Ah, okay, now we're getting serious. TA was my favourite RTS game and somewhere up in my top 5 games ever.

Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't TA:Kingdoms made when Chris Taylor had left. Sadly he went on to make Dungeon Siege but we're having that conversation somewhere else.

He's sold me on the idea. Gonna give it a try.

EDIT: We'll he's right. It's not a tabbed browser. I assume it's similar to Avant Browser, in that it's not a full on product in it's own right but it uses the existing Internet Explorer engine with a different look. Of course I could be wrong, but the advanced Internet Options take you to the IE options screen and if I open a link in a new window it opens in IE. Did I mention it doesn't recognise the side buttons on my mouse for going backwards and forwards through pages. It understands scroll wheels but it'd be nice if it was in context. ie I have to click on a particular window before I can use the scroll wheel there. I know that's pretty standard, but why?

So: scroll wheel in context
side buttons in context
option to view a fullscreen version of a website
in each mini window (ie no horizontal scoll bars)

Would make a decent porn browser. (option to slideshow all the images linked from a page would be the ultimate for that though. Only saying.)


This comment was edited on Feb 8, 13:09.

City of Heroes is offering exclusive benefits to people who pre-order in the US. (a) it discriminates against people who, through no fault of their own, were born in countries with a history longer than the average soap opera run, and (b)wasn't there an outcry when Shadowbane did this?

>...what, exactly, does id "owe" us?

Ack...who do you think gave them the money to buy their Ferraris? "We" did. Tell me one time you phoned up anybody's customer services (phone company, electricity company, web retailer, anybody) and weren't pissed off if they treated you like dirt? Whatever, I get the point of the rest of your post and agree with it, but I'm hung over and bad-tempered right now. (Usually I only post when I'm drunk and mean)

I'm using Avant Browser (basically a re-designed front-end for IE), and I've got it pretty much where I like it. I can use all the available Internet Explorer anti-rogue-code utilities out there. It stop pop-ups and it's a tabbed browser. I tried Opera and wasn't impressed with the ads in the top right - I assume that if it's displaying ads it's using bandwidth, therefore I'm going to automatically resent it. In order to get rid of the ads I'd need to pay for it (or use a crack which I'm pretty much opposed to). So, my question is - can Opera offer the same level of security that a fully tricked out version of Avant Browser can? Does it use the same hosts file for instance?

> does it bother anybody else that this is for windows XP only?

Nope. But I run XP now and I'm massively self-centred.

> I like to write.

Now there's an understatement.

The Diablos were visceral experiences. You couldn't take your eye off the screen in combat and every mouseclick meant something. In Dungeon Siege, once you'd set up everybody's default orders, you only had to click the party on a group of enemies and wait. The game virtually played itself.

>Like the present day military vs. high tech alien concept

Okay, didn't like Stargate that much, film or TV series. But if you ever watched Farscape, this was answered. Basically, and I paraphrase,... we found out where you live, tell us everything you know.... No? We just destroyed where you used to live and everyone you used to know....

No.. GAMES based on TV series, based on movies...

This was prompted by the comment from Seenitall, "Man, a game based on a TV show that was based on a movie. This can't miss!"

Pardon me for deconstructing my statement but I'm interpreting his world-weary posturing as representing a tiredness for games based on TV series, based on movies. And especially, again based on his comments, because these games are generally bad.

I can think of 1/2 games based on Tv series..blah. Buffy 1&2 for the consoles. To the best of my knowledge neither were that bad, I never played'em but I heard only good things about them.

So, I'll call Buffy.. 1. Seenitall, give me 4 more. Hey, give me 1 more and I can give you 1 back. I could give you 2. The point is you don't know jack about games.

I played the Far Cry demo on a P4 1.6GHz with 512Mb and a TI4600. Played fine and looked great. Now, I don't know any better but it looked great. If you have an older PC, maybe you should comfort yourself by not looking at the latest gaming rigs' output of your game of choice. I recently sold my first business for almost seven figures and I can't imagine (okay, not really *almost* but the figure was mentioned once. There was laughing. Apparently I can laugh both optimistically AND unsuccessfully.) buying a new grafix card every 6 months. It's the curse of PC gaming - there are serious gamers who keep their rigs up to date as best they can and there are people who buy e-Machines and wonder why their games run like crap. The people who take an interest and make an effort expect games to cater to them. They just don't represent a significant proportion of the people buying the games. Somewhere down the lines, 12 months from now the canny budget buyer wins.

>Man, a game based on a TV show that was based on a movie.

Name five. I'm curious. So that's a game that was based on a... "TV show that was based on a movie."

>but I am a big fan of SilentStorm, and a [more] sci-fi game on that engine would be great.

Yeah we all want the X-com mod. It won't happen anytime soon though. There are other X-com based mods coming out however.

>i guess you havent played Silent Storm either..

Ack...Gothic 2 and S2 are my favourite games of 2003. I haven't even done any acid.

I did use some acid in a chemistry class once. We had to potentially make a PH +5 salt. So I spiked the guy's water next to me cos it was boring.

Best SF series taken from a movie - discuss... (actual or spiritual successors allowed.)

I'll start and stretch the definition... Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Outdid the movie for at least 55% of the seasons.

>Morrowind streamed the outdoor area's pretty well. I barely notice it on my system.

Ooohhhhh.... Morrowind is what nearly 2 years old? At the time it came out I had a decent system (unfortunately I still use the same system today with a slightly better grafix card. Hey ho.) but MW played like a practical joke. A 2-3 second pause every time you moved 10 feet in any direction. One of the patches and some ini tinkering helped but I still wouldn't say it was a good system. Hmm. Unless you were sneaking the whole time.

I was about two weeks into playing SWG, sitting at my desk sketching out ideas to improve my combat macro while my toon was busily slaughtering wildlife in the background when it struck me this just wasn't right. I tried to cancel my account and couldn't - stupid mistake, my IE has java etc turned off for non-trusted sites - cancelling SWG opens a disguised browser window. I kept hitting the edit account button and nothing. Ended up penning a drunken email to them that they never replied to - lousy customer support. I was barely sarcastic even, cos I was rather pleased with myself that I'd figured out how to win their game. Stop playing. It's a zen thing.

> 1. The price that maximizes profits doesn't depend at all on development costs.

Golly, I'm aghast.
(a) You're assuming there will be profits. That's a pretty naive attitude. 90% of the time it's about minimising the losses.
(b) You're right in what you say but it's a 60 year old concept that isn't relevent today. We can look back at the Jaguar whose price was based on what it cost to manufacture - 70s thing - they could have sold it for 50% more than they did and still matched production targets. This is your argument. It's not valid. Games are ephemeral. If you want to make a profit you have to shift units. Putting 10 bucks on the selling price can quintuple your profit per unit sold. THAT MEANS you can sell five times less and make the same profit. Do I need to repeat that?

EDIT: I didn't make this clear - the argument centres around the fact that a game has virtually fixed production costs - once you make the game you're distribution costs are media, packaging, advertising and physical distribution. The argument that you can sever selling price from profit is based on the final product COSTING something to make every time. A typical game has about a bucks worth of materials and transport or less to get to stores. A car or a cat language tranlator costs a significant amount to make, on top of development costs. Trolling really is easier.

This comment was edited on Jan 31, 14:26.

<nod>

I played UO for a couple of months. Just complain about what they did to creature trainers. Seriously. Every time they ask you a question, bulge up your neck muscles and spit venom about how thousands of hours of effort were wasted. I have no idea if they did anything about this afterwards but it was an major issue while I was playing.

There also the whole, they made the game fit for nothing but carebears... angle.

UO got rid of volunteer helpers (mainly thanks to former volunteer helpers and some bizarre law in the USA), moved customer support to India and basically turned into Stalinist Russia. Now they're running focus groups. There's enough there to fuel a speed-rant for four times 90 minutes.

>and dereks previous dealings with them game them license to say "eh, fuck him" and...

I'm sure you had a point to make in there somewhere. Better luck next time.

There's something so elegantly self-destructive about Derek Smart. Just when you think he's going mainstream, this...