theyarecomingforyou wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 17:47:

Verno wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 08:48:
I'd much rather take faster loading times on the games I do use than waiting an hour to play some game I might never play again anyway.

The thing is, load times on modern games are really pretty minimal once you bypass the mandatory intros. Games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Borderlands 2 and Dishonored load in seconds. Obviously an SSD would be much faster still but I consider it more important to be able to launch any game I choose, rather than having to constantly juggle games between drives.Especially when most games I'll play for the 8-30hrs it takes to complete them and probably not go back to them for years. I've only got 50GB free on my SSD and all my SATA ports are in use. Plus Valve only recently added the ability to install games to different locations - before it was a complicated process involving symlinks, which would have to be reconfigured each time one reinstalls Windows.

It's only possible to keep a handful of games on an SSD and to do that you have to constantly juggle games back and forwards. I use Steam because it is less hassle that traditional installs and I don't want to make lots more work for myself for minimal gain.

Grifter wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 13:34:
actually the problem was not megatextures technology that worked perfectly fine. The problem with his game was that he had to compress the textures to get them on to a format that people could actually realistically use.

That's not actually true. Carmack revealed that the source textures were no higher quality, hence why the high resolution texture pack he originally talked up was scrapped. Further, the issue with megatextures is that there is no detail texture when you get close - they only look good from afar and Carmack admitted optimising the game for consoles, which is 720p. The game was a trainwreck from conception.

MajorD wrote on Oct 25, 2012, 15:08:
But, but.....look, it runs at a silky smooth 60FPS on both PC and console platforms.

Exactly. Anyone can get a game to run at 60fps if they scrap demanding features like high resolution textures, dynamic lights and making objects that consist of more than 10 polygons.

Beamer wrote on Aug 22, 2012, 12:06:

Grifter wrote on Aug 22, 2012, 11:45:
That sucks!!!! these were the guys that made some of my favorite old school titles during the PSOne days. Man I miss Colony Wars and G-Police

I hated G-Police. None of the HUD transparencies worked on my S3 Virge!


I remember them for the pc actually My rig just was not capable of running them back then




Crazy how many people remember these guys from the PSX not PC.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 16, 2012, 02:41:

Grifter wrote on Jan 16, 2012, 02:35:

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 16, 2012, 02:22:

Dev wrote on Jan 15, 2012, 22:47:

Jerykk wrote on Jan 15, 2012, 22:33:

It wasn't retroactive. So, when DLC was released for Crysis 2 and DA2 they were removed from Steam; Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins both came before the change, which related to the addition of F2P titles on Steam.

If that's true, then why are Dirt 3 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record still available on Steam? Both of those games have DLC that is still only available through GFWL and was released after both Crysis 2 and DA2 were pulled.



It just doesn't really make any sense.

Release date doesn't mean the date contracts were signed. There could be months difference between. I'd imagine the paperwork should be in order prior to a game's actual release to avoid extra delay.

For instance, what if those games still there (such as dirt 2) had signed old version contracts and ended up delaying the release date until after the other games were removed? Even if no delays at all happened, if one company got the paperwork settled a year ahead of release and the other company was tardy and only got the paperwork signed weeks before release, that would explain it.

Another thought, perhaps there's exceptions if the DLC is exclusive to GfWL, which it appears to be the case for both Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR (I don't own either so I don't know for sure, I only spent a few mins googling about it). Valve may not want to tangle with MS over this. In contrast, the DLC for DA2 on PC was through bioware/EA's special store as I recall.

My question is why is it okay for Valve to be greedy about demanding a chunk of profits from DLC they don't fund development on, but EA is oh so evil for wanting to get more of a foothold into the digital distribution space?

This is why I said gamers are hypocrites. At the end of the day it's a business. EA, Valve, Activision, TakeTwo are all in it for the money, none of them deserve any more adoration than any of the rest of em imo.

You have to understand dlc on the pc to understand why valve has taken the stance it has taken. Most dlc on pc games come thru a patch or were present in the game when launched.(most however come thru a patch). What EA is essentially doing is using Steam to provide the dlc in the form of a patch, and then locking out valve from any profits from the dlc by requiring the purchase for dlc to be made in game thru a vendor other than valve. It's not evil in valve's case EA is patching there games thru steam with dlc but not allowing valve to profit in anyway shape or form from providing the patch with the dlc on it.

Boohoo, So Gabe has a few less steaks and cheeseburgers, Valve isn't funding the DLC, why should they be entitled a cut from it? They're ALL greedy, putting any developer/publisher up on a pedestal as some holy bastion to gaming is silly.

RollinThundr wrote on Jan 16, 2012, 02:22:

Dev wrote on Jan 15, 2012, 22:47:

Jerykk wrote on Jan 15, 2012, 22:33:

It wasn't retroactive. So, when DLC was released for Crysis 2 and DA2 they were removed from Steam; Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins both came before the change, which related to the addition of F2P titles on Steam.

If that's true, then why are Dirt 3 and Dead Rising 2: Off The Record still available on Steam? Both of those games have DLC that is still only available through GFWL and was released after both Crysis 2 and DA2 were pulled.



It just doesn't really make any sense.

Release date doesn't mean the date contracts were signed. There could be months difference between. I'd imagine the paperwork should be in order prior to a game's actual release to avoid extra delay.

For instance, what if those games still there (such as dirt 2) had signed old version contracts and ended up delaying the release date until after the other games were removed? Even if no delays at all happened, if one company got the paperwork settled a year ahead of release and the other company was tardy and only got the paperwork signed weeks before release, that would explain it.

Another thought, perhaps there's exceptions if the DLC is exclusive to GfWL, which it appears to be the case for both Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR (I don't own either so I don't know for sure, I only spent a few mins googling about it). Valve may not want to tangle with MS over this. In contrast, the DLC for DA2 on PC was through bioware/EA's special store as I recall.

My question is why is it okay for Valve to be greedy about demanding a chunk of profits from DLC they don't fund development on, but EA is oh so evil for wanting to get more of a foothold into the digital distribution space?

This is why I said gamers are hypocrites. At the end of the day it's a business. EA, Valve, Activision, TakeTwo are all in it for the money, none of them deserve any more adoration than any of the rest of em imo.

Jerykk wrote on Jan 15, 2012, 23:14:

For instance, what if those games still there (such as dirt 2) had signed old version contracts and ended up delaying the release date until after the other games were removed? Even if no delays at all happened, if one company got the paperwork settled a year ahead of release and the other company was tardy and only got the paperwork signed weeks before release, that would explain it.

While possible, it seems fairly unlikely that the contracts for Crysis 2 and DA2 were signed after the contracts for Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR. DA2 and Crysis 2 were much higher-profile titles so it seems reasonable that EA and Valve would have finalized the contracts long before release in order to avoid potential launch issues or delays.

Another thought, perhaps there's exceptions if the DLC is exclusive to GfWL, which it appears to be the case for both Dirt 3 and DR2:OTR (I don't own either so I don't know for sure, I only spent a few mins googling about it). Valve may not want to tangle with MS over this. In contrast, the DLC for DA2 on PC was through bioware/EA's special store as I recall.

That's also possible, but why would Valve choose to tangle with EA instead of MS? EA is a much bigger player in the PC gaming market, whereas MS only releases games very rarely and nobody cares about them anyway because they're long-delayed ports of games that flopped on X360.

EddieTheHack wrote on Sep 20, 2011, 17:33:
Crytek used the money from their early success with farcry to rapidly grow the company. Part of their business model is becoming a middleware provider similar to Epic. CE1 never did anything aside from being used as a base for Dunia - which Ubisoft owns fully. CE2 got exactly 1 third party license and that game did a bunch of nothing. Crytek did 2 in house titles using 2 teams: Warhead and Crysis - they sold decently enough but not well enough to float a studio that has grown to 5 branches through buyouts. Whatever cash they had they spent on growing the company. CE3 is getting used for their in house titles only and has not landed a single AAA studio license. Crysis 2 did not sell very well aside from initial shipments and was a financial disappointment given how much hype and resources went into it - not even a year later and the game is effectively dead. Crysis 2 sold 835K units on 360, 590K units on PS3 and 210K on PC. That's a grand total of 1.635 million units. Warhead alone almost did that just on the PC. Crytek can not be in a fiscally stable position. They spent scads of money buying out other developers and have spent scads of money trying to fix CE3 and get the industry to use it - and its all be for nothing. Now they are building games to order from a 3rd party? If they are not nearly broke they will be soon. EA does own crysis. Its theirs and they control it. The Yerli brothers are idiots when it comes to business. Crytek would rather buy studios than self finance future projects and remain independent and stable. They could not float the 30-50 million it takes to make a AAA game on their own because of idiotic management decision rooted in staggering arrogance on the part of the Yerli brothers. They could have done something amazing, but instead they have been reduced to turning tricks for second rate publishers.

nin wrote on May 6, 2011, 22:14:

yes I would like to purchase first-person hooters.

Here ya go...

Rosco wrote on May 5, 2011, 22:55:
United Offensive is still the one I treasure the most. Base Assault FTW!