[Morgoth]

I'm trying to beat CIV 5 on.. emperor? The one above king. Annoyingly, the AI is now so obvious in its cheating it's losing quite a bit of its charm. Playing CIV 4 I never felt so... helpless in my choice of tactics. Since it is actually impossible to compete on culture and tech, and since tech trading doesn't exist the only way to win as far as I can tell is through diplomacy or conquest. However, as the diplo condition takes place after the science victory (at least that's my experience) one or another of the AIs will have reached the tech victory by the time you can organize a vote.

So conquest is left as the only viable option, but that's the least interesting choice mainly because the AI is terrible at warfare, but also because it's hopeless on the larger maps. And larger maps are by far the most fun in my opinion.

So I can win through conquest on a small map, but culture, tech and diplomacy seems pretty hopeless.

I'll prodvide an example of the AI cheating when it comes to culture. I figured I'd go for a culture victory as India, focusing on just a few massive cities and use the happiness/culture bonus of Piety together with the relevant bonuses of tradition and liberty. I built every culture building and every single culture focused wonder. Now, the Russians had just over 20 cities towards the end of the medieval area, and yet they had three more social policies than me, without having picked liberty!

Pah!

[Silencer]

Not that it tells me anything more than I already knew/thought, but I think this is just one of those things that needs to be spread far and wide: SimCity and Lies. Being paranoid, anti-customer and creating stupid obstacles to people enjoying your product is one thing. It's annoying. Alright, it's also disappointing, frustrating, stupid, and a bunch of other things. But at the end of the day it's basically just annoying. But lying to your customer base about WHY you are placing the aforementioned annoying-and-ultimately-useless anti-customer obstacles into your game? Now that's a different thing altogether...

Anyway; long story short - as expected, SimCity can run just fine offline, and EA are a bag of lying, paranoid, douchenozzles. Wonderful.

[worry]

Not that I've played a Star Wars game since the SNES trilogy, but Disney just shut down LucasArts.

[Defiance]

Yeah. I see a ton of people raging about this, but honestly I don't care. It sucks for the people who lost their jobs, but LucasArts hasn't developed anything worthwhile in at least a decade. For whatever reason, many people are treating this like it's the end of Star Wars games, which is hardly the case. If anything, I hope this will mean more freedom and creative control for those who get licenses to develop. I never have forgiven LucasArts for making Obsidian release KotOR 2 six months early.

And were the SNES games you played called Super Star Wars? Those kicked ass.

[worry]

Indeed they were. I'm not sure I beat any of them, they were all hard as hell and all were borrows or rentals. But totally awesome.

[Macros]

Icewind dale 2 and Zeus.
love me some old school

[MTS]

Zeus! One of my favourite games ever, played that and the expansion to death during high school. Never played the Icewind Dale games though.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Macros, on 02 April 2013 - 10:36 AM, said:

give me gameplay over pretty any day of the week.

I guess that's a part of what I see in the more interactivity side of engines. The more little things the engine can handle physics wise and the smoother it can handle them allows more freedom for interesting and immersive gameplay. Things like adding weight to scenery allows you to shove tables and fridges in front of doors in a game where you're being chased. Better lighting and reflective surfaces allows for intense first person stealth (want to see what's around the corner without being spotted? Gonna have to work out a way to do so). Leaves and trees that react to players, NPCs and environmental effects better could make for very cool jungle hunting (of NPCs or other players).
Those can mostly be done now to a certain degree, but it was just to show examples of how these things give options for gameplay.

worrywort, on 03 April 2013 - 10:16 PM, said:

Not that I've played a Star Wars game since the SNES trilogy, but Disney just shut down LucasArts.

On one hand I am little sad, but on the other I think it's a good thing. Not being that great in recent years doesn't change that they were awesome for a while, but I think all the talent involved in those awesome games is elsewhere these days. On the good side I have heard quite a few times that in recent years their impact on the games they had third party studios working on was mostly bad. And generally not community friendly. Hopefully that will stop.
In fact the studio that developed Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy is now releasing the source code for both games, as LucasArts is no longer around to tell them they can't (Jedi Academy is still the game I have felt most like a badass force wielding warrior in).

[Macros]

I get where you're coming from Luc but I cant help but feel story and gameplay* have suffered due the need to be ever prettier.



*by gameplay I hadn't considered the real life physics aspect, I had only considered, longeovoty, difficulty, increasing repetition and variety. Considering I play mostly old isometric rpgs and Rome total war these days I don't give a shit if the table weighs the correct kilos

[Defiance]

I think it's all about finding the line between what's truly life-like and what's enjoyable. As much as we say we want our games to be realistic, we only want this to a certain degree. How many of you reload your guns before the clip has run out? Do you really think that you could be able to effectively play a stealth game if the enemy AI was intelligent and the lighting and sound system was perfect? You'd be caught in an instant. What about going through the whole game limping because you've been shot in the leg?

There also comes to be a limit on what we can do simply because of the keyboard/controller (the latter even more so). Sure, with better physics we might be able to barricade doors effectively and so on, but where do we draw the line for realism? I want to have the fridge be at a very particular angle so that it's most effective in barricading, perhaps. Or maybe I want to place a certain amount of my character's weight on the door. Until we have virtual reality games, I'm really not too concerned about this stuff. In my opinion, many times when developers try to add these aspects in just highlights everything you can't do (oh, my enemies can barricade the door? Why can't I use this axe in the hallway to smash through the two-by-fours and drywall into their house?).

Like I said in a previous post, I'm all for better engines to run games. It's just not something I get too excited about, nor is it necessary for great gameplay. I think there are already so many unrefined parts in what we currently have that things can seem really fresh and exciting without new options. There's also the problem, and I kind of stated this already, of the closer you get to reality the more you expect everything to behave like reality. I don't scratch my head and wonder why the character's mouths don't sync up perfectly with their voices or why character's eyes make them look like they have no soul when playing older games. The closer we get to reality, the more imperfections stand out and impede my enjoyment.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Uh, yeah.

I don't want complete realism, I never said I did. Those ideas I suggested were all for different sorts of things. A game like Last of Us or another survival game could make good use of the ability to barricade doors. Even taking into account the way the barricade is built, I see no problem with that. And you know what? I see no reason you shouldn't have to be careful NOT to barricade yourself into a room made of drywall. I can easily think of situations where that sort of thing could be very cool.
Sure you don't want to spend a whole game limping because you got shot in the leg, let alone actually spending a while in hospital for it. But that doesn't mean moving slower from injured legs in Call of Cthulhu while trying to escape from something wasn't great. And what about the ability to open every cupboard and shit in Amnesia, and being able to control how far you open doors? That game couldn't be as intense without that.
The realism argument is a stunted one when discussing engines, because nothing is stopping you from not using everything the engine is capable of. Team Fortress 2 was built on one of the most advanced engines of it's day, realism is not and issue for that game, no gameplay uncanny valley in sight.

Better engines aren't NECESSARY for great gameplay, but if you're going to look at it like that, no one particular thing is necessary for great gameplay in general. But that's a silly argument. If you took away the ability to jump, you could still make lots of great games, it wouldn't be necessary to make them in general. You could still make all the Total War games, but you couldn't make a Mario 64 without it. If you took away the ability to interact with NPCs you could still make Journey, but you couldn't make Baldurs Gate, Planescape, etc.
Lots of people think Farcry 3 is sooo much better than Farcry 2. I'm betting a huge amount of the improvements are due to the capabilities of a better engine.
I said new physics capabilities give great options for stuff, it still has to be used right. You've just given poor examples.

Also, you are forgetting that a lot of the cool and interesting mechanics that can be done often require some additions and changes to engines. The better the engine, the more it can do, the more flexible it is (and they DO get more flexible with each iteration), the easier those things are.
The easier they are, the cheaper they are.
The cheaper they are the more likely we are to see someone with a good idea actually be able to make something based on that good idea.

[Mentalist]

Lucifer, on 06 April 2013 - 03:43 PM, said:

Uh, yeah.

I don't want complete realism, I never said I did. Those ideas I suggested were all for different sorts of things. A game like Last of Us or another survival game could make good use of the ability to barricade doors. Even taking into account the way the barricade is built, I see no problem with that. And you know what? I see no reason you shouldn't have to be careful NOT to barricade yourself into a room made of drywall. I can easily think of situations where that sort of thing could be very cool.
Sure you don't want to spend a whole game limping because you got shot in the leg, let alone actually spending a while in hospital for it. But that doesn't mean moving slower from injured legs in Call of Cthulhu while trying to escape from something wasn't great. And what about the ability to open every cupboard and shit in Amnesia, and being able to control how far you open doors? That game couldn't be as intense without that.
The realism argument is a stunted one when discussing engines, because nothing is stopping you from not using everything the engine is capable of. Team Fortress 2 was built on one of the most advanced engines of it's day, realism is not and issue for that game, no gameplay uncanny valley in sight.

Better engines aren't NECESSARY for great gameplay, but if you're going to look at it like that, no one particular thing is necessary for great gameplay in general. But that's a silly argument. If you took away the ability to jump, you could still make lots of great games, it wouldn't be necessary to make them in general. You could still make all the Total War games, but you couldn't make a Mario 64 without it. If you took away the ability to interact with NPCs you could still make Journey, but you couldn't make Baldurs Gate, Planescape, etc.
Lots of people think Farcry 3 is sooo much better than Farcry 2. I'm betting a huge amount of the improvements are due to the capabilities of a better engine.
I said new physics capabilities give great options for stuff, it still has to be used right. You've just given poor examples.

Also, you are forgetting that a lot of the cool and interesting mechanics that can be done often require some additions and changes to engines. The better the engine, the more it can do, the more flexible it is (and they DO get more flexible with each iteration), the easier those things are.
The easier they are, the cheaper they are.
The cheaper they are the more likely we are to see someone with a good idea actually be able to make something based on that good idea.

Can't tell if serious (I just woke up)
But really, FC3 is a better game because checkpoints don't respawn, and enemy AI doesn't spot you from 2 KM away.

[Macros]

I think we're at crosspurposes her luc. I agree with you that engine advancement makes better play, but I'm argueing that there's so much time being spent on graphics and prettification whcih I don't give a shit about what a game LOOKS like, I care about how it plays. make the enhanced physics engines yes, hell yes, but I really couldnt give a damn if the characters look awful, I still love replaying MGS, even though the graphics look woeful by modern standards the gameplay's still better than some modern games.

[Mentalist]

Macros, on 06 April 2013 - 09:26 PM, said:

I think we're at crosspurposes her luc. I agree with you that engine advancement makes better play, but I'm argueing that there's so much time being spent on graphics and prettification whcih I don't give a shit about what a game LOOKS like, I care about how it plays. make the enhanced physics engines yes, hell yes, but I really couldnt give a damn if the characters look awful, I still love replaying MGS, even though the graphics look woeful by modern standards the gameplay's still better than some modern games.

New engines can make new physics. New physics are a good thing, b/c they can offer new gameplay opportunities.

it's only when new engines are ONLY made to showcase graphical prettiness that they can be considered a waste.

Though I'agree. I'd MUCH rather see the money the likes of Crytek and Epic are spending on new engines go to developing better game AI.

[Lucifer's Heaven]

Macros, on 06 April 2013 - 09:26 PM, said:

I think we're at crosspurposes her luc. I agree with you that engine advancement makes better play, but I'm argueing that there's so much time being spent on graphics and prettification whcih I don't give a shit about what a game LOOKS like, I care about how it plays. make the enhanced physics engines yes, hell yes, but I really couldnt give a damn if the characters look awful, I still love replaying MGS, even though the graphics look woeful by modern standards the gameplay's still better than some modern games.

While I care more about it looking nice than you do, I don't actually think we're at cross purposes at all. I like a game to be pretty, but I agree gameplay is the more important of the two, by far (with story and writing up there).
That post was mostly made for Defiance, who was saying that there's no point in better engines because we haven't exhausted all the good ideas that can be done with current tech. I disagree with that. And it's not as simple as that either.

Teams like the Unreal team spending so much time on their engines is good for what you want by the way Macros. They make their money leasing that engine out to other devs, thereby allowing those other dev companies to do what you said, spend less time on engine stuff (as they just leased a perfectly good one) and more time on the important stuff for their game. Hopefully they think that's the story and gameplay.

[Macros]

Fair enough, I hadn't considered the financial side of it like that.
i bow to your geekery knowledge

[Defiance]

I never said there's no point for new engines. I was just explaining why new engines fail to excite some people, such as myself.

[Mentalist]

just for Maccy:
Rome II. BIGGEST SCREENSHOT EVER. (double-click to zoom in)

http://tww-data.s3.a...ama2/index.html

[Macros]

Damnit cant get it up on the phone.
laptop later

[Jakovasaurus]

Any of you gamers going to have a go at Dead Island: Riptide? The first Dead Island had its issues but I had a lot of fun playing it. Riptide looks like more of the same.