Sue them for what, Tumbler, that they didn't say that the game had SecuROM? If that, then please cite the locales that have statues preventing the non-disclosed used of SecuROM in a retail product. What do you expect to sue for as damages?

You might as well sue them for not saying that the source code has curly-brackets in it.

I had to get the Illinois Attorney General involved when BFG wouldn't honor a rebate they offered. After double the time period they said it would take to get a refund, and multiple letters from me, they sent me a response saying that the rebate was only good for the liquid cooled versions of their cards.

I had purchased a liquid cooled version. The model number reflected that fact quite nicely with the 'H20' suffix.

After I wrote a letter to the IL Attorney General, including all of the submitted paperwork and copies of the correspondence.....all of a sudden BFG was very apologetic and issued my refund immediately.

Good riddance. They might once have been a good company. In the past couple of years they went way downhill.

Let's engage in some truth-shining on your revisionist history, shall we?

UO - massive item duping issues due to how the item database was updated on patch intervals. Rampant player griefing, camping, etc... It wasn't until years later when Gordon Walton joined Origin and started his tenure by banning thousands of players did UO turn around.

WoW - Due to the network topology of 5(?) game servers sharing one item database server it took minutes....lots and lots of minutes for loot menus to appear after players killed animals/monsters/mobs, etc... Overloaded login servers also made for huge queues just to get into the game

EverQuest - The team launched the game and then went to Game Developer Conference for a week. The login servers crashed and continued to crash even then they were brought online. That situation existed for most of that week.

That leave AC and SW:G. AC did launch cleanly. SW:G I have no clue about with regards to its launch. The problem with SW:G was more of its base design poor support and half-thought out attempts to attract players by changing things at a moments notice to the detriment of the existing player base.

There have been clean MMO launches since SW:G. AC2 launched well but was poorly received. EVE did not have any issues that I remember. City of Heroes doesn't ring any bells, etc...

Not all other MMO launches have been shitty.

In typical Spector fashion each level will have three different ways to complete it - one of which will always be "crawl through an air duct".

This comment was edited on Dec 23, 2008, 00:13.

If your going to build a FPS-like MMO, why not just build a true FPS MMO?
for the same reason traditional mmo's have the combat they have; systems cannot function with thousands of players and the complexity of modern shooters, IE physics engines and poly-based hitcoding. It's just too much computing for a server to handle.

Your theory falls apart in the face of the fact that there were shooter based client-server distributed games long before RPGs became the dominant MMO genre.

Air Warrior, Aces High, Fighter Ace, Multiplayer BattleTech, and CyberStrike (among others) all had physics engines and per-polygon hit detection. I played Air Warrior on an Amiga, in 1987, on a 2400 baud modem to GEnie. The processing power of the client and the server are not the issue. The bandwidth of the network connection is not the issue. The genre of the game is not the issue. The skill of the people crafting the game is what matters.

sent over the art and images to a company but refusing to give up the code.

Chances are that Perpetual owns any code they write but art assets belong to the company that granted the dev contract. That would be especially true for a licensed product like Star Trek. Any ST imagery is, more than likely, soley owned by Paramount.

Devs hold on to code like it was gold. What gets written for one game is probably going to end up in a lot of other games the devs make. If they sign the code away in a contract then, when the contract is done, they have nothing with which to use for their next project. Art, on the other hand, has a fairly short "shelf-life". What is cutting edge on one project is yesterday's news on the next.

This comment was edited on Jan 15, 09:24.

Not to diminish your prognostication abilities, Derek, but when the first published article about the ST MMO discussed how they were focusing their energies on correctly rendering starship hallways it wasn't hard to see that there was little chance of its success.

When I uploaded the script, I uninstalled the game, check the registry for any entries related to it (there were none). Then I re-installed it (it prompted for the correct path) again.

While it appears it prompted for the correct path it may still have been showing you the last install path that was used. Did you install anything else between installs of UC? You might want to uninstall it, install it to a very different path, uninstall that, and then see what the path shows you when you reinstall it.

You know, this could be an NSIS bug.

Quite possibly. Bugs have happened before with that installer.

This comment was edited on Jan 2, 18:20.

No clue mate. I just uploaded the entire script to the site. Take a look see. There's nothing wrong with it. And since its based on the same template that I use for all my game installers - and patches - my guess is that something is screwed up on your end.

Other than at the top of the script where the desired path is set to InstallDir that variable name isn't used anywhere in the script. $INSTDIR is used as the preface to all of your install and unisntall paths. I'm not saying that's incorrect, just odd. It's been about two years since I've used NSIS with any regularity so my functional knowledge of it is quite rusty.

You might want to check the macro that defines the MUI_PAGE_DIRECTORY to see if the edit text box on that dialog is being set to InstallDir when that dialog opens and then storing it's result in the other INSTDIR variable when that dialog closes.

This comment was edited on Jan 2, 18:02.

No Falcon, I was not posting to you. I was responding to The Raven in post #4. So HE was the reason I posted the docs.

Post #15, Derek. You quote the following statements, "Do you really think that there would be 8+ million people playing WoW if the interface was anything but intuitive? You press asdw to move and click on icons to perform actions.", which I made and then go on to post three links to PDF files of your game manuals.

I see now that you also posted those same links in a different reply, post #16. Maybe you didn't mean to include them in the reply you made to me. Maybe you forgot you included them in that reply. Either way it came across as you offering those up as some factual defense. That confused me as the discussion wasn't (as I had already stated) about your games, it was about WoW.

YOU on the other hand, talked about not being able to use wasd for movement. Again, you - like him - were wrong. You - like him - drew an opinion on a game that you - like him - have never played.

No, Derek, I never said you can't use wasd in your game. I did say you use wasd to move in WoW. You're twisting my comments to fit what you think I wrote, not what was actually written.

This comment was edited on Jan 2, 17:50.

Sorry, but that has nothing to do with the UC installer. I tested that myself before releasing it.

That's fine, maybe I should've prefaced my bug post with "on my machine...". It does it consistently here. Every time I run the installer it shows the last install path I used.

I've installed UC to a different path/uninstalled and tried again three times now. Each time the installer shows me the last path I entered. It's never shown me "$PROGRAMFILES\3000AD\Universal Combat", which on this machine would resolve to "C:\program files\3000AD\Universal Combat"

While the snipet of NSIS code you posted clearly shows the InstallDir variable being set to what you want there's not enough there to verify if the variable is being clobbered later on or if the Install Path edit text box is being populated from an odd Registry entry as opposed to the InstallDir variable.

Just pointing out something anomalous.

The point of my posting the docs was for him to show me why he thinks the games UI doesn't work.

Um, Derek, The "him" you refer to was "me". I made both posts. You might want to slow down and cross reference poster names before you go off.

Let's recap since you seem to be a bit reactionary and not keeping the entire discussion in context. I can see why that might be a problem with the number of different threads going on in this discussion at the momemt.

* You made the comment, "Even WoW has an obtusely complex interface compared to ANY of my games. "

* I entered the discussion and said that WoW doesn't not have a complex UI, that it couldn't garner 8+ million users if it wasn't easily accessible. Note, I never mentioned your game. I wasn't talking about your game, just your statement regarding WoW.

* You came back and posted links to your manuals.

* I pointed out that those links are irrelevant as the point I was making was about WoW, not BC300AD, UC, or any of the other products you have shipped.

Please go back and READ what I wrote.

Just to be on the safe side I did do that before I wrote this. I'd suggest you do the same for my posts, as you seem to have this idea in your head that I'm trying to talk about your games. I'm not. I'm trying to discuss the comment you made about WoW.

Someone who's been in this industry as long, if not longer, than you. Someone who worked on multiplayer games for well over a decade. I've seen sales data that showed a large number of boxes sold and server usage data that showed the majority of those people never getting past the initial portions of the game due to unnecessary complexity. I know what a bad interface can do to player retention in an MMO. I know what I'm saying when I state that WoW's interface is ntuitive.

Again, you're missing the boat here.

How could I be missing the boat? You replied to my post questioning your comments about the WoW interface with the question, "Thats right, I'm not a poster boy for the PC corporate culture. And who are you again?" and I answered with enough information to let you know that I have enough experience and credentials in this industry to judge the merits of the WoW interface.

Also, as long as you're anon, posting that you're the King of Siam doesn't mean squat to me or anyone else here. Any nitwit can post anon and claim to be whoever they want.

I could post my real name here and it really wouldn't change anything. Yeah, you could go to MobyGames and see that I've worked for SOE, EA, Mythic, and others. You could go to the CMP site and see that I've given talks at GDC and been featured in Gamasutra. But again, that really wouldn't change anything. This discussion stalled at the point where you made a statement about the WoW interface, I explained how I thought that statement wasn't true, and you went off on your strange "I'm under siege", you're an idiot" tangent.

So spare me the pointless - and largely meaningless and inconsequential - rhetoric.

What rhetoric, Derek? Honestly, what have I said that was at all rhetorical?

This comment was edited on Jan 2, 17:33.

Hey Derek,

The install path selection screen on the UC installer defaults to showing the path I chose for the last program I installed, not a predetermined path for where UC should be installed. You might want to consider fixing that before someone installs your game to, say, C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office by accident and seriously mucking their computer up.

This was on WinXP SP2, 32bit

Do you really think that there would be 8+ million people playing WoW if the interface was anything but intuitive? You press asdw to move and click on icons to perform actions.

You're an idiot, you know that? What makes you think that you can't use WSAD to contol any of my games? Oh, thats right, you wouldn't know since you haven't actually played them.

Along with being insulting and engaging in personal attacks you're either jumping to conclusions, attempting to put words in my mouth, or trying to ignore the fact that you insinuated the the WoW interface was unintuitive. I wasn't commenting on your game at all. I was arguing against your statements about the the complexities of the WoW interface. I can do that without having any experience with your games because I wasn't taking about your games. I was only refuting your negative comments about the WoW interface. My statement still stand. You can't get 8 million paying players by targeting the hard-core niche players and you can't get casual players with an interface that has a steep learning curve. Since WoW has 8 million users it stands to reason that the game's interface isn't perceived as complex.

Below are the docs for the recently released UC freeware upon which ALL the games in that series are based. Go ahead, show us how stupid you look.

http://www.3000ad.com/downloads/uc/UC_KEYBOARD_CMDS.PDF
http://www.3000ad.com/downloads/uc/UC_MANUAL.PDF
http://www.3000ad.com/downloads/uc/UC_TUTORIAL.PDF

Unnecessary and irrelevant to the discussion, as they don't relate to the WoW interface. If you want to try to bolster your argument about the (supposed) complexities of the WoW interface then you should provide links showing how that interface is unnecessarily obtuse.

Of course the Blizzard developers aren't openly hostile to users, don't spew vulgarities in public forums, and generally have a better idea of how to tailor a product to make it accessible. Sadly those are concepts you've never shown an interest in understanding.

Thats right, I'm not a poster boy for the PC corporate culture. And who are you again?

Someone who's been in this industry as long, if not longer, than you. Someone who worked on multiplayer games for well over a decade. I've seen sales data that showed a large number of boxes sold and server usage data that showed the majority of those people never getting past the initial portions of the game due to unnecessary complexity. I know what a bad interface can do to player retention in an MMO. I know what I'm saying when I state that WoW's interface is intuitive.

And that rubbish you posted comparing Blizzard devs is just that, rubbish.

So you feel it's ok to use base language, insult people, and ignore criticisms? While I applaud your honesty I am sorry that you have such disdain for other people.

You may need a refresher course on Derek Smart. So here it is: Noboby puts me under siege. nobody. You come at me with a baseball bat, I'm bring an ICBM. Overkill, yeah. Thats why boys don't play games with men.

Who put you under siege? Unless you are saying that no one is allowed to debate your statements then I have no idea what you are trying to say.
This comment was edited on Jan 2, 15:17.

Do you really think that there would be 8+ million people playing WoW if the interface was anything but intuitive? You press asdw to move and click on icons to perform actions.

Of course the Blizzard developers aren't openly hostile to users, don't spew vulgarities in public forums, and generally have a better idea of how to tailor a product to make it accessible. Sadly those are concepts you've never shown an interest in understanding.

$1M to port a game isn't all that much. Game development budgets for AAA titles are in the tens of millions now, not counting advertising costs. $1M would be approximately enough to pay 10-15 people for 12 months of work (figure 50% of that for salary and 50% for overhead such as health care benefits, office rent for the employee, and other fixed operating costs).

The money value here is nothing surprising. Of course, neither is Apple's skeletal gaming group or their historic lack of interest in games.

"the Oblivion engine" is Gamebryo, a commercial middleware engine. It's the same one used in Dark Age of Camelot, Warhammer Age of Reckoning, Fallout 3, just about anything Firaxis puts out these days, and a lot of other games.

No, the free d/l version was TrackMania:Nations. It was a client used in some sort of multi-national cyber competition.

Does United still use StarForce for copy protection? I love TM and TM:Sunrise but I won't put them back on my computer because of the StarForce protection.

> ...Fucktard. Yup, that sums it up. Fucktard. ...
> I (being a reasonable person)...

You were reduced to nothing but uttering vulgarities by the forth sentence of your reply. Reasonable, indeed.

>>C&C3, being 3D, is a fuck load more complex than C&C2, which was 2D.

Let's talk about that new fangled 3D thing you think first showed in an EA RTS with C&C3. Perhaps you've overlooked the other RTSs that EA built in 3D on the RTS engine code base they got from Westwood...the same core technology they used in C&C3. Why don't those account for anything in your worldview? There is absolutely nothing about C&C3 that pushed the bounds of new technology. It's built on a codebase that has been used in every EA/Westwood RTS going back to Dune 2000 on the Commodore Amiga in the early '90s.

I'm in no way bashing EA's decision to use that code. It's a smart business decision to reuse tech that has been invested in and refined. It's not reasonable to give that business a pass on rampant bugs that they introduced into a game built on technological pedigree that seemed to be doing pretty well before. The other EA RTSs that were in 3D, C&C Generals and the myriad LoTR RTSs among others, didn't have these problems.

It wouldn't matter to me if it was EA, UBI, Eidos, MS, or etc... These types of bugs and problems shouldn't exist in a shipping game. Especially in a game that has as much development and refinement behind its core technologies as C&C3 does.