Comments - MajorBanter

It's called silhouetting, and it's very important. In a good multiplayer game, you should recognise the enemy's weapon. Stylisation makes that a lot easier.

Realism has no place in gaming.

snip

We looked at this in Interlopers and concluded it's a useless system that's pointless to implement.

It's not hurting you?! Ubisoft's DRM? Diablo's Online-Only? The same COD games over and over? Piracy is PART of the driving force that's making games a crap industry to both work in and buy from.

The players shape the market, and they've shaped it into something they don't like. People fail to think ahead, dish out bad karma and don't think. Nothing will magically fix itself unless you start picking yourself up and asking the question 'why' this is happening. Why is Activision such a cash cow? Why have Blizzard forced out Mod support?

It's the players fault, and accepting that is the first step towards fixing it. Get some humility.

TF2 fulfilled it's profit margin by a long, long way. Why not make it free?

Remember GOW's choice system; a complete waste of time. You figured out which was easier, and took it. In the case above, I'd bet a study would see a considerable bias towards the right-hand area. It's brighter, more obvious and gives a clearer picture.

Choice areas are usually pointless, and players really won't care about the gimmick when they're actually playing.

The only way a choice really works is to inform the player what's down each path; and that's usually ridiculous. 'Hard path but quicker' is a classic error that makes for a boring game with no innovation.

If you want to make a choice system succeed beyond "oh look, another gimmick" and genuinely be original, look at the Dark Knight film. Batman must choose between his lover and a key political figure, and only has time to save one. As for the twist at the end of his journey, that's an optional extra. In either case, it's a moral decision rather than a pointless one.

I'd be hugely pleased to know how you built the inventory system, and a PM would be fantastic.

I assume it's just an env_screenoverlay with a few clientcommand bits, but that seems overly simple and would need a ridiculous number of VTFs. You say you work entirely within Hammer, so I'd like to know how it was done.

Naturally, if it's code based, then just let me know.

Again, I'd greatly appreciate it and I'd love to send a texture pack, some writing or some VO work your way as thanks.

I'd like to see a 'holster weapon' option. Those are some big guns taking up my screen space.

Sound is going to be a big player in this kind of environment. I hope it's up to par.

While it's a nice, clean style, the glow - or the small size - is a problem.

Admittedly the image is small, but I can't read the key elements. Frag, Smoke, Flash; they shouldn't need me to squint.

In essence, either boost up the TYPE (the images are fine in my personal opinion) or reduce the glow to make the HUD sharper. Again, I haven't seen it full size but it just looks too small. There's minimalist, then silly.

We call this period of time 'finals'.

Grow some patience.

Isn't that a flawed viewpoint?

Furthermore, are 'mistakes' that make a game less than what YOU believe decent justification for performing a morally wrong and illegal action?

The hours that developers - not publishers - invest in these games does not mean you can dismiss piracy as 'the industry's fault'. It's the pirate's fault; surely if a game is flawed, why spend money on it?

Society's obsession with 'needing' things distorts actual requirements. You have never needed a game, and you can spend money on better things. If those points are correct, why pirate if you're not going to buy it?

I buy my games because it's easier, quicker, helps developers and above all because I enjoy playing things that I have chosen to invest in. Not generic crap I pirated.

While this argument is flawed in many ways, and can be countered, it's my viewpoint and I won't impinge that on other people. I simply feel that piracy has gained an image of anti-whatever and generates a bizarre sort of superiority in pirates.

Piracy a few years back was an underground 'get the things you can't afford' process, not a factory-line process of thievery that somehow gives people an excuse to look down on developers.

I will always excuse the poor. I will never excuse those who can afford the privilege of gaming.

Definitely one of the best maps in STALKER. It's the reason I'm tracking this mod.

Ah, so John's almost definitely an ex-slave. Sucks.

The negative impact on ModDB would be far too great to allow the modification to continue updates on the site.

I understand the damage control, and frankly free speech and rights can go **** themselves when it comes to cold, hard business. Checkerboard are free to set up their own external site, but ModDB specifically states it reserves the right to remove offensive content.

ModDB is a company, not just a random site thrown up by a bunch of people, and it has a code of conduct. If something has violated it in massive, massive excess then it should be removed.

As for the mod itself, I have no opinion on it. ModDB's actions are justified, logical and frankly hypocrites throwing out the "knee jerk reaction" statements are making one themselves. You don't own the site. It's not your call. That's an end of story.

Very well said.

Having worked with Sn1pe on mod work, I can say he is a hugely talented, very capable individual.

He's also absolutely all over the shop.

The ModDB community have time and time again recently proven that they're no longer here for the art form of gaming; Dear Esther is a perfect example. This is another. You have no idea of the situation and are running on an emotive young man's words over Prassel's; a proven, decade dedicated Orion creator.

It's completely ridiculous and totally farcical, this response. Prassel has chosen to verify the situation and essentially issue damage control. What else do you expect?

I think Sn1pe is a brilliant guy, but I could have seen this coming. He's unreliable. That's just Sn1pe.

tl;dr - There's no solid fact either side at the current moment. Get off your moral high horse and remember that we live in a land where "innocent until proven guilty" applies.

I am sure there will be an explanation in time. Whether or not Prassel is an ******* will come clear soon enough.

It depends on your card and processor. If you've got low video RAM and low standard RAM, it doesn't matter how phat your system is. It can't render that much data at once.

Turn down the graphics by one notch; High to Medium for example. It makes a lot of difference for very little graphical giveaway.

Got extreme lag spikes that are increasingly occurring.

A huge blurred screenshot does not do you any favours; it hurts the eyes. Good colour scheme though.

Regarding the domain name, it's unprofessional because it contains ".wordpress" - not that it's unsuitable or just stupid.

Sure.

Half-life.wikia.com

Half-life.wikia.com

Half-life.wikia.com

Looks similar. Inspired or not, the similarity is undeniable.

Either way, it might be useful.

Not enough robots in windows.

Chunky feet. That's my only criticism.

While a little disappointed with the transition to indie, when I think about it I can't actually pin down WHY I should feel betrayed.

I think that the transition is definitely beneficial on the whole, and while it has been unexpected and furthermore an annoyance - my anger lies with the unexpected transition, not with the cost.

I believe that everyone's point is solid - Dear Esther SHOULD have the right to earn money and be officially recognised and distributed; even on an old engine. However, I also believe that the community should have not been 'misled', or rather, been kept out of the loop of the discussions with Valve.

Either way, I'll pay, and I'll play. And either way, the modification is now a game. That's final.

You can also do something else with that tonemap.

Using a logic_auto AS WELL, create two outputs:

OnMapSpawn - TonemapControllerName - setexposuremax - 0.xxx

OnMapSpawn - TonemapControllerName - setexposuremin - 0.xxx

I'll puncture them all with one.

Dear Esther is none of those games.

Lulz, inspired by the WC mappack.

The point of placing the receiver on the opposite side is the same reason why Black changed all of it's weapons' receivers. It gives more detail to the weapon for the 90% of the right handed population of players, and means bullets can fly across the screen.

Which looks cool.

Brush channel blending? Phong texture shading? Public release of code ba-

Awwh.

I wonder if it would ever be possible to release extremely detailed insight into how you actually created the astonishing environments of Dear Esther? I'm not asking for tutorials, but rather what the workflow, shaders, algorithms and so on were and how they in turn benefitted the modification.

In other words, I don't want to know how you modelled, coded or textured. I want to know why and what your techniques are. After all; many of us can handle those processes, but your ability to take them to a whole new level is incomprehensible.

Thanks Robert.