Happy 25 Half-Life!

Thank you Blue for your OotB posts, the jokes always give me a chuckle.

Played it today with some friends, and I'm glad that some of the bugs we reported to Valve were addressed. I heard rumors about new maps but I was not expecting so many changes like the Menu being similar to the CD original now or Steam P2P networking built in. There's definitely stuff that still needs addressing (I hear there might even be another update tomorrow), but this is a pretty good start. Valve got this one right in my eyes.

From what I understand a lot of the negative reviews aren't about CS2 itself but rather the way they went about removing CS:GO. You lost all your earned achievements, custom installs, etc. as soon as CS2 released. I can imagine if you wanted to play on your favorite custom map/server that night, you probably weren't in a good mood. I'm not quite sure why they went about it they way did...

Mordecai Walfish wrote on Aug 23, 2023, 15:00:
Wonder how it will compare to the community works at https://df-21.net/ and https://theforceengine.github.io/ ?

It's interesting how these remasters seem to be announced shortly after open source projects get these classic games running, one would hope this is purely coincidence...

Really sorry about Jedi, I know your pain all too well Blue. Our canine friends are family, and losing them is just as hard as any other passing. May he rest in peace, my condolences go out to you and the rest of his family.

Edit: Autocorrect mistake

This comment was edited on Apr 29, 2023, 21:28.

jdreyer wrote on Apr 2, 2023, 16:30:
Ryuichi Sakamoto is an underrated composer. Listen to how he takes this song from pathos to triumph without losing the melody. Brilliant. RIP.

Whether it was Hip-Hop music, movie/video game soundtracks, or just pop music in general, the world won't be the same without him or YMO. A great loss. RIP.

Timmeh wrote on Mar 23, 2023, 18:27:

RogueSix wrote on Mar 23, 2023, 13:27:

WannaLogAlready wrote on Mar 23, 2023, 12:38:
Goodby Nigthdive, you were exceptionally good.

Were they? Delays galore, cancelled projects... the System Shock demo was completely unimpressive imo. If there is or was anything that made them "exceptional" then it must be pretty well hidden.

Your opinion is like a complete and total clueless joke.

Nightdive has done their fair share of mistakes and poor decision making, clearly they didn't sell themselves to Atari for no reason, I imagine they have been struggling immensely with funding the System Shock remake.

They have also done a number of things worthy of criticism:

• Their handling of the System Shock remake with the constant delays, using Warren Spector as a marketing tool (remember when he was involved?), along with screwing over all those backers with this deal. Now the project is in control of another company those people did not back, were not informed of, nor did they consent to this.

• Turning "preservation" and "nostalgia" into a marketing tool to overstate their own efforts while never acknowledging and ultimately devaluing the people who actually spend years of their lives documenting, reimplementing, and fixing the games they love for free. How many of you even know that Blade Runner has ran on ScummVM for a number of years now? Free and open source too. Every time their CEO says he's "preserving" games I genuinely roll my eyes. I can't find an archive.org page for Nightdive. Their Github is pretty weak if you consider how many games they've done.

• Had their developers do damage control via their personal YouTube (like Modern Vintage Gamer) for the poor handling of remasters like Blade Runner. Very unprofessional and inappropriate conduct, where was the CEO's statement or videos on the matter? Why are the devs the fall guys?

• Having quite pricey remasters for very old games (20 bucks for each Turok game seven years after remaster, really?). These prices would be more justified if they actually liberated the games they resell. Only liberated two so far, Strife VE doesn't count as they were legally obliged thanks to the GPL and SiN's game logic was already public but under a terribly limited license to this very day.

• Bought up second hand copies of games like Gunman Chronicles (a game they do not own or cannot remaster) then sold it for 60 bucks on their own website. Stephen Kick even tweeted about doing stuff like this:
  
  

  "...I'll be listing a massive amount of PC games on eBay in the coming days as I've run out of space! I bought many of these with the intention of doing re-releases through @NightdiveStudio but it was not meant to be".

  
  Not a good look.

• Let's not forget about (cancelled?) "remasters" like SiN: Reloaded. That reeked of a cash grab with lazy Waifu2x upscaling and every piece of promotional material literally being the first level.

In fairness, some good stuff they did:

• Brought interest to old games in an accessible way

• Released their games on DRM-free platforms like GOG

• Seemed to care and put in effort when they first started out with games like System Shock, Turok, and Shadowman (can't say the same now however)

• Released and liberated the source code for System Shock (original Mac version only, no remasters) and their Machines Remaster.

The ends don't always justify the means though, and the reality of Nightdive's contributions are mixed at best, and sometimes harmful at worst. It would be nice if people would stop giving them a free pass for every criticism they receive. They are not infallible.

Edit: Wanted to remove the point about Turok 2's Workshop, as it was one dev speaking "nonofficially" so it's not a fair criticism. And I removed the outright scalping accusation, because the evidence is circumstantial, but their buying up and reselling of game boxes at that kind of price is still not something I would personally approve of.

This comment was edited on Mar 24, 2023, 03:31.

It's awesome to be living through a new Counter-Strike game coming out, played a big CS:S game last night with friends just to celebrate!

Well ok maybe not entirely "new", but it's a least deserving of the title "2" more than another certain game Especially since they've already done a fair amount of changes/upgrades in this new version, with the promise of a lot more to come (they've have a limited beta test that's already leaked publicly apparently).

The voxel data-structured smoke is just the coolest thing ever, can't wait to see how that plays out.

My father has a cool memory about when he laid eyes on a video game for the first time:

He was at the mall with our cousin and (my great) grandmother where they see a table top of this new "Pong" thing. Intrigued, my Dad and cousin go check it out. Of course despite being right behind my great grandmother, she loses sight of them and can't find the two. When she asks around, someone tells her they saw two boys walking away with some man! So while this giant commotion starts happening with great grandma freaking out, my Dad and our cousin are just sucked into Pong, as it was unlike anything they'd ever seen. They were so entrenched in the game, that the next thing Dad could remember is my great grandmother cartoonishly yanking him away in anger/relief that they were OK.

Ever since that day, whether it was Apple II, Sega, or the ST, my Dad has been hooked on video games. So I guess Pong is why my father and by extension me, are gamers

Thank you old Atari, and late Happy Birthday Pong!

Happy Birthday Blue!

I will admit it does look cool and it's the type of game nVidia should've demo back when the "RTX" brand was announced. Using Quake II with an HD texture pack was always baffling to me, I mean, not even Quake III?

I'll have to check it out on the Deck, even if it's another piece of marketing propaganda from nVidia that they are some "great innovator" in the "real time ray tracing" field (notice the quotes because RTX comes with so many caveats to achieve its goal I'd barely consider it ray tracing).

SiN was awesome! This is another one of those classics my Dad somehow missed during the 90s. I remember growing up I would see SiN: Episodes on old Steam and wanting it really bad (the physics papertowels blew me away... lol) but I finally got to play and beat both 10 years ago. Even played some of the MP with a friend recently, that gravity mechanic and upside down level is insane! Almost like Prey before it came out. Reminds me that I still need to finish Wages of SiN...

The fate of Ritual is incredibly sad, and being brutally honest, this game has not been treated well. With buggy/flawed re-releases and that "remaster" looking like some horrible scam considering the screenshots were just the first level with generic AI upscaled textures, but it has never come out (and I hope it never does). Even when SiN came out it was getting hit with bad luck, such as that awful BIOS killing virus infecting some demos of the game. SiN and Ritual deserved a lot better.

I never noticed the Blue's News easter egg, but I didn't really know about BN back then, so next time I play I'm gonna have to look out for this! I know I sound like a broken record, but thanks again Blue for having such an amazing archive that we can still see a screenshot from 24 years ago!

Edit: Wrong name, gah

This comment was edited on Nov 9, 2022, 22:19.

RedEye9 wrote on Oct 15, 2022, 22:16:
https://www.engadget.com/2005-02-18-pizza-and-everquest-2-two-great-tastes-that-clog-arteries.html
While playing EverQuest II just type /pizza and a web browser will launch the online ordering section of pizzahut.com. Fill in your info and just kick back until fresh pizza is delivered straight to your door.
Mmmm, fresh

Was even reported on here like 17 years ago: https://www.bluesnews.com/s/54898/etc

Neat, I guess that answers if this was the first time this ever happened. Though, this might be the first mod to ever do this.

Sorry for the late post, was at a funeral sadly...

I can't believe I've been on here for 7 years now, this is my favorite Gaming News site of all time and I can't imagine the world without it. Happy birthday Blue's News

This is what I dislike intensely about the "Boomer Shooter" revival, how games like this are all of a sudden "rediscovered" and sold for a quick buck. No one heard or played this back in the day because this was not a good game that stood out from the pack, it should at best be preserved and given away for free. Now that people are willing to buy any old shooter regardless of quality, these publishers want to make you pay 20 bucks for what was abandonware just a couple years ago. No thanks.

It's cool nVidia recreated the Voodoo 5, but seems like a poor business decision.

/jk Voodoo 5 didn't have a cane to support itself.

A friend linked me to that thread as this happened live, this leak is insane! Probably is one of the biggest leaks in the industry, especially if the source code does get it out it'll be Half-Life 2 levels of bad for Rockstar. Historic moment indeed.

Edit:

Sorry for the initial excitement, it's just a huge event in the industry right now, but I really do hope the best for the developers. I can't imagine how hard this must be for them. It's a living nightmare us devs all share.

This comment was edited on Sep 19, 2022, 00:10.

The original XIII is a little clunky in parts but overall I found it to be an amazing game. It's a tragedy how poorly the remastered was handled because it caused so many people to write off the original.

Here's to hoping this "improved" remaster is better, but this low framerate Switch trailer isn't exactly instilling the best of confidence. To give them some credit, this does look a bit better, so we'll see.

It figures Ubisoft didn't keep the rights to one of their greatest games, could've really used it for Ubsioft+

Some context since the headline isn't exactly correct:

Since we have Proton/Wine, the games will still work. It's that originally there was "native ports" (which was just some Wine-like wrapper ironically enough), and now 2K has forced a despicable launcher into these games and pretty much broke the old "native ports". You can still load them with Proton on Steam, but it might be a little challenging. Still, this a stab in the back of the Linux owners like myself and just another spit in the face on the rest of 2K's player base who now has to go through yet another soon to be obsolete data harvesting launcher.

TL;DR 2K is not just screwing over Linux users, they're screwing over all of us.

Edit: Removed part of this comment that was an embarrassing brain fart.

This comment was edited on Nov 9, 2022, 22:16.

I gotta say this is really cool, Threewave is legendary!