JSP wrote on Dec 3, 2013, 12:04:
Of all the disdain for MS on its 8.x OS, just remember, most of you all are still using some form of Windows. It still has got you by the balls.

Typing this response on a 2013 Macbook Air running Mavericks. My personal desktop at the house is running Xubuntu 13.04, and has been since I built the system. Between scientific computing, video encoding, and day-to-day usage, there isn't much it can't do outside of games, and Steam runs fine in Linux now. A *lot* of old games also work in Wine these days. There are games that only run on Windows, sure, but that's what the home theater PC is for when it's not playing movies. Everything else gets funneled through the Mac and Linux systems. I wish more games ran on the others, but I'm a grown man with kids, a wife, a full-time job, and grad school - any time for video games is a bonus.

Trainwreck wrote on Sep 18, 2011, 21:22:
Dinosaurs didn't fly or swim in the oceans. Animals like pterosaurs and plesiosaurs are not considered dinosaurs.

Birds are extant theropod dinosaurs, and Archaeopteryx was (sort of clumsily) winging it in Mesozoic air space. Your second point's accurate: there's no evidence of specialized marine dinosaurs. Icthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, pliosaurs, and placodonts were euryapsid reptiles, not closely related to dinosaurs. Mosasaurs were bad, terrifying diapsids, but seem closer to snakes than dinosaurs.

Primal Carnage looks like good LAN fodder. I'd take it over a dozen Dino D-Days based on the video. Still, Primal Rage remains the greatest dinosaur game made to date. What I'd give to see a modern version of that.

How the fuck is an 8800GT equal to a Radeon 4200? That's some great reefer they've stumbled onto.

Bhruic wrote on Aug 3, 2011, 10:13:

Anyway, Gearbox explicitly stated that they went with regenerating health and a 2 weapon limit simply because those are modern standards

Didn't they explicitly state that that was what was already in the game, so they just went with it? Wasn't it 3DR that made the decision, and their rationale (for the 2 weapons) was because they couldn't find a system for more that worked with consoles?

George Broussard talked about considering the two weapon system all the way back in 2003 on Shack News. For better or worse, Gearbox just stayed true to the original vision.

StingingVelvet wrote on Aug 2, 2011, 23:25:
Wonder what the improved textures means...

The bumpmaps seem sharper. There's definitely a visible improvement with high texture detail, though I haven't tried on lower settings because... well, why would I? Performance all-around seems to have improved, even on my not-so-studly Athlon X2 5050e HTPC with 2 gigs DDR2-667 and a 512 MB GeForce 9600GT. Say what you will about the game (and a lot of it's deserved), but I wish more first patches offered this kind of improvement.

StingingVelvet wrote on Jul 1, 2011, 07:32:
It's funny that they fix these issues within a week and all they hear is bitching after the fact. What?

Seriously, what's with the shrill screeching? Is there never a reprieve from it on Blue's News any more?

Halo wrote on Jun 3, 2011, 17:59:
Is there such a thing as a eWang or eBlood. I miss both those build gems.

http://www.jonof.id.au/jfsw

It's not up to date with eDuke32's improvements, but JonoF's port of Shadow Warrior should work with OpenGL support in Windows. Blood was given up as a lost cause years ago; there have been a couple of leaks of the source code, but nobody's 100% sure who owns it or how vigorously they'd choose to defend their moribund IP. Your best bet's DOSBox for the time being.

Icewind wrote on Jun 3, 2011, 16:53:
I cancelled my pre-order. God this game is horrid.

First of all, what's up with the old and busted textures? Even on ultra these textures look so hideous.

Picture here

The small levels, the flashing orange aura over "interactive" items, the auto aim, the two weapon limit...WTF is this, Halo with a Duke Nukem skin applied?

I just saved myself 50 bucks and can instead go back to DOSbox and play Duke 3D again.

Thanks to gearbox for letting me know how bad it is so I don't have to waste money. This game is a disgrace.

Just so you know, eDuke32 will even keep you from having to run DOSBox. Just put it in your DN3D directory and prepare for OpenGL-accelerated vintage fun.

As for DNF... I'm still going to give it an honest chance.

Marvin T. Martian wrote on May 8, 2011, 20:59:
"Another one bites the dust!"

MP and consoles have soooooooooooooo destroyed good gaming.

No, no. *Money* destroys good gaming because the pursuit of it causes risk averseness, and the inclination to "be more like the other guy, because they made so much money." There's no denying that video gaming is a business and that a profit is an ultimate goal, but the pursuit of profit to the exclusion of doing right by your customers - and the games you lavishly design - is pissing in your own well. It results in expensive, monolithic franchises, hordes of wannabes, and games that are easily dated. In 10 years, kids (and all of us) will look back and say, "Man, people sure played a lot of Call of Duty."

As for Valve wanting to incorporate some kind of co-op or social element into their games? It's not really shocking; even their single player games have started leaning in this direction since the Orange Box. This isn't a sign of doom and gloom; they're just the harbingers of a larger trend that makes me shiver a little. When Frictional Games makes an announcement like this on any day that isn't April Fool's, that's when I'll die a little inside.

Thanks for Chaser, guys. Best $3 closeout game I ever snagged.

I'm not even sure I'd say their newer titles are like Quake - that game still had Sandy Petersen and John Romero's distinctive fingerprints on it. It's been a steady stream of Quake II-alikes since 1997, including the titles they've outsourced to Raven and Splash Damage. It seems like Rage is going to make or break 'em, but at this point I couldn't care much less.

How about Back to F#!@ing Egypt...?

StingingVelvet wrote on Mar 16, 2011, 16:04:
Didn't they do the expansions? Maybe I am remembering that wrong.

Anyway I have little faith in this game.

Nah, TimeGate developed both of the expansions. Remaining cautiously optimistic about this sequel.

Jerykk wrote on Mar 1, 2011, 22:59:
I don't understand why console-makers always skimp on memory. Memory is the cheapest part of any system yet it continues to be the bane of console development. Ask any console developer what would make their job easier and every single one will say "more memory."

In an effort to minimize performance bottlenecks, console manufacturers frequently choose top-of-the-line, VERY fast memory by the standards of the console's initial release timetable. The theory is that a lightweight OS layer can mitigate not having a huge *amount* of RAM, along with judicious memory management by developers and developing specifically for the hardware's strengths. This will work for a while - the 360 and PS3 do look at least as nice as a nice PC that was built right when they were new - but inevitably skimping on the RAM catches up to you... especially when the console and video chipset have to share from the same pool.

As for DX11 support: is anybody really surprised? Epic will milk this cow until it just won't give any more, and this facilitates that goal.

Cartman wrote on Feb 28, 2011, 20:33:

Hyatus wrote on Feb 28, 2011, 12:24:
I had more fun playing SS than I ever did playing Duke.

Looking more forward to this than DNF.

Me too. All Duke ever had was pixilated porn and that wasn't all that hot.

Serious Sam continues to deliver fun while 3DRealms wasted years and years on DNF which will most likely suck if the videos are any indication.

I've said it for years and years.. I don't know what people see in Duke Nukem. I think the memory is far better than the reality. Kind of like looking back at old girlfriends, lol.

Duke was vulgar, crass, and crude, but it has a worthy legacy because it really was a tightly designed, envelope-pushing shooter. It was also of considerable renown among game designers - and level designers in particular - because its environments were so incredibly interactive by 1996 standards. Walls you could blow up with rockets? A building you could *detonate*? Scripted events? It was all pretty heady stuff, once upon a time.

And Serious Sam 3 looks great. If id has any cojones left, they'll take notes - the fat rocket-launching thing's basically what Doom 3's mancubus should have been.

bigspender wrote on Feb 19, 2011, 17:49:
what is this crap! proper unreal 1 sequel plz

What? You mean Unreal II didn't count? *ducks*

jdreyer wrote on Feb 19, 2011, 15:58:
Chocolate Strife, sequel to Chocolate Rain...

Actually it's based on Chocolate Doom, which is an attempt to replicate the behavior of the original Doom executable as closely as possible. Since pre-source release Doom's frequently referred to as "vanilla" Doom, the chocolate moniker's a winking acknowledgment of the project's goals. It's interesting to see Strife getting the same treatment at this point.

Ludomancer wrote on Jan 31, 2011, 00:15:
I was thinking the same... That's a lot of effort this guy has put in.

Um, was Doom64 something special? Or is he just a random nut?

Doom64 had colored lighting, new sprites and sound effects, an ambient soundtrack, and all-new levels, as well as a handful of new weapons. It's distinct from the other Doom titles in terms of its feel, and was really pretty damned good.

As for the project leader being a random nut, well, most people in the original Doom community have been at it for a really long time... A certain amount of eccentricity's to be expected.

This deserves more love than it's getting here. For anyone who ever wanted to play through Doom64 free of charge, with modern niceties like anisotropic filtering and antialiasing, this is the gold standard.

Unless there's some way for me to try Rage before buying it, I'm just not confident that it would be worth my money. The last id game I consistently enjoyed was Quake III Arena, and that's because I'm a sucker for fun deathmatch. Everything attached to the id name since has been varying flavors of disappointment; Doom 3 was a confused bore, Quake 4 was fitfully entertaining but felt like it was stuck in the past, and Team Arena felt like a free mod released commercially with an inexplicably high price tag. There's no reason to believe that creative people aren't working at id (or Raven), but fresh ideas aren't managing to make it into their shipping products. Wolfenstein's the first product I skipped outright until reading reviews, and apparently that was warranted... I've got a bad feeling that Rage is going to be derivative and silly. Duke Nukem Forever at least looks like it will be a trashy good time.