That was the first screenshot for Starcraft 1 too, so who knows how it'll come out.

http://www.sclegacy.com/show_image.php?features/evolution/earlyalpha3.jpg

"The game has been worked on in various forms for almost 10 years, having been originally announced in April 1997, and the update describes the current state of the title, which was viewed at 3D Realms' Texas studios: "mainly just pieces of the game in progress and tech demos", including "an early level, a vehicle sequence, a few test rooms", among others."

10 years, more than 4 million dollars, and they don't have more to show? Some people must be pissed... Where has all that money went?

"We [3000AD Inc] don't particularly want to receive emails asking us what a vertex shader is and where it can be downloaded. After a year of having to field that crap, I'm burned out. In fact, I have advised my guys to just IGNORE any/all such queries that come through the tech support list/email. If you don't know what a shader is by now, there is a very good chance that my games weren't developed for you."

/that man sure knows how to treat customers.

yeah, probably that the reporter also coached everyone to cheer too...

Move to rural areas? What in hell are you talking about? Canada has probably one of the lowest ratio of population/land in the industrialized world. We're far from being overcrowded, so you can go anywhere you wish. And besides, this isn't the USSR. The government doesn't tell anyone where to live.

And what's wrong with Montreal?

It's funny you're all saying that, because it was one of the starting idea for SP2, to have a fully zoomable 3D globe of the earth. Maybe Sid has our offices bugged...

Jean-René Couture
GolemLabs

"it never ceases to amaze me that any news announcement concerning DNF always draws a crowd"

We should make it a contest. Start a couple of threads and see which one will rise faster.

1) 3DRealms says they are working on DNF
2) Derek Smart says anything
3) Doom3 is way better than HL2 (or the other way)
4) RIAA sues someone pirating music
5) Microsoft is evil

The bets start at 5$

specially since according to their own survey ( http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html ), no one plays on a voodoo3...

*edit* just reread the news after coffee, and I see I jumped to conclusions too soon... sigh...

This comment was edited on Sep 24, 12:12.

"Agreed. Vivendi will have to do their own playtesting to check of show stopping bugs, which could easily take 2 weeks. Then Valve will fix them and resubmit another RC. Then another 2 weeks of playtesting. This cycle could continue for awhile."

That is if Vivendi never did QA before that. I bet this is the first version called "RC", because it includes the EULA, installer, manual, readme, etc. but Valve must have sent dozens of builds to Vivendi in the last months. They've also probably did numerous hardware tests, media preview builds, etc. etc. The only things to test at this point is if the uninstall works, if the readme file is localized, and other minor stuff.

My bet is also that the game should reach Gold by next week, and be on shelves around mid october.

Actually, I've had this discussion with our publisher. They had tried last year to release a very large game (I think it was an adventure game of 6 CDs) with both formats. Each stores carried the DVD version and the 6 CD version. Can you guess the amount of persons that bought the DVD version?

5%

It seems that a lot of people want to buy games, not movies, and a DVD support makes the casual think they're buying a movie.

Ok, it was the adventure games crowd, not the die-hard one, but still, the die-hards aren't the majority of a market base. Everyone waits for a big game, something like D3 or HL2, to come out on DVD before supporting it, since a big game would probably sell on audio cassettes if it was the only support.

"Why he (and the 2-3 other developers) post here is beyond me. Imagine being a film buff and having a director take the time to post a comment. I doubt they would get the rough trade the developers here do."

I can say from experience, developpers come here because we also love games, we stay current on gaming events (we're not registered to some form of secret developper's only newsreel, so most of us learn the news like you do, and sometimes even employees learn news about their own company here first), and we enjoy reading user comments about such and such game.

I you were making a game, wouldn't you want to know what people think about it, and wouldn't you want to talk to people who either love it or hate it and find out why? Us too.

And BTW, the booth babes are overly hyped for not much. Most of them are local strippers out of work, and what we see on the floor is a scantily clad babe with 50 geeks all around her waiting to get their picture taken with her. Pretty sad if you ask me.

E3 is mostly about noise, lights, lasers, and headaches. Oh, and 65 thousand people in a single building yelling on their cell phone.

Jean-René Couture
GolemLabs

One thing also to consider is that not all warezed copies represent lost sales. Most people download something to try it out, but they wouldn't have bought it otherwise. So some studies show that warezing can actually increase sales because it increases exposure to a title. Of course, then, you have to have people honest enough to buy a game they just have downloaded...

One cool copy protection that seem to work is to have redundant, multiple types of checks. Most games only check once, at bootup. These are easier to spot and take out. But if a developper puts many checks all around the game, the challenge is greater for the crackers. They crack the first layer, and the game starts normally, so the group wanting to be the first to release a crack releases on the web. But what they don't know is that the game only appears to work correctly. An hour or two down the road, or a couple of levels, whatever, another checks determines that you shouldn't be here, thus meaning that your game is pirated. The user receives a security warning, and the game automatically uninstalls.

The warez group then gets blasted, they have to release a second crack, etc. All this only delays the release of a good crack, and forces the crackers to play the ENTIRE game to make sure they've found everything. You can add random ones in there to keep them busy, false alarms, etc. Anything to make their job hard to do.

A CD key scheme where you maintain a database is hard to do because you can't force people to have an internet connection to play your game, so you couldn't verify if the key is legit unless in MP modes. These servers are hacked like crazy all the time because hard-core gamers don't want to have to connect all the time. And like someone else said, keys that depend on an algorithm are most of the time broken and key gens are released.

What I'm wondering is if the romans were playing D&D, was it a sci-fi game to them?

Ok guys, I'll try to explain it from a developper's perspective.

The code was stolen early september. Valve found out, but the code wasn't "out" yet. They contacted the FBI and tried to recover it. When the hackers started to feel the heat (or maybe they were trying to blackmail Valve, who knows?), they released it in the public. This is when Valve decided to delay.

The game was finished. The code that is out is the completed code (people have been successful in compiling it, something that they couldn't have done if it truly was 1/3 or the code) and now, the resources files (the "beta") prove the content was pretty much completed too.

They decided to delay because the code contains a lot of sensitive information, like the CD authentification and the online protocols. If they had released it, hackers would have been able to program cheats easily. And cheats on a high-profile game like this one kills the community, thus killing sales (who wants to play on servers full of cheaters?). And the CD authentification means that we would have been swamped with "serial generators". They would have lost too many sales, and that's the bottom line for any company.

For anyone to say that Valve leaked the code on purpose to generate publicity doesn't understand how many millions Valve is gonna lose because of that. I'm not sure there's gonna be a Valve in the next two years. They're gonna get sued by those that licensed some code to them that was included in the leaked code, and they're gonna lose a lot of sales. They must have invested anything between 5 and 10 millions developping the game, and they're pretty sure to never make it back in revenus. No one would do that "on purpose" just to justify a delay. Everyone expects a delay anyway.

The delay is not to rewrite the entire game. 90% of the source will stay the same. But they need to change the online communications protocols, the steam authentification, the key authentification, etc. And they need to analyse their own code to spot any security holes that possible hackers could use.

This comment was edited on Oct 7, 23:05.

Yeah Blue, we're all here thinking about you and wishing you and you're family the best. Who says the web is de-humanizing? Look at all these hundreds of people (and probably thousands more that don't wish to post) all over the globe coming here and wishing you luck...

I never talked about only "hidden gays" hating gays. Sexuality is a lot more complex than that.

Remember middle school. Being gay was the worst label you could have, and it seems everyone in some point in their lives were called gay. It's just a normal part of growing up.

Being afraid that people see you as a gay and actually being gay is two totally different things...

Well, I don't want to be the psychologist here, but...

People will hate other people only when they represent something they hate/fear about themselves. You will hate gays because you're scared that people will see the "gay" in you. In the end, you hate people that you feel are threatening you in some way, and might cause you to be excluded/singled out. It's the old "I want to be accepted by society" thing. And don't tell me: "but I don't want to be accepted by society, society sucks!" because that's fitting in into the "I hate society" crowd.

Anyway, just wanted to clear this out. Carry on.

I wonder how the folks in Washington feel about this considering the news these days...

Wasn't it Seinfeld that said that? About the man on the moon excuse...

"Most of the news and stories are incredibly exaggerated and don't even come close to what's really important. I just wish people outside of this country would stop stereotyping Americans based on what they read in the news and see on TV"

It's the same everywhere, even in the US. I'm canadian, and I watch both american news and international news. I know and talk to a lot of people living elsewhere. Most of the international news you have is blown up to be more sensational. Of course, there's a backbone of truth, but it's always blown up because journalists sell stories, pictures and footages, and they'll have a better price if the material is "better".

I attended a LAN party a couple of months ago. It was from 5PM to 11AM the next morning, and the persons in charge had prepared a room where gamers could sleep if tired. The local media came to see us. When they came, they were surprised that no one was sleeping, everyone was playing. But they liked the IDEA so much that they asked some gamers to pretend to sleep there since it showed how hard-core they were. I personally tought it would have been more hard-core to show the room empty, but anyway.

The point was that the news footage ended with this image of gamers "sleeping", and some lame comments from the reporter. This was the last image people saw.

Now, this was some small unsignificant event in a local town, but the reflex is there for journalists everywhere.

A columnist in Montreal went to Irak a couple of years ago to report on the life of the people there. Not the regime, not Saddam, but the people there. He was saying that the youngsters wear baseball caps of american teams, listen to american music, etc. Irak is (was) the most developped country in the middle east before 1990, and one of the least "hardcore muslim", compared to others, including allies like Saudi Arabia.

And he said that manifestations where people burn the american flag are organized by the regime, and the protesters are selected and "encouraged" by the police. Of course, the american media show these demonstrations. Not the teens wearing the baseball caps. Too mundane.

So I'm with you all the way on that.