for the best. And much like pulling teeth, at the end of the day you usually wish you had spent it doing something else.
On an interesting note: despite being nominally the same engine as the other three (they can say what they want; Skyrim is still absofuckinglutely Gamebryo; just with a more annoying scripting format shoehorned in), Oblivion is pretty stable. I can play it three or four hours; with only the odd (once? twice a week, maybe) crash caused by some less than ideal scripting in some converted Japanese mods I won't go into the exact nature of here. It also at least partially destroys the "it's my PC" theory as well; since the way I have it set up Oblivion is more of an overall memory drain than FNV -- I've installed entirely too many HGEC bodies and armors; and the amount of drain that game can rack up is astounding, even at the relatively low graphics settings I run. Still, the memory leak wasn't as bad in that iteration of the engine, so it takes longer for the game to crash and burn.
Still, I'm not sure what I'm going to do about FNV. It would figure that right after I get my estate finished the damned thing stops working right. Probably has something to do with some mods I installed last month in an attempt to "make the game more interesting". Populated wasteland and casinos, angel park, a world of pain, the monster mod, and a few others...
They fucked my game so bad it's worthy of a Lifetime daytime movie about the evils of rape. I resisted ranting about them at the time because I try hard not to step on other modders' toes; especially when I don't know exactly what went wrong where... and "momod" broke my game so fucking bad I never got a chance to run down exactly what did it. It's MMM all over again. The others were varying levels of suck, fail, and pointless.
I cleared all the stuff out, of course... but not all at once. I had some foolish notions of being able to salvage some of the mods, and kept them active into the early stages of the game I'm currently playing. This, obviously, was a mistake. Judging by how much bigger each save file I make is than the previous one, it looks like there may be some bloat in there someplace. Probably doesn't help that I've modified my load order multiple times, and had to fix the master listing in two WME plugins to get them to behave -- savegames tend not to like having stuff like that changed.
So, it's looking like much as I don't want to -- especially being thirty-four hours in now -- I'm going to have to dump this set of saves; wipe them all, and start an entirely new game, since somehow my "clean save" ended up with Armor By Race in it (don't ask how -- I turned that stupid thing off at least a dozen times, and it would never shut down; I ended up having to delete the piece of shit to make it go away). After, of course, going through my data directory with a fine toothed comb and purging out every mesh and texture that isn't supposed to be there anymore.
I realize they weren't as moddable; but sometimes I miss the old days of gaming. You kids in the audience may not know this, but before the internet became ubiquitous, companies had to put out games that worked reasonably well at release. "Patching" involved disks (yes, with a K) and could be very expensive business. Of course, I don't have to memorize the IRQ, DMA, and Hex address of my game port and sound card for modern games... so there is that up side.
You know, I spent an hour or so yesterday morning working on my 1911's here at the desk while waiting on FNV to stop being stupid, and I have to confess: the older I get, the more I prefer that sort of stuff. I swear, games just get more and more unreliable and randomly coded every year... but steel will always be steel; and will always obey physics. Now if I could just figure out how to get that damned leather to stop squeaking... or failing that, I suppose I could break down and buy my own kydex forming table...
Saturday, January 7, 2012
Hitman: Absolution
For many years I've been a considerable fan of the Hitman series of stealth assassination games. While the series has been saddled with poor controls that effectively make it impossible to play it like an FPS; the games are nonetheless glorious -- perfect "hits" often end up as orchestras of planning, timing, and a little luck.
It's been some years since the last title (Blood Money) was released, and with its ending there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the saga of everyone's favorite genetically engineered assassin wasn't over.
I was reading around this internet this morning, and came across some info on the upcoming title.
David Bateson will not be voicing Agent 47.
Vivienne McKee, who has always voiced 47′s handler, Diana, has been replaced by Marsha Thomason.
The original soundtrack for the game is composed by Peter Kyed and Peter Peter, replacing the game's previous composer, Jesper Kyd.
The new title will feature an online or possibly multiplayer option unlike previous titles.
Different 47. Different Diana. Different composer. Multifuckingplayer mode.
Multi-motherfucking-player. In a Hitman game.
If anyone needs me, I'll be quietly sobbing in front of my altar to Silent Assassin.
It's been some years since the last title (Blood Money) was released, and with its ending there was no doubt in anyone's mind that the saga of everyone's favorite genetically engineered assassin wasn't over.
I was reading around this internet this morning, and came across some info on the upcoming title.
David Bateson will not be voicing Agent 47.
Vivienne McKee, who has always voiced 47′s handler, Diana, has been replaced by Marsha Thomason.
The original soundtrack for the game is composed by Peter Kyed and Peter Peter, replacing the game's previous composer, Jesper Kyd.
The new title will feature an online or possibly multiplayer option unlike previous titles.
Different 47. Different Diana. Different composer. Multifuckingplayer mode.
Multi-motherfucking-player. In a Hitman game.
If anyone needs me, I'll be quietly sobbing in front of my altar to Silent Assassin.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
On Skyrim
...Or: packin' up the family, and move to... Skyrim. (kind of kills the melody, doesn't it? I've got to hire new writers...)
So... I will now confess that my interest in Tamriel and Vvardenfell being available (after a fashion) in TESV wasn't purely curiosity.
I do have the game, yes.
And before you ask: yes, I pretty much take Herculine at face value whenever she tells me I can run a game. On that note, Miss Neko: should I ever end up in Video Gamers Anonymous, you're going at the bottom of my list of potential sponsors. I can just hear it now...
"I'm so tempted; I saw this new game and it looks so cool..."
"I've played that one! You'll love it! Go for it!"
Oh, well -- it's not like I need any free time, anyhow.
Anyway.
According to my saves, I've logged thirty-three hours on Skyrim now, so I thought I'd be a pretentious prick and offer my thoughts for those who may still be on the fence.
First and foremost: the "official" system requirements are horrible, horrible lies. Seriously. Someone is going to Hell for writing those. As noted before, I'm actually below minimum-specs for FNV: single core Athlon 2.4ghz, 1gbDDR2, and a GF8800GTS. I'm here to tell you folks, Skyrim runs smoother for me than Oblivion does. Granted, my Oblivion install is loaded down with high-res armor, weapon, and body meshes; so I'm not sure I'd consider the requirements on Skyrim lower than those for Oblivion; but if you can run FNV, you can run Skyrim, no matter what the liars who wrote the ostensible requirements say.
As my Neko partner has so astutely opined, I also believe that this has to do with "dumbing down" (for lack of a better term) the specs so that the same game can run on the XXXBox 360, PS3, and PC without having to have its engine redone between them -- but I'll go one further, be a paranoid bastard, and suggest that the padded system reqs are also a conspiracy to trick us all into buying new PCs and/or hardware that we really don't need (but the manufacturers really need to sell).
From a technical standpoint, the engine seems to be a solid improvement over previous forays; but don't be fooled -- this is absolutely still Gamebryo, no matter what label they slap on it. Same file formats, same mesh and texture formats, same sound format; same horrific implementation of small-item-physics via the Havok engine.
It is, however, markedly more stable. I've yet to have a crash on loading a new cell, nor a hang on loading a game. Autosaves work without causing crashes, and quick saves don't appear to corrupt themselves at the drop of a hat. At least for me. Other people report having less luck with saving and loading; but I can only report what I physically see from the game as it runs on my archaic system -- I refuse to give hearsay from heavily-biased parties absolute credence.
Visually, the game is a mixed-bag. The character and item textures and meshes are simply horrible; the textures especially so. They're worse than many of the ones that shipped with Oblivion in 2006 -- far worse than what we're used to seeing from FNV; and they just don't compare to Oblivion mod textures from the likes of HGEC and Apachii. Most armor textures look like they were pulled from a PS2 game circa 2004. They might be better if run at large size; but since I run medium in Oblivion, both Fallouts, and now Skyrim, I do consider it an apples-to-apples comparison.
On the other hand, when you get away from characters and into environments, the game is simply gorgeous. The trees, the water, the mountains off in the distance; clouds drifting around obscuring the peak from view... it's one of the most magnificent worlds I've ever seen in a game -- and that's on medium textures, with shadows and effects cranked down considerably. If you have the system horsepower to ramp this bitch up to ultra-high, it may well be one of the most beautiful digital landscapes ever rendered into a game.
On the environment: the water, I was amazed to see, actually flows now. In Oblivion and the Fallouts, water had "wave textures" to make it look like it was moving; but in Skyrim? It actually does. It meanders in streams, and rushes over falls. Early in the game, I was trying to cross a fast moving river near some falls to pick alchemical components; ended up missing my jump from rock to rock, and fell in the water... and was promptly swept over the falls. Didn't even hurt me; but the fact that the physics have advanced that much is just glorious.
The wind and snow is also interesting. It snows, it rains; but you can also see little swirls in the snow on the ground where the wind is blowing. And I swear that wind is blowing; because something is screwing up my archery at range (but more on that later). Though like previous games, the rain and snow are not stopped by awnings and roofs -- if you're outdoors, it precipitates into your vision no matter what cover you're under.
Likewise, the trees, bushes, grasses, and all are well done; and give a sense of actually being in a forest, or on a frozen plain. I was standing on an ice floe near the shore of the north sea, gazing out on the icebergs at sunset. I have to say, while it may not be as "real" as being there... it's certainly head and shoulders above any other game I've ever played.
The terrain is still mostly vertical once you're off the established roads; but it seems easier to climb than in Oblivion, so you aren't railroaded into particular areas nearly so bad.
The game world does still have borders. "You cannot go this way; turn back" and such. I've only run into the one at the north sea; but I assume the other three directions will have one too.
Sadly, once you get past the pretties, the game becomes more of a mixed experience.
The new UI is simply terrible. My issue isn't even cosmetic, either -- though I find the new menu system clumsy at best, it is certainly usable. No, my issue is again technical. The UI ignores clicks, may or may not work with custom keybinds; and if you click the wrong part of a menu choice when bartering with an NPC you'll be kicked out of the barter window. As well, the menu "freezes" regularly -- refusing to have the selection highlight move to where the mouse is pointing; thereby making it impossible to do anything by clicking on it. Closing the conversation and/or menu and reopening it fixes the issue... at least until it occurs again.
Another thing that suggests the game was made for consolers is that the menus are all set up to be run by a pair of buttons -- accept and cancel. On the PC, these default to E or Enter for accept (depending on the context) and Tab to cancel. You can also click the accept or cancel icons with the mouse, but this was pretty clearly tacked on after the fact as a concession to PC users who aren't likely to play with a game pad.
Once out of menus and into the game world, you find that mouselook is now a joke. The default sensitivity makes it almost impossible to play. Ramping it up to ~55% made it playable for me, but the game randomly changes the up/down sensitivity sometimes, making it half the right/left; or other times double. It's playable... but it takes a lot of getting used to. Plan to invest much practice in learning to aim spells and arrows. WSAD controls seem to work fine, and the game's not nearly as prone to ignoring movement button presses as previous entries have been. Skyrim uses the Fallout-style overencumbrance; where you walk slowly instead of being rendered totally immobile. You can also still jump now whilst overencumbered; though still no fast travel.
Onto characters: I am not impressed by the new chargen. They took away most of the grown-up hair styles for human men. You essentially get to be a filthy ponytailed hippy, or going bald. The one compromise hairstyle is a sort of Roman Legionary cut -- sort of a shaggier, messy bowl-cut. They completely did away with my beloved slicked-back style, as far as I can tell... the heathen bastards. On the up side, they greatly increased eye colors; rather than simply blue, green, or brown there are now a range of colors, several heterochromia combinations, and some blind-in-one-eye choices. I believe that someone on the dev team was a considerable fan of Nequam's work in Oblivion. Sadly, there is no close-up of the face during chargen, so getting the eye color(s) you want is less than amazingly reliable. If you have glasses and/or a magnifying glass handy, use them during eye selection. They also added facial tattoos, and scars.
As you can see... not my best chargen work ever.
The face editor itself is pretty clumsy and coarse, all told. There's not a huge range of settings -- much like in the Fallouts, all men of a particular race look pretty similar. I picked a Nord because I always play a Nord when going for a "me" analog in an Elder Scrolls game; being as I myself am of north-euro descent, so I can relate to the pale, hairy, cold loving Nords.
It took three tries to get blue in both eyes. I'm used to looking at one eye to determine color while I cycle through the list; and the second time I missed that I had inadvertently selected green rather than blue. For the successful third try, I got considerably closer to the screen than you're normally supposed to; and could still just barely make out the color.
Facial scars are a nice touch; though I have little use for the tattoos myself.
I didn't try creating a female character, but their options didn't look much more expansive.
The biggest change regarding faces from Oblivion is that much of the stylizing has been removed. Faces are less round; eyes smaller and less round; hair looks less like it's made of plastic. Characters appear... dirtier, now, as well. It's a more medieval experience all around. Whether this will appeal to you or not I can't say. I personally liked the stylized look in Oblivion well enough, but there is something to be said for it being less "cartoony".
As well, the "beast races" -- the Argonians and Khajiit -- are far more realistic looking now. Both are downright disconcerting to look at, at times. I didn't much like the Oblivion versions of these races; and I like the Skyrim ones even less. I eagerly await the glut of Japanese cosmetic overhauls to unfuck them.
As has been noted elsewhere, they did away with the "class" system this time around. I'm apparently one of like six people on Earth that didn't hate that in Oblivion. The new system simply levels you up when you gain enough skill points in any skill or combination of skills. On leveling up, you get a skill point, and can add ten points to either magicka, health, or stamina. You do not get increases automatically anymore. The skill points are used in a system somewhere between WoW's skill tree, and Fallout's perks. Each skill has an associated tree; and putting points into special skill abilities unlocks the next entry up the tree. The abilities also have skill level requirements. This is a mixed bag to me. On the one hand, it allows specialization that simple skill levels ala Oblivion don't; but on the other, it also falls into the pit trap of "character planning" -- of having to decide early in a character which parts of which trees you want to pursue. This is the sort of thing that spawns character planning spreadsheets and other min/maxing nonsense. It also means that if you don't decide what you want early, you're likely to waste points on skills that end up being useless to your play style.
Worse yet, because you level from any skill increases, you can easily screw yourself, as I did.
I got a lot of skill increases from crafting -- creating armor, weapons, and potions. Consequently, by level twenty I could make great items... but my combat skills were shit. I had to be extremely careful when in combat (which is just about every quest and area outside a town) or I'd get my ass handed to me. I put in some time leveling my archery and destruction; then put a couple skill points into my light armor skill, and can now hold my own for the most part... but if you don't focus on combat skills early game, it's a lot harder.
Combat is different this time around, too. You can now dual wield weapons. Why this is a big deal to everyone I will never know. I tried it, and all it seems to do is blow through stamina twice as fast while precluding your ability to block. I do like though that I can have a weapon in one hand, and a spell readied in the other. I find having a flamethrower spell in the offhand and a sword in the main makes for a good combination -- I can use the flamer to chip away at my enemy while dodging his attacks until he presents an opening for stabby-stabby time. Interestingly, even if your opponent is full health, there are certain events that will trigger an insta-kill event with a melee weapon. These are presented in a format similar to the kill-cam from FONV.
Archery has gone downhill, as well. It's now much harder across the board, as the arrows' path is no longer straight -- they shoot high in close (surprisingly so) and arc like a rainbow at distance. There also seems to be a hard limit -- a range past which an arrow simply will no register a hit on your target no matter how it's aimed. I haven't figure out yet if it's the virtual wind blowing it off target, or some kind of limit in the game itself. Skill increases seem to help a bit, but not much; my old Oblivion tactic of picking off targets from a hundred plus yards out is pretty well impossible in Skyrim -- at least thus far. Different bows and arrows don't seem to affect it any.
Magic can now be wielded with a different spell in each hand; providing some interesting combinations of double-damage dealing, or simultaneous offensive/defensive casting. Spells are learned from books now, rather than bought through a secondary psuedo-barter interface. With a skill perk, you can overpower your destruction spells by casting them with both hands at once. This is kind of cool, but really chews through mana.
The crafting system is my favorite part of the game. You can craft (and improve existing) armor and weapons; as well as enchant them with magic effects. You can also still brew potions -- of which there are several new types made to increase specific skills or damage outputs. Sadly, it suffers from the usual nonsense that prevents you purchasing more advanced metals until you're higher level -- rather than availability being driven by whether you have the skills to actually make use of the stuff. I had access to the ability to craft Elven armor five or seven levels before the components became available in the game world (this is another reason to concentrate on combat skills early; that way your crafting skills won't be useless waiting on components to appear).
Needless to say, assuming we ever get a CS, one of my first mods is going to be another "capitalism" overhaul that removes those stupid level requirements for merchant items.
Player houses are better this time around. Unlike Oblivion where you needed only the money (or sometimes a certain amount of fame) to buy them, in Skyrim you have to have completed a quest for the fiefdom before you're allowed to own property there. I only have the first house you gain access to (in Whiterun) but it's not bad, as far as official Bethsoft housing goes. Two bedroom, working kitchen (for cooking-crafting), alchemy lab.
Interestingly, in another act that shows they were paying attention to the modding community, the bookshelves and weapon rack actually work. When you store items in them like a container, the items actually appear in their places. It's pretty cool. I'd like to have seen space for a blacksmithing workshop and enchanter's table, though; just to save on running to other places in the world to craft. One of the other houses may have them; I'm not sure yet, and haven't gone looking around the web for walkthroughs or other guides.
When you become eligible to own land in Whiterun, the Grand High Poobah also grants you a servant; what they call a "Housecarl" I believe it was. This basically amounts to henchman/bodyguard. The one you get from Whiterun is named Lydia; a somewhat rough looking Nord woman. Lydia will follow you and act as a companion and mule.
On the whole, the companions here are a serious step up from Oblivion's Adoring Fan and Dark Brotherhood Murderers; but they're severely lacking compared to the companions I'm used to running.
Lyds' pathfinding is terrible; and her combat abilities are unimpressive at best. She functions as an attention-taker most of the time; keeping the enemy's attention away from me so I can riddle them with arrows uninterrupted. Beyond that, she's pretty useless. Lydia gets her ass kicked on an astoundingly regular basis, and is not essential. She has no magic whatsoever; and does not appear to be able to heal herself in any way during combat. I haven't tried giving her health potions. She gets lost regularly, and can't follow me across many sections of perfectly passable terrain -- let alone climbing out on the rocks like I'm used to my girls doing.
On the up side, they did finally perfect the whole range switching behavior to let an NPC switch from bows to melee weapons depending on the enemy's range. Lydia is not particularly handy with a bow, but I think the system will have potential when applied to less shitty companions. As well, Lydia does not report you to the guards for committing crimes; so you can bring her along on Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood missions, if you like (though I wouldn't recommend it -- her stealth is pretty bad).
As for enemies: Skyrim doesn't railroad nearly as bad as FNV did. No super enemies waiting around every corner to make sure you don't stray from your by-God-assigned path through the story. On the other hand, the game has a massive case of GMPC going on. Virtually every higher-than-normal-ranked enemy is a boss unto themselves. Most have several times your health, high armor ratings, and at least partial magic immunity. If you're an archer or mage, you will get your ass kicked if you get into a fight in the close quarters of a cave or building. Having your housecarl along helps greatly here, since she helpfully meat-shields and holds the boss' attention long enough for you to get some distance and make with the ranged killing. You also have to worry about numbers, since most caves and other bandit hideouts have ten to twenty enemies in them who will magically notice your exact location when you kill anyone. Terrain can help here if you can find someplace to get out of melee range... but it's still pretty dicey. Carry health potions. Lots of them.
However you plan to do combat, do yourself a favor and put your skill points into that tree. The damage boosts are all but essential, and each of the combat trees seems to have several special abilities that will come in very handy.
Lastly, I want to talk about the "shouts". These are a gimmick, plain and simple. Like all gimmicks, they are useful primarily when specially written into the quest. I do not like them; and half the time don't even remember they're there.
On the whole, I like the game. It's fairly stable, smooth, pretty, and affords plenty of room to explore in a mostly free-form manner. Character paths are fairly diverse; though the large number of possible skills leads to a bit of a learning curve -- don't expect your first character to turn out great unless you do a bunch of reading up online on what all the skills do beforehand. Skyrim doesn't suffer from the four-voice-syndrome of previous games, either.
If you liked Oblivion, or thought FNV would be fun in a medieval setting; you'll probably like Skyrim.
Though I must regrettably withhold my official "get it" recommendation until we see how the whole construction set issue turns out. If they shaft us on that, I don't think it'll nearly as good -- since losing the ability to fix some of the game's flaws and add new characters and items will cut heavily from it's replayability. The game is also in desperate need of replacement textures, and new hairstyles.
So... I will now confess that my interest in Tamriel and Vvardenfell being available (after a fashion) in TESV wasn't purely curiosity.
I do have the game, yes.
And before you ask: yes, I pretty much take Herculine at face value whenever she tells me I can run a game. On that note, Miss Neko: should I ever end up in Video Gamers Anonymous, you're going at the bottom of my list of potential sponsors. I can just hear it now...
"I'm so tempted; I saw this new game and it looks so cool..."
"I've played that one! You'll love it! Go for it!"
Oh, well -- it's not like I need any free time, anyhow.
Anyway.
According to my saves, I've logged thirty-three hours on Skyrim now, so I thought I'd be a pretentious prick and offer my thoughts for those who may still be on the fence.
First and foremost: the "official" system requirements are horrible, horrible lies. Seriously. Someone is going to Hell for writing those. As noted before, I'm actually below minimum-specs for FNV: single core Athlon 2.4ghz, 1gbDDR2, and a GF8800GTS. I'm here to tell you folks, Skyrim runs smoother for me than Oblivion does. Granted, my Oblivion install is loaded down with high-res armor, weapon, and body meshes; so I'm not sure I'd consider the requirements on Skyrim lower than those for Oblivion; but if you can run FNV, you can run Skyrim, no matter what the liars who wrote the ostensible requirements say.
As my Neko partner has so astutely opined, I also believe that this has to do with "dumbing down" (for lack of a better term) the specs so that the same game can run on the XXXBox 360, PS3, and PC without having to have its engine redone between them -- but I'll go one further, be a paranoid bastard, and suggest that the padded system reqs are also a conspiracy to trick us all into buying new PCs and/or hardware that we really don't need (but the manufacturers really need to sell).
From a technical standpoint, the engine seems to be a solid improvement over previous forays; but don't be fooled -- this is absolutely still Gamebryo, no matter what label they slap on it. Same file formats, same mesh and texture formats, same sound format; same horrific implementation of small-item-physics via the Havok engine.
It is, however, markedly more stable. I've yet to have a crash on loading a new cell, nor a hang on loading a game. Autosaves work without causing crashes, and quick saves don't appear to corrupt themselves at the drop of a hat. At least for me. Other people report having less luck with saving and loading; but I can only report what I physically see from the game as it runs on my archaic system -- I refuse to give hearsay from heavily-biased parties absolute credence.
Visually, the game is a mixed-bag. The character and item textures and meshes are simply horrible; the textures especially so. They're worse than many of the ones that shipped with Oblivion in 2006 -- far worse than what we're used to seeing from FNV; and they just don't compare to Oblivion mod textures from the likes of HGEC and Apachii. Most armor textures look like they were pulled from a PS2 game circa 2004. They might be better if run at large size; but since I run medium in Oblivion, both Fallouts, and now Skyrim, I do consider it an apples-to-apples comparison.
On the other hand, when you get away from characters and into environments, the game is simply gorgeous. The trees, the water, the mountains off in the distance; clouds drifting around obscuring the peak from view... it's one of the most magnificent worlds I've ever seen in a game -- and that's on medium textures, with shadows and effects cranked down considerably. If you have the system horsepower to ramp this bitch up to ultra-high, it may well be one of the most beautiful digital landscapes ever rendered into a game.
On the environment: the water, I was amazed to see, actually flows now. In Oblivion and the Fallouts, water had "wave textures" to make it look like it was moving; but in Skyrim? It actually does. It meanders in streams, and rushes over falls. Early in the game, I was trying to cross a fast moving river near some falls to pick alchemical components; ended up missing my jump from rock to rock, and fell in the water... and was promptly swept over the falls. Didn't even hurt me; but the fact that the physics have advanced that much is just glorious.
The wind and snow is also interesting. It snows, it rains; but you can also see little swirls in the snow on the ground where the wind is blowing. And I swear that wind is blowing; because something is screwing up my archery at range (but more on that later). Though like previous games, the rain and snow are not stopped by awnings and roofs -- if you're outdoors, it precipitates into your vision no matter what cover you're under.
Likewise, the trees, bushes, grasses, and all are well done; and give a sense of actually being in a forest, or on a frozen plain. I was standing on an ice floe near the shore of the north sea, gazing out on the icebergs at sunset. I have to say, while it may not be as "real" as being there... it's certainly head and shoulders above any other game I've ever played.
The terrain is still mostly vertical once you're off the established roads; but it seems easier to climb than in Oblivion, so you aren't railroaded into particular areas nearly so bad.
The game world does still have borders. "You cannot go this way; turn back" and such. I've only run into the one at the north sea; but I assume the other three directions will have one too.
Sadly, once you get past the pretties, the game becomes more of a mixed experience.
The new UI is simply terrible. My issue isn't even cosmetic, either -- though I find the new menu system clumsy at best, it is certainly usable. No, my issue is again technical. The UI ignores clicks, may or may not work with custom keybinds; and if you click the wrong part of a menu choice when bartering with an NPC you'll be kicked out of the barter window. As well, the menu "freezes" regularly -- refusing to have the selection highlight move to where the mouse is pointing; thereby making it impossible to do anything by clicking on it. Closing the conversation and/or menu and reopening it fixes the issue... at least until it occurs again.
Another thing that suggests the game was made for consolers is that the menus are all set up to be run by a pair of buttons -- accept and cancel. On the PC, these default to E or Enter for accept (depending on the context) and Tab to cancel. You can also click the accept or cancel icons with the mouse, but this was pretty clearly tacked on after the fact as a concession to PC users who aren't likely to play with a game pad.
Once out of menus and into the game world, you find that mouselook is now a joke. The default sensitivity makes it almost impossible to play. Ramping it up to ~55% made it playable for me, but the game randomly changes the up/down sensitivity sometimes, making it half the right/left; or other times double. It's playable... but it takes a lot of getting used to. Plan to invest much practice in learning to aim spells and arrows. WSAD controls seem to work fine, and the game's not nearly as prone to ignoring movement button presses as previous entries have been. Skyrim uses the Fallout-style overencumbrance; where you walk slowly instead of being rendered totally immobile. You can also still jump now whilst overencumbered; though still no fast travel.
Onto characters: I am not impressed by the new chargen. They took away most of the grown-up hair styles for human men. You essentially get to be a filthy ponytailed hippy, or going bald. The one compromise hairstyle is a sort of Roman Legionary cut -- sort of a shaggier, messy bowl-cut. They completely did away with my beloved slicked-back style, as far as I can tell... the heathen bastards. On the up side, they greatly increased eye colors; rather than simply blue, green, or brown there are now a range of colors, several heterochromia combinations, and some blind-in-one-eye choices. I believe that someone on the dev team was a considerable fan of Nequam's work in Oblivion. Sadly, there is no close-up of the face during chargen, so getting the eye color(s) you want is less than amazingly reliable. If you have glasses and/or a magnifying glass handy, use them during eye selection. They also added facial tattoos, and scars.
As you can see... not my best chargen work ever.
The face editor itself is pretty clumsy and coarse, all told. There's not a huge range of settings -- much like in the Fallouts, all men of a particular race look pretty similar. I picked a Nord because I always play a Nord when going for a "me" analog in an Elder Scrolls game; being as I myself am of north-euro descent, so I can relate to the pale, hairy, cold loving Nords.
It took three tries to get blue in both eyes. I'm used to looking at one eye to determine color while I cycle through the list; and the second time I missed that I had inadvertently selected green rather than blue. For the successful third try, I got considerably closer to the screen than you're normally supposed to; and could still just barely make out the color.
Facial scars are a nice touch; though I have little use for the tattoos myself.
I didn't try creating a female character, but their options didn't look much more expansive.
The biggest change regarding faces from Oblivion is that much of the stylizing has been removed. Faces are less round; eyes smaller and less round; hair looks less like it's made of plastic. Characters appear... dirtier, now, as well. It's a more medieval experience all around. Whether this will appeal to you or not I can't say. I personally liked the stylized look in Oblivion well enough, but there is something to be said for it being less "cartoony".
As well, the "beast races" -- the Argonians and Khajiit -- are far more realistic looking now. Both are downright disconcerting to look at, at times. I didn't much like the Oblivion versions of these races; and I like the Skyrim ones even less. I eagerly await the glut of Japanese cosmetic overhauls to unfuck them.
As has been noted elsewhere, they did away with the "class" system this time around. I'm apparently one of like six people on Earth that didn't hate that in Oblivion. The new system simply levels you up when you gain enough skill points in any skill or combination of skills. On leveling up, you get a skill point, and can add ten points to either magicka, health, or stamina. You do not get increases automatically anymore. The skill points are used in a system somewhere between WoW's skill tree, and Fallout's perks. Each skill has an associated tree; and putting points into special skill abilities unlocks the next entry up the tree. The abilities also have skill level requirements. This is a mixed bag to me. On the one hand, it allows specialization that simple skill levels ala Oblivion don't; but on the other, it also falls into the pit trap of "character planning" -- of having to decide early in a character which parts of which trees you want to pursue. This is the sort of thing that spawns character planning spreadsheets and other min/maxing nonsense. It also means that if you don't decide what you want early, you're likely to waste points on skills that end up being useless to your play style.
Worse yet, because you level from any skill increases, you can easily screw yourself, as I did.
I got a lot of skill increases from crafting -- creating armor, weapons, and potions. Consequently, by level twenty I could make great items... but my combat skills were shit. I had to be extremely careful when in combat (which is just about every quest and area outside a town) or I'd get my ass handed to me. I put in some time leveling my archery and destruction; then put a couple skill points into my light armor skill, and can now hold my own for the most part... but if you don't focus on combat skills early game, it's a lot harder.
Combat is different this time around, too. You can now dual wield weapons. Why this is a big deal to everyone I will never know. I tried it, and all it seems to do is blow through stamina twice as fast while precluding your ability to block. I do like though that I can have a weapon in one hand, and a spell readied in the other. I find having a flamethrower spell in the offhand and a sword in the main makes for a good combination -- I can use the flamer to chip away at my enemy while dodging his attacks until he presents an opening for stabby-stabby time. Interestingly, even if your opponent is full health, there are certain events that will trigger an insta-kill event with a melee weapon. These are presented in a format similar to the kill-cam from FONV.
Archery has gone downhill, as well. It's now much harder across the board, as the arrows' path is no longer straight -- they shoot high in close (surprisingly so) and arc like a rainbow at distance. There also seems to be a hard limit -- a range past which an arrow simply will no register a hit on your target no matter how it's aimed. I haven't figure out yet if it's the virtual wind blowing it off target, or some kind of limit in the game itself. Skill increases seem to help a bit, but not much; my old Oblivion tactic of picking off targets from a hundred plus yards out is pretty well impossible in Skyrim -- at least thus far. Different bows and arrows don't seem to affect it any.
Magic can now be wielded with a different spell in each hand; providing some interesting combinations of double-damage dealing, or simultaneous offensive/defensive casting. Spells are learned from books now, rather than bought through a secondary psuedo-barter interface. With a skill perk, you can overpower your destruction spells by casting them with both hands at once. This is kind of cool, but really chews through mana.
The crafting system is my favorite part of the game. You can craft (and improve existing) armor and weapons; as well as enchant them with magic effects. You can also still brew potions -- of which there are several new types made to increase specific skills or damage outputs. Sadly, it suffers from the usual nonsense that prevents you purchasing more advanced metals until you're higher level -- rather than availability being driven by whether you have the skills to actually make use of the stuff. I had access to the ability to craft Elven armor five or seven levels before the components became available in the game world (this is another reason to concentrate on combat skills early; that way your crafting skills won't be useless waiting on components to appear).
Needless to say, assuming we ever get a CS, one of my first mods is going to be another "capitalism" overhaul that removes those stupid level requirements for merchant items.
Player houses are better this time around. Unlike Oblivion where you needed only the money (or sometimes a certain amount of fame) to buy them, in Skyrim you have to have completed a quest for the fiefdom before you're allowed to own property there. I only have the first house you gain access to (in Whiterun) but it's not bad, as far as official Bethsoft housing goes. Two bedroom, working kitchen (for cooking-crafting), alchemy lab.
Interestingly, in another act that shows they were paying attention to the modding community, the bookshelves and weapon rack actually work. When you store items in them like a container, the items actually appear in their places. It's pretty cool. I'd like to have seen space for a blacksmithing workshop and enchanter's table, though; just to save on running to other places in the world to craft. One of the other houses may have them; I'm not sure yet, and haven't gone looking around the web for walkthroughs or other guides.
When you become eligible to own land in Whiterun, the Grand High Poobah also grants you a servant; what they call a "Housecarl" I believe it was. This basically amounts to henchman/bodyguard. The one you get from Whiterun is named Lydia; a somewhat rough looking Nord woman. Lydia will follow you and act as a companion and mule.
On the whole, the companions here are a serious step up from Oblivion's Adoring Fan and Dark Brotherhood Murderers; but they're severely lacking compared to the companions I'm used to running.
Lyds' pathfinding is terrible; and her combat abilities are unimpressive at best. She functions as an attention-taker most of the time; keeping the enemy's attention away from me so I can riddle them with arrows uninterrupted. Beyond that, she's pretty useless. Lydia gets her ass kicked on an astoundingly regular basis, and is not essential. She has no magic whatsoever; and does not appear to be able to heal herself in any way during combat. I haven't tried giving her health potions. She gets lost regularly, and can't follow me across many sections of perfectly passable terrain -- let alone climbing out on the rocks like I'm used to my girls doing.
On the up side, they did finally perfect the whole range switching behavior to let an NPC switch from bows to melee weapons depending on the enemy's range. Lydia is not particularly handy with a bow, but I think the system will have potential when applied to less shitty companions. As well, Lydia does not report you to the guards for committing crimes; so you can bring her along on Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood missions, if you like (though I wouldn't recommend it -- her stealth is pretty bad).
As for enemies: Skyrim doesn't railroad nearly as bad as FNV did. No super enemies waiting around every corner to make sure you don't stray from your by-God-assigned path through the story. On the other hand, the game has a massive case of GMPC going on. Virtually every higher-than-normal-ranked enemy is a boss unto themselves. Most have several times your health, high armor ratings, and at least partial magic immunity. If you're an archer or mage, you will get your ass kicked if you get into a fight in the close quarters of a cave or building. Having your housecarl along helps greatly here, since she helpfully meat-shields and holds the boss' attention long enough for you to get some distance and make with the ranged killing. You also have to worry about numbers, since most caves and other bandit hideouts have ten to twenty enemies in them who will magically notice your exact location when you kill anyone. Terrain can help here if you can find someplace to get out of melee range... but it's still pretty dicey. Carry health potions. Lots of them.
However you plan to do combat, do yourself a favor and put your skill points into that tree. The damage boosts are all but essential, and each of the combat trees seems to have several special abilities that will come in very handy.
Lastly, I want to talk about the "shouts". These are a gimmick, plain and simple. Like all gimmicks, they are useful primarily when specially written into the quest. I do not like them; and half the time don't even remember they're there.
On the whole, I like the game. It's fairly stable, smooth, pretty, and affords plenty of room to explore in a mostly free-form manner. Character paths are fairly diverse; though the large number of possible skills leads to a bit of a learning curve -- don't expect your first character to turn out great unless you do a bunch of reading up online on what all the skills do beforehand. Skyrim doesn't suffer from the four-voice-syndrome of previous games, either.
If you liked Oblivion, or thought FNV would be fun in a medieval setting; you'll probably like Skyrim.
Though I must regrettably withhold my official "get it" recommendation until we see how the whole construction set issue turns out. If they shaft us on that, I don't think it'll nearly as good -- since losing the ability to fix some of the game's flaws and add new characters and items will cut heavily from it's replayability. The game is also in desperate need of replacement textures, and new hairstyles.
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Fair Game?
It's one of those mornings. 0414 as I type this, and I can't sleep. This week has sucked... and not in the definition I'm a fan of.
So, as I sit here listening to Five Finger Death Punch's new album (which fucking rocks, by the way -- Under and Over It All is easily one of the best songs I've heard in years) I'm feeling a bit introspective; which granted I usually am when I'm in what my owner calls one of my "melancholy moods".
I was playing Oblivion earlier; on a new-ish game -- I don't get off on starting new games or anything by the way, it's just that a lot of Lovers plugins are less than amazingly stable, and tend to break saves... I keep a limited number per character because of Oblivion's relative stability, and the breakage doesn't generally occur until they're all afflicted.
As I've noted in the past, I'm a fan of Colourwheel's mods in general. Tonight in particular, I had progressed far enough into the game to organize a heist on the Ladies' Bank of Cyrodiil -- the vaults of which contain literally millions of septims worth of gold and paper notes. With CW's tendency to mis-read "Guards" as "Gods" and set up her NPCs accordingly, such a heist is certainly not to be undertaken lightly, but it can be done: get in, kill a guard; loot their keys (all locks in CW's work are key-required); steal; and get out without getting a bounty and/or assraped by the level 100 "guards".
As I was offloading the loot at Khafiz, my favorite fence, a thought occurred.
Where do you draw the line? Where does it become cheating?
Now, normally, I say if you don't use a code or over the top mod -- if you work completely within the game's normal limits, it ain't cheating. Exploiting the system? Sure; but not cheating.
As I was selling loot, Khafiz's inventory bugged, and he got 65535 gold -- not an unusual event in Oblivion if you work the inventory hard enough without closing the barter window. What got me thinking this time, was that it bugged worse than usual; and went into an infinite loop: if I sold something worth enough to eat his entire remaining barter amount, it would sell and instantly reset to 65535. As my stash of septims passed 1.2 million, I started thinking... is this cheating?
I mean, I wasn't using an additem code; wasn't using a cheat mod with add-on-command items; wasn't using a mod to artificially increase barter gold. Sure, it's a flawed engine... but I was just working within it. Not my fault the devs were too lazy to patch the barter system up so it worked right... right?
So I ask you, semi-loyal readers: where do you draw the line? When does it stop being playing the game; and start being cheating?
Codes? Mods? Exploiting holes in the system?
Will you purposefully restrain yourself from using techniques and such that have the potential to make a game "too easy"? Or is anything "official" in the game fair?
At the end of the day... is the line anything more than academic? There's a fine line between "challenging" and "an ordeal". One game is fun, the other isn't.
I suppose it heavily depends on what you want from the game. As I've said before, I tend to ignore the main quest in Oblivion (and FO3/NV) and just do my own thing; exploring, buying in-game stuff.
Oblivion is easier than most to exploit, granted. I learned years ago how to become a God in Oblivion. Want to know? You'll need the ability to cast a chameleon spell of any type; access to an enchanting altar; five trapped grand souls; five equippable items -- or four of each and the Ring of Khajiiti from Meridia's shrine quest. Enchant the items with chameleon -- you'll get 20% for each grand soul; and 35% for Meridia's Ring. Either way, once you get the items for 100% chameleon you have full-time, non-dispel-able invisibility; but can still steal, attack, and interact with the environment.
It's amusing for about an hour. After that, you realize you may as well be playing in God mode with the NPCs' combat AI off for all the challenge the game presents when no one can see you.
Can't say as I do it much, despite the fact that it's fully within the game's rules -- completely attainable even without a single mod or DLC running. Handy to have on hand for a couple parts of the main quest where things are time-sensitive, though -- like stopping the siege engine from reaching Bruma. Beyond that... I dunno; it's just too easy.
Granted, the couple million septims I made off the bugged inventory means I'll not have to grind bandits for loot to sell in this game anymore... but I'm beginning to wonder. Leaves a bit of an empty feeling.
I'm beginning to wonder about FONV, as well. Since installing those communal containers, I've got enough loot to clean out every merchant of caps, every time their inventory resets. Have more than 150k caps at present, and many more if I can find someone to pawn off those gold bars from Dead Money on. With the short-sightedness of Bethsoft's devs regarding game economies, that one's pretty much set-for-life, too -- there's nothing in FNV to eat that many caps. Not even if I tried.
I wonder some days if Mystery-chan's comments to me in FNV aren't spot-on. My methods are more round-a-bout, but maybe it would be better to just use an additem and not even have the pretense.
If I go the flip side, and don't abuse the systems... where do I draw the line? Where does it stop being "smart playing" and start being exploitation...? Do I pretend I'm a GMPC; pointedly ignore that I know where the good items are in the game already, just drone-along picking up whatever the devs decided I should be allotted for my level and the point in the story?
By the same token, aren't I cheating regardless? I mean, I made my name (small as it is) modding with companions. Extra combatants who help in combat; carry more loot than you could alone; spawn with "free weapons"...
So, as I sit here listening to Five Finger Death Punch's new album (which fucking rocks, by the way -- Under and Over It All is easily one of the best songs I've heard in years) I'm feeling a bit introspective; which granted I usually am when I'm in what my owner calls one of my "melancholy moods".
I was playing Oblivion earlier; on a new-ish game -- I don't get off on starting new games or anything by the way, it's just that a lot of Lovers plugins are less than amazingly stable, and tend to break saves... I keep a limited number per character because of Oblivion's relative stability, and the breakage doesn't generally occur until they're all afflicted.
As I've noted in the past, I'm a fan of Colourwheel's mods in general. Tonight in particular, I had progressed far enough into the game to organize a heist on the Ladies' Bank of Cyrodiil -- the vaults of which contain literally millions of septims worth of gold and paper notes. With CW's tendency to mis-read "Guards" as "Gods" and set up her NPCs accordingly, such a heist is certainly not to be undertaken lightly, but it can be done: get in, kill a guard; loot their keys (all locks in CW's work are key-required); steal; and get out without getting a bounty and/or assraped by the level 100 "guards".
As I was offloading the loot at Khafiz, my favorite fence, a thought occurred.
Where do you draw the line? Where does it become cheating?
Now, normally, I say if you don't use a code or over the top mod -- if you work completely within the game's normal limits, it ain't cheating. Exploiting the system? Sure; but not cheating.
As I was selling loot, Khafiz's inventory bugged, and he got 65535 gold -- not an unusual event in Oblivion if you work the inventory hard enough without closing the barter window. What got me thinking this time, was that it bugged worse than usual; and went into an infinite loop: if I sold something worth enough to eat his entire remaining barter amount, it would sell and instantly reset to 65535. As my stash of septims passed 1.2 million, I started thinking... is this cheating?
I mean, I wasn't using an additem code; wasn't using a cheat mod with add-on-command items; wasn't using a mod to artificially increase barter gold. Sure, it's a flawed engine... but I was just working within it. Not my fault the devs were too lazy to patch the barter system up so it worked right... right?
So I ask you, semi-loyal readers: where do you draw the line? When does it stop being playing the game; and start being cheating?
Codes? Mods? Exploiting holes in the system?
Will you purposefully restrain yourself from using techniques and such that have the potential to make a game "too easy"? Or is anything "official" in the game fair?
At the end of the day... is the line anything more than academic? There's a fine line between "challenging" and "an ordeal". One game is fun, the other isn't.
I suppose it heavily depends on what you want from the game. As I've said before, I tend to ignore the main quest in Oblivion (and FO3/NV) and just do my own thing; exploring, buying in-game stuff.
Oblivion is easier than most to exploit, granted. I learned years ago how to become a God in Oblivion. Want to know? You'll need the ability to cast a chameleon spell of any type; access to an enchanting altar; five trapped grand souls; five equippable items -- or four of each and the Ring of Khajiiti from Meridia's shrine quest. Enchant the items with chameleon -- you'll get 20% for each grand soul; and 35% for Meridia's Ring. Either way, once you get the items for 100% chameleon you have full-time, non-dispel-able invisibility; but can still steal, attack, and interact with the environment.
It's amusing for about an hour. After that, you realize you may as well be playing in God mode with the NPCs' combat AI off for all the challenge the game presents when no one can see you.
Can't say as I do it much, despite the fact that it's fully within the game's rules -- completely attainable even without a single mod or DLC running. Handy to have on hand for a couple parts of the main quest where things are time-sensitive, though -- like stopping the siege engine from reaching Bruma. Beyond that... I dunno; it's just too easy.
Granted, the couple million septims I made off the bugged inventory means I'll not have to grind bandits for loot to sell in this game anymore... but I'm beginning to wonder. Leaves a bit of an empty feeling.
I'm beginning to wonder about FONV, as well. Since installing those communal containers, I've got enough loot to clean out every merchant of caps, every time their inventory resets. Have more than 150k caps at present, and many more if I can find someone to pawn off those gold bars from Dead Money on. With the short-sightedness of Bethsoft's devs regarding game economies, that one's pretty much set-for-life, too -- there's nothing in FNV to eat that many caps. Not even if I tried.
I wonder some days if Mystery-chan's comments to me in FNV aren't spot-on. My methods are more round-a-bout, but maybe it would be better to just use an additem and not even have the pretense.
If I go the flip side, and don't abuse the systems... where do I draw the line? Where does it stop being "smart playing" and start being exploitation...? Do I pretend I'm a GMPC; pointedly ignore that I know where the good items are in the game already, just drone-along picking up whatever the devs decided I should be allotted for my level and the point in the story?
By the same token, aren't I cheating regardless? I mean, I made my name (small as it is) modding with companions. Extra combatants who help in combat; carry more loot than you could alone; spawn with "free weapons"...
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Say What Now?!
...New Tribes game?
Fuck! Now I've got to buy a new computer...
Ah, Stormhammer; how I have missed thee.
Kids today with their wannabe SOCOM games. No one appreciates a proper FPS experience anymore.
Hard to be sure from the promo of course, but it looks good. I see lots of "real" Tribes (1 and 2) and less of that "UT with jetpacks" bullshit from Vengeance.
They kept skiing; kept non-regenerating health, no "iron sights"; still have the good old inventory station/class driven system...
Whoever was playing in that demo video was a Halo or UT player though, I guarandamntee ya. A real Triber would've been discing the shit out of people instead of putzing with that pistol. It was pretty cool when he MA'd that would-be capper with the Shrike, though...
I'd like to have seen more about the deployables. As a turret monkey myself, I care about such things. Not that it'll matter much -- I'm sure the Renegades crew is still out there somewhere, and will give us a proper mod for the thing.
Not sure I like the glow-y corridor leading into the base. It was supposed to be difficult for heavies to assault a Broadside-style base. That's what made it such an ego boost when you could pull it off.
Of course, it's also very cool that you can still run people down with the grav bike. That was always a kick; I remember in T2 there were maps where you could get a bike up to 300+kph. You could mow down heavies at that speed. Couldn't steer for shit, though... lining up your run-down was much like aiming a V2 rocket.
Gah, damn it. I miss my old Annihilation buddies, now. I know I've mentioned it before, but they used to make me stay in the base -- since I tended to beat on the 0300 server denizens so hard we could never keep the other team stocked with enough players for a game.
I really, really hope this one isn't dumbed down like the last one. One of the great things about Tribes was that cliff-like learning curve. Made it so much fun. It also made it easy to pick out UT and Quake players -- they were the dumbasses standing around trying to fight on the ground instead of jetpacking. Combat in three axises, she is a bitch.
Oh... and apparently we'll also soon-ish be seeing a new Planetside, and ARMA III...
Considering the first Planetside flopped inside a year, and ARMA II is still melting down even new systems, I'm not particularly excited about them, though. Shame; Planetside had potential. Persistent world capturing of territory over whole continents; with sort of a Tribes feel... it'd be nice if II works out. Might actually convince me to subscribe.
Fuck! Now I've got to buy a new computer...
Ah, Stormhammer; how I have missed thee.
Kids today with their wannabe SOCOM games. No one appreciates a proper FPS experience anymore.
Hard to be sure from the promo of course, but it looks good. I see lots of "real" Tribes (1 and 2) and less of that "UT with jetpacks" bullshit from Vengeance.
They kept skiing; kept non-regenerating health, no "iron sights"; still have the good old inventory station/class driven system...
Whoever was playing in that demo video was a Halo or UT player though, I guarandamntee ya. A real Triber would've been discing the shit out of people instead of putzing with that pistol. It was pretty cool when he MA'd that would-be capper with the Shrike, though...
I'd like to have seen more about the deployables. As a turret monkey myself, I care about such things. Not that it'll matter much -- I'm sure the Renegades crew is still out there somewhere, and will give us a proper mod for the thing.
Not sure I like the glow-y corridor leading into the base. It was supposed to be difficult for heavies to assault a Broadside-style base. That's what made it such an ego boost when you could pull it off.
Of course, it's also very cool that you can still run people down with the grav bike. That was always a kick; I remember in T2 there were maps where you could get a bike up to 300+kph. You could mow down heavies at that speed. Couldn't steer for shit, though... lining up your run-down was much like aiming a V2 rocket.
Gah, damn it. I miss my old Annihilation buddies, now. I know I've mentioned it before, but they used to make me stay in the base -- since I tended to beat on the 0300 server denizens so hard we could never keep the other team stocked with enough players for a game.
I really, really hope this one isn't dumbed down like the last one. One of the great things about Tribes was that cliff-like learning curve. Made it so much fun. It also made it easy to pick out UT and Quake players -- they were the dumbasses standing around trying to fight on the ground instead of jetpacking. Combat in three axises, she is a bitch.
Oh... and apparently we'll also soon-ish be seeing a new Planetside, and ARMA III...
Considering the first Planetside flopped inside a year, and ARMA II is still melting down even new systems, I'm not particularly excited about them, though. Shame; Planetside had potential. Persistent world capturing of territory over whole continents; with sort of a Tribes feel... it'd be nice if II works out. Might actually convince me to subscribe.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
So They Get a Motel Room...
Bored this evening, awaiting the new seasons of Futurama and Ugly Americans to start; happened to browse across some chan boards.
You see a lot of video game posts in such places. Especially hypotheticals. "The protagonist from the last video game you played is now the MC of the last anime you watched, what changes?" et cetera.
Tonight's pointless post with four hundred replies? "The protagonists from the last two games you played are now having sex with each other."
...This is too stupid for me not to keep reading.
And, oh! The answers given...
"Pokemon Trainer Red and Mega Man. Eh, I'm sure that's a fanfic somewhere."
"If I use the term protagonist loose enough for it to work with the last two games I played, that would mean Raynor (StarCraft 2) is having romantic affairs with Bismarck (Civ4), and that's simply historically inaccurate."
"Oh shi-
The Jedi Exile is getting gangbanged by everyone who isn't Galactus in MvC3.
:<"
"that's great, because that means the loli girl from recettear is getting plowed by heavy weapons guy, THANKS GUYS I LOVE HAVING NIGHTMARES"
"So, Geralt from The Witcher is having sex with Hawke from Dragon Age 2 right now... A male warrior Hawke.
I'm not as Ok with this as I thought I would be..."
Hold on, I'm giggling so hard I can't breathe at that last image...
"Female High Elf mage from Morrowind
and
Female Malkavian from VtM: Bloodlines"
Y'know, I always thought the female Malk in Bloodlines would be a tiger in the sack. Batshit insane tends to do that.
"John Shepard and John Shepard.
Oh my."
"Let's see, I'd say I'm the protagonist of EVE, so me, and... Master Chief... fuck..."
"Master Chief and Samus. Well, that went better than expected."
Huh, I think VGCats did that comic already...
"Blonde female Courier from New Vegas and female Commander Shepard from the second Mass Effect.
My courier is an unarmed specialist. I foresee fisting, and now I have a boner."
Well, I could have lived without that visual, thanks.
"Femshepard and Ladyhawke.
Not even shitting you."
You know, I remember Ladyhawke. It wasn't a bad movie, I don't care what the critics say... what's that? As in female Hawke of DA2? Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense, then.
"F.E.A.R 1, 2 and 3 put together.
So New Point Man and Paxton Fettel are raping Samuel Beckett while themselves getting fisted by Old Point Man.
Pretty much sums up my opinion of the game's quality."
What would my answer be?
Well, I was playing Sins of a Solar Empire last; which doesn't have a protagonist... so I suppose I'd have to kick back to the two games before that, which would be: my redhead female Horkew (wolf girl) character in Oblivion, and a male Nosferatu in Bloodlines (never have actually finished a playthrough as a sewer rat, so was trying again).
Now... I have watched some screwed up porn in my day -- and enacted some other screwed up stuff via video games and mods thereof... but I can say with pretty good certainty, that is one video I would not be buying a copy of. I... really don't want to see a Nosferatu naked, thanks. Like, at all. Ever. Even a female one.
So, what say you, moderately loyal readers? Care to play? Can you top my soul-scarring answer?
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go start a new Bloodlines game with a female Toreador character, answer the question again; and figure out a way to film that shit. I'll make a mint...
You see a lot of video game posts in such places. Especially hypotheticals. "The protagonist from the last video game you played is now the MC of the last anime you watched, what changes?" et cetera.
Tonight's pointless post with four hundred replies? "The protagonists from the last two games you played are now having sex with each other."
...This is too stupid for me not to keep reading.
And, oh! The answers given...
"Pokemon Trainer Red and Mega Man. Eh, I'm sure that's a fanfic somewhere."
"If I use the term protagonist loose enough for it to work with the last two games I played, that would mean Raynor (StarCraft 2) is having romantic affairs with Bismarck (Civ4), and that's simply historically inaccurate."
"Oh shi-
The Jedi Exile is getting gangbanged by everyone who isn't Galactus in MvC3.
:<"
"that's great, because that means the loli girl from recettear is getting plowed by heavy weapons guy, THANKS GUYS I LOVE HAVING NIGHTMARES"
"So, Geralt from The Witcher is having sex with Hawke from Dragon Age 2 right now... A male warrior Hawke.
I'm not as Ok with this as I thought I would be..."
Hold on, I'm giggling so hard I can't breathe at that last image...
"Female High Elf mage from Morrowind
and
Female Malkavian from VtM: Bloodlines"
Y'know, I always thought the female Malk in Bloodlines would be a tiger in the sack. Batshit insane tends to do that.
"John Shepard and John Shepard.
Oh my."
"Let's see, I'd say I'm the protagonist of EVE, so me, and... Master Chief... fuck..."
"Master Chief and Samus. Well, that went better than expected."
Huh, I think VGCats did that comic already...
"Blonde female Courier from New Vegas and female Commander Shepard from the second Mass Effect.
My courier is an unarmed specialist. I foresee fisting, and now I have a boner."
Well, I could have lived without that visual, thanks.
"Femshepard and Ladyhawke.
Not even shitting you."
You know, I remember Ladyhawke. It wasn't a bad movie, I don't care what the critics say... what's that? As in female Hawke of DA2? Oh. Yeah, that makes more sense, then.
"F.E.A.R 1, 2 and 3 put together.
So New Point Man and Paxton Fettel are raping Samuel Beckett while themselves getting fisted by Old Point Man.
Pretty much sums up my opinion of the game's quality."
What would my answer be?
Well, I was playing Sins of a Solar Empire last; which doesn't have a protagonist... so I suppose I'd have to kick back to the two games before that, which would be: my redhead female Horkew (wolf girl) character in Oblivion, and a male Nosferatu in Bloodlines (never have actually finished a playthrough as a sewer rat, so was trying again).
Now... I have watched some screwed up porn in my day -- and enacted some other screwed up stuff via video games and mods thereof... but I can say with pretty good certainty, that is one video I would not be buying a copy of. I... really don't want to see a Nosferatu naked, thanks. Like, at all. Ever. Even a female one.
So, what say you, moderately loyal readers? Care to play? Can you top my soul-scarring answer?
If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go start a new Bloodlines game with a female Toreador character, answer the question again; and figure out a way to film that shit. I'll make a mint...
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
On Modern and Future Games
In the comments section of the last post, Kirtai posted a link to a Cracked article on trends in gaming.
It being Cracked, I was expecting something rather facetious; absurd, perhaps. This was spot-on, though, and echoes several things I've noticed myself.
I'm not thrilled at where gaming is going. Brushing aside for this discussion things like DRM and sales models where you never get an actual, physical product; there's still the matter that most new games suck.
Honestly? I haven't bought a game in months. The last game I bought was either STALKER: Call of Pripyat ($15 on the Target bargain rack) or VtM: Bloodlines ($19.99 on Steam because no one in the free world had it for sale on disc anymore). I don't really have plans to buy any in the near future, either.
The game situation now is so bleak that I'm actually a solid year beyond where I'd normally upgrade my computer to keep up. Why bother?
Let's run down some recent titles, shall we?
Dawn of War II: Have the first game, and its three expansions. I liked one of them -- Dark Crusade. Soulstorm did away with everything that made DC great, and DoWII looked to be more of the same.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Again, own the first one and expansions. Again, liked one out of the pack. Hordes of the Underdark rocked. The rest were ordeals to be survived, not stories to be enjoyed. 2 was said to be more of the same by virtually all; except with considerably worse reliability.
Resident Evil 5: Didn't like the first four. Aren't they out of zombies to be attacked by, yet? Shit, at least in the movies I get to look at Milla Jovovich hurt people. The games don't even do us that courtesy; and instead insist on sticking us with a male protagonist whose ass I really don't want to stare at for forty-nine hours of key-seeking boredom.
HALO 47: Played the first one. Was bored out of my goddamned mind. Generic shooter #11,790. Have largely ignored the series since.
Battlefield Whatever: Lost interest in this series during Battlefield 2 in what? 2001? 2002? EA/DICE are the only folks I'm aware of that can give Bethsoft a run for their money for the title of "most unstable game launch ever". Seriously. You Gamebryo players don't know. DICE's patches had about a one in three chance of corrupting your game install with every new version. Every patch. I think I reinstalled BF2 six times trying to get 1.3 to work. Then DICE announced that "realism would never get in the way of 'fun' in the game" which told me it would always be the bunny-hopping bullshit they had been thus far putting out. When BF2142 turned out to be a massive mess of spyware, I just stopped watching the series at all.
Call of Duty et al: First one was a great game. The others, not so much. They pretend real hard to be realistic, but in the end aren't anywhere close. The Modern Warfare series has convinced an entire generation of neckbearded douchebags that they're worthy of joining "special forces", as well. I'd pay money to watch that assault on a Taliban stronghold.
The Witcher 2: Not sure on this one. The first one was good, but mainly because it was different. Here was a fantasy world that was dark and ugly; full of poverty, racism, and plenty of people motivated by sex. The combat system was also fairly new; combining not just poisons and oils with sword combat, but also adding different styles that were suited to specific situations. The second seems to want to follow that model... and derivative works rarely turn out well. Plus, the ending to the first one (at least the ending I got) seemed kind of... tacked on at the last minute, rather than a real conclusion.
Dragon Age 2: I wanted to like the first one, I really did. I started like eight games, but never finished it. Between reliability problems, clumsy storytelling, clumsier controls, a retarded AI, romance that didn't really serve any purpose, and the just flat out poor story, I was never motivated to slog through it all. Why anyone would want more of the same is beyond me.
Oblivion/Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas: You'd think that I, being a prolific modder for all three games would start singing their praises here. Gods' own truth? All three are mediocre games, at best. Lame main quests, hit-or-miss side quests, tons of bugs and crashes despite multiple patches each. I mean, New Vegas' GECK has been out for almost eight months now, and they still can't be bothered to enable error reporting in the script editor. They also still haven't fixed the semi-auto refire bug in the engine; despite the fact that it was present from day one in FO3. Really, the friendliness of these games to modding is the only reason they're worth the sticker price.
Crysis: I never played this one. The specs were ridiculous when it was new, and aren't to be scoffed at today. From the synopsis I read when it first hit, I wasn't inclined to upgrade to play it. Time travel suit? Journeyman Project, anyone? This seemed like a remake; without the learning a bit about a history, and with a lot of first-person-shooter tacked on to seem "intense". No doubt the upcoming sequel will be the same thing.
Somebody tell me: why in the hell should I lay out six or seven hundred bucks on computer upgrades or a new system? Gaming seems to be formulaic, these days. You either grind online (and pay a monthly fee for the rest of your natural life) or get railroaded through some hack writer's ham-handed attempt at an action story.
I don't think I'm getting jaded. I still like my old games... it's just that these new ones suck. Much like new movies, they're virtually all derivative works; slapped together as fast as possible for budget reasons.
Now, I will confess: Skyrim has me... mildly hopeful. It'll suck at release, we all know this. But hopefully, Bethsoft has paid attention since 2006, and knows that mod-ability is the key to their games selling worth a damn. As long as it has a robust toolset similar to the one we know (and hopefully uses a similar scripting language...) it should have serious potential. Will it be worth buying a new PC for? Probably not... but by November, this system will be four years old, and on its last leg if not outright dead. They just don't build 'em to last, anymore. Not that Gateway ever built them to last, but that's a separate rant on its own.
What say you, readers? Am I off-base, and just being a codger? Or have we all really lived through the glory days of gaming, and now only get to look forward to getting reamed by DRM over and over in the pursuit of whatever the flavor of the week is, once it's been dumbed down to console-gamer level?
And just to be even more depressing: realize that we will likely never again see a proper simulator -- be it Battletech/Mechwarrior or Spacefighter. Even flight sims are getting pretty thin. No, we're moving square into a gaming future made up of Wii-bowling, drunken fratboys teabagging each other in Halo, and WoW's fifteenth expansion that ups the level cap by ten yet again, and adds a new dungeon raid that requires six hundred and twelve players to work in perfect unison for seven hours to complete...
Almost enough to make you want to go buy some printed-on-paper books to read, innit?
It being Cracked, I was expecting something rather facetious; absurd, perhaps. This was spot-on, though, and echoes several things I've noticed myself.
I'm not thrilled at where gaming is going. Brushing aside for this discussion things like DRM and sales models where you never get an actual, physical product; there's still the matter that most new games suck.
Honestly? I haven't bought a game in months. The last game I bought was either STALKER: Call of Pripyat ($15 on the Target bargain rack) or VtM: Bloodlines ($19.99 on Steam because no one in the free world had it for sale on disc anymore). I don't really have plans to buy any in the near future, either.
The game situation now is so bleak that I'm actually a solid year beyond where I'd normally upgrade my computer to keep up. Why bother?
Let's run down some recent titles, shall we?
Dawn of War II: Have the first game, and its three expansions. I liked one of them -- Dark Crusade. Soulstorm did away with everything that made DC great, and DoWII looked to be more of the same.
Neverwinter Nights 2: Again, own the first one and expansions. Again, liked one out of the pack. Hordes of the Underdark rocked. The rest were ordeals to be survived, not stories to be enjoyed. 2 was said to be more of the same by virtually all; except with considerably worse reliability.
Resident Evil 5: Didn't like the first four. Aren't they out of zombies to be attacked by, yet? Shit, at least in the movies I get to look at Milla Jovovich hurt people. The games don't even do us that courtesy; and instead insist on sticking us with a male protagonist whose ass I really don't want to stare at for forty-nine hours of key-seeking boredom.
HALO 47: Played the first one. Was bored out of my goddamned mind. Generic shooter #11,790. Have largely ignored the series since.
Battlefield Whatever: Lost interest in this series during Battlefield 2 in what? 2001? 2002? EA/DICE are the only folks I'm aware of that can give Bethsoft a run for their money for the title of "most unstable game launch ever". Seriously. You Gamebryo players don't know. DICE's patches had about a one in three chance of corrupting your game install with every new version. Every patch. I think I reinstalled BF2 six times trying to get 1.3 to work. Then DICE announced that "realism would never get in the way of 'fun' in the game" which told me it would always be the bunny-hopping bullshit they had been thus far putting out. When BF2142 turned out to be a massive mess of spyware, I just stopped watching the series at all.
Call of Duty et al: First one was a great game. The others, not so much. They pretend real hard to be realistic, but in the end aren't anywhere close. The Modern Warfare series has convinced an entire generation of neckbearded douchebags that they're worthy of joining "special forces", as well. I'd pay money to watch that assault on a Taliban stronghold.
The Witcher 2: Not sure on this one. The first one was good, but mainly because it was different. Here was a fantasy world that was dark and ugly; full of poverty, racism, and plenty of people motivated by sex. The combat system was also fairly new; combining not just poisons and oils with sword combat, but also adding different styles that were suited to specific situations. The second seems to want to follow that model... and derivative works rarely turn out well. Plus, the ending to the first one (at least the ending I got) seemed kind of... tacked on at the last minute, rather than a real conclusion.
Dragon Age 2: I wanted to like the first one, I really did. I started like eight games, but never finished it. Between reliability problems, clumsy storytelling, clumsier controls, a retarded AI, romance that didn't really serve any purpose, and the just flat out poor story, I was never motivated to slog through it all. Why anyone would want more of the same is beyond me.
Oblivion/Fallout 3/Fallout New Vegas: You'd think that I, being a prolific modder for all three games would start singing their praises here. Gods' own truth? All three are mediocre games, at best. Lame main quests, hit-or-miss side quests, tons of bugs and crashes despite multiple patches each. I mean, New Vegas' GECK has been out for almost eight months now, and they still can't be bothered to enable error reporting in the script editor. They also still haven't fixed the semi-auto refire bug in the engine; despite the fact that it was present from day one in FO3. Really, the friendliness of these games to modding is the only reason they're worth the sticker price.
Crysis: I never played this one. The specs were ridiculous when it was new, and aren't to be scoffed at today. From the synopsis I read when it first hit, I wasn't inclined to upgrade to play it. Time travel suit? Journeyman Project, anyone? This seemed like a remake; without the learning a bit about a history, and with a lot of first-person-shooter tacked on to seem "intense". No doubt the upcoming sequel will be the same thing.
Somebody tell me: why in the hell should I lay out six or seven hundred bucks on computer upgrades or a new system? Gaming seems to be formulaic, these days. You either grind online (and pay a monthly fee for the rest of your natural life) or get railroaded through some hack writer's ham-handed attempt at an action story.
I don't think I'm getting jaded. I still like my old games... it's just that these new ones suck. Much like new movies, they're virtually all derivative works; slapped together as fast as possible for budget reasons.
Now, I will confess: Skyrim has me... mildly hopeful. It'll suck at release, we all know this. But hopefully, Bethsoft has paid attention since 2006, and knows that mod-ability is the key to their games selling worth a damn. As long as it has a robust toolset similar to the one we know (and hopefully uses a similar scripting language...) it should have serious potential. Will it be worth buying a new PC for? Probably not... but by November, this system will be four years old, and on its last leg if not outright dead. They just don't build 'em to last, anymore. Not that Gateway ever built them to last, but that's a separate rant on its own.
What say you, readers? Am I off-base, and just being a codger? Or have we all really lived through the glory days of gaming, and now only get to look forward to getting reamed by DRM over and over in the pursuit of whatever the flavor of the week is, once it's been dumbed down to console-gamer level?
And just to be even more depressing: realize that we will likely never again see a proper simulator -- be it Battletech/Mechwarrior or Spacefighter. Even flight sims are getting pretty thin. No, we're moving square into a gaming future made up of Wii-bowling, drunken fratboys teabagging each other in Halo, and WoW's fifteenth expansion that ups the level cap by ten yet again, and adds a new dungeon raid that requires six hundred and twelve players to work in perfect unison for seven hours to complete...
Almost enough to make you want to go buy some printed-on-paper books to read, innit?
Monday, June 13, 2011
Tachyon: the Fringe
Most folks probably don't remember the game. It was notable mostly for having Bruce Campbell voicing the main character.
No, I didn't just finish it -- I'm not that far behind the curve. Bought the game new (wow. eleven years ago according to the copyright date on the disc case), and went Galspan on the first playthrough. Once that was finished, I attempted to play through the Bora side; but the game developed some weird issue that caused it to crash whenever I entered the Ripstar region... which made the campaign uncompletable.
Plagued by some rather severe boredom this last week, I reinstalled it to try giving the heretofore unseen campaign a go. It worked for once, and I finished it up last night.
I believe my impression of the Bora campaign can be summed up in two words:
That's it?!
Now, when you finish the Galspan side it's all neatly tied up. You've made yourself so valuable to the corporation that they turn the whole of their legal department to your aid, and soundly overturn the main character's exile from Sol; allowing him to go home when he wants. Which of course he doesn't for more than a visit in deference to the obscene amount of money they're throwing at him to stay.
Bora ending? "I could have stayed on, but I needed a vacation with a cute blonde... *credits roll*".
Gods, it's worse than Fallout 3...
We won't even talk about what a clusterfuck the final Bora mission is. In the end, it was just me against the Hephaestus platform -- my wingman and every friendly fighter in the area had gotten themselves killed off. I had taken out the enemy fighters; and destroyed the platform's weapons powerplant... so it basically consisted of me sitting next to the platform for fifteen minutes, trying to destroy it with a heavy mining laser. Took forever.
On the whole, my impression from 2000 remains unchanged: an otherwise unremarkable space sim made enjoyable mostly because of the personality and acting talents of the good Mr. Campbell.
Speaking of, we haven't had a good space sim lately, have we? What was the last? The last one I played was Freelancer, I think. I miss those. Where is the modern Descent: Freespace? The Wing Commander?
They're not really making much these days other than MODERN COMBAT SO REAL YOU'LL GET PTSD!, survival horror, and fantasy MMOs.
No, I didn't just finish it -- I'm not that far behind the curve. Bought the game new (wow. eleven years ago according to the copyright date on the disc case), and went Galspan on the first playthrough. Once that was finished, I attempted to play through the Bora side; but the game developed some weird issue that caused it to crash whenever I entered the Ripstar region... which made the campaign uncompletable.
Plagued by some rather severe boredom this last week, I reinstalled it to try giving the heretofore unseen campaign a go. It worked for once, and I finished it up last night.
I believe my impression of the Bora campaign can be summed up in two words:
That's it?!
Now, when you finish the Galspan side it's all neatly tied up. You've made yourself so valuable to the corporation that they turn the whole of their legal department to your aid, and soundly overturn the main character's exile from Sol; allowing him to go home when he wants. Which of course he doesn't for more than a visit in deference to the obscene amount of money they're throwing at him to stay.
Bora ending? "I could have stayed on, but I needed a vacation with a cute blonde... *credits roll*".
Gods, it's worse than Fallout 3...
We won't even talk about what a clusterfuck the final Bora mission is. In the end, it was just me against the Hephaestus platform -- my wingman and every friendly fighter in the area had gotten themselves killed off. I had taken out the enemy fighters; and destroyed the platform's weapons powerplant... so it basically consisted of me sitting next to the platform for fifteen minutes, trying to destroy it with a heavy mining laser. Took forever.
On the whole, my impression from 2000 remains unchanged: an otherwise unremarkable space sim made enjoyable mostly because of the personality and acting talents of the good Mr. Campbell.
Speaking of, we haven't had a good space sim lately, have we? What was the last? The last one I played was Freelancer, I think. I miss those. Where is the modern Descent: Freespace? The Wing Commander?
They're not really making much these days other than MODERN COMBAT SO REAL YOU'LL GET PTSD!, survival horror, and fantasy MMOs.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
No Improvement
Slept all of an hour this morning; ended up in the mood to enact destruction on a larger scale than FPS allows for. Fired up a favorite from years ago: Command and Conquer: Generals: Zero Hour.
Sadly, the AI has not improved any in the intervening years:
Even three on one it was still boring.
Webcomics aren't updating (and the ones that do, suck), and I'm ducking the Nexus file entries at the moment. I just can't do any more Stupid Mod Questions(TM) right now. Between the "someone else's mod broke yours, fix it" and the "tell me step by step how to rewrite your mod to make it mine"... I'm good and fed up with the whole mess for awhile. Fortunately, PMs get a notification sent to my Gmail box; so I can access them direct.
Don't expect my mood to improve much in the immediate future, either. It's the most horrible time of the year. Yesterday, I had to sign another lease on this place; which means I'm fucking stuck here for another year.
Just about out of pomegranate Rockstar, too; and this is the odd month that it's not on sale, so I can forget getting another case.
Where the hell's the apocalypse when I need it?
Sadly, the AI has not improved any in the intervening years:
Even three on one it was still boring.
Webcomics aren't updating (and the ones that do, suck), and I'm ducking the Nexus file entries at the moment. I just can't do any more Stupid Mod Questions(TM) right now. Between the "someone else's mod broke yours, fix it" and the "tell me step by step how to rewrite your mod to make it mine"... I'm good and fed up with the whole mess for awhile. Fortunately, PMs get a notification sent to my Gmail box; so I can access them direct.
Don't expect my mood to improve much in the immediate future, either. It's the most horrible time of the year. Yesterday, I had to sign another lease on this place; which means I'm fucking stuck here for another year.
Just about out of pomegranate Rockstar, too; and this is the odd month that it's not on sale, so I can forget getting another case.
Where the hell's the apocalypse when I need it?
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Cool.
We all know most of us have too much free time on our hands, strictly speaking. Some of us mod video games; some work on cars; some write or read or *shudder* watch reality TV.
Then, there are the folks who do things that are just plain cool.
Then, there are the folks who do things that are just plain cool.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
"Roleplaying"?
http://bitnexus.net/RP/viewtopic.php.htm
First post.
I laughed until I was light headed.
I always knew I shoulda hung around RP servers when I played WoW...
First post.
I laughed until I was light headed.
I always knew I shoulda hung around RP servers when I played WoW...
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Arena Commentators
This would have made the Arena in Oblivion a thousand times better.
Even better than the announcer in UT2k4.
Even better than the announcer in UT2k4.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Slacking Again
I'll confess, I haven't been modding for NV lately. Haven't even fired up the NVGECK.
Quite frankly, the gaggle of fuckwits who can't do anything but bitch about the quality of something they're getting for free has got me disinclined to take NCCS one step further in the immediate future.
Instead, I've been playing Dragon Age.
It's... okay.
As I described it to Herculine recently, DAO feels, to me, like World of Warcraft, if it were written by the people who did The Witcher. You still got the simpering nonsense of "OMG WE HAVE TO SAVE TEH WRLD FROM TEH EVL ZOMBIE-DRAGON!" but it includes a lot more death, sex, general hopelessness and racial inequality.
I tell you, Kiddies: I have been playing video games for over two decades now, and I am so completely and thoroughly sick of saving the world from some allegory for the devil and his faceless, dark minions...
That was one thing I respected about the writing for The Witcher. There were no 'good guys'; there was no altruism; there were no happy endings. It was just which side you decided to take in the grand argument.
I've also been playing with the DAO toolset. I used Aurora for NWN back in 'the day' quite a bit, and was fairly handy with it. This seems to be the same toolset, but more evolved - and none of the evolutions are improvements.
The DAO toolset is the most convoluted, needlessly complicated piece of shit I have ever used.
After this, NVGECK's bugs are a tiny price to pay for something that does what I want without seventeen useless steps in between.
Not going to start officially modding for DAO or anything, so don't worry if you're one of the four or five people who actually give a shit about my FO3/FONV mods.
Speaking of, I just made the mistake of looking at NCCS' stats. 1164 unique downloads, 14 endorsements. For those of you who fucked your way through high school and missed math class, that's a hair over one percent of players that could be bothered to take the ten seconds to endorse.
Couple that with the fact that I haven't picked up a single kudos point for NV despite blowing through twelve or more hours of my life answering inane posts and PMs to help morons figure out how to use a mod...
...Yeah. I'm gonna go work on a gun or something. At least that's thankless work that benefits me in some way...
Quite frankly, the gaggle of fuckwits who can't do anything but bitch about the quality of something they're getting for free has got me disinclined to take NCCS one step further in the immediate future.
Instead, I've been playing Dragon Age.
It's... okay.
As I described it to Herculine recently, DAO feels, to me, like World of Warcraft, if it were written by the people who did The Witcher. You still got the simpering nonsense of "OMG WE HAVE TO SAVE TEH WRLD FROM TEH EVL ZOMBIE-DRAGON!" but it includes a lot more death, sex, general hopelessness and racial inequality.
I tell you, Kiddies: I have been playing video games for over two decades now, and I am so completely and thoroughly sick of saving the world from some allegory for the devil and his faceless, dark minions...
That was one thing I respected about the writing for The Witcher. There were no 'good guys'; there was no altruism; there were no happy endings. It was just which side you decided to take in the grand argument.
I've also been playing with the DAO toolset. I used Aurora for NWN back in 'the day' quite a bit, and was fairly handy with it. This seems to be the same toolset, but more evolved - and none of the evolutions are improvements.
The DAO toolset is the most convoluted, needlessly complicated piece of shit I have ever used.
After this, NVGECK's bugs are a tiny price to pay for something that does what I want without seventeen useless steps in between.
Not going to start officially modding for DAO or anything, so don't worry if you're one of the four or five people who actually give a shit about my FO3/FONV mods.
Speaking of, I just made the mistake of looking at NCCS' stats. 1164 unique downloads, 14 endorsements. For those of you who fucked your way through high school and missed math class, that's a hair over one percent of players that could be bothered to take the ten seconds to endorse.
Couple that with the fact that I haven't picked up a single kudos point for NV despite blowing through twelve or more hours of my life answering inane posts and PMs to help morons figure out how to use a mod...
...Yeah. I'm gonna go work on a gun or something. At least that's thankless work that benefits me in some way...
Monday, November 22, 2010
And In Non-Fallout Related News...
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/105396-280-Hour-Commodore-64-RPG-Coming-Out-This-Year
Wow. 280 hours, and for the C64.
I'm torn between awe at the length of a free game, and abject horror at how bad the graphics will be.
Didn't own a C64 myself, but I played more than a few of that era's RPGs on the stately 8088, and can safely say I have no desire whatsoever to return to graphics that give me eyestrain every twenty minutes.
Wow. 280 hours, and for the C64.
I'm torn between awe at the length of a free game, and abject horror at how bad the graphics will be.
Didn't own a C64 myself, but I played more than a few of that era's RPGs on the stately 8088, and can safely say I have no desire whatsoever to return to graphics that give me eyestrain every twenty minutes.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Diversions
Been playing other games again, lately.
Ran through Hordes of the Underdark again. Even after a dozen odd playthroughs I'm still amazed by how random and unreliable the story's back-end scripting is. Went to all the trouble of turning Aribeth evil, and she got tagged as the sleeping planetar's true love? Lovely wasted efforts there on my part. Still can't get it to reliably let Deekin into act three with me. It happened once, so I know it's possible... it's just figuring out how. One of these days I swear I'm going to tear those nwm files open and just read through the scripts myself.
Don't mention it much, but I was actually a modder for NWN back in "the day". Got fairly handy with its scripting engine, and was well into my own module consisting of a decently in-depth story with a dozen or so companions, a romance quest, and other such niceties.
(Are we seeing the recurring themes here? Big mod, hot wemmenz to help you out along the way, great ideas... abandoned because of boredom...)
Also picked up STALKER: Call of Pripyat a couple weeks ago. Managed to play for three, maybe four hours. It's so godawfully boring it isn't even funny. No character development, no companions. Just run and shoot and loot and run some more and OH GOD WHAT'S THAT IN THE DARKNESS?!
How this game series ever got to be so popular is beyond me. It's outdoor DOOM with bad Russian accents and mutants instead of demons.
I had brief inclinations towards modding myself in a fireteam... but the game not only has no women at all that I saw, but has no construction set in a form that someone used to dealing with the Gamebryo engine would recognize.
Bloodlines is still hanging around my hard drive. My last character was a Tremere, and I got bored with the game around Chinatown and effectively abandoned it. The new stuff added by the Clan Mod gets frustrating. Some bad scripting, and ridiculously high requirements for persuasion. Plus, whoever they got to voice the "new" lines for the Voermann sisters was terrible.
The real surprise has been Recettear, which I've linked before. It's not only so cute I'm pretty sure it could cause diabetes, but is an interesting look at economics on a small scale. After reading a fair bit of forum and imageboard traffic surrounding the game, I no longer wonder why the world economy is such pisspoor shape. I found it simple enough to deal with customers; save that I was undercutting myself by about ten percent according to the game makers.
'Course, that's because I actually have some training. Part of gunsmithing school was running a retail business; and I applied the margins we were taught to expect there to the game. The fantasy world customers seemed happy enough; and I made my loan payment on time.
While I haven't done it yet because of a stolen bank card number SNAFU, I do intend to eventually lay down the cash on this game.
Oblivion's also coming around, again. Was chatting with everyone's favorite little fairy earlier; going back and forth about our various favorite mods. Damn it all, she got me interested again, too. Oh, well; at least my disc drive still works so I don't have to do anything in the legally-gray area to play it (he says whilst whistling innocently...). May end up tinkering in the CS again; would still love to see that house on Lake Rumaro go up, someday.
But of course, this all isn't in exclusion to GECKing. With the basic structure of the Penthouse level done, I've been thinking on the tower - trying to decide how best to get those windows working worth a damn. I'd hate to have to board them up.
I'm also fully aware that I'm still slacking and not releasing the final version of the RR Companions Vault, or building up a plugin for my companions pack to use the Pip-Boy plugins I wrote up awhile back. Amongst the other things I'd like to do at some point.
I tell ya Kiddies, battling apathy sucks.
Ran through Hordes of the Underdark again. Even after a dozen odd playthroughs I'm still amazed by how random and unreliable the story's back-end scripting is. Went to all the trouble of turning Aribeth evil, and she got tagged as the sleeping planetar's true love? Lovely wasted efforts there on my part. Still can't get it to reliably let Deekin into act three with me. It happened once, so I know it's possible... it's just figuring out how. One of these days I swear I'm going to tear those nwm files open and just read through the scripts myself.
Don't mention it much, but I was actually a modder for NWN back in "the day". Got fairly handy with its scripting engine, and was well into my own module consisting of a decently in-depth story with a dozen or so companions, a romance quest, and other such niceties.
(Are we seeing the recurring themes here? Big mod, hot wemmenz to help you out along the way, great ideas... abandoned because of boredom...)
Also picked up STALKER: Call of Pripyat a couple weeks ago. Managed to play for three, maybe four hours. It's so godawfully boring it isn't even funny. No character development, no companions. Just run and shoot and loot and run some more and OH GOD WHAT'S THAT IN THE DARKNESS?!
How this game series ever got to be so popular is beyond me. It's outdoor DOOM with bad Russian accents and mutants instead of demons.
I had brief inclinations towards modding myself in a fireteam... but the game not only has no women at all that I saw, but has no construction set in a form that someone used to dealing with the Gamebryo engine would recognize.
Bloodlines is still hanging around my hard drive. My last character was a Tremere, and I got bored with the game around Chinatown and effectively abandoned it. The new stuff added by the Clan Mod gets frustrating. Some bad scripting, and ridiculously high requirements for persuasion. Plus, whoever they got to voice the "new" lines for the Voermann sisters was terrible.
The real surprise has been Recettear, which I've linked before. It's not only so cute I'm pretty sure it could cause diabetes, but is an interesting look at economics on a small scale. After reading a fair bit of forum and imageboard traffic surrounding the game, I no longer wonder why the world economy is such pisspoor shape. I found it simple enough to deal with customers; save that I was undercutting myself by about ten percent according to the game makers.
'Course, that's because I actually have some training. Part of gunsmithing school was running a retail business; and I applied the margins we were taught to expect there to the game. The fantasy world customers seemed happy enough; and I made my loan payment on time.
While I haven't done it yet because of a stolen bank card number SNAFU, I do intend to eventually lay down the cash on this game.
Oblivion's also coming around, again. Was chatting with everyone's favorite little fairy earlier; going back and forth about our various favorite mods. Damn it all, she got me interested again, too. Oh, well; at least my disc drive still works so I don't have to do anything in the legally-gray area to play it (he says whilst whistling innocently...). May end up tinkering in the CS again; would still love to see that house on Lake Rumaro go up, someday.
But of course, this all isn't in exclusion to GECKing. With the basic structure of the Penthouse level done, I've been thinking on the tower - trying to decide how best to get those windows working worth a damn. I'd hate to have to board them up.
I'm also fully aware that I'm still slacking and not releasing the final version of the RR Companions Vault, or building up a plugin for my companions pack to use the Pip-Boy plugins I wrote up awhile back. Amongst the other things I'd like to do at some point.
I tell ya Kiddies, battling apathy sucks.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Roleplaying
Been reading /tg/ this lazy Sunday afternoon, and it's making me wish I had a group to RP with.
The thread that so captured my attention was on what popular movies, television shows, and anime would be like if they were RPGs of various system.
The one with Macgyver making the DM go "...wait, what?" as he used a lawn mower gas tank, can of coke, package of pop-rocks, and small balloon to kill a dozen men armed with flame throwers was particularly amusing.
Reading threads on Dark Heresy or Shadowrun do make me want to give it a try. I think of all the wonderfully damaged characters I could play, and express my love of rendering other players speechless.
Old friend of mine called it "Throwing a curve". Time was, I was prone to randomly saying things just to get the "...wait, what?" effect from whoever I was talking to.
Makes for a wonderful Malk, or in a D'nD setting you get those lovely "oh shit, what the Christ is the sorcerer going to do this time...?"
To screw with people used to my curve-balls, I can also play the most frustratingly ardent Paladin you've ever seen.
And of course, there are always the "so how did your character get nuclear weapons, anyway?" moments. Remember: pull back; nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure. Solves any problem.
Almost want to reactivate my old WoW account and find myself an RP server. If I had anyone to play with, at least.
I'll confess, I'm more than a bit intrigued by the recently-announced World of Darkness MMO. I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow, but MMO vampires sounds fun. Leaves the eternal question, though: Ventrue or Malkavian? Smooth social abilities and the ability to dominate, or being just plain batshit insane? They're both so fun. Bonus points for the Malk being female; because it's so much more fun when the hot chick is lucid and smoothly hitting on someone one second, and speaking in tongues and reacting to shit only she can see the next.
The upcoming WH40K MMO sounds interesting too, provided they'll let me play a Chaos Marine. Ideally one of the Thousand Sons. I'm sure they'll start you out as a Cultist that dies from one hit from a sewer rat, though.
So, what say you, readers? RP? Wish you could? Detest the whole idea?
The thread that so captured my attention was on what popular movies, television shows, and anime would be like if they were RPGs of various system.
The one with Macgyver making the DM go "...wait, what?" as he used a lawn mower gas tank, can of coke, package of pop-rocks, and small balloon to kill a dozen men armed with flame throwers was particularly amusing.
Reading threads on Dark Heresy or Shadowrun do make me want to give it a try. I think of all the wonderfully damaged characters I could play, and express my love of rendering other players speechless.
Old friend of mine called it "Throwing a curve". Time was, I was prone to randomly saying things just to get the "...wait, what?" effect from whoever I was talking to.
Makes for a wonderful Malk, or in a D'nD setting you get those lovely "oh shit, what the Christ is the sorcerer going to do this time...?"
To screw with people used to my curve-balls, I can also play the most frustratingly ardent Paladin you've ever seen.
And of course, there are always the "so how did your character get nuclear weapons, anyway?" moments. Remember: pull back; nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure. Solves any problem.
Almost want to reactivate my old WoW account and find myself an RP server. If I had anyone to play with, at least.
I'll confess, I'm more than a bit intrigued by the recently-announced World of Darkness MMO. I'm sure they'll fuck it up somehow, but MMO vampires sounds fun. Leaves the eternal question, though: Ventrue or Malkavian? Smooth social abilities and the ability to dominate, or being just plain batshit insane? They're both so fun. Bonus points for the Malk being female; because it's so much more fun when the hot chick is lucid and smoothly hitting on someone one second, and speaking in tongues and reacting to shit only she can see the next.
The upcoming WH40K MMO sounds interesting too, provided they'll let me play a Chaos Marine. Ideally one of the Thousand Sons. I'm sure they'll start you out as a Cultist that dies from one hit from a sewer rat, though.
So, what say you, readers? RP? Wish you could? Detest the whole idea?
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Sitrep, 9-9
Been awhile, Kiddies.
I'm sure at least some of you have been chomping at the bit; after all, in days gone by when I'd poof off for a week I'd come back with a new version of something or other in hand.
'Fraid not. I haven't touched the GECK. Haven't even played FO3, other than enough for the next installment of Nos' Adventures.
Which, by the by, is almost done. Screenshotted, mostly written. Would already be up; but it got a tish out of hand and dialog heavy, and is currently sitting at twenty pages. Somewhere near five to ten more before done; depending on how damned wordy I let it get.
Even managed to work in a Monty Python reference.
Anyway.
In other video game related news, I finally picked up copies of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines; as well as the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions for Sins of a Solar Empire.
While I quite frankly can't stand the LARP crowd, I'm nonetheless a fan of the World of Darkness - the vampire subsect thereof especially. There's just so much potential for fun.
Most of you probably never played Bloodlines. It was from a small studio, and while the concept was great, the execution was... lacking. So bug-riddled as to be un-fucking-playable. So bad the original version makes FO3 look good.
Picked it up on Steam (which I hate, by the way. Make me log into an online service to play a game I own offline? Fuck you.), but had little choice. I haven't seen a disc copy of Bloodlines in four or so years.
Even the patched version on Steam is loaded with bugs. But, like other games I favor, mods come to the rescue. Picked up The Clan Mod for it, and just finished a playthrough. So nice; and oh baby can you rock the undead house with that G36 and some grenades.
Played as a Malk, because hey; life's more interesting when you're batshit fucking insane.
Last time I played the game (years ago) was as a Ventrue. Not as much fun dialog, but that Dominate ability is so damned useful...
Arsenal Mod is definitely a requisite for any Bloodlines install. (included in the Clan mod install) Still has the normal game problems, though. Namely lack of ammunition carrying capacity. I mean, come on. I'm a super-strong, preternatural killing machine but can only carry ten rifle mags? Shit, I can handle thirteen here in the real world. Probably more, now that I think of it - I haven't ran a poodle-shooter seriously since 2006, and they have invented some neat new six mag carriers in the last couple years...
...But of course, you guys don't care about that.
The Sins expansions follow the classic Stardock pattern, as seen previously in Galactic Civilizations 2: base game made of fuck and win, first expansion acceptable but not groundbreaking, second expansion garbage.
I kind of like Entrenchment and its added starbases and such. Diplomacy? Crap. It's yet another instance of a game developer deciding that the way to keep a game interesting is to make it harder and more complicated across the board. It's a brilliant theory that results in nothing more than a convoluted mess.
Diplomacy does this by making it impossible to maintain good relations with another empire without following their asinine "missions", which usually involve attacking another empire that you happen to have a peace treaty with. Gets old fast.
Back to FO3. I picked up a few decorating ideas while running around the LA nights drinking blood, and will probably see about actually getting them into the game soon; being as my immediate urge to engage in said acts of darkness has been sated.
Don't want to give any time frames, though. Hell, there's decent odds I'll up and decide to disappear into another game for a week or two before I get around to actually GECKing something screenshot worthy up.
I'm sure at least some of you have been chomping at the bit; after all, in days gone by when I'd poof off for a week I'd come back with a new version of something or other in hand.
'Fraid not. I haven't touched the GECK. Haven't even played FO3, other than enough for the next installment of Nos' Adventures.
Which, by the by, is almost done. Screenshotted, mostly written. Would already be up; but it got a tish out of hand and dialog heavy, and is currently sitting at twenty pages. Somewhere near five to ten more before done; depending on how damned wordy I let it get.
Even managed to work in a Monty Python reference.
Anyway.
In other video game related news, I finally picked up copies of Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines; as well as the Entrenchment and Diplomacy expansions for Sins of a Solar Empire.
While I quite frankly can't stand the LARP crowd, I'm nonetheless a fan of the World of Darkness - the vampire subsect thereof especially. There's just so much potential for fun.
Most of you probably never played Bloodlines. It was from a small studio, and while the concept was great, the execution was... lacking. So bug-riddled as to be un-fucking-playable. So bad the original version makes FO3 look good.
Picked it up on Steam (which I hate, by the way. Make me log into an online service to play a game I own offline? Fuck you.), but had little choice. I haven't seen a disc copy of Bloodlines in four or so years.
Even the patched version on Steam is loaded with bugs. But, like other games I favor, mods come to the rescue. Picked up The Clan Mod for it, and just finished a playthrough. So nice; and oh baby can you rock the undead house with that G36 and some grenades.
Played as a Malk, because hey; life's more interesting when you're batshit fucking insane.
Last time I played the game (years ago) was as a Ventrue. Not as much fun dialog, but that Dominate ability is so damned useful...
Arsenal Mod is definitely a requisite for any Bloodlines install. (included in the Clan mod install) Still has the normal game problems, though. Namely lack of ammunition carrying capacity. I mean, come on. I'm a super-strong, preternatural killing machine but can only carry ten rifle mags? Shit, I can handle thirteen here in the real world. Probably more, now that I think of it - I haven't ran a poodle-shooter seriously since 2006, and they have invented some neat new six mag carriers in the last couple years...
...But of course, you guys don't care about that.
The Sins expansions follow the classic Stardock pattern, as seen previously in Galactic Civilizations 2: base game made of fuck and win, first expansion acceptable but not groundbreaking, second expansion garbage.
I kind of like Entrenchment and its added starbases and such. Diplomacy? Crap. It's yet another instance of a game developer deciding that the way to keep a game interesting is to make it harder and more complicated across the board. It's a brilliant theory that results in nothing more than a convoluted mess.
Diplomacy does this by making it impossible to maintain good relations with another empire without following their asinine "missions", which usually involve attacking another empire that you happen to have a peace treaty with. Gets old fast.
Back to FO3. I picked up a few decorating ideas while running around the LA nights drinking blood, and will probably see about actually getting them into the game soon; being as my immediate urge to engage in said acts of darkness has been sated.
Don't want to give any time frames, though. Hell, there's decent odds I'll up and decide to disappear into another game for a week or two before I get around to actually GECKing something screenshot worthy up.
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