Now try that with a game that has a quake3 or unreal powered engine...

I would be curious to see how something like Unreal fared under the CLR. What I do know is that I reinstalled Quake 2 for this and played it on myu current system. And of course I got silky smooth graphics at 1600x1200. So then I fired up the managed .NET port - same thing. So I was looking for some sort of hit but couldn't find one.

But yeah, DOOM 3 and the other cutting edge games will never run in .NET. DirectX 9 has a managed mode which means you could write your games in .NET using C# or whatever, but even Microsoft admits this will probably never happen - C/C++ will always be the language/s of choice for game developers.

Could someone please explain to a non programer like me, what .net is? I always thought it was some gay microsoft internet security monopoly crap?

Allow me to dispel your misconceptions:

http://www.schnapple.com/dotnet.html

And the poster which figured this was for demonstration purposes is right - Vertigo Software is a .NET consulting firm which Microsoft has hired in the past to put together demonstration applications, both for proof of concept and because Microsoft also wants to see what is possible with what they've made.

And programming Managed C++ is indeed hairy, but it's possible. But if I understand it right, mods could be made in any .NET language - C#, VB.NET, COBOL.NET, FORTRAN.NET, etc. C# is much nicer than C++ (though obviously less powerful).

Plus I wonder what this does for portability? I mean obviously the FCL is Windows specific but if they didn't use that, could this run in the SSCLI CLR that's been ported to FreeBSD, Mac OSX and Linux?

(edit - fixed link)


This comment was edited on Jul 14, 22:32.

The poster posted a GameSpy link and their number at that point in time was way off.

And the 1500 number is players on servers with no bots at all, no players on servers with bots.

Forget about the exact number of people playing UT2k3, it's still 16 out of 20

Right now it's #5.

Activision has produced 14 Star Trek themed products, including a tie-in to the release of the 10th Star Trek film, Nemesis, just last year

A Nemesis product from Activision? Did I miss something?

Reminds me of when some record label signed Hall & Oates to an amazing record contract...

But who here actually thought the single player game in Quake 1 rocked the house?

Well the complaint about Quake wasn't that the SP game did or did not rock, but rather that the game didn't have a plot (other than a tacked-on "story") and was essentially DOOM with better graphics. It's an example of what happens when drastic design changes happen late into a game's cycle - at the last minute most of the innovative concepts went out the window in favor of a lean and mean gameplay style.

And I of course still bought it and loved it.

What kind of PC do you have Blue?

My guess would be.... a blue tower!

*ducks*

Well a direct comparison of what people can expect from BF1942 versus NWN doesn't really work because until very recently there was no official support for any end user modification for BF1942 - any mods you saw and any maps you played were made with unofficial editors. NWN OTOH shipped with editors in the box. Rumor was that EA didn't want any editing capabilities for BF1942 since they found the add-on market was so lucrative (witness six SIMS expansions).

But hey, it really does sound like NWN just isn't your thing and that's fine. It's sold over a million copies but it doesn't mean you're wrong for not liking it, or not wanting to rely on other players online to play with. Magic Online is becoming really popular and I'm starting to see why, but it doesn't mean I want to pay $3.29 for a deck of online cards.

an interesting take on it - while people seem to be lining up for the next MMORPG that is 100% reliant on other people, this notion of a game which is in many ways a toolkit for others to make adventures with is frowned upon.

Viacom also has allowed two "Star Trek" television series to go off the air and the remaining series suffers from weak ratings.

Umm, well the general rule of Star Trek shows is seven seasons, right? I mean that's what we got with TNG and all. So, of course these shows went off the air. And whereas TNG got seven top-rated seasons, ratings always sucked for DS9 and Voyager. The problem wasn't them going off the air - it was that the rating sucked when they were. And as for Enterprise's ratings - well, I'm sure Viacom didn't do that on purpose.

I do wonder if Enterprise will pull off the ratings maneuver they promise in the third season with the story arc. Maybe Activision wanted to sue before they had a chance.

Well the thing abut the FF games is that they're mainly fantastically popular in Japan, and then they're vicariously popular in America since America like Japanese culture. Ergo, if it was an American developer I think Americans would be more tired and cynical of the series.

The other thing is that the games more or less have nothing to do with each other - it's not like say Mario where you think "how many times can they save this princess?", the stories are different every time. The main consistency is the same developer/designers.

Finally though, I don't think this 11th game has much to do with the gameplay of the previous games - it's mainly just the name in common.

well the one show of theirs that is really interesting to me is "icons" - it's like a Biography for gaming.

You are the first person I've heard of that does have G4...

And believe me, it was totally by accident. I moved to Dallas and had to get Comcast cable, so there it was.

I know it's cool to rag on them (see Penny Arcade) and they had a fiasco with Wil Wheaton leaving the Arena show (boiled down to a dickhead producer) but I think they're really showing potential. It reminds me of the days of Comedy Central before they got their big guns (like Ab Fab and South Park).

If you don't have G4, then the show on G4 that (most closely) fits your description is Arena.

OK, so the Bink video people screwed them over by making a Linux driver and then not letting Bioware use it because of licensing. Now InstallShield is doing pretty much the same thing (though they don't have a Linux version). I'm starting to see why some companies are hellbent to write their own stuff.

Ya know, I don't think they could get away with these sorts of things with id/Activision - maybe Atari should throw some of their weight around.

Holy Schnikes! They're letting you download the entire game, all you need is a CD Key. Why didn't they just do a Linux installer/updater?

I'm so diappointed in Blue's punning abilities.

They did Unreal Tournament on Dreamcast and PS2, and I know at least the DC version tried to do online. They did the not-really-UT2K3 game Unreal Championship on Xbox. Did the original Unreal ever make it to a console? I don't think so. I remember hearing an announcement at some point that Unreal was going to be ported to the PSOne (can't really call it PSX anymore), but that would have been a joke. And I remember that the original Unreal compiled and ran on the Dreamcast, but was never released.

Well there's already lots of ganes looking like cartoons - do you mean FPS's in particular?