nowadays games
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As a tike an Atari 800XL cost me 6 months allowance and several lawns cut. Now an XBOX 360 cost is equivalent to 2 days per diem.
I will transmit this information to Vladimir.
The game I had the most fun with was Dynamix's "Red Baron". Now everything is geared towards complete realism in the flight sims or complete boredom in the first-person shooters. You are right, "the magic is gone" because the fun was taken out of everything due to the increased capabilities of technology. This is why I believe that when technologies are used beyond their natural capabilities whatever they touch turns to crap. Games are a perfect example...
Steve Naidamast Black Falcon Software, Inc. blackfalconsoftware@ix.netcom.com
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
Alright, #1 answer: You're old. Remeber when you were young and you looked at your parents and couldn't understand why they didn't "get" the stuff you were into? But it didn't bother you because they were old? Yeah. Now you're the old guy and your inner child is laughing at you. #2 answer: Games are in some very significant ways better than they ever were and in some ways they've gotten worse. Ways in which they are better: Graphics, sound. Ways they are worse: They take more money than ever to make. There's been tons said on this so I'll just to the end: Investors are why every game is derivative and game developers are discouraged from taking chances and trying anything new. Three decades of dedicated study and ludology hasn't been allowed to advance in any practical way. There's still the independent video game scene, a chance for experimentation at the pearl of the technological advances generally speaking. But if you find more value in play than in pretty screen caps on the box art then that's for you.
Visit Cymon's Games for a new program each week!
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
Few things... Graphics over gameplay and story. Many games today give an adrenaline rush for approximately six hours and then it's game over. Some don't even make the six hours... Perhaps DRM takes some of the fun away if you're keen on that sort of thing. If you aren't and you download everything that might make playing the game less rewarding because you didn't have to do anything to get the game (you might as well gotten 100s). The amount of games on the market today. Why pick X over Y? Are they really that different? Most of the time they aren't... Most games today are pre- or sequels to games we played in the 90's and early 00's. We know them by now... It just so happens I have a couple of gaming magazines right here. On average seven out of ten(!) titles on the cover are pre/sequels! I'm currently playing Final Fantasy VII (1997) again, because it STILL is one of the best games ever made. Graphics have their charm, but they're far from todays standard. But this game just has the best story ever and keeps you tied to the screen for HOURS. If any game today would be able to do that you'd finish it in a day. Last christmas I got Skyrim, which I think is a great game, but after about 40 hours of play it all got the same to me. Lack of story. Mass Effect had that amazing story that kept me playing for hours, but I finished it in a couple of evenings (15-20 hours gaming I guess, which is decent today, but nothing compared to the 50+ I spent on many others). Sure, there's some great games out there, but you have to look extra hard for them, because for every great game there's a whole lot more of sucky games :(
It's an OO world.
public class Naerling : Lazy<Person>{
public void DoWork(){ throw new NotImplementedException(); }
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
I second what "guesst" posted. It's both "What is it?" and "Who is it?" "Who is it?" comes in with a 80% ~ 99.99999% weight factor ~ Now you're the old guy and your inner child is :laugh: laughing :laugh: at you. "What is it?" comes in with a 0.00001% ~ 20% weight factor. For those who disagree, that's yer inner older self mocking you...
The best way to improve Windows is run it on a Mac. The best way to bring a Mac to its knees is to run Windows on it. ~ my brother Jeff
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What do you think of 0 a.d.? It's got (or aims to have) wonderful graphics, and no story at all. Still, it's IMO promising.
I had checked out 0AD (you're referring to the open source project right?) a couple (or maybe more) years ago. I thought the graphics were interesting. I think aiming toward innovation in graphics or any part of a game is worthwhile. I'm not a big fan of games that contain excellent graphics and no gameplay, but as a programmer am interested in learning how people do different things. I thought it had died out, but I'll check it out again. When did you last look at it? what is your opinion? [EDIT]BTW, have you played Caesar III? It's one one my all time favorites. Caesar IV (I played the demo, couldn't find a CD in the shops, I guess it didn't do too well), was in 3D and did what I thought was a pretty good job of it. The 0AD guys were trying to achieve a 3D RTS right? Or was it governance?[/EDIT]
"It was when I found out I could make mistakes that I knew I was on to something." -Ornette Coleman "Philosophy is a study that lets us be unhappy more intelligently." -Anon.
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For me games have lost the enjoyment for a few of reasons: - too many first person shooters. Yawn. Including so called computer RPGS - yes it really helps immersion in the game world to have your character having the same level of intelligence and manual dexterity. Tits to that, I want to play a role, not me in a funny suit. If I wanted a funny suit I'd become a furry. - lots of developers and publishers place graphical sophistication over making an interesting game. They seem to think a game is just like an interactive film with as few controls and choices as possible. Ooo look at the game world graphics, aren't they good? Shame you can't do anything apart from fairly tightly scripted choices. Does it sound like I'm ranting? And I work in the effing industry. When I were a lad 'twere all fields 'round 'ere...
Myst is definitely a tightly scripted game, but I found it very interesting. It's follow-on was so boring to me, I don't recall it's name and I lost interest in an hour. Don't know what makes a game interesting. Maybe I lost interest because the only winning solution to Myst is to walk away after you've found everything you need to know. It pretty early on suggests that may end up being the solution. What I like are challenges. While reading a C++ book, it brought up a knight's move game where you have a chessboard, put a single knight on the board, using chess rules for moving a knight, move to every square on the board without repeating a single move. You're probably yawning already, but I found it interesting enough to make two versions of the game using JavaScript. First I wrote a recursion routine in C++ (The book was covering recursion, which wasn't new to me. Never did read the book's solution.) using it's ideas on not covering every possible solution. I picked the 10 unique starting positions on the board, used the book's "best" pick for the next move and it found a first pick solution, 9 out of 10 times. Since 1 of the 9 solutions I found was 1 knight's move away from the starting point I learned, EVERY position had a solution. So, I went to JavaScript and wrote up the game showing the stats I'd used to pick my "best" pick. I quickly found out that it was really easy to win starting from the position that had failed, even when I started the game by intentionally ignoring the "best" pick. Do I think this game could be marketed? No. Do I find it interesting? Yes. Do I play it often? No. Do I still occationally pull this game up and play it? Yes. Why? I don't know, being reminded of it, maybe?
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
I'm still an avid gamer, just entering my forties. Been playing games since my brother brought home a brand new Atari VCS (before the name was changed to the Atari 2600) in 1977. Since then, I've played on the Commodore 64, C=128, C=Amiga and a 386. Then I picked up a PlayStation in 1998. Over the years, I've picked up several systems, including my current PlayStation 3. I agree there are far to many FPS games. I enjoyed Doom and Duke Nukem 3D. I've since burnt out on them. Unless it has an intriguing setting or storyline, I don't play FPS anymore - Bioshock II was my last FPS, heh. I prefer the RPG genre, but some of those are lacking as well. Final Fantasy XIII was okay - story was interesting, game system was not. Dragon Age II felt more like an action game than an RPG (but I still mostly enjoyed the game). I think it's somewhat telling that I spent money recently at GOG.com for some of the older RPGs. I may get the Ultima series in the near future... :) Flynn
_If we can't corrupt the youth of today,
the adults of tomorrow will be no fun...
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wizardzz wrote:
Also, because there is so much money involved, and so many people working on it, they are created by committee which I am starting to feel more and more leads to mediocrity. Movies and TV's shows written via committee suck compared to one where someone has a clear artistic / creative lead / vested interest.
Errr...there is so much money involved because the games are vastly more complex. Try playing 'hunt the wumpus' (the text one) or 'pong' and then compare that to something like Halo.
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I think that's what's missing these days. Most games have very similar story lines these days. Also, a particular rant I've had for a long time: WHY OH WHY are games that run on things like IPads and IPods (despite running on far more powerful games than classic games run on) absolute shit?! Why would I want to play some crappy game where all you do is simple mundane tasks (E.G. Angry birds, a game I've seen where you throw fruit around and then cut it up, various driving games) Classic games were made to be FAR better than this in less program space and on systems with limited memory and processing power. Thing's like Zork could keep you entertained for hours, all the games that run on IPads are crappy and maybe keep you interested for a few minutes. In fact, they are all like the Flash games you can find to play on the internet. :mad:
See if you can crack this: b749f6c269a746243debc6488046e33f
So far, no one seems to have cracked this!The unofficial awesome history of Code Project's Bob! "People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid."
I've done a little iPhone programming on the side for a small indie developer. The outfit is dominated by young hipsters who think if you make the graphics "beautiful" the thing will sell. The functionality isn't important as long as it's beautiful. Even the fact that their sales are inversely proportional to the quality of the graphics in their various apps doesn't seem to convince them. I wrote more complicated games on a TRS-80 back 1980 then what they want me to program for them on an iPhone. But hey, the graphics are pretty. Trust me, I'm not giving up my day job...
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Long live PONG!! :-D
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! Code, follow, or get out of the way.
When I was a teenager, we had pin-ball machines. A dime got one game, a quarter got three. I'd spend a dime, play several hours, sell 10 games for a quarter. Couldn't afford the gas at a quarter per gallon, so bicycled to the bowling ally that had the machines. Asteroids came out when I was in college. That was fun.
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
Vasily Tserekh wrote:
as i did when I was a child or a teenager
Ask someone who was 5 y/o during the Cold War era how their childhood was. Or ask the woman who, as a little girl, was toted around in a VW bus from ages 3-7 by her peace-loving mother what it was like to have only a single doll to entertain herself with for that whole time. Point is stuff was great when you were a kid becuase you were a kid.
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When I was a teenager, we had pin-ball machines. A dime got one game, a quarter got three. I'd spend a dime, play several hours, sell 10 games for a quarter. Couldn't afford the gas at a quarter per gallon, so bicycled to the bowling ally that had the machines. Asteroids came out when I was in college. That was fun.
Ahhhh, the good ol' days, riding bikes to video arcades - hey at least we were active and sort of social! :-D
- S 50 cups of coffee and you know it's on! Code, follow, or get out of the way.
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
The good news in all of this tech pushing is that we only have to wait till 2019. One of the big guys at Nvidia said they will reach photo realism in 2019. If you can’t make anything that looks more real it will force developers to revert back to content to set them apart from other games. Guess we need to wait this out :D
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Someone tell me why i dont enjoy games today as i did when I was a child or a teenager i still can remember how i played the first RE back in 98 or how i played indiana jones and the fate of atlantis back in 95 or Metal Gear Solid for PS1 or Agent 007 in N64. nowadays games seems stupid to me i just finished playing the last call of duty, death island and battlefield 3 and i sense somthing is missing What is it?!!!!
Back in the dark times, 1980, I played a CLI-based Star Trek game on a multi-user PDP11. You would string commands together to move to a location/fire on an enemy/run away.
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Aescleal wrote:
Does it sound like I'm ranting? And I work in the effing industry. When I were a lad 'twere all fields 'round 'ere...
Then you also know how users are. They don't care very much about your brilliant programming as long as it does not make their computer explode. Unlike all other features your game may or may not have the graphics can be shown on the box, in ads or in the internet. Nobody really reads endless sermons from marketing. It's images that get the customer's attention, nothing else. And let's talk about fans. They always want exactly what they are used to, yet in unexpected new ways. They will shriek and snarl if you change too much. They will also shriek and snarl if you change too little. You might get away with changing nothing and selling it to them a second time as 'expansion'. Otherwise it's better to work on those things they can't possibly mind (the graphics) and be very careful with everything else. Understandable with those production costs at stake. You mentioned scripts and how they are an inadequate substitute for real AI. True, but how often have you seen such an AI in a game? How many programmers do you have that could pull that trick off without seriously endangering the project? It's still a field with more questions than answers. I have tried my luck and even got some results. You could give it inputs and than ask it what it wants to do. It started with no knowledge at all and over time it learned how to interpret the inputs and make valid decisions, including picking the right moment to give up when facing defeat. I change the rules and it adapted. It would also have adapted when players found out how to defeat it. Sounds like a vast improvement over scripts, right? The downside was that it was unpredictable how it would adapt. One of its earliest strategies was to run away at the first sign of trouble. Artificial cowards. A good choice because their primary goal was survival, but also not really good for creating an exciting game. If it 'learned' that we are using them as cannon fodder it might very well be that they go back to that behavior at any time. Or they might actually find a disadvantage of the players to exploit and become almost invincible.
At least artificial intelligence already is superior to natural stupidity
CDP1802 wrote:
You mentioned scripts and how they are an inadequate substitute for real AI.
Games being scripted doesn't mean only AI. It means instead of giving you freedom to explore (and get lost), act (and blow away the designer's path), they provide a normalized 'cinematographic' experience, with dialogue and cut-scenes. Sometimes it can be done well (GTA, Mass Effect IMHO), but most of the time it's boring and limiting.
'As programmers go, I'm fairly social. Which still means I'm a borderline sociopath by normal standards.' Jeff Atwood 'I'm French! Why do you think I've got this outrrrrageous accent?' Monty Python and the Holy Grail
