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Skeletor

What other games are you waiting for?

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sargebaldy said:

similar in the sense they both have a shoddy engine maybe =P anyway, heretic isn't an id game (even if romero produced it and it uses doom's engine). try using two id games for comparison instead.

Okay then, Catacomb Abyss and Wolfenstein 3D are more similar than Quake 1 and Quake 2.

And lets not forget the fact that each Commander Keen games was virtually identical (other than the graphics getting an upgrade for no. 4 onwards).

Shaviro: sorry, but the idea that you needing good graphics/physics in order to have an immersive and believable game is complete nonsense to me. I - and I'm sure many, many, many others - have been able to get completely and utterly immersed in computer games almost since they first existed :)

The most immersive game I've ever played (and it remains incredibly immersive to this day) was an old ZX Spectrum game released back in 1984 called Lords of Midnight. There have been several attempts to update the game with new graphics, but they actually make it feel less immersive.

IMHO saying that good graphics/physics are needed to make a game immersive and believable is somewhat like saying a good book or audio drama can't be immersive and believable unless someone turns it into a film. ;)

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NiGHTMARE said:

Okay then, Catacomb Abyss and Wolfenstein 3D are more similar than Quake 1 and Quake 2.

um, are you actually serious?

catacombs3d


wolf3d


quake


quake 2


i don't think it takes a trained eye to tell which two are most similar to one another.

NiGHTMARE said:

And lets not forget the fact that each Commander Keen games was virtually identical (other than the graphics getting an upgrade for no. 4 onwards).

uh, except that all had completely different monsters, items, textures, locales, and storylines, sure. but the commander keen era also only lasted about a year, not a full decade before they got bored with it.

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NiGHTMARE said:

IMHO saying that good graphics/physics are needed to make a game immersive and believable is somewhat like saying a good book or audio drama can't be immersive and believable unless someone turns it into a film. ;)

However, films generally have much worse physics than books.

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Y'all should do what I did awhile back and stop trying to convince these Luddites that games with good graphics are worth playing. It's like arguing with a rock.

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NiGHTMARE said:

blah blah blah


Are you denying that good graphics/physics will help on the immersiveness? Anyways. I'm sure the old monster movies from the 50's were immersive too back then. Who needs CGI? Let's go back to puppets, it was immersive back then so let's not evolve.

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My point is not that it has to lack beauty and such to be great, but if the sheer -emphasis- is on making everything lightmapped, texturemapped, veinmapped but forgetting to add controls, gameplay and anything of the like, it -will- suck.

It's not very reliable to take the observations of some playtesters seriously, as it is possible they're just people pulled off the street and profess "oooh~... shiny~..."

NiGHTS was, for the Saturn, a graphical showcase of the time even if some design aspects were simplistic and the level enemies were sprite. It was good not because it was very pretty, but had gameplay, diverse level and even some more hidden aspects which could be overlooked (the A-life system). That, and it's rather fun to kill the poor little Nightopians if you're feeling cross ("squwark~! O_O;;").

F-Zero GX is a current favorite of mine, too. Flashy graphics, but it still keeps the basis of the series at heart... fast racing, interesting tracks and the challenge of mastering the machines. It went so far as to add a customization engine, where you can use bits and pieces you buy to create a completly tailored racer. You may create and apply decals, too. It wasn't in the previous versions, but took nothing away from the game's "soul". It's not about killing the other racers, which is -very- popular, but about just racing. It didn't change the concept, but just added to it, especially in the optional story mode.

Just because the graphics are outdated doesn't mean something's bad. People still play Super Mario Brothers. Let's just hope Doom 3 at least tries to keep the heart of Doom, because if it doesn't... it should have been given another title.

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Shaviro said:

Are you denying that good graphics/physics will help on the immersiveness?

No, he's saying that it's not essential to creating an immersive experience (at least that's how I interpreted his comment).

Doom is still a damn immersive experience for me, despite the fact that its graphics are dated and may be considered "bad" by todays standards.
Granted, good graphics can help adding immersiveness, but it's not absolutely essential if you ask me - gameplay and sound play a far more vital role in this area than graphics. But good graphics are, apart from being something that can help adding additional immersiveness if used right, just damn sexy to look at.

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Or, to compare it to something else...

Not all really, really hot women (or men) are any good in bed, or anything else, for that matter.

Context XD.

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I dunno about the heart of DOOM, but I agree that a great game doesn't need great graphics. Else, all handheld games would have burnt and crashed a long time ago.

But I don't understand all the skepticism against DOOM 3.

A game with groundbreaking graphics/sounds/physics, intense/terrifying atmosphere, consistent and unified game world, adrenaulin-pumping gameplay, great level/model designs, a decent plot, and an incredible level of interaction with the environment, is excellent in its own rights. DOOM 3 seems to be able to accomplish all that, so it should turn out to be great, IMO.

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Zoorado said:

But I don't understand all the skepticism against DOOM 3.

Some of the sceptic folk are probably people who expected "cool shit!!!1111111" like alt fire modes or people who are dissatisfied that it doesn't throw tons of monsters at the player.
[edit]oh yeah and of course people who think Doom 3 gets too many positive comments, so they try to even the score by criticizing its pants off.[/edit]

But I agree that while graphics aren't alpha and omega, I think Doom 3 looks like a game that really is quite capable of exploiting good graphics in such a way that the experience becomes more immersive.
However, I get the impression that it's much more than just the graphics that'll make Doom 3 immersive.

Sound springs to mind, level and monster design spring to mind.

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Shaviro said:

Who needs CGI? Let's go back to puppets, it was immersive back then so let's not evolve.

You know, a majority of the time, puppets actually look more real than CGI. Actually, I have yet to see CGI that had I not known better I'd think it was a puppet or something.

Actually v2.0, "puppet" is a generic term. It can range anywhere from a marionette to a sock to an animatronic suit to an animated computer model (yes, you heard me right; Max Headroom was technically considered a "puppet"). In short, all it means to say something is a "puppet" is that it's a prop representation of a character controlled completely by human action. The problem is that since it took a long time for puppets to evolve from what they originally were to the more diverse kinds now, people have popularly (and ignorantly) made the term synonymous with animatronics and "lower forms" of puppetry.

End lecture.

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well i WAS waiting for homeworld II, but its out and i already got it. its harder than the first.

Doom III is about it, oh and half-life II. parasite eve III.... opps i mean silent hill III for PC and or X-box
though parasite eve III would be cool.

other than that not much is on my list

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if u say duke 4 ur dumb, cause it aint ever coming out.

original release was in 1998 that was 5 years ago! and if by some chance it does come out... it will suck

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the reason that it is taking them so long is that they start from scratch every time there is new Ut engine update(or something to that effect). anotehr thing is that they are wasting time on is they are porting it to the Atari! i mean cmon, who is really gonna want to play Duke4 on an Atari!

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Zell said:

anotehr thing is that they are wasting time on is they are porting it to the Atari!

...

for your own good: edit your post to say something else before you embarass yourself.

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Zell said:

the reason that it is taking them so long is that they start from scratch every time there is new Ut engine update(or something to that effect). anotehr thing is that they are wasting time on is they are porting it to the Atari! i mean cmon, who is really gonna want to play Duke4 on an Atari!


rofl. Dude, that was an APRIL FOOL'S JOKE.

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BBG said:

rofl. Dude, that was an APRIL FOOL'S JOKE.

Duke 4 is an april fools joke.

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atari, fun times

duke 4 is a dead project. last i heard they where all but bankrupt because of it. hel i think each license if like $250,000 a pop plus all the labor, adds, and other stuff. so i figure a few mill, at least, down the drain

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Despite my better judgement, if it does ever come out then I'll have to buy it. Just to see what's taken them 5-10 years...

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chilvence said:

Despite my better judgement, if it does ever come out then I'll have to buy it. Just to see what's taken them 5-10 years...


It will come out. But they just changed engine last year. It'll take at least another 3 years for the game to be completed, provided they don't make significant changes to the technical aspects of the game in the near future.

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Cecillia said:

Let's just hope Doom 3 at least tries to keep the heart of Doom, because if it doesn't... it should have been given another title.

Exactly. I'm not sure what to think of Doom 3 at the moment. Some of the things they mention adding sound a lot like they're trying to imitate Half-life, which doesn't set well with me at all. Done right, some of those elements could be really cool, but too much focus on them will wreck the game, make it all glitz and no gameplay. Id did a good job with the previous installments in the Doom/Quake series though, so I still have some faith that this one will kick ass too. I really hope they'll still include secret areas and kill counts, because those two things, while small, are an important part of the formula, IMHO. And if there have to be less monsters, I at least want ones that have strong AI and interesting abilities above just run and shoot, which judging by what's been said is the case. I also hope it will have seperate levels or hubs, rather than just one long-ass progression like Half-life, and that there will be some cool secret levels to discover.

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Shaviro said:
Are you denying that good graphics/physics will help on the immersiveness? Anyways. I'm sure the old monster movies from the 50's were immersive too back then. Who needs CGI? Let's go back to puppets, it was immersive back then so let's not evolve.


They'll help immersiveness, but, in respect to a movie, how many times can you watch a movie with "great visual special effects" and get something out of it for those visual illusions? Not many, and you'll probably want to watch another such movie or one with better effects soon. Even the word "immersive" gives the idea of pushing you down into the substance, but it doesn't necessarily imply the ability to make you stay there...

As for old movies, I don't think they were as immersive as newer movies are; I think we're always pretty conscious of visual technical development and I'm pretty sure those old movies seemed pretty funny to most people back then. Even now Alien is one of my favorite horror movies, but not because of any sort of standard scare factor gimmick that can be obtained through using the latest visual effects (which the movie had for its time and was relatively effective at.) But it has something else in its design and make-up that gives it an awesome atmosphere and an admirable style, and that in the long run makes it one of the better movies in its gerne. I think there are some things that are more relevant to consider in movies than the level of technical devolpment or even the particular usage of that tech. Both can be admirable, especially the latter, but both are rather ephemeral and/or secondary. Movies certainly are visual effects, but in relation to many things, and not necessarily just "physics" or "immersiveness" or whatever two or three factors drive the graphics cards/devlopment race nowadays. Same goes with games, they are games, not simulators. Simulators are cool and all, but confusing games with them isn't going to help, if all it helps is the games store next door as you go buy a new game often to try out new visual effects as opposed to playing a game because it's addictively fun.

I haven't been playing DOOM much these past few weeks, just a bit on weekends, as my mind's been on other things. Yesterday my homie got me on ICQ and we said "hey, let's play a game." So we had a match over Dweller2 Map11, and when I was playing I was like "hey, is this on low detail mode?" Actually it wasn't... it's just that since I hadn't been playing for a while it had become less familiar and I had noticed the incredibly low res. Then this feeling (not a bad one really, just "wow, it's so low!") went away, of course, as the game carried me on, and the action took over me. It's all a question of adaptation to a medium, after that, it's a question of how good a game is. Newer games tend to be efferctively more catchy? Mostly, yeah. But after that process of sitting down and getting immersed, what?

Evolution? Maybe in the modern sense of "change," but not in the humanistic sense or in the sense of a renaissance-styled progression. That latter acceptation applies to visual simulation maybe, since the tech is in development with certain aims in mind (realism, practical functionality, etc.) and will continue to "grow." But for games, that "progression" only helps in the sense that it ugres the software companies to invest in it for thier convenience, fine. But also, it partially destroys the possiblity of having games with a long life span (except in the residual sense, there's always someone playing almost any game,) and it drives many people away from playing perfectly fun and exciting (and also cheap) games just cause they're not part of the latest tech fad.

This is all part of inevitable way things are; the development of hardware and software and the accompanying entertainment train, and I'm not even complaining (I don't even have enough time to play a single game with the two other players I found willing to play it over here.) But neither am I gonna get carried away by all this "development," or over-praise anything for secondary qualities, or have faith in anything just because it's new.

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