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Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer
May 19th 2006, 20:23 CEST by CheesyPoof

I never played any form of Riiiiiiiiiiiiiidge Racer, have you? I wonder why they keep making it?
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#55 by LPMiller
2006-05-20 00:06:35
lpmiller@gotapex.com http://www.gotapex.com
You play with 3 other people over live. It is kinda fun, actually.

"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
#56 by LPMiller
2006-05-20 00:06:50
lpmiller@gotapex.com http://www.gotapex.com
frankly, live is the whole reason to get a 360.

"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
#57 by Squeaky
2006-05-20 00:22:01
I was sold on live with the first xbox.

Aeternum vale
#58 by jjohnsen
2006-05-20 00:30:41
http://www.johnsenclan.com
That is cool, I loved Gauntlet.

Actually, the liberalism of the media - as a general thing - IS a major fallacy. What the media is, is a whore.  -LP
#59 by Dinglehoffen
2006-05-20 00:36:57
The money I spent playing the first few arcade Gauntlets that came out in my youngers could have comprised my retirement.

Gregor Samsa woke to find himself changed into a monstrous vermin.
#60 by Shadarr
2006-05-20 01:04:18
shadarr@yahoo.com http://digital-luddite.com
Live is definitely the best thing about the XBoxes, but unfortunately I don't give a crap about online play.  I play games at times when I want to do something by myself.  I have all sorts of other things I do with people.
#61 by G-Man
2006-05-20 01:19:01
Speaking of Fallout (in the old threads) here is an interesting interview with an ex-Troika guy about his new company and new X-Com style game. It also contains this little snippet about Source licensing, which puts the Sin Episodes in a different light:
To help everyone better understand, I will explain Publisher funding vs. Developer return process. I'm going to simplify it a lot, but this is more or less how it works.... and it's really quite amazing...

After they agree to fund your game for 6 million, you begin production. They give you 500k a month upon receiving, reviewing, and approving your milestone. They are basically checking every month to make sure the game is actually being made and going in a good direction Fair enough. To keep things easy, let's say the game ships on time and they've given you a clean 6 million bucks.

Ready?.... You get 10% of the royalties of the game! So like if the game sells 1 million units at Electronics Boutique for 50 bucks a piece, you get 5 million dollars coming back at you right?!??!

WRONG

EB bought the game for 40 dollars and sells it for 50. Now the publisher takes away their expenses of producing the full color manual and the pretty box and such which we'll say is 10 bucks (usually more like 7, but let's keep the math easy). So now we are down to 30 bucks, and you get 10% of that... 3 bucks.... but WAIT!!! Your 3 dollars doesn't go into your pocket, your 3 bucks goes to pay back the publisher what you borrowed to make the game. They did give you 6 million dollars. So before the developer see's a check in the mail, you would have to sell 2 million units!!!!! So the developer before the developer gets a check, the publisher gets 30 million dollars coming in.

Crazy huh?

So why choose Steam? I have chosen Steam because if you buy Valves engine to make your game with, you get to keep 100% of what you sell on Steam. That's right 100%. So using our math from above, if I can sell the game on Steam for 30 bucks and cost 6 million to make, I'll be seeing a check after the game sells 200k units instead of 2 million. AND the check I get for the units I sell will be 10 times more than it would be from a publisher AND after all this wonderfulness, you guys all get the game for 30 bucks instead of 50....

It's an all around winner.
#62 by anaqer
2006-05-20 01:26:58
which puts the Sin Episodes in a different light:

It does? In what way exactly? The game is still... uh, of the same quality - regardless of how much money the developers are actually making from it.

will work for hate
#63 by gaggle
2006-05-20 01:41:49
SiN sounds exactly like what I expected it to be. Obviously I can just say that, but in my world it means another direct hit by my Awesometastic Extrapolation Engine™.

And I think Steam needs a makeover, the current list of all possible games is just too cumbersome, if I can't soon remove games from the list that I don't have access to I shall be very.. annoyed.

Aaaaaaand the Troika (whoever they were) thing sounds like what the music and video business is going through, except we're seeing a much faster move towards electronic self-publishing. Who does the advertisements though? Who oversees that a project upholds the laws of all the weird countries it'll appear in? This sure puts the developers directly in the line of fire when it comes to all the weird legal shit that may come their way.

On the other hand that's still probably well worth the risk if you feel you have a product you can sell on its own merits, it's not like I'm really arguing for the classic big-publisher approch.

"the game will be based on famous battles which actually took place in ancient Japan. So here's this giant enemy crab."
#64 by Dumdeedum
2006-05-20 01:51:49
http://www.dumdeedum.com
And I think Steam needs a makeover, the current list of all possible games is just too cumbersome, if I can't soon remove games from the list that I don't have access to I shall be very.. annoyed.

Jesus good golly don't say that, it's bad enough I have to update the damn thing every time I load it without you encouraging them.

#65 by Shadarr
2006-05-20 01:53:24
shadarr@yahoo.com http://digital-luddite.com
I'm confused, so is Valve providing the $6 million in dev funding or does the developer have to find someone else to front the money?  The rest of it makes perfect sense to me, it's exactly like the situation with the recording industry--you can make more money selling fewer units at a lower price, if you just cut out the middle man.
#66 by Funkdrunk
2006-05-20 06:25:53
jflavius@bellatlantic.net
Did any of you Smallville fans see the trailer for the Aquaman show (which due to the UPN/WB merger will never see air).  It was surprisingly not too bad.

Funk.

I am sofa king.  We todd ed.
#67 by Neale
2006-05-20 08:09:25
neale@pimurho.co.uk www.pimurho.co.uk
Valve's licensing is very flexible. You can buy the engine license upfront and pay for your Steam distibution, and you get 100% of sales, but they've also been known to give out an engine and Steam deal in return for a 50% royalty, which is still a far better deal than you'd ever get from a normal publisher. Obviously, you've still got to fund your development yourself, but it is bringing a degree of "garage development" back to the fore and making it more viable.

I have a hard time accepting that anyone could achieve this miraculously high level of stupidity. - Caryn
#68 by McBain
2006-05-20 09:51:08
Worst President Ever.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
#69 by lwf
2006-05-20 10:24:15
Every president is.

Put down the imaginary knife before you pretend to hurt yourself.
#70 by McBain
2006-05-20 11:13:47
I went to see "Thank You For Smoking" earlier tonight.  It was pretty funny and I recommend it.  It was a wonderful "issue movie" that isn't bombastic and condescending.  The way it portrays the main character so humanly is refreshing.

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.
#71 by Warren Marshall
2006-05-20 12:13:42
http://www.wantonhubris.com/
Obviously, you've still got to fund your development yourself, but it is bringing a degree of "garage development" back to the fore and making it more viable.

It's a great first step but my experience with SiN leads me to believe there are still many bumps to work out.  I installed from the retail box CD and this was my experience:

- install from CD
- start game
- starts up Steam
- updates Steam
- restarts Steam
- updates SiN (apparently there's another 3% of content that needs to download- patch?)
- asks for the CD key
- game starts

That's too many steps.  I don't care about updating Steam - I want to play the game I just installed from the damn CD!  And I want a choice of installing a patch now or later.  I felt hand cuffed and unable to play the game I bought for a good 20 minutes.

Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
#72 by Warren Marshall
2006-05-20 12:15:00
http://www.wantonhubris.com/
Don't get me wrong, I think digital distribution like this is a great thing - I just think it has a few more rungs to climb on the convenience ladder before it's something I'll prefer over retail.

Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
#73 by Neale
2006-05-20 12:33:40
neale@pimurho.co.uk www.pimurho.co.uk
Installing and playing via Steam works fantastically, but the whole Steam -> Retail thing doesn't really work all that well, so I agree with you there.

It's still really the best, sensible option for a developer such as myself, trying to get a project to go commercial.

I have a hard time accepting that anyone could achieve this miraculously high level of stupidity. - Caryn
#74 by LPMiller
2006-05-20 14:13:16
lpmiller@gotapex.com http://www.gotapex.com
Yeah, but Warren, you didn't DO digital distribution. You bought the cd. If you had steam, then it's preload, pay, play.

"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
#75 by Anonymous
2006-05-20 15:16:13
Sin made me motion sick like nothing before. If it's an anti-piracy measure, than it worked. I'm not playing it again.

#76 by Warren Marshall
2006-05-20 18:00:07
http://www.wantonhubris.com/
Yeah, but Warren, you didn't DO digital distribution. You bought the cd. If you had steam, then it's preload, pay, play.

But really, my experience should have been smoother than someone who had to preload.  The fact that it wasn't points to some fairly glaring holes in the process.

Granted, my Half-Life 2 preload experience was very favorable but it wasn't for a lot of other people I know.

Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
#77 by gaggle
2006-05-20 18:25:34
Sounds like the media-based installation can be substantially shortened by simply packaging all the updating into one big ball of fun. So it becomes Install SiN, start game, wait for patching, cdkey, playing. Which would roughly mimic the digital distribution. You still get the download-waiting, but I don't see how that can be fixed conceptually.. apart from the obvious solution of getting more bandwidth.


And I don't see how buying a product physically ought to be smoother than all digital. You have built-in cdkey verification since the act of buying also binds the copy to your account, and you have built-in patching since what you download is already patched.

"the game will be based on famous battles which actually took place in ancient Japan. So here's this giant enemy crab."
#78 by lwf
2006-05-20 18:46:26
Yeah, I don't get what Warren is trying to say. Pirating a game is usually smoother and more convenient than futzing with some old tyme disc delivery method, so having it preloaded should be the smoothest of all. My friend lent me half-life 2, discs and all, but I just signed into his account and had it steam me up instead.

Put down the imaginary knife before you pretend to hurt yourself.
#79 by LPMiller
2006-05-20 19:10:03
lpmiller@gotapex.com http://www.gotapex.com

But really, my experience should have been smoother than someone who had to preload.


I don't see why it should. Installing store bought games has been a pain in the ass for years now, waiting to install 4gb installs, dealing with copy protection that doesn't like your hardware, and release day patches. You bought a game that very likely was nothing more than the preload package. The whole point of steam is that if you want it, you have it preloaded already, then a small download on launch day. I mean, I have sin installed, I just have to pay for it, which I will just as soon as I have the time to care.

I mean, I can see why you'd expect it to be easier, as in concept, it is. But the fact is, it's been a bitch to install store bought games for a while now.

"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
#80 by G-Man
2006-05-20 19:18:40
You people are crazy. I see Warren's point. The only reason he couldn't play the game as soon as it was installed was because Valve decided to impose their copy-protection and online distribution schemes on him. Why can't their retail products be totally decoupled from Steam, or at least have an opt-in relationship? Because they want your money and don't mind annoying you to get it.

It isn't like the game wouldn't work at all without being patched, and it isn't like Steam NEEDS to be installed to play the game. The retail version could have been made standalone at probably minimal expense. Instead they just dumped a copy of the prerelease onto a CD with a quickie InstallShield that spawns Steam when it finishes. People who buy the retail releases probably aren't Steam users for a reason.
#81 by Neale
2006-05-20 19:20:07
neale@pimurho.co.uk www.pimurho.co.uk
Ritual scored their own retail distribution deal - Valve didn't do it for them.

I have a hard time accepting that anyone could achieve this miraculously high level of stupidity. - Caryn
#82 by LPMiller
2006-05-20 19:33:53
lpmiller@gotapex.com http://www.gotapex.com
yeah, dumbass!

"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
#83 by lwf
2006-05-20 19:34:40
That's all well and good, G-man, but expecting the retail experience to be smoother than the preload experience is a tad loony. I would especially pissed off at this kind of garbage if I was on, say, dial-up. You shouldn't HAVE to connect to the internet to play your recently bought game at all.

Put down the imaginary knife before you pretend to hurt yourself.
#84 by Warren Marshall
2006-05-20 19:36:17
http://www.wantonhubris.com/
Ritual scored their own retail distribution deal - Valve didn't do it for them.

Then there's even LESS reason to burden the retail buyer with Steam dependant baggage.

Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
#85 by Hugin
2006-05-20 19:39:59
lmccain@nber.org
So, how can Rise of Legends be so obviously high quality in just about every way, feature really cool, nonstandard fantasy designs, in one of my favorite game genres...and be so unfun?  Man I'm disappointed.
#86 by LPMiller
2006-05-20 19:43:28
lpmiller@gotapex.com http://www.gotapex.com
cause.

"Testiculos habet et bene pendentes" — "He has testicles, and they dangle nicely."
#87 by Ng Yo
2006-05-20 19:48:35
http://www.taxi583.com
boo hoo, another steam fuck up!!!
eat it and die!!!

anonymous - if I knew for sure you were the legendary Ng Yo, I would gladly answer you.

Come hack my site @:
http://members.westnet.com.au/xx0x8x2z/
#88 by Warren Marshall
2006-05-20 19:49:34
http://www.wantonhubris.com/
It's not a fuck up.  The game worked.  It was just a huge hassle that didn't need to be that way.

Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
#89 by Ng Yo
2006-05-20 19:51:07
http://www.taxi583.com
ok i know, i simply HATE steam!!
that should be known by now!!!

anonymous - if I knew for sure you were the legendary Ng Yo, I would gladly answer you.

Come hack my site @:
http://members.westnet.com.au/xx0x8x2z/
#90 by gaggle
2006-05-20 19:55:35
For me it wouldn't be easier to get SiN going even if it were decoupled from Steam. Yes you'd get to cut out the part where Steam itself has to update, but apart from taking up an impressive three lines on Warren's list it's a pretty irrelevant part of the process. But then, I wouldn't consider not patching. Of course I'd install it, it fixes errors.. I mean, unless it's really obviously a stupid patch of course. I'd like to see all games come equipped with an auto-patcher.


Now if you have a problem with the concept of Steam then that's a different and somewhat interesting topic. It smells a bit of Valve liking their product so much that they just assume everyone wants it.. though I wouldn't claim it'd be as easy to implement a Steam-free version as G-Man suggests. I don't have a problem with Steam personally, but I can see how someone might.

"the game will be based on famous battles which actually took place in ancient Japan. So here's this giant enemy crab."
#91 by Ng Yo
2006-05-20 19:57:43
http://www.taxi583.com
we said this before, the worst thing about steam is that THEY have control,
mainly it's ALL about control, don't you see ???
most of you ARE sheep!!!
BAHHHHHHH....

anonymous - if I knew for sure you were the legendary Ng Yo, I would gladly answer you.

Come hack my site @:
http://members.westnet.com.au/xx0x8x2z/
#92 by bishop
2006-05-20 19:58:47
http://www.darkintellect.com/00FF00/
I suspect ridge racer has a lot to do with it.
#93 by gaggle
2006-05-20 19:59:54
Angelina shouldn't be wasted on a troll.

"the game will be based on famous battles which actually took place in ancient Japan. So here's this giant enemy crab."
#94 by lwf
2006-05-20 20:01:09
There's nothing wrong with being a sheep. Sheep are very happy people.

Put down the imaginary knife before you pretend to hurt yourself.
#95 by Ng Yo
2006-05-20 20:01:54
http://www.taxi583.com
btw, do others NOT see a problem with supreme commander having a whole side only ONE fucking color ?? i mean look at the beauty that is c&c generals, lovely colors 'n all Gov!
SC looks bland and actually rather shitty.
what's wrong with you people ???

anonymous - if I knew for sure you were the legendary Ng Yo, I would gladly answer you.
#96 by Warren Marshall
2006-05-20 20:05:04
http://www.wantonhubris.com/
gaggle

Simply saying it removes 3 line items is not seeing the larger issue.  Those 3 line items took the bulk of the time.  So instead of playing my new game immediately upon installation, I got to play it 20-25 minutes later.

Jesus Christ, that is unbelievably retarded! - lwf
#97 by Squeaky
2006-05-20 20:13:01
Shoulda downloaded it!

Aeternum vale
#98 by Squeaky
2006-05-20 20:13:35
And besides, this has been common knowledge with steam products since the retail release of half life 2. You're a little late to the bitching. In other words: SEEN IT

Aeternum vale
#99 by Anonymous
2006-05-20 20:22:16
I see a problem with SC but it's not the colors. It's that the really large units have grown in size yet many of them last not more than 10 seconds in battle. That I don't like.

#100 by Hugin
2006-05-20 20:33:36
lmccain@nber.org
I thought the big spiders in that Supreme Commander stood up to a fairly tremendous volume of fire before going down, and that army cluster had three of them.  I think that was fine.  The battleship seemed to go down kind of fast, i agree.  I'd want to know if the game does a lit with defensive upgrades or whatever, for example I noticed there was a forcefield unit.  In my memory, Total Annihilation tended towards a "high numbers of units getting created and blown away brutally' model, so I'm ready to accept fairly fast unit death, so long as the bigger units aren't a crappy value, costwise.  Maybe they have special abilites that come in handy or something.  I'll have to wait and see.  Also, god knows how the numbers for the units might have been tweaked for the demo, compared to a real game.
#101 by Percy Kittenz
2006-05-20 21:12:46
blakcat9@planetquake.com http://www.livejournal.com/users/percykittenz
I will agree that Steam seems to need to update itself way too much, and asking if you want to apply patches now would be a nice courtosy gesture, but Steam takes a ton of the burden out of the equation that overrules what they put back in. In order to get that patch, you'd first have to be aware that such a patch existed, then find it on a download site - most of which require registration, so you might presumably have to do that - then get the patch at whatever throttled down bandwidth the site offers you, and once you have it, run the installer. Now, don't you think that would probably take around 20 minutes, even if you found a good download site? With Steam, it finds any and all updates automatically and downloads them as fast as possible, installing the files right into the system as it goes.

Besides, you're going to want this patch. The game is nearly impossible, or at least hair-pullingly difficult, without the patch due to a broken difficulty system.

When I bought Sin on Steam, I purchased it without pre-downloading. I waited about 20 minutes for Sin 1 to download, played that for a couple hours until Sin Emergence downloaded, then went right in. Pretty painless and I didn't have to leave the house. I expect it probably would have taken about as long to drive to the store, drive back and install it from the cd, but instead, I got to play my free bonus game while I waited.

"There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Because your philosophy sucks." - Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg
#102 by Shadarr
2006-05-20 21:20:34
shadarr@yahoo.com http://digital-luddite.com
I think what would solve all of Warren's complaints is if it started the game up immediately after install, and then did all the Steam crap in the background.  And applying patches should always be optional, because sometimes patches suck and break the game.
#103 by gaggle
2006-05-20 22:24:08
Simply saying it removes 3 line items is not seeing the larger issue.  Those 3 line items took the bulk of the time

Oh, well.. yeah, that doesn't seem like it's just three irrelevant lines then, I can see how you'd be fond of not having to go through that. But really? Just for updating Steam? We're both talking about the lines
- starts up Steam, - updates Steam, - restarts Steam
yeah? I remember installing Steam from fresh just recently, on account of reinstalled Windows, and I don't think it took more than a couple of minutes, at most. Unless I'm seriously misremembering things or you have a wacky slow internetconnection I'm not sure where exactly we're getting our beams crossed.

Certainly what took the longest was the downloading of all the games, now that was an all-nighter. Literally.


But eh well, reflecting back on your original post this is about being annoyed of all the waiting you had to go through, and that's obviously not something my own different experience can change. I see your point, and ah.. well hey, at least you don't have to go through updating Steam when HLep1 arrives. Presumably anyway.

"the game will be based on famous battles which actually took place in ancient Japan. So here's this giant enemy crab."
#104 by Squeaky
2006-05-20 22:32:26
I don't think anyone here still cares about WoW, but for those that do still play, some interesting things in the 1.11 patch notes:

The cost to unlearn talents will now decay over time. This cost will be reduced by a rate of 5 gold per month to a minimum of 10 gold.

Yay! Respecing is not as bad as it used to be!

After a disconnect from the server, it is now possible to log back in immediately, instead of receiving the message, "A character with that name already exists."

Hooray. Took them long enough to figure this one out.

Fear: The calculations to determine if Fear effects should break due to receiving damage have been changed. The old calculation used the base damage of the ability. The new calculation uses the final amount of damage dealt, after all modifiers. In addition, the chance for a damage over time spell to break Fear is now significantly lower. Note that Fear continues to be roughly three times as likely to break on player targets as on non-player targets.

Slight warlock nerf :(

And it looks like they're finally fixing that damned bug where Shamans take damage occasionally, and making mages fun to play. Also of note: keyrings, increased stack sizes for leather, and an altered cooldown system for consumables:
We have re-evaluated the mechanics of consumable items in the game and concluded that these should work in a more intuitive manner. As such, most items that can not be equipped with right click abilities have been streamlined into one of three categories. Using an item of a particular category will trigger a shared cooldown among all other items in the same category. The categories break down as follows with category cooldowns as listed.
Potions 2 minutes: This includes items such as Health Potion, Mana Potion, Invisibility Potion and Mighty Rage Potion.
Aggressive 1 minute: This includes items such as explosives, Really Sticky Glue and Discombobulator Ray.
Non-Aggresive 2 minutes: This includes items such as Healthstone, Night Dragon's Breath, Whipper Root Tuber and Target Dummy.
Many items that can be equipped have had their cooldown category removed and will be controlled exclusively by the item's self cooldown. For example, the Gnomish Mind Control Cap should no longer trigger the cooldown of the Talisman of Arathor.
We have re-evauluated the class specific quest rewards for both Zul'Gurub and Ahn'Qiraj Ruins. To bring them more in line with the effort required to attain them we have upgraded the superior items to epic quality.
All food/drink can be eaten while silenced. Previously some food/drink could not be consumed when under the effect of a silence.
The Gnomish Mind Control Cap may now only be used on targets that are not in combat.


Looks like they're also beefing up the PvP armour sets, and are adding a bunch of new quests.

and for you catassers:
A new LEGENDARY item quest has been added! Casters rejoice (and druids too)!



Full patch notes over at Qt3.

Aeternum vale
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