Fallout and Interplay

Re: Don't bother logging back on

That's true. Given you are fairly new here, though, try and post as much as you can at once i.e. Don't separate your posts into different trains of thought. And don't worry about going off topic, nothing stays on topic here for very long anyway.

It's the attitudes present in these statements (not so much the sentiments expressed) that makes me believe you have a great future ahead of you here.

 

Mr. Hyde

Ok so I was having this really shitty day yesterday, and subconsciously, Jeek looked like an excellent target for my abuse. The Smashing Pumpkins have a good song or two. I'm just kind of biased, I've loved the Beatles since I was just a little Aura Emenator, and sex has always been a favorite of mine too. The Pumpkins might be better than Led. I haven't heard a Pumpkins album with more than one or two good songs on it since their first one though. Arguing about music is a circular battle anyway, nobody wins, and everybody gets pissed. Punk rock sucks though. I don't need to go listen to it again. Plenty of my friends listened to all that when we were younger, and i didn't like it then either. To me it was about dodging responsibility, living a party and skate or die lifestyle, and had little or no redeeming intellectual value. Not to metion endlessly ripping on the same two chords to a pretty good beat. What I meant by "Make Mine Mike Patton" was that he is one of the few musicians that is pushing boundaries and creating new sounds. Fantomas, Tomahawk, Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, and there are some Peeping Tom Demos available out there too. That's some of the stuff I listen to, besides the Beatles of course. And yeah, I've read about Fallout 3, but really, they started development right after Fallout 2. Then they broke away for Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. They have had Fallout 3 in the back of a closet for years, and most info on the web about it is ancient speculation. They can't get that game on the shelves fast enough for me. Greyhawk is looking pretty creamy, but the atmosphere and story in the Fallout games (1+2, not tactics) is untouchable. I even got Wasteland from HOTU so I could stay in the mood.

 

There are games like Lunar Tycoon which can be make very cheaply and fast as the program they are base on is at least data back to the 1960's as text base hacker game play on mainframe computer. Than good CPRG or stragery game is more work and harder to program. Norrwind took I believe over 4 year to make and it show.

 

Re: Don't bother logging back on

And I thought derailing was bad around here...

AE, don't worry, because Jar loves you, like a son, and he will treat you as one.

Beware the sexual abuse.

 

Re: Mr. Hyde

Well, they started again. After their BG3 game got canned due to them losing the rights to any future PC BG games, they had the resources to start again. Now it's still not officially announced and in early stages of development, but there are actually a fair amount of gameplay and system issues being discussed on the boards. Enough to get (cautiously) excited about, that is. If you want to read up on what has been said so far check out: http://www.nma-fallout.com/fallout3/faq.shtml

 

I hope they make it so that you donot need than 3-d card to play it.

 

Ahem!

Well, while I understand why you hope for that, I must say that it is very unlikely that you get your wish granted. I have suffered too, when developers start crack-potting and believing that all PCs out there had more than $3000 in cutting-edge hardware. There is a reason why you won't see Fallout 3 (Project Van Buren? www.nma-fallout.com for more info) in the 2-D we have all grown to love: 2-D graphics, while not processor-and-graphics-card hungry, take a lot more time to develop than 3-D. When you develop in 2-D, you have to draw EACH frame of animation for ALL character models doing ALL the actions. Thats the reason why you can't get a tribal to use a minigun in Fallout 2 as the character model is lacking the animation frames necessary to do so. This happened by one of two possible reasons: a) Developers didn't think a tribal using a minigun fit the setting (very reasonable but it can have many counter arguments) or b) Developers didn't have the time necessary to do ALL character models to end and chose only to do what was necessary in the game. A part of that problem passes to other aspects of the game left incomplete (see the EPA, Space Shuttle, the Den orphanage, etc) since developers have to cut down on some things. 3-D graphics, on the other hand, are very simple to draw: you set a "skeleton" model of the character and paste a texture that will represents the different character models (tribal, raider, Big Jesus Mordino, etc) and voilá, you got yourself a character model. You don't have to draw each frame since an animation program handles that. Also the graphic acceleration routines have probably been optimized to handle 3-D graphics (compare the speed when you try a fullscreen Directdraw test to the one you get when doing a fullscreen Direct3D 9 test). I hope I at least helped throw some light in this issue.

 

With the bad ecomony I would think game companies would realizm that 80 % of the computer game player donot have 3-d accerate card.

 

Somehow I doubt THAT figure too. Almost all computers sold nowadays have graphics handlers capable of accelerating 3D graphics. Infact, it's very hard to BUY a card nowadays that doesn't have some sort of 3D acceleration functionality. Sure, it may not be very good, but it's there in most cases.

Add to that the fact that just over 1/3 of all motherboards on the market today have built-in 3D graphics handlers and there isn't much of a chance NOT to have some sort of 3D capability with a computer any less than 5 years old.

I agree that some people out there still don't have 3D capabilities, and some countries may not have much at all, but to state that 80% of computer game players don't have 3D cards is just rediculous. It would be a serious problem to the games industry, since just under 1/4 of all games on the market today (admittedly doesn't include those old, faithful games you can download etc.) employ some form of 3D processing. Additionally, over 2/3 of games developed in the last 2 years are either 3D based in some form or other, or require advanced graphics handlers in order to process the effects in the game.

 

Well I have a Gateway with than built in graphic card with 4meg Intel with 256 meg of memony than I cannot play Wizardry 8 anymore (able to with 128 meg of memony). Then may-be programmer need to be able to proramming better so they game can use my card.

 

It unlikely it has anything to do with the programming. Just adding extra memory won't affect it. It's more likely something is screwed with your system. Have you done a memory integrity check? Maybe your new memory is bad so when it's used it doesn't work? Or maybe the installation of the game is corrupt. Try reinstalling the game and seeing of that helps. Or maybe looking for a patch for the game.

 

It's good.

Baldur's Gate on PS2 and X-Box is more of an action game than the PC version, but still better than most console RPGs. The graphics are sweet, the gameplay is fun, all in all, I thought it was a damn fine game. Got pretty good reviews too I think.


"I'm Batman." - Batman, "Batman"

 

I chech my memony and if my memony was bad other games will not work either.

 

3d cards: expensive for us, convenient for them

2d graphics: nostalgic and loveable and beautiful and sexy for us, expensive and time consuming for them...

but who controls everything anyway? the nsc! it is my theory that the national security council played a hand in getting us to spend that extra 400 buckaroos on our 3d accelerator cards in order to stimulate our economy after 911...

i betcha nvidia has thousands of afghani pow's chained to soldering irons making geforce 5s as we speak...

 

TRUE!! Why else would the encampment in Cuba be labelled "Camp X-Ray"!?

 

True. Just a suggestion though. I just find it extremely unlikely that it's down to the extra memory that Wizardry 8 doesn't work. Adding extra memory would have absolutely no impact on the game. You have lower limits for playing games, but if every game imposed an upper limit then it would be stupid.

Sure, some old games don't run if you upgrade your CPU to too high a speed because you get divide by zero errors, or the game just runs too fast to play. If you upgrade you OS then you may not be able to run some old games because of imcompatability. However, memory has no affect at all, except to enhance gameplay if the game supposts it. W8 is also a fairly recent game so that makes it even more suspect....

 

Shit, I have a $40, 32MB ATI Rage Pro in my crappy P3 450, and I can play some new games, and just about anything over a year old. Also there is a program called Moslo that you can use to set your processor speed slower while playing older DOS based games. I think i got it from a link on Home of the Underdogs. Not every development team has the time and money to make all their games in gorgeous, life like 2-D. I mean think about it, would you rather pay 5 artists to do all your art in 3D in 5 months, or pay fifteen artists to work with 2D sprites for a year? It's business folks, keep up or drop out; cause progress doesn't wait for poverty to catch up.

 

what the hell? that doesnt have anything to do with anything...

 

That's what they all say, you Democratic rodent! :lol:

 

Ok, I'm confused now. DID you have a point Syrian? If so, I'm missin it completely.