Sorry for the recent lack of updates. More stuff coming soon... promised!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1028f43d-9f1b-4fc0-9e37-4d7eaee8f06c)
March 2010 Archives
I finally got to play Heavy Rain, that almost non-Hyped game recently released on PS3. These are my thoughts on it.Heavy Rain is quite good. I mean, the last 7 hours I was totally sucked into the game. The first ~2 sucked monkey balls to the point of having really -annoying- scenes where I just wanted the game to f*cking start. I must say I had a great time in the mall scene, although thinking about it afterwards, it was a bit ridiculous and very, very improbable. I'm trying not to spoil anything!
After the first few hours, however, the story and the different scenes started to get really interesting. The mood of the game becomes powerful and I really got emotionally involved with it, especially with some of the main characters. While I got one of the "not so bad endings" (as there's no such thing as a good ending in this game), it just didn't feel fair. Also, there are some points during the walk-through that kind of feel stupid after the final scenes.
I mean, the character you're playing sometimes knows stuff you don't, but still acts how you, the one who doesn't know the truth, makes him act. But to be fair, the way it's done it's just part of the way the game handles the story. And it may be, in fact, considered quite well done.
Now, for the game mechanics themselves, I really hated them at some points. If you ever played Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy in the US) you know how most of the time the movements feel "natural". They added more to Heavy Rain... and some of them really got on my nerves. Rocking a baby took me 7 tries, because on the sixth I failed when leaving him back on the cradle. I shouted at the TV.
Maybe I just wasn't used to the feel of the Sixaxis, as it had been more than two years since I had even a Dual Shock in my hands.
The "action" scenes where quite long, and while I like that usually the limbs have their own buttons (for example, the legs are usually L1 and R1), the stuff you must do with your arms/hands uses all the four main buttons. The result? Dragon's Lair. You're just pressing buttons whenever you're told, but these buttons feel "random", as in, you cannot see them forthcoming, and make you fail, for example, in the most easy to block punches. Often it's not hard at all, and you have to be really slow to mess up a scene if you don't want it, except on one of the final fights, maybe. Still, I'm starting to hate these action scenes that seem to be very important if you want your game to be next-gen. OK, this time it was the core mechanic of the game, but still!
Anyway, the game is good, and it has some re-playability value, especially if you want to get all the trophies, as most times you'll need to overcome a scene in every single different way possible to get all the rewards. However, under my point of view, it's simply not that good. My expectations weren't really too high, but I think that probably the lack of great franchises for now in PS3 and the small collection of great games this console has, made this game way better than most of the games released recently (recently being since PS3 came out). It's worth a play, nonetheless.
As a final score, I'm giving it a 7.5 out of 10. Looking forward to the "Taxidermist" DLC, though...
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=f62f89f1-12c0-4bcc-8bd5-98aa298c06fd)
Today, Warhammer Online's Associate Producer James Casey featured one of the two "In Development" letters published by Mythic and GOA. I think it's worth mentioning, because I'd like to talk about some of the points he makes:
One of the things we've been discussing with the Core Testers lately is the economy of WAR. We received some excellent feedback and we're formulating plans based on that discussion, however we want to open up the dialogue to all players for broader input.
As we continue to look at Warhammer Online (where it's been and where it's going), we're examining the game from a macro and micro (big picture, little picture) level. One of the more macro areas we have discussed is the overall game economy. To put it bluntly, it's not where we or the players would like it to be. The designs and decisions made during development left us in a hard position, where, in order to jumpstart the economy, we need to make some changes. Before we go into that, let us look at the status of the economy now.
The basic principle of a viable sustainable economy is supply and demand. If these are balanced, economies can sustain themselves. Tipping too far to either extreme can cause an economy to falter. In WAR, one can see examples where we made a misstep based on this principle; too much supply for the demand (plenty of gold, nothing to spend it on), and not enough supply for demand (not enough items are tradable). In a way, these two dynamics feed one another.
Let's look at an example:
Public Quests provide loot bags which allow the owner to choose an item that is specifically tailored to their class and bind on pickup (BOP). This does two things; limits the potential demand for the product because it is class specific and makes it so it can't be offered in trade because it is BOP. This feeds the problem that there are not enough items being available. Compounding the issue, if the item is not useful to the person that earned it, they will sell it, gather gold, and due to the lack of items in demand, they have little to spend their gold on. It's a vicious cycle.
So how do we look at ways to change our current economy to balance both supply and demand? To accomplish this we need to look at solutions that will tweak the way items are rewarded. Not just how useful they are to the individual, but also as potential trade goods in the economy. We have a good idea on how to do this, but we want to throw the issue out there and get some feedback proactively, before we settle on a design.
What we'd like are some thoughts on how to change our world drops, PQ loot, and the like to make them more viable and valuable to the economy which will hopefully balance supply and demand. Examples would be: making items BOE versus BOP, making items useful to multiple classes, etc.
Making some changes will allow us to redefine the balance of supply and demand and give us greater flexibility in introducing items going forward, which will benefit characters of all ranks.
I'd like to explain this a bit for those who didn't play Warhammer Online. When it comes to economy, the game came out with one idea on mind, keeping it simple and controlling the inflation at any cost (especially after some bad experiences the company had with DAoC), The result was that after the first months, economy was conspicuous by its absence. The crafting professions were supposed to be "supporting" and not too deeply involved in game mechanics (as apparently the only other option was to clone World of Warcraft). This meant you couldn't craft armors, weapons, clothes or basically anything useful for quite a while, until they got re-vamped, adding some extra flavor to talisman making (allowing players to customize their gear a bit with some saucy extra bonuses better than those they could get with random talisman drops) and alchemy (potion making, really reduced to a couple of overpowered potions).
Still, it's basically something done usually inside the guild. Why? Because being more simple doesn't make it less boring, the game really forces you to have "friends" at higher levels (so, usually, if you are somebody who would care for those extra stats and buffs, you'll have a 99% chance of being in a guild) and the often diluted realm pride, mixed with the auction house being only in the major cities (which means during the first 30 levels you won't be going there unless you specifically need/want to), means you really won't do stuff just to sell it. Also, as there's nothing you can buy, and money is "cheap", trying to exploit the system gets you nothing.
Because, yes, they also tried to fight with gold farming, making it unnecessary because gold was "abundant". Or better, because you really didn't need to buy anything expensive, and even if you spent a fortune in that ultracool weapon, it would mean almost nothing when it came to power increase. Not to mention the best gear was bind on pickup, so, in the end, you needed to get it yourself.
No crafting, no trading... yeah, this seems like the economy was broken. But is it broken at its core? It looked so obvious when the game came out, and it's almost hilarious the way it's now presented. As if somehow it was surprising for somebody. "Hey, look, we enforced a economy based on players not wanting to purchase stuff, and now it sucks". Offer and demand? I'd even mention interaction or usefulness. Also, I've only understood one "solution" by reading the letter, making some of the Bind-on-Pickup items Bind-on-Equip, or maybe not binded at all. It's a bit poor, considering this still doesn't make 99% of the items more desirable, and only the highest sets would get some actual market love. And I mean -the highest- sets, as getting high level armors got easier and easier over time.
Maybe the economy on this MMO can still be saved. Maybe it does need a complete re-vamp. Only time will tell if it'll be able to improve or not. However, it does already state something about what happens when you completely forget about it when developing your massive multiplayer online roleplaying game. I really hope, by the feelings I still have for this game, that these solutions shut my mouth up. And who knows, maybe at some point in the future somebody writes a developer diary saying something like "hey, segregating players by their levels makes them segregated, lololol!".
Or maybe, as Ozzy sang when he became a weird old man, "I'm just a dreamer".
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=28832ddb-a6df-45cd-a979-2d019debad35)
If you are into retro-gaming you probably have some idea of what DOSBox is. If you're still not aware, it's the Disk Operating System (DOS) emulator. The project started several years ago, and it's aimed mostly towards video-games. It's quite mature and stable, and companies like GOG.com or Steam are using it, in most cases, to allow the execution of old games in modern computers. Have you ever tried to play a game pre-2000 in Windows 7, or even Windows XP? It usually won't run, as most of these games were written for DOS. Even when Windows 98 was already standardized, there was no reason to create a game that run on it natively. Even games that needed windows to run, still worked pretty much under DOS (it makes sense, as Windows itself was just, somehow, another layer over MS-DOS).
There are probably many more tweaks, but until now I didn't really need more. Also, notice that some particular games may be a bit picky, needing special settings for themselves.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4cccf57d-278e-418f-abdb-fe34e647b10f)
Anyway, for this article, I'm taking for granted that you, fellow reader, know what DOSBox is, and just need to get somehow a better emulation for your old game. I must say I'm not an expert on DosBox, and most of my DOS knowledge has diluted during the past years. I wouldn't even know how to use the expanded memory anymore. Or, at least, I wouldn't recall the command.
Also, I'd like to point out that all these tips worked for me, but that doesn't mean they should work for your computer, and of course it doesn't mean it will work for every game. However, in my experience, most of these """""hacks""""" do work. Although if they break your computer, I take no responsibility.
Almost all the changes are done through DOSBox's configuration file. If you installed DOSBox yourself (I pity you) you'll find the configuration file under C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\AppData\Local\DOSBox in Windows Vista / Windows 7, and under %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Application Data\DOSBox\ in Windows XP. If I'm not mistaken, it will be in your home folder in Linux. The file is called dosbox-x.yz.conf, (x.yz being the version number of the software). Please, note that this file used to be called just dosbox.conf, and that's the name it'll have when downloading a game from GOG.com or Steam. By the way, in these particular cases, the configuration file will be somewhere on the game folder. Just search for *.conf, inside the root folder and something like dosbox*****.conf will appear. The name may vary depending on the game. Any text editor will be enough to modify the file.
Now, let's get started...
1) CPU Settings
There are two things we should be probably changing here, especially if we're trying to run a game we bought through a digital retailer, as they are usually leaving the default options which, well, are shit.
core=simple (default "auto")
The "auto" setting changes the way the core is emulated during runtime. It may mess up the game at some points. As an example, the first Gabriel Knight is impossible to get through with dynamic emulation. Still, dynamic emulation might give your game a great performance improvement. If that's the case, it's better to set it directly on the configuration file than letting DOSBox guess it by itself. Just mess around with the option and see what works better for you.
cycles=15000 (default "max")
In my experience, specific numbers work better. You might have to throttle them a bit until you find your "perfect" setting, although most games will run OK with a number between 15000 and 20000. Any processor nowadays can handle these values.
2) Video Settings
The video options of DOSBox are scattered through various different sections. There are a couple of important options under [sdl].
output=overlay (default "surface")
This setting is a bit tricky. You'll get the best image quality (as in the proper, crisp image) with surface. The overlay option should give you some extra performance, at the loss of almost no image quality, although it won't be that significant without the dynamic core parameter. Other options such as opengl or ddraw (Windows only) -could- give you some extra performance, but they depend a lot on your graphics card and its drivers. Apparently, NVIDIA cards work a bit better with opengl than the ATI counterparts. Still, again, any graphic card with less than two years should be able to handle these modes without any problem. It's also said that you'll get the worse image quality. Not in my experience. Also, keep in mind that some modes will work better in full screen, and some will benefit from windowed mode.
fulldouble=true (default "false")
This option should only be changed on some 3D games, where our FPS go far beyond infinity and flickering/tearing occurs. Most of the 2D games won't benefit from this option, so it may be better to leave it in "false".
Let's move to [render]:
aspect=true (default "false")
While most games won't benefit from this option, you might need it for some of them, especially if using non 4:3 screens (think of 3D games). It barely hits the performance of the emulation.
frameskip=0 (default "0")
If you can avoid using frameskip, do it. A value up to 2 is acceptable, but anything beyond that will be very noticeable, and probably reduce the quality of the experience more than it will improve it.
scaler=normal2x (default "normal2x")
This setting changes the way the games are scaled. Normal2x gives the best retro result, just using nearest neighbor scaling, thus showing bigger pixels at higher resolutions. If you want to get a "better" quality, as in using gradients and more rounded edges, I suggest hq2x or hq3x (remember we're multiplying pixels, so hq3x means you'll need a 1920x1440 resolution screen for a game originally displayed at 640x480).
Finally, let's check the [dosbox] options.
machine=svga_s3 (default "svga_s3")
Any other option should be only used for specific games, such as cga versions.
memsize=16 (default "16" or "8")
This option changes the amount of emulated video memory. Usually 16 is enough for any game, but you might want to check 24 or 32 for later games.
3) Other emulation options (sound, joystick, IPX...)
I've heard many times that it's a good idea to disable everything you're not using. I've never noticed more than (hardly) a 2% improvement in the best case scenario, disabling the joystick, non-used sound cards and network options. What do have an impact, however, are the rates on the soundcards, and the sbtype. Usually 44100 will sound better than 22050 in any game post-1995 (or any game that does have 44KHz sounds), and anything below this will probably sound like an old walkie-talkie. However, the lower the number, the better the performance.
Different Soundblaster emulation options will also bring different results. For example, you'll need sbpro2 to get stereo sound on some games.
4) More tweaks
When trying to play Theme Hospital some time ago, I stumbled upon DOS32A. This small "Advanced DOS Extender" is meant to replace DOS4GW.EXE, a file you will find in most DOS games. To use it, just create a backup of DOS4GW.EXE on your game folder and copy dos32a.exe to the same folder, renaming it to DOS4GW.EXE afterwards. Easy!
What does this program do? Basically just replacing the horrible default extender by a proper set of functions.
Taken from the official page of the project:
DOS/32 Advanced DOS Extender is a drop-in replacement for the popular DOS/4GW DOS Extender and compatibles. During 1990'es many software applications and games were developed using Watcom C/C++ and Fortran compilers which allowed DOS applications to run in 32-bit flat protected mode environment, e.g. be "DOS Extended." This functionality was provided by the DOS/4GW DOS Extender from Tenberry Software, a middleware product which at the time was bundled with Watcom tools. While being royalty-free, DOS/4GW was big, slow and lacked many important features, all in favour of its commercial (and rather expensive) siblings. To remedy the situation a number of independent projects set out to create a replacement of DOS/4GW that could match and exceed it in terms of features, performance and price. DOS/32A is the result of such a project.
There are probably many more tweaks, but until now I didn't really need more. Also, notice that some particular games may be a bit picky, needing special settings for themselves.
Do you know more tricks? Just post them!
I've been messing with Construct these past days, and decided to finally give it a chance and try to do some basic stuff; some kind of basic platforming + hack&slashing game. Maybe even just a short level, no more than 5 to 10 minutes to get through. Anyway, as I'm still thinking on how to deal with it, I'll show you what it'll get for sure:
(Original size)
(Zoomed x2)
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=dd575ed8-fe02-431e-9c47-9e6141f71eb4)
(Original size) (Zoomed x2)Yes, it's our mandatory barbarian chick, holding two battle axes. Why's that? Well, I was thinking on giving her a sword, or even a two-handed something, but I thought that it would mean either reworking all the animations for left direction movement (time-consuming), or making the character left-handed each time she looks back, which didn't sound that good even if it's the way it's normally done.
Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to post an update showing some progress!
As the dungeon system has been completely re-vamped (will talk about it on my next post), we currently found ourselves with an attribute that's more or less useless. Leadership doesn't impact anymore the amount of people that can come with you to a dungeon, as these are currently open to everyone. However, there's still the Pressure system (and we don't plan to remove it). Should we keep the attribute just for this? Well... with one of the great mechanics being developed at this very moment, it will be replaced by something that may prove to be more interesting. What am I talking about, you may be asking? Well, stay tuned and you'll know!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=4cfdafd0-2439-4143-99d6-cc7e4104ef8f)
I'd like to add a picture or something to this post, but after reading the small paragraph I can't really think of much. Apparently, Zemanta couldn't either, considering the tags it found that could be appropriate:
I mean... furniture? What the heck, Zemanta?
In case you're not still aware of it, Sleep is Death, by Jason Rohrer (Passage), may be the next big thing. This two-player (and only two-player) storytelling game follows a very original formula. While one player plays the main character, the other one is in charge of -the rest- of the game. Everything! You may be thinking of something like the DM client for Neverwinter Nights or Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption, and I guess you'd be correct to a certain point. The possibilities, however, are a bit wider here. Plus, the more you play (and, especially, the more you play with different people) the more stuff you'll be able to do. Why? Because all the stuff created for one game is carried with you to the next one. A bit like Animal Crossing, when your character appears in someone else's console.
The game is already available for pre-order for just $9. If you're interested, just check Sleep is Death's official webpage!
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=efaa0bb7-0e62-412a-b077-f3a527e886f6)
To fully understand the game, however, nothing as good as a slideshow the developer himself prepared, explaining how the magic works. To check it, just click on this link or the image below.
