Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: Mars on January 06, 2011, 10:42:50 pm
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So I played Half Life for the first time today. It's fun, reminds me of Red Faction.
When I close my eyes I see the game - I don't get that with modern games - it seems to be games of a certain generation. Anyone else?
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When I close my eyes I see the game - I don't get that with modern games - it seems to be games of a certain generation.
that's called nostalgia :nervous:
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Do you understand why we were disappointed with HL2 now?
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Heck, I still drag out Dungeon Keeper 2 from time to time ;) I've looked at the new DK2 clone coming out next year, looks interesting, but I'll wait and see :)
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Do you understand why we were disappointed with HL2 now?
No, because having played both now, Half-Life 2 is far far superior. :p
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Do you understand why we were disappointed with HL2 now?
No, because having played both now, Half-Life 2 is far far superior. :p
Don't get me wrong Half Life is super awesome, but the only disappointing thing about HL 2 is that Valve is leaving us hanging after Episode 2.
Anyway; Dark Forces II Jedi Knight, TIE Fighter, Buried in Time, Total Annihilation, Civ II and Freespace 2 make up my golden oldies. I'll still crank up TA, BiT and Civ for some good times, they still hold up well even today.
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Heck, I still drag out Dungeon Keeper 2 from time to time ;) I've looked at the new DK2 clone coming out next year, looks interesting, but I'll wait and see :)
DK2 clone?
Please tell me more.
I wanna see the lizzard win the jackpot again :C
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Heck, I still drag out Dungeon Keeper 2 from time to time ;) I've looked at the new DK2 clone coming out next year, looks interesting, but I'll wait and see :)
DK2 clone?
Please tell me more.
I wanna see the lizzard win the jackpot again :C
I'll start a new Topic about it, rather than offtopic this one ;)
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Pre-2000 (excluding really old titles) and in no particular order: Descent, Super Mario 64, System Shock*, Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest, GoldenEye 007, Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters*, The Oregon Trail, Earthbound, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Final Fantasy IV*, Shadowrun*, Super Mario World, Super Mario RPG, Fallout*, Final Fantasy Tactics, and quite a few others were all games that stayed with me, when I was done playing them.
I mean, it started to get pretty freaky. Everywhere I went, I saw these HUDs and Action Bars. And don't get me started on the health meters appearing above people's heads. (Note: I am completely serious about all of this)
*I didn't play this until well after the release date.
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Age of Empires 2... Been playing it since I was 9. :D
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Bill Clinton gaming years - the golden age of gaming.
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I still play the first Unreal...
There are also packs of HD textures. Even now, this game is exceptional !
I also play some FF6 (FTW !) and Oddworld.
And the Homeworld serie.
And FreeSpace... :)
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I currently have installed and play from time to time or more often
Doom
Epic pinball
First Encounters (Elite III, the really buggy one)
Freespace 2
Master of Magic I
Master of Orion II
One Must Fall 2097 (the best pc only beat-em-up ever)
Transport Tycoon Delux
Total Annihilation
Tyrian 2000
UFO enemy Unknown
X-Com Terror from the deep
Not installed but occasionally drag out
Global Operations
Ground Control
Ground Control II
Incoming
Rainbow 6 Raven Shield + Athena Sword
Unreal 2
UT2k4
Worms United
When I pop over to my parents LAN Unreal Tournament GOTY edition against my dad and sister is always a scream
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Carmageddon FTW! :cool:
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Carmageddon II!
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@bloodeagle
shadowrun you mean this:
(http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/9576/256pxshadowrunboxart2.jpg) (http://img211.imageshack.us/i/256pxshadowrunboxart2.jpg/)
I thought it was awful
@mars if you liked half life you should track down half life opposing force
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Outcast
Jagged Alliance 1&2
Settlers
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Outcast
Awesome game has (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtdSH9YKJrM&feature=related) awesome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=889VL3GxmoU&feature=related) soundtrack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ffNvTAAFit0&feature=related).
I really wish more games would hire an entire freaking orchestra to record their soundtracks.
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Outcast also had a new graphics engine (what's it called? The one that uses dots instead of polygons...)
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Outcast also had a new graphics engine (what's it called? The one that uses dots instead of polygons...)
No, it used voxels, which have since mostly been discarded.
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@bloodeagle
shadowrun you mean this:
(http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/9576/256pxshadowrunboxart2.jpg) (http://img211.imageshack.us/i/256pxshadowrunboxart2.jpg/)
I thought it was awful
@mars if you liked half life you should track down half life opposing force
Pre-2000
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun_%28SNES%29
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Did no one play UT99?
And where are Starcraft and Diablo?
A personal childhood gem for me was Buried in Time. That game was frustrating but epic for a 10 year old resolute to beat the thing without walkthroughs.
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1. Diablo II
2. Knights of the old Republic
3. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines
4. Freespace 2 SCP :)
.
.
.
The list goes on and on (mostly n64 and SNES games and all time classics like Counterstrike, Starcraft, Warcraft 3 and all these things you played at your friends local garage-LAN :D )
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I hated Half Life 2.
Also, Voxels are being used heavily in the Miner Wars game;
http://www.minerwars.com/
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It's also used in Crysis for its terrain. Yeah, that surprised me too.
But yeah, Batutta's right. Voxels are largely useless nowadays. I figure Miner Wars only uses it as a good way to do cheaper (?) procedural destruction.
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I hated Half Life 2.
Awesome. I thought I was the only one who wasn't a fan of Half Life 2.
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But yeah, Batutta's right. Voxels are largely useless nowadays. I figure Miner Wars only uses it as a good way to do cheaper (?) procedural destruction.
They're not useless at all. They're still used in a few 3D apps and are quite powerful, and they're used all over in medical imaging stuff. Battutta said (someone incorrectly), that they've been discarded - not that they're useless.
You should go and actually look at Miner Wars. It's not just "cheaper", it's a completely different way of rendering 3D objects. Polygons simply can not do what Voxels do, at least, they can't do it without being EXTREMELY inefficient.
Voxels are the best way of showing non-uniform volumes. Polygons are a bunch of faces drawn between vertex data points - you could define an entire 3D model in a text based table, for instance (you used to be able to open most .OBJ files with Notepad, I'm not sure if you still can - I think there was a text export function way back when).
Now, when it comes to creating a 3D object with vertices and polygons, you have to worry about a lot of things - connecting the polies so that there's no gaps, making sure that what's called the "poly flow" is well laid out and organized, etc - all of this helps to reduce rendering errors when creating polygon-based images. It does, however, require a lot of forethought and planning when creating a model. This means live, fully functional terrain deformation is essentially impossible, as you would have to move around these polygons quite a lot, and you would end up with several errors - for instance, hyper-sharp points, smoothing errors (caused by small radius light sources being applied to very large polygons), flipped faces, etc), when it comes to extreme deformation.
Voxels, however, are arranged much like a 3D grid - if you typed it all out in a text file, it would be in a table with each point's X, Y, and Z coordinates.**
Each of these little "voxels" are essentially representing a single "unit" of space (don't think of them like polygons and vertices, they are a TOTALLY DIFFERENT 3D REPRESENTATIONAL/DATA METHODS). What this means is that a "voxel" object has absolutely no issue with terrain deformation, because if, say, I blow a hole in an asteroid, the game simply creates new "dots" and destroys the old ones - a chunk of the object is simply blown away and new data is made where it used to be.**
** Now, I'm not TOTALLY SURE that this is the 100% PROPER definition. The results, however, speak for themselves - Voxels are able to produce shapes and mesh detail that is difficult, if not impossible, with polygonal based formats.****
****That's not to say voxels don't have drawbacks that polygons don't have - they're two equally well-off 3D representational/data methods, for their own strengths/weaknesses. But that's not the point of this argument.
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I hated Half Life 2.
Awesome. I thought I was the only one who wasn't a fan of Half Life 2.
Why's that?
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I think it was partially the story-telling method, where you had to go out of your way to find critical plot information on why you are fighting in the first place by looking at the wall. Also, there was the lack of any real alien soldiers, all you ever fought were faceless humans, some somewhat genetically modified, sure, but still faceless human. The combine AI was also terrible, as were the accuracy on the weapons (the ****in' shotgun and CROWBAR were better at range than a sub machine gun and assault rifle thing).
There was also a real lack of the old aliens from Half Life 1, the only one we ever saw was the Vortigaunt.
I think there were some other things but I just woke u so it's hard to think atm.
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Everything Hades says is basically horribly true, the Combine AI in particular was such a letdown
Still great games though, especially Episode 2 - super atmospheric and i loooooooooooove the art design to death
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Yeah, what Hades said pretty much. I didn't mind the way the story was presented that much and liked it a lot better the second time around. Everything else I agree with though. The enemies were boring, it was all just dumber versions of HL1's marines and headcrab/zombie variants, which was a massive step down after stuff like bullsquids and tentacles and the frakking female assassins. The weapons were lame, that MP7 was just atrocious after how awesome the MP5 was in HL1, and the fact you couldn't carry as much ammo rubbed me the wrong way.
That said, the episodes have somewhat redeemed it, though I still like HL1 best. The striders and physics puzzles were cool too and HL2 had pretty winsome atmosphere.
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Yeah, I'll agree, the atmosphere and art design was pretty good.
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Oh and the infinite ammo box RPG things, hrrrmph
Don't get me wrong Valve is great at gameplay design, absolutely smashing, but I dunno why they thought they needed to give all their weapons the approximate accuracy of a greased pig - I suspect to make the gravity gun more of a star given all the effort they put into it.
Plus you can really see how some parts of the plot were victimized by cuts; we got to trudge through Water Hazard for aaaaaaages but the entire uprising the plot's been building up to happens while you're trapped in a very slow teleporter. :blah:
The Combine Soldiers were super cool in terms of their art and audio design, though, they sounded like BAMFs and the Overwatch voice was sweet. They just behaved so duuumb.
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I agree with pretty much everything negative about HL2, but I'd like to put special emphasis on their awful, awful storytelling. You were supposed out about the entire war that led to Earth surrendering to the enemy (pretty much everything that happened prior to Half Life 2) from a newspaper clipping in the basement of a lighthouse in a level where you've stopped after driving a buggy at 60 mph and before you see a bunch of rockets littered around that you need to stock up on because there's an enemy helicopter trying to kill you. Yea, and that newspaper clipping is a WALL TEXTURE - which means if you, like me, were running a less than stellar machine, couldn't even read it because your texture detail was too low!
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Yeah, that definitely bugged me. I played through the whole game on my first try not knowing much about why I was fighting the combine, and I too had to play on low (I didn't even know at the time that the story was on the walls, either)
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Yeah, what Hades said pretty much. I didn't mind the way the story was presented that much and liked it a lot better the second time around. Everything else I agree with though. The enemies were boring, it was all just dumber versions of HL1's marines and headcrab/zombie variants, which was a massive step down after stuff like bullsquids and tentacles and the frakking female assassins. The weapons were lame, that MP7 was just atrocious after how awesome the MP5 was in HL1, and the fact you couldn't carry as much ammo rubbed me the wrong way.
I'll give you those *****ninja assassins, but are you talking about the bullsquids and tentacles that you could kill with all of three bullets, or the MP5 that I could shoot thirty rounds into a soldier's face and not kill him with? Yeah, I'm not really seeing the pluses. :p
Don't get me wrong Valve is great at gameplay design, absolutely smashing, but I dunno why they thought they needed to give all their weapons the approximate accuracy of a greased pig - I suspect to make the gravity gun more of a star given all the effort they put into it.
Plus you can really see how some parts of the plot were victimized by cuts; we got to trudge through Water Hazard for aaaaaaages but the entire uprising the plot's been building up to happens while you're trapped in a very slow teleporter. :blah:
The Combine Soldiers were super cool in terms of their art and audio design, though, they sounded like BAMFs and the Overwatch voice was sweet. They just behaved so duuumb.
I found the Combine pulse rifle to be fairly accurate at range myself, especially if you were going more single-shot with it; in any case, the Magnum was what you wanted to be using for longer-range headshots anyway. I also don't look at the uprising as it was portrayed as being any sort of "cut victim;" from the beginning, the game was much more about your actions on a personal level than anything else, and I don't think being part of a full-scale invasion from the beginning would have worked as well as trying to fight your way to the Citadel specifically to rescue Eli. (Besides, you wind up doing some heavy-duty fighting in the end anyway.) I will give you the Combine soldiers' AI being lame, but I loved the hell out of pretty much everything else in the game. It's easily one of the most intricately-crafted gaming experiences I've ever played through.
(Also, for anyone trying to claim that the enemies were unimpressive: Fast/Poison Zombies. *shudder*)
Edit:
I agree with pretty much everything negative about HL2, but I'd like to put special emphasis on their awful, awful storytelling. You were supposed out about the entire war that led to Earth surrendering to the enemy (pretty much everything that happened prior to Half Life 2) from a newspaper clipping in the basement of a lighthouse in a level where you've stopped after driving a buggy at 60 mph and before you see a bunch of rockets littered around that you need to stock up on because there's an enemy helicopter trying to kill you. Yea, and that newspaper clipping is a WALL TEXTURE - which means if you, like me, were running a less than stellar machine, couldn't even read it because your texture detail was too low!
Waitwaitwait...you're saying this when the first game didn't even have a plot in the first place? Like Battuta said, you find out more about the original Half-Life in the sequel than you did in that game proper. I thought a lot of the beauty of HL2 came from dropping you in the middle of this dystopia without knowing what was going on, and then using the environment itself (as well as character comments) to fill in quite a bit of the backstory for you. And as far as that newspaper clipping goes, did you perhaps fail to notice the same one earlier at Black Mesa East in Eli's lab, one which Eli specifically comments on when you look at it? :p
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Waitwaitwait...you're saying this when the first game didn't even have a plot in the first place? Like Battuta said, you find out more about the original Half-Life in the sequel than you did in that game proper. I thought a lot of the beauty of HL2 came from dropping you in the middle of this dystopia without knowing what was going on, and then using the environment itself (as well as character comments) to fill in quite a bit of the backstory for you. And as far as that newspaper clipping goes, did you perhaps fail to notice the same one earlier at Black Mesa East in Eli's lab, one which Eli specifically comments on when you look at it? :p
[/quote]
What does the first game have to do with anything? I was critiquing the SECOND game.
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He can't refute the criticism of the second game so he has to resort to trying to get us with the first game
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Um can we not turn this thread into personal attacks because we can't agree which of two very excellent video games is slightly better
thanks
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System Shock 2 :drevil:
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SWotL.
Da da da, da dada. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eosVhMLr1A)
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SWotL.
Da da da, da dada. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eosVhMLr1A)
I LOVE that game! That's totally what I grew up on! :)
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He can't refute the criticism of the second game so he has to resort to trying to get us with the first game
yeahno
Also, again, what Battuta said. I think I've been saying that a lot in here recently. :p
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He can't refute the criticism of the second game so he has to resort to trying to get us with the first game
negrep. :no:
I think this is more likely true of you considering you didn't even try to refute the points he made about the second game. Neither did Unknown. :P
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I'll give you those *****ninja assassins, but are you talking about the bullsquids and tentacles that you could kill with all of three bullets, or the MP5 that I could shoot thirty rounds into a soldier's face and not kill him with? Yeah, I'm not really seeing the pluses. :p
The giant green tentacles? Uh, those couldn't even be killed with bullets. and I'm pretty sure you're wrong about 30 rounds into a marine's face, they died in about 6-7 shots IIRC, not to mention they had decent AI.
The bullsquids died in about the same amount of shots as a combine overwatch with each game's respective weapon. :p
I found the Combine pulse rifle to be fairly accurate at range myself, especially if you were going more single-shot with it; in any case, the Magnum was what you wanted to be using for longer-range headshots anyway.
It was more accurate than the SMG but definitely still pretty inaccurate. Not to mention Magnum rounds were extremely rare so you don't really have many with you at a time anyway.
And as far as that newspaper clipping goes, did you perhaps fail to notice the same one earlier at Black Mesa East in Eli's lab, one which Eli specifically comments on when you look at it? :p
He was saying that since the damned newspapers were a part of the texture that they were unreadable at low settings.
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I didn't like HL2 much either. The story was okay but was only told in a handful of cutscenes, and most of the actual game consisted of a series of dull sewers and destroyed houses. It always felt like you were running through these boring and completely linear maps with no purpose or goals in mind. As for the storytelling and presentation style, Cryostasis was a far better example of that approach. Despite its flaws, that game is what HL2 should have been like.
Anyway, I always play lots of stuff from the 90s. I play D2X-XL a fair bit these days and am going through some recent fanmade levels.
I still play the first Unreal...
There is still a fairly active singleplayer mod community for this and UT. I was just checking out the progress with this (http://www.unrealsp.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1651&sid=fb476920e3376a3d2fca3c84d409a824). :D
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I didn't like HL2 much either. The story was okay but was only told in a handful of cutscenes, and most of the actual game consisted of a series of dull sewers and destroyed houses. It always felt like you were running through these boring and completely linear maps with no purpose or goals in mind. As for the storytelling and presentation style, Cryostasis was a far better example of that approach. Despite its flaws, that game is what HL2 should have been like.
Yeah, I definitely agree. It's also funny how the graphics looked only somewhat better than Halo 1 (and it's TPS pre-release version, which goes back before 1998) even though it was made 3 years after Halo 1 was made.
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I still play the first Unreal...
There is still a fairly active singleplayer mod community for this and UT. I was just checking out the progress with this (http://www.unrealsp.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1651&sid=fb476920e3376a3d2fca3c84d409a824). :D
Well, OldUnreal, UnrealTextures and UnrealSP are on my favorite bar, soooo... :D
It's just fun that the 3 first games I ever bought (in order : Unreal, FreeSpace and Homeworld) are among those who have, even years later, great communities.
For Half-Life 1 : I found it inventive, not just the kill ! kill ! kill ! game, very pleasant to play (finished it at least 5 times), but a little bit too...clean (except in Xen, of course) compared to Unreal and his sinister atmosphere. I like to be scared and I'm pretty sure that the Skaarjs took me at least one year of my life :shaking:.
For Half-Life 2 : I really prefer what have been done with his engine than the game itself (PORTAL !!! )
BUT ! This is only my opinion, so don't kill me.
To strictly stay within the subject, I think that the games we played some years ago are the same than the games our children play today : great memories for the years to come, nostalgia... That's for THIS that GoG.com was created, after all. It don't prevent me for liking actual games (I pretty enjoyed Batman : Arkham Asylum, for example), but it's true that our first gaming experiences often remains in our mind.
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since we are mentioning old games
Hardwar that rocked
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hardwar was soooo goooood
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ATI Rage Pro :nervous:
Incoming was soooo beautiful on it !
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System Shock 2 :drevil:
System Shock 2 was awesome, I just can't help but feel that it could've been way better if they had found some other way to tell what happened, other than the crew logs.
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Tyrian
Day of the Tentacle
Monkey Island Series
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Battlefield 1942 (though I never played it, Bad Company 2 has given me a good idea of what a really fun BF-style match would be)
Freespace 2! :D
Homeworld
Jane's WWII Fighters
Unreal Tournament 1999
Unreal Tournament 2004
Infiltration for UT99
Matrix mod for UT99
Unreal4Ever for UT99
Ironically I never played that many FS2 mods, I was too busy modding :D
I can't think of too many others, actually. Freespace and all of the extra mods and stuff that came with every game I bought meant I didn't buy too many games. Didn't have the money, either. :)
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Nostalgia for me is the old Zelda games. Ocarina of Time, in particular
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For me it was
Freespace 1 ooh the music was epic and the intro sent chills down my spine! Shame FS2 never did for me, well not the intro.
System Shock 2
Realms of the Haunting - a truely classic, epic, atmosphereic game
Doom, i can still humm the soundtrack to E1M7!
As for Half-life 2 techincal and graphical it was a masterpiece but for gamplay wise i found Half-life superior in that respect, i prefer the marines to the combine to fight anyday. HL2 was just another shooter for me that lacked a proper plot but thats my take on it, maybe i was looking the wrong places to the get the plot and story of the game.
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Zaxxon
Frontier II: Elite
Star Control I/II
MANTIS
LHX
Echelon (http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/simulations/games_d_e/echelon.html) ( The OLD abandoned 1987 version, so as not to be confused with the MADIA 2001 version)
The above is NOT a warez link. The title is so abandoned, it's not even funny. Thanks to who reported it anyway, though. lrn2read.
Any SSI (Strategic Simulations, Inc) AD&D Game.
Space Quest
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Well, if I go back to the ones that truly defined my gaming experiences:
Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy
Ant Attack
Scramble
Jet Pac/Nodes of Yesod
Phoenix
Q*Bert
Missile Command
Gauntlet
Elite 1
..... Ahhhh.. those were the days ;)
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Dune II, the first C&Cs, Terminal Velocity, DK I, Half Life 1, oh.. too many games to count. I've literally been gaming since I was 3 (1994), where I started with Alone in the Dark (Too young to be scared) and Dune II on the Acorn.
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... since I was 3 (1994)...
I think I'm going to go have a large stiff drink. So I can not feel so old.
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... since I was 3 (1994)...
I think I'm going to go have a large stiff drink. So I can not feel so old.
Not old, just a veteran of years.
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... since I was 3 (1994)...
I think I'm going to go have a large stiff drink. So I can not feel so old.
*clinks the glass*
Right there with ya bruttha.
Most of these games I remember playing. I remember when SWotL was first published. Heck, I remember playing a standup arcade pong in a pizza place, and the first video pinball games.
This thread makes me want to pull my VIC 20/Apple IIe/Amiga 500 out of the garage and hook it up again.
*sigh*
You kids... Up hill both ways, and get off my lawn. :D
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... since I was 3 (1994)...
I think I'm going to go have a large stiff drink. So I can not feel so old.
*clinks the glass*
Right there with ya bruttha.
Most of these games I remember playing. I remember when SWotL was first published. Heck, I remember playing a standup arcade pong in a pizza place, and the first video pinball games.
This thread makes me want to pull my VIC 20/Apple IIe/Amiga 500 out of the garage and hook it up again.
*sigh*
You kids... Up hill both ways, and get off my lawn. :D
mum and dad never let me play on archade machines :(
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I remember when SWotL was first published.
Oh man, SWotL, Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour: the Battle of Britain. Those were good games. I remember when the Aces series replaced them and I was disappointed because they didn't have the big campaign mechanic and their ToDs were short.
(And no flying the B-17.)
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I remember when SWotL was first published.
Oh man, SWotL, Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour: the Battle of Britain. Those were good games. I remember when the Aces series replaced them and I was disappointed because they didn't have the big campaign mechanic and their ToDs were short.
Those were quite good. I played BoB and it's expansion quite a bit, then I got the budget label version of Battlehawks 1942 a few years later. The manuals for those games were almost like history books. I can also remember the "radio wheel" copy protection device that BoB had. Later I got the Aces collection (by Dynamix) for the PC; in fact I was rummaging around the loft two days ago and pulled it out along with a load of other oldies (probably too many to list here). I missed out on SWotL, which I really wanted to play, because it wasn't released for the Atari ST which was my main gaming platform when I was younger. But IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 kind of makes up for that.
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All you old-timers make me feel so young. I was 2 in 1994....
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I remember when SWotL was first published.
Oh man, SWotL, Battlehawks 1942, Their Finest Hour: the Battle of Britain. Those were good games. I remember when the Aces series replaced them and I was disappointed because they didn't have the big campaign mechanic and their ToDs were short.
Those were quite good. I played BoB and it's expansion quite a bit, then I got the budget label version of Battlehawks 1942 a few years later. The manuals for those games were almost like history books. I can also remember the "radio wheel" copy protection device that BoB had. Later I got the Aces collection (by Dynamix) for the PC; in fact I was rummaging around the loft two days ago and pulled it out along with a load of other oldies (probably too many to list here). I missed out on SWotL, which I really wanted to play, because it wasn't released for the Atari ST which was my main gaming platform when I was younger. But IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946 kind of makes up for that.
I miss thre old days when you got a decent sized manual with every game to flick through while you were waiting for the game to install.
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All you old-timers make me feel so young. I was 2 in 1994....
I was 22 :nervous:
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I wasn't even born in 1994. :nervous:
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I've always felt one of the creepiest moments in my life was realising I'd written my first line of Machine Code before anyone else in my College Class had been born, except the teacher.
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Did somebody mention Zaxxon? Count me in! And if one mentions Zaxxon, one has to mention Sopwith!
And how could I forget Laser Squad?
Also, more recent ones like Worms (first one) was a blast back then when playing with friends. Molez was great too, especially when 4 people crammed to play it with a single keyboard!
Dune II (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFiwBQbu9Pk&feature=related), this one I didn't expect (http://dune2themaker.fundynamic.com/)
And Falcon 3.0. Never forget that.
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Just started playing Final Fantasy a few hours ago. The very first one.
Seems kinda neat.
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Dune II (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFiwBQbu9Pk&feature=related), this one I didn't expect (http://dune2themaker.fundynamic.com/)
Curse you! I forgot how much I loved that game and now I'm being sucked back in....
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Just started playing Final Fantasy a few hours ago. The very first one.
Seems kinda neat.
I keep meaning to get into that...
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Prince of Persia, (the original), Pitfall, Asteroids and Another World! :nod: :yes:
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I wasn't even born in 1994. :nervous:
Now I feel old.
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Dune II (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFiwBQbu9Pk&feature=related), this one I didn't expect (http://dune2themaker.fundynamic.com/)
Curse you! I forgot how much I loved that game and now I'm being sucked back in....
Would you like to remember more? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkiloFcdpI8&feature=related) A welcome find as well. (http://www.moddb.com/mods/one-must-fall-destiny) If they only finished it some day...
EDIT: Thanks for reminding me of Another World! I don't remember how many times we died on the first screen...
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From the days when EA was still a new company, had shapes as it's logo and actually made games vs buying sports games from other companies:
Mail Order Monsters:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLcYHlmKM7U (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLcYHlmKM7U)
M.U.L.E.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo&feature=related)
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As strange as it may seem, EA has been fairly awesome over the past few years in terms of promoting new IPs and treating its developers well. Activision is basically the new EA.
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Yeah, since they have that new CEO they are still quite business like, but (much) less scared to invest in something new and innovative. It is why Bioware and Pandemic joined EA.
Just started playing Final Fantasy a few hours ago. The very first one.
Seems kinda neat.
Seriously, I've got some kind of FinalFantasiofobia. Ever since someone said that someone called Sephiroth from FF7 is awesome because he has a big sword which is 6 meters long (giggles, giggles), and that is apperently the most important reason I should play that game, I am staying away from it.
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Actually, Sephiroth is the main reason I WANT to play it.
Just so I can hear One-Winged Angel in context.
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Just watch Advent Children. One-Winged Angel is the track for the final epic battle scene and it is glorious.
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Just watch Advent Children. One-Winged Angel is the track for the final epic battle scene and it is glorious.
Might have to. Until I can procure it, though, I can entertain myself with the track on youtube. That is, once I sort through all the bad other versions....
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From the days when EA was still a new company, had shapes as it's logo and actually made games vs buying sports games from other companies:
Mail Order Monsters:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLcYHlmKM7U (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLcYHlmKM7U)
M.U.L.E.: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo&feature=related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6L6MhSgpgo&feature=related)
It appears I have missed both of them! But this one (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdfIfC9BHwQ) I do recall.
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Interesting to note that there is a game called 'Archon Classic' which is based roughly on the original C64 game on Steam ;)
http://www.archonclassic.com/
Going to try the Demo before I pass judgement though.
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Now playing Deus Ex
Becoming conspiracy theorist.
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Now playing Deus Ex
Becoming conspiracy theorist.
Make sure you are using the High-Res Mod! (http://www.moddb.com/games/deus-ex/addons/dues-ex-enb-series-latest)
There is also a mod with new models and textures - but I don't know, if they're compatible to each other. To be found Here (http://www.moddb.com/mods/project-hdtp).
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Ugh. EBN Series. What a waste. I guess it works, but I know that for Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it just makes things look way wrong. So, mileage WILL vary.
The Project HDTP is shiny though. I always load that.
AFAIK, they are compatible with each other.
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there is also a dx10 renderer I beleive
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Nah. I am just using DeusExe to play in widescreen resolution for now. No need for high res resolutions, the game looks pretty enough with 1920*1080, 4X anti aliasing and 8x anostropic filtering...
(By the way, who invented Anostropic filtering? it's awesome).
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Nah. I am just using DeusExe to play in widescreen resolution for now. No need for high res resolutions, the game looks pretty enough with 1920*1080, 4X anti aliasing and 8x anostropic filtering...
(By the way, who invented Anostropic filtering? it's awesome).
You mean anisotropic, right?
And anti-aliasing is the worst graphical feature ever invented. If you're at that high of a resolution and you need to blur edges, then someone somewhere screwed up.
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Nah. I am just using DeusExe to play in widescreen resolution for now. No need for high res resolutions, the game looks pretty enough with 1920*1080, 4X anti aliasing and 8x anostropic filtering...
(By the way, who invented Anostropic filtering? it's awesome).
You mean anisotropic, right?
And anti-aliasing is the worst graphical feature ever invented. If you're at that high of a resolution and you need to blur edges, then someone somewhere screwed up.
I hope you choke on jaggies.
It's funny you think a technique invented in the 1970's is horrible, when they were working with tiny resolutions. Also, guess what, AA is still useful with high resolutions, despite what you may think.
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Check out the TNM mod for Deus Ex if you haven't played that already. It's better than almost all of the commercial games I've played in the last few years.
Ugh. EBN Series. What a waste. I guess it works, but I know that for Fallout 3 and New Vegas, it just makes things look way wrong. So, mileage WILL vary.
There is no point in using it for recent games, but it works well in some old games if you play around with the settings. The bloom effect does a pretty good job in Deus Ex if you tone it down.
And anti-aliasing is the worst graphical feature ever invented.
:wtf:
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Anti Aliasing is an neccesity when using any LCD monitor. Heck. WINDOWS USES IT ON THE TEXT!
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Anti-aliasing is very pretty, but most of the time, the extra prettiness isn't really worth dropping your FPS by 25-50%.
And uh, whoever says that it's useless, even at high native resolutions, doesn't know what they're talking about.
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Anti-aliasing is very pretty, but most of the time, the extra prettiness isn't really worth dropping your FPS by 25-50%.
And uh, whoever says that it's useless, even at high native resolutions, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I never said that it was useless. It certainly has a place during pre-rendering. And it's especially useful in rendering for modeling programs.
That said, for games, I've never seen any AA worth the drop.
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Anti-aliasing by two levels (in my experience) is more resource intensive than going from 1024x768 to 1280x960, and damned near more resource intensive than going from there to 1600x1200. The result? Your game looks better and runs faster by merely increasing the resolution than if you had blurred the Hell out of everything. Some games (and video cards) are better at handling AA than others, but I've never seen an improvement that was worth the drain. And in some cases I've seen AA that is jarring when enabled. Quake Wars: Enemy Territory handles AA in that, if you use it, it blurs the entire screen rather than just the edges.
If the game's engine and assets were set up properly (hah), then no object should have noticeable 'jaggies' at the highest (currently) possible resolution. If they do (see: Oblivion), then someone screwed up. Raising stock Dues Ex to 1600x1200 gives me no reason to turn AA on, at all.
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Anti Aliasing is an neccesity when using any LCD monitor. Heck. WINDOWS USES IT ON THE TEXT!
/me is the proud owner of a CRT monitor.
And using anti-aliasing on text (usually pre-rendered (if you really want to use the word rendered, here)) is far different than using it on, say, a space-shuttle model.
[EDITED TO CORRECT A SINGLE, RATHER EMBARRASSING SPELLING ERROR]
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No matter how high you set your resolution, jaggies can still occur if no AA is used.
It's not a reason of screwing up, it's a natural part of rendering things.
Also, you seem to be unaware that once you've increased your resolution to your monitor's native one, AA (and some other techniques I'm sure, but AA is simpler) is basically the only way to go to improve the clarity of rendered objects. No one here is saying that increasing resolution is worse than turning on AA, but you can only increase your resolution so much.
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Portal is a good example of a game that gets a huge facelift with at least 4x AA. In fact, it looks better at 1366x768 with 4x AA than 1920x1080 with no AA IMO, but that also has to do a lot with the game's art direction. There isn't a lot of texture or polygon detail you'll lose by dropping the resolution that much, but the game suffers really bad jaggies even at 1080p if you leave out AA. And this is on a 16" 1080p monitor, which is pretty high DPI.
But yeah, that's kind of the exception. I don't play any of my other games with AA, either because it doesn't really need it, or because it costs way too much.
As an aside, AA gets rid of rendering artifacts, like various types of shimmering, crawling, or garbled/noisy detail that is impossible to match regardless of your resolution (unless you have some sort of next-gen panel at like 600+dpi)
Like, no amount of cranking up the resolution will turn:
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/27/Mandelbrot_%22Turbine%22_desk_shape.jpg/799px-Mandelbrot_%22Turbine%22_desk_shape.jpg)
into
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/61/Mandelbrot_Budding_turbines.jpg/800px-Mandelbrot_Budding_turbines.jpg)
(K yeah, games don't look like that, but many can have details in scenes that will have the sort of noise shown above. Normal maps on ships in the distance in FSU is an example)
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No matter how high you set your resolution, jaggies can still occur if no AA is used.
It's not a reason of screwing up, it's a natural part of rendering things.
I didn't say that 'jaggies' wouldn't occur, I said that objects shouldn't have noticeable 'jaggies'.
Also, you seem to be unaware that once you've increased your resolution to your monitor's native one, AA (and some other techniques I'm sure, but AA is simpler) is basically the only way to go to improve the clarity of rendered objects. No one here is saying that increasing resolution is worse than turning on AA, but you can only increase your resolution so much.
/me is the proud owner of a CRT monitor.
I really shouldn't have to clarify these points.
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As an aside, AA gets rid of rendering artifacts, like various types of shimmering, crawling, or garbled/noisy detail that is impossible to match regardless of your resolution (unless you have some sort of next-gen panel at like 600+dpi)
Fair enough. Though for the most part I don't think it usually makes a difference.
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CRT's suffer from increasing resolution in other ways. Or rather, VGA connections do.
Have fun with your blurry 18273957x1298789 CRT display.
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The type of display or connection is irrelevant. CRTs need it just as much as LCDs do. I find some amount of AA essential even at 2048x1536 on a 20" CRT that maxes out the VGA bandwidth. The images Kolgena showed are an extreme example for a still image, but it becomes much more noticeable in motion. If you can't tell the difference at all between having AA off or on, your monitor has serious problems in other ways. :p
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Wait wait wait.
Bloodeagle: Please tell me that you aren't passing judgment on AA only based on your CRT. Because, like, that's kind of similar to saying "Snow doesn't suck" when you live in Hawaii.
And I'd have to say that CRTs don't need AA as much as LCDs do. You know that blurry mess your image turns into when some of the games use post-processing "AA" effects? Yeah, CRTs have that all the time, so jaggies are inherently less sharp than they are on LCDs. But just like how the edge AAs or blur shaders kinda suck at anti-aliasing, having a CRT doesn't mean that your image is completely aliasing-free.
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*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*
*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*
*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*
*headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk**headdesk*
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The only complaint I ever had with my old CRT monitor was that it took up half my bloody desk, if it wasn't for that, I'd probably still be using it. It's certainly better for playing older games because of the maximum screen sizes.
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Yeah, CRTs have that all the time, so jaggies are inherently less sharp than they are on LCDs.
If they have that all the time, they're probably defective. A properly focused and calibrated one shouldn't look like that.
I still use my old CRT since anything I replace it with would be a downgrade in some ways, especially for dark room gaming, but I find its 20" (marketed as 22") screen size to be lacking these days. 20" looks pretty small by today's standards. I would like to just get a large TV at some point after I graduate, and keep this CRT around for old games. The monitor itself is big but my desk is much bigger, so that isn't a problem. :p
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Hmm. The CRT I'm thinking of is most likely unproperly focused and/or defective.
It's also ancient-looking and is covered in chemical scarring and what have you.
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Maybe i'm wierd, but i like jaggies, and i hate softened out images. I really like how a picture looks without that kind of assistance. One of the reasons i absolutely hate dlp and lcd screens at low resolutions. Dlp and lcd screens really only look good at the highest resolutions their capable of. Anything less starts getting softened out more and more the lower you make the resolution.
The reason i liked crt monitors, was that they didn't soften out the picture at all. I got all my stout pixelated blocky glory at 320x240, because then i knew i got to see the picture for what it really looked like. If i wanted softened out images or no jaggies, then i'd turn on AA.
Jaggies get taken care of pretty well at 1024x768 and up. I just like the look of a game at a high resolution with no AA. Since you can minimize jaggies pretty great at high resolutions, why have AA on to drop performance (some people like AA at 1400x900, my dad sure does)? I'm also a big fan of anistropic filtering with vertical sync on a monitor that can at least do 85hz. Also, dvi and hdmi are way better than vga (vga you can notice some softness on everything to a small degree at high resolutions compared to dvi and hdmi).
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AA isn't meant to preserve original appearances of textures.
It's meant to help simulate reality.
Look at the top of a brick wall straight on. Now, tilt your head. Do you see it getting jaggy? No?
That's what games try to replicate by relying on AA. Sometimes they rely TOO much on AA and make crap that you HAVE to have AA on to look good. But there you go.
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I didn't mention a thing about textures, just jaggies...softening out an image to get rid of jaggies, raising the resolution to minimize them a lot, or turning on AA to get rid of them.
If i want good texture quality, i'll turn textures from low to high. But, i guess i'll be ultra clear. I like crt monitors because they don't naturally soften out images at low resolutions like dlp and lcd screens do. I get to see everything for all of its pixelated undisturbed glory with a crt whereas dlp and lcd screens only look good at max resolutions because lower resolutions get softened out. I like the look of a game on a crt with a dvi interface at or above 1024x768 with vertical sync taking advantage of at least 85hz refresh rate with some anistropic filtering. Jaggies (aka staircasing) after all are just noticeable pixelization due to digital approximation.
(http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/AY2001/cs4451_spring/projects/Five/jaggies.gif)
I don't know why you thought i was talking about texture compression.... :confused:
There are some very lazy implementations of AA out there. Some older graphics cards with AA turned on playing at 640x480, the graphics card would just render everything in 1280x960 (ie, some older graphics cards at lower resolutions with AA turned on just did nothing more than play the game in a higher resolution than what you're actually playing the game in...it does get rid of jaggies, but it is also non-revolutionary or anything like that).
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Certain types of AA will help textures. Any full-screen SSAA will do it, as well as any alpha-texture (think chainlink fences) SSAA techniques.
(In regards to old cards and their "lazy" implementations of AA, it's kinda ironic that the newest GPUs have brought that all back with SSAA :P Let's render an image 2x bigger and scale it down! It does look fantastic, even though your frames will drop through the ground)
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That's basically still the best looking method of AA out there (although modern cards do the scaling with a rotated or random sampling pattern). The problem is that its performance hit usually makes it impractical for modern games.
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Kolgena....that rather colorful picture hurts my head.....
A lot
:P
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I would rather aa was solved by having massive dpi
after all printers can do 2400 dpi would be nice if displays could do it
ps: I dont have a printer but I wonder if someone could do a little test to see at what dpi aliasing dissapears at if indeed it does
and aa is slightly less noticable on a crt its to do with the shape of the pixels
crt vs lcd
(http://img710.imageshack.us/img710/1272/monitorqr.jpg) (http://img710.imageshack.us/i/monitorqr.jpg/)
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The only way aliasing would disappear is if your screen resolution is greater than the resolving power of your eyeball, which will be dependent on the distance from the screen. I think I saw a graph or chart somewhere showing the relationships between screen size, resolution, and viewing distance so you can get the ideal image.
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You can also simulate distance from a screen by using different screen sizes. Such as, i bet 640x480 looks like non-pixelated goodness on a 3 inch screen compared to pixelated goodness on a 21 inch screen.